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In February 1981, pro-Franco army officers attacked the Spanish Parliament hoping to halt Spain's evolution toward democracy and liberalism. 1/x

 The coup was soon suppressed, in large part because of a miscalculation by the dying Franco regime. In 1975, the regime had restored the old Spanish monarchy, hoping to glamorize authoritarianism. Instead, King Juan Carlos opposed the coup - and most of the army obeyed. 2/x
Here's where the story gets interesting for our current purposes ...

The coup launched to thwart Spain's shift to democracy instead consolidated Spanish democracy. The next year, 1982, social democrats won the biggest landslide in Spanish electoral history. 3/x
The elected social democrats formed a government without a single minister connected to the old regime. State support of the Catholic church ended. Family law was modernized, minority language rights were protected. If Franco had opposed it - the new Spain wanted it. 4/x
The process was not instant. Not until 2019 would the state remove Franco's remains from the lavish tomb he built to himself. But the process was inexorable. The pro-Franco attempted coup guaranteed the total doom of Francoism in Spain. 5/x
The differences between the US in 2021 and Spain in 1981 are obviously huge. I'm not proposing an analogy at all. But what I do notice is that some on the pro-Trump side apparently fear that what happened to Francoists in Spain after 1981 could happen to them after 2021. 6/x
The day after pro-Trump insurrectionists invaded the capital, apparently with a plan to lynch the vice president of the United States, Tucker Carlson was on Fox News worried about the terrible risk of persecution of Trump supporters. 7/x https://t.co/sJfQ5F3c6F
Similar concerns are being articulated by other hard-line and soft-line pro-Trump voices. They lament that real victims of the attempted violent overthrow of a US election will be ... those who sympathized with that attempted violent overthrow 8/x https://t.co/ZfqGHkkG9x 8/x
Why, some of those who supported that attempted violent overthrow have already lost their book contracts and may have to republish instead with a less prestigious imprint! If that's not tyranny, what is? 9/x
But beneath the self-indulgent self-pity, these pro-Trump voices are saying something real and true. What was attempted on January 6 *is* discrediting in a democracy -and the disgrace will be shared to some measure not only by its participants, but by its sympathizers. 10/x
The discredit of Trumpism will not be unanimous, obviously - just as you can still find Francoists in Spain even today. But the balance of political and especially cultural power will shift. And Trumpists care even more about cultural power than about political power. 11/x
Trumpists often compare themselves to truly persecuted minorities: African Americans in the Jim Crow South, Jews under Nazism, Christians under communism. That's disgusting and also crazy. 12/x
But Trump's incitement of violence to overturn an election he lost - atop his horrifying mismanagement of the pandemic and the economic crisis in which so many Americans have suffered so much - will cast enduring, inescapable odium upon him and anything associated with him. 13/x
Trumpists already feel the chill of the thickening clouds of social disapproval. And the chill bites sharper because at some deep inner level, even the Trumpists must recognize - they deserve it. END
PS Spanish readers inform me that not all state support for the Catholic church was ended post-Franco. I stand corrected.

More from David Frum

David Frum
David Frum
@davidfrum
On October 16 2020, a secondary school teacher named Samuel Paty was beheaded with a meat cleaver in the street of a small town 20 miles down the Seine from Paris. 1/x

Paty's murderer, a young Chechen refugee, had never met the teacher. The killer was incited to the crime by a multi-day campaign of defamation and disinformation on French social media. 2/x

For 5 years, Paty had taught his classes a unit on free speech and its limits in a democratic society. As part of the discussion, he showed his students some of the famous Charlie Hebdo cartoons - after inviting those who might be offended to leave and then rejoin the class. 3/x

One parent of one student - not the student herself - then set in motion a campaign of denunciation against Paty. And the result was a crime that shocked France and pulled tens of thousands to vigils and protests. 4/x

France has suffered terrible crimes in the name of religion before the Paty killing. We're only 5 years from the horrifying nightclub attacks that killed 130 in November 2015. But past attacks caught France by surprise. This murder announced itself in advance. 5/x
EDUCATION
David Frum
David Frum
@davidfrum
I got overnight via email a query from @briansflood at Fox News, the principal part of which I reproduce below. I answered by email too. I'll append that reply in the next threaded tweet:


My reply:


Hunter Biden's dubious business activities have been reported for years. Here for example is @TheAtlantic in September 2019, year *before* @nypost https://t.co/qZBTpyuysM


That emails attributed to Hunter Biden were circulating was also known well before the NYPost story in October. Here's TIME magazine https://t.co/JvpEKdG0U4


What @NYPost added to the work earlier done by others was a new *origin* story for the materials that circulated in Ukraine in 2019. When other media organizations attempted to corroborate that story, hijinx ensued. https://t.co/ZJGZWq7etU @thedailybeast account
BIDEN
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David Frum
David Frum
@davidfrum
You're hearing a lot of talk about "irregularities" in the election of 1876 that led to a "disputed" outcome. What is being referred to in this hazy terms?

Across the state of South Carolina, white conservatives had used terror and massacre to deter former slaves from voting in 1876. Here's the story of an attack upon the small town of Hamburg in July

Hundreds of black South Carolinians were killed by white conservative militias. Blacks fought back in many places, but they were out-gunned.

The killings were not spontaneous outbursts. They were part of planned campaign of anti-black voter

Some of the elements of the conservative plan to suppress black votes in South Carolina in 1876 sound queasily familiar in our own time, adjusting for the antique language and technology.


But back of it all was terror and violence, more violence than could be contained by the limited federal forces in the area - who were anyway constrained by the white conservative Democratic House majority elected in 1874.
POLITICS , HISTORY
David Frum
David Frum
@davidfrum
In an early episode of "Mad Men," the young striver Peggy Olson faces a traumatic experience. The principal character, a man whose life is built upon falsehood and evasion, offers his life advice: "It never happened. It will amaze you how much it never happened." 1/x

With the Tanden nomination, we are watching congressional Republicans put Don Draper's advice into effect.

They supported a profoundly corrupt, cruel, vituperative, and generally immoral and unethical president at the head of an inept and unethical administration. They knew it!

But of course those senators never said so. They were scared and they were shamed. Maybe they stopped some bad things - or at least they tell themselves they did. But the experience had to have been profoundly humiliating for almost all of them. And these are not humble people.

So how do they cope? They follow Don Draper's advice. "It never happened."

The Tanden nomination is the opportunity to rev the pretense loud and fast.

The lady was occasionally indecorous! Even ... sometimes ... untoward. We can't have THAT in the US government!

Hypocritical is not really the word to describe this behavior. It's more a kind of post-traumatic coping mechanism, a denial of the radical abuse that they also suffered, along with US allies worldwide, people of integrity in govt service, and so many bereaved American families
ALL
David Frum
David Frum
@davidfrum
Trump tweets about his health remind me of a story my late father-in-law Peter Worthington told about covering the Six Day War in 1967 ... 1/x

Pete was in Cairo on the day the war started. He was awoken early by air raid sirens. He turned on Radio Cairo to listen for news. Time passed until an announcer delivered a bulletin. "The Zionists attacked at dawn. We shot down six of their planes and suffered no losses." 2/x

Pete shaved and prepared to go visit the air ministry for himself. The announcer returned to the air. "Update: we shot down TWELVE Zionist planes and suffered no losses ourselves."

He understood the Egyptians had suffered a bad defeat. 3/x

He finished dressing, knotted his tie, and the announcer was back.

"Update again. We shot down FIFTY Zionist planes and suffered no losses ourselves."

That's when he realized that the entire Egyptian air force had been wiped out.

4/x

(NB I may have the figures wrong in the anecdote, I'm telling the story from memory, but you get the idea.)

5/x
TRUMP

More from World

Heshmat Alavi
Heshmat Alavi
@HeshmatAlavi
THREAD

1)
“Iranian Arms, Fighters Bolster Maduro Government in Venezuela, U.S. Says”

#Iran has a long history of meddling in #Venezuela with the U.S. in its crosshairs.

And Obama facilitated the mullahs’

2)
Iran has sent arms & dispatched paramilitary operatives to help Maduro remain in power.

“We see a growing Iranian influence in there,” said Adm. Craig Faller, head of the U.S. Southern Command, citing the “alarming & concerning” presence of IRGC Quds Force military personnel.


3)
“We’re concerned about what we see…It’s not just oil shipments, it’s arms shipments as well,” Adm. Craig Faller said. “We saw an uptick in that this year. We are watching the rate of change very carefully.”

More on Iran's malign role in South

4)
“… flotillas are often accompanied by Iranian naval vessels, including an intelligence ship that U.S. officials say has been used to transport missiles to Iranian proxies in the Middle East…”

More on Iran's gaining a dangerous foothold in the

5)
“Iran’s Mahan Air, an airline sanctioned by the U.S. for transporting men, money & arms for the terror-designated IRGC, has also restarted flights between the two
WORLD
Pulp Librarian
Pulp Librarian
@PulpLibrarian
Today in pulp I look back at the world of Soviet women's fashion!

It's not all berets, but it mostly is...


Now you may think that fashion and the Soviet Union go together like Groucho Marx and Friedrich Engels. However that is to misunderstand the nature of the Commad Economy: if she commands it, you'd better buy it for her!


So there is a rich history of fashion and fun (along with the tractor factories and endless ballet performances) in the old USSR. Let's take a sashay along it...


At the start of the Soviet years women's fashion, let's face it, tended towards the functional. Red was popular, as were headscarves, hobnail boots and the ability to field strip a 3-line rifle.

But all that was about to change...


...because Russia had a new fashionista in charge: Stalin! He hated the peasant look of War Communism because it made socialism seem synonymous with poverty. He ordered Soviet Woman to spruce herself up.
WORLD
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SeunOkin Channels tv
SeunOkin Channels tv
@seunokin
#endsars #endpolicebrutality

Dear Friends,

On a rather deeper look at things, Police brutality is the topmost of the agitation but the anger and fury is deeper, bottled up for many years. An oppression our fathers have endured and the children now say No More, Enough is Enough!

In the context of the current scenario “SARS” has become a metaphor.

“SARS” in our society today represents all the inefficiencies, corruption, structural imbalances, faults and All the shenanigans of the Political class

If this present fury does not inspire an overhaul of the Nigerian system, then we may be headed for another restless round of 60 year of disastrous merry go round. This Nation needs a RESET NOW!!

It’s a good time to negotiate the fixing of this great Nation.

How long do we keep singing; Nigeria has great potentials? Let those potentials start working for good

If we must tell our selves the bitter truth as a people we urgently need to fix these;

* A drastic cut in cost of governance
* Federal Ministers shouldn’t be more than 10

* Remove the lofty attraction in public office
* Reduce the powers of the centre and decentralize reasonably
* Fix our defective constitution
* Reset the civil service
* Create regional economic/developmental competition
* Allow states to explore their resources/endowment
WORLD
Aitor Hern\xe1ndez-Morales
Aitor Hernández-Morale...
@aitorehm
Portugal is famous for its mild climate and sunny beaches, but each year hundreds of people freeze to death and millions struggle to survive frigid winter weather.

Here's a quick thread based on my @POLITICOEurope story on Portuguese energy poverty

When I lived in Lisbon my friends and I joked that although the Portuguese were famous for melancholia, uncharacteristic (and unrealistic) optimism defined their approach to thermal insulation: homes seemed to be built as if the weather was expected to be perfect year-round.


While the weather is, indeed, really great for most of the year, it can also be really awful sometimes. In the Summer temperatures can shoot up to truly unbearable levels for weeks on end, and in the Winter the icy humidity can easily make you feel like you're freezing 24/7.


This reality is a huge problem precisely because so many Portuguese people live in homes that don't have the capacity to shelter them from the heat when temperatures rise and the cold when they drop. And that means that every year that means people die because of the weather.


This issue can be traced back to the rural exodus that took place during the second half of the XX century, when millions fled the interior to seek better futures either outside the country — immigrating to France, Germany and Luxembourg — or in cities like Lisbon and Porto.
WORLD
MEWAS
MEWAS
@KeithMEWAS
As witch-hunt #3 gets underway by @BeatriceJanzon
@sverigesradio @sr_ekot against me, Keith Begg, a citizen of Ireland and Sweden and no doubt some members of the FB Group I would like to post some questions to the above:
🆘Is it ethical, that the tactics and antics of a state


media station, paid for with taxpayers money, can infiltrate a Private FB group and try to discredit them? This is done in the most authoritarian of states.
🆘Is it ethical that the Honorable David Nabarro from @WHO had to issue a press release due to being deliberately


misquoting in Swedish media?
🆘Are these headlines reflective of what you would see in free media in a democracy, when the rest of the world was posting quite opposite headlines about Sweden?
🆘Does the deliberate distortion of information on Swedish TV constitute any


breaches of trust? Why was it done? After all when the government changed its C19 strategy on the Gov website, they deemed it a mistake?
🆘Not to mind the Italian embassy having to issue three statements over false claims by Tegnell


which were picked up by the media. Do I as a private citizen think that @RSF_en made a big mistake by recognizing Sweden as #4 in terms of Freedom of the Press? ABSOLUTELY. We want to know what they based their decisions on. Because it is clear to many
WORLD

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Antonio Garc\xeda Mart\xednez
Antonio García Martíne...
@antoniogm
Observing the public conversation around FB, and the private ones happening among techies and ex-FBers, I think the mutual misunderstanding is worse than when I set out two years (and 500 pages) ago to (in a small way) bridge that gulf.

We're basically fucked.

The tech world has gotten so huge, self-reinforcing, and insulated from reality they can no longer even vaguely look at themselves (and their actions) as others do. They just live on a different planet than most people.

Conversely, the average tech consumer doesn't understand the technology that has slowly taken over their lives, and their designated emissaries to figure it out--politicians, pundits, regulators, journalists--understand it barely better than they do, and have their own agendas.

To say more than generalities for a moment, here's what I think is likely the core problem.

Techies take weird, improbable visions, and make them realities: some BS pitch deck to a VC, mixed with money and people, really does turn into some novel thing.

Most people work inside a legacy industry that's evolved that way over time (usually for good reasons), and they think about the future via some analogy with their present (which is a function of a long-ago past). The interruption that tech will introduce is often hard to grasp.
TECH
Anshul Pandey
Anshul Pandey
@Anshulspiritual
Rig Ved 1.36.7

To do a Namaskaar or bow before someone means that you are humble or without pride and ego. This means that we politely bow before you since you are better than me. Pranipaat(प्राणीपात) also means the same that we respect you without any vanity.

1/9


Surrendering False pride is Namaskaar. Even in devotion or bhakti we say the same thing. We want to convey to Ishwar that we have nothing to offer but we leave all our pride and offer you ourselves without any pride in our body. You destroy all our evil karma.

2/9

We bow before you so that you assimilate us and make us that capable. Destruction of our evils and surrender is Namaskaar. Therefore we pray same thing before and after any big rituals.

3/9

तं घे॑मि॒त्था न॑म॒स्विन॒ उप॑ स्व॒राज॑मासते ।
होत्रा॑भिर॒ग्निं मनु॑षः॒ समिं॑धते तिति॒र्वांसो॒ अति॒ स्रिधः॑॥

Translation :

नमस्विनः - To bow.

स्वराजम् - Self illuminating.

तम् - His.

घ ईम् - Yours.

इत्था - This way.

उप - Upaasana.

आसते - To do.

स्त्रिधः - For enemies.

4/9

अति तितिर्वांसः - To defeat fast.

मनुषः - Yajman.

होत्राभिः - In seven numbers.

अग्निम् - Agnidev.

समिन्धते - Illuminated on all sides.

Explanation : Yajmans bow(do Namaskaar) before self illuminating Agnidev by making the offerings of Havi.

5/9
RELIGION
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Anu Satheesh
Anu Satheesh
@AnuSatheesh5
Sri Mridanga Saileswari Temple Muzhakkunnu, Kannur KERALA

The temple is established by Parasurama and it is one among 108 Durga temples.
Devi will answer all the prayers of her devotees who pray to her with utmost devotion lighting the ghee deepam.


It is the family diety of Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja.
Devi is present in three forms Kali, Saraswati and Lakshmi.

Legend...👇
Once a Mridungam ( musical instrument) shaped rock fell from heaven here.
@SriramKannan77


Devi originated in the form of Mridangam and Parasurama captivated the essence of Devi into a Vigraham. Vigraham is made of Panchaloham.
Kathakali, an art form of Kerala originated here.


Temple Vigraham was stolen 3-4 times, but because of power of Devi all the attempts were failure. Police records says that Whenever the thieves try to steal, they lose their senses, and they will be in a confused state. So they will abandon the idol.
🕉
ALL
Hector Navarro
Hector Navarro
@Hectorisfunny
I'm going to attempt to chronologically list all of the Marvel characters Stan Lee had a hand in creating. Working with his genius collaborators, Stan and his team produced an insane amount of iconic characters in a roughy ten year period. (Thread)


With his younger brother, writer Larry Lieber, and Jack "the King" Kirby:

Groot

Tales to Astonish #13 (November, 1960)


With writer Lieber, and artist Kirby:

Fin Fang Foom

Strange Tales #89 (October, 1961)


With the King, Stan gives birth to the Marvel Universe:

The Fantastic Four

Fantastic Four #1 (November, 1961)


With Jack Kirby:

Mister Fantastic

Fantastic Four #1 (November, 1961)
CULTURE
Patrick McKenzie
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
A thing which I unironically and enthusiastically believe which is unpopular among smart people of my acquaintance: financial engineering has in the recent past and present contributed substantially to human welfare. We should hope to see more of it.

Maybe more geeks need to meet someone who says “My job is teleporting value across time and space.”

Financial engineering is sort of a squishy term. I don’t primarily mean payments infrastructure or financial rails, although both of those involve substantial engineering.

I mean more “We took a thing and performed some alchemy, and now have a new thing.”

Except instead of alchemy it is generally quite a bit of math, a huge amount of contract law and due diligence, often an impressive amount of ops work, and a dusting of technology that web devs would recognize as such.
ALL