Now for something other than the United States: Germany's centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) are choosing their new leader next week. The winner has a very good chance of succeeding Angela Merkel as Chancellor of Germany. Here's what you need to know:

First, a little context. Merkel became leader of the CDU in 2000. After she stepped down in 2018, the party held a leadership contest in which Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (AKK), Jens Spahn and Friedrich Merz fought to succeed her. AKK won.

AKK, who is Germany's Minister of Defence in addition to leading the CDU, really struggled to bring the party together. I don't want this thread to run to 400 tweets so I won't go into detail here but it's fair to say that some of the losers never accepted defeat

AKK decided to step down as leader of the CDU early last year. A new leader was supposed to be elected quickly but corona happened and the party kept delaying. Logistical challenges aside, a lot of people worried about doing too much party politics while the world burned

That's how we got here. So what's going on? There are three candidates running to become new leader of the CDU: Norbert Röttgen (left), Armin Laschet (middle), Friedrich Merz (right)

Thread: Hinduphobic origins of the word ‘juggernaut’

“Juggernaut” is the Anglicized name for the Hindu god Jagannath, the “Lord of the Universe.”
“Juggernaut” entered English in the early 19th c. to mean “a powerful, dominant, unstoppable force”, as colonial Brits encountered

the massive chariot of Jagannatha being pulled through the streets devotees during the Rath Yatra.

Rev. Claudius Buchanan was the first to popularize “the Juggernaut” in both Britain and the United States in the early 1800s. Buchanan was an Anglican chaplain stationed in India,

and a staunch supporter of Christian missions to India. In his letters sent back home from India, Buchanan described ‘“Juggernaut” as a dangerous, violent, and bloody religious cult. These letters were reprinted in Christian missionary magazines on both sides of the Atlantic.

In 1811, Buchanan published Christian Researches in Asia, his broad examination of the religious state of India and its need for Christian missions. He described devotees throwing themselves under the wheels of Juggernaut’s chariots.

He used a biblical reference to the Old Testament’s description of the heathen god Moloch (to whom people sacrificed their children) to explain Juggernaut to his Christian audience:

I want you to understand something:

Twitter didn't just nuke @realdonaldtrump today

They nuked the top 35% of his most influential users/followers/thought-leaders.

Why did they take the dramatic and unprecedented step of doing this so suddenly, to perfectly rule-abiding users?

After seeing the role that civil religion Christianity played in Wednesday’s events, I am all the more convinced that religious liberty is absolutely urgent for us as Baptist and evangelicals to prioritize. Why?

Religious liberty is much broader than just about the freedom to believe or act. It is about the relationship between eternal authority and temporal authority. Thus, in discussing religious liberty, we have to get to questions of jurisdiction. Jurisdictions assign roles.

The role of government is not to act as an instrument of salvation. At best, it indirectly serves the mission of the church. The state is a temporal, prudential, and pluralistic arrangement that restrains human ferocity for obtaining whatever common good can be negotiated.

Religious liberty is thus foundational to public theology because it helps clarify the jurisdiction and role of eternal and temporal authority. This is why in every class I teach, I make religious liberty an essential component to our engagement. It’s our Baptist heritage.

If we get religious liberty right, we actually get the proper distinctions between church and state and church and world right—which counteracts the confused outworkings of civil religion vis-a-vis Christian Nationalism.

This reminds me of an old story...

Once upon a time there was a city.

In the middle of the city there was a huge and very popular meeting place where everyone gathered and talked and shared ideas.

The meeting place had only one rule: "No shitting on other people".

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The people agreed that it was a good rule and they met and talked and didn't shit on each other and were happy.

2/10

By and by a politician wanted to take advantage of the meeting place to talk to all of the people at once.

The owner thought it was a good idea and said "everyone is welcome but you must obey our one rule".

The politician agreed.

3/10

Day after day, the politician talked and talked and people listened, but there was a bad smell in the air.

People thought that the politician was not obeying the rule and complained to the owner that they were being shat on.

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The owner assured the people that the politician wouldn't do something like that deliberately but agreed that it was only fair to warn people.

So, whenever the smell was bad the owner made the politician wear a blue badge to advise that there may be shit in the air.

5/10

This remarkable embroidered tent from 19th-century Iran, now in the Cleveland Museum of Art, has been popping up on social media quite a bit over the last few days, so I thought I'd do a thread on it to brighten the twitter feeds this weekend...

It was made for Muhammad Shah, the second ruler of Iran's Qajar dynasty, who reigned from the death of his grandfather, Fath-ʿAli Shah, in 1834, until his own death in 1848.

We know it was made for Muhammad Shah as it bears his name, with the title 'Sultan-i Ghazi'. It also has a second inscription, which has been interpreted in a number of ways, but is likely to give the name of the maker, Fath-ʿAli.

The technique is known as rashti-duzi (Rasht embroidery), named for the city in the NW of Iran where is it used. Rashti-duzi most often consists of chainstitch in silk, done with a hooked needle, and applique, on (often felted or fulled) wool. Details from two V&A pieces here:

It was not only tents that were made using the technique, but all sorts of items, including saddle cloths & even portraits. The 2nd one here depicts Muhammad Shah's successor, Nasir al-Din Shah, which I photographed when it was on display at Louvre Lens. (The other is V&A).

A friend shares zhis thoughts on our brave no genderless world, free of white supremacy and racism. 1/9

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I am somehow now getting the the reason why all WWW based SM platforms went berserk simultaneously! Nope it has nothing to do with the election results , rather its a bigger plan a deception ! Here it goes .. its a thread

The deletes (dark eeeelllliiitttteeesss) were living a happy life in shadows while controlling the world via their puppets such as religion and money ! Then there was a disruption in their paradise , it was the rise of internet

They didn’t take it seriously in the beginning, but it gradually started connecting the world , people from distant places could communicate with each other share ideas and culture , and then twin tower happened when people first took to the internet to expose Deletes

By 2012 Expose of deletes on the internet reached to a dangerous level .. there were too many awakened people ( deletes call them conspiracy theorist) now all across the world , who understood their shenanigans

Deletes had to stop it ! This technology and specially teh world wide web was the biggest enemy of their long cherished dream of controlling the whole world ! They needed technology for it but the technology was proving to be a double edged sword due to it world wide web nature!

Read bottom to top for correct chronological timing...

WTF?

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The Board Meeting

The Board of Directors was caught in a deadlock situation. A secessionist state, called Freedom's Charter by its hard-bitten inhabitants, had somehow spawned almost overnight the month before.

It was causing the Societal Protectorate's Board of Directors no end of problems. The Board was still attempting to determine just how it had happened, but even more important was that it be ended.

And so they met, for the fourth time that month, in their dimly-lit conference room, with the various Directors seated around it, the walls lined with aides and functionaries of various levels.

The Board members had been deliberating for a little over four hours now, with no discernible progress.

One of the more junior functionaries started, almost imperceptibly, as his implant pinged, information scrolling up his vision.

Trained to rapidly assimilate such, the young man read and understood before stepping forward.

"We do have Marshall," offered the junior functionary. His voice was quiet, his tone a clear indicator of how well he knew the suggestion would be taken.

This tweet may slightly be off tangent and there may be outage; that doesn't mean one can't express what one feels about issue(s).. I've divided it into 3 parts - part 1 is about the outage at twitter - on them blocking Donald Trump- of these I'm astonished at some big handles ..

2. How many of them have read the rules/regulations as expressed by twitter - whether it's legally tenable to the law of the land is a different question - Trump himself , when his personal account got suspended used the id of Potus - all his noise could've been made in that id .

He fell into the trap well laid by the opposition , because he used his emotional quotient rather than his wisdom. Period. There's no reason claiming otherwise or using it as a comparative narrative - Eos; moreover, the unity among luteyns and the left , obnoxious they're, the RW

lacks it - RW fights among themselves and more the popular you're (I'm sticking to that definition by twitter standards), to me they're just another user of SM. The kind of reporting they do , and the alogrithm built in, suits them, do the RW ever done that on a single account ?

NO being the answer - why are we cribbing ? Part 2 is even more sensitive - look at the peacefuls, look at the white coats, do the warring Hindus - do we have the unity - we don't - when the cause is common, whether it be temples or any social issue, including the #DikkiSonas,

Story of Mahaperiya -
We also need to restore the name of River Purna - which is called in the name of stooge 'Periyar" now

One day a very reputed Geologist happened to visit Kanchipuram to have darshan of Mahaswamigal.
After enquiring about his family
#SaturdayMotivation

Swamigal asked him if he would do Him a favour. The geologist was overwhelmed he wondered what it was that he, a mere mortal could help the Saakshaat Deivam with. He immediately agreed. Mahaperiya asked him if he knew about Kaladi.
He replied even as a young child

he knew that it was the birth place of Adi Shankaracharyar
Periyava then told him that the river Purna ran through that place and that Shankarar's mother used to bathe in it every day. He then requested him to arrange for a diver

to dive and take out sand from two different locations of the River Purna (presently called River Periyar).

One location, He said, should be where the River Purna enters Kerala before it diverts into entering Kaladi and the other location should be at Kaladi, where the river

makes a small U-turn and reaches Shankarar's home itself. Swamigal asked him to use the technique of carbon dating to ascertain the age of the sand at these two locations. The geologist promised to return with the results at the earliest overjoyed that he could actually

21. Military Intelligence Contact Update continued:

Twitter•Yesterday at 12:17 PM
Ashli Babbit ALIVE and WELL The FALSE FLAG Shooting
You have been PLAYED. Chalk one more for the DeepState. Sheeple will still believe whatever they are told. In this Slowed Down & Stop Motion...

BREAKING – Authorities destroying Mullivaikkal memorial at Jaffna University

A monument paying tribute to the tens of thousands of Tamils massacred by the Sri Lankan state at the University of Jaffna is currently being bulldozed by authorities.

Heavy machinery has been pictured inside the campus toppling the monument.

Students have gathered at the gates of university campus but fear entering amidst reports that Sri Lankan soldiers may also be present.

Sri Lankan police officers have been pictured arriving at the scene just moments ago, as the tense situation continues.

More to follow.

The monument was first unveiled in 2019, on the 10 year anniversary of the Mullivaikkal massacres.

The massacres saw tens of thousands of Tamils killed by the Sri Lankan state in 2009.

As students gathered outside the gates, they expressed concerns about other memorials inside the campus, including the Pongu Thamil commemoration board and a central monument commemorating lives lost in the Tamil liberation

#xicheng modern au

Where JC came from a happy functional fam (surprise) & he was the absolute Baby of the house.

A-niang didn't allow him to cook cz what if he got burned?

A-die drove him EVERYWHERE or sent WWX to accompany him.

A-Jie held his hand when crossing the street.

WEI WUXIAN LEGIT BOUGHT HIM CHILDREN TICKETS EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

And the worst part was JC KNEW it wasn't intentional, WWX REALLY had a hard time remembering that just bcs JC was the youngest, at 18 he wasn't a Baby anymore.

He was going to start college soon!!

JC's dream was to be Independent & acted his age for once instead of being babied by everyone.

(Seriously, A-Die BABY PROOFED his new apartment so JC wouldn't bruise when hitting the table corners, and A-Niang asked he apartment manager to make sure JC ate 3 times a day. STAHP).

At the apartment next door, lived Lan Xichen.

First born. Heir of the family business. Gotta be perfect, responsible, independent, reliable, two steps ahead. The family's pride and joy, but also his parents' emotional support eldest son.

Kinda feel so done sometimes but

had to stay ☺️ because he was THE Eldest Son you know?? He was Too Old for mental breakdown whatever. He got this. Conceal, don't feel.

The show must go on.
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They met at the elevator.

LXC was carrying bags of groceries (independent, need no help) and JC was enjoying his