#BenazirBhutto became the youngest and first female prime minister of the Muslim world in 1988. She was an embodiment of women empowerment. Her three children, Bilawal, Bakhtawar and Aseefa were born while she faced myriads of political challenges but showed relentless...

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Whatsapp will start forcing users to share personal data with Facebook which is it's parent company. It doesn't come as a surprise since all the major giants of Silicon valley; Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft etc are deeply integrated with US intelligence agencies.

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In 2013, Edward Snowden, an employee of National Security Agency, revealed that the US govt was running a vast Internet surveillance program and tapping every major Silicon Valley platform and company— Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon including mobile games like Angry Birds.

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The most astonishing program revealed by Snowden’s disclosures is called PRISM, which involves a sophisticated on-demand data tap housed within the datacenters of the biggest and most respected names in Silicon Valley: Google, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo!, and Microsoft.

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These devices allow the National Security Agency (NSA) to extract whatever the agency requires, including emails, attachments, chats, address books, files, photographs, audio files, search activity, and mobile phone location history.

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Edward Snowden also revealed the Mass Metadata Surveillance System of America's National Security Agency (NSA) in his documents. Let's suppose if NSA had found someone dialing number of an al Qaeda member, and assume that this person had phoned 100 other people over the...

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President Trump has pardoned four Blackwater contractors who killed 17 Iraqi citizens including a 9 year old Ali,19 year old Ahmed and 11 year old Qasim in one of the worst acts of terrorism.

In this thread I'm sharing the heart wrenching accounts from that day in 2007.

On Sept 16 2007, at approximately 12:08 p.m. in Nisour Square Baghdad, a heavily armed Blackwater convoy consisting of four “Mamba” armored vehicles with 7.62-millimeter machine guns mounted on top made a surprise U turn as they entered the square.

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While the blackwater convoy entered, a young Iraqi medical student named Ahmed Hathem al-Rubaie was driving his mother, Mahasin, in Opal sedan after dropping his father Jawad at a hospital where he worked as a pathologist. Ahmed was in the third year of medical school.

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It was the month of Ramadan so they were fasting. Ahmed’s mother, was also a doctor--an allergist. They could've left Iraq but Jawad believed they were needed in the country. “I feel pain when I see doctors leaving Iraq,” he said.

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Ali Khalaf Salman, an Iraqi traffic cop, was on duty in Nisour Square on that day. As Khalaf watched, the blackwater convoy came to an abrupt halt and a large white man with a mustache, positioned atop the third vehicle in the Blackwater convoy, began to fire randomly.

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Today marks 73rd anniversary of the Nakba when more than half of Palestine's native population close to 800,000 was uprooted in 1948. 531 villages were destroyed. Palestinian sources, combined with Israeli military archives, have listed 31 confirmed massacres.

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In February 1947, the British cabinet decided to pull out of Mandatory Palestine. UN had to solve the question of Palestine's future. It took nine months in deliberation and then adopted the idea of partitioning the country without the consent of Palestinians.

The Jews, who owned less than 6% of the total land area of Palestine and constituted no more than one third of the population at the time of partition, were handed more than half of its overall territory. The Partition Resolution was adopted on 29 November 1947, and...

the ethnic cleansing of Palestine began in early December 1947 with a series of Zionist attacks.

Ben Gurion said couple of months before partition:
“The Palestinians could become a fifth column, and if so they can either be mass arrested or expelled; it is better to expel them”

The early Jewish assaults were severe enough to cause the exodus of around 75,000 Palestinians. But on 9 April 1948, Jewish forces carried out the Deir Yassin massacre. As they burst into the village, the Jewish soldiers sprayed the houses with machine-gun fire killing..

“Thread: History of Valentines Day”

Ancient historical sources have claimed the existence of several saints by the name of St.Valentines who died on Feb 14. Among them, two were executed during the reign of Roman Emperor Claudius Gothicus in 269-270 A.D.
#valentinesday2021

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It was the time when the Christian persecution was common. Another legendary account states that under the rule of Claudius II, Rome was involved in the bloody campaigns, therefore, to maintain a strong army, Claudius II banned all marriages and engagements in Rome.

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The reason of forbidding marriages was forced by the reluctance of people to join military because of their strong attachment to their wives. But St. Valentine defied the orders of the Emperor Claudius II Gothicus and married couples secretly to spare the husbands from war.

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A few claims have reported that St.Valentine endorsed illegal relationships which could end up into a marriage. When it was discovered by the emperor, St. Valentine was arrested and condemned to have his head cut off.

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An order of Belgian monks spent almost three centuries to explore the lives of saints by the name of St.Valentines from archives around the world. Bollandists suggested, that there weren’t actually two decapitated Valentines, but the two different versions of one saint’s...

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The recent act of terrorism against the Hazaras has raised questions. Which terrorist groups carried out the attack? Is the state appeasing terrorists or fighting them?

In this thread, I would give a factual account of what has happened in the last two decades in Balochistan.

In 1998, Riaz Basra who was then a member of Sipah e Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) arrived in Baluchistan along with six fighters; Zahid Multani, Saifullah, Najmus Saqib, Bashir and two others. Riaz Basra met Farooq Bangalzai of Baloch Liberation Army and Habibullah Zehri.

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The meeting was followed by the formation of Lashkar e Jhangvi's Balochistan wing under the command of Zahid Multani. Riaz Basra returned to Jhang while Zahid Multani was given the task of training a force for Lashkar e Jhangvi (LeJ) Balochistan.

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The first sectarian attack by LeJ in Baluchistan was carried out six days prior to the coup in Oct 1999 when the provincial education minister Sardar Nisar Ali Hazara was attacked along with his driver and bodyguard at point-blank range. Though the minister survived but...

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..it marked the beginning of a targeted killing spree against Hazaras. When General Musharraf came to power, he banned five organizations under the Anti Terrorism Act of 1997, Lashkar e Tayeba (LeT), Jash e Muhammad (JeM), Sipah e Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), TNSM and TJP.

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On this day in 1945 Soviet forces liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was the largest concentration and death camp. 1.1 million people, 90% of them Jews, were murdered there. Today it is an international day of commemoration, to honor the memory of all victims of Nazi extermination.

A few things to keep in mind on International Holocaust Remembrance Day:

1) The Soviet liberation of Auschwitz is a deeply symbolic event, but it is worth noting that allied forces were liberating Nazi camps until May of 1945. Unspeakable suffering and death continued for months

I bring this up because the popular perception of events is informed by primary school practices which present them with clean start and stop dates. Useful for repeating dates, but less useful for having an understanding of what forces you unleash and what it takes to unwind them

When we talk about the lessons of the Holocaust, too many fall into the trap of "if it's not identical to Auschwitz, it's not worth invoking the Holocaust."

The seeds for the Holocaust were laid long before Auschwitz was opened, and the Holocaust continued after its liberation.

2) Every year on this date you can reliably expect a debate on what it is we are commemorating. A small but loud group of people use this date as an opportunity to play suffering olympics. Resist the urge to engage with these fools.

Rio de Janeiro, 1920. 🇧🇷

São Paulo, 1910. 🇧🇷

“Arpoador”, Rio de Janeiro, 1900. 🇧🇷

“Avenida Paulista”, São Paulo, 1902. 🇧🇷

Recife, 1885. 🇧🇷

THE LAST PRINCESS OF LAHORE - BAMBA DULEEP SINGH (1869 - 1957)

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Post partition, every morning a weak old woman would board the Model Town bus service headed to the city. The conductor never asked her for money or he would invite anger of the last Queen of Punjab.

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Princess Bamba Sutherland, the eldest daughter of Maharaja Duleep Singh and grand-daughter of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, was born on Sep 29, 1869, in London.

Duleep Singh, the last Maharaja of Punjab was taken away to England by British after annexing Punjab.

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Since he was still a child he was forcibly converted to Christianity and made to adopt British values in order to prevent him from ever thinking about regaining Punjab.

He was also kept away from his mother Maharani Jindan.
When he finally met his mother years later...

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...he was told about his lost kingdom and religion after which he decided to reclaim it from British treachery.
During his struggle he married and had six children, 3 sons & 3 daughters from the 1st marriage.

Bamba was the most colorful character among 6 and was a rebel...
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...like her father and daring like her Grandfather Ranjit Singh. She married Col Sutherland who later became principal of King Edward Medical College.

When she got permission to bring her grandmother Maharani Jindan's ashes to Lahore in 1924, she saw a huge crowd gathered...
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Princes of Orissa (1870)

https://t.co/lU805fGjwH

As the Qanon prophecies fail and the cult-members struggle to resolve their cognitive dissonance, it's a good time to revisit the history of paranoid, conspiratorial political movements in American history - the "paranoid style" that has dominated since the Revolution.

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After all, the very first skirmishes of the US war of independence were based on a conspiracy theory: that the levy on tea was a prelude to a sellout of the colonists to transnational mercantalist interests. US politics have always been conspiratorial.

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I found @zacharykarabell's @politico history of the Know Nothing party especially useful, as it tells the story of what happens when surging, paranoid, fractious political movements

The American Party was a secret 19th century organization founded on a conspiracy theory: that Irish immigrants were secretly planning a takeover of the US on behalf of the Pope.

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