Stalin offered a million troops to help Britain and France deter Nazi Germany 2 weeks before Germany invaded Poland.

The Allies turned them down, and the rest, as they say, was history.

But why did they refuse? 🧵 The upper class of both France and Britain were terrified of Bolshevism. They viewed Nazi Germany as a "Bulwark" against Soviet Communism.

This sympathy wasn't merely emotional - these classes had a great deal of influence on national policy - and normalized fascism.

While all the self-congratulation goes on in Israel regarding Iran's attack, consider that the results may have been exactly as expected by Iran - and that the attack was merely a test of the defense nexus of Israel. >>

https://twitter.com/Intel_Sky/status/1779671076118630435

No one would claim that slow moving drones or rockets are impossible to shoot down. The vast majority of the objects fired by Iran were these, and all of them were intercepted.

But there were some hypersonics (mach 10+). That's the 1% which did hit. >>

1000 Years of Darkness

At its height, the Library of Alexandria held nearly a million scrolls. Its scholars knew the circumference of the Earth, that it revolved around the Sun, that matter was made of invisible fragments called "atoms," and records of 1000 years of history. >> The library's collection was destroyed by religious zealots in 391/2 AD - not by Caesar as is commonly held.

The circumference of the Earth, the Heliocentric system, atomic theory, and thousands of other concepts and proofs, were not re-discovered until the 15th Century. >>

The Katyn Gambit

The picture below is of Polish prisoners taken by Nazi Germany in 1939. Some 420,000 Polish troops, including about 40,000 officers, were captured by the Nazis.

What happened to them after they were taken prisoner? 1/x Nobody knows for certain. Subsequent crimes against Poland and the Polish people were so horrendous that the fate of the Polish POWs was, to say the least, overshadowed.

It is only recent scholarship which has begun to shine light on this. 2/x

The Origin of Hamas - A Thread.
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Israel acquired Gaza from Egypt through conquest in the 1967 War. From then to 2005, it was administered directly by the Israeli Military. Avner Cohen was an Israeli official in Gaza overseeing religious affairs.
[Cohen in 1980, and today].

During the early period of occupation, the Palestine Liberation Organization, led by Yassir Arafat [below] was both the leading voice for the dispossessed Palestinians, as well as declared a "terrorist organization" by Israel and most of the West.
[Yassir Arafat in 1970]

In one of the early scenes of "Gone With The Wind," Rhett Butler makes the comment "there isn't a single cannon factory in the entire South." Which made him an unpopular figure at the ball. Also, as he predicted, the South lost.
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How many tank factories does Ukraine have? The answer is . . . they have one. Which produced exactly one tank in the last 10 years.

uawire.org/ukraine-s-larg…

Another escalation on the road to WW3.
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Kaliningrad is a sliver of Russian territory surrounded by Lithuania and Poland. The latter have now cut off resupply of that area by land, threatening starvation of Russian citizens - a violation of agreements and international law.

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1538910841378066432

After WW2, the USSR gave three major German provinces and part of Prussia to Poland (the yellow territories on the map), while keeping the northern part of Prussia for itself. The populations of these areas were relocated - so they are no longer "German" in any sense.

Cutting Countries Out Of The World Economy - A Thread
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Napoleon invaded Russia, lost his army, and was eventually forced to abdicate. France was given back to the Bourbon Kings, who later their royal behinds put back into the dustbin of history.
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Why did all of this happen? Why did the otherwise highly intelligent, rational Napoleon invade Russia? Was it just hubris, or the corruption of power? Or something more?
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Well, possibly a bit of hubris and corruption, but also something more - because Napoleon had to convince others too. Let's look. (c)

Yes - it's a huge mistake to think fascism "requires" antisemitism. It's a catastrophic mistake to think that because a political formation isn't anti-semitic, or has a "Jewish President" it, ipso facto, cannot be fascist.

https://twitter.com/notXiangyu/status/1508699560792797188

Fascism is a political form assumed in capitalism when the capitalist class perceives, rightly or wrongly, a threat to capitalist social relations, regardless of whether that threat was brought on by their own incompetence, greed, or by external factors.

The Story of Zoë and Karl.
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A young German submarine commander in 1917 meets a young Polish girl. They fall in love. He breaks the relationship when he sees her with German colonel. On patrol, Karl is nearly killed and suffers a nervous breakdown, returns to Zeebrugge. (c) Zoë takes charge of him on his return, whisks him off to the Belgian countryside for 6 weeks. They marry. Karl goes off to sea for his next patrol (now in 1918).
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On his return, he receives a letter from Zoë, which she wrote 5 hours before her execution for being an Allied spy.

Some of us have in recent days lost 'comrades' over the split view on the alleged 'trucker convoy.'
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It illustrates the need for the next phase of worker consciousness - which is revolutionary discipline. Lenin called it democratic-centralism.
(cont). Revolutionary discipline is one of the things which distinguish socialists from anarchists. It requires a leadership cadre dedicated to the working class, and a cadre of activists who place their trust in that leadership.

Let's be very crystal clear here: Members of the public banding together to "short squeeze" overextended hedge funds, deliberately, is perfectly *legal* activity.
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But, all of the sudden, Wall Street mavens are having conceptual problems with it. Because they aren't in control. So what is a "short squeeze" ?
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Hedge funds often deal in something called "options." These aren't actual stocks, but contracts to buy or sell stocks at some future time. These contracts themselves have "market value" and are a major source of income for many funds. (cont).

Capitalist Subjectivism, Jo.
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For decades now, every major media and capitalist government has been cranking out 24/7 propaganda on the benefits of capitalism and the free market, spewing out increasingly preposterous "theories" (Laffer) and "proofs" from institutions galore.

https://twitter.com/WelshyJo/status/1354434411891187712

Every vector of human existence has been framed in the lies necessary to sustain the continued rule of the capitalist class, to perpetuate the continued extraction of wealth from the working class and its continued immiseration. (cont)

THREAD: #JesseVentura2020 has never been an anti-capitalist. In fact he's been a "libertarian" - which is functionally indistinct from anarcho-capitalism.
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He appears to have pivoted recently, joined the Green Party, and now supports #MedicareForAll.
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Analysis follows. In 2016, Ventura explictly supported the Libertarian candidate for President, Gary Johnson -- who famously didn't know where (or possibly what) Aleppo was. Here's his endorsement of him on CNBC, the favorite network of oligarchs.

cnbc.com/2016/07/13/jes…

On June 8, 1967, #Israel attacked an American Navy ship in international waters. The Israeli military knew the ship was American, and that it was not a threat. They aimed to sink the ship, and blame Egypt, in order to involve the U.S. in the Six Day War.

digitaljournal.com/news/world/tap… President Johnson ordered the U.S. Navy to cover up this deliberate attack. The Navy Board inquiry complied with this order, over the resignation of one of its members.
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The father of John McCain, Admiral John S. McCain, complied with the cover-up order.