These are pics from former East German stores. This is kind of what happens when you try to produce everything locally. In the case of East Germany it was because the currency was worthless so they could not get any imports. Like no bananas. Wait time for a car was 8-12 years. /1


For this 26HP 2 stroke disaster of a car. There was no competition from imported goods, so the quality of local products was poor. Of course central planning was very stupid & inefficient too. /2

Trump has no clue what he just did. Some car parts go back & forth between 🇲🇽🇨🇦🇺🇸 FIVE times. The fallout will be epic. And different from Trump, Trudeau did the math on how to respond. It will create food insecurity, bring 🚘 production to a halt, worsen housing crisis /1 (Lumber & Aluminium), ruin red states that are set up to refine the heavy canadian crude and have soy bean & corn farmers, jeopardize the electricity supply for northern US, drive 🇨🇦 to trade with 🇨🇳& 🇪🇺, isolating the US and it shows the world that the 🇺🇸 is an unreliable /2

A populist demagogue tricked low information voters into abolishing democracy for the price of groceries. What nobody told you, prices for groceries ain't coming down. Because you know climate, floods and drought and such and Trump's mass deportations /1 and tariffs are going to make it worse as most produce is harvested by migrant farm workers. While groceries will remain expensive, Biden passed a lot of transformative legislation that is bringing costs down and creating high paying jobs for non-college educated people /2

Ok hear me out. No Trump voter would have changed their vote to Harris based on @washingtonpost endorsement. BUT: many moderates, independents & undecided are pissed about these billionaires bowing to facism. This is the perfect lesson how facism works. Obeying in advance. /1 As per Timothy Snyder 👇. This will only shine a bright light on the clear & present danger we are facing & if it moves the needle it will tilt it towards Harris. More will speak out. In soccer that’s an own goal /2

https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1849951974944313590

In 2017 Puerto Rico was hit by cat 4/5 Maria. 65 direct deaths. 3000 in the aftermath (lack of drinking water, electricity, insulin, IV fluids…). 8% of roads were passable, 100% of cell towers as well as local radar were destroyed. 0% of households had power. Puerto Rico is 1/ a US territory and about the size of the area between Fort Lauderdale & Miami. It takes a cargo ship traveling at 15-20knots 2-3 days to get to Puerto Rico from Miami. The flight duration is 2:40 minutes. Trump was president at the time. 2/

NATO spending is set 2% of GDP of each member country. There is no bill and no payment to NATO. This is money the member countries invest IN THEIR OWN MILITARY. E.g. it pays for troops, training, R&D, weapons stock piling etc. So all the money the US spends for "NATO" goes 1/ Directly into the US economy. Now the US spends more than 2% of GDP on defense anyways so NATO is not "costing" the US anything. Because the spend is % of GDP of course a smaller country like Greece spends a smaller total amount of money. This is not unfair. The reason for 2/

Orange Grandpa goes on increasingly weird tangents in his rallies (magnets in glasses, -40 in Iowa his EV going bzzzbzzz, GSDs are better than machines, dementia tests etc.). He still knows how to read a crowd and does notices when he is losing them. He then quickly brings out 1/ his all-time classics, drill baby drill (which is a lie as US domestic oil production is higher than ever) and the border. So of course he is not going to give up on this all time classic about the only thing that still gets major applause in his increasingly lunatic rants. 2/

The German 🇩🇪constitution equivalent from 1945 has may safeguards in place to avoid a 1933 repeat. Funny enough it was the allied forces who insisted on this and had to approve it before Germany was allowed to self govern. The US 🇺🇸could use some of these today what are they? 🧵 Art. 1 of 🇩🇪 basic law states that "human dignity shall be inviolable & all state authority shall respect and protect it“ they learned from a cruel leader. Forced birth, migrant bussing, trans healthcare denial and all the border cruelty would be unconstitutional in 🇩🇪

This weekend in Germany 🇩🇪, over 1.4 million people in 145 cities and villages came out for pro democracy demonstrations agains the far right. Ordinary people who never attended a demonstration in their life came out. Grandparents, families, everyone. What triggered it? 1/ Germany's far right party AfD is gaining traction esp in the former East. Some party members were overheard talking about deportation and some were filmed singing Germany to the Germans in a club. Now if what Trump says at his rallies about deportations and poisoning the blood 2/

Florida, take note. In Berlin 🇩🇪 a memorial is set into the cobblestones of a plaza and contains a collection of empty subterranean bookcases. The plaque reads: That was but a prelude;
where they burn books,
they will ultimately burn people as well. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Empty…

https://twitter.com/mattxiv/status/1620144556225490945

Dear American journalists, SWIFT is not a bank it is European's banking code system to send and receive money orders. Each account has a unique long number which is a combination of routing number and account# it's not that simple to just cut Russia off, European creditors would loose their payments from Russa and yes Germany and others pay their gas with it. Also Russia built their own SWIFT alternative after Crimea, so it is not certain how powerful it be and

I grew up on the west side of the wall in Cold War Germany. In a town with an army headquarter and 80.000 American soldiers. Chernobyl and the wall coming down happened in my formative years. The world seemed good after that with democracy winning, we are going backwards in time. One of my first childhood memories 6 yrs old is cycling over a bridge to tennis practice being passed by a colony of US tanks. Not with wheels, but with chains, deafening noise, asphalt flying, the bridge shaking and the tank less than 2 feet away. exercises, keeping us safe!

1/ So much misinformation going around about the dogs. The US military did not leave their dogs behind. The dogs in crates at airport are contractor working dogs that were rescued by KSA and are being flown out by @VetSheepdogsUS. The CDC does not allow dogs from 100 nations in 2/ that includes Afghanistan. The working dogs have the paperwork (e.g. rabies shot) to go to Germany for quarantine for 30 days before going to the US. The other dogs without paperwork were released from their crates in enclosed area of airport (former employee housing) w/ food