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James Spackman
38K posts
@JCDuncanauthor @pinstripedline The oldest road in Britain went to East Anglia.
icknieldwaypath.co.uk
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@pinstripedline East Anglia is undefeated in the 'this part doesn't really matter' national planning. 😂
Never even bothered to build a proper road to it.
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A 1950s TOP SECRET map showing the critical areas of the UK that needed to be defended from both conventional and nuclear air attack by Fighter Command and ground based AA defences.
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@NBCNews Sounds like the return of ‘sluggish schizophrenia’…
x.com/jamesspackman/…
James Spackman@JamesSpackman
But repressive conditions quickly returned after the Revolution - most perversely, the pseudo-diagnosis of ‘sluggish schizophrenia’ was used to persecute political dissenters. To the KGB, opposition to their cruelty was a sign of political madness! medicalnewstoday.com/articles/slugg…
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A loyal pro-Kremlin blogger who unexpectedly denounced Russian President Vladimir Putin as “a war criminal and thief” has been admitted to a psychiatric facility. nbcnews.com/world/russia/k…
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James Spackman أُعيد تغريده
So CS Lewis refers to a key battleground…
From USA to Iran, the cultural confrontation between the contrasting authoritarian imperialist and common humanitarian tendencies is being fought over anachronistic interpretations of propagandised history.
The Atlantic@TheAtlantic
The Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals aligning with ICE are "prying Christianity further and further away from the ethic and teachings of Jesus," @Peter_Wehner argues: theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/…
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Thomas’ martyrdom in south India was reputedly choreographed as a similar indignity by his assassins to evoke the piecing of Christ on the cross by Longinus with the ‘spear of destiny’.
Because murdering a lion-hearted man isn’t enough, you must also crush their spirit.
James Spackman@JamesSpackman
The baptising community of Ecbatana was traditionally founded by Thomas - who was sent east in the dispersal of the Apostles after the Pentecost to evangelise the Medes, Parthians, Persians, then sailing to Cochin in 52ce and martyred at Mylopore in 72ce. baselius.ac.in/wp-content/upl…
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For Christians however, these resonate as iconography of martyrdom.
Ignatius was ‘damned to the beasts’ under Trajan, but with Constantine’s dramatic reversal to toleration, Shapur2 responded in 339 by persecution killing 16,000, ‘damned as the beasts’.
gloriaromanorum.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-16…
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The Caspian Sea is named after Ctesiphon, which was the capital of the Parthian, then Sassanid empires which controlled the sea.
James Spackman@JamesSpackman
Seleucia was founded in 305bc opposite Opis on the Royal Road, before it was conquered by Parthians c141bc, burned by Trajan in 116ad, returned to Parthia by Hadrian, then sacked in 165 and the site was abandoned, before Sasanians moved to Opis to construct Ctesiphon.
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You wouldn’t say Russians have a ‘mother complex’, more of a ‘grandmother complex’.
Babushkas emerge as a social phenomenon due to male estrangement from family life.
uclpress.co.uk/book/the-babus…
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However, the end of glasnost in 1991 saw a spike in alcoholism reflected in inordinate male mortality rates that contribute to Russia’s demographic imbalance.
ox.ac.uk/news/2014-01-3…
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@DrUweSchmidt1 @GrimmVeronika @bitterlemmer Same criticism was levelled at Bush jr.
He had no plan for Iraq other than fit with his re-election campaign.
Ironically, US foreign policy has much in common with the Islamic world - where politicians treat it as an arena for domestic control, not real world improvements.
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As much as I generally agree in economic questions, using the term „failure of US/Israel“ truly exposes the dilemma and the shortcomings of the US strategy:
WHAT is „failure“ of the US/Israel, what would be „success“?
(and that may be very different for Israel and the US already)
Only if we solidly and clearly define this term, we can actually evaluate any potentially„MUCH higher“ costs for Europe.
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I fear that Europeans don‘t get what is at stake.
Failure of US/Israel in the middle east is of MUCH higher cost to us in Europe than to almost anyone else.
(This holds independently of what one thinks about the escalation - it is already there)
Lindsey Graham@LindseyGrahamSC
Just spoke to @POTUS about our European allies’ unwillingness to provide assets to keep the Strait of Hormuz functioning, which benefits Europe far more than America. I have never heard him so angry in my life. I share that anger given what’s at stake. The arrogance of our allies to suggest that Iran with a nuclear weapon is of little concern and that military action to stop the ayatollah from acquiring a nuclear bomb is our problem not theirs is beyond offensive. The European approach to containing the ayatollah’s nuclear ambitions have proven to be a miserable failure. The repercussions of providing little assistance to keep the Strait of Hormuz functioning are going to be wide and deep for Europe and America. I consider myself very forward-leaning on supporting alliances, however at a time of real testing like this, it makes me second guess the value of these alliances. I am certain I am not the only senator who feels this way.
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Violence and corruption is enforced via the means arms.
While Russia offers ‘safe haven’ for traffickers, Russian armed forces are an easy conduit (sometimes described as an ‘open fawcet’ or ‘eternal fountain’) for illicit supply of weapons.
sipri.org/sites/default/…
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Where drugs and prostitution are the not directly political in purpose, the spider trails of vice create corrupting networks of subversion which are fed into finance and violence - indirect dependency on force creates dependency on ‘safe havens’-from 2007:
rusi.org/publication/ar…
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War is an opportunity for criminality.
Drug, arms and people trafficking are principal money earners for Russian mafia.
OSCE Anti-Trafficking@osce_cthb
"Because #humantrafficking is a financially motivated crime, this spike in demand serves as an incentive for traffickers. We stand on the verge of an unprecedented trafficking crisis in Europe unless we act decisively to prevent it." @OSCE #SRValRichey op. remarks at SE #UNGA77
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