[Breitbart] A startling trend based on contradictory data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Federal Bureau of Investigation indicates that violent crime is not going down; rather, it has increased and is not being reported, according to Crime Prevention Research Center President John Lott.
Lott detailed the trend during a Trump campaign press call on Friday, hours before the National Fraternal Order of Police endorsed former President Donald Trump.
The expert pointed to a substantial divide in violent crime incidents reported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics’s National Crime Victimization Survey versus those reported by the FBI. The divide is especially eye-poping because data in the past from the two organizations has trended closely together, he notes.
“There are two measures that the Department of Justice puts out on crime,” Lott explained:
One is the FBI data on crimes reported to police, and the other one is the National Crime Victimization Survey from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which gets at a measure of total crime, both reported and unreported. They do that by surveying a mass of 240,000 people each year, and they’ve been doing that for 50 years.
“What you find is that these two measures, prior to 2020, generally moved along together, but, since 2020, they’ve moved in opposite directions in each year, often by very large amounts,” he added. “If you take 2022, which is the last complete data that we have final data for both of those two measures, while the FBI showed a 2 percent drop in reported violent crime, the National Crime Victimization data showed a 42 percent increase in violent crime.”
Indeed, in 2021, the FBI reported 387 violent crimes per 100,000 people. The figure dropped to 380.7 per 100,000 people in 2022. Yet, the National Crime Victimization survey found that reports of violent crimes increased 42 percent, from 16.5 incidents per 1,000 people in 2021 to 23.5 per 1,000 people in 2022.
According to Lott, one cause of this trend is that the enforcement of certain crimes has “collapsed” over recent years:
Enforcement of violent crime and property crime has collapsed in this country. If you take just the FBI data, which is what the media, generally, and what the Democrats want to go and look at, in the five years before COVID in large cities of over a million, for example, the average arrest rate for violent crimes was 44 percent. It started falling, and after that, by 2022, it was down 20 percent. That’s over a 50 percent drop in three years. It’s never, in the entire time that we’ve had FBI data, it’s never been anything even closely low to that.
Notably, some blue states and Democrat district attorneys in major cities have embraced soft-on-crime policies in recent years, including cashless bail for certain felony offenses in some places, like New York.
Lott emphasized that a factor in whether victims will actually report a violent crime is whether or not they believe their perpetrator will be held to account.
“So, the question you have to ask yourself is: Do you think it’s more interesting to look at reported crimes or total crimes?” he posed to reporters on the call. “And one of the reasons why this collapse is important is that we’ve known for a long time the rate that people report crimes to the police depends, in part, on whether they think anything’s going to happen, whether they think the criminals are going to be arrested and punished.”
“And if they don’t think criminals are going to be arrested and punished, they’re less likely to go and report crimes to the police,” he added.
#2
SNARK ON.
So the National Crime Data is missing from more than 6,000 of the 18,000 US law enforcement agencies for 2023, as we go into an election year.
I am sure it wasn't intentional.
SNARK OFF.
ON A SERIOUS NOTE:
Each of the 6,000+ US law enforcement agencies should be required to return the Federal taxpayer $$$$ it was given for National Crime Reporting.
#5
In theory, managing things by the numbers is a great idea. In practice, it is easier to cook the books than influence the process you are tracking. It takes discipline not to cheat, especially if your bonus (or re-election) depends on those numbers.
[AmericanThinker] ...Charles Murray is a prolific author and writer on education. He notes:
For 40 years, American leaders have been unwilling to discuss the underlying differences in academic ability that children bring to the classroom. Over the same period, federal policy, backed by billions of taxpayer dollars in loans and grants, has aggressively encouraged more and more students to try to obtain a college education. As a result, about half of all high-school graduates now enroll in four-year colleges, despite the ample evidence that just a small minority of American students — about 10-15% — have the academic ability to do well in college.
But they're real good at having pro-Hamas demonstrations
...The problem is when Barack Obama federalized the student loan industry, colleges were incentivized to admit everyone with a loan, which led to remedial high schools on campus, tuition inflation, grade inflation, and the devaluation of a college degree. One would think our Ivy League schools would not fall into this academic death spiral. One would think "surely they’d maintain academic standards!" One would think wrong. Even Harvard, our first university, founded in 1636 to teach ministers, has succumbed:
The Harvard Math Department will pilot a new introductory course aimed at rectifying a lack of foundational algebra skills among students, according to Harvard’s Director of Introductory Math Brendan A. Kelly.
The course, titled Math MA5, will run alongside two established math courses — Math MA and MB — with an expanded five-day schedule. Kelly said that students in MA5 will meet with "one of two instructors all five days" with "a variety of different activities" on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
And whatever happened to kindly telling people they’re just not qualified, that there are specific performance standards and everyone must meet them if they want to enroll at America’s most prestigious center of higher education?
Sadly, the answers are obvious, aren’t they?
Posted by: Grom the Reflective ||
09/07/2024 11:22 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11138 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
a lack of foundational algebra skills
What about the 'a lack of foundational parenting skills'?
#3
re: #1 Sorry Skid but you can't blame everything on the parents.
If they need algebra to get into Hahvahd then high school is where they should have learned it (should have started in middle school)
re: #2 Did I miss something isn't 800 a perfect score? Or are you adding the Language & Math together, in which case 800 should barely qualify for crossing the street on your own.
#7
In Germany maths education has been deteriorating for decades.
The problem isn't only that the non-qualified get de facto fraudulent credentials but also that those who could qualify aren't taught the necessary foundations of mathematics that would qualify them to study a maths-affine subject at university level.
#8
A diminished capacity for abstraction.
"If you have three friends and one apple, and you cut the apple into three parts, how much of the apple does each friend get?"
"I don't have any friends."
Sometimes the Russians are their own worst enemy.
[KavkazUzel] The crews of four tanks deployed to the school building in Beslan were ordered to fire on the building when hostages were inside, according to materials from interrogations of servicemen and hostages published by Novaya Gazeta.
As "Kavkazsky Uzel" wrote, on the twentieth anniversary of the terrorist attack in Beslan, the cultural and patriotic center for the prevention of terrorism "Beslan School No. 1" was opened. The school grounds had to be preserved, says Emma Tagaeva. The center will become international and is necessary to preserve the memory of the terrorist attack, says Atsamaz Misikov.
The project took three years to implement, and 206.1 million rubles were allocated for the creation of the center. Twenty years later, the authorities have still not given a concrete answer as to how terrorists managed to organize the 2004 seizure of a school in Beslan, which resulted in the deaths of more than three hundred people, North Ossetian journalists noted.
On September 1, 2004, militants took 1,128 hostages in the gymnasium of School No. 1 in Beslan. The operation to free them ended on September 3, 2004. As a result of the terrorist attack, 334 people were killed, including 186 children, and another 810 people were injured. The "Caucasian Knot" has prepared a report "Terrorist attack in Beslan (September 1-3, 2004)" and a chronicle of the terrorist attack and the events that followed.
The Beslan attack was a project of Shamil Basayev, head of the Chechen insurgency (which at that time called itself the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, renamed two years later as Al Qaeda’s Caucasus Emirate), financed by Abu Omar Al Seif, who was Al Qaeda’s man in Chechnya. It is said that the money he brought came from the Saudis, and that the jihadis involved in the attack on Beslan School Number One, some of whom were Arabs, were trained in al Qaeda camps.
On the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attack in Beslan, Novaya Gazeta published materials from the criminal case that Russia submitted to the ECHR. In particular, journalist Elena Milashina's publication "Tanks in Beslan" states that FSB representatives gave orders to conscripts to shoot at the school from tanks.
As follows from the interrogation protocols of the Chief of Staff, Head of the UFSB of North Ossetia Valery Andreyev, the Chief of the FSB Special Operations Center, General Alexander Tikhonov, reported that on September 2 he asked the command of the 58th Army to provide tanks to the Alpha and Vympel special forces to conduct the operation to rescue the hostages. The Commander of the 58th Army, Viktor Sobol, who was also part of the operational headquarters, gave the order to bring tanks into Beslan.
At 18:00 on September 2, exactly one hour after the former President of Ingushetia, General Ruslan Aushev, led 26 hostages out of the school seized by terrorists and managed to convince the militants to continue negotiations and allow the bodies of the dead hostages to be taken away, tanks entered Beslan and stopped near a transformer substation next to a railroad crossing, three hundred meters from the school seized by terrorists.
The hostages stood in the windows and waved white rags
The first shot from the tank was fired on September 3 at 14:25 Moscow time. At the same time, conscript Dmitry Godovalov, who commanded tank #328, said that the tank crews, who were in their combat vehicles, could clearly see the hostages through the viewing slits and triplex on the windows of the canteen. "The hostages were standing in the windows and waving white rags," he said during interrogation.
"This cafeteria became a real trap for the hostages. The fact is that in the entire first school, only the cafeteria windows had bars installed. Moreover, the bars were installed not on the outside of the windows, as is usually the case, but on the inside of the building. This fact is clearly recorded in numerous photographs of the cafeteria destroyed during the assault, including such photos in the materials of the criminal case. These bars became the main obstacle for the operational combat groups "Alpha" and "Vympel" deployed from Kominterna Street, because they did not allow the special forces to get inside the school. The headquarters tried to develop a scenario for the assault with a minimum number of casualties among both the hostages and the special forces - General Tikhonov spoke about this at a meeting of the parliamentary commission, in addition, this point is reflected in the situational examination. The bars on the cafeteria windows could have become a determining factor in the decision to use tanks. Because the internal fastening of the bars did not allow them to be knocked down or torn out using heavy equipment," writes Milashina.
At 14.25, one of the tanks fired directly at the window of the canteen, where the terrorists had placed their hostages as a human shield. Yuri Savelyev, a member of the federal parliamentary commission, who analyzed in detail in his special opinion the use of tanks during the storming of the Beslan school, assumes that it was tank No. 325, since it had more powerful active armor than other tanks. The shell hit the school gatepost and flew into the assembly hall.
Only 14 years after the tragedy, in December 2018, the presidential envoy to the North Caucasus Federal District, Alexander Matovnikov, made the first official admission since the terrorist attack that the storming of the school had been planned from the very beginning, despite protests from local residents. The presidential envoy also confirmed that the school had been shelled from a tank.
More than 50 witnesses from among former hostages and city residents testified that tanks fired at the canteen between 15:00 and 16:00 (closer to 16:00) on September 3. It was at this time, at 15:10, that General Tikhonov gave the order to the Alpha and Vympel combat groups to directly storm the school. Until that time, the school, mainly the combat positions of the militants, was actively shelled with small arms and grenade launchers. Until 15:10 Moscow time on September 3, not a single special forces soldier was in the school building, the publication says.
The tank crews fired at the windows of the canteen, so the damage to the school's façade wall was minimal; the main damage to the walls, ceilings and floors from tank shells was recorded inside these rooms. At that time, dozens of hostages were able to escape from the gymnasium, which had been destroyed by the first explosions, either on their own or with the help of local residents. However, a significant number of hostages, at the request of the terrorists, moved from the gymnasium to the main part of the school (classrooms, canteen, kitchens) and to its southern wing, the article notes.
The author of the article also emphasized that the number of hostages killed directly in the cafeteria will most likely never be known.
"Immediately after the assault, all the bodies of the dead were taken out of the cafeteria. An autopsy of the bodies and the establishment of the real causes of death of the people killed in the school were not carried out. And in the criminal case and death certificates they wrote that all the hostages died as a result of explosions in the gym," claims Elena Milashina.
At this time, an attempt was made to tear off the bars from the dining room window by the crew of BTR-80 No. 834, commanded by the commander of the reconnaissance and airborne platoon of military unit 12356 Andrei Shuvarikov. However, the terrorists, using the hostages as cover, stopped this attempt with direct fire to kill.
Trying to carry out the order, Andrei Shuvarikov and Warrant Officer Sergei Ryabikhin were wounded, and the BTR was hit by terrorists with an under-barrel grenade launcher.
The investigation, despite the fact that the attempt was unsuccessful, supported the official version, stating that the servicemen of the crew of the armored personnel carrier #834, Shuvarikov and Ryabikhin, managed to hook a cable and tear off the bars on the windows. But this was denied in court by both the hostages and the only, according to the investigation, surviving terrorist Nurpasha Kulaev.
"When they fired from the tank, the bars [in the dining room] fell... The bars were inside. They did not shoot with the tank at the second floor. They shot at the bars. This is inside the first floor," he said.
The hostages who survived in the dining room said that the bars "flew off" as a result of the shelling. "I remember that there was a loud shot, and then the bars [flew off]. I determined by ear that these were shots from a tank, by the way the room shook when they shot. Before that, the militants also shot from machine guns and something else. Then the building shook, too, but not to such an extent," said hostage Zhanna Tsirikhova.
On September 4, during an inspection of the school, investigators actually found window bars inside the cafeteria. In addition, the same inspection recorded a large number of characteristic destructions of the interior walls, floors and ceiling of the cafeteria and adjoining utility rooms, which could not have occurred from the use of firearms and grenades, the publication says.
During the interrogation of the participants in the events in September 2004, a version about the grating, the cable and the APC emerged. The tankers in their testimony claim that only one tank, No. 325, fired seven shots, and that it was in the evening. This tank was commanded by Guram Abuladze.
The second wave of interrogations of the tankers took place in 2005, after the victims testified at the Kulaev trial that all the tanks had repeatedly fired at the canteen during the day, when the hostages were still there. The repeated interrogations of the tankers and servicemen of military unit 12356 almost word for word coincide with their first interrogations.
Only one phrase is added: "Tank No. 325 fired at the school when there were "no more living hostages" in it." The tank crews were interrogated for the third time in 2006. From these interrogations it follows directly that the commander of tank No. 325, Guram Abuladze, voluntarily changed his testimony between 2005 and 2006 and testified under the protocol that on September 3, 2004, he and other tank crews received orders from officers to fire at the canteen where the hostages were. But Guram Abuladze apparently refused to carry out this order, Milashina notes in the publication.
Ivan Bazhenov, a tank driver, said on May 18, 2006, that on the afternoon of September 3, "the Alpha special forces began preparing to storm the school."
According to him, he heard an order on the radio for one of the tanks not to get nervous and not to shoot. "No one fired from the tanks during the assault, at least I did not hear any shots. I did not hear anyone on the radio ordering Abuladze to shoot at the school, at least when I was in the tank, and when I got out of it, I could not hear the radio," he said.
Another conscript, Aleksandr Asharin, said on June 9, 2006, that he did not know that "Abuladze refused to carry out the order <...> to shoot at the school when there were hostages there." "I cannot explain why witnesses and victims claim that the tank fired during the daytime; maybe they got something mixed up," he said.
I know that there was an order to fire at the school during the day when there were hostages there.
This testimony proves that Abuladze told the investigation about the order from the officers to shoot at the school, the publication notes.
This was confirmed by Dmitry Godovalov, commander of tank No. 328. "I know that there was an order to fire at the school during the day, when there were hostages there. But we refused to fire at the school, since the hostages were standing in the windows and waving white rags," he said.
Sixteen years after the terrorist attack, the investigation admitted that tanks had indeed fired at the school during the assault - in 2020, VGTRK aired a film by Alexander Rogatkin about the tragedy in Beslan. The author of the film stated that "a tank was also used." "He fired blanks in order to “to make breaches in the walls for the passage of special forces, and with combat shells,” Rogatkin asserts.
Albert Khasanov, senior investigator for especially important cases of the Investigative Directorate for the North Caucasus Federal District, also spoke about this in the film.
"The T-72 tank had been used before, but it fired blanks. The combat use of the tank, that is, when it fired high-explosive fragmentation shells, was after 21:00," he said.
However, in the weapons reports available in the criminal case, all T-72s only have high-explosive fragmentation shells. According to Milashina, "the version about the "blanks" was created by the victims themselves, who saw the tanks shooting at the school, but they could not imagine that the tanks could shoot at hostages standing in the windows and waving white rags." At the same time, all the interrogated tank crews confirmed that there were no "blanks" in the ammunition of their tanks, the article says.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Dmitry Gubin
[REGNUM] "Shamil has been captured. Congratulations to the Caucasian Army!" This short message from Adjutant General Alexander Baryatinsky about the capture of the Dagestani village of Gunib marked the end of an entire era in Russian history.
The Caucasian War, which exhausted both the empire and the mountain peoples, did not stop for more than forty years: from 1817 until September 6, 1859, when the last stronghold of the “unpeaceful mountaineers” in the east of the Caucasus fell, and the Amir al-Mu’minin himself, the “commander of the faithful,” Imam Shamil, surrendered to the soldiers of the Baryatinsky Corps.
The fighting in the Western Caucasus, in the Circassian lands, continued until 1864, but that was an afterthought - according to historians, the outcome of the war (the progress of which was closely followed in Istanbul and London) became clear precisely then, in the village of Gunib, exactly 165 years ago.
According to eyewitnesses, seeing that resistance was futile, the imam came out to the victors with a weapon, saying: “Just as honey can acquire a bitter taste, so war can become meaningless.”
The former implacable enemy lived the last 12 years in the status of a subject of the Russian Empire, a hereditary nobleman of the Kaluga province.
There is a curious episode in the descriptions of this time: during his travels through the Russian hinterland, Shamil stayed at the estate of his former enemy, Prince Baryatinsky, in Maryino (present-day Rylsk district of Kursk region). By the way, an interesting historical echo - the chambers of Hetman Mazepa are located on the estate's territory.
There is a legend that Shamil, on his way to Mecca (the Russian government let the ex-enemy go on a hajj to Arabia, where he died), stayed for several days at the retired general Baryatinsky's other estate - near Lgov on the bank of the Seim River. The imam performed prayers in a small pseudo-Gothic tower, which has since been called "Shamil's Tower".
All these names are familiar these days. Lgov and Rylsk, peaceful sleepy provinces in those years, are now not only border towns, but, alas, frontline towns as well. Our artillery is pounding the bridges across the Seim, which the Ukrainian Armed Forces are trying to break through. The Caucasus, which was “burning” in the 19th century and at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, is now, on the contrary, a reliable rear, from where volunteers and contract soldiers go to defend the common country.
The current frontline work of the Caucasians can be called the fulfillment of Shamil’s covenant when he (and his sons Gazi-Muhammad and Muhammad-Shapi ) took the oath to Russia in 1866:
“I bequeathed to my children and my fellow believers to be loyal subjects of Russia and useful servants of our Fatherland.”
But this oath (which was followed by both the volunteer cavalrymen of the “Wild Division” during the First World War and the Dagestani militias of 1999) was preceded by a long feud, which was used by external forces in order to weaken Russia.
Britain and the Ottoman Empire viewed the North Caucasus as a battering ram against our country, just as the collective West now assigns the same role to Ukraine. At the same time - and this was evident in the example of the Caucasian War - foreign powers used and fueled the already existing difficulties in relations between the highlanders and the subjects of the "white tsar".
"HE STARTED GIVING A PRICE ONLY FOR IRON"
For a long time, until the first quarter of the 19th century, the Russian authorities pursued a policy towards this mountainous territory, described by General Vasily Potto in his work “The Caucasian War”:
"All our relations with the small Caucasian possessions had the character of some kind of peaceful negotiations and treaties. Most of not only the Dagestani and other khans, but even the Chechen elders... Russia paid salaries."
While it was a "gray zone" in the borderland, such a policy, coupled with the actions of the Terek Cossacks, was quite adequate. When, as a result of wars with Persia and the Ottoman Empire, Russia annexed Transcaucasia, communication with the newly acquired lands through the uncontrolled zone became absolutely intolerable.
In 1817, Alexander I commissioned the hero of the Napoleonic wars, General Alexei Yermolov, to restore order in the Caucasus Mountains. " Yermolov's principle was that gold is no protection from the enemy, and he began to put a price only on iron, which he forced to value more than gold," General Potto writes evasively. To stop mountain raids, Yermolov acted harshly - not limiting himself to building fortresses and creating clearings in the "gray zone", he resorted to destroying "bandit nests" and taking hostages.
Two years later, foreign “help” arrived: in 1819, the Anapa Pasha (the Black Sea coast was then still controlled by the Turks) sent agents to the Trans-Kuban Adyghe who “incite the Circassians, persuade them to attack the Russian border, and most of all, Yekaterinodar as the main point of the Black Sea population.”
At the same time, the penetration of British emissaries into the North Caucasus is recorded. Diplomat David Urquhart, who arrived from Istanbul in the 1830s and “in the field” — in Trans-Kuban — supervised the “Circassian issue,” and Captain Lyons, who at the same time delivered weapons to the North Caucasian princes and leaders, were already following the paths beaten by other “agents of influence.” Local rulers took the aid for granted, considering it a help in the war — which they considered religious.
Meanwhile, St. Petersburg seemed to underestimate the significance and military danger of the events in the south. Infantry General Alexei Velyaminov argued to the court that it was possible to end the war in six years, provided that an additional 14 million rubles were allocated (a large sum, but it should be taken into account that the budget was calculated in hundreds of millions of rubles) and personnel were increased.
But, according to Potto, “the Tsar believed that one twentieth division in full strength… would be enough for Paskevich (Yermolov’s successor. — Ed.) to complete the conquest of the Caucasus that had begun.” Somewhat reminiscent of Pavel Grachev’s promise in December 1994 — to complete the Chechen campaign with the help of one parachute regiment.
In reality, the war not only dragged on, but also reached a new level.
THE POET AND HIS MURIDS
After Yermolov's resignation, military operations continued, but the focus was again on winning the loyalty of local elites and integrating them into Russian society.
In Transcaucasia, this practice was quite successful - there, the state tradition was strengthened over thousands of years and the tribal structure was absent.
In Dagestan and Chechnya, alas, it worked with varying success, and local leaders repeatedly defected from one camp to the other. Perhaps it would have triumphed there too, if not for, as they say now, “a black swan arrived” in the person of Imam Ghazi-Muhammad. This Sufi sheikh, poet and mujaddid (reformer), was also a talented organizer.
With the support of the local clergy, he declared a ghazawat (holy war against the infidels). This is how the separate militias were united into a single controlled structure of murids - translated from Arabic as "followers".
The first imam did not rule for long and died in the battle for the village of Gimry with the troops of General Rosen. Gazi-Muhammad's successor, Gamzat-bek, was not an imam for long, only a year, and was stabbed to death during Friday prayers in the main mosque of the village of Khunzakh. Gamzat became a victim of blood feud - which, by the way, was declared by the Avar ruler Hadji Murat - glorified by Leo Tolstoy in the story of the same name.
Finally, in 1834, the third imam of Chechnya and Dagestan became Gazi-Muhammad's childhood friend and fellow student, Shamil. And this was not just a "personnel decision", but a fundamental change in the war.
"SINCERELY DEVOTED TO THE IMAM"
For a quarter of a century, Shamil commanded troops in Chechnya and Dagestan and tried, not without success, to create a state on this territory. Moreover, the state was special in many respects. In one respect, he largely anticipated the future - he built an Islamic theocracy, not a traditional monarchy.
Then the Sudanese Mahdists, the supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and the Afghan Taliban, banned in the Russian Federation, will act in this way. But the task of the third imam was more difficult.
There were no cities at all in the lands subordinated to Shamil, so - before the beginning of the resistance to Russian troops - there was no state as such in Chechnya and a significant part of Dagestan. Now it was created by directive.
Moreover, Shamil relied not on the tribal or feudal nobility (especially since the latter simply did not exist in mountainous Chechnya), but on the naibs - his authorized representatives, who were recruited from the most capable mountaineers and reported directly to the commander of the faithful.
The naibs " were sincerely devoted to the imam and for the sake of the cause did not spare either their property or themselves, observing justice among the people subject to them...", recalled Shamil's son-in-law Abdurrahman Kazikumukhsky. The naib of the Avar lands was the above-mentioned Hadji Murat.
It was under Shamil that the mountain militias turned into a full-fledged army, and from individual skirmishes and local operations, the military actions in the Caucasus grew into a real war. Where both Lieutenant of the Tenginsky Infantry Regiment Mikhail Lermontov and the cadet of the 20th Artillery Brigade Count Leo Tolstoy managed to fight.
Listing the "fights" (using the language of the reports of the First and Second Chechen Wars) would take too much time. Suffice it to say that the battle on the Valerik River, celebrated by Lermontov - in which the Russian detachment of General Galafeyev fought the murids of Akhverd Magoma, one of Shamil's most capable "generals" - is considered one of the bloodiest battles of the 1840s.
MEDALLION FROM THE SULTAN
During the Crimean War, Shamil essentially opened a second front by moving the Dagestani highlanders into Kakheti, where they were stopped by Russian troops. Historians believe that the invasion occurred after negotiations between the imam and emissaries from the Turkish Anatolian army in 1854. Even earlier, at the beginning of the war, Shamil received an offer to prepare to meet the allied (i.e. Anglo-French-Turkish) troops in Imereti.
Historians believe that during the Crimean campaign, a number of British politicians, including future Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, "were prepared to agree to the creation of an independent Circassian state headed by an imam after the war."
However, Shamil himself was already clearly aware that the allies were using him. “Instead of gratitude for his willingness to act in accordance with the allies’ plans and for the speed with which he fulfilled his promise, they began to reproach and scold him as the last subject,” Colonel Runovsky, who served as a bailiff to the imam, relayed Shamil’s oral memoirs when he was already living in Kaluga.
Other sources provide further evidence: “Shamil never received anything from the Ottomans except banners, medallions and empty promises.”
BEHIND THE PICTURE FRAME
Although the Crimean War was unsuccessful for Russia, its end allowed the Caucasian War to be concluded. The troops operating on the Turkish front in Anatolia were transferred to the Caucasus in 1856, under the command of a new commander, Prince Baryatinsky.
At the same time, Baryatinsky, as the Caucasian viceroy, "financially encouraged the highlanders' desire for a peaceful life, willingly took the most warlike ones into Russian service, but those who were ready to serve the Russian tsar," notes historian Irina Kumova. Baryatinsky believed that the highlanders were quite capable of living in the Russian Empire, relying on internal self-government.
The Caucasian Corps launched an offensive in Chechnya and mountainous Dagestan against the highlanders who had not laid down their arms.
After taking the last capital of the Imamate, the Chechen village of Vedeno, Shamil went into the mountains, beyond the Andiyskoye Koysu River. The last battles in 1859 took place on the approaches to Mount Gunib, where the Imam had fortified himself with half a thousand loyal murids.
"All of Chechnya and Dagestan have now submitted to the power of the Russian Emperor, and only Shamil personally persists in resisting the great sovereign. <…> I demand that Shamil immediately lay down his arms," Baryatinsky announced on August 24, promising full pardon in the event of surrender.
But the imam gave the last fight.
In the absence of action cameras and photo cameras, the events and memorable places of the forty-year Caucasian War were captured (naturally, after the fact) by painters: from professionals like Franz Roubaud and Ivan Aivazovsky to amateurs, such as Lieutenant Lermontov. The details of the capture of Gunib are known to the general public from the painting by Theodore Horschelt (currently exhibited in the Kursk Museum) - an artist who is not the most famous, but who was personally present at the assault.
The painting depicts the dawn of August 25 (September 6, new style), when soldiers of the Apsheron regiment, having climbed the cliff from the southern side, fought a hundred murids on one of the mountain ledges. The enemy is depicted with all respect - it is clear that the mountaineers, one of whom holds the banner of ghazawat, are ready to fight to the end. And many, as eyewitnesses recalled, threw themselves into the abyss, not wanting to surrender.
The only inaccuracy is that the painting depicts Baryatinsky and Shamil in the thick of the battle. In reality, the general was watching the assault from a grove at the foot of the mountain, and Shamil was in the village of Gunib. A detachment of Apsheronians cut off the Imam's headquarters from the mountain, where the last defenders were defending themselves.
In the end, Baryatinsky “exceeded” his promise – although Shamil surrendered not before, but after the storming of Gunib, his life was spared, and later, in fact, he was forgiven.
Alexander II assigned Shamil a pension of 10,000 silver rubles per year (later increased to 15,000 rubles).
And although Shamil and his family were under “constant and vigilant surveillance” at their place of residence, the emperor ordered that “they should not be shy.”
"I WAS STRUCK BY THE BEAUTY..."
Further on, Shamil's story is an acquaintance with Russia, which he had fought with all his life, but, in fact, did not know. There were audiences with Alexander II in Chuguev and St. Petersburg and the above-mentioned meeting with Baryatinsky in the Kursk estate.
But first there was a trip through the Russian provinces, during which Shamil experienced a real civilizational shock. Here is what he said in Kursk to Governor Nikolai Bibikov :
"When passing through Stavropol, I was struck by the beauty of the city and the decoration of the houses. It seemed impossible to me to create anything better, but, having arrived in Kharkov and Kursk, I completely changed my worldview and, judging by the structure of these cities, I can imagine what awaits me in the capital...".
The attitude towards the former enemy can be judged by the fact that in 1866 Shamil was a guest at the wedding of Tsarevich Alexander, the future Alexander III, and then met the Tsar-Liberator for the third time. Two years later, the Tsar, caring for the elderly imam, advised him to choose a place to live with a more suitable climate than Kaluga. Shamil chose Kiev, from where he set off on his final journey to Mecca.
The transformation of an enemy into an ally, who ordered his fellow countrymen and co-religionists to “be faithful to Russia,” according to eyewitnesses, was completely sincere.
Text taken from the Telegram channel of @neinsider
[ColonelCassad] In the West, the Special Military Operation is considered a hybrid war…
Currently, Western experts assess the course of the SVO as the implementation of the concept of Russia's "hybrid war", which includes a calculated combination of military power, cyber operations, information and psychological operations and economic manipulation.
Russia's multifaceted approach, supported by China, Iran and North Korea, is aimed not only at defeating the Ukrainian Armed Forces as such, but also at exerting a broader influence on the global geopolitical landscape.
The so-called Russian "hybrid war", according to experts, is manifested at all levels:
Tactical level. Russia's immediate goals are to undermine the enemy's defenses, various cyber attacks on critical infrastructure, information and psychological operations and disinformation operations to confuse and demoralize both the Ukrainian military and the civilian population. Such tactics are aimed at creating chaos, reducing the operational effectiveness of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and undermining public trust in the Ukrainian government.
Operational level. Russia uses a combination of conventional warfare, cyber operations, and manipulation of energy supplies to pressure Ukraine and its allies. By maintaining a persistent military presence and periodically escalating hostilities, Russia seeks to keep Ukraine in a state of perpetual instability. Cyberwarfare tactics, such as disruption of communications networks and infrastructure, are designed to undermine Ukraine’s ability to respond effectively.
Strategic Level: Strategically, Russia seeks to reassert its influence in the post-Soviet space and weaken the NATO alliance. By partnering with China, Iran, and North Korea, Russia strengthens its position against the West by leveraging each ally’s strengths: China’s economic might and cyber capabilities, Iran’s experience in proxy warfare, and North Korea’s willingness to engage in subversion. Together, this alliance poses a multifaceted threat to the collective West, seeking to fracture the alliance and advance an anti-Western narrative around the world.
To counter this threat (as they have defined it), Western theorists have yet to come up with a clear and unified approach. They basically offer nothing new, repeating the old mantra: strengthen the cyber defense of the alliance member countries, continue sanctions pressure, increase support for Ukraine, organize a strategic counter to Russian propaganda, and increase NATO's combat readiness. In general, everything they are doing now.
In addition, the West believes that their democracies are very vulnerable to Russian hybrid actions, but in general the West can resist, if united into one whole, in the face of a global threat, and Russia understands only power and strength and treats with complete disdain those who waver in front of it.
P.S. The manuals are apparently old: "Red threat", "Comrade!", "The hand of the Kremlin", etc.
If you squint at the latest jobs report, you might find something to cheer about. But if you look at it with clear eyes, what you really see is an economy downshifting and bracing for impact.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics told us Friday that employers added 142,000 jobs in August—hardly anything to write home about and well short of expectations for the second month in a row. Add to that the revisions to June and July, which collectively erased 86,000 jobs from the books, and the three-month average is now a tepid 116,000. That’s a far cry from the 202,000 monthly average we saw last year.
If we narrow that down to the private sector, employment grew by 73,900 in August, falling short of the consensus forecast of 136,000. What’s more, the prior month’s private sector figure was revised down from a lukewarm 97,000 to a chilly 74,000. The three-month average is now just 96,000. This suggests that businesses are not expanding payrolls, indicating a weakening demand for labor.
Go a step further and subtract the so-called government-adjacent sector of health care and social assistance, and private payroll growth drops to just 73,900. After revisions, the July figure was just 15,200, bordering on contraction territory, and the June figure was 28,3000. That brings the three-month average down to just 39,100, one of the weakest three-month periods outside of outright recessions and employment contractions recorded in data going back to 1990.
So, where’s the good news? August was not as weak as July or June, so the deterioration of the labor market may not be getting worse. Then again, given the history of large downside revisions, it’s very likely that the reported numbers for August are too high and will be revised down. So, perhaps things are getting worse and we just do not know it yet.
The unemployment rate fell from 4.3 percent to 4.2 percent. But that decline is less a sign of strength and more of a rounding error and a statistical quirk. The rise to 4.34 percent was largely due to temporary layoffs, which cleared up by August. And the actual move was from 4.25 percent—which was rounded up to 4.3 percent—to 4.23 percent—which was rounded down to 4.2 percent. So, all we really got was a two-tenths of a percentage point improvement that looks larger due to rounding.
The household survey, from which the unemployment rate is derived, showed slightly higher employment growth in August, with the number of employed people rising by 168,000. The discrepancy between the establishment survey and the household survey that got a lot of attention earlier this year after several reports showed far less employment growth in the household survey than the establishment survey seems to have been resolved. For the past three months, the two surveys have been producing results very close to each other.
THE FOREIGN WORKER SURGE
One aspect of the household survey that has received a lot of attention is the gap between native born employment and foreign born employment. In August, the number of U.S. born employees fell by 1.3 million and the number of foreign born employees rose by 635,000. Over the past 12-months, native born employment has contracted from 131 million to 129.7 million, a loss of 1.3 million natives from payrolls. The number of foreign-born employees has grown from 30.4 million to 31.6 million, a gain of 1.2 million.
This does mean that close to all of the increase in employment has gone to foreign-born workers. Actually, the official numbers may undercount the number of foreign born employees because the household survey is probably not picking up a lot of the newly arrived Biden-Harris open borders crisis migrants.
This is not, however, primarily a sign that foreign workers are taking jobs from Americans. What the government calls the “civilian noninstitutional” native population over 16 shrank by 392,000 over the past year. The U.S. born civilian labor force—that is, the part of the population that is able and willing to work—fell by 768,000. In other words, one of the primary drivers of the contraction in U.S. born workers is that there are fewer adults born here who are able and willing to work because our native population is aging, retiring, and dying.
[FoxNews] Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been in more than a few debates during his decades-long political career.
Abbott won three terms as state attorney general before winning election and two re-elections as Texas governor.
So his advice to former President Trump ahead of Tuesday's first and potentially only debate between the GOP presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris — the Democratic Party's nominee — is "Let Harris talk."
"The more she talks without talking into a teleprompter, the more she shows America that she’s really not up to the task," Abbott emphasized in an interview with Fox News Digital along the sidelines of the Republican Jewish Coalition's annual leadership meeting in Las Vegas.
Abbott asserted that "if he [Trump] lets her talk and if he focuses on three issues — one is the border, another is the inflation caused by Harris and [President] Biden, and the other is the rapid crime that we see in some cities, caused by people like Harris and [her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim] Walz — Americans are going to understand the last thing they want to do is to have Kamala Harris running our country, because it would be run into the ground."
The governor endorsed Trump for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination last November — before the start early this year of voting in the Republican primaries — when the two leaders teamed up for an event along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Earlier this week, Abbott was on the campaign trail in battleground Arizona on behalf of Trump. And he says he will continue to make the case for the former president.
QUESTION OF THE DAY
Given the massive well documented DC Swamp Civil Rights violations, of select citizens. Plus, the flaunted abuse of the US Justice System for political reasons, these past 3+ years.
If you were the DOJ AG, what names would you seek to indict and what for?
Posted by: NN2N1 ||
09/07/2024 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11136 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
#1
The only problem is that DoJ is technically the enforcer and will not act against anyone who is a member of the party. The entire Civil Rights division should be converted to prosecuting this violation. You'll only need to get a few heads for some attitude adjustment.
Section 242 of Title 18 makes it a crime for a person acting under color of any law to willfully deprive a person of a right or privilege protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.
For the purpose of Section 242, acts under "color of law" include acts not only done by federal, state, or local officials within their lawful authority, but also acts done beyond the bounds of that official's lawful authority, if the acts are done while the official is purporting to or pretending to act in the performance of his/her official duties. Persons acting under color of law within the meaning of this statute include police officers, prisons guards and other law enforcement officials, as well as judges, care providers in public health facilities, and others who are acting as public officials. It is not necessary that the crime be motivated by animus toward the race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status or national origin of the victim.
The offense is punishable by a range of imprisonment up to a life term, or the death penalty, depending upon the circumstances of the crime, and the resulting injury, if any.
#3
Consider the act of Nonfeasance-"Nonfeasance is the failure to act or do something that one is obligated to do."
The massive increase in the selective use of "prosecutorial discretion" by law enforcement at federal, state and even local levels officials is actually willful nonfeasance by those obligated to enforce the law uniformly and fully. This widespread tactic at both DOJ and local District Attorneys has been used to elect favor from political allies and conversely, punish vigorously theor political enemies. The cases of Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro vs. Eric Holder are a perfect example.
[BEE] MINNEAPOLIS, MN — Democrat Vice-Presidential candidate Tim Walz has just added another distinguished award to his already impressive military resume. According to sources, the battle-hardened veteran awarded himself a Purple Heart after his motorcade was involved in a fender bender yesterday.
While sources say that the incident was "relatively minor," as Walz had accidentally bumped into a parked car, the Minnesota governor decided it was a good enough opportunity for him to spiff up his military career just a little more.
"I, Tim Walz, for my outstanding bravery and courage in the face of suffering slight back pain as a result of rear-ending another person's parked car, do hereby award myself the Purple Medal for Distinguished Valor or something," Walz reportedly intoned, gazing balefully at the damage with his best grizzly veteran's face. "In recognition of my service, I would like to offer myself my sincerest congratulations and best wishes. Science bless America. Communism is the answer. Thank you all."
[JPost] Two back-to-back diplomatic stands, one from the States and one from Israel, mark the eleventh month of war with six hostages being recently executed in Gaza. The United States said that Israel agreed to remove its military from the densely populated areas along the Philadelphi Corridor, also known as Saladin Axis,
…I didn’t know that…
as part of a truce prisoner swap deal.
"The deal itself, the proposal, and the bridging proposal that we started working with included the removal of Israel Defense Forces from all densely populated areas, including those areas along the corridor. That’s the proposal Israel agreed to," said the White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Tuesday.
That was before Hamas started openly murdering hostages, just for spite. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote so lyrically, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."
Kirby added as well that US President Joe Biden has, in numerous conversations with Netanyahu, as with counterparts in Qatar and Egypt, stressed the importance of "doing everything" to conclude this proposal, which, according to him, "was an Israeli proposal agreed to at the end of May."
"The United States is desperate for a ceasefire for two reasons: the elections and Iran. If a deal happens, the electors, both Jewish and Muslim, may favor this more, and also the threat of Iran and its proxies may ’cease’ according to them, but Israel knows this is not the case," Daniel Diker, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, told The Media Line.
NEGOTIATIONS
Meanwhile, Netanyahu on Monday signaled that he wouldn’t compromise on this issue and demanded control of the corridor in any ceasefire deal, stalling once again negotiations for the release of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
"The corridor is the oxygen of Hamas. No one is more committed than me to freeing the hostages. No one will preach to me on this issue," Netanyahu affirmed in a press release on Monday. "Netanyahu will never accept to give up the corridor completely. There could be minor changes, mainly in the number of troops and their deployment, but there will still be an Israeli military presence. If Israel withdraws from Gaza, it won’t be able to enter back afterward," Zaki Shalom, professor at the Misgav Institute, explained to The Media Line.
"America is not able to exert significant pressure on Israel right now. Biden’s biased approach in the past months has damaged America’s reliability in the region and has shown his moderate response to American citizens’ deaths. So, if the States try to push for a change of the agreement, this will lead to the final loss of its credibility as an ally all over the world, plus Democrats will lose Jewish voters at the elections, which may favor Trump."
Good.
Diker agreed that pulling out of the Philadephi corridor would be catastrophic for Israel and would symbolize a victory for Hamas since it is a strategic military site.
After eleven months of war and still no deal, the country's citizens remain skeptical of a ceasefire solution.
According to The Israel Democracy Institute, August 2024 Israeli Voice Index—conducted by IDI’s Viterbi Family Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research—Jewish Israelis are overwhelmingly pessimistic (78.5%) regarding the chance for a ceasefire deal that would lead to a release of hostages. Arab Israelis are divided evenly between optimistic (48%) and pessimistic (49%) about a deal. Across the sample, 73.5% are pessimistic, and about 21% are optimistic.
..."We saw the Israeli policy colliding with the American one over the months. I think that America actually prefers a weaker Israel, which is more dependent on the States’ choices and less self-sustaining," Diker concluded.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
QUESTION OF THE DAY
[BEE] MINNEAPOLIS, MN — Democrat Vice-Presidential candidate Tim Walz has just added another distinguished award to his already impressive military resume. According to sources, the battle-hardened veteran awarded himself a Purple Heart after his motorcade was involved in a fender bender yesterday.
