[TOWNHALL] ''When somebody does a bad job, I fire them,'' said former President Donald Trump ...The Hero of Butler, Pennsylvania... during his recent debate with Vice President Kamala Harris So Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So, basically, that’s wrong On the other hand, ''They never fired one person. They didn't fire anybody having to do with Afghanistan,'' Trump said, referring to the Biden-Harris administration. ''Look at the economy. Look at the inflation. They didn't fire any of their economists. They have the same people.''
Although Trump's comment about the Biden-Harris administration's propensity to not fire incompetent officials who have screwed up royally over the past four years did not garner the attention it rightfully deserves, it certainly struck a chord with me and many more Americans.
For far too long, hard-working Americans have watched as government babus bureaucrats and high-ranking officials routinely get treated with kid gloves instead of being held accountable for their laziness, incompetency, or whatever else prevents them from being good at their job.
Perhaps the public sector attracts workers who are not supremely confident in their abilities to make it in the private sector. From my experience as a public high school teacher for many years, I strongly believe this to be the case for at least a large percentage of those who choose to work for the government rather than seeking employment outside of the public sector.
However,
death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate... I believe the notion of not holding people accountable when they do not perform to expectations is a much larger societal problem that has been festering for a very long time.
When I was growing up in the mid-1990s, the ''everybody gets a trophy'' mentality was just beginning to take shape. I remember tryouts for little league baseball wherein we were told beforehand that nobody would be cut. Everyone would make the team, lest we hurt someone's feelings and potentially scar them for life.
While I understand that children are emotionally vulnerable and nobody wants to get cut from a sports team, this mentality has metastasized far beyond its original intention of trying to make little kids always feel good.
While teaching at a public high school in the mid-2010s, I was shocked to see that the everybody gets a trophy mindset now means that students cannot fail, even when they do not do the bare necessities that are required to receive a passing grade. Time and again, I was told by my superiors that any child who ''fails'' is an indictment of my teaching abilities, not the unwillingness of the student to study and do their work.
However,
death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate... in what can best be described as cognitive dissonance on steroids, the teacher union took the same basic stance when it came to all teachers. In general, the teacher union would move heaven and earth to prevent any teacher from being held accountable for not being good at their job.
Of course, we all know that it is almost impossible to fire babus government employees. But this should not be the case. During his term, President Trump issued an executive order designed to make it easier for the executive branch to get rid of bad employees. However,
death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate... President Biden made sure that Trump's executive order was short-lived when he signed his own executive order intended to further protect federal babus government employees from being held to account when they fail to perform their job effectively.
Nowhere is this more concerning than the situation with the Secret Service, which failed to properly protect Trump in mid-July while he was holding an outdoor rally in Pennsylvania.
Incredibly, it's been more than two months since that dreadful day, and not a single Secret Service official have been fired for cause. A handful have resigned, but they will still receive their full pensions and go on as if nothing happened.
Unfortunately, the notion of firing poor employees has also transcended to the private sector in recent years. I cannot help but think that the COVID-19 pandemic, and its effect on the workplace, has fueled this to some degree.
Before the pandemic, working in person in an office was the norm. Not anymore. Now, with people ''working'' from home five days per week, there is much less accountability. The entire notion, espoused mostly by younger Americans, that work-life balance is paramount is laughable.
Hard work is good. It builds character. It also brings dignity and builds one's confidence. I fear that these values are being lost as more and more employees try to do the bare minimum with little fear of repercussions.
In all workplaces, whether they be public-sector or private-sector, basic expectations ought to be met. When those expectations are not met, those people should fear for their jobs. This is not meant to scare employees, it is a basic tenet that benefits everyone. Workers who do not possess the requisite abilities to exceed or who choose not to do what is expected ought to be fired so that they can adjust accordingly or pursue different endeavors.
Ironically, keeping people in jobs to which they are not fundamentally qualified for or have proven incapable of executing is a disservice to all. Just like getting cut from a sports team should cause a child to consider another sport or simply practice more, the same rings true for adults, especially those in government, who have been coddled and insulated from accountability for far too long.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2024 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11130 views]
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#1
My mother retired from being a postal clerk.
She said the only thing that would get you fired was not coming to work.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
09/18/2024 10:22 Comments ||
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#2
I tried listening to Harris' interview last night. Again it was very softball and as usual was lie after lie.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
09/18/2024 13:07 Comments ||
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Oleg Khavich
[REGNUM] Exactly 85 years ago, Moscow took a decisive step towards eliminating the “ugly brainchild of the Versailles Treaty.”
At three o’clock in the morning on September 17, 1939, Deputy People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs of the USSR Vladimir Potemkin handed the Polish Ambassador in Moscow, Vaclav Grzybowski, a note that began with the words: “The Polish-German War revealed the internal insolvency of the Polish state.”
The document also stated that the Soviet government “cannot be indifferent to the fact that the Ukrainians and Belarusians of the same blood, living on the territory of Poland, are abandoned to their fate and left defenseless.”
Four hours later, at dawn, the Red Army crossed the border (established 18 years earlier - as a result of a war that Soviet Russia lost) along its entire length, from Polotsk in the north to Kamenets-Podolsky in the south.
Troops of the Ukrainian Front (commander Semyon Timoshenko, not yet a marshal at that time) and the Belorussian Front under the command of Mikhail Kovalev entered Western Ukraine and Western Belarus.
In Soviet historiography, the 1939 campaign, which expanded the borders of the two fraternal republics, was called the Liberation Campaign. Post-war Atlantic Sovietologists branded this operation as "aggression." The same opinion, as expected, is prevalent in modern Poland.
Belarus celebrates National Unity Day on September 17. The significance of the event, thanks to which Brest, Novogrudok and Grodno returned home, is beyond doubt.
In Ukraine, the operation, as a result of which the Ukrainian SSR acquired Galicia and Volyn, is called the result of joint aggression by Stalin and Hitler. This would sound paradoxical if Viktor Yushchenko had not started issuing such formulations (and continued after 2014 - starting with the then speaker of the Rada Andriy Parubiy ). Volodymyr Zelensky also did not fail to state that the USSR was allegedly “one of the culprits in unleashing World War II” - however, the Kiev authorities are in no hurry to return Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil to the Poles.
Be that as it may, the fact that in 1939 Poland lost the “kresy wschodni” (the “eastern outskirts” populated by Belarusians and Ukrainians) that it had occupied was predetermined long before the start of World War II.
PILSUDSKI WAS READY TO LET HITLER THROUGH TO OUR BORDER
Until the mid-1930s, Poland was considered one of the main potential adversaries in Soviet military plans. At first, in itself, since the Second Polish Republic, with its 1921 borders, defined in the east by the Riga Peace Treaty with Soviet Russia, and in the west by the Treaty of Versailles and the Entente, was the largest state in Eastern Europe.
Later, Poland aroused concern in the Soviet Union as an ally of Nazi Germany. On January 26, 1934, an agreement was signed that is called the "Hitler- Pilsudski Pact."
It provided for the free passage of German troops through Polish territory in the event that “these troops are called upon to repel a provocation from the east or from the northeast” (that is, from the USSR).
Besides all this, Joseph Stalin had a personal score to settle with Poland. During the Polish-Soviet War in 1920, he did not agree with the general strategy of world revolution put forward by Lenin.
Stalin believed that instead of marching on Warsaw and Berlin, Volyn and Galicia, populated predominantly by Ukrainians, should be annexed to the RSFSR.
In August 1920, Stalin ignored orders from Moscow and continued to hold the 1st Cavalry Army near Lvov, which some historians consider one of the main reasons for the defeat of Tukhachevsky's troops near Warsaw.
DALERUS' PLAN
Stalin had an opportunity to realize his long-standing plans in August 1939, when Poland’s intransigence disrupted Soviet-British-French negotiations on joint resistance to potential German aggression.
On August 23, a non-aggression pact was concluded between the USSR and Germany, with a secret additional protocol defining “spheres of interest.”
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact included Finland, Estonia and Latvia in the USSR's sphere of interest. Poland was given a separate clause in the secret protocol:
“In the event of a territorial and political reorganization of the regions that are part of the Polish state, the boundaries of the spheres of interest of Germany and the USSR will approximately run along the line of the rivers Narew, Vistula and San.”
A kind of response to the Soviet-German pact was the treaty between Poland and Great Britain on mutual assistance of August 25, 1939.
The document contained mutual promises of military assistance if one of the parties was attacked by any European power.
On the same day, Hitler moved the date of the attack on Poland from August 26 to September 1 and sent a negotiator to London.
This was not a German diplomat, but a Swedish citizen, Birger Dahlerus, a close friend of Heinrich Goering. Dahlerus traveled from Berlin to London several times before August 30, 1939, where he even met with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.
But it was not possible to reach a compromise on the Polish issue.
STRANGE WAR. "THE OPPONENTS ARE PATHETIC PEOPLE"
On the morning of September 1, 1939, German and Slovak troops (the latter included units of Ukrainian nationalists under the command of Roman Sushko ) crossed the borders of Poland.
Hitler did not expect Warsaw's Western allies to enter the war, expecting that Poland would repeat the fate of Czechoslovakia.
At a conference on August 22, 1939, specifically devoted to Poland, he declared: "Our opponents are miserable little people, I was convinced of that in Munich. Now it has become even more likely that the West will not intervene. Therefore, we must take the risk with iron restraint."
The Fuhrer guessed only partially.
On September 3, 1939, France and Great Britain declared war on the Third Reich.
But it was very strange from the very beginning: French troops crossed the border into the Saar Basin on September 6-7 and pushed back the advanced German units. But the depth of the attack was only 1 km, the French actions were very slow, and the Allied air forces were completely inactive.
And already on September 12, 1939, French troops stopped their offensive altogether.
On the same day, at the first meeting of the Supreme War Council of Great Britain and France in the Piccard town of Abbeville, chaired by Prime Ministers Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier, a decision was made to abandon the promised actions of ground forces on the Western Front to Poland and the British air raids on Germany.
Warsaw was not informed of the decision taken in Abbeville by its Western allies, who had previously pushed Poland into war.
Moreover, the next day, the commander of the French military mission in Poland, Louis Faury, informed the Chief of the Polish General Staff, General Wacław Stachiewicz, that the planned full-scale offensive on the Western Front had to be postponed from 17 to 20 September.
But no offensive was planned, and the French divisions were ordered to retreat to their barracks behind the Maginot Line.
HOW RIBBENTROP CONVINCED MOLOTOV
It is worth noting that from the very beginning of the Polish campaign, Germany was pushing the USSR to take control of its "sphere of interest" in Poland. Thus, on September 3, 1939, Ribbentrop sent a telegram to the German ambassador in Moscow, Werner von der Schulenburg, which, in particular, said:
"Please discuss immediately with Molotov and find out whether the Soviet Union considers it desirable for Russian armed forces to intervene at the appropriate moment against Polish armed forces in the area of the Russian sphere of interests..."
On September 9, Ribbentrop seemed to have succeeded.
During a meeting with Molotov, Schulenburg received information: the USSR would soon begin introducing troops into Poland. But a few hours later, when it became clear in Moscow that the German message about the beginning of the battle for Warsaw was false, the Soviet decision was cancelled.
On September 10, at a meeting with Schulenburg, who emphasized the need to activate the Red Army as quickly as possible, Molotov stated that the Soviet side would need “two to three weeks” to prepare for action.
Molotov also noted that intervention by the Soviet side was possible as a reaction to the further advance of German troops, to protect Ukrainians and Belarusians from the “German threat,” but this was currently impossible due to the latest reports from the German news agency DNB.
The message mentioned by Molotov quoted Colonel General Walther von Brauchitsch as saying that “further military action on the eastern borders of Germany is no longer required.”
Such statements, Molotov noted, create the impression that a Polish-German armistice would soon be concluded – and in this case the USSR would not start a “new war.” However, this was a political game.
On September 11, the Belorussian and Kiev special military districts received an order to deploy field administrations of the districts to the Belorussian and Ukrainian fronts.
GALICIAN "GASKET"
At the same time, on September 12, 1939, at a special meeting on Hitler’s train, issues regarding Poland and the Ukrainian population of this country were discussed.
According to Hitler’s plans, it was necessary to create “spacer states” loyal to the Third Reich on the border with the USSR between “Asia” and the “West”: Ukraine (on the territory of Galicia and Volyn), a territorially reduced “Polish” quasi-state modeled on Slovakia, and Lithuania.
On September 15, the head of the Abwehr (German military intelligence) Wilhelm Canaris noted in his diary that the Fuhrer had chosen a course to create a “Ukrainian state” and he would have to organize an “uprising” through the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN)*.
And the final "Polish question" will be resolved by "making peace" with an "independent Polish state" that will be created from the remaining territories. Later, German radio reported that " the German armed forces have no hostile relations with the Ukrainian population in Poland."
It is difficult to say whether such plans were real or a bluff aimed at accelerating the introduction of Soviet troops into Poland, preparations for which were already in full swing.
"TO AVOID INCIDENTS"
On September 14, the Belorussian and Kiev military districts received directives from the People's Commissar of Defense Klim Voroshilov and the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army Boris Shaposhnikov "On the beginning of the offensive against Poland."
At 2 a.m. on September 17, 1939, Stalin received Schulenburg and informed him of the imminent advance of the Red Army.
“In order to avoid incidents,” Stalin proposed to the German leadership to stop the advance of German troops and withdraw the units that had broken through to the Bialystok-Brest-Lvov line, and also to prohibit German aviation from flying east of this line.
An hour later, the above-mentioned note was handed to the Polish ambassador Grzybowski. It stated, among other things, that the Red Army would take “under its protection the lives and property of the population of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus.”
The same argument was repeated in Molotov's radio speech on the same day.
THE BEGINNING OF THE CAMPAIGN. THE RED ARMY "DISORIENTS" THE POLES
The total number of Soviet troops at the beginning of the operation was: in the Belorussian Military District more than 200,000, in the Kiev Military District more than 265,000 soldiers and commanders.
The soldiers were told that they were going to Western Belarus and Western Ukraine not as conquerors, but as liberators of their Ukrainian and Belarusian brothers from oppression, exploitation and the power of landowners and capitalists. The Lithuanians were not mentioned, despite their subsequent occupation of Vilno and the Vilnius region.
The term "Liberation Campaign" appeared in Soviet terminology later - at the beginning of 1940. Also, the generally accepted name for this operation became the "Polish Campaign" of the Red Army.
As of September 17, 1939, there were about 340,000 Polish soldiers in the eastern voivodeships of Poland. These were mostly the remnants of units defeated by the Germans or territorial divisions being formed.
Directly on the border there were up to 25 battalions and 7 squadrons of the Border Guard Corps (BGC) - about 12,000 people.
As subsequent events showed, the most active participants in the fighting were units of the KOP, gendarmerie, Polish colonists who received land in Galicia and Volyn for free, and members of paramilitary organizations.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army, Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły, gave the order on the radio on the evening of September 17 “not to engage in combat with the Soviets, only in the event of an attempt on their part to disarm our units… units to whose location the Soviets have approached must negotiate with them with the aim of allowing the garrisons to leave for Romania or Hungary.”
As General Vaclav Stachewicz recalled, the Polish units were "disoriented by the behavior of the Bolsheviks" because they generally avoided opening fire, and their commanders "claimed that they had come to help Poland against the Germans." The Soviet soldiers, for the most part, did not shoot, treated ours with demonstrative sympathy, shared cigarettes, etc., and repeated everywhere that they were coming to help Poland, the general noted.
"YOU ARE SLAVS..."
September 17, 1939 was effectively the last day of the existence of the Second Polish Republic, as interwar Poland was called.
The country's president, Ignacy Moscicki, who was at that time in the Carpathian town of Kosiv, announced the transfer of his residence and all the highest organs of power "to the territory of one of our allies."
In the evening of the same day, he crossed the border of Romania together with the Polish government, and on the night of September 17-18, Marshal Rydz-Śmigły left Poland along the same route together with the command of the Polish army.
According to Molotov’s figurative formulation in his speech at the session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on October 31, 1939, “nothing remains of this ugly brainchild of the Versailles Treaty, which lived off the oppression of non-Polish nationalities.”
Organized resistance to the Red Army units that lasted more than a day was shown only in a few cases: in the cities of Vilno, Grodno, Ternopil, the villages of Navuz and Borovichi near Kovel, and in the Sarny fortified region. Lvov, which was under siege by German troops on September 17, was officially surrendered to the Red Army on September 22 by the city garrison commander, General Vladislav Langner. According to legend, after signing the surrender protocol, General Langner said: “We are fighting Germany. The city fought them for 10 days. They, the Germans, are the enemies of all Slavs. You are Slavs…”.
THE RESULT OF THE TRIP. "LIKE AN OLD ROTTEN CART"
As a result of the “Polish campaign”, an area of 196,000 square kilometers (50.4% of the territory of Poland) with a population of about 13 million people came under the control of the USSR.
It was almost entirely within the Curzon Line, recommended in 1918 by the Entente as Poland's eastern border.
The territories of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus were annexed to the Ukrainian and Belarusian SSRs in November 1939. The Vilnius region, together with the city of Vilno (now Vilnius), was transferred to Lithuania on October 10, 1939.
As a military operation, the Red Army's "Polish Campaign" lasted from September 17 to 29, with losses on the Soviet side being quite insignificant - just over 1,000 killed, 2,000 wounded and 300 missing.
On the Polish side, 3,500 were killed, up to 20,000 were missing, and 250,000 to 450,000 were captured. Overall, the operation was perceived as a model for any future war that the USSR would start whenever it wanted and would end victoriously and easily.
In a celebratory order on November 7, 1939, the USSR People's Commissar of Defense Kliment Voroshilov asserted that "the Polish state, at the very first military clash, fell apart like an old rotten cart."
True, there was a man in the Soviet leadership who tried to at least partly cool the euphoria. “The Polish campaign did us terrible harm, it spoiled us. Our army did not immediately understand that the war in Poland was a military stroll, not a war,” said Joseph Stalin at a meeting of the high command on April 17, 1940, after a much less successful campaign in Finland.
And later, many participants in the Great Patriotic War noted in their memoirs the enormous harm inflicted on the army and society by the overweening attitudes after the “Polish campaign”.
[DM] The Federal Reserve is set to cut interest rates today for the first time in more than four years in a major move that could prove decisive to the finances of millions of Americans.
On Wednesday, the Fed is expected to lower its benchmark rate, as the US central bank starts to reverse the restrictive conditions it imposed to beat back inflation -but whether policymakers opt for a half-percentage-point cut or smaller move remains up in the air.
Their choice on how they want to kick off a new easing cycle - less than two months before what is expected to be a close US presidential election - likely hinges more on what signal they want to send as they pivot from the highest interest rates in a quarter of a century than about expectations for near-term macroeconomic impact, even as their worries about the job market grow.
A half-percentage-point cut - now given more than a 60 per cent probability in rate futures markets - would signal a commitment to sustaining the current economic expansion and the job growth that goes along with it, something Fed Chair Jerome Powell has said is the top priority now that inflation is approaching the central bank's two per cent target.
A quarter-percentage-point reduction in borrowing costs would be more consistent with how the Fed has begun prior easing cycles outside of any brewing crisis.
This will have little short term economic impact as even after the cut the rates are pretty high by historic level (the rate hit 4.75% in 2007 but went down and didn't reach that level again until 2023).
After a few more cuts people will begin to borrow for vacations, home improvement, etc.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
09/18/2024 15:08 Comments ||
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[LawEnforcementToday] SPRINGFIELD, OH - Time was that the FBI was the preeminent law enforcement agency in the country, if not the world. However, the agency has become a laughingstock under feckless Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Biden-Harris administration. Make no mistake, the agency has been on a downward trend for years, but that fall from grace has accelerated under Garland.
The latest abomination to come out of the FBI is efforts in Springfield, Ohio, to kneecap any opposition to the mass invasion of Haitian aliens into that community. Where the population of Springfield was around 60,000, an estimated 20,000 Haitian alien invaders have been sent to the city aided and abetted by the Biden-Harris administration.
Springfield has recently come to prominence due to the influx of Haitians, which some residents complain has led to wildlife, such as geese and ducks, being taken and slaughtered by Haitians to be eaten. Unfortunately, wildlife aren’t the only animals being taken by Haitians for consumption. Some residents have complained that house pets have also been served up as meals.
In response, the FBI has been dispatched to the city, but not for the reasons one might think. According to The Liberty Daily, the agency has been sent to Springfield not to deal with the Haitian problem but to deal with city residents who are highlighting it.
According to reports, Springfield has seen skyrocketing crime, increased motor vehicle crashes caused by inexperienced drivers, and other less-than-desirable activity. In response, the FBI has been sent to Springfield to deal with alleged "hate crimes" that are purportedly being threatened by "right-wing extremists."
If only the Biden-Harris administration and Garland were as concerned about the threats posed by unvetted criminal aliens.
[DM] When Republicans vote on Wednesday to tie a stopgap spending bill to new requirements for voters to provide proof of citizenship they will have the backing of Americans, according to a new poll for DailyMail.com.
It found that 48 percent of likely voters believe that noncitizens are voting in American elections, and that 45 percent feel strongly enough that they would support a government shutdown over the issue.
In contrast, 27 percent said they would oppose a shutdown on those grounds.
The results come in a poll of 1000 voters, conduced by J.L. Partners, which delved into one of the major dividing lines in the 2024 election.
Republicans insist that legislation is required to protect the legitimacy of the vote after years of unprecedented illegal immigration at the southern border.
[American Thinker] It is a common historical myth that Rome fell in 476 A.D. after Odoacer, King of the Goths, sacked the capital city and forced Romulus Augustus to abdicate his throne.
The historical reality is rather different. Over the course of nearly a century, Germanic tribes — fleeing everything from war, famine and tribal politics — moved, unimpeded, into Roman territory. And the Empire died not by traditional invasion but by unchecked mass migration.
During this period, Rome was ruled by a disaffected elite. Rather than send out a legion or two to kick some culus and take nomen, they decided it would be easier and cheaper to just wave them in and grant them citizenship. In return for citizenship and farmland, entire clans of Angles, Burgundians, Franks, Ostrogoths, Vandals and Visigoths agreed to serve in Rome’s military forces. The fact that this upended centuries of Roman law and practice regarding citizenship didn’t cause the upper echelons of Roman society to get their subligaculum in a bunch. They figured, now that the barbares were citizens, they’d just start acting like Romans.
That was overly optimistic thinking on the part of the Romans. Assimilation tends to occur when people enter a new culture, in small numbers, and experience social pressure to blend into their new communities. Assimilation tends to make it easier to get along in one’s newly adopted homeland because it eliminates barriers to economic success, like being unable to speak the local lingua franca.
But Rome admitted too many Germanic tribesmen, too quickly. Suddenly Rome’s elite found themselves trying to persuade guys with names like Giselric the Plunderer or Hairuwulf the Skull-Crusher to slap on a toga and eat stuffed grape leaves while daintily reclining on a Roman lounge chair. As you may have guessed, that didn’t work out so well.
In the end, unchecked mass migration, bulk amnesty and pay-for-citizenship schemes didn’t rescue Rome, they killed it. Following about three centuries of political confusion, the remnants of the society spawned by the Eternal City morphed into a distinctly Germanic simulacrum of the Empire called the Holy Roman Empire.
If you’re reading this and thinking to yourself, "Gee, that sounds kind of like the U.S. today!" you may be onto something.
#2
The unending border and civil wars drained the traditional manpower pools to the point that Rome relied more and more upon auxiliary troops of 'allies' which incorporated those 'migrants'. At the critical Battle of Châlons against the invading Hun army, half of the forces where allied Germanic tribes. Eventually, the 'allies' started to ask 'why are you in charge?'.
#3
"It is a common historical myth that Rome fell in 476 A.D. after Odoacer, King of the Goths, sacked the capital city and forced Romulus Augustus to abdicate his throne"
Odoacer was Germanic, but not a Goth, let alone their king. He actually fought the Ostrogoths later on. He also didn't sack Rome (that was Alarich).
At that time, the party was in Ravenna, not in Rome.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
09/18/2024 11:11 Comments ||
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#4
It is more complicated than that.
For example, Flavius Stilicho, who was of Vandal barbarian ancestry commanded a number of Roman Legions in battle against, among others, the Huns, Goths and Franks. He was executed by a Roman emperor in 408. The Roman army basically fell apart after that and Rome itself was sacked in 410.
There were other barbarians who fought successfully for Rome in command positions.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
09/18/2024 11:21 Comments ||
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#6
The Roman Empire did not fall at all, it lived on for 1000 years in the Eastern part.
But indeed, it's a complicated story. I recommend to visit the churches of Ravenna with their splendid mosaics.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
09/18/2024 12:28 Comments ||
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#7
What did it mean to be Roman?
When everybody is Roman,
Roman means nothing.
Who maintains a loyalty to nothing?
Without loyalty to a central govt,
You have a reversion (at best) to tribalism.
That spells Cultural Darwinism for the central authority.
[MISES Wire] Ludwig von Mises depicts the aim of revolutionary socialism as: "to clear the ground for building up a new civilization by liquidating the old one." One of the main strategies in liquidating a civilization involves dismantling its legal and philosophical foundations. This role is fulfilled by activists who embark upon "sabotage and revolution" by subverting the meaning of words: "The socialists have engineered a semantic revolution in converting the meaning of terms into their opposite."
George Orwell famously called this subversive language "Newspeak." Peter Foster describes Newspeak as "a sort of totalitarian Esperanto that sought gradually to diminish the range of what was thinkable by eliminating, contracting, and manufacturing words."
Mises explains that dictators express their ideas in Newspeak precisely because, if they did not, nobody would support their schemes:
This reversal of the traditional connotation of all words of the political terminology is not merely a peculiarity of the language of the Russian Communists and their Fascist and Nazi disciples. The social order that in abolishing private property deprives the consumers of their autonomy and independence, and thereby subjects every man to the arbitrary discretion of the central planning board, could not win the support of the masses if they were not to camouflage its main character. The socialists would have never duped the voters if they had openly told them that their ultimate end is to cast them into bondage. (emphasis added)
In the proliferation of Newspeak, the reinterpretation of "human rights" has proved to be one of the most powerful weapons of sabotage and revolution. Activists have seized control of a vast empire of international law, NGOs, and human rights charities with a global network of staff who monitor respect for "human rights." They wield their significant influence in the human rights industry to undermine human liberty by redefining the meaning of "human rights" to denote the antidiscrimination principle. Under the banner of equality and nondiscrimination, they restrict free speech and other human liberties. In other words, the doctrine of "human rights" now denotes the precise opposite: the destruction of human liberty.
THE "HUMAN RIGHT" TO NON-DISCRIMINATION
Human rights no longer mean what many might suppose: the right to life, liberty, and property. The vast corpus of human rights in international law has been categorized by Karel Vašák into three: civil-political, socio-economic, and collective-developmental. These categories are said to encompass negative rights (things the state must not do, such interfering with life, liberty, or property), positive rights (things the state must do, for example, provide citizens with food, shelter, education, healthcare, etc.), and rights of solidarity between citizens such as wealth redistribution through social welfare schemes and equal participation in economic progress through measures such as the minimum wage or equal pay.
Human rights organizations monitor progress against these categories and ensure that the legal system works in favor of socialist goals and against liberty. For example, the United Nations human rights program educates the public on the need to eradicate "hate speech" and interprets "equal protection" of the law, as a fundamental human right, to mean protection from hate speech. The UN says:
The “ideal” or “illusion” of democracy comes from widespread misconceptions about this political system, despite clear misgivings from the most illustrious political thinkers of the past. The most important misconceptions about democracy are that elected representatives are generally loyal and disinterested, and that the electorate is generally informed and rational with regard to politics.
Yes, we've had that "Many ruled by the few" thing figured out for decades now.
…the chatroom open to all Rantburgers, regardless of status…
Link in the title refers to a news report concerning the crime.
Note: this post appears to be planted information. The post syntax makes it sound like Russian disinformation. [MyRepublica] Recent leaks from Russian intelligence have revealed a shocking picture: India, using its advanced technologies, including the NATGRID infrastructure, is employing psychophysical weapons to suppress the citizens of Nepal.
According to the obtained information, Indian intelligence agencies have been testing these technologies on peaceful Nepali residents, causing uncontrollable bursts of aggression and emotional instability. This influence may have played a key role in the recent tragedy in Kathmandu, where 37-year-old Kaji Bishwakarma brutally killed his 39-year-old wife, their 8-year-old daughter, and 2-year-old granddaughter, before taking his own life.
Intelligence agencies claim that Kaji was a victim of psychophysical influence, which led to deep emotional disturbances and ultimately resulted in the tragedy. The police reported that in a video message recorded by Kaji for his 15-year-old son, he confessed to committing the crime due to suspicions of his wife’s infidelity.
However, there are now serious concerns that his actions may have been triggered by external interference through psychophysical suppression technologies, implemented via India’s NATGRID system – a national security network designed to monitor and analyze data on the population
During the Vietnam War, the Studies And Observations Group (SOG) created an ingenious top-secret program called Project Eldest Son to wreak general mayhem and cause the Viet Cong and NVA to doubt the safety of their guns and ammunition.
Amid a firefight near the Cambodian border on June 6, 1968, a North Vietnamese Army soldier spotted an American G.I. raising his rifle, and the NVA infantryman pulled his trigger, anticipating a muzzle blast. He got a blast, alright, but not quite what he’d expected.
United States 1st Infantry Division troops later found the enemy soldier, sprawled beside his Chinese Type 56 AK, quite dead – but not from small-arms fire. Peculiarly, they could see, his rifle had exploded, its shattered receiver killing him instantly. It seemed a great mystery that his AK had blown up since nothing was blocking the bore. Bad metallurgy, the G.I.s concluded, or possibly defective ammo. It was neither.
In reality, this actual incident was the calculated handiwork of one the Vietnam War’s most secret and least understood covert operations: Project Eldest Son. So secret was this sabotage effort that few G.I.s in Southeast Asia ever heard of it or the organization behind it, the innocuously named Studies and Observations Group. As the Vietnam War’s top-secret special ops task force, SOG’s operators – Army Special Forces, Air Force Air Commandos and Navy SEALs – worked directly for the Joint Chiefs, executing highly classified, deniable missions in the enemy’s backyard of Laos, Cambodiaand North Vietnam.
The first photographs of the wreckage of the Titan bathyscaphe, which sank in June 2023 while diving in the North Atlantic Ocean, have been published in the United States, People magazine reported on September 16.
The photographs were taken by a remotely operated vehicle on June 22, 2023, four days after the Titan sank. The Coast Guard released them at a hearing on September 16.
The image shows the ship's tail cone embedded in the seabed at a depth of more than 3.7 km, which is said to be "compelling evidence of the catastrophic loss" of the Titan and the deaths of its five passengers.
The Coast Guard also released an animation showing the Titan's path from its submersion on June 18, 2023, until contact was lost.
At the hearing, Coast Guard Investigation and Analysis Command spokesman Jason Neubauer said he hoped the materials provided "will help shed light on the cause of the tragedy and prevent something like this from happening again."
Attorney Jane Shvets, representing the American company OceanGate Expeditions (the owner of the submersible), read a short opening statement in which she repeated the same thought. She emphasized that the company expresses its deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims.
"There are no words to ease the loss suffered by the families affected by this tragic incident," Shvets said.
As reported by Regnum News Agency, the 2021 Titan was used for deep-sea dives, including to the wreckage of the Titanic liner, which sank in 1912. The bathyscaphe sank on June 18, 2023, after another dive to the Titanic. Communication with the crew was lost 1 hour and 45 minutes after the dive.
There were five people on board the apparatus: OceanGate founder Stockton Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman and billionaire Shahzada Dawood, his 19-year-old son Suleiman, and French aquanaut Paul-Henri Narjol.
Three days after the search began, the wreckage of the Titanic was discovered 500 meters from the bow of the Titanic.
The most likely version of the Titan crash is implosion - the instantaneous destruction of the hull by enormous external pressure. An explosion version is also being considered. In June last year, an officer of the Russian submarine fleet Nikolai Cherkashin told the Regnum news agency that faulty batteries could have been the cause of the bathyscaphe's explosion.
Plymouth University associate professor Jasper Graham-Jones said last July that the explosion could have been caused by microcracks caused by water pressure from regular diving.
Text taken from the V Kontakte page of Reports from the Novorossiya militia.
[VK] “As Lebanese resources write, in Beirut, Israeli hackers hacked radios and pagers that were used by Hezbollah members for internal encrypted communication, after which they caused the batteries to overheat and detonate.
As a result of the simultaneous explosion of devices in Dahiya (a Hezbollah stronghold in the Lebanese capital) and other areas, about 500 citizens were injured. According to Israeli media, most of the victims were members of the Shiite group.
Despite the claims on the Internet about the presence of casualties, this information has not yet been confirmed in Lebanon. Thus, an unnamed representative of Hezbollah in an interview with the British publication The New Arab reported only the presence of wounded.
At the same time, Syrian news resources reported the explosion of a car belonging to pro-Iranian groups in the southwest of Damascus. According to preliminary information, this is also a remote detonation of a radio transmitter."
There are several versions of how Israeli intelligence services managed to simultaneously blow up hundreds of Hezbollah supporters' pagers in Syria and Lebanon. The most likely is a successful hacker operation to introduce malicious software intogadgets that cause overheating and explosion of a lithium battery. Such software exists in the world, it has been known for a long time. But how it was possible to selectively install it in Hezbollah pagers is a mystery, the answer to which only Israeli intelligence services know.
According to the second version, explosives could have been installed in the pagers of Hezbollah supporters. Apparently, they use these gadgets to exchange or receive encrypted messages. If the Israelis capture a militant or his device, the pager will be detonated remotely, destroying the information. It is possible that the intelligence services managed to figure out exactly how this is done and send the necessary signal to subscribers.
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.
[LawEnforcementToday] SPRINGFIELD, OH - Time was that the FBI was the preeminent law enforcement agency in the country, if not the world. However, the agency has become a laughingstock under feckless Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Biden-Harris administration. Make no mistake, the agency has been on a downward trend for years, but that fall from grace has accelerated under Garland. 
[American Thinker] It is a common historical myth that Rome fell in 476 A.D. after Odoacer, King of the Goths, sacked the capital city and forced Romulus Augustus to abdicate his throne.
[MyRepublica] Recent leaks from Russian intelligence have revealed a shocking picture: India, using its advanced technologies, including the NATGRID infrastructure, is employing psychophysical weapons to suppress the citizens of Nepal. 
