Imperial Roman unit who guarded the emperors
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2 episodes with Praetorian Guard
2 episodes with Praetorian Guard
2 episodes with Praetorian Guard
2 episodes with Praetorian Guard
2 episodes with Praetorian Guard
In this Podcast, Craig, Gaurav and their guest Victor discuss the Year or War of the four Emperors. In a time of chaos, after the death of Emperor Nero, the Roman Empire found itself engulfed in a brutal power struggle known as the Year of the Four Emperors. It began with Galba, the governor of Hispania, leading a rebellion against Nero, catalyzed by discontent among the provinces. As Nero fled, declared an enemy of the state, he took his own life, paving the way for Galba's ascension. Galba, however, struggled to maintain power. His failure to pay the Praetorian Guard alienated key supporters, leading to his assassination. Otho, one of Galba's trusted allies, soon seized the throne, but his reign was short-lived as he faced opposition from Vitellius, who rallied the legions and successfully marched on Rome. The battle for control culminated in fierce confrontations, with legions loyally switching sides. Ultimately, Vitellius claimed victory and adorned the Imperial purple, yet his decadent reign could not sustain. He was overthrown by Vespasian, a seasoned general who had garnered support from the eastern provinces. Vespasian's rise marked the end of the chaos. He established stability, founding the Flavian dynasty that would last for decades. This tumultuous period not only reshaped leadership in Rome but also highlighted the fragility of power, etched forever into the annals of history as a superb reflection of ambition, betrayal, and courage in the heart of the Roman Empire.
From Gladiator to Rome Total War to I, Claudius, today the Cohortēs praetōriae are one of the most distinctive military units of Imperial Rome. It was their job to protect the Roman Emperor and his household, a task for which they hold a somewhat ‘chequered' record (especially when we focus in on the Praetorian Prefects). But what do we know about this unit's origins? How did this powerful force become protectors of the Emperor and his household? What other functions did they serve? And how did they differ from the standard Roman legions in their structure?To talk through the rise of the Praetorian Guard, with a specific focus on the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, Tristan caught up with historian Lindsay Powell at Fishbourne Roman Palace in West Sussex. Lindsay is the author of several books about the Early Roman Imperial Period. His latest book, Bar Kokhba: The Jew Who Defied Hadrian and Challenged the Might of Rome, is out now.Presented by Tristan Hughes. The producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.The Ancients is a History Hit podcast.All music from Epidemic SoundsSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here.This episode first aired in October 2021.
Appreciating just how dangerous our situation is right now. They are experts in language and controlling the language. The revolution is more important than honesty. Going for a ruck in the neighborhood. Stopping the Kamikaze planes. The communist is purposeful with his language. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Serving at the pleasure of the Praetorian Guard. Commies sniffing out who’s likely to be a friend and who’s likely to be a foe. Jesse’s blackpill moment. We wont stop spending til there’s a financial crash. Government spending is the reason why your standard of living is lower than your parents. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
From prison in Rome, Paul writes about how his imprisonment has actually served to advance the Gospel. Through being chained to rotating guards from the elite Praetorian Guard, Paul had unique opportunities to share Christ. Even when others began preaching Christ from wrong motives like envy and rivalry, Paul still rejoiced because Christ was being proclaimed. His response demonstrates putting the Gospel's advance above personal comfort or recognition, showing how to find joy in Christ being made known regardless of circumstances. WATCH FULL SERVICE ON YOUTUBE DOWNLOAD PDF SERMON NOTES HERE
Following the bloody assassination of the twenty-eight year old Emperor Caligula, Rome found herself without a leader. Who then should fill the enormous power vacuum left by the death of an emperor? Should Rome return to a Republic? Then, one overlooked candidate - a scion of the hallowed family of Augustus long lurking in the wings of imperial power - unexpectedly rose to the fore: Claudius, Caligula's uncle. Famed as a drooling idiot all his life, Claudius' apparent shortcomings had kept him safe from the ruthless ambitions of his family and enemies. But his life of anonymity would now be brought to an abrupt end, with a shocking coup led by the Praetorian Guard. The Praetorians, one of the most potent forces in Rome, feared the loss of the emperor's patronage, and so pulled him out from the curtain behind which he had been hiding, carried him to their camp, and declared him emperor. The reign that ensued - described in gory, glistening, salacious detail by the Roman historian Suetonius - would see Claudius dismantle his mask of imbecility to reveal himself clever and studious, but easily duped by his advisors, freemen, and wives alike. It would see him claim the conquest of Britain, increase the strength of the Roman army, fall foul of the senate, play cuckold in one of the most famous sexual scandals of all time, and marry his niece. All the while, the shadows of Nero's rise to supreme power were lengthening… Join Tom and Dominic for the mighty conclusion of their journey through the lives of Rome's first Caesars, as described in rich, technicolour by Suetonius, climaxing with the epic reign of Rome's most unexpected emperor: Claudius. Pre-order Tom Holland's new translation of 'The Lives of the Caesars' here: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/279727/the-lives-of-the-caesars-by-suetonius/9780241186893 _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Editor: Jack Meek Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
He grew up in Milan and became an army officer, where he distinguished himself so well that the Emperor Diocletian made him captain of the Praetorian Guard not suspecting that Sebastian was a Christian. In Rome, while fulfilling the duties of a courtier, he used his position to comfort and encourage his imprisoned fellow-Christians. By his labors and example he brought many to faith in Christ, including Chromatius, the Prefect in charge of persecuting the Roman Christians. Sebastian had upheld two brothers, Mark and Marcellinus, who were awaiting execution for their faith. When the day of execution came, their father Tranquillinus, who had been a pagan but through Sebastian's example had converted, presented himself to Chromatius and announced that he too was a Christian. His testimony was so powerful that the hard heart of the Prefect was melted, and he himself resolved to become a Christian. Caius, Bishop of Rome, gathered the new brethren (both men and women — not all of Sebastian's converts have been mentioned here) to embrace them and baptize them, but also to warn them of their coming Martyrdom. He instructed some to flee the city and others, headed by Sebastian, to remain in Rome, devoting their days to fasting, prayer and thanksgiving as they awaited their death. As the "company of Martyrs" did this, many came to them and were healed of ailments, and many joined them in confessing Christ. When the time of martyrdom came, each member of the company was subjected to imaginatively cruel tortures before his execution. Sebastian himself was made to witness the deaths of all his companions, then to endure his own trial. He serenely confessed his unshaken faith before Diocletian himself before being taken to the place of execution. There he was tied to a post and made the target of a band of archers until his body bristled with arrows like the quills of a porcupine. He was left for dead, but when Irene, widow of St Castulus, came to bury him, she found him alive and tended his wounds. Amazingly, he recovered, and presented himself once again to the Emperor. Astonished and outraged, the tyrant ordered that Sebastian be beaten to death with clubs and thrown into the city's sewer. That evening, a pious Christian woman was told in a vision to retrieve his body and bury it in the catacombs. After St Constantine brought peace to the Church, Pope Damasus built a church over the site in the Saint's honor. For hundreds of years, many miracles were worked there through St Sebastian's intercessions.
Danny and Derek are back with Patrick Wyman, host of the Tides of History podcast and author of The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World, for the second part of their discussion about Ridley Scott's Gladiator films. This episode explores father-son relationships, Numidia, why the original film outshines the sequel and most depictions of Rome since, the military campaigns depicted in the movies, different types of gladiators, the Praetorian Guard, treacherous personal trainers, and more. Subscribe now for the full episode! Read Patrick's piece for Slate, "The Case for Gladiator II". Be warned, this is full of spoilers.
Listeners react to Denver mayor Mike Johnston's Machiavellian fever dream of calling upon Denver Police as his own Praetorian Guard against ICE federal agents seeking to apprehend criminal aliens in the upcoming Trump administration.
The true nexus of power in the Roman Empire wasn't in the Emperor's box but in the shadowy ranks of the Praetorian Guard. First established in 27 BCE by Caesar Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome, they acted as his personal army and security escort. But it didn't take long for their influence in Rome to become more insidious … they became kingmakers and power brokers with the ability to topple a dynasty at the drop of a hat. They were the ones who decided who lived and who died.Dan and Dr Simon Elliot, a leading voice in Roman History, walk the streets of Rome where Praetorian conspiracies and assassinations spilt imperial blood on the stones of the eternal city… This is episode 4 of 4 in our mini-series 'Gladiators'.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal PatmoreSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.
Join the Brothers as they discuss the Praetorian Guard, and the infamous Death Korps of Krieg! In this vox we will discuss their origins, some of their more famous battles and hypothesis on what the Krieg actually are! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ian-crombie00/support
Preview: Nero: Agrippina the Younger: Conversation with author Anthony Everitt, author of "Nero," regarding Agrippina's ambition to become the emperor of Rome along with or in place of her son, Nero. More later. undated Claudius begs the Praetorian Guard not to slay him after Caligula was murdered by the same Praetorian Guard.
President of the Mises Institute and author of “How Capitalism Saved America”, Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo joins us to uncover the current state of capitalism and if it still exists in America. Earlier in the episode, Keith discusses the inaccuracy of economic predictions, citing examples like the 2023 recession that never happened, the negative impact of misinformed predictions on investment decisions and business growth. Persistent housing price crash predictions have been consistently wrong despite global pandemics and higher mortgage rates. Dr. DiLorenzo advocates for #EndTheFed to reduce inflation and restore free market principles. Learn how voluntary exchange between buyer and seller through market prices communicates information and influences production. Resources: Learn more about Austrian economics and Ludwig von Mises through visiting mises.org Show Notes: GetRichEducation.com/521 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments. You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review” GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREmarketplace.com/Coach Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE' to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript: Automatically Transcribed With Otter.ai Keith Weinhold 00:00 Keith, welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, reviewing some terrible economic predictions and why it matters to you. Then the President of the Mises Institute joins us. Does capitalism still exist in the US and what would happen if we ended the Fed, today on get rich education. 00:24 Since 2014 the powerful get rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show Host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad advisors, who delivers a new show every week since 2014 there's been millions of listener downloads of 188 world nations. He has a list show. Guess who? Top Selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki, get rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener phone apps build wealth on the go with the get rich education podcast. Sign up now for the get rich education podcast, or visit getricheducation.com Corey Coates 01:09 You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education. Keith Weinhold 01:25 welcome to GRE from Syracuse, Sicily to Syracuse, New York, and across 188 nations worldwide, you're listening to one of the longest running and most listened to shows on real estate investing. This is Get Rich Education. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold, now a lot of media companies and pundits and influencers like to make predictions. Listeners like learning about predictions and by engaging just a little of that each of the past few years on one of the last episodes of the year. Here, I forecast the national home price appreciation rate for the following year, many media outlets, pundits and influencers have made terrible, just absolutely terrible, predictions about interest rates and other financial forecasts. Last year, a majority of Pro prognosticators firmly forecast six or eight Fed rate cuts this year, for example, well, we're going to have far fewer, and that's because high inflation kept hanging around. Then there's the 2023 recession that never happened, yet both Bloomberg and the economist actually published some rather ignominious headlines, as it turned out, they published these in the fall of 2022 Bloomberg, big headline was forecast for us, recession within year hits 100% in blow to Biden, well, That was false. That didn't come true. I mean, 100% that doesn't leave you any room for an out. And then also published in the fall of 2022 The Economist ran this headline why a global recession is inevitable in 2023 All right, well, they both believed in a recession, and they believed in it so deeply that it got fossilized. Well, an economic archeologist like me dug it up. Dr Thomas DiLorenzo 03:31 We are going to die Keith Weinhold 03:35 well, but I didn't risk my life like Indiana Jones did there. This archeology, it only involves some Google searches. Well, here's the thing. What's remarkable about America staving off a mammoth recession and leaving all the other g7 nations in the economic dust is the fact that merely predicting a recession often makes it come true. Just predicting one often turns a recession into a self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah, recession forecast headlines alone, they can spook employers from making new hires and slow down manufacturing, and it can also disillusion real estate investors from expanding their portfolios. Well, the US economy grew anyway, besides the farcical prognostications about myriad interest rate cuts in a quote, unquote definite 2023 recession that never happened. You know, there's also a third forecast that so many got wrong. And you probably know what I'm gonna say. I've brought it up before, because this hits our world, those erstwhile and well still ever present housing price crash predictions. I mean this facet of the gloom boom really ramped up from 2020 One until today, even a global pandemic, new wars and a triplicate mortgage rates couldn't stop the housing price surge and the rent surge. A lot of doomsdayers just couldn't see, or they didn't even want to see that a housing shortage would keep prices afloat. They didn't want to see it because they get more clicks when they talk about the gloom government stimulus programs also buoyed prices, and deep homeowner equity cushions will still keep prices afloat. Ever since 2021 here on the show, I've used that rationale and more to explain that home prices would keep appreciating, but that the rate of appreciation would slow down, and it has slowed down since 2021 see YouTubers tick tockers. They notoriously use woe begone housing crash headlines, because that gets more clicks and then some of the rationale behind this. The reasoning is just dreadful, like, what goes up must come down, all right? Well, this is like, why does it matter? Who cares about wrong predictions anyway? What's the point? Well, people become misinformed. People waste their time on these things and see no one loses money on dismal economic predictions. But the damage is done, because when investors don't act well, then they didn't get the gain that they should have had. Businesses didn't get the gain that they should have had when they could have made new investment and hired new employees sooner. And of course, a recession is going to happen sometime. They occur, on average, every five to six years. It is just a normal part of the business cycle will collectively these three faulty economic predictions, rate cuts, a recession and a housing price crash. I think if you bundle them all up combined, it could be as bad as one doomsday prediction about worldwide starvation or the Mayan apocalypse. Remember that the wide to K bug, the acid rain, even that the internet is just a fad that ran a buck 30 years ago. World War Three is eminent, robots overtaking humans, or how about running out of crude oil. I mean, we're definitely all supposed to have jet packs in flying cars by now, right? But yet, did anyone have the clairvoyance to predict the stock market crash of 1929 or September 11 terrorist attacks, or Trump's surprise, 2016 presidency or Bitcoin hitting 70k A while back, or the coronavirus. So really, overall, the bottom line here with predictions is that no one knows the future. Control what you can maintain equanimity, add good properties, gradually raise rent, reduce expenses, create leverage and expect inflation truly the best way to predict the future is to create it in just that way. Well is the USA capitalistic nation today. That's what we'll discuss later with this week's guest. When Chuck Todd hosted the show Meet the Press, he interviewed AOC about this. Yes, I'm talking about us. House Rep from New York, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, what she say? You 08:34 have said you are democratic socialist. Can you be a Democratic socialist and a capitalist? Well, I think it depends on your interpretation. So there are some Democratic socialists that would say, Absolutely not. There are other people that are democratic socialists that would say, I think it's possible. What are you? I think it's possible. I think you say to yourself, I'm a capitalist, but I don't say that. You know, if anything, I would say, I'm I believe in a democratic economy, but. Keith Weinhold 09:03 okay, well, I'm not sure if that clears it up at all. And I've listened to more of that clip, and it just makes things more confusing. But I think that most people have trouble drawing a line between capitalism and neighboring economic systems. Where exactly do you draw that line? I don't know exactly where to draw it. When I think of capitalism, I think of things though, like removal of interventionist central planning and allowing the free market to run with few guardrails. And then there's an issue like labor unionization. I don't really know about something like that. This is a real estate show. I'm still forming an opinion on a topic like that. In you know, some of this gets political, and that's beyond the scope of get rich education. The Fed was created in 1913 that central planning, its central banking from 1987 to. 2006 Alan Greenspan reigned as Fed chair. Those were his years, and he became even more interventionist. And then his successor, Ben Bernanke, maybe even more so with quantitative easing and such. Let's talk about, should they end the Fed and capitalism with this week's expert guest. You very well may have heard of the late, famed Austrian American economist Ludwig von Mises today, the Mises Institute carries on his legacy, and this week's guest is none other than the President of the Mises Institute. He's also the number one best selling author of how capitalism saved America and his newer book with a title that I love, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Economics. Hey, it's great to have you here. It is. Dr Thomas DiLorenzo. Dr Thomas DiLorenzo 11:00 pleased to be with you. Thanks for having me.Th Keith Weinhold 11:02 Well, Dr DiLorenzo, for those that don't know, just tell us a bit in an overview about Austrian economics and what Ludwig von Mises stood for. Dr Thomas DiLorenzo 11:02 Well, Ludwig von Mises was the preeminent critic of socialism and fascism in Europe, and in his day, he fled the Nazis literally hours before the Gestapo broke into his apartment in Geneva, because he was the preeminent critic of fascism and socialism, and he was also Jewish, and so he had to get out of town. And he miraculously ended up after wandering through Europe with his wife in New York City, and he taught at New York University for many years, until he died in 1973 and but the Austrian School of Economics is a school of thought. It has nothing to do with, necessarily, with the Government of Austria, the country of Austria, just this the founder of a man named Carl Menger happened to be from Austria, but probably the most famous or well known among Americans would be Friedrich Hayek, who won the Nobel Prize in 1970s he was a student of Ludwig von Mises and critics of interventionism, critics of socialism. We teach about free markets, of how markets actually work and how governments don't work. And that's in a nutshell, that's what it's about. And you could check out our website, mises.org, M, I, S, E, S.org, you can get a great economic education. We have a lot of free books to download. Some of them are downloaded 30 or 40,000 times a month. Still, it's even Mises old books like human action, first published in the 1960s and so you can get a great education just by reading our website. Keith Weinhold 12:42 Well, congratulations, that's proof that you're doing an excellent job of carrying on the Mises legacy into the present day, a lot of which is championing capitalism. Do we have capitalism in the United States today? Dr Thomas DiLorenzo 12:59 I was an economics professor from 40 years before I got this job as President of the Mises Institute. And I used to say we had islands of socialism in a sea of capitalism at the beginning of my career. But now I'd say it's the opposite, that we have islands of capitalism in a sea of socialism. And socialism, this data is not defined anymore as government ownership. That was, you know, about 100 years ago, the socialism. It's basically government control of industry and in addition to government ownership. So the instruments of the welfare state, the income tax and the regulatory state, is our version of socialism, or central planning, if you will. And it's the Federal Reserve the Fed, which is a government agency that orchestrates the whole thing, really, it's a big, massive central planning industry that controls, regulates basically every aspect of any kind of financial transaction imaginable. They list in their publications over 100 different functions of the Federal Reserve. It's not just monetary policy. It's a big regulatory behemoth, and so that's that's what the Fed is. That's what I think we have today. A friend of mine, Robert Higgs, a well known economic historian, says our system is what he calls participatory fascism. And fascism was a system where private enterprise was permitted, but it was so heavily regulated and regimented by the government that industry had to do what government wanted to do, not what its customers wanted it to do, so much, and a large part of our economic system is just like that, and we get to vote still, so that's where the participatory and comes in, and the pin of Robert Hinz. Keith Weinhold 14:41 yeah, maybe at best, I can think of today's system as capitalism with guardrails on but the guardrails keep getting taller. And I think of guardrails as being, for example, regulatory agencies like the Fed in FINRA. In the FDA. Dr Thomas DiLorenzo 15:01 It is the beginning of my career. You know, I studied economics and a PhD in economics, and there was a big literature on what's called regulatory capture. And it was sort of a big secret among US economic academics. There was all this research going on and how the big regulatory agencies created by the federal government in the late 19th, early 20th centuries, were captured by the industries that they were supposed to be regulating. Right? The theory was they would regulate these industries in the public's best interests. But what has happened from the very beginning is they were captured by the industries, and they benefit the industry at the expense of the public. But today, that's caught on thanks to people like Robert Kennedy Jr, frankly, has been a very popular author. He sold a gazillion copies of his book on Anthony Fauci, and in it, he explains in tremendous detail how the Food and Drug Administration was long ago captured by the pharmaceutical companies. And he's not the only one. I think that that is being more and more recognized by people outside of academic economics, like me, and that's a good thing, and that's sort of the worst example of crony capitalism. It's not real capitalism, but crony capitalism making money through government connections, rather than producing better products, cheaper products and so forth. Keith Weinhold 16:21 I watched RFK Jr speak in person recently, and I was actually disappointed when he effectively dropped out of the upcoming presidential race. And I do want to talk more with you about the Fed shortly, but with all these regulatory agencies and how I liken them to guard rails. You know, I sort of think of it as a watchdog system that's failing. You mentioned the FDA. I know RFK Jr brought them up an awful lot, the Food and Drug Administration that are supposed to help regulate what we put inside our own bodies in our diet. But these systems are failing. We have regulatory agencies in industry, industry in regulatory agencies. I mean, look at the obesity rate. Look at all the ultra processed food that's allowed. Look at all the seed oils that are allowed in food that people actually think are healthy for them. So this system of capitalism with guardrails is failing almost everywhere you look. Dr Thomas DiLorenzo 16:22 I wouldn't call it capitalism. I wouldn't use the word capitalism at all, other than crony capitalism, people can relate to that. You know, a lot of these regulatory agencies were lobbied for in the first place by industry. That while the very first one was the Interstate Commerce Commission, it was in the 1880s it was meant to regulate the railroad companies. The first president was the president of a Railroad Corporation, the head of the Interstate Commerce Commission. So talk about the fox guarding the hen house. That was from the very beginning. And so in a sense, this word capture theory of regulation, which Kennedy has used, they weren't really captured. They always were created by the government. The same is true of all the so called Public Utilities. It was the corporations, the electric power companies, the water supply companies, that lobbied for governments to give them a monopoly, a legal monopoly, in electricity, water supply and all these things that were called natural monopolies, but there was nothing natural about them. There was vigorous competition in the early 20th century in telephone, electricity, water supply, and that was all set aside by government regulation, creating monopolies. For example, in electric power, there's an economist named Walter primo who wrote a book some years ago showing that always have been several dozen cities in America that never went this way, that always allowed direct competition between electric power companies. And what do you know, better service and lower prices. As a result, they did dozens of statistical studies to demonstrate this in his book. Keith Weinhold 18:58 Okay, well, that's a great case study. Why don't we talk about what things would look like if we took down one of these agencies? We're a real estate investing in finance show. Sometimes it's a popular meme or hashtag to say, end the Fed. What would it look like if we ended the Fed? Dr Thomas DiLorenzo 19:18 Well, the Fed was created in 1913 in the same era, with all these other regulatory captured agencies were created, right? And it was created basically to cartelize and create a cartel for the banking industry to make it almost impossible to go bankrupt. They've been bailing out foolish bankers for 111 years. And of course, the biggest example was that as the crash of 08 after they they handed Goldman Sachs and other big investment banks billions of dollars. That was a direct assault on capitalism itself, because capitalism, as you know, is a profit and loss system. It's not a I keep the profits. You pay for my losses system. You're the taxpayer. But that's what happened with that. So the Fed would. Fall into that the Fed is actually the fourth central bank in America. We had three other ones. First one was called Bank of North America. Its currency was so unreliable, nobody trusted it went out of business in a year and a half. And then we created something called the Bank of the United States in 1791 same thing. It created boom and bust cycles, high unemployment, price inflation, corrupted politics. It was defunded after 20 years, and then it was brought back to fund the debt from the war of 1812 and so we had a Second Bank of the United States. It did the same thing, boom and bust cycles, price inflation, corrupted politics. Benefited special interest, but not the general interest, and President Andrew Jackson defunded it, and so we went without a central bank from roughly 1840 until 1913 so we've had experience of that. And what we had been was competing currencies, and that would be sort of a stepping stone. If we got rid of the fed, we wouldn't have to abolish the Fed altogether. We could amend the charter to the Fed to say you're no longer permitted to buy bonds. Can't buy government bonds anymore. That's how they inflate the money supply, right? By buying bonds. That's totally unnecessary. And we could just just that would be a great step forward, and we would sort of whittle away our $80 trillion debt, if you count again upon count the unfunded liabilities of the federal government, Keith Weinhold 21:26 if we did end the Fed, what would the price of money? Which are interest rates really look like? Would a new market rate be sent by individuals and companies on the free market like Bank of America, with a customer or borrower settling on an interest rate that they both agree to. Dr Thomas DiLorenzo 21:44 You know, the Fed uses sort of Soviet style economics, price control. The economists and are all getting all over Kamala Harris for recommendations for price controls on rent and other things. Well, the Fed price control. They control the price of money. That's what they do. And so there's a big, kind of a comical thing that here you have all these economists, if they were to teach economics in the week one, they would teach about the bad effects of price controls, and then they get a job at the Fed, and they spend their whole career enforcing price controls on money, and the interest rate would be determined by supply and demand for credit and inflationary expectations. That's what the market does. And you wouldn't have these bureaucrats at the Fed tinkering around with interest rates, creating tremendous arbitrage opportunities for Wall Street investors. With all the movements and interest rates, you'd have much more stable interest rates, and and you wouldn't have this ridiculous system where the Fed says we need to always have forever at least 2% inflation. And of course, they never meet that, and they lie about it. I don't believe for one minute that the price inflation right now is 3% or under 3% that's ridiculous, right? And so things should be getting cheaper. Everything should be getting cheaper because of all the technology we have. My first PC I bought in the early 80s for $4,000 and it was a piece of prehistoric junk compared to my cell phone today, that almost for free. Almost everything should be like that agriculture, but the reason it isn't is the Fed keeps pumping so much money in circulation, that it pumps up the demand for goods and services, and that's what creates price inflation. And by its own admission, that's what it does, even though it's charter, it's original charter said they're supposed to fight inflation. All of a sudden, about 10 years ago or so, they announced, south of blue, we always have to have at least 2% inflation. Congress had nothing to do with that. President had nothing to do with that, and the people of America had nothing to do with that. It was dictators like Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke that just make these announcements. And where does that come from when we live under the dictatorship of the Fed? And of course, the people who are hurt the most by the Fed are elderly people are living on relatively fixed incomes and are forced to become Wall Street speculators they want to make any more money other than their fixed income, where, you know, during the days of Greenspan, when they're pursuing zero interest rates, maybe the mortgage industry like that, but the people on retirement income were starving as a result of that. So it's been sort of an economic war on the retired population. Keith Weinhold 24:24 Things should get faster and cheaper to produce, like you said. However, there's definitely one thing that's not getting faster to produce, that's housing build times. Housing build times have actually gone up, which is sort of another discussion unto itself. But we talk about the Fed and then setting prices. People wouldn't stand for setting the price or having price controls on oil or lumber or bananas, but yet we set the price of money itself. People have just become accustomed to that. Yet it's that money itself that we use to buy oil and lumber and bananas the fed with that dual mandate of stable prices and maximum employment. If we did abolish the Fed, what would happen to the rate of inflation? Dr Thomas DiLorenzo 25:12 Well, we would have less inflation. It's supposed to what we replace it with. There's some system would be a replacement, but we wouldn't have the boom and bust cycles that we have now. There's been research in the past 100 years or so of the Fed, and what the academic researchers have concluded is that the Fed has made the economy in general more unstable than it was before we had the Fed and price inflation. That's a joke. The dollar is worth maybe three cents of what it was in the year 1913 right when the Fed was created. So it has failed on all accounts. And so if we got rid of it, we would reverse that. The idea would be to start out with a competing money system. And I'll tell you a quick story is, you know the word Dixie from the south, you know land of Dixie that was named after a currency by a New Orleans bank called the Dix D, I x 10 in French, and it was 100% gold reserve. It was backed by something real and valuable, and it was so popular as even used in Minnesota. But that's why the whole south, the states in the South, were using this currency, because it was so reliable. But during the Civil War, the national currency acts imposed taxes on the competing currencies and taxed them out of business and established the greenback dollar, as it was called, as the Monopoly money of the country. We didn't get a central bank during the Civil War, but we got that. And so that's the kind of system that we would have. Friedrich Hayek wrote a whole book about this, about competing currencies, called the denationalization of money. He poses that as a good stepping stone to a freer market in money. And like you said, Money is the most important thing. Is most more important than bananas or shoes or any of these other things that we might have price controls on. Keith Weinhold 27:01 All right, so we're talking about the case for ending the Fed. What is the counter argument? I mean, other than the government wanting control, is there a valid, or any academic counter argument for keeping the Fed in place? Dr Thomas DiLorenzo 27:16 The Fed has an army. I call it the Fed's Praetorian Guard of academics. There was a research article published by an economist named Larry White at George Mason University several years ago, and he found that 75% of all the articles in the academic journals regarding money, monetary policy and so forth, are by people who are basically paid by the Fed, one way or the other. Either they're fed economists, or they've been invited to a conference by the Fed, or they're an intern some relationship with the Fed. The late Milton Friedman once said, If you want a career as a monetary economist, it's not a good idea to criticize the biggest employer in your field. So there's a lot of nonsense about that. And so yes, you'll have all sorts of rationales, but it basically comes down to this, that we think we can do central planning better than the Russians did under communism, because the Fed is basically an economic central planning agency, and there's no reason to believe Americans are better at it than the Russians or anybody else. And it basically comes down to that, you know, studying the past 111 years that's showing Well, yeah, they've been trying that for 111 years. They've made the economy more unstable, and they have failed miserably to control inflation. And why should we give them another chance? Why should we continue along this road? We shouldn't So, yeah, there'll be all kind of excuses the late Murray Rothbard, who was one of the founders of the Mises, who once answered this question by saying, It's as though people said, Well, say the government always made shoes. 100 years ago they took over the shoe industry. People would be saying, who will make shoes if the government doesn't make shoes? The government has always made shoes, right? But the government has not always monopolized the money supply. It's only like I said, we abolished three Feds in our history. In American history, they weren't called the Fed, but they were central banks. And the Fed is called a central bank, and we've done that three times. We've abolished more central banks than we have kept in American history. Keith Weinhold 29:17 We're talking with Dr Thomas D Lorenzo. He is the president of the Mises Institute. About, is there really any capitalism left more when we come back, this is Get Rich Education. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, hey, you can get your mortgage loans at the same place where I get mine, at Ridge lending group and MLS 42056, they provided our listeners with more loans than any provider in the entire nation, because they specialize in income properties, they help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. You can start your pre qualification and chat with President Caeli Ridge personally. Start now while it's on your mind at RidgeLendingGroup.com, that's Ridgelendinggroup.com. Your bank is getting rich off of you. The national average bank account pays less than 1% on your savings. If your money isn't making 4% you're losing your hard earned cash to inflation. Let the liquidity fund help you put your money to work with minimum risk, your cash generates up to an 8% return with compound interest year in and year out. Instead of earning less than 1% sitting in your bank account, the minimum investment is just 25k you keep getting paid until you decide you want your money back. Their decade plus track record proves they've always paid their investors 100% in full and on time. And I would know, because I'm an investor too. Earn 8% hundreds of others are text family to 66866, learn more about freedom. Family investments, liquidity fund on your journey to financial freedom through passive income. Text, family to 66866. Kristen Tate 31:11 This is author Kristen Tate. Listen to Get Rich Education with Keith Weinhold, and Don't quit Your Daydream. Keith Weinhold 31:27 welcome back to get rich education. We're talking with Dr Thomas DiLorenzo. He is the president of the Mises Institute. You can learn more about them @mises.org and Dr DiLorenzo. Frederick Hayek, an economist that you mentioned very well known and a student of Ludwig von Mises, he believed that prices are a communication mechanism between a buyer and a seller. Say, for example, there's a new style of single family rental home that everyone wants to rent. So therefore the rent price goes up when other builders see that the rent price goes up, that brings in more builder competition, and with more competition, that brings rent prices down, and then the world is filled with abundant housing, rather than a scarcity of housing. So that's how I think of a free market system within capitalism as working, as defined through Hayek. Dr Thomas DiLorenzo 32:22 You know, the consumer is king. Von Mises once wrote about the same point where he said that people mistakenly believe that it's the bankers and the CEOs and the businesses that control what gets produced and so forth, but it's really the consumer. You build a housing development then people don't want those houses. You'll find out real fast who's in charge. It's not the mortgage brokers. It's not the bankers. It's not you, it's the consumer. That's the free market system, and if you do without it, and not using the free market system, whether it's for money or anything else, is kind of like trying to find your way around a strange city with no street signs, and the prices are the street signs that tell us what to do, exactly like you said, if there's strong demand for a certain type of housing, that'll drive the price up, and that'll tell the home builders, we can make money building more of these. And they will do that. Nobody tells them. The Chairman of the Fed doesn't have to tell them that the President doesn't have to tell them that Congress doesn't have to issue a declaration telling them to do that. That was the Soviet Union where they tried that. And that's the great thing about the market, is that the consumer can tell the richest man in the world like Elon Musk, go play in the traffic. Elon Musk, if they don't like his cars or whatever he's producing, even though he's the richest man in the world. And he understands that he's a pretty successful businessman, I would say, and so so he understands that the consumer is his boss. Keith Weinhold 33:53 Well, what else do we need to know? You have published a lot of celebrated books, from how capitalism saved America to the politically incorrect guide to economics. What else might a real estate investor or an economic enthusiast need to know today? Oh, Dr Thomas DiLorenzo 34:10 well, I think everybody needs to be their own economist. You can listen to the talking heads on TV and on podcasts and all that, but educate yourself and become your own economist. Because a lot of the people on TV, as you might see on the news, they have an ax to grind, or they have a sort of a hidden financial interest beyond what they're saying, Be your own economist. And that's why I'm selling my website, which is everything on it, it's for free, mises.org, and there are quite a few others too. You don't have to go to school, you don't have to get a degree. You can get a good economic education, for example, on money. We're in the middle of giving away 100,000 copies of a book called What has government done to our money. I'm Murray rothbar. You go to our website, scroll down to the bottom, and you can fill out a form online, and we'll send you free books and. You can educate yourself that way. And so just in general, I think that's what people need to do. I taught MBA students for many years who are people in their 30s or maybe even early 40s, who didn't have economics degrees, but they were really into it, and for the first time in their careers, they decided maybe I should understand how the economic world that I live in and work in every day operates rather than going through your life and your career without you. Might know all about real estate sales, but it's also useful to know about the economy in general and how things work. Keith Weinhold 35:35 And when one becomes their own economic student and they take that on, I think it's important for them, like you touched on to not just consume the economic news that's on CNBC or other major media, because that doesn't really tell you how to create wealth. It might inform you, but it doesn't necessarily tell you how to take action. For example, on this show an educational channel, you might learn about a story about rising inflation like we had starting three or four years ago. And here we talk about how, okay, if inflation is going to be a long term economic force, you may or may not like what the Fed is doing, but rather than save money, borrow money, outsource that debt service to the tenant on a cash flowing asset like a single family home or an apartment building. And that inflation that you're learning about on CNBC will actually benefit you and debase your debt with prudent leverage on a property, for example, so not just consuming the news, but learning and educating yourself and acting. Dr Thomas DiLorenzo 36:34 Oh, sure, well It just so happens that last night, I was talking to a friend of mine who's a real estate professional. They're all talking about, Oh, are we going to have a slight drop in interest rates? And I reminded them that there will be a part of the market if they see it, if we do have a slight drop in interest rates, we'll look at that and say, well, maybe this is a new trend. And so I'll sit back and I'll wait. I'm not going to buy now, because I think the interest rates are going to go down even further in the next six months there were, there would be some segment of the market that thinks that way. And so that's just one little thing. Another thing I would mention is that one of the basic tenets of free market economics is that voluntary trade is mutually beneficial. People buy and sell from each other, because both sides benefit. And that's very important for any business person to keep in mind as you structure business deals, because you know about business deal that is successful is basically, I will give you what you want, and you give me what I want, and we're both happy. And that's that's one of the main tenets of how the market works. Voluntary exchange is mutually beneficial. So think about how to make it mutually beneficial, and you'll succeed in making a deal. Keith Weinhold 37:45 Well, it's been an excellent discussion on Is there any capitalism left, and how would it look like if we turned the course and created more capitalism here in the United States? It's been great having you on the show. Dr Thomas DiLorenzo 37:58 Thank you. Keith Weinhold 38:05 Yeah , again, Learn more @mises.org or look up books by Dr Thomas DiLorenzo. His viewpoint is that there are now merely islands of capitalism in a sea of socialism where those conditions were inverted last century. We've got to end the complex between the government and corporations that these watchdogs are basically powerless when the fox is guarding the henhouse. Dr dilorezzo says we could change the Fed charter so that they couldn't buy bonds, which should reduce inflation. So he does offer a way forward there, a solution. In capitalism, he consumer is king. This is a good thing. You yourself are empowered because you get to vote with your dollars. So therefore what you buy more of society will see and make more of but a prosperous, progressive economy that should be able to produce goods and services that are constantly cheaper because they get more and more efficient to make with innovation, but centrally planned inflation makes them more expensive, at least in dollar denominated terms. So progress should make things cheaper? Well, then everything should take fewer dollars to buy, homes, oil, bananas, grapes, but it doesn't, and it won't anytime soon, like I mentioned in the interview, there single family build times are taking even longer. That's not more efficient, and they're sure not getting cheaper. In fact, the National Association of Home Builders tells us that from permit to completion in 2015 it took 7.2 months to build a single family home. By 2019 it was up to 8.1 months and then. Last year, the time required to build a single family home from permit to completion was 10.1 months. That's not the side of an efficient economy. So basically, therefore, in the last eight, nine years, the time to build a home has gone from 7.2 months up to 10.1 months. That is a drastic increase in a short period of time. Just amazing. And we now have data after covid as well, broken down by region. The longest build time, by the way, is in New England, where it is 13.9 months to build a home from permit to completion. Gosh, such inefficiency. But despite all that stuff that you might find discouraging like that, I want to go out on a good news note here some encouraging sentiment for you, if you champion free markets, then invest in us rental property down the road, there is no centrally controlled ceiling on what you can sell your property for. Most places don't have rent control. In fact, there's been no federal rent control on private property since World War Two. And somewhat ironically, you benefit. You actually benefit from government backed loans at these low fixed rates, and now they're moderate fixed rates. You often get these through Fannie Freddie or the FHA. See you benefit from that particular government backing as a savvy borrower for rental property. And on top of this, you use the GRE inflation triple crown to flip over that not so capitalistic inflationary force. You flip it upside down and use it to your benefit, profiting fantastically from inflation. So you know how to take the situation you're given and use it to your advantage rather than your detriment. Big thanks to Dr Thomas DiLorenzo today, longtime econ professor and current Mises Institute president, more ways to build Real Estate Wealth coming up here for you on the show in future weeks, as always, with the dash of economics and wealth mindset. Until then, I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, Don't Quit Your Daydream. 42:28 Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC, exclusively, Keith Weinhold 42:56 The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth, building, getricheducation.com.
The Rosgvardiya, the National Guard, is the final backstop of Putin's rule, the public order force on which he relies to control the streets.* However, facing growing protest at home and engaged in pacifying occupied Ukraine, they and their commander, the thuggish Viktor Zolotov, are under pressure. How well are they coping?*Admittedly, arguably the FSO, the Federal Protection Service, is closer to the Praetorian Guard of Roman times, but I cannot pass up on a nice alliteration...The podcast's corporate partner and sponsor is Conducttr, which provides software for innovative and immersive crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counter-terrorism, civil affairs and similar situations.You can also follow my blog, In Moscow's Shadows, and become one of the podcast's supporting Patrons and gain question-asking rights and access to exclusive extra materials right here. Support the Show.
On this episode of “What the Frock?”, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod explore the rise and fall of the Praetorian Guard, the elite unit that served as both protectors and power brokers in ancient Rome. From their inception under Emperor Augustus to their notorious involvement in political intrigues and assassinations, the Praetorian Guard played a crucial role in shaping the fate of the Roman Empire. Through detailed historical analysis, Dave and Rod draw parallels to contemporary issues of power, loyalty, and corruption. Join us for a captivating journey into the heart of Roman history and the lessons it offers for today's world.
The New Praetorian Guard? The Demoncrat's Gulag Tortures, 4 X/Twitter Clips, COVID Vaccine Autopsy Lancet Study, Election Fraud Deniers. Supreme Court sides with Jan 6 Protesters. 4 X/Twitter Clips: Post Election fraud deniers. 10,000+ illegal aliens used the “exact same” Social Security number and voted in the Nov 3, 2020 election. This is just in Arizona. Congress knew this and certified a criminal enterprise on Jan 6. Sheri™ @FFT1776 Post They cannot find one unvaccinated kid who is autistic. Brandon Taylor Moore @LetsGoBrando45 Post WOW! This lady absolutely nails it! Must watch! Pismo @Pismo_B Post Another COVID "conspiracy theory" becomes reality as a bombshell study CENSORED by The Lancet has now been peer-reviewed. What were they trying to hide, you ask? Lots and lots of vaccine deaths. After analyzing 325 COVID vaccine autopsy cases, the now peer-reviewed study found that “a total of 240 deaths, which is 73.9%, were independently adjudicated as DIRECTLY DUE to or significantly contributed to by COVID-19 vaccination.” The Vigilant Fox @VigilantFox The Vigilant Fox is highly recommended by ACU. Real America with Dan Ball By One America News Network Supreme Court sides with Jan 6 Protesters, The American Gulag Tortures. Jun 28 2024 Real America with Dan Ball The New Praetorian Guard? https://youtu.be/LJksNkwwX_c?si=qdlS-xOPXB3XWCXF Bill Whittle 187K subscribers 21,927 views Mar 11, 2024 Steve Green brings us shocking news of the US Military's new, woke training materials… and suffice it to say they don't paint a picture of a country worth dying for. Is this a move toward a 3rd World military, whose only real purpose is to protect the junta that pays for it? Join our crack team of elite anti-elitists by becoming a member or making a one-time donation right here: https://billwhittle.com/register/ Check out our ACU Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/ACUPodcast -------------------------------------------------------------------- HELP ACU SPREAD THE WORD! Please go to Apple Podcasts and give ACU a 5 star rating. Apple canceled us and now we are clawing our way back to the top. Don't let the Leftist win. Do it now! Thanks. Also Rate us on any platform you follow us on. It helps a lot. Forward this show to friends. Ways to subscribe to the American Conservative University Podcast Click here to subscribe via Apple Podcasts Click here to subscribe via RSS You can also subscribe via Stitcher FM Player Podcast Addict Tune-in Podcasts Pandora Look us up on Amazon Prime …And Many Other Podcast Aggregators and sites ACU on Twitter- https://twitter.com/AmerConU . Warning- Explicit and Violent video content. 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As we celebrate the birth of Christ this Christmas, join us in giving new life to brothers and sisters in Sudan who have enslaved as a result of their faith. https://csi-usa.org/metaxas https://csi-usa.org/slavery/ Typical Aid for the Enslaved A ration of sorghum, a local nutrient-rich staple food A dairy goat A “Sack of Hope,” a survival kit containing essential items such as tarp for shelter, a cooking pan, a water canister, a mosquito net, a blanket, a handheld sickle, and fishing hooks. Release celebrations include prayer and gathering for a meal, and medical care for those in need. The CSI team provides comfort, encouragement, and a shoulder to lean on while they tell their stories and begin their new lives. Thank you for your compassion Giving the Gift of Freedom and Hope to the Enslaved South Sudanese -------------------------------------------------------- Food For the Poor https://foodforthepoor.org/ Help us serve the poorest of the poor Food For The Poor began in 1982 in Jamaica. Today, our interdenominational Christian ministry serves the poor in primarily 17 countries throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. Thanks to our faithful donors, we are able to provide food, housing, healthcare, education, fresh water, emergency relief, micro-enterprise solutions and much more. We are proud to have fed millions of people and provided more than 15.7 billion dollars in aid. Our faith inspires us to be an organization built on compassion, and motivated by love. Our mission is to bring relief to the poorest of the poor in the countries where we serve. We strive to reflect God's unconditional love. It's a sacrificial love that embraces all people regardless of race or religion. We believe that we can show His love by serving the “least of these” on this earth as Christ challenged us to do in Matthew 25. We pray that by God's grace, and with your support, we can continue to bring relief to the suffering and hope to the hopeless. Report on Food For the Poor by Charity Navigator https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/592174510 -------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer from ACU. We try to bring to our students and alumni the World's best Conservative thinkers. All views expressed belong solely to the author and not necessarily to ACU. In all issues and relations, we hope to follow the admonitions of Jesus Christ. While striving to expose, warn and contend with evil, we extend the love of God to all of his children. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For this special One on One, Sebastian talks to Lee Smith, author of "Plot Against the President" and "The Permanent Coup," about the fallout from Hunter Biden's "guilty" verdict, and what it means for the Deep State.Support the show: https://www.sebgorka.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Nathan wonders how the Praetorian Guard was structured. Was it used in traditional combat or taken on campaigns? While not directly related to ancient warfare, why did the emperors continually use the Praetorian Guard despite their history of treachery, intrigue, and assassination? Join us on Patron patreon.com/ancientwarfarepodcast
Steve Green brings us shocking news of the US Military's new, woke training materials… and suffice it to say they don't paint a picture of a country worth dying for. Is this a move toward a 3rd World military, whose only real purpose is to protect the junta that pays for it? Join our crack team of elite anti-elitists by becoming a member or making a one-time donation right here: https://billwhittle.com/register/
Steve Bannon says we have a crisis on our hands as big as any that has hit this nation in its history. If you saw the debacle news conference thrown together to try to get in front of the firestorm over the Special Counsel report on Joe Biden's cognitive decline, non compos mentis (of unsound mind), you know we have a Constitutional crisis. Special Counsel Robert Hur gave us the indictment document of Joe Biden. Bannon thinks Comer and Jordan should have a formal emergency hearing on Monday, demanding Hur explain to the nation in detail what his investigation found. Biden's ghostwriter should be called in to explain why he deleted recordings of Biden reading classified documents to him. And Comer and Jordan should begin the formal process of impeaching Biden as Commander-in-Chief not only for his mishandling of classified documents but also for his inability to perform as President. We have a national crisis. A formal investigation will uncover a lot of documentation and Bannon believes the Left has known about his decline for years and has covered it up. Bannon doesn't see the Dems moving to remove Biden any time soon given that the Praetorian Guard of the media has come out and taken a hard line in Biden's defense and there is now silence. Kamala Harris is a catastrophe for the Democrat Party. They know she polls worse than Biden which would mean a blowout in November. It's important to show our righteous indignation that this is now beyond partisan politics and has nothing to do with President Trump. This is about what's good for the country. Call the Capitol Switchboard, tell your Senators and Representative remove Biden: (202)224-3121.GUEST: STEVE BANNON, STEVE BANNON'S WARROOMSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
#Bestof2022: #Britannia: When Caligula proposed and Claudius conquered. Matt Steinglass @mattsteinglass. @TheEconomist https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/03/05/a-roman-fort-in-holland-is-linked-to-the-conquest-of-britain "Caligula seems to have visited the region to inspect the preparations. Wine barrels stamped with his seal have been found near Utrecht and Valkenburg. But by the time the fleet left northern France, he was dead, and Claudius would reap the glory. Invasions are often vanity projects launched by insecure, hedonistic autocrats. They seldom go as planned." Claudius pleading for his life as the Praetorian Guard approaches following Caligula's murder.
He grew up in Milan and became an army officer, where he distinguished himself so well that the Emperor Diocletian made him captain of the Praetorian Guard not suspecting that Sebastian was a Christian. In Rome, while fulfilling the duties of a courtier, he used his position to comfort and encourage his imprisoned fellow-Christians. By his labors and example he brought many to faith in Christ, including Chromatius, the Prefect in charge of persecuting the Roman Christians. Sebastian had upheld two brothers, Mark and Marcellinus, who were awaiting execution for their faith. When the day of execution came, their father Tranquillinus, who had been a pagan but through Sebastian's example had converted, presented himself to Chromatius and announced that he too was a Christian. His testimony was so powerful that the hard heart of the Prefect was melted, and he himself resolved to become a Christian. Caius, Bishop of Rome, gathered the new brethren (both men and women — not all of Sebastian's converts have been mentioned here) to embrace them and baptize them, but also to warn them of their coming Martyrdom. He instructed some to flee the city and others, headed by Sebastian, to remain in Rome, devoting their days to fasting, prayer and thanksgiving as they awaited their death. As the "company of Martyrs" did this, many came to them and were healed of ailments, and many joined them in confessing Christ. When the time of martyrdom came, each member of the company was subjected to imaginatively cruel tortures before his execution. Sebastian himself was made to witness the deaths of all his companions, then to endure his own trial. He serenely confessed his unshaken faith before Diocletian himself before being taken to the place of execution. There he was tied to a post and made the target of a band of archers until his body bristled with arrows like the quills of a porcupine. He was left for dead, but when Irene, widow of St Castulus, came to bury him, she found him alive and tended his wounds. Amazingly, he recovered, and presented himself once again to the Emperor. Astonished and outraged, the tyrant ordered that Sebastian be beaten to death with clubs and thrown into the city's sewer. That evening, a pious Christian woman was told in a vision to retrieve his body and bury it in the catacombs. After St Constantine brought peace to the Church, Pope Damasus built a church over the site in the Saint's honor. For hundreds of years, many miracles were worked there through St Sebastian's intercessions.
He grew up in Milan and became an army officer, where he distinguished himself so well that the Emperor Diocletian made him captain of the Praetorian Guard not suspecting that Sebastian was a Christian. In Rome, while fulfilling the duties of a courtier, he used his position to comfort and encourage his imprisoned fellow-Christians. By his labors and example he brought many to faith in Christ, including Chromatius, the Prefect in charge of persecuting the Roman Christians. Sebastian had upheld two brothers, Mark and Marcellinus, who were awaiting execution for their faith. When the day of execution came, their father Tranquillinus, who had been a pagan but through Sebastian's example had converted, presented himself to Chromatius and announced that he too was a Christian. His testimony was so powerful that the hard heart of the Prefect was melted, and he himself resolved to become a Christian. Caius, Bishop of Rome, gathered the new brethren (both men and women — not all of Sebastian's converts have been mentioned here) to embrace them and baptize them, but also to warn them of their coming Martyrdom. He instructed some to flee the city and others, headed by Sebastian, to remain in Rome, devoting their days to fasting, prayer and thanksgiving as they awaited their death. As the "company of Martyrs" did this, many came to them and were healed of ailments, and many joined them in confessing Christ. When the time of martyrdom came, each member of the company was subjected to imaginatively cruel tortures before his execution. Sebastian himself was made to witness the deaths of all his companions, then to endure his own trial. He serenely confessed his unshaken faith before Diocletian himself before being taken to the place of execution. There he was tied to a post and made the target of a band of archers until his body bristled with arrows like the quills of a porcupine. He was left for dead, but when Irene, widow of St Castulus, came to bury him, she found him alive and tended his wounds. Amazingly, he recovered, and presented himself once again to the Emperor. Astonished and outraged, the tyrant ordered that Sebastian be beaten to death with clubs and thrown into the city's sewer. That evening, a pious Christian woman was told in a vision to retrieve his body and bury it in the catacombs. After St Constantine brought peace to the Church, Pope Damasus built a church over the site in the Saint's honor. For hundreds of years, many miracles were worked there through St Sebastian's intercessions.
The Year of Five Emperors - Part 1 : Pertinax by Robert EckertThis is a thoroughly researched, panoramic view of a pivotal year in mid-imperial Roman history. It can still be seen how the old Roman society functioned, but it is beginning to break down. The viewpoint shifts from chapter to chapter to show what is happening not only in the capital, where the Praetorian Guard, the City Legion, and the Senate are vying for control, but also at the frontiers: in the far northwest, the Caledonians are willing to consider joining but only on their own terms, and they will not be dishonored; in the north-center, the Germans are not currently as active as they have been before, and will be again, but need watching; in the east, the Parthian Empire is crumbling, but for Romans to take advantage they need to settle the question of who would get credit for any triumph. The pervasive role of religion is also illustrated: the traditional Roman religion with all of its gods, rituals, and omens still is the most common belief, with deities from other nationalities in the Empire incorporated into the pantheon with varying degrees of comfort; but the more skeptical philosophy of Stoicism replaces it as a moral guide among large segments of at least the more educated population; and Christianity is growing in influence, still technically illegal but generally tolerated in practice; while Jews and Samaritans maintain their distinctive ways in isolation. The Empire and the society, and the story, are tied together by an intricate web of patronage and friendship relationships: no two people in the rather small upper class are more than a couple connections away from each other, and no-one from lower down the scale can rise except by becoming connected.Robert N. Eckert has degrees in philosophy, law, and mathematics, and lifelong interests in linguistics and history. He won a set of Encyclopedia Brittanicas in 7th grade for an essay on who the speakers of Proto-Indo-European might have been. In the 1970s he transcribed the Tanakh (original Hebrew text of the Old Testament, from the Leningrad Codex) into an ASCII file (with codes for the cantillations as well as vowel-points and consonants): all online Hebrew OTs derive from this file. In 1980 discovered an unexcavated archaeological site in Turkish Kurdistan. Eckert currently tutors statistics and calculus in the Detroit area.https://www.amazon.com/Year-Five-Emperors-Part-Pertinax-ebook/dp/B0CBD5QP4Q/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=s7ery&content-id=amzn1.sym.ed85217c-14c9-4aa0-b248-e47393e2ce12&pf_rd_p=ed85217c-14c9-4aa0-b248-e47393e2ce12&pf_rd_r=141-8309265-5160862&pd_rd_wg=4GTbS&pd_rd_r=04e179a4-63bc-4e63-b3c5-52a2c97685ff&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dskhttps://roberteckertbooks.com/http://www.BooksidePress.comhttp://www.bluefunkbroadcasting.com/root/twia/81723bsp1.mp3
Broadcasting from the Free State of Florida. Joe Biden went overseas to meet with NATO and conducted himself like you would imagine anyone with advanced cognitive decline would--mumbling, looking lost, and shuffling aimlessly. If the Praetorian Guard media was any kind of actual 1st Amendment protected organization they would be calling for immediate 25th Amendment actions, but instead we get told he's a modern day Eisenhower by Chris "Thrill Up the Leg" Matthews. A "queer" surgeon goes on the internet to admit to surgically mutilating the genitals of young boys who don't even understand sex. In a moral society this man would be in prison, instead he is practicing medicine at the Oregon Health & Science University. Joe Biden gets shut down when he tries to keep interfering with your free speech by coordinating with social media companies to silence conservative voices. Bud Light may be phased out at Costco according to some who have seen a "death star" asterisk applied to price labels indicating the item will not be restocked once current supplies are gone. Just think, Budweiser used to be at the pinnacle of advertising success with the Bud Bowl and Spud McKenzie. Now they are heading toward the dustbin of history just to score a few woke points. Hollywood will be going dark soon as writers and now actors have gone on strike. Apparently the all-feeling, all-loving Leftists who run Hollywood don't really care if writers starve or lose their home--in fact that is their plan. https://DoctorTommy.com/podcast
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Everyone we are going to start uploading the audio of some youtube episodes to the podcast channel. This is the first of that Series. The episode will post likely on tuesday, wednesday, or thursday of the week depending on the amount as well as filming so please enjoy. Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was the fifth Roman emperor and final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, reigning from AD 54 until his death in AD 68. He was adopted by the Roman emperor Claudius at the age of 13 and succeeded him on the throne. Nero was popular with the members of his Praetorian Guard and lower-class commoners in Rome and its provinces, but he was deeply resented by the Roman aristocracy. Most contemporary sources describe him as tyrannical, self-indulgent, and debauched. After being declared a public enemy by the Roman Senate, he committed suicide at age 30. Travel to Italy With Me here Travel to Japan With Me here Bonus episodes as well as ad-free episodes on Patreon. Find us on Instagram. Join us on Discord. Submit your relatives on our website Join the Book Club on http://chirpbooks.com/history Get some delicious COFFEE Podcast Youtube Channel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
05/10/2023 PODCAST Episode #620-623 - TODAY'S GUESTS: Calvin Thomas, Phill Kline, Andy Biggs, David Penn, Morgan Griffith, Tom Homan, Jeff Bruzzesi, Bryce Reeves, Sheriff David Clarke + America Speaks - YOUR CALLS! at 1-888-480-JOHN (5646) and GETTR Live! @jfradioshow #GodzillaOfTruth #TruckingTheTruth Want more of today's show? Episode #620 Fredericks Blasts Cortes As "Phony Populist," "Turncoat," "Backstabber" Episode #621 D.C.'s Deep State Praetorian Guard Insulates Biden Episode #622 Morgan Griffith Predicts "DOJ Will Do Nothing" With Biden Crime Family Allegations Episode #623 The Biden Crime Family Exposed - GOP Alleges Biden Took Cash As VP https://johnfredericksradio.libsyn.com/
For nearly 30 years Judicial Watch has been holding successive governments and administrations to account. Tom Fitton has been at the helm as President since 1998 and is known as one of the most fearless conservative activists whose desire to seek truth makes him one of the biggest enemies to governments who cover up facts for their own benefit. No other organisation in America uses the Freedom of Information law in such a logical joined up way and is never afraid to use the courts to force the disclosure of hidden documents. Time and time again the veil is lifted and the public see the truth and often Judicial Watch are behind this reveal. It was an absolute honour to speak with Tom, so join us as he unpacks some of the requests they have made and how they often have to fight to see the truth exposed. Tom Fitton is the President of Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption. Founded in 1994, Judicial Watch seeks to ensure government and judicial officials act ethically and do not abuse the powers entrusted to them by the American public. With 20 years of experience in conservative public policy, Tom Fitton has helped lead Judicial Watch since 1998 and overseen its tremendous growth and success in recent years. Under Fitton's leadership, Judicial Watch was named one of Washington's top ten most effective government watchdog organizations by The Hill newspaper. Mr. Fitton provides Judicial Watch with strategic guidance and leadership on Judicial Watch's comprehensive efforts to fight government corruption. He is a nationally recognized expert on government corruption, immigration enforcement, congressional and judicial ethics, and open government. A former talk radio and television host and analyst, Tom is well known across the country as a national spokesperson for the conservative cause. He has been quoted in TIME, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Associated Press, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, and most every other major newspaper in the country. He has also appeared on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX News Channel, C-SPAN and MSNBC. Mr. Fitton has authored numerous articles such as “Judicial Activism Hurts our Courts,” “What Bill Clinton Knew About bin Laden,” “Following Terrorism's Money Trail,” “Senate Abandons Judicial Nominees,” “Every Town is a Border Town,” “Obama's Records Problem” and “Jesse Jackson Exposed.” Judicial Watch also publishes the monthly 375,000+ circulation Verdict newsletter and runs the cutting-edge Internet site JudicialWatch.org, which includes the oft-cited Corruption Chronicles blog. Mr. Fitton gained national attention as a political analyst, previously working for America's Voice and National Empowerment Television. He is a former employee of the International Policy Forum, the Leadership Institute, and Accuracy in Media.Mr. Fitton holds a B.A. in English from George Washington University. A Republic Under Assault: The Left's Ongoing Attack on American Freedom (Judicial Watch) available from Amazon in hardcover, e-book and in audiobook... https://www.amazon.co.uk/Republic-Under-Assault-American-Judicial/dp/1982163658/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=tom+fitton&sr=8-3 Follow Tom and Judicial Watch... WEBSITE: https://www.judicialwatch.org/ TWITTER: https://twitter.com/JudicialWatch https://twitter.com/TomFitton?s=20 GETTR: https://www.gettr.com/user/JudicialWatch https://gettr.com/user/tomfitton TRUTH: https://truthsocial.com/@JudicialWatch https://truthsocial.com/@TomFitton TELEGRAM: https://t.me/JudicialWatch Interview recorded 4.5.23 *Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast. Check out his art https://theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com/ and follow him on GETTR https://gettr.com/user/BoschFawstin and Twitter https://twitter.com/TheBoschFawstin?s=20 To sign up for our weekly email, find our social media, podcasts, video, livestreaming platforms and more... https://heartsofoak.org/connect/ Please subscribe, like and share! Transcript (Hearts of Oak) Hello Hearts of Oak and welcome to another interview coming up in a moment with Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch. I had the privilege of meeting Tom over in CPAC six weeks ago and we talk about many things. What Judicial Watch do is use freedom of information and I haven't seen it used so effectively as Judicial Watch do and Tom has been the president for 25 years and we go into a whole range of issues that, without Judicial Watch, the public would not be aware of the truth. So we go into Biden targeting Christians and an FOI that Judicial Watch have just put in on the FBI and they're targeting of Roman Catholic churches. Universities control from abroad. This is a story about a university receiving half a billion from Qatar. Is that good? Is that bad? And how does it influence the education sector. The growing power of the CCP, we look at CCP police stations in New York and you saw maybe six weeks ago there was an arrest of two people. Actually it was Judicial Watch that initially put in that FOI. Without their work you wouldn't have seen the arrest and the exposure of that. Election integrity, they put in many different FOIs in regards to states, and states have been forced to clean up their electoral rolls. They've just put an FOI on Trump raid records to reveal all of those. I think 8,000 records need to be revealed. Judicial Watch have put that in. Gain of function. Again, a lot of stuff has been exposed. Hunter Biden. There are so many issues which they address, and without them, these would not be exposed to the public. So Tom shares many of those stories and talks about how actually what they do can be used abroad and replicated because many countries around the world have an FOI system, certainly in the UK and Europe. And I think we need to be aware of what we can do as citizens and actually use the institution, the legal system that we have to force the government to account. So tune in, listen to Tom share his 25 years worth of experience heading up as President of Judicial Watch. And hello, Hearts of Oak. Today it is an honour to talk to the President of Judicial Watch, Tom Fitton. Tom, thank you for your time today. (Tom Fitton) You're welcome, Peter. Thank you for having me. Not at all. And you can follow Tom on Twitter. All the handles are there on the screen, @TomFitton and judicialwatch.org, at @JudicialWatch on Twitter. And his latest book, just to give you an idea, published in 2020 is A Republic Under Assault, the left's ongoing attack on American freedom, which really addresses the deep state voter fraud, illegal immigration. And there's a lot packed into that. So I'd encourage our viewers after this, if they want to delve a little bit more deeply into some of the things that Tom has discussed, the book is available everywhere. Now, Tom, for our non-US viewers, could you maybe take a moment and introduce yourself before we get into the work of Judicial Watch? Well, thank you, Peter, and I won't presume our fellow Americans here in the United States know who we are. So, we're a non-profit educational foundation. We're essentially a government watchdog group. We use often a law here in the United States, it's the bulk of our litigation, called the Freedom of Information Act, which is an open records law that allows federal level access to records. And of course, states do it as well. They have similar laws, so we sue there. So we've been able to uncover all sorts of records about corruption issues that the media isn't terribly interested in pursuing, the Congress is arguably incapable of pursuing, but the American people desperately want to know about. And one of the things we do is we represent whistle-blowers, those who've been victimized by the government for daring to blow the whistle on government misconduct, meaning government officials, and then of course the victims of government misconduct as well. And so in doing so, we not only advance the rule of law, but we educate Americans and and other concerned citizens across the world, frankly, about the importance of clean government, honest government, and transparent government. Well, I think just on you, one thing I read on your Wikipedia, which is always good fun to read, and that in 2022, researchers found that Fitton was the third most prolific purveyor of election misinformation on Twitter during the late months of 2020. That's quite a badge of honour, isn't it? I was hoping for at least a silver medal. Well, the left is obsessed with depicting anything they dispute or hate as quote disinformation and of course, the communist left, which is on the rise here in the United States. They really like compiling lists. So I'm all sorts of lists that I'm sure they'll go to if they advance the revolution far enough along, to put me in jail or worse, but these are serious times and I'm half joking, but I, that book title is prescient, isn't it? Republic Under Assault. I often confuse it because I can, it sounds like a Star Wars movie title to me, but our Republic is under assault. And we have this constitutional system here in the United States that the left has decided is not convenient to them anymore. And so they've let folks who don't follow the rule of law and don't care about protecting the institutions that protect our Liberty, they're running the show for, in my view, an entire political party with the acquiescence, if not too often the allegiance of the other political party, the Republicans. On your website, and I've worked with FOIs here, we have a similar system in the UK, but how you have used them is on another level. I think on the, on your website the document archive section there are 27,000 documents. I mean that is a huge resource of information and it really is a window on government corruption that you've just made available to the public to use as they see fit. Yeah, I don't, it would be difficult to overstate the nature of our work in terms of the scope in what we've been able to uncover. We have thousands of Freedom of Information Act requests, I could come up with a number which may or may not be correct, but it's thousands and it would be shocking if the actual number was certified for you. And I know it's hundreds of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, so there's no one more, there's no one who does more litigation to uncover what the government's up to, not only here in the United States, but worldwide. And you know, I know it's this is more of an international audience is that, you know, we're kind of unusual here in the United States, given our work. Now, I'm pleased to say, because of our aggressive heavy lifting on FOIA, others now know about it as a way to get access to information. But it's relatively unique here in the United States to just have a group focused on uncovering and battling government corruption. And to me, it's a great testament. I know there there are a lot of issues here in America, but it's a great testament to the American way and our rule of law that allows a little Judicial Watch to go into court and the IRS or the State Department or the Treasury, FBI, DOJ, they need to go into court and answer to the court as to why they're not giving us documents and what they're withholding and justify it. And so that's a rarity here in the United States and I know worldwide, we just don't have that sort of accountability in a regular way. First of all, if you're doing it in most other countries, you face financial ruin, imprisonment, injury, death to you and your family potentially. And that's just in France. Yeah. So true. You know, the point is, even in Western Europe, they don't like civic society. That's the term I use. They call it the non-governmental sector, which to me is just so communist in approach. It's the government, everything else, the government has to justify its role as a sector. The NGOs don't need their own little sector. We should be running the show, non-government entities. But as you, and I don't need to tell you in the United Kingdom, there are just few independent civic groups. Usually they're either creatures of the government or of the parties. And so it's hard for them to get the traction we're able to get here in the United States. And you see when a few of them do get traction or when there's more of a populist movement, how vociferous the reaction is by the state there in Europe and frankly in Canada and elsewhere. So thank God for America but you know this is this is a more than just a third world problem government corruption it's a first world problem. Yeah no completely and what you're doing shines a light on that and expose the things the government obviously don't want people to see. But maybe I could just go through some of the freedom of information that you have done that gives people an idea of your work and an idea what's possible and shows the failures of government and institutions. I think one of the most recent ones just a few days ago was Biden's targeting of Christians and Judicial Watch have just filed a Freedom of Information Act along with Catholic vote civil action against the FBI and the Department of Justice. Why on earth are the government spying on Christians. Well, if you're a leftist, it makes sense, right? The church is an enemy of the state, unnecessarily. Certainly the left's cultural agenda here in the United States, whether it be abortion or radical transgender extremism. And so the FBI, they know who butters their bread, and they follow or they come up with things that they think will appeal, to their political masters, who are the left. And one thing this agency did in Richmond, Virginia, so the FBI, for those of you not here in the United States, and those of you here in the United States may not know this, you've got the FBI headquarters, but the offices of the FBI, the Richmond office and the New York office, they're kind of their own fiefdoms as well. And so they're substantial in terms of their power and influence. And Richmond's and the Richmond office decided that, you know, traditionalist Catholics could, be attractive to the terrorists they want to monitor domestically. And I mean, it's really laughable, Peter. It's worth reading. Everyone should read it. It just shows you how out of control the government is and how stupid it is. They do an analysis under the guise of this intelligence threat assessment of Vatican II and the debates in the church about Vatican II. So do you want the FBI analysing those who support the Latin mass versus those who think we should have a mass in the everyday tongue of the country? It's just incredible. But what's frightening is the document also makes it clear that they want to get sources in the Church. So what they were planning was spying onto the Catholic Church, using them as, using these sources as tripwires, right, to get the bad guys who are too pro-life or too extreme in terms of defending children from mutilation and such. So, you know, you shouldn't have to go to your, go to mass or go to church. In this case, obviously, the Catholic Church was being specifically targeted, but every Christian should worry and wonder if your pastor or or your priest is spying on you and watching what you're saying, or whether your fellow parishioner that you shared a sign of the peace with is, is it informant for the FBI? And now, of course, the FBI and the Justice Department run from that document once it became disclosed as a result of a whistle-blower disclosure to a former FBI agent. But I'm not confident that they've stopped this type of approach and, indeed the fact that they haven't given us documents about this scandal suggests there's more to, hide. That's why we're in court. Well, how does that spying on its own citizens and the understanding that being a conservative is somehow dangerous to society? Does that just happen as the FBI under a Democrat regime, or is it so ingrained, that hatred of conservatism, that actually that prevails whoever is in the White House? Oh, well, you know, the history of the FBI is one of an agency that is often used to either protect or target the enemies of the sitting president, and they don't need to be told to do it. They kind of, as I said, they instinctively know who butters their bread. But I think things changed a bit with Donald Trump. He came in, was seemingly hostile to virtually every institution in the country, the drain the swamp approach. And so they decided that he needed to be taken out. And so you had these mandarins in the FBI decide that they were going to be, and I think actually, I forget who mentioned it, referenced the Praetorian Guard of old. They started off as quote, defenders of the Republic, right? And instead they became their own power centre. And I think we're seeing that with the FBI and the Justice Department. I was looking at their budget documents the other day, 30, I think it's 35, 37,000 staff, 13,000, which includes 13,000 FBI special agents, you know, $10-11 billion budget, and, I suspect that's about the size of most countries' militaries. And they're not just checking out, you know, and when you've got a bureaucracy that big, they're not just looking for bank robbers. No, I can bet. One of the other recent, people can go up on the website, obviously, and see all the press releases and the many regular FOIs, but universities being controlled from abroad, and this was a document showing the Texas A&M, which is a university there, it appeared to to receive $500 million, that's half a billion dollars, in grants from Qatar regime. And that's something massively concerning. We've had concerns here in the UK about Chinese influence on our universities especially, but also there is money and influence coming from the Middle East that probably is opposed to anything you would want freedom-wise in your country. So tell us about that. Well, when you give someone $500 million, you usually want something. You either want recognition or something in the least, the most charitable interpretation is, you know, at the university level, major donors usually seek recognition or to advance a specific academic goal. And so the question is, what was the goal here? I think, again, what, you know, it's one thing to say, oh, look at this money, it's terrible. You know, you just can't draw a conclusion. Well, someone gave money a gift, therefore it's terrible. You have to see what the circumstances are. And here the circumstances are, it looks like there was underreporting of the amount that was given. And it also is only being disclosed after hard-fought litigation in state courts that went up and down the Texas courts against the Qatar Foundation, which is a front for the terrorist-linked regime there. And so, if everything was on the up and up, this would have been a straightforward request for information. Indeed, Texas A&M I don't think had any initial objection. We had to fight the government, the Qatar government in lawfare here in the United States. It was really quite incredible. And, to me, it's like an easy, it's easy pickings if you're a foreign government seeking the influence, you just give money to universities and such. And in the case of China, there's a kind of almost an inherent, there's a special interest group because forget about giving money directly through Confucius Institutes or whatever the latest version of their academic fronts are, but you have a half, let's say a half a million Chinese residents here in the United States going to school, most of whom are paying full tuition. So the universities all of a sudden become advocates for this, just potentially dangerous relationships that we develop with these foreign countries through our higher education system. Another story that broke and I didn't realize that you had been involved in putting the FOI. We're involved in everything. Yeah, I get it. So we talked about the power of the CCP but actually the story broke I think a month ago and the headline was the Federal Bureau investigation misled and stonewalled Judicial Watch on legitimate public record requests involving illegal Chinese police station opening in New York. And then your FOI, actually the people who you had put that in about, they suddenly get arrested. That is really concerning that a foreign government would have a police presence in the US and it makes you wonder kind of what else else is happening. But that was, again, your FOI that you'd put in. Yeah, I mean, we, you know, the idea that there are police fronts operating in the United States is not a new issue. You know, the folks have noted it and it took forever and a day, it looks like, for the FBI to get on it. And, you know, we asked for the documents and we got the run-around or they pretended there was no issue and didn't have anything to give to us. But sometimes even a non-answer is, indicates government scandal and corruption, but think about having the goal to run a police agency, practically speaking, that not only targets Chinese residents who are foreign nationals here in the United States, but American Chinese citizens, American citizens of Chinese origin. What chutzpah? And but on the other hand, you have a regime that thinks low enough of the United States and has Biden evidently deep enough in its back pocket that they can send in a spy craft to attack our sovereignty and do figure eights with no repercussions, practically speaking, above our secure military installations in the heartland of our country. In the heartland of our country. You have to wonder, obviously, what the Chinese are concluding from our lack of seeming outrage, I wonder what all of our friends must think, too.They won't defend themselves. Well, how can we rely on them to defend us or to help us, if push comes to shove? Completely, and that one you'd put in, again in the UK, we put in FOI and they come back and say the information is too difficult to obtain and then you can put another FOI, but you then go down the legal route. That's intriguing. You're not without teeth that you're using the legal system, you're not simply requesting according to what your statutory allowed to receive, you're actually then going to the court. So you have that threat and it's often that threat or actually you in the courtroom forces the government to release the information. Yeah that's true, it's actually going to court that often gets a response and you can imagine it's the United States government, it spends more money than mine is, so and the bureaucracy is huge so that their resting state is incompetence or refusal to comply with the law since, there's little accountability on that and the only way to get their attention is through a federal court case often. But that also has, you know, thankfully thanks to Judicial Watch's well-known record for going to court, other FOIAs sometimes do get responded to that otherwise wouldn't. For instance, we've done a ton of FOIAs on and lawsuits on on COVID, its origins, the vaccine, et cetera. And it was just a separate FOIA that wasn't a lawsuit, but they knew we were sniffing around and had similar lawsuits on the same issue, that just disclosed recently that the Fauci Agency was funding in China through EcoHealth Alliance, which is a third party, a front or a pass-through for grants, the creation of literal mutant coronaviruses, And that's a quote. Mutants. To see how or if they could infect humanized mice. I never thought to call gain of function viruses mutants, but it's a rather obvious point. And of course, our government's figured out that's what they are too. And they've been lying to us about what they've been doing for years. And the conclusion from that, which to me is, to me, this is some of the biggest, the most important material, Peter, at least on this issue we've uncovered, it helps explain why there was this fanatic desperation to discount the lab leak theory. Because if it was, quote, a leak from a lab, and I don't know why we presume it was a leak if it came from a lab, it was either a natural virus in the lab that got out somehow, or it was an engineered virus. And what was the technique for engineering it, And what was the set of viruses that were engineered? Well, the answers to those two latter questions are it was the United States. And the gain-of-function technique was a US biological approach that we shared and exported to China. So, this COVID origin story isn't just about what the Chinese were doing, in my view. And that shows, because many conservatives have had big concerns at the government's role, institutions' role within that. But it's one thing to have concerns and suspicions, it's another thing to have the documentary evidence. Going through your FOI seems time and time again that you're providing the evidence to back up what the suspicions that have been there over time, but most other people are not doing that. It's you that are going in and actually delivering on the hard facts for the issues. Yeah, I know a lot of folks who have conspiracy theories, what is derided as, what are derided as conspiracy theories, and my view is actually the truth is usually worse than the conspiracy theory. It's worse once you know what they actually did, and it's usually folks with the conspiracy theories, they're usually in the right ballpark, but they've got the specifics and the mechanisms and the people involved wrong, and sometimes the motivation's wrong, but their suspicions generally are correct. Something went wrong with the way the vaccines were manufactured. That process was politicized and is untrustworthy, and how it was pushed out and information about the issues related to the vaccine were handled. Something went wrong about the vaccine, excuse me, the coronavirus and its origins. There was reason to suspect that what we were being told wasn't true. Or we should at least examine all sorts of possibilities, as opposed to just pretending some questions are you're not allowed to ask. I mean, this is the craziness of these days, Peter. It's not even saying this happened, or I believe this happened. You're not even allowed to ask the question. And I tell you, the wonderful thing about FOIA is we get to ask those questions. Well, we find, yeah, that's an area you don't touch on. And another area you don't touch on, which you've talked about, another, we're told, is a conspiracy, is election integrity. And that's also because we've seen some lawsuits going in favour of actually cleaning up the system within states. But one of the FOIs you'd put in was in Colorado. And it's, the statement was, Judicial Watch announced that Colorado's Secretary of State agreed to settle a lawsuit alleging that Colorado had failed to remove ineligible voters from its rules. As part of a settlement, Colorado, I love this, will report to Judicial Watch on its yearly progress in cleaning up its rules for the next six years. I love that they have to answer to you, but that's a state-by-state issue that needs to be addressed, and that's one state that you then had a victory on, and I guess that has to happen state-by-state. Yeah. Well, and we've been successful state by state. And that's not the FOIA. That's not Freedom of Information Act. That's a law that allows, under federal law, aggrieved parties to sue states and localities that aren't taking reasonable steps to clean up the voter rolls. And I think this translates internationally. If you have a list of people who are eligible to vote, you should make sure that list is as accurate and up-to-date as you reasonably can, because it invites fraud, right, if oh so-and-so moved and died or died I'm still getting their ballot or I know their their name is on the list I'm gonna vote in their name or do something other than something else nefarious which is why the law requires the list to be cleaned up it's not just Tom Fitton being worried that's the reason the laws there otherwise why would you have it, and of course at the federal level the leftist running the Justice Department have little interest in cleaning up voter rolls because I believe certainly here in the United States and I'm not naïve that both political sides, both sides of the aisle are often tempted to mess with election results. But they don't want cleaner elections here in the United States. And I think it's because, because I can't think of any other reason. They oppose voter ID, they oppose cleaning up the rolls. They want to expand the idea of voting from one day, through entire months. They want unsupervised voting, which is the way to think about mail-in balloting. And that's something that no one else does. And I don't like the point to say, oh, no other country does this, because usually most every other country does things wrong. But I don't think any sensible person thinks that having millions of ballots be mailed out, and people filling those ballots out And just mailing them back is any way to run an honest election. No completely, and I know we- And necessarily undermines confidence in the election system. Even if people participate in it, they realize, boy, how do they make sure no one is being intimidated when they vote? How do they make sure no one is, that the actual voter who sends the ballot in is who the person says they are? Oh, if they collect ballots, how do we know those ballots are collected properly and there's certifications about their origin? there was no intimidation in the collection process. None of that is, practically speaking, checkable under the new systems that were set up under the pretext of the COVID pandemic. Completely. Well, I know we often look to the States for hope here in Europe, but we just had an election and maybe one thing the US can learn from the motherland is that we actually do paper ballots. It's all counted on the one day and we don't use any voting dominion systems and it's it's all done and dusted and by 3 a.m. the next day you've got a result. Yeah I mean and there's no excuse for the United States not to be able to do that. You know people say well the United States a bigger country. Well we don't run elections nationally, it's state by state. So there's no reason any major state in this nation can't figure out who won on election day. And we've also had another breakthrough where they now require voter ID so the left have realized it's not actually racist to ask someone for ID so we've had another breakthrough. Well it's funny you know the left used to not like vote by mail because it used to be used by elderly republicans to vote. And then they decided they liked it. And everyone used to understand vote by mail was a kind of a recipe and invited voter fraud until it became politically, until they realized well we kind of like that so let's do more of it. One of the other big things has been that the Trump raid records and I know you put down FOI and I think last month you'd said that you'd, they had released, the National Archives had released 1,200 pages of 8,000 records about that unprecedented raid. Tell us about that because it's vital that the American public know what was behind that, the reasons, the conversations, and I guess that will be another case of you then going to court to force those release off the other what six and a half thousand documents. Well, let's take a step back here, Peter. Back in, it was like 10, 12 years ago, we found out that Bill Clinton had tapes of recordation's of his conversations with foreign leaders and members of Congress that he kept after he left office. Right? And we thought, well, isn't that a presidential record? You know, I don't need to explain, practically speaking, what that might mean. Talking to foreign leaders typically are, you know, those talks are almost always classified inherently. And we went to court and the Justice Department and the National Archives, which is the federal bureaucracy that handles presidential records, their preservation and such, they came to us and said, no, we can't, you can't force us to get these records. And the court said, you have to defer to the president. He gets to decide what's personal and what's not. And the Justice Department in a court hearing said, you know what, if he has records after he leaves the Oval Office, they're presumptively personal. So compare and contrast that with their new position, 180 degree difference, with President Trump. And so the same archives that went out of its way to protect Bill Clinton's right to keep whatever records he wanted, conspired against President Trump to try to nail him on this records dispute criminally. And, you know, it's basically a civil matter, even if it is a dispute and there's a basis for it. And now they don't want to tell us that, because to get the records, it's all about transparency, right? We got to know what the president was doing. Well, now we don't, they won't tell us what they were doing to go after the president. And to take a step further back, I'm kind of getting a little bit in the weeds there. But and in America here, the political media class, they like to talk about this as if it's serious and important. No one buys it. I mean, I tell you. There isn't a foreign leader who doesn't look at what America is doing and say, okay, the current president, his agencies are trying to jail the former president, and his number one opponent in the presidential campaign. They don't need the details. They don't need the, oh, oh, but this is why it's important. This is, this is the terrible crime. They see through it and they see America that's no better than anyone else internationally in the way they are supposed to follow the rule of law. And I think it's a terrible national security and international embarrassment to the United States because now our moral, you know, the moral weight we could throw when we talk about the concerns about having fair elections and accountable government and consent to the government. Well, all that's out the window. They're trying to jail Trump simply because he opposed the wrong people here in Washington, not because of any personal misconduct. And Putin and Xi and, you know, frankly, Macron and whoever the current office holder is in Downing Street, that changes, I know, every three months. It does. It's Rishi Sunak today, but who knows who it will be tomorrow. You know, they see what's happening in the United States, and they also recognize that attitude is there in their home countries. I mean, there isn't a major politician in any Western country that doesn't sit there because of the lack of rule, because of this contempt for consent of the government that doesn't sit there at the the sufferance of the deep state. Which is, in my view, transnational in nature in terms of their attitude. It doesn't mean they're conspiring saying we got to put this person on this piece in this place on the chessboard. No, it's an approach and it's a shared approach. One other area, and we had Miranda Devine on a few weeks ago and the Laptop from Hell and looking at Hunter Biden and you'd filed an FOI for a gun owned by him and I thought someone who had such a drug issue, an alcohol issue, wouldn't be eligible to get a gun but somehow. So tell us about that because obviously Hunter Biden's background, all the the business dealings that leads directly to Joe Biden himself. Well there are a few things there and so he was dating the widow of his brother and they got into a fight or dispute and she allegedly took his gun and threw it in a dumpster across the street from a school. Law enforcement got involved and the political reporting, the reporting on it was that the Secret Service and the FBI came and went to the store from which he purchased the gun and vacuumed up documents. So, to me, that shows improper involvement by federal agencies to take care of a political problem for the son of a major political figure. But when you think about the petty nature of what he kind of had to come in and sweep up for, and of course, we've been suing about those records, right? It helps explain, well, if they're doing that for little stuff, can you imagine what they're doing for big stuff? And certainly they've had the so-called Hunter laptop for at least since 19, excuse me, 2019. It's like a Hamlet-style agony about whether to prosecute Hunter since then, even though they have him dead to rights in a series of crimes. But there's new information now that just came out here from senior members of Congress that the FBI had evidence that Joe Biden had specifically been involved in a bribery scheme with a foreign nationals vice president, and all the evidence that's out there from the laptop and other witnesses suggest and show that Joe Biden was a beneficiary of Hunter's business dealings. So he got a cut of the action, you know, the infamous 10% for the big guy approach. So Hunter, I mean, Biden, Joe was a ran his operation like a Rico operation, a racketeering operation, a mob operation. And I think the challenge for his Justice Department, which is first and foremost moving to protect him, is they can't get at Hunter without getting and raising issues about Joe. So that's why you have this stalling and this hemming and hawing about, what you're going to go, if you go after Hunter for failing to disclose money on his tax returns, what about all the money he was giving his father? Is it he's subject to the same type of scrutiny? And if he hasn't, why not? We're in a crisis here. And you know, and some of that money came from the mayor of Moscow's wife. So you've got the Putin connection, Burisma. At least that was a company. So. Burisma was a Russian leading company. And then of course, you have the Chinese who were who had Hunter in their back pocket as well, obviously, because of his name and the influence. And it wasn't like the vice president was involved in all of this as vice president. So when Putin's making decisions and Xi is making decisions, how is it that they're not calculating Biden's corruption in their decision-making? You know, they're compromised, right? He's obviously has cognitive difficulties. He's compromised by the very public figures the public figures or political figures in China and Russia making these dangerous decisions. And so, you know, maybe, oh, does it mean we invade Ukraine because Biden's in our back pocket? No, but I would suggest it's a factor. Does it mean we are more aggressive around Taiwan or generally in China because Biden's in our back pocket? No, it's not the only reason, but certainly it's a factor. Too me it's a national security issue and it would be for any other country worth it's salt. All the issues you kind of talk about seem to be the Democrat party behind institutions, and I'm wondering will it come to the point where organizations like Judicial Watch and others need to actually go after either those on Capitol Hill or those in the institutions, AGs, I mean will it have to be actually going after those within the party itself? Well, we don't go after them under law because they are Democrats. We don't go after someone because they're Republicans. We try to apply the law. Or, you know, apply our focus without regard to political party. Though generally speaking, big government usually means big corruption. So we have all that money being spent. There's usually a lot of money sloshing up over the sides, right? Or it's usually being directed to political supporters as opposed to those in the public interest. And so ideologically, if you support bigger government, you tend to be more involved in corruption. I mean, it's just kind of, to me, it just goes with the just, it's part of the package. Now, Republicans, they abuse government to target us. They refuse to take action against corruption too often because they think politically it's not feasible or won't work for them, which to me is also a form of corruption. And so this temptation is great among both Republican and Democrats to kind of abuse these powers entrusted to them, especially if they think no one's watching. And I think the problem's not insurmountable. there's always going to be, you spend $4 trillion, there's going to be corruption, okay? But let's avoid having a Justice Department that is just thrown out all semblance of being dispassionate. Let's maybe have an FBI that is significantly curtailed, or if not, radically repurposed, to focus more on traditional law enforcement than political targeting of individuals. Let's ensure that our elections are as clean as we reasonably can. You know, the temptation is great. I mean, North Carolina, they had the stay here in the United States. They had to redo a congressional election because a Republican, essentially was engaged in a massive fraud. So we just have to be constantly vigilant. That's the price of freedom. To finish off with, Tom, for 25 years you've been president of Judicial Watch. And I guess there are many stories that if Judicial Watch hadn't been there, then the truth would never be told. And I think what you're doing is a model for other countries. And I know your focus is on the US, but there are other countries across Europe that have a similar freedom of information system, but it hasn't been used as well as you have used what you have there. Go ahead, I'm sorry. You obviously raise money from the public, you've got a big team, and tell us about that because ideally what you've built there is something that actually could be rolled out and used in other countries. Well, we're able to fundraise directly and the fundraising laws here in the United States are very friendly to grassroots groups and the non-governmental organizations, a phrase I hate, to be able to raise public support and that's much harder, my understanding is, in other countries. It's just more difficult to raise money directly from the public, as I said, outside the, you know, they usually rely on the government or the creatures of the party. But there's a growing conservative movement internationally to address this transnational left-wing threat. Our folks are there in Europe this week now for CPAC Hungary, right, and there are conservatives from all over Europe there hanging out, figuring out ways to oppose Lothiathan. Yeah, and I know I'm watching CPAC Hungary. So, Tom, thank you for your time. It's fascinating. I've followed Judicial Watch for quite a while and it's exciting to see what you're doing. So thank you for coming along and sharing insights on what is happening there with Judicial Watch. Well, best of luck to you, Peter, thanks for having me on. Thank you.
On this episode we sample and review Redwood Empire's Emerald Giant Cask Strength Rye Whiskey and then jet pack on over to a conversation on all things The Mandalorian season 3 and Star Wars. We discuss old men talking about weather, mario eats mushrooms and you should too, unapologetic RYE, Kyle's BIRTHDAY, no more Tatooine, being critical because we love the thing, subplot heaven, Din Grogu, why not lead more into Ahsoka, Grogu's suit, parental realizations, Din Djarin's growth, The Praetorian Guard, I can take you in warm or I can take you in cold, Moff Gideon and his suit, Darth Maul, Zeb, Bladerunner, Jack Blak and Lizzo, Christoper Lloyd, and all of the exciting news coming from Star Wars. Support Us On Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/DrepandStone We'd love to hear from you! https://linktr.ee/DrepandStone Don't forget to subscribe! Music by @joakimkarudmusic Episode #188
When your plans are changed or interrupted, are you upset? Listen to this message to learn about the Apostle Paul's attitude when he was put in jail and not able to do his usual ministry. Hear the encouragement he gives believers to see that in spite of that God's plan was working out to greater progress of the gospel. Find out who the Praetorian Guard were and why Rome is the most likely place of his imprisonment. See two different types proclaiming the gospel and Paul's reaction to them.
A former official with the CIA and DIA admits that he and others who signed an open letter “debunking” the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election knew that it was probably true—but says they were still right to call it Russian disinfo. 5) Klaus Schwab opens World Economic Forum meeting by claiming he will “master the future”; 4) Deep state beginning to look like Rome's Praetorian Guard; 3) Fox News' Tucker Carlson suggests the FAA full ground stop last week may have been caused by hackers; 2) New study finds that more than half of men who have transgender “bottom surgery” suffer such pain that they need ongoing medical care; 1) Japanese gamer has credit card info shared with web by his pet fish.
Broadcasting from the Free State of Florida at Echelon-Health studios. We are keenly aware of the classified documents that Joe Biden held at his "think tank" and his garage are not going to be treated with the same scrutiny as Donald Trump. We also know that the "special counsel" appointed to investigate Biden will probably be a little less investigative than Donald Trump's own special counsel. The history of the DOJ and Hoover's Boys since 2016 show they have a dog in this fight, and it's the Democrats. Will the Democrats use this "classified documents scandal" to sweep aside Joe Biden for 2024? Unlikely, because if they want Joe Biden to step aside, all they have to do it tell him to. The only reason there is a special counsel for Biden is because they have to some semblance of fairness. It's almost as if God forced their hand. Orwell predicted how the media would transform the written word to correct "incorrect" history, and now we see happening in real-time as CNN and Politifact whitewash the "gas stove ban" story to make it look like conservatives are being their usual tin-foil hat selves. Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (DIE) on display in our Diversity Update. DoctorTommy.com/podcast
Jeff is joined again by his delightful daughter, DeAnna. After her first appearance on the podcast, listeners urged Jeff to have her make another appearance. This time she discusses her favorite stage shows, musicals, and symphonies. Many of her favorites are tied to famous historical events, which helps explain her love of history. Or maybe it's her love of history that helps determine her favorite shows. Regardless, she is a charming guest that we're sure you'll enjoy! Key Takeaways 00:17 – Broadway favorites Favorite show is Hamilton Other favorite Broadway shows include SIX: The Musical, The Music Man, Dear Evan Hansen, Into the Woods, Wicked, and Beetlejuice 06:44 – Eclectic taste in symphonies Loved John Williams: The 90th Birthday Gala Concert Favorite classical symphony is Bach's Brandenburg Concertos Favorite musical of all time is Hadestown—the Tony-winning tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice—but Les Misérables is up there, too Jeff puts in a good word for The Lion King and Chicago 11:48 – History! Especially interested in Rome and the Middle Ages into the Renaissance She discusses a cast of characters that includes Caesar, Augustus, Cleopatra, Mark Antony, Charlemagne, and Leonardo da Vinci DeAnna also describes some of the political systems, militaries, and societal hierarchies and challenges of the time, such as feudalism, the Praetorian Guard, and the Black Plague 22:23 – Scuba diving and pre-teens After listening to episode 21, which featured DeAnna and her experience as a scuba diver, the audience wants to know whether DeAnna thinks a ten-year old is too young to start diving DeAnna says it depends on the person—they must be responsible and ready for a challenge. Ten-years old is not necessarily too young. You can always try it to determine whether the child is ready. If so, it takes a lot of practice Night diving is especially good for seeing marine life that is less active during the daytime Links and Resources Mentioned Episode 21: Meet Jeff's Daughter, DeAnna Bellomo https://sites.libsyn.com/420320/meet-jeffs-daughter-deanna-bellomo Bellomo & Associates workshops: https://bellomoassociates.com/workshops/ For more information, call us at (717) 845-5390. Connect with Bellomo & Associates on Social Media Twitter: https://twitter.com/bellomoassoc YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/BellomoAssociates Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bellomoassociates Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bellomoassociates/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bellomoandassociates Ways to work with Jeff Bellomo Contact Us: https://bellomoassociates.com/contact/ Practice areas: https://bellomoassociates.com/practice-areas/
He grew up in Milan and became an army officer, where he distinguished himself so well that the Emperor Diocletian made him captain of the Praetorian Guard not suspecting that Sebastian was a Christian. In Rome, while fulfilling the duties of a courtier, he used his position to comfort and encourage his imprisoned fellow-Christians. By his labors and example he brought many to faith in Christ, including Chromatius, the Prefect in charge of persecuting the Roman Christians. Sebastian had upheld two brothers, Mark and Marcellinus, who were awaiting execution for their faith. When the day of execution came, their father Tranquillinus, who had been a pagan but through Sebastian's example had converted, presented himself to Chromatius and announced that he too was a Christian. His testimony was so powerful that the hard heart of the Prefect was melted, and he himself resolved to become a Christian. Caius, Bishop of Rome, gathered the new brethren (both men and women — not all of Sebastian's converts have been mentioned here) to embrace them and baptize them, but also to warn them of their coming Martyrdom. He instructed some to flee the city and others, headed by Sebastian, to remain in Rome, devoting their days to fasting, prayer and thanksgiving as they awaited their death. As the "company of Martyrs" did this, many came to them and were healed of ailments, and many joined them in confessing Christ. When the time of martyrdom came, each member of the company was subjected to imaginatively cruel tortures before his execution. Sebastian himself was made to witness the deaths of all his companions, then to endure his own trial. He serenely confessed his unshaken faith before Diocletian himself before being taken to the place of execution. There he was tied to a post and made the target of a band of archers until his body bristled with arrows like the quills of a porcupine. He was left for dead, but when Irene, widow of St Castulus, came to bury him, she found him alive and tended his wounds. Amazingly, he recovered, and presented himself once again to the Emperor. Astonished and outraged, the tyrant ordered that Sebastian be beaten to death with clubs and thrown into the city's sewer. That evening, a pious Christian woman was told in a vision to retrieve his body and bury it in the catacombs. After St Constantine brought peace to the Church, Pope Damasus built a church over the site in the Saint's honor. For hundreds of years, many miracles were worked there through St Sebastian's intercessions.
He grew up in Milan and became an army officer, where he distinguished himself so well that the Emperor Diocletian made him captain of the Praetorian Guard not suspecting that Sebastian was a Christian. In Rome, while fulfilling the duties of a courtier, he used his position to comfort and encourage his imprisoned fellow-Christians. By his labors and example he brought many to faith in Christ, including Chromatius, the Prefect in charge of persecuting the Roman Christians. Sebastian had upheld two brothers, Mark and Marcellinus, who were awaiting execution for their faith. When the day of execution came, their father Tranquillinus, who had been a pagan but through Sebastian's example had converted, presented himself to Chromatius and announced that he too was a Christian. His testimony was so powerful that the hard heart of the Prefect was melted, and he himself resolved to become a Christian. Caius, Bishop of Rome, gathered the new brethren (both men and women — not all of Sebastian's converts have been mentioned here) to embrace them and baptize them, but also to warn them of their coming Martyrdom. He instructed some to flee the city and others, headed by Sebastian, to remain in Rome, devoting their days to fasting, prayer and thanksgiving as they awaited their death. As the "company of Martyrs" did this, many came to them and were healed of ailments, and many joined them in confessing Christ. When the time of martyrdom came, each member of the company was subjected to imaginatively cruel tortures before his execution. Sebastian himself was made to witness the deaths of all his companions, then to endure his own trial. He serenely confessed his unshaken faith before Diocletian himself before being taken to the place of execution. There he was tied to a post and made the target of a band of archers until his body bristled with arrows like the quills of a porcupine. He was left for dead, but when Irene, widow of St Castulus, came to bury him, she found him alive and tended his wounds. Amazingly, he recovered, and presented himself once again to the Emperor. Astonished and outraged, the tyrant ordered that Sebastian be beaten to death with clubs and thrown into the city's sewer. That evening, a pious Christian woman was told in a vision to retrieve his body and bury it in the catacombs. After St Constantine brought peace to the Church, Pope Damasus built a church over the site in the Saint's honor. For hundreds of years, many miracles were worked there through St Sebastian's intercessions.
The worlds media are doing their best to ignore what has been happening in Brazil following the Presidential Elections. Matthew Tyrmand is one of the worlds top investigative journalists and he has been one of the most outspoken in calling out this South American steal. A great many Brazilians are refusing to accept the election results, remember that Lula had his 12 year jail sentence overturned by the Supreme Court just so that he could run against Bolsonaro. After nearly 2 months of silence, Bolsonaro finally spoke to his people last week to say he would fight on and win. Join us this episode for all the latest and Matthew's expert analysis of the situation. #VivaBrazil Matthew Tyrmand is a journalist (both investigative and editorial), political strategist, activist, consultant, and investment banker. He is a dual Polish and American citizen deeply engaged in the battle of political ideas in both the USA and Europe. As an unabashed nationalist and populist, he is an outspoken critic of the European Union and American-engineered globalist multi-lateralism and is a consistent voice in the battle to take back Westphalian nation state sovereignty. In the U.S. he works closely with organizations focused on bringing robust fiscal transparency, prudence, and accountability to the public sector as well as rooting out corruption in both the public and private sectors. In Poland, where his father was a pivotal mid-20th century anti-communist writer and dissident (and Holocaust survivor) and later an informal advisor to Presidents Nixon and Reagan on defeating communism, Mr. Tyrmand frequently appears in mass media commenting on Polish, American, and European political issues and contributes twice a week to Polish Television's (TVP) main English language news commentary show. For several years he penned a weekly column for one of Poland's top conservative newsweeklies, Do Rzeczy. He has contributed to numerous English language platforms in the U.S. and Europe including, but not limited to; Breitbart, Forbes, The American Mind, The American Thinker, The American Conservative, The Jerusalem Post, The European Conservative, Big League Politics, Human Events, and numerous outlets in Poland including Wprost, Gazeta Polska, and SuperExpress in addition to authoring two books in the Polish market. He is an actively engaged board member of the guerilla journalism platform Project Veritas working closely alongside it's founder and leader, the modern-day muckraker, James O'Keefe on operations and strategy. Mr. Tyrmand is a Claremont Institute Lincoln Fellow, a Conservative Partnership Institute Haggerty-Richardson Fellow, and a member of the Philadelphia Society. Before getting involved in politics, policy, and activism, he spent his years after graduation from the University of Chicago as an analyst and trader on Wall Street, running equity long/short portfolios in the healthcare, tech, media, and telecommunications sectors for well known New York based hedge funds. Those who know him describe him as "enfant terrible" and describe his mouth as "a weapon of mass destruction." Follow and support Matthew on..... GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/MatthewTyrmand Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewTyrmand?s=20&t=DvFAH3osks4PFfPBfFDk0w Originally broadcast live 15.12.22 *Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast. Check out his art https://theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com/ and follow him on GETTR https://gettr.com/user/BoschFawstin To sign up for our weekly email, find our social media, podcasts, video, livestreaming platforms and more https://heartsofoak.org/connect/ Please like, subscribe & share! Transcript of episode (Hearts of Oak) And it's an absolute pleasure to have Mr. Matthew Tymrand back with us once again. Matthew, thank you. (Matthew Tyrmand) Good to be with you, Peter. It's a pleasure being with you. Last time you blew up Sweden, now it's Brazil's turn. So, I think we talked about Sweden, France, Germany, all the sovereignist movements in Europe. It was Europe. I guess now Latin America's my beat. Now you're going Latin. All good. (HoO) You can follow Matthew, of course, at Matthew Tymrand on GETTR, on Twitter, and he is regularly on War Room giving an update of what's happening. I think Matthew and Gateway Pundit are the two main sources for actually getting an update on what's happening in Brazil. But Matthew, Brazil, the elections were the second and 30th of October with the 30th being the runoff. It's been six weeks ago and you've been on this from day one, day to day following it. Do you want to give us an overview of what's happened before we get into some of the nitty gritty stuff. (MT) Sure. So I've been following Brazil. I never expected Latin America to be my beat as we discussed last time. I've got Polish family roots, Polish citizen, a lot of time in Europe working, Poland, Hungary, Sweden, Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain. You know, Europe's my beat, you know, working right wing party, covering... Populist movements, Sovereign Justice movements. But last year in September, 2021, I went down to CPAC Brazil to speak about media and other issues and was with Jason Miller. And we met with Jair Bolsonaro, and set up a meeting for us. And that was widely covered. And we were detained at the airport by the Supreme Court, which as we'll discuss is not really a court as much as a dictatorship, a bunch of political appointees who are running rough shot over Brazilian constitution and rule of law. They detained us and interrogated us and wanted to know who we met with and wanted us to literally write down names of politicians, journalists, activists, very Stasi-like so that they could be added to the enemies list. Obviously we declined to take part in such exercise, but we were held there and we were finally let go. And I sort of wanted to understand what just happened there. I knew it was bad. I knew that there was a strong bifurcation in Brazilian society along political lines, much like the US, much like Poland, much like many countries in Europe and the West. And what I discovered in the following eight, nine months was as it really did deep dives into the people, the players, the politics, that it is been a judicial dictatorship and autocracy by the judiciary. Judges in theory, judges are supposed to adjudicate rule of law, constitutionality, especially at the Supreme Court level. And here you had a Supreme Court led by a guy who was appointed by the same political cabal as Lula De Silva, the guy who just ran against Bolsonaro for president. And by background, he was president before. And he was convicted of many crimes. Public corruption was sent to prison. But he appointed a lot of judges before that, and after he went to prison, his vice president slash chief of staff, Chief of Staff there, sort of the second in line to the throne in the executive branch, Dilma Rousseff, she served as president for a few years before she was ensnared in the same corruption game, the very famous Operation Car Wash, where the Marxists, and they really are, Sao Paulo Forum Marxists, people that sort of come from the same sort of ideological bent, and this includes Chavez and Maduro, and we'll go through some of the Forum Sao Paulo people, that have swept Latin America. But she was also convicted and impeached. And then Temer came in and served out the rest of her time before Bolsonaro was elected. Now, all these judges on the Supreme Court, not all of them, two were appointed by Bolsonaro and eight were appointed by Lula, Dilma and Temer, Lula and Dilma, eight, and then Temer was one. Alexander de Marais, this Supreme Court head, was appointed by Temer, a former Sao Paulo prosecutor. And he basically prosecutes from the bench. And he has given this court, just, you know, Audubon Bismarck said politics is the art of the possible. He's just taking control. These are not endowed rights, constitutionally endowed rights that the court has. But as I wrote about in this long article that I erred to really break down this dynamic ahead of the election a week or so ahead of the first round of the Brazilian election, I wrote this or published this in September. The first round was October 2nd, as you noted. And I wrote that these are guys that if you could roll up the powers in the U.S. Corollary would be the Supreme Court on a constitutional law basis, the prosecutors like the heads of the DOJ, or Justice Minister in European parliamentary parlance, the head of the prosecutor's office, the head of the investigative criminal division. They've got subpoena power. They've got a law enforcement that they have taken over, like an FBI or an MI5, I think it would be, in the UK, where it would be domestic criminality, the Police that would come and have sort of jurisdictional rights, federally, nationally, as opposed to locally. And you rolled up all these powers in the US, like Sonia Sotomayor and Eric Holder and Jared Nadler and Merrick Garland and legislative members of the legislature who are political animals. You rolled up all these powers, you would have Marais in the Supreme Court. And so of course, they're running rough shot over Brazilian society with these powers in their hands. They're censoring journalists, they're arresting journalists. They are Censoring politicians from Bolsonaro's camp and they're arresting them. Over the last two to three years they've been at war with the right. Everything that the right accuses them of, they then get convicted of. They say the right says the court is assaulting democracy and Constitutional law, so then they get arrested for the charge of assault on democratic institutions. If you criticize the court for overreaching, for abusing its power, then they actually arrest you or censor you, force you to be de-platformed by big tech under the guise of it's an assault on, institutional democracy, which is incredible projection. We know the left likes to project, but I mean, this is whole new levels of evil hypocrisy in a political sphere. So they've put politicians under house arrest, journalists. There's a journalist who has been in exile in, in the US. Recently, Marais revoked his passport. They tried to execute an Interpol red notice against him because of what he writes. Again, journalism, writing. This is not violence. This is not calls for coups or insurrection. This is him writing very, very well-founded in constitutional law about their overreach. And so they tried to get Interpol to arrest him in the US and extradite him to Brazil so they can put him in prison. Obviously, Interpol declined to execute this red notice because they saw the frivolity and the abuse that was inherent in it. So I mean, that's sort of like how we entered into this election cycle and at the same time. Very important to note, Lula De Silva was convicted by three separate courts long before Bolsonaro was appointing any judges anywhere. This was 2015-16, the trials, convicted by three separate courts, 12 charges, 19 judges, 19 judges across three courts, so like tribunal instead of juries, it's you know a bunch of judges on a panel, unanimously voted to convict him. You know people 2012, when he was pushed out of office there were protests in the street and the military helped defend those protests because they saw what he was doing it was widely exposed that he was selling state assets to China for cash in bags laundering it through car wash chain of car washes owned by this party's friends that's hence the name operation car wash and it was his judges that he appointed or his subsequent president appointed or the subsequent president to that appointed, who let him out of prison, vacated his sentences and then annulled the convictions and expunged his record. So let him out of prison, annulled the sentences, first pending never-ending appeal, claiming that the courts didn't have jurisdiction. Now he was convictable in any court in the country because he stole from the whole country. So that's a canard, total bullshit. And then they just said, pending never-ending appeal, you're now free. And then as the appeals started, which never really went through, because before there ever was an appeal heard, they vacated and annulled and expunged his record. And why is that important? Because in Brazil, there's a law, if you're a convicted felon, you cannot run for office. (HoO) So, I mean, this seemed to be that the Supreme Court wanted Lula to run. I mean, a 12-year sentence suddenly disappears under the orders of the Supreme Court, so he can run. (MT) 580 days out of a 12-year sentence he served, and he got off light because there should have been many, many more prosecutions. And there might have been had this not played out because they were always discovering more stuff on the public corruption, whether selling state assets, diverting state funds to friends, including the mainstream media, who are truly died in the wool leftists and Marxist sympathizers. You saw on election night, when they announced it for Lula, claps, there were two places where there were audible cheers. The newsrooms of the mainstream press and the prisons. There are videos of of the prisons and everybody in the prisons is clapping and whoop, whoop, whooping about Lula. His base is narco Traficant, he even wears a hat from a from a famous Rio de Janeiro guerrila narco trafficking group called CPX He wore the hat in his limited campaigning, he couldn't really campaign too wide because everybody knows hes a corrupt convicted felon and he would be met with jeers, even when he was certified on Monday there was nobody there supporting him and the one thing the leftists do really well is they go to the streets and they protest, they turn them out, they frequently astroturf. They try to make themselves look bigger and more prevalent than they really are in terms of representation in society. Meanwhile, you've got 10 million Brazilian patriots by my estimate over the last 46 days now on the streets of every city in Brazil and predominantly obviously Brasilia the capital but also Rio, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, even places that are leftist strongholds in the north like Recife, Bahia, everywhere. And the revolution will not be televised. None of the global mainstream press is covering it all. The largest human manifestations in at least a democratic country, maybe during the late stages of communism, when people went to the street in places like Hungary, and Czech Republic and Poland, there might've been comparable numbers per capita. And remember Brazil, big country, six largest country in the world, third largest economy in the Western hemisphere, and second largest country in the Western hemisphere after US, Canada, then Brazil, massive 220 million people. And you have a measurable amount of representation per capita on the streets, rain, shine, monsoon, whatever. They're there a lot of times outside military barracks, praying and begging the military to come and save them. And this is a point Bolsonaro made that I'm absolutely co-opted and using in a speech he gave at. He invited the protesters into the grounds of the Alvarado Palace, the White House, Buckingham Palace, the presidential residence. He gave a speech last Friday, then did a demonstration and a prayer vigil on Sunday and then another one on Monday. And by the way, letting, I mean how populous is that, letting people into the presidential grounds so that he could, you know, walk up, hug people. And by the way, he could walk through a crowd and nobody would hurt him. They would hug him, they would love him. Lula cannot go anywhere without 100 plus security guards because everyone wants to rip him shred from shred, limb from limb like Gaddafi. And the police who are on his detail are tipping off the protesters where he is so they come and protest with, like when he was at a hotel last week or a week and a half ago meeting Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security advisor, because obviously they're part of the fix. Global leftism works together. If the military does not act, if they do not invoke Article 142 of the Brazilian Constitution, which is very constitutionally fitting and relevant here, it says in separated power, disputes, which certainly exists right now between the judiciary and the executive branch, as well as election fraud, they have a constitutional right to audit the election, and in their attempt to do so, the TSE, a subsidiary court to the Supreme Court, the STF, blocked them out. They wouldn't give them the machines, they wouldn't give them the source code, they wouldn't give them the tabulation data. So they have very much grounds to act and stabilize society and the Constitution says the military is the stabilizing force in society because they're the institution that's most governed and built up by the fundamentals of hierarchy and discipline and order. And if you notice on Brazilian flag, it's ordum and and progress, so order and progress. So you can't have progress unless you have order. And if you look at Latin America's history, military coups, you know, there was one 1965 that lasted 20 something years. They have a lot of belief in rule of law at this stage. Brazil is one of the most successful constitutional republics in terms of really taking to Western classical liberal standards of rule of law and freedom. They do not have the unfettered First Amendment the US has, but they do have the right to assemble and protest and use their voice, that's constitutionally protected. And then as they're trying to exercise that, Marais, who by the way is also the head of the TSC, the Supreme Electoral Court. So the subsidiary court that oversees the elections. So the Chicanery, the pure evil, I mean, they're arresting now indigenous peoples who have become protest leaders. Indigenous peoples saw they were disenfranchised because they were historically left-wing voters. All their votes in many of these precincts went to Lula, even though they physically voted for Bolsonaro. And they say, what gives? The left has used them as a tool, a device for pushing their agenda for generations. They petitioned the UN committee on indigenous rights and said, hey, what gives? You're supposed to protect their indigenous rights. But I guess that only works if we vote the right way, which is left. So they've been ignored. And now they're arresting them. arrested, they violently arrested one of the major guys, the chief of the Givenchy tribe on Monday after certification, in what I believe is an attempt to try and get the protesters to increase and escalate their volatility and then inject violence. And the left did inject violence. Antifa came in, very few, but enough that they burned some buses, burned some cars, broke some windows. And of course Reuters took Globo, which is sort of CNN of Brazil, major mainstream media, dominant media player, took their account. Bolsonaro protesters are violent and you know, set fire to cars and break windows of cars. And by the way, every car window that was broken had a Brazilian flag on it or the symbol of this movement. The Brazil was stolen flag, which is Brazilian flag that's black and white with Brazil was stolen on it. And so those are the windows getting broken, and there were even gas masks. I mean, in 45 days, 46 days, there had not been a single incidence of violence, vandalism, arson, and you know how we know there wasn't a single incidence? Because if there was even a single incidence, it would be the only thing Globo was running and the only thing they're sending to their their fellow traveling useful idiot leftist Marxists across the globe whether that's Reuters or BBC or Washington Post, New York Times, but it's been crickets. It's been crickets, in the New York Times did run a few reports, dispatches by Jack Nikis, their correspondent at Brazilian, saying that it's a little bit worrisome about the powers that Marais has taken and abused, censoring politicians. At the same time, the courts previously said that Bolsonaro should be held criminally liable for blocking trolls on his Twitter, as the same court is saying, and personal Twitter, the same court is saying, we can remove the voices of anybody we claim, as assaulting democratic institutions by criticizing us, including Villa-Kesis, one of the leading senators, major parliamentarians, House of Deputies, lower house members of the legislature, Gustavo Guyer, Nicholas Ferreira, Carlos Zambelli, tons of journalists today. They just arrested four more journalists, a mixture of journalists, a pastor and an elected. I think it was two journalists, pastor and elected. Four more arrests. So, you know, Marais has said that if the protesters stay out there, they're going to start proceedings to take away protesters' kids because they say it's child abuse. Obviously, lefties, you know, brainwash their kids and bring them to all sorts of manifestations, frequently violent ones, if you look at the Antifa types. So it's pretty fucked up there. It's pretty fucked up. (HoO) Where does Bolsonaro, because Bolsonaro basically was silent for like 45 days and suddenly had, not press conference, but he engaged with his supporters. That was on what, Friday, Saturday? And that was the first time he stepped in and said, no, we're going to win. We're going to fight this. (MT) Why didn't they say that directly? It's not in his hands. I know a lot of people around him. I've got very good sources, whether it's military people, legislative people, executive branch people in the ministries, as well as around Bolsonaro advisors. I'm getting some really good feel. Nobody's telling me anything directly because it's so fog of war. Nobody knows. Of course, when you're talking to government sources, everybody has their own agenda and strategy, so you'll hear a lot of different things. I'll talk to one guy who says, no, we're acting tomorrow. We're going to do this. Another guy goes, nothing's happening. Another guy says, we're going to do it this way in three days, and by the way, these things are probably in motion. They're just trying to push their strategy that they want and have me run it out as a reflexive sort of, you know, create a self fulfilling prophecy through the media. But the timeline is important. Bolsonaro did not concede the night of, he did not concede the next day. On Tuesday, he came out at three o'clock or two o'clock and gave a little press conference, spoke for two minutes and said, follow the constitution, we will follow the constitution. You know, if you believe protesting is warranted in assembling, that's your constitutional right, go to it. Then his chief of staff, who was kind of a technocrat, said we're gonna follow the transition protocols, also constitutionally, but that wasn't a concession. That was them just trying to figure out what their move would be. They were gonna engage in this audit. The military was blocked out in their audit. In the meantime, there's been lots of fraud discovered. Their political party, the Liberal Party, party of the party of the liberal, Bolsonaro's party, put their own report together about fraud and what did the court do with it? They fined the party 22 million reais, about four or five million bucks, and put the head of the party, who is an elder statesman in Brazilian politics, been around for generations, a very serious guy, nobody has ever accused of anything untoward, put him on a criminal law, the same fake news investigation list he's been writing, so put them on the criminal list, that they're gonna investigate him for criminal activity. Now, by the way, they're adding all sorts of other people, Bolsonaro's former cabinet members and previous in the first part of government. Now they're going on criminal lists where they're gonna be investigated by this court. There's no grounds, there's no due process, there's no probable causes we have on the US constitutional basis for such things. But hey, Marxists do what Marxists do, communists do what communists do, we've seen that all over the world. So the timeline, go back to the timeline. So he didn't say anything for a couple of days, then he went silent. A couple of times he went out, waved, moved through people, but no public statements, and I think that was smart. This is not about Bolsonaro. This is what I've tried to drum home, whether it's on Tucker Carlson or on Vantage show or on Emerald Robin show or whoever. That this is not about Bolsonaro. This is about the Brazilian constitution, the Brazilian transition in power, Brazilian elections. This is not a cult of personality. Bolsonaro, if the military acts is not gonna be engaged in a coup, this would be a quelling of a coup by the judicial dictatorship, with the military has a constitutional right to do, to defend against the sovereignty and against the sovereigns enemies, the nation states enemies, foreign and domestic, within and without. They have buffered the borders because Venezuela and Chile keep threatening that if Lula's not seated, they're gonna invade. These are one team, one dream communists. Shaba's in school. But then last Friday, he gave a speech, and then Sunday, the vigil. And in between the time, there've been some military edicts signed, expanding the reserves a week ago, and the site crashed the second they put up a site saying, if you want to be in the Brazilian reserves, and the site crashed within moments because it was so overwhelming. They just passed one yesterday, or Bolsonaro and the Defense Ministry pushed through one yesterday, about mobilization of emergency food suppliers and expedited contracting process. Tells me something's kind of up, and people I know in the military, connected to the military have been absolutely quiet with me, which by the way is a good thing, I got a big mouth, I am who I am. I'm a journalist. If I know something, I'm probably gonna run it out. So it's good they're silent with me on this. If they're gonna bring something to bear in this process, then they should be doing it by the book, by their way, and not leaking it to me or anybody in the Western or domestic media. That being said, the military has moved. There are videos all over. Yesterday morning at 4.30 a.m., what was described as, well, you know, drills or practice or, you know, routine practicing, whatever they call it, right by the Venezuelan border columns, and columns of soldiers, you know, because Venezuela is a risk point, as is Peru, as is Colombia, as is Chile. They're all led by the same millier South Paliform Marxists. And we'll go into South Paliform in a moment. So the military's moving, there've been firefights in the favelas with what's rumoured to be Venezuelan paramilitary operators that moved through these sort of drug trafficking networks. Cause if you recall, you know, Venezuela's laden with that just as Columbia was with FARC. And there's another FARC like Narco trafficking paramilitary guerrilla group that Petro, the new head of Columbia was a long time member of. So the South Palo form where all these people were incubated, people have to recall It was founded in 1990 by two people, Lula and Fidel Castro. Tells you a lot, tells you a lot. 1990 because in 89 to 91, The Soviet Union was falling. Soviet Union was the big funder of Cuba and all the Latin American, Marxist guerilla movements to try and create an Orwellian style, continental nation state construct, In Orwell were three major nation states, Eurasia, Oceania and whatever the other one was, and so this always been the vision for the latin american marxist.Simon Bolivar . He's he is to you know, whoever politically who they want him to be the conservatives hold up the Bolivarians, Bolivarianism as the Marxists do but Marxist Bolivarianism suggests we have to break down all the borders of Latin America of South America and just make one continental super state led. Of course by Marxist is right out of Orwell So Palo forum was formed when Soviet Union money stopped coming in, Cuba needed you know, how do we, you know operate this build this out Marxist workers of the world unite, so Lula and Fidel got together and all sorts of other criminals from across that continent and they incubated such wonderful political leaders and talent as Hugo Chavez Ava Morales RC, the Mora, Bolivia. Uh, Fuji Mari had some connections certainly Castillo who just tried to run this coup last week and dissolving congress, dissolving legislature, South California, the Kirchners, I mean Fernandez, I mean it's a who's who of the war, Ortega, I mean if there's a Marxist in Latin America who was incubated by South Calif and the head of the South California in Brazil, a woman named Monica Valente, she's a part, they even use words like party secretary, it's like they, when people tell you who they are, believe them, party secretary, she's head of Lula's transition now, and she said early on, right after October 30th. We need to protect Brazil's democracy like we have to protect Maduro's hard-fought Venezuelan democracy. And they really believe it. They really believe that Venezuela is the kind of democracy they'd like to make Brazil. So the Brazilian people aren't stupid. Modern history, pre-modern history, they know Latin American history, communism, and all across Latin America. What's happened in Venezuela? What just happened in Chile with Boerich and other young Marxist revolutionaries from the South Hallow Forum and Petro in Colombia? They know it. They haven't lost the plot. They get it. And we will never be communist is one of their refrains. Give us paper ballots is another one. Give us auditable ballots. And that's a whole great, you know, sock we can get into. Bolsonaro pushed it as a congressman and got a paper balloting bill, a backup paper ballot against the machines. So you have the machines, but you also have a paper ballot printout. That thing gets locked for audit purposes. And so when I was in Brazil last September, there was tons of chance in the freedom Independence Day March, give us paper ballots, give us audible ballots. Bolsonaro as a congressman, and I think it was 2016, maybe it was a little over 15, got a bill passed, which by the way, getting bills passed in Brazilian legislature, very, very tough. I mean, there's essentially, I put it on a spectrum of five different, it's like parliamentary politics, there's dozens of parties, but there's really five cohorts. You've got far right, centre right, centre, centre left and far left. So figure 20% give or take. By the way, going forward in this next session, far right and centre right are dominant because Bolsonaro down ballot pulled everybody over the line, governors, senators, lower house legislators. It was like unheard of level of galvanized unity and performance for the right in Brazil. So the fact that he lost to Lula, we all know it's bullshit. We all, there's no way. None of these politicians even exist except for his endorsement. And they won overwhelmingly in places that were left to stronghold for 50 years. That they're now gonna be led on the provincial level and the federal level state-wide by Bolsonaro people, whether they're far right or centre right. But they're all together one thing, anti-communist, anti-socialist, anti-South Paulo Forum, anti-China, anti-globalist. They believe in Brazilian sovereignty and they believe in God, which does bring them together. But so, so Bolsonaro gets this bill passed, Dilma Rousseff is president, so I guess it was pre-16. She vetoes it. Back to legislature and the Congress overrode her veto with a super super majority. Never happens. So then what happens, Supreme Court comes out, by the way, her veto was predicated on something I find hilarious. It's like truth is stranger than fiction with these idiots. She vetoed it because it would cost too much to put a printer, a hundred dollar printer next to their $20,000 voting machine. So she said, Oh, no, fiscally it would be irresponsible. Have you ever noticed socialists or communists to cite fiscal policy as to why they shouldn't Spend money, spend government money? Of course not, it's a fig leaf, it's a canard, it's ridiculous. So Supreme Court takes this congressionally overrode veto legislation and they nix it on constitutional grounds, but on bullshit. They said it would open up privacy concerns. Now at the same time, by the way, I've exposed with Argentinian forensic analyst, Fernando Ceramito, who's hiding in Argentina because they wanna really go at him, because he's exposed huge amounts of fraud, from day three after the election, we expose that Oracle has a undisclosed contract to suck up everybody's private data. So all the voting data, all the personal data, the Ministry of Information is being run out of the electoral court overseen by Marais. So more corruption, more communists, stasi tactics, they've got the Praetorian Guard and the federal police force who are arresting indigenous peoples and journalists and harassing Miller, Jason Miller and myself when we were in Brazil, detaining us, surveilling us, which the mainstream press had the day before we left that broke all the news wires there that we were being surveilled from the moment we landed, which I told them, I mean, like I've dealt with stuff Poland and Central Europe, which has been time in Ukraine, Ive spent time all over the place. So I said, we're probably being surveilled. He goes, Whatever. I said, then when that news story broke, he goes, he was like, Oh, well, you're right. And I said, well, probably gonna be detained at the airport tomorrow. And he goes, Oh, shit, I go, no, it's gonna be good. Be great. Made a big international incident. I credit Mariah for getting me off the side-lines. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have been doing jack shit on Brazil. I wouldn't have been doing, you know, deep dives into the forum and the who appointed the judges and who their friends with and what laws they're breaking and who they put in prison unjustly and under house arrest. I wouldn't have any edge on Brazilian politics and society if it wasn't for Marais detaining us and me getting intrigued. I don't like getting detained illegally. So I like to punch back. So here we are. So now I've been doing 10 to 20 hours of press today. So as a lot of Brazilians say, they want to if the military comes in and they they circumvent Lula and the completion of this coup that's been run out of the, judicial dictatorship, then there's I think there'll be a push to give me honour citizenship, which I'd be all about. I love Brazil. I love the Brazilian people. Brazilian women are the most beautiful women in the world. The food is like the best food in the world. The weather, the cities, just the whole, the people are just so awesome. They're so thoughtful. They're so intelligent. They're so motivated to protect their society. They understand the difference between rule of man and rule of God, higher natural law, and even the truckers, the truckers blockaded, these wasn't like Canadian trucker blockades, and all due respect to the Canadians, they do a great job on that. But they got busted up pretty quickly and it wasn't a huge amount of population saying we're going to we're willing to stay here forever how long it takes. The Brazilians are willing to blockade the ports and the roads and the major arteries. Brazil's one, sixth of the world's food supply. They're willing to blockade it forever if need be. They're willing to starve to protect their sovereignty because they know that if they lose it, if they lose their their constitutionally protected natural rights of natural law and their constitutional rights that that have been. That they work toward and building a robust constitutional republic if they lose that, it's gulags. I think the military knows that too. I think the military, but Lula even said last week, he even publicly stated who he's going to replace all the high command military generals with, his communist cronies. So if they're not motivated to act, then you know what, to be honest, they deserve to go to the gulag. They deserve to have their hands up. (HoO) Tell me more about the military, and I love Brazil as much as you and I've only been once, but a beautiful country. But tell me about the military, where do they fit in? Where is the clash? Where is their allegiance? I mean, you've talked about the legal side, about the Supreme Court and the battles legally, which reminds me of the same situation in the US in the 2020 elections. But over the military, which is again quite different, and I guess from anyone in the West, you don't think the military has been separate from the government or separate from the judicial is just all in one. But I guess Latin America is quite different. So where did the military fit into this? Cause I read a number of reports, the military being on the sidelines, what does that mean? And who are they accountable to? (MT) The military had, you know, a 65 page report about the, the, the elections and saying, you know, we can't prove fraud yet because you won't give us the machine source code of tabulation data, but it certainly doesn't look good. And the fact that you're blocking us out, the military and you know, Latin America's got this history of communism, then reaction back. And Pinochet was an anti-communist reactionary. He threw the communists from helicopters, which I would never condone until watching, until getting to know Brazil. To be honest, Marais and these judges who have so subverted rule of law and arrested their political enemies, just as bad, just on a level of the Soviet Union, of Stalin, of Khrushchev, of Brezhnev, of Lenin, of Jurginsky. I mean, they are ends justify the means leftist and the corrupt as shit. I mean, the Politburo will live well. You know, Animal Farm, you know, the Napoleon and Snowball will live high on the hog. And these people are totally corrupt. Their friends are going to feed and everybody else, they'll rob the wealth of the country, sell to China, give it to help buffer Cuba. You remember when Lula was there, last time he was giving Petrobras, Petrobras was a big center of the biggest company in the country. the state oil giant and they were helping buffer and support Cuba and Venezuela and selling to China. So this is a repeat. I think the military knows, given the history, there's a lot of generals who actually have not remained silent. They're not running their mouth off the way I do, the way Miller does, or the way our friends who are analysts, journalists, and political activists do, they're military guys. And by the way, Bolsonaro was a career military guy before entering politics. But they have made public statements. One of them, and a lot of these military guys have also gone into politics when they retire, very senior guys. So there's a very strong connection ideologically and politically. But there are some scumbag military guys as well. There were four guys that Paolo Figurito, an exiled journalist here in Florida who's left Brazil because he can't go back for the same reasons that Alonso Santos is exiled in Virginia. That's who they put the red notice for, revoked his passport. By the way, they've also revoked issuance of new passports because I think they don't want anyone to escape the impending communism because they want to go after everyone. I mean, this is a court that was airing private businessmen's WhatsApp messages when they were bashing the court and saying we defend Bolsonaro. So they publicized it and then they tried to arrest them. Business guys, just normal guys, not breaking any laws, just saying the court's really running amok. Okay, we're gonna subpoena the stuff because they hear about it and they leak it and then they air it all. I mean, really dirty pool, Soviet style tactics, Stasi style tactics. But Paulo Figueredo named three or four generals who were trying to push back on any military guys, who were saying we should invoke Article 142, we need to take action, saying, no, no, we'll be fine under Lula. Trust us. Palo named them publicly and effectively took them off the field. And there have been rumors in the last couple of days that they'll be fired in the next few days by the Defense Ministry in Bolsonaro. Hopefully they will. Also important to note that Bolsonaro has still elevated other generals There have been ceremonies that have gotten publicized, putting the new rank on the chest of a couple of naval guys, a couple of generals. So there is movement, but there are a few very senior generals. And by the way, Brazil is the most social media engaged country in the world. So when you lose your social media voice, whether you're a politician or whoever you are, it's a big deal there. And some of the politicians who have been leading the charge, calling out the court, who have lost it, the generals have said, that is unconstitutional. One general who was a running mate for Bolsonaro, Hamilton Mourao, a political guy now, very well respected. And again, because Brazil has so much social media engagement, these generals have like 2 million followers. They have as many followers as the party leaders, the legislature leaders in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the legislature. So they have gravitas when they say something. Hamilton Mourao was the first one to come out. This was a few weeks ago. This was right after the second round. And he said, he cited on the anniversary, the 87th anniversary of a communist insurgency, the first one in Brazil in 1935 that came from within the military. He said, we put that one down and we are on guard. We are ever vigilant. Another one said, echoed those statements a few days later. Another general said, load up on food, gas and cash, which tells you a little bit of something. Just said public announcement, public service announcement, load up on food, fuel and cash. I mean, that kind of tells you something. I think something's coming. I think they were waiting. I was incorrect in my initial assessment about the certification, which is very equivalent to the January 6th in the US with a certified president. And that's when they had Antifa come down from the hills and set buses on fire. And Reuters said, Bolsonaro supporters are setting buses on fire. Meanwhile, there's video of some of the guys who had, they turned out the next day that some of these guys they found and they were paid 200 Riyals to do it. They were vagabonds. They were homeless drifter, grifter types. And then there were some guys yelling. ...... Which means out-Bolsonaro. So, I mean, you know, but Reuters, without uncritically, unanalytic ally, just runs out what Globo says. Globo's even said, I mean, to give you an example, how corrupted this media is. They're all in the tank with the court. The court says we now need to arrest the First Lady because she was beating the protesters, aiding and abetting the illegal protests, which, by the way, are not illegal. I mean, it's a real mess. I mean, you see, and it's been so fluid. Gateway Pundit's been great on writing the stuff. It says, plug, Richard Abelson there has been covering like crazy. We talk every day. We compare notes on our sources. And I've been doing a lot of this stuff, the talking, the live action, Tucker, Bannon, you, Emerald, Gaffney on, Senator CSP, just tons of this stuff, live streams on GETTR. So, you know, very, very fluid. Another, point I do want to make just to show you how big the fix was in. In November, all eight of the Dilma and Lula and Temer appointed justices, went to New York for a meeting at the Harvard Club. They convened a conference with the incoming Lula cabinet ministers. By the way, he's supposed to be separate powers. Judges supposed to judge the law and not party with their communist cronies. After they certified him, Lula the other day, Marius and a bunch of them went and partied with a well-known, together, Lula and them. With a well-known communist lawyer, like a major communist figure down there. So, but in November in New York at the Harvard club, they convened this conference with the incoming Lula cabinet ministers and these eight communist Marxist, Sao Paulo forum, Lula, Dilma, Temer appointed judges. They booked the room well before the second round of the election months ago. They knew, they knew. And for the, you would even say that if you're in Brazil, you lose your social media. Are you even getting potentially arrested as they're doing now? So the certification, my mistake on timing was, I thought that the certification was less of a formality and more of a big deal. And what I've learned since is it's not the only big deal is does Lula walk up the ramp as they say, That's the sort of terminology. Walk up the ramp and the equivalent of a swearing in for the president where he puts his hand on the Bible in the US, walk up the ramp and accept the sash and become anointed head of state. And that's right after New Year's Day. So that'll be January 2nd or January 3rd. I think January 2nd, Monday, January 2nd. By the way, the certification was supposed to be this coming Monday, the 19th, but the electoral court moved it up to the 12th. No constitutional allowance for that exists. They just did it. Again, they are very Bismarckian. Politics to the art of the possible. Just do it, and hey, see what happens, come at me bro." So they did the certification on Monday, and after the certification Marais gave a public statement saying, mission assigned, mission accomplished. I mean, it's like, they don't even hide what they're doing, and that if you criticise them and point out the granular fallacy of it all, then you get arrested. I mean, it's right out of Sovietism. It's pretty nuts. (HoO) Where does the pressure come? Because there isn't any pressure from surrounding countries in Latin America. Democracy works to varying degrees in different countries. (MT) It's pressure from Venezuela, Colombia under Petro, Chile under Boric, Peru, that they better seat Lula or they're going to invade. Another reason you're seeing military moving around the countries from the Chocos and securing the borders. But they have no allies, which is insane. I mean a couple of people, Ted Cruz gave a moderately sympathetic statement, but none of the politicians in the West and the US and Europe, nobody even knows what's going on. Swedish press, Polish press, Hungarian press, Slovakian press, but right-wing press, alternative press, the way you and I always are. So this thing doesn't have a critical mass like the BBC or, you know, Rye in Italy or Odyssey France press or, but, you know, TVP has been good. You know, Polish television has been good. I'm a contributor there, so, because I'm a dual citizen. But they don't have any allies. I'm guessing the US politicians who are aware of this, I've talked to many of them, and just said, you know, what's going on here? You should know what's going on here, guys. I mean, Marco Rubio runs Latin American policy in this country, and he's like, the guy. Nothing, nothing. Now, if Bolsonaro does see Article 142 invoked, in theory, he has to sign a letter authorizing the defense ministry to activate the military and invoke this constitutional article. Some rumors say that it's been signed already. I would argue that the military should do this unilaterally and ignore the executive under the guise that he's a lame duck and he's essentially out of power. I know he's still in power. The problem is that the second something does happen that's kinetic and they take action, they raid the Supreme Court and the electoral court, they go out and they take the machines by force. By the way, we have a video of a Sunday in Sao Paulo a week after the second round, a Sunday afternoon, four o'clock, all the machines, not all, but a cache of machines, voter machines from this. And by the way, some of the work done on this machine shows that certain modern series are programmed by default to annul votes and to be programmed, have communication device and all the things that the laws passed on the running of the election it flies in the face of. But this one cache in Sao Paulo of machines was being moved in boxes onto the back of a truck, an unmarked truck. And it looked to be unconfirmed, but looked to be a trucking logistics company because we got the weaponized autists everywhere, that it was a truck belonging to a company that is run and owned by a PT Lula party legislator. So it tells you a lot. The law is very clear, by the way. The machines can't be touched for 60 days. They can't be disassembled, can't be touched for 60 days. So a week after they're being moved. So there's a lot of different things. But I think that if the military does take action, which I believe they will, I think they will, even rumors that Bolsonaro has resigned as president in a private military sort of convocation and given the powers of the executive branch to the military as a caretaker. I don't believe that's true, but it is floating around. So I'm throwing that out there just because it's one of the things I've heard from certain sources. I think that will get publicized pretty quickly if that were the case. But whenever anything does occur, something does occur, I believe that what you're going to see is the revolution now will be televised by the entire global media complex and it, will go, Bolsonaro executes military coup against democratic elections that elected Lula. Nowhere in those articles will it say that Lula was let out of prison by his appointees for looting the country for 10 years. Nowhere will that be said. I read something in Brookings, they're fucking embarrassment, by an analyst saying that Lula was the most popular president ever. His socialist policy, Bolsa Familia, elevated so many people out of poverty and he will win in a landslide because he's so popular and never even mentions he was convicted for anything. And nobody in the country, I mean, you go to stadiums, people are watching the World Cup in stadiums, they're watching it remotely, and they were chanting, or car races, they were chanting, Lula's a convicted thief, Lula is convicted thief. They call him Squid. His nickname across the country is Squid. And it ain't for anything good. So I mean, we're gonna see the global media, you know, take action and run an info war. And then what's gonna happen? I told this to Bannon, I'll tell it to your audience. We need to get real vocal. That's why I'm doing so many of these things because I want people to have real fact pattern. You know me and I think people can hear me. I'm nothing if not comprehensive. I will throw out facts all day long and put them into context so that we can fight back because the leftist media, the mainstream media, the global media, they ain't gonna talk facts. They're gonna say these poor maligned Supreme Court justices that Bolsonaro's trying to go over, never mention they're imprisoning journalists, they're deplatforming everybody, that their ties to South Valle forum. They'll never mention the South Valle forum and how it was started by Fidel Castro and Lula in 1990. Lula's criminal history, Lula being close to all the drug gangs, wears a CPX hat as I said. I mean his base is criminals, criminals and media. So that's a redundancy I guess. (HoO) Just to finish off, where does this leave democracy in many parts if the system is an electronic system that can be controlled by those on the left and the left also have a big hand in the judicial system as we basically saw in the States, even when it went to the Supreme Court, actually they wouldn't call it out. It's very different than where we are. I mean, in Britain, it's just the stupidity of our electorate, basically put to say, it's a paper ballot. So yeah, it's different. (MT) But you also have some really shitty issues going on there where rule of law is also under attack and it's not getting publicized. When constabularies can go to the homes of somebody for tweeting something and arrest them as we've now seen several dozen times in the provinces and these are not you know lefty strongholds then you know this is fraying you know the Orwellian dystopic vision is playing out thanks to big tech thanks to the consolidated powers of information flow that government has control or access to so i mean it is worrisome Brazil is the bulwark I say you watch Bannon and i sit on Bannon and every single time, Brazil falls the far so takes over South America, a very wealthy continent, Brazil itself, you know, one sixth of the world's food supply, but also iron ore, oil, manganese, bauxite, tin, cobalt, copper, gold, I mean, very wealthy. The most, and Amazon, stuff in the Amazon, we don't even know the drugs and therapeutics that we're going to make from species of plants and bugs and shit that we don't even, we've never even discovered yet. And that's part of the play. It's the same thing that what's her face, Maloney was saying about France and the French colonies in Africa. You know that, okay, you're so egalitarian as you rape, you're still raping the colonies of Africa, even if they're quote unquote independent, you're still treating them like protectorates. Well, if Brazil falls, then all of Latin America is gone. We saw Colombia and Chile, the two furthest generally right nation states in Latin America, at least in South America, because Guatemala is pretty decent and Honduras give or take sometimes. But you know scaled up societies that have fallen out to the foreign so Paulo in the left. Brazil falls, China owns all of South America and that's obviously a threat to the Pax American in the west and the US. I mean AMLO, López Obrador in Mexico also a Sao Paulo foreign guy. So I mean it's it ain't good and there's a reason. The useful idiots of our side, the lefties on our side who believe, oh yeah, little socialism and big government's fine and they're not even averse to communism, they're the proverbial, you know, what Lenin said, they're the capitalists who will sell us the rope with which they'll hang them. Biden, the corrupt comatose vegetable that he is, said, and obviously he didn't say it, he probably fell asleep at four o'clock after his ice cream cone or his jello, but he had said right after, like moments after the tabulation was done. Congratulations Lula for the fair free and credible elections. How the fuck would you know that one minute after the tabulation? They don't have, IRI, the International Republican Institute, whose job it is to look at election fraud around the world, silent. Organization of American states, silent. UN, silent. EU, silent. State departments, silent. NSA, silent. I mean it's like, it's a giant global fix because they hate Bolsonaro like they hate Trump. Meanwhile more popular maybe than any leader anywhere in the world. He's probably the most popular, at least in a country of more than 10 million people. We're talking 220 million people. (HoO) Yeah, absolutely, Matthew, thank you so much for your time. Our viewers and listeners can follow you at @MatthewTyrmand. Make sure and follow Matthew on GETTR or Twitter for keep your finger on the pulse and also make sure and watch Gateway Pundit that are bringing daily articles, keeping you posted on what is happening. So we'll certainly watch this closely. (MT) And Bannon's War Room, I'm doing Bannon sometimes multiple times a day. He's kind of tipped the spear on this. Because Bannon and I were talking about Brazil for the last two to three years. We saw what was going to happen. I wrote about this a year ago and talked about it. And then, then obviously everything played out exactly as I wrote about, you know, and published in details in August, September. And so War Room, Emerald Robinson, I'm doing a few times a week and sort of all over the place, posting as much as I can on social media as I get information or as I do these segments and pods. I throw them up there as quick as I can so that people are informed and have information. And again, Brazilian people, the best people in the world. We need to stand with our Brazilian brothers and sisters in arms and cousins, because if they do not fail this coup, it will be Venezuela within a year. The gulags will start in a few months. Hell, he's not even president yet. They're already gulagging people for arrest today. The indigenous leader on Monday, they're already doing it. They've already censored. Now they're already starting Gulag. So, I mean, we've got to fight this. (HoO) Yeah, completely, completely. Matthew, thank you so much.
Things get cosmic as we discuss GLADIATOR! Doc has no shortage of confidence when it comes to dealing with this Strontian - are you not entertained? Intro Extra Life reminder Background (3:50) Gladiator of the Imperial Guard created by Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum in The X-Men #107 (Oct 1977) Introduced as a member of the Imperial Guard of the Shi'ar Empire, serving under Emperor D'Ken, brother of the exiled Lilandra Kallark is a Strontian, and the race is incredibly strong, but only when devoted to a principle - Kallark and other Strontians were vying for a spot in the guard, when they were ordered to return to Strontia and kill their elders - only Kallark obeyed without question, learning that it was a test of loyalty set up by the elders to protect the homeworld He encountered several heroes along his journey, as he continued to serve whoever was in charge of the Shi'ar Empire - D'Ken, Lilandra, Deathbird, and Vulcan Kallark defends the Empire against Vulcan and his assault, but when Vulcan leads a coup and takes over, Kallark is honor-bound to serve, although he has fleeting thoughts of doubt On Vulcan's orders, Kallark and the guard attack the wedding of Crystal and Ronan, intended to unite the Kree and Inhumans, though he sides with Lilandra to prevent her execution, he is unable to prevent a later assassination He accepts the position of Emperor of the Shi'ar to prevent further bloodshed and war, but appoints two advisors to help him handle most of the logistics of running the empire Joins the Annihilators to give himself an outlet for fighting, but refuses a leadership role Joins the Galactic Council, where he decides that Earth must be destroyed to save the universe from incursions, but when it was restored, no memory remained of the destruction Put a time-displaced Jean Grey on trial for her “future” crimes as Phoenix After Xandra is discovered, Kallark hands over the throne of the Shi'ar empire to her and returns to his role as head of the Guard Issues - More than you think you know (11:10) The waxing and waning of his self-esteem and focus. It's a function of the Strontian species that their physical abilities are all directly tied to their confidence level and their belief in themselves and their purpose. When Gladiator believes he can do so, he is powerful enough to knock planets out of their orbit, burn Galactus with his heat vision, and is said to have once ripped a black hole in half. Which I really hope was just an idle boast, because there's just...so many things wrong with that sentence. When he doubts himself, he becomes weak enough to get smacked around by Cannonball. A slavish devotion to his sense of duty. Gladiator takes his oath of loyalty to the Shi'ar throne and his position as Praetor of the Imperial Guard VERY seriously. He begins his career of imperial service when the Emperor orders him and the rest of the cadets being evaluated with him to kill the Council of Elders of his home planet as a test of loyalty. Most of the rest of the cadets refuse the order and rebel. Gladiator obeys it without question. He's had to serve a string of emperors and empresses who were objectively very bad people, from T'Korr to D'Ken to Deathbird to Vulcan. He hates the things he's ordered to do most of the time, but is a loyal servant of the throne through and through, purposefully keeping his focus single-mindedly on his duty in order to keep his powers at their maximum level and best perform his duties. The only time he ever wavers is when he's ordered to execute Lilandra, which is a pretty high bar, all things considered. (18:38) Lack of faith in his ability to lead anything that's not the Guard. When Vulcan and Deathbird are dispatched after War of Kings, Gladiator really doesn't want to take charge of what's left of the empire, and would rather anyone else be leader besides him. When he's with the Annihilators, he has no interest in any kind of a leadership role despite arguably being the team's most powerful member. When Professor X and Lilandra both die and someone has the bright idea to hatch a child from an egg made out of their combined genetic material, Gladiator's first response is, oh, thank God you're here! YOU'RE the empress now! This is probably tied into the confidence-based nature of his powers, but even with all of his experience serving at the highest echelons of an interstellar empire that boasts over one million member states, he really seems allergic to the idea of being in charge of anything that's not in his comfort zone of the Praetorian Guard. (25:46) Break (34:32) Plugs for ODPH, Freudian Sips, and Cullen Bunn Treatment (36:07) In-universe - Get him out of his element Out of universe - Compare to high-level athlete with the yips (39:14) Skit (48:31) Hello Kallark, I'm Dr. Issues. -Thank you for taking the time to see me, doctor. So, what can I do for you? -Forgive me my manners, but, we should at least shake hands before discussing more…personal items. Ok, sure -*yell*Ow! You have quite the grip for a human. Said…no one ever. Are you ok? I wasn't even trying to -*abruptly* I'm fine. Everythings fine. Not everything, but my hand is fine. *whispering to himself* Have I truly fallen so far? What was that? -Nothing. I…I need to see you because I have some questions that only a man of mental science can answer. Mental sci…that's unique. Anyhoo, go ahead. -Even though I am eons old, I pride myself on my…stamina. *hushed tone* do you understand what I'm saying? This is embarrassing. Well, you might need a different specialist, then. Do you have a primary care provider? -The Shi'ar Empire has spared no expense to test me from crown to sole, and yet, they find nothing…but…I haven't given them all of my…details. Go on…*sigh* look, I'm a professional. This is all confidential. If this goes where I think it's going, I may have ways to assist you. Continue -*deep breath* I am a proud member of the Imperial Guard. The proudest…member…if you will. I train my body constantly to serve in as many capacities as I can. And yet, I must admit…I may have cheated…oh the shame! I'm not casting judgment. You cheated with whom? -No, no, I do not blame anyone besides myself, by my own hand. Well, your hands may desensitize you if you aren't using variation in technique. -You do sound like you know about this topic quite well, and without hesitation. Alright then! I'll admit, I've resorted to using some natural remedies. Supplements if you will. Oh really? Well, on Earth many of those products do more harm than good. -I have learned the…umm..hard way…that this is true throughout the galaxy. Sure, for a brief time I felt like I could tackle a whole army and have my way with them in any test of…accomplishment. But that feeling faded. Now I feel…weaker than any Strontian has any right to feel. I may look the same, but I can tell I lack…girth. Is this making sense? Yes, and I definitely can help you. There is plenty of literature on my planet that shows some men have this type of adverse reaction to treatments for anxiety or depression. -Really? So they can't get up what they used to? I could lift planets out of their natural orbit, you know. Um…not the visual I would have wanted, but my point is, it's treatable. I don't know what the alien equivalent is, but here, it's called sildenafil. There are some options, and I want to go over the risks and benefits of - *interrupting* I have no fear of risks! Just tell me the benefits, please. Well, as you may have guessed, you'll be able to function in that area again. It increases blood flow, but the typical formulation is only used as needed to avoid staying that way permanently. -What? As needed? But I am always needed. The guard never ceases their duties. How am I supposed to maintain a steady workload if I rely on this temporary aide? Well first you need to try a low-*interrupting* And what time of day do I take this…sildenafil? On the days you use it…and ONLY on that day, you can take it up to 4 hours before any stimulation, but it's best 30 minutes before -And what about my diet? Don't eat, you need an empty stomach, but you can drink water, it's good to stay hydrated, anyway. -And what if I need to increase my…output. How many of these can I take? Just one a day, but -And will this also affect my breathing if I am too vigorous? Actually, for pulmonary hyperten -And what about if I am injured? If this affects my blood, will I suffer mortal wounds easier? I wouldn't recommend -Plus I don't…recover…as well as I used to. If I take anything else, will it affect those things as well? I thought you didn't care about side -How long do I take this, if I feel like my…body…is catching up to my…head? Sometimes I get a throbbing STOP! ***breathing heavily*** Look, stop with the innuendo, alright? You're talking about a sensitive topic, but you got through it. It's not easy to penetrate your defenses, but I've kept a stiff upper lip for too long. You're not going deep enough to get to the psychological basis of all of this. I can't last much longer. We need to start talking in plain language, or this whole encounter ends in a meaningless discharge. Do I make myself clear? -*shouts* SIR YES SIR! Good. Now, as I was trying to say before you unloaded all of your emotional content, erectile dysfunction is -*shocked* EXCUSE ME?!!! *pause* Come again? -WHAT are you on about? I've been pouring my soul out about my decline as a defender of the empire, and you want to talk about…sexual matters? What is wrong with you? I…I thought -You are a disgrace to your profession! And to think, I let myself believe that I needed your kind of help. I have tested the limits of EXISTENCE, and you have some sort of perverse motive to corrupt everything I stand for. How dare you! But the…and your cadence…your tone…the embarrass…*sigh* You know what? I'm willing to cut my losses. I apologize for the misunderstanding. I can refer you to another clinician, and we'll wipe the slate clean. Shake on it? -*pause* You drive a hard bargain. *crunching sound* OOOWWWW Where did that come from? -My grip…that's the grip I know that could choke out the Sun…YOU DID IT! I don't know how, but I'm back to…to ME? I can trust my…head…as well as my body…with my hands…I'm so excited I could just explode! Thank you! The Empire thanks you. THE UNIVERSE WILL SHOWER YOU WITH JOY *swooshing sound to indicate flying away* YESSSSSSS! *sigh* I need a vacation. Ending (55:09) Recommended reading: War of Kings Next episodes: Raven, Aquaman Plugs for social Transcript References: Moira episode - Anthony (6:05) Crystal episode - Anthony (7:08) Transformers Movie - Anthony (8:05) Rogue & Gambit episodes - Anthony (10:10) Dan and Dave 30 for 30 Podcast - Doc (44:45) Apple Podcasts: here Google Play: here Stitcher: here TuneIn: here iHeartRadio: here Twitter Facebook TikTok Patreon TeePublic Discord
Members of Pelosi's Praetorian Guard snub Republican leaders at today's congressional gold medal ceremony. Plus, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch raises concerns about re-education programs happening in progressive Colorado. Then, a three time Emmy award-winning actress joins us with updates about the wrongful prosecution of her husband as an alleged Chinese spy. Finally, former ambassador John Bolton can barely contain himself at the prospect of World War Three, and he wants to be the one leading it - not stopping it. More on his possible primary against Trump in 2024.Guests:· Julie Kelly· Martha Byrne· Kelly Lester· Connor Freeman
In this episode, Doug looks into the sordid history of the Praetorian Guard. Originally created by Emperor Augustus, it was intended to be a few thousand simple bodyguards who would protect the emperor and his family. Little did Augustus know, "[he] created potentially the most dangerous institution the Roman world had ever seen." In less than 100 years, the Guard's role expanded to become cops, soldiers, spies, gladiators, and assassins. They were supposed to take out the emperor's enemies. But once they got the taste for killing emperors and replacing them with guys who gave them bonuses, they became the emperors' biggest enemies themselves. During their four-hundred-year history, they would have a hand in killing over a dozen emperors. And they abandoned many more. They would be responsible for both the Year of the Four Emperors (AD 69) and the Year of the Five Emperors (AD 193). At their lowest point, they were literally selling the emperorship to the highest bidder. Sources used in this episode: Cassius Dio's Roman History Machiavelli's The Prince Chapter 19 Carl J. Richard, The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment, p. 103 Hayden Chakra at About History, History Of The Praetorian Guard, https://about-history.com/history-of-the-praetorian-guard/ Mark Cartwright at World History Encyclopedia, Praetorian Guard, https://www.worldhistory.org/Praetorian_Guard/ Evan Andrews at History.com, 8 Things You May Not Know About the Praetorian Guard, https://www.history.com/news/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-praetorian-guard Peter Preskar at History of Yesterday, The Imperial German Bodyguard, https://historyofyesterday.com/the-imperial-german-bodyguard-c0abb84c0e3 Genevieve Carlton and John Kuroski at All That's Interesting, Inside The Praetorian Guard, The Fearsome Military Unit Of Ancient Rome, https://allthatsinteresting.com/praetorian-guard --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
The FBI's efforts to interfere in the last two presidential elections on behalf of Democrats brings to mind the Praetorian Guard in the Roman Empire. Once the Guard realized it had the power to make and break emperors, who learned to play ball—or else. 5) Russia's natural gas diplomacy sending EU into recession; 4) China spying on US reaches disturbing levels; 3) Real US inflation now higher than worst of the Jimmy Carter years; 2) Polio case in New York, anthrax in Colorado cattle; 1) FBI suppression of Hunter Biden investigation was second consecutive presidential election in which the bureau intervened to hurt Trump.
What if the Roman Empire had experienced an Industrial Revolution? That's the compelling hook of Helen Dale's two-part novel, Kingdom of the Wicked: Rules and Order. Drawing on economics and legal history, Helen's story follows the arrest and trial of charismatic holy man Yeshua Ben Yusuf in the first century — but one with television, flying machines, cars, and genetic modification.In this episode of Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I dive into the fascinating world-building of Kingdom of the Wicked with Helen. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.James Pethokoukis: Your Kingdom of the Wicked books raise such an interesting question: What would have happened if Jesus had emerged in a Roman Empire that had gone through an industrial revolution? What led you to ask this question and to pursue that answer through these books?Helen Dale: There is an essay in the back of book one, which is basically a set of notes about what I brought to the book when I was thinking. And that has been published elsewhere by the Cato Institute. I go into these questions. But the main one, the one that really occurred to me, was that I thought, what would happen if Jesus emerged in a modern society now, rather than the historic society he emerged in? I didn't think it would turn into something hippy-dippy like Jesus of Montreal. I thought it would turn into Waco or to the Peoples Temple.And that wasn't necessarily a function of the leader of the group being a bad person. Clearly Jim Jones was a very bad person, but the Waco story is actually much more complex and much messier and involves a militarized police force and tanks attacking the buildings and all of this kind of thing. But whatever happened with it, it was going to go badly and it was going to end in violence and there would be a showdown and a confrontation. And it would also take on, I thought — I didn't say this in the essay, but I thought at the time — it would take on a very American cast, because that is the way new religious movements tend to blow up or collapse in the United States.And so I was thinking this idea, through my head, “I would like to do a retelling of the Jesus story, but how do I do it? So it doesn't become naff and doesn't work?” And so what I decided to do was rather than bring Jesus forward and put him now, I would put us back to the time of Jesus — but take our technology and our knowledge, but always mediated by the fact that Roman civilization was different from modern civilization. Not in the sense of, you know, human beings have changed, all that kind of thing. We're all still the same primates that we have been for a couple of hundred thousand years or even longer. But in the sense that their underlying moral values and beliefs about the way the world should work were different, which I thought would have technological effects. The big technological effect in Kingdom of the Wicked is they're much better at the biosciences and the animal sciences. They're much weaker at communications. Our society has put all its effort into [communication]. Their society is much more likely to put it into medicine.To give you an idea: the use of opioids to relieve the pain of childbirth is Roman. And it was rediscovered by James Young Simpson at The University of Edinburgh. And he very famously used the formula of one of the Roman medical writers. So I made a very deliberate decision: This is a society that has not pursued technological advancement in the same way as us. It's also why their motor vehicles look like the Soviet-era ones with rotary engines. It's why their big aircraft are kind of like Antonovs, the big Ukrainian aircraft that we've all been reading about since the war has started in Ukraine. So, in some respects, there are bits of their culture that look more Soviet, or at least Britain in the 1950s. You know, sort of Clement Attlee's quite centralized, postwar settlement: health service, public good, kind of Soviet-style. Soft Soviet; it's not the nasty Stalinist sort, but like late-Soviet, so kind of Brezhnev and the last part of Khrushchev. A few people did say that. They were like, “Your military parades, they look like the Soviet Union.” Yes. That was deliberate. The effort has gone to medicine.It's an amazing bit of world-building. I was sort of astonished by the depth and the scale of it. Is this a genre that you had an interest in previously? Are there other works that you took inspiration from?There's a particular writer of speculative fiction I admire greatly. His name is S.M. Stirling, and he wrote a series of books. I haven't read every book he wrote, but he wrote a series of books called the Draka series. And it's speculative fiction. Once again, based on a point of departure where the colonists who finished up in South Africa finished up using the resources of South Africa, but for a range of reasons he sets out very carefully in his books, they avoid the resource curse, the classic economist's resource curse. And so certainly in terms of a popular writer, he was the one that I read and thought, “If I can do this as well as him, I will be very pleased.”I probably didn't read as much science fiction as most people would in high school, unless it was a literary author like Margaret Atwood or George Orwell. I just find bad writing rebarbative, and a lot of science fiction struggles with bad writing. So this is the problem, of course, that Douglas Adams famously identified. And one of the reasons why he wrote the Hitchhiker's books was to show that you could combine science fiction with good writing.In all good works of speculative fiction of the alt-history variant, there's an interesting jumping-off point. I would imagine you had a real “Eureka!” moment when you figured out what your jumping-off point would be to make this all plausible. Tell me about that.Well, yes. I did. Once I realized that points of departure hugely mattered, I then went and read people like Philip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle. The point of departure for him is the assassination of Roosevelt. I went and read SS-GB [by] Len Deighton, a great British spycraft writer but also a writer of speculative fiction. And in that case, Britain loses the Battle of Britain and Operation Sea Lion, the putative land invasion of the UK, is successful. And I really started to think about this and I'm going, "Okay, how are you going to do this point of departure? And how are you going to deal with certain economic issues?"I'm not an economist, but I used to practice in corporate finance so I've got the sort of numerical appreciation for economics. I can read an economics paper that's very math heavy because that's my skill based on working in corporate finance. And I knew, from corporate finance and from corporate law, that there are certain things that you just can't do, you can't achieve in terms of economic progress, unless you abolish slavery, basically. Very, very basic stuff like human labor power never loses its comparative advantage if you have just a market flooded with slaves. So you can have lots of good science technology, and an excellent legal system like the Romans did. And they reached that point economists talk about of takeoff, and it just never happens. Just, they miss. It doesn't quite happen.And in a number of civilizations, this has happened. It's happened with the Song dynasty in China. Steve Davies has written a lot about the Song dynasty, and they went through the same thing. They just get to that takeoff point and then just … fizzled out. And in China, it was to do with serfdom, basically. These are things that are very destructive to economic progress. So you have to come up with a society that decides that slavery is really shitty. And the only way to do that is for them to get hooked on the idea of using a substitute for human labor power. And that means I have to push technological innovation back to the middle republic.So what I've done for my point of departure is at the Siege of Syracuse [in 213-212 B.C.]. I have Archimedes surviving instead of being killed. He was actually doing mathematical doodles outside his classroom, according to the various records of Roman writers, and he was killed by some rampaging Roman soldier. And basically Marcellus, the general, had been told to capture Archimedes and all his students and all their kids. So you can see Operation Paperclip in the Roman mind. You can see the thinking: “Oh no, we want this fellow to be our DARPA guy.” That's just a brilliant leap. I love that.And that is the beginning of the point of departure. So you have the Romans hauling all these clever Greek scientists and their families off and taking them to Rome and basically doing a Roman version of DARPA. You know, Operation Paperclip, DARPA. You know, “Do all the science, and have complete freedom to do all the…” — because the Romans would've let them do it. I mean, this is the thing. The Romans are your classic “cashed up bogans,” as Australians call it. They had lots of money. They were willing to throw money at things like this and then really run with it.You really needed both. As you write at one point, you needed to create a kind of a “machine culture.” You sort of needed the science and innovation, but also the getting rid of slavery part of it. They really both work hand in hand.Yes. These two have to go together. I got commissioned to write a few articles in the British press, where I didn't get to mention the name of Kingdom of the Wicked or any of my novels or research for this, but where people were trying to argue that the British Empire made an enormous amount of money out of slavery. And then, as a subsidiary argument, trying to argue that that led to industrialization in the UK. … [So] I wrote a number of articles in the press just like going through why this was actually impossible. And I didn't use any fancy economic terminology or anything like that. There's just no point in it. But just explaining that, “No, no, no. This doesn't work like that. You might get individually wealthy people, like Crassus, who made a lot of his money from slavery.” (Although he also made a lot from insurance because he set up private fire brigades. That was one of the things that Crassus did: insurance premiums, because that's a Roman law invention, the concept of insurance.) And you get one of the Islamic leaders in Mali, King Musa. Same thing, slaves. And people try to argue that the entirety of their country's wealth depended on slavery. But what you get is you get individually very wealthy people, but you don't get any propagation of the wealth through the wider society, which is what industrialization produced in Britain and the Netherlands and then in Germany and then in America and elsewhere.So, yes, I had to work in the machine culture with the abolition of slavery. And the machines had to come first. If I did the abolition of slavery first, there was nothing there to feed it. One of the things that helped Britain was Somerset's case (and in Scotland, Knight and Wedderburn) saying, “The air of the air of England is too pure for a slave to breathe.” You know, that kind of thinking. But that was what I realized: It was the slavery issue. I couldn't solve the slavery issue unless I took the technological development back earlier than the period when the Roman Republic was flooded with slaves.The George Mason University economist Mark Koyama said if you had taken Adam Smith and brought him back to Rome, a lot of it would've seemed very recognizable, like a commercial, trading society. So I would assume that element was also pretty important in that world-building. You had something to work with there.Yes. I'd read some Stoic stuff because I did a classics degree, so of course that means you have to be able to read in Latin. But I'd never really taken that much of an interest in it. My interest tended to be in the literature: Virgil and Apuleius and the people who wrote novels. And then the interest in law, I always had an advantage, particularly as a Scots lawyer because Scotland is a mixed system, that I could read all the Roman sources that they were drawing on in the original. It made me a better practitioner. But my first introduction to thinking seriously about stoicism and how it relates to commerce and thinking that commerce can actually be a good and honorable thing to do is actually in Adam Smith. Not in The Wealth of Nations, but in Moral Sentiments, where Adam Smith actually goes through and quotes a lot of the Roman Stoic writers — Musonius Rufus and Epictetus and people like that — where they talk about how it's possible to have something that's quite base, which is being greedy and wanting to have a lot of money, but realizing that in order to get your lot of money or to do really well for yourself, you actually have to be quite a decent person and not a s**t.And there were certain things that the Romans had applied this thinking to, like the samian with that beautiful red ceramic that you see, and it's uniform all through the Roman Empire because they were manufacturing it on a factory basis. And when you come across the factories, they look like these long, narrow buildings with high, well-lit windows. And you're just sort of sitting there going, “My goodness, somebody dumped Manchester in Italy.” This kind of thing. And so my introduction to that kind of Stoic thinking was actually via Adam Smith. And then I went back and read the material in the original and realized where Adam Smith was getting those arguments from. And that's when I thought, “Ah, right. Okay, now I've got my abolitionists.”This is, in large part, a book about law. So you had to create a believable legal system that did not exist, unlike, perhaps, the commercial nature of Rome. So how did you begin to work this from the ground up?All the substantive law used in the book is Roman, written by actual Roman jurists. But to be fair, this is not hard to do. This is a proper legal system. There are only two great law-giving civilizations in human history. The Romans were one of them; the English were the other. And so what I had to do was take substantive Roman law, use my knowledge of practicing in a mixed system that did resemble the ancient Roman system — so I used Scotland, where I'd lived and worked — and then [put] elements back into it that existed in antiquity that still exists in, say, France but are very foreign, particularly to common lawyers.I had lawyer friends who read both novels because obviously it appeals. “You have a courtroom drama?” A courtroom drama appeals to lawyers. These are the kind of books, particularly if it's written by another lawyer. So you do things like get the laws of evidence right and stuff like that. I know there are lawyers who cannot watch The Wire, for example, because it gets the laws of evidence (in the US, in this case) wrong. And they just finish up throwing shoes at the television because they get really annoyed about getting it wrong.What I did was I took great care to get the laws of evidence right, and to make sure that I didn't use common law rules of evidence. For example, the Romans didn't have a rule against hearsay. So you'll notice that there's all this hearsay in the trial. But you'll also notice a mechanism. Pilate's very good at sorting out what's just gossip and what is likely to have substantive truth to it. So that's a classic borrowing from Roman law, because they didn't have the rule against hearsay. That's a common law rule. I also use corroboration a lot. Corroboration is very important in Roman law, and it's also very important in Scots law. And it's basically a two-witness rule.And I did things, once again, to show the sort of cultural differences between the two great legal systems. Cornelius, the Roman equivalent of the principal crown prosecutor. Cornelius is that character, and he's obsessed with getting a confession. Obsessed. And that is deeply Roman. The Roman lawyers going back to antiquity called a confession the “Queen of Proofs.” And of course, if confessions are just the most wonderful thing, then it's just so tempting to beat the snot out of the accused and get your bloody confession. Job done. The topic of the Industrial Revolution has been a frequent one in my writings and podcasts. And one big difference between our Industrial Revolution and the one you posit in the book is that there was a lot of competition in Europe. You had a lot of countries, and there was an incentive to permit disruptive innovation — where in the past, the proponents of the status quo had the advantage. But at some point countries realized, “Oh, both for commerce and military reasons, we need to become more technologically advanced. So we're going to allow inventors and entrepreneurs to come up with new ideas, even if it does alter that status quo.” But that's not the case with Rome. It was a powerful empire that I don't think really had any competitors, both in the real world and in your book.That and the chattel slavery is probably why it didn't finish up having an industrial revolution. And it's one of the reasons why I had to locate the innovation, it had to be in the military first, because the military was so intensely respected in Roman society. If you'd have got the Roman military leadership coming up with, say, gunpowder or explosives or that kind of thing, the response from everybody else would've been, “Good. We win. This is a good thing.” It had to come from the military, which is why you get that slightly Soviet look to it. There is a reason for that. The society is more prosperous because it's a free-market society. The Romans were a free-market society. All their laws were all sort of trade oriented, like English law. So that's one of those things where the two societies were just really similar. But in terms of technological innovation, I had to locate it in the army. It had to be the armed forces first.In your world, are there entrepreneurs? What does the business world look like?Well, I do try to show you people who are very commercially minded and very economically oriented. You've got the character of Pilate, the real historical figure, who is a traditional Tory lawyer, who has come up through all the traditional Toryism and his family's on the land and so on and so forth. So he's a Tory. But Linnaeus, who he went to law school with, who is the defense counsel for the Jesus character, Yeshua Ben Yusuf, is a Whig. And his mother was a freed slave, and his family are in business in commerce. They haven't bought the land.A lot of these books finished up on the cutting room floor, the world-building. And there is a piece that was published in a book called Shapers of Worlds: Volume II, which is a science-fiction anthology edited by a Canadian science-fiction author called Ed Willett. And one of the pieces that finished up on the cutting room floor and went into Shapers of Worlds is a description of Linnaeus's family background, which unfortunately was removed. You get Pilate's, but you don't get Linnaeus's. And Linnaeus's family background, his dad's the factory owner. The factory making cloth. I was annoyed with my publisher when they said, “This piece has to go,” and I did one of those snotty, foot-stamping, awful things. And so I was delighted when this Canadian publisher came to me and said, “Oh, can we have a piece of your writing for a science-fiction anthology?” And I thought, “Oh good. I get to publish the Linnaeus's dad story in Shapers of Worlds.”And I actually based Linnaeus's dad — the angel as he's referred to, Angelus, in the Kingdom of the Wicked books, and his personality is brought out very strongly — I actually based him on John Rylands. Manchester's John Rylands, the man who gave his name to the Rylands Library in Manchester. He was meant to be the portrait of the entrepreneurial, Manchester industrialist. And to this day, authors always have regrets, you don't always get to win the argument with your publisher or your editor, I am sorry that that background, that world-building was taken out of Kingdom of the Wicked and finished up having to be published elsewhere in an anthology. Because it provided that entrepreneurial story that you're talking about: the factory owner who is the self-made man, who endows libraries and technical schools, and trains apprentices, and has that sort of innovative quality that is described so beautifully in Matt Ridley's book, How Innovation Works, which is full of people like that. And this book as well, I've just bought: I've just bought Arts and Minds, which is about the Royal Society of Arts. So this is one of those authorial regrets: that the entrepreneur character wasn't properly fleshed out in the two published books, Kingdom of the Wicked book one and book two. And you have to get Shapers of Worlds if you want to find out about Linnaeus's industrialist dad.Is this a world you'd want to live in?Not for me, no. I mean, I'm a classically trained lawyer. So classics first, then law. And I made it a society that works. You know, I don't write dystopias. I have a great deal of admiration for Margaret Atwood and George Orwell, who are the two greatest writers of dystopias, in my view, in contemporary, and not just contemporary fiction, probably going back over a couple of hundred years. Those two have really got it, when it comes to this vision of horror. You know, the boot stamping on the human face forever. I greatly admire their skill, but those are not the books I write. So the society I wrote about in Kingdom of the Wicked is a society that works.But one of the things I deliberately did with the Yeshua Ben Yusuf character and what were his early Christian followers, and the reason I've taken so much time to flesh them out as real characters and believable people [is] because the values that Christianity has given to the West were often absent in the Roman world. They just didn't think that way. They thought about things differently. Now some of those Christian values were pretty horrible. It's fairly clear that the Romans were right about homosexuality and abortion, and the Christians were wrong. That kind of thing. That's where they were more liberal. But, you will have noticed, I don't turn the book into Gattaca. I try to keep this in the background because obviously someone else has written Gattaca. It's an excellent film. It's very thought provoking. I didn't want to do that again. It's kept in the background, but it is obvious — you don't even really need to read between the lines — that this is a society that engages in eugenics. You notice that all the Roman families have three children or two children, and there's always a mix of sexes. You never have all boys or all girls. You know what they're doing. They're doing sex-selective abortions, like upper-class Indians and Chinese people do now. You've now dealt with the problem of not enough girls among those posh people, but they still want a mixture of the two. You notice that the Romans have got irritatingly perfect teeth and their health is all very good. And people mock Cyler, one of the characters, because his teeth haven't been fixed. He's got what in Britain get called NHS teeth. He hasn't got straightened teeth, because he genuinely comes from a really, really poor background. I have put that in there deliberately to foil those values off each other, to try to show what a world would look like where there are certain values that will just never come to the fore.And as you mentioned, industry: how those values also might influence which areas technology might focus on, which I think is a great point.I did that quite deliberately. There is a scene in the first book in Kingdom of the Wicked where Linnaeus — who's the Whig, the nice Whig, the lovely Whig who believes in civil rights and justice and starts sounding awfully Martin Luther King-ish at various points, and that kind of thing; he's the most likable form of progressive, Stoic Roman ideas — and when he encounters a child that the parents have kept alive, a disabled child, which in his society would just be put down at birth like Peter Singer, they have Peter Singer laws, he's horrified. And he doesn't even know if it's human.I actually wrote a piece about this couple of years ago for Law & Liberty, for Liberty Fund. I did find that people wanted to live in this sort of society. And I just sort of thought, “Hmm, there are a lot more people out there who clearly agree with things like eugenics, Peter Singer laws, a society that has absolutely no welfare state. None.” There are people who clearly find that kind of society attractive. And also the authoritarianism, the Soviet-style veneration of the military. A lot of people clearly quite like that. And clearly like that it's a very orderly society where there are lots of rules and everybody knows where they stand. But even when the state is really, really very powerful.I deliberately put a scene in there, for example, where Pilate's expectorating about compulsory vaccinations — because he's a Roman and he thinks compulsory vaccinations save lives and he doesn't give a s**t about your bodily integrity. I did try to leave lots of Easter eggs, to use a gaming expression, in there to make it clear that this is a society that's a bit Gattaca-ish. I did that for a reason.I don't know if there's a sequel in mind, but do you think that this world eventually sort of Christianizes? And if this is what the world looks like 2000 years ago, what would that world look like today?I haven't thought of the answer to the first one. I must admit. I don't really know the answer to that. But in the second one, I did discuss this in quite a bit of detail with my then partner. And she said, “I honestly think that with that sort of aggressiveness and militarism, they will finish up conquering the planet. And then it'll start looking like a not-nice version of Star Trek. It won't be the Federation. It will be much more likely to be Khan and the Klingons and they'll start looking really, really Klingon basically.” That was her comment at the time.Like a more militaristic version of Star Trek.Yeah. But sort of very militarized and not the Prime Directive or any of that. Obviously Star Trek is very much an American conception of Americans in space. My Romans in space would look much more like the Centauri out of Babylon 5 or the Klingons in Star Trek. They would be much more aggressive and they'd be a lot more ambiguous…I don't know how much of a Star Trek fan you are, but of course there's the mirror universe, which kind of looks like that. We have the evil Kirk and the evil Spock. There's still advance, but there's like a Praetorian Guard for the captain and…All of that. Yes. I hadn't really thought about the first question, but the second question I thought, “Yeah, if this persists into the future, imagining a hypothetical future, then I think you are going to be dealing with people who are really, really quite scary.”Apparently you're not working on a sequel to this book, but what are you working on? Another book?Yes. I'm actually being pursued at the moment by a British publisher, who I won't drop into it because otherwise, if I say the name, then I will never, never be forgiven. And then they will insist on me writing a book. I'm never going to be the world's most super productive novelist. I think that I may finish up in my life writing maybe another two. I look at Stephen King. That man writes a door stopper of a book every time he sits down to have a hot meal. Incredible. How does he do it? I'm not that person.Helen, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.Thank you very much for having me. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe
In this episode, it's Roman Emperors behaving badly--and Praetorian Prefects behaving even worse. Beginning with Caligula, Emperors were assaulted in their homes, killed with their families, dragged through the streets, and mutilated by angry mobs. At one point, the Praetorians even assassinated an Emperor, then auctioned off the Empire to the highest bidder. Find out just how bad it got. Get ad-free episodes here: https://www.patreon.com/ancienthistoryfangirl Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
He grew up in Milan and became an army officer, where he distinguished himself so well that the Emperor Diocletian made him captain of the Praetorian Guard not suspecting that Sebastian was a Christian. In Rome, while fulfilling the duties of a courtier, he used his position to comfort and encourage his imprisoned fellow-Christians. By his labors and example he brought many to faith in Christ, including Chromatius, the Prefect in charge of persecuting the Roman Christians. Sebastian had upheld two brothers, Mark and Marcellinus, who were awaiting execution for their faith. When the day of execution came, their father Tranquillinus, who had been a pagan but through Sebastian's example had converted, presented himself to Chromatius and announced that he too was a Christian. His testimony was so powerful that the hard heart of the Prefect was melted, and he himself resolved to become a Christian. Caius, Bishop of Rome, gathered the new brethren (both men and women — not all of Sebastian's converts have been mentioned here) to embrace them and baptize them, but also to warn them of their coming Martyrdom. He instructed some to flee the city and others, headed by Sebastian, to remain in Rome, devoting their days to fasting, prayer and thanksgiving as they awaited their death. As the "company of Martyrs" did this, many came to them and were healed of ailments, and many joined them in confessing Christ. When the time of martyrdom came, each member of the company was subjected to imaginatively cruel tortures before his execution. Sebastian himself was made to witness the deaths of all his companions, then to endure his own trial. He serenely confessed his unshaken faith before Diocletian himself before being taken to the place of execution. There he was tied to a post and made the target of a band of archers until his body bristled with arrows like the quills of a porcupine. He was left for dead, but when Irene, widow of St Castulus, came to bury him, she found him alive and tended his wounds. Amazingly, he recovered, and presented himself once again to the Emperor. Astonished and outraged, the tyrant ordered that Sebastian be beaten to death with clubs and thrown into the city's sewer. That evening, a pious Christian woman was told in a vision to retrieve his body and bury it in the catacombs. After St Constantine brought peace to the Church, Pope Damasus built a church over the site in the Saint's honor. For hundreds of years, many miracles were worked there through St Sebastian's intercessions.
Episode two of Saint Podcast's Martyr series is about Saint Sebastian, the patron saint of pandemics, athletes, archers, and outcasts. He's one of the most well-known saints. No other saint has as many works of art dedicated to them from paintings to films to books and pop songs. Tune in to learn more about this 3rd-century Roman citizen from Gaul who was famously shot full of arrows. And discover how a battle-weary Praetorian Guard transformed from a Medieval protector against pandemics to a shirtless, barely legal pin-up and gay icon.
“This guy is a critical race theory zealot, a huge proponent of the notorious 1619 project, huge proponent of the Black Lives Matter movement, proponent of all kinds of riots that have been going on,” Beattie said. Our guests are: Boris Epshteyn, Darren Beattie, Rudy Giuliani Stay ahead of the censors - Join us warroom.org/join Aired On: 05/06/2021 Watch: On the Web: http://www.warroomorg.wpengine.com On Podcast: http://warroom.ctcin.bio On TV: PlutoTV Channel 240, Dish Channel 219, Roku, Apple TV, FireTV or on https://AmericasVoice.news. #news #politics #realnews
News and chat about society, with a soundboard and propaganda mixed in. On all podcast platforms. This is the first episode with the new HD microphone. It's the HD era! This episode, I was joined by Andy Palmer (twitter: @andipalmur) of the Grubstakers podcast, we talked about mmany things, primarily related to Ancient Rome, such as: - The Trojan War and the mythological associations of the Romans to the Trojans - Romulus and Remus - Historical evaluations of Julius Caesar - The transition from Roman Republic to Roman Empire - The role of the Praetorian Guard, and how the emperor's guards evolved into a powerful state apparatus - The causes of the rise and collapse of Rome - The transition to feudalism that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire - The political economic structure of Empires - The American imperialist impact on places like Germany and Korea, and our study abroad experiences - All of that, and much much more, this is the Society Show! Leave a message on the Society Show voicemail: (917) BETH-1EU [(971) 238-4138 Follow the show on twitter: @society_show Write in to the show: societyshowpodcast@gmail.com These four books were referenced on the episode: "SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome" by Mary Beard, "Caesar, Life of a Colossus" by Adrian Goldsworthy, "The Assassination of Julius Caesar" by Michael Parenti, and "Escape from Rome" by Walter Schiedel
Justin and Drew discuss how his background in sports and the lessons in teamwork, failure, and passion has prepared him for his career in the financial world.
Like Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the media members of the Praetorian Guard rushed to attack the Wall Street Journal over an op-ed that argued Jill Biden should drop the "Dr." as an honorific. It's this kind of moral grandstanding that is employed to silence critics and elevate one's social status. This kind of grievance politics is also used as an excuse for the elites to abandon allegiance to the nation - arguing it is inherently irredeemable. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/petekalinershow See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Get exclusive content here!: https://thepetekalinershow.com/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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