Onasander

I'll quit if you want me to Viggen. I have zero tolerance for false martyrs. It was the Romans, after all who pioneered this concept when some Christians would intentionally provoke pagan administers to martyr them. It was declared a sin of pride by the Roman Church in that era. Absolutely no difference here. Zero. He had a chance to leave, and it was when the Antiquities were pulled out by Assad's government. He obviously was a subject matter expert on the site. His knowledge of artifacts would be essential to identifying any future black market sales, as well as documenting future destruction of the site. He had zero capacity to positively effect the site. He was far too old to fight to preserve the site. He was very, very unlikely to reason in the preservation of the site to ISIS, they are iconoclastic, and view guts like him as preservers of the very pagan heritage they sought to destroy. By leaving, he could of potentially served history, by staying, absolutely no one benefited. I speak the obvious truth, the onus of responsibility was leaving. It was never in staying. If he had loved ones that needed protecting, he should of unhesitatingly gotten them out, he had plenty of advance warning. The end result was obvious. Why is he a martyr? For what cause? Shall we emulate him, be like him? No. Under no circumstance be like him. He threw away his duty and responsibility. It's a unpalitable truth only because our society has conditioned us to be uncritical about such matters. He was a old man who died for what he believed in, for history. We shall have icons made of him, and dedicate a history of Palmyra in his name. He can become the new Saint of History. No.... the unpalatable truth is, what this man did was wrong. He gave up on either romantic tiredness, or a flight of fancy that somehow sticking it out would save, or preserve so aspect of the site, offer a symbolic Victory in retrospect. Let me tell you this, every historian covering the plundering and pillaging of war. War Crimes are always irreprehensible and disturbing, a lot of outright rape and butchering. Severe, gut wrenching violence. Average people, the kind of people you see everyday suddenly getting beaten to death. Wounded, raped infront of their children. Storefronts and monuments ripped apart, burnt. Anything of beauty, anything of memory gone. There are two kinds of people. People who understand this in advance, can read the signs, and leave. And the second type, those foolish enough to stay. I prefer civilians to be of the first, and soldiers of the second. But it doesn't work out that way, far too many fools stay put. Does it make the actions of the invading Army any less evil? No, he was a old man, a non-combantant, and in Islam's eyes a good Muslim undoubtedly. He simply shouldn't of died. But it was obvious knowing who he was, he would. It be right up there with being a luxury store owner in a communist revolution, chances are.... your bid to sovietize your employees into a luxury guild isn't going to pass the central committee's approval. It's how prejudice works. These armies of not fountainheads of enlightenment. They exist to mangle and break. Chances are local stone sculptures in ISIS lands have found business to be rather depressed as well if they are still alive. There is a overriding, fundamental importance that we all someday may potentially have to make, depending on where our life will take us. If we end up in some perspective hellhole, and Syria wasn't always a hellhole, the subject matter expert in our field, and were facing a Army such as ISIS, and have zero reason pragmatically of positively effecting anything by sticking around, but can do much in documenting the destruction by going elsewhere, into a safe rear area, then we have a absolute moral duty to do just this. Staying is a prideful, immoral suicide. It's right to be appalled by such acts, as ISIS's brutality, but its equally wrong to make false martyrs of a fool who was intelligent enough to know better. It only encourages others to replicate the behavior in this war and future Wars. It's a cycle that unnecessarily depletes the intelligencia dedicated to history and its preservation. Only reason we even know about this story is because for some odd reason, destruction and exploitation of antiquities are becoming a war crime (destruction of inanimate objects = the violence of genocide, I doubt this, but for devil's advocate, lets accept it here). He had zero chance of successfully emulating General Gordon in 19th Century Khartoum, under siege my the Madhi's Army. The General tried shamming the British Empire into rescuing him, falls talking the fall of Sudan to the Islamic forces. This guy had zero pull. I can't name a single archeologist alive that NATO would parachute a unit in to defend on site, in situ. If it is becoming a war crime (silly, but I can think of worst candidates. I recall Marx and Engels horrified at making the destruction of industrial property in Russia illegal internationally in wartime) then we infact have a duty to aide in the documentation. At his age, he couldn't be expected to do much else infact. His economic worth is more or less shot otherwise. We have the beginnings of sites and movements dedicated to documenting this destruction. We have a emergent awareness of the necessity to document artifacts on the black market even when taken out of its archeological context, we have a cosmetic and romantic need to recreate sites destroyed. This is good. We're now the worst of in Syria because this fool threw his life away. Hence why he can't ever be accepted as a martyr. Is it a tragedy? Yes. Was ISIS any less wrong in killing him? No. Are we right in upholding him as a martyr, as a object of emulation? Absolutely not. Unless you have fighting skills, arms, and a desire to form a resistance, or tied to a impossible to move assortment of dependents locally who couldn't be moved, you have a singular duty to be one of the people who flee in advance. The statues in the museum managed to get out, why not him? It is good to mourn him, ethically very wrong now to celebrate his act of stupidity as a martyr. If History is to become the domain of Ethics, then historians fall under Ethical teachings. Our actions in times of war are now accountable, we are no longer privileged to become aloof, introspective observers with our heads up in the clouds like Archimedes being slayed by Roman soldiers, unaware of the larger battle raging outside. Our entry into Just War Theory as more than passive observers have trusted responsibility upon us. We can't just expect everyone to jump and serve us, and be careless about ourselves, and the war we now play in society. We now have a legal role that's just now becoming apparent, as documenters of destruction, in explaining the importance of a site. We can't do this if we go down with the ship. We have to be preferably outside the destruction, preferably preserving as many artifacts and primary resources outside of the conflict if at all possible. You cannot justifiably apply a warrior ethos to us. It's not our job to be brave in the face of danger and defy death, but to actively evade it when given the chance. Thus is what it means to be a historian, be you academic or the foremost local expert of lay knowledge. If I was to apply Roman era ethical evaluations, say, from Arius Didymus, qualifying this man as worthy or worthless, in which direction do you think I'd be forced to categorize him as? Plain and simple, you can't get much use out of his corpse. We already knew ISIS was genocidal. What we needed to know was details on artifacts, the state of the site it terms of before and after destruction, identifying which artifacts were pilfered from warehouses, or dug up from the ground. Future trials are this much harder for international dealers and war profiteers now because he decided to be foolish, doing something most of us would of instinctively known not to do. It's right up there with elderly people who decide they aren't complying with the state of emergency declarations, and will ride out the storm from the volcano they built their house on while it blows. It's a remarkably bad idea. I cry for the list of life, but won't make martyrs out of them. We all kinda know why they died. At least they didn't have Just War requirements forming around them as historians are now today in the 21st century. He evaded his duty to society. That's the flip side to everyone crying over historic sites being destroyed or ransacked at the pining of history enthusiasts. It means we just received a public aura of sacred keepers of kinds of knowledge, whereas before we were just civilian professionals or enthusiasts. We know have responsibilities. Think of Spock in the recent Star Trek movie trying to save his planet's council on culture and history. That is the old way of thinking. We as a society have changed so much in our recent thinking in approaching antiquities and war that it would of been common sense, Logic even, for Spock to assumed they left at the very first instance of trouble. If history is this important, we have a absolute duty to retreat, evade, and survive. We of all people should know exactly how nasty a invading, hell bent Army can be, especially if they despise everything we as historians believe in. So no, this man can never be a martyr. It is the caveat of mourning over history, in getting our laws internationally rewritten to support our causes. We can no longer afford to be emotionally impared or stupid in the onslaught of danger. We can't be high priests self sacrificing, or captains trying everything until the last, going down with the ship. Rarely can we be warriors and fight the threat off single handedly, and I am unaware of a single historian, museum director, or historian with enough charisma and cultural pull that he would become a cultural treasure we would go far out of the way to defend under impossible odds. We can't move a Army to our defense, but we can easily direct the ire of a prosecutor in a international war court later on with our expert testimony. We can write books, help future generations remember. The ironic thing about the Library of Alexandria is we have just as many accounts of its many book burnings and destructions as its actual vital life while in operations. We know more about the Jews of Germany in the 1930s than in 1990. Just how it was, and in the future we can do better. Times are changing Viggen. I'm the first to note this, but just that.... the first. A new chapter to the Philosophy of History has opened up, and it will become a increasing pressure upon our future to get historians to realize they are operating in a new Ethical framework, and that we have more responsibility to society and less free will than we had just two years ago. It's going to be very slow for cultural perspectives to change, but were now on a legal footing that will inevitably force all of us to change. I recommend everyone to bookmark this thread, and return to it in twenty to thirty years, and see just how right my predictions turned out. Moral questions regarding the duty of historians and archeologists will be debated in History 101. It's a concept alien to us not too long ago, isn't it? People studying to be museum conservators will take courses detailing working in parallel with national guards and relief organizations in evacuating national treasures. What is the triage? What do you save? Is the conservator's life cheap in a case not everything can be moved? Does he have moral and legal responsibilities to society and future generations beyond the site? Will this "martyr" pop up on a history MBA course? Perhaps not him in particular, but other fools in the future like him. Eventually prosecutors and lawyers are going to snap, pointing out the best expert witnesses habitually die over a stubborn romanticism for sites that were lost to begin with, and really need to stick to the rear and help international efforts to preserve the knowledge they have. Everything this guy knew.... gone. ISIS' destruction is just starting though. We needed him, and the damn fool threw his life away. Times have changed. History itself as a discipline is changing. The old morality has changed too. We have to look towards ourselves as keepers of a flame worth remembering, and that remembering is too precious to throw our lives away. This is, after all, the underlining presumption to making destruction of historical sites a war crime, right? It seems to be the logical ends of it. By upholding the self serving desires of a old man to stick to his site under the onslaught of a genocidal Army, certain to either kill him or abuse his knowledge to maximize their pilfering, is simple wrong. I grieve over the lost of life, I am angered at the crime, but am very stern and emphatic, our era of youthful fun history is over. History has now come into its own as a Ethical and Sacred Profession. The things you know, once they are lost from your carelessness, its as bad a genocide. He had a moral responsibility to Syrians, to the world, and to future generations to evade and survive, to preach his knowledge and keep a keen eye of vigilence on his site from afar, working and unifying every investigator and taskforce out there. It's not glorious, its not brave, but if history matters as much as the UN is claiming it to be, as news attention on Syria has been (and Syria has 15,000 Roman sites, only this one made the news big) then yeah, our responsibilities have decidedly shifted. You might not tolerate it on your site Viggen, but I promise you, it will become the leading Ethical dilemma rooted at the heart of historians everywhere in a generation. We are just now seeing things change now. I don't see how history professors won't be shocking freshmen students with far more inflammatory language and moral questioning, yelling "Nooooo" and slamming text book covers in class to dramatically unaware students that there are ethical dimensions to history and archeology far beyond Indiana Jones, that we can find ourselves in the 21st century in duties a 20th century professional would of found farther absurd or alien. Viggen, your flabbergasted now, give it a few more decades. You'll find I was a relative angel in my stance, and rather prophetic. I won't hold the grudge against you. Heck, I'll probably write another Philosophy of History essay on this very subject here in a few days after I'm done with my current one. It be under my "Rot at the Center of Time" collection someday if you look it up in a few months. Been pumping ideas out slowly. I'll check back in a few days to see if your serious about this ban. I stand absolutely by what I said, I won't allow this man to become a false martyr. Our priorities have just shifted ethically to survival. We must intrinsically somehow matter more, as the chief interpreters of History, if the destruction of History is somehow now a war crime. We can't be children in the face of danger any more.

http://www.haaretz.com/life/archaeology/1.640797 I suppose the argument is a bit like the abortion argument, if you outlaw abortion, women merely will go to back alley hanger sessions under very unhygenic conditions to have it done, so by outlawing abortions, your just putting women's health at risk. In Egypt, the laws around Antiquities can be very strict, so whenever people decide to defile a mummy, looking for treasures to sell on the black market, they have a tricky moral dilemma.... how do you get rid of the historical treasure afterwards? You flush it down the toilet! No, not literally of course. They have no toilets, but rather pipes in a bowl in the ground they squat over, and they don't usually flush.... but I assure you, the have enough ingenuity to get a whole sarcophagus down there. The obvious solution.... open up clinics for people to bring their Mummies they found in, so they can desecrate them under the watchful eye of experts, who can photograph and even appraise the pawn shop worth of any trinkets they may find, and can have access to the broken remainder afterwards. Chainsaws, prybars, and axes will be provided by the clinic. No need to flush human remains, precious historical artifacts down the toilets anymore! It's time we take this barbaric practice out of the back ally and into the mainstream. Think of all the history we can preserve!

He did a lot of harm by sticking around, he should of left and wrote about it. I'm not going to let this guy become a martyr for history. His duty was to survive, and write about what was lost, and coordinate the documentation of the destruction of antiquities from afar. By sticking around, nobody benefited. He wasn't in a position of doing anything positive by hanging about ISIS territory. Their soldiers aren't going to be moved by a passionate plea on his part not to destroy, they are a bunch of thugs who would look at him as a preserver of idols. If he got a chance to live at all once they figured out who he was, it was to help them coordinate the exploitation of the site for sale on the black market, and what had priority in western minds for destruction for future propaganda purposes. If your involved in antiquities, be it a historian, archeologist, or life long volunteer involved in the system, and a similar iconoclastic militia shows up hell bent on destroying your life's accomplishments, get the hell out. There is nothing you can do. If you have time, and they did here.... move the treasures out, snap some photos of what you can't, and get out of Dodge. You have a duty to preserve the knowledge, not to die like a idiot or worst, become a pawn in the destruction of the site when at the last moment you realize when given the ultimatum, you do indeed want to live. Last thing we need is a specialist with intimate knowledge of archeology sites turn coating because they had a existentialist awakening at the barrel end of a gun. Zero tolerance for this kind of silliness.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphiareion_of_Oropos Anyone up for a agnostic festival with athletic games? Everyone proudly stumped and uncommitted either way?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_glass I'm assuming someone in Roman times discovered how to make plastic.

Well, this veteran is disagreeing with you. I was in the airborne infantry, unit was in the triangle of death. I don't recall any systematic brutality being taught to us outside of classic troop moving proceedures. We did have a certain emphasis with encouraging guys to be assertive when grabbing and holding people down, but really can't say we were trained to be brutal. Quite the opposite, lots of safeguards were put in place to prevent it, SOP regulations on getting insurgents from the battle to detention, and not allowing same soldiers into the detention center. Medical access was available in a moment's notice, and they had the means to complain and file a complaint, and we wouldn't begrudge them that. Our martial arts was US Army Combative, which emphasizes wrestling over kicking or punching. I've seen guys go full throttle by the book for hours doing it. It's not designed to defeat a opponent as much as to hold them down so your support can arrive and capture them. There are psychological crutches. I kept reaching for my rifle every time I left my room for years after, when I was out.... I had no rifle. Whenever I walked, I felt the phantom pains of a gun in my arms. Of all the messed up vets Ive seen, and I've seen a lot, none suffered from this brutality you mentioned. Many had asocial issues, or alcohol and substance issues, family issues (never heard of abuse, but sure that was in the mix for some, its a taboo subject). Who it is being dehumanized, I don't know. Modern infantry tactics emphasizes conscious awareness of your actions in a firefight. You don't always get it right, and that's understandable, but we try hard to do so. A competent military unit doesn't go around pushing civilians around, smacking them and spitting on them, calling them weak like some stupid Nietzschean, bloating up a pathetic superiority complex. That's just lame. We have 50 years of winning their hearts and minds theory behind us, and a facade from WW2 of a Liberator Complex, be it right or wrong in reality, is very much right in most soldier's heads. You get your basic cultural contradictions, such a meme driven racism, everyone has heard of "Sand Niggers" but its never said to the population, and is said usually in a Beavis & Butthead style. Those same guys usually can be seen doing some pretty decent things as well. I'm not claiming this to be a trait of just Americans, or even a unique virtue of democracy or our culture. I think it stems from the current Tactical Synthesis. Troops have a limited amount of ammo (so can't endlessly butcher), prefer the humvee to running amok, prefer the base to the humvee, and the barracks back home to the warzone. Everything is being watched on multiple tiers.... from other units via satellite computer programs, satellite imaging, battalion and brigade (and who knows above) is listening to the radio talk, every mission has concrete objectives and time tables. Planning from beginning to end is accounted for, and how to react to impossible situations. It kills the motivation to act on negative impulse. Likewise, a absurd level of authority has been given to even unit commanders to get rid of suspected soldiers prone to fraking, killing their officers. It's to the point people making legitimate complaints can get sent away. This doesn't stop everything. I recall for example, my battalions scout unit was repeatedly placed in a position where their cover was blown during the day, and they had to kill people who can across them (I emphasize, this was the triangle of death in 2007). This has philosophically been debated prior to it on a national level, inside and outside the military, and in SF training. We never came to a balanced conclusion culturally. The scouts were trained to a SF level, were in a arctic airborne infantry unit with ample access to Ranger and SF veterans. Same circumstance. Central command decided to make a political example of them for having to kill to keep their position secret. They needed a PR campaign to show the Iraqis they care, and fabricated a case against them. It was morally wrong for JAG to do this, as I pointed out before, we philosophically were out on a limb long before the Iraq war came along in regards as what to do, and have been quite public about it. But it shows you the level of intentionality the military goes to enforce humanization of soldiers. When I look at the Chinese Army, I see they are specifically mimicking the US system. India Britain's system. A AK-47 isn't much different from western weapons. A uparmored humvee with a gunner standing in the back isn't much different from a humvee. Airforces drop a variety of potential bombs, but the trend will be increasingly towards smart, exact explosives. I don't think the trend internationally will be towards roaming, independent units left up to their own devices. It will be centralized control, seeking to minimize any negating fluctuations that jeopardizes the image of the unit, or produces needless friction between the military and the civilian population. Doing otherwise is a great way to encourage active resistance, including full blown guerilla movements, and a needless list of skilled personal. Showing off your war wounds has nothing to do with this topic. Ive been gone for a few months from this site duking it out with a Nietzschean faction on a philosophy site, who were obsessed with sexual politics (cause they are secretly gay or something, I dunno). I had to give my military background and show off my beard just to show I was unimpeachable a man. Wasn't my intention setting out, but they questioned everyone like in the inquisition on the Roman concept of Vir, which is a nasty paraphilia in and of itself (Catallus) when you have to emphasize it to cover up. I had to show my credentials to show them otherwise, and end that tangent of the debate. I'm sure this Roman you speak of had to do likewise, showing that his ideas may differ, but he can't be declared unpatriotic for having a different opinion. For Gods sake, look.... I was even wounded in defence of my society. It's a excellent retort. Some military formations, and technologies, force close quarters melee combat. Brutality is emphasized. The US doesn't encourage this, as we don't have to. So its not a inherent component of military training, unit consciousness, or inherent even in the use of military force. However, it is inherent in kinds of close quarters melee fighting. You can expect soldiers used to fighting from a disrance, to be less brutal. Doesn't mean they will be, but there is selective pressures to lead to this conformity over time. Doesn't make them less effective. Does make the transition period awkward, as some parts of the military lag, while others get ahead of themselves in their miscarriage of justice (JAG).

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-08/14/c_134518054.htm This comes from a major Chinese new site. Claims that in "celebration" of the 70th anniversary of China's Victory Over Japan, they released a batch of state files, including a bewildering confession by a Japanese soldier of systematic brain harvesting, taken from living victims, cooked into a medicinal soup and given to a sargeant to treat his sexually transmitted disease..... It's very, very rare for me to come across a story of a war crime that causes me to pause in amazement and disgust. I honestly can't tell if it is true. Chinese are perpetually racially and nationally motivated against China, the war ended 70 years ago, and they still drum those demons up, so can't rule it out as a masterful piece of propaganda. But it comes from a top state owned new site. If true, middle and high school teacher of history should mention this to their class when discussing WW2 atrocities. Yes, the gas chambers killed far more, but at the same time removed the actual killing away from the soldiers and workers involved. It was commanded down from the highest echelons. This brain harvesting, to treat a VD of all things, was done to appease a very low ranking NCO's very personal issue. So personal, I'm surprised anyone knew. From what traditional medicine text they got this one from, I dunno. Seems a rather frivolous connection to make. I simply can't fathom how a unit can fall so low as for everyone in a battalion to just sit around and accept this. This wasn't survival cannibalism, but casual. How can you sit somewhere, say in a chowhall, in that unit, and not immediately look at this guy and think "This is the asshole how has VD that eats brain soup" and not be disgusted enough to bayonet the moron in the latrine at night? That's all I would think about if I was drafted into that unit. This guy, he has to die. How can I kill him without getting caught? Horrible? Yes, but that's exactly my approach. Stab you, push you down into the much and drop a duce on you too. I have zero sympathy for such people, or the systems that allow such atrocities to occur in plain daylight. Imagine being the new recruit to a unit, and they are debating who goes to which squad in headquarters infront of you and the rest of the new guys, and they debate sending you to the cannibal NCO with al messed up genital.... no thank you. I've clearly wasnt needed to be drafted in the first place if this is the kind of unit and squad you need to place me in. Id either go AWOL on the spot or injure myself so severly on the way over that I simply put couldn't serve anymore. Shoot me, put me in prison, I don't care, not serving under such men. If I couldn't manage that, my every thought would be "How do I kill this monster, and the idiots who support him"?

I doubt this information was even historically preserved, but I'll ask it anyway. Outside of diplomatic ships (such as Roman ships) were only ships piloted and owned by Carthagenians allowed into Carthage? I'm trying to make sense of the lop sided balance of dock to urban area, noting some of the civilian buildings got up to 6 stories high, I presume only warehouses were privately owned, the docks were either communal or rented for actual time spent inside. I also presume Carthage had more ships in service than they could ever dick in the home port, for ever ship docked, you can have one or two out sailing fae, far away. What would be the ratio, I dunno. I never liked the idea of the navy docks being in the rear of the merchants, but it is viable if you can trust the merchant ships aren't going to get in the way, intentionally jam traffic in a emergency, etc. This alone strongly suggests to me only Carthagian Merchants were allowed in. Secondly, the way their empire is structured. Africa is a horrible emporium, at least that part of Africa. Carthage didn't build itself up that way with trade with the Numidians or Granarians. I assume most, if not all trade, was a state monopoly upon the sea. This doesn't mean others didn't parallel trade along the same traderoutes, but if you were a village or city port under with Carthage, you only traded through Carthage. In early (Pre-Punic Wars) Rome, Carthage arrived at a time when Rome was already trading, couldn't prevent them from trading, but negotiated a treaty for trade. This made it possible for Carthage to move more Roman goods. But did all trade have to go from Rome to Carthage, or could it go to Sardinia or Corsica to and fro? If so, was it only through the auspices and direction of the governor's there, who taxed and regulated the markets by the will of the Senate in Carthage, or was it up to them? Or was it a free for all? I ask this, as I'm failing to understand how Carthage could maintain such a empire, based on trade, without understanding how it controlled it. We're Carthage's highest ranking territorial administrators appointed, or quasiheteditary, like Hannibal's Barca clan was for the Army? Did Carthage require all goods picked up shipped back to Carthage, sent to market, or could their captains do direct port to port trade?

Ummm... what? The inability to adapt many have to "civilian life" has nothing to do with the training we recieved. Rather, its adapting to a radical change from a hybrid Meritocracy/Good Old Boy in the military, where everyone has a place and purpose that is dictated by logic, governed by necessity; everyone has pluralustic identities subdivided across specialty and echelons your unit belongs to, your every deed good and bad is recorded, and a uniformed sense of community is fostered upon you. You always belong to a proud, unique unit who have heroes in its history that you can live up to, and women are easy to come by, due to material needs being relatively stable and plentiful enough. A Veteran doesn't have this, beyond living off the fumes of pass glory. Its very rare to find a veteran living deep in the forest like Rambo, it happens, I've seem it happen, done it myself to a degree. Most don't do that, as most veterans don't have a decent survivialist background and training sufficient to pull that off, including most infantry. Most of the guys who don't make it actually do make it to a large degree, they do indeed successfully integrate partially, but fail in other respects. Simply put, in their cases.... they don't die, they are trained to withstand hardship to a high degree, and have bivouac in the military, not much difference in being a urban hobo. Secondly, able bodied young men receive the least assistance, when homeless, and understand the logic of government well enough, having once been part of it, to understand when a system is stacked against them. They don't receive much in assistance, and the assistance they can recieve through the VA here in the states can be rather leathal, whose policies I gave personally witnessed leading to mass suicide (I am not exaggerating, US Vets at Barbers Point at a very high suicide rate for its imprisoned success stories, the program was absolutely rotten, guys were jumping out of windows to end it). The underlining reasons for every veteran failing to adapt is highly diverse, as they are each complex individuals. They are more visible to society because of their background, and we keep track of them in a impersonal manner via statistics. No matter what accomplishments I do, for the rest of my life, I'm a veteran. If I cure cancer, a Veteran cures Cancer, but if I'm homeless, or imprisoned, get cancer, lose a limb, marry 20 times, buy land.... I'm also a veteran and someone is keeping tabs. No one notices the non-veteran guys who can't adapt, until they are caught and imprisoned, and we only care about they as far as recidivism goes. They can succeed or fail, and get to belong to categories belonging to other legal fictions that subdivide their humanity, and asserts their identity in parts.... Is he a black drug user? Is she a transgendered homeless person? Is he a homeless Christian? Is he a alcoholic native american? If you get to be a part of one of these groups, and only some are voluntary to join, others you must be born into, money exists out there, as well as organizations, to help you get out of your rut. Not nearly enough for everyone.... but some. But you gotta be part of that group. If you are not, your screwed. They few guys with PTSD and Rambo training able to hike out into the woods and live in a log and eat catipillars know what they are doing, and aid agencies rarely bother them. The rest get screwed because they are veterans, and are told to go to the VA cause the government will take care of them, as normal aid agencies have to puck and choose who to take care of. VA can't competently help them, so they are more or less subcontracted out, and this subcontracting has a lot of horror stories. This is assuming that even happens, most just don't get help. They get the run around till they leave frustrated. Vets just get noticed more. Its easier to trace our conclusions, but everyone on the flipside of the wheel of fortune experience this breakdown. Just differs for each, as society if very complex, and our personality type, or thinking style, determines how we examine our prior ideological assumptions with the current crisis. A lot of diversity is inherent in this, and there isn't a cure all simple solution. Its easy to confuse the appearance of uniformity the military enforces on troops with equality in outlook, thought, and free time. Even marines, Jarheads.... are highly complex individuals, educated, and differ in their ambitions and outlook in life. You take away their chain of command, units, safety net.... their individuality shows in how they live. They can have very different lifestyles and pursuits over the course of their life. But in our statistical assumptions, that uniformity in the military erases everything, makes everyone the same. Equal starting points. Its a bad way to approach this. They aren't clones hatched in a lab, grown on base then released as civilians after service. I absolutely fail to understand how understanding troop moving procedures work, and battle drills, hand eye coordination, produces guts unable to adapt. Fairly simple stuff, no different from mowing the yard or fly fishing, or making glass. Its a learnable skill. Kids learn it playing games even.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/08/11/lost-resting-place-egyptian-queen-nefertiti-may-have-been-hidden-by-tutankhamun/ I remember hearing there was something odd about the wall as a child, so am surprised it took this long. Who knows, maybe in another 25 years someone may be allowed to enter into it. I can't imagine more ideal surroundings for a dig as far as the Valley of the Kings excavating goes.... you don't gave to dig through mounds of dirt.... it has every bit if dust one could desire removed already gone. Roads and plenty of parking, sure there is bound to be hotels and a soda machine close by. My only concern is that, over the last century, countless tour groups have been inside. I don't know how good of a seal this was. Might be solid looking at the surfacs, but when you crack it open, its molded all through. I recommend, if it indeed another tomb, to pay really close attention to the walls on the interior walls, you don't want to overlook yet another tomb that won't be seen for another hundred years.

Its best not to take the great fire away from Nero, as he has so few accomplishments to his name. He sent legions into both ends of Africa, and found nothing save a stagnant swamp, cavemen, and a black desert. He started digging the Canal at Corinth, and that wasn't done till the 19th century. He tried to kill the Christians off, and that horribly backfired, their still very much around, he attracted a literary circle of poets and philosophers around him, ordered them all to kill themselves, he tried to be a artist, and everyone killed him for it. Let's just accept he burnt the city down with the ulterior motive of building bath houses and a stupid large statue of himself. Its the only thing that gives this guy the air if semi-compentence. I do believe infact he did so, but none the less, let's just not doubt the story. If we do, what really, are we left with as far as his accomplishments go? We are left with very little.Let's not turn a Emperor into a plebian, Arson is his big claim to fame. If you say he didn't play the lyre while the city burnt around him, then we must question if he even knew how to play the lyre.... he becommed a smaller and more pathetic man at every turn. I personally loved his second act in River world, where he built a second Roman Empire against Mark Twain's Riverboat. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gHcEGaizQxg

Oh.... do you mention Seneca at all in the book?

Principality of Theodoro https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Theodoro Found another byzantine desponate, up in Ukraine. It was a Greek dynasty, Trebizond clearly recognized it, got its royal princess for its "emperor". Lasted till 1475 at least, still can't date the survival of the mountain island cities that held out against both the Turks and Italians. So.... yeah. Wasn't expecting that, was another independent town hidden behind a Geneoese/Venetian Buffer holding just the shore. Turks didn't appear to happy once they finally reached them, dragged the ruler down to Constantinople and executed him.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33397305 25 executions in the amphitheater.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33369701 ISIS smashes museum statues.