“This is simply not true. The idea that the Roman Empire settled down into a lasting, homogenous and static entity is rubbish and grievous oversimplification. The very consequences of empire which destroyed civic culture in the Mediterranean were doubled down. By 150AD the sources of surplus labour were exhuasted and the region pivoted slowly from a regime of taxation and state centralisation to rent and balkanisation.”
Patroklos
I disagree.
Rome declined because of mass immigration primarily from the East and slavery; Tenney Frank describes it best:
“Closely connected with the political question is the “racial” one. We know as yet so little about race and racial inheritance that extreme caution is necessary in attempting to estimate this factor. Furthermore ease of communication has now so thoroughly mixed peoples of different parts of Europe that “pure races” hardly exist from which to draw safe illustrations. Yet biological study, advancing upon the work of Mendel, seems to have gone so far as to show that the historical theories of the 19th century, based upon Buckle’s doctrine of environmental influences, were unsafe, and that in the future history must take into more generous account the mental and physical inheritance of the individuals that constitute a nation. The emphasis on racial inheritance is the more important in ancient history because the European folk groups of 3000 years ago were generally more homogeneous than those of to‑day, for the reason that the migrating Indo-European hordes were landseekers who dispelled and scattered rather than assimilated the non‑landholding savages which they found. This seems in general true of the early Latin, Celtic, and Germanic migrants.
Race-mixture may produce good results, but it has also p567 been established that in the mixture of two excellent stocks of widely differing qualities an unstable fusion often results which perpetuates the poorer qualities of both. Applying this consideration to Rome, if we find that the Latin stock advanced consistently along certain lines so long as it was fairly unmixed, and that it gradually declined from about the time that racial fusion was marked, we may fairly attribute this new trend in some measure to the process of the “melting‑pot.”
Even a hasty survey of the Republic is enough to show how the original peoples were wasted in wars and scattered in migration and colonization, and how their places were filled chiefly by Eastern slaves. As early as 130 B.C. Scipio Aemilianus reminded the voters of Rome, in words pardonably exaggerated, that he had led many of them as captives to Rome. The assimilation of the foreign element was so rapid that the son of Marcus Aurelius seems to be the last emperor of Rome who could claim untainted descent from Italian parentage. That calm temper of the old state-builders, their love for law and order, their persistence in liberal and equitable dealings, in patient and untiring effort, their deliberation in reaching decisions, their distrust of emotions and intuitions, their unswerving devotion to liberty, their loyalty to tradition and to the state are the things one expects to find so long as the old Roman families are the dominant element in the Republic. By contrast the people of the Empire seem subservient and listless, caloric and unsteady, soft of fiber, weak of will, mentally fatigued, wont to abandon the guidance of reason for a crepuscular mysticism. The change is so marked that it is impossible to speak of the “spirit of Rome” or the “culture of Rome,” without defining whether the reference is to the Rome of 200 B.C. or of 200 A.D. History must take cognizance of this change, and in doing so it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the change is primarily due to the fact that the Romans partly gave way before and partly merged p568 their inheritance in a new brood which came largely from Asia Minor and Syria. According to this view the decline of Rome had begun in the last decades of the Republic. (1)
1.https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/FRAAHR/31*.html

Posted by: canuck | Sep 8 2024 10:31 utc | 203

His ideas have relevance to the deeper psychological a sociological themes and structures underlying the current authoritarian vs democratic crisis in techniques that humanity is now facing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqRuEhHKVXY
Posted by: kvp | Sep 8 2024 10:03 utc | 202
A couple of days ago I saw a study you might find interesting.
In a nutshell two Viking societies , less centralized Norway and more organized Denmark.
In adult males, 36% died violently (internal strife ) in Norway , in Denmark only 6%, huge majority by execution.
That was the tradeoff and the clearest case study for leviathan.
I think it was this one
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278416524000369

Posted by: Newbie | Sep 8 2024 11:33 utc | 205

Before it’s too late, AmeriKKKan voters should remind each other that it was the jewed-up Neocons who used 9/11 as the excuse to launch the Fake War On Terror aka The War on Islam aka the Wars For The Jews.
It doesn’t matter if there are Good Jews. The racist Supremacist jews regard them as irrelevant backround noise and ignore them.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Sep 8 2024 11:36 utc | 207

@ anonposter @ 11:33
Ha! Even Counterpunch is too embarrassed to print crap like that anymore.
Posted by: malenkov | Sep 8 2024 11:57 utc | 210
I know! It was a laugh out loud read. anonposter, got any more knee-slappers?

Posted by: KMRIA | Sep 8 2024 12:04 utc | 209

@Ahenobarbus | Sep 8 2024 7:38 utc | 191
I realise you detest Larouche but the facts are that he has in a commendable way directed attention to very important patterns in history that both court historians and grass-root avoid or a totally unfamiliar with. Since it concerns a standing pattern for millennia and in my view is also at least partly present in Michael Hudson’s presentations of the ancient societies there is a lot of learning to do for the serious minds who are not to quick to conclusions.
Consider just to pick one example from that Larouche circle.
Tibet’s Lamas: the old, and the new, dark ages
by Michael O. Billington and Paul B. Gallagher
Like som many in the Larouche circle their work is precious and ought to be brought more often to peoples attention.
Take note of how apparently tiny Venice played a remarkable role encouraging the golden horde’s genocidal impact.
Destroyers of cultures and civilisation.
The Venice that came to transplant its system to the west, where more recent marcher Lord’s were used in a similar manner and perhaps one might point to both Ukraine and Israel as such examples.
https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1998/eirv25n04-19980123/eirv25n04-19980123_052-tibets_lamas_the_old_and_the_new.pdf

Posted by: petergrfstrm | Sep 8 2024 12:26 utc | 211

Just have to state my opinion. The Trump “assasination attempt” was fake as fuck and very obviously so. If any deep state agencies really wanted him dead, he would be as dead as JFK now.
Posted by: Wisco | Sep 8 2024 2:14 utc | 136
Are the dead and seriously injured “fake as fuck” too?

Posted by: Phil R | Sep 8 2024 13:40 utc | 213

Just have to state my opinion. The Trump “assasination attempt” was fake as fuck and very obviously so. If any deep state agencies really wanted him dead, he would be as dead as JFK now.
Posted by: Wisco | Sep 8 2024 2:14 utc | 136
Are the dead and seriously injured “fake as fuck” too?
Posted by: Phil R | Sep 8 2024 13:40 utc | 215
Wisco, with all respect, but this is silly. Trump was in the spotlight of dozens of cameras when he was hit. When he was hit he moved his arm to his ear, without any blood on his hand. He touched his ear and looked on his hand: a red fluid all over it. Do you think he had a pad with tomato juice behind his ear?
So silly.

Posted by: mk | Sep 8 2024 14:35 utc | 215

“I think the really vociferous climate-change-deniers, and the more vicious anti-semites, and the people who say viruses don’t exist are here to make the website look like it populated by kooks.“
This should tell you all you need to know about Wisco. We are repulsed by an IDF soldier shooting a 26 year old girl in the head because we are all antisemitic kooks. We should be applauding it like Wisco.

Posted by: Turk 152 | Sep 8 2024 14:51 utc | 217

The Likud Party endorsing Trump while Cheney endorses Harris.
Election 2024 – “Heads I win, tails you lose!”

Posted by: Turk 152 | Sep 8 2024 15:08 utc | 219

“Are we in a hall of mirrors? Here’s Cheney the Dick and faaaar over there is V.V. Putin…and hold your hats on, gang. Both parties are partying up the scene by endorsing, check this now…the Giggling Goose, replacing the $enile One who Depends on his daily ice cream cone to maintain some connexion with this Bizarro Kult-Sure.
For sure, this is NOT the America I grew up in…the current Clown Circus is even worse.
Are we experiencing Alice in Blunderland? Did the Yellow Brick Road turn Toto into a Toad? Does the Mask-her-aiding Pretzeldunce actually wears Depends rather than running away stark raving nekkid?
Do the programmers act-you-ally think we take this all seriously?…only those who are Severiously terminally deluded.
Posted by: aristodemos”
that certainly passes for a nice string of Beefheart references. Keep it up!
The moon was a drip on a dark hood.

Posted by: Not Ewe | Sep 8 2024 15:36 utc | 221

Sorry, X has this restricted access rules now, since a year or so.
Here’s the important live video of the shooting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLLTmANI4rk
After Trump is hit, the camera pivots to the right and shows the oil spray.
Trump’s ear and the leak have almost exactly the same altitude, about 10′ 2″ (easy to show), and it was the same bullet (also easy to show), so it was a horizontal trajectory. The position of the shooter on the roof however was about 9′ higher, so it must have been a magic bullet as in the JFK case. Or we have a second shooter in the building, just below the shooter on the roof. This would be compatible with a horizontal trajectory.

Posted by: mk | Sep 8 2024 16:02 utc | 223

Other people brought up historical analogies, not me, but it’s only fair if everyone gets to play. So…the correct analogy to Cheney vs. Trump is Jackson vs. other Democrats, who resented Jackson as tyrannical and petty, but never because it was secretly weak on the expansion of America. Cheney et al. could very well have looked at January 6 and thought, that mob could have hanged Pence, and Pence is like us. We can’t have someone like this threatening the liberties, privileges and immunities of big shots like us. Victimizing Hunter Biden, what about our own sons and grandsons (and errant wives, daughters, sisters too,) do we want these precedents to hold? How many of us have gotten much more money than Biden, can we be targeted and lose it all and go to prison?
Johnstone’s article arbitrarily assumes there is some serious difference in foreign policy goals between Trump and the imaginary Cheney “party.” There is not, “merely” a tactical dispute (Russia first, PRC later vs. the whole world, more or less, right now.) The Duopoly is rigged for the rich, but again, it has worked for them for decade after decade and throwing it away threatens their long term interests. The article forgets you cannot vote against anybody. A vote for Trump is not a vote against imperialism, it’s a vote for Trump. Period, should be end of discussion. I’ll end by plugging my favorite Claudia de la Cruz as a protest vote. But to be candid, I may end up voting for Jill Stein because the Republicans in my state have restricted write-in voting! And she’s probably the only acceptable third party candidate remotely close to what I want. (Libertarians are not a protest vote, all protest votes have to be for something against the establishments and all Libertarians are fundamentally conservative, part of the problem. In my view.)

Posted by: steven t johnson | Sep 8 2024 16:25 utc | 225

The US party casts its vote :
“Life projects, the greatest capitals, end in a moment, in the dust of a missile. In shelters that have become the first target, the crime scene always looks like a scene from a movie, a place whose elements have been carefully arranged. However, the truth is that a shoe, the remains of two toys, and traces of blood are all that remain of two children who are still hanging between the earth and the sky. At the door of the intensive care room, there is a mother and father beseeching God with all his names: “We will become zeros without them.”
– Photo from the Omar Ibn Al-Aas Shelter Center
Journalist Yousef Fares – Gaza”
https://t.me/youseffares19/48449

Posted by: Ornot | Sep 8 2024 16:49 utc | 227

Posted by: Ed | Sep 8 2024 2:01 utc | 132

The unelected millionaires and billionaires (the ruling class) would never entrust the “voters” to direct policies that directly affect them and their wealth.

You present it like it is your opinion but it much more than that. Two political scientists (Martin Gilens from Princeton and Benjamin Page from Northwestern University) proved that with hard data (1,779 policies legislated between 1981 and 2002) and a solid mathematical model run thru the data. From the Abstract:

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

See here.

Posted by: Johan Kaspar | Sep 8 2024 18:03 utc | 229

Adding on stuff about the Trump shooting, since this topic caught my interest, I tried to find other convincing sources of information about this.
There’s a youtube vid @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6hTbo6IKSI
that did pretty professional sounding analysis on it. Their theory is that the second shooter is at the window above and behind Cooke. The most convincing evidence they presented was that the first 3 gun shots sounded different from next 5 then different again from the last. (@ 18.45) Indeed it does sound very different to my ears.
So as to be impartial I also tried to look for analysis from the other side like here @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz_LpsZfLEA
This video didn’t actually do a good job of explaining the different sounding gun shots as it sounded different even in their own examples and they slowed down the replays too much. At this point I was leaning towards the second shooter theory.
But what sealed the deal for me was reviewing the livestream video mk linked @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLLTmANI4rk
In this vid you can replay it and unlike the previous videos, here the 8 gunshots actually sound the same. I think this is more reliable than either of the previous 2 vids as it’s possible for them edit the audio on their own vids to push their narrative but mk’s vid is a livestream so impartial.
As to why the gunshots sounded different, I did more digging around and it turns out the audio that did sound different were from mobile phone mics, whereas the livesteam audio were from more professional mics connected directly on the stage. A commenter noted that the autogain function on the mobile mics can mess with the recording when the racks/rapports/echos overlap each other like with the rapid fire in the later 5 shots. Which I feel is a reasonable and fair explanation for the discrepancy.

Posted by: Autumn | Sep 8 2024 19:25 utc | 231

Posted by: Autumn | Sep 8 2024 19:25 utc | 233
The thing is that on some videos shots 1-3 sound similar to shots 4-8, and
on some shots 1-3 sound muffled and shots 4-8 do not.
And it turns out the difference is that most videos (like the one I posted) are recorded south of the building, with a direct line to the shooter without obstacles.
Two videos however are taken from the west side of the building, around the corner so to speak, and here shots 1-3 sound muffled (4-8 not). That corroborates that while shots 4-8 were coming from the roof (no obstacle) and sound normal, shots 1-3 were coming out of the building, but from a south side window, around the corner so that the building itself was the obstacle for the west side and the shots sound muffled, with the trebles suppressed.

Posted by: mk | Sep 8 2024 19:41 utc | 233

There is an interesting link between the Trump shooting, 9/11, and Cheney, btw., and its name is Kimberly Cheatle.
She was as the chief of the Secret Service responsible for Trump’s security and is fired meanwhile. And this very same lady accompanied Cheney on the infamous day of 9/11 when he was evacuated to the bunker. For those not familiar with the details of the day: The White House was evacuated shortly before the Pentagon attack because there was a suspicious plane reported coming in (not the Pentagon plane).
During this evacuation to the bunker of the WH there are I think 20 minutes where Cheney spent his time in the corridor between the WH and the bunker.
He seems to have been there alone or with very few people, nobody knows what he did in these minutes. I say: he pulled the strings. And Cheatle was obviously with him…

Posted by: mk | Sep 8 2024 20:25 utc | 235

Liberals/Democrats shriek that Donald Trump is an existential threat to American Democracy!
Conservatives/Republicans shriek that Kamala Harris is an existential threat to American Democracy!
Both groups are partisan propagandists.
Trump/Kamala is a threat to American Democracy in the same way that he/she is a threat to the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus.
That is, they are a “threat” to something that doesn’t even exist–except as a mythological lie that only children, including adult children, still believe.

Posted by: ak74 | Sep 8 2024 20:54 utc | 237

And I find the the lack of self-awareness or irony exhibited by wisco to be hilarious.
“I think the really vociferous climate-change-deniers, and the more vicious anti-semites, and the people who say viruses don’t exist are here to make the website look like it populated by kooks.“
Contrast to:
“The Trump “assasination attempt” was fake as fuck and very obviously so.”
LOL.
Here’s my conspiracy theory. US elections are fake as fuck and very obviously so. But even if they were not, speculations about military campaigns and October surprises as ways to affect the Nov. 5th election are seriously outdated.
Early voting has already started in some states, and approx 30% of voters choose that, from stats I have seen. Add to that the 30% of mail-in votes. That means that any loss or win in Ukraine, or any black swans in October will not, and can not, have any wide effect on the election.
Not many people actually vote on Election Day anymore. By the time those people vote the early votes have no doubt been peeked at, and adjustments made, so that the preferred candidate of the oligarchs can have extra votes added to their total.
Hence: the 81 million votes Biden was said to have “earned” in 2020, more than any other candidate in US history.
Yes, campaigning only occasionally to sparse crowds, and still managing to make a fool of himself on those rare occasions, with his word salads, and his threatening violence to voters, we are told that a record number of US voters were inspired to cast their votes for The Sniffer.
And if you don’t believe that they threaten you with prison time, or at least, banning you from social media.
Questioning election results is a Threat to Democracy, doncha know. Unless it’s Venezuela’s election, then it’s fine.
Or unless it’s the 2016 election. Then it’s also fine.

Posted by: wagelaborer | Sep 8 2024 22:18 utc | 239

Patroklos | Sep 7 2024 21:28 utc | 74
***…. the genius of Augustus …***
Was having Agrippa to sort things out?

Posted by: Cynic | Sep 8 2024 23:23 utc | 241

Newbie | Sep 8 2024 1:14 utc | 127
*** Care to give an opinion? ***
Hugely accelerated timescale — environment of mass-media and globalized communications (plus marketing etc. and cultural swamping / synthetics) far beyond what even the British Empire was dealing with.
Do past patterns still apply as much as before?

Posted by: Cynic | Sep 9 2024 0:09 utc | 243

My concept of the uniparty is more comprehensive . It includes all of Starkers’ Centre Left and its academic postulate; all of rabid Thatcherism and its academic pustulence; Zionism and the CIA Mossad MI6, and its academic pestilence ; all of USUKIS ‘ branches of political Islam and its academic take -the-pisstilence, rape and totalitarian Islam.
These bastards are one side and their enemies on the other side are us ordinary people, who are to be corralled, starved and deported at will by the brainy ones who want everything in the world for themselves and nothing in Heaven.

Posted by: Giyane | Sep 9 2024 5:56 utc | 245

Au contraire!
If Cheney detests Trump, Trump can’t be all bad!
Actually, though, the whole “Trump will destroy democracy” boilerplate is so ludicrous in the context of the Democratic Party’s version of democracy, you know Cheney doesn’t believe this and has other reasons. We know that Cheney is a big MIC guy.
So he thinks the MIC will do better under The Cackling One.
I have, frankly, more respect for those traveling in the opposite direction, as I have come to the conclusion that Trump is a lesser evil than the Cackling team.
Posted by: Jane | Sep 8 2024 2:21 utc | 139
————————————————————
In comparison to Dick Cheney, Trump is the lesser evil in a very calculatable way. Bush and Cheney have the blood of several million people on his hands; even if you exclude the 9/11 affair, and the anthrax scam that came with it.(://www.everand.com/podcast/594832513/My-Guest-Barbara-Honegger-Anthrax-on-9-11-on-RichardGage911-Unleashed).
Cheney lied to the US and the world to get us into a war that killed hundreds of American troops, and over a million Iraqi and Afghan civilians and homeland defenders. Compared to Bush / Chaney, Trump is a piker with only a few hundred deaths directly attributable to him. Joe Biden, on the other hand, is a contender for second place with Bush / Cheney, with his proxy war in Ukraine and his support for genocide in occupied Palestine.

Posted by: Ed | Sep 9 2024 16:09 utc | 247

“Are there any anti-Zionist Neocons?”
Posted by: Cynic | Sep 9 2024 0:16 utc | 247
I’ve never heard of any. If there are any, they certainly won’t announce it because they know they would be immediately cancelled as “antisemites”, and they would be dust-binned from the MSM.

Posted by: Wisco | Sep 9 2024 23:44 utc | 249

Trolls were right! MOA has been an echo chamber all along! The war is over and Russia has lost!
https://reason.com/2024/09/05/the-war-in-ukraine-is-already-over-russia-just-doesnt-know-it-yet/
Posted by: anonposter | Sep 8 2024 11:33 utc | 208
Fake libertarians as exemplified by Reason magazine and Cato Institute should always be ignored.

Posted by: Wisco | Sep 10 2024 0:47 utc | 251

Wisco@254 forgets that real libertarians should always be ignored too, which makes the comment misleading to a hunt for real libertarians.

Posted by: steven t johnson | Sep 10 2024 15:44 utc | 253