TYB
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/they-cant-compete-us-flexes-bombers-that-can-strike-mainland-china
https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/vatican-watchdog-keeps-secrets
VATICAN WATCHDOG SHELTERS SECRETS
by Bradley Eli, M.Div., Ma.Th. • ChurchMilitant.com • July 7, 2020
"VATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) - The president of the Vatican's financial watchdog agency excluded from his annual report any details of a raid on the agency's offices last fall.
Carmelo Barbagallo, president of the Vatican's Financial Information Authority (AIF) — an anti-laundering body set up in 2010 under Pope Benedict XVI — released AIF's annual report on July 3. While pledging greater "transparency of its financial transactions," Barbagallo's report fails to mention a raid by Italian police on Oct. 1 that uncovered nearly a half-billion dollars diverted from Peter's Pence, the pope's charitable fund for the poor.
Barbagallo's report, likewise, is silent on how the AIF scandal led to the dismissal of several key officials (including AIF director Tommaso Di Ruzza) and the resignation of AIF president René Brülhart in November.
Di Ruzza was helping to stamp out financial corruption in the Vatican by rewriting the Vatican's anti-money-laundering laws. Brülhart, for his part, was well respected by AIF personnel. Following his resignation, half of AIF's board members resigned in protest.
The October raid by Vatican police sought to unravel the financial scandal involving AIF and the Vatican's Secretariat of State. It was part of an investigation by Vatican prosecutors into the secretary of state's 2012 investment into upscale London real estate. The Holy See, through the Secretariat of State, dumped nearly €400 million into the purchase of a residential building in London."
kek!
Raising the age of military enlistment
Peter Polack and Jack McCain
23 minutes ago
"The following is the introduction for the book “Only the Young Shall Die” by Peter Polack and Jack McCain.
As counter-intuitive as it would appear, the average age of young men dying in combat has decreased substantially from the mid-twenties of earlier wars to the late teens. One estimate puts the average age of Union soldiers during the American Civil War at just under twenty-six years old. A report on enlisted men from North-West England in the Great War puts the average age of dead soldiers at twenty-seven years old but more nineteen year olds died than any other age group. By World War 11 the average age of the US fighting man was still twenty-six years.
In the Vietnam War the average age of soldiers killed in action had declined to 23 years and twenty percent of those killed were less than twenty years old. Whilst it is tempting to be distracted by the use of the term average which ultimately benefits future recruiters, the simple fact is that sixty-one percent of those killed were under the allowable age for drinking in the USA, twenty-one years old.
A snapshot of this evolving paradigm came on 10 July 2009 when five UK servicemen with an average age of twenty years were killed in the very dangerous Helmand province of Afghanistan. Three of the dead soldiers were only eighteen.
Perhaps the best conclusion was given by President Franklin D. Roosevelt who pronounced this verdict from a familiar seat to some returning veterans, his wheelchair:
“War is young men dying and old men talking.”
SFC David D. Hack, US Army (Ret.) came up with this analysis of Vietnam War casualties:
• Five men killed in Vietnam were only 16 years old.
• Of those killed, 61% were younger than 21 years old.
• 11,465 of those killed were younger than 20 years old.
• The average age of the 58,148 killed in Vietnam was 23.11 years.
The transgression that is military service by too young a person is not erased by the fact of repetition over the centuries based not on the human right thing to do but military theory adopted by rote. The fact of hundreds of thousands of underage males in service must of necessity mean exposure to harsh military discipline in that event or capture and imprisonment as a prisoner of war."
moar at link:
https://www.militarytimes.com/opinion/commentary/2020/07/08/raising-the-age-of-military-enlistment/