How to detect decay and rot in empires as they breathe their last

Don't know about you but I like the smell of a decaying empire. 

 

https://www.stripes.com/branches/navy/2026-08-25/lawsuit-workers-comp-sexual-assault-navy-ship-22658787.html

 Lawsuit over sexual assault aboard Navy transport ship dismissed as worker’s comp issue

By ROSE L. THAYER 

STARS AND STRIPES Published August 25, 2026

 A judge dismissed a lawsuit from a civilian engineer in the Military Sealift Command after it was determined that her report of being raped in her own bed aboard a Navy transport ship was within her duties and must be treated as a worker’s comp claim. The order handed down this month closed a multiyear attempt by Elsie Dominguez to get justice for an assault she said threw her personal and professional lives into shambles. She eventually took an unpaid year away from work to recover, as her perpetrator continued to receive pay while being investigated, she said. “I’ve lost a lot of sleep, I’ve lost a lot of friends who didn’t agree with what I was doing in coming forward,” said Dominguez, 35. “I learned that I had to set a precedent legally so that this could be used in the future.” She spoke from her current assignment in Croatia about the entire experience, which began in December 2021 while she worked as the first assistant engineer aboard the USNS Carson City, an expeditionary fast transport vessel. Dominguez said the ship’s captain used a master key code to access her private room overnight and rape her in her bed. She sued the federal government in 2023 over the Navy’s failure to care for and protect her when she reported the attack.............

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 https://scheerpost.com/2026/08/28/thank-trump-for-this-he-has-exposed-the-leaking-guts-of-the-war-machine/

Thank Trump for This: He Has Exposed the Leaking Guts of the War Machine

August 28, 2026 

By  Phil Wilson Common Dreams 

 

Forget about Ancient Sparta, Attila the Hun, Hernán Cortés, Julius Ceasar, Alexander the Great, Adolf Hitler, and all of the conquerors that terrified the world with colonial aspirations and a psychopathic lust for blood. None of these ever imagined a $1.5 trillion military budget. President Donald Trump requested that grotesque figure, but don’t give him the kudos—our “fois gras” military machine is a US tradition that predates us all.

The US war machine has scaled Orwellian heights to achieve a virtual blank check to spend on death. For we, stateside, have built a culture entirely at the service of warfare, with myths, stories, and platitudes hardwired into the brains of 349 million people extolling war, not as a necessity, but as ritual, as cleansing, as meditation, and as redemption. We are bombing schools and hospitals to secure the rapture, for the war industry in the apocalyptic end times has been tasked with the creation of biblical events. A recent Huffpost piece by Brandi Buchman quotes US soldiers’ allegations of lunatic fringe Evangelical propaganda from haranguing superiors: ............

 

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