| Just f*** off on 15:30 - Mar 10 with 324 views | Churchman |
| Just f*** off on 09:00 - Mar 8 by bsw72 |
Oh, the Romans. Fascinating choice of defence.
The Romans who crucified thousands along the Appian Way as a warning. The Romans who razed Carthage to rubble and salted the earth. The Romans whose entire economic model was built on slavery so absolute it makes uncomfortable reading even now. That Rome. Yes, let’s be like them.
But let’s address the central claim directly.
Better for whom, exactly? Better for the Lancashire mill owners who grew obscenely wealthy while Indian textile industries were deliberately destroyed?
Better for the Belgian Congo, where rubber quotas were enforced by amputating the hands of children?
Better for the Australian Aboriginal peoples whose population was decimated, whose children were stolen by state policy for generations, whose land was declared empty by legal fiction?
“We made it better” is the oldest and most self-serving justification in the imperial playbook. Every occupying power in history has said it. Every single one. The Spanish said it in the Americas. The French said it in Algeria. It is what people say when they want the credit without the reckoning.
Railways are usually the next line of argument, so let’s pre-empt it. Infrastructure built to extract resources for the coloniser’s benefit is not a gift. It is a supply chain.
The truly staggering thing isn’t the original statement. It’s that in 2026, with everything that has been documented, researched and evidenced, someone can still reach for “we made things better” as though it is an argument rather than an epitaph for critical thought.
Rome fell. Empires always do. What they leave behind is rarely gratitude. |
That’s an interesting view of the Romans
The crucifixions you are referring to are presumably the survivors of the Spartacus slave rebellion in around 70bc. There was actually plenty of objection to it as some considered it a waste. A waste of potentially good soldiers or usable slaves is a matter for debate. There were not prisons as we know them at that time. Just holding pens for selling into slavery or death or by execution or in the Arena.
The economic model was not built entirely on slaves. It was built as much on conquest and trade - which included of course the currency of slaves who were also used up in a variety of other ways including usually but not always powering of ships.
The Roman empire lasted longer than any other in history (correct me if I’m wrong). It formed the world as we know it in many ways, from language to principles, as of course the Greeks did before them. It survived so long due to its organisation that surpassed anything in the western world, including Carthage.
And before we get moist about poor old Carthage, they were not averse to butchery, slavery, colonisation and all that jazz. It’s just that Rome was stronger and literally rubbed them out at the end of the third Punic War.
Roman culture absorbed others’ culture and even people into its army, especially the Greeks. It traded far and wide, including Britain before Caesar then Claudius invaded it. But its strength was its organisation. That’s how it broke the tribes of Gaul (France and surrounds) in about 50bc who when they weren’t busy killing each other could amass about 10x the number of soldiers.
Rome ranged from a Republic to a Monarchy, from a form of democracy to an autocracy. It could be beyond cruel, but also be creative and produce amazing structures and achievements. Agrippa build a fleet on a lake then spent a month digging a one mile canal to the sea to eventually smash Sextus Pompey’s fleet (Octavian’s war against Brutus and Cassius following Caesar’s assassination in 44bc). We can’t even get one pathetic destroyer ready for sea in 10 days and counting.
You have to look at history through the standards of the day. Where they came from, what they were up against at the time. To judge them by today’s standards for me produces wrong conclusions. Were the Romans better than their peers? In terms of how they saw the world, no better or worse. It really depends on the term ‘better’.
But to nail colours to the mast, how they went about it and their achievements, yes otherwise they’d never have survived the length of time they did, especially with frequent civil wars. Certainly nothing surpassed it in the western world for 100s of years. And even into the last century unspeakable actions were being carried out in the Congo, German East Africa etc before we get to Stalin in the 30s and beyond.
In conclusion, it seems in man’s nature to acquire through any means and be cruel with it by necessity and sometimes choice. I don’t think much has changed in about 3000 years. |  | |  |
| Just f*** off on 16:27 - Mar 10 with 249 views | Dubtractor |
| Just f*** off on 18:03 - Mar 9 by The_Major |
Think Nigel, Kemi, and the Daily Mail might have backed the wrong horse here.
Opposition to the United States' military action against Iran has risen by 10pts among Britons over the last week
Support: 25% (-3 from 2 March)
Oppose: 59% (+10)
yougov.com/en-gb/daily-... — YouGov (@handle.invalid) 2026-03-09T17:05:00.730Z
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I note that both Farage and Badenoch have now reversed their 'we should be joining in' position on the war.
https://bylinetimes.com/2026/0 |  |
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| Just f*** off on 18:05 - Mar 10 with 133 views | Whos_blue |
That's not true. They never said what they said in the first place......... |  |
| Distortion becomes somehow pure in its wildness. |
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| Just f*** off on 18:18 - Mar 10 with 106 views | Churchman |
He really is a dangerous idiot. When you look in his eyes, you can see the back of his head; the lights are on but there’s no one at home. That sort of thing.
When these people resort to religion, I’m always reminded of the service of prayer conducted at Norte Dame and in Britain just before France fell. All the great and the good turned out. And there was no point whatsoever, beyond scaring the French people who were already in chaos even more. | | | |
| Just f*** off on 18:48 - Mar 10 with 70 views | DJR |
Just as well Hesgeth isn't a Catholic.
Robert W McElroy, the archbishop of Washington, has said that the US-Israeli war with Iran is “not morally legitimate”, going further than the pope has done in his more moderate appeals for an end to the war.
In an interview with the Catholic Standard this week, McElroy said “the criterion of just cause is not met because our country was not responding to an existing or imminent and objectively verifiable attack by Iran.”
“As Pope Benedict declared categorically, Catholic teaching does not support preventative war, ie a war justified by speculation about events in the future,” he said. “If preventative war were to be accepted morally, then all limits to the cause for going to war would be put in extreme jeopardy.”
McElroy also argued that the conflict fails the “criterion of right intention” arguing that in his opinion, “one of the most worrying elements of these first days of the war in Iran is that our goals and intentions are absolutely unclear, ranging from the destruction of Iran’s conventional and nuclear weapons potential to the overthrow of its regime to the establishment of a democratic government to unconditional surrender,” he said. “You cannot satisfy the just war tradition’s criterion of right intention if you do not have a clear intention.”
He added that “our current war effort does not meet Catholic just war teaching because it is far from clear that the benefits of this war will outweigh the harm which will be done.” |  | | |
| Just f*** off on 18:58 - Mar 10 with 47 views | Dubtractor |
| Just f*** off on 18:05 - Mar 10 by Whos_blue |
That's not true. They never said what they said in the first place......... |
This is just so unbelievably weak from Badenoch.
https://www.theguardian.com/po | |
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| Just f*** off on 19:10 - Mar 10 with 29 views | Churchman |
Given the state her sorry shower left the country she should just shut up. Anything she has to say is as irrelevant as her hapless, ever shrinking band of weirdos. | | | |
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| Just f*** off on 19:24 - Mar 10 with 2 views | LeoMuff |
Trump now saying he wants to cooperate with Iran’s oil industry, of course he does. |  |
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