Literal

Exasperated conservatives sometimes refer to the media as “the enemy”.

It’s understandable – the media at the editorial and national level is in general a PR firm for Big Left – and accurate in terms of long-term effect.

But not since Walter Duranty has it been quite this literally true.

Five Israeli families are suing the AP and Reuters for their “journalists” obvious collusion with Hamas on October 7:

The lawsuit filed by the victims’ parents last week alleges that five photojournalists, Hassan Abdel Fattah Eslaiah, Hatem Ali, Mohammed Fayq Abu Mostafa, Ashraf Amra, and Ali Mahmoud who filed photographs in real time of the atrocities being perpetrated by Hamas terrorists were in fact a component of the attacks themselves, and were not conducting legitimate journalistic work.

The journalists were either aware ahead of time that a mass invasion and terror attack was about to be staged by Hamas or, being present from the very outset of the attacks, were culpable for doing nothing to stop the assault, including failing to warn the Israeli authorities, the suit asserts.

While the free market is having its real final say with Big ProgressiveMedia, a little economic justice would be welcome. FIngers crossed.

Social Participation Trophy

“Dozens” [1] of Government workers are going to show Israel what-for by…

…er…

…skipping three meals:

To be fair, skipping three meals [2] is arguably a bigger commitment to one’s cause than, say, a “stolen land declaration” or some other such frippery.

If I were covering the story, I’d ask how many of the “dozens” [1] had scheduled colonoscopies, cholesterol tests or lipid panels for the next day.

[1] How many “dozens”? Two? Three? Eight?

[2] That’s presuming they actually complete the, er, “protest”.

One Day At Big Left (TM)

SCENE: It’s a planning session at Big Left (TM), the central planning organization for leftist, “woke”, “progressive” groups. Avery LIBRELLE, Cat SCAT, Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK, Stephanie Marie ANNAN, Edmund DUCHEY, Evan Micah BRYAN, Inge “Lucky” CARROLL are gathered around a conference table.

ANNAN: We need to come up with something around which we can unite people against the racist genocidal colonizers.

LIBRELLE: Walmart?

ANNAN: No, not this time. We’re talking Israel.

CARROLL: Yes. What can we do to focus the attention of the world on the slaughter of innocent people by the white supremacist colonizer Jews…

BRYAN: Zionists

CARROLL: …Zionists?

SCAT: Maybe go to Gaza and demonstrate?

(There is a brief, pregnant pause before the discussion resumes)

BIRKENSTOCK: I’ve got it! Let’s demonstrate in front of a childrens cancer hospital!

CARROLL: Yes! That’ll show the Jews…

BRYAN: Zionists

CARROLL: ..Zionists that we mean business!

ANNAN: I (claps) love (claps) it!

DUCHEY: (perusing cell phone) Oh, no. Look – it’s been done:

CARROLL: Dammit!

ANNAN: OK – but we’re on the right track!

BIRKENSTOCK: OK – maybe we picket a no-kill animal shelter?

ANNAN: I (clap) LOVE (clap) IT!

And SCENE

Now That San Francisco Solved All Its Problems

The SF City Council voted to clean up all the sh*t on the streets.

Hahahahaha. Just kidding. The Cantina Band voted to throw their immense weight and foreign policy power behind a cease fire in Gaza:

No word if a pre-emptive stolen land declaration on behalf of Hamas was included in the decree.

Question: what is it about white “progressives” bobbing and lurching around like they’re at a “Phish” concert that makes me hope a pack of wild boars happens into the room?

A Small Win

Mia Schem is a 21 year old Israeli who was kidnapped at the Nova EDM festival on October 7, after her arm was mangled by a terrorist with an AK.

She tells her story on Israeli TV.

I’m trying to imagine a 21 year old American of either (any?) gender responding to 55 days of psychological and physical torture like this:

In fact, given the number of Zoomers who are siding with “Palestine”, it’d seem they’ve been programmed out of this sort of resilience.

Let’s Not Forget…

…who the real victim in the Claudine Gay flap at Harvard (according to the university’s governing “Corportation”) actually is.

It’s Claudine Gay:

“And she’d have gotten away with it, if it wasn’t for those darn meddling pouncing conservativesI”!

And while Gay is gone, let’s remember that it’s not for the reason she should have been tossed:

And that’s the real atrocity, here.

UPDATE: The “community” is speaking:

My question: Is the AP proverbially “saying the quiet part out loud” – is plagiarism the new norm among “elite academics”?

Your Christmas-Time Reminder That Everything Is Going Just Great

Rabbi Schmuley relates this episode in Paris.

No, of course it’s not Paris. It’s New York. (Although if that giggle trollop girl is 11 years old, I’m 18.

But this is…Christmastime in the USA today.

UPDATE: Schmuley seems to bring them out of the woodwork:

Massacre

I’m a little old-fashioned in a lot of ways. I guess part of it goes along with being a conservative. And/or a Christian. And/or a decent human being.

Which is why seeing the current statistics about the beliefs of the younger Gen-Zs seem so very catastrophic to me.

Huge percentages of people from the late teens through late 20s:

  • Have no idea who Hitler was
  • Don’t know what the Holocaust was, and have no idea that there was a concerted attempt to rid the world of Jews, which was about 70% successful in Europe.
  • Think removing Israel from the map is just fine.
  • Believe that October 7 was an Israeli “blue on blue” or false flag, or just faked.

It’s to them that I commend this Israeli documentary about the massacre at the Nova dance party – drawn entirely from footrage from partygoers and the terrorists themselves.

It’s all in Hebrew and Arabic – but it’s easy enough, and utterly terrifying, to figure out for yourself what’s going on anyway, as the film spirals from ecstasy-soaked rave through “Iron Domes” bursting in the distance, to swarms of goons with AKs and RPGs murdering and grenading civilians, fleeing and hiding for their lives.

And in my unguarded moments tempted to tell actual humans to force their acquaintances who believe it’s all a conspiracy to watch it. Jamming it down their throats if necessary. With a stick and a hammer, if needed.

But that’d be uncivil, wouldn’t it?

Almost as uncivil as hoping the IDF strangles the last Hamas terrorist with his own entrails.

PS: you can have my gun when you pry it from my cold head hand.

PPS: Palestinian Arabic is an extraordinarily ugly sounding language.

A Pattern

SCENE: Mitch BERG is walking to his parked car after a political event in downtown Saint Paul. As he walks past a near-empty office building, MyLyssa SILBERMAN, Reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats, steps out.

SILBERMAN: Merg!

BERG: Er, hey, Mylys…

SILBERMAN: In recent years, you’ve pounced on Demcorats for saying “tut, tut, nobody’s coming for your guns…”

BERG: ….and pointing the reams of legislation that shows that they are, but that that’s not good enough unless there’s actually a cop beating down your door.

SILBERMAN: Uh…

BERG: If the cops are busting down one’s neighbor’s door, I should shut up because they’re not storming my house yet. Point being, the progressive line on all outrages against freedom is “If it’s not happening to you right this second, no matter how imminent, then it’s not a threat”.

SILBERMAN: Don’t you think that’s a bit unfair?

BERG: You tell me:

SILBERMAN: Not sure I get your point…

BERG: Yeah, I don’t imagine you do.

AND SCENE

No Mask Conceals Stupidity

Blue City governments apparently think banning matches will prevent fire.

No, it hasn’t quite gotten that stupid ytet. But give ’em time.

Banning guns (in the hands of the law-abiding citiizen, at least) is a pretty common…conceit? Deflection? Fig leaf? Anyway – the notion that barring law-abiding citizens from using legal things to do things they weren’t going to do in the first place will affect crime (positively) is the sort of thing you have to believe to be a modern Democrat.

But that sound you hear?

It’s the bottom of the intellectual barrel being scraped.

Philadephia bans ski masks in some public places.

Because crime:

“The City of Philadelphia has been under siege with individuals who use ski masks to commit crimes. It’s caught onto not just young people, but young adults who have made this a particular thing to do,” Phillips told CNN. “The Philadelphia Police Department can’t tell who’s a criminal and not a criminal, which makes it difficult for crimes to be solved in Philadelphia.”

Sarah Peterson, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office, told CNN, “The administration will review the legislation, and in the meantime looks forward to our ongoing work with City Council on the urgent matter of ensuring public safety.”

The Covid-19 pandemic, which resulted in people wearing various face coverings including ski masks, “complicated policing” because mask mandates made it easier for criminals to conceal their identities, Philadelphia Police Department Deputy Commissioner Francis Healy said during a committee hearing in November.

Philadelphia has a crime problem.

Too many ski masks? Could be.

Could also be all the depraved leftists:

Place your bets.

Berg’s Seventh Law Comes Screaming Back From The 1930s

I was warned that if I voted Republican, there’d be an explosion of Fascist sympathizers.

And they were right.

Berg’s 7th Law is called a “law” for a reason.

Senator Ron Latz – an anti-gun zealot about whom I’ve never, not once, said anything good or complimentary – came out in support of Israel finishing the job of removing a terrorist group that has spent decades training its children to hate Jews, and is currently not only deliberately using civilians as human shields, but bragging about it.

And his DFL colleagues were not amused:

The DFL responded “Nuh-uh” in defense of a group that has created a generation that in fact is trained to venerate killing Jews. Because the truth about “Palestinians” is to DFLers what sunlight and garlic is to vampires.

The Senate DFL Caucus went full-on fascist symp in response:

CAIR is trying to put the squeeze on.

I’d say this makes a good electoral “hit list”, although of this entire list of genocide symps, the closest to one to a “contestable” seat is Erin Maye Quade. One hopes Apple Valley does better. I, for one, am going to do my bit to make sure they remember this.

Just to be clear, this is what the MNDFL supports. It’s a long thread.

If you happen to know a “progressive” who supports this mob, push their snout to the screen and make them read the whole thing. :

Remodeling With A Smaller Overton Window

My friend, advice columnist and author Amy Alkon, has been chronicling the orgy of antisemitism bursting out in the Los Angeles area.

She filmed this encounter over the weekend:

Let’s take Judaism, Antisemitism and the Middle East out of this incident. Let’s say this was a domestic altercation. A man Two men use their physical bulk and subtly aggressive invasion of personal space to force a woman out of the way? That’d be considered abuse in court, and justification for a restraining order and, likely, loss of child custody if the woman really wanted to put her back into it, legally .

When I was working in bars, if I saw a man behaving like this around a woman, I’d have called the bouncers in. And there’s nothing those bouncers liked more than having a pretext to pummel guys who were threatening the ladies.

Big Left – maybe 5% of the population – is trying to intimidate the 55% that passively or actively disagree with them into submission.

And the subtle threat of violence implicit is there, in this “man’s” delivery and in Big Left’s approach to every issue today – be careful, or you’ll get Swatted/a visit from “Anti”-Fa/doxxed – is waiting out there for everyone – especially if you try to rally in response.

I’ll be interviewing Amy on my show this coming Saturday.

All Relative

The incredibly aptly named Representative Debbie Dingell lectures us on semantics:

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free“ means different things to different people in different times!“, says the font of wisdom, in rising to the defense of the loathsome modern Nazi Rashida Tlaib.

And she’s right, in a sense.

The phrase “the final solution” can mean a lot of different things; it can be the formula that gets rid of your Creeping Charlie, or solves your credit card debt. So, too, can the German phrase “Arbeit Macht Frei”, or “work will set you free” which, set free of other context, seems straight out of Horatio Alger

Except.

Except when you’re talking about people who wanted, or want, to remove Jews, from some corner of the world.

Then, they mean exactly one thing, and one thing only. And anyone who pretends otherwise is being disingenuous, precious, a useful, idiot, or lying like a sack of garbage.

And if Dingell is capable of being anything, it might very well be all four.

Review And Revise

Whatever opposition I’ve had to deportation of illegal immigrants is waning fast:

I’ll work my ass off for the first Presidential candidate to promise to deport aliens who are actively hostile to everything this country stands for.

I said “actively”.

And if the people in this mob are citizens? Deport whatever immigration official or politician OKed their naturalization.

Or at least tar and feather them.

History Talking

I wish more American – especially Minnesota DFL – politicians could speak with the moral clarity that German vice-chancellor Robert Habeck does:

While allowing that the Germans have a tighter definition of free speech than we do – when you let the depraved speak out loud, you can see what they’re doing in a way you can’t in Europe, and I vastly prefer the American way – this would still be considered pretty daring in the US.

And he’s a Green.o. Talking like a classical liberal, on this issue at least.

This is apposed to the avatar of modern left-liberal left-center-leftism, President Obama…

…who is right at the top of the short list for worst president ever, with Woodrow Wilson, and far and away the worst of my lifetime.

When Germans out-do Amercan pols on this subject, it’s time for some electoral bells to be rung.

(Links bogarted from Powerline).

History Rhymes

“The Devil’s greatest achievement was convincing the world he didn’t exist”
— “Keyser Söze”, The Usual Suspects

One of the greatest achievements of the modern Big Left is convincing the world, and itself, that the Nazi movement of the 1920s and 1930s was, like today’s “American” “Nazi” party, a movement of ignorant blue-collar and no-collar losers.

It was in fact a youth movement, led by academics and artists. Besides Hitler himself, most of the cabinet that ran Germany from 1933 to 1945, much of the party’s senior leadership were writers, playwrights, journalists, painters and academics.

Same as the Communists before them.

And same as today’s Big Left. This is Judith Butler,

And if you wonder if today’s Big Left is bigger and more powerful? You’re not alone.

Przioritiesz

SCENE: It’s September 1, 1939. In the command post of the Republic of Poland Armed Forces. Poland’s Minister of War, Jozef BECK, and the Marshal of the Polish Military chief Marshal Edward SMYGŁY-RYDZ, General Szymon NOWACKI of the Armored Force,, are at the center of a gaggle of staff officers, poring over a wall full of maps showing a dire situation.

SMYGŁY-RYDZ: The Germans have cut off Gdańsk, have broken through west of Krakow, and are threatening to cut off the Poznan Army.

GENERAL NOWACKI: Marshal, we’ve got the Seventh Armored Brigade in reserve. They could hit the breakthrough from the flank.

SMYGŁY-RYDZ: We’ll need the Sixth Corps to support them on the left.

STAFF COLONEL: They’re in OK position for that.

Corporal Filip PRZYBYL, the headquarters Administrative assistant, enters the command post and salutes.

PRZYBYL: Marshal, the MInister of Social Justice has arrived .

(The officers groan)

SMYGŁY-RYDZ: Show him in.

(Social Justice Minister Evgeny LYBRZELSZ enters the room and doffs his French-style top hat)

LYBRZELSZ: Marshal Smygły-Rydz? I’m told you’re planning a counterattack against the Germans.

SMYGŁY-RYDZ: Well..yeah, The Niemcy attack threatens Poland’s very existence.

NOWACkI: If they break past Poznan, there is no obstacle between them and Warsaw.

LYBRZELSZ: We can’t launch the attack.

SMYGŁY-RYDZ: (Stops short, dumbfounded) What now?

LYBRZELSZ: There is no humanitarian corridor for German civilians.

(As an air raid siren goes off in the background, the officers stand, agog).

NOWACKI: What on earth are you talking about?

LYBRZELSZ: Attacking the Germans when there’s no allowances for humanitarian aid to German civilians is immoral.

SMYGŁY-RYDZ: This is a literal threat to our existence, by a nation that’s completely mobilized for war.

LYBRZELSZ: So you are committing genocide against Germans.

Entire room falls silent. The sound of bombs in the distance swells.

SMYGŁY-RYDZ: So, see to the destruction of Poland, then

LYBRZELSZ: What are you, a bigot?

And SCENE

Compromise

Someone walks up to you with a baseball bat. They say they want to kill you.

Your response is “no, I don’t want to get beaten to death with a baseball bat”.

Looks like you have a standoff. A controversy. A conundrum.

Someone else steps in and asks “How about we compromise? Will you settle for a traumatic brain injury?”

It’s the middle way, after all. The guy with the bat might even say “sure, I just wanna hit you, hard!“

You might respond “No – in fact, I don’t want anyone hurting me in any way. At all”

And the buttinski responds “Why won’t yiou compromise?”

Who’s right?

You?

The guy with the bat?

Or the person striving to find the middle ground between the two of you?

If your response is “I’m putting my foot down; nobody is hitting me with a bat for any reason at all“, and the other to ask “why do you hate the guy with the bat?“, does that change anybody’s mind?

Point being, sometimes the middle path, the compromise, is not the most moral path forward.

Rule #1: Know Your Audience

Hamas leader puts out a dog whistle to western leftists:

It’s not even close to the dumbest strategy.

Evil

The Nazis weren’t especially coy about their views on Jews. Hitler telegraphed his intent in Mein Kampf. The Nuremberg Laws were a pretty solid hint.

And yet in 1944 and 1945, as the wheels came off the Third Reich, they feverishly bulldozed the camps, shipped or force-marched the surviving inmates to other camps farther from the front, and tried to erase the record – because even the Nazis knew that their “final solution” wasn’t going to go over well with the outside world ,and could see war crimes trials in their futures.

Hamas, on the other hand, in carrying out the same mission as any of Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen, with the same exact methods they used in every shtetl in Eastern Poland (shooting, raping, smashing, burning), put it out on social media, with gleeful pride, to get eaten up by the gleeful masses of droogs on the “red/green” left…

….and, for whatever reason, ultra-right.


I was halfway through my trip when the worst atrocity agains the Jews, and one of the most ocncentrated orgies of violence against civilians since Rwanda, happened.

Ben Shapiro had probably one of the best hours of broadcasting ever last Monday. The video includes a lot of uncensored blood and gore and horrific violence in process – which is the point.

Here is is on Youtube, until it no doubt gets taken down.

Here’s the audio version, for when they do.

“Let’s not be picking black hats and white hats, here – this is a complicated situation”.

No, it’s not.

“The is a complicated situation”

Historically? Sure. .

In terms of this past week? Not complicated at all.

But let’s let you show us how complicated it *really really isn’t*. Answer this question; think of someone who did you wrong; the person who transgressed you worse than anyone in the world.

Q: What would it take for *you* to shoot that person in the face as he shielded his kids? What would it take for *you* to then rape, kill and mutilate his wife, to burn his siblings houses with his siblings and families inside, to give his daughter over to your rapey friends to haul off to another country to rape and kill, to saw his son’s head off, and use the other son as a human shield when the SWAT team arrived?

Did you answer “I would never do that?”

If not, why not?

It’s not a complicated answer at all. If you answered “No, under no circumstances would I do that”, it’s because you are not evil.

Which is what we’re talking about, here. Evil. There is no other word.

Figures

I take some time off from job, blog and radio show, and suddenly the biggest story in the world isn’t our senile president and Trump’s legal woes.

The fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur invasion, no less. Couldn’t see that one coming.

Quietly hoping that this time Israel ignores the international yapping about cease fires and diplomacy, and builds a pyramid of the skulls of HAMAS fighters, and puts it at the approaches to Yad Vashem.

They really need to push the notion that that “never again” thing wasn’t a polite request. It clearly hasn’t sunk in.

One thing that is sinking in: someone missed their cue:

“All of Israel is asking itself: where is the IDF, where are the police, where is the security?” said Eli Maron, a former head of the Israeli navy, on Channel 12. “It’s a colossal failure; the [defence] establishments have simply failed, with vast consequences.”

HAMAS is directly supported by Iran, whose intelligence and special forces are among the craftiest in the world. While Berg’s 18th Law is in full effect, I’m going to go out on a short, sturdy limb and guess that Iran spent years helping HAMAS play intel-fu to conceal the attack plans.

This isn’t without precedent; even though the Yom Kippur War was a huge conventional operation with thousands of tanks and planes and hundreds of thousands of troops, it came as a complete surprise as well.

One thing that doesn’t need any post-attack study: Biden Administraiton policies have directly contributed to the situation. Reports say US weapons left in Afghanistan were used in the attacks; while I’m waiting for better confirmation there, it appears almost certain that US integrity and foreign-policy gravitas left in Afghanistan, or packed into boxes of money sent to Iran, was involved.

And the administration remains an embarassment:

That didn’t sound “unequivocal” at all.

Never Forget

Yesterday was the date of a horrific atrocity.

No, not some people kicking Ilhan Omar off of something. The 21st anniversary of the – words fail – supernaturally brutal murder of Daniel Pearl.

You should read Yid With Lid’s entire piece on the subject, which writ larger is the fiction of the notion that “Antizionism” isn’t in fact antisemitism. Pearl’s murder showed this to anyone who isn’t too blinded by bigotry to see it.

Twenty-one years and one day after Daniel Pearl was brutally murdered, Rep Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was tossed off a committee because of her putrid public Antisemitism and regular use of anti-Jewish canards on Twitter. Omar was tossed because of her hatred of Jews, but many in congress, the media, and their supporters are claiming it’s political.

If you ask people why Daniel Pearl was murdered, they will give several reasons but leave out the Antisemitism part. Because the key lesson was never learned.

May God teach the people in the world to recognize that Antisemitism is real and pervasive.

“Never Forget”, they used to say.

The black hole of Aghanistan

SIGAR (the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction) was established in 2008 to serve as an oversight body. It conducts audits of reconstruction projects and its mission is to look for waste and fraud.

In the wake of the collapse of the Afghan government last year, SIGAR was asked by Congress to look into the causes of the rapid collapse and today it issued an interim report. The text of the report is here.

Here is a summary of the conclusions.

SIGAR found that the single most important factor in the ANDSF’s collapse in August 2021 was the U.S. decision to withdraw military forces and contractors from Afghanistan through signing the U.S.-Taliban agreement in February 2020 under the Trump administration, followed by President Biden’s withdrawal announcement in April 2021. Due to the ANDSF’s dependency on U.S. military forces, these events destroyed ANDSF morale. The ANDSF had long relied on the U.S. military’s presence to protect against large-scale ANDSF losses, and Afghan troops saw the United States as a means of holding their government accountable for paying their salaries. The U.S.-Taliban agreement made it clear that this was no longer the case, resulting in a sense of abandonment within the ANDSF and the Afghan population. The agreement set in motion a series of events crucial to understanding the ANDSF’s collapse.

The report identifies “six factors that accelerated the ANDSF’s collapse in August 2021.”

1) U.S. decision to withdraw military forces and contractors from Afghanistan through signing the U.S.-Taliban agreement in February 2020 under the Trump administration, followed by President Biden’s withdrawal announcement in April 2021
2) the change in the U.S. military’s level of support to the ANDSF
3) the ANDSF never achieving self-sustainment
4) Afghan President Ashraf Ghani frequently changing ANDSF leaders and appointing loyalists
5) Afghan government’s failing to take responsibility for Afghan security through an implementation of a national security strategy
6) the Taliban’s military campaign effectively exploiting ANDSF weaknesses

In addition, the report identifies “nine factors that explain why, after 20 years and nearly $90 billion in U.S. security assistance, the ANDSF was ill-prepared to sustain security following a U.S. withdrawal”.

1) no country or agency had complete ownership of the ANDSF development mission,
2) the length of the U.S. commitment was disconnected from the reality of the time required to build an entire security sector
3) the U.S. created long-term dependencies that would require significant time to overcome, such as providing the ANDSF with advanced equipment they could not sustain and leaving them out of the equipping process
4) the U.S. military, driven by political deadlines, struggled to balance winning battles with letting the ANDSF gain experience by fighting on their own
5) U.S. metrics created to measure the development of the ANDSF were unable to effectively measure ANDSF capabilities
6) Afghan corruption harmed ANDSF capabilities and readiness
7) U.S. control of the battlespace and of key governance systems restricted Afghan ownership of important military and governance systems
8) U.S. and Afghan governments failed to develop a police force effective at providing justice
9) advisors were often ill-trained and inexperienced for their mission, and personnel rotations impeded institutional memory

SIGAR has been issuing quarterly reports and “lessons learned” reports as part of its mission. Last August, SIGAR issued one of these “lessons learned” reports, the text is here, and this is from the executive summary.

The U.S. government has now spent 20 years and $145 billion trying to rebuild Afghanistan, its security forces, civilian government institutions, economy, and civil society. The Department of Defense (DOD) has also spent $837 billion on warfighting, during which 2,443 American troops and 1,144 allied troops have been killed and 20,666 U.S. troops injured. Afghans, meanwhile, have faced an even greater toll. At least 66,000 Afghan troops have been killed. More than 48,000 Afghan civilians have been killed, and at least 75,000 have been injured since 2001—both likely significant underestimations.

What, really, do we have to show for all that blood and treasure? Will anyone be held accountable, even if it’s only at the ballot box? If the American people don’t have the fortitude to hold their leaders accountable, we shouldn’t hold out hope that said leaders will hold themselves accountable.