You're welcome back. The World Bank is on the news or in the news for a lot of reasons, or maybe the same reason with different perspectives or different sides of the story. But we have the World Bank saying that NNPCL is not transparent enough. We have the same World Bank advising Nigeria that they should raise tax, they should raise VAT for everybody and tax for SMEs, which are the small and medium-scale industries. And then the World Bank is also backing Tino Booth reforms. They project 3.5% economic growth. And we have with us here this morning to discuss this. Mr. Bolaon Olujede and he's a public affairs analyst. Good morning and welcome to the program Mr. Olujede. Thank you very much. Good morning. Nice to be here. Only the same World Bank as we would say in Nigeria. Only they move. The NNPCL is not transparent. Our tax, we should raise it up. VAT, we should raise it up. Tax SMEs more and all that. And then they're saying that the economic reforms of the Tino Booth administration are very good and they are projecting 3.5% economic growth. What is your take? Well, that's a lot of information out there. Number one, on the NNPC not being transparent. It is not news. NNPC has never really been as transparent as people have loved them to be. As a matter of fact, I still remember the vision that some years ago for several years, NNPC did not even have an account that is audited. So nobody even knew the position of anything that was going on at NNPC. It was recently, I think it was on the MeliPierre that issues around having an audited account that at least shows what is going on, what is going on. It came into place and some element of transparency started to come into that space. Way back in 1970, is it 1976 or something? When OBJ came, one of the very first things that he asked to deal with was the 2.8 million billion dollars that was said to be missing at NNPC. That was 1976 or 77 actually. We remember the IBB's Gulf War Winfors. The Gulf War Winfors or the 2.8 billion dollars, both of them were never fully explained to you today. Beyond that, the issues around subsidy payments and the genitals era, a lot of subsidy were paid to some marketers and others. Most of those issues were also never really brought to a clinical close in the sense of it. I still remember 1993's speech by MK Wabiola. One of the things he said in that particular presidential comment or speech was that NNPC was not transparent and that under his regime, he would make NNPC more transparent. So we actually don't hear something new about the transparency of NNPC and the decision makers to continually pursue transparency of that institution because a lot of our wealth is tied to the performance and activities of NNPC. So maybe we can take it as a reminder that NNPC can do more with issues of transparency. My concern is that a body that knows that NNPC is not transparent is now advocating that the price for fuel be raised and all that. We don't know what is happening in the subsidy removal, how much money we have and all that is around that. And they are still telling us that the way to go is to raise fuel price and all that. It's like still enriching a body that we do not know how it operates. Unfortunately that is not the way it goes. Part of what could actually help transparency in NNPC is that subsidy matter. I work at the oil and gas industry at a very senior level and I have a clear understanding of some of those issues around subsidy. And I would just sum it up as a dark pool of unaccountability. The more elements of it are retained the way it has been, the more we sustain that dark pool. So one of the things that need to be dealt with is the subsidy and the subsidy administration in NNPC. So I want to believe that that is what World Bank is hitting at. The target of World Bank I don't believe is that oh, I want money to be produced to increase the fuel price. No, no, no, no, no, no. It is an admission of the fact that the subsidy regime has been a very horrible dark pool of unaccountability that nobody could say exactly this is how it goes. Because of subsidy matters, we don't have much fuel. It is not because we cannot count how much fuel. It is wrapped around issues of subsidy. You need to keep it dark, keep the subsidy there and keep it dark. So that is what World Bank is referring to. What bank is not interested in saying punish the people by just increasing fuel price? Yeah, they may not be saying that, but at the end of the day, is that not exactly what will happen? Well, it might lead to that. Fuel price might increase. It might also go down because the biggest component in fuel price is actually the price of food. So we are in a season where for the past three years or there about fuel price has been on a steady high or even on an increase at some point. Since we got out of 2020 when we had COVID, fuel price has been on the rise on a steady high price. So we are not in a season where there is a likelihood that if you remove the subsidy that the fuel price will go down. Most likely it will go up. But here is what has also been established over the years. It is the fact that fuel price does not remain permanently up. It is static and that period when it will go down will eventually come again. It has gone over and over again. So in those prices, in those seasons when the price of the largest impute into the refined product goes down, it is expected that the retail price of the refined product will also go down. Okay, so what does that mean for Nigerians? Because now the World Bank is saying it should be increased to about 750 per liter. And as of right now some gas stations are selling for I think 590 something, some of them 611. That is in Lagos. Yes, in Lagos but in other states, yes, it's even more expensive. So now if it goes to 750 per liter and if possible maybe 1000 per liter, what does that even do for the common man in Nigeria? Because now a lot of things are dependent on this fuel subsidy that has been removed for instance transportation, alternative power. A lot of people depend on this. So what is that going to even do for the economy? And for people who are supposed to be making ends meet with this same commodity? For me, that is part of the transfer principle that we are talking about. You threw in a number now, said 750 or something. And the question is how did we arrive at that? The way the prices itself are going to be arrived at should not be a top secret. There are variables that go into determining what should be the appropriate price or what should be the market price for your product. And we'll be transparent about it. This is the cost. This is the other variable. This is transport. This is the tax. This is the tax. And then we can arrive at a particular price. For me, that should not be a secret. As a matter of fact, what I would like to see is that the transparency will rise to a level that anybody who is interested enough can already know when the oil price is going to increase or when it will go down. Without waiting for government to make any announcement, should there even be an announcement by government? Is it not the market that will determine that? Oh, I am an importer. I bought a product for 100 Naira. I want to make 10% gain. Therefore, I will be selling it at 110. That should be market determined. Should there even be an announcement by government? But where we are right now, where governments are the remain... I don't want to say the sole importer because I think that people are tired to import. But the major, maybe 90% of what we have is even imported by government and there are dollar-related issues that have effects of that issue. So government will still be in that middle. But government can be more transparent about what is going on. Government also needs to pursue the alternative energy possibilities that are available. PMS is not the only energy source that is available. There is the CNG. There is the LPG.  So revving up on the activities of the government to push other energy sources other than PMS is something we need to look at and fast-track and make it happen. So if we have alternative energy that are even more efficient and cheaper than PMS and are being offered in the market, why won't people gravitate towards the cheaper alternative? Okay, let's look at the crux of the matter. Now having established what the problem in Nigeria is the economy, what it is likely going to face and all that. This projection of the World Bank for 3.5%, is it realizable knowing what we are facing as a country, knowing that we have almost a mono economy that is dependent on oil alone and these things are happening, do you think the economy will grow as it has been projected to 3.5%? To be honest with you, 3.5% is low. We need growth levels that are much higher than that. So if we can do 3.5%, it won't take us to... I know the government has been saying something about a trillion dollar economy. 3.5% will not take us to a trillion dollar economy in seven years. It is too small. But if we work at it, we probably can achieve it. And what do I mean by work at it? Let us have a disciplined approach to the implementation of policies that are going to drive the economy. I'll give you an instance. If you look at our inflation numbers, you will see the food inflation as an arrowhead driving this... So when you have an inflation number of 27.3 or 27.6, when you look at food inflation alone, 30.7, there is a message there. That message is saying that food is a major problem driving inflation. How about we do something about that major driver that is out there and do it with discipline and in time? Are you sure it's not the egg and the chicken problem here we're finding? You are saying it is food that is the problem. The farmers who produce this food will tell you that is the fuel. And every other thing that is... And even transportation, transporting the food to the cities. So now you're saying it's the food. How do you tackle the food where you're not tackling the things that are making the food to go high? The dollar, for instance, that enables the farmers to get the fertilizers and other farm imputes and all that is high. And then you're talking about fuel that you need to transport this thing to the market is high. And so many other things. And will you succeed? Yeah. Because what you need to do is analyze exactly what are the issues in that space that is driving your inflation and what are the interventional measures that you can do. Is it fertilizers? What can I do to make fertilizers readily available to the farmers at the price that they can afford? Is it transportation? The government incidentally has spoken about rural roads which means that it has an understanding that connecting the centres of production to where these farm produce are going to be consumed is a major issue because of infrastructure. So connect them. We need to move away from the talk to walking the talk. If you are going to do additional 500,000 hectares of cultivation get it started. Let it move away from the speech of the President and get it onto the land where those after-production will have that is discipline execution. Whatever is hampering those production, whatever is hampering them from getting to the market deal with it. And you'll be dealing with the food matter. When people are able to eat almost half of their proper food. True. True. True, I agree. However, the World Bank has commanded President Boletini on the reforms so far. And then they've said that as long as we can keep driving this momentum of the reforms, we would see that 3.5%. But for me, seeing what we are facing now as a nation, I think it's okay for me to be pessimistic that we might not even be able to get there. So what are the driving factors in tackling the food inflation? What are the other factors that we know that would help us, that would drive us to that 3.5% which you've actually said is quite low because I think it's 3.5% in three years. So we're looking at till 2026 and then we'll have that growth of 3.5%. But what are other factors that would even make us surpass the 3.5% if we're looking at the trillion dollar economy? Okay. There are policy issues. The government has been talking about a number of policies. It is in the place of being able to execute those policies, consume them to the logical end. I'll give you an example. One of the things that this administration did when it came on board was to set up a committee on tax and fiscal policies. Now one of the problems in the nation is our tax system. So you have a situation in which there are all sort of taxes everywhere. I think some numbers were being thrown around, maybe about 50 or 60 different taxes. Now where you are in that kind of an environment as a business, you are not encouraged and you are most of the time paying extortion, not even tax. Some people will come here and say, oh, come and pay us this one. You look at the thing that is too big. You said, I can pay you this one or you come by this side. Let me give you this small thing for your own pocket. The guy takes it and walks with it. That is extortion. That is not even taxation. But part of what that committee is meant to do is streamline the taxes. So maybe you are taking it from 50 different taxes to 10. And then the payments, the administration side of things, the tax administration, make it easier. So you encourage the people who want to pay their taxes because they were paying 50 taxes before. Now they have 10. The channels for making the payment on this thing is clear and easy. These are part of what will help businesses. It will also help us to deal with issues of double taxation. Someone is saying, look, I'm a producer. I pay tax on this one at this junction. You asked me to pay tax at this junction again. By the time I put together all these taxes, am I really making profit? So that committee will help to deal with matters of double taxation. That's a policy area. And one of the policy areas is also in the effects issue. If you look at what has been happening with the big companies, you see manufacturers have suffered a great deal this time. Though the banks have made a whole lot of money on their own part, because there are two segments, two different segments of the economy. And it has achieved the woes of one segment as we call the return of the other side. What happens to the manufacturers? It's the effects problem. It is the effects problem. So the policy around effects, how we can increase the supply of effects, how we can deal with matters that are draining our effects, how we can get transparent with the issue of policy around forex administration. These are all policies. And being able to pursue them with the right level of discipline is those are the things that we are sure that this 3.5% growth that we are talking about. And I'm even saying 3.5% it doesn't really cut it, but maybe that is the best we can get. All right. Well, I don't know. All the things you have said, I hope they will adhere to them. From the body language and everything that you have seen, do you think they will be disciplined enough to do what you have proposed, even if they know these things? For me, I've seen certain discipline, especially from the CBN side of it. Certain policy pronouncements, certain circular issuance that shows some element of discipline. I've also seen certain acts of government that I believe does not portray efficiency of the bureaucrats. The most recent one was the COP 28 attendance. So when a government is trying to at least see the support of the people, say, look, I'm taking you people somewhere, but you see, I need you to make certain sacrifice so that we can arrive at that destination that I'm taking you. The people also want to see you as a government making the same sacrifice. That was not what we saw with the attendance at COP 20. A country that is in the kind of financial situation that we are, did not need foreign and something people representing the government and a total of 1.1 million there about representing the country to go and do what exactly? When did we become such a passionate country about issues of environment? If we are passionate about issues of environment, we should start from the Niger Delta, not from speech and from attendance that attendants of COP 20. So issues around those inefficiencies and portrayal of profligacy are things that the government must watch out for and ensure that we don't put ourselves in this country. Okay. Mr. Lodje, we thank you so much for coming on the show. And as usual, we had some insight into things that we may not have known. For instance, I thought 3.5% was so much. Even though I know the president said that he was projecting 6%, but now they said 3.5%, ah, the World Bank is saying that. And now you're saying it's so low. We should be more ambitious. We should be more. Thank you so much for being a part of our program this morning. Thank you, sir. Thanks for having me. We've been talking to Mr. Bola Honolodje, the public affairs analyst, and we're going to take a short break now. When we return, we'll be looking at the second half topic. Stay with us.


A seven-storey building in Banana Island area of Lagos has collapsed, leaving a few construction workers injured. This is according to the Commissioner for Physical Planning and Urban Development Engineer Tayo Bamboche Martens and he said the building was an unapproved seven-floor building. He mentioned that the incident happened while casting was being done. He has visited the site to assess the situation and flag off investigation. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Well hello everybody and welcome back to my channel. Today we're gonna do a random target haul. I actually once target the other day which I should have filmed this then because it's like pouring outside and I just got home from work and tomorrow's Wednesday which is when this is actually getting filmed and published and all of that so it's Tuesday evening. It's time for a target haul. So like I said this is like super random but I figured I'm always interested to see what people get at Target or Walmart or like clothing and I don't know. I just love watching hauls. I'm gonna get to the close soon because I'm like super excited about fall stuff like it's basically fall weather slash winter for the majority of the year here in lovely lovely Minnesota. It is the very beginning of September and I think the high today was like 62. It was really really freaking cold today. So anyway let's get with like the more weird stuff first and I'll talk about the clothes. So I decided to get this bad boy. I've heard lots of good things about it. It is a barkeeper's friend. It's a soft cleanser. This is supposed to help with like like scratches and stuff. I think in your like kitchen sink and it's good on cookware and bathroom and I don't know. I've just heard a lot of things about it that are good. So like stainless steel porcelain ceramic tile and copper but I just got a small like there was bigger ones like massive jugs but I just had to go with a small one and I will keep this in my kitchen. I also got these. I got two of them. They're the Tide Pods, the free and clear or sorry not free and clear the free and gentle because you know my laundry needs to be gently all. I decided to get two of them because well I needed more pods anyways and they were buy two get a $5 gift card so I figured why not? Oh we're ready to put all this stuff. Oh my gosh sorry I didn't mean I didn't mean to kick you guys. I need like a table here. All right and then I think this is actually a really fun purchase but you guys might find it boring but I don't care. I will end up linking all of the products down below for you guys too so if you're interested in checking out any of this stuff feel free to check out the links okay. All right it's so heavy. I need a little backstory here. So when I was unpacking um or actually let's back up. When I was originally leaving Fargo and coming back to Minnesota and staying at my parents place for a little while I downsized like a lot. So I got rid of anything that just didn't really speak to me anymore and I just really wasn't a fan of. Well in the process of doing that I pretty much got rid of all of my serving bowls. I had a couple like mixing bowls like I have like three clear mixing bowls but I don't have any like proper serving bowls. So um like the last couple times I've been a target I keep eyeing these bowls and I never buy them so I figured I'm gonna do a haul. It's gonna happen. I'm gonna talk about those serving bowls. We're gonna do it. So I ended up getting four serving bowls and two are of the same size and you'll see why in a moment. So let me just unpackage these first because it's gonna be really really loud and irritating. These are from the threshold line just says threshold porcelain dishwasher and microwave safe. I will show you the back of it real quick here. Let's see if it'll focus for me. Yes it's focusing. Screenshot guys screenshot. Um I will link these like I said down below but I got this big bowl and I like that it's footed. I think that's like so nice and I like that it kind of has this like I don't know is this like a tulip or something? Is that what it is? I don't know. I think it's so nice and it's like ginormous. Like this is the this is my head. It's like right next to my ear. This is huge but I figured this would be good for um you know big things. So that's the largest one. Then this one is the medium which is like perfect for like a really big bowl of popcorn. Like this is like a perfect bowl for that. It's still the same style where it's got the footing on the bottom and like the fluted out tulip thing. Why am I calling it a tulip? I don't know. Maybe I've been looking at some flowers. I don't know. So that's the medium and then this is the small. I actually ended up getting two smalls because I thought this would be good for like if I entertain or something and someone brings like a dip like a queso or like a guacamole or something. These would be good for you know like around that size. So I got two of these and oh I should have told you the prices. Oh darn it. I don't have my hold on. I might actually have my receipt somewhere. Let's find out. I don't have my receipt. I think it's downstairs somewhere and it's like in a bunch of piles of paper and I don't know but if you click the little links down below you'll see the prices of everything but I'm super excited about these bowls. I don't know why. I am really like obviously you guys know I'm like crazy neutral lady. But I love just like plain white dinner wear and clear dinner wear too. I feel like you can just kind of jazz it up with other colors if you really want to. So like if you're having a birthday party and someone really likes the color like say orange for example well you can have your white and clear and then you can incorporate you know bits of orange but you know say if you had blue dinner wear or something that might look like a little funny. I mean I don't know. I mean I guess I really like neutral stuff because it's like totally my jam but I just like the idea that everything kind of coordinates together and if I see something that I like like a target or home goods or you know anywhere and I in it's white I know it's gonna match.  So I got some clothing actually I got some nail polish too so oh and I got some other cases. Okay I got some really random stuff. First of all I got this top that I'm wearing and it is by a brand actually it's by this brand too so let me pull this out. It's like a new brand called a new day. I have seen if you guys follow like Instagram it is there's an account called Target does it again and it's like amazing and I love it so I will put that link down below but I am obsessed with their new stuff. This is like a really really soft gray. It looks like a chambray shirt but it's not it's like softer than that and it's got little black stars on it and I'm like normally not like a big print person but I just I don't know I thought it was I thought it was cute and it's got like the two little things I don't know. I've been wearing this all day but I really really liked it and then I got this one which is like pull over top so the buttons don't go all the way down. Again I'll link these down below because it's like so hard to share and then it's got like the two pockets um this one has it's just rolled sleeve but it is a long sleeve and it's so like light weight and it's like a creamy color but then the actual check on it is like a dark navy blue which I thought would be really cute with some jeans and some boots or something. I don't know for the fall. This one was $19.99 right here and unfortunately there were no cartwheel deals on clothing but oh well and I think this one was $19.99 as well um let's see here oh also in the same bag they kind of like put things in different bags for some reason. This is the same brand but this is a super super cozy crew neck and it has a little pocket right over here and these kind of like what what kind of sleeves are these called again? They're like are they like dolman sleeve is that what it is? It is a long sleeve and this is also $19.99 and then in the back if you can see kind of where the crew neck is it like I don't know it like splits off a little bit but there's no like split on the bottom which I really like but this is like oh like so soft and cozy. This feels like like a baby sweater. I was like I felt it and I was like I'm gonna get one of those so I don't know I just thought it was super cute it's gonna be super cozy and this I feel like this is something that you could dress up and wear like a fun like chunky necklace with it or even just like a simple necklace with it and a little vest um I don't know but also you could just like wear it as pajamas because that's the next thing I have in my lap. All right and I went to the oh the oh the um pajama section and I saw these these are by that Gillian or Gillian O'Malley. These were $16.99 and I gotta tell you I'm kind of obsessed. It is the same well not the same they're a little bit different this is the sweater I just showed and these are the pants um they're a drawstring which is like my fave. Doyle what are you doing? He's creeping um and also they have pockets. Do you guys see this? Do you guys see the pockets?  I might actually even put them on tonight because I've been saving them in the bags because I didn't want to take out anything for the haul until you know this. Also I got this cute little makeup bag this is by Sophia Joy and I thought I would use this for some of the organizing in my bathroom or in my desk which is also kind of doubles as my vanity for things I just don't use as often and I love how deep this is too. It's got a little bit of color to it which I'm like okay with. It's got a little bit of this kind of like bright teal and then also navy and white and it's got some light blue right here as well but yeah and I love the gold hardware it's like totally my jam and then this let's see by Sophia Joy it does not have a price on it but again I'll link it below. All right I've got one more bag left so this is also somewhere in this oh wait hold on before I get into this bag there's the nail polish I was talking about. All right so I went over to the nail polishes because I really haven't bought a nail polish and I don't know how many years maybe two three years. That's bad because that means that all my nail polish is like epically old but whatever. I got this one which is like a creamy creamy taupe color kind of. I just I thought this was so pretty and it kind of like I felt like looked good on my skin and not everything does. Right now I'm currently wearing sefiji and I'll leave a link for that polish down below too but this one is called master plan it's color 680 I really like this and I thought this would be really pretty for the fall or just to have like more of a neutral nail and then this one is called in stitches number 608 and it was just like this really pretty creamy rose color um something that I do with nail polishes which if you guys don't like the nail polishes don't get fiji because to get this kind of color consistency three coats you guys three coats and it's still like kind of streaky anyways but I always with polishes I open up the bottle because I'm crazy but I always check to see like you know if it's thin you know what I mean because if I wanted a thin nail polish that would be fine but typically I want it opaque in two coats and I can usually like tell but usually those lighter colors like fiji which I have on my hands right now it's just one of those that always seems to be an issue but like those super light colors it's really hard but I'm so excited about these new polishes and I think I'm going to change up my nail polish here in a couple of days so for the weekend I think I'm going to do something different but I don't know I don't know which one I'm not sure maybe I don't know one of these two you can vote in the comments which one I should do hi I got some other fun things some of the stuff I got on clearance actually too so I'll go over that as well um I live in Minnesota as you guys know this is a like Doyle that escalated quickly um this is a Minnesota sweatshirt Doyle get out of there it's like a nice big hoodie sweatshirt it was 24.99 um and it's got kind of that like lumberjacky kind of print it's got the little pouch in the front hopefully you can see it I'm like way super close um but yeah basically Minnesota I mean we're not all lumberjacks but we all aspire to be lumberjacks and I just got done getting going not getting to going to the Minnesota State Fair a couple weekends back so um I saw this and I was like yep gotta have it and I always love my clothing and my like especially my casual stuff well let's be honest like most of my clothes are casual like I feel like this is even casual even though I like can wear it to work or whatever can you get out of there jeez um but I love everything oversized like I just want to be comfortable and I don't like um tight stuff it just I don't know it doesn't suit me I mean there was a time in my life where tight stuff was all the rage but I think it was more like that was the style then too but now I feel like everything is kind of like that loose baggy oversized with like a really cute pair of leggings and boots and like you're good to go but anyway um but I love this thing I think this is so cute and it was in the women's section and I'm pretty sure this was a mens but whatever I don't care I'll I like it I'm gonna wear it um also uh oh I told you the price 24.99 I think okay this was on clearance it was originally 16.99 and is now eight dollars and 48 cents and this was the Jillian O'Malley sleepwear again nice drawstring in the front and is there pockets on this one oh there's pockets on this one too pockets and um this one has a really big cuff as well the uh material is kind of see through but it's very different it's really really light almost like it feels almost cool to the touch which is kind of cool um but I just I I just love a good sleep pant and I always always size up maybe one or two sizes in a sleep pant because you know again the comfort thing like especially if it's a drawstring like this you can't really go wrong with oversized sleep pants in my opinion more clearance things um I found some of my favorite tank tops let's see here did I just get one of these yeah I did okay um this is originally eight dollars and was four dollars it's the marona and this whoops here we go um these are the little tank tops they're like let's see can you see it it's black you probably can't see it let's try it with the other color um these are like the like ribbed tank tops I'm like literally wearing one right now too but the ones that I currently have are really old but they're kind of like a longer tank top which I appreciate and um I just it's like I like that there's a little bit of stretch to it as well so I got one in black because they had one in my size and then they also had one in the navy so let me see if I you can see the ribbing on it a little bit better yeah so it's like ridged like that it looks like really royal blue on camera but this is actually navy and then this one was also four dollars unclear it's it was half price oh I was like score time to get one of those and then let's see okay down to the last two items you guys whoo all right and then I got two pouches that were actually in the like wallet section by all the handbags and I thought these would be really really pretty this is um by mossimo this is a light light pink like a blush pink and this is uh 14.99 from mossimo whoa hello I thought this would be really nice to store my pens um as some of you have seen in my last plan with me I showed like a pen haul thing and I have a bunch of pens that I really don't use that often but I thought this would be really really pretty for like all my colorful pens and then I did get another one because this won't be able to fit all of my pens and then I also got the there was one black one so I probably would have gotten two black ones to be completely honest if there was two but there was only one um but I figured this would be nice for all of my black and blue pens for when I do like pen testing and stuff and it seems to be definitely like wide enough for the pens and markers that I use so I am very very excited to start to organize with these and I have heard your comments I will be showing my raskog cart um I bought that from Ikea many many moons ago but I will be showing that in an upcoming video and I will probably be having these in there organizing all my patents do you guys see the dog this is what I have to deal with on a daily basis what are you doing Doyle what what what are you doing seriously you coming over here I think he was mad because I wasn't paying attention to him hi do it all what hello okay so Doyle decided to join me for a minute he hates being held but we're just gonna do it anyway because we get more views when Doyle is on camera right Doyle okay so anyways um uh we are gonna jet this video is insanely long because I kind of rambled on on the weird things that I bought hope you guys enjoyed it uh as always I will link everything down below for you that I can possibly find some will be from Target's website and some I'll just uh ew um some of them I will just post from Amazon because I know Amazon links are sometimes easier for you guys so anyways I if you have any questions feel free to post them below and I will get back to as many of you as I can feel free to subscribe if you haven't already I'm here every Monday Wednesday and Friday with new content geez okay I I gotta finish the outro Doyle no one's touching your butt get out of here all right well that's gonna do it for me I'll talk to you later bye guys


Studying Romeo and Juliet. Here's how you can analyze that five scene too. The scene starts in Friar Lawrence's cell. We can see Friar John in the stage director's is entering. This is the Friar that Friar Lawrence sent to Mantua with a letter for Romeo. Friar Lawrence is pleased to see him. He assumes he went to Mantua so he's really keen to know how Romeo is and if Romeo got the letter. Friar John is sad to tell him that he was detained by searchers in Verona. Searchers were people who were hired to look for those who had a plague and they had to quarantine these people who had a plague. Since Friar John was trying to leave Verona with another Friar who had worked with sick people the searchers thought that he may be infected with the plague which is called the infectious pestilence. As a result Friar John and the Friar that he was traveling with were quarantined. They were locked up in order for the searchers to see if they were sick and Friar John never ever left Verona. He never ever made it to Mantua. Upon hearing this Friar Lawrence gets scared. He wonders whether the letter has made it to Romeo telling him that Juliet's death is actually fake. Friar John speaks using caesura. He produces the letter and gives it back to Friar Lawrence. Friar Lawrence is horrified. He speaks in this Islamidry sentence basically cursing bad luck. Friar Lawrence is upset and he speaks using caesura to tell Friar John that he should have done something to send the letter. It's so important it wasn't a regular letter and now if it doesn't arrive in time to Romeo it's going to cause a lot of harm. Once Friar John leaves to go and get the letter Friar Lawrence speaks using alliteration of M here to say that he now needs to sneak back into the Capulet tomb to get Juliet. He speaks using Iron Bay Contaminer to say that once he wakes Juliet up from her sleep she's going to be really furious at him for not having the letter sent to Romeo in good time. Yet Friar Lawrence remains hopeful. He speaks using alliteration to say that once he's able to fetch Juliet from the tomb he's going to write to Romeo again to Mantua in order to give him another plan to rescue Juliet. He speaks using this oxymoron as he considers how Juliet is going to panic once she wakes up in this tomb filled with dead bodies. She's going to panic because she won't see Romeo.


It's hard to imagine what it must have been like during the night, between March 7th and 8th, in which the Battle of Peeridge took place. On the 7th, the two armies had fought what was, at that point, one of the largest battles of the Civil War, and it wasn't over yet. Both sides had already suffered hundreds of casualties or more, far more than the surgeons could effectively tend to. I shall never forget that night, one Confederate soldier said. Wounded Union soldiers were all around me, and their suffering and calls for water and fire appealed to me and gained my sympathy. Those supplications to God and us for help were enough to soften the heart of even a Missouri soldier. I've talked plenty about the loss of romance in war, but many of the soldiers on both sides were still green. So the transition from visions of glory to facing the grim realities of war was still taking place. Another Confederate soldier serving as a sentry during the night where he could see the piles of body in the moonlight described his experience, quote. It was a cold night and it was pitiful to hear the wounded calling all through that night in the woods. For some water or something to keep them warm, I hope I will never hear such pleadings and witness such suffering again, such cruelty and barbarity ought not to be tolerated by civilized nations, end quote. On either side we find examples of some soldiers having sympathy for the dead and wounded enemy and some happy to loot the bodies of their fallen foes. In one case, a Missouri Union soldier took a bullet he thought would kill him. I was shot somewhere in the heart, he later said. I cannot tell where, but I was sure it was a death shot as the blood was flowing from my mouth and I was choking for breath. He made his way to a cornfield that was already littered with bodies from the day's fight and he collapsed. Some Missouri Confederates were making their way through the cornfield and thanking him dead, stole his sidearm and rifled through his pockets. The soldier probably would have bled to death had it not been for a couple of Union soldiers who found him a little while later, realized he was still alive and brought him to the surgeon. The doctor said that his wound was fatal, but the men who rescued him stayed with him and made sure he didn't drown in his own blood and the soldier survived. Just as we saw in previous battles, soldiers new to combat were particularly taken aback by the side of the makeshift hospitals.  Some were praying, some swearing, some laughing, others crying, some growing, many dead and dying, end quote. The night was cold, some of the soldiers hadn't eaten in two days. They were entirely exhausted. But for many, this was their first combat experience. And if the trauma of that wasn't enough, they had to try to sleep, knowing that they would have to face the horrors of war again as soon as the sun came up. I'm Chris Calton and this is the Mises Institute podcast Historical Controversies. In the previous episode, we looked at one part of the Battle of Peeridge, which took place at Leetown. This fighting took place on March 7th and it turned out to be a Confederate disaster in which two Brigadier Generals, Ben McCulloch, and his immediate subordinate James McIntosh were both killed within minutes of each other. The result led to a breakdown in Confederate leadership that left one section of the army under Major General Earl Van Dorn unable to reinforce the other section of the army, which was fighting at Elkhorn Tavern. While General Van Dorn and Sterling Price, who led the Confederate Missouri State Guard, were fighting, they fully expected Ben McCulloch to arrive with his division at any moment to reinforce them. This, of course, would not happen. In today's episode, we will finish the story of the Battle of Peeridge, looking at the fighting that took place around Elkhorn Tavern. The Union General in charge of the Army of the Southwest was Samuel Curtis. When he learned on March 7th that the Confederates were marching up the Telegraph Road, Curtis decided he had to intercede to maintain control of this important road. The Army of the Southwest was composed of four divisions, one of which had been already sent to deal with Ben McCulloch in Leetown, as we covered in the previous episode. Now to defend Telegraph Road, he sent Colonel Eugene Carr and his division to hold off the Confederates who were following Van Dorn and Sterling Price. Cars selected the land around Elkhorn Tavern as the best strategic ground to defend against the Confederates. The Tavern itself was a prominent two-story building with a large set of antlers decorating the outside of its roof. But what made the ground around it so suitable for Carr's defense was that the Tavern was located at the top of a plateau that the Telegraph Road ran through. The hillsides of the plateau were covered with trees, so this gave the Union the high ground advantage and its forested hillsides provided natural cover for the soldiers. Now roughly half of Curtis' army was held back from either front of the battle. In the previous episode, we saw how the Confederates at Leetown should have easily been able to overrun the Union forces, had it not been for the breakdown in leadership that followed the deaths of McCulloch and McIntosh. In many ways, luck was on the Union side that day. At Elkhorn Tavern, Carr realized that even with the natural defensive advantages the plateau provided, Van Dorn's Confederates greatly outnumbered him and could potentially run him out more quickly than Curtis could reinforce him. He asked Curtis to send more men, but it would take at least an hour for them to arrive and they may have been driven back by then. But nothing could be done by the time the fighting started, except to try to hold the rebels off until reinforcement showed up. As soon as the Confederates came in range, the small Union battery at the top of the hill started firing. Van Dorn reacted quickly, calling up his own artillery to respond in kind. The Confederate Artillerists were at a clear disadvantage, having to maneuver their guns into place while the Union cannon fire was landing around them, sending tree limbs and piles of dirt flying everywhere. But they managed to get their guns in position and when they started firing back, the small Union battery couldn't hold out long. They had already lost a gun when a shell got stuck. Now the Confederates were firing on them. One shell landed on a Union ammunition chest creating an explosion that sent smoke and debris everywhere. Not long after, the Southerners landed a hit on another ammunition chest that was being brought in by horses. The explosion this time panicked the horses who ran off dragging supplies behind them. Even after the explosion of the second ammunition chest, none of the Union Artillerists were killed, but they were now either stunned or groping around blindly in the thick cloud of smoke that engulfed them. It's worth remembering, as I've mentioned at least once in previous episodes, that artillery had a tremendous psychological effect and deaths from cannon fire could be particularly gruesome, but overall artillery wasn't as deadly as we might think because people could actually see it coming and react accordingly. But covered in smoke, the soldiers were blind and therefore that much more vulnerable to the Confederate cannons. While the Yankees were struggling with the smoke, a quote-unquote perfect storm of grapeshot and shell and debris pounded at the Union Battery, injuring the officers, including Carr himself, and killing several men. Enough men and horses were either killed or wounded that there weren't enough left to operate the cannons, and Union fire slowed nearly to a halt. While the Union Battery was falling into disarray, the commander of the 1st Missouri Brigade, Colonel Henry Little, decided to try to force them to retreat. He called for Colonel Elijah Gates, leader of the 1st Missouri Cavalry, to help him. According to Little's orders, Gates' cavalry would move up the hill to capture the battery while the infantry followed behind to cover them. Now this may be one of the muddiest moments in the battle in terms of the details we have. Think of old cartoons like Looney Tunes or something, where when two characters would fight, the animators would just draw a big cloud of dust and add sound effects to illustrate the fighting. So you couldn't really see what was going on in the cartoons. A fight was just a ball of dust and sound effects. Well, that's kind of what was going on here. The smoke from the cannon fire was so thick that the cavalry couldn't really see what they were charging into. They rode up the ravine, but before they charged into the smoke, they dismounted and proceeded on foot, pulling their horses behind them. Colonel Little ordered his men to support the cavalry by firing a volley into the cloud of smoke. But the scene was so obscured that there was no way for the infantry to avoid hitting the very men they were supposed to be supporting. To make matters worse, when the cavalry, now on foot, moved into the smoke-filled area, they ran headlong into a line of Union infantry that was coming in to support the battery. They weren't expecting this, and many of the Missourians panicked, running back down the ravine with the horses following behind them. In the words of one witness, quote, the horses came galloping down the hill in writerless yet regular order as if guided by unseen hands, end quote. The horses were obviously more visible than the men leading them down the hill. One man, seeing the horses without anybody riding them and unaware that the cavalry was on foot, screamed, my God, they have all been killed! Now the Union infantry was advancing slowly down the hill. Sterling Price, who was on the left side of the Confederate line, mistakenly assumed that the Union was now attacking the Confederates on each flank, and he ordered some of his artillerists to turn their guns in the direction of what he believed was a Union attack. He overestimated the Union advance, though, and by diverting some of his cannons away from the direct Confederate assault, the advantage they had won against the Union battery was gone. Instead of attacking, the Union infantry only advanced a little way down the slope before they were ordered to lie down and try to aim their shots at specific targets rather than just firing at the Confederate line while they marched. Both sides now exchanged heavy fire for maybe a half hour or so without advancing. The Elkhorn Tavern, which had been converted into a Union hospital, started to take damage from Confederate cannons, forcing the evacuation of the wounded soldiers inside. One survivor described how intense the fighting was, I never heard anything to equal it in any other battle. The incessant crash of musketry and roar of artillery amid curtains of rising smoke appeared both to sight and sound as if two wrathful clouds had descended to the earth, rushing together in hideous battle with all their lightning and thunder. The Union suffered the most damage from it, but they managed to hold off the Confederate advance. At around 1230, Union reinforcements arrived. Military outfits were still not uniform at this point, and when a regiment of Illinois cavalry started to move down the hill, the opposing Missourians weren't sure if they were friend or foe, so they held their fire. The regimental officer of the Missourians was on horseback and he rode forward to find out whose side the cavalry was on, only to find himself coming under fire. He immediately turned his horse around and started to race back down hill yelling, it's them, it's them, it's them. The Missouri Confederates and Illinois Cavalry were now less than 200 yards away when the Confederates opened fire, taking out several of the Illinoisans as they drove them back up the hill. Most of the other reinforcements moved down the slope and entered the battle more tactically. The Union was still suffering the greater number of casualties at this point, but they did manage to take out one Confederate brigade leader, killing him at roughly the same time that General McCulloch was shot down at Leetown. So in both fields of battle, the Confederacy was not suffering a high number of casualties, but they were losing high-ranking officers, though in this case it was only a brigade leader rather than a division commander. But the high ground actually proved to be something of a disadvantage for the incoming Union reinforcements. The slope of the ravine was so steep in some places that the men were falling and sliding down the hill while they tried to move forward. As the 9th Iowa Regiment closed in, a single volley of Confederate musket fire took out more than 60 of them, forcing the rest of the regiment to fall back before it could even start fighting. So in this case the Confederates actually seemed to have a defensive advantage by being on the low ground, which is obviously quite unusual. At one point the Union disorder was exacerbated when a Confederate shell set fire to some dry leaves and started a brush fire near one Union regiment, creating a panic about the wounded men who couldn't move out of harm's way. The fighting like this kept up for a couple of hours. Curtis was sending reinforcements to Elkhorn Tavern but only a little bit at a time because he was afraid of giving up other positions that he may need to defend depending on the outcome of the fighting at Leetown. So he was being somewhat conservative and Colonel Carr at Elkhorn Tavern had reinforcements trickling in, not enough to change the tide of battle but enough to keep the Confederates at bay. Van Dorn was also being conservative, which is rather out of character for him. He was usually a pretty aggressive leader but at around noon he received the message that Ben McCulloch had sent shortly before leading his own fatal charge against the Union line at Leetown. The message optimistically claimed that it seemed likely that McCulloch would be able to rejoin Van Dorn in Sterling Price before long. So Van Dorn was delaying any aggressive assault until he had his entire army at his disposal. He was content enough to remain on the defensive until then. Things seemed to be going well for the Confederates by around two o'clock. The Union line was finally starting to fall back. Colonel Little finally led his men up the hill to occupy the ground where the Union battery had been, which he later described as quote, a scene of wreck and disaster. One of his soldiers described the scene quote, the remains of parts of the Federal battery were scattered around and the effect of the explosions could be plainly seen. Dead horses and dead and wounded infantry told of the storm of iron, which had beaten them down, end quote. But as all this was taking place, Van Dorn and Price were discussing how to proceed when another messenger brought distressing updates about Leetown. He was able to inform Van Dorn that the Confederates at Leetown were no longer moving toward Elkhorn Tavern as they were caught up in their own battle. As if to prove him right, the fighting at Elkhorn Tavern was dying down as the Union fell back and the scene was now quiet enough that the musket and cannon fire from Leetown could be heard. The messenger didn't know it at the time but both McCulloch and McIntosh were already dead, having both been killed somewhere between 1.30 and 2.00 in the afternoon. So Van Dorn didn't realize the full scale of the Confederate disaster at Leetown but he was finally aware that he would not be receiving the rest of his army anytime soon at the very least. Then, as Van Dorn and Price were considering what to do with the Sun Happy update, Sterling Price took a bullet that ripped through his right arm and landed in his side. According to witnesses, Price maintained his composure quite well as aides bandaged the wound.  While his injury was being tended to, Van Dorn had to consider what to do now that things weren't looking quite so positive for the Confederates at Pea Ridge. This was an important turning point for the battle at Elkhorn Tavern. Up to this point, both sides were maintaining defensive positions. The Confederates had the early advantage but they didn't press aggressively up the hill because they were waiting on McCulloch to join them. The Union didn't move aggressively down the hill because they had a tactical position on the plateau. They were outnumbered and their goal was to maintain control of the Telegraph Road which didn't require an advance anyway. But with the news of Leetown, Van Dorn made the decision to finally push his attack. Although he couldn't know what was going on with McCulloch, had he done this a few hours earlier, he likely would have driven the Yankees away. But since he waited, he gave the Union time to receive the reinforcements that continued to trickle in. Moreover, the steep slopes may have worked to the Confederate advantage when the Union soldiers were trying to move downhill to face them. But all this meant was that the steep ravines would work to the advantage of the defenders regardless of whether the attackers were moving uphill or downhill. So Van Dorn's decision to advance was exactly what Carr had been positioning his men to be prepared for. Despite his injury, Sterling Price refused to leave the battlefield. They divided command of the Missouri State Guard between them with Van Dorn taking the right half and Price commanding the left half of the Confederate line. They decided that the Union right flank was the weakest, so that would be the point they would push against. On paper, this looks like a reasonable plan. But due to the rough terrain, the steep slopes and the foliage, it was impossible for the men to advance in an orderly fashion and the advance was painfully slow. Since the push was against the Union right flank, it was made by the Confederate left under Price's supervision. Van Dorn maintained the Confederate right, which would occupy the rest of the Union line so that the Union right flank couldn't be reinforced. Now here was Van Dorn's logic. McCulloch's division was quite strong. Since it consisted of roughly 7,000 men, it was almost as big as the entirety of Curtis's army of the Southwest. The Confederates had the clear advantage of numbers. So Van Dorn assumed that if McCulloch was being held up this effectively, he must be facing the entire Union force that wasn't already at Elkhorn Tavern. This of course was incorrect. Only one of Curtis's four divisions was at Leetown, and the only reason they weren't overrun by McCulloch is because of the back-to-back death of the two division commanders, which resulted in a breakdown in Confederate leadership. But Van Dorn didn't know this, so he incorrectly assumed that the other two divisions that Curtis had on standby must be occupied at Leetown. He also misinterpreted the movement of Union troops around Elkhorn Tavern, in which the Union line was shortened, indicating that Curtis had pulled some of Carr's troops to Leetown as well. But in reality, the troops at Elkhorn Tavern had simply been repositioned so the Union line was shorter but more concentrated. So Van Dorn was making assumptions that may have been reasonable, given the knowledge he had, but was entirely incorrect and demonstrated Van Dorn's tendency for naive optimism. It was roughly 4.30 when Price commenced his attack up the hill. The lull was over. The march up hill moved through the thick forests, but the Union right flank extended to a farm where the trees had been cleared away long ago. The result was that the Confederate advance was mostly invisible in the dense forest, but when they emerged into the farm, they were only about 100 yards from the enemy. Intense, close-range gunfire erupted immediately from both sides. By many accounts, the fighting here was even more intense than what took place a few hours earlier. One regimental officer from Iowa later stated, I charged the battlements of Vicksburg and assisted in driving the Confederates from their almost impregnable position on Missionary Ridge, but in all my army experience, I did not see any fighting compared with the plain, open-field conflict that occurred in and around Elkhorn Tavern on March 7th, 1862. Those who could found shelter behind tree stumps or a nearby limestone outcropping and everybody else dropped to their bellies. It was a war of attrition as each side exchanged gunfire in an open field from less than 100 yards away. Van Dorn moved up the hill as well to occupy the Union left. With both flanks of the Union line unable to reinforce the other, Van Dorn was able to push the Union line back and occupy the ground at the top of the terrace by five o'clock. His push was successful, but the climb-up hill left his men completely exhausted. Despite all the setbacks and difficulties, though, the Confederate advance was going well, as they still heavily outnumbered the Union. One Northerner said, quote, It seemed to me that the whole world over there was full of rebels. It was one line after another, end quote. The Confederates were swarming up hill from every direction. While this fighting was going on, Van Dorn finally received word that both McCulloch and McIntosh had been killed, and the third-ranking officer, Louis Hebert, was unaccounted for. At this point, the Confederates at Leetown were already completely done for, even though Van Dorn still didn't know the full story. So he sent orders for Colonel Greer, the fifth officer to take command of McCulloch's division at Leetown, to hold the position at all costs. But of course, by the time the message was delivered, Greer and the rest of the division would already be gone. Given that Sterling Price was the division leader of the Missouri State Guard at Elkhorn, Van Dorn probably should have gone to Leetown himself to take command of McCulloch's division, now that he was aware of the crisis of leadership. At least this is what other historians have suggested, but things seem to be going well with the Confederate attack at Elkhorn Tavern, so Van Dorn chose to stay. Sterling Price and his men were still waging their war of attrition. Price called his artillery up to start pelting the Yankees in the cornfield. After battering the Union position, the Missouri infantry charged the cornfield again, and once more, they met with devastating results. As more Missourians fell, the rest retreated, even as Sterling Price, with his arms still in a sling, was trying to rally them forward. This kept up a number of times, with the Union officer in the field saying, I mowed them down in mounds. They charged us time and time again, but they could not move us. But Price still wasn't calling it quits. He tried to gather more of his men to conduct a more orderly charge, this time moving in from each side. As the southern battery continued to send shells into the cornfield, the Union battery was running out of ammunition. But by the time Price's men commenced this more tactical charge, more Union troops arrived to reinforce those who had been holding the field. The result was yet another bout of heated combat. For Price, this was quote, the fiercest struggle of the day, end quote. But even with the Union reinforcements, the Confederates had the advantage of numbers. Finally, by 6 p.m., the Union soldiers gave way and retreated downhill. Regiment by regiment, the Confederates at different points of the hill drove the Union forces back. They were gaining ground and winning the assault, but organization, which already was disrupted by the March of Hill, broke down even further as soldiers broke ranks to loot the Union camps they captured. These men were exhausted, and they hadn't eaten since the previous morning, so their reaction shouldn't be surprising, but it did undermine the Confederate advance. The Union forces fell back to another nearby farmed downhill. The Confederates who didn't stop to loot and eat continued pushing against them, but the strength of numbers was dwindling as too many soldiers remained at the top of the plateau, exhausted and famished. As a result, the Union forces concentrated at the farm were able to hold off any further Confederate advance. The Missourians who did run after them found dozens of their comrades dropping from Union musket fire and canister, bodies piled up in the cornfield, and the Union line held its ground. General Curtis finally showed up at around sunset, and he took command to try to lead his men to reclaim the ground lost to the Confederates. When some regimental leaders told him that they were completely out of ammunition, he told them to use their bayonets, the men did as they were told. As one regimental officer described the Union soldiers during this final assault, such a yell as they crossed that field with, you never heard, it was unearthly, and scared the rebels so bad they never stopped to fire at us or let us reach them. They finally succeeded in reclaiming a bit of ground, but not enough to matter very much. They were stopped far short of Elkhorn Tavern, which was now completely in Confederate hands. By 730, with the sun completely set, Curtis was still trying to stay in the fight, but his batteries were out of ammunition, along with his infantry. There would be no more fighting that day. Even without McCulloch's division, the Confederates had driven the Union men completely off the plateau. During the night, the rest of Curtis's army joined those around Elkhorn Tavern. The Confederates also had some of McCulloch's division find their way to the tavern from Leetown, though others were unaccounted for after their retreat. Van Dorn repositioned his troops to form a better line across the Telegraph Road. He was more than ready to fight, but he thought Curtis might be ready to surrender, so he was content with holding back in a defensive position to see what Curtis was going to do. Almost as soon as the sun came up, the fighting resumed, with the first shot fired on March 8th from a Union cannon. Neither side quite knew what to expect from the other. The Confederates now had the terrain advantage, and they made early use of it. The field that the Union managed to hold from the day before was the first target. Conciled in the woods around the farm, Southern batteries unleashed a surprising volley of cannon fire against the two Union batteries in the field that had been positioned and adjusted during the night.  But when the Southerners emerged from the woods and tried to cross the field, they were quickly driven back by more Union artillery. This would prove to be the last Confederate offensive of the Battle of Peerage. Now it was Curtis' turn. With all four divisions of his army at hand, Curtis was much more prepared to meet the Confederates than he had been the day before. He formed them into a single line of infantry and artillery stretched across the Telegraph Road. He also had the high ground advantage once again. The Confederates may have pushed him off the hill at Elkhorn's Tavern, but by taking the field at the bottom of the hill, they were once again on the low ground, facing a Union line situated up a different hill this time. Curtis made full use of his entire army, including all 21 of his working cannons. Van Dorn had the numerical advantage, at least in artillery. It's hard to say what the numbers of each respective army were after the fighting from the previous day, but Van Dorn only employed three of his 15 batteries, which means the Union had nearly twice as many cannons in the fight. This decision was likely made because some of the batteries were running low on ammunition, though Van Dorn's rationale isn't entirely clear here. Starting at around 8 a.m., the Union started unleashing the full power of their artillery against the Confederates at the bottom of the hill. For the next two hours, the two forces waged a heated artillery battle. Van Dorn tried to call more batteries into position to join the fighting, but this was much more difficult to do now that the Union was unleashing the power of 21 cannons against them. One battery full of rookie artillerists from Arkansas fled the field before they ever fired a shot. Another battery that Van Dorn tried to bring into the fight after the shelling already started was a Missouri battery supported by the infantry of the 2nd Missouri Brigade, but the terrain put the Union at a clear advantage. No longer covered by the woods around Peeridge, Union batteries on the high ground were able to slaughter them. To make matters worse, these Missourians were trying to position themselves along a rocky side of the ravine. If the Union shells didn't take them out, stray rocks that the explosion sent flying did. After the battle, Union soldiers would come to the area to find the bodies of dozens of men and horses lying either dead or wounded, having been mangled and often dismembered by the devastating barrage. The Union officer on sight said that it was a scene that he would never forget. In the words of one survivor, the assault was a perfect hell. Literally thousands of rounds of cannon fire were exchanged during these two hours. One soldier later wrote of it, It was a continual thunder, and a fellow might have believed that the day of judgment had come. Another described the ground as shaking like an earthquake. The Union cannon aides successfully disabled the Confederate batteries, either destroying them, killing the gunners, or sending them fleeing. This opened the door for an infantry assault, and if this ever gets made into a movie, here's the epic shot that would be needed to do the scene justice. The hills around Peeridge, as we've already seen, were heavily wooded, concealing the troops that moved through them pretty well. But the battle had now shifted to large patches of cleared farmland. So the Union troops, as they moved into position for the charge, were now organized uphill from the Confederates on completely clear stretches of land. If you were a Confederate looking up at this, you would be gazing at close to 10,000 Union soldiers staring back down upon you, standing nearly elbow to elbow in a single contiguous line that spanned roughly a mile long. The descriptions left by some of the witnesses don't give the details I would like to have, but they do illustrate how awe-inspiring the site was. One officer said, quote, I had heard of such things, but they were far beyond my conception, end quote. Another called it, quote, the grandest site that I had ever beheld. And years later said, I would not have missed that site for thousands, end quote. By the time they started their impressive descent, the Confederates were already retreating. Van Dorn having unhappily chosen to withdraw rather than surrender. They still faced some resistance, some of which came from the Confederate Cherokees that had arrived from Lytown during the night. But those Confederates who did try to hold their ground found themselves overtaken by the line of Union soldiers, swarming upon them, sending them a quote, unquote, perfect shower of bullets, as one Missouri soldier put it. I said in the previous battle that pretty much every soldier would end up blaming Van Dorn for the defeat. Van Dorn obviously made some mistakes, but it isn't fair to say that he is the reason for the Confederate defeat, at least not entirely. Some of the problems the Confederates faced, such as the death of two generals at Lytown, are hard to blame on any person. But if you want to know why the soldiers who took part in the battles were so willing to lay the blame at Van Dorn's feet, here's a really good example. Van Dorn called for the retreat, but he failed to send word of this. Did the 13 batteries that were still sitting around Elkhorn Tavern. As the thousands of Union soldiers swarmed up the hill toward the Tavern, these batteries didn't know what to do. They tried to fight back, and they fired off a few shots of canister at the Union soldiers, but any resistance was hopeless. They were massacred by the Union troops. At one point, an ammunition chest exploded, killing or wounding an entire team of horses and artillerists. The destruction of these units was awful. One survivor said that it was, quote, the most horrible spectacle it was my lot to witness during the war, end quote. We might see how these men would be ready to blame Van Dorn for their trouble once they learned that the rest of the army had already been ordered to retreat while they were facing a massacre. With the victory at hand, the Union troops were elated, but there were exceptions to this. One Union soldier writing to his brother back home tried to explain his complicated emotions, where he was happy about the Union victory, but overcome by the cost, he wrote, quote. Maybe you know what joy is, but you do not and never can know the wild delirious ecstasy which crazes the soldier or rather an army when they know they have met and put root to an enemy twice or three times their number, whom they may have been fighting with various success for three excited, anxious, almost eternal days. What, though their comrades moan and shriek with painful wounds, what, though hundreds of dead are strewn within their very sight, the victory is ours. The cost and all else is forgotten. The great joy and wild delight absorbs all else. Ecstasy rules the hour and the man and gives a life that he never knew before, end quote. This letter from this Union soldier kind of reminds me of Mark Twain's war prayer, where a man goes into a church and sarcastically prays to God for victory, praying for the blood of the enemies to run through the streets and for God to help make sure that the children of the enemy grow up orphans and all other manners of horror implied in the desire for victory and war. This soldier was trying to reconcile the joy of victory with the realization of the dead and wounded soldiers, his friends and comrades that littered the ground around every man celebrating. To everyone else it seemed they had forgotten their dead comrades even before they had been buried. I admit that I've never been to war so these are things I think about when reading these histories. How do you reconcile the joy of victory with the price you pay to achieve it? I don't know. The Confederates under Van Dorn would make their way to Corinth as the Confederate troops in the west would all be brought together in response to a string of Union victories. As they moved, they swarmed like locusts on the farm in towns they passed. After battles, both Union and Confederate soldiers made a habit of looting and pillaging and it's difficult to defend a soldier who, to give one example, steals children's clothing from a private home in a conquered city and this kind of pillaging occurred all throughout the war. But the looting by the soldiers under Van Dorn even if we won't condone it is at least more understandable. The soldiers were literally starving. Some of them hadn't eaten for three days because of Van Dorn's mishandling of the supplies which were left at train depots separated from the army they were intended for. But this hardly makes it any less destructive to the victims of the pillaging especially when the Confederate army was claiming to protect Southern citizens from exactly this kind of behavior from the Yankee villains. One farmer said that the Confederate soldiers quote, killed every fowl of any kind all the cattle, hogs and sheep and took all the bacon and corn they could find for several miles around. They cooked at our house from 11 o'clock until midnight until there was nothing left to cook. End quote. He went on to say, perhaps hyperbolically, perhaps not, quote, I seen lots of men cut out slices of beef and mutton before it was done bleeding and eat it raw. The only bread they had was the corn they had hooked on the road. They threw the ears into the fire and burnt the outside black and eat it, end quote. Soldiers give testimonies that suggest the farmer may not have been exaggerating. One soldier wrote, quote, I was so hungry I even picked up turnip peelings out of the mud and ate them and I saw many others do the same, end quote. But while we may be able to understand looting that is driven from desperation and starvation, they left the subsistence farmers of rural Arkansas with nothing left for themselves. Even as they picked the state clean of anything to eat, there wasn't enough to feed the thousands of soldiers who continued to effectively star for more than two weeks. The citizens were also left, in many cases, with the wounded Confederates that were left behind. Many of the Southern wounded were carried for a while, but Price eventually gave the order to leave the immobile soldiers behind as they were slowing the army down. One soldier who had taken a bullet to the thigh, recalled being, quote, laid out in a porch by the side of the road, end quote. We can think of what that soldier must have gone through being left behind by his friends, but it couldn't have been easy for the comrades who were ordered to leave him behind either. In fact, if you read some of the literature on the psychology of warfare, one of the most prominent phenomena that scholars have repeatedly observed is how the trauma of war makes men surprisingly willing to sacrifice their own safety or well-being for their comrades, which is not the reaction psychologists expected when they first started studying this stuff. But we can also imagine the citizen who comes home or opens their front door to find a bleeding and dying soldier lying on their front porch. In rural Arkansas in 1862, there weren't a whole lot of options for how to deal with that other than to take the soldier in, sometimes requiring months of care for another mouth to feed. To be sure, many, probably most, people who took care of injured soldiers did so out of compassion or a sense of moral duty, but the material burden of this could still be tremendous. The Union soldiers, being the victors, were left dealing with the bulk of the dead and wounded, as is the case with any relatively large-scale battle, and peerage was probably more mid-scale by the standards established later in the war. Numerous soldiers left testimonies of their first experience witnessing the piles of amputated legs and arms that surgeons casually built from the hundreds of amputations they had to perform. As the soldiers combed the ground around peerage for dead and wounded, some of them happened upon soldiers that had been scalped, and others who seemed to have either been finished off as they lay wounded, or at least mutilated, after their death by knives or hatchets. This was a testament to the different approach to warfare that the Indians engaged in, which frankly wasn't unlike what we saw in the episodes on Nicaraguan in the 1850s, where it was standard practice to bayonet enemy wounded after a battle. But it was enough to compel General Curtis to compose a letter to Vandoren complaining of the Confederate deviation from quote-unquote civilized warfare. Of course, the Southerners and Northerners generally showed the same deference to the rules of engagement, such as the practice of not attacking enemy hospitals and treating enemy wounded, but both sides were also guilty, at least in their newspapers, of painting the enemy as barbarians and stories of scalped, mutilated Northerners certainly fed into wartime prejudices. One final event is worth mentioning here, as it almost never gets talked about, and that's Curtis' march through Arkansas. Honestly, I would have liked to have devoted an entire episode to this, but it's nearly untouched in the scholarship. There is one book on the subject, but it's a self-published book by an amateur historian, which doesn't mean it's bad, by the way, but it is riskier to use such sources, especially when there's no corroborating literature. But after recovering from the battle intending to the dead or wounded, Curtis led his army on a long march through Arkansas that took place from the end of March through part of July. His goal was to capture Little Rock, but he would fail and ultimately situate his army in the city of Helena, off the Mississippi River. The fact that Curtis failed to capture Little Rock is probably the primary reason historians have given Curtis this march little attention, as it amounted to little of strategic military significance, especially in 1862, in which so many important battles took place. But it's worth mentioning for two reasons. One is that, as we will see when we look at Grant's Vicksburg Campaign, as Curtis was really the first Union general to take his army on a long march without consistent access to supplies. This meant that they had to live off of what they could claim along the way. This obviously compounded Arkansas's devastation, which they suffered from both the Confederate army and the Union army, and it also left them exposed to the occasional episodes of guerrilla warfare at the hands of Southerners acting independently of any larger army. The brutal tactics of guerrillas also contributed to the view that Confederates did not practice the oxymoron civilized warfare. But most importantly, Curtis would establish the precedent for the strategy that Grant would famously and successfully employ in his capture at Vicksburg. The other reason that the march through Arkansas is worth mentioning is because we should always keep in mind the psychological impact of these events in the minds of Southern citizens. Just like I described with the Tennessee River Raid after the fall of Fort Henry, the citizens of Arkansas were getting a rude awakening about the realities of war. They were not insulated from the conflict, even if they were on the western side of the Mississippi River, where neither side was focusing the bulk of its soldiers. From March through July of 1862, Arkansas was devastated. All in all, the battle of Peeridge is relatively minor engagement, not as large scale of a battle as many of the others that would take place in 1862, and not as strategically important as some of the smaller battles either. But it is large enough and interesting enough that I would have been remiss to skip it. So I decided to devote only two episodes to it. It probably would have been at least three if I went into the level of detail that I have for some other battles. But at the time that it took place, Peeridge would have been huge. The only battles that had been fought that were larger than it were Bull Run and Fort Donaldson. If you don't count the 12,000 Confederate prisoners at Fort Donaldson, Peeridge was also the bloodiest battle in proportion to the size of the armies engaged in it up to that point in the war. Bull Run had roughly 5,000 casualties between both sides, but both armies involved were more than twice those at Peeridge, which still had roughly 3,500 casualties. Obviously, casualty counts are incredibly rough estimates, but the point is that Peeridge, at the time that it took place, would have been a tremendous battle in the minds of the public on both sides of the war. But it would quickly be overshadowed. A month after Peeridge, a battle would be fought over the course of two days that would blow any conflict that the United States had seen out of the water. And by conflict, I don't mean battle, I mean war. The next major battle of the Civil War would be larger in size than Bull Run and would have more casualties than the entire Mexican-American war. I'm referring, of course, to the Battle of Shiloh, also known as the Battle of Pittsburgh Landing, and we will begin that incredible story in the next episode. Historical controversies is a production of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. If you would like to support the show, please subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher and leave a positive review. You can also support the show financially by donating at Mises.org slash support-h-c. If you would like to explore the rest of our content, please visit Mises.org. That's M-I-S-E-S dot O-R-G.


Why narcissists are so sleazy? Narcissists are sleazy They are so did corrupt and immoral They are unsavory and unpleasant They have immoral and dishonorable actions and motives Arousing moral distaste and contempt They will swindle and deceive you They will obtain something from you by deception or theft They will deliberately cause you to believe something that is not true For their own personal gain They will give you a mistaken impression And they will even fail to admit to themselves that something is true They will often try to present a classy and elegant image to you If they think that will get your attention If they think that's what you're looking for They will pretend to be stylish and sophisticated But that's not who they really are They just want to display a level of superiority But it's not grounded in their character and personality It's an act that they are using to lure you in They don't know how to say no to sex They are trashy and indecent They sleep around They often have poor hygiene They're wolves in sheep's clothing They may often display a pleasant and friendly appearance But they hide the fact that they are evil They are profoundly immoral and wicked They are low-level people And they will eventually try to pull you down to their level They will be very unpleasant and disagreeable They will insult you They will use extremely offensive words and expressions They will be offensively impolite and bad-mannered But you should avoid syncing to their level Never wrestle with a pig You both get dirty And the pig likes it Never sync to the level of a sleazy narcissist It doesn't mean that you have to talk down to them Just treat them like a normal person Talk to them normally But always keep your distance Move away from them as quickly as you can Because they're very dirty people You don't know where they've been And you're never going to get a positive response From a sleazy narcissist They don't respond well to good people Save that honor and respect for a person of a higher quality Someone who will respond well to the respect that you show towards them Because they feel worthy of that respect Although narcissists may be sleazy You should still treat them as your equal You should still treat them with respect Because narcissists are very dangerous people They can ruin your life They will pull you down to their level They will do horrible things to you They will ruin your reputation They will gossip about you And people may start to believe it Unless you have always treated them with dignity and respect If you have always treated a sleazy narcissist respectfully It will be difficult for them to pull you down So be polite And show your good manners to sleazy narcissists Just do it at a distance Then it will be very difficult for them to smear you The difference between a sleazy narcissist And someone who is respectable Is that a respectable person Understands that they should be a compliment to you They understand that they should contribute extra features to you To improve and emphasise your quality They understand that their role in life Is to connect and build with you Rather than being preoccupied with their own desires and self-interest A respectable person Recognises their qualities and abilities And they respond to your qualities and abilities A respectable person wants to be a part of what you're trying to build Rather than trying to take it all for themselves They crave that complimentary nature between a man and a woman That is the definition of a respectable person While a sleazy narcissist hates the opposite sex They resent them They hold grudges Because they're damaged people And they never took the time to heal They don't self-reflect They don't look at themselves to even realise that they have a problem Instead they take that anger and frustrations out on other people And that is why they will never heal They will never change And you will never be able to build anything with them Sleazy narcissists know that they're in loveable They know that they are incapable of inspiring love and admiration They know that they don't have any attractive or appealing qualities But rather than working on themselves They chose to abandon their true identity They chose to take qualities from other people Who they deem to be desirable or attractive They chose to follow fashions and trends And they lost themselves in the process of doing that So while they may present this false image to you Deep down they know that's not who they really are They know they're just a concoction of things they've seen in magazines or on TV Which is why they feel like they're not enough Which is why they're so insecure They feel like they cannot hold on to anyone So they become sleazy They use sex to grab your attention They cause disruption They start fights To provoke anxiety within you To create a chaotic environment So that they can then hold on to you That's what sleazy narcissists do Sleazy narcissists are the product of the failed relationship Between them and their parents Maybe their mother divorced their father Maybe their father was dominated by their mother Or maybe their father just wasn't around The sleazy narcissists didn't get the right attention From their parents when they were children So now they feel like they're unlovable They don't believe that they can be loved They don't believe that they deserve love Because of their failed relationship with their parents Especially the failed relationship with their father And that is why they always act out That is why they behave badly Were never there unhappy or stressed Because they were never disciplined by their father They were never showed a controlled form of behavior Maybe their mother was too dominating and controlling over their father So the father was not the authority figure In that family dynamic And that is why these sleazy narcissists will engage in promiscuous behavior They will be very irresponsible They will have many sexual relationships They will be very competitive with the opposite sex They will try to compete with you in everything They will chip away at your self-esteem They will try to pull you down to their level They will try to make you feel like you're not enough Because that's exactly how they feel about themselves They're very insecure They feel like they're not enough And that is why they're so sleazy Thank you for watching I hope this video resonate with you Please like, comment, share and subscribe If you would like to donate My PayPal link is in the video description Coaching Inquires You can email me at coaching.narcdefiver.uk Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you soon


The basic model of primary education is the teacher sets a task. There's one correct answer. You solve it in your best handwriting. And that's kind of the model that most of us have taken into our work. You know, there's a right way of doing this, maybe different colors of that, but there's a right way of doing it and there are many wrong ways. And I do it in my best handwriting. And that's the opposite of design. First of all, we question the question. Where does this question come from, teacher? Why not a different question?  There could be a hundred answers. How about I give you 10, 15 sketchy ones and you see which ones you like and we develop that? You know, that is, that's design.


That's one secret of happiness is being able to go back down to the simplest things in life. Be thankful and be grateful and realize how majestic and how wondrous life is by itself. Even when you're suffering, you may be even having, you know, sickness. You may be having hard time financially, you may be suffering from a recent loss of someone or you may have stress in your life, but that's also part of the wonder. That's also part of the majestic creation, part of the human experience.