The New Madness of War

My prior post mentioned that it is hard to feel like Ukraine is "winning" a war when 10+ million of its citizens are displaced from homes that are likely destroyed. Kurt Vonnegut couldn't even find a wry line of bitter humor in that circumstance.

As an entire country gets physically obliterated in a genocidal land grab by a nuclear-capable kleptocratic despot, we citizens of the "Western powers" are facing a disturbing moral and strategic problem...

We seem paralyzed to intervene directly for fear of escalating a two-country conflict being fought in one country into a third world war, possibly involving "tactical" nuclear weapons. Yet Russia's actions are targeting hospitals, shopping centers and apartment towers with ZERO military value and Russian soldiers are shooting civilians in broad daylight. This dynamic is not new. Putin used it in Chechnya, Syria and Crimea. In each case, a nuclear power pursued direct "conventional" military attacks against civilian populations and the opposing world forces seemed to conclude

a) sorry, not a direct ally, sucks to be you

AND / OR

b) well, we'd like to help but don't want to trigger a nuclear Armageddon so as long as they keep the nukes in the silos, we'll stand aside and hope the bad guy tires himself out on you innocent civilians

No one is arguing for nuclear escalations but this decision model seems insane - mad, if you will. Taken to the extreme, it basically says a nuclear power can use any means SHORT OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS to annihilate an enemy and the rest of the world will tolerate it in a form of ultimate cynical relativism. Again, no one is arguing FOR a nuclear escalation here but if this current nightmare ever ends, the world as a whole is going to have to re-think how nuclear weapons are collectively managed and actions that need to be taken against current loose cannons in the nuclear club. The cold war strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction helped avoid mass destruction by nuclear means but now seems frighteningly incapable of avoiding mass destruction by any other lesser means.

WTH

It's Hard to Call This Winning

Back in November 1989, as East Germany decided it wasn't worth the bother to enforce crossing restrictions at the Berlin Wall, everyone immediately pegged that as the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union and -- inevitably -- "victory" of the West in the Cold War over the East. Even at that time, I had a great deal of difficulty processing it as a "win" by the West. Instead, I view the circumstance as one in which the Soviet Union merely lost first by bankrupting itself by redirecting too many resources into military gear and not enough into keeping bread and shoes on the shelves for average citizens.

In March of 2022, there is talk about how Ukraine is actually winning the war against Russia There are actually some legitimate points supporting that argument but it's hard to view them as a win when over ten million Ukrainians have been forced to relocate (3.5 million outside the country, another 6.5 million within) and uncounted millions of homes, schools, hospitals, etc. have been destroyed preventing ANY instant return to physical normalcy even if Putin conceded and yanked his troops out immediately.

There's no guarantee events will continue unfolding in this direction or if Putin will escalate in new military directions or in cyber directions as hinted at as of 3/21/2022. Here are some of the points being made for Ukraine being on the winning side so far, per a writer in The Atlantic here:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/ukraine-is-winning-war-russia/627121/

• Russia has committed fifty percent of its troops to this effort
• they are close to having lost between 10-15 percent of those troops (dead, wounded, deserted)
• Russia seems unable to protect its electronic communications in the field, allowing Ukraine forces to find / kill them
• there is nearly a 1:1 ratio between equipment destroyed and equipment captured or found abandoned which indicates many of the Russian troops have no will to fight
• the US has good intelligence on Russian plans and it appears we ARE sharing it with Ukraine
• Russia doesn't have a well-funded reserve army force like the US - what we see now is pretty much all Putin has

Another point made in an online video (sorry, didn't save the URL and couldn't find it) was that maps depicting the progress of Russian troops through Ukraine are misleading because there is a difference between merely TRAVERSING territory and CONTROLLING territory. As a more simple analogy atop American geography, imagine an enemy force entering the US in New Orleans then traveling west to attack El Paso, Texas. Assuming that happened, there is a VAST difference between saying that enemy is now simply inflicting pain on El Paso versus saying that enemy CONTROLS all of the territory from New Orleans to El Paso -- the entire state of Texas. Putin has launched campaigns against several major cities in Ukraine and troops have moved a great distance but that doesn't mean they've held control of all of the territory between their point of entry at the border and the target. They don't have the troops, equipment or supply chain to do it.

It's still way to early to predict how the war will end but at a minimum it's obvious the physical damage to the infrastructure of Ukraine will require a mini-Marshall Plan to rebuild. Of course, we won't know WHERE to rebuild until the war reaches a conclusion. If Putin remains on the attack, he may "win" the territory but he will inherit control over a bombed-out wasteland with probably 25-30 percent of the population gone, leaving him no productive work force or productive economic engine to incorporate back into his kleptocracy. (And oh yea, Putin will regain control of all of the costs and headaches of Chernobyl…) If that's the way this ends, that mini-Marshall Plan will need to provide funding to all of the neighboring countries to compensate them for absorbing the mass exodus of refugees into their countries and building the housing and amenities needed for 10+ million people.

WTH

More Insight on Putin and Russia

Two items have been released recently that are worthwhile independent watches / reads regarding Putin and Russia but combine to make a few clear points about the dangers posed by Putin.

The Weakness of the Despot -- https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/stephen-kotkin-putin-russia-ukraine-stalin

A interview by David Remnick published in The New Yorker on March 11, 2022 of Stephen Kotkin, a noted expert on Russian history in general and biographer of Josef Stalin.

Vladmir Putin - KGB Agent -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2_EFJLWA6o

A short video biography of Putin from his early days in the KGB up to the collapse of the Soviet Union. This was published on March 13, 2022 by Mark Felton, a noted YouTube creator whose predominate expertise is WWII and Nazi Germany. His material on YouTube easily matches or surpasses Frontline or BBC content in quality, making him a modern day William Shirer.

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The key point made by Kotkin in his interview involves the combined cultural / economic / political trap that Russia has succumbed to for hundreds of years. Kotkin addresses an often asked question about any famous despot and his country -- does the man make the country or does the country make the man? Like Stalin, Kotin says Russia made Putin. As Kotlin first wrote about six years ago, Russia has believed for hundreds of years that it should be a great power - setting up societal expectations -- but its power has never matched those aspirations. Part of that failure stems from its otherness -- being of Eastern Orthodox tradition rather than being "Western" -- and part stems from lacking some of the natural resources that have proven useful in prior waves of economic / industrial advancement.

Over repeated cycles of history, Russia has attempted to offset this lack of economic power by focusing on military power as compensation. This approach can succeed for brief periods but requires shifting resources and support away from citizens. After enough time, shorting the citizens of basic needs requires active coercion through force and political processes that fixate on exaggerated or imagined external threats rather than actual internal problems.

This pattern has another unfortunate consequence. It continually recreates an environment where the citizens personalize the state into one leader -- a cult of personality. The combination of this pattern with the ongoing coercion required to redirect economic resources to military aims inevitably corrupts the entire economy as wealth is redirected away from public benefits to the control of a small number of people tied to the leader and military / police. That corruption then produces another long term problem. It starves the economy of resources required for growth so keeping up with foreign competitors whose economies ARE prospering requires ever more redirection of resources away from the stagnant economy and citizens which requires MORE corruption of MORE people -- a spiraling cycle that will never keep up with the more dynamic economic and political systems of the enemies.

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The key takeaway from the Felton biography on Putin is that Putin has a track record dating back to the 1980s of fomenting dissent in foreign countries via supporting political extremist factions and seeding bogus stories to stir up distractions for leaders. In fact, Putin was selected in 1984 for a special on-boarding program by the KGB created by Yuri Andropov to teach these tactics to newly recruited KGB officers. A year later, he was assigned to a KGB office in Dresden, East Germany where it appears he provided guidance to an established group operating out of East Germany termed the Red Army Faction which was responsible for over two hundred forty eight terrorist bombings across Western Europe from 1970 to 1998. Sound familiar?

Putin also provided support for a East German neo-Nazi named Rainer Sonntag who created a neo-Nazi movement in East Germany that went on to support neo-Nazi / "skinhead" extremist groups in West Germany. Remember the West's collective sense of puzzlement when the neo-Nazi movement arose in Germany at that time? How could that arise with their recent history? It might be understandable that the IDEA of neo-Nazis came up but shouldn't German memories and ANY sense of shame have been sufficient to squelch it? Now we know. Sound familiar?

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These are key insights into the dynamics of the current problem. Putin sits atop a pyramid of economic and military / police power largely of his own making that is so inherently corrupt it can never achieve its supposed long term goals (sustained worldwide Russian influence), there is no way to suddenly stop the train and get off without those at the top being killed or jailed and any effort aimed at stabilizing the unsustainable status quo only contributes to the eventual collapse. And the resume of the man at the top is 100% consistent with that of a paranoid, psychopathic murderer. With nuclear weapons.

WTH

American Oligarchs / American Justice

The New Yorker published an opinion piece by Evan Osnos optimistically extrapolating how western world unity on closing off access by Russian oligarchs including Vladmir Putin to worldwide financial systems might trigger similar efforts to stop abuses in the legal and financial systems allowing the American uber-wealthy to distort politics via dark money.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/turning-the-focus-on-americas-oligarchs

Osnos recounts how numerous investigations in numerous countries found Russian dollars funding Brexit efforts, funding the rise of far-right candidates in France and Germany and in general funding anything sowing conflict between domestic factions on any issue. He then described Biden's pitch for the Disclose Act mentioned in the 2022 State of the Union address and its assumption that if more transparency will help disinfect international funding of divisive politics, we need the same for domestic spending on politics through dark money channels.

Osnos seems to assume that opaque banking is the primary contributor to the wholesale looting of the common good by those at the top and now that we are tackling it internationally, tackling it domestically will be easier as well. His piece ends with a reference back to the 2016 debates in which Trump bragged about avoiding taxes and faced no revolt from voters for his Leona Helmsley ("only little people pay taxes") arrogance. Osnos suggests that maybe after the events in Ukraine and watching the world rally to halt access to banks by oligarchs, the same scrutiny will become fashionable domestically and US politics will become less toxic as "American oligarchs" are brought to heel.

Ummmmmm, in a word... NO.

First, Osnos is not properly framing the concerns over Trump's business dealings. No one can find fault with someone AVOIDING taxes. Tax payers are entitled to whatever deductions, write-downs, exemptions, et al present in the tax code providing the underlying records and accounting for those benefits are sound. The issue with Trump's dealings are that they reflect a consistent pattern of maintaining two sets of books, one set shown to banks deciding whether to lend more money to Trump the individual and The Trump Organization and another set to state and federal tax officials.

The real problem with Trump's dealings and many of our "rich people / bad behavior" concerns is that very little of the corruption is opaque -- it's out in the open -- and much of the corruption is subjected to a different standard of behavior and criminality if it ever reaches law enforcement. The New York Times just published an update to the story behind the resignation of the key prosecutors for the Manhattan District Attorney's office investigating Trump for simultaneous banking fraud and tax fraud that provides a reminder of the double standard applied to the wealthy.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/manhattan-das-investigation-donald-trump-152547072.html

The Manhattan District Attorney's office was investigating Trump for a consistent pattern of reflecting the SAME ASSETS in two different sets of paperwork for bank loans and state taxes at GROSSLY DIFFERENT VALUES, always in ways which financially favored Donald Trump. These were not rounding error deltas between the numbers. They reflected probably 30-50 percent swings in valuation on multi-million dollar assets which increased Trump's borrowing capability and likely lowered interest rates by appearing to offer more as collateral for loans banks might not have otherwise made while also drastically reducing his tax bills.

The NYT article states that efforts to continue presentation of material to a grand jury essentially halted upon the swearing in of the newly elected District Attorney Alvin Bragg on January 1, 2022. By late January, a meeting to review the state of the case with Bragg and the two lead prosecutors focused not on the evidence gleaned to date but whether they could win in court.

But Bragg and his senior aides, masked and gathered around a conference table on the eighth floor of the district attorney’s office in lower Manhattan, had serious doubts. They hammered Pomerantz and Dunne about whether they could show that Trump had intended to break the law by inflating the value of his assets in the annual statements, a necessary element to prove the case.

The facts are:

• Trump signed financial summaries stating "Donald J. Trump is responsible for the preparation and fair representation of the financial statement in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America"
• Trump submitted loan paperwork referencing those financial summaries that valued various properties at A dollars
• Trump submitted tax paperwork at the same time of the loan paperwork valuing the same properties at B dollars and the A amounts were vastly larger than the B amounts
• inflated values on loan paperwork benefited Trump by providing the illusion of more collateral
• reduced values on tax paperwork benefited Trump by generating smaller state / county tax bills
• Trump's own accountants have publicly disavowed their work over the past ten years, presumably because they concluded they were consistently provided misleading data

This investigation involved state criminal charges and the burden of proof for a GRAND jury to indict is LOWER than the burden of proof of a TRIAL jury to CONVICT a defendant. The burden of proof at the grand jury phase is reasonable cause. The burden of proof for CONVICTION is beyond a reasonable doubt. So what is the burden for the prosecutor? The American Bar Association says

A prosecutor should seek or file criminal charges only if the prosecutor reasonably believes that the charges are supported by probable cause, that admissible evidence will be sufficient to support conviction beyond a reasonable doubt, and that the decision to charge is in the interests of justice.

Filing charges beyond these circumstances is considered prosecutorial misconduct.

The problem with this rule in recent prominent cases is that middle clause -- that admissible evidence will be sufficient to support conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.. In a case involving a popular figure (Donald Trump, Bill Cosby, etc.), deciding whether evidence is sufficient for CONVICTION requires the prosecutor to forecast the mindset of the judge and jury sitting for the trial and the state's ability to convince that jury of the facts.

Should a prosecuting attorney in a racist county AVOID filing charges in a case of a racially motivated murder even if the evidence is sound and conviction is in the interest of justice if they don't think they can find an unbiased jury or a judge that won't discard valid testimony?

Should a prosecuting attorney looking at a tax fraud and banking fraud case involving tens of millions of dollars in variation that might be worth millions in lost tax revenue AVOID filing charges if there might be one lone juror and fan of the defendant who might lead to a hung jury and acquittal or an expensive re-trial?

The requirement that prosecutors "believe" the admissible evidence is "sufficient" to convict is likely one of the most poorly understood and damaging "features" of the American justice system. There seem to be cases all over the country of county District Attorneys falsely pursing charges against known-innocent defendants simply because law enforcement could manufacture "evidence" that looked sound and local officials wanted to appear tough on crime. How is this ethical rule stopping those abuses? The American justice system seems to have no objection to going after the weak / poor when there's a political point to be made. The rule only seems to be helping those at the top when those within the justice system don't want to alienate powerful people.

This standard and its consequences need serious review. It seems to put the onus on a prosecutor -- and only the prosecutor -- to essentially pre-judge an entire potential trial and calculate the impact of every personality of every judge, attorney, juror and witness who might become involved and surmise whether all those variables are "likely" to return a conviction. That should not be entrusted to one person -- that's why we have grand juries. Unless this aspect of our justice system is corrected, our American oligarchs will likely continue to feel untouchable.

WTH

Jaw Dropping - COVID Cardiovascular Issues

Ken Sepkowitz is a doctor specializing in infectious disease at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York and has been publishing commentaries on CNN's site throughout COVID. A commentary from 3/4/2022 summarized findings from a study of COVID patients as jaw dropping.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/04/opinions/covid-19-cardiovascular-symptoms-sepkowitz/index.html

His commentary references an underlying study published by Nature Medicine on 2/2/2022 here:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01689-3

The Nature Medicine results were based upon analysis of medical evaluations of 153,760 individuals provided with care by VA hospitals who tested positive for COVID. Those individuals were contrasted against two much larger groups -- 5,637,647 individuals treated by the VA during the same time frame who had no testable signs of COVID infection and 5,859,411 VA patients from 2017 prior to the onset of COVID. Here is the key conclusion in the VA based study:

We show that, beyond the first 30 d(ays) after infection, individuals with COVID-19 are at increased risk of incident cardiovascular disease spanning several categories, including cerebrovascular disorders, dysrhythmias, ischemic and non-ischemic heart disease, pericarditis, myocarditis, heart failure and thromboembolic disease. These risks and burdens were evident even among individuals who were not hospitalized during the acute phase of the infection and increased in a graded fashion according to the care setting during the acute phase (non-hospitalized, hospitalized and admitted to intensive care). Our results provide evidence that the risk and 1-year burden of cardiovascular disease in survivors of acute COVID-19 are substantial.

Figures 2 and 3 in the Nature Medicine report summarize the jump in incidence of subsequent cardiovascular issues between the group that experienced COVID and the control groups. Two factors are presented in each category.

Hazard Ratio -- the ratio between the share of COVID patients exhibiting a specific issue and the share in the control groups exhibiting the same symptom. For example, if 2.0 percent of the control group exhibited dysrhythmia and 3.6 percent of COVID patients exhibited dysrhythmia, the hazard ratio would be 1.8, meaning the actual incidence rate would be 80% above "normal."

Excess Burden -- reflects the additional absolute number of patients exhibiting a particular symptom per one thousand patients in the test group over the control groups. For issues involving relatively small percentages of occurrence, this form of statistic scales values back into integer ranges to simplify comparison across factors where even small rates of occurrence in large populations still means dire consequences.

The study results showed that the SMALLEST spike in the hazard ratio for cardiovascular problems for those infected by covid was about 1.6 and the cumulative excess burden of covid patients presenting cardiovascular issues was 45.29 per 1000 in the population.

The key to this study is that it compiled these stats against ANY patient interacting with VA healthcare providers who tested positive for COVID, not just those seeking COVID-specific treatment or requiring hospitalization for COVID. What that means is that ANY actual COVIDinfection, even mild or undetected cases, produced a much higher, statistically non-random jump in a full range of undesired cardiovascular health issues.

In Sepkowitz's commentary, he makes two important points.

The first point is that this VA study used data related to patients with "classic COVID", not delta or omicron variants so it is impossible at this point to predict if those variants will reflect similar outcomes to infected patients. It seems obvious to point out that because the original study group included those who didn't require hospitalization or may not have even known about their own case of "classic COVID," the lack of immediate acute symptoms or hospitalization for delta and omicron doesn't seem to warrant optimism. These issues seem to have nothing to do with the respiratory related issues that cause most hospitalizations.

The second point is that with over EIGHTY MILLION Americans infected with one of the COVID variants and these statistically significant "hazard ratios" for complex, dangerous, expensive-to-treat cardiovascular issues, the United States needs to begin planning to fund and staff the effort required to provide long-term treatment for these conditions. Using the "excess burden" number from this study of 45.29 per 1000, America's population of 80,000,000 (and counting) exposures could lead to 3.6 million new chronic patients requiring ongoing treatments over decades. There's no "if" involved. Only "when."

WTH