Throughout history the legitimacy of violence has been a common debate. Was it right for one marauding tribe to go to war against another for more land or food or offspring? Was war to avenge an injustice OK? If so, when and at what level was violence excessive?

The ancient Romans believed in total war until their targets capitulated completely. Although the Christianization of the Roman Empire saw the rise of "just war" theory, religious wars in those days between various sects accusing the other of "heresy" almost nullified the righteousness of each sect's beliefs. Not long after, Islam adopted the pattern of conversion through mass capitulation under duress if necessary. And so it went, some wars were waged chivalrously and others visciously.

So despite "just war" theory's existence, it's utility waxed & waned over the centuries. America's Civil War might have been "civil" in that both sides strictly forbade violence against non-combatants, but the combatant death tolls were truly horrific. And from then on war's capacity to inflict horrific harm to lives and treasure has become boundless.

Enter a debate on the ethics of war - again.

Commonly, advanced democracies believe that violence between states or by governments on any sect among its population is wrong. Enter Putin. Clearly his fear that Russia's former Soviet satellites were aligning with NATO and the EU was a critically serious threat to Putin's idea of Russia's national interests. (Note, though, that Putin's kleptocracy defines Russia's interests as everything that keeps Putin rich and his kleptocrat lieutenants enriched and in power.) So, in cahoots with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kiril, a long-time former KGB compatriot of Putin, Russians are told that Russia is saving ethnic Russians from Ukraine and stopping Western immorality from expanding into Russia's neighborhood. So does Russia's #1 religious leader Kiril endorse Russia's aerial on Ukraine's civilians? Does Kiril understand the concept of "proportionality' in war?

If Ukraine's response to Russia's violence on civilians were to be "proportional", then should bombardment by Russia on a Ukrainian city be matched by a Ukrainian bombardment of a Russian city? If this is a consideration, then Russia ought to make those air defense units very prominent. Two world wars showed Europe the horrors of matching violence with violence. But for how long should Russia's civilian population be allowed to remain dumb to the violence Russia's military has unleashed on their civilian counterparts in Ukraine?

Make Russians realize that their violence vs civilians has consequences. Somehow. How?

Another angle on the news item: looking at the June 4, 2021 file photo of Oleg Deripaska during a panel session in St. Petersburg makes me wonder what it takes to work towards being an oligarch in Putin's kleptocracy. The guy looks like he could have been a cab driver from Brooklyn in the 1999s. Or a water utility executive at a routine meeting. Not like someone cheerleading an immoral war to advance the fortunes of the world's richest grifter and mass murderer in this Century. If you grew up in a land where playing the game by rules that could either put you on a safe path to wealth, influence, & approval from the highest in your society, or where riling things would sabotage your opportunities, how would you act?

The adage, "Grow where you are planted" comes to mind. How would most people of ambition act if their society rewarded self dealing and protecting the srlf-dealer-in-chief?

So many odd things about Russia & its history. Putin's kleptocracy of former KGB megalomaniacs is the latest. The Russian Orthodox Church's collaboration with autocrats at the expense of its faithful is another perennial oddity. Why would tens of millions obey clergy who support oppression and suppression of human rights and liberty? Like the Patriarchs who fostered tsarism, Kiril, a life long KGB functionary first backed Communism's domestic terrorism and now endorses Putin's kleptocratic government and his murderous aggression against innocent civilians and their defenders. From Ivan the Terrible, to Rasputin, Beria, Stalin & Lenin to the Iron Curtain's evil vs its neighbors & to Putin this vast cobbled together Empire has struggled to impose its autocracy on neighbors and few neighbors who've survived Russia's threats ever want to feel tgev"embrace" of "Mother" Russia ever again.

Nothing Dmitry Medvedev says means anything EXCEPT that he's voicing EXACTLY WHAT PUTIN TELLS MEDVEDEV TO SAY. if Medvedev had any guts and any moral conscience in the.first place, he'd never have relinquished control back to Putin to turn Russia into an even deeper kleptocracy than it was the first time Putin was in control.

But ... Putin's surrounded himself with frightened butt kissers who know that standing up to him would be self-destructive. Medvedev knows that well.

Patriarch Kiril is worse. Every non-Russian Orthodox bishop, priest and monk detests Kiril's Putin cheerleading. How can anyone of good conscience support indiscriminate war on civilians of every age? Putin's war is patently immoral and unjustifiable. Threats to escalate Russia's murderous aggression don't help Russia or Russians. They just mark Russia's military as one of the most evil and detestable militaries in the world and embolden China to make Putin kneel before Xi Jinping (general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and chairman of the Central Military Commission), because Xi is Putin's only "ally" of any capacity.

#8: Mullens cannot be fired, he retired more than 6 years ago. But he is one of the most rational and least hawkish former CJCS alive today.

Also, those elections cannot be considered any more legitimate than confessions after torture are "legit". People under hostile occupation by Russia have never wanted to be ruled by Russia's system.

Er, typo. Like the mafia don's wife " once in, you cannot get out.

#21. Poor Andrei Medvedev probably wasn't an alter boy when he joined Wagner Group. He probably was a well-trained officer in a peacetime Russian military who desired to make a few extra rubles by joining a privately owned equivalent to the Wicked Witch's Mercenary Army Reserve. Once his contract expired he knew he wanted no part of Putin's crazy war. Like a mafia don's spouse, once in you csnnotbgryltbout.

Which brings me back to poor Andrei Medvedevs crisis. No doubt, he needs asylum. If Putin dies or is deposed, two leading candidates for succession are m:

Former president, ex-prime minister, and deputy chair of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev who has been particularly busy making statements. His over-the-top, hardline comments on foreign policy issues and insults hurled at Western leaders often look comical, but the role he's trying to play is clear. It blends tough isolationism with populism, firmly placing the blame for internal woes on the shoulders of external enemies.

Another contender is Yevgeny Prigozhin, once Putin's private cook, and now @Owner" of the Wagner Group, a mercenary army not constrained by moral conventions of warfare. Prigozhin Is considered Putin's likeliest successor, though "suspected potential usurper" might be more likely. His aggressive rhetoric and tactics seem to be winning public support among extremists who believe their aging president is failing them.

Good article.

I had a frend who served his national duty in Norway's Army at the arctic bordet between Norway & Russia. Hiis stories of that tour of duty were sometimes hilarious as both Russian and Norwegian soldiers peered at each other through binoculars while each was fully armed for global combat to start at moment's notice.

Still, the Norwegians pulled sight gags to test their Russian counterparts' reactions. For example, one story was that the Norwegians created a skit where their soldiers played was a mock execution of a "bad" mess hall cook.

One morning after breakfast in the dim Arctic dawn's light, a huddle of "angry" Norwegian soldiers dragged a dummy in cook's clothes out of the mess hall, yelling obscenities at the "cook" for serving an "inedible" breakfast, and after dragging & kicking the poor incompetent cook to a flagpole, they tied him (it) to the post in plain sight of the always watching Soviet observers. Then one sergeant shouted for the cook to be shot. One of the Norwegians with a blank in his rifle fired right into the poor dummy's belly and then all the Norwegians in the "disgruntled" crowd took their caps off and bowed their heads in somber respect for the late incompetent chef, as a handful among them untied the dummy cook and carried it back to the messhall.

Apparently the observing Russians were stunned, getting their officers to the line and grabbing binoculars from the enlisted observers. Meanwhile, according to my friend, a great laugh was had by all inside the Norwegian messhall.

Mapped: The World's Billionaire Population, by Country

The Top 1% is not necessarily the top 1% of INCOME earners. About 600 US billionaires own about $5 trillion in total US wealth (that's 600 billionaire households out of ~ 100,000,000 total US households, or 6/1,000,000 (0.0006%) of US households) or about 4% of America's est. $125 trillion ye2022 wealth.Roughly $25 trillion of America's wealth is owned by households w/ $30 million net worth.

Let's just say that the wealthiest 1% of US households own 25% of America's wealth. The next 49% own about $97 trillion, and the poorest 50% or about 170,000,000 Americans in ~ 50,000,000 households own just 2% of America's wealth. That means the median wealth for the bottom 50% is only $60,000; great globally, but modest compared to the top 49% and a pittance compared to the top 1%.

Many of these top 1% of America's "wealthiest" families are not the country's too 1% of income earners. Trump, for example, reported income at the bottom 10% of Americans for half of the past 8 years? How? Corporate tax laws allow deductions for nearly any expenses except for graft or bribery. When deductions & expenses exceed revenues you have a net loss for income reporting purposes.

For this reason, it's not that the top 1% of income earners must be paying too little in taxes, it's that wealth (with qualified exceptions for properties) isn't generally taxed, so wealth grows exponentially.

So if folks chant "Tax the rich!", they need to figure how to fairly tax the wealth component; something some theocracies have attempted to do with limited effectiveness, and which free market democracies have barely been able to do at all.

Attention would-be billionaires: The Secret to riches is simple, "INVEST; BORROW; DIE".

Unlike high income earning professionals or athletes, the billionaire class measures its wealth not by "INCOME" but in "MARKET VALUE". And since market value growth is never recognized as "INCOME", it makes sense to BORROW against appreciated assets to generate cash, and if one structures their organization according to pro-corporate tax rules, the interest paid on debt is tax deductible and assets can be further protected from litigation and liabilities surprisingly limited. The final escape ramp for this ever upward ratcheting wealth mechanism is death. But legacy wealth if structured appropriately moves on virtually tax free under tax laws that give heirs a tax-free step up in the cost-basis of assets, and tax free benefits from insurance schemes only the multi-millionaire class can afford.

Simpke?

Correcting a part of #19, the reference to "Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale" should have begun by identifying Dr. Timothy Snyder as Yale's "Richard C. Levin Professor of History". In editing that sentence, Dr. Snyder's namer was inadvertently omitted.

The Russian band, ----- Riot, should be commended widely for its social conscience despite the fascist dictatorship that rules Russia. In a police kleptocracy, anyone challenging the dictator places themselves in peril.

How to counter the state media's parroting of Putin's lunacy? Tough to do when even the head of Russia's Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kiril, p a former KGB agent, condemns Ukrainians as immoral deviants.

A billion newsletters airdropped on Russia's metropolitan capitals might change the minds of a mere one million Russians. Perhaps a hundred million copies of ----- Riot's protest music might be more effective at informing the everyday Russians of Putin's murderous & kleptocratic ways, and perhaps it will motivate more Russians to revolt against Putinism and to seek a government more aligned with peaceful participatory democracy and international goodwill.

Perhaps? The world hopes.

Tor, many critics of the Russian War on Ukrainians are on the left of the political spectrum.

I'msure Pattis has $ coming in under the table from Alex Jones and his ilk. A 6 month suspension is a 6 month vacation for Pattis.

A super-grifter like Trump can miraculously turn every challenge into a profitable grift. And in the process waste others time & money. Why does it seem that MAGA suckers will continue to fund one Trump grift after another at their own expense?

Great Salt Lake, like Mono Lake in California, is an important fly over stopping point for migratory birds, and possibly sometime in the future, Like Mono Lake now, conservation efforts will be needed to preserve this vital link in thevavian ecosystem. But for the mobile human ecosystem one of the major problems is toxic air pollution coming from the dust blowing off Great Salt Lake's exposed "salt" beds - not table salt quality, but composed of a wide range of potentially harmful mineral dusts.

Still, newcomers continue to move to Utah, and developers are building pricey developments that look sparkling new & great in Spring and Fall, but which might face ecological crises in 10-20 years.

With the lowest water usage rates in the country, Utah's fresh water consumption is excessive. Water users pay less for public water than it costs to maintain water distribution infrastructure. A good first step for Utah would be to disincentivize wasteful water consumption. Politically tough? Or, the right thing to do?

Italy's post-WW1 Blackshirts were fascist thugs who paved the way for Mussolini to rise to dictator by terrorizing liberals & intellectuals. Later, Hitler's Nazis were propelled to Germany's political scene by Brownshirts and later Blackshirts, both pro-fascist thug paramilitary "militias" who helped propel the Nazi movement.

Today, violent "conservative" seem to be American fascists in search of an American version of Hitler or Mussolini. Trump almost became their "Messiah" but his star is fading. Who will they support next? DeSantis? He's certainly extreme enough. Or would David Duke or Slex Jones do?

Hang on to your hats folks. Fascism took hold with less than 1/3 of the population as its "base" in Italy and then Germany through political paramilitary terrorists.

Interesting article. The gist is that Amazon is an example of capitalism's callous tendencies. Hmm?

There ia trend in US history to favor corporations over ordinary humans. In the 1860s, 1870s & beyond, railroad companies sued to assert that corporations were entitled to the same protections & privileges as people under the Constitution. Railroads won. In 1919 the Dodge brothers, who owned significant percent of Ford Motor Co. stock, sued Ford's management (Henry Ford) to prevent policy changes that would have made Ford's cars more affordable to Ford's workers. The Court ruled that a corporation's PRIMARY duty was "to increase shareholder wealth"! (IMHO, Adam Smith, famously the Scottish Enlightenment's "Father of Western Capitalism" must have rolled over in his grave at that!)

Calvin Coolidge, I believe, uttered the proclamation that, "The business of America is business." Go figure.

Congress and various state legislatures have passed laws to provide protections for workers and consumers, and some courts have favored people over companies, but in the end, corporations will migrate to places where the politicians and policies are more friendly to them. And over the past 150 years, according to an Ivy League law school study, the Supreme Court of the US has ruled in favor of corporations over individuals 80 percent of the time.

Aristotle declared that the purpose of government is to promote public virtue. I wonder how he would critique the virtue of US capitalusm?

The indications & warnings were clear. That's why it seems that more precautions were called for and yet no one in the Secret Service nor the DCPD, nor the Capitol Police took the warnings seriously. Why not?

From Dec through Jan, on a widely aired nighttime call-in show, CoastToCoastAM, several of host George Noory's regular callers advertised the coming "wild" showdown for Trump that they would be participating in on Jan 6. If the insurrection was advertised on one of the most widely nationally aired call-in shows by the host's regulars, what would have been needed to have authorities call for the necessary arrangements to minimize a potential riot and attack on Congress???

In Post Ww2 Malaya, Britain had to maintain a COIN (CounterInsurgency) force equal to 5% of Malaya's population. If Russia was committed to subjugating Ukraine's 60 million citizens, it would need a COIN force of 3 million!! Is Putin going to be able to raise 3 million mercenaries to control Ukraine? Without those numbers, the only way to subjugate an unwilling population would be through brutality and strong-armed coercion and terror. Russia's trying that and the world is watching.

Is this guy a shill? He sounds like an embittered combat experienced armored (tank) division NCO. But his discussion is as if he's a kid playing a video game and trying to explain why his virtual team is losing.

Obviously Russia is sick. Everyone knows that.

Kleptocrats aren't great logisticians or good leaders. Rot starts at the top. But Russia's duped military recruits have no identification with Putin's & Metropolitan Kiril's motives for invading Ukraine. In contrast, every Ukrainian fighter has full buy-in to Ukraine's goal to evict Russian invaders.

Nixon, actually I think the meme was "Obligatory." #3 | POSTED BY REINHEITSGEBOT AT 2022-12-22 02:03 PM. Except for the misattribution, my sentiments remain.

Nixon, if my Ukrainian-born grandfather hadn't been so terrorized by Stalin's mignons and had 2 of his favorite cousins "disappeared" (his word) from their homes near L'viv in the middle of the night in the 1930s when he was visiting from the US, I'd probably not have laughed so hard at your meme. (It's a bit of sick humor, but to those terrorized by Russia and by earlier generations of Soviet wickedness and terror it's a pressure relieving schadenfreude.)

In a way it's so sick what Putin has done to the young recruits in his military. And it's so sick that Russians are putting up with Putin, his kleptocracy, and his kleptocrat ex-KGB lieutenants.

If there's a message to the parents & loved ones of the 100k+ KIA Russian military that we should send it would one of commiseration for their loss, wishful hope that their loved dead were not among the immoral war-criminal rapists & murderers that have so characterized Russia's aggression; and urging that they get all of Russia to aveng their loss by deposing their lying kleptocrat dictator, and striving for a benevolent and egalitarian social democracy that has brought the rest of Western and Northern Europe to peaceful progress over the past 6 decades.

And to all Russians, please send Russian Orthodox (& ex-KGB) Metropolitan Kiril the message that Ukraine is not Russia, nor is it Russia's to invade or attack. Russia should leave Ukraine, Putin should eat crow and pray for mercy from a world that would justly condemn him, and the people of Russia should pay reparations to repair the physical destruction they've done. There can scarcely be any reparation possible for Russia's psychological harm it's caused, and generations to come will hate their Russian neighbors, but if Russia gets out of Ukraine now, it will start the healing process faster.