War and Crime

 A short housekeeping note. I have disabled comments for the moment as they are being spammed for offers for cryptocurrency and casinos from parts unknown. I hope to re-enable them at some point.


Last week I opened the subject of how the growing population of humans represents a threat to the survivability of our species because of the increasing degradation of the environment. I will get back to that but today there are two other things at the top of my mind.


The first is the crisis in Ukraine brought about by Vladimir Putin. Putin has clearly evolved into the same sort of dangerous autocrat that the world saw too much of in the last century. Russia is now toying with war as a means to extend its influence to the states that separated from Russia when the USSR collapsed. As David Ignatius writes, Putin's rage at NATO is long-standing and his military has improved dramatically over the past two decades. The coziness between Xi Jinping and Putin has also created a powerful bloc that seems likely to catalyze a return to the Cold War. Putin’s goal seems to be a desire to see democracy fail, not only in Ukraine but all over the world. As Russia’s military surrounds Ukraine on 3 sides, and Russia continues to shell Ukrainian territory, war seems imminent. The world waits. Democracy faces a severe challenge from Putin and Xi. No matter what the outcome, it will not be good in the long run.


The second thing that happened this week is the slow crumble of the house of cards known as Donald Trump. George Conway wrote an op-ed this week that this may be the end of Trump’s dodging accountability. The list of unethical, immoral, and criminal behavior that Trump is responsible for just grows and grows. But in both civil and criminal suits, he has been on a losing binge as never before. The news that Trump’s accountants, Mazars USA LLP, were severing ties to the Trump organization and stating that the last 10 years of his financial documents were basically cooked books means that his business is in real jeopardy. As far back as 2019, it was argued that New York State Attorney Letitia James, operating under the Business Corporation Law of New York, could sue to dissolve the Trump Organization. This already happened with the Donald J. Trump Foundation, dissolved by New York State for nefarious operations. The operations of the Trump Organization seem to be orders of magnitude more nefarious than the charity. If his business is dissolved, there will never be an opportunity for Trump to finance anything again. Watching this closely.

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