Russia's Ground Game Not Keeping Up With Its Propaganda

Those of you who've been following Russia in the last few years of its >11.5 year war to seize Ukraine will be interested that its neighboring dictatorship in North Korea, which has been providing the lion's share of Putin's artillery shells, may be running out of ammunition it can spare to sell. Despite shipping 6.5 million artillery shells to Russia since it began arming its former supplier,  North Korea's 2025 shipments appear to be approximately half its 2024 shipments, and observers in September of 2025 were unable to identify even a single shipment of artillery shells from North Korea. It hasn't helped that the quality of North Korea's ammunition products has been worse even than the quality of Russia's.

Russia's economy has been suffering, its population has been in decline since before it started stealing Ukrainian children, its casualties exceed 1.1 million (larger than its active military), and recruiting is so bad Russia has been sending its underperforming recruiting officers to frontline deployment in Ukraine to die. Soviet-era stockpiles of ammunition and armored vehicles have been exhausted. Funding Putin's war with oil exports has faced multiple headwinds, ranging from economic sanctions to deep-Russia attacks on petroleum infrastructure that reduces production, interferes with transport, eliminates significant elements of Russia's refining capacity (video: a petroleum distillation column struck), and destroys Russian export facilities (like this one on the Black Sea). Just keeping its facilities operating is a challenge, seriously draining margins and preventing altogether the export of refined petroleum products, with which Russia is struggling to adequately supply military units who increasingly are deployed in meat waves unsupported by armor. In prior years, "missing" soldiers' families were not paid death benefits that Russian law provided for soldiers' families, but it's gotten worse: live workers who can still complain, and who can be found alive in Russia, are increasingly not being paid for work done to keep Russia's economy alive. (Forty-four percent of construction wages are reportedly not being paid, for example, and other industries are suffering wage nonpayment not only in the private sector but for government employees.)

Russia's 11.5-year war appears to have stabilized as a grinding war of attrition, which Russia has always assumed works in its favor. Yet in this time Russia manages to control approximately 20% of Ukraine's surface, most of which was taken in its 2014 surprise offensive supported by corrupted officers in the Soviet-trained legacy military stationed in the affected areas of Ukraine. The last couple of years, Russia's gains amount to approximately 1% and it has exacted from Russia an enormous cost in blood, matériel, and treasure. Although Russia postures over the destruction of little towns that used to house 10,000 civilians before they fled, the fact on the ground is that what Russia has been touting as gains have come at an enormous cost.

St. Petersburg's crematorium has been expanded to handle 250 bodies per day, and that's a city from which Russia has deliberately avoided recruiting in order to keep unrest from the two urban centers that differentiate Russia, at least cosmetically, from third-world countries (the other being Moscow).

Russia Cannot Afford Putin's Ambitions

The Jaded Consumer doesn't want to amplify economic nonsense by linking to it, but the international news sources that uncritically publish economic numbers approved by authoritarian regimes aren't doing the public any favors in understanding the impact of nations' military and economic policies and appreciating the prices caused by their conflicts. This note is intended to provide an evidence-based view of the global conflict underway between expansionist tyrannies and the more democratic nations authoritarians have targeted.

Russia claimed to have bulletproofed itself against sanctions in order to enjoy normalcy as it prosecutes ongoing war against Ukraine. Claims that Russia thrives while democratic adversaries suffer economically are undermined greatly by the data. Russia's central bank's announced interest rate is worse than I've paid on credit cards. At the time of this writing the rate has been raised to 21%. Russian propagandists had been trying to convince democratic nations that imposing sanctions on Russia injured free people more than the subjects of what's left of the Russian empire. The claim Russia's economy is strong has two basic problems. First, Russia's auto industry is now wholly dependent on manufactured goods from China, and Russians buy these with funds obtained selling raw materials to China (primarily unrefined energy products). If acting as a source of raw materials while buying finished goods from one's sponsor state sounds to you like the role of a colony, you've figured out that Russia is now a de facto colony of China. The second problem is that even suffering the colonization sucks: unlike the U.S., which has got inflation in the low single digits and is close enough to its ultimate target inflation rate that the federal reserve bank is cutting interest rates to avoid allowing inflation to fall too much, Russia still has an official inflation rate that is in the high single-digits (and a real inflation rate estimated at 27%). It might be worse, but a lot of what Russians want to buy isn't available at any price. Whoops.

Russia isn't alone in living in a fantasy land. China has been making public policy on the basis of fictitious population data, and that's going to cost it. The longer China can get cheap fuel from Russia to prop it up from collapse, the longer the West has to reconfigure supply chains so as to avoid dependence on authoritarian regimes and the legal quicksand the tyranny there imposes on all who do business there.

Russia is dependent on North Korea and Iran for weapons and is burning cash while it goes all-in on Putin's dream of re-establishing the lost empire of the Russia of his imagination, with Soviet-era borders. Unless some outsider throws Putin a lifeline, he's going to drive himself and his government into the same kind of bankruptcy-driven collapse that put an end to the Soviet Union. China will just take the eastern territories Russia continues to occupy but hasn't anyone there to defend it. China has already updated its maps of Russian territory with its preferred Chinese names.

Russia Handling Sanctions Worse Than It Pretends

 The cost of shipping energy products to more distant customers, the loss of workers to frontline duty and to international flight, and the inability to tap foreign resources to support local operations have left Russia in an economic crisis that its propaganda efforts and international denials cannot hide. The price of eggs increased 18% last month (December 2023) in that one month alone. The Russian Federation has been propping up the economy by directing long-husbanded resources into military-oriented manufacturing, but causing an explosion in Ukraine does nothing for quality of life within Russia; the transformation of Russia into a wartime economy currently directs a third of the federation's national expenditures into the military. 

While Putin claims in his speeches that Russia's economy thrives despite foreign barriers to trade with most of the free world, much of the nation's current production does nothing for Russians: rockets aren't infrastructure, they destroy infrastructure. This game of economic chicken is profitable only if Russia ultimately seizes Ukraine and its natural resources and can compel the service of its millions of inhabitants. Forcing people to serve Russia's tyrants isn't a particularly efficient way to build national wealth, but it's all tyrants know. And they're used to the inefficiency: per-capita GDP within the Russia's empire is so small that despite having many times the population of Texas, the empire's overall GDP was lower even before sanctions cost Russia all the foreign expertise that had kept its energy industry in business. GDP per capita in Russia has been on par with China, at a fraction of GDPs typical of democracies in Europe or Asia.

If nobody throws the Russian tyranny a lifeline, it will likely digest itself trying to threaten neighbors into surrendering to Russia's appetite for geographic expansion. 

Halting Russia's advances into Ukraine has been an efficient investment for the United States. For only a few percent of the existing US defense budget, the United States has created a state of emergency in its most aggressive international adversary which is spending not just a third of its military budget, but a third of its entire national budget, to hand onto its untenable position. Especially since Ukraine is willing to contribute all the combat personnel, supplying them with equipment to test and improve American tactics and methods against Russia's current best technology and electronic systems is a fantastic investment in the future of our defense of American interests and the interests of democratic trading partners around the world.

Wagner Felons Turn Out To Commit Felonies

 So, this happened. Was anyone surprised?

Cannot Remain In Power: What That Means Without Any NATO Attack

Information Gap

If Putin's rule could survive Russians learning what its government was doing at Putin's instructions, Putin would not have suddenly changed the law to prevent Russians calling his invading Ukraine a "war" and closed all the independent news outlets in Russia. He knows his rule depends on misleading Russians. It's a lesson he learned while in the KGB, helping to mislead Russian and East German workers whose output was captured for the benefit of the regimes' political elites. Putin may have been deceived by Soviet propaganda about Russia's history, but he certainly understood his government employers did not try in any way to deliver Russians communism – ordinary Russians didn't control the means of production in Russia, did not choose how Russian resources would be allocated, and were prevented from achieving reform by farce elections that existed only for propaganda purposes (anyone operating a reform party was killed or incarcerated). Putin knew Russia's government existed for the benefit of its political elite, and he's worked to become the head of that political elite and to restore what he regards as the tragically lost glory of Stalin's Soviet empire.

Putin's miserly grip on true facts is killing Russians. Consider the soldiers who had no knowledge of the history of Chernobyl – why would Putin-authorized schools and media allow information about Russians causing the world's most notorious and nasty nuclear disaster? Ordered to seize Chernobyl with no forewarning of its dangers, soldiers not only stirred up radioactive dust driving vehicles through danger zones but dug trenches in areas so toxic facility oversight workers were forbidden even to go there. The deaths aren't all over-the-horizon horrors of dying slowly at home in a later year: in the first month Putin has gotten as much as 25% of his entire invasion force killed. This is a direct result of what onlookers have noted as a surprising inability to execute combined arms: Putin's armor has advanced without infantry support so armored elements could be picked off and destroyed by anti-armor infantry weapons like the NLAW and Javelin (or mines) which have been delivered to Ukraine in quantities that significantly outnumber Putin's entire inventory of tanks; advancing infantry has consistently lacked close air support; artillery hasn't supported armor; in essence, each of Putin's infantry, armor, artillery, and air units have been acting in relative isolation, and without the coordination required to execute military maneuvers at the skill and effectiveness NATO forces have trained to achieve. Putin's police state, apparently assuming that its information campaigns and not its huge numbers of troops have allowed it to swallow tiny opponents, grievously misunderstood the nature of the conflict it started in Ukraine.

The death toll isn't a diversion from the discussion of information, but a consequence of Putin's iron-fisted control over the distribution of facts. A Western military conducting a ground assault would empower a local officer to receive intelligence from every available source so that commands could be given across all military branches to achieve a joint mission intelligently integrating armor, artillery, bombing operations, infantry, close air support, and intelligence. Imagine for a moment how long Putin would last in office if some office other than his own had such broad access to information and military command. Would he last a week? The fact Western militaries do this all the time without governments collapsing in a coup shows that Western governments have the support of their people: they possess what in a democracy passes for legitimacy, which is broad popular support. Putin does not. In a Putinesque government, legitimacy is the fact of rule as maintained by bribe or threat and nothing more.

Putin can't let local commanders coordinate or he'd be out of a job and he knows it. Putin can't give his commanders the ability to perform like Western forces. This isn't something Putin can learn from: this is a fundamental flaw in Putin's entire style of government.

Ukrainian Capabilities

From the outset, Ukrainian civilians have opposed Russian invaders, refusing to collaborate with invaders (for which some were murdered), and poisoning occupiers. The crimes committed against Ukrainians have galvanized them against Russia. The enormous catalog of photos available online of Russian armor standing in a derelict shambles in Ukraine proves Ukraine is willing to engage Russia's armor, and the fact Ukraine has retaken towns Russia formerly occupied proves that it is capable of succeeding in offense against Russian infantry. The scores of Russian aircraft lost so far demonstrate it can do what Afghans did for more than nine years of occupation and make air operations a sphincter-puckering experience for Russians.

Russian claims about its destruction of Ukrainian personnel and equipment are pretty easily debunked: had Putin's forces obliterated more than 50% of Ukraine's inventory of tanks or artillery,  Ukraine's military would no longer be an effective fighting force. Yet, it's Russian forces in retreat. While Russia has managed to capture several small military watercraft, it's lost a landing craft and suffered damage to another landing craft and a patrol boat. Out of the water, the tables are turned: Ukraine has destroyed at least 62 Russian aircraft, the number Oryx has been independently able to verify through photographic evidence, while losing 30. Oryx has confirmed Russia's loss of 2608 ground vehicles including 448 tanks, of which 182 have been captured by Ukraine and turned against Putin; Oryx has confirmed Ukraine has lost 697 vehicles, including 95 tanks. This means Ukraine's tank count may have actually increased since the start of the invasion as its forces have captured from Putin more tanks than it has lost in battle. Other sources make Russia's losses to Ukraine look much grimmer: since Russia is unable to field precision munitions, the only way its aircraft can hit anything on the ground is to make a bombing run that is low enough for visual targeting, which drives planes directly into the teeth of the air defense Russians have no hope to suppress – man-portable anti-air rockets of the kind NATO countries have been showering Ukraine. Three weeks into the war Ukraine was claiming 77 aircraft kills, and the New York Times radio intercepts included numerous ignored pleas by a Russian armor radioman for close air support that never came. Russians can't do what they want with air.

Russians may be able to murder Ukrainian civilians at will, but they've been unable to defeat Ukraine's military forces anywhere. Citing Ukrainian sources, Pravda reports Ukraine has killed 16,600 invading Russian soldiers, a number greater than Russia's losses over several years in Chechnya or even its nine-plus-year campaign in Afghanistan.

Putin's Ambitions

Anyone who has been watching understood Putin planned to take the rest of Ukraine after he ordered it partially seized in 2014. His blatant invasion lacks the middle-of-the-night quietness of salami-slicing border encroachment committed by prior regimes, by China into India, or even by Putin into Georgia. Aggression hasn't worked out for Putin in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine: within the first two weeks Putin lost up to 10% of his combat forces – the very definition of "decimation."

Since Putin committed Russia's entire deployable force, there's nothing with which he can quickly reinforce troops he sacrificed to wood chipper that is Ukraine. Accordingly, Putin has been scraping to find soldiers he can re-allocate from occupation of Georgia (which Putin invaded in 2008), mercenaries from Syria and Putin's advertising campaigns targeted at Russians who have previously murdered civilians abroad, and a tyrant enthusiasts from war-ridden places like Chechnya. Putin's pleas for Belarusian soldiers have not met with success: Belarus' dictator owes his office to Putin's intervention, but Belarusians are dissatisfied with his sham elections, and Belarusians are undermining their dictator's effort to support Putin's war in Ukraine. Putin's work to keep Belarus under the boot of a puppet dictator has, in fact, made Belarusians enter Ukraine to kill Russians. Foreign volunteers motivated to defend against Putin for free might not actually reach the reported 20,000, but even so may dwarf the number Russia has been able to hire or import. One of the major foreign fighter groups in Ukraine is the Georgian Legion, which since 2014 has been striking back at the dictator who invaded their homeland; they're training other foreigners (including many from English-speaking countries). Since 2016 the legion has swelled from about one hundred fighters to hundreds of applications per day.

Putin's biggest enemy may be the shocking incompetence of his own regime. His army can't manage to get a column of vehicles to Kyiv on a paved road. The missiles he's firing into Ukraine have a fail rate approaching 60%. And he's not going to make it up in volume: he seems to be running out of inventory (other arguments here). The fact he wasn't ready for the war he started has been something of a shock to observers. Forces sent to capture Kyiv included elite Russian units like the now-decimated 331st Guards Parachute Regiment. Decisions to staff logistical roles with conscripts who haven't been on job even a single year hasn't helped keep Russian invaders supplied with food or armaments. Although Putin has just ordered another 134,500 men to be conscripted into the Russian army, they won't be of much help until trained. Also, deploying conscripts in a foreign war violates Russian law, and Putin's own claims, though he has been contradicted by Russian military sources who confirm Russia indeed ordered conscripts deployed to war to Putin's "special military operation" in Ukraine. The domestic effect of this news is severe enough that Putin made a public announcement ordering military prosecutors to identify and bring charges against those who sent conscripts into Ukraine in his invasion's first phase. Putin claims that these conscripts won't be sent to Ukraine, but time will prove him a liar as the vanishing Russian soldiers begin contradicting Putin's propaganda that everything is going to plan.

Apparently, part of the plan is shoddy equipment. Instead of military-grade communications with encryption, Russian soldiers have been found using unencrypted off-the shelf handheld walkie-talkies from budget Chinese manufacturers. Accordingly, their disorganization and panic can be heard on open channels, as captured by The New York Times. Russians' discussion of their own war crimes can be captured by German intelligence services. 

Considering the huge trove of photographs showing Russian armored personnel carriers and tanks destroyed in every corner of Ukraine, it's hard to see how Russia can sustain war while it can't build more military equipment. Check out this image, showing Russia removing from Ukraine the scrapped husks of destroyed Russian armor:

Looking at this photo casts in a new light all the photos shown of Russian armor rusting by a roadside or laying upside down or standing in a roadway with the turret blown free of the body: how many more of those we'd see if Russia had been able to spirit away more of the physical evidence.

Speaking of evidence, Putin's propaganda that Russians are carefully targeting exclusively military targets while providing humanitarian assistance to locals has been undermined by drone and satellite footage showing Russian forces slaughtering fleeing motorists, murdering bicyclists, shooting civilians in a bread line, and Russians killed civilians and left their corpses on the street before Ukrainians could possibly have created a staged scene. Russians killed and wounded civilians indiscriminately while committing an airstrike against a maternity hospital in Mariupol, which is not an isolated incident: Putin's forces have destroyed every single hospital in Chernihiv. By March 26, 2022, Russians had launched more than 70 separate attacks on Ukraine's hospitals and the World Health Organization said the number grew daily. The fact Russian soldiers are robbing civilians during their invasion is proved by the fact Ukrainian survivors can track their robbers' movements as they retreat with stolen Apple devices trackable by their owners. 

Looting expensive consumer tech isn't necessary to Russia's advance, but with Russian logistics in the toilet Russian soldiers have been looting grocery stores and living out of civilian houses and committing other criminal acts against civilians while driven to otherwise avoidable contact. Russia can't supply soldiers. So, it's little wonder all the evil Putin can order has failed to take Ukraine. It has, instead, galvanized against Russia virtually everyone capable of receiving uncensored news. Germans, who long disdained active military activity beyond their borders and resisted spending on defense what NATO encourages its members to spend, have escalated from sending Ukraine non-lethal aid like helmets to sending antitank and antiaircraft missiles while bumping defense spending above NATO's recommended 2% threshold. Putin's effort to strangle democracy in neighboring nations – Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus – has driven democracies together.

Sanctions have halted Putin's ability to restore lost force-projection capacity. For example, the two principal factories that make and rebuild Russia's tanks and armored personnel carriers have been shuttered for lack of parts formerly imported from Europe, which is Russia's most leading trading partner. Putin's aircraft lost their source for repair parts. Russia may have the ability to manufacture small arms, but vehicles? Putin had a hard enough time moving soldiers away from a railway when his ability to amass war matériel stood unobstructed. Now his power to project force is gone.

International condemnation isn't mere words: substantial changes in international trade posture has created a long-term and growing problem for Russia, the impact of which is already contracting the Russian economy. To prop up the Rouble with deposits in Russian banks, Putin had Russian banks more than double the interest rate to 20% – but inflation was forecast at 24%, but the White House Economic Council reported April 5 that current inflation in Russia stood at 2% per week or 200% per year. 

Putin wanted to live in the Soviet Union again … and now he does. He'll better understand how the Soviet Union he served through the '80s collapsed in the early '90s by making it happen again under his watch.

He'll throw bodies at this problem – and, like all those sent to their fruitless destruction in Afghanistan, they'll die.

Cop Killers

A "Black Lives Matter" activist named Sandra Bland died recently in the jail of Waller County, Texas.  Sandra Bland, 28, was about to begin a new job at Texas A&M University before she was killed in custody.  Pulled over ostensibly for failure to signal a lane change, she was arrested rather than cited.  To defend itself from criticism of the arrest, the department released a video showing her arrest by an officer who later asserted the unarmed woman had "assaulted" him.  Although the video contains obvious signs of editing, the department denies that the video was ever edited.

Speaking with her mother about her new job, Bland had said, "My purpose is to go back to Texas and stop all social injustice in the South."

Well, Waller County had an answer for that, didn't it?

Instead of protecting the citizens, police in the United States have a developed a reputation for using force to coerce citizens into complying with a variety of ridiculous demands (why did Sandra need to exit her vehicle to receive a citation for failure to signal a lane change?), or skipping the demands and moving straight to the killing.  The police killing of Caroline Small emphasizes the ability of police to kill unarmed civilians with impunity even if they aren't men trying to purchase an unloaded air rifle at Walmart, or for allegedly shoplifting.  Maybe – at least in New York, when the officer is a rookie – there's at least an apology for killing a civilian for deciding to take the stairs.  The culture of killing American civilians is an epidemic among U.S. law enforcement.  Suicide by cop just doesn't work in places like the United Kingdom:  they don't kill people.  While acknowledging that the United States has a greater population (~319 million) than the United Kingdom (~64 million), the rate of police killings of civilians is vastly different than the population difference:  despite that U.S. data on police killings is incomplete because reporting to the F.B.I. is purely voluntary, the U.S. death toll from "justifiable" killings by police was more than 400 individuals, while British police discharged their weapons in the line of duty a grand total of three (3) times, with zero fatalities.  British shootings of civilians by police is extremely controversial even in the case of a known gangster.  In the U.S., the hypermilitarized "police" now occupying our cities seem virtually expected to kill.  For some real perspective:  U.S. police killed more people this March than U.K. police have killed since 1900.  Last year, the death toll was 1,100 killed in the U.S. compared to twenty-six (26) in the U.S.  This isn't some multiple based on population difference, it's a cultural problem in U.S. "police" forces.

Convicted for Blackness

In yet another example of what's all too common in the American criminal prosecution apparatus, an African American man was convicted and sentenced to hard labor where he languished for 23 years after the real perpetrator has been convicted.  Investigators told prosecutors no evidence existed to link Robert Jones to robberies, murders, and a rape – and that their evidence on the perpetrator was rock-solid (he wore the stolen jewelry, carried the gun ballistics proved fired the killing bullets, and admitted owning the distinctive getaway vehicle seen at each scene).  But the prosecutors had Jones in custody, and he was black, so despite their memos that show they knew there was no admissible evidence linking him to the crimes in any way they argued to a jury he was a dangerous criminal associate of known evildoers and had to be put away for murder, robbery, and rape. (His name was provided to a tip line when a $10k reward was offered; presumably, the tipster understood naming a black man was good business.)

No Trial Needed: How Mr. Browder Died

New York magazine offers an articulate look at how the criminal justice system's servants took the freedom, and ultimately the will to live, from a teen charged with a felony the government never bothered to bring to trial.  The story is called "How All New Yorkers Killed Kalief Browder" and it's worth your time.  If you don't live in New York, the bail statute is likely much more restrictive, increasing the probability that an accused will languish in jail for years. 

I had a civil client I met in a Montgomery County jail whom I discovered had been in custody more than a year without trial.  His last attorney had tried to get him a plea deal that the State liked, to improve his bid to obtain a job in the prosecutor's office.  Other appointed counsel hadn't done much on his case because they weren't paid to prepare it for trial, they were paid to show up for court settings.  Getting paid for something outside a scheduled setting took extra work, and was iffy.  Whether the client did it or not, we should provide the same due process we'd like to receive ourselves – because the rule is there to protect not criminals we expect should lose, but to protect US when we're broke and wrongly accused. 

If the law and its servants can't do that, they have failed.

Unarmed Man Killed By Cop Who Just Got Off Suspension for Killing Unarmed Man

If you've been following the Jaded Consumer coverage of America's national epidemic of killings by police, you'll be unsurprised at what should be shocking news.  This time, a Walmart called the police on a woman who approached to ask what her son supposedly stole before he was murdered by the boys in blue.  She's been stonewalled – unsurprisingly – by the department who loosed its known killer on the civilian public despite knowing his history killing an unarmed civilian.

NYPD Rookie Kills Unarmed Innocent Who Took Stairs

In a continuation of earlier coverage, The Jaded Consumer notes that NYPD rookie Peter Liang killed Akai Gurley with one shot to the chest when he and his girlfriend decided not to wait for an elevator but to use the stairs.  There, he was shot by the uniformed officer while doing nothing but trying to walk down the stairs.  Although many of the news accounts do not discuss the race of the participants, New York Daily News published a photo that makes clear that Akai Gurley was African American.

The witness Melissa Butler, who entered the stairway with Gurley, reported that officers never identified themselves, never gave any warning, fired without provocation, and called for no medical assistance.  Butler and Gurley fled the gunshot until Gurley collapsed, dead, three floors below.  No ambulance was summoned until Butler called one after pounding on a neighbor's door.

When asked about killing Gurley with a single gunshot to the chest, Officer Liang said, "I shot him accidentally."

Uh-huh.

In other news, crime in New York is down.  Mayor Bill de Blasio was elected last year on a platform that included reigning in the NYPD's stop-and-frisk practice that in 2011 targeted minorities so heavily that 87% of frisk subjects were African American or Latino.  Contrary to assertions that reforming the NYPD's stop-and-frisk practices would "end in buckets of blood on city streets[,]" a 75% drop in police stops – from about 700,000 in 2011 to 50,000 this year – has not prevented New York's murder count to drop by 20 deaths compared to the same period last year.  New York City's crime rate hit a 20-year low.  The NYPD's stop-and-frisk practices were ruled unconstitutional last year.

Maybe the way to reduce crime isn't to escalate oppression.  Who knew?

"Islamic State" Sex Slavery, Personalized

Putting a human face on the sexual slavery practiced by the "Islamic State" declared in Syria and parts of Iraq, CNN is running a story about a 19-year old aspiring physician abducted at gunpoint.  Apparently, the "Islamic State" offers a compensation package to fighters that goes beyond $2,000 cash and drugs to stave off flight from battle:  they offer the opportunity to rape captive women.

On Fuel Prices, Taxes, and Profits

ExxonMobil's fuel tax map of the United States shows regional variation in tax policy:

The page's author presents a defense to the charge that oil companies are scamming government out of tax money: the government earns in taxes an order of magnitude more on each gallon refined, shipped, and sold in the United States than ExxonMobil earns in profit on the same gallons.

The defense is interesting, but I think it dodges the charge.  Those who accuse multinational oil companies of running a tax scam aren't focused on sales taxes imposed on locally-sold products, but the international business of companies that historically paid U.S. income taxes on income earned in foreign jurisdictions.  From the point of view of ExxonMobil, of course, the government collects not only 40 to 60 cents per gallon refined, shipped, and sold in the U.S. – but also 35% income tax on ExxonMobil's 5.5¢ profit per gallon.  From the perspective of ExxonMobil's detractors, what has that to do with ExxonMobil's 'right' to use U.S. resources to build and defend a global business empire from which it gathers income free of U.S. taxes?

It's an interesting situation that invites inquiry into local competitive conditions globally and examination of the practical effects of tax policy.  With the elimination of the double-Irish scheme, international tax planning will take another wave of innovation (and consultants in the area will make another fortune).  Is there a tax policy that will result in more tax collected and less resources wasted avoiding taxation?

ISIS Explains Enslavement Policy

The Islamofascist organization sometimes known as ISIS has apparently published a position paper supporting its people-trafficking, which it describes as consistent with shariah.  The self-declared "Islamic state" previously admitted it peddled flesh for cash, but the position paper seems a propaganda step taken to defend its position against genuine Muslims reacting to seeing their religion employed in this manner.  Or maybe it's an advertisement to young males, unable to get dates back home.  The would-be caliphate doesn't strictly require females to serve domestic roles, though; they're also employed to oppress women in public in ways males might find hard to explain.

It'll be interesting to see what response results from these killers' formal announcement of their outrageous position.  Presumably nobody will now mistake their outlook for something less sinister.  Certainly the women who are hunting these misogynists with rifles have already gotten the message.

If She's Arrested There Must Be Something To It, Right?

A woman found in possession of a spoon with SpaghettiOs sauce on it spent a month in jail after officers wrote a report that described the spoon as bearing "a residue" they alleged showed she'd used the spoon to prepare meth.  While incarcerated she was so worn down she considered taking a plea deal to be freed, despite that it would falsely have branded her for life as a felon drug user.

When the overloaded lab's test results came back it became evident the state had no case.  At least the prosecutors didn't bury the exculpatory evidence as occurred elsewhere, and the error was discovered while its victim was still alive to free.

Has our zeal to make it easy to arrest bad guys reached a point that nobody is safe from losing valuable rights – like the freedom to sleep at home – on a mere accusation?

Grand Jury: OK To Shoot Man For Buying Unloaded BB-gun at Wal-Mart

Today an Ohio grand jury "decided that the police officers were justified" when they killed Cincinnati resident John Crawford III when they found him shopping in a Wal-Mart, and trying to buy one of the unloaded BB-guns for sale lawfully at the store. (Video at link)

Sean Williams, the officer who shot Mr. Crasford while he was turned away and on a cell phone had previously killed a civilian in 2010.  In that incident Scott Brogli, a retired Master Sergeant, was shot dead at his apartment in front of his 17-year-old son.

Unlike the Brogli killing (which police stated involved a knife), Mr. Crawford was facing away from his shooter, was on a cell phone, and was holding an unloaded BB-gun when he was shot twice.

The other officer involved in the Crawford shooting, David Darkow, is already back at work.

Security Problems in Paris

In Paris recently, an armed crew hit a Saudi prince's convoy to heist his suitcase of cash.

This isn't the only evidence of security problems in Paris.  Earlier this year, French officials confirmed they'd deploy Chinese police to patrol parts of Paris in which Chinese tourists were likely to desire additional security.

Imagine that in your neighborhood.  Crazy, no?

Government Killings: What Defines An Epidemic?

Supposedly one is an accident, two a coincidence, and three a pattern. Stories about uniformed government peace officers killing Americans without trial raise concerns not only about the safety of life under its rule but the endurance of the rights with which the government has been entrusted – the rights that are, in fact, the government's purpose for existence.  How iffy must those rights become before something must be done?  When is it an epidemic?

In Oklahoma City, two police officers murdered the man dating their daughter. (The man was black.)

In Cincinnati, a man was shot dead by police in the store where he sought to purchase a BB-gun. (The BB-gun buyer was also black.)

An unarmed teen walking with a friend in the street was killed after a police car approached, and its uniformed officer told the boy to get on the sidewalk.  Despite that the boy had no weapon and raised his hands in surrender, the just-graduated teen was shot dead in Missouri.  (Other versions of this story point out the killed man was black.)

Before then, New York City police killed a man they found standing unarmed at the scene of a reported disturbance (which the shooting victim had broken up before officers arrived).  This incident got more profile because it was filmed by bystanders, and because police reports purporting to describe the scene – made before police knew film existed – shows the police acted deliberately to conceal from the public the truth about the killing.  Although the incident has been described as illustrating a plague of brutality against black men, one wonders how anyone could feel "protected" by armed men who go unprosecuted despite doing this to other humans.  The police response?  Eric Garner wasn't killed by armed men employing a choke hold after their victim begged for air and warned them he couldn't breathe, he was killed for failure to respect the officers of the NYPD.  To make sure the news on the NYPD is appropriately respectful, the NYPD has begun writing its news itself.  Like Cesar trying to sound like a historian by writing about himself in the third person, the NYPD offers feels-like-news stories purporting to celebrate successes like recovering a single .22 handgun. On the bright side, the officer who arrested the .22's owner managed to do it without killing anyone. Yay?

In Houston, police killed a mentally ill double-amputee who was confined to a wheelchair.  According to police, the man attempted to stab an officer with a pen.  Lemme give you a hint, for the next time a schizophrenic bipolar patient who's confined to a wheelchair gives you palpitations over the risk he's unwilling to surrender his felt-tipped pen, consider fleeing for the high ground of the nearby bed, which the wheelchair will not surmount.  Just a thought.  In a metropolitan area exceeding five million souls, there's bound to be someone who's very ill and poorly medicated  – someplace – pretty much incessantly.  From the incident's description, two officers were in the room and neither bothered to attempt any kind of restraint – they just brandished weapons and issued commands to a man whose psychiatric disorder could very well have been causing him to hear things they never spoke.  It wasn't the first time the officer who pulled the trigger decided that the answer to his daily problem was to shoot a civilian.  The prior incident involved a man who'd attacked others with a knife.  The photo doesn't suggest the killed double-amputee belonged to a minority race, but he was mentally ill and had been a ward of Harris County since 2003.  Way to take care of your sick, Harris County.  Bullets are, what? About a buck apiece?

In Dallas, police who were dispatched to the home of a paranoid schizophrenic man based on a report that he had threatened suicide decided to yell at him, predictably escalating his fragile mental state, until after tazing him they chose to shoot him eleven times (including after he was already on the ground).  A home surveillance camera provides video.  Neighbors reported that they never felt threatened by Michael Blair, despite his odd behavior.  The 26-year-old was black.

The Dallas video contains something that appears in an account by a Washington Post reporter [*] regarding his own arrest: loud self-serving statements by police for the benefit of cameras and witnesses, intended to create some basis on which to find the officers' conduct justified.  There's nothing to the statements; they're just there to prejudice onlookers.  The golden example is this:

“My hands are behind my back,” I said. “I’m not resisting. I’m not resisting.” At which point one officer said: “You’re resisting. Stop resisting.”

Turn off the audio on the Dallas shooting and look for indications the officers attempted to subdue the mentally ill man using any means besides appealing to the rational fear we expect people to have when confronted with force (including fore like electric shocks or the threats of gunfire).  Once you know the civilian is mentally ill, and contemplating suicide, why on Earth would you expect a threat to kill him to represent a plausible strategy to de-escalate him so he could get treatment?

I don't know if there's a formal field of study for this kind of government/citizen interaction, but I wonder if some threshold exists for determining that an issue has progressed from a shocking aberration to an epidemic that demands prompt action.

Anyone know?

Anyone care?

[*] The Washingon Post reporter arrested covering a protest over a police shooting of a civilian wasn't the only one.  Another reporter (white) covering the same protest was not only arrested, but suffered having his face bashed into a fixed object by an armed police officer in riot armor, who sarcastically apologized afterward – another incident of abusive police employing language to create cover for inappropriate conduct.  If called on his assault, the response will surely be to claim the whole thing was an accident, as evidenced by his prompt 'apology'.  The result?

Ryan Grim, The Huffington Post's Washington bureau chief, noted in a statement that Reilly "has reported multiple times from Guantanamo Bay." According to Grim, Reilly "said that the police resembled soldiers more than officers, and treated those inside the McDonald's as 'enemy combatants.'"

So at home, we're treated as 'enemy combatants.'  So, it's true: freedom isn't free.  And bogus oversight isn't oversight at all. Public attention must be directed to the problem of reviving the dying rule of law if we are, in fact, to have "rights" as our predecessors understood the term.


==========
UPDATES:
In the interest of plotting the data points, I've also noticed ...

... Miami SWAT executing a narcotics warrant, and their behavior toward the 13-year-old boy in the raises house and their treatment of the glass picture frames through out the house; should it matter that conduct like this was committed in a house two blocks from the one specified in the warrant – or is there really anyone who seriously believes such conduct is appropriate even there?

... A multi-jurisdictional SWAT team in Georgia threw a stun grenade into a crib, putting a 19-month-old without health insurance in the hospital in a coma with burns that exposed his ribs. Does it matter the adult sought in their warrant didn't live there and wasn't present?

UPDATE:
Giving armed organizations immunity to prosecution seems to invite poor behavior, including extreme reactions to attempted oversight, even abroad.  Yet, proven misconduct doesn't seem to prevent our government from funding known killers.

IRS Sends Billions To Wrong People

Apparently, now the IRS has sent $106b to erroneous recipients.

Sigh.

911: "If This Is An Emergency, Hang Up and Call …"

Americans have become used to being transferred into purgatory on "customer service" calls, but 9-1-1?  In New Port Richey, Florida, a married couple with a child and a visiting in-law called 9-1-1 in response to a home invasion in progress, only to be transferred to a recorded message.  The dispatcher who picked up the 9-1-1 call wasn't "qualified" to respond to a call requiring assistance from law enforcement, and transferred the call to the Sheriff's Department's non-emergency line, which played the emergency victims a recorded message suggesting they consider calling 9-1-1 if they had an emergency.

This didn't just happen once: the victims called back and got the same response again.

In a Kafka-esque twist, the person who was qualified to field the call was sitting right next to the dispatcher who proved incompetent to transfer the call.  You'd think that "help I'm being attacked" would elicit enough concern to hand the phone over, or grab the person who could help so the right assistance could be brought to the phone.

Alas.

Information Protocols and the Surveillance State

Just in case you thought Snowden's exposure of a secret spy program against Americans is okay because it centers on metadata rather than on message content, listen to what General Michael Vincent Hayden – former director of the NSA and the CIA – says eighteen minutes into this Johns Hopkins Foreign Affairs Symposium: "First of all, David's description of what you can do with metadata … is absolutely correct, okay? We kill people based on metadata."

This casts into better light the decision of the Internet Engineering Task Force in RFC7258/BCP188 that pervasive monitoring is an attack and that protocol designers must work to mitigate it.