Police Quotas - Always a Bad Idea

By 1937 there were quotas for arrests just as there quotas for steel production. Crimes were simply made up to fit the punishments... Taking into account the six or seven million Soviet citizens who were sent into exile, the share of the population who experienced some kind of penal servitude under Stalin approached 15 percent. - Niall Ferguson The Square and the Tower

In the United States just under 1 percent of the population is incarcerated, mostly for just cause. However, I'm guessing if you took into account the percentage of US citizens who has had to pay a fine for speeding or other minor offenses because of police quotas the the number would approach or pass the Soviet figure of 15 percent. 

Not trying to equate spending time in a gulag to paying a speeding ticket just pointing our that police quotas are always wrong in my opinion.

Will China Doulbe Cross Russia?

The invasion by Russia of a neighboring country on their western borders once nearly led to all-out war on their eastern borders with China. Could history repeat itself?

Have this new post up on Substack. Please let me know what you think. Thanks!

Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous thoughts and observations.

Is one of the underrated reasons for the fall of the Soviet Union the opening of China to the West by Nixon? The economy and military capabilities of China have greatly expanded in the years since Nixon's historic visit at a pace the Soviet Union could never match... I wonder what the hammer-throwing girl (Anya Major) from Apple's iconic 1984 commercial is doing these days... Pretty sure if the Earth were hit by a giant asteroid there are many who would somehow blame the event on man-made global warming... A healthy list indeed... In other news Syracuse University forced to change nickname of athletic teams after campus wide breakout of TDS... I did not know this...

The Biological Chernobyl

In 1979 about two shot glasses worth of anthrax was released into the air around the Soviet military facility in Sverdlovsk. The deadly biological agent was released due to a filter not being replaced. Around 105 people died because of the anthrax leak. If the wind was right that day the agent could have killed more than 100,000.

Scary history that is not discussed much if at all. Even scarier is the fact that the facility at Sverdlovsk is still open and active.