What Jay Powell should say at Jackson Hole FT
TD Bank Sets Aside $2.6 Billion for Possible U.S. Anti-Money Laundering Penalties WSJ
Revisiting How Many People Have Filed Bankruptcy Credit Slips
Climate
How to Force Capitalism to Stop Climate Change Foreign Policy
AI tech giants hide dirty energy with outdated carbon accounting rules Business Standard
The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud Bert Hubert’s Writings
‘We’re changing the clouds’: Unintended geoengineering test is warming the Atlantic Earth.com
Water
Large number of customers starting lawn-watering cycles on Mondays is stressing Denver Water’s system Colorado Sun
The Strange Heat Island Lurking Beneath Minneapolis Atlas Obscura
TechCrunch Minute: This startup wants to mine water on the moon TechCrunch
Syndemics
A new Covid vaccine is expected soon. Here’s the best time to get it NBC
Novavax Stock Rocketed This Year, But Challenges Persist. Is It A Buy Or A Sell? Investor’s Business Daily
* * *
Health officials recommend curfew in Mass. town as community faces critical EEE risk Boston25. EEE = Eastern Equine Encephalitis.
Could Mpox Become Established in the Indo-Pacific? The Diplomat
China?
China says it is ‘seriously concerned’ about US nuclear strategic report Channel News Asia
Humanoid robots steal limelight at WRC 2024 CGTN
PwC braced for 6-month ban in China over Evergrande audit FT
India
COMMENT: India booms, but is it structural growth story of the century or domestic investors’ irrational exuberance BNE Intellinews
Syraqistan
USS Abraham Lincoln strike group arrives in Middle East Anadolu Agency
A Look at Iran’s First Ever Aircraft Carrier: Shahid Bagheri Promises to Expand Reach of Stealth Drone Fleet Military Watch
America The Ugly Clyde Prestowitz (!), Clyde’s Newsletter. Commentary:
Gaza is covered in 42 million tonnes of rubble.
The enduring human, environmental, and economic consequences of the immense toxic detritus of genocide—towering piles of debris that also bury an estimated 10,000 dead—are just staggering https://t.co/VW0v9nCSiQ pic.twitter.com/locMxt7Vbd
— Thea Riofrancos (@triofrancos) August 17, 2024
Africa
Koch Invests in Massive Land Grab From West African Herders Exposed by CMD
European Disunion
France’s summer break is ending – and the bitter fight to form a government is back France24
New Not-So-Cold War
Scholz believes Ukrainian troops are unlikely to stay in Russia’s Kursk Oblast for long Ukrainska Pravda
Russia Seeks to Turn Humbling Incursion Into Military Gains NYT
Russia says Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk region has ended any possibility of peace talks Anadolu Agency
Ukrainian incursion into Kursk paralyses Russia’s railways BNE Intellinews
* * * Russia and Ukraine Can’t Mount Major Offensives Against Each Other, US Says Bloomberg
* * * As Conflict Escalates, Secret Russian Files Reportedly Reveal Lowered Nuclear Threshold Training (excerpt) Simplicius, Simplicius the Thinker
Ukraine’s Offensive Bolsters Russia’s Separatists Foreign Policy
South of the Border
Fraud Foretold? New Left Review. Venezuela. “A careful consideration of the evidence, then, suggests that the election results are not just difficult but impossible to believe.”
2024
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to address nation Friday amid reports he will endorse Trump Anadolu Agency
* * * Meet the ‘uncommitted’: How Gaza hangs over Democratic National Convention AL Jazeera
Republicans Kill Civilians For Bad Guy Reasons, Democrats Kill Civilians For Nice Guy Reasons Caitlin Johnstone
* * * Trump or Harris? Moscow Does Not Care Valdai Discussion Club
Who is Philip Gordon, the foreign policy pragmatist with Harris’s ear? FT. See NC here.
* * * Police and FBI investigate maggot incident at DNC breakfast in Chicago WGN
The planet the Democrats live on sounds nice The Guantlet
Spook Country
U.S. Investigating Americans Who Worked With Russian State Television NYT
The right to be left alone Andrew P. Napolitano, New Jersey Herald
Digital Watch
‘Wartime CEO’: Urbit’s Founder Returns in Shakeup at Moonshot Software Project CoinDesk
No Exit Opportunities: Business Models and Political Thought in Silicon Valley American Affairs Journal
An Age of Hyperabundance n+1. Excerpt:
???? pic.twitter.com/CeSqgMbh2K
— alex (@genossse) August 21, 2024
* * * What margins? AI’s business model is changing fast, says Cohere founder TechCrunch
Antitrust
What Happens When a CEO Destroys Evidence in an Antitrust Trial? Matt Stoller, BIG
Zeitgeist Watch
US hospital told family their daughter had checked out when in fact she’d died Guardian (DS). DS writes: “CalPERS isn’t running the only cover-up in Sacramento. Waiting a year to file a Death Certificate (required in 15-days by law) suggests hiding malpractice, and failing to ever inform the family who spent a year searching for her smacks of wanton cruelty. No mention of any investigation by the State Medical Board here or in the SacBee coverage. Words fail me.”
Supply Chain
US uranium production bounces back from steep decline in recent years: EIA S&P Global
The Final Frontier
Robotic Russian Progress 89 cargo ship docks at ISS with tons of fresh supplies (video) Space.com
Sports Desk
‘More and more’ – The unusual cosmetic step Man City star has taken to improve athletic performance Manchester Evening News
Class Warfare
How US Big Tech monopolies colonized the world: Welcome to neo-feudalism Geopolitical Economy Review
You Say You Want a Revolution Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds
Bioaccumulation of Microplastics in Decedent Human Brains Assessed by Pyrolysis Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (preprint) Research Square. N = 12. From the Conclusion: “The parallels between the present data showing an increasing trend in [Micro- and NanoPlastics (MNP)] concentrations in the brain with exponentially rising environmental presence of microplastics and increasing global rates of age-corrected Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia, given the potential role of anionic nanoplastics in protein aggregation, add urgency to understanding the impacts of MNP on human health.” Musical interlude.
Antidote du jour (Ltshears):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
GENERAL STRIKE
(melody borrowed from A Day In The Life by The Beatles)
We’ll all revolt today, O joy!
A new world waits beyond the barricades
This crowd is huge and really mad
We’ll push the fences back
Demanding what we lack
Gas mask and ten granola bars
No more false promises of hope and change
Adverse perspectives can’t be squared
It’s change we’re looking for
No more harsh austerity from beating plowshares into swords
We won’t pay bills today, O joy!
They take it all and yet they must take more
We’re out on strike and here we’ll stay
It is our lives you took
Stuffed in your chequebook
But now those days are gone . . .
The joke that goes unsaid
Is that we’re easily misled
What our Congresscritters cover up
Is cash comes first while you and I can wait
Congress works on tit for tat
Money gets the welcome mat
Our nation’s way past way past broke
The donor class keeps skimming off the cream
(Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh)
We’ll all revolt today, O joy!
There’s going to be a lot of changes here
We won’t accept the same cabal
We want our wherewithal
No more hungry people working hard for nothing much at all
But now those days are gone . . .
Working link for “US hospital told family their daughter had checked out when in fact she’d died” article at-
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/21/sacramento-hospital-patient-death-checked-out
Somebody would have had to have signed off on her body going to that off-site morgue. Maybe the police had better check the identities of the other bodies at that site in case there are similar cases.
>France’s summer break is ending – and the bitter fight to form a government is back – France24
As long as a substantial number of Europeans enjoy their long "summer break" not much political change will occur. In Italy Ferragosto, is sacred. Those with the means head for the coast or the mountain to enjoy the beach or cool air. Talk of politics is put aside and the business of enjoying life proceeds undisturbed. And who can blame them? The mind-numbing platitudes of genocide enabling politicians only raise the blood pressure and horrify. No, take the whole month of August off and enjoy yourselves, forget the bombs blowing up innocent women and children or poking the bear…while you can.
I don’t know, nor do I care, whether or not Maduro won the election fairly. I do know that no US-based or aligned organization can be trusted to tell the truth about Venezuela. But my real beef is this: who the f’ do we think we are to be going around playing the arbiter of right and justice when we’re currently funding and arming a genocide? We have no moral authority left, if ever we had any. Maybe these leftists should focus on their own countries and trying to affect those politics, rather than opining about what’s wrong with governments in their former colonies. People like the author seem to care more about reigning in Maduro than they do about reigning in their own governments who, as the author even states, have a long history of fomenting right-wing military coups in that (and many other) countries. Our epic blindness to Western hypocrisy would be funny if it weren’t so harmful.
We have been funding genocide since the 1930s…I guess we can sdy US elites gave been funding genocide since the 1930s. We officially started to fund genocide in the 1980s when military dictatorships in Central America slaughtered native people.
Every genocide since then has US money or arms fueling to he conflict. I don’t think we can take credit for Pol Pot but his genocide is not possible with out our involvement in Vietnam.
The only difference now is that you can easily see the images and videos.
Iirc, latin America has been at the mercy of imperialist rule for hundreds of years. In more contemporary times, American meddling in the region dates back to at least the 1820s, around the time the Monroe doctrine was adopted.
Related:
https://hir.harvard.edu/the-dark-side-of-bananas-imperialism-non-state-actors-and-power/
https://soaw.org/about-soa-watch
https://x.com/KawsachunNews/status/1616594222865334272/mediaViewer?currentTweet=1616594222865334272¤tTweetUser=KawsachunNews
Same here. Why do these people have such a hard on for Venezuela?
‘oil’ in big letters
The US would not fare too well if the same criteria for elections were applied to itself.
I do think it’s prudent to wait until the Venezuelan Supreme Court finishes its investigation and conclusion of the elections before declaring fraud. Could it be that the CNE and ruling party are not sharing the voting details and tallies until after this process, to make sure the opposition does not have time to ‘correct’ the codes or results of any fraudulent tallies they have posted? Can we blame them for acting defensively given the boldness of the Machado led opposition to declare itself the winner and usurp the functions of the CNE? The continuing cyberattacks the state is under must also influence these decisions.
It is unfortunate Edmundo Gonzalez did not submit those tallies to the Supreme Court or request the Court to overturn the ruling of the CNE.
We had to wait over a month back in 2000 I think for US Supreme Court to rule on the Bush-Gore election and know the winner.
Gooooooooood Mooooooorning Fiatnam!
Nobody expected Bob Hope to make an appearance @ the DNC convention in Chicago, but there he was larger than life, in particular for a guy who’s been pushing up daisies for decades. Luckily it’s a fairy short flight from second city to Jackson Hole, where Hope springs eternal, at least as far as Jay Powell is concerned.
Turns out the hopester was only there to pitch his latest effort:
The Road to Partition
Lol, I see what you did there. Yesterday the Atlantic was cooling, yet today it is warming?! Ah what tangled webs :)
>Trump or Harris? Moscow Does Not Care – Valdai Discussion Club
Trump’s possible victory in the 2024 elections will change little for Russia… Trump’s threat to force European allies to pay for their security will not break NATO solidarity. Such threats could not undermine it even during his first term, and today, against the background of the crisis in relations with Russia, they will not lead to any changes, even less so.
And I don’t care much either, I won’t waste a vote on either. Little will change for Russia, and little will change for the majority of U.S. citizens. The oligarchs, “the inner circle,” will still decide public policy and determine the (mis)allocation of the nation’s wealth. The Trump/Harris theatrical production is a dialectical “alchemical” process of instilling the belief that the people are sovereign.
When Entities like the “Grayzone” are banned on Youtube for a week so that they cannot broadcast their coverage of the DNC convention and Jackson Hinkel and Scott Ritter past videos are purged, what is there left to care about? Maybe if there was a viable, adversarial press to press the issues of the day, people here and countries there, would care.
While Russia is directionally correct, 2024 is not 2016. Look at how Germany has said no to more Ukraine funding due to budget rules. Shifting NATO costs onto European members who are in recessions or facing low growth to pricier energy isn’t as viable for NATO as it was in Trump’s first term. This is a prescription for “Atlanticists” and internationalists to be voted out of office. That turnover is unlikely to get very far during a second Trump term, though, and so Russia can’t expect any meaningful shift.
“TechCrunch Minute: This startup wants to mine water on the moon”
‘Starpath is building robots that it hopes will be able to autonomously mine liquid oxygen from the moon. That liquid oxygen can then be used to develop fuel for spacecrafts, which could make it possible for humans to travel farther through space than they have thus far.’
To extract that oxygen from Luna rocks and soil would be prohibitively expensive, especially when all the mining gear would have to be shipped to the Moon first. And we have only ever sent small payloads to the Moon – not industrial equipment weighing many tons. But this mob want to use this stuff for flights to Mars as if the Moon was some sort of free gas station. Maybe they had better work on getting to the Mon first. Sort of like baby steps.
I am starting up a startup for mining water on the Sun. In order to avoid the heat, we will be working only at night.
UFC 86
Teetotalitarian Dictator-the Ayatollah of Diet Coca-Cola versus a 3 liter Black Box of red blend consisting of grapes mostly sourced locally from Lodi-the most awarded boxed wine, by the way.
Both go into the Octagon, one might risk a WUI if she emerges on foot.
Letttttttttt’s get ready to Tipple!
$49.99 TV PPV
$39.99 HD TV PPV
Charles Hugh Smith and revolution–
Charles and I are very much on the same page. Here are a few examples of our concord with comments:
Smith is actually quoting from a NYT article about homesteaders with Youtube channels that in turn was quoting a homesteader on Youtube. After years of trying to organize locally and get something positive going in my poor, urban neighborhood, I’m ready to throw in the towel and move to where the Amish live. I finally found a book that investigates why the Amish live as they do, eschewing electricity and Happy Motoring:
Donald Kraybill, The Amish Way: Patient Faith in a Perilous World (2010)
The Amish are undeniably Christian monotheists who believe that humans have been handed “dominion” over Nature, but the best among them come close to recognizing the interdependence of humans and the rest of life on Earth, including this Amish bishop quoted in Kraybill’s book:
Community, humility, simplicity. Renouncing the status game of conspicuous consumption. Valuing solidarity above the “achievement” extolled by the disparagers of “slave morality,” These are all values I can get behind even if I see the monotheism they profess as more of a hindrance than a help in attaining a healthy understanding of who we humans are and how we relate to this planet and the life on it. The Amish are astute observers of modern culture’s dangers as well as faithful adherents to the best values they find in the teachings of Jesus and Paul.
Among those who come from Western traditions, I think the Amish and their somewhat more assimilated theological cousins, the Mennonites, have more going for them as the Jackpot approaches than the rest.
Maggot incident at a Chicago hotel. Well the edict has been pushed forward after all. Pretty hilarious from this armchair view of things and modern America in 2024.
“You will own nothing….and also, be sure to eat the insects whilst you exist with your nothing!”
Go ahead, bite that Toddlin’ Town … don’t mind the maggots!
(Paraphrasing Mick)
“Hungary law could make Ukrainian refugees homeless”
I would imagine that the EU would be having a stress attack about this story and would be demanding answers from the Hungarians. So what happens if the Hungarians say that they were forced to do so because the EU has illegally withheld funds from Hungary forcing them to make cutbacks, namely to non-citizens. But the Hungarians could cheerfully offer to ship those Ukrainian refugees to the rest of the EU where their funding hasn’t been cut if they so desire.
…would you pull yourself up by your galoshes in Hungary?
Regarding the Aeon piece about C L R James — imagine what he may have made of contemporary America with its slavish devotion to the Marvel universe and its associated movies, grossing as much as they do?
Getting my mouth fixed and wallet lightened, and my next appointment is November 5th, and I of course realized it will be on election day-hope it doesn’t hinder my performance behind a closed curtain.
In light banter I gave away my platform to the gaggle of women working there:
Fridays & Mondays off, 4 day weekends
Full dental coverage
Free lunch
Free daycare
Military spending cut back 65% to accommodate my plank
I have at least 5 write-in votes now.
What? No brunch included? Get a lot of Democrat voting women that way.
You give ’em brunch and the next thing you know is they’ll be demanding lunner.
The Clyde Prestowitz article “America the Ugly” is from January. It’s still a good read and all the more impressive for it’s being from January. His point about the USA being and appearing to rest of world weak and isolated has only gotten stronger. Congress’ flogging of university presidents did indeed produce a chilling effect.