The Horrible Hope

One can arrive at a place of what appears to be maximal personal virtue. Vices have been eliminated. No drugs, no alcohol, no meat, no dairy, no tobacco, no junk food, no fornication. I buy organic. I am vegan. I exercise. I recycle. I compost. I consume on average less three kilowatt-hours of electricity per day in my humble studio apartment. I don't take public transit to work; I walk.

But recently I have been nagged by a suspicion that my apparent virtue is fraudulent. What makes me feel this way is that just about whatever I consume I deposit a nib of non-recyclable plastic into the garbage -- the little pull-top to the coconut milk container; the cap to mango juice bottle; the bag that holds the stir-fry faux-beef soy strips. Granted, it takes a while to fill up a trash container with these non-recyclable nibs and sheets. But in less than a month's time I have a shopping bag full of plastic destined for the landfill and from there likely the ocean.

That's why this blurb from today's Significant Digits caught my eye:

8,300 million metric tons of plastic

We humans have made a ton of plastic during our time on Earth — well, about 8,300 million metric tons. Most of it is now in the ocean or the dump. But some of it — like Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit or works of contemporary art — we’re trying very hard to preserve. Unexpectedly, plastics are a great challenge for conservators. The material is unpredictable and there is “huge variation in forms of deterioration.” [The New York Times]

If you're going to read one thing this weekend read Troy Vettese's "To Freeze The Thames," which appears in the May-June issue of New Left Review. It is a revelation.

The Little Ice Age of the 17th Century was likely triggered by a massive die-off of humans indigenous to the Americas. This returned a huge amount of agricultural land to the wild, which took a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere.

Vettese says that we can achieve the same results without the die-off if we take most agricultural land out of production and return it to the wild. People will have to go vegan because a significant portion of agricultural is tied up in producing feed grain for livestock. 

Basically, E.O. Wilson's half-earthing is possible but almost everyone in the developed world is going to have to live a radically different life.

Sadly, this is politically impossible. So what we are left with is a hope that is hard to swallow: A massive human die-off in the next few decades.

The Fiction that is Kosovo Revealed in the Arts Page

Apparently when it appears in the arts section the editors at The New York Times aren't as vigilant in censoring political content that veers from the official narrative. Case in point is the thoroughly damning "Can a Music Festival Make Kosovo Cool?" by Alex Marshall, which appeared in Tuesday's national edition.

Dukagjin Lipa, the father of pop singer Dua Lipa, recently staged a major musical festival in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, with his daughter headlining.

What emerges from Marshall's reporting is a confirmation of one of the main criticisms of the NATO air war in support of the Kosovo Liberation Army 20 years ago: There is no such thing as a "Kosovar," a person with a unique national identity rooted in Kosovo's political independence; it was a creation of the Western powers to justify a war of aggression against Serbia. Kosovars are Albanians and identify as such. The putative Kosovo war of liberation was really a NATO campaign to further dismember the former Yugoslavia; for Albanians, it was a big step down the path towards "Greater Albania."

According to Marshall,

A strong sense of ethnic Albanian identity was everywhere at the festival. Dua Lipa wore red and black, the colors of the Albanian national flag, when performing her 90-minute set. She spoke almost entirely in Albanian between songs. Later, she held the Albanian flag aloft to screams from fans.

Many of the acts, who ranged from Albanian rap stars like M.C. Kresha to Jericho, a band widely seen as Kosovo’s answer to Rage Against The Machine, drew cheers from the crowd by making a double-handed sign that represents the black eagle on Albania’s flag. The American rapper Action Bronson, whose father is Albanian, also made the gesture during his set. 

Kosovo’s blue flag, which features six stars to represent the country’s main ethnic groups, was nowhere on display.

You won't find such hard truths on the front page.

Kosovo is ghastly experiment which highlights the preferred method of U.S. power projection. Splinter a state, cow it into submission with air power, and then erect a huge military base.

Peace Talks on Afghanistan

The Taliban have agreed to attend peace talks in Moscow on September 4. The United States and its Afghan client government have declined an invitation to attend. The U.S. is attempting to negotiate its own peace deal with the Taliban. Pompeo, commenting the other day on the Trump administration's support for Ghani's call for an Eid al-Adha ceasefire, sounded like Mahatma Gandhi.

The U.S. wants peace with the Taliban now because the U.S. wants to use Islamic State proxies along the border with Iran. A U.S. war on Iran is coming.

Like so much else the U.S. does these days its position is nonsense designed to engineer the next war. Moscow is offering the Taliban a seat at the table with India, Pakistan and other regional players. The U.S.? It's unclear what the U.S. is offering beyond "fight with us against the Shia in Iran instead of against us in your own home."

There Will be Impeachment

Given that the Democrats were going to take back the House anyway prior to Trump consigliere Michael Cohen pleading guilty to, among other things, violating federal campaign finance law by paying hush money to two of Trump's former paramours; and given that there was going to be a leadership battle in the House Democratic caucus; now it is inevitable that there will be impeachment. A zombie-like Nancy Pelosi, on record of being reticent about pursuing impeachment, will have to pledge allegiance to the cause if she is to have any hope of becoming Speaker again.

What makes it interesting is that if articles of impeachment manage to clear the House, the Republicans in the Senate will be placed on a very hot seat -- all in the run up to a presidential election. It is going to be hard to apply the brakes. It could be a runaway train.

From "Legal noose tightens around Trump White House" by Patrick Martin:

The logic of the Cohen case was best summed up by one of his own lawyers, Lanny J Davis, a veteran of the Clinton White House during its defense against impeachment. If what Cohen did in relation to the payoffs to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal was a crime, Davis argued, and he did it on behalf of and for the benefit of candidate Donald Trump, then Trump is also guilty of a crime. Last month Davis released an audio recording Cohen had made of Trump admitting to knowing of the payment made to silence McDougal.

From "A One-Two Punch Puts Trump Back on His Heels" by Mark Landler, Michael Shear and Maggie Haberman:

Still, Mr. Cohen was blunt about the president’s culpability as he stood in court and admitted his guilt: “In coordination with, and at the direction of, a candidate for federal office,” Mr. Cohen said he conspired with a media company to keep secret Mr. Trump’s affair with Stephanie Clifford, a pornographic film actress known as Stormy Daniels.

“Mr. Cohen, when you took all of these acts that you’ve described, did you know that what you were doing was wrong and illegal?” the judge asked. Mr. Cohen answered, “Yes, your honor.”

The startling charge directed at Mr. Trump carried echoes of President Richard M. Nixon, who was named an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the special prosecutor’s investigation of Watergate.

And it raised the prospect that Mr. Trump’s presidency could be at risk by impeachment in Congress even if the sprawling Russia investigation never definitively concludes that there was collusion or obstruction of justice.

[snip]

“I think impeachment is now squarely going to define the midterms,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist who has been critical of Mr. Trump. “It’s inescapable now that Democrats can legitimately raise that issue.”

He added, “There’s a lot of Republican members of Congress sitting in tough districts that are going to have to really think hard about how they’re going to finesse this in the days ahead.”

What makes it harder for Republicans, he said, is that this did not emerge from the Mueller inquiry. “This isn’t something from the deep state,” he said. “This is a classic B-team type of bumbling screw-up of covering up mistresses.”

And, he added, “It’ll be very hard to distance the president. You would assume that there’s legitimate evidence that the president was aware that those invoices were not for services rendered. You already have the one tape.”

Greece's Odyssey is not Over

Today Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras travels to Ithaca to announce the end of nearly a decade of bailouts. The idea that Tsipras wants to convey by traveling to Odysseus' home is that Greece's Odyssey is over. But it isn't.

To understand why read Liz Alderman's story from the other day, "Greece’s Bailout Is Ending. The Pain Is Far From Over." Over a third of the country lives near poverty, twice the level of the United States, and greater than the 27.4% poverty rate for African Americans. During the peak of the bailout crisis people weren't paid for months on end. They went to work anyway.

The Greece of today that Alderman describes is a neoliberal wonderland:

[F]or the vast majority of workers, Greece’s labor market remains a rough-and-tumble landscape.

To make the economy more competitive, Greece’s creditors — the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission — set austerity terms that included suspending collective bargaining and easing conditions for firing. Salaries in the public and private sectors fell more than 20 percent. The monthly minimum wage was cut to €586 in 2012, the second-lowest in the eurozone, from €751.

Today, a growing share of jobs are minimum wage. At least half involve temporary or part-time contracts. While that helps lower unemployment figures, many private-sector employees now earn less-than-poverty wages, according to the O.E.C.D., as do nearly half of Greek households with two children. Others work even more precariously with no contract at all, as employers seek to evade paying overtime and social security charges.

It all sounds very American, which I think was the point of austerity -- to roll back the European welfare state, and the party of the radical left, Syriza, jogged it over the finish line.

Democrats Take the House

With two-and-a-half months until the general election in November I think it is safe to predict that the Democratic Party will regain control of the House of Representatives.

A sober assessment is "Why Even a Blue Wave Could Have Limited Gains" by David Wasserman, an editor at The Cook Political Report:

It's hard to believe, but true: If every state’s and district’s election results on Nov. 6 were a uniform eight-point swing in the Democrats’ direction from the 2016 presidential result, Democrats would gain 44 House seats — almost twice the 23 they need to control the chamber. But with that same eight-point swing, the party would lose four Senate seats, leaving them six seats short of a majority.

Nate Silver is presently predicting that the Dems will pick up 34 seats.

The problem is that a Democratic victory in November doesn't change much. The Senate will stay in control of the GOP, and Trump, who triangulates using his own administration as a foil, will rape whomever the Democrats make Speaker, particularly if it is Nancy Pelosi.

Ask yourself, Does the Democratic House act as a brake on Trump's coming war on Iran? (U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil commence in November.) It's doubtful.

But for all the conflicted, supine weakness of the Democratic Party, Trump's game is beginning to emerge to the point where he's becoming predictable. He's basically a right wing Barack Obama. Trump can keep the faithful clocking in to work though he delivers a meager paycheck. Obama had safely won a second term before his base started to look elsewhere for gainful employment. Hopefully the 40% of voters who have stuck with Trump so far will come to their senses sooner than Obama Democrats.

Avital Ronell

There was this toss-off story the other day on the front page of The New York Times -- "What Happens to #MeToo When a Feminist Is the Accused?" by Zoe Greenberg -- which happened to be the most read story on Tuesday. It tells the tale of academic superstar Avital Ronell sexually exploiting one of her NYU grad students. A choice passage reads:

The problems began, according to Mr. Reitman, in the spring of 2012, before he officially started school. Professor Ronell invited him to stay with her in Paris for a few days. The day he arrived, she asked him to read poetry to her in her bedroom while she took an afternoon nap, he said. 

“That was already a red flag to me,” said Mr. Reitman. “But I also thought, O.K., you’re here. Better not make a scene.” 

Then, he said, she pulled him into her bed. 

“She put my hands onto her breasts, and was pressing herself — her buttocks — onto my crotch,” he said. “She was kissing me, kissing my hands, kissing my torso.” That evening, a similar scene played out again, he said.

I was at Berkeley in the 1980s the same time Ronell was teaching in the university's Comp Lit Department and making her rocket-like ascent.

Some thoughts about this time are contained in a review I wrote of David Mikics' Who Was Jacques Derrida? (2010) for my public library's website:

This is a solid, readable intro to Jacques Derrida, the French post-structuralist powerhouse. I studied Derrida at U.C. Berkeley in the 1980s and read most of his major works, books like, OF GRAMMATOLOGY, SPEECH AND PHENOMENA, DISSEMINATION, WRITING AND DIFFERENCE, but once I left school and entered the rat race I failed to keep up with his new output. Mikics does a fine job establishing the continuity of Derrida's thought, from an Algerian Jewish childhood to international celebrity. But this is not an adulatory book. Mikics is critical about what he sees as the underlying skepticism of Deconstruction and dismissive of its Leftist political tilt. But then again, he's a Comp Lit guy. When I was in school Derrideans were divided into two camps: literati, who wore studded wristbands and black leather and studied in the Comparative Literature Department [Avital Ronell], for whom the philosophical tradition was not the main concern; and students like me for whom the history of philosophy was the whole point. Derrida's writings make sense, truly, as part of the Western philosophical canon, which is the chronicle, going back to the Presocratics, of man's attempt "to sing a song that says it all at once." So read this book and enjoy it as I did but use it as a springboard to read Derrida himself.

No Peace on the Korean Peninsula

On a regular basis, if not daily, a story will appear in the mainstream press which pretty much tells it like it is.

In yesterday's national edition of The New York Times international correspondent Edward Wong gave readers a snapshot of the beating heart of the United States, "Why Is the U.S. Wary of a Declaration to End the Korean War?"

Because the U.S. is a warfare state, plain and simple, particularly now that its soft power and its economic supremacy are on the wane.

Wong's story says that North and South Korea are unified in the goal to bring an official end to the Korean War. The U.S. is opposed. The problem with U.S. opposition is that it is stalling out denuclearization of Korean Peninsula.

By the end of Wong's dispatch the reader knows the real reason why the U.S. doesn't want a formal declaration of peace:

American officials worry a peace declaration could dilute the U.S. military in Asia.

Although a peace declaration is not the same as a binding peace treaty, it would start the process for one. That would mean talking about how many American troops are needed in South Korea. Before the Singapore meeting, Mr. Trump ordered the Pentagon to prepare options for drawing down the troops there now.

For some American officials, the troop presence in South Korea is not just a deterrent toward North Korea. It also helps the United States maintain a military footprint in Asia and a grand strategy of American hegemony.

China has already begun challenging the United States’ military presence in Asia, which will only be reinforced as China becomes the world’s biggest economy and modernizes its military.

The officials also worry that President Moon Jae-in of South Korea might try to push for a lesser American military presence, or a weakening of the alliance, after an end-of-war declaration.

“For the United States, an end-of-war declaration or a peace declaration or a peace treaty has always had a broader context,” Mr. Yun said.

The U.S. doesn't want peace. There will be no peace.

The War will Rage On Until Kabul is Surrounded

What I've noticed in reading the media reports coming out of Afghanistan as the Taliban have engaged in a pitched battle since Friday to take control of the Ghazni City and cut the vital Kandahar-Kabul highway is that the United States military is just flat-out lying now. A good example is taken from Mujib Mashal's "Why the Taliban’s Assault on Ghazni Matters for Afghanistan and the U.S.":

But much like the Afghan government, the United States military played down the extent of the crisis, in assessments completely at odds with the information from the locals. 

A statement by the United States military said, for example, that the main highway to the south remained open. But passengers on both sides remained stuck, and local Afghan officials said the highway was closed. 

It is unclear how many American troops are on the ground in Ghazni. But in cities such as Farah and Kunduz — assaulted by Taliban militants in 2015, 2016 and this year — the American military sent teams of Army Special Forces to call in airstrikes and fight alongside their Afghan commando counterparts.

An even more telling passage is found in "Were Victims Friend or Foe? U.S. Airstrike Leads to New Dispute With Afghan Allies" by Farooq Jan Mangal and Rod Nordland which was published Friday. The story is about a U.S. airstrike in Logar Province that killed 17 Afghan police and pro-government volunteers who were battling the Taliban. Mangal and Nordland widen their scope to take in other deadly errant U.S. airstrikes of late:

The episode on Tuesday was the latest in a series of cases in which the outcomes of American airstrikes were disputed, and occurred as the tempo of coalition air actions in support of their Afghan allies has risen sharply. With only about 14,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan — compared with 140,000 at the peak of the deployment — most of the ground operations are being conducted by Afghan forces, whose air force is small and poorly equipped.

In the first six months of this year, United States forces dropped more than 3,000 bombs across Afghanistan, nearly double the number for the same period last year and more than five times as many as the number for the first half of 2016.

For this same six-month period, the United Nations documented a 52 percent increase in civilian deaths from airstrikes compared with the first half of 2017.

On July 19, an American airstrike in the Chardara District of northern Kunduz Province killed 14 members of one extended family, including women and children, according to Afghan officials in the area.

On Friday, Colonel O’Donnell said that the American investigation of the July 19 airstrike in Kunduz had been closed after determining that there were no civilian casualties. “After carefully considering all relevant and reasonably available information, which included a review of the Afghan government’s report of findings, our investigation found no credible information to corroborate the allegations,” he said.

Aerial video footage showed a single bomb dropped on two homes where the Taliban had been firing from for more than an hour, he said, and the firing stopped as soon as the bomb was dropped.

The American military spokesman said that no Afghans had come forward to document any civilian deaths, and the only complaints received were two that documented damage to homes and one injured person.

A New York Times reporter at the scene, however, was given a list of the names of all 14 fatalities from the same extended family. The list was provided by family members and verified by government officials and the Kunduz hospital, where 12 of the dead were taken. The victims included five women, seven children aged 2 to 14, and two men, a father and an uncle to the children. 

Told about that, Colonel O’Donnell said, “When we’re presented with any credible evidence, if something is provided to us we will take a look at it.”

The U.S. is in a spot so tight it has very little room to turn. Peace with the Pashtun Taliban would not be recognized by the Hazaras, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Turkmen, not to mention a large part of the 9/11 mythologized U.S. population. The war will rage on until Kabul is surrounded, which the U.S. will deny right up until the moment the last diplomats and military advisers are airlifted away.

I Don't Think Turkey is Lehman Brothers 2.0

I'm not convinced that Turkey is going to be the big one, Lehman Bros. 2.0. There will be a Lehman Bros. 2.0, but not now I think.

It's been reported for many moons that Turkey's long financial boom was fueled by foreign loans denominated in foreign currency, principally dollars and euros. Now with the lira in free fall (the lira is trading at an all-time low against the dollar) those loans will be impossible to pay back. Turkish companies will go bankrupt. 

Turkey will likely issue capital controls to prevent panicked money from fleeing the country, repudiate a portion of the debt, and then Erdogan will go looking for a bailout because Turkey will probably not be able to export its way out of the crisis thanks to the devalued lira.

Does this mean that Erdogan is less likely to throw his weight around on the international scene? I doubt it. Erdogan's popularity in part is due to his willingness to tweak great powers.

****

"Turkey’s Financial Crisis Surprised Many. Except This Analyst." by Landon Thomas Jr.

Corporate, financial and other debt denominated in foreign currencies, mostly dollars, represents about 70 percent of Turkey’s economy, according to the I.I.F. Turkish companies and real estate developers used borrowed dollars to pay for new factories, shopping malls and the skyscrapers that now define the Istanbul skyline. 

The threat is that as the lira loses value, it becomes more expensive for Turkish companies to repay their dollar-denominated loans. Indeed, a growing number of companies in Turkey already have said they cannot repay these loans.

[snip] 

If Mr. [Tim] Lee’s 2011 call now looks prescient, it hasn’t won him much new business.

Lately, just as Turkey began its crackup, a number of his clients have left him.

Yes, he might have been right on Turkey. But his persistent gloom was wearing thin, especially as the markets continued to soar. 

“It has been some hard sledding,” Mr. Lee admitted. “I have lost a lot of clients because I have been too bearish.” 

Yet he is doubling down on his doomsday message: The river of global cash will dry up, the dollar will spike and there will be a series of financial seizures. Investors, he thinks, will flee developing economies, then Europe and eventually the American stock and bond markets. 

“It won’t be a banking crisis this time around — it will be a financial market crisis,” Mr. Lee said. “And I am very confident that it will happen.”

"Turkey’s Economic Woes Fuel Fears of Contagion in Markets" by Jack Ewing and Alexandra Stevenson:

There were already ominous signs on Monday. After the Turkish lira fell even further against the United States dollar, investors dumped other emerging-market currencies. The Indian rupee also dropped to a record low against the dollar. And in Indonesia, the rupiah flirted with a three-year low against the American currency. 

[snip]

Stock markets across Asia, including in Hong Kong; Seoul, South Korea; Shanghai; and Tokyo, fell on Monday, with many exchanges dropping nearly 2 percent during the day. European markets fared only slightly better. Stocks opened in the red, though the losses were less severe than on Friday. The euro hovered around its lowest point against the United States dollar in a year.

Shares of European banks suffered some of the biggest losses. Those hit included not only the likes of BBVA of Spain and UniCredit of Italy, which have large holdings in Turkey, but also lenders such as Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank, which do not have major operations there.

Iron Curtain is being Drawn Again

An iron curtain is being drawn again, and it's the United States that is doing the drawing. New U.S. sanctions on Russia for poisoning the Skripals; sanctions on Iran and anyone who trades with her, with more to come in November targeting oil; sanctions on Turkey; a trade war with China; a trade war with Europe; a bloody war on civilians in Yemen; Afghanistan imploding; the Saudis goading Canada

I'd say a GOP rout in November would be a good place to start, but the Democrats are only mildly less hawkish than Republicans. So the iron curtain it is.

Some Good News

There has been some good news over the last couple of days:

"Republican law limiting labor powers defeated in Missouri." Voters in Missouri walloped by a 2-to-1 margin a Republican scheme to make the state right-to-work. Evidence, I believe, that people at root know what's in their best interest.

From NYT's "Thursday Briefing" news that the gig economy has peaked --

A big blow to Uber and Lyft

• New York is the first major American city to halt new vehicle licenses for ride-hailing services and to set a minimum pay rate for drivers. 

Mayor Bill de Blasio and Corey Johnson, the City Council speaker, said the measures passed on Wednesday would reduce traffic and improve drivers’ low wages. Uber warned that the cap could result in higher prices and longer waits. 

• The legislation, our columnist writes, “suggests the extent to which the false promises of the sharing economy are becoming better understood and, how much more aggressively they still could be counteracted.”

Plus, the story from Tuesday that hints our social media fever might be breaking -- "Snap’s Drop in Active Users Could Signal a Social Media Peak."

Tuesaday's elections revealed some huge vulnerabilities for the GOP going into the November general election. The special election in Ohio's 12th CD is case in point. Rural turnout was down while turnout in the tony suburbs was up, which led to the "too close to call" status of the race two days after election day -- in a district that Trump won by 11 points in 2016. Democrats could just about guarantee control of the House if only Nancy Pelosi would stand down from leadership. Republicans are running against Pelosi in all districts that appear to be in play.

Alex Jones Got Trump Elected in 2016 not Vladimir Putin

The New York Times has a decent short video about big tech's purge of Alex Jones' Infowars. Jack Nicas had the front-page story yesterday, "Alex Jones and Infowars Content Is Removed From Apple, Facebook and YouTube." Apple started the ball rolling by deleting podcasts, and then Google, Facebook and Spotify jumped in and joined the party:

Apple on Sunday removed five of the six Infowars podcasts on its popular Podcasts app. Commenting on the move, a spokeswoman said, “Apple does not tolerate hate speech.”

Facebook, Spotify and Google’s YouTube site, which removed some Infowars content last week, followed with stronger measures on Monday. Facebook removed four pages belonging to Mr. Jones, including one with nearly 1.7 million followers as of last month, for violating its policies by “glorifying violence” and “using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants.” Facebook said the violations did not relate to “false news.”

YouTube terminated Mr. Jones’s channel, which had more than 2.4 million subscribers and billions of views on its videos, for repeatedly violating its policies, including its prohibition on hate speech. Spotify cited its own prohibition on hate speech as the reason for removing a podcast by Mr. Jones.

What caught my eye in Nica's report is how Infowars out-punches news media heavyweights in the online world; that, and the tech giants haven't completely blacklisted Infowars:

Infowars introduced a new smartphone app last month that is finding users on Apple’s App store and Google’s Play Store. From July 12 through Monday, the Infowars app was, on average, the 23rd most popular news app on the Google Play store and the 33rd most popular news app on Apple’s App Store, according to App Annie, an app analytics firm. On Monday, the Infowars app ranked ahead of apps like BuzzFeed and The Wall Street Journal on Google, and ahead of apps like MSNBC and Bloomberg on Apple.

Apple decided to allow the Infowars app on its store after reviewing it, according to a person close to the company who spoke on condition of anonymity. The Google Play Store has different policies than YouTube, a Google spokesman said.

Infowars is claiming that big tech's censorship has backfired, and that its app has jumped to number three.

Much is made of Jones' theory that the mass shooting of Sandy Hook was an "inside job." My guess is that big tech's decision to remove Infowars content had to do with elections and not lunatic fringe conspiracies. Alex Jones got Trump elected in 2016 not Vladimir Putin. So booting him off YouTube is a battening down the hatches for 2020.

Will it work? It'll have an effect. Facebook, Apple and YouTube are ubiquitous platforms, the very digital air we breath. But in the end you have to figure that followers of Infowars have the site bookmarked. For the true believers it won't mean a thing.

Ours is a Sick, Failed Society

The whole reason one reads newspapers can be found in a story by Tara Siegel Bernard, "‘Too Little Too Late’: Bankruptcy Booms Among Older Americans," which appeared in yesterday's national edition. Ours is a failed society. We are often told that our politics are skewed to the elderly, who receive the lion's share of the benefits. But Siegel Bernard makes clear that even Medicare and Social Security are not enough to protect a growing number of senior citizens:

For a rapidly growing share of older Americans, traditional ideas about life in retirement are being upended by a dismal reality: bankruptcy.

The signs of potential trouble — vanishing pensions, soaring medical expenses, inadequate savings — have been building for years. Now, new research sheds light on the scope of the problem: The rate of people 65 and older filing for bankruptcy is three times what it was in 1991, the study found, and the same group accounts for a far greater share of all filers.

Driving the surge, the study suggests, is a three-decade shift of financial risk from government and employers to individuals, who are bearing an ever-greater responsibility for their own financial well-being as the social safety net shrinks.

The transfer has come in the form of, among other things, longer waits for full Social Security benefits, the replacement of employer-provided pensions with 401(k) savings plans and more out-of-pocket spending on health care. Declining incomes, whether in retirement or leading up to it, compound the challenge.

[snip]

As the study, from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, explains, older people whose finances are precarious have few places to turn. “When the costs of aging are off-loaded onto a population that simply does not have access to adequate resources, something has to give,” the study says, “and older Americans turn to what little is left of the social safety net — bankruptcy court.”

Of course this tip-of-the-iceberg crisis -- it's going to get much worse -- has been foreseen for a long time. The disappearance of defined benefit pensions in favor of inadequate 401(k) plans; the usurious nature of health care; skyrocketing housing costs -- a regular wage worker will not be able to retire in such an environment.

What was interesting about Siegel Bernard's story is the role that student debt plays in the financial woes of seniors:

A little more than a third of the older filers who answered the researchers’ questionnaire said that helping others, like children or older parents, had contributed to their seeking bankruptcy protection. Marc Stern, a bankruptcy lawyer in Seattle, said he had seen the phenomenon again and again.

Some parents, Mr. Stern said, had co-signed loans for $10,000 or $20,000 for adult children and suddenly could no longer afford them. “When you are living on $2,000 a month and that includes Social Security — and you have rent and savings are minuscule — it is extremely difficult to recover from something like that,” he said.

Others had co-signed their children’s student loans. “I never saw parents with student loans 20 or 30 years ago,” Mr. Stern said.

“It is not uncommon to see student loans of $100,000,” he added. “Then, you see parents who have guaranteed some of these loans. They are no longer working, and they have these student loans that are difficult if not impossible to pay or discharge in bankruptcy, and these are the kids’ loans.”

The Trump administration is actively working to make housing more expensive, not to mention what DeVos is doing to unleash for-profit colleges.

It is a sick, failed society, the paradigm for which was put in place as a reaction to the spirit of '68 50 years ago. I don't think it can continue much longer.

Payback for being on the Wrong Side of the Coup in Ukraine

I've read all the NYT coverage of the ongoing Manafort trial. It's easier to get a sense of the government's case against Manafort from reading this mornings NPR story "4 Insights As Manafort Trial Enters Week 2" than anything published so far by "the newspaper of record."

Basically Manafort is being prosecuted for disclosure violations. He didn't disclose overseas bank accounts that he used to pay for his luxury items, and he cooked his books to both lower his income (to pay less tax) and raise his income (to qualify for bank loans).

The heart of the prosecution's case is about Ukraine. Manafort made millions working for Viktor Yanukovych, and those millions dried up following the coup in February 2014 that sent Yanukovych scurrying out of Kiev.

The whole thing seems like payback for being on the wrong side of the coup; that, and working for Trump. As one NYT story concludes:

Mr. Manafort’s lawyers say he almost certainly would not have faced charges if not for his brief, unpaid stint with the Trump campaign.

War in Yemen is Grossly Under-Reported

Last week the the Saudi-led coalition resumed its bombing of the critical Yemeni port city of Hodeida after a month-long ceasefire.

Mohammed Ali Kalfood and Margaret Coker provide a rundown in "Saudis Escalate Siege of Port in Yemen, Alarming Aid Groups," which is the first non-AP or Reuters dispatch on Yemen that The New York Times has published in a month.

It is fairly well-accepted fact that the war on Yemen is grossly under-reported. Just one example from last month -- there was barely a blip on the media radar when Amnesty International published a report accusing the UAE and the U.S. of war crimes in Yemen torture centers.

There are other grossly under-reported wars as well; Libya and Somalia, to name two. But Yemen is the worst because it is broadly acknowledged to currently represent the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe, and it wouldn't be possible without the active involvement of the United States.

In June, the Saudi and Emirati governments launched the battle for control of Al Hudaydah in an effort to tip the balance of power against the Houthis. The Saudi-led coalition ignored a resounding diplomatic outcry over concern for the safety of the city’s 600,000 residents and the possibility that the fighting could disrupt supply lines for urgent humanitarian assistance to millions of others in Yemen.

Aid arriving in the Red Sea port accounts for about 70 percent of imports in Yemen, a country where two-thirds of the 29 million people rely on international aid.

Less than a month later, the coalition halted the Al Hudaydah ground assault as it faced the hard realities of urban warfare and little progress. Instead the Saudis and Emiratis said they would support United Nations efforts to find a political solution, as well as a possible formula for a wider cease-fire.

Martin Griffiths, the United Nations special envoy, offered a grim progress report to Security Council members. “Recently, and despite all our efforts, the pace of war has increased,” he said, with Al Hudaydah becoming the “center of gravity” for the conflict.

Since the assault on Al Hudaydah started, more than 330,000 people, approximately half the city’s inhabitants, have fled, according to the United Nations.

Mr. Griffiths said he planned to invite the warring sides to Geneva on Sept. 6 for a first round of consultations aimed at convening peace talks. The plan is to “discuss a framework of negotiations and specific plans for moving the process forward,” he said.

On Thursday afternoon, however, the Arab coalition’s aerial forces were pounding several neighborhoods of Al Hudaydah, according to residents and aid workers.

Shortly after 4 p.m., bombs hit the city’s crowded fish market, about 200 yards from Al Thawrah Public Hospital. Medics rushed to the scene trying to save lives, but then about 30 minutes later another strike rocked the street in front of the hospital, where the wounded had been transported from the market.

Crime of the Century

In case you missed it -- it was published last Monday, July 23 -- Robert Fisk's "I traced missile casings in Syria back to their original sellers, so it’s time for the west to reveal who they sell arms to" is worth reading. Fisk comes across TOW missile casings in an underground room in East Aleppo that had been occupied by jihadists, and he tracks them back to the U.S. government.

This was a story known from the beginning, mentioned by mainstream reporters down in the weeds of their dispatches -- that the Salafis had Western-supplied weaponry in abundance. I think it's a strong candidate for "crime of the century."

Remember, Democrat Lobbyists Worked for Manafort and Yanukovych

Look past the latest front-page Facebook Russiagate bombshell ("Facebook Identifies an Active Political Influence Campaign Using Fake Accounts"), the import of which, incidentally, is based on an enormous suspension of disbelief that "eight Facebook pages, 17 Facebook profiles and seven Instagram accounts" created in the last year or so could have any measurable impact on the U.S. body politic, and focus instead on "Mueller Passes 3 Cases Focused on Illicit Foreign Lobbying to Prosecutors in New York," by Matthew Rosenberg, Kenneth P. Vogel and Katie Benner.

As Jeffrey St. Clair commented some months ago when the Manafort indictment was announced, if the laws on foreign lobbying were truly enforced the D.C. gravy train would come to a halt. Now Mueller has referred cases involving three big names --Tony Podesta, Vin Weber and Greg Craig (two of whom are prominent Democrat lobbyists) -- to the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan:

Under American law, anyone who lobbies or conducts public relations on behalf of a foreign interest in the United States must register with the Justice Department. The law carries stiff penalties, including up to five years in prison. But it had rarely been enforced, and thus widely ignored, until recently.

Now, it appears to have become a weapon for prosecutors. Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, was facing possible charges of violating the law over his secret work for the Turkey during the campaign before he agreed to cooperate with Mr. Mueller last year.

The three cases referred to prosecutors in New York appear to be another sign that the Justice Department intends to more strenuously enforce the law.

Yet, as the cases show, such investigations often confront prosecutors with interlaced financial arrangements that can prove difficult to untangle.

The Podesta Group, Mr. Podesta’s firm; Mercury Public Affairs, where Mr. Weber worked; and Skadden, where Mr. Craig practiced, were all recruited by Mr. Manafort to assist with his work in Ukraine on behalf of that country’s president at the time, Viktor F. Yanukovych, who was considered a Kremlin ally.

But two of the firms — the Podesta Group and Mercury Public Affairs — were retained through a nonprofit group in Brussels, the European Center for a Modern Ukraine. The nonprofit was directed by Mr. Manafort, and the firms lobbied in Washington on behalf of the nonprofit for what Mr. Manafort billed as Mr. Yanukovych’s efforts to move Ukraine into the West.

The firms were paid more than $1.1 million each for the work. But they did not initially register to lobby with the Justice Department as foreign agents. Doing so would have required them to make detailed disclosures of the lobbying activity they had performed.

They instead had filed less detailed lobbying reports with Congress, based at least partly on misleading characterizations that Mr. Manafort’s deputy later admitted to providing. The firms retroactively registered to lobby for foreigners with the Justice Department in 2017. The Podesta Group collapsed in part because of the scrutiny from the case.

Skadden was hired directly by Mr. Yanukovych’s government to analyze the prosecution of one of Mr. Yanukovych’s leading political rivals, former Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko. Led by Mr. Craig, the firm published a report in 2012 that was used — mostly without success — to try to allay concerns about Mr. Yanukovych’s leadership in Washington.

Skadden also did not register its activity under lobbying rules, despite Mr. Craig himself being involved in promoting the report to journalists and members of Congress — activity that experts said should have prompted registration requirements.

Mr. Craig left Skadden in April as investigators made inquiries about his work with Mr. Manafort. While the departure was presented as voluntary, a lawyer familiar with the situation said that Mr. Craig was forced out.

Mr. Mueller’s team repeatedly referenced the work of the firms in his filings in Mr. Manafort’s case, including accusing Mr. Manafort and his longtime deputy of using an offshore account to “funnel $4 million to pay for the report” from Skadden.

Mr. Mueller’s team also indicted a Skadden lawyer who worked with Mr. Manafort on the report. The lawyer pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his communications with a former Trump campaign aide, and has already completed a jail sentence.