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POSSIBLE TOPICS: VOTETEXAS.GOV—Voter Information; March 5 Primary Elections; A 13-county Gulf Coast regional air pollution, emission reduction plan advances; Consumers are tired of inflation. But some retailers fear falling prices; Natural Gas News: Cautious Optimism Amid Production Adjustments; Plastic experts say recycling is a scam. Should we even do it anymore?; Hungary’s parliament clears path for Sweden’s Nato membership; Nord Stream: Denmark closes investigation into pipeline blast; Confiscating Russia’s assets would send negative signal, says central bank; China Deflation Alarms Raised by Falling Prices for Food and Cars; Why landing on the moon is proving more difficult today than 50 years ago; Brazil’s ex-leader Bolsonaro surrenders passport over coup probe; 

Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig where we discuss local, state, national, and international stories. My co-host, assistant producer and show editor is Andrew Ferguson.

Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio) is now on Wednesdays at 11AM (CT) or Thursdays at 6PM on KPFT 90.1 FM-HD2, Houston’s Community Media. You can also hear the show:

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Except for timely election info, the extensive list of voting resources will now be at the end.

1. March 5, 2024 Primary Elections: com
   1. If you have applied for a mail-in ballot and have not yet received it, check with your county clerk. Fill out and mail in your ballot as soon as you can. Make sure you use enough postage.
   2. Early Vote Centers are open until Friday, March 1. (from 7 a.m. – 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 12 noon – 7 p.m. on Sunday).
   3. On Election Day, Tuesday, March 5, polling places will accept voters from 7 a.m. – 7 p.m.,
   4. Sample ballots are available for the primaries. Visit the “What’s on my Ballot?” page at HarrisVotes(dot)com and enter your name or address to see all the contests and candidates you are eligible to vote on! Your local election clerk outside of Harris County should also have local ballots. (You can bring handwritten notes or printed sample ballots to the voting booth; just be sure to take it with you when you leave.)
   5. We will have a joint primary this year (COM)
   6. ANDREW: And remember, the March 5th primaries are for the Democratic and Republican parties ONLY. The Texas Green and Libertarian parties have precinct nominating conventions. For Harris County, these will take place on Tuesday March 12 at 7pm, and you can only participate if you didn’t vote in the March 5th primaries. For more information, check org/calendar or lpharris.org/calendar.
2. A 13-county Gulf Coast regional air pollution, emission reduction plan advances; By Melissa Enaje | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 5:21 PM Feb 27, 2024 CST / Updated 5:21 PM Feb 27, 2024 CST
   1. In partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, officials with the Houston-Galveston Area Council [H-GAC] are preparing for the first phase of a 13-county regional climate action plan that aims to develop aggressive strategies, programs and policies over the next three years in order to reduce air pollution, emissions and greenhouse gases that are being emitted in the region.
   2. How we got here — H-GAC was one of the entities chosen by the EPA in September to receive the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant, totaling $1 million in federal funds [of which] Harris County Commissioners accepted [about $239,000 from the Council] at the Feb. 27 Commissioners Court.
   3. [A priority climate action plan has been in development,] with the final plan being submitted to the EPA on March 1. …
   4. The big picture — This comes as a new national air quality standard was announced Feb. 7 by the EPA that aims to lower the amount of fine particulate pollution emitted by power plants, vehicles and industrial facilities. Federal officials are saying the efforts are meant to better protect communities across the country from the dangerous and costly health effects of air pollution. There are 10 Texas counties that do not meet the revised annual levels based on 2020-22 air quality monitoring data from the EPA, including in the Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston areas.
   5. While … H-GAC will be responsible for reporting plan details [to the EPA] for the 13-county region, officials will also be working with partner subrecipient agencies, including: Harris County; City of Houston; Fort Bend County; [and the] Houston Advanced Research Center;
   6. Grant awardees will work toward a handful of environmental efforts that focus on: Reducing emissions; Creating projects that benefit low-income and disadvantaged communities affected by the pollution; Developing strategies to stimulate the green economy and create jobs;
   7. According to … H-GAC’s emission data from 2021, manufacturing and construction industries were the source behind 70% of the region’s greenhouse emissions. …
   8. MIKE: At this point in the article, there’s a chart listing the 13 counties included in the grant and the sources and quantities of CO2 being generated.
   9. Get involved — Residents who want to learn more about the region’s three-year climate action plan and weigh-in on how H-GAC should adapt its various strategies are invited to comment at H-GAC’s community involvement website.The climate action plan’s regional strategies are divided into five sectors: Material management; Urban agriculture; Buildings; Electric power; [and] Transportation.
   10. Also of note — Houston’s climate action plan launched in April 2020. The plan stated that Houston has one of the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the country, largely due to high emissions caused from transportation.
   11. A poll on … H-GAC climate action plan website shows that 50% of voters would like to see a reduced number of vehicle miles traveled, 25% voted for an increase in deployment of electric vehicles, and another 25% voted for alternative commute infrastructure.
   12. MIKE: This is a welcome advance from the time when the State of Texas kept demanding waivers from the Federal Government for constantly missing pollution targets. Let’s see where it goes.
   13. ANDREW: I’m surprised the Houston climate action plan says that transportation is a bigger producer of greenhouse gases than the oil and gas industry. I read some of the plan, and it’s true that the inventory lists transportation as the biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, far more than commercial or manufacturing businesses. However, I feel it’s important to note that this is the City of Houston’s Climate Action Plan, not Harris County’s. If the plan took an inventory of Harris County, that would include the oil and gas plants down in Pasadena, and that would almost certainly boost industry’s share of the emissions.
3. Consumers are tired of inflation. But some retailers fear falling prices; By Amelia Lucas (@Thxamelian) and Melissa Repko (@in/melissa-repko@melissa_repko) | CNBC.COM | Published Sun, Feb 25 2024 @ 8:00 AM EST
   1. Just ahead of the holiday season, Walmart had encouraging news for inflation-weary shoppers: Prices on food and other staples were falling instead of rising. The retail giant said if the trend continued, it would soon contend with deflation in some of those key household categories, which would be a welcome sight for consumers emerging from the worst price increases in decades.
   2. But the retail giant backpedaled this week, saying higher prices on many grocery items and household staples like paper goods have stuck.
   3. “There is deflation in certain categories … but prices are more stable than where they were three months ago,” CFO John David Rainey told CNBC.
   4. In recent weeks, corporate leaders have sung a similar tune — at a time when inflation is cooling but prices are still rising faster than the Federal Reserve would like. Home Depot said the prices of home improvement items have “settled” rather than fallen. Coca-Cola and the makers of other popular brands of snacks, sodas and household essentials said their prices are still ticking higher than a year ago. While they’re planning for more modest price hikes, shoppers should not expect price cuts, either.
   5. [While] the rate of price increase is dipping year over year, the latest inflation metric came in hotter than expected. The consumer price index, a broad measure used to track what shoppers pay for goods and services across the economy, rose 3.1% in January from the prior year. …
   6. While deflation could offer consumers relief, it can be a tricky dynamic to navigate, too. In many cases, companies might opt to protect profits rather than pass on lower input costs to consumers. Otherwise, they risk shrinking sales and a falling stock price. …
   7. So far, the unwinding of historic inflation has been uneven.
   8. Products like chicken or eggs have been more likely to see prices slashed inside the grocery store. Tyson said chicken prices fell 3.9% in its fiscal first quarter. … Unilever CFO Fernando Fernandez also called out price cuts for at-home ice cream, laundry and skin cleansing bars on the company’s Feb. 8 conference call.
   9. “We’ve seen deflation first in the commodity-oriented categories,” said CFRA analyst Arun Sundaram. “I think it will take some time before packaged food pricing comes down.” …
   10. [Customers] are more likely to swap to a cheaper product or a store brand for items that don’t have a unique flavor or taste, such as a container of peanuts. That’s one reason why Kraft Heinz sold its Planters nuts business to Hormel three years ago.
   11. “The more ingredients in the product, the more pricing power you have typically,” Sundaram said. …
   12. Some industry watchers expect a meaningful wave of price cuts as food makers struggle with weaker demand and lagging sales growth. …
   13. Just as inflation has become a dirty word, deflation can be one, too, said Greg Melich, a retail analyst for Evercore ISI.
   14. “High inflation is bad, but deflation is bad, too, because you have fixed costs that aren’t going down,” he said.
   15. Wage costs have risen as new minimum wage laws take effect and the labor market remains tight. Many food companies are locked into supplier contracts signed when commodities cost more. …
   16. MIKE: My decades of life experience tell me that after a period of inflation, significant deflation rarely follows, barring a major economic downturn.
   17. ANDREW: As we’ll discuss in later stories, deflation is good for the consumer, but can make consumers wait to spend money in an effort to maximize value. This can stop cash flow to businesses, which leads to job losses, harming consumers. But when wages aren’t high enough to keep up with prices, consumers develop a habit of waiting to spend, and it’s hard to break that habit when the economy suddenly turns. But if people are used to having money, they may prioritize getting what they want when they want it at the price it is. Perhaps increasing wages can help stave off deflation in that way.
4. Natural Gas News: Cautious Optimism Amid Production Adjustments; By: James Hyerczyk | FXEMPIRE.COM | Published: Feb 26, 2024, 13:40 CST
   1. MIKE: I can summarize this story for folks who are somewhat interested in the natural gas market, as it may affect their home and business utility bills.
   2. MIKE: The first thing to understand from this headline is that “cautious optimism” in the natural gas (NG) industry means that they see higher prices in the future. That is obviously not cause for optimism for the average person.
   3. MIKE: The story says that natural gas suppliers are cutting back on gas production. They do this because selling gas in a flooded market gives them lower prices on their finite raw material. Cutting production conserves their reserves and also has the additional effect of tightening the market and ultimately raising prices. This is a pretty normal annual cycle.
   4. MIKE: There is a graph with this story that shows the movement of natural gas prices, and it supports something I learned years ago: Natural gas prices generally hit their lowest point around January/February of any given year. Many years ago, I decided to set my electricity contracts to expire in February because the market price of natural gas is tightly connected to the market price of electricity. This is because so much electricity is produced using natural gas. While NG is used for heat in winter, it’s used much more to generate electricity in hot weather for air conditioning. From my observations, that means that electricity contracts I see available at PowerToChoose(dot)com generally offer the best prices for 12–36-month contracts at around that time.
   5. MIKE: Do with that information what you will.
   6. ANDREW: That’s interesting. I’ll keep that in mind in case I can ever afford to move out of my parents’ house.
5. Plastic experts say recycling is a scam. Should we even do it anymore?; Evidence shows fossil fuel companies pushed recycling instead of addressing our growing plastic problem. By Matthew Rozsa, Staff Writer | SALON.COM | Published February 23, 2024 @ 11:15AM (EST) (TAGS: Climate Change, Global Warming, Plastic Pollution, Plastic Recycling, Recycling,)
   1. When the Center for Climate Integrity [CCI]released its report about plastic recycling, one might have expected the environmentalist non-profit to encourage the practice. …
   2. Yet the title of Center for Climate Integrity’s report — “The Fraud of Plastic Recycling” — reveals a very different point-of-view. What if plastic recycling in fact does little to help the environment, and instead serves the interests of the same Big Oil interest groups destroying Earth’s ecosystems?
   3. “Through new and existing research, ‘The Fraud of Plastic Recycling’ shows how Big Oil and the plastics industry have deceptively promoted recycling as a solution to plastic waste management for more than 50 years, despite their long-standing knowledge that plastic recycling is not technically or economically viable at scale,” the authors of the report proclaim. “Now it’s time for accountability.”
   4. The Center for Climate Integrity is not alone in characterizing plastic recycling as a false crusade. Erica Cirino, communications manager at the Plastic Pollution Coalition and author of “Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis,” pointed to data that clearly shows we do very little recycling anyway, despite the overwhelming emphasis on it.
   5. “In 2017, scientists estimated that just 9% of the 6.3 billion metric tons of plastics produced from about the 1950s (when plastics were first mass produced) up to 2015 had been recycled,” Cirino told Salon. “Plastic recycling rates vary widely from region to region around the world. In the U.S., plastic recycling rates are currently below 6 percent.”
   6. Yet even those numbers are deceptive, Cirino warned, as they incorrectly imply that at least the plastic which does get “recycled” is handled in ways that help the environment. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter where or how you set out your plastic for recycling collection, whether at the end of your driveway, at your local recycling center, or in a municipal recycling bin: Most plastic items collected as recycling are not actually recycled,” Cirino explained. “Surprisingly, plastic is not designed to be recycled — despite industries and governments telling the public that we should recycle plastic.” …
   7. Instead the plastics that people think get “recycled” are often instead shipped from the Global North to the Global South, with waste haulers often dumping and openly burning plastic without regard to environmental laws, Cirino explained. People who live near the sites where these things happen face a lifetime of health risks, to say nothing of living in a degraded environment.
   8. “People who earn incomes by picking wastes make the least from cheap plastics, and because of constant exposure to plastics in their line of work face elevated risks of cancers, infectious diseases (which cling to plastics), respiratory problems and other serious health issues.” Even the plastics that do get reused somehow are less “recycled” than “downcycled,” as “manufacturers mix in a large portion of freshly made plastic or toxic additives to melted down plastic waste to restore some of its desirable properties.”
   9. If you want to understand why the general public mistakenly believes that plastic pollution significantly helps the environment, one must look at the same fossil fuel companies that caused the problem.
   10. “Many people in the Baby Boomer Generation and Generation X remember the ‘crying Indian ad’ that was published in the 1970s,” Melissa Valliant, communications director for the nonprofit Beyond Plastics, told Salon by email. “It was an iconic ad of the time, created by Keep America Beautiful — a corporate front created in 1953 by powerful generators of plastic waste, like PepsiCo and Coca-Cola. This was really the start of a decades-long streak of multi-million dollar ad campaigns leveraged by the plastics industry to convince consumers that if they just were a little better at putting the right plastic in the right bin, the plastic pollution problem would disappear.” …
   11. Indeed, a compelling question arises from the fact that the crusade to recycle plastic is more corporate propaganda than true Earth-saving measure: Should we recycle plastic at all?
   12. “No,” Cirino told Salon. “Even if plastic recycling rates were higher, recycling alone could never come close to solving the serious and wide-ranging health, justice, socio-economic, and environmental crises caused by industries’ continued plastic production and plastic pollution, which go hand in hand.” Cirino argued that, given how plastic production has grown exponentially and its pollution problems have likewise worsened, emphasizing recycling over meaningful solutions is at best irresponsible. …
   13. Erin Simon, the vice president and head of plastic waste and business at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), offered a different perspective.
   14. “Everyone has a role to play – and that includes the average consumer as well,” Simon wrote to Salon. “But individuals are often limited in what they can contribute because recycling infrastructure and availability is different in every community. …”
   15. Simon also advocates for multinational approaches, writing to Salon that the upcoming fourth (of five) negotiating session for a United Nations Global Treaty to End Plastic Pollution has promise.
   16. [Simon explained that,] “…WWF will be advocating to ensure the final draft of the treaty is globally binding for all Member states, and provides a clear path to ban, phase out or reduce problematic single-use plastics. WWF is also calling for the treaty to include defined requirements for product design and innovation in plastic waste management systems, while also providing policies and incentives that allow businesses to transition to more sustainable and innovative options.” …
   17. Chelsea Linsley, … [a co-author of the CCI report, wrote to Salon,] “The best and most effective solution to the plastic waste crisis is to reduce the amount of plastic produced in the first place, especially for unnecessary single-use plastics. The Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act is an example of legislation that could implement real solutions, such as reducing and banning non-recyclable or easily replaced single-use plastics and establishing programs to support reuse and refill efforts. However, for such measures to be successful, the plastics industry must not be allowed to perpetuate the myth that recycling is an equally effective solution.”
   18. MIKE: Andrew was the first to get me to think twice about plastic recycling … Or at least, what kinds of plastic items I recycled. Plastic containers that were for water, or cleaned with a quick rinse, were an easy choice. Alternatively, containers that I could just throw in the dishwasher to clean required no wasted water or effort to put in recycling. Anything else now gets tossed.
   19. MIKE: But this article is just depressing. And it gets me to thinking about approaching plastic waste in a new way … At least it gets me to thinking about an old idea in a new way.
   20. MIKE: The article mentions that much reputedly “recycled” plastic just ends up being shipped in heaps to poor, southern hemisphere countries where it’s simply burned, sometimes in open air pits. This is not only wasteful. It puts CO2 in the air for no useful purpose while also putting polluting chemical residues into the local environment.
   21. MIKE: On my March 4, 2019 show, I discussed how toxic it can be to simply incinerate plastics as simple waste.
   22. MIKE: For decades, industry has been telling us to “recycle” plastic. That it can be turned into new, useful plastic products or utilized in other ways. Even today, this is not true for about 94% of plastics collected for recycling.
   23. MIKE: There have been at least two articles that I’ve read recently — and I’ve mentioned this on the show in the past — about processes that can turn unsorted plastics back into virgin material. This would be a great advance in plastic recycling, except that this newly-processed virgin-like raw material costs much more than regular virgin material. There may be ways to make the processes cheaper, and perhaps also government can incentivize its use.
   24. MIKE: But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I believe that our society needs to rethink how we dispose of plastics. It makes superficial sense to burn plastics for fuel in retrofitted coal-powered plants. This could replace the same amount of CO2 generated by carbon-based fuel currently generating power, but plastic usually releases toxic by-products into the environment. So maybe we need to rethink what the plastics industry should be mandated to do.
   25. MIKE: Perhaps, rather than think about reusing or “down-cycling” plastics, we should require companies to make plastics that are “incinerator-ready” in power plants that are properly equipped to do it. Formulations might be changed to remove toxic metals and avoid turning incinerated plastic into poisonous combustion by-products.
   26. MIKE: Smokestack scrubber processes are not a magic solution to air pollution. They are mostly effective against sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and particulates. That’s only a fraction of what’s emitted by burning plastics. But it leaves us with goals for research.
   27. MIKE: Between plastics industries changing plastic formulations so they can be more safely burned, and the limited amount of plastic that can be successfully down-cycled, perhaps that’s the part of a better solution.
   28. ANDREW: Burning plastics for fuel is an interesting idea, but I’m not sure the CO2 tradeoff is worth it. However, I think reducing the amount of harmful chemicals in plastics is a good direction to take research in, as that will minimize exposure to those chemicals in general, but I think the biggest help is going to be minimizing the use and production of plastic in general.
   29. ANDREW: We just don’t need to use plastic for as many things as we do. Cardboard and aluminum (without a plastic layer as so many cans are made with today) can serve as low-cost, recyclable packaging for low-cost, mass-produced goods. Slightly more upmarket goods can be packaged in glass, sturdier metals, or wood. Paper bags are already making their return over plastic ones.
   30. ANDREW: We have plenty of alternatives that can be recycled, but plastic production is at such a scale that it’s the cheapest packaging option by far, which is the main reason why so many companies use it. Of course, there are some use cases where plastic is near impossible to replace, and plastic isn’t just used for packaging. Even so, just stopping the use of plastic for packaging should have a major reduction in the demand for plastic, reducing the supply of it and increasing the price. That makes alternative packaging look more attractive, increasing its demand and in turn supply and in turn reducing its cost.
   31. ANDREW: We also need to look into alternative uses for plastic waste. We once discussed a BBC article about new road building techniques using plastic as an ingredient in the bitumen. This technique is still being evaluated for longevity, but this is the kind of thinking we need if we want to find ways to compensate for the lie of plastic recycling. Perhaps we should look at integrating plastic waste into construction materials, car body panels, or even certain clothing like coats.
   32. ANDREW: But aside from everything else, I believe that plastic producing companies should be held to account for lying to the public about recycling for all these years. Much as Exxon and other oil companies need to be held legally accountable for covering up global warming, the world’s biggest and oldest plastic producers should have to pay their share into the coffers needed to fund public projects that will deal with their unrecyclable plastic waste. (Exxon Mobile being one of those plastic producers, I guess they’ll be paying into both programs.) Future corporate crime on this scale needs to be deterred, and the only thing a business truly fears is losing money. Hitting these companies in the wallet is the only way they and their successors will get the message — be honest about your products. Our planet and our lives may depend on it.
   33. REFERENCE: Keep America Beautiful: The Crying Indian (1970)
   34. REFERENCE: Microplastics Found in Sediment Layers Untouched by Modern Humans – They were found in layers not touched by modern man. — by Sharon Adarlo | FUTURISM.COM | Feb 23, 11:34 AM EST
   35. REFERENCE: Burning plastic can affect air quality, public health — NIEHS.NIH.GOV
   36. REFERENCE: What does a scrubber remove? — LIQTECH.COM
   37. REFERENCE: Is burning plastic waste a good idea? — NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC.COM
6. Hungary’s parliament clears path for Sweden’s Nato membership; By Paulin Kola | BBC.COM | 4 hours ago FEB. 26, 2024 (TAGS: Sweden, Nato, Finland, Hungary,)
   1. Sweden has cleared its final obstacle to joining Nato after Hungary’s parliament voted to ratify the bid.
   2. The Nordic nation applied to join the defence alliance after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
   3. Every member must approve a new joiner, and Hungary had delayed, accusing Sweden of being hostile to it.
   4. But last week Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban said the two countries were now “prepared to die for each other”.
   5. All Nato members are expected to help an ally which comes under attack.
   6. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said it was a “historic day” and a “big step” for Sweden to abandon 200 years of neutrality.
   7. “Sweden is an outstanding country, but we are joining Nato to even better defend everything we are and everything we believe in,” he said.
   8. Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the Hungarian decision made the alliance “stronger and safer”.
   9. The parliament’s approval must now be signed by the president – after which a formal invitation is sent to Sweden to join the 31-member group.
   10. The process usually lasts a few days.
   11. Mr Orban is a nationalist politician with close ties to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. He has often blocked EU efforts to send military aid to Ukraine.
   12. Sweden is one of the EU countries which have accused Hungary of backsliding on the EU’s democratic principles.
   13. In turn, Mr Orban’s spokesman Zoltan Kovacs accused officials in Sweden of sitting on a “crumbling throne of moral superiority”.
   14. Last week, however, Mr Orban hosted his Swedish counterpart Ulf Kristersson and announced his support for Sweden’s membership. …
   15. Sweden and its eastern neighbour Finland, both long considered militarily neutral, announced their intention to join Nato in May 2022. …
   16. Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his army into Ukraine in 2022 in the expectation it would check Nato’s expansion and weaken Western collectivism.
   17. In fact, with the addition of Sweden and Finland, the opposite has happened.
   18. MIKE: I think we’ve basically discussed the implications of Sweden joining NATO in the previous story. This article is more about the political maneuvering of the various countries attempting to allow Sweden’s accession to NATO versus Turkey and Hungary trying to obstruct it for their own reasons and purposes.
   19. MIKE: Turkey got some political concessions from Sweden as well as a Swedish agreement to stop blocking certain military equipment from sale to Turkey. The US inducement was in the form of a large sale of upgraded F-16 jets that Turkey wanted. The concessions that Hungary got from Sweden were similar: Some political softening of Swedish criticism of Hungarian “democracy”, and according to a CNBC story that I’ve linked to, “The countries also signed a military pact, in which Sweden agreed to sell [Hungary] four new Gripen planes.”
   20. MIKE: Such are the mechanics of international relations.
   21. REFERENCE: Hungary votes to approve Sweden’s NATO membership; Published Mon, Feb 26 202410:50 AM EST / Updated Mon, Feb 26 2024 @ 11:49 AM EST
   22. REFERENCE: What is Nato, which countries are members and why is Sweden joining? —
   23. REFERENCE: Kaja Kallas: Estonian PM urges Nato to bolster support for Ukraine; By Laura KuenssbergPresenter, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg | BBC.COM | FEB. 26, 2024
7. Nord Stream: Denmark closes investigation into pipeline blast; By Laura GozziBBC News | BBC.COM | Feb. 26, 2024 ( TAGS: War in Ukraine, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Ukraine,)
   1. Danish police have said they are closing their inquiry into the blasts that tore apart two pipelines intended to ship Russian gas to Germany.
   2. Authorities concluded the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines had been “sabotaged” in September 2022 – but said there was no basis for pursuing a criminal case.
   3. Responsibility for the suspected sabotage is still unknown.
   4. Sweden closed its investigation earlier this month, citing a lack of jurisdiction.
   5. Germany is still investigating the incident.
   6. In September 2022, leaks were discovered in three of the four gas lines east of the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. Seismic institutes had recorded large underwater explosions just before.
   7. Soon after, Swedish prosecutors said that traces of explosives had been found on several objects recovered from the site and stated that the explosions had been due to “gross sabotage”.
   8. The pipelines were built by Russia’s gas giant Gazprom. Nord Stream 1 was operational from 2011 to 2022. Nord Stream 2 was completed in 2021, but never used because Germany halted the project days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
   9. Danish police said that the investigation, which was carried out with the Danish intelligence agency PET, had been “complicated and extensive” and said it would not provide further comment on the case.
   10. Reacting to the Danish police’s statement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “The situation is close to absurd.
   11. “On the one hand, they recognise that a deliberate sabotage took place, but on the other hand they are not moving forward.”
   12. An investigative report by four Nordic public broadcasters in 2023 found Russian ships to have been involved in suspicious movements in the area in the months leading up to the blasts.
   13. Moscow denies responsibility, saying the US and UK were to blame.
   14. Last year, US intelligence officials told the New York Times newspaper that a pro-Ukrainian group might have plotted the attack. The Ukrainian government has denied involvement.
   15. MIKE: This is another conclusion to the mystery of who bombed the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines from Russia.
   16. MIKE: I find this interesting on a couple of levels. On the one hand, Denmark announces that the results of their investigation are inconclusive, much like Norway announced. On the other hand, their announcement includes a call-back to suspicious Russian ship movements around the time of the sabotage.
   17. MIKE: Up to this point, I think that the consensus — sometimes official, sometimes not — was that Ukrainian partisans or sympathizers were responsible for blowing up Nord Stream. Now, Denmark brings Russia back into the mix, albeit without any actual conclusions regarding possible Russian culpability.
   18. MIKE: Andrew and I have discussed this story a number of times, and we’ve both agreed that, using Occam’s razor, some connection to Ukraine made the most sense for sabotaging Nord Stream. If they could accomplish the sabotage with plausible deniability, they would both hurt Russia’s ability to profit from natural gas sales to Europe while also forcing Europeans to wean themselves off of Russian natural gas.
   19. MIKE: But just for fun, let’s think about what the Russians might have to gain by cutting of Nord Stream from Europe, however misguided that calculation might have been.
   20. MIKE: For one thing, they might have hoped to divide the NATO alliance by changing the political calculations of the various parties. Germany, for instance, might have panicked at the sudden shortage of natural gas and tried to make nice with Russia, perhaps cutting or eliminating German aid to Ukraine in return for Russia repairing Nord Stream as soon as possible and sending natural gas to Germany. If that was Putin’s calculation, it failed.
   21. MIKE: Putin might also have hoped that Ukraine would get the blame for the sabotage, again with dividing Ukraine’s allies as the goal. The calculus here might have been that the countries needing Russian natural gas might consider this a hostile act against them by Ukraine — their reputed partner and ally — and make sending aid to Ukraine a political impossibility for them. If that was the calculus, it failed. Ukraine’s allies, even if they secretly believe Ukraine is responsible, are not announcing it publicly, thus avoiding the political fallout that might make Russia’s calculations reality.
   22. MIKE: Putin also claimed that his war was an effort to keep NATO from expanding to Russia’s border. If that was an actual strategic objective, it failed spectacularly. Russia’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine prompted long-time neutral countries Finland and Sweden to apply for NATO membership as a matter of their own national security. This added over 800 miles of NATO border with Russia, as well as creating a situation where NATO now has turned the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake.
   23. MIKE: So it’s plausible that Russia and Putin might have envisioned the sabotage of Nord Stream and the invasion of Ukraine as parts of a grand strategy for achieving Putin’s imperial and geopolitical strategic goals, but their what was expected to be a short “special military operation” to bring Ukraine back into the Russian fold has turned into a spectacular geopolitical disaster of historic proportions, and technically, Russia hasn’t actually “lost” their war yet. Russia is basically becoming a vassal state of China, a historically humiliating reversal. Russia’s losses of people, military hardware, military credibility, wealth, and political heft will hurt Russia for at least a generation; perhaps for the rest of the century. If Putin thought that the end of the USSR was a historic tragedy, I think it’s safe to say that, so far, he has one-upped that collapse.
   24. ANDREW: I don’t know that I’d say it’s that bad, but this failed invasion is probably one of, if not the most major event in Russian history since 2010. Sort of like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the United States, complete with notable actions of domestic opposition and nosediving international standing.
   25. ANDREW: As for the Nord Stream investigation itself, we’re never going to know what happened until somebody, somewhere decides they have the jurisdiction and that they don’t care who the truth inconveniences. And I want to know!
   26. ANDREW: Maybe it’ll have to be the realm of some international organization, like the UN or Interpol. That way, each side can oversee it and try to minimize the bias in one direction or the other, and at least some of the countries who have territorial interest in the waters can be represented still.
   27. ANDREW: Oh well. We’ll just have to hope someone steps up to bring this mystery to a close.
8. Confiscating Russia’s assets would send negative signal, says central bank; Reporting by Elena Fabrichnaya, Vladimir Soldatkin and Alexander Marrow; editing by Jason Neely and Sharon Singleton | REUTERS.COM | February 16, 2024 @ 7:57 AM CST / Updated 2 days ago
   1. The potential confiscation of Russian assets by Western governments would send a strongly negative signal to other central banks and would gradually undermine international finance, Russia’s Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina said.
   2. The European Union on Monday adopted a law to set aside windfall profits made on frozen Russian central bank assets, in a first concrete step towards the bloc’s aim of using the money to finance the reconstruction of Ukraine following the war.
   3. Russia’s foreign ministry warned the West that it would take a very tough response, describing the plan as “theft” and “appropriation”. Nabiullina, in a more measured response on Friday, said the central bank would take steps to protect its legitimate interests.
   4. Nabiullina was speaking after the Bank of Russia held its key interest rate at 16%, opting to leave borrowing costs unchanged after five successive rate hikes since last summer, due to stubborn inflation pressures.
   5. “Essentially, (confiscation) is a breach of the basic principles of central bank reserve protection,” Nabiullina said. “In international law, this is one of the key, basic principles of immunity of central bank assets from coercive measures of seizure.
   6. “In our view, deviation from this principle, will lead to the, albeit gradual, undermining of the system of international finance and the position of reserve currencies in the world.”
   7. MIKE: This is a tough question, forcing policy choices about what might be fair and morally right versus for Ukraine versus what’s legal and wise in a rules-based order. And of course, an additional irony here is that Russia often complains about the rules-based international order.
   8. MIKE: Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia’s assets in the West and other countries have been frozen, and are thus unavailable for Russia’s wartime use, but are still the property of Russia and Russian citizens. Governments can attempt to legislate away property rights, but under rule by law, the courts get the last word. Property can only be confiscated by due process, and nations operate under both local national law and by international law, depending on the circumstances.
   9. MIKE: Confiscating Russian assets for the use of Ukraine for its own defense might feel good and even be morally right, but it has consequences. It would impact the reputation of trustworthiness of any country or central bank that confiscated national assets without due process that was recognized by all parties. This damage to national reputation could have long-term consequences for a nation’s economic influence and soft power. It might even affect domestic confidence in a nation’s banking system since, if a nation can confiscate assets of another sovereign nation, what protection do its own citizens have?
   10. MIKE: Another idea has been to leave Russia’s assets intact, but to use “windfall profits” for the benefit of Ukraine. I see this as having similar problems to those I’ve already discussed.
   11. MIKE: But what if Russia’s assets were “borrowed” for the benefit of Ukraine? After all, that’s what banks do with their depositors’ money all the time. This would put Russia’s money to work for Ukraine while still giving Russia ownership that can potentially be redeemed at some future time. This is where the terms of potential future peace treaties might come into play.
   12. MIKE: The money might even be borrowed at interest. Perhaps the market interest rate paid on accounts by banks like Chase — which is 0.01% — would be appropriate. It’s at least defensible.
   13. MIKE: I hate to side with Russia, but I think this is a question that is larger than just this war, if that’s possible.
   14. ANDREW: I think Russia might argue that they don’t object to a rules-based international order, but how Western nations often manipulate that order for their own ends. And while that argument may have merit, I’m afraid that while the right-wing Putinist faction remains in power, no one can trust Russia to act any better.
   15. ANDREW: At any rate, I think lending out frozen Russian assets to Ukraine to help them fight Russia off is a pretty clever idea. I think interest would almost certainly have to accrue to be paid to Russia once the assets are unfrozen, though, in order to maintain legal legitimacy of this plan. But I wouldn’t expect every nation to simply accept that interest payment as a cost of doing business, er, war. (If there’s still a difference.) And that might cause another legal challenge with potentially wide-ranging implications for the global financial system… but hopefully with lower stakes than trying to seize the lot.
   16. MIKE: As an aside, the recent Ukrainian withdrawal from the city of Avdiivka can be directly attributed to the failure of what Liz Cheney has called the “Putin wing” of the Republican Party to allow Congress to provide Ukraine with essential weaponry for its own defense. The Republicans who stand in the way of this aid have Ukrainian blood on their hands, as well as working against the direct and vital interests of the United States and its allies.
   17. REFERENCE: EU takes first step to use Russia’s frozen assets for Ukraine — COM | February 12, 2024 @ 1:25 PM CST / Updated 6 days ago
9. China Deflation Alarms Raised by Falling Prices for Food and Cars; In addition to consumer price declines in January, wholesale prices fell last month, and have been down in every month since October 2022. By Keith Bradsher, Reporting from Seoul | NYTIMES.COM | 8, 2024
   1. Consumer prices fell last month in China by the most since the global financial crisis in 2009, the latest sign that weak spending and a glut of output from factories and farms are forcing businesses to offer discounts.
   2. The decline in consumer prices was mostly confined to food and electric cars. But wholesale prices charged by factories and other producers also fell last month, and have been down from their levels a year earlier in every month since October 2022.
   3. A broad decline in the overall level of prices, a phenomenon known as deflation, could be very troublesome for the economy. Falling prices make it hard for households and companies to keep up on monthly payments for mortgages, corporate loans and other debts.
   4. “The deflation data add to a raft of other economic indicators that, on top of a struggling stock market and unraveling property market, pose an extraordinary challenge to the command and control approach of the Chinese government,” said Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade and economics at Cornell University. …
   5. The decline in prices does have one silver lining for China: It makes Chinese goods even more competitive in overseas markets. As many Chinese families have become increasingly wary of spending, manufacturers of everything from electric cars to solar panels are ramping up their exports to distant markets.
   6. [MIKE: With the Chinese New Year falling in February rather than January, year-over-year comparisons are trickier, however …] Consumer prices dropped 0.8 percent in January from a year earlier, a much larger drop than expected. …
   7. MIKE: Economic science is tricky and often counterintuitive. As consumers, we tend to think that falling prices are a good thing, but on a macro basis for a national economy, that’s not the case.
   8. MIKE: First, falling prices can reduce economic activity by reducing a consumer’s incentive to buy. Waiting might mean even lower prices.
   9. MIKE: Also, as mentioned in the article, when suppliers lower prices due to oversupply, that reduces their revenue and makes it harder for businesses to pay their fixed expenses such as loans, rents, utilities and taxes. One of the few expenses that can be controlled is labor. In most economies, this means layoffs, which further reduces purchasing power and further reduces economic activity. Tax revenue related to economic activity drops, thus increasing government deficits, which leads to spending cuts or government borrowing.
   10. MIKE: These and other factors can lead to what’s called “a vicious cycle” which becomes self-reinforcing. Breaking out of this cycle into a “virtuous cycle” then becomes the challenge.
   11. MIKE: This is the situation in which China finds itself, and which can lead to another problem: International economic contagion. Let’s extend this scenario to its wider implications.
   12. MIKE: The Bank of China may lower interest rates in an effort to increase economic activity. In most countries, this should lead to depreciation of their currency on the world market, but China pegs its yuan to the US dollar, leaving it an open question. We’ll get back to currency values.
   13. MIKE: China’s companies, finding themselves with excess inventory and lower prices, push more exports, which can lead to what’s called “dumping”. This means that the industries of other countries have to compete with even cheaper Chinese products, which can lead to reduced sales and ultimately layoffs there. This is how the problems in one large economy can create problems for others.
   14. MIKE: Now as to currency values … Two currencies in the world that have irrational values are the US dollar and the Chinese yuan.
   15. MIKE: There are so many US dollars sloshing around in the world that the US dollar should be worth much less, but the US dollar is both a reserve currency among nations and also seen as a safe store of value among investors. That creates and maintains demand for it; what some may see as artificial demand. This high valuation makes many world goods cheap for Americans, but is an obstacle to US exports.
   16. MIKE: China is exactly the reverse. China is such a powerful exporting nation that their currency, the yuan, should be in high demand in order to pay Chinese suppliers in their home currency. This high demand on the world market should translate into a US dollar being worth fewer yuan, but it doesn’t work that way because the Chinese government pegs the yuan to the US dollar, keeping it artificially cheap. This cheap yuan drives exports by keeping them cheap on the world market, and also acts as a de facto tariff on imports by keeping them artificially expensive. This is good for Chinese industry and bad for the Chinese consumer, but is a strategic advantage for China as a whole.
   17. MIKE: This is my best layman’s explanation. It’s also why economics is often called “the dismal science”.
   18. ANDREW: That it is, and it’s often made more dismal by how governments choose to respond to it.
   19. ANDREW: To break a cycle, something has to change. This can be someone doing something different, or a situation changing on its own. Most governments seem to be content to take the passive approach. This is less risky for the government, but that risk instead goes to the citizens, who often lose their jobs, their homes, or their lives as a result of the economic situation getting worse and the companies taking unpredictable action to reduce their expenses to survive it.
   20. ANDREW: We’ve been following the Chinese economy through other stories we’ve discussed in previous shows. A story from our September 13^th, 2023 show posits that lowering interest rates might be the solution. I said that while I could see lower interest rates combining with falling prices to prompt people to buy now without waiting to see if prices drop further, I also believed that increased government spending on social services and welfare would be necessary to keep the crisis from hurting the average citizen too much. 
   21. ANDREW: I still think that’s the case, and I think the key thing that might allow this path to break the vicious cycle and save the Chinese economy is government action. Changing policies now allows the government the chance to control what change occurs to break the cycle, to plan for the future impact of that change and to guide that impact toward economic sustainability. This is a level of control and foresight that just doesn’t come with “watchful waiting”, not to mention that some people will be saved by this spending and everyone else will see the government taking proactive measures to try and help people, which could prompt increased public support for current officials. That’s always useful in politics.
   22. ANDREW: I do understand, however, that governments are generally risk-averse. I think the passive option is the far more likely one. But even if the possible suffering down that path isn’t enough to compel government action, I would hope the uncertainty and chaotic nature of it would. I suppose all we can do is wait for time to tell.
10. Why landing on the moon is proving more difficult today than 50 years ago; Moon mission records provide a clue as to why getting to the lunar surface remains far from straightforward. By Ian Sample Science editor (@iansample) | THEGUARDIAN.COM | Fri 12 Jan 2024 09.34 EST / Last modified on Fri 12 Jan 2024 21.30 EST. TAGS: Space, The moon, Nasa, Apollo 11
    1. It was a flawless launch. In the early hours of Monday morning, the Vulcan Centaur rocket rattled into the darkness over Cape Canaveral, shed its solid rocket boosters and released the Peregrine spacecraft on the perfect trajectory for its landmark mission to the moon. …
    2. But it wasn’t long before the mood shifted. Astrobotic, the company behind Peregrine, found the spacecraft was leaking propellant. And without sufficient fuel, the chances of landing softly on the moon rapidly fell to zero.
    3. It is more than half a century since Nasa landed astronauts on the moon and brought them all home safely. Shouldn’t landing on the lunar surface today be, if not quite trivial, then at least straightforward? Hasn’t the rocket science of the mid-20th century become the basic knowledge of the 21st?
    4. Peregrine isn’t the only recent failure. While China and India have both placed robotic landers on the moon, Russia’s Luna 25 crash-landed last year, nearly 60 years after the Soviet Union’s Luna 9 nailed the first gentle touchdown. Landers built by private companies have a 100% failure record on the moon …
    5. One fundamental challenge, says Jan Wörner, a former director general of the European Space Agency (Esa), is weight. “You are always close to failure because you have to be light or the spacecraft will not fly. You cannot have a big safety margin.”
    6. Added to that, almost every spacecraft is a prototype. Apart from rare cases, such as the Galileo communications satellites, spacecraft are bespoke machines. They are not mass produced with the same tried and tested systems and designs. And once they are deployed in space, they are on their own. …
    7. The moon itself presents its own problems. There is gravity – one-sixth as strong as on Earth – but no atmosphere. Unlike Mars, where spacecraft can fly to their destination and brake with parachutes, moon landings depend entirely on engines. If you have a single engine, as smaller probes tend to, it must be steerable, because there is no other way to control the descent. …
    8. MIKE: I actually found this rationale interesting, since until relatively recently, landing on the Moon was considered much easier than landing on Mars precisely because it had only 1/6 the Earth’s gravity and no atmosphere. But continuing the story …
    9. And yet, with the first lunar landings back in the 60s, it can be hard to grasp why the moon remains such a tough destination.
    10. Moon mission records provide a clue: soon after the Apollo programme, lunar landers fell out of favour. When China’s Chang’e 3 spacecraft touched down in 2013, it chalked up the first soft landing on the moon since the Soviet’s Luna 24 in 1976.
    11. “There were decades when people were not developing landers,” says Dettmann. “The technology is not that common that you can easily learn from others.”
    12. [And,] … there is no good way to simulate a moon landing. …
    13. During the space race, Nasa spent a staggering $25bn on Apollo. [MIKE NOTE: With compound inflation since 1969 of about 730%, that number is now equal to about $182 billion.] It still clocked up failure after failure before it reached the moon. It now has 70 years of institutional knowledge and a culture geared towards designing, building and testing spacecraft. Under its new Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) scheme, however, the agency is looking to slash costs and stimulate the US space industry by paying private companies, such as Astrobotic and the Houston-based Intuitive Machines, to deliver its instruments to the moon.
    14. The trade-off is a greater risk of failure, so more lost missions should be expected. “These companies are all relatively new. And comparatively, they are doing these missions on pocket change,” says Dr Joshua Rasera, a research associate at Imperial College London. But the strategy should pay off, he says, because companies learn from their failures. “It still ends up being cheaper over the total number of missions,” he says, “even if the first few maybe crash.”
    15. MIKE: I really have to discuss the author’s argument in this story that Mars landings are implicitly easier than Lunar landings. Mars atmospheric entry speed is 12,000 mph and US missions slow to about 12 mph at touchdown in what has been called “the Seven Minutes of Terror [GREAT VIDEO]”, because that’s how quickly the mission must shed almost all of that 12,000 mph.
    16. MIKE: At an altitude of about 62 miles (100 km), the orbital velocity around the Moon would be approximately 3750 mph. The Apollo Lunar Modules’ vacuum touchdown speed is about 2 mph. So which should be harder?
    17. MIKE: As far as lunar landings go, considering that NASA knowledge for stuff that is not classified is publicly available information, lander technology amounts to a lot of forgotten capability lost through disinvestment and retirement. In other words, if the US had continued doing lunar landings, we’d remember how to do lunar landings.
    18. ANDREW: So you’re agreeing with the article’s position that lunar landings are harder than they used to be because no one did them for a few decades?
    19. MIKE: Basically. But the iteration argument is interesting. It’s basically SpaceX’s development style. It amounts to building a basic prototype, testing it to destruction, learning from it, and building another one quickly using what’s been learned. We’ll eventually see how that translates to private Lunar missions versus nationalized missions.
11. In international news — Brazil’s ex-leader Bolsonaro surrenders passport over coup probe; By Vanessa Buschschlüter | BBC News | 8, 2024 (Tags: Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil,)
    1. Brazil’s ex-President Jair Bolsonaro has surrendered his passport amid an ongoing investigation into the 2023 storming of Brazil’s Congress by his supporters.
    2. Police accuse him of having led a failed plot to remain in power after losing the election to his left-wing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
    3. Mr Bolsonaro says the operation is politically motivated.
    4. Three of Mr Bolsonaro’s allies have been arrested. The head of his political party has also been detained. They are suspected of plotting to keep Mr Bolsonaro in power following his election defeat in October 2022.
    5. Police accuse them of spreading doubts about the electoral system, which became a rallying cry for his supporters, who claimed the election was stolen from Mr Bolsonaro.
    6. This, police argue, set the stage for a potential coup. When it failed to get the support of the armed forces, however, his frustrated supporters stormed Congress, the building housing the Supreme Court and the presidential palace on 8 January 2023.
    7. Mr Bolsonaro was in the US when the attack on Congress happened.
    8. On Thursday he denied any wrongdoing. …
    9. A lawyer for the former leader said his client would comply with the order to hand over his passport.
    10. The ex-president returned to Brazil in March 2023 – two months after the Congress storming – saying he had nothing to fear, despite facing a number of investigations.
    11. In June, he was banned from running for office for eight years for casting unfounded doubts on Brazil’s electronic voting system. But interest has been greatest in the investigation into the events of 8 January 2023.
    12. Brazil’s federal police only gave limited details about the operation it carried out on Thursday, but said it was targeting a “criminal organisation involved in the attempted coup”.
    13. Over the past year, more than 1,400 people have been charged over their alleged role in the riots but so far only a few dozen have been convicted.
    14. ANDREW: Bolsonaro did like to follow in the footsteps of Donald Trump, from what I saw. It seems that with this investigation, he’s doing that once again. The consequences he’s facing like the ban on holding office and the arrest of his political allies, though, represent a difference in direction. I’d rather like to see Trump start walking that way, too.
    15. MIKE: I still don’t understand why Trump’s passport wasn’t taken away. He certainly doesn’t need a passport to campaign for president. I don’t see the rationale.
    16. MIKE: But I do think that there may be a silver lining for the United States in Brazil’s experience. Or maybe at least a bronze one. It’s taken over a year for Brazil to arrest a highly placed military person for the attempted coup. In the US, Merrick Garland, for his own reasons, seems to have slow-walked the January 6 investigations into the higher-up US coup plotters. But Jack Smith has been moving along fairly briskly as these things go on a timeline close to Brazil’s.
    17. MIKE: There’s a saying that “the wheels of justice move slowly but grind exceedingly fine.” Of course, there’s also a saying that “justice delayed is justice denied.” My recent adaptation of that one is that “justice delayed mainly is for rich people. Poor people plead out.”
    18. MIKE: The rubber will metaphorically hit the road if any of Trump’s felonies are tried and adjudicated before the November election. Fingers crossed.

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