As residents see fires and looting, some worry that local Democratic leaders are failing to keep control of the situation.

The country is headed for disaster as the pandemic devastates health services and livelihoods

Opinion by Jean Dreze  @ Scientific American, August 25

[....] India is now ahead of all other countries in terms of the number of new recorded COVID-19 cases per day—close to 70,000 in mid-August. That’s about one fourth of world-wide new cases. Only two countries are anywhere close: Brazil and the United States; and India has lagged behind those two countries in achieving a reduction in daily cases.

Further, recorded cases in India are likely to be a small fraction of all COVID-19 infections. That could be true in many countries, but the ratio of infections to recorded cases seems particularly large in India—at least 20:1, judging from two recent serological surveys, in Delhi and Mumbai respectively. This would mean that India already had more than 50 million COVID-19 infections, compared with a recorded figure of 2.5 million [....]

The case of the alleged 'poisoning' of the Russian rabble rouser Alexey Navalny is becoming more curious.

Guest contribution by Andrew Reschovsky, Professor Emeritus of Public Affairs and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison @ Econbrowser.com, Aug. 23

I found this piece really really really helpful in understanding what's going on when FBI and other law enforcement experts say things like we have a "domestic terrorism" problem now. They often don't use further definers, there is a reason. It is no longer so simple as labeling them "right wingers" or white supremacists. We've gone beyond that easy labeling. Lots of them are no longer either. Quite a few see radical left and BLM protesters as bedfellows. There seems to be no unifying ideology beyond hating police and feds and having a libertarian ethos. Guys still in the military seem particularly prone to acting out so far! They are not the ones quietly standing in line at Subway with a bazooka. They are the ones showing up at a BLM-related riot in Oakland and shooting at a guard booth at Federal building from a beat up van wth an automatic weapon.

By Leah Sottile @ NYTimes Magazine, Aug. 19

It started as an internet meme.Then waves of political unrest gave adherents of the Boogaloo a chance to test their theories about the collapse of American society.