Great power tensions on the rise in East Asia and Ukraine
At home, Arkansas legislators overrode a veto to demonize trans children | #TC92
Welcome to Third Cultured – a foreign policy and LGBTQIA+ politics newsletter – published by yours truly, Kyle Borland. My goal is to highlight the unique role Queer people play in the politics of the United States and the world-at-large.
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This edition:
Commentary
Stories to Watch
Commentary
Arkansas legislators overrode the governor’s veto to attack trans kids.
States like South Dakota, North Carolina, and Alabama are biting at the heel to be next. Red States and their Fox News-controlled masses have a new culture flare to shoot off and they won’t stop until they’ve worn themselves out, no matter how many trans kids they have to kill along the way.
Some housekeeping things, I have a free month to share of Sinocism – Bill Bishop’s premium newsletter on China – and I’d love to gift it to a Third Cultured reader! Reply to this email if you’d be interested in a month of the best China Watcher content out there, but do it fast because I only have one to gift.
Lots of news in “Stories to Watch” today, so make sure to scroll through!
Stay safe and healthy, beautiful people. And, thanks for reading.
xoxo,
Kyle (@kgborland)
PS – Here are some great reads worth your time.
#026: The Other Black Wall Streets (Run It Back)
Advocates push sex work law reform (Bay Area Reporter)
Biden’s Great-Power Test Begins (WSJ)
The U.S. Navy announced Tuesday that the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group entered the South China Sea for “routine operations” amid a Chinese maritime militia standoff with the Philippines. China’s provocation comes as Russia has surged forces near Ukraine.
The Philippines began to sound the alarm last month over Chinese militia boats, at one point totaling 220, occupying the Whitsun Reef west of the archipelago. The naval equivalent of Russia’s “little green men,” China’s military-affiliated flotillas can masquerade as fishing fleets to give Beijing plausible deniability as it entrenches itself in disputed waters.
An analysis by two researchers from the U.S. Naval War College last week found “no evidence of fishing whatsoever during these laser-focused operations, but every indication of trolling for territorial claims.”
California Senators Approve Bill To Legalize Possession Of Psychedelics Like LSD, MDMA And Psilocybin (Marijuana Moment)
DOJ tells agencies gay and transgender students are protected by anti-discrimination laws (The Hill)
If It’s Not Jim Crow, What Is It? (NYTimes)
Joe Biden Could Easily Recall the Billions in Military Equipment Police Received From the Pentagon (Jacobin)
No, transitioning doesn’t always spell the end of a marriage (Xtra)
That's (adult) entertainment: veteran editor & columnist on the B.A.R.'s erotica true connection (Bay Area Reporter)
The Blob is Back (Foreign Exchanges)
The ‘Kardashians’ is ending. The Kardashians will never go away. (WaPo)
Nearly everyone interviewed for this story echoed a variation of the line you cansee any given day floating aroundsocial media: “The devil works hard, but Kris Jenner works harder.”
Jenner, the matriarch, is credited as the architect behind her children’s successes — the one who engineered the reality show deal with executive producer Ryan Seacrest in the first place and launched her kids on paths so successful they would far outpace a TV series.
So that’s where the Kardashians will be after their longtime reality show ends: still all over the place, with millions of followers eager for updates. But their place in TV history will loom large. Farjam, the show’s executive producer, can’t count the number of times that other producers breathlessly said they found the “next Kardashians.” They haven’t.
The Search for a Ranger Who Was Lost and Never Found (Outside)
The strange journey of ‘cancel,’ from a Black-culture punchline to a White-grievance watchword (WaPo)
The US Is Waging Neoliberal Forever Wars (Jacobin)
TikTok vs Putin: An Unexpected Clash (Real Clear Defense)
Woman learns son’s bride is her long-lost daughter on their wedding day – but since he was adopted, couple can still tie the knot (South China Morning Post)
Yi Yang: Judicial Activist – LGBT Rights Advocacy, China (Alturi)
Currently, LGBT Rights Advocacy is working on a case over child custody for a split lesbian couple. Yi hopes that he can get the court to indirectly acknowledge the validity of the lesbian couple’s familial relationship, which would be another small step towards arguing for same-sex marriage. Yi hopes this case will go viral.
“People don’t care much about human rights. But people empathize with loved ones. It’s a good strategy for change.”
“America first must never mean America alone. For in today’s world, no country alone can suitably provide a strong and sustainable economy for its people.”
— Janet Yellen, Treasury Secretary. The two big proposals were getting G-20 nations to agree on a minimum global corporate tax and another aim, announced last week, to approve $650 billion in special drawing rights that will provide U.S. dollars to IMF members.
Stories to Watch
Amazon vs Bessemer: Early vote tallies – 1,100 employees against unionizing vs 463 in favor – show Amazon’s union-busting worked.
Big Tech at SCOTUS: Google beat Oracle and saved APIs as we know them. Meanwhile, Justice Thomas took aim at Section 230 again, arguing that social networks like Facebook, Google, and Twitter should be regulated like utilities.
Boycotting the Olympics? China said, “Don’t you dare.”
China and Japan: Japan and the US are about to finalize a Belt and Road alternative next week, and China warned Tokyo not to “side with the US in great power contest.”
Cryptocurrency: China launched the first digital currency backed by a major country.
China’s version of a digital currency is controlled by its central bank, which will issue the new electronic money. It is expected to give China’s government vast new tools to monitor both its economy and its people. By design, the digital yuan will negate one of bitcoin’s major draws: anonymity for the user.
Beijing is also positioning the digital yuan for international use and designing it to be untethered to the global financial system, where the U.S. dollar has been king since World War II. China is embracing digitization in many forms, including money, in a bid to gain more centralized control while getting a head start on technologies of the future that it regards as up for grabs.
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD): Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan remain at a standoff over the filling and maintenance of the GERD on the Blue Nile, which is a primary tributary of the Nile River. Egypt and Sudan want a legally binding agreement on the dam’s filling and operation, but Ethiopia says “guidelines” are necessary and Addis Ababa outright rejects mediation by the US, UN, and/or the EU. Cairo threatened “instability that no one can imagine” in the region if the dam is filled without an international agreement.
Greenland stays green (for now): The leftist environmental party won elections this week in opposition to a proposed rare earths and uranium mine that stood to make the nation financially independent but at too steep an ecological price. The mine stood likely to become the largest rare earths producer in the western world (10% of global).
Iran Deal: Progress was made between Tehran and Washington in Vienna this week, but Israel is determined to tank any efforts by attacking Iranian ships in the Red Sea.
Northern Ireland: Catholics and protestants are attacking each other again in Belfast now that there’s a “hard border” again after Brexit. (This a pro-Irish unification newsletter.)
PRO Act: Democrats presented the largest pro-labor legislation in generations, but its only hope of passage is if conservative Democrats nuke the Jim Crow filibuster.
"The act would extend joint employer liability (in which an individual who is not on an organization’s payroll, and is contracted from another company, could still be considered their employee), expand the definition of employee by narrowing the definition of supervisor and independent contractors, simplify union election rules, end right-to-work protections that prohibit employees from being forced to pay union dues as a condition of their employment, allow for more strikes and make it more difficult for employers to replace workers on strike, and mandate initial collective bargaining agreements within as little as 120 days, amongst other things."
Scramble for the Arctic: Russia is amassing a huge military presence in the Arctic.
The State Department official believes the Russians are mostly interested in exporting hydrocarbons -- essential to the country's economy -- along the route, but also in the resources being uncovered by the fast melt. The flexing of their military muscles in the north -- key to Moscow's nuclear defense strategy, and also mostly on Russian coastal territory -- could be a bid to impose their writ on the wider area, the official said.
"When the Russians are testing weapons, jamming GPS signals, closing off airspace or sea space for exercises, or flying bombers over the Arctic along the airspace of allies and partners, they are always trying to send a message," the official added.
South China Sea: The US warned China against its increasingly aggressive actions toward Philippines and Taiwan, particularly to remind Beijing of Washington’s commitments under the US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty should China escalate to armed attack. Elsewhere, Taiwan threatened to shoot down Chinese drones if they come too close to the Pratas Islands. Not to be out done, the US Senate released its “Strategic Competition Act of 2021,” that mandates diplomatic and strategic initiatives to counteract Beijing.
Space Junk: Between SpaceX, anti-satellite-obsessed militaries like Russia and China, the Quad, and an ever-growing number of other space-focused companies…Wall-E’s trash-ridden Earth is looking more prophetic. (Graphic: WaPo)
Ukraine: There are more Russian troops at the Ukrainian border than any time since 2014, and it likely has something to do with Crimea’s dire water crisis that gets worse by the day. Kyiv emphasized to NATO that its ascension to member status was the only way to end the conflict in Donbas after two soldiers were killed by Russian separatists. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked for an increased NATO military presence in the Black Sea region to deter Russian aggression. Preemptively, Russia moved 10 warships to the Black Sea. The shit icing on the shit cake, the Biden administration has no plans to rejoin the Open Skies Treaty that Trump left, leaving an avenue of cooperation with Russia in tatters.
