Third Cultured | June 28, 2020
Commentary and News Links
Welcome to Third Cultured, a Queer Reading of the American Empire through crisis-after-crisis — written by yours truly, Kyle Borland.
Thanks for reading. This newsletter is free but – if you’d like to support it or me – subscribe below, heart this post, or support my Patreon.
Stay safe and healthy, beautiful people. And, thanks for reading.
xoxo,
Kyle (@kgborland)
If you’re seeing this newsletter for the first time, you can subscribe here.
“It has been more than 150 years since the white planter class last called up the slave patrols and deputized every white citizen to stop, question and subdue any black person who came across their paths in order to control and surveil a population who refused to submit to their enslavement. It has been 150 years since white Americans could enforce slave laws that said white people acting in the interest of the planter class would not be punished for killing a black person, even for the most minor alleged offense. Those laws morphed into the black codes, passed by white Southern politicians at the end of the Civil War to criminalize behaviors like not having a job. Those black codes were struck down, then altered and over the course of decades eventually transmuted into stop-and-frisk, broken windows and, of course, qualified immunity. The names of the mechanisms of social control have changed, but the presumption that white patrollers have the legal right to kill black people deemed to have committed minor infractions or to have breached the social order has remained.”
— Nikole Hannah-Jones argues in “What is Owed?” that we must move beyond slogans and into a conversation about reparations for Black Americans.
American Empire & Other Wars
#2020Election – 14-point national lead for Biden as Americans reject Trump’s handling of COVID, global police brutality protests, and economic instability. | Jamaal Bowman, Mondaire Jones, and Ritchie Torres defeated top Democrats on a Progressive agenda, with Jones and Torres becoming the first openly gay Black men ever elected to Congress. | Obama helped Biden raise $11 million, $7.6m from more than 175,000 grassroots donors with the rest from big donors, during a two-day online fundraiser event. This event followed fundraisers headlined by Senator Elizabeth Warren ($6m), Senator Kamala Harris ($3.5m), Senator Amy Klobuchar ($1m), and Pete Buttigieg ($1m) that helped Biden top Trump’s fundraising haul in May. | Biden is the first Democrat with a real chance at winning Arizona since Bill Clinton in 1996. Trump is in trouble in Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, too. | VP Pence and other major GOP officials have voted by mail for years. | Trump is looking to fire Brad Parscale or Jared Kushner from the campaign after his humiliation in Tulsa. | Potential VP candidate Susan Rice endorsed a national service program.
#BlackLivesMatter – Ahmaud Arbery’s three killers were indicted on felony murder charges. | Colorado is reopening Elijah McClain’s 2019 killing by Aurora police while in their custody. | The House passed legislation granting DC statehood in a 232-180 vote. | Mississippi’s state legislature passed a resolution on Saturday – 85-34 in the House and 36-14 in the Senate – that will begin the process to change the state's flag that currently includes a Confederate square. | There was another standoff near Lafayette Park on Tuesday between police and peaceful protesters, but no helicopters like last time. | Senate Democrats blocked the GOP’s police reform bill, decrying it as “inadequate” as it does not ban no-knock warrants or chokeholds, leaves qualified immunity untouched, and does not create a national database to track police misconduct. In contrast, there have been 250 bills introduced in 26 states on the issue of police reform since George Floyd’s May 25 death. | African history is finally getting its due in world history. | Civil rights activists are calling for an advertiser boycott of Facebook in July. Major companies have already followed suit, including Verizon, Ben & Jerry’s, REI, The North Face, Patagonia, Upwork, Unilever – one of the world’s largest advertisers – and more. #StopHateForProfit | Princeton voted to remove Woodrow Wilson’s name from the School of Public Policy and International Affairs and residential college. | Fortnite is removing police cars from the shooter-survival game. | NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace was (thankfully) not the victim of a hate crime. | The Dixie Chicks are now “The Chicks.” | Podcasts about race are replacing COVID on the charts. | Read Black science-fiction authors.
Afghanistan – Intel officials announced that the Russian military offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan, which President Trump has been aware of since March. Biden accused Trump of betraying the American people for his lack of retaliation, re-inviting Putin back into the G7, and announcing the downsizing of the US presence in Germany while holding this knowledge. | 291 Afghani security forces were killed by the Taliban last week, the deadliest week in the 19-year war.
Catholic Sex Abuse Scandals – Allegations of Catholic clergy sex abuse of minors more than quadrupled in 2019 compared to the average in the previous five years. There were 4,434 allegations in 2019 and that number was 1,451 in 2018, 693 in 2017, 1,318 in 2016, and 903 in 2015. Globally, the Church is in even hotter water.
China – Trump’s National Security Advisor compared Xi to Josef Stalin, calling the Blob’s miscalculation around China’s eventual democratization, “the greatest failure of American foreign policy since the 1930s.” | Beijing launched the final part of its GPS competitor, BeiDou-3. The launch means China is longer reliant on US-owned GPS. | Canadian PM Justin Trudeau rejected calls to release Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou. | The Defense Department released its list of companies tied to the Chinese military, including Huawei, Hangzhou Hikvision, China Railway Construction Corporation, and China Telecommunications Corporation. | Brussels’ idealistic expectations about the EU’s relationship with China evaporated and they’re ready to tag-team Beijing with the US. | China canceled $3.4 billion of interest-free loans for African countries suffering from COVID, which is only a fraction of the $152 billion China has loaned to the continent since 2000. | India and China have not simmered down on their border, and India is ramping up anti-Chinese trade actions in retaliation.
Egypt v Ethiopia – Egypt said it would declare war on Ethiopia if it filled the Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile in the next two weeks without an agreement between the two nations and fellow Nile-dependent Sudan.
Iran – The flight recorders from the downed Ukrainian airliner by an Iranian missile was sent to France for inspection. | Tehran and Afghanistan announced their intention to create “strategic cooperation” between the two nations.
Libya – AFRICOM signaled its support for the GNA – the UN-backed government in Tripoli – as France, Egypt, and Turkey lock horns over their opposing proxies. The GNA demanded General Haftar withdraw from Sirte as a precondition for any ceasefire discussions.
Russia – The nation began voting on a package of constitutional changes, the largest reform package since the fall of the Soviet Union, which would allow Putin to rule until 2036, give parliament new powers to appoint the prime minister and enshrines social conservatism — "faith in God" and opposition to gay marriage — into the constitution.
United Nations – Chartered 75 years on June 26 in San Francisco, California.
White Nationalism/Supremacy – A US soldier plotted to ambush his own unit with the “Order of the Nine Angles,” an “occult-based neo-Nazi” group.
“This is an extraordinary moment which has brought together a whole number of issues. I don't know whether it would have unfolded as it did if not for the terrible COVID-19 pandemic, which gave us the opportunity to collectively witness one of the most brutal examples of state violence.”
– Angela Davis in a recent interview with WBUR
COVID-19 Updates (as of 9pm, 6/27/2020)
Total Confirmed: 9,953,038; Total Deaths: 498,178; Total Recovered: 5,032,146
US Cases: 2,596,537; US Deaths: 128,152; Recovered: 1,081,437; Tested: 30,401,644
1 in 3 Black Americans knows someone personally who has died of COVID-19, compared to just nine percent of white Americans.
26 – Number of states that saw coronavirus caseloads increase last week. Nationwide, cases are up 30 percent since the beginning of June.
34,700 – Number of cases reported on Tuesday, the third-highest single-day total since the beginning of the pandemic, and the highest since a record high of 36,400 was reported April 24.
$1.4 billion – The government sent $1,200 stimulus checks to almost 1.1 million dead people.
A wave of utility shut-offs are coming after June 30, the deadline many corporations gave pledges to waive fees and forgive missed payments. Even worse, courts will reopen which means an inevitable eviction surge after months of depression-level job losses.
Brazil became the second country to pass 50,000 deaths, after the US.
China reported 22 new cases on Monday.
Despite popular belief, young people are driving the spike in cases nationwide.
EU vs US comparisons show the failures of the American COVID response.
Europe included the US on its travel ban list because of its handling of COVID.
Federal stimulus measures led to an overall drop in poverty in April and May.
President Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin want to send a second round of $1,200 “economic impact payments,” believing (correctly) it will boost his chances in November.
Saudi Arabia is restricting the Hajj to Saudi residents and will limit attendance.
Trump has attempted to pin the blame on everyone but himself for the horrible US response to COVID, and now the CDC and his own federal bureaucracy
Enjoying the newsletter? Share it with friends and family!