You Best Start Believing Fascism Can Happen Here
You’re in it. | #TC84
Welcome to Third Cultured, an international politics and LGBTQ+ culture newsletter, written by yours truly, Kyle Borland. Reach out with feedback, suggestions, tips, and/or ideas at kgborland23@gmail.com.
My goal is to inform curious folks about the messy politics of our planet and the unique role Queer people play in the US and the world-at-large. I hope that’s you!
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This edition:
Commentary on this week
Hot Spots
We can’t count on Senators Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Susan Collins (Maine) or spineless Mitt Romney (Utah) to help Democrats block McConnell’s hypocrisy. Without a fourth dissenter, their mythical opposition is pointless and unlikely to hold once Moscow Mitch brings Scalia’s heir-apparent, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, to the floor for a vote. Barrett is on record saying, “a legal career is but a means to an end … and that end is building the Kingdom of God.”
The anti-abortion homophobes won’t be able to resist.
While the rest of the country spiraled into another SCOTUS battle, the Department of Justice designated New York City, Portland, and Seattle as “anarchist jurisdictions,” meaning that the cities should lose federal funding for failing to control protesters and defunding the police. If you’re surprised Atlanta, San Francisco, or the Right’s other favorite media targets didn’t make the cut, don’t worry, the Feds assured us that the list would be updated periodically. It’s almost as if they anticipated the unrest following the announcement that there’d be no justice for murdering Breonna Taylor.
Who doesn’t love christofascism and 200,000 dead Americans on the first day of fall?
It seems the only thing the Democrats can do competently in response is raise money.
Over the weekend, Biden’s campaign announced they had $466 million in cash on hand vs President Trump’s $325 million. (Not to mention the $160 million Democrats donated to Senate races after RBG’s death.) This is a huge reversal in fortunes for both campaigns as Trump’s started the race hundreds of millions of dollars in the lead, but has spent “like a drunken sailor” as it wasted $800 million of the $1.1 billion it raised to date.
Thank goodness Trump and everyone around him are blistering fools or there’s no way in Hell the Biden campaign would come within an inch of the Oval.
Truth be told, I’m semi-convinced the Democrats want to lose the election based simply on their record-breaking donations and volunteer engagement under Trump. The only thing that makes me doubt myself is the consistently bad record of Beltway consultants and their inability to prioritize winning over a moral victory.
Unfortunately, this is the Democrat’s version of “trying to win.”
Stay safe and healthy, beautiful people. And, thanks for reading.
xoxo,
Kyle (@kgborland)
PS – Some great reads from around the web worth your time.
“A referendum for the whole world”: Global voices on the US election (GZERO)
American Gentry (Perspectives)
It’s not hard to spot vast apple orchards or sprawling vineyards and figure out that the person who owns them is probably wealthy; it’s harder to intuitively grasp that a single family might own seventeen McDonald’s franchises in eastern Tennessee, or the kind of riches the ownership of the third-biggest construction company in Bakersfield might generate.
Fall of the frat house: Students target Greeks amid US’ racial reckoning (WaPo)
FinCEN Files Show Criminals Moved Billions As Banks Watched (BuzzFeed News)
TL;DR via the BBC: What has been revealed?
HSBC allowed fraudsters to move millions of dollars of stolen money around the world, even after it learned from US investigators the scheme was a scam.
JP Morgan allowed a company to move more than $1bn through a London account without knowing who owned it. The bank later discovered the company might be owned by a mobster on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list.
Evidence that one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's closest associates used Barclays bank in London to avoid sanctions which were meant to stop him using financial services in the West. Some of the cash was used to buy works of art.
The husband of a woman who has donated £1.7m to the UK's governing Conservative Party's was secretly funded by a Russian oligarch with close ties to President Putin.
The UK is called a "higher risk jurisdiction" and compared to Cyprus, by the intelligence division of FinCEN. That's because of the number of UK registered companies that appear in the SARs. Over 3,000 UK companies are named in the FinCEN files - more than any other country.
Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich once held secret investments in footballers not owned by his club through an offshore company.
The United Arab Emirates' central bank failed to act on warnings about a local firm which was helping Iran evade sanctions.
Deutsche Bank moved money launderers' dirty money for organised crime, terrorists and drug traffickers.
Standard Chartered moved cash for Arab Bank for more than a decade after clients' accounts at the Jordanian bank had been used in funding terrorism.
How Climate Migration Will Reshape America (NYT Magazine)
The American Empire and Existential Enemies (Foreign Exchanges)
The Doxxing of Senator Wiener (SF Weekly)
The Election That Could Break America (The Atlantic)
"The world as it is today cannot come down to simple rivalry between China and the United States, no matter the global weight of these two great powers, no matter the history that binds us together, and especially to the United States."
— French President Emmanuel Macron speaking to the 75th UN General Assembly
Hot Spots
5 million – Wildfires across the western United States have burned more than 5 million acres of land, including 3.3m in CA alone, and killed at least 27 people. Smoke from the fires stretches from the middle of the Pacific to NYC. Don’t worry, California isn’t alone. The whole world set wildfire records this year.
$12 million – Louisville city officials unveiled a $12m settlement for Breonna Taylor’s family that included a package of police reforms, including the search warrant process.
Afghanistan: The Afghani government and the Taliban began official talks for the first time since the US invaded 19-years ago.
America: Nearly two-thirds of US young adults – 63 percent – don’t know 6 million Jewish people were killed in The Holocaust. (Graphic: Statista)
Belarus: The US no longer recognizes Lukashenko as the legitimate government of Belarus, following a similar move from the European Union, as the nation goes into its eighth week of continuous protests in response to the fraudulent election. Ultimately, it won’t matter because Putin is slowly digesting Belarus into Russia as you read.
"The United States cannot consider Aleksandr Lukashenko the legitimately elected leader of Belarus. The path forward should be a national dialogue leading to the Belarusian people enjoying their right to choose their leaders in a free and fair election under independent observation."
— State Department spokesperson
China: The CCP has built 380 internment camps for Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, despite promises from Beijing that construction of their “re-education camps” had halted. Tibet is now getting the same treatment and Inner Mongolia, too. | US Senate Democrats announced a US$350 billion plan to confront China called the America LEADS Act. | US Ambassador to China Terry Branstad will be stepping down after more than three years in Beijing amid rising tensions. | The WTO ruled some US tariffs against China broke international trading rules. | A small Chinese company called Shenzhen Zhenhua Data Technology has systematically collected data on foreign political, military, and business leaders to provide intelligence to the Chinese military and government officials.
Facebook: A leaked internal memo from a recently fired Facebook employee revealed that the company ignored or was slow to act on evidence that fake accounts on its platform have been undermining elections and political affairs around the world.
Greece: 13,000 refugees were left without shelter after fires destroyed the Lesbos Moria camp. Germany has agreed to accept 1,500 refugees.
India vs China in Ladakh: Skirmishes continue to escalate on the border between the Asian superpowers, including the first gunfire traded between them in 45 years, as China has taken over more than 1,000 square kilometers along the border since the two militaries traded dozens of casualties in May. Both sides have agreed to not send any more troops to the contested region (for now).
Iran: Tehran is allegedly plotting to assassinate the US ambassador to South Africa Lana Marks in retaliation for the US assassination of General Soleimani. This weekend, Tehran threatened that revenge for everyone involved in the strike was imminent.
"Do you think we hit a female ambassador in return to our martyred brother?' the general said. “We will hit those who had direct and indirect roles. You should know that everybody who had role in the event will be hit, and this is a serious message. We do prove everything in practice.”
Israel/UAE/Bahrain: President Trump is nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for brokering the deal that normalized relations between the UAE and Israel (in order for DC to sell the Emiratis F-35s). Bahrain also signed an agreement formalizing relations with Israel. Deemed “the Abraham Accords,” this is the biggest diplomatic win of the Trump administration. Saudi Arabia refused to budge because of the status of the Palestinian question, but the Arab League decided not to condemn either state showing a general sea change in Jerusalem’s favor. Meanwhile, back at home, Israel became the first developed nation to re-institute a nationwide lockdown because of COVID. Iran was predictably unhappy at two of its main rivals teaming up, especially since the same day as the signing Israel was sending rockets into Gaza. It is looking like Sudan *might* be the next MENA country to recognize Israel to get something from the US (in this case, removal from Washington’s “state sponsors of terror” list).
Of the four leaders at the White House, only Abdullah bin Zayed, the UAE foreign minister, mentioned either of the two outstanding concerns that have been raised about the new accords. In exchange for normalization with the UAE, Netanyahu agreed to suspend plans to annex Israeli-occupied parts of the West Bank, but it remains unclear how long that suspension will last.
The other issue is what the White House has said is the potential sale of F-35s, the sophisticated U.S. stealth fighter jet, to the UAE. Only Israel has the planes in the Middle East, and many Israelis as well as members of Congress have raised concerns that selling them to the Emiratis would violate U.S. law requiring a “qualitative military edge” for Israel in its neighborhood.
The broadly worded, one-page Abraham Accords do not mention annexation or weapons sales, nor does the publicly released Israel-UAE accord, in which the word “Palestinian” does not appear.
Japan: Yoshihide Suga was elected to lead the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe resigned in August due to health issues, and was resoundingly elected to be the nation’s next prime minister.
Libya: The EU relaxed its sanctions on Aguilah Saleh, leader of rebel-held eastern Libyan parliament, in a show of good faith as both sides look to avoid partition.
Nord Stream 2: Germany is under immense pressure to terminate the pipeline once and for all after the poisoning of Putin critic Alexei Navalny.
Peru: Impeachment proceedings against President Martín Vizcarra have been started by Peru’s Congress for trying to obstruct a corruption investigation.
Taiwan: The US announced it plans to sell $7 billion in major weapons systems, including mines, cruise missiles, and drones to Taiwan to put pressure on the CCP. In response, the PLA flew 40 fighter jets into Taiwanese airspace over the weekend.
TikTok: ByteDance chose Oracle as its “US technology partner,” meaning there will be no sale of the startup’s US operations. Walmart ditched Microsoft and hopped onto Oracle’s bid, which gained Trump’s approval over the weekend. The deal dictates that Oracle would get a 12.5% in TikTok Global, a new US-based company, and would store its data on the Oracle cloud in the US, Walmart would get a 7.5% stake and provide ecommerce and other online-shopping-related services, and Bytedance keeps 80% ownership. However, ByteDance is 40 percent owned by US venture firms, so TikTok Global would be have majority US ownership. Even with Trump’s approval, he now claims he wants TikTok to invest $5 billion in “real US history” and ByteDance said on Monday morning that the new company would be its subsidiary and *not* majority owned by Americans. The TikTok rollercoaster is not over yet!
Ukraine: Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Derkach was added to the US Treasurys "Specially Designated Nationals" list for alleged efforts to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, including by promoting "false and unsubstantiated" allegations targeting Joe Biden.
Venezuela: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's government announced it had captured a man accused of being a U.S. spy has been charged with terrorism. The man identified as Matthew John Heath was said to be trying to "fill the country with blood," presenting evidence of various weapons from his Heath's capture. However, the UN accused Maduro’s government of “crimes against humanity,” so…time will tell.
Venus: The second planet showed signs of life.
