AUDIO:

POSSIBLE TOPICS: VOTETEXAS.GOV—Voter Information; REGISTER TO VOTE; APPLY FOR MAIL-IN BALLOT; Houston leaders, worker groups sound alarm over bills limiting local power; Congress worried more blackouts coming in Texas, other states; The Land Beneath This Stadium Once Was Theirs. They Want It Back.; US agency takes unprecedented action to tackle PFAS water pollution; Security News This Week: Russian ‘Ghost Ships’ Identified Near the Nord Stream Blasts; A Secret War Is Brewing In The South China Sea;More.

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

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

https://www.youtube.com/embed/EwrSlzZC31w

1. Make sure you are registered to vote! VoteTexas.GOV – Texas Voter Information
   1. It’s time to snail-mail (no emails or faxes) in your application for mail-ballots, IF you qualify TEXAS SoS VOTE-BY-MAIL BALLOT APPLICATION (ALL TEXAS COUNTIES) HarrisVotes.com­ – Countywide Voting Centers, (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965), Harris County Clerk
   2. Obtain a Voter Registration Application (HarrisVotes.com)
   3. Harris County “Vote-By-Mail’ Application for 2022
      1. Austin County Elections
      2. Brazoria County (TX) Clerk Election Information
      3. Chambers County (TX) Elections
      4. Colorado County (TX) Elections
      5. Fort Bend County takes you to the proper link
      6. GalvestonVotes.org (Galveston County, TX)
      7. Harris County ((HarrisVotes.com)
      8. LibertyElections (Liberty County, TX)
      9. Montgomery County (TX) Elections
      10. Walker County Elections
      11. Waller County (TX) Elections
      12. Wharton County Elections
   4. For personalized, nonpartisan voter guides and information, Consider visiting Vote.ORG.   Ballotpedia.com and Texas League of Women Voters are also good places to get election info.
   5. If you are denied your right to vote any place at any time at any polling place for any reason, ask for (or demand) a provisional ballot rather than lose your vote.
   6. HarrisVotes.com – Countywide Voting Centers, HARRIS COUNTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: Do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
      1. Fill out a declaration at the polls describing a reasonable impediment to obtaining it, and show a copy or original of one of the following supporting forms of ID:
      2. A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
      3. Current utility bill
      4. Bank statement
      5. Government check
      6. Paycheck
      7. A certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document)
      8. You may vote early by-mail if:You are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
         1. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
         2. Sick or disabled;
         3. 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
         4. Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
         5. Make sure you are registered:
         6. Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
         7. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
         8. CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
         9. Outside Texas, try Vote.org.
2. BE REGISTERED TO VOTE, and if eligible, REMEMBER TO FILL OUT AND MAIL NEW MAIL-IN BALLOT APPLICATIONS FOR 2023.
   1. Obtain a Voter Registration Application (HarrisVotes.com)
   2. Just be registered and apply for your mail-in ballot if you may qualify.
   3. You can track your Mail Ballot Activity from our website with direct link provided here https://www.harrisvotes.com/Tracking
3. Houston leaders, worker groups sound alarm over bills limiting local power; By Leah Foreman, Shawn Arrajj | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 3:37 PM May 9, 2023 CDT, Updated 3:37 PM May 9, 2023 CDT
   1. Efforts by Texas lawmakers to rein in the powers of cities and counties across the state have reached new heights during the 2023 legislative session, with bills targeting everything from local elections to broad attempts to preempt local regulations in several areas.
   2. Central to the push are a trio of what some experts call “super-preemption” bills making their way through the Legislature: House Bill 2127 and its companion bill Senate Bill 814, as well as SB 149. The phrase “super-preemption” refers to how the bills preempt cities and counties in Texas from adopting their own ordinances, limiting them to only ordinances that are expressly allowed under state law.
   3. Those in support of the bills say they are needed to provide more regulatory consistency for small business owners and people who work in those fields. …
   4. But opponents of the bills—which include workers’ rights organizations, the Texas Municipal League and the city of Houston—have decried what they said would be a loss of local freedom if the bills pass in their current form. Although the full implications of the bills are still unclear, opponents said regulations at risk range from worker safety to drought restrictions, consumer protections and zoning laws.
   5. Houston officials said the passage of bills like HB 2127 could result in a loss of protections for residents, pointing to past examples of local ordinances being struck down and never replaced at the state level.
   6. “Take concrete batch plants, for example,” said Bill Kelly, director of government relations with Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner’s office. “The Texas Supreme Court struck down Houston’s ordinances, and now we are faced with [a] process where vulnerable neighborhoods in Houston are at risk. The Legislature has passed nothing to protect them.”
   7. Preemption laws are any bills passed by a large governing body, like the state of Texas, that limit the power of smaller governments, like the city of Houston, under its umbrella.
   8. HB 2127 and SB 149, if passed, would prohibit cities and counties from passing regulations in several key areas unless they are specifically authorized by the state. The codes under HB 2127 and SB 814 include finance, agriculture, labor, and property, among others, while SB 149 deals with commercial activity conducted in more than one city. …
   9. According to Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, the open-ended language of the bills could lead to problems.
   10. [According to Jones,] “Unless someone’s done the work of cataloging every kind of responsibility a city or county government engages in, there are going to be some things cities and counties have been doing as part of their normal activities that is not specifically authorized by the state.”
   11. Although HB 2127 has gotten the attention of local leaders, there are other bills working through the Legislature that would shift power from the local level to the state, including a batch of bills that provide the state with more power to oversee and intervene in elections at the local level.
   12. The broad and sweeping legislation in HB 2127 would remove power from larger cities, such as Houston, which are currently independently ruled—known as home rule cities—according to Bennett Sandlin, executive director of the Texas Municipal League, which provides legal, legislative and training services to city governments in Texas.
   13. “It would turn home rule cities into general law cities,” Sandlin said. “They’d have to look for specific grants of state law. So it sort of undermines the home rule principle.”
   14. Houston officials said the bills could lead to an uptick in litigation. Collyn Peddie, a senior attorney for the city of Houston, appeared before the Texas Senate Committee on Business and Commerce to denounce SB 814 at a public hearing April 4.
   15. “[SB] 814 will stifle the customized local innovation and tailored services and protections the framers embraced by adopting home rule in the first place. The state could never match the custom efforts—like Houston’s noise ordinance—and Houston businesses and residents suffer,” Peddie said.
   16. An earlier version of the bill would have preempted local regulations for payday and auto-title lending. The bill was amended to allow payday ordinances adopted before 2023 to remain in place, but would still prevent cities from adopting new ordinances.
   17. The bill would also preempt local protections for workers, including those mandating breaks in the heart of summer. This is a concern for Rick Levy, president of the Texas AFL-CIO, a federation of labor unions representing 235,000 members in Texas.
   18. “There’s no question that what [they’re] doing will result in the ordinances in these cities being nullified, and so workers will actually lose the right to have a rest break in the middle of summer,” Levy said.
   19. As of press time May 3, HB 2127 had passed in the Texas House of Representatives and had advanced out of the Senate Business and Commerce Committee. …
   20. Norman said HB 2127 would still leave cities with the ability to regulate themselves in many other areas outside of the targeted ordinances. Worker protections would also still exist under laws enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, he noted.
   21. However, Hany Khalil, executive director with the Texas Gulf Coast Area Labor Federation, said OSHA is underfunded and cannot be relied on to consistently oversee and enforce protections, which is where local protections can help fill gaps.
   22. Jones said groups opposed to the legislation have two main options: continue fighting to get the bill killed, or accept that it is likely to pass and try to work with lawmakers to change concerning elements. …
   23. ANDREW: This kind of situation is exactly what my union, the Industrial Workers of the World, prepares for. The IWW’s organizing philosophy is firstly to build as much power as possible by bringing together as many workers from as many industries as possible, and secondly to consider every opportunity possible to use that power whether those opportunities are protected by law, things the law doesn’t say you can’t do, or even things the law forbids but the penalties are survivable. Bosses use this philosophy all the time, because it works. The IWW’s wins prove that it can work for workers, too.
   24. ANDREW: So these bills won’t pressure the Houston, Austin, or North Texas IWW branches too hard. But plenty of other workers still stand to lose a lot, so I want to see more opposition to these bills, and I’m going to talk to my union about pitching in. Our organizing philosophy may help find outside-the-box ways of pressuring lawmakers to withdraw their support, and I’m sure any protests could use more attendees. I encourage our listeners to find ways to oppose these bills themselves, whether alone or as part of a group. All the power that bosses and politicians use comes from us workers, and if we work together, we can take that power back.
   25. MIKE: We talked about this a few weeks ago when the latest legislative sessions started and a couple of times since. What I see here is a Texas version of gradual autocracy at the State level. Republicans used to be all for local control, on the premise that local governments know best what they need for their communities. Now they’re using their overwhelming State legislative power to crush local governance.
   26. MIKE: According to Ballotpedia, the current Texas Constitution has been amended 517 times. Funny how none of those amendments seem to enshrine local government freedom.
   27. MIKE: I wish Andrew and his union luck, but with Republicans controlling so many levers of power, nothing is likely to change unless voters throw the Republicans out of power. Much stronger influence groups than the IWW are trying, but Republican power in Texas is unnervingly strong.
4. Congress worried more blackouts coming in Texas, other states; By James Osborne, Washington bureau | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM | May 9, 2023, Updated: May 9, 2023 5:36 p.m.
   1. One evening last summer, power officials in Texas observed a new phenomenon: the amount of electricity available on the grid went into sharp decline even though temperatures were relatively moderate.
   2. An unusual combination of factors was at play. As the sun went down, so too did the wind, causing a simultaneous decline in generation from wind turbines and solar panels. At the same time, a number of coal and gas plants were offline, causing “tight grid operations,” Pablo Vegas, president of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said in a news conference last week.
   3. Had those same events taken place a week later, when temperatures soared and power demand hit a record, grid operators might well have had to implement rolling blackouts. As it turned out, this time “there was ample wind that day, so there was no reliability concerns,” Vegas said.
   4. With wind and solar farms taking up a larger and larger share of the country’s power generation, the state of the U.S. power grid is coming under increasing scrutiny in Congress, as grid operators around the country warn blackouts could soon be a regular feature of American life.
   5. At issue, grid officials around the country say [is that]the closure of so-called dispatchable power sources such as gas and coal plants – which can deliver electricity with the flip of a switch – leaves the power grid increasingly reliant on intermittent renewable generation that can go offline with a shift in the weather.
   6. At a hearing in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last week, Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner Mark Christie, a Republican appointed during the Trump administration, warned the blackout that left millions of Texans without power during Winter Storm Uri in 2021 could be a “harbinger.”
   7. “I’m afraid to say it, but I think the United States is heading towards a catastrophic situation,” he said. “The problem is not the addition of wind and solar, it’s the subtraction of dispatchable resources like coal and gas through this cascading number of early retirements.” …
   8. In Texas, the state legislature is weighing whether to offer $10 billion in low-interest loans to build around 15 new gas-fired power plants to serve as a backup if ERCOT runs out of power.
   9. “We need to make reforms that are going to incentivize building more dispatchable generation so that as demand continues to grow as the state of Texas continues to grow, we’ll always have reliable supply to serve it,” Peter Lake, chairman of the Texas Public Utility Commission [PUC], said last week.
   10. The state of the power grid is drawing concern at the national level from Democrats and Republicans alike, not just over the rapid closure of coal and gas plants but the rise in extreme weather events that can knock out generation and transmission lines.
   11. There is even movement in some quarters of Washington for the federal government to take a larger role in determining which types of power generation are being built.
   12. At the hearing last week, Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner James Danly, a Republican, said the commission needed to do more to protect markets from inappropriate state “subsidies” for wind and solar generation. But other members of FERC [Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] are unlikely to go along with a strategy …
   13. That leaves decisions on the fate of the U.S. power grid largely in the hands of individual state utility commissions, which have wildly disparate points of view on what a modern power grid should look like. …
   14. Alison Silverstein, an Austin-based consultant and former adviser at FERC, said Texas needed to invest in improving its energy efficiency, as well as building more fast-starting gas plants, battery systems, and getting homes and businesses to lower their power use at times of high demand. …
   15. That sort of strategy is proving a tough sell in Austin, with Republican lawmakers eager to build a flood of new gas-fired infrastructure and disincentivize the construction of wind and solar farms they view as increasingly unreliable.
   16. At his press conference last week, Lake, who was appointed in 2021 by Gov. Greg Abbott, said wind and solar farms were of great benefit in bringing down the cost of electricity but, “don’t have an on switch.”
   17. “We’ve got lots of renewables, but at the end of the day, zero wind times infinity windmills is zero electricity. And the sun sets every night,” he said.
   18. MIKE: When I was exploring solar power for my house, I learned a lot about how important backup power is for the system to be of significant use, especially in power outages. I’ve learned even more in the almost 1 year that I’ve had it operating.
   19. MIKE: For home and business use, backup batteries are essential. Without them, solar systems simply shut off in an outage so as not to electrocute line workers.
   20. MIKE: On the scale of a grid using renewable power, the power backup systems may be of a different type and scale, but are essential to the smooth functioning of the system. Lithium-based batteries are primarily what are available now, but they’re expensive, use scarce resources, and become less efficient over time. They also occasionally overheat and catch fire, but they’re the main option right now.
   21. MIKE: Iron-based batteries may be the next Big Thing for grid-scale storage. They’re less efficient and take up more space, but they’re much cheaper and more easily recycled.
   22. MIKE: In any case, I’d like to see more incentives for backup grid-level storage. It’s becoming clear that only incentivizing renewable generation is missing an important puzzle piece.
   23. ANDREW: Battery construction and research definitely needs better funding. Republicans will want to spend the money cozying up to the gas industry instead, but ultimately batteries would be more useful as they could store energy from all sources on the grid. But if we have to add new generation to help deal with this problem, well, that sounds like a job for nuclear.
   24. ANDREW: Regular listeners might know that I’m a Green Party voter, so they might be surprised to hear me suggest nuclear energy. But my position on nuclear isn’t quite in line with the party. I’m not saying it should be everywhere, or that it should be the majority of our grid capacity. I’m absolutely not saying nuclear should be prioritized over renewables.
   25. ANDREW: But small reactors built away from major population centers could be a good backup for when renewables can’t meet demand, and would probably be more efficient in cost, materials, and pollution than a fleet of coal or gas-fired plants would. Perhaps they could be activated only when ERCOT projects an energy deficit, so that most of the time, there’s minimal pollution and safety risk.
   26. ANDREW: I’m no energy policy expert, so I could be missing something here, and radioactive waste presents its own problem to deal with. But on balance, I think nuclear is a smarter choice than fossil fuels to support the expansion of renewable energy.
   27. MIKE: Actually, my understanding of the German Greens is that they favor some nuclear power for similar reasons. And there was a time, decades ago, when I would’ve agreed with that conclusion. But I’ve seen 2 catastrophic nuclear plant failures just in my lifetime, and that has eliminated any trust I might have had in nuclear power. I don’t trust current technology at all, and I’m waiting to be persuaded on a new nuclear technology.
5. The Land Beneath This Stadium Once Was Theirs. They Want It Back.; Dodger Stadium is the home to the seven-time world champion Los Angeles Dodgers. But in the 1950s, the land around it belonged to families who are now seeking reparations for what they lost. By Jesus Jiménez | NYTIMES.COM | May 7, 2023
   1. … Long before the Dodgers won their first World Series at Dodger Stadium in 1963 and Sandy Koufax tossed the team’s first perfect game in 1965, the land the ballpark was built on was home to hundreds of families living in communities called Palo Verde, La Loma and Bishop.
   2. Those neighborhoods and their residents were displaced in the 1950s by the city of Los Angeles, citing plans to build affordable housing. But eventually the land was given to the Dodgers to build a ballpark after the team moved to the city from Brooklyn in the late ’50s. The area is now commonly called Chavez Ravine, a term that has become synonymous with Dodger Stadium. …
   3. The story of this displacement has been well documented in books, news articles and videos. But in recent years, descendants of marginalized communities in California have had success seeking reparations for land that was taken from them, in the form of money or the return of land. Spurred by that momentum, the descendants of the three Los Angeles communities see a chance to seek their own justice. The land on which Dodger Stadium was built, they say, should be returned to them. …
   4. [I]n the early 1950s, the city of Los Angeles began displacing the residents of Palo Verde, La Loma and Bishop, through voluntary purchases and eminent domain, with plans to build a housing project in the area. [The last of the families were forcefully evicted by sheriff’s deputies in May 1959.]
   5. [The housing project] was never built, and eventually, after the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, the team acquired the deed to the land. A condition was that the team build a stadium with capacity for at least 50,000 people. …
   6. … Buried Under the Blue [is] a nonprofit organization [founded in 2018] that seeks to raise awareness about the history of the displacement of the residents of Palo Verde, La Loma and Bishop. …
   7. Those seeking reparations in California have been encouraged by the story of Bruce’s Beach, a property that was bought by a Black couple, Charles and Willa Bruce, in 1912 in what would become the city of Manhattan Beach, Calif. The land was taken from the Bruces in 1924 when city officials condemned it through eminent domain, claiming to need it for a public park.
   8. Last year, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to transfer ownership of the land to the great-grandsons and great-great-grandsons of Charles and Willa Bruce. They sold the land back to the county for $20 million.
   9. Buried Under the Blue and the descendants of those who were displaced have political support, including from Eunisses Hernandez, a member of the Los Angeles City Council who said she stands with them.
   10. “Oftentimes we are in these situations because companies, corporations, people with a lot of money, have felt that other communities were disposable,” Hernandez said. “We are still confronted with moments like that even today, and so we have to demand that these corporations, these companies, give back to the communities that they have taken from.”
   11. But Hernandez said that she would like to see a concrete plan from organizers on what reparations would look like before moving forward.
   12. Leaders of Buried Under the Blue have also met with the descendants of Indigenous tribes that once lived in the Los Angeles Basin. In a true land-back effort, they say, land should be returned to the Indigenous groups who were the first occupants. …
   13. Even if the land were returned to the descendants of the Indigenous tribes, Montalvo said, homeowners and renters who were displaced would still deserve financial reparations for investing in the community.
   14. Buried Under the Blue has yet to determine what it would do with the land if it were ever returned, and it’s unclear if that will ever happen or how long it would take. …
   15. MIKE: There’s quite a bit more to this story than I have excerpted here, but I think this is the gist of it.
   16. MIKE: Obvious injustice has been done here and sad to say, it’s not an unusual story.
   17. MIKE: I find it interesting that the leaders of Buried Under The Blue wants to ally with indigenous groups who would probably claim prior ownership. It’s a strategically interesting question that would seem to further complicate who gets reparations and of what kind?
   18. ANDREW: Yeah, Indigenous sovereignty including concepts like land-back is something I sometimes see talked about in discussions about reparations, but not too often.
   19. ANDREW: Obviously this particular question can only be decided among the groups involved, and neither Mike nor I are authorities on racial reparations. So our opinions shouldn’t be considered as important as those of someone actually affected by the issue.
   20. ANDREW: With that said, I personally would hope to see an agreement reached between the displaced residents and the Indigenous representatives that is equitable to the impact that losing this land has had on each of them. I think that’s generally a good way to frame the issue of respecting Indigenous sovereignty within reparations. What that means in practice will differ in each case, but it strikes me as a good mindset to have when thinking these things over.
6. US agency takes unprecedented action to tackle PFAS water pollution; EPA has ordered chemical company Chemours to stop discharging high levels of the toxic substance into the Ohio River. By Tom Perkins | THEGUARDIAN.COM | `Sat 6 May 2023 06.00 EDT, Last modified on Sat 6 May 2023 06.18 EDT
   1. The US Environmental Protection Agency is taking unprecedented enforcement action over PFAS water pollution by ordering the chemical giant Chemours’ Parkersburg, West Virginia, plant to stop discharging extremely high levels of toxic PFAS waste into the Ohio River.
   2. The river is a drinking water source for 5 million people, and the EPA’s Clean Water Act violation order cites 71 instances between September 2018 to March 2023 in which Chemours’ Washington Works facility discharged more PFAS waste than its pollution permit allowed.
   3. The agency also noted damaged facilities and equipment that appeared to be leaking PFAS waste on to the ground.
   4. PFAS are a class of about 15,000 chemicals often used to make thousands of products across dozens of industries resistant to water, stains and heat. The chemicals are ubiquitous and linked at low levels of exposure to cancer, thyroid disease, kidney dysfunction, birth defects, autoimmune disease and other serious health problems.
   5. The step by the EPA drew praise from some environmental groups, but at least one noted the permit still allows high levels of PFAS pollution and may not adequately protect the environment and human health. The EPA and states should also be taking similar action against PFAS polluters everywhere, not just Chemours, critics say.
   6. Washington Works’ PFAS waste poisoned Parkersburg’s water for decades under DuPont’s management, before it spun off Chemours. That led to lawsuits in the early 2000s that dragged on for years, but in 2017 led to $671m in payouts to town residents, an epidemiological study that linked DuPont PFAS to residents’ health problems and a movie about the controversy.
   7. Still, the pollution continues. …
   8. The EPA is ordering Chemours to rein in its pollution by testing effluents and implementing a plan to remove more of the dangerous chemicals before discharging water.
   9. The order cites exceedances for two PFAS compounds, PFOA and HFPO-DA, the latter more frequently known as GenX. Chemours in 2019 recorded GenX levels from one Washington Works pipe at a monthly average of about 38,000 parts per trillion (ppt). The pollution permit’s current limit is 1,400ppt. But the EPA is in the process of lowering GenX’s national drinking water limit to 5ppt.
   10. Similar levels and exceedances were found for PFOA, and the chemicals are generally considered to be two of the most well-studied and dangerous PFAS compounds. …
   11. Chemours did not say how it plans to control the pollution, but told the Guardian that it “worked with EPA to agree to a consent decree and will continue to take action to address the legacy deposition that have contributed to many of the exceedances”.
   12. MIKE: As I’ve often said, profit is private, but pollution is public. At a certain point, humans running corporations must be held responsible. Simply charging money fines to a paper entity is insufficient.
   13. MIKE: I hope you also noticed in the story that Dupont spun off Chemours. This is something often done by large corporations when they have a health, safety, or pollution liability that they believe may be substantial. It insulates the “deep pockets” of the parent corporation from financial liability. That’s also a law that needs to be changed.
   14. ANDREW: Absolutely. At the very least, fines should be on top of a forfeiture of all of the profit that the company made since the violation occurred. As for the EPA’s action in this specific case, it is absolutely an encouraging sign, but without more public support and pressure for serious consequences for polluters, it will be more of a ceiling than a floor.
7. Security News This Week: Russian ‘Ghost Ships’ Identified Near the Nord Stream Blasts; By Matt Burgess, Senior writer | WIRED.COM | May 6, 2023, 9:00 AM
   1. Russian ships with underwater operations equipment have been identified as being near the sites of the Nord Stream gas pipeline explosions in the days before the blasts, according to a joint investigation from national broadcasters in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Journalists at the publications combined intercepted radio broadcasts from the ships with satellite images to pinpoint their locations and track their paths. It is the latest example of investigators piecing together different sources of data, from varying unconnected sources, to reveal new details about real-world events.
   2. Three ships, according to the investigation, sailed from naval bases in Russia to near the blast sites in June and September 2022. All of the ships had turned off their location tracking AIS services, an act often described as “going dark” and commonly used for disguising activity. … (In November 2022, WIRED reported on the presence of “ghost ships” around the time of the explosions, but had no information on their identity.)
   3. Separately, another Russian vessel, the SS-750, was near the pipelines four days before they were blown up. In response to a public records request, the Danish Defense Command confirmed to the Information, a Danish news site, that it had 26 photos of the SS-750 near the sites.
   4. Since the explosions at the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in September, there has been no official confirmation, with supporting evidence, of who may have been behind the blasts. The investigation from the Nordic journalists says the ships’ behavior was unusual but does not conclude what they were doing near the Nord Stream sites. Russia has denied being involved in the attacks, pointing fingers at both the UK and US. Other reports have claimed a pro-Ukranian group may have conducted the attack, which Ukraine has denied. Official investigations into the blasts are still ongoing in multiple European countries and the exact cause of the explosions is still unclear.
   5. ANDREW: The Nord Stream Mystery gets more mysterious. The other interesting thing here is that the ships were able to be identified by radio broadcasts and satellite images. This tells me two things: first, that “going dark” isn’t quite as dark as it maybe used to be, and secondly that either the missions these ships were on weren’t so clandestine as to order total silence onboard which one might expect with a sabotage mission, or there WAS supposed to be total silence onboard but some sailor needed more training. I wonder what else we’ll find out in time.
   6. MIKE: In Ukraine, Russian soldiers have become notorious for poor signals security, so that’s not a far-out possibility.
   7. MIKE: This still leaves unanswered the old question of who has Means, Motive, and Opportunity. I still don’t see the Russians’ Motive for blowing up the Nord pipelines. Could it be something that’s simply inscrutable to us simpletons?
   8. Mike: We’re living in an era with lots of movie potential.
   9. REFERENCE: Nord Stream: Report puts Russian navy ships near pipeline blast site, By Gordon Corera, Security correspondent, BBC News | BBC.COM | Published May 3. 2023, 3 days ago
8. A Secret War Is Brewing In The South China Sea; By Haley Zaremba | OILPRICE.COM | May 04, 2023, 3:00 PM CDT
   1. [T[here is once again a geopolitical storm brewing out in the South China Sea. This time, there are dual face-offs: one minor spat between China and Malaysia, and another seriously major spat between China and the Philippines. 
   2. The South China Sea is one of the most heavily trafficked maritime routes in the entire world. However, the conditions that make it so valuable – namely, its location on the coasts of a considerable number of Asian countries – have also led to major regional tensions over ownership, rights, and tenure. Vast, overlapping swaths of this prized patch of the Pacific are currently being claimed by Brunei, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam. 
   3. China, which has staked the largest claims to the South China Sea and has historically (and continuously) been the most aggressive in its position with an ever-expanding military presence on the waters, has stirred up no shortage of political discontent in the region. Beijing claims sovereignty over more than 90 percent of the South China Sea – using a delineation branded as the “nine-dash line” – which cuts into the exclusive economic zones of Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia. As a result, geopolitical squabbles over rights to the Sea are the rule rather than the exception. 
   4. Earlier this year, when Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim made his first official visit to China, officials pointedly questioned Malaysia about its exploration activities in what it has designated as China’s exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea. …
   5. Now, just a couple of months later, China has once again made headlines for its bullying and intimidation in the South China Sea, but this time Beijing’s adversary is the Philippines. On the surface, the argument between Xi Jinping’s China and Ferdinand Marcos [Jr.’s] Philippines is over fishing rights. It all started in late April when the Philippines publicly accused China’s coastguard of employing “dangerous manoeuvres” and “aggressive tactics” to intimidate the Filipino coast guard [in] Philippines-held waters. …
   6. However, according to new reporting this week, the fights between the Philippines, Malaysia, and China aren’t really about fishing or even oil exploration at all – instead, it’s just one battle in a “secret war to control the internet.” …
   7. According to reporting from The Hill, “the biggest economic asset up for grabs in the region is Big Data — and the future of the entire internet depends on who wins the battle to dominate this strategic waterway.” The crux of the war is underwater cables. More than 99% of all international internet traffic is carried through such subsea cables, which are overwhelmingly controlled by a handful of Big Tech companies in the U.S., “namely Google-owner Alphabet, Facebook-owner Meta, Amazon and Microsoft.” As the internet economy ramps up in Asia – it’s expected to reach $1 trillion in value by just 2030 – other economic powers now want their slice of that pie. Whoever controls the cables that cross through the South China Sea will stake a major claim to that $1 Trillion. …
   8. MIKE: We talked about some of this on our March 29^th show in a different context. In that story, it was about a US company being aided by the US government to defeat a bid by a Chinese business to lay transglobal cables across, in part, the South China sea and the Indian Ocean. This aspect of that competition did not come up.
   9. MIKE: The difference here is that if China can successfully claim ownership of most of the South China Sea, it will have effective control of these data cables within its territorial waters.
   10. MIKE: I’ve always thought of the Exclusive Economic Zones as relating to oil, minerals and fishing, and that’s been enough to bring some countries close to war. But controlling who can lay data cables and where is a wrinkle I have not previously considered.
   11. MIKE: On Chinese maps, the so-called Nine-Dash Line is the part of the South China Sea that China claims as within its territorial waters. China claims some historic rights to this area, but its claim is almost universally considered illegitimate. (Taiwan may be the lone exception.) The claim is neatly summarized in a US statement cited in a 2014 article from the Brookings Institution, referenced below.
   12. MIKE: “Under international law, maritime claims in the South China Sea must be derived from land features. Any use of the ‘nine-dash line’ by China to claim maritime rights not based on claimed land features would be inconsistent with international law. The international community would welcome China to clarify or adjust its nine-dash line claim to bring it in accordance with the international law of the sea.”
   13. MIKE: The article further explains that “[t]he PRC inherited from the former Kuomintang [pre-1949] government of China the nine-dash line, which draws a line around all of these islands, asserts sovereignty over all of them, and makes ambiguous claims about rights to waters within the line. Under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), negotiated in the 1970s and 1980s, countries can claim exclusive rights to the fish and mineral resources within Exclusive Economic Zones, which can extend 200 nautical miles from a continental shoreline or around islands that can support habitation. There is no provision in the convention granting rights to waters, such as in the South China Sea, without regard to land-based sovereign rights. So it has long been implicit in the U.S. interpretation of UNCLOS that claims to the mineral and fish resources of the South China Sea, unless they are linked to specific inhabitable islands, are invalid.”
   14. MIKE: A so-called “rock” is a feature that is always above sea level, but is otherwise uninhabited and usually uninhabitable. A “rock” can be claimed as national territory, but it only qualifies for the standard 12 nautical mile territorial limit. Further, a “rock” cannot have it’s status changed by so-called land reclamation. as China claimed such status changes with some coral shoals and rocks in the South China Sea that it has artificially raised and expanded, and turned mostly into forward military bases.
   15. MIKE: The US and other countries recognize many of these areas as Chinese territory with 12 Nautical mile limits, although some of these islets and shoals are disputed territory.
   16. MIKE: So, to get back to the point of the article, by attempting to enforce its sovereign claim to the South China Sea, it’s not only claiming almost the entire sea as its Exclusive Economic Zone. It would also be able to control who lays data cables in the Sea.
   17. MIKE: This is another example of the implications of law that precedes advances in technology. I wonder it the UNCLOS would have been written a bit differently in an era of transoceanic data cables? Would they have been treated differently from telephone cables on the ocean floor, or are they legally retroactively considered the same for treaty purposes.?
   18. ANDREW: The nine-dash line is a good reminder that any situation that one day seems like mostly an interesting political thought exercise can easily become a pressing issue with serious implications the next day.
   19. ANDREW: If China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea do ever have to be resolved, I think the diversity of national interests and combinations of government positions around the issue will help lead to a peaceful, negotiated solution. Western allies and rivals share interests here: China (a rival) and Taiwan (an ally) are on one side of the dispute, Vietnam (a rival) and the Philippines (an ally), among others, are on the other.
   20. ANDREW: There are questions in geopolitics that can bring rival governments closer together when successfully and peacefully resolved; at the risk of being too optimistic, I believe that potential is present here. I just hope no other issue stops us all from being around to see it.
   21. MIKE: Of course, one might think that if China submits to UNCLOS, most of the disputes would be automatically resolved. It’s interesting that in this context among others, Vietnam as a party with interests aligned with the US. My generation still finds that hard to believe. But Germany and Japan are treaty allies, and have been since only a few years after WW2. Many folks of that generation had a very hard time swallowing that. History is funny that way.
   22. REFERENCE: The U.S. and China’s Nine-Dash Line: Ending the Ambiguity; By Jeffrey A. Bader | BROOKINGS.EDU | Thursday, February 6, 2014
   23. REFERENCE: What is the difference between a nautical mile and a knot? — NOAA.GOV

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