For technical reasons, the Oct. 4 & 5 show were reruns of the previous week’s show.

AUDIO:
 

POSSIBLE TOPICS: VOTETEXAS.GOV—Voter Information; BALLOT; Oct. 10 Deadline to REGISTER TO VOTE; APPLY FOR MAIL-IN BALLOT; Constitutional Amendments; PAYWALLED — Chronicle’s Texas election voter guide: 2023 key races, candidates, dates; And now we have a hue and cry about Whitmire’s campaign treasury; Harris County residents petition to remove Judge Lina Hidalgo from office; If not Kevin McCarthy for US House Speaker, then who else?; Biden administration waives 26 federal laws to allow border wall construction in South Texas; A Bold Challenge to Chinese Aggression Succeeded. What Does That Mean?; Peak China may pose peak danger; Key details behind Nord Stream pipeline blasts revealed by scientists; New study on monkeys using stone tools raises questions about evolution; 

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

Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio) is now on Wednesdays at 11AM (CT) or Thursdays at 6PM on KPFT 90.1 FM-HD2, Houston’s Community Media. You can also hear the show:

1. Live online at KPFT.org (from anywhere in the world!)
2. Podcast on your phone’s Podcast App
3. Visiting Archive.KPFT.ORG

Except for timely election info, the extensive list of voting resources will now be at the end.

1. VOTING IN THE NOVEMBER 7^TH GENERAL ELECTION:
   1. Make sure to register to vote, or update your address by the October 10thdeadline. Click here for more information on voter registration. 
   2. Deadline to apply for a mail ballot is Friday, October 27. Click here for the application.Fill it out, print it, and then mail it before the deadline.
   3. For more election information anywhere in Texas, go to VOTETEXAS.GOV
   4. Just be registered and apply for your mail-in ballot if you may qualify.
   5. Obtain a Voter Registration Application (HarrisVotes.com). You must register to vote in the county in which you reside.
   6. You can track your Mail Ballot Activity from our website with direct link provided here https://www.harrisvotes.com/Tracking
   7. In HARRIS COUNTY, go to COM. For any place in Texas, you can go to VOTETEXAS.GOV
2. Everything you need to know before voting for Houston’s new mayor in November election; COM | Tuesday, August 22, 2023/ 1:29PM
   1. MIKE: This is a really comprehensive article about Houston elections: Who’s running for what (including mayor, city controller), and all city council positions.
   2. Houstonians can visit the city’s redistricting website to view maps and determine which council district they reside in. …”
3. Taxes, state parks, infrastructure: What you need to know about the Nov. 7 constitutional amendments election; Texans will decide the fate of 14 constitutional amendments approved for the ballot by state lawmakers. Here’s a breakdown of each constitutional amendment and requirements to vote. by María Méndez, Yuriko Schumacher & Texas Tribune Staff | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | Sept. 15, 2023 — 5 AM Central — TAGS: Politics, State government, Texas House of Representatives, Texas Legislature, Texas Senate,
   1. MIKE: This article from the Texas Tribune has lots of really detailed and specific information. It contains links for not only how and where to vote anywhere in Texas, but also about the Texas Constitutional Amendments that will be on the ballot.
   2. MIKE: I’ll probably discuss the Amendments in October with my suggestions when we get to Early Voting.
   3. REFERENCE: Charles Kuffner’s insightful discussion of these amendments at his website, offthekuff.com or by following the link to the specific article here: A guide to the constitutional amendments for November 2023 — Posted on September 19, 2023 by Charles Kuffner
4. HERE’S SOMETHING RELATED THAT TICKS ME OFF: Texas election voter guide: 2023 key races, candidates, dates; Houston Chronicle | OCT. 3 2023
   1. MIKE: I bet that would be a really useful article — if it wasn’t paywalled. I understand that news organizations need to make a profit or at least (in the case of non-profits like the Texas Tribune) make their operating expenses. But some stories should be too important for a paywall, and especially in today’s political climate, what is more important than election information?
   2. MIKE: There are many news sites that are free. The Guardian is one. It’s free and not a non-profit. I nonetheless send some money every month because I use them so often.
   3. MIKE: Community Impact is free and not a non-profit, but I also send them money.
   4. MIKE: I send money to the Texas Tribune, which IS a non-profit and free to access.
   5. MIKE: Even many for-profit news sites allow a certain number of free articles per month, usually at the price of your email for their mailing list. Often, I can live with that.
   6. MIKE: On the other hand, many popular sites that specialize in what amounts to propaganda are always free. I won’t name names, but many of you will have experienced such sites.
   7. MIKE: As was once wisely said by Nathan J. Robinson in 2020, “The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free.”
   8. MIKE: I can think of no better example than the Houston Chronicle paywalling an elections guide. It’s the clearest example of corporate greed superseding the public interest they are supposed to serve.
5. And now we have a hue and cry about Whitmire’s campaign treasury; By Charles Kuffner | OFFTHEKUFF.COM | Posted on October 3, 2023
   1. I’m surprised it took this long, to be honest. [MIKE: excerpted by Kuff from the COM]
   2. U.S. Rep Sheila Jackson Lee and former Metro Chair Gilbert Garcia have requested the city attorney to investigate alleged campaign contribution limit violations by State Sen. John Whitmire, hinting at a potential lawsuit if the city does not act.
   3. Whitmire jump-started his mayoral bid with a $10 million war chest, accumulated mostly from his decades-long tenure in the Texas legislature. While state law imposes no contribution limits, city rules cap donations at $5,000 from individuals and $10,000 from political groups, prompting questions about how much of his money Whitmire is allowed to use for the mayor’s race.
   4. Past campaign finance reports indicate that around half of the funds Whitmire amassed in the legislature came from portions of donations that would have surpassed the city limits. The state senator’s campaign said they have been making internal transfers in compliance with Houston law. But some candidates said they are not ready to take Whitmire’s word for it without seeing detailed breakdowns of these transfers.
   5. The latest campaign finance reports show that Whitmire’s hefty fund balance far eclipses his opponents’ resources. As of July, Garcia, Jackson Lee and attorney Lee Kaplan reported having only $2.9 million, $1 million and $1.4 million, respectively, in their accounts. Meanwhile, even after spending $1.9 million on his mayoral bid, Whitmire reported $9.9 million in cash on hand.
   6. [Jackson Lee and Garcia wrote in a letter to City Attorney Arturo Michel on Monday,] “Without action on the part of the City Attorney’s office, 2023 city candidates who have abided by campaign and contribution cycle limits are harmed and treated unequally.” …
   7. The debate over Whitmire’s fund transfer has reignited longstanding debates on what Houston’s contribution limits permit. Gordon Quan, who led the charge in passing the ordinance in question in 2005, believes the law should only let a candidate treat any non-city account like a single political group and transfer a total of $10,000.
   8. Both [City Attorney Arturo] Michel and former City Attorney Dave Feldman, on the other hand, … suggest candidates can use the capped amount from each individual donor, instead of viewing the non-city account as a single entity. …
   9. Kuff then goes on to add: We were talking about this in January, and let’s be honest, we knew it would be an issue when Whitmire first announced his intention to run in 2021. Why this complaint is just being raised now, I couldn’t say. City Attorney Arturo Michel says he will respond, but given the circumstances he will be limited in what he can do.
   10. For what it’s worth, I think Gordon Quan’s interpretation is too strict, but I’m not sure I would sign on to the Michel/Feldman view, either. Jackson Lee and Garcia suggest that Whitmire limit himself to what he has raised in this two-year cycle, with the $10K limit applied to donors for that period. That’s not unreasonable to me, but he declared before that time, so I think the funds he raised since that time ought to be in bounds as well. I dunno. I’d be happy to let a judge decide, but I doubt we’ll get any kind of resolution in a timely fashion. Which again raises the question, why wait this long to bring it up?
   11. MIKE: There is more, but on the radio it might make your eyes glaze over. I’ve linked to Kuff’s story.
   12. MIKE: I may have already passed that point for some of you, but this is actually an important sidebar story to the Houston Mayoral election.
   13. MIKE: When Whitmire entered the race, there was considerable reporting on the campaign war chest he had accumulated which would eclipse any competitor.
   14. MIKE: Personally, with that much campaign money, I wish he had run for governor. I think he’s got the conservative credentials to beat Abbot and enough liberal credentials that Democrats, independents and undecideds would vote for him in large numbers. His decision to run for Houston mayor has always puzzled me.
   15. MIKE: But here we are.
   16. ANDREW: I personally support the strictest interpretation of these campaign finance rules, though I’m not sure how much it would really affect things. Even if a candidate like Whitmire wouldn’t be able to use more than $10,000 of his $10 million fortune, someone who has amassed that kind of wealth will still have favors from and obligations to wealthy and influential people around the state and very likely the world. Limiting how much a candidate like that can spend on their campaign isn’t a bad idea, but that rule alone probably isn’t going to do much to make the campaign process—and the resulting mayoral term—fair and honest.
   17. REFERENCE: Mayoral Candidates Gilbert Garcia and Sheila Jackson Lee Call For Investigation into Campaign Finance Violations by John Whitmire – Legal Action Looms; By Lisa Valadez | STYLEMAGAZINE.COM | 10/4/2023, 2:54 p.m.
6. Harris County residents petition to remove Judge Lina Hidalgo from office; The petition claimed that Hidalgo “has abandoned the office of the Harris County Judge and failed to perform any of the duties and responsibilities of the Harris County Judge.” By Renee Yan | CHRON.COM | Sep 30, 2023
   1. On Friday, five people filed a petition with a Harris County district court to remove Judge Lina Hidalgo from her elected position, according to a report by The Texan’s Holly Hansen. The lawsuit came just a few days before her scheduled return to office after seeking treatment for clinical depression at an out-of-state facility.
   2. “I filed because Hidalgo abandoned her office in gross carelessness in discharging her duties,” Dave Wilson, one of the plaintiffs, told The Texan. Wilson, a Houston Community College board trustee, is joined by Thomas Thrash, Thomas Bazan, Milinda Morris and Tommy Slocum Jr. in his lawsuit. 
   3. Per court documents obtained by The Texan, they argued that Hidalgo missed six Harris County Commissioners Court meetings and that her “absence from public office has prevented her and continues to prevent her from the lawful discharge of her duties as Harris County Judge.”
   4. Hidalgo, who announced her temporary leave in August, is set to return to work on Monday. Before she left, Hidalgo stated that although she would not be presiding over the court, she would remain available to her staff and in emergencies. Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis was tapped to fill the gap in her absence. In a statement on Friday, Ellis decried the petition as an attempt to undermine the will of voters. He told the Houston Chronicle, “These are not serious people and should be treated accordingly.” 
   5. MIKE: There was a later follow-up to this article from the Houston Chronicle in which Lina Hidalgo responded, “I’m thrilled to be back,” Hidalgo wrote. “I’ve had a fantastic day with my staff, and I am slowly working through supportive letters and notes. Thank you to everyone for your incredible support as I return to the office. Nobody would think twice about taking time off work to recover from a heart attack or another physical ailment, and it should be the same way for a mental illness.”
   6. MIKE: And I think that’s the best answer to this 5 small people bringing this action, even after they since amended it.
   7. MIKE: What annoys me the most in all this is the Rightwing readiness to try any course of action to depose an elected official they don’t like, from a county judge to the president of the United States. This is a faction — and I won’t indict the whole Republican party for this strategy, though that’s where these people seem to affiliate — this is a faction that considers a legal coup d’état an acceptable strategy for trying to put their people in office. They’re constantly trying recall elections, impeachments, and other technically legal means to take out elected opposition figures in hopes of getting one of their own elected.
   8. MIKE: Just because they use processes that are technically legal doesn’t make it less anti-democratic.
7. THE FOLLOWING IS A BBC ARTICLE FROM JANUARY 6^th, 2023. It’s amazing how little I had to change to make it current: If not Kevin McCarthy for US House Speaker, then who else?; By Sam Cabral | BBC News | Published 6 January 2023
   1. … Until the House has its presiding officer in place, the body is not swearing in its new members or moving on with its legislative business.
   2. Steve Scalise [MIKE: NOW DECLARED]: The Louisiana congressman, 57, has been Mr McCarthy’s deputy since 2019.
   3. Mr Scalise, who is entering his eighth term in the House, survived being shot and wounded by a left-wing extremist while practising for the annual congressional baseball game in 2017. [MIKE: He also survived being noted early in his elevation to leadership that he had associated with known White supremacists.]
   4. In an internal Republican Party election [in November 2022], he was elected unopposed by his colleagues for the position of majority leader, the second-highest rank in the House. …
   5. But [back in January, Rep.] Matt Rosendale, a Montana congressman …He said neither Mr McCarthy nor anyone who has been in Republican House leadership over the past 10 years were acceptable to him.
   6. Elise Stefanik: Elected to the House in 2014, Ms Stefanik was the youngest woman elected to Congress at the time, aged 30.
   7. Once the vice-president of Harvard University’s prestigious Institute of Politics, the New Yorker won election to the House as a moderate.
   8. But the 38-year-old has veered sharply to the right in recent years, most notably by her outspoken support for Donald Trump.
   9. In May 2021, as Republicans ousted Liz Cheney from leadership over her criticisms of Mr Trump, Ms Stefanik was elected to replace her as chair of the House Republican Conference, making her the fourth highest ranking member of the party. She was re-elected to the position this November. …
   10. Other (unlikely) possibilities: … Andy Biggs, an Arizona congressman who is part of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus. …
   11. Another name [previously] pitched for Speaker was Representative Jim Jordan [MIKE: NOW DECLARED], a conservative firebrand from Ohio. … But the congressman… [insisted in January that] he does not want the job …
   12. Neither Mr Biggs nor Mr Jordan are seen as lawmakers who could be acceptable to a majority of their colleagues as speaker. …
   13. Candidates for speaker must be nominated by members of the House, but they don’t need to be elected lawmakers of the chamber, according to the US Constitution.
   14. The chamber has always elected a House member as speaker, but it has seen nominations of non-House members in the past, including Joe Biden in 2019.
   15. Could we hear a Republican nominate Donald Trump for speaker … ?
   16. MIKE: Sounds like it could have been written yesterday, right?
   17. MIKE: Note this excerpt from Wikipedia — Speaker of the United States House of Representatives — From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: “The speaker of the United States House of Representatives, commonly known as the speaker of the House, is the presiding officer of the United States House of Representatives. The office was established in 1789 by Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. The speaker is the political and parliamentary leader of the House and is simultaneously its presiding officer, de facto leader of the body’s majority party, and the institution’s administrative head. …”
   18. There is this article from CBS News that is new, but not so different that I need to excerpt it: Who could be the next speaker of the House? Republicans look for options after Kevin McCarthy’s ouster; By Melissa Quinn | CBSNEWS.COM | Updated on: October 4, 2023 / 8:01 PM / CBS News
   19. MIKE: FYI, in the new CBS article, Kevin Hern (R, OK-CD 1) is also in the current speculative mix.
   20. You hear it a lot in the context of a Speaker election: The Speaker does not have to be a member of Congress. But that curiosity, if you will, is never really explored except for the horrific possibility of Donald Trump becoming Speaker.
   21. MIKE: Going to toss out a strong improbability that is still an actual possibility: A fusion party speaker.
   22. MIKE: Let’s say that the bid for Republican House Speakership goes to multiple ballots and leaves the Republican Party still riven by divisions. And let’s further stipulate that after evidence of such destructive division, that even moderate Republicans — short of changing parties, caucusing with the Democrats, and/or voting for Hakeem Jeffries — are willing to discuss a candidate that Democrats could vote for with certain conditions.
   23. MIKE: What if this candidate is not a currently an elected politician or currently serving judge, or some other “statesman-like” figure that members of both feel they could trust?
   24. MIKE: This person might be selected with the promise to be as non-partisan as possible, instead being a trusted adjudicator between the parties and House parliamentarian. Might this open a door to a historic and unprecedented compromise for the position of Speaker of the House?
   25. MIKE: We’ve been using the word “unprecedented” a lot over the past 7 or 8 years. Maybe an arrangement like this might — if implemented — become an unprecedented precedent that both parties decide they can ultimately live with.
   26. MIKE: Wouldn’t it be interesting to find out?
   27. ANDREW: I’ll throw my hat in the ring. My qualifications are that I hate both major parties, and both of them hate me. I wouldn’t play favorites, and both parties could blame me whenever something goes wrong. It would be perfect.
   28. ANDREW: Seriously, though, I do think there’s a good chance that every Republican nominee for the Speakership is going to be too divisive. Either too cozy with Trump for moderates, or not far enough to the right for the proto-fascists. And the fact that McCarthy was recalled anyway is proof enough that the Democrats can take advantage of a divided Republican Party (so long as they can do it to serve the status quo, in my experience). They piggybacked off of the far-right to push McCarthy out; it does seem to me like they could do the same with the moderates to push a compromise candidate.
   29. ANDREW: The problem is that that compromise candidate would have to be able to stand up under pressure from the public, the media, and those proto-fascists I was talking about earlier. It’s not an enviable job, and there probably won’t be a whole lot of non-politicians who are interested because of that.
   30. MIKE: By the way, I was watching Lawrence O’Donnell and he reminded me of something. Jim Jordan has been accused of ignoring pedophilia complaints when he was a high school gym coach and is running for Speaker. An earlier Republican House Speaker, Dennis Hastert, is currently serving time in prison for a pedophilia charge.
   31. MIKE: There also used to be something called “the Hastert Rule.” This rule was that for the Republican conference to reach across the aisle, a majority of the conference had to be in favor. Republicans mostly still use that rule, but they don’t call it that anymore. In fact, to my knowledge, while they still use the rule, they have never publicly renamed it.
8. Biden administration waives 26 federal laws to allow border wall construction in South Texas; By VALERIE GONZALEZ | APNEWS.COM | Updated 10:53 PM CDT, October 4, 2023
   1. The Biden administration announced it waived 26 federal laws in South Texas to allow border wall construction on Wednesday, marking the administration’s first use of a sweeping executive power employed often during the Trump presidency.
   2. The Department of Homeland Security posted the announcement on the U.S. Federal Registry with few details outlining the construction in Starr County, Texas, which is part of a busy Border Patrol sector seeing “high illegal entry.” According to government data, about 245,000 illegal entries have been recorded so far this fiscal year in the Rio Grande Valley Sector which contains 21 counties.
   3. “There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” [DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas] stated in the notice.
   4. The Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act and Endangered Species Act were some of the federal laws waived by DHS to make way for construction that will use funds from a congressional appropriation in 2019 for border wall construction. The waivers avoid time-consuming reviews and lawsuits challenging violation of environmental laws. …
   5. Although no maps were provided in the announcement, CBP announced the project in June and began gathering public comments in August when it shared a map of the additional construction that can add up to 20 miles (32 kilometers) to the existing border barrier system in the area. Starr County Judge Eloy Vera said it will start south of the Falcon Dam and go past Salineño, Texas.
   6. “The other concern that we have is that area is highly erosive. There’s a lot of arroyos,” Eloy Vera, the county judge said, pointing out the creeks cutting through the ranchland and leading into the river.
   7. Concern is shared with environmental advocates who say structures will run through public lands, habitats of endangered plants and species like the Ocelot, a spotted wild cat.
   8. “A plan to build a wall through will bulldoze an impermeable barrier straight through the heart of that habitat. It will stop wildlife migrations dead in their tracks. It will destroy a huge amount of wildlife refuge land. And it’s a horrific step backwards for the borderlands,” Laiken Jordahl, a southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, said Wednesday afternoon.
   9. During the Trump administration, about 450 miles (724 kilometers) of barriers were built along the southwest border between 2017 and January 2021. Texas Governor Greg Abbott renewed those efforts after the Biden administration halted them at the start of his presidency. …
   10. In a statement Wednesday, CBP said … “Congress appropriated fiscal year 2019 funds for the construction of border barrier in the Rio Grande Valley, and DHS is required to use those funds for their appropriated purpose,” the statement said. “CBP remains committed to protecting the nation’s cultural and natural resources and will implement sound environmental practices as part of the project covered by this waiver.” …
   11. “A border wall is a 14th century solution to a 21st century problem. It will not bolster border security in Starr County,” U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar said in a statement. “I continue to stand against the wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars on an ineffective border wall.”
   12. Political proponents of the border wall said the waivers should be used as a launching pad for a shift in policy.
   13. “After years of denying that a border wall and other physical barriers are effective, the DHS announcement represents a sea change in the administration’s thinking: A secure wall is an effective tool for maintaining control of our borders,” Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said in a statement. “Having made that concession, the administration needs to immediately begin construction of wall across the border to prevent the illegal traffic from simply moving to other areas of the border.”
   14. MIKE: So the Biden administration’s defense has been that money previous designated by Congress for this stretch of border wall must be used for its intended purpose … unless Congress changes its mind in the near future, which seems unlikely until at least 2025.
   15. MIKE: This position would be consistent with arguments and legal challenges made by Democrats and liberal-leaning organizations during the Trump regime, and you can’t play by two sets of rules.
   16. ANDREW: Without an act of Congress, the funds may need to be used for their intended purpose, but I doubt the earmarking was so thorough as to prevent the funds from being used on feasibility studies, materials testing, environmental consultations, et cetera. Even failing that, the Biden administration could have refused to waive the twenty-six federal laws standing in the way. Surely if we want to argue for following the rules, refusing to sidestep federal law is the most appropriate approach. 
   17. ANDREW: Biden and Mayorkas have plenty of ways to stop this unethical, immoral construction, but they are choosing not to. They choose this because Democratic electoral strategy relies on promising to stop Republican cruelty, then pretending it’s impossible or impractical to actually follow through. If they actually used their power to stop Republican cruelty on any major scale, Democrats would have to promise instead to do the hard work of changing the status quo, promises they wouldn’t be able to lie their way out of. Promises that, if kept, would alienate their power base of the rich and influential — meaning the end of the Democratic Party as we know it. No, it’s much easier to say their hands are tied, and write this into the next fundraising email.
   18. MIKE: I think your analysis of the politics of the situation has a point. With Republicans constantly crying about the southern border and the lack of a border wall, this is potentially neutralizing a campaign issue.
9. A Bold Challenge to Chinese Aggression Succeeded. What Does That Mean?; By Fred Kaplan | SLATE.COM | Oct 04, 20232:17 PM
   1. When the Philippine Coast Guard removed a Chinese barrier in a contested stretch of the South China Sea last week, some observers feared it might light a fuse to war. It didn’t—and it’s worth examining why it didn’t, because we may soon see similar challenges to China’s dominance in the region.
   2. Initial reports of the removal—which happened on the orders of the Philippines’ President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.—cited worries that Chinese President Xi Jinping might react with some escalatory counteraction. But, so far anyway, he has not.
   3. Marcos’ action was legally and morally proper. The Chinese barrier clearly violated international law and blocked the movement of Philippine fishing boats. Still, Manila has rarely—and, in the past decade, has never—challenged Beijing’s territorial claims so boldly. It’s an open question whether Xi will now double down on his claims or settle into a more “rules-based” coexistence.
   4. After the Philippine Coast Guard cut the rope that held the barrier in place, a commentator and former military officer in Beijing, Song Zhongping, denounced the move as “a serious threat to China’s national sovereignty and security,” adding, “China must take decisive measures to put an end to the Philippines’ provocation.”
   5. However, a spokesman for China’s foreign minister was less bellicose, saying merely, “We advise the Philippines not to cause provocation and cause trouble.” The barrier was carted away.
   6. China’s disputes—not only with the Philippines but with most other countries in the area—have been going on since the end of World War II, when Beijing’s rulers drew an “11-dash line” delineating almost the entire South China Sea as its territory. (When the Communist Party took over China in 1949 and the former rulers retreated to Taiwan, this was revised to a nine-dash line.) The claims, from all parties, intensified in 1969, when a geological survey first discovered “substantial energy deposits” in the sea.
   7. Still, few took any of this as a source of danger—for one thing, China had few resources to back up its position—until 1996, when three Chinese naval vessels engaged a Philippines gunboat in a 90-minute battle over Capones Island in the Mischief Reef, part of the Spratly Islands chain, about 100 small islands claimed by Manila.
   8. President Bill Clinton helped mediate a stand-down, then signed the US–China Military Maritime Consultative Agreement, which established a forum to discuss these sorts of disputes, while also reviving a U.S. military treaty with the Philippines. Tensions calmed further in 2002, when China and 10 Asia-Pacific countries signed the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea.
   9. Still, China kept pressing its claims, blocking other countries’ fishing boats and impeding maritime passageways generally. At the same time, though, Chinese economic growth was beginning to boom; U.S. firms were finding investment too lucrative to let some complaints about unfair trade practices or improper incursions across obscure maritime borders get in the way.
   10. When Barack Obama became president in 2009, he announced a desire to pivot from the ancient squabbles of the Middle East to the more vital challenges and opportunities of Pacific Asia. [MIKE: This is actually when the US began referring to the “Indo-Pacific” rather than just the Pacific theater.] Part of this meant trying to lure China into the international economy, hoping the benefits of its inclusion would help make it a good global citizen; part of it also meant containing China from persistently violating the rules. Or as Obama later put it in his memoir, he “settled on a strategy to thread the needle between too tough and not tough enough.”
   11. As part of this needle-threading, at a 2010 conference in Hanoi, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reiterated U.S. neutrality on sovereign matters in the South China Sea but also affirmed America’s interest in the “open access to Asia’s maritime commons”—a statement that Beijing took as a rebuke to its territorial claims.
   12. In 2013, the Philippines formally submitted its complaint about the Spratly Islands to an arbitration court in the Hague, citing the definition of proper maritime borders in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Though the U.N. had passed the law in 1994, this was the first claim to be adjudicated under its authority. (The U.S. never ratified the treaty and, as a result, has stayed out of these disputes, though it has backed its allies’ positions and criticized China’s.) [MIKE: As a general rule, the US rarely ratifies treaties that might impinge on its sovereign policy-making while often still trying to abide by terms of treaties signed by a president of the US.]
   13. In July 2016, the Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines, saying the nine-dash line was illegal. China ignored the ruling. In fact, in the months leading up to the decision, China started building artificial islands throughout the contested areas of the South China Sea. It then built military bases on those islands, then transported bomber aircraft and missiles to the bases. The idea, as a former senior China analyst in the CIA told me, was to “create facts on the ground” which no mere ruling from the Hague could displace.
   14. Manila’s severing of China’s floating barrier last week—the significance of the action—should be viewed in the context of this broader militarization.
   15. Under the rules of the Law of the Sea, a nation’s territory extends 12 nautical miles beyond its coast, but its Exclusive Economic Zone, or EEZ—the area where it has legal jurisdiction over maritime resources—extends to 200 nautical miles. (A nautical mile is about 1,852 meters.)
   16. The area where China placed its floating barrier is 124 nautical miles from the Philippines, well within Manila’s EEZ. It is 350 nautical miles from the closest internationally recognized strip of Chinese territory—well outside Beijing’s EEZ.
   17. When President Marcos, who is popularly known as “Bongbong,” ran for president of the Philippines in 2022, he promised to crack down on China’s aggression. (His father, who died in 1989, was the country’s kleptocrat-dictator from 1965 until he was deposed in 1986.) Bongbong’s predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, reveled in anti-American politics, rebelling against Washington’s onetime colonial rule, and cozied up to China, tolerating all manner of Beijing’s incursions until just before leaving office, when, after 200 Chinese ships sailed into the Philippines’ EEZ, he vowed to run a “suicide mission” into China’s harbors—a clearly empty threat.
   18. Marcos Jr. probably could not have done something so bold as cut loose a Chinese barrier without first renewing the strong ties to Washington. (It is not known whether President Joe Biden encouraged or even knew about the action ahead of time, but Biden has stepped up U.S. military cooperation with the Philippines.) President Donald Trump tried to reverse China’s unfair trade practices in a way that previous presidents hadn’t, but he did nothing about its territorial assertions (or about its more serious economic malpractice—intellectual property theft).
   19. Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, told me in an email last week, “U.S. support is giving Manila the confidence to confront China in ways they haven’t been willing to in the past.”
   20. This U.S. support may be giving Xi second thoughts about asserting China’s claims as brazenly as he has in the past. Biden and Xi are likely to hold a private face-to-face meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit next month in San Francisco. Both leaders are seeking ways to deal with their myriad interests—some conflicting, some converging—in ways that avoid either war or capitulation. What happens between now and then in the South China Sea may affect the tone and substance of that meeting. What happens at the meeting will certainly affect the tone and substance of future maneuverings in the South China Sea.
   21. MIKE: If this seemed a little lengthy, it’s because I considered it important enough to read the whole piece because anything I cut would confuse the context of other parts.
   22. MIKE: This is a slow-burning crisis that has been simmering for decades, but has only posed a serious potential for some sort of armed conflict in the region since China’s military buildup.
   23. MIKE: I consider China to be a rising, aggressively assertive, neo-imperial and neo-mercantilist power. And this story leads me to another interesting piece.
10. Peak China may pose peak danger; By Hugo Dixon | REUTERS.COM | October 2, 2023 / 4:02 AM CDT, Updated 3 days ago. Commentary By Hugo Dixon
    1. “When bad folks have problems, they do bad things.” So said Joe Biden in August when speaking about how China was a “ticking time bomb” because of its economic troubles. Experts are downgrading the country’s full-year growth target below an official 5% goal.
    2. But last month when in Vietnam, the U.S. president changed his tune. He said he thought China would not invade Taiwan precisely because the world’s second-largest economy was slowing down: “Matter of fact, the opposite — it probably doesn’t have the same capacity that it had before.” He added that Chinese President Xi Jinping “has his hands full right now”.
    3. It is not surprising that Biden is giving contradictory messages about how dangerous China is to its neighbours, with which the United States has been constructing a network of increasingly close security alliances. A glance through recent history suggests great powers are a threat whether they are rising, peaking or falling, says Victor Sebestyen, a historian.
    4. He points out that Germany, France, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire all fought wars before and after they peaked. Russia’s current war in Ukraine is a case of a declining power which has invaded its neighbour.
    5. That said, China may be especially dangerous if its power is in fact peaking. This is because Xi could enter a “now or never” mindset – believing that, if the People’s Republic waits too long to press its claims to Taiwan or large chunks of the South China Sea, the chances of mounting a successful military invasion will drop. Beijing is certainly riling its neighbours. For example, last week it installed a floating barrier by a rocky outcrop in the South China Sea claimed by the Philippines – which Manila promptly removed. …
    6. MIKE: The article goes on length at some length, citing history, economics, and past outcomes to make its point. I recommend it as an interesting read. Just click on the link.
    7. MIKE: But frankly, I felt that the most eye catching line of the article was this: “A glance through recent history suggests great powers are a threat whether they are rising, peaking or falling, says Victor Sebestyen, a historian.”
    8. MIKE: Because the thought that went through my mind was, is there any other time — in hindsight or with foresight — that a great power is not either rising, peaking or declining? Am I missing something, or does that pretty much cover all of the possibilities?
    9. MIKE: What historian Victor Sebestyen seems to be saying is that great powers are always a threat. Now, that may be true, but isn’t it interesting that, along with this statement, he doesn’t seem to have mentioned when great powers are not a threat?
    10. MIKE: As I said earlier, the article is otherwise interesting, fact-filled, and worth reading, but nothing else in it addressed that one part that truly puzzled me with its inclusion in in this opinion piece.
    11. ANDREW: He didn’t go into when great powers aren’t a threat because they always are. When you have a global socioeconomic system built on hierarchy and the wielding of power for self-enrichment, like capitalism is, “great powers” are always pushed to wield that power over others for their own gain. That’s threatening, no matter whether the great power in question is the US or China.
    12. History is full of examples of nations that gain riches and influence through conquest, and soon conquest is all that is holding their nation together. They can’t stop the pain and suffering they inflict upon the people they invade, otherwise their economy and society will fall apart. And inevitably, they run out of people to conquer, and they fall apart anyway.
    13. Great powers are almost always nations that seek to expand their own influence, if not by direct control over land and people, then by indirect control through economic and defense means. That agenda of expansion is what allows them to rise to “great power” status; without expansion, these nations could not expand their influence. And it is often nations that choose not to pursue this agenda that last the longest, or if they are conquered, are the most persistent in reforging themselves after their conqueror has collapsed. Consider Switzerland, or Cuba. Hardly great powers, but also hardly threats to anyone, and nations that have established their own places in the world that they are happy with.
    14. Nations that understand the dangers of expansionism and hierarchy are destined never to be great powers, but nor are they at risk of causing mass suffering on the scale that great powers so often do. They do not have the ability to bend other powers to their will, instead cooperating with them for mutual benefit, and when warranted, defending themselves and each other for no expectation of influence in return. In short, we need fewer great powers, and more equal ones. That is the only way to truly reduce the threat that the people of the world face.
11. IN OUR ONGOING COVERAGE OF THE NORDSTREAM SABOTAGE STORY: Key details behind Nord Stream pipeline blasts revealed by scientists; Researchers in Norway reveal further analysis of 2022 explosions as well as a detailed timeline of events. By Miranda Bryant in Oslo | THEGUARDIAN.COM | Tue 26 Sep 2023 16.24 EDT / Last modified on Wed 27 Sep 2023 05.47 EDT
    1. Scientists investigating the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines have revealed key new details of explosions linked to the event, which remains unsolved on its first anniversary.
    2. Researchers in Norway shared with the Guardian seismic evidence of the four explosions, becoming the first national body to publicly confirm the second two detonations, as well as revealing a detailed timeline of events.
    3. The recently discovered additional explosions took place in an area north-east of the Danish Baltic island of Bornholm about seven seconds and 16 seconds after the two previously known detonations.
    4. Using information from seismic stations in northern Europe and Germany, including the Swedish National Seismic Network and Danish stations on Bornholm, seismologists deployed advanced analysis techniques to observe and pinpoint the blasts. …
    5. Two clear seismic events, named Event S and Event N, were identified on 26 September 2022, soon after the attack. The first, on Nord Stream 2, occurred at 02:03:24 (UTC+2), and the second, on Nord Stream 1, at 19:03:50 (UTC+2).
    6. Norsar said there could potentially be further explosions buried in the data.
    7. The explosions made holes in both Nord Stream 1 pipelines and one of the Nord Stream 2 pipelines. By November last year, Swedish investigators had confirmed that the breaches were caused by man-made explosives.
    8. Investigations are continuing, but officials quoted in the US and German press have said the evidence points towards a Ukrainian-backed group, or a pro-Ukrainian group operating without the knowledge of the leadership in Kyiv.
    9. German investigators have focused on a 51ft rental yacht called the Andromeda, which was hired by a mysterious crew of five men and one woman, at least some of whom were travelling on false passports.
    10. Der Spiegel, which recreated the Andromeda’s journey, quoted investigators as saying the evidence all pointed at Kyiv’s involvement. There is debate, however, over whether a small crew of divers operating from a pleasure yacht would have been capable of carrying out the difficult, deep and slow dives necessary to place the explosives.
    11. A leaked US defence document, reported by the Washington Post, showed the CIA had been tipped off by an allied European agency in June 2022, three months before the attack, that six members of Ukraine’s special operations forces were going to rent a boat and use a submersible vehicle to dive to the seabed using oxygen and helium for breathing, in order to sabotage the pipeline. But the leaked US document said the planned operation had been put on hold.
    12. Other reports in the Scandinavian media have pointed to a cluster of Russian ships, with their identifying transponders turned off, in the vicinity of the blast sites in the days before the explosions. …
    13. Investigations by Denmark, Sweden and Germany are understood to be planned for publication in a joint study with Norsar. Authorities for all three countries declined to comment on the investigations. …
    14. MIKE: Even a year after the event, this is still a developing story.
    15. MIKE: Whatever you may think of the Ukrainians’ alleged involvement in this likely sabotage, consider under the circumstances that is a partly-Russian owned asset that was potentially a large source of revenue for Russia in its war against Ukraine. It can be reasonably argued that that made it a legitimate war target.
    16. ANDREW: That could certainly be argued, though it was also a key resource supply line for Germany, one of Ukraine’s Western allies. If it does become provable knowledge that Ukraine was behind the attack on the Nord Streams, Germany probably won’t be very happy with Ukraine. 
    17. ANDREW: At the time of the operation, maybe that was an acceptable risk, because I doubt anyone thought the war would go on for this long. But with Ukraine today still asking the West (including Germany) for military aid, aid that sometimes puts strain on these nations’ own defense readiness, those acceptable risks may turn out to be much more perilous than anyone thought.
12. New study on monkeys using stone tools raises questions about evolution; Monkeys in modern-day Thai forests create stone artifacts uncannily similar to those crafted by early humans — challenging the established narrative of human cultural evolution. by Saul Elbein | THEHILL.COM | 03/10/23 5:35 PM ET
    1. A new study published on Friday in Science Advances suggests the possibility that a critical hallmark of human tool use happened by accident — potentially blurring the line between tool use by early humans and our primate relatives. 
    2. The Thai monkeys produced stone artifacts “indistinguishable from what we see at the beginning of the [human] archeological record — what we see as the onset of being human,” said Lydia Luncz of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, a co-author on the study. 
    3. The monkeys — long-tailed macaques — seem to have made their artifacts by accident, not by design. But in many ways, that only makes the finding more disruptive. 
    4. Tool use in nonhuman primates is nothing new. Long-tailed macaques — the small, mischievous and social primates often seen in Southeast Asian cities and temple complexes — use stones to break through shells and get at the meat inside. …
    5. Macaques foraging on beaches choose out long, narrow and heavy stones — what anthropologists call an ‘axe hammer’ — to pop open oyster shells. … The Planck group found the first evidence of macaques adapting this seafood-foraging use of stone tools to another food: nuts. …
    6. In an abandoned oil palm plantation on a national park site, … they break open the palm fruit’s oil-rich pit between hand-wielded hammer rocks and a thick, flat stone that functions as an anvil. 
    7. Camera traps showed that when the nut-cracking monkeys miss a strike, the two stones bang together.
    8. That collision sometimes strikes a flake off of one of the rocks — something very similar to the toolmaking process archeologists call “knapping.”
    9. Ancient humans used knapping to break apart rocks to create an incredibly flexible set of tools — the earliest forms of which cannot be distinguished from the ones macaques made by accident.
    10. That points to a possibility that could throw a wrench into the established narrative, Luncz said: that “all the conoidal flakes we find in the archaeological record — deemed to be intentionally made — could be unintentional byproducts.”
    11. In many ways, the Science paper lays the groundwork for a more intuitive story of human evolution than the idea that stone flakes — and the human cultural flowering they enabled — sprung forth by deliberate invention.
    12. That narrative requires a lot of additional steps, Luncz said. It presupposes axe-swinging early humans with brains big enough to plan their “extraction” of the perfect flakes from rocks and hand-object movement sophisticated enough to deliver it.
    13. By contrast, the Planck team’s findings suggest another possibility — that the evolution of human tool use could have been more fitful and staggered.
    14. In one possible scenario, ancient humans — like modern macaques — could have first produced stone flakes as a byproduct as they bashed apart bones, nuts or shellfish with rocks.
    15. Then, far later — perhaps alongside some kill where they had used rocks to hammer open bones to get at the marrow within — early humans may have turned to these razor-sharp flakes, which would once have been discarded as trash, to begin cutting up meat.
    16. Or, as Luncz put it: “An accidental stone breakage could have led us down the evolutionary trajectory of making stone tools.” …
    17. The Planck study was controversial in part because it brushed against broader, entrenched debates over nothing less than what it means to be human.
    18. In particular, there is a long-standing debate over whether animal social learning can be described using a word as loaded, venerable and human-inflected as “culture.”
    19. Luncz was careful about using that word. But she noted that “nut cracking in primates is socially transmitted — a monkey in isolation doesn’t learn it. It’s our material culture that we use to recreate our history.” …
    20. In a bitter irony, macaques’ very social ingenuity and flexibility — a hallmark of primates — endangers attempts to preserve and learn from them. …
    21. [A]s the species’ wild, forest-dwelling populations break down — and their social memory with it — our ability to learn about our own deep origins is also slipping away. …
    22. ANDREW: Ah, to be a monkey, using stones to break open shells and nuts to get at the treats inside. A simpler life that I think many of us have imagined taking on at one point or another, even if just for a moment. If this study is any indication, there may be more similarities in our histories driving that than we thought.
    23. ANDREW: One part of the article we didn’t excerpt mentions that these monkeys’ habitat is being demolished for human land use, which pushes them into human spaces like parks, causing contact with humans that annoys us and gives the monkeys a bad reputation analogous to pigeons in European and euro-colonial nations.
    24. ANDREW: That’s an interesting observation, because it calls attention to how species viewed as “pests” by humans are often left out of conservation efforts. That leaves them more vulnerable to extinction from human activity, which aside from being bad for those species, leads to changes in our ecosystem that we as humans then need to contend with. I say that for those reasons, it’s worth trying to conserve even pest species, because you never know which pests you’ll miss when they’re gone.
    25. MIKE: I heard many years ago that the only difference between a weed and a plant is that a weed is something you don’t want in your garden.
    26. But the main thoughts in this story are compelling. To me as a lay person, it makes more sense than protohumans just suddenly realizing that they can break up stones in certain ways and turn them into tools.
    27. MIKE: To expand on the described scenario a little bit, imagine using a stone to break up an animal bone to get at the marrow. A flake breaks off and in picking it up, the user cuts him or herself.
    28. MIKE: A firestick appears over their head (because there are no lightbulbs), and they realize that that flake might be useful in trimming off pieces of meat and fat that otherwise stubbornly stuck to bone, thereby slightly increasing the food potential of animal carcasses.
    29. MIKE: Just because current anthropological dogma resists such ideas doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Alfred Wegener developed the notion of “continental drift” as far back as 1912. He was initially ridiculed, but within my lifetime, in the 1960s, the theory of plate tectonics became accepted as fact. Wegener’s theory is now dogma.
    30. MIKE: I like the story of potential inventive incrementalism described here among the macaques.

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