Russia's Alexei Navalny arrested as 1,600 detained nationwide

Authorities arrest opposition leader at Moscow anti-Putin rally that was part of demonstrations across the country
Alexei Navalny and scores more arrested at anti-Putin rally – video

Marc Bennetts -Sat 5 May 2018

Russia’s opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, was one of about 1,600 of people detained by police during nationwide protests before Vladimir Putin’s inauguration for a fourth presidential term.

Navalny, 41, was arrested by police shortly after joining thousands of protesters at Moscow’s Pushkin Square, a short distance from the Kremlin. Officers carried the government critic from the landmark square by his arms and legs as he struggled and angry opposition supporters jeered and shouted. A police helicopter circled low, almost drowning out chants of “Putin is a thief! and “Down with the tsar!”

After the arrest, police said Navalny was arrested for disobeying police, an offence punishable by up to 15 days behind bars. He spent two months in prison last year on protest-related charges.
Navalny had called for the protests on Saturday prior to Putin’s inauguration on 7 May, a ceremony to mark the start of a new six-year term of office that will keep the former KGB officer in power until 2024.

“Putin is not our tsar,” Navalny said in an online video before the rallies. “He intends to manage Russia as his own personal property in the interests of his allies, his family, and a narrow ruling group that has seized power.”

Police in Moscow appeared to be taken by surprise when hundreds of protesters surged from Pushkin Square on to Strastnoi Bulvar, a key road that leads to Tverskaya, the Russian capital’s main thoroughfare. Traffic police diverted vehicles before riot police, some lashing out with batons, made repeated attempts to try and clear the road. There were isolated clashes as some protesters attempted to hold their ground.

Protesters shout anti-Putin slogans at a rally against the Russian president in Moscow’s Pushkin Square. Photograph: Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

Almost 600 people were taken into custody in Moscow, according to OVD.info, a rights organisation that monitors police detentions. One man wearing a red robe and a crown, an apparent mocking reference to “Tsar Putin”, was among those dragged from the crowd by riot police on one of the hottest days of the year so far in Moscow.

“I spent 18 years of my life living under the rule of [Leonid] Brezhnev, and I’ve already spent 18 living under Putin,” said Alexander, 63, an opposition supporter in Moscow. “Two terms was enough. He has no right to rule for so long. He’s never won a genuine election.”

Putin, who has now ruled Russia for longer than anyone since Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, took 76% of the vote at presidential elections in March that some international observers and opposition figures said were marred by vote fraud and intimidation.

Navalny was barred from standing over a fraud conviction that he says was trumped up to prevent him from challenging Putin at the ballot box. Russian authorities have also twice refused to allow the Kremlin critic to register a political party that could field candidates at parliamentary elections.

Moscow’s protest was the biggest in the Russian capital since last year, when opposition supporters repeatedly took to the streets in large numbers over allegations of massive corruption against Dmitry Medvedev, the prime minister.

Russian police detain protestors at a demonstration against Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg, Russia. Photograph: Dmitri Lovetsky/AP

Protesters also gathered on Saturday in scores of other towns and cities across Russia, including St Petersburg, where over 150 people were detained. About 160 people were also detained in Chelyabinsk, in central Russia, and 75 in Yakutsk, the capital of a diamond-mining region in north-east Russia. Many of those taken into custody were minors, reports said. Some opposition activists were reportedly beaten by police.

Police were assisted in Moscow by hundreds of members of the pro-Kremlin Molodaya Gvardia youth movement, reports said. Nationalists and people who claimed to be Cossacks also confronted protesters in the Russian capital. Some attacked protesters with leather whips, OVD.info reported. “I’m here to protect my country from those people who want to stage a Maidan,” said Alexei, a pro-government activist, referring to the violent protests that toppled Ukraine’s pro-Moscow president in 2014.

Denis Krivosheev, Amnesty International’s deputy director for eastern Europe and central Asia, said:
“The forceful dispersal of today’s opposition demonstrations is outrageous. The Russian authorities once again refused to authorise protest rallies, and then used this ban to crackdown on those gathered in Moscow and elsewhere.

“But what is worse is the total police inaction, which allowed the beating of protesters by unknown men in Moscow. On what grounds people in ‘Cossack’ uniforms were allowed to use force remains a question.”

Although demonstrations will have made unpleasant viewing for Putin just two days before his inauguration and six weeks before the World Cup kicks off in Moscow, the protests were far from the scale and intensity of the 2014 revolt in neighbouring Ukraine or the massive demonstrations that forced Armenia’s prime minister, Serzh Sargsyan, from office last month.

The protests were also far smaller than the rally that took place in central Moscowbefore Putin’s inauguration for a third term in May 2012. That was attended by tens of thousands of people and ended with violent clashes between riot police and protesters. Almost 500 people were arrested and it signalled the end of the Russian opposition’s anti-Putin coalition. “They ruined my big day. Now I’m going to ruin their lives,” Putin reportedly said after the 2012 protest, according to opposition figures citing Kremlin insiders.

Saturday’s opposition protests proved once again that Navalny has the ability to bring relatively large numbers of people on to the streets, but they also underlined that he has not experienced a groundswell of popular support that makes him a serious threat to Putin’s long-term grip on power. His supporters say that is partly because he is banned from state television, which carries out regular smear campaigns against Kremlin critics. Navalny has been accused by national television of working with the United States and Britain to bring down Putin, a claim that he has laughed off.

Russia: how Western condemnation lets Putin off the hook

The invisible competition between Russia’s various informal influencers will determine which route the Putin government will go down in the next six years. Clues as to how that competition is unfolding aren’t always easy to come by – but not long ago, at the Moscow State Institute for International Relations, I myself got a very telling glimpse.

by Gerhard Schnyder-May 4, 2018

( May 4, 2018, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) As Russians settle in for another six years under Vladimir Putin, they are waiting to find out how willing their government is to tackle the country’s pressing economic problems. This is hugely important for Russia, but also for the world. If the Russian economy improved, the Kremlin would be able to build its legitimacy on something other than nationalistic posturing and belligerent foreign policy, turning it away from what looks like a dangerous collision course with the West.

So far, the Putin government doesn’t seem keen to take the risk of announcing a bold economic programme. But in purely political terms, perhaps it doesn’t have to. The opprobrium and sanction of Western rivals provides ample material with which Putin can prop up his legitimacy.

The poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal provided the UK with a badly needed diplomatic triumph as it confidently declared that Russian government involvement was highly likely. And soon, the European Council, other European leaders and US President Donald Trump all lined up behind Britain’s diagnosis. Then came the latest chemical massacre in Syria, which immediately drew international condemnation of the Assad regime, and by the same token of Russia, its foremost backer. A Russian veto once again blocked the UN Security Council from censuring Assad, but drew the ire of other permanent members, especially the US.

Now, much of the flack Russia takes for its foreign policy and its alliances with governments like Assad’s may or may not be justified. But the West completely misses the effect it has on the dynamics of Russian domestic politics – and how international criticism is shaping the strategic direction of Putin’s fourth term.

Western observers often think of Russia as a one-party state headed by an undisputed and all-powerful dictator. But in reality, it’s something very different. Despite limited democratic competition and electoral choice, Putin still depends on some form of legitimacy and popular support. And given that Russia is a relationship-based society through and through, even he depends on a network of formal relationships that impose certain informal rules – the so-called Sistema. The direction of policies is determined not by who’s in government, but by whichever informal group close to the Kremlin can get Putin’s ear.

This “invisible” political competition is what the West overlooks. And it’s particularly relevant when it comes to the economy. After years of economic stagnation and decreasing real wages, the Russian population is losing patience. To preserve its legitimacy, the government has two options: fix the ailing economy and provide increasing living standards and perspectives to its citizens, or ask the population for sacrifices by portraying the country as being in the midst of an epic clash of civilisations in which the president defends Christianity against both the Muslim world and the hostile and depraved West.

The invisible competition between Russia’s various informal influencers will determine which route the Putin government will go down in the next six years. Clues as to how that competition is unfolding aren’t always easy to come by – but not long ago, at the Moscow State Institute for International Relations, I myself got a very telling glimpse.

The beauty contest

Held at the institute this spring, the Stolypin Forum was organised by presidential candidate Boris Titov to promote his economic strategy. Titov is Putin’s Business Ombudsman, a role for which the Spectator magazine dubbed him the “anti-corruption tsar”. The forum brought together a wide range of reformists (Titov among them), opposition figures, religious leaders, and people close to Putin’s governing coalition to discuss an economic growth strategy for Russia.

The event can be seen as a continuation of what the Financial Times has dubbed a beauty contest among three different economic advisors: Putin’s prime minster, Dimitry Medvedev, former finance minister Aleksei Kudrin, and Business Ombudsman Boris Titov, all of whom have developed their own reform strategies.

Medvedev’s strategy was considered the least ambitious and hence the most politically feasible, but all indications are that he has since fallen out of Putin’s favour, which reduces the chance that his strategy will be implemented. Kudrin’s reform programme is reminiscent of the US-led liberalisation policies of the Yeltsin era; he first presented it in January 2017 at the Gaidar Forum – a gathering named after the neoliberal reformer responsible for the radical “Shock Therapy” reforms of the early 1990s. Titov’s proposal, meanwhile, is an ambitious and comprehensive catalogue of reforms spanning everything from monetary policy to the judiciary to education and skills. The long-term goal is to break Russia’s reliance on the export of raw materials and turn it into an exporter of high-value-added products.

But while the Stolypin Forum was meant to stay focused on economic issues, the Skripal Row and the Western reaction visibly dragged it off course.

Several discussions were hijacked by more extreme panellists, who deployed aggressive nationalistic rhetoric and conjured an image of the West as a dangerous enemy, hellbent on bringing Russia to its knees. Many clearly invoked the extreme nationalist school of thought known as Eurasianism, a tendency that has greatly influenced certain sections of the Russian elite since the fall of the Soviet Union.

In this nationalistic climate, liberal reformers are struggling to make their voices heard. Defending economically and socially liberal views is associated with the same ideas that were – according to some – deliberately deployed to bring Russia to its knees in the 1990s. From there, it’s only a small step to considering would-be economic modernisers “un-Russian” and even traitors.

The chillier Russia’s diplomatic relations with the West get, the more likely it becomes that militarists and Eurasianists will beat out economic reformers in the race to influence Putin’s thinking. As a result, he may well choose to safeguard his legitimacy by sticking to the “collision course” option rather than by tackling complex economic issues.

Given the scale of Russia’s ventures abroad and the millions of people they affect, the stakes in this invisible competition are uncommonly high. That means the West must avoid fuelling the more extreme elements in Russia’s domestic political competition at the expense of reformers. The British diplomatic reaction to the Skripal affair may have looked like an easy victory for a weak government in search of positive press, but the confrontational approach it entailed may turn out to be good news for Russia’s warmongers.

Gerhard Schnyder, Reader in International Management, Loughborough University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. 

Karl Marx’s German home town celebrates his 200th birthday with a Chinese statue — and a struggle

Trier, Germany is hosting a party for the 200th birthday of philosopher Karl Marx, but some see one of the gifts as cause for concern. (Sarah Parnass , Griff Witte/The Washington Post)

by Griff Witte and Luisa Beck May 5 at 7:02 PM

TRIER, Germany — Nearly two centuries ago, the 17-year-old son of a vineyard owner left this tranquil riverside city on the edge of the Prussian empire to make his way in the world — and maybe shake it up a bit. 

On Saturday, after inspiring untold numbers of revolutions, repressive regimes and ponderous grad school seminars, Karl Marx came home. In bronze. By way of China. And, oh, he is now 18 feet tall.

The unveiling of a two-ton ­Chinese-funded sculpture to honor the German philosopher on the 200th anniversary of his birth brought scads of tourists to Trier, where his life began. 

While here, they took in Marx lectures, toured the Marx family home and bought vast quantities of marked-up Marx souvenirs. (The Marx rubber duckies — wild gray mane framing bright orange bill — were a particular hit.)

Souvenir “zero euro” bank notes feature a portrait of German philosopher and socialist Karl Marx. (Harald Tittel/AFP/Getty Images)

 Marx-inspired rubber duckies hold one of his most famous works, “Das Kapital.” (Harald Tittel/AFP/Getty Images)

 The capitalist exploitation of his birthday may not have thrilled the co-author of the Communist Manifesto. But the proponent of proletarian uprisings might have been cheered by another facet of the celebration: the struggle. Not of the class variety. But a bitter one, nonetheless.

[The four most ridiculously capitalist souvenirs for sale at Marx’s birthday party]

The city is split over whether a democratic nation such as Germany should be erecting monuments that are paid for, designed and built by an authoritarian one such as China. The divide spilled into the streets Saturday with dueling demonstrations for and against the monolith, forming a noisy backdrop to the statue’s official dedication.

On one side, hundreds of flag-waving members of Germany’s fringe Communist Party cheered. On the other — separated by barricades and riot police — an eclectic group of Free Tibet, anti-fascist and pro-human rights protesters chanted and blew whistles in a vain effort to drown out the speeches.

City officials say they see nothing wrong with the statue’s unusual path to Trier’s downtown. The statue, Trier Mayor Wolfram Leibe insisted Saturday, is not about the “glorification” of Marx. Instead, he told the large crowd that had assembled under a cloudless blue sky, it is meant to spark conversation — and strengthen international bonds.

“It’s a gesture of friendship,” he said.

But others in Germany — a nation divided for nearly a half-century due in no small part to its native son’s theories — say city officials are being naive about a project that neatly aligns with Chinese state propaganda.

“There’s no doubt that there’s a political agenda behind it,” said Christian Soffel, a Chinese studies professor at Trier University.

Anti-communist groups demonstrate at the statue’s unveiling. (Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images) 

Supporters of the German Communist Party near Karl Marx’s sculpture in Trier. (Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images)

 How important Marx is to that agenda was underlined by the visit of two senior Chinese officials who spoke at Saturday’s ceremony. The officials — the country’s ambassador to Germany and the deputy chief of the Information Ministry, the government’s propaganda arm — each paid tribute to Marx, although not in terribly Marxian terms. 

The ambassador, Shi Mingde, said China had “modernized” Marx’s theories — a veiled reference to the country’s hearty embrace of much of modern capitalism — and boasted that China is responsible for 30 percent of global economic growth. 

“For that,” he said, “we can thank Karl Marx.”

At the unveiling’s critical moment, Chinese and German officials together pulled back a red drape to reveal a rendering of Marx in full stride — a book clutched beneath his left arm, his right gently pressed to his signature frock coat. 

China had already held its own lavish event to honor the bicentennial. On Friday, President Xi Jinping heralded Marx as “the greatest thinker of modern times” at a ceremony to mark his birthday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. 

Xi, who recently pushed through constitutional changes that could allow him to stay in office indefinitely, has urged all Communist Party members to read Marx and adopt his theories as “a way of life.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks at an event marking Karl Marx’s birthday in Beijing on Friday. Xi heralded Marx as “the greatest thinker of modern times.” (Jason Lee/Reuters)

Xi’s German counterpart, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, showed markedly less affection with his own speech about Marx on Thursday. The philosopher was undeniably influential, Steinmeier said, and his ideas need to be discussed. But the country also cannot forget that his writings gave fuel to murderous regimes — and still do. 

“We shouldn’t fear Marx, but we don’t need to build any golden statues to him either,” Steinmeier said. 

Not so long ago, Germany was tearing down statues of Marx. An icon of communist East Germany, his likeness was scrubbed from many a town square after the country’s reunification under democracy and capitalism in 1990. 

And that is the way it should stay, said Dieter Dombrowski, who spent 20 months in an East German prison after getting caught trying to flee the country.

“Marx wrote the cookbook for communist dictatorships all over the world,” said Dombrowski, who now chairs an organization that advocates on behalf of those who were victims of such regimes.

He called the decision by Trier, in far western Germany, to allow China to build an enormous Marx statue “tragic and laughable all at once.” 

“In Trier, and in the West as a whole, no one read Marx. They don’t have a sense for the history,” he said. “It was all far away from them. But we know both his theories and how they were put into practice.”

Whether Marx would have approved of how his theories have been applied is the subject of fierce debate. Many defenders insist he should not be held responsible for the way his ideas were distorted for murderous ends decades after his death. And love him or hate him, there is no denying that the problems he identified — particularly the tendency of capitalism to create conflict between classes — remain relevant two centuries later. 

“The gap between rich and poor is getting wider — not only here in Germany, but in the U.S. and in many other countries,” said Wolfgang Bergmann, a retired locksmith whose billowing white hair and beard make him a dead ringer for the long-dead philosopher. 

Bergmann was drawn to Trier for the statue unveiling because of his own political convictions. “I’ve been a communist since 1971,” he said proudly.

But Bergmann is relatively rare in Germany, particularly in Trier — a heavily Catholic and somewhat conservative city where residents have no taste for revolution.

The same was true in Marx’s day. 

Having been raised in a middle-class family in a stately Baroque home, he left to attend university at 17 and never moved back. Much of his life was spent in exile, where his radical writings advocating the violent overthrow of the capitalist system were better tolerated than they would have in his native land. He died in London and was buried there. 

Karl Marx’s family home in Trier, Germany, has become a “euro store,” where everything from Chinese-made flip-flops to sunglasses can be bought with loose change. And the new Marx statue itself stares out at a hair salon. (Ronald Wittek/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

Modern-day Trier, with a population just north of 100,000, reflects little evidence that Marx’s ideas had much impact locally. Icons of capitalism — McDonald’s hamburgers, luxury watches, designer clothing brands — are on sale in the grand central square. Marx’s boyhood home, meanwhile, has become a “euro store,” where everything from Chinese-made flip-flops to sunglasses can be bought with loose change. The Marx statue itself stares out at a hair salon.

The city has long been conflicted about Marx’s legacy — a strife well-represented in the bookstore window across the street from the home where he was born. Unlike the home where he was raised, the bookstore has been converted into a museum. 

Owner Regina Ebel has assembled in the window a motley collection of Marx books, Marx busts and even an antique that she claims, with a wink, could be Marx’s baby carriage. But she also has a cage stuffed with books and sealed with red tape — a protest of Marx-inspired oppression. 

Her own views are similarly ambivalent. She would not mind a Marx statue in town. It’s just the size that bothers her. 

“A statue on a human scale is fine,” she said. “But this is propaganda.” 

If the tourists who have descended on Trier have such a concern, it hasn’t shown. Many are Chinese, and Soffel, the professor, said he believes the city’s true goal in allowing the statue to be built is to up their number. 

“For a city like Trier, which has no real industry aside from wine and tourism, it’s quite attractive to draw more Chinese,” he said. 

Early indications suggest the strategy is working. At Trier Souvenir, around the corner from the spot where the statue was unveiled, the shop was doing a brisk business Saturday in all things Marx.

The ducks were going fast at 6.90 euros (or $8.25) apiece. The “zero euro” souvenir bank notes, adorned with Marx’s stern visage and selling for three euros ($3.59), had sold out — but they could still be preordered. Marx mouse pads, coffee cups and refrigerator magnets were also in demand. 

In between ringing up sales, 24-year-old Sarah Klein said she had not given much thought to the statue debate or to what Marx would make of it all. 

But she was sure of one thing: “It’s going to be good for business.”

The Perils of a Putsch in Venezuela

Encouraging a coup in Caracas will give Russia and China a foothold in the United States’ backyard.

A member of the national guard fires his shotgun at opposition demonstrators during clashes in Caracas on July 28, 2017. (Carlos Becerra/AFP/Getty Images)

BY BRIAN FONSECA-

 MAY 4, 2018, 12:20 PM

In recent months, high-ranking U.S. officials have been signaling to Venezuelan military leaders that they have Washington’s blessing to take the reins in Caracas. In a February speech ahead of his trip to Latin America, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, “In the history of Venezuela and South American countries, it is often times that the military is the agent of change when things are so bad and the leadership can no longer serve the people.”

Others have been blunter. Just a few days after Tillerson’s remarks, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R) took to Twitter to say that the world “would support the Armed Forces in #Venezuela if they decide to protect the people & restore democracy by removing a dictator.” And earlier this week, in a speech at Florida International University, Juan Cruz, U.S. President Donald Trump’s special assistant and senior director for western hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council, urged “the military to respect the oath they took to perform their functions.”

Giving the green light for a military coup is not only bad for America’s image; it is also a threat to U.S. strategic interests.

 That’s because encouraging a putsch in Venezuela could backfire and end up increasing Russian and Chinese influence in the Western Hemisphere.

The U.S. officials praising the prospect of a military takeover seem to disregard the fact that U.S.-Venezuelan military relations are virtually nonexistent today. U.S. defense contacts with Venezuela declined sharply in the years following the rise of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in 1999. Meanwhile, the Russians, Chinese, and Cubans have replaced the United States as the primary sources of financial, technical, and material support to the Venezuelan military. The mere threat of a coup in Venezuela could be enough to rally the military around hard-liners and compel U.S. rivals to consider their preferred alternatives to the Maduro regime as collapse becomes imminent. Rivals with economic, political, and geostrategic interests in Venezuela, such as Russia and China, are far better positioned than the United States to influence the Venezuelan military during any transition.

Moscow and Beijing will be especially interested in cultivating ties with the top brass in Caracas if they sense that offering economic and political support to a new Venezuelan leadership could change the mineral-rich country’s trajectory from an economic basket case to an economically and politically stable authoritarian regime. In such a situation, Russia, China, and Cuba — in some formal or informal configuration — could abandon the flailing and ineffective leadership of President Nicolás Maduro and back a military regime in uncomfortably close geographic proximity to the United States.

The current situation in Venezuela is untenable. Oil production is declining, public unrest is spreading, inflation is up nearly 13,000 percentage points in the last two months, and military and civilian elites are becoming increasingly dissatisfied. Moreover, other countries in Latin America that stood by Chavez in the past are now denouncing Maduro. Pressure for regime change is growing.
For now, the most viable path to change involves the military in some way. However, it would take years for the United States to rebuild substantive relations with the Venezuelan armed forces after almost two decades of estrangement. Making matters worse, Washington may not be prepared to provide the economic and security assistance or the political backing in international forums like the United Nations and the Organization of American States that would be needed to sustain a new military regime. Supporting such a regime would also create tensions between the United States and its allies in the Western Hemisphere and around the world, while legitimizing authoritarian political models at a time when China and Russia are already challenging the efficacy of democracy.
Russia, China, and Cuba all currently have extensive and friendly relations with the Venezuelan military.

 Indeed, Russian, Chinese, and Cuban engagement with the Venezuelan armed forces has increased exponentially over the last decade — Venezuelan personnel have been attending Russian and Chinese military schools for years, and Venezuela is the top buyer in Latin America for Russian and Chinese military equipment. As for the Cubans, their security forces started providing technical assistance on the ground to the Venezuelan military shortly after the last — arguably U.S.-inspired — coup attempt in 2002.

In the event of a coup, these existing ties mean that the priorities of Moscow, Beijing, and Havana will likely prevail over Washington’s in managing a military transition. Moscow has experience in this regard. Russia and the Soviet Union before it supported the rise and maintenance of authoritarian regimes in Latin America — including Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Fidel Castro in Cuba, and military dictators such as Juan Velasco Alvarado in Peru.

The situation in Venezuela could also be an opportunity for Russia and China to expand their emerging strategic partnership with nations in the Western Hemisphere. Both countries are increasingly using their military ties to counter U.S. influence around the world. Russian and Chinese defense officials even discussed forging a strategic partnership in a series of recent meetings. For now, their relations have been limited to bilateral meetings of key leaders and joint military exercises. Still, that should be enough to give U.S. policymakers pause.

 A coup in Venezuela would be a chance for China and Russia to collaborate on an issue far away from their own spheres of influence.

 If successful, it would give them greater access to Venezuelan mineral resources as well as a military footprint in Latin America. China would likely be a silent underwriter, as it has been hesitant to openly challenge the United States in Latin America so far. Still, Beijing could provide much-needed political and economic support. Russia might flex its muscles more visibly. Both would likely avoid sending troops to support a military regime in Venezuela. However, there could be an increase in arms and equipment transfers, technical training, and Russian security contractors on the ground in Venezuela, much like what Russia has done in Syria.

At the moment, there is no indication that Russia, China, or Cuba, together or independently, are calling for a coup in Venezuela — but the United States is. U.S. policymakers should think twice before ceding space in the region to Washington’s geopolitical rivals.

A coup would not only pose a strategic threat; it would also harm U.S. economic interests. If a military regime propped up by Russia or China emerges in Venezuela, then it’s likely that the last remaining U.S. oil companies operating in Venezuela, namely Chevron and Halliburton, would be forced out and replaced by Russian and Chinese firms. Moscow and Beijing would also gain greater influence over other Latin American countries. Ultimately, it could lead to the emergence of authoritarian regimes across Latin America backed by Russia and China, which would increase tensions with the United States while cementing the influence of U.S. rivals in the region. In a worst-case scenario — the United States and its rivals could find themselves at war in the Western Hemisphere.

Policymakers praising the virtues of military coups should remember the many historical examples of armed intervention in Latin America that have come back to haunt U.S. leaders — Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973, Argentina in 1976. And they should consider the longer-term implications of a rival-backed regime across the Caribbean before encouraging a Venezuelan military intervention.

N.S.A. Triples Collection of Data From U.S. Phone Companies

The National Security Agency collected last year three times the phone and text message records it did the year before, a new report said on Friday.CreditSait Serkan Gurbuz/Reuters

By Charlie Savage-May 4, 2018

WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency vacuumed up more than 534 million records of phone calls and text messages from American telecommunications providers like AT&T and Verizon last year — more than three times what it collected in 2016, a new report revealed on Friday.

Intelligence analysts are also more frequently searching for information about Americans within the agency’s expanding collection of so-called call detail records — telecom metadata logging who contacted whom and when, but not the contents of what they said.

The new report — an annual set of surveillance-related statistics issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — did not explain why the number of records increased so dramatically. But in an interview, Alex Joel, the office’s chief civil liberties officer, said the N.S.A. had not reinterpreted its legal authorities to change the way it collects such data.

He cited a variety of factors that might have contributed to the increase, potentially including changes in the amount of historical data companies are choosing to keep, the number of phone accounts used by each target and changes to how the telecommunications industry creates records based on constantly shifting technology and practices.

“Based on what we have learned from this data, we expect it will continue to fluctuate from year to year,” Mr. Joel said.

Still, the large and growing volume of data gathered shows that the N.S.A. continues to collect significant amounts of information about Americans’ phone and text messages after changes made by Congress in a 2015 law, the USA Freedom Act, which overhauled how the N.S.A. can gain access to domestic telecom data.

That law ended a once-secret program by which the N.S.A. had systematically collected Americans’ domestic phone logs in bulk — billions of records per day. The program traced back to the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and was revealed in 2013 by leaks from Edward J. Snowden, the former intelligence contractor, setting off a wide debate over surveillance and privacy.

Though Congress ended that program, lawmakers still wanted the N.S.A. to retain its function: the ability to analyze links between people in search of hidden associates of terrorism suspects. So it authorized a new system in which the bulk records stay with the phone companies but the N.S.A. can get copies of all records of a target and everyone with whom a target has been in contact.

The phone companies turn over both whatever historical records they have for targets and for their associates, as well as new logs from calls and texts after the order. The system requires the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to agree that there is “reasonable, articulable suspicion” that the seed target is linked to terrorism.

In 2016, the first full year for which that replacement system was in operation, the government obtained orders to target 42 people and collected just over 151 million call detail records. In 2017, the government obtained orders for 40 targets. (The orders generate data for 180 days, so some of the 2016 orders kept generating additional data in 2017, and some of the 2017 orders may have been reauthorizations of expiring 2016 orders pegged to the same targets.)

After the N.S.A. put the record sets obtained from the telecoms into its databases, intelligence analysts queried that data using 31,196 search terms associated with Americans last year, up from 22,360 a year earlier.

The large volume of records generated from a relatively small number of targets is attributable to several factors. One is the exponential math associated with gathering the communications logs not just of targets, but of every person with whom a target has been in contact.

Another is that some conversations generate more than one record at phone companies. These apparently include back-and-forths via text messages, as well as calls involving cellphone users on the move, whose calls are handled by different cellphone towers.

Officials have also cautioned that some records gathered by the N.S.A. are duplicates: A call between an AT&T customer and a Verizon customer, for example, generates records at both companies.

The report listed several other notable statistics about surveillance activities. For example, it showed that the number of people whom the surveillance court granted approval to target with wiretaps for national-security purposes dropped somewhat, from 1,687 in 2016 to 1,337 last year.

By contrast, the number of targets for the N.S.A.’s warrantless surveillance program — noncitizens abroad whose communications are collected from American companies like Google — grew significantly, from 106,469 in 2016 to 129,080 last year.

The warrantless surveillance program also grew out of the once-secret post-Sept. 11 programs, and is now conducted under a law called Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. It has attracted controversy because when foreign targets communicate with Americans, the government collects those Americans’ emails and other private messages without a warrant, too. Congress reauthorized that law without major changes this year.

The report contains several statistics about how the government has used Americans’ information that it gathered without a warrant under Section 702. Analysts queried metadata harvested from that program for information about an American 16,924 times in 2017. That was down from 30,355 times the previous year; the report did not explain the drop.

F.B.I. agents did not open any criminal investigations into an American that had no connection to national security in 2017 based on Section 702 data, the report said. Nor did they scrutinize any communications in the Section 702 database that came up in response to queries for an American’s information when agents were working on a criminal case that had no connection to foreign intelligence.

But the report did not disclose how many times the bureau did either of those things when agents did deem their work to have a foreign intelligence or security link.

It also did not disclose the volume of Americans’ communications or metadata gathered by the N.S.A.’s work abroad, where its activities are regulated by Executive Order 12333, not the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and it is permitted to engage in bulk collection.

When Will Electric Cars Take Over The Roads?

The age of the electric vehicle (EV) will be here sooner than you think.

James Burgess Oilprices.com

May-04-2018

(LONDON Oilprice.com) - Out of 1 billion cars in the world, only 2 million are electric. But that will soon change, as costs diminish, and more governments encourage the adoption of EVs to cut carbon emissions and fight urban pollution.

According to Bloomberg, by 2040, 54 percent of all new car sales will be for EVs. Millions of new EVs will take a big bite out of oil demand and displace 8 million barrels of transport fuel (gasoline and diesel) every day.

But the biggest factor in the EV surge is what's under the hood...lithium ion batteries.

Bloomberg estimates that in the late 2020s, cheap battery technology will allow EV production to skyrocket.

The key is lithium, "white petroleum," which is quickly becoming the world's most sought-after mineral.

Jonathan More of lithium miner Power Metals Corp. calls it the largest commodity boom "in a generation." The world is going to need "mountains of lithium, from all over the world, to satisfy the global hunger for batteries."

A lot of those lithium batteries will be needed for EVs: in fact, major oil companies like Total SA have estimated that 20 million EVs will be on the road by 2030, and they'll need enough batteries to power 200 million cell phones. That's 1.2 million tons, six times current production levels.

With future demand like that, it's no wonder that miners like Power Metals are so bullish. With a 15,000m drilling program about to get underway on 3000 hectares, Power Metals is at the center of the Canadian lithium belt that could contain as much as 7.5 million tons of lithium.

Forget oil and gas; the future of energy belongs to lithium.

"Carpocalypse Now"

When EVs first started to roll off assembly lines, plenty of skeptics scoffed. EV sales were tiny and concentrated on the luxury car market.

But now that's all changing.

In March 2018, more than 40,000 EVs were sold in Europe, a 41 percent increase from last year. Total sales for the year were up 37 percent from 2017. European auto-makers like Volvo want to concentrate on EVs, and plan on electric cars and trucks covering 50 percent of all sales by 2025.

Porsche will be 50 percent EV by 2023. General Motors and Toyota want to sell 1 million EVs per year by 2025.

The real juggernaut in the global EV market is China, where half of all EVs are currently in use. China will remain the chief EV market for the next 5-7 years, and demand is growing more quickly than expected.

Global EV sales are estimated to increase from 1.2 million in 2017 to 1.6 million in 2018 and 2 million in 2019. By 2025, some states have decreed that EVs must make up 15 percent of all new car sales.

The Boston Consulting Group released a report estimating that hybrids and EVS would cut the market share of internal combustion cars by 50 percent by 2030.

Whether you're an EV skeptic or a Tesla super-fan, it's impossible to deny that EVs are going to transform the international auto market…and trigger a massive increase in demand for lithium, the key ingredient in all EV batteries.

The White Gold

You can't have EVs without lithium ion batteries. That's why Tesla CEO Elon Musk built a "gigafactory" in the Nevada desert, where thousands of batteries are churned out every year.

The worldwide battery market was $5.1 billion in 2017, but it's to expand rapidly and could reach $58.8 billion by 2024.

Batteries have gotten a lot cheaper to make, but it all hinges on securing an adequate supply of lithium.

New lithium deposits are being uncovered all the time. One asset, Paterson Lake in Ontario, contains thousands of tons of lithium spodumene locked away in "pegmatite," hard-rock formations that are entirely different from the salt-brine lithium found in South America.

Power Metals Corp., which owns the Paterson Lake property, has launched an aggressive 15,000m drilling program. According to head geologist Dr. Julie Selway, the property contains a "staggering amount of pegmatite dykes" and a "huge potential of finding more lithium mineralization."

Along with firms like Nemaska Lithium and Quantum Minerals Corp., Power Metals (PMC) is at the forefront of Canada's lithium boom.

Together with new production in South America, Australia and Europe, Canada will help feed the world's lithium demand and facilitate the surge in EVs by the 2020s.

When EV demand began picking up in 2015, it triggered a bull market for lithium. Prices shot up as battery manufacturers started buying up all the lithium they could find.

Lithium prices remained strong in early 2018, and capital is flooding into lithium projects all over the world.

A lot of the money is coming from China, the world's leading battery manufacturer. Capital is seeking out lithium properties in South America, as Chinese companies hope to secure lithium supplies to feed EV battery growth.

A Chinese investment group recently acquired Lithium X for $265 million, taking over that company's Argentinian property at the center of South America's "lithium triangle."

Chile and Argentina are the world's no. 2 and no. 3 lithium producers, and production in Argentina is expected to triple by 2019 to more than 15,000 metric tons per year.

So aggressive has the Chinese push into South American lithium been, the Chileans have started to push back, warning one Chinese firm away from attempting to buy one major lithium producer, worth $5 billion.

Money is flooding into the lithium sector. And lithium miners like Power Metals will need every penny to fuel surging battery demand.

Fueling the Fire

According to one August 2017 analysis, the global lithium ion battery market could reach $93 billion by 2025, growing at a rate of 17 percent each year.

To feed that colossal demand, the world is going to need lithium. A lot of it.

Miners in Canada and South America will bear the burden. Power Metals could potentially turn Canada into a major lithium producer, and it's not alone: other companies like Nemaska Lithium have also made big discoveries, riding them to billion-dollar valuations.

Battery manufacturers feeding the EV market will rely upon new sources of lithium production. The surge of investment into lithium mining could turn into a flood.

Pretium Resources (NYSE:PVG):

This impressive Canadian company is engaged in the acquisition, exploration and development of precious metal resource properties in the Americas.

Additionally, construction and engineering activities at its top location continue to advance, and commercial production is targeted for this year.

The company's modest market cap and stock price make it an appealing buy for investors. Pretium has an impressive portfolio and if you can catch the stock while the price is right, there could be huge opportunity for upside.

Newmont Mining Corp (NYSE:NEM)

Founded over 100 years ago, Newmont Mining Corporation is one of the leading mining companies in the world. The company holds assets in Peru, Australia, Ghana, Indonesia, Mexico, and around the United States.

Primarily focusing on gold and copper, Newmont has steadily carved out a name for itself among those in the industry.

Newmont has had an excellent start to 2018, and it is set to keep up the pace as burnt bitcoin buyers move back to gold and silver.

Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd (NYSE:AEM)

Canadian based miner, Agnico Eagle Mines is an especially noteworthy company for investors. Why? Between 1991-2010, the company paid out dividends every year.

With operations in Quebec, Mexico, and Finland, the company also is taking place in exploration activities in Europe, Latin America, and the United States.

This is certainly a company with tremendous potential that grows better by the day.

Investors have certainly taken note. In the past month, Agnico has seen its share prices climb steadily, and 2018 looks to be shaping up to be a promising year.

Turquoise Hill Resources (NYSE:TRQ)

is a mid-cap Canadian mineral exploration and development company headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. Its focus is on the Pacific Rim where it is in the process of developing several large mines.

The company mines a diversified set of metals/minerals including Coal, Gold, Copper, Molybdenum, Silver, Rhenium, Uranium, Lead and Zinc. One of the fortes of Turquoise hill is its good relationship with mining giant Rio Tinto.

Going forward, Turquoise's success at the giant Oyu Tolgoi project in Mongolia will be crucial to boost its lagging share price.

Cameco Corporation (NYSE:CCJ)

Cameco is one of the largest global producers and sellers of uranium and nuclear fuel.

Its operating uranium properties include the McArthur River/Key Lake, Cigar Lake, and Rabbit Lake properties located in Saskatchewan, Canada; the Inkai property situated in Kazakhstan; the Smith Ranch-Highland property located in Wyoming, the United States; and the Crow Butte property situated in Nebraska.

While many analysts see low uranium prices as a problem for miners, an OPEC like move from world uranium leader Kazakhstan to bump prices could benefit Cameco and its peers.

A strong push towards nuclear power from China, India and the Middle East could create further upside for this promising miner.

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