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One of the world's most famous political dissidents may die in a Russian prison this week.
Alexei Navalny has been on a hunger strike for almost three weeks over the authorities' refusal to let his own medical team examine him after he developed signs of tuberculosis. Now, one of his aides says Navalny is "close to death."
The fate of Vladimir Putin's most prominent critic — who was poisoned last summer, allegedly by state officials, treated in Germany, and then jailed upon his return to Russia — is being closely watched both inside and outside the country.
The US and Europe, as always, are issuing statements. As Navalny's condition worsened over the weekend, the White House warned that "there will be consequences" if Navalny dies on Russia's watch. The European Union demanded he get immediate access to independent medical professionals. The Kremlin, meanwhile, insisted that Navalny will not be allowed to die behind bars, but it also called him a "hooligan" for refusing to eat while sick.
The bigger question is what those consequences will be, and whether they really hurt Moscow in such a way that compels Putin to change his ways.
Until now, there has been little appetite in the West for tougher sanctions on Russia that could really choke the country's economy or ruling elites. Cutting off access to Russian sovereign debt would starve Russia of money, but also impact US and European investors. Sanctioning its oil or natural gas exports would have a crippling effect, but wreak havoc with global energy markets and potentially leave Europe — Moscow's main gas customer — in the cold.
What about inside Russia? Navalny isn't quite as popular domestically as he sometimes seems in the Western media. According to a recent poll, only 19 percent of Russians approve of his activities since he returned to the country. Compare that to Putin's own approval ratings, which have dipped a bit in recent months but still hover in the low sixties.
Still, Navalny's support is strongest among young, mostly urban Russians who braved subzero temperatures to come out in his support in January. They were the largest protests in Russia in years, even if they were quickly beaten back by a ferocious police crackdown. Navalny supporters now plan a much bigger rally on Wednesday, which will coincide with Putin's annual address to the nation. How many people will turn up?
Navalny is not the only contentious issue between the West and Russia nowadays. Over the weekend, the Czech Republic, a member of NATO, linked two Russian military intelligence agents to an explosion at a Czech arms depot in 2014. It just so happens that the two spooks in question are the same ones accused of the high-profile poisoning of a Russian dissident in the UK three years ago.
What's more, NATO is increasingly worried about the recent build-up of Russian soldiers at the border with eastern Ukraine. As fighting between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces flares, there is concern that the Kremlin may muscle in with its own forces.
So, what may we expect? If Navalny dies, Western governments will surely respond in some way. They could place Russian officials or oligarchs on sanctions lists related to human rights violations. But at a moment when the Kremlin seems to be testing the West's resolve yet again, are Brussels and Washington willing to go any further?
Putin is watching this at least as closely as we are.
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Ian Bremmer and Bill Maher discussed the global leadership of the United States compared to that of China on a recent episode of Real Time. "The level of corruption in China, the level of corruption in China, even the buildings and the rails you talk about - the average building the Chinese build lasts for 20, 25 years. In the United States, it lasts for 40 to 50. There's a reason why we are still the world's most powerful country," Ian argued. "I'm just saying China's not eating our lunch - that's all."
Ian and Bill agreed that Biden's decision to fulfill his promise to take US troops out of Afghanistan is an admirable achievement and a sound strategic move. "We have the ability to send in special forces, we have intelligence. If what you're trying to do is stop terrorism, you don't need to be on the ground," Ian explained. "And what you're trying to do is improve the lives of Afghan people. We're going to be the world's leading vaccine exporter in a few months. We can help them."
Ian Bremmer Discusses US Afghanistan Withdrawal with Bill Maher on Real Time youtu.be
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The Graphic Truth: Crypto-mining sucks up lots of power
April 19, 2021
As the price of Bitcoin has skyrocketed in recent months, so has the amount of energy that procuring it hogs. Research shows that Bitcoin "mining" now uses 80 percent more energy than at the start of 2020. Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates recently sounded the alarm on crypto, saying that he would not invest in Bitcoin because mining for the digital currency requires huge amounts of energy, much of which is powered by fossil fuels that harm the environment. So where does Bitcoin rank in electricity consumption compared to nations?
Even if the US, Europe, China, and India reduce carbon emissions at the rate they've promised, much climate damage has already been done. That shouldn't stop these and other countries from doing all they can to meet their net-zero emissions targets, but they also better start preparing for a world of people on the move.
Climate change will displace an unprecedented number of people in coming years, creating not just a series of humanitarian crises in many parts of the world, but lasting political, economic, and social upheaval as those of us who live on higher ground try to find a sustainable place for these climate refugees to live.
The importance of Teitiota
In 2013, Ioane Teitiota applied for asylum in New Zealand. His home on the Pacific island nation of Kiribati, he argued, would be underwater within 15 years. (He had scientific studies to back him up.) Isn't it my right as a human being to live on land, he asked, and why wait until the flood waters come?
New Zealand, unwilling to open the door to an unknown number of other asylum seekers, said no, and Teitiota then asked the United Nations to grant him the status of climate refugee. Last year, the UN Committee on Human Rights ruled that there was still time to organize the relocation of all Kiribati's people and refused his request.
But… the UN ruling did accept the principle that governments cannot return people to countries where their lives might be threatened by climate change. That argument establishes a basis for refugee rights.
Six feet above sea level
Kiribati, Teitiota's home, a string of 33 islands with a population of about 100,000 and an average elevation of less than six feet above sea level, will become the first "climate refugee nation" when rising seas submerge much of its territory, drop salt into groundwater, and destroy the coral reefs that provide natural barriers against storm surges.
Faced with the inevitable, Kiribati's government has plans to move its entire population hundreds of miles across open ocean to land it has purchased in Fiji. They will no longer be Kiribatians. They will become subject to the laws of their new country, and their rights remain vaguely defined. It's not clear how these tens of thousands of people will support themselves, because the forested hillsides they'll live on won't allow them to grow anything, though China has promised "technical assistance" in developing the land, and they won't have fishing rights.
Bangladesh
Now, multiply that problem by tens of millions of people. More than 45 million of Bangladesh's 161 million live in coastal areas prone to flooding. Studies estimate that rising seas alone will force as many as 18 million of them from their homes as their country loses 11 percent of its land over the next 30 years. The number and intensity of tropical storms that drench these people is already rising.
Where will those people go? Will they be welcome somewhere else? Will their human rights be respected?
The bottom line. This is not a Pacific problem or a South Asian problem. This drama will play out everywhere that seas are rising and weather patterns are changing. In other words, everywhere.
The world's wealthiest countries, those most responsible for the carbon emissions that created this storm, better have a plan for this.
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Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Hi, everybody, Ian Bremmer here, kicking off your beautiful spring week from New York City. A little Quick Take. I thought I'd talk today about Russia, going to be in the news this week. Putin doesn't like it when they're out of the news for too long, certainly plenty going on between the US and Russia right now.
I'd say, first of all, to start off, the relationship is in the toilet. We know this. It is the worst it's been since the early '80s. That was true even under Trump. Trump and Putin personally had a pretty good relationship, but Trump wasn't able to get anything really done for the Russians, because both the Republicans in Congress, key members of cabinet under Trump, massive amount of constraints on what Trump could actually do, whether it's trying to bring Russia back into the G7 or recognize Crimea as a part of Russia, or remove or reduce sanctions. None of that actually got done. In fact, the relationship deteriorated over the four years.
But now we've got Biden and the focus is of course, more on human rights. The focus is more on climate change, which means that Russia as a massive energy exporter and particularly in terms of their influence on Eastern Europe and Western Europe on the downstream for gas delivery, for example, something that Biden is much more focused on. So a lot more pressure on the Russians, and the Russians don't care. Their willingness to hit back and show that the Americans are not willing to take any significant risks to constrain the Russians is also fairly significant. And this is playing out in a number of ways.
And perhaps most importantly, for the media this week, will be Alexei Navalny. He has been in jail. He's still very much incarcerated, but has just in the last few hours, been moved to a hospital. Some doctors who have not been able to see him directly say that his health is in danger, that he could potentially die. I have no way of knowing whether that's true or not, but we do know the Russians tried, indeed did poison him before and could have killed him but did not because of some quick thinking medical response. And that, that means that their willingness to assassinate him certainly is there.
Now the consequences, they say ... Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor of Biden says that there will be consequences if Navalny dies in Russian custody. I think the consequences there would be, would be additional sanctions. But they probably wouldn't be all that great, certainly not more than the Russians would expect or be willing to tolerate. What's more interesting perhaps is that over the course of the next couple of days, Navalny's supporters are organizing nationwide demonstrations. They were planning on holding off until the summer, but they pushed it up, because of the health decline. And the date of this, on Wednesday, coincides with the date of Putin's annual State of the Union speech, which goes on for hours. And he takes all of these questions from the media, and he shows what a wonderful guy he is, and how he can talk about just about anything, because he, of course, is the absolute authority in Russia, and nothing he says can or will be used against him. He's not going to like a backdrop of big demonstrations, which means the potential for large scale arrests and violent repression is pretty high. That is going to indeed continue to worsen the relationship between the two countries as well as Russia and the Europeans. But I still don't think this is going to move the needle very much.
A couple of points here, one, all of the sanctions that the US have put against the Russians so far have paled in terms of response to Navalny, compared to what the US did to the Saudis following the Khashoggi assassination. There, you had 76 members of the Saudi government that reported directly into Mohammed bin Salman that were personally sanctioned. The US has done none of that to people that are close to Putin. In fact, they've assiduously avoided putting sanctions on any oligarchs that would embarrass or cause problems for Putin directly. And that's the message, right? I mean, the Russians know that the Americans are capable of doing that, and they also know that it would have major knock-on economic effects. So, Biden doesn't want to do that.
Also, I want to say that as much as it disturbs me, it even repulses me that Navalny is being treated, has been treated the way he is, there is no effective opposition in Russia. It is an authoritarian state. It is like China, and many other authoritarian governments in that regard. And there are many things the Russians have done that are far more brutal and consequential for human rights around the world, like the war, the intervention, the invasion in Georgia, like the cyberattacks against Ukraine, like the invasion into Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea, and much more impactfully and importantly, the little green men into Southeast Europe, where they continue to occupy territory, and where there has been a massive military buildup on the border just over the last couple of weeks. These are bigger deals.
The media and the Americans focus more on Navalny. He speaks English. He is sort of charismatic. He's tall. He's attractive. And I mean, he gives lots of interviews. And so, the Westerners like that. But these other stories affecting poor people that don't get the media time actually matter a lot more. And even there, the willingness of the US to engage seriously, the US was planning on sending ships to the Black Sea. They demurred. They decided against doing that because the Russians told the Americans that this was just two weeks of military exercises, and then they were going to stop. But they still occupy Ukraine. It's a sovereign nation. And the Americans indeed had said before, along with other countries, that if they got rid of the nuclear weapons that the sovereignty would be respected. That was a treaty. So much for that.
So, I mean, I think those are more significant things. Just like in Saudi Arabia, the war in Yemen has been much more consequential than Jamal Khashoggi. But Yemenis aren't writing for the Washington Post and Khashoggi was, so there you have it. I think that's significant. I mean, my friend, Mike McFaul, the former ambassador to Russia, and a very good guy, came out and posted that if Navalny is killed, that no leader that focuses on human rights, cares about human rights should ever meet with Putin again. That's wrong, and that's wrong because you have to meet with leaders that do repugnant things in a world where national security means that we are dependent on each other. There's mutually assured destruction that we don't want these much greater consequential issues to impact us.
And also, just the fact that we focus so much on these issues around consequential individuals, as opposed to masses of people that end up suffering so much is one of the big problems that we have in society today. And we'd all be much better off if we were spending a lot more time focusing on the occupation in Ukraine, for example. I do think that ultimately, even though the Russian/US relationship is not about to break, it's not about to explode. I didn't mention the cyberattacks yet, and we didn't do much in response to the cyberattacks on the US except that we engage in cyberattacks against Russia all the time. And our cyber capabilities are every bit as great as Russians on the United States. And so they hit us with SolarWinds, it's embarrassing. That becomes public. We're engaging in espionage all the time, and we're not destroying each other's critical infrastructure.
I think the bigger issue is the fact that Russia is a country in decline, that their economy is doing poorly, that that makes it worse for their pensioners. It makes it worse for the average Russian member of the middle class. It means that Putin's support levels, which were very high when they annexed Crimea have gone down, and they're likely to continue to. And that means that Navalny or not, there are going to be more demonstrations. There's going to be more willingness to go against the existing regime. At the same time that Putin has just forced through a law that says that he can basically be president through the 2030s, because heck, why not? It's not a real democracy. We can do whatever we want.
A sad state for an important country. Opportunities that were missed, the whole "who lost Russia debate" back in 1991. The Soviet Union collapsed and there was lots of ideas that the Russians would eventually integrate, become part of the United States. The Russians mishandled their reforms. The Americans didn't provide much support. And now we're in a situation where the relationship is very much back in cold war footing, except the Russians are much less consequential than they used. They still got lots of nukes though. We still have to pay attention to them. They can cause trouble in their country, and around their borders. And they are still doing that. And as a consequence, that's why we're talking about them today.
So that's it for me. Be safe, avoid fewer people. We're coming out of this. Talk to you soon.
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What We're Watching: Deadly clashes in Pakistan, Xi Jinping's calendar app, Parisian courts vs Macron
April 19, 2021
Pakistani radicals vs French cartoons: It's been a tumultuous week in Lahore, Pakistan's second largest city. After widespread protests broke out across the Muslim world late last year after Paris defended French publications' rights to publish satirical images of the Prophet Mohamed, the radical Pakistani Islamist group Tehrik-i-Labaik Pakistan (TLP), gave Pakistan's government until April 20 to expel the French ambassador, when it had planned nationwide demonstrations. When Prime Minister Imran Khan refused to meet their demands, more violence erupted across the country and authorities arrested the TLP leader — prompting TLP supporters to hit back by kidnapping six state security personnel in Lahore this past weekend. Authorities have now banned the TLP outright and are bracing for more violence in the coming days. France, meanwhile, has urged all of its citizens to leave Pakistan.
Xi Jinping's calendar app: After three days of talks between US climate czar John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua, the two sides agreed to cooperate on tackling climate change "with urgency." Urgency is a good thing, given that China is the world's largest polluter, followed by the US. If there's any hope of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees celsius by the end of this century, the US and China will have to work together to get there. But the US and China climate dialogue will need to move quickly from diplomatic goodwill to observable action. On that score, one big thing to keep an eye on is whether Chinese president Xi Jinping himself decides to attend the online global climate summit that US President Joe Biden is hosting later this week. Amid growing tensions between the US and China on a range of human rights, technological, and strategic issues, Xi's decision will send an early signal about how important Beijing thinks it is to work with Washington on climate specifically.
Parisian court won't try anti-semitic attacker: Four years after the brutal murder of a Jewish woman in Paris, France's top court has ruled that the alleged attacker cannot face trial because he was in a cannabis-induced "delirious fit" (in lay terms: he had smoked a lot of pot). Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old Orthodox Jewish woman living alone, was brutally attacked by a young Muslim man in 2017, who engaged in an anti-semitic rant while aggressively beating the woman before throwing her off a balcony. The French Jewish community, the largest in Europe, expressed outrage at the judge's decision to uphold a lower court ruling that the aggressor could not be held accountable for his actions because of his drug use. The high-profile crime came as French Jews have been reeling from a series of anti-semitic attacks in recent years, prompting thousands to flee the country in fear. Before the verdict, President Emmanuel Macron came under fire for saying that he hopes the case goes to trial, with critics saying he should stay inside his (executive) lane. In response to the case, dozens of French senators are now calling for legislative reform so that a disturbed mental state because of drug use cannot be cause for exoneration, which Macron says he also supports.
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Hard Numbers: Wildfires sweep Cape Town, New Delhi locks down, trade through Dublin dips, German Greens rise
April 19, 2021
1,544: South African authorities say that at least 1,544 square miles of land has already been destroyed by wildfires in Cape Town. Landmarks including an African antiquities library at Cape Town university were gutted by the flames, while communities around the historic Table Mountain were evacuated as fire engulfed the area.
32 million: New Delhi residents — some 32 million people — were placed under a week-long lockdown Monday as COVID cases surged in India's capital, overwhelming the healthcare system. The sprawling city recorded its highest COVID spike over the weekend, recording more than 24,000 new cases on Sunday alone.
15: Trade through the port of Dublin, Ireland's capital, fell by a whopping 15 percent in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2020. Irish authorities say that while the dip can be attributed in part to pandemic-related disruptions, the main cause is Brexit-induced red tape.
1: For the first time in over four decades, the German Green Party has tapped a woman as candidate for Chancellor, the nation's top job. At 40 years of age, Annalena Baerbock was born the same year that the Green Party was founded. With support for the Green party steadily climbing, while Merkel's conservative coalition struggles, Baerbock has an increasingly realistic chance of becoming Chancellor after elections this fall.
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