Oil and Privacy. Russia’s Reciprocal Retaliation. China’s Cash Powers Its Foreign Policy.

“There are two different ways of writing history: one is to persuade men to virtue and the other is to compel men to truth.” – Robert Graves, I, Claudius: From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius

“If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree. ” – Michael Crichton

Russia Vows Reciprocal Retaliation: On Monday, the United States ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats and closed Moscow’s consulate in Seattle, in a show of solidarity with Great Britain over the poisoning on British soil of a former Russian spy and his daughter. More than 20 Western allies across Europe and North America joined suit, also expelling dozens of Russian diplomats. In all, the coordinated response will return over 100 Russian diplomats to Moscow, representing the biggest concerted blow to the Kremlin’s intelligence networks in the West since the Cold War.

An official of the Russian parliament’s foreign affairs council called the expulsions “unprecedentedly dirty” and accused Western countries of following a “herd instinct.” Vowing reciprocal retaliation, Moscow said dozens of Western diplomats would be expelled. The Russian embassy to the US solicited input from Twitter users as to which American consulate in Russia should be closed. The US has an embassy in Moscow and consulates in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, and Vladivostok.

Meanwhile, a German member of the European Parliament has called for the creation of a Europe-wide law enforcement body (like the US Federal Bureau of Investigation) to deal with rampant money-laundering in havens like Latvia. US Treasury officials learned several years ago that a little known Latvian bank, ABLV, was laundering money for corrupt clients in Russia, Azerbaijan, and Ukraine. In February, the Treasury Department sanctioned ABLV and cut off its access to dollars, causing the bank to close. The European Central Bank, responsible for supervising EU member banks, said it didn’t have the investigative powers to uncover money laundering and was leaving the responsibility to individual member governments, a task that  clearly isn’t being accomplished.

–  On Sunday, Carles Puigdemont, the former leader of a secession movement to declare Catalonia independent from Spain, was detained in Germany on an international arrest warrant. Spain’s central government had ousted separatist leaders, prompting some to flee to several other European countries. Catalonia has been in political turmoil since its declaration of independence last October. Now Berlin is involved in Spain’s festering territorial dispute. (NYT)

– The US and South Korea reached an agreement Monday to renegotiate their trade pact, giving President Trump his first major trade deal. Seoul agreed to reduce its steel exports and open its market to American cars in exchange for an exemption from Trump’s global tariffs on steel and aluminum. (NYT)

– North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un went on his first trip outside his country since taking power in 2011. He made a surprise visit to China, arriving in a special train. Allegedly. (Bloomberg)

– George Nader, a cooperating witness in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, wired $2.5 million through Canada to a top fundraiser for President Trump for use in influencing legislation to persuade the US to take a hard line against Qatar. Allegedly. (Salon)

– 202-year-old US firearms manufacturer Remington has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy amid nationwide outcries over gun violence. The company found itself on the losing end of the “Trump slump,” a phenomenon in which higher gun sales are seen under Democratic presidents due to what gun enthusiasts fear will be greater gun control than under Republicans. (NPR)

China’s Economic Might Powers Its Foreign Policy: China continues to throw its weight around Asia, and this time it’s not in the South China Sea. Beijing has been aggressively expanding its influence in the Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, vexing the region’s traditional top dog, India. It’s not gone without notice. A fellow at the Carnegie India thinktank noted: “China’s penetration of south Asia is the biggest game changer in 100 years. The Russians tried, the Americans tried. This is the first time since at least world war two you have a massive power contesting the Indian state.”

China is “killing,” not with kindness, but with cash. Renminbi has been flowing into south Asia, particularly Pakistan, like lava from an erupting volcano. The Chinese government or state-owned enterprises have provided loans or investment for more than 20 projects in the Maldives. At least two dozen Chinese investments are at work in Nepal, and in Bangladesh, Chinese interests are estimated to be worth nearly $35 billion.

Perhaps most noteworthy, however, are the enormous examples of modern infrastructure in Sri Lanka’s Hambantota region, built with some $8 billion of Chinese money after the end of the civil war. Unfortunately, the new hospital has never admitted any patients, the airport is practically deserted, and the convention center offers cheap rates to wedding parties. When the government was unable to keep up with loan repayments of money borrowed from a Chinese corporation to build a new port on the southern coast, the port and 15,000 acres surrounding it were leased to the same Chinese company for 99 years. That move appears to offer China a strategic foothold in the Indian Ocean, something that worries both Indian and Western policymakers.

– The CIA and the Marines are becoming identical in that they invest heavily in recruiting and then let others generally do the talking afterwards. “The CIA rarely speaks publicly. But when it comes to recruiting, the agency can’t seem to stop talking. These efforts are more visible than ever, with pitches on social media, regular appearances at college job fairs.” (NPR)

– Speaking of Marines, “Can Jim Mattis Hold the Line in Trump’s ‘War Cabinet’? Dismissed as a warmonger during the Obama presidency, the defense secretary may be the only reliable voice of caution left in an administration inching closer to the brink.” And another article reveals “Why Trump Hasn’t Fired Mattis: The defense secretary seems to know how to disagree with the president and get away with it.” (NYT & Politico)

– Speaking of informants and spies, “Lawyers for the widow of the Pulse nightclub shooter have only just been told that the attacker’s father was an FBI informant for 11 years.” (The Guardian)

– Speaking of digital spies and the state, “ICE, the federal agency tasked with Trump’s program of mass deportation, uses backend Facebook data to locate and track suspects, according to a string of emails and documents obtained by The Intercept through a public records request.” (Intercept)

– Speaking of digital spies and their possible connection to the state, this quote is borderline conspiracy theory and borderline hair-raising fascinating: “The whole Facebook project” has only been allowed to become as vast and powerful as it has because of the US national security establishment. “It’s a form of very deep but soft power that’s been seen as an asset for the US. Russia has been so explicit about this, paying for the ads in roubles and so on. It’s making this point, isn’t it? That Silicon Valley is a US national security asset that they’ve turned on itself.” (The Guardian)

– Speaking of Facebook and privacy: “It’s sometimes said that data is the ‘oil’ of the digital economy, the resource that fuels everything else. A more helpful analogy is between oil and privacy, a concealed natural resource that is progressively plundered for private profit, with increasingly harmful consequences for society at large. If this analogy is correct, privacy and data protection laws won’t be enough to fight the tech giants with. Destroying privacy in ever more adventurous ways is what Facebook does.” (London Review of Books)

– Speaking of the London Review of Books, privacy, and digital spies, here is a piece that in the years and centuries to come will undoubtedly stand as one of the finest essays on Facebook, privacy, and modern day (online) life: “What this means is that even more than it is in the advertising business, Facebook is in the surveillance business. Facebook, in fact, is the biggest surveillance-based enterprise in the history of mankind. It knows far, far more about you than the most intrusive government has ever known about its citizens. It’s amazing that people haven’t really understood this about the company.” (London Review of Books)

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