By: Cliff Kincaid | America’s Survival
The author of “Islamic Jihad, Cultural Marxism and the Transformation of the West” examines the global forces that are determined to destroy the United States and the Trump presidency. William Mayer is the editor and publisher of PipeLineNews.org, which features news regarding U.S. national security issues.
By: Denise Simon | Founder’s Code
President Jimmy Carter gave away the Panama Canal which was officially transferred in 2000. Few know about the other canal project in Nicaragua, which is designed to be bigger and better. It was launched by a Chinese billionaire however, it appears the Chinese government is actually behind it.
The whole matter is shrouded in secrecy while the Panama Canal is going through a huge expansion.
PBS
China has been creating islands in the South China Sea while other islands are a source of major dispute. China has been seen as militarizing the manufactured islands giving rise to concerns of major cargo and global shipping lanes. Could China be making a worldwide play to control commerce and sea transportation?
Chinese state firms have expressed an interest to develop land around the Panama Canal, the chief executive of the vital trade thoroughfare said, underlining China’s outward push into infrastructure via railways and ports around the world. China’s state firms have in recent years already chalked up investments in key logistics nodes, including Piraeus in Greece and Bandar Malaysia, a major development project that is set to be the terminal for a proposed high-speed rail link between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. More here from Reuters.
So is there more to this under reported threat by China? Yes. For instance:
HONG KONG — When the United States Air Force wanted help making military robots more perceptive, it turned to a Boston-based artificial intelligence start-up called Neurala. But when Neurala needed money, it got little response from the American military.
So Neurala turned to China, landing an undisclosed sum from an investment firm backed by a state-run Chinese company.
Chinese firms have become significant investors in American start-ups working on cutting-edge technologies with potential military applications. The start-ups include companies that make rocket engines for spacecraft, sensors for autonomous navy ships, and printers that make flexible screens that could be used in fighter-plane cockpits. Many of the Chinese firms are owned by state-owned companies or have connections to Chinese leaders.
The deals are ringing alarm bells in Washington. According to a new white paper commissioned by the Department of Defense, Beijing is encouraging Chinese companies with close government ties to invest in American start-ups specializing in critical technologies like artificial intelligence and robots to advance China’s military capacity as well as its economy. More here from the New York Times.
Humm, need more? Both China and North Korea are known for hacking. China may have some obscure agreement with North Korea to hack selected global sites. As we know, North Korea is a threat as they are continuing to advance their missile program and super thrust rocket engines which are tied to their nuclear weapons program. China provides that communications, telecom and internet platform and servers for North Korea.
BBC
North Korea relies on China for Internet connectivity, partially due to longstanding ties between the two nations and partly because it has few options. North Korea borders just three countries: South Korea, with which it is still technically at war, Russia and China. The Chinese Internet is well developed and the Russian border is far from Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, making China a good choice. Going back to 2014, the U.S. State Department was well aware of all these conditions between China and North Korea, still no solution by the Obama administration.
***
Hackers associated with the Chinese government have repeatedly infiltrated the computer systems of U.S. airlines, technology companies and other contractors involved in the movement of U.S. troops and military equipment, a U.S. Senate panel has found.
Cybersecurity expert Dmitri Alperovitch, chief technology officer with the security firm Crowdstrike, said China had for years shown a keen interest in th the logistical patterns of the U.S. military.
The investigation focused on the U.S. military’s ability to seamlessly tap civilian air, shipping and other transportation assets for tasks including troop deployments and the timely arrival of supplies from food to ammunition to fuel. U.S. authorities charged five Chinese military officers, accusing them of hacking into American nuclear, metal and solar companies to steal trade secrets.
Last month, Community Health Systems (CYH.N), one of the largest U.S. hospital groups, said Chinese hackers had stolen Social Security numbers and other personal data from some 4.5 million patients.
*** North Korea has an elite and secret hacking unit as well known as Bureau 121. The Department of Defense submitted a report to Congress on Bureau 121 using asymmetric warfare. North Korea also has an additional cyber unit known as Office 91.
Office 91 is thought to be the headquarters of North Korea’s hacking operation although the bulk of the hackers and hacking and infiltration into networks is done from Unit 121, which operates out of North Korea and has satellite offices overseas, particularly in Chinese cities that are near the North Korean border. One such outpost is reportedly the Chilbosan Hotel in Shenyang, a major city about 150 miles from the border. A third operation, called Lab 110, participates in much the same work.
There are also several cyberunits under North Korea’s other arm of government, the Workers’ Party of Korea.
Unit 35 is responsible for training cyberagents and is understood to handle domestic cyberinvestigations and operations. Unit 204 takes part in online espionage and psychological warfare and Office 225 trains agents for missions in South Korea that can sometimes have a cyber component. More here from PCWorld.
*** China is well aware of North Korea activities, while China has and is becoming more aggressive globally. There is clearly collusion, yet what is the West and in particular the United States prepared to do in response remains unclear. However, China did approve 38 Trump trademarks. President Trump meets with Xi Jinping, maybe we will know more in April.
By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton | I Have The Truth
The commies have truly come out of the closet. The whole gang will be getting together in Chicago on June 9th thru the 11th. Bernie Sanders, Michael Moore, Danny Glover and Van Jones will be headlining the People’s Summit. Chicago is where the headquarters of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) is located. They are still labeling themselves as progressives, but anyone with two functioning brain cells knows these are devout communists… comrades in arms. Thousands will join them to plot taking back America from President Trump and the Republicans. It will be one giant war room.
This should be common knowledge now and come as no surprise to anyone. Van Jones has a long, violent history of being a Marxist. Don’t believe his protestations that he has reformed, he hasn’t. Bernie Sanders calls himself a socialist… in reality, he’s a communist and the current healthcare plan he is presenting to Trump should prove that. He is pushing single payer healthcare. Michael Moore is a Marxist film producer and the editor of The Nation. And Danny Glover never met a communist or dictator he didn’t love.
From PolitiStick:
Soviet-style socialist Bernie Sanders, along with fellow radical communist and CNN commentator Van Jones, Marxist film producer Michael Moore, and Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez-loving stooge and actor Danny Glover will be headlining the upcoming “People’s Summit” to be held from June 9 to 11 in Chicago, the headquarters of the Communist Party USA.
Calling themselves the politically correct term “progressives” instead of the anti-American, anti-freedom communists that they are, the above communist leaders will join thousands of other totalitarians who are hellbent to fundamentally transform America into North Korea or Venezuela.
Groups sponsoring the event include a laundry list of George Soros-funded communist front groups who are butthurt that corrupt and untrustworthy Hillary Clinton was not elected to continue Obama’s lurch to the left.
Among the “convening organizations” listed on the group’s website, include the following: National Nurses United, People’s Action, United Students Against Sweatshops, People for Bernie, Our Revolution, United Electrical Workers, Color of Change, Progressive Democrats of America, Democratic Socialists of America, and Presente.
Many of the groups attending are funded by that old spider George Soros. Mark Svart, national director of the Democratic Socialists of America, had this to say: “President Trump exploited long-standing racial divisions between working people to gain power, when we know he’s packed his cabinet with the same characters who rigged the economy. We all need to team up and fight back, and pro-corporate Democrats aren’t doing that effectively. Democratic socialists know that defeating neo-liberalism is a necessary part of defeating Trump’s right-wing populist agenda and defending democracy itself. The People’s Summit helps us make the alliances we need against capitalism at its worst.” They are terrified that Trump will undo the progress they’ve made in turning America into a communist hellhole like North Korea, Venezuela or Cuba.
If you want to hear the sentiment from these jackals, take a listen to Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator and a vocal communist supporter of Sanders during the Democrat presidential primary: “There is no force more powerful than a community on the move for justice. We will protest, we will plan and we will preserve in the building of political power from the ground up. This is our moment.” And they really, really believe it. They are saying go, go, go! That is why you see chaos and violence exploding in our streets now.
This is going to be a who’s who of radicals. Others attending include Shaun King, Frances Fox Piven and Palestinian Linda Sarsour. You’ve got proponents of Saul Alinsky, the Muslim Brotherhood and one of the founders of Cloward and Piven. Sounds like the party from hell to me.
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the largest socialist organization in the US. It is one of two official US affiliates of the Socialist International. It was formed in 1982 from a merger of the Michael Harrington led Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and the smaller New American Movement. DSA publishes a quarterly journal, the Democratic Left. While claiming to be socialist, Democratic Socialists of America is a Marxist organization, that draws heavily from the ideas of the late Italian Communist Party theoretician Antonio Gramsci. This is the true face of the left. The People’s Summit is an event organized and promoted by the CPUSA and those attending it are communists… pretty much the entire Democratic Party these days. And definitely the enemies within.
By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media
The Heritage Foundation article, “We Don’t Have to Choose Between Putin and George Soros,” is a very effective rebuttal to claims in the media that conservatives who oppose the influence of billionaire George Soros in foreign affairs are therefore siding with another billionaire, Russian ruler Vladimir Putin. The author, Mike Gonzalez, looks into the global struggle playing out on the international stage between these two major figures, and how conservatives are smeared as members of the Putin camp by liberal media outlets like Politico.
Gonzalez focuses on the small country of Macedonia, where “Soros and the U.S. Embassy have thrown their support behind parties contending against the conservative party VMRO—imperfect as many political parties around the world no doubt are, but very much pro-U.S. and pro-NATO.” Gonzalez examines Soros’s far-left agenda of open borders, abortion on demand and homosexual/transgender rights, and comments, “If for lack of a conservative alternative, VMRO turns to Putin to counter this far-left agenda coming from outside the country, that is our fault—and Soros.”
It is “our fault,” he says, because the State Department continues to facilitate Soros operations to transform the culture and politics of foreign countries.
Of course, President Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson can change this, but they have been resistant to putting conservatives in place to change the course of U.S. foreign policy.
Gonzalez had previously examined how Soros money was corrupting the political process in Macedonia, with the assistance of the U.S. State Department. He noted that the Obama-appointed U.S. ambassador in the capital of Skopje, Jess Baily, has shown a political bias against the Macedonian conservative party, VMRO, and was promoting a left-wing coalition.
Republican members of the U.S. House and Senate had asked Baily to explain reports that his embassy had selected Soros’ Open Society Foundations as the main implementer of U.S. Agency for International Development projects in Macedonia. The State Department’s response “was thin on details regarding funding for Soros’ foundation and groups it controls,” Gonzalez reports.
Gonzalez has put his finger on a dialectical maneuver that plays into Putin’s hands. In response to official U.S. support for “liberal progressive policies around the world,” conservatives and moderates in foreign countries believe they have nowhere else to go except Putin, the former KGB officer now operating undercover as a religious conservative touting traditional values and national identity.
The U.S., not Putin, should be promoting Western values. But Obama’s State Department promoted a form of cultural imperialism that reflected the “fundamental transformation” of the United States. That is, multiculturalism, gay rights, abortion rights and even the rights of prostitutes!
Then there is Soros’ long-standing pro-drug legalization agenda, as we documented 12 years ago in our special report, “The Hidden Soros Agenda: Drugs, Money, the Media, and Political Power.” The leftist billionaire is accelerating his activities in Latin America on behalf of pro-drug interests.
In Costa Rica, for example, conservatives are alarmed by the push to legalize marijuana under the cover that the drug supposedly has “medical benefits.” One of them told me, “What we fear is that drug traffickers will shield themselves under regulations included in the medical marijuana bill if it passes, making it easier for them to send illegal substances to other countries, including the U.S.” He said the U.S. embassy in Costa Rica has been alerted to how Soros-backed organizations are putting pressure on the country’s Congress to pass a so-called medical marijuana bill. “We hoped for a change of mentality from the U.S. Embassy since President Trump was elected,” this source added, “but these officials are from the Obama administration and they stopped communicating with us after we mentioned Soros.”
In his column, “Vetting Trump’s Foreign Policy Team,” my colleague Roger Aronoff examined some of Trump’s high-profile picks and concluded that “…Trump needs to do a better job of filling key positions and vetting the people who are making and carrying out his policies. Otherwise, his administration could turn out to be a disaster.”
Looking at various selections in the foreign policy and national security fields, Aronoff asks, “Are these rookie mistakes or does Trump not care if his campaign promises regarding Israel, combating the Islamic jihadis, and ripping up the Iran deal go unfulfilled?”
Incredibly, as Aronoff notes, Trump himself “has signaled his unwillingness to fill many of his political appointee posts” with committed conservatives.
By continuing Obama’s policies and keeping Obama personnel in place, as Mike Gonzalez of the Heritage Foundation demonstrates, Trump is actually furthering the foreign policy goals of Putin. If this continues, it will constitute a form of collusion between the Trump and Obama administrations.
Perhaps that was the goal of the so-called “silent coup” all along—to keep in place the Soros policies financed by the Obama administration. If so, it appears that Trump has lost another big battle that will make his health care defeat seem like small potatoes.
Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.
International news services now report that Japan’s Toshiba Corporation (9502.T) is preparing to make a chapter 11 bankruptcy filing for its Westinghouse Electric subsidiary as soon as this Monday, March 27. For most of our readers this news evokes little surprise. This is merely another chapter of a slow moving financial and accounting train wreck involving nuclear design and construction firm Westinghouse and its troubled Japanese parent, Toshiba. But like an old, leaky garbage scow there is much to clean up in its wake.
The two U.S. utilities with the most at risk are Southern Company and SCANA Corp. Westinghouse is presently constructing two unit, AP 1000 nuclear power stations for each utility. These projects are over-budget and behind schedule. It appears that Westinghouse offered both utilities a fixed price contract for these new nuclear plants. Our best guess is that this fixed price construction guarantee has doomed Westinghouse and prevented other potentially willing buyers from stepping in. No one it seems is willing to take on this seemingly open-ended nuclear construction liability.
What does this mean for the two domestic utilities embroiled in this international financial quagmire?
First, we expect that they will complete both nuclear construction projects. The bulk of heavy capital expenditures for both utilities seem to be in the 2017-2019 period.
Second, it is in all interest of all potential litigants to see these plants completed. Westinghouse/Toshiba, for one, would at least get to showcase the AP 1000 design and its successor entity could advocate for additional sales of this reactor design. A working design has value. (What happens in the UK is another matter where Toshiba hoped to build several plants). The utilities, which need new power stations, get large, rate based, non-fossil base load power generating resources for the next 40-60 years.
The worst case scenario for utility investors would be if the utilities had to cancel the projects and take big write offs. But we assign a very low probability to this scenario.
Perhaps, more likely, a Westinghouse bankruptcy means abrogation of the fixed price contracts signed with Southern and SCANA. News reports this week indicated that both utilities had hired bankruptcy counsel.
As these plants are brought on line, presumably in the 2020-2021 time frame, the matter will go before the state utility commissions of Georgia and South Carolina. Both commissions approved these nuclear projects. It’s just that the plants will cost more than expected.
Unfortunately for investors, they will have to live with uncertainty until the regulators make their decisions. There are no clear precedents for the decisions, other than that commissions typically allocate or split unexpected financial burdens like these between shareholders and consumers. And that the amounts at risk won’t be modest given the size of the projects.
Link to original article: http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/What-A-Westinghouse-Bankruptcy-Could-Mean-For-US-Utilities5507.html
By Leonard Hyman and Bill Tilles for Oilprice.com
By: Kent Engelke | Capitol Securities
Where to? The headlines suggest the Trump agenda might be dead. The President’s approval rating is at a record low, be it his administration or any other administration at this juncture of the term. Sentiment and optimism however are still around a decade high and appears to believe there will be tax and regulatory relief.
Change is always unsettling as most find comfort in the current environment because of familiarity even if the situation is unpleasant. The President is directly confronting the powerful administrative state, an administrative state that is supported by both sides of the proverbial aisle as well as the entrenched establishment.
It is to be expected that any losses — real or perceived — will be met with great fanfare because of the threat the Trump administration is to the established course of business.
As noted many times, in many regards, the cross correlated trade has broken down. The dollar is falling which hypothetically should be oil positive. Oil is down. Hypothetically, Treasury yields should be climbing because of the falling dollar and more dovish FOMC, but yields are around 4 month lows.
According to the WSJ, the Dow has now declined for eight consecutive days, the longest streak since August 2011 and the peak of the European debt crisis. Bespoke Investment Group further added the only other time since 1990 that there has been 8 consecutive down days for the Dow was in October 2008 and September 2001. Prior to 1990, Bespoke commented that it happened three times in the 1980s.
Bespoke stated there have been three seven consecutive day drops in the Dow in the last year.
Earning warning season has commenced. Will the lack of warnings support prices? Or conversely will such warnings hurt shares?
Perhaps the only definitive comment to make about profits is that they will exceed expectations for the gazillionth consecutive quarter, the result of regulatory over reach that in some regards has made this quarterly event questionably meaningless, except of course if one trades via algorithms that are programmed to respond to such events.
I reiterate my long held belief that growth will exceed expectations. Historically, GDP growth correlates to home values. Because of the dearth of housing inventory, coupled by the lowest home ownership in 50 years — partially the result of the lack of inventories — home values should continue to rise.
Most people measure their net worth by the value of their home, not their stock account. Typically when home values rise, so does spending and vice versa.
These rising values, coupled with increased confidence perhaps amplified by tax and regulatory reform and an increase in monetary velocity, all may be the ultimate elixir for annual growth to exceed 3% for the first time in 10 years, the longest stretch on record where growth did not exceed 3% for one year. The previous record was 1930-1934.
Last night the foreign markets were up. London was up 0.01%, Paris was up 0.09% and Frankfurt was up 0.58%. China was down 0.43%, Japan was up 1.14% and Hang Sang was up 0.63%.
The Dow should open flat. Hope is reemerging that the President will be able to enact his tax and regulatory changes, two issues that are core to the Republican-controlled Congress and to the markets. The 10-year is unchanged at a 2.38% yield.
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