Monthly Archives: July 2018

07/31/18

Russia Hacks Lab Testing Poison from Britain Cases

By: Denise Simon | Founders Code

Kremlin Hackers Take Aim at the Swiss Lab That’s Working the Skirpal Poisoning Case

The group that attacked Ukraine’s power grid is phishing a chemical-weapons lab critical to the Skripal case.

A state-backed Russian hacking group has is targeting a Swiss laboratory that’s helping investigators solve the March poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in London.

Called Sandworm, the group has been trying to phish employees of Switzerland’s Spiez Laboratory, a chemical-and biological-weapons facility that is doing forensics work on the Novichok poisoning of the former Russian colonel and double agent, according to Swiss news outlet Sonntags Blick, which reported the attacks on Sunday.

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07/31/18

Legislation Proposed on Front Company’s/Foreign Investment

By: Denise Simon | Founders Code

Frankly, Britain has a much worse issue, but big hat tip to Senator Rubio. There are cities in America which are pockets of some nasty dark money in real estate.

There needs to be some real reform to CFIUS, Committee for Foreign Investment in the United States.

Crackdown on dirty money shook Miami real estate. Now, Rubio wants to take it national

Washington – In a move with significant implications for the U.S. housing market, Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio is seeking to take a Treasury Department crackdown on dirty money in luxury real estate and expand it from a few high-priced enclaves to the entire nation.

Rubio says his proposal is an attempt to root out criminals who use illicit funds and anonymous shell companies to buy homes — a form of money laundering that hides the cash’s tainted origin from law enforcement and banks. The widespread practice enables terrorism, sex trafficking, corruption, and drug dealing by providing an outlet for dirty cash, according to transparency advocates.

Through an amendment to an unrelated major spending bill, Rubio will ask Treasury to study whether government regulators should force shell companies that buy homes priced at $300,000 or more in cash nationwide to disclose their owners. That could be a figure as high as 10 percent of the nation’s real-estate deals.

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07/31/18

Chinese Regime Recruits American Communists

By: Trevor Loudon | Epoch Times | New Zeal

Beijing opens new chapter, seeking to take the lead among world’s communist parties.

News Analysis

With little fanfare and no mainstream media publicity, two of the world’s most important communist parties have begun rebuilding relations after five decades of minimal contact.

At the invitation of the Communist Party of China (CCP), a two-member delegation from the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) toured China from May 26 to June 3. The duo, Chicago-based party Chairman John Bachtell and New York official Carol Widom, represented the CPUSA at a conference on the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth.

Bachtell wrote:

“We were invited to attend a forum to celebrate the 200th birthday of Karl Marx with 70 communist, socialist, left, and revolutionary parties in Shenzhen, an eco-planned city, followed by a week touring Beijing, Hefei, Fengyang County, and Xiaogang Village, the site of the first rural economic reforms.

“The event reflected the feeling by the Communist Party of China [CCP] that a qualitative turning point has been reached in socialist construction and that China is playing a new role on the global stage. The meeting is an example of China and the [CCP] opening wider to the world and expanding and deepening relations with communist and workers’ parties.”

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07/31/18

55 Remains from N. Korea, Identification Underway

By: Denise Simon | Founders Code

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) stated on its Korean War website that “on several occasions in the past, [North Korean] officials have indicated they possess as many as 200 sets of remains they had recovered over the years. The commitment established within the Joint Statement between President Trump and Chairman Kim would repatriate these.”

WASHINGTON — All Americans welcome the return of remains from the Korean War.

United Nations Command returned 55 cases of remains from North Korea to Osan Air Base, South Korea, July 27, 2018. Members of the command and the Osan community were on hand at the arrival ceremony. Army photo by Sgt. Quince Lanford

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07/31/18

Facebook Announces Foreign Intrusion Again, 290,000 Accounts

By: Denise Simon | Founders Code

The details “About two weeks ago we identified the first of eight Pages and 17 profiles on Facebook, as well as seven Instagram accounts, that violate our ban on coordinated inauthentic behavior,” said Nathaniel Gleicher, the company’s head of cybersecurity policy, in blog post. Those pages and accounts have been removed.

  • “In total, more than 290,000 accounts followed at least one of these Pages, the earliest of which was created in March 2017,” Gleicher said. “The latest was created in May 2018.”
  • The New York Times was the first to report that the company had identified the operation.

What they’re saying: Gleicher said Facebook has not attributed the campaign to a specific actor like Russia’s Internet Research Agency, which was behind the 2016 campaign.

  • There are some similarities to what they say before and after the 2016 elections, and Facebook found evidence of some connections between recent accounts and IRA accounts that were disabled last year.
  • But there are also differences: “For example, while IP addresses are easy to spoof, the IRA accounts we disabled last year sometimes used Russian IP addresses. We haven’t seen those here,” Gleicher said.

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07/31/18

Senate Democrats Are Circulating Fascist Plans For An Unconstitutional Government Takeover Of The Internet

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Virginia’s Mark Warner is the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

I have railed against Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube for censoring conservatives and their voices on the Internet. I also don’t like the fact that the Russians, Chinese, Iranians and the North Koreans are all messing with our accounts and spreading massive propaganda out on the Internet. But calling for the regulation of the Internet hands the oversight of it over to big government… or ‘the swamp’ if you will. That’s a catastrophic idea, especially if the leftists regain full control. And of course it’s one that Senate Democrats embrace. Enter Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), who has for some time now been pushing for exactly that.

A leaked memo has been circulating among Senate Democrats over this. A copy made it’s way to Axios and then to Reason, where I learned of it thanks to a friend who gave me a head’s up on it. That memo contains a slew of simply insane authoritarian proposals for regulating digital platforms. All in the name of fighting Russian intervention by bots and fake news. That’s not it at all… it’s to silence conservative voices out there once and for all. Take the freest communication platform in the world and give oversight to the feds and there goes your freedom of speech. To ostensibly save American trust in “our institutions, democracy, free press, and markets,” it suggests we need unprecedented and undemocratic government intervention into online media and markets, including “comprehensive (GDPR-like) data protection legislation” of the sort enacted in the E.U. That right there is a door to globalist intervention and one world government.

The paper is entitled, “Potential Policy Proposals for Regulation of Social Media and Technology Firms.” Sounds benign right? It’s no such thing. You can read the leaked paper here. It starts out by noting that Russians have long spread disinformation, including when “the Soviets tried to spread ‘fake news’ denigrating Martin Luther King.” Some of that was fake and some of it wasn’t – that’s another discussion for another day. It’s replete with justifications and if you think social media is bad now, just wait until something like this is enacted. A couple of weeks ago, Twitter purged millions of accounts they said were bogus. Today, Facebook purged seventeen they said were foreign propaganda accounts. But liberals are being judge and jury here on those platforms. They probably are what they say they are, but after the way leftists on Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube have shadow banned, purged and censored those on the right the way they have, do you trust they’ll do the right thing here?

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07/31/18

Incredible Read: New Michigan mosque: A not-so-open ‘open house’?

The United West

By: Leo Hohmann

Unexpected guest welcomes chance to engage in real interfaith dialogue

Editor’s note. “Interfaith dialogue” is a big thing right now in the West, as churches seek to understand the Muslim population growing up around them due to immigration. But much of what passes for real dialogue is nothing more than a contrived discussion about a “common word” and the “same god” theories while glossing over core beliefs that seem to clash. Below is one woman’s experience at a recent event in which a church is targeted for conversion to a mosque, first reported last week by LeoHohmann.com. She writes under the pen name Helen Abousamra.

 By HELEN ABOUSAMRA

On a dreary, rainy Sunday in Southeast Michigan, my husband and I decided, after attending church in Troy, that we would drive over to nearby Sterling Heights where the former St. Mark Lutheran Church is being converted into a Sunni mosque.

A group of Pakistanis had circulated flyers in the community advertising an “Open House” from 12-6 p.m. on July 22. We thought we’d take them up on it.

Upon turning into the long driveway that led to the church, we were greeted by a rather lonely-looking, tiny house that seemed out of place, as if it were set down as an afterthought. There were no trees or shrubs adorning it. We learned later that this will be the new home of the mosque’s imam. The church building itself was about 80 feet beyond it.

Only six cars dotted the parking lot. We sat for a few minutes hoping more would arrive. We prayed, asking the Lord to give us His wisdom.

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07/31/18

London’s Crime Is Surging And 80 Terrorists To Be Released

By: Denise Simon | Founders Code

London’s Mayor, Sadiq Khan is under fire for the growing crime rate in his city. How can the murder rate be higher than in New York?

As of March, London accounted for 17 percent of all recorded crime in England and Wales in the year prior, as well as 42 percent of all recorded robberies. A third of all knife crime took place in London as well.

London temporarily overtook New York in the number of murders in early 2018. In February, London’s police investigated 15 murders while New York saw 11 homicides. In March, the Metropolitan Police murder numbers increased further to 22, while the NYPD’s jumped to 21. New York has since recorded more murders.

Remember those “Beatles,” ISIS suspects? Well, Britain’s Home Office has suspended cooperation with the United States in extraditing them mostly due to the death penalty.

A combination picture shows Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, who the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) identified as British nationals, in undated handout pictures in Amouda, Syria, released February 9, 2018 by the Syrian Democratic Forces. HANDOUT/REUTERS

Dozens of convicted terrorists are about to be released.

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07/30/18

Earnings, GDP And The Fed Meeting

By: Kent Engelke | Capitol Securities

Last Monday, I wrote this could be a significant week. This Monday, I am writing last week was indeed significant.

Commenting first on earnings, profits have exceeded expectations, but the psychology has changed dramatically, the result of Facebook’s massive miss. In my view, most were trying to spin AMZN’s mixed report positively. As widely noted, both issues are heavily recommended and the ownership/concentration of wealth is unprecedented.

APPL reports this week. In my view, the hype going into its release is in no way near as great as the hype surrounding FB, NFLX, AMZN and GOOG, two of which greatly missed expectations, one whose results were mixed and the fourth, (GOOG), exceeded in almost every dimension.

I will argue if APPL misses, market volatility can increase considerably. [MSFT is the sixth name that has dominated market performance and its results exceeded expectations.]

Speaking of volatility, the NASDAQ opened considerably higher on Friday only to succumb to persistent selling though out the day, ending lower by 1.50%, selling in the mega capitalized and highest price stocks.

Commenting about second quarter growth, the GDP expanded by 4.1%, the greatest pace since 2014. Some, me included, thought the print would be higher. Inventories, which I view as a sentiment indicator, subtracted about 1% from growth.

Reflecting upon the draw down in inventories, should this not have been expected given the myriad of concerns surrounding trade? The question at hand is will these spent stores be replaced during the third quarter, hence increasing the potential growth rate?

Commenting about inflationary pressures, the core PCE rose 2% for the second consecutive quarter, which is at or above the Fed’s inflationary speed limit.

In my view, the sub-indices indicate an economy that is gaining momentum.

The two major events of the week are APPL’s earnings and the Fed meeting. No change is expected in monetary policy. Little deviation from last week’s congressional testimony is expected in the post meeting statement.

Last night the foreign markets were down. London was up 0.04%, Paris was down 0.24% and Frankfurt was down 0.21%. China was down 0.16%, Japan was down 0.74% and Hang Sang was down 0.25%.

The Dow should open nominally lower ahead of a big earnings week where expectations are high and nervousness surrounding several policy meetings of the world’s biggest central banks. The 10-year is off 7/32 to yield 2.98%.