Tag: news

Authored by Nicole Hao via The Epoch Times,

U.S.-based cybersecurity firm FireEye revealed that a state-backed Chinese hacker group APT41 has compromised several major telecom firms and retrieved call records from the carriers’ customers whom they deemed as targets, intercepting text messages as well as call records worldwide.

The report did not name the telecom companies. The hackers searched call and text records for specific keywords, including the names of “high-value” targets such as the names of politicians, intelligence organizations, and political movements “at odds with the Chinese government,” according to the report.

This is not the first time that Chinese state-sponsored hackers were reported to have intercepted international cell phone text messages. U.S.-based cybersecurity firm Cybereason released a report on Jun. 25, discussing how hacker group APT10 conducted persistent attacks since 2017 on global telecommunications providers. Cybereason concluded that APT10 operates “on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of State Security,” China’s chief intelligence agency. They were to obtain call detail records (CDR), which includes call time, duration, the involved phone numbers, and geolocation.

MESSAGETAP

FireEye published its study on text message security on Oct. 31, focusing on a new tool that APT41 is using: a malware named MESSAGETAP, to intercept people’s text messages worldwide.

Text messages are also called short message service (SMS) messages, referring to the plain word messages that are sent and received by cellphones.

The report explained that APT41 hackers installed MESSAGETAP on the Short Message Service Center (SMSC) servers of the targeted telecom carriers. The malware can then monitor all network connections to and from the server.

MESSAGETAP can intercept all SMS messaging traffic, which includes the content of the messages; their cellphones’ unique identifiers, known as international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) number; and the source and destination phone numbers.

Furthermore, the hackers can set up keywords in MESSAGETAP, allowing the malware to filter the content that the hackers are looking for.

During the investigation, FireEye found out that hackers searched keywords such as the names of “foreign high-ranking individuals of interest to the Chinese intelligence services,” as well as political leaders, military and intelligence organizations, and political movements.

FireEye said they observed four telecommunication organizations being targeted by APT41 in 2019.

APT41’s Targets

FireEye previously released a full report on APT41 in August, titled “Double Dragon: APT41, a dual espionage and cyber crime operation.”

“Double” refers to the fact that “APT41 is a Chinese state-sponsored espionage group that is also conducting financially motivated activity for personal gain,” since 2012. It did not provide further details about who has hired APT41’s services.

One particular pattern emerged: “APT41 targets industries in a manner generally aligned with China’s Five-Year economic development plans” and Beijing’s ten-year’s plan “Made in China 2025,” according to the report.

The hacker group also gathers intelligence ahead of important events, such as mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and political events.

“Made in China 2025,” first launched in 2015, is an economic blueprint for China to become the dominant manufacturing nation in the world in 10 key high-technology verticals, such as pharmaceuticals, artificial intelligence, and robotics.

APT41 targets healthcare (including medical devices and diagnostics), pharmaceuticals, retail, software companies, telecoms, travel services, education, video games, and virtual currencies, according to the report.

APT41 has targeted firms in those sectors located in the United States, UK, France, Italy, Holland, Switzerland, Turkey, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, India, Myanmar, Thailand, and South Africa.

Purpose and Tools

FireEye found out that APT41 focused on stealing intellectual property from those targeted countries. But beginning in mid-2015, the hackers “have moved toward strategic intelligence collection and establishing access and away from direct intellectual property theft.”

The hacker group uses “over 46 different malware families and tools to accomplish their missions, including publicly available utilities, malware shared with other Chinese espionage operations, and tools unique to the group,” the report said.

In order for a firm to protect itself from potential attacks from APT41, FireEye warned firms not to open unfamiliar emails: “The group often relies on spear-phishing emails with attachments such as compiled HTML (.chm) files to initially compromise their victims.”

It’s no longer a question of “if” we’re going to all eventually be replaced with robot overlords in the workplace, it’s a question of “when”.

The nuances of how this is going to occur – like which industries are likely to see to the most disruption from automation – were the topic of a new study published by St. Louis Fed Economist Maximiliano Dvorkin and Research Associate Asha Bharadwaj.

The authors found that there has been predominantly a decline in U.S. “middle-skill” occupations as a result of automation. This was despite growth in both high- and low-skill occupations occurring at the same time. 

According to the authors, this job polarization is a result of “automation and offshoring, because both these forces lower the demand for middle-skill occupations relative to the rest.”

In the study, the authors looked at two types of work:

1. Whether jobs involve routine tasks or nonroutine tasks

2. Whether jobs use mostly cognitive skills or manual skills (brain vs. brawn)

They also looked at how the state of employment has changed across these four categories:

• Nonroutine cognitive, which includes management, professional and related occupations

• Nonroutine manual, which includes service occupations related to assisting or caring for others, such as health care support, food preparation and serving, and cleaning

• Routine cognitive, which includes sales and office occupations

• Routine manual, which includes construction, transportation, production and repair occupations

The study found that “employment in nonroutine occupations, both cognitive and manual, has been increasing steadily for several decades, while employment in routine occupations has been mostly stagnant or even declining.”

The authors also honed in on robots used specifically for industrial automation processes. 

The study found: “Industrial robots are fully autonomous machines that do not require any human intervention and can be reprogrammed to perform several manual tasks. For instance, technologies like tractors or elevators are not industrial robots since they are able to perform only specific tasks and require some degree of human intervention.”

And the use of robots in industrial automation isn’t just prominent in the U.S. – industrial robots per thousand workers was higher in Germany and Italy.

“France and the average of the countries Spain, the U.K. and Sweden were ahead of the U.S. in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but in the last decade, it seems that the U.S. has overtaken these countries,” the study found. 

Arguably the most important finding, however, was that the automotive industry – an industry already being ravaged by recession and job cuts – is seeing the highest distribution of robots out of all industries.

The study concluded: “Clearly, the automotive industry is by far the largest user of robots, in the U.S. as well as in other advanced countries around the world. For instance, in 2014, the automotive industry accounted for around 54% of the total U.S. stock of robots. For Germany, the share was higher, at around 60%.”

It’s just another brick in the wall of the worsening picture if you are dependent on the automotive industry, which has collapsed globally over the last 18 months, take make your living. 

Authored by Matthew Ehret via The StrategiC ulture Foundation,

While world’s attention is absorbed by tectonic shifts unfolding across the Middle East, and as many Americans are brainwashed to believe the 2020 elections are driven by the need to impeach President Trump, something very ominous has appeared “off of the radar” of most onlookers. This something is a financial collapse of the western banks that threatens to unleash chaos upon the world.

In my last report, I discussed why the current financial system is on the verge of a 1923-Weimar style hyperinflation driven by Federal Reserve bailouts trying desperately to support a deleveraging of the $1200 trillion derivatives bubble that has taken over the western banking system. I also discussed the Bank of England-led “solution” currently to this crisis involves a new global “green” digital currency with new “rules” which are very similar to the 1923 Bank of England “solution” to Germany’s economic chaos which eventually required a fascist governance mechanism to impose it onto the masses.

In this article, I wish to take a deeper look at the causes and effects of Weimar Germany’s completely un-necessary collapse into hyperinflation and chaos during the period of 1919-1923.

Versailles and the Destruction of Germany

Britain had been the leading hand behind the orchestration of WWI and the destruction of the potential German-Russian-American-Ottoman alliance that had begun to take form by the late 19th century as foolish Kaiser Wilhelm discovered (though sadly too late) when he said: “the world will be engulfed in the most terrible of wars, the ultimate aim of which is the ruin of Germany. England, France and Russia have conspired for our annihilation… that is the naked truth of the situation which was slowly but surely created by Edward VII”.

Just as the British oligarchy managed the war, so too did they organize the reparations conference in France which, among other things, imposed impossible debt repayments upon a defeated Germany and created the League of Nations which was meant to become the instrument for a “post-nation state world order”. Lloyd George led the British delegation alongside his assistant Philip Kerr (Lord Lothian), Leo Amery, Lord Robert Cecil and Lord John Maynard Keynes who have a long term agenda to bring about a global dictatorship. All of these figures were members of the newly emerging Round Table Movement, that had taken full control of Britain by ousting Asquith in 1916, and which is at the heart of today’s “deep state”.

After the 1918 Armistice dismantled Germany’s army and navy, the once powerful nation was now forced to pay the impossible sum of 132 billion gold marks to the victors and had to give up territories representing 10% of its population (Alsace-Loraine, Ruhr, and North Silesia) which made up 15% of its arable land, 12% of its livestock, 74% of its iron ore, 63% of its zinc production, and 26% of its coal. Germany also had to give up 8000 locomotives, 225 000 railcars and all of its colonies. It was a field day of modern pillage.

Germany was left with very few options. Taxes were increased and imports were cut entirely while exports were increased. This policy (reminiscent of the IMF austerity techniques in use today) failed entirely as both fell 60%. Germany gave up half of its gold supply and still barely a dent was made in the debt payments. By June 1920 the decision was made to begin a new strategy: increase the printing press. Rather than the “miracle cure” which desperate monetarists foolishly believed it would be, this solution resulted in an asymptotic devaluation of the currency into hyperinflation. From June 2020 to October 1923 the money supply in circulation skyrocketed from 68.1 gold marks to 496.6 quintillion gold marks. In June 1922, 300 marks exchanged $1 US and in November 1923, it took 42 trillion marks to get $1 US! Images are still available of Germans pushing wheel barrows of cash down the street, just to buy a stick of butter and bread (1Kg of Bread sold for $428 billion marks in 1923).

With the currency’s loss of value, industrial output fell by 50%, unemployment rose to over 30% and food intake collapsed by over half of pre-war levels. German director Fritz Lang’s 1922 film Dr. Mabuse (The Gambler) exposed the insanity of German population’s collapse into speculative insanity as those who had the means began betting against the German mark in order to protect themselves thus only helping to collapse the mark from within. This is very reminiscent of those Americans today short selling the US dollar rather than fighting for a systemic solution.

1923: City of London’s Solution is imposed

When the hyperinflationary blowout of Germany resulted in total un-governability of the state, a solution took the form of the Wall Street authored “Dawes Plan” which necessitated the use of a London-trained golem by the name of Hjalmar Schacht. First introduced as Currency Commissioner in November 1923 and soon President of the Reichsbank, Schacht’s first act was to visit Bank of England’s governor Montagu Norman in London who provided Schacht a blueprint for proceeding with Germany’s restructuring. Schacht returned to “solve” the crisis with the very same poison that caused it.

First announcing a new currency called the “rentenmark” set on a fixed value exchanging 1 trillion reichsmarks for 1 new rentenmark, Germans were robbed yet again. This new currency would operate under “new rules” never before seen in Germany’s history: Mass privatizations resulted in Anglo-American conglomerates purchasing state enterprises. IG Farben, Thyssen, Union Banking, Brown Brothers Harriman, Standard Oil, JP Morgan and Union Banking took control Germany’s finances, mining and industrial interests under the supervision of John Foster Dulles, Montagu Norman, Averill Harriman and other deep state actors. This was famously exposed in the 1961 film Judgement at Nuremburg by Stanley Kramer.

Schacht next cut credit to industries, raised taxes and imposed mass austerity on “useless spending”. 390 000 civil servants were fired, unions and collective bargaining was destroyed and wages were slashed by 15%.

As one can imagine, this destruction of life after the hell of Versailles was intolerable and civil unrest began to boil over in ways that even the powerful London-Wall Street bankers (and their mercenaries) couldn’t control. An enforcer was needed unhindered by the republic’s democratic institutions to force Schacht’s economics onto the people. An up-and-coming rabble rousing failed painter who had made waves in a Beerhall Putsch on November 8, 1923 was perfect.

One Last Attempt to Save Germany

Though Hitler grew in power over the coming decade of Schachtian economics, one last republican effort was made to prevent Germany from plunging into a fascist hell in the form of the November 1932 election victory of General Kurt von Schleicher as Chancellor of Germany. Schleicher had been a co-architect of Rapallo alongside Rathenau a decade earlier and was a strong proponent of the Friedrich List Society’s program of public works and internal improvements promoted by industrialist Wilhelm Lautenbach. The Nazi party’s public support collapsed and it found itself bankrupt. Hitler had fallen into depression and was even contemplating suicide when “a legal coup” was unleashed by the Anglo-American elite resulting in Wall Street funds pouring into Nazi coffers.

By January 30, 1933 Hitler gained Chancellorship where he quickly took dictatorial powers under the “state of emergency” caused by the burning of the Reichstag in March 1933. By 1934 the Night of the Long Knives saw General Schleicher and hundreds of other German patriots assassinated and it was only a few years until the City of London-Wall Street Frankenstein monster stormed across the world.

The New Silk Road or New World Order

Today’s world sits atop a bubble of unimagined proportions which began to blow in 2008 and has been kept afloat by nothing more than a decade of blind hope mixed with money printing, zero interest rates, speculation and austerity. The PHYSICAL economic basis supporting the money system has been crippled due to 40 years of post-industrial consumerism rampant across the west. While it is admitted that the U.S dollar cannot remain the reserve currency for the world as it has from 1945-present, those same central banking forces from London have admitted that if their plans for a “one-world” green digital currency is not forced onto nations, then China’s Yuan and the New Silk Road will shape the new system.

Whether London will manage to succeed in 2020 pushing a fascist de-carbonization (ie: depopulation) scheme onto the world where their 1920 Monster failed remains to be seen.

In an effort to rapidly modernize before the next large-scale military conflict, the US Army has purchased 624 robotic mules from General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS), a deal worth more than $162 million, reported Defense Blog.

GDLS’ MUTT (Multi-Utility Tactical Transport) is designed to reduce a soldier’s load by carrying gear on an 8×8 unmanned ATV. 

According to Army officials, MUTT can haul up to 1,000 pounds of gear and is designed to follow infantry soldiers on the battlefield, through some of the harshest terrains. 

Infantry soldiers carry between 60-120 pounds of gear, and MUTT can alleviate nearly 80% of the weight, which allows soldiers to move swiftly across the battlefield.  

MUTT comes in several sizes: tracked, 6×6, and 8×8. It measures 9 feet long by 5 feet wide, can carry 1,000 pounds of gear, and also provide 3,000 watts of power, in addition to a 60-mile range. 

Besides hauling soldiers’ heavy gear packs, MUTT can hold anti-tank missiles and or spare ammunition. 

Several other uses include evacuating wounded soldiers from frontlines, surveillance missions with high-tech sensors, and it can even be outfitted with machine guns, anti-tank missiles, and or grenade launchers to conduct attack missions. 

In 2H18, soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, New York, were given several MUTTs for a field training exercise that simulated warzone like conditions. 

“It’s a huge upgrade for the dismounted reconnaissance troop. I picked up five casualties in one night at different locations with this vehicle [MUTT] that I wouldn’t have been able to do. I’d have been able to make it to maybe two,” said 1st Sgt. Joshua Richards, 1st Brigade Combat Team.

The next big push with the Army are robots for the modern battlefield. Before you know it, these artificially intelligent machines will be making war decessions without any or limited input from humans. The rise of the terminator is happening. 

 

Authored by Kurt Schlichter, op-ed via Townhall.com,

Like the garbage French elite of long ago, our American garbage elite of today has learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

For four years, it has been focused entirely on deep-sixing Donald Trump for his unforgivable crime of demanding that our ruling caste be held accountable for its legacy of failure. Instead of focusing on not being terrible at their job of running America’s institutions, our elitists have decided that the real problem is us Normals being angry about how they are terrible at their job of running America’s institutions.

So, let’s imagine that they finally vanquish Trump, though every time they come up against him they end up dragging themselves home like Ned Beatty after a particularly tough canoe trip.

What happens then?

What happens then is that it’s back to business as usual, and for decades, business as usual for our garbage elite has not merely been running our institutions badly but pillaging and looting our country for power, prestige and cash.

The difference is that in the future they will be much more careful to ensure that no one who is not in on the scam will ever again come anywhere near the levers of power. You can already see it – the demands that we defer to the bureaucrats they own, the attacks on the idea of free expression, and the campaign to disarm us. Their objective is no more Trumps, just an endless line of progressive would-be Maduros with the march toward despair occasionally put on pause for a term by some Fredocon Republican who hates us Normals just as much as the Dems, but won’t admit it until after he’s out of office.

Our garbage elite talks a good game about its service and moral superiority, but if our betters were actually better than us, we would not be having this national conversation about how awful they are.

The fact is that what they want to do is go back to the way it was before Trump, back to 2015, aka the year 1 BT – Before Trump. Back then, progressive Democrats got their bizarre social pathologies normalized. Moderate Democrats got money, power and an open season on the local talent. Corporate types represented largely by squishy Republicans got globalism and the ability to ship our jobs out and import Third World serfs in. And the fake conservatives of Conservative, Inc., got to cash in without the necessity of actually conserving anything.

The only people that the old system didn’t work for were the American people.

It’s important to remember and to always remind yourself, that everything our elite says about its motives and morals is a lie and a scam. Take the whole #MeToo thing. This was supposed to be some sort of revolutionary rebellion against the sexual exploitation of the powerless by the powerful. It’s not, and never was. Rather, it’s simply an internal power struggle among and within the elites to reallocate power among snooty people who don’t give a damn about you or me.

The fall of Harvey Weinstein or Matt Lauer or any of the other bigwigs means nothing to the conservative single mom being exploited by the Democrat donors who own Walmart. It was actually striving female members of the elite – actresses, models, media figures, executives – leveraging the monstrosity of the creeps at the top to increase their own power within the elite. Do you see any of these #MeToo heroines, now that they have taken their scalps, helping their non-elite sisters out in Gun-Jesusland? Yeah, right. They are lining up with the rest of their elite pals to shaft us.

What you do see is excuses. They excuse Bill Clinton and his enabler Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit. They excuse Gropey Joe. They are in the process of excusing Katie Hill, whose naked hairbrush photo has ensured that none of us will ever sit on a hotel room chair again. Why no outrage? Why no concern? Because taking out Stumbles McMyturn or Hoover’s Dad or Congresswoman Every Man’s Lesbian Fantasy Destroyer does not help the faction of the elite that benefited from #MeToo. That would help us, but not the elite. Throuple Gal was exposed by Townhall’s peppery sister site Redstate, not the mainstream media, and the mainstream media is horrified – not by her furniture defilement but that word of it got through the gate they yearn to keep.

The simple fact is that they desperately want Trump out so they can return to the good old days of winks, nods, and payoffs.

Look at the Biden Family Crime Syndicate and the antics of the junior capo of the Cosa Nose Candy. In what universe is it A-OK that the crack-fueled Johnny Appleseed of paternity suits that is Joe’s snortunate son was cashing in on $50K a month in sweet, sweet Ukrainian gas gold just weeks after Ensign Biden got booted because he tooted? And then there’s riding on Air Force Two to the NBA’s favorite dictatorship for some commie ducats. Now there are even some Romanian shenanigans too – is there a single country on earth that Totally-Not-Senile Joe didn’t shake down for the benefit of his daughter-in-law’s second hubby?

But our garbage elite’s garbage media seems amazingly uninterested in all this – it’s fascinated by the timing of a situation room snap after Trump unleashed the Army’s Delta Force on al-Baghdadi and by dog medal memes, but the Veep’s boy’s bag-mannery is not merely of no interest but is something they close their fussy phalanx ranks around to protect. Keep in mind, the premise underlying the whole star chamber impeachment festival of onanism is that Donald Trump, America’s chief law enforcement officer, was somehow wrong and bad and double-plus ungood because he allegedly asked the Ukrainians, “Hey, what’s the dealio with the Columbia Kid’s pay-offs?”

In a non-bizarro political universe, the proper reaction to the Prezzy demanding, “You best fork over the evidence on these manifestly corrupt antics involving the Vice-President of the United States or we’re cutting you off from the American taxpayers’ feeding trough,” would be, “Hell to the yeah, four more years! Four more years!’

But it’s not, because the elite likes its sexual abuse and its foreign cash and its total lack of accountability to us, the Normals, the people who are supposed to be the ones that our elite is working for. The elite has not learned its lesson. It has not admitted that it sucks and resolved to stop sucking.

Instead, it has doubled down. And if it gets power again, it will act to solve what it sees as the most urgent problem facing America – the fact that we the people have the ability to reject the elite’s utter incompetence and surpassing greed and elect someone with a mandate to burn down the whole rotten edifice.

If the elitists get power again, they are never letting go of it, not without a fight. And now, doesn’t the elite’s obsessive fixation on shutting down conservative dissent, eliminating competing institutions (like religious entities), and disarming law-abiding Americans make a lot more sense?

*  *  *

Our garbage elite is outraged over the success of my action-packed yet hilarious novels of America torn apart by liberal malice, People’s Republic, Indian Country and Wildfire. In a few weeks, Number IV, Collapse, will drop. They call these books “appalling.” They don’t want you to read them. That’s better than any blurb!

Iraqi anti-government demonstrators fear a major new crackdown is coming after much of the nation’s internet access has been cut, especially in the restive south. This also as Baghdad authorities fear outside ‘foreign interference’ after President Trump referenced the mass protests on Twitter. 

A nearly nationwide blockage was first reported last night, and was briefly restored early Tuesday before being cut off again. “At the time of writing, national connectivity has fallen below 19% of normal levels sending tens of millions of users offline across Baghdad, also impacting Basra, Karbala and other population centers,” Reuters cited NetBlocks as stating late in the day Monday. “The new disruption is believed to be the most severe observed in Iraq to date,” the report added.

And NetBlocks monitoring group further observed into Tuesday — “Internet shut down again across most of Iraq following brief 3.5 hour restoration; real-time network data show national connectivity currently at 30% of ordinary levels” — related to the ongoing mass protests which have swept the country for over the past month. 

After accusations of Iran being involved in assisting and directing Baghdad security forces’ crackdown, which in many case has involved live ammo to disband crowds, resulting at this point in over 250 Iraqis killed and nearly 10,000 wounded, there’s growing fears that a Syria-style broader proxy war could emerge. 

⚠️ Alert: Internet shut down again across most of #Iraq following brief 3.5 hour restoration; real-time network data show national connectivity currently at 30% of ordinary levels; incident ongoing #iraq_protests #KeepItOn 📉

📰 https://t.co/SeCyP2mj1T pic.twitter.com/Qx7Mdqs9pp

— NetBlocks.org (@netblocks) November 5, 2019

The major government ordered blockage came a day after on Sunday the Iranian consulate in the city of Karbala came under attack by throngs of demonstrators and was torched, in the latest sign of public backlash over perceived Iranian control of Iraq’s politics and military. 

On Sunday President Trump retweeted two videos showing the attack on the consulate, no doubt as encouragement given it was an Iranian target. It’s possible or even likely that this was a deciding factor in authorities blocking internet access for most of the country. 

#BREAKING: Dozens of Iraqi demonstrators have stormed the Iranian consulate in #Karbala, lowering the flag and burning part of the outer wall #IraqProtests https://t.co/axoNKBjwHh pic.twitter.com/4wLEJYImKW

— Arab News (@arabnews) November 3, 2019

President Trump retweeted the above, along with another video of the consulate attack.

NetBlocks and the NGO Internet Society have estimated that the current internet blockage, the most significant in the nation’s history, has now cost Iraq over $1.3 billion.

Let the fearmongering begin…

In a joint statement from the alphabet soup of US intel agencies (DOJ, DOD, DHS, DNI, FBI, NSA, and GSA) on ensuring the security of the 2020 elections, officials would like you to know that while there is no current evidence of any threats, “foreign malicious actors” are out there hating you for your freedom and democracy and ready to meddle…

Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan, Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, FBI Director Christopher Wray, U.S. Cyber Command Commander and NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone, and CISA Director Christopher Krebs today released the following joint statement:

Today, dozens of states and local jurisdictions are hosting their own elections across the country and, less than a year from now Americans will go to the polls and cast their votes in the 2020 presidential election. Election security is a top priority for the United States Government. Building on our successful, whole-of-government approach to securing the 2018 elections, we have increased the level of support to state and local election officials in their efforts to protect elections. The federal government is prioritizing the sharing of threat intelligence and providing support and services that improve the security of election intelligence and providing support and services that improve the security of election infrastructure across the nation.

In an unprecedented level of coordination, the U.S. government is working with all 50 states and U.S. territories, local officials, and private sector partners to identify threats, broadly share information, and protect the democratic process. We remain firm in our commitment to quickly share timely and actionable information, provide support and services, and to defend against any threats to our democracy.

Our adversaries want to undermine our democratic institutions, influence public sentiment and affect government policies. Russia, China, Iran, and other foreign malicious actors all will seek to interfere in the voting process or influence voter perceptions.

Adversaries may try to accomplish their goals through a variety of means, including social media campaigns, directing disinformation operations or conducting disruptive or destructive cyber-attacks on state and local infrastructure.

While at this time we have no evidence of a compromise or disruption to election infrastructure that would enable adversaries to prevent voting change vote counts or disrupt the ability to tally votes, we continue to vigilantly monitor any threats to U.S. elections.

The U.S. government will defend our democracy and maintain transparency with the American public about our efforts. An informed public is a resilient public. Americans should go to trusted sources for election information, such as their state and local election officials. We encourage every American to report any suspicious activity to their local officials, the FBI, or DHS.

In past election cycles, reporting by Americans about suspicious activity provided valuable insight which has made our elections more secure. The greatest means to combat these threats is a whole-of-society effort.

In other words: be afraid, be very afraid, see something, say something – and do not question any crackdowns on your liberty and it is merely a temporary repression for your own good and to save democracy.

A housing affordability crisis, depressed wages, insurmountable debts, and a downturn in the economy have paralyzed US homeowners as their ability to move collapses. 

US homeowners in 2019 had spent an average of 13 years in their home, up from eight years in 2010, reported Redfin.

Across 55 metros Redfin analyzed, homeowners in all regions stayed in their home much longer versus 2010.

Salt Lake City, UT; Houston, TX; Fort Worth, TX; San Antonio, TX; and Dallas, TX were some of the metropolitan areas where homeowners were staying the longest as their economic mobility rotted away over the last decade or so.

Here are the top 18 cities where homeowners were staying in their homes the longest:

This means your home is your prison, and it’s possible new homeowners will be stuck in their new purchases for a much more extended period than ones before them after the next recession strikes. That is because many of the new homeowners are millennials with insurmountable debts. 

It’s not just mortgage debt that will hold back millennial homeowners from moving — their student loans, auto loans, and credit card debt will also be a significant factor. 

Plus, most millennials have been purchasing homes at the highest price extremes, they will have to wait for the Federal Reserve to blow up the housing bubble again before they can break even after prices fall in the next recession. 

With economic mobility among all homeowners deteriorating, this is the latest example that the “greatest economy ever” is merely a hoax. 

Authored by JD Heyes via NaturalNews.com,

The few times in our history when Congress has either voted to impeach a president or considered returning articles of impeachment, the process was handled very publicly.

Hearings were not held in secret. Testimony was not taken behind closed doors. Witnesses and evidence were presented out in the open so the American people, through various media of the day, were well aware of what was happening.

The reasons for the openness should be obvious, but alas, they are not for far too many Americans.

First of all, allowing someone accused of criminal activity to face his or her accuser is a fundamental legal principle of our founding. 

Secondly, secret trials were banned hundreds of years ago because they are the legal instruments of tyrants: Kings and dictators holding secret proceedings can present phony “evidence” in order to achieve convictions. 

Third, the accused are permitted legal representation of their own so they can challenge the prosecution’s witnesses and alleged “evidence.”

None of these founding principles are being applied to the current “impeachment inquiry” involving President Donald Trump.

Democrats, led by Rep. Adam Schiff of California, are holding the inquiry behind closed doors. They are bringing in ‘witnesses’ whose testimony is being sequestered – even as Schiff has been accused of leaking the contents of some witness testimony completely out of context. 

Also, no one on the president’s legal team has been able to question any of the witnesses Democrats have called in to testify. So he doesn’t know what’s being said — other than what Schiff is leaking to the “mainstream media,” which is dutifully reporting what they’ve been provided, sans corroboration.

It’s the most un-American legal process one could ever have envisioned. Worse, this is supposedly involving an impeachment process — one that, theoretically, could involve the removal of a duly elected president 63 million Americans voted for. (Related: “Ukraine” whistleblower suddenly not going to testify before Adam Schiff’s secret committee — so what’s the “impeachment inquiry” really for?)

We will rue the day we allow our country to be stolen from us

In short, nothing about this process should be held in secret. Communist countries and others who are run by dictators have secret ‘legal’ proceedings, but clearly none that would involve the leader of the country.

Democracies don’t operate that way and our unique American republic was never supposed to operate in the dark. 

Granted, if the Democrat-controlled House ever does return actual articles of impeachment against President Trump, that will be conducted in the open. But knowing how secretive Democrats have been thus far, it’s a safe bet they’ll attempt to present as “evidence” the “testimony” of so-called “witnesses” who, thus far, have only appeared behind closed doors.

It’s been said that ‘impeachable offenses’ are whatever the House of Representatives say they are in order to satisfy the Constitution’s “high crimes and misdemeanors” impeachment requirement. But clearly the processes employed against Trump are partisan in nature and not based on any semblance of historical precedent.

As Americans, we can’t allow this process to be warped — by one political party and the media. The future of our country is far too important. 

“President Trump is a disruptor. That makes some people very happy, and it makes some people very mad,” former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said during a Friday speech at the American Enterprise Institute.

“But if we are a country that lives by the rule of law, we must all accept that we have one president at a time, and that president attained his office by the choice of the American people.

“No policy disagreement with him, no matter how heartfelt, justifies undermining the lawful authority that is vested in his office by the Constitution. … What’s at stake is not President Trump’s policies. What’s at stake is the Constitution,” she added.

She’s exactly right. Nothing is worth losing our country. As long as we continue to have unimpeded free elections, there is always a chance to fix things. 

After more than a decade since the subprime mortgage market triggered the 2008 financial meltdown, the strict lending standards placed on new homeowners post-crisis have disintegrated in the last three years.

Homebuyers with low credit scores, gig-economy jobs, and high-debt loads (sounds like millennials), can now obtain mortgages and participate in the American dream of owning a home.

Putting unqualified people back into homes is the latest example of stupidity from Wall Street, but the lack of oversight from the Federal Reserve and government. 

The rapid surge of non-qualified, or non-QM bonds, is happening as cracks in the housing market have appeared. For instance, the housing price growth of major cities in the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index has stalled. Delinquency rates of these unconventional loans have also started to tick higher. 

“It’s obviously disturbing this late in the cycle to see originations for these loans at the kind of level they’ve kicked up to,” Daniel Alpert, managing partner at Westwood Capital, told Bloomberg. “The housing market is not quite ready for a big infusion of this product.”

Banks, who are underwriting these unconventional loans, are doing so through weakening standards very late in an economic expansion. The expectation is that a recession could arrive as early as next year, could lead to a further tick up in delinquency rates.

The non-QM bond market is nowhere near the size of the subprime bond market of 2007/08. 

“It’s not the subprime we remember from 2006 to 2007,” said Mario Rivera, managing director of the Fortress Credit Funds business, which has bought non-QM bonds. “It’s more of a second or third inning of non-QM. We’re getting the best collateral before the more aggressive lending comes in.”

Bloomberg says the size of the non-QM bond market is about $27 billion, a tiny fraction compared to the $10 trillion mortgage-bond market. Back in 2007, the subprime mortgage bond market was approximately $1.8 trillion right before it imploded. 

Nonbank mortgage lenders have largely underwritten these unconventional loans, but large banks like JPMorgan Chase & Co., Credit Suisse Group AG, and Citigroup Inc. have been entering the space since 2016.  

Recent non-QM borrowers have had credit scores at or below 700, many have provided income statements rather than tax returns. Fitch Ratings analysis warns non-QM borrowers are susceptible to income fluctuations. 

Fitch added that non-QM bonds have a lot more safeguards than the subprime ones did in 2007.

“There’s a lot more cushion, as there should be,” said John Kerschner, head of U.S. securitized products at Janus Henderson Group Plc. “You can get some comfort that even if defaults inch up, the losses from those defaults aren’t going to be egregious.”

And while the non-QM bond market won’t lead to the next financial armageddon like what was seen a decade ago, it certainly demonstrates that Wall Street is willing to create the same financial products that led up to the last crisis.