Tag: news

Authored by Daniel Greenfield via Sultan Knish blog,

They say that Disneyland is the happiest place on earth, but Hillaryland must be the saddest.

What is Hillaryland? It’s a social network “aiming to connect all the people who’ve worked for Hillary Rodham Clinton during her more than 40 years of public service.” It’s run by “volunteers” and offers a plain white $15 Hillaryland tote bag which it claims that it’s selling “at cost” and “not for profit”.

How the might have fallen.

Once upon a time, Hillary and her people gaslit the country on the big issues. Now they’ve gone from Benghazi to trying to convince a declining handful of suckers that $15 is the cost price for a tote bag.

Hillaryland is the sad successor to Clintonworld networks like the Clinton Foundation which connected world leaders, foreign criminals and a prospective president. The alumni network is now a joke. The Clintons will never hold public office again. Hillaryland isn’t an alumni network, it’s a political leper colony run by “volunteers” too dumb to realize that the S.S. Slick Willy will never rise again.

Hillaryland promotes such promising ventures as Nasty Women Serve which holds an annual Hillary Rodham Clinton Day of Service. The highest level of service in Hillaryland is hosting a “house party” on November 8, which is National Hillary Day, also known as the day of Hillary’s downfall and defeat. The party will have, “in the true spirit of HRC — some Chardonnay” and will go on “until the wine runs out”.

Only Nazi war criminals in Argentina have sadder and more pathetic reunions than Hillary minions.

Nazis and potheads have 4/20 to get high. Hillary fans have 11/8 to get drunk on white wine. And both of them even blame the Russians for the defeat of their miserably corrupt murderous regimes.

And where’s Madame Fuhrer?

Hillary stopped by the Venice Biennale, the umbrella organization that includes the Venice Film Festival, allegedly a favorite stalking ground of old Clinton pal, Harvey Weinstein, to attend the exhibit of “HILLARY: The Hillary Clinton Emails.”

For an hour, Hillary sat in a replica of the Oval Office pretending to read her own emails as part of an art project. To make her humiliation more complete, HILLARY was staged at the Despar Teatro Italia, a former theater turned into a supermarket. Confused shoppers watched a former American presidential contender pretending to be the President of the United States in an Italian supermarket.

There’s your chicken, your canned tomatoes and your pasta. Upstairs is a crazy lady who thinks she’s the President of the United States. Go easy on the chardonnay, you don’t want to end up like her.

Even Lady Macbeth went mad with more dignity than Hillary Clinton.

The Oval Office recreated in an Italian supermarket is only the second most famous piece of eponymous Hillary art. The National Museum of Women in the Arts also features a 6-foot-tall painting of a black fabric swatch named Hillary gifted to it by Heather and Tony Podesta. Heather and Tony have since split up. And Tony, a Hillarylander, got caught up in the Russia scandal and shut down his lobbying operation.

Sic transit gloria clintonmundi.

Hillaryland and the Italian supermarket presidency cast a dim light on Hillary’s prospects. What do you do when you run out of Chardonnay and ways to market yourself to an audience that no longer cares?

Audiences turned up their noses at Bill and Hillary’s theatrical appearances. The real Bill and Hillary flopped and so did fictional versions of them played by John Lithgow and Laurie Metcalf in Hillary and Clinton. Everyone, including Italian supermarket shoppers, want Hillary to go away. But she won’t go.

After churning out way too many books, Hillary is back with The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience. This one is supposedly co-written with Chelsea, but just sounds like a revamp of Chelsea’s collection of She Persisted books which seem to have the same premise and theme.

This just means another Hillary Clinton book tour that nobody asked for and nobody actually wants.

Nevertheless, Hillary’s desperation tour will still be coming to such world-renowned locations as the Women’s Club of Ridgewood, NJ (no books will be signed), the United Methodist Church in Denver, CO, and the San Ramon Valley High School gym. Next stop, a random Appleby’s in Great Forks.

What’s the point of all this?

Jeffrey Epstein is dead, Ed Buck is in jail, and Harvey Weinstein is tapped out. The money has to come from somewhere. Even if it means sitting dead-eyed and drunk in a high school gym while Chelsea launches into an enthusiastic explanation of how Rachel Carson made the world safe for malaria.

But it’s not as if the Clintons really need the money. Their greed is as compulsive as all their vices.

Hillary Clinton loathes other people, but is incapable of existing without them. She can’t do what every other contender did and go away because she has nowhere to go. There’s a mansion in New York, but it has too many mirrors. And at night, she might start wandering and muttering, “Out, damned spot.”

And she won’t be talking about the neighbor’s dog who committed suicide in a local park.

Desperate and malicious, Hillary’s restless spirit wanders the nation and the world, haunting random supermarkets, gyms and colleges. To paraphrase her inspiration, Karl, a specter is wandering D.C. That’s where Hillary showed up to George Washington U to claim that she only lost Wisconsin because of Republican voter suppression. It had nothing to do with her failure to campaign in Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, only 300 people turned out to hear her latest set of pathetic excuses and lies.

“I was the first person who ran for president in more than 50 years without the protection of the Voting Rights Act,” she whined.

The Voting Rights Act had been put into place to stop Democrat voter suppression in segregated states in 1965. Not to protect Hillary. It had nothing to do with why a rich white Democrat lost Wisconsin.

Who actually invited Hillary to rant at GWU? Who else? Hillary Clinton. In Defense of American Democracy, the conference at which Hillary spoke was sponsored by Onward Together. Her own group.

Hillary told attendees that the crisis caused by her defeat requires “national soul searching.”

Would you have “risked arrest to demand votes for women or bled on the Edmund Pettus Bridge to demand voting rights for all?” she demanded.

Why would anyone get arrested or bleed for Hillary? They’re not even coming to hear her speak.

Just like they didn’t bother turning out to vote for her.

Hillary wants to fight a war until the last Hillarylander, but nobody would sacrifice a bunion for her, let alone their life and liberty to see that the flag of Hillandia flies proudly over a burning White House.

That’s what happens when you live in your own imaginary echo chamber of wealth and power.

Hillary claimed that Republicans had prevented American Indians on reservations from voting for her. But maybe they were just saving their votes for Elizabeth Warren, the first Cherokee president.

The only thing democracy needs defending from is Hillary Clinton.

The 2016 election was not hijacked by the Russians, Facebook or UFOs. It was nearly hijacked by Clinton operatives who spread false claims that Trump was a Russian agent that her campaign manufactured and paid for, and then passed along to government officials who used it as a pretext to spy on the opposition. Hillary began her rise with Watergate and ended her career by trying to recreate Watergate.

And now it’ll be on to the next stop in her endless self-humiliation world tour.

Hillary’s election hijacking failed and the only way she’ll ever be president is in an Italian supermarket.

‘Resistance Hero’ Robert De Niro — who since Trump took office has become known for his epic self-righteous rants against the president in interviews and public venues, such as his profanity-laced anti-Trump tirade at last year’s Tony Awards, or more recently his dropping F-bombs on a CNN live show — has been slapped with a $12 million lawsuit by his former personal assistant of 11 years, Graham Chase Robinson.

Robinson, who served as the Vice President of Production and Finance at De Niro’s company, Canal Productions, alleges “years of gender discrimination and harassment,” and additionally that her boss created a “hostile work environment” — notably including “gratuitous physical unwanted contact” and consistently making “sexually charged comments”.

The suit was filed in the Southern District of New York on Thursday and the hefty multi-million dollar sum is being sought for “back pay, front pay, compensatory damages, punitive damages, attorneys’ fees, costs, and other appropriate relief.”

She’s described De Niro treating her as essentially an “office wife”, detailing that he assigned her “stereotypically female duties such as housework” and created conditions of extreme overwork with no compensation, sometimes as much as “20 to 30 hours of overtime per week,” according to the filing. She also alleges he threatened negative “consequences” for her career if she left his employment. 

“De Niro subjected Ms. Robinson to gratuitous unwanted physical contact,” the filing states. 

Among the most shocking allegations included claims the famous award-winning actor made “vulgar, inappropriate, and gendered comments” suggesting she use a male co-worker’s sperm to impregnate herself. Other similar incidents included De Niro allegedly inappropriately referencing his Viagra prescription.

Chase Robinson’s name first made headlines in association with De Niro in August, when the actor sued her for $6 million alleging she wasted “astronomical amounts of time” on things like binge watching Netflix and blowing through corporate cash on personal shopping trips. She said De Niro’s suit was in order to preempt and discredit her own lawsuit. 

De Niro’s lawyer has called the lawsuit “beyond absurd”; however, Robinson has already publicly released evidence she says backs the allegations, in the form of a fuming and expletive-laden voicemail he left her after she merely missed one of his calls. 

In the angry voice message, De Niro repeated calls her a “spoiled fucking brat” for missing his call, the transcript of which was included in Thursday’s court filing:

“You f***ing don’t answer my calls? How dare you! You’re about to be fired. You’re f***ing history,” De Niro told her. 

His abusive behavior toward employees and people attending to his personal needs has been documented before, including earlier this year a public meltdown on a Manhattan sidewalk outside of divorce court where he was fighting for custody of his seven-year-old daughter from his estranged wife of 21 years Grace Hightower.

He began yelling and cursing at the driver for not picking him up in the right place. 

Over the past years his anti-Trump tirades have been no less aggressive — though often receiving the approval and applause of his fellow Hollywood liberals and audiences. 

He recently dropped F-bombs on CNN’s Reliable Sources while saying of Trump, “We’ve gotta get him out…This guy should not be president, period.” 

Fox’s Tucker Carlson this week described De Niro’s ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ as increasingly on full display:

Here you have this incredibly rich guy – who really is the embodiment of privilege in New York City – screaming at probably some foreign born driver, while his assistant covers his face so we can’t see him berate his servants. 

“Of course he’s a liberal… cause he cares about the little guy,” Carlson concluded sarcastically.

Indeed it will be interesting to see if other actors as well as #MeToo movement activists rally to Robinson’s defense on this one, and call out De Niro’s clearly abusive and aggressive behavior, much of which has already been on public display. 

Authored by Haley Zaremba via OilPrice.com,

Big things are happening at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The state-of-the-art intergovernmental research organization is home to the single biggest particle physics laboratory on the planet. CERN’s unparalleled infrastructure and funding from 23 member countries give the organization the unprecedented opportunity to scientifically study some of the biggest, most hard-to-answer questions about the universe, even down to the logistics of the all-encompassing mystery that the Big Bang. 

At any given time, CERN has its hands in a number of different scientific endeavors, each loftier and more high-minded than the last. At the moment the Large Hidron Collider–the world’s largest–is almost halfway through a two-year hiatus, but that doesn’t mean that the researchers at CERN have slowed down one bit.

One of the projects currently in the works concerns the future of Artificial Intelligence and its role in the advancement of science. CERN has ambitious plans to upgrade its famous accelerator over the next 20 years in order to push our research capabilities and understanding of physics to historically unprecedented levels, but in order to do so the research organization will need to surpass some enormous computational hurdles.

This is where AI comes into the picture.

“Such technologies could, for example, play a role in filtering through hundreds of millions of particle collision events each second to select interesting ones for further study,” says CERN’s own news outlet.

“Or they could be used to help spot patterns in monitoring data from industrial control systems and prevent faults before they even arise. Already today, machine-learning approaches are being applied to these areas.”

Playing around with AI is nothing to be taken lightly, however, and CERN is well aware of the potential pitfalls. This is precisely why School of Computer Science at University College Dublin in Ireland assistant professor Vivek Nallur was invited to CERN to give a talk about “consequentialist ethics, virtue ethics and deontological ethics”. 

But AI should be the least of CERN-sceptics’ worries. In fact, AI is just the very tip of the ethical iceberg. AI is not the only project that CERN has devoted its attentions to in the interim while the particle accelerator is offline. And the other big project has potential implications so dangerous it could literally mean the end of the world.

As has already been mentioned, CERN is currently working on a lofty plan to revamp its “flagship accelerator complex” over the course of the next two decades. But a more powerful particle accelerator could be the very last thing the world needs, according to British cosmologist Martin Rees. Rees, a well-respected expert in his field, issued a grave warning to the scientific community about particle accelerator experiments gone awry in his book “On The Future: Prospects for Humanity” published late last year. These experiments meant to push the boundaries of nature and physics, he writes, “might do something far worse — destroy the Earth or even the entire universe.”

As alarmist as it sounds, this is no crackpot notion. Rees writes that,

“Maybe a black hole could form, and then suck in everything around it […] The second scary possibility is that the quarks would reassemble themselves into compressed objects called strangelets. That in itself would be harmless. However, under some hypotheses a strangelet could, by contagion, convert anything else it encounters into a new form of matter, transforming the entire earth in a hyperdense sphere about one hundred metres across.”

If the idea of a black hole being created by sheer accident here on earth, almost instantaneously compacting the entire earth into an ultra-dense object the length of a football field isn’t scary enough, this isn’t even the worst-case scenario. The third, and by far the most disturbing way in which a particle accelerator could potentially undo the world as we know it is by taking the entire universe down with it by means of a “catastrophe that engulfs space itself.”

The book goes on to elaborate on this impossible-to-fathom idea. “”Empty space – what physicists call the vacuum – is more than just nothingness. It is the arena for everything that happens. It has, latent in it, all the forces and particles that govern the physical world. The present vacuum could be fragile and unstable.

“Some have speculated that the concentrated energy created when particles crash together could trigger a ‘phase transition’ that would rip the fabric of space. This would be a cosmic calamity not just a terrestrial one.”

CERN, of course, has dismissed the ideas put forward by Rees and maintain that their experiments and their groundbreaking Large Hadron Collider pose no such threat to the world or the universe or even its hometown of Geneva, Switzerland. In a statement on its website CERN assures readers that “the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) can achieve an energy that no other particle accelerators have reached before, but Nature routinely produces higher energies in cosmic-ray collisions,” and that a new safety analysis has been conducted, with all findings backing up the 2003 report in that “ LHC collisions present no danger and that there are no reasons for concern.”

In Rees own words, however, even though the various potential doomsdays via particle accelerator are unlikely, “given the stakes, they should not be ignored.” NBC’s tech and innovation news branch MACH points out that Rees’ call for concern has its place in a long and historized legacy of “experts cautioning that modern technology could lead us to disaster,” from atomic bomb testing igniting the atmosphere to astronauts bringing incurable space diseases back from the moon. Just because these worries haven’t come true, however, doesn’t mean that such fears should be dismissed–especially coming from an industry veteran like Rees. 

Every technological advancement in human history has been made possible by the boundless curiosity and hubris of man. Scientific inquiry and an outright refusal to explain away or simply accept the infinitely complex world and universe we live in is quite possibly the greatest gift of our species. But as we continue to push the bounds of physics, nature, and science, we should always endeavor to expect the unexpected and consider every possible outcome so we can best mitigate the consequences. 

Authored by Anna Massoglia via OpenSecrets.org

Foreign influence and lobbying spending targeting the United States on behalf of Saudi Arabia’s interests has grown precipitously in the year since the death of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul.

Some firms attempted to publicly distance themselves from Saudi Arabia due to the controversy over Khashoggi and mounting allegations of human rights abuses. But other foreign agents and lobbyists capitalized on the opportunity to try to help improve the country’s reputation on the global stage. 

Saudi Arabian interests reported spending just over $16 million on foreign influence operations from October 2, 2017, until October 2, 2018, according to OpenSecrets’ analysis. In the year since Khashoggi’s death, Saudi interests have poured more than $27 million into influence operations disclosed in Foreign Agent Registration Act filings in OpenSecrets’ Foreign Lobby Watch database.

The vast majority of Saudi Arabia’s influence spending targeting the U.S. in the past year went to a lobbying and communications firm called MSLGroup in a stream of payments starting days after Khashoggi’s killing. From October 2018 to January 2019, MSLGroup raked in more than $18.8 million from Saudi government — more than Saudi Arabia spent lobbying the U.S. in the entire year leading up to Khashoggi’s death. 

Registrants are supposed to file every six months, but FARA filings often are submitted late. That can cause additional delay between when payments take place and when they are disclosed — meaning that Saudi foreign influence spending this year is likely to be even higher once other foreign agents submit their FARA disclosures.

Saudi Arabia deployed 39 lobbying firms and other registrants under FARA this year, down from 49 registrants in the year leading up to Khashoggi’s death. Those firms that stuck with Saudi Arabia were rewarded with big paydays. 

Overall, Saudi interests spent more than $38.5 million in the 2018 calendar year, up from around $19 million in 2017 and and just over $15 million in 2016.

Saudi interests have spent roughly $60 million on foreign influence and lobbying operations in the U.S. since President Donald Trump took office. 

Saudi influence networks deploy a wide array of strategies, ranging from more traditional lobbying campaigns to extensive digital operations. But even Saudi Arabia’s most conventional lobbying efforts are notable for more than just the vast amounts spent. 

An impassioned 2017 speech on the House floor defending U.S. support for war in Yemen by former Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) was taken almost verbatim from a lobbyist’s script handed to him earlier that day by a foreign agent for Saudi Arabia. After leaving Congress in 2018, Royce took a job at Brownstein Hyatt, which is one of the major firms representing the Saudi government.

Foreign agents and lobbyists from at least two K Street firms worked directly with the aide who allegedly engineered Khashoggi’s murder. Sitting lawmakers targeted by foreign influence and lobbying operations are hardly the only politicians whose names show up in FARA disclosures.

Foreign agents working for Saudi Arabia’s U.S. influence or lobbying operations made over $1.6 million in political donations in the 2018 election cycle, and 2020 presidential candidates face the decision of whether to pocket money from foreign lobbyists or reject it. 

FARA disclosures are also rife with former elected officials who’ve since entered the revolving door. Multiple former members of Congress now registered as foreign agents used leftover campaign money in so-called “zombie campaign” accounts to funnel political contributions to the same lawmakers they were lobbying on behalf of Saudi Arabia.

Former Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) is one such former lawmaker who used leftover campaign money to make political contributions to House Armed Services Committee members while working as a registered foreign agent of Saudi Arabia and lobbying for defense contractors on legislation related to arms deals under the committee’s purview. 

Some of McKeon’s political contributions to lawmakers’ campaigns were made the same day he spoke with their congressional offices. McKeon’s firm continued to rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars just days after Khashoggi’s death.

At least one foreign agent simultaneously held a U.S. government appointment while being paid to represent Saudi interests as a foreign agent. Richard Hohlt registered as a foreign agent of the Saudi Arabian government weeks before the 2016 presidential election and just months before President Trump appointed him to the Commission on White House Fellowships. Hohlt continued raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars to represent  Saudi interests while serving on Trump’s commission but ultimately terminated the arrangement following backlash.

Trump’s campaign aides and allies have also been enlisted in Saudi lobbying efforts. 

One of Saudi Arabia’s highest-paid firms since Trump took office is Sonoran Policy Group, a lobbying firm founded by Trump campaign advisor Robert Stryk. The firm received a $5.4 million cash infusion from the Saudi government paid up front for “broad advisory services” under a contract that was reportedly terminated shortly after it was signed, resulting in the Stryk’s firm essentially being paid more than $5 million to “do nothing.”

Another avenue of Saudi influence in the Trump administration has been through Trump’s many business entanglements with foreign countries.

Saudi foreign agents and lobbyists spearheaded by MSLGroup have come under fire for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to put up a group of veterans at Trump International Hotel while lobbying for changes to the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act — legislation that enabled 9/11 lawsuits against the government of Saudi Arabia — after those veterans claimed they did not know their trip had been organized and financed by the government of Saudi Arabia.

A 2018 report to Trump Hotel Chicago investors obtained by the Washington Post showed a 169 percent increase in Saudi Arabia-based patrons since 2016. 

While the Trump Organization pledged to contribute all profits from foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury, Saudi Arabia’s government alone spent more at Trump International Hotel in the four months after Trump won the presidency than the entire Trump Organization donated to cover foreign profits either year he has been in office.

And that’s only what Saudi Arabia’s foreign influence agents and lobbyists have readily disclosed. 

But is all the foreign lobbying in America working?…

Amid global uproar, some US colleges rethink Saudi ties https://t.co/xHy8AcuAHS

— asad abukhalil أسعد أبو خليل (@asadabukhalil) October 30, 2018

In addition to shelling out millions for lobbying campaigns, Saudi Arabia has also quietly strengthened its brand in the U.S. through less traditional channels of foreign influence. Many of Saudi Arabia’s creative influence operations stem from psychological research built by a subsidiary of Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, a secretive defense and intelligence contractor called SCL Group hired by the Saudi Arabia to build a “psychological road map.”

A secretive cultural-exchange project called Gateway KSA enticed hundreds of social media influencers with invitations for all-expenses-paid trips to Saudi Arabia chock full of amenities ranging from VIP tickets to concerts and safaris.

The trips generated social media fodder from non-Saudi influencers across the world in advance of Saudi Arabia’s new tourist visa formally launched Sept. 27 as part of efforts to rehabilitate the country’s image and develop its tourism industry, according to reporting by Bloomberg and Insider. Gateway KSA is run by a cousin of Crown Prince Mohammed and receives support from Saudi government-owned entities.

Influencers were reportedly not permitted to explore Saudi Arabia outside their official itineraries, effectively limiting the content they shared to the parts of Saudi Arabia the country wants to promote. Instead of relying solely on posts by Saudi Arabia’s official government accounts to promote the country’s interests, the program enabled Saudi actors to amplify their message through non-Saudi social media accounts across the world and effectively curate what content influencers who accepted the invitations shared about the trip.

In August, Facebook suspended hundreds of accounts, pages and groups it determined were tied to the Saudi government due to “coordinated inauthentic behavior” attacking Saudi Arabia’s rivals and promoting the government’s propaganda. The ring of accounts spent six figures on  on Facebook and Instagram ads reaching more than a million people across the platforms, according to the company.

Last week, Twitter disclosed the removal of 4,525 more accounts linked to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.

At least four of the accounts were verified, including one that belonged to a U.S. meteorologist who died more than two years ago. They appear to have been hacked and sold to pro-Saudi entities, according to research from an assistant professor in Middle East Studies and Digital Humanities at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Qatar.

The thousands of suspended Twitter accounts were tied together by their frequent interactions with a recently-rebranded verified Twitter account called @TheGlobus, which acts as a news outlet. The same account had been previously linked to a pro-Trump information operation trying to denounce the special counsel report as a “Russiagate hoax.” Prior to its rebranding, the Globus was named Arabian Veritas and primarily posted news and memes favorable to Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, according to researchers who uncovered the network.

In October 2018, Twitter suspended thousands of bots flooding the platform with favorable messages about Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman days after Khashoggi was killed.

Following violations of “platform manipulation policies,” Twitter also suspended the account of Saud al-Qahtani, a Saudi official sanctioned by the U.S. after being implicated in Khashoggi’s killing. Qahtani is considered the “architect” of Saudi Arabia’s digital media operations, procuring bots and spyware to target perceived critics of the country.

Following Khashoggi’s death, the New York Times reported that the Saudi government reportedly had a spy working inside Twitter to help track dissidents like Khashoggi online and deployed an army of over 100 people working as a “troll farm” to go after them.

Authored by Alt-Market’s Brandon Smith, originally published at Birch Gold Group,

Another trade war is brewing between these two nations, and the results could be dramatic for U.S. investors.

The United States and China are not the only two nations involved in a trade war.

Over the summer, trade relations between Japan and South Korea have dramatically deteriorated to the point that many are calling this a trade “war”, although some experts are describing the developments as a trade “dispute” at this point.

Whatever you want to call it, recent trade relations between these two nations are beginning to look eerily similar to the collapse in trade relations between China and the U.S. which everyone agrees is now a full-fledged trade war.

For example, in August Japan removed South Korea from its list of trusted trade partners. One month later, South Korea retaliated by doing the same thing—Tokyo was dropped from Seoul’s own list of preferred partners.

The reasons why this is happening go back 60 to 100 years. If the relationship continues to slide, a collapse in trade relations between South Korea and Japan could bring negative, destabilizing consequences to the U.S. economy.

Let’s begin by looking at the history of the Japan-South Korea conflict for context.

The Origins Behind the Bad Blood

Japan and South Korea have unresolved issues between them that go back to World War II.

According to Korean estimates, during World War II the Imperial Japanese government forced 7.8 million Koreans into forced labor, including military service and sexual slavery. To this day, Korea has not been satisfied with a sense of justice.

In fact, the South Korean Supreme Court recently ordered Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan to pay South Koreans who were forced to work in its factories during the war. And in a previous ruling the top court ordered Japan’s Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal to pay $88,700 to four South Korean victims.

The complicated and emotionally volatile history between the two nations goes back even further—Korea was a Japanese colony from 1910 until Japan surrendered in WWII.

Japan has insisted for decades that all the forced labor allegations were settled under agreements that established bilateral diplomatic ties in 1965. Both sides now interpret the treaty somewhat differently when it comes to addressing past Japanese transgressions.

The bad blood can be traced back centuries before the Japanese colonization. In the largest public square in Seoul, you can find a statue of Admiral Yi Sun-sin, an admired Korean general who stopped Japan from invading Korea in 1592. In the process of that invasion, the Japanese burned down the country’s royal palace. A few hundred years later, a Korean queen was murdered by Japanese assassins inside that same royal palace.

Fast forward to today and you find both nations led by nationalists who do not want to be seen as weak when dealing with the other side on trade, or anything else.

As an investor, you probably want to know how the Japan-South Korea relationship could affect your retirement savings, so let’s take a look…

Connecting the Trade Partner Dots

After WWII, the U.S. built an architectural alliance in Asia that included both Japan and South Korea. The stability of this alliance continues to directly affect trade relations.

China looms large geographically in Asia, and one of their own strategic trade partners is North Korea. Liberal South Korean President Moon Jae-in recently called for economic collaboration with North Korea as a means to crush Japan’s economic superiority. Moon has publically called Japan a U.S. ally, not his. Moon has also threatened to withdraw from a military intelligence-sharing pact with Tokyo that is a key component to the U.S. alliance architecture in Asia.

You can see how the escalating trade war between China and the U.S. is inextricably attached to the Seoul-Tokyo-Washington trade alliance. Any changes, however slight, could cause these delicate trading relationships to crumble and when the dust settles, who knows what will remain and what will be lost?

Potential Destabilizing Impacts on U.S. Economy

One industry that looks vulnerable right now is the global technology sector.

Last month, Japan announced they were tightening controls over critical chemicals that South Korea needs to make semiconductors. Japan imposed the new regulations to force Japanese companies to obtain a license for each chemical before they can import them to South Korea. This process will take 90 days.

Semiconductors are required in most electronic devices, so Samsung would not be the only one feeling the hit from the Japanese regulations. Not only would the entire economy of South Korea be impacted—Silicon Valley would also take a hit.

The trade war poses a threat to the entire global tech supply chain. For example, two South Korean companies: Samsung and SK Hynix provide 60 percent of the world’s DRAM memory chips, which are in most of the electronics we all use daily. From Apple iPhones to Dell laptops, a shortage of memory chips could apply the brakes to an already slowing global economy.

Interdependence is Sometimes Unpredictable

In today’s interdependent global economy, a trade war in Asia between two nations can bring dramatic economic results to the shores of the U.S. and beyond.

We need to be paying attention to more than just the China-U.S. trade war. Investors must also keep an eye on this developing trade dispute between Japan and South Korea.

The four countries involved share too many connections, and both trade wars could collide to create one big economic downturn.

SoftBank Group founder and CEO Masayoshi Son is having tremendous difficulty attracting new investors to his Vision Fund 2 amid new developments that his current Vision Fund is taking a beating after the WeWork implosion and sliding valuations of its other major investments, according to several of Reuters’ sources. 

Despite the implosions of Vision Fund’s investments in the last several months, Son’s top advisors are urging the billionaire to halt Vision Fund 2, two people with information of SoftBank’s internal discussions told Reuters.

SoftBank Group has committed $38 billion to Vision Fund 2, but sources said no other significant commitments are outstanding.

The spectacular implosion of WeWork’s valuation over the last month has severely damaged Son’s reputation and leads Reuters to believe that Vision Fund will experience a significant writedown in the coming quarters.

SoftBank/Vision Fund plowed nearly $10 billion into WeWork, investing some of that capital at a $47 billion valuation in 1Q19. But since WeWork’s IPO was shelved, the startup is now only worth $10-12 billion.

On Tuesday, we noted how Son’s aggressive risk-taking in technology companies left him overlooking valuation metrics in the last several years. 

Another terrible judgment call on Son’s part was the announcement of a $5.5 billion share buyback program of SoftBank Group’s shares, earlier this year. The billionaire decided to buyback company stock because valuations of WeWork and other investments, like Uber and Sprint, saw significant valuation increases. 

SoftBank’s stock has plunged 30% in the last 46 trading days, as the market has finally figured out Son and Vision Fund made some bad bets. 

If macroeconomic headwinds continue to mount in the global economy, Son’s second fund could be scrapped in the near term. 

As we’ve highlighted in the last week or so, the global IPO and M&A markets are starting to falter. 

We even reported on Tuesday that veteran venture capitalists called an emergency meeting of the technology unicorns in Silicon Valley to advise them on the turbulent times ahead.  

Reuters noted that Vision Fund raised $97 billion, capital that was used to invest in unicorn startups. The fund was so large that it had more money than the entire U.S. venture capital industry raised in 2018.

Vision Fund’s investments in Uber, Slack, and WeWork (startups that have seen their valuations implode this year) are warning signs that the proverbial tide is going out, and it’s those who ignored valuations, like Son, are the ones currently swimming naked. 

Back in July, Apple, Microsoft, a handful of Japanese banks, and Britain’s Standard Chartered indicated that they would commit to Vision Fund 2. Three months later and several of Vision Fund’s investments deeply underwater, there is no word if these mega-corporations are still committed. 

“I think that it’s incredibly likely that they’ll postpone their plans for … fundraising efforts around Vision Fund 2,” said Andrea Lamari Walne, a Silicon Valley-based partner at Manhattan Venture Partners. 

And just like that, Vision Fund 2 has likely died, can’t attract the slightest bit of money from investors after Son’s wreckless investing spree in Vision Fund, has left investors with the possibility of significant losses ahead.

Everyone on the funding side is a genius in a synchronized recovery as central banks flood markets with liquidity, but it’s only when the tide goes out, those geniuses become clowns.

 

The Sackler family’s profiteering from the opioid crisis that has gripped most of the US over the past decade was far more extensive than even the courts realized. Citing figures gleaned from several legal filings, WSJ reports that the Sacklers likely reaped profits in the range of $12 billion to $13 billion from Purdue Pharmaceuticals – though the time frame for these earnings was left unclear.

The Sacklers and Purdue have taken a public relations beating over the firm’s aggressive marketing practices for its “revolutionary” pain drug, OxyContin, which is widely blamed for kick-starting the opioid crisis as Doctors over-prescribed it to people outside of the typical patient pool, which mostly included cancer patients and those with terminal illnesses.

This figure is much higher than the previous estimate of the family’s earnings: The Massachusetts AG had tabulated that the Sackler family made $4 billion in total off Purdue between 2008 and 2016.

Purdue and its lawyers have agreed to a $10 billion settlement that was intended to end the thousands of lawsuits facing Purdue, but it appears many of the state AGs who are suing the Connecticut-based pharmaceutical firm no longer wish to accept the settlement. Instead, lawyers for the plaintiffs are looking into ways to pierce Purdue’s bankruptcy protection (it filed for Chapter 11 in New York state earlier this year to try and shield itself from the myriad claims stemming from the opioid crisis).

The Sacklers have been widely criticized as evidence of the family’s efforts to shield its money has leaked to the press. Last month, the office of the New York AG uncovered $1 billion in wire transfers tied to the Sacklers. Plaintiffs accused the family of trying to siphon money away from Purdue to try and protect it from the settlements as it tries to legally extend the protections that cover Purdue to the family’s wealth as well. Even though not a single member of the Sackler family is employed at Purdue, nor do any of its members occupy board seats at the company.

The family still maintains a private family office that manages its wealth. The firm is reported to have north of $10 billion in assets.

Unsurprisingly, the company, and the family, have declined to discuss the payments made by the company to the family over the years (the family bought Purdue in 1952). But the company’s lawyers did have this to say: they urged the plaintiffs to sign on to the settlement and halt the lawsuits against the firm. Only once this has happened can the Sacklers “focus on giving up ownership of Purdue and contributing funds toward a settlement rather than on litigation that will waste resources and delay the deployment of solutions to communities in need.” A “need” which they themselves created.

Facebook’s Libra stablecoin project is imploding.

Just days after the Wall Street Journal reported that credit card titans Visa and Mastercard, who had initially agreed to back Facebook’s Libra, are reconsidering their involvement following a backlash from U.S. and European government officials, late on Friday e-payment giant Paypal also announced it was withdrawing from the group of companies Facebook had assembled to launch the global cryptocurrency-based payments network, dealing a blow to the social-media giant’s ambitions to overhaul financial services.

While Paypal didn’t cite a specific reason, it said it “made the decision to forgo further participation in the Libra Association at this time and to continue to focus on advancing our existing mission and business priorities as we strive to democratize access to financial services for underserved populations.”

“We remain supportive of Libra’s aspirations and look forward to continued dialogue on ways to work together in the future,” the statement continues. “Facebook has been a longstanding and valued strategic partner to PayPal, and we will continue to partner with and support Facebook in various capacities.”

In a statement given to The Verge, Dante Disparte, the Libra Association’s head of policy and communications, reaffirmed the nonprofit’s commitment to “build a generational payment network. Disparte also confirms that an upcoming council meeting on October 14th in Geneva, Switzerland, where the Libra Association’s headquartered, is still on:

Building a modern, low-friction, high-security payment network that can empower billions of financially underserved people is a journey, not a destination. This journey to build a generational payment network like the Libra project is not an easy path. We recognize that change is hard, and that each organization that started this journey will have to make its own assessment of risks and rewards of being committed to seeing through the change that Libra promises. We look forward to the first Libra Council meeting in 10 days and will be sharing updates following that, including details of the 1,500 entities that have indicated enthusiastic interest to participate.

PayPal’s departure is not exactly a shock: on Thursday the Financial Times reported that PayPal had begun distancing itself from the project amid increasing regulatory scrutiny. The company reportedly signaled its intention to skip a meeting in Washington, DC scheduled for today, and as the Verge notes, at least one primary concern for PayPal has been the lack of attention Facebook executives have paid to Libra’s considerable backlash. Another key concern is how the platform will combat money laundering activity. 

Ironically, Libra is the brainchild of David Marcus, a former PayPal president who joined Facebook in 2014 to lead its Messenger division. In 2018, he formed a team within the social-media company to explore applications of blockchain, the technology that underpins bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Like PayPal, libra was envisioned to be a way to send money between two people as well as a way to pay for goods and services online. Unlike PayPal, libra will run not on existing payments infrastructure but on a yet-to-be-developed blockchain network backed by a pool of real assets and currencies.

Facebook’s entry into the digital payments space threatened to upend the cryptocurrency ecosystem as the number of people that use Facebook is around 10 times the number of people that use PayPal every year, and the opportunity to deliver financial services to them motivated PayPal to sign on to libra early. PayPal also powers payments on Facebook’s existing platforms, including a new in-app shopping offering announced in March; libra was seen as a way to further cement ties between the two companies.

“We believe that our more than 20 years of payments expertise can not only contribute value to the Libra Association, but it also gives us the opportunity to work with and learn from other leading organizations,” PayPal Chief Executive Dan Schulman wrote in a blog post in June. The post has since been deleted.

The most likely reason behind PayPal’s departure is the regulatory blowback Facebook received in the past few months as lawmakers and regulators in the U.S. and Europe were quick to criticize libra after it was unveiled in June, citing concerns about how Facebook and other companies involved would protect users’ privacy and stop criminals and terrorists from using it to launder money. Additionally, as the WSJ notes, this summer PayPal was one of a number of companies that received a letter from the U.S. Treasury Department that asked for a complete overview of its money-laundering compliance programs and how libra would fit into it.

While losing PayPal does not necessarily signal the eventual unwinding of Libra, the company was a major financial player, alongside existing members like Mastercard and Visa, of the Libra Association. As such, losing PayPal is not a great sign for the health of the project.

It is also unclear what the sudden backlash against Libra means for the other cryptocurrencies: the price of bitcoin and various alt-coins has been largely stable on Friday, with no notable market reaction observed following the PayPal news.

House Democrats on Friday roped Vice President Mike Pence into their investigation into whether President Trump “jeopardized national security” by asking Ukraine to investigate what looks like obvious corruption by former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. 

In a letter from Democratic House Committee Chairs Eliot Engel (NY), Adam Schiff (CA) and Elijah Cummings (MD), Pence is given a deadline of October 15 to turn over all documents related to President Trump’s April 21 and July 25 phone calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. 

The letter also requests all communications between administration officials regarding the calls, as well as information concerning Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to investigate or pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. 

Of note, the letter danced around a popular lie about the call between Trump and Zelensky:

According to the record, President Trump stated, “I would like you to do us a favor though.” He also stated, “I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.” 

The letter then jumps to a transcript of the July 25 phone call in which Trump said “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great.” 

Meanwhile, House Democrats purposely conflate Trump’s “favor” – which was actually for the investigation of the DNC servers involving their contractor Crowdstrile – and the Biden investigation. 

The word “favor” and “Bidens” are not related upon a simple read of the transcript. 

If Pence refuses to comply, the chairmen say it “shall constitute evidence of obstruction” in their impeachment inquiry. 

For those keeping track – Rep. Schiff lied when he said his office had no contact with the whistleblower (which earned him ‘four Pinocchios’ from the Washington Post). Schiff also fabricated a quote from the Trump-Zelensky call which he read during an official hearing. 

And now, he and two other House Democratic chairs are doing their best narrative shaping by misrepresenting more facts. 

As you might remember, if not, we’ll refresh your memory, we reported on a real estate technology company several years ago that wanted to lower the cost of home-selling by using robots and “big data” instead of commission-based real estate agents. Now it seems the trend of replacing real-estate agents with robots is heating up again. This time, robots have already sold nearly two dozen homes in Tennessee.

The home buying process in Tennessee is currently going through a technological revolution. 

Prospecting homebuyers, who visit listed Goodall Homes in the state, are greeted with a segway like robot that will answer all real estate questions. 

The Tennessean is reporting that Goodall’s robots are situated in listings located in 13 neighborhoods across the Nashville region and Knoxville. 

The robots are called Innovative Sales Consultants, have replaced the need for agents or sales associates to be present at a listing when home buyers want to look inside. 

So far these robots have sold 25 houses as of mid-Sept, said Amber Davis, the company’s online sales manager.

Chris O’Neal, Goodall’s chief business development officer, told The Tennessean that automation would revolutionize the homebuying process. 

“It’s not far-fetched to think that one day, maybe just months away, (our) competition maybe Amazon,” said O’Neal.

The Tennessean interviewed home buyer Rachael Flynn, who pressed the ring video doorbell at a Goodall model home in Durham Farms and was immediately welcomed by a robot at the door. 

“It came to the door. We were buzzed in by the Ring doorbell and she rolled over. It was like a Segway with an iPad,” said Flynn.

The newspaper said a team of six real estate agents operate Goodall’s robots remotely. Conversations between agents and homebuyers are held with FaceTime or Skype. 

Flynn said the home buying experience was similar to a realtor in the same room, but noted a significant problem: the robot had wheels and couldn’t travel up the stairs.  

Flynn also said the new process allowed her to visit the home on her own schedule, rather than when the realtor was available. 

Goodall’s robots are currently available day and night in ten Nashville region neighborhoods. In Sumner County, the robots are at homes in White House, Durham Farms in Hendersonville, and in Gallatin at Carellton, The Retreat at Fairvue, The Reserve at Cambridge Farms and Patterson Farms.

In Wilson County, the robots are at The Grove at Five Oaks in Lebanon and Oakvale in Mt. Juliet. In Rutherford County, they are at Valleybrook and The Reserve at Marymont Springs in Murfreesboro.

“To date, Goodall’s sales team has helped nearly 300 people using the ISCs, and have assisted in 25 sales, proving that the new technology is working,” Davis said.

And by 2025, your next real estate agent may be a robot.