Christopher Wray, the Director of the FBI, and Kevin McAleenan, the acting Homeland Security Secretary testified on Wednesday that they expected foreign countries, such as Russia and China,will try to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.
Source: https://ijr.com/fbi-director-warns-russian-interference/
Holmes Chan 31 October 2019 19:45
The Secretary for Justice, in her capacity as “guardian of the public interest,” applied for an injunction at the High Court of Thursday. The application asked that the court restrain anyone from “disseminating, sharing, or resharing” any information or material that “promotes, encourages or incites” violence against any person or unlawful damage against other persons or property.
The injunction application lists Telegram and LIHKG as examples, but said it would apply to other online forums and communication software as well. Judge Russell Adam Coleman granted the interim injunction, which will stay in place until a formal hearing for the application is heard on November 15.
Read the rest here.
Source: HKFP
Hong Kong court grants temporary injunction against inciting violence via messaging app Telegram and LIHKG forum
Chinese government-linked hackers are monitoring mobile text messages of specific users, and for certain keywords as part of a new surveillance campaign meant to track individuals in a vast trove of telecommunication data, according to findings published Thursday.
Oct. 31, 2019
In an address to a gala dinner in New York of the conservative Hudson Institute think tank on Wednesday, Pompeo said:
The Communist government in China today is not the same as the people of China. They are reaching for and using methods that have created challenges for the United States and for the world and we collectively, all of us, need to confront these challenges … head on.
“It is no longer realistic to ignore the fundamental differences between our two systems, and the impact that … the differences in those systems have on American national security,” Pompeo added.
The US Secretary of State Pompeo tweeted out this Thursday morning, “We accommodated China’s rise, in the hope that they would become more free. In response, the CCP took advantage of our goodwill. Now, @realDonaldTrump is facing the reality of CCP hostility to the U.S. and our values. We must engage China as it is, not as we wish it to be.”
Source: https://twitter.com/SecPompeo/status/1189738829101617153
Jho Low, the Malaysian financier at the center of the 1MDB scandal, has struck a $700m settlement with the US Department of Justice that resolves a string of civil forfeiture lawsuits targeting assets including luxury properties and a private jet.
Read more: FT
CNN Report with video: CNN
GNews: according to Miles Kwok, a Chinese dissident, Jho Low is an illegitimate son of Meng Jianzhu and IMDB was one of the many tools for the Chinese Communist Party to control the world through corruptions.
FT: 1MDB explained:
The Chinese Communist Party has just announced in the Dalian Intermediate People’s Court the seizure of 101 apartments owned by Mr. Guo Wengui at the Yuda International Trade Center in Zhengzhou,Henan province and Henan Yuda Real Estate co. LTD. The communist party once again took all the assets of Henan Yuda Hotel, worth $1.5 billion.
Private property: 0. Your life: 1.
It has always been the essence of the tax system under the Chinese Communist Party. Ever since the CCP took over China in 1949, countless private business people have been executed, private wealth taken, and their families destroyed. And if that was not enough, door to door search and confiscation of anything valuable was launched by the CCP (Now happening in Hong Kong.) And yet, the CCP’s success to political power in China was not without the support of the private businesses, the capitalists as the CCP called them, and the Chinese people. Unfortunately, this is a brutal reminder of what the Chinese Communist Party truly is. If you want to live, turn everything you work so hard for the state and the Party. And if you have any doubt what your life is worth, then take what the CCP explains to you: You belong to the state, and the state owns everything. You can keep whatever the state decides to be left. It is time for the United States and the world to wake up and realize that the CCP is an imminent threat to the civilization the world has achieved today. Just as Miles Kwok has been pointing out, ” In China, the Party comes first, your family second. Everything in your life belongs to the Party”. When China dominates the world, represented solely by the Chinese Communist Party, what has happened to the Chinese people in the past 70 years will be the future for the world.
Hong Kong police, alleged to be mainland soldiers, rampaging on the streets for more than three months. They are beating teens blatantly. They are using pepper spray to soak protestors no matter the victim is an 80-year-old in wheels or young couples inside the subway.
They are firing rubber bullets and live rounds randomly at Hong Kong residents and pedestrians walking by. Yes, they do all these crimes in front of the media and the cameras. And from one day, they started to attack journalists.
Comment from GM53:
No matter how the Chinese Communist Party has polished itself as the most successful economic regime of the 21st century, or a must-have partner with the USA sugarcoated by Bloomberg. The truth of the CCP has never changed. It is suppressing mainlanders in China for over 70 years.
Today, Hong Kong is no different from any other city, the mainland. The century-old rule of law no longer exists in Hong Kong. The government can do whatever it wants with its police force, which is now a representative of the PLA. To keep Hong Kong’s free trade status any longer would be equivalent to handing over a loaded gun to the Communist Party so that it can shoot anyone.
HONG KONG Protesters crush extradition bill but end up with much tougher emergency law.
It reminds people of Tiananmen Protest in Beijing thirty years ago.
Read more at Asia Nikkei
The head of Hong Kong’s stock exchange, Charles Li, has said the city’s “one country, two systems” relationship with China is flawed.
Read more at FT
A top Pentagon official has warned that China’s efforts to gain influence in the Middle East could undermine defence co-operation between the US and regional allies that grow too close to Beijing.
As violence escalates between demonstrators and the police in Hong Kong, protesters have started writing “last letters” to their loved ones, in case they don’t return. These notes chronicle the mental and emotional state of
Arrested Hong Kong protesters have alleged torture and sexual abuse at the hands of the police during their detention at a facility near the mainland border.
Allegations of abuse were raised shortly after 54 people were brought to the facility following arrests on the night of August 11. Of those detained, 31 were later hospitalised, with six treated for fractured bones.
A report from NGO Amnesty International says that Hong Kong police have used reckless tactics and retaliatory violence in their crackdown on protesters during the demonstrations, originally sparked by an extradition bill.
Pop superstar Taylor Swift is cozying up to some of China’s biggest power players by agreeing to perform at an Alibaba promotional event for Singles’Day, the country’s biggest shopping day.
David Ng 29 Oct 2019
The multiple Grammy Award-winning @taylorswift13 will perform at Alibaba’s 11.11 Countdown Gala – a live show hosted by Alibaba’s video streaming platform Youku that runs in the hours leading up to the world’s biggest shopping day of the year. https://t.co/OEXXQI1Avh
— Alibaba Group (@AlibabaGroup) October 28, 2019
While the U.S. entertainment industry was once eager to buddy up with China, their close business relationship has come under scrutiny in recent months in the wake of pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong. Hollywood is facing criticism that it censors content in order to please China’s authoritarian Communist Party, which imposes strict controls on which foreign titles can be released locally.
Read the rest here.
Source: Breitbart News
Catherine Shu@catherineshu / 1:40 pm CST • October 29, 2019
ByteDance’s apps also include Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, news app Toutiao and TopBuzz, a news aggregation app for the U.S. market that the Financial Times reports it is planning to sell as it prepares for an IPO. A spokesperson for the company, the owner of TikTok said:
There is absolutely zero truth to the rumors that we plan to list in Hong Kong in Q1.
Read the rest here.
Source: Techcrunch
Blizzard lost the trust of its fans, and some money too
By Nick Statt@nickstatt Oct 29, 2019, 8:42pm EDT
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Mitsubishi decided to pull sponsorships of Blizzard e-sports events after the company banned Wai Chung for voicing support for the Hong Kong protesters in a televised post-game interview earlier this month. Reddit users first noticed the disappearance of the Mitsubishi logo during a recent Asia Pacific Hearthstone tournament, and the company confirmed its decision to pull its sponsorship to The Daily Beast. Mitsubishi Motors Taiwan will no longer support Blizzard e-sports events
Read the rest here.
Source: The Everge
https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/29/20939236/blizzard-china-hong-kong-protests-mitsubishi-hearthstone-ban-sponsorship-pulled
Jessie Yeung, CNN October 30, 2019
In a twist of coincidence, “Joker” was released in Hong Kong just one day before authorities used colonial-era emergency powers to ban face masks and face coverings during public assemblies. In destructive protests over the following week, outraged demonstrators wore all types of face coverings in defiance of the ban — including Joker masks and makeup in the style of the Joker (both Joaquin Phoenix and Heath Ledger versions).
After today, Hong Kong needs Joker,” read one post on the online protest site LIHKG the day after the ban was announced. Another user called the Gotham rioters “martyrs,” and the Joker “the symbol of the resistance and the spiritual leader of the rebels.”
Read the rest here.
Source: CNN
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/29/asia/hong-kong-protests-joker-intl-hnk-scli/index.html
by Reuters, October 29, 2019
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio plans to introduce legislation to block a federal pension fund from investing in Chinese stocks after the fund delayed a decision on tracking an index provided by MSCI Inc (MSCI.N) that includes Chinese firms.
The move is the strongest yet by Rubio, a Republican and China hawk, to pressure the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB) into reversing a decision that would allow federal employees and military service members to invest their retirement savings in a fund that includes China-listed stocks.
“It’s clear the Board will not act in the best interests of the United States, reverse this misguided decision and protect our national interest, as well as those who serve it,” Rubio said in a statement on Monday.
“That’s why I will be introducing bipartisan legislation to ensure that federal retirement savings can never be a source of wealth funding the Chinese Communist Party at the expense of our nation’s future prosperity.”
FRTIB spokeswoman Kim Weaver said on Tuesday the board, which plans to revisit the index decision at a Nov. 13 meeting, would review the legislation when it is introduced.
The effort by Rubio comes amid heightened U.S.-China trade tensions and as the U.S. government considers ways to limit the flow of U.S. capital to Chinese companies due to security concerns about their activities.
The FRTIB administers the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), a retirement savings plan similar to a 401(k), for federal employees and members of the military. As of July 2019, the TSP had around $599.5 billion in assets, which are owned by the plan’s participants, who choose which of the TSP’s funds they want to invest in.
Rubio and other senators have denounced the TSP’s plan to switch the benchmark its international fund tracks to MSCI’s All Country World ex-U.S. Investable Market Index.
The index represents 99% of the international equity market, with a 7.5% weighting to Chinese firms. The TSP currently tracks another MSCI index that represents 58% of the international market, and does not include China.
Some of the companies included in the index “assist in the Chinese government’s military activities, espionage, and human rights abuses, as well as many other Chinese companies that lack basic financial transparency,” Rubio and Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen said in one of two recent letters to the FRTIB.
MSCI is one of the world’s largest index providers, with trillions of dollars tracking its benchmarks.
Along with other index providers, like FTSE Russell and S&P Dow Jones Indexes, MSCI in recent years has increased the weighting of Chinese-listed companies in some of its indexes as China’s economy has opened more, helping asset managers invest in the country.
MSCI previously responded to Rubio’s criticisms, saying there is no U.S. law or regulation that prohibits an index company from creating an index containing Chinese securities or U.S. investors from trading Chinese shares.