After Blocking Zero Hedge And Others, NZ Telcos Demand Big-Tech Censorship Surge To “Protect Consumers”

 

In the wake of last week’s terror attacks at two New Zealand mosques which left 50 dead, several websites which either reported on the incident, hosted footage of the attacks, or have simply allowed people to engage in uncensored discussion such as Dissenter or Zero Hedge, have been partially or completely blocked in both New Zealand and Australia for the sake of “protecting consumers,” according to the CEOs of three New Zealand telcos.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting – which was broadcast over Facebook Live by accused gunman Brenton Tarrant to an initial audience of just 200 viewers (none of whom reported it) and had 4,000 overall views before it was taken down – Facebook deleted 1.5 million videos of the attack, of which 1.2 million were blocked at the time of upload.

US warns Germany it will end intelligence sharing if Huawei is given 5G contract

 

The United States has warned Germany that intelligence sharing between the two countries will be threatened if the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei is awarded a contract to build Germany’s 5G network. The company, Huawei Technologies, is a private Chinese venture and one of the world’s leading telecommunications hardware manufacturers. In recent years, however, it has come under scrutiny by some Western intelligence agencies, who view it as being too close to the Communist Party of China. More recently, Washington has intensified an international campaign to limit Huawei’s ability to build the infrastructure for 5G, the world’s next-generation wireless network. Along with Britain, Australia and Canada, the US is concerned that the Chinese telecommunications giant may facilitate global wiretapping on behalf of Beijing’s spy agencies.

Australia: One Foot in Asia v the West

 

QUESTION: Hello Martin Armstrong,

Australia seems to have one foot in the West and one in the East. With the fall of the Western economies and then the rise of Asian economies, how does that affect the Australian economy? Does the real estate bubble collapse the Aussie economies and then the rise of China creates the opportunity to rebuild the economy after 2032?
Thanks for all the work you do.

Intelligence Network against China

 

BERLIN/TOKYO (Own report) – In Tokyo today, German Chancellor Angela Merkel will conclude a statement of principles on intelligence service cooperation with Japan more closely linking Germany to espionage structures directed against China. According to reports, the agreement will initially regulate the exchange of intelligence information, along the lines of similar agreements Japan has concluded also with the USA, Australia, India, and NATO. Berlin and Tokyo are thereby drawing closer to the US-led “Five Eyes” intelligence network, which launched an international campaign against Beijing last summer. As the Western campaign against China gains momentum, the German government, together with Japan, is also seeking to make a stand against the USA, staking its claim to an independent global policy. Therefore, Berlin is taking joint action, not only with Japan, but with Beijing as well against the Trump administration’s punitive tariffs, as Norbert Röttgen, CDU foreign policy maker explained.

Five Eyes

BERLIN/WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Own report) – In the dispute over boycotting the Chinese Huawei corporation, the German government is considering joining a campaign of the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing network, it was reported in Canada and Australia. According to the media, intelligence chiefs of the five English-speaking “Five Eyes” countries launched a boycott campaign last July under US leadership. The campaign seeks not only to put pressure on the governments of Five Eyes members Great Britain and Canada, which – for economic reasons – have initially been reluctant to boycott Huawei, but also to increase the pressure on the Germany and Japan. Experts in Australia speculate that, in return for its participation in the boycott, Berlin could become an accepted FIVE Eyes member, something Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has been striving to do for years. To “maintain their own technology competence,” EU companies should develop 5G, according to Berlin. German managers, however, are up in arms, fearing falling far behind and never catching up with China.

Russia De-Dollarizes Deeper: Shifts $100 Billion To Yuan, Yen, And Euro

 

Russia is continuing to ramp up its efforts to move away from the American dollar.  The country just shifted $100 billion of its reserves to the yuan, the yen, and the euro in their ongoing effort to ditch the dollar.

The Central Bank of Russia has moved further away from its reliance on the United States dollar and has axed its share in the country’s foreign reserves to a historic low, transferring about $100 billion into euro, Japanese yen, and Chinese yuan according to a report by RT. The share of the U.S. dollar in Russia’s international reserves portfolio has dramatically decreased in just three months between March and June 2018.  The holding decreased from 43.7 percent to a new low of 21.9 percent, according to the Central Bank’s latest quarterly report, which is issued with a six-month lag.

America Frozen Out of World Trade

 

Yet another trade agreement excludes the U.S.

A new trade agreement that covers more than 13 percent of the world economy, accounting for 15 percent of global trade, was ratified by its first six countries on December 30. The Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (cptpp) will cover 500 million people.

Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and Singapore will be joined by another four countries that have already signed but not yet ratified the agreement. Vietnam joins on January 14, while Brunei, Chile, Malaysia and Peru will join the deal 60 days after completing the ratification process.

China Could “Weaponize Cities” If Allowed To Dominate 5G Networks

 

China’s push to dominate new wireless technology will give Beijing advanced capabilities for “mayhem and mass surveillance” if they are allowed to cominate [sic] 5G networks linking billions of devices, according to retired Air Force Brigadier General Robert Spalding.

Spalding was fired from the National Security Council last February after a memo leaked in which he argued for a government takeover of the nation’s 5G mobile network – an idea lawmakers and wireless companies flatly rejected.

How arrest of Chinese ‘princess’ exposes regime’s world domination plot

Getty Images; Shutterstock

 

Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou’s arrest in Vancouver on Dec. 6 led to immediate blowback.

Furious Chinese Communists have begun arresting innocent Canadians in retaliation. So far, three of these “revenge hostages” have been taken and are being held in secret jails on vague charges. Beijing hints that the hostage count may grow if Meng is not freed and fast.

Even for a thuggish regime like China’s, this kind of action is almost unprecedented.

So who is Meng Wanzhou?

China Press Warns To “Prepare For Escalation Of Conflict With Canada”

 

Days after revealing that businessman Michael Spavor – who became the second Canadian citizen detained in China since Beijing warned it would retaliate against Canada for the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver earlier this month – had been arrested for “threatening national security”, the Communist Party made clear that this is only the beginning, and that Canada should expect “further escalation” as Beijing has no intentions of backing down – and every intention of sending a message to US allies that they should stay out of the still-simmering dispute between the world’s two largest economies.

Will China Rule The World?

(Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

China’s worldwide influence campaign requires a coordinated response from all segments of American society—not just politicians and policy-makers.

No bilateral relationship in the world is more important than that between the United States and China, and it is now undergoing an epochal transformation. For three and half decades after Deng Xiaoping put an end to the Maoist nightmare and opened up China to markets and modernization in the late 1970s, American policymakers and scholars believed that engagement with China would lead that system to become at least a little more like us. Economically, China would become more of an open, market economy. Politically, China would become more of an open and pluralistic (if not democratic) society. Internationally, China would become what Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick urged it to be in a famous 2005 speech: a “responsible stakeholder” in international affairs.

MI6 Scrambling To Stop Trump From Releasing Classified Docs In Russia Probe

Photo: Flickr

 

The UK’s Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, has been scrambling to prevent President Trump from publishing classified materials linked to the Russian election meddling investigation, according to The Telegraph, stating that any disclosure would “undermine intelligence gathering if he releases pages of an FBI application to wiretap one of his former campaign advisers.”

Trump’s allies, however, are fighting back – demanding transparency and suggesting that the UK wouldn’t want the documents withheld unless it had something to hide. 

The Telegraph has talked to more than a dozen UK and US officials, including in American intelligence, who have revealed details about the row. 

British spy chiefs have “genuine concern” about sources being exposed if classified parts of the wiretap request were made public, according to figures familiar with discussions. 

A New Era for the China-Russia-U.S. Triangle

 

Nearly a half-century ago, President Richard Nixon’s secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, established a successful U.S. strategy for dealing with America’s two most dangerous rivals. He sought closer ties to both the Soviet Union, with its more than 7,000 nuclear weapons, and Communist China, with the world’s largest population.

Kissinger’s approach was sometimes called “triangulation.” But distilled down to its essence, the phrase meant ensuring that China and Russia were not friendlier to each other than each was to the United States

Given that the Soviet Union was much stronger than China at the time, Kissinger especially courted Beijing.

China Launching More Sophisticated Cyber Attacks and Plans to Persist, Report Says

The offices of PricewaterhouseCoopers in St. Helier, Jersey, U.K., on April 12, 2017. That month, China-based hackers attacked PwC through its IT service providers. (Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

 

China doesn’t plan to cease conducting commercial espionage that benefits the central government, even as the U.S. is rolling out new, proactive cyber strategies to counter threats from Beijing, a new report by an Australian think tank says.

Furthermore, China’s hacking capabilities have gotten more sophisticated, with the intention of making the hacking harder to detect, according to a new report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

A New Move Toward a European Army

 

Also, the Catholic child abuse scandal hits Germany.

European Commission President Jean Claude Junker gave his annual state of the union address on Wednesday. “If Europe were to unite all the political, economic and military might of its nations, its role in the world could be strengthened,” he said.

“Whenever Europe speaks as one we can impose our positions on others,” he continued.