China Welcomes President of El Salvador to Beijing with Aid Offers

Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping hosted the leader of El Salvador on Thursday, pledging aid to the Central American country as a reward for switching their allegiance from Taipei to Beijing.

On Thursday, Xi met with Salvadorian President Salvador Sánchez Ceren, who was welcomed with a ceremony at the Great Hall of the People where a military band serenaded the two leaders with their country’s national anthems. Strong diplomatic ties between the two countries were forged in August this year after El Salvador agreed to switch its allegiance from supporting Taiwan’s independence to supporting the one-China principle, which does not recognize Taiwan as an independent state. Such a decision was likely an attempt to court Chinese aid and investment, as El Salvador remains one of the continent’s poorest and most violent countries. At a press conference, Xi pledged funding for education, health, and drought relief.

“The decision to establish and develop diplomatic ties with each other was independently made by the two sovereign states,” Xi said. “It is consistent with the international laws and purposes of the UN Charter and reflects such principles as mutual respect, equal treatment, mutual benefits, and common development.” “Within slightly more than two months after China and El Salvador forged diplomatic ties, bilateral exchanges have progressed rapidly in various fields with strong vitality and robust momentum,” he continued.

Xi warned that El Salvador must now stick to the one-China principle to maintain their new relationship. “El Salvador has to stick to the one-China principle, which is the foundation of China-El Salvador relations, to build a more solid base for bilateral relations,” Xi said. “China is willing to join hands with El Salvador to promote friendly cooperation in a speedy yet steady manner, so as to benefit the two peoples.” Sanchez appeared to heed Xi’s warning, claiming that they had built a relationship based on “respect and trust.”

“The two countries have identical positions on many issues, and the development of bilateral relations is based on mutual respect and trust,” Sanchez said. “My visit has fully demonstrated El Salvador’s confidence in advancing ties with China.” Next week, Xi will host President of the Dominican Republic Danilo Medina, who in May also announced that his government would the one-China principle to the dismay of Taiwan. The decision came days after China offered the Dominican Republic a $3 billion investment and loan package, as it continues to use its economic and financial power to expand its influence across Latin America’s most impoverished nations such as Venezuela and Cuba.

https://www.breitbart.com/latin-america/2018/11/02/china-welcomes-president-el-salvador-beijing-aid-offers/

Brazilian Intelligence Reveals ‘Terrorist’ Plot Against Bolsonaro

Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro’s choice for minister of defense revealed on Friday that intelligence services had thwarted a “terrorist” attack against the conservative future head of state, who survived an assassination attempt to win last week’s election.

Reserve General Augusto Heleno, who Bolsonaro has stated he will appoint defense minister when he takes office on January 1, said in an interview with the newspaper O Globo that Brazilian authorities had reason to believe Bolsonaro was the target of a plot to kill him. Heleno revealed the plot in response to a question about rumors of such a plot exacerbated by the elevated presence of security in Brasilia and around Bolsonaro, who has spent much of the week outside the capital. Officials had insisted that heightened security around the president-elect had been planned long before Bolsonaro won Sunday’s election and would have occurred if his opponent, socialist Workers’ Party (PT) candidate Fernando Haddad, had won instead. “The information suggesting that a planned terrorist attack against the president was thwarted is true,” Heleno said. “That was confirmed by intelligence authorities already.” O Globo notes that the general did not specify who was planning the attack or any details about the nature of the attempt, including when they attack may have occurred if not prevented.

Bolsonaro has increased personal security around him since September, when a socialist fanatic attempted to stab him to death at a rally in eastern Minas Gerais state. The assailant told police that he had been “ordered by God” to kill Bolsonaro. The attack occurred during a campaign rally in broad daylight and was caught on video. Bolsonaro suffered severe damage to his abdomen, requiring reconstructive surgery in his digestive tract, and could not campaign for much of the last month before the first round of voting on October 7. Bolsonaro did not appear in public when he won the election on October 28, instead delivering a victory speech from a private location. In his first public appearance since winning, which occurred at a church on Tuesday, his first words to the audience were “first, I want to thank God for being alive.”

In an interview Wednesday, Heleno, who will be responsible for imposing Bolsonaro’s right-wing law and order platform against crime, insisted that making Brazil a less violent place was a priority for the incoming administration. Heleno protested that, due to “an inversion of values in our history,” the government stopped properly dealing with criminals and allowed drug gangs, organized criminal syndicates, and corrupt politicians to thrive. “We cannot accept for us to walk little by little towards becoming a ‘narconation,'” he insisted. “The number of homicides in Brazil, the highest consumption of crack in the world, second-highest in cocaine, the highest passage of drugs [through the country] in the world. These are a series of titles that do not make the people proud. “It is absurd to treat this like a normal situation,” he continued. “This situation of excess deserves excessive treatment.”

In the same interview, Heleno addressed critics who fear that the Bolsonaro administration will violate legal procedures to capture drug criminals, insisting, “human rights are for righteous humans.” While Heleno will be responsible for establishing order and organizing the war on drugs, Bolsonaro announced Thursday the addition of another political figure with a reputation for being tough on crime to his cabinet: Judge Sergio Moro, the magistrate responsible for issuing the warrants that made dozens of arrests of politicians under the investigation known as “Operation Car Wash” possible.

Working alongside Moro, investigators in southern Curitiba state found evidence of a nationwide corruption scheme in which politicians of several major political parties overpaid private contractors for public projects in exchange for kickbacks. Moro became a folk hero among Brazilians in 2016 after he issued warrants for several major political figures. Among those arrested, convicted, and sentenced by Moro are former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and former Speaker of the House Eduardo Cunha. “Federal Judge Sergio Moro has accepted our invitation to be minister of justice and public security. His anti-corruption, anti-organized crime agenda and his respect for the constitution and the law will be our guiding principle!” Bolsonaro announced on Twitter Thursday.

https://www.breitbart.com/latin-america/2018/11/02/brazilian-intelligence-reveals-terrorist-plot-against-bolsonaro/

U.S. official felt 'obligation' to leak documents on Manafort, others: lawyer

A lawyer for a U.S. Treasury Department employee charged with leaking to a journalist confidential documents on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and others, said on Friday that his client was motivated by public service. Manafort and his longtime associate Rick Gates have pleaded guilty to criminal charges and agreed to cooperate in U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and whether President Donald Trump’s campaign coordinated with Moscow. Russia denies election meddling and Trump denies campaign collusion.

Prosecutors said Natalie Sours Edwards, a senior adviser in the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), leaked documents to a reporter that became the basis of articles about that investigation published by digital media company BuzzFeed. “She saw things in her official capacity that she felt an obligation to bring forward,” Marc Agnifilo, a lawyer for Sours Edwards, told reporters after a hearing in federal court in Manhattan.

During Friday’s brief hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn ordered that Sours Edwards may remain free on bail. She had previously pleaded not guilty at a hearing in Virginia, according to Agnifilo. She is currently on paid leave from her position. Prosecutors said beginning in October 2017, Sours Edwards illegally disclosed so-called suspicious activity reports connected to Manafort, accused Russian agent Maria Butina, the Russian embassy and a unit of Prevezon Holdings Ltd, a corporation owned by Russian businessman Denis Katsyv. Suspicious activity reports are submitted by banks to alert law enforcement to potentially illegal transactions.

Information from the disclosures was reported in 11 articles that appeared in BuzzFeed over the course of a year, prosecutors said. Agnifilo said Sours Edwards shared the reports because “she believes that certain pieces of information were not being handled the right way and were not being brought to the attention of the people who should know it,” though he did not give further details. He said Sours Edwards had also spoken to committees in Congress and to other government agencies about her concerns, and that her contact with the media was a relatively small part of her efforts. “It’s been going on for several years,” he said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-leaks/u-s-official-felt-obligation-to-leak-documents-on-manafort-others-lawyer-idUSKCN1N72L2?il=0

Missouri Official Asks FBI to Investigate Dark Money Mailers Targeting Republicans

Campaign says it looks like a 'dirty trick by Claire McCaskill'

Missouri state treasurer Eric Schmitt asked the FBI on Thursday to investigate who is behind the slew of campaign mailers sent to voters without required disclosures of who paid for it. Thousands of voters reportedly received mailers criticizing Republican Senate candidate Josh Hawley, urging them to consider third party candidates in next week's election. Schmitt, a Republican, said that the lack of legally required disclaimers on the mailers makes it impossible for Missouri voters to know who is behind them and asked the FBI to get to the bottom of it. "Missourians deserve to know where these mailers are coming from, and why they failed to use a federal disclaimer on the mailers," Schmitt said. "That's why I'm calling for the FBI to investigate these dark money mailers."

Dark money groups have frequently been targeted by Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.), whose campaign told the Kansas City Star it "condemns all dark money efforts, including these mailers." Schmitt, however, said the groups attempting to illegally meddle in Missouri's election appear to be taking direction from McCaskill's campaign. "Claire McCaskill may have denounced the mailers, but the fact that these dark money groups are copying her attacks on Josh Hawley is no coincidence," he said. The Missouri Republican Party backed Schmitt's request for an FBI investigation, calling it an attempted "trick on Republicans." "I think it’s a trick on Republican voters to try to trick them into thinking there are more conservative candidates than Josh Hawley," said party chairman Todd Graves.

The Hawley campaign has pointed to McCaskill's admitted work in previous elections to meddle on the Republican side in order to get an advantage in the general election. "Sounds like another dirty trick by Claire McCaskill," said Hawley spokeswoman Kelli Ford. "She wrote the book on it. This is just more of the same." Similar mailers have been sent in competitive Senate races in Montana and Indiana with a goal of depressing Republican turnout. Signs indicate the same group may be behind the mailers.

https://freebeacon.com/politics/missouri-official-asks-fbi-to-investigate-dark-money-mailers-targeting-republicans/

China Reveals Plans for ‘Phantom’ Underwater Drone War Against U.S.

Artificial intelligence-powered drone subs to target American carriers

China’s military is preparing to wage autonomous underwater warfare against the United States, including the use of drone submarine attacks on American aircraft carriers, according to the official Chinese military newspaper. "Underwater offensive and defense operations constitute a major battle domain for the seizure of sea supremacy, and represent a major means of winning superiority in maritime operations," the newspaper of the People's Liberation Army stated in an Oct. 25 report. The report said China envisions future unmanned underwater vehicles conducting stealthy autonomous attacks and relying on networks of sensors planted around the world in the sea floor that can be triggered by satellites.

Autonomous underwater warfare capabilities are part of the Chinese military's decades-long arms buildup of forces capable of defeating the United States. The PLA report provides a rare glimpse into Chinese military thinking for deterrence and future underwater warfare.

Smart submarines operating and attacking on their own, and new high-tech underwater weapons are the "new frontier mainly for laying ambushes with underwater robots, smart ‘phantom' weapons, and bionic fish-like devices to shape a network-based operations system." Underwater attacks will be carried out using AI-powered robot submarines that operate "without relying on human control" to assess targets automatically, and organize coordinated attacks in what the military report calls "underwater phantom warfare." "Before a crisis evolves into a war, the ‘phantom' weapons may be deployed ahead of time in a way of deep submerging below the sea surface or deep lurking on the seafloor beneath a strategic sea channel, or a sea strait that the adversary's vessels will certainly pass through, one may activate such weapons via the space-based or sea-based low-frequency signal system to shape a pre-deployed underwater operations system with the capability of self-determined smart attacks," the report said. AI underwater drones also can be used to impose a self-activated blockade of fixed targets based on the weapons' automatic target identification capabilities. The drone submarines also will employ unbreakable coded communications and data transmission sent by advanced quantum computers.

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/china-reveals-plans-phantom-underwater-drone-war-u-s/