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Showing posts with label extradition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label extradition. Show all posts

Thursday 7 November 2019

When It Comes to China, Do Canadians Believe the Media?

The Media blitz

Since I first published a post ( 10 Dec 2018) on Canada's arrest of the Huawei CFO, Meng Wanzhou, I have been baffled, awestruck and frustrated by the refusal of Canadian media to question the legitimacy of her arrest and extradition.  Since I began the process of my own modest online inquiries, I have noticed that the National Post, the newspaper founded by Conrad Black before he went to prison (he has since been pardoned by President Trump), has published some of the most strident anti-China editorials.  Although, Black sold the paper to one-time Liberal Izzy Asper, in recent years "the Post has retained a conservative editorial stance."

What does "freedom of the press" mean?

Obviously every newspaper in the "free" world is owned by somebody. Does it matter who owns a newspaper or a media company?  I don't know.  I've never worked for a newspaper.  I'm not particularly courageous or selfless, so I imagine that if I worked for a large media company I would be reluctant to risk my job, my salary, my social position and connections by publishing anything that I knew ran seriously counter to the interests and ideology of my top-of-the-pyramid employer.  I find it discouraging that Robert Maxwell "who embezzled hundreds of millions of pounds from his companies' pension funds" also controlled hundreds of newspapers. (His daughter, Ghislaine Maxwell,  is in the news with claims that she was sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein's madame, supplying him with juvenile prostitutes.) It is hardly encouraging that Robert Maxwell's nemesis, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, "faced allegations that his companies, including the News of the World, owned by News Corporation, had been regularly hacking the phones of celebrities, royalty, and public citizens. Murdoch faced police and government investigations into bribery and corruption by the British government and FBI investigations in the U.S."

Does it matter that the Globe and Mail is wholly owned by The Woodbridge Company which is the private holding company of the Thomson family?

Is Reuters covering the story, or is Reuters the story?

As your typical diffident Canadian, I have long been aware but not terribly disturbed by the fact that our news comes to us through channels that usually have owners.  As a Canadian, I think that we have CBC News and are therefore immune from tampering.  However, this seemingly innocuous article disturbed me: "New documents link Huawei to suspected front companies in Iran, Syria."

Why is it disturbing? If you followed the link, you will realize that it is presented under the banner CBC News.  However, this is not by any stretch of imagination CBC News.  As the small print and the content of the article make clear this is a publication of Thomson Reuters, the news agency owned by The Woodbridge Company of which the Thomson family are the principal shareholders.  Reuters is categorical that "Our correspondents do not use unconfirmed reports as the basis of a story, nor do they offer subjective opinion."  Nonetheless, readers need to be alert to the fact that what appears to be the research and writing of journalists from our national public broadcaster is, in fact, the work of un-named authors working for a private company principally owned by a single family.

Reading the article you will quickly discover that Reuters isn't just reporting the story, they are the story.
 . . . corporate filings and other documents found by Reuters in Iran and Syria show that Huawei, the world's largest supplier of telecommunications network equipment, is more closely linked to both firms than previously known.
Reuters have actively been building a case which might ultimately be used against Meng.  As they report, somewhat proudly:
Articles published by Reuters in 2012 and in 2013 here about Huawei, Skycom and Meng figure prominently in the U.S. case against her. 

Does Thomson Reuters have skin in the Meng-Huawei game?

Under "normal" circumstances, we would praise journalists for the hard slogging, investigative journalism required to unearth evidence.  However, in this case, we don't know who the authors are.  We are encouraged to believe that this "news" comes from the CBC, but obviously no CBC journalists were involved.

Does Thomson Reuters have any skin in this game?  Is it reasonable to ask this question?  I ask the question quite naively, but the result is surprising.  Thomson Reuters has gone through significant restructuring this year.  (I own 16 shares of Thomson Reuters stock by the way.) In its Annual Report for 2018, Thomson Reuters announced "In October, we sold 55% of our Financial & Risk (F&R) business to private equity funds managed by Blackstone for approximately $17 billion and retained a 45% interest in the new company, which is now known as Refinitiv."

Refinitiv, as its website displays, is collaborating on China's "Belt and Road Initiative" (aka "The New Silk Road") which the company describes as "The Infrastructure Project of the Century."  Thomson Reuters is now invested in China.  Will we begin to see a softening of positions and warming toward China in the Globe and Mail and Reuters' reports?  On November 4, Reuters still appeared to be maintaining a negative slant on China, but on November 5, along with everyone else, they reported on the front page of the Globe and Mail print edition that China had lifted its ban on Canadian beef and pork.

[This link (above) is to the "Global News" website.  Since I'm on the theme, I checked to see "who owns Global News?"  It's owned by Corus, which is controlled by the Shaw family.  Wherever you get your news in Canada, there is likely to be a family at the top of the pyramid.]

Same numbers different story

Reuters published this article 4 Nov 2019:  "Less than a third of Canadians view China favorably -poll."  Considering the media coverage, I think the real and surprising news is that 29% of Canadians continue to view China favourably. Reading this "Less than a third" headline, I was reminded of living in Quebec during the referendum years.  I can vividly recall standing at the counter of my local depanneur (corner store).  Glancing down to my right, I saw the bold, front-page headline of the Montreal Gazette: "One Third of Anglos Determined to Leave an Independent Quebec."  Looking to my left, the front-page headline of the French-language La Presse read "Two Thirds of Anglos Happy to Remain in an Independent Quebec"  [my translation from memory]. Same numbers different stories.

Summarizing a UBC survey, Reuters reported:
“The chill is real,” concluded the survey. China is now viewed favorably by 29% of Canadians, down from 36% two years ago but up from 22% in February, it concluded.

 

"Canadian Public Attitudes on China and Canada-China Relations"

"The chill is real" is a direct quotation from the UBC report, but the sentence appears on page 2, and is not a conclusion to the report as a whole.  "The chill" refers only to the drop of 7% from the previous survey two years ago.  Oddly, survey numbers indicate that attitudes toward China have warmed by 7% since February.  In the face of a Canadian media blitz condemning China for the arrest of two Canadians, and numerous reports on the threat China poses to Canada, it is astounding that one third of Canadians continue to view China positively.  (Keep in mind, that one third is almost as many Canadians as voted for the re-elected Liberal Party in the recent election.)

Survey says . . . 

The results are even more surprising, given the tenor of the survey as a whole which includes questions about human rights in China, references to Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, and a substantial listing of all the reasons a Canadian might perceive China negatively.  A frankly amazing statistic (again given media coverage) is presented in the conclusion of the report:

A plurality (39%) of respondents felt arresting Meng was a mistake, and a plurality (35%) feel she should be released before judicial proceedings complete.

Consider:  if "arresting Meng was a mistake" were a political party, it would have formed a majority government in the October 2019 election.  Despite our politicians and our journalists, Canadians are impressive.  Being "wary of China while supporting continuing contact" and releasing Meng--all make perfect sense.

Is Canada’s Print Media Fair on China

Influential, misinformed Canadian media hurts China-Canada relations: envoy


Monday 4 November 2019

The Panda and the Beaver

The Difference between pandas and beavers

The panda and the beaver are very different animals.  The panda is big and black and white, eats bamboo and likes to sleep in the top of trees.  The beaver is small and brown, eats maple trees and lives inside a beaver damn.  Beavers and pandas don't have much to do with each other, except that eating maple trees is good for bamboo, and eating bamboo helps the growth of maple trees, so they got along.  Then one day the eagle told the beaver, those pandas have been helping the leopards, so you should grab that panda cub when she comes near your pond.  Beavers always do what the eagle tells them to, so they did.  They grabbed the panda cub and brought her underwater to their lodge.  The beavers treated the panda cub very nicely because beavers are nice.  When the pandas saw what the beavers had done they were very upset and they grabbed two beavers and brought them to the top of the trees.  Beavers don't like being high in the air--pandas aren't nice like beavers.  Then the pandas began to drain the water out of the beaver pond--pandas really aren't nice like beavers.



The Beaver response

When they saw what was happening the beavers did what beavers do, they slapped their tails against the water to make a loud noise.  When the eagle heard the noise he understood and said: "Yes, what the pandas are doing isn't nice!"  The beaver slapped its tail some more and the rooster and the lion and the kite and the falcon and camel all agreed that "the pandas weren't nice like the beavers."  And the beavers all agreed "we're nice, but the pandas aren't."  But the bear and the crocodile and the cobra and the leopard and lots of other animals still seemed to like the pandas.  So the beavers told themselves some more, "Pandas aren't nice like beavers."  But the two beavers stayed in the trees and the pandas continued to drain the pond.


Is the panda a dragon?  What kind of dragon?



Enough Aesop's already--except to quote a line from a documentary on China and the New Silk Road:  "China is a friendly dragon, but it's still a dragon."  Canada's relationship with China, its second-largest trading partner, is the most acute and urgent problem facing legislators, but I heard no substantive discussion of the issue during the recent election campaigns.  Only one politician, Yves-François Blanchet, leader of the Bloc Québécois dared to mention China in the leaders' debate.  Blanchet proclaimed that it was foolish of Canada to arrest the Huawei CFO, trying to flex muscles that it did not have before China. In his report on the debate, Paul Welles, in keeping with what has become the Anglo-Canadian journalistic meme, took the opportunity to play to Anglo-Canadian self-righteousness mixed with a bit of Quebec bashing, while alluding to how law-abiding we have been been in arresting Meng.

He [Blanchet] did say arresting Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou “may have been a big mistake,” which I will take as his way of letting everyone know that a sovereign Quebec would ignore its obligations under extradition treaties. 

Had Welles taking 45 minutes to consult the Canadian Extradition Act, or the  Treaty on Extradition Between the Government of Canada and the Government of the United States of America, or even the Public Prosecutor Service of Canada's clear instruction that "Extradition treaties do not themselves create an obligation or a power to arrest in Canada," he might have reconsidered his mockery of Blanchet.  However, these days the job of most Canadian journalists is to repeat not to research.


China's new "Silk Road" 

For most of its history, Canada's economy has depended on trade with the USA to function and survive.  However, China has been challenging the USA as the world's largest and most powerful economy.  As the USA has adopted a fuck-you-if-you're-not-American economic policy, China has been subsidizing massive infrastructure projects all over the world--hundreds of billions spent in 65 different countries so far.   The size and scope of Chinese global subsidies have been compared to the USA's Marshall Plan after the Second World War.











How should Canada behave in this battle of Titans?

A number of editorials and Jonathan Manthorpe's recent monograph, Claws of the Panda:  Beijing's Campaign of Influence and Intimidation in Canada emphasize that we should mistrust and fear the current Chinese regime.




Okay.  Once fear and mistrust have been established, then what?  Manthrope judiciously points out that "engagement with China cannot and should not be avoided" and claims that his book is not "arguing that Canada should distance itself from the current regime in Beijing."  However, since his premise is that representatives of Chinese diplomacy or business can be viewed as "spies" for a "fascist" regime in Beijing, a thick cloud of suspicion is cast over virtually every interaction between Canada and China.

Here's the smoke, where's the fire?

In these cautionings about Canada becoming too cozy with China, concrete examples and hard evidence never quite match the level of the sensational rhetoric and headlines.  The essayists'  evidence is often in the form of guarded references and allusions to CSIS (the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service).  CSIS itself is part of the problem.  Our Intelligence Service has yet to gain the recognition of the population or the confidence of our political class.  (This is, after all, the organization that Arthur Porter, who was convicted of receiving $22 million in bribes from SNC-Lavalin, was tasked with overseeing.)  Evidence, purportedly coming from CSIS, of Chinese malfeasance, is in the form of leaks and anonymous sources--all under the required veil of secrecy.  When there are supporting public documents such as the  National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Annual Report 2018, they don't quite live up to the dire, definitive headline:  "It's official – China is a threat to Canada's national security."  Or, as in the case of Rethinking SecurityChina and the Age of Strategic Rivalry, linked on the CSIS website, we are informed that what we are reading is not a CSIS report but the opinions of un-named academics. Ultimately, when Manthorpe offers potential solutions, they sound much more like the status quo, a (re)new(ed) cold war, or simply too abstract to be meaningful:

. . .  future governments in Ottawa need to prepare the ground. They need to cement political, economic, social, and security ties within NATO and the G7, along with other like-minded countries. Canadian politicians need to assume a much tougher and more self-assured attitude toward Beijing than is now the case.
If these are the solutions, can the threat to Canada be that dramatic?

The Examples of Australia and New Zealand

Warnings of the Chinese threat in Canada typically cite the examples of New Zealand and Australia.  In fact, when the argument is being presented that China is a threat to Canadian sovereignty the authors most frequently quoted are from Australia and New Zealand--Clive Hamilton and Anne-Marie Brady respectively. (See, for example,"Academic who blew the whistle on China's influence on Australia says Canada is in even worse trouble, [take note of the quite innocent but dire looking photo] and  "How China uses shadowy United Front as 'magic weapon' to try to extend its influence in Canada."  Both articles published in the National Post.)

I agree with Manthorpe that the Australians have been a "good deal louder" than we have in discussing their relations with China.  Watching the Australian television series Pine Gap, I was struck by how the challenge of being in the middle of a China-versus-USA conflict is forefront in the Australian imagination.   Fiction aside, Pine Gap is, in reality, a "US satellite surveillance base" run jointly by Australia and the USA.  "The station is partly run by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), US National Security Agency (NSA), and US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and is a key contributor to the NSA's global interception effort, which included the ECHELON program."  If you watch the tv series to the end, you will discover that these fictional Australians are much more concerned by the recklessness of the American regime than by the financial investments of a Chinese businessman in their communities.

There is more to fear than fear itself

It makes perfect sense to be wary of Chinese investments and influence in Canada, particularly as China is expanding its global empire and, in some instances, using debt-trap diplomacy to achieve its objectives.  There is no doubt that the current regime in China espouses and promulgates a system of values which runs counter to the dominant values of the West.  General Secretary Xi Jinping's Document 9 on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere clearly and explicitly spells out those differences.  We need to have an open, public discussion of Canada's relationships with China.  Describing those relationships as "a war" and couching the discussion in terms of espionage do not strike me as helpful.  At the moment we seem to have fear-mongering in one corner and naivety in the other, but willful ignorance about everything in between.  The absolute refusal of Canadian politicians and media to discuss all aspects of the Meng arrest is evidence of our current inability to have an open discussion.

"Open discussion" is NOT the same singular argument presented over and over

Global News published a commentary this morning in which it is observed that "Meng is living in a gilded cage at one of her two multi-million dollar homes in Vancouver and is free to go shopping and eat out."  How many times do we need to hear this beside-the-point inanity before someone finally asks, "Were we justified in arresting her in the first place?"

Jonathan Manthorpe was invited to discuss his book on TVO's The Agenda.  The episode, Exposing China's Influence in Canada, was bookended by references to Canada's arrest of Meng.  Both the introduction to the show and Manthorpe's penultimate answer referred to the arrest of the Huawei CFO. However, in discussing the "Huawei affair,"  Manthorpe described it as "the kidnapping and holding hostage of two Canadians."  Not a single word was spoken about the Meng arrest which precipitated this reprehensible response.  I certainly agree with Manthorpe that in our dealings with China we have to ask "How does this benefit Canada?"   How has arresting Meng benefited Canada?

Back to Aesop

The panda princess is still being held in a "luxurious" beaver lodge, beavers are still being held in the trees and the pandas continue to drain the pond.  How is the newly-re-elected leader of the beavers going to deal with the situation?  He's going to make it rain!


Saturday 29 December 2018

The Chaos Theory of International Trade, or How Canada Arrested a Chinese Executive on a US Warrant in Order to Protect Israel from Iran

I heard it from every economics professor I ever had, at both Oregon and Stanford, and everything I saw and read thereafter backed it up. International trade always, always benefits both trading nations. Another thing I often heard from those same professors was the old maxim: “When goods don’t pass international borders, soldiers will.” Though I’ve been known to call business war without bullets, it’s actually a wonderful bulwark against war. Trade is the path of coexistence, cooperation. Peace feeds on prosperity.

 Phil Knight. Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (p. 374). Scribner. Kindle Edition. 

A Few Facts

Huawei holds 4% of the cellphone market in Israel. In the UK, which is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, Huawei has 14% of the market.  Huawei Canada is a major contributor to Canadian business and research.  These facts matter. 

Why Conspiracy Theories Exist

Reading about the arrest of Huawei’s CFO Sabrina Meng Wanzhou, who is also the daughter of the company’s founder, at the Vancouver airport, I had the same question everyone was asking:  why?  Attempts to answer the question have spawned a number of conspiracy theories.  Conspiracy theories flourish when the information available in the public domain never quite makes sense or at least never comes close to explaining who did what, how, with what motives and intended outcomes.  The explanations for why and how never satisfy the parameters of what has happened, and we live in suspense,  forced to speculated about behind-the-scenes, cloak-and-dagger black ops in search of explicable motives for unexplained or inexplicable events.   

Just Because It's a Conspiracy Theory . . .

Once established, conspiracy theories take on a life of their own.  They thrive and spread and become better known than the mundane facts because they tell a better, more dramatic and coherent story.  All this being said, to cannibalize a better-known expression:  just because it’s a conspiracy theory doesn’t mean that it isn't true.

Chaos Theory Is the Opposite of a Conspiracy Theory

The opposite of a conspiracy theory is “chaos theory”—the theory that explains how very small causes can precipitate very large effects.  Science tells us that if we want to know the answers to big questions like  “how did we get here?” or “where did that hurricane come from?”  the answer requires “chaos theory.”  No one caused it; a lot of small things happened and as a result that big thing happened.  The butterfly in Brazil may have intended something but she did not intend to set off a tornado in Texas.  Unlike conspiracy theories, chaos theory is no fun at all. Reviewing the explanations, analysis, speculation and theories emerging from Sabrina Meng Wanzhou’s detainment in Vancouver, chaos may be the only answer.


What We've Been Told

Based on media reports, sometime in 2014 (and/or earlier) Sabrina Meng Wanzhou did a presentation in front of HSBC executives in New York (HSBC is the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) in which she is alleged to have misrepresented the ownership of a company called Skycom which was doing business in Iran in contravention of US and United Nations sanctions.  The physical evidence against her as an individual is, allegedly, a powerpoint presentation and a paper trail showing that Skycom is owned by a Huawei shell company. As a result, a warrant for her arrest was issued (22 August 2018) by the Eastern District Court of New York.  After various people had been informed, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and John Bolton, National Security Advisor to the White House, the RCMP exercised the American warrant and detained Sabrina Meng Wanzhou as she was changing planes at Vancouver airport en route from Hong Kong to Mexico.  She was jailed on December 1 pending a bail hearing.   She was released on bail on December 5.  Friends and family posted the 10-million-dollar bail, and she remains under house arrest in Vancouver, pending an extradition hearing in which American authorities must present evidence that her extradition is justified, meaning that there is compelling evidence that she has committed a crime which would be recognized as a crime according to Canadian as well as American law, and that the motives of her extradition are justified.

Mr. Chaos and the Conspiracy Theories

Not surprisingly, the immediate conspiracy theories make Mr. Chaos himself, President Donald Trump, the central antagonist.  Theory number one is that Meng’s arrest was a Trump gambit to gain leverage in trade talks with China, attempting to bully and cower China by showing how far he is willing to go playing hardball.  Theory number two is the exact opposite.  Meng’s arrest on December 1, the same day Trump was having one-on-one trade talks with China’s President Xi, was a deliberate attempt by an anti-Trump Washington faction to embarrass and undermine the American President. 

The "Let's Put Canada in Its Place" Conspiracy

Conspiracy theory number three is distinctly Canadian.  On June 1, 2018, the USA imposed a 25% tariff on Canadian steel on the grounds that Canadian steel imports were “a threat to US national security.”  Suddenly all the rhetoric about Canada and the USA being the greatest of trading partners, the best of friends and the closest of allies evaporated, and we were just another potential enemy.  Nonetheless the USA still didn’t want us to go around acting like a sovereign nation.  As part of the recent trade deal replacing NAFTA, the US-Canada-Mexico trade agreement, the American’s insisted on what is known as the “China clause” requiring three-months notice before Canada could sign a trade agreement with  “non-market countries.”  (The list of “non-market countries” includes China, Vietnam, North Korea and 11 others.)  In other words, if Canada approaches a trade agreement with China, we will be putting at risk our trade with the USA to whom we export nearly 70% of our goods and services, accounting for 20% of our Gross Domestic Product.  Having Meng arrested in Canada had the effect, which would be desirable from an American perspective, of blocking friendly relations and future trade between China and Canada.  

The Paradox of China's Getting Tough with Canada

Ostensibly as a consequence of the Meng detention, two Canadians—Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor—were arrested in China.  As I try to imagine the strategic value of these arrests from a Chinese perspective, my conclusion is that they must be a gesture for domestic consumption in China.  In other words, Chinese politicians needed to show their Chinese compatriots that they are doing something about Meng’s arrest.  However, I would surmise that these Chinese politicians are more than sophisticated enough to realize that Canada, in contradiction to its own best interests, has been trapped in the middle of this affair by the American warrant.  The Chinese leadership have made Canada the target of their ire rather than focussing on the USA.  The rational conclusion is that Canada just doesn’t matter enough to either China or the USA.  Both countries are at ease making Canada a patsy and the detained Canadians collateral damage, but the real game—where the big money and power are at stake—is China-US trade.  Paradoxically, the more China puts pressure on Canada to release Meng, the more it will be in Canada’s interest to extradite her to the USA, thereby forcing the Chinese to address their true antagonist the USA, leaving Canada out of the US-China trade war. 

The Chinese Global Domination Conspiracy

In casual conversation with my fellow Canadians, this is the conspiracy theory that is least understood but is the most readily and stubbornly accepted.  Arresting Meng has nothing to do with protecting Israel.  From this point of view, the claim that she was arrested for contravening trade sanctions with Iran becomes a bogus pretext, smoke and mirrors.  From this point of view even the allegations that Meng committed bank fraud by failing to reveal a Huawei/Skycom/ Iran connection, are a pretext, accusations that are not intended to pursue justice and discourage crime, but simply to undermine a large and successful Chinese technology company.  If this is the case, the crime being perpetrated against Meng seems much more significant than the crime she is being accused of.

What exactly is this conspiracy theory?  Huawei is in the process of developing 5G technology in Canada and around the world which will provide the next generation of wifi and internet applications.    Huawei is believed to have close ties to the Chinese government and the MSS (Ministry of State Security).  Huawei's presence in and even control of cyberspace in other nations will give them the potential to access state secrets and the possibility of disrupting any industry connected to the internet (aka The Internet of Things).

As evidence of this conspiracy my fellow Canadians point out that three--USA, Australia, New Zealand--of the five members of the Five Eyes have "banned" Huawei's 5G technology.  The USA's decision to go with an American company for its 5G technology is hardly surprising.  We might wonder why Australia and New Zealand have decided not to go with Huawei.  The counter to this conspiracy theory is that so far two Five Eyes members--Canada and the UK--have not banned Huawei, but we can imagine that they are both under enormous American pressure to do so. 

The Chinese counter to this conspiracy theory is that if Huawei's 5G technology is a gateway to global domination, then any of its three major competitors in 5G development--Verizon, IBM, AT&T--also threaten global domination.  The USA's use of its secret services and intelligence networks in conjunction with private contractors and businesses to promote American economic interests has a long and publicly acknowledged history.  "What's good for General Bullmoose is good for the USA" may once have been considered somewhat ironic, but history has shown that the slogan can be taken literally as representative of American attitudes and practices.

Once again, the great paradoxical, Chinese miscalculation is that the arrest of two Canadians in retaliation for the Meng arrest is the strongest evidence that the choice of Chinese 5G technology might prove dangerous for foreign nations.

The "Business as Usual" Conspiracy

In 1953 the CIA orchestrated the overthrow of Iran's democratically elected President, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in order to support BP and prevent the nationalization of the Iranian oil fields.  The USA installed and maintained the Shah of Iran as dictator, for the benefit of Anglo-American oil companies, until he was overthrown in 1979.  In 1954, the CIA arranged a coup in Guatemala, overthrowing the democratically elected President, Jacobo Arbenz, thereby preserving the monopoly of the United Fruit Company.  In 1973 a US-backed military coup overthrew the government of Salvador Allende and installed Augusto Pinochet as dictator thereby protecting the assets of the Anaconda Copper Company and Kennecott Utah Copper from Allende's plans to nationalize the copper industry.  These covert operations may strike you as distant in time (which is why we now know about them) but they establish a pattern of collusion between American business and American intelligence and secret services that has grown stronger not weaker over the years.  Of all the things we have heard about Edward Snowden over the years, the one I find most striking that usually goes by without comment was that he was working for a private company, Booz Allen Hamilton, when he copied and leaked classified NSA (National Security Agency) files. Snowden's previous employers were Dell technologies and the CIA. 

The warrant for Meng's extradition issued by the Eastern District Court of New York was a collaboration among the US Attorney, the secret service and American business interests on the grounds of national security.  "National security" in the USA means "for the perseverance and profit of American businesses."  From this perspective Meng's arrest was just "business as usual" as the various American agencies collaborated in undermining a Chinese company.

The Chaos Theory of International Trade

While none of these conspiracy theories tells the whole story, each has some degree of truth, which is why I think that chaos rather than conspiracy offers the better answer to the question "why?".  One particular butterfly has been flapping his wings vociferously enough to cause turbulence in Canada and around the world.  His name is Richard P. Donoghue.  He is a US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.  His name is on the letter released to the public asking that Meng not be given bail, and presumably, he is the attorney who signed the original warrant for her arrest.  Remarkably little attention has been paid to who exactly Richard P. Donoghue is.




Richard Donoghue, until recently (I.e. 4 January 2018), was an employee of CA Technologies.  Does it matter that the man who caused Meng's arrest and detention was, until less than a year ago, the Chief Litigator of CA Technologies, a competitor of Huawei in the Internet of Things?  Logically, this is at least a question that should be asked.  Why isn't the Canadian media asking this question? 



Did someone from CA Technologies suggest, last January, that it would be useful if one of their litigators became a US Attorney?  I'm going to guess that Donoghue took a pay cut to become a US Attorney.  Does he maintain contact with colleagues in CA Technologies?  Have any of his buddies from CA suggested that it would be really helpful if "someone" went after Huawei?  Is Donoghue receiving any kind of compensation from CA?  Did Donoghue receive financial compensation from CA in 2018--after he became US Attorney and before he issued the warrant for Meng's arrest in August?  Does Donoghue have close friends and family employed by or receiving benefit from CA Technologies which would put him in a conflict of interest in demanding the arrest of Huawei's CFO?


Let's be clear:  I have no inside knowledge of Richard Donoghue's motivations, but his situation and the circumstances are obviously something that the Canadian media should be investigating in the first instance and the Canadian judiciary considering Meng's extradition and continued detention must thoroughly consider.  If the request for Meng's extradition is just a ploy to undermine a business competitor, then the detention of Huawei's CFO for years of extradition hearings will accomplish that goal and a travesty will have been perpetrated on and by the Canadian judiciary.


I consider the Donoghue warrant more chaos than conspiracy because I cannot imagine that Richard P. is a singular agent in this case or that he sat down and said to himself, "I think today I will embarrass Canada, cause a trade war between the USA and China, provoke the arrests of innocent bystanders in China, destabilize the global economy, and broach the possibility of a war which could drag every country in the world into the conflict."  Oh, I know this has to sound farfetched, but Meng's arrest and all of its potential ramifications could not have happened or be happening without Donoghue.  These days whenever I think about Richard P. Donoghue and the mess he's unleashed, I can't help thinking, at the same time, about a 19-year-old named Gavrilo Princip.







"Three Days of the Condor" and the Tenth Anniversary of "The Sour Grapevine"

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