Monday, November 18, 2019

CANADA AND CHINA. PART TWO: THE MENG WANZHOU EXTRADITION PROCEDURE HUAWEI INCIDENT: Contradictions Unlimited.

CANADA AND CHINA. PART TWO: THE MENG WANZHOU EXTRADITION PROCEDURE HUAWEI INCIDENT: Contradictions Unlimited.

By Robin Mathews, November, 2019.


The Vancouver Extradition procedure requested by the U.S. government (of the Canadian government) intends to remove Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of the huge Huawei international technology Corporation, to the U.S.A. for trial... for various alleged wrong-doings. The request is freighted with contradictions.  On the face of it a perfectly reasonable request under the Canada/U.S. Extradition Treaty was made which requires (and is proceeding) that the subject of the request, Meng Wanzhou, undergo a process in Canadian court to determine that the U.S. request is legitimate and, if so, to then be handed to U.S. authorities for trial in the U.S.A.


A Canadian can argue that the request has been made in proper form and the treaty is a common structure among countries (China apparently has a number of extradition treaties) and Canada is simply fulfilling its obligation and must do so.


The request, however, exists in a global condition in which the U.S.A. sees itself in contest with China over trade matters, spheres of influence, military power, and control of geographical areas (like the South China sea, etc.).  In addition, the Chinese may see Canada as nothing more than a U.S. lackey.


In South and Central America where the U.S.A. promotes and supports  thug leadership which aligns with U.S. policy, it has trained some of those leaders in the U.S. School of the Americas. Both Russia and China have been known to support legitimate forces struggling to represent the people of those countries against U.S. thug policies and allies.  In almost every case, Canada has supported the most egregious violators of Human Rights put in place or openly supported by the U.S.A. in Central and South America.


China, therefore, has no reason to believe that Canada is acting purely out of the requirements of the Extradition Treaty with the U.S.A (but, perhaps, as a known and proved lackey of whatever U.S. policy is hatched.)


As in all well-run Communist Societies, merit and need decide the lives of the Chinese people: from each according to his (her) ability, and to each according to his (her) need.  Meng Wanzhou's father is an especially talented man creating, according to his ability Huawei, over which he still retains a measure of power.  His needs being especially great (as a man of genius), he is now listed as a billionaire. And Huawei, in keeping with the operative policy in China, exists in the structure of Socialism with Chinese characteristics. As an independent Free Market corporation, Huawei may or may not, ultimately, take direction from the Chinese government.


The founder's daughter, Meng joined Huawei, we are told, as an answerer of telephones.  But having great ability, she now contributes as Chief Financial Officer and a member of the Board of Huawei her relation to the founder, her father, the powerful billionaire, has had no bearing upon her rise (from sheer ability) in the Corporation.  Her needs, too, are significant and upon her arrest in Vancouver, she was able to choose which of her Real Estate holdings "valued overall at something more than twenty million dollars"  she would choose as a place to reside during the legal process.


A further complication "if not a major contradiction in the matter" involves the violations with which Meng Wanzhou is charged. She was arrested on suspicion of violating U.S. Trade Sanctions against Iran.  Those are unilateral U.S. Sanctions which have been questioned by many and rejected by the United Nations.  Upon the discovery of Iran's nuclear undertaking (earlier), a Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action was initiated by a number of countries, the U.S. among them.  The U.S. withdrew (May, 2018) claiming a horrible agreement criticism which the UN didn't recognize.


U.S.-Iran Relations might fill an encyclopaedia.  Suffice it to say that since the forcible removal of the Shah of Iran, 1979, (a U.S. puppet), the U.S. (deeply interested in the oil-rich nation) has wanted to exert a proprietary hold on the country.  And so the withdrawal of the U.S. in May, 2018, from the Joint (many nation) Comprehensive Plan Of Action (approved by the UN) to oversee Iran's development of nuclear power for peaceful purposes led to the re-institution of heavy U.S. sanctions against Iran … not approved of by many other countries.


In that light alone, the U.S. allegations against Huawei and Meng Wanzhou are open to serious question.  Nevertheless, she is charged by the U.S.A. with conspiracy to defraud multiple international institutions; to defraud certain banks by pretending to clear money for a corporation in order to disguise its dealing with Iran; with wire fraud to mask sales to Iran; with obstruction of justice and with misappropriating trade secrets.


A reasonable Canadian might observe that the U.S. sanctions against Iran are highly questionable and so being able to violate them (questionable sanctions) may be equally questionable.  And in that light, some argued at the time of the arrest of Meng Wanzhou that she should have been released because the U.S. sanctions against Iran are illegitimate.  As true as that may be or have been, Canada felt bound by its Extradition Treaty with the U.S.A. to arrest and to hear the arguments in Court for and against there being a legal basis for the arrest.


A more serious contradiction in the whole matter has been engaged in by China, which has chosen to arrest, hold in torture conditions, and not bring to trial two (actually more) unrelated and innocent Canadians! But Canada didn't request the Extradition of Meng Wanzhou: the U.S.A. did. And so China should have seized U.S. citizens in China, demanding that the request for extradition of Meng Wanzhou be withdrawn by the U.S.A.  HERE, the contradictions of Big Power Politics seem clearly to be in play.  China appears to have been afraid to offend the U.S.A. in a matter wholly created by the U.S.A.  Instead, China decided to beat up Canada for something Canada is not responsible for.  And, to rub salt into the wound, China bought products from the U.S.A. to make up for products it refused to buy from Canada!


The real possibility that the whole scenario is a sham points to another  serious contradiction.  And that is the failure to use the Canadian courts expeditiously to manage Canadian needs. No one claims that wait times and procedure times and accessibility to Canadian courts are reasonable for Canadians.  But the courts can be used endlessly on call to please a country (the USA) seeking, perhaps, false charges against a trade competitor.


The Canadian State, moreover, which leapt to serve the dubious request of the U.S. has still not moved on the gigantic False Flag, fake Islamic Terrorist Event at the B.C. Legislature grounds on July 1, 2013, an event alleged (by TWO higher courts) to have been intricately and criminally created by the RCMP, involving the entrapment, improper incarceration, fake charges, and enormous mental stress to two wholly innocent Canadians who have not received a single gesture of compensation from the RCMP or the Government of Canada ! !


Contradictions in the Meng Wanzhou Extradition case in the Vancouver Courts pile up as I write, not only in Canada, but in the lands of the two principals in the case, both apparently too powerful to be challenged or to be bothered much with Truth and Justice.



 Contact: Robin Mathews

Friday, November 15, 2019

CANADA AND CHINA. From Slavery to Managed Citizenship on the Globe. PART ONE. the Late Robin Mathews

CANADA AND CHINA.  From Slavery to Managed Citizenship on the Globe. PART ONE.

By Robin Mathews, November, 2019


The great civilizations of Greece and Rome were founded upon slavery at a time when physical labour was basic to managing individual life.  But life could have proceeded there, happily without slavery.


China used slavery through some of its history, but does not seem to have founded its community on slavery as did Greece and Rome.  There were, indeed, times when slavery was outlawed in China. (The history of China is very long over three thousand years, and so almost any generalization about China can be challenged.)  Wars killing millions have been fought there by the ambitious.  Competitions for suzerainty have been common. Some scholars suggest Mao's (modern) policies and actions resulted in the brutal death of untold millions.


In what we choose to speak of as modern times (post the Christopher Columbus discovery of the Americas, 1492), one of the most brutal, oppressive, and warlike (democratic) Imperial Powers “the USA“ was also founded upon slavery. Even while composing its great Declaration of Independence (declaring that all men are created equal) and for many decades after it the U.S. welcomed ships full of Black Slaves and put them to (mis)use.


Indeed slavery has much to do with the difference in development between Canada and the United States.  The U.S. has a more productive climate, about seven times as much arable land, and it produced an independent central government nearly a hundred years before Canada did. But perhaps the most important element of its growth to wealth and power was SLAVERY which flourished in the USA for 250 years before its erasure. One of the major expenses in the Capitalist System (we all know) is The Cost of Labour.  In the U.S.A. for nearly 250 years the Capitalist system could develop with a huge slave population almost erasing “the cost of labour” from the account books of huge portions of the U.S. economy.


China's (recorded) history is very old and fascinating.  The communities, clans, ethnic groupings, movements of population resulting in the Han people and its equation with the Chinese may play a small part in the present sinofication of the Uyghur (Islamic) population allegedly being re-educated (inside kinds of settlement areas) into conformity with present Chinese values. Put very simply, the imposition of present values under the for life head of the Chinese government, Xi Jinping, will want to erase (or at least defuse) the Muslim faith, assure use of the Chinese language (Mandarin), and teach acceptance of whatever iteration of Communist belief is dominant in China. (Managed citizenship?) That is not at all to say the Chinese Mainland population is servile.


Indeed, public protests and disagreement have not been uncommon, and the Central Government takes pains to work on the living conditions of average Chinese people ... raising the standard of living of a gigantic population as a major program.


We cannot say with the wildest stretch of the imagination - that a good (U.S.) democratic country is in contest with an evil (China) undemocratic country for global dominance or that a freely choosing, enlightened population faces a managed population under the heel of communism.  The U.S. population is as managed as any population on the globe.


For the 35 or so millions of (mostly) Euro-Canadians in a Canada that crystallized in 1867 (upon a sub-group of indigenous peoples roughly brushed aside), the one billion and a quarter population/Chinese phenomenon (in a country smaller than Canada) shaping itself over 3000 years until the 1912 Declaration of the Republic of China (ending 2000 years of dynastic rule) presents a reality and a modern State of a stunning and complex kind.


In 1949 the Chinese State was won to Communism by a romantic, adventurous, daring, imaginative, and (more recently) much maligned wartime leader called Mao Tse-Tung.  He was, among other things, a political philosopher, military leader, and a poet and even a theorist on the need for democracy within a centralized system.


Today China still presents itself as a Communist society (a semi-Command Economy).  It is, in fact, a One Party State and the One Party has opened itself to something like Capitalism within a Communist State.  Within that One Party State ties to increasingly large and successful Capitalist corporations are made with the governing class, a class that cannot be called dynastic certainly, but which has visible ties to the Mao generation as if succession in power is based upon Party affiliation and merit married to some kind of affiliation with the Mao generation.


After two thousand years of dynastic rule, could it be possible that a natural tendency of spirit, historical experience, and a special understanding of rulership is moving China close to old ideas?  Time will tell.  When democratic government is not in use in a country, the search for top governors tends to move into and among people with familiar backgrounds, historical relations, and genetic connections.  And those people tend to forge relations with especially helpful associates found among those with (apparently) civic, non-political, kinds of Corporate power.


Does that mean serious exchange and relation cannot exist between such a government and democratic governments of the West?  Not at all.  It means simply that special care must be taken to fashion meaningful ties.  Special care on all sides.


In the meantime, in Vancouver, a drama is playing out with the arrest and extradition proceeding (requested by the U.S.A.) related to Meng Wanshou, who is a top officer of Huawei, said to be the world's largest telecommunications technology corporation. Wanshou is accused by the U.S. of violating (U.S.) Iran sanctions (questioned and/or rejected by many countries).


THAT situation has played upon and plays upon Canada's relation to China.  And since China is vying for predominance as a trading and military power in the East (at least) of the world Canadians would do well to think about it and about Canada/China relations. It is not, however, a one-way street by any means.  To achieve its aspirations, China, too, must think of its one-on-one relations with other countries on the Globe.  Moving into a relatively new relation in the world, China is flexing its muscles and seeking super-power relevance and influence.


 Contact: Robin Mathews