I was worried that maybe the Iran sanctions that were violated by the Huawei Princess, Sabrina Meng Wanzhou, were the new ones imposed unilaterally by Heir Shtroomphmeister after he heroically (in his mind) withdrew from the international Iran sanctions, but, nope, she violated the international ones. The ones that are working. Not the ones Trump fabricated to actually punish the other countries (the allies of the U.S.) who have imposed sanctions to discourage nuclearization in Iran. Trump says he's all about denuclearization in North Korea, but as I have written of here before, I think Dumby's just jonesin' to build golf courses, condos and hotels he can use with his pony pal Putin for some future top secret North Korean bro-downs. And when he proudly stated that he withdrew from the international sanctions on Iran, which are working to curb Iran's nuclear aspirations, during the state of the union address, (and received ignorant and dutiful applause), he neglected to mention the new sanctions he imposed on his allies to punish their punishment of Iran. And when he went on to take some credit for getting North Korea to the brink of denuclearization with ostensibly the same efforts he is penalizing in his allies, he was again applauded, but we know he doesn't give a shit about that sort of thing. Don't we?
But to get off Trump, (that's what she was paid not to say), who always finds his way into my posts these days, Skycom and Huawei are linked. Meng Wanzhou used to actually be on the board of directors at Skycom. So vacating the seat may have some mitigating effect on the up to 30 year sentence she could face for fraudulently helping Skycom deal with Iran, it does not indicate full separation between Huawei and Skycom. Indeed, it may just have been part of a plan to create an appearance of separation. So the proper thing for Canada to do in this situation would be to extradite her to the U.S. and allow her to face trial. I think she'll get a slap on the wrist and a fine that won't hurt her at all. She won't get 30 years in prison. I'd be surprised to see her get any prison time. What is more likely is that she'll be used by the U.S. as a pawn in the trade war with China. Something like, if you allow North Korea to continue building the hotel/casino across the Yalu River from Dandung (with some Trumped up financing of course) we will go easy on Sabrina Meng Wanzhou. By the way, notice in that article China's oh-so-ingenious (and pretty much their only) political tactic of saying, "Do what we want, or else." The U.S. might be powerful enough to get away with giving them a big (or in Trump's case maybe not so big) middle finger, but all North Korea and Canada seem to get is the "or else."
The Canadian quandary is that doing what they HAVE to do might just result in the execution of one of its citizens. That's something Canada does not believe in. China knows we have an extradition treaty with the U.S. that we can't break, and we know how China behaves in cases such as these. They don't give a crap. It gives me shivers when I think of stories like this one. Kevin and Julia Garratt, two Canadians who had spent 30 years in China teaching ESL and eventually opening up a coffee shop, were suddenly (and completely without grounds (pun apology)) arrested as spies in retaliation for Canada's arrest and extradition of an ACTUAL Chinese spy who had stolen American military fighter jet plans. These unsuspecting, innocent Canadians were the victims of a Chinese "or else." Can you imagine going through what they did? And at the end of it all they still maintained a love for their adopted country of China. Because, although you should know by now, I hate China, when I say "China," I am talking about the few people who run that shit show over there. Most of the regular people are not so detestable. Some are actually nice.
If you recall, I was threatened with publication of fake charges against me when I chose not to allow my employers to cheat me while I was in Taiyuan. Their offer had a familiar ring to it: "Give us what we want, or else." This Garratt story from (Hey what do you know, Dandung! See how this all ties together nicely?) could have been mine! It could happen to ANY foreigner living in any city in China. The Great Wall is not a national symbol that has diminished in its message over the years. Rather, it has become like the wall along the northern border of the Seven Kingdoms that keeps the Wildlings out. I wonder if Trump is a UGE fan of Game of Thrones because of that beautiful wall... China hasn't "opened up" economically to mix with the other countries of the world, it has done so to screw us all. Yet we continue to do business and stick our national economic digits deeper into the Chinese finger cuffs...
Now I don't believe Bob Schellenberg to be innocent like the Garratts, or me, so maybe China is improving a little???, but, he's gonna get punished when Canada does the right thing. China likes punishing people for doing the right thing. It's a pattern. They also like encouraging people to do the wrong thing at their own peril. Ask former ambassador to China, John McCallum. He'd been over in China for a year, long enough to learn how "corruption" isn't a strong enough word for what goes on there. You don't last even that long without learning how to play the game. And you don't get fired for just saying, "It would be great if the extradition request was dropped." He was probably wheeling and dealing with Huawei to bring their baby home and it bit him in the arse. I wouldn't be surprised if he was offered money to take her side in the media and put pressure on his own country to have her released, but I WOULD be surprised to find out about it. We'll probably just have to speculate.
Having said all of this, the U.S. anti-corruption laws, well, they're sorta corrupt. It seems to many like they are selectively enforced against company officials who may be beating Americans to the corruption punch. The story of Fredirick Pierucci of Alstom is a good example. To sum it up, the French company Alsom was doing a deal in Indonesia and their rep there, Pierucci, took advantage of the "well-oiled" system of corruption in the country which greases local officials to promote your company. It was a 118 million dollar deal. But before Alsom could perpetrate its corruption, G.E. wanted to buy the company and profit from the same corruption. So the ANTI-corruption America-Fuck-Yeah task force sprung into action. They arrested Pierucci and tsk-tsked Alsom for its abominable business practices and got the CEO, Patrick Kron, to talk up the G.E. deal, which was eventually accepted juuuuuust before Perucci was released from American prison and Kron received a 7.5 million dollar bonus for the G.E. deal. There's, of course, no proof that that's exactly what happened, but that's exactly what happened.
So the question needs to be asked (and this may have been where John McCallum was going) what U.S. rivals of Huawei are at this very moment scrambling to buy Skycom Tech (a Hong Kong company) or merge with them and take advantage of the very same "illegal" dealings with Iran? Are there any? We know that the Senate Intelligence Committee has been advised against using Huawei products. Whether they just want to ensure U.S. data collection takes priority over Chinese data collection in the world's smartphones is unknown but it wouldn't surprise me. What WOULD surprise me is finding out about it.
Remember ZTE? The Chinese telecom company that was accused of violating N. Korean and Iranian sanctions? Three months of U.S. sanctions against that company weakened it so much that it was on the verge of collapse. But wait a sec, Trump is good buddies with Kim Jong Un now and he has punished the people who are punishing Iran. What happened to ZTE again? Oh yeah, I remember now. Ivanka Trump got some business from China and ba-da-bing, ZTE sanctions were lifted. The corruption was magically forgiven, or unmagically just replaced with other corruption.
In the end, I would not be surprised if Meng Wanzhou is returned to China after some U.S. company can broker a similar deal in Iran that she was arrested for making. Canada, as always, will get little or nothing from the U.S. for their part in the corruption and will be punished by China for it. And China will have to look for some more illegal deals that they can make without the U.S. finding out about them and stealing them. But I will be surprised if I hear about all of this in the news.
Just a bunch of rich, guilty, (and oh they are guilty!), criminal scumbags playing real life Monopoly with the lives and resources that belong to the rest of the world. Meng Wanzhou had to go to jail, go indirectly to jail. She did not pass Go and did not pick up her 200 billion dollars. But with a lucky roll of the dice, perhaps in Hanoi, or if China can produce another get outta jail free card like the Ivanka Trump deal, she'll be back in the game.
So, in the next summit between Trump and Kim, do you REALLY think they'll be talking about nuclear disarmament when they have SO much more on their agendas?
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