Back in the saddle. Rough road ahead.
Victoria Day Weekend roundup: What's the real story behind that "Huawei decision"? What the heck have I been up to all this time? A foreboding: What's up next is going to be. . . crazytimes.
As the more attentive of this newsletter’s subscribers will recall I’ve been away from my regular column duties in the National Post & the Ottawa Citizen to focus on some pretty serious investigations. Thanks to everyone out there for asking where where the hell I went. I’m back at this newsletter after skipping an entire week, and I’ll be back at my regular column this coming week, along with the results of what I’ve been up to. I’ll come to that in a moment.
I’m exhausted. I’ve still got a file to send my editors containing background notes and sources on the big story that’s been taking up so much time, but last Thursday I finally filed what will be a series (5,500 words, latest version). There will be more detail in this newsletter later in the week once all that work starts appearing in print, and there will be deeper and grislier background for paid subscribers. There’s a hint below.
I did manage to get out and about briefly, riding with the lads. But then I got called back in to dash off my verdict on the Huawei decision - so much more to be said about that, and I’ll say some of it below - which is why I’m putting together a notes & sources file on what’s supposed to be a holiday weekend.
I should be able to get outside in the real world later today and there’s always Monday. The weather forecast is vaguely encouraging. The rains aren’t expected to return until late in the day.
Speaking of motorcycles, two lads on bikes quickly dispatched a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guards colonel in the streets of Tehran today. I swear I was nowhere near the place.
If you find my tone cavalier, it’s because I’m partial to the virtuous doctrine of tyrannicide, I make no apologies for it, and I am not fond of the Khomeinist regime. I share the sentiment expressed by my friend Rahim Hamid on the subject of Colonel Khodai’s demise: “Iranian murderer of Syrian children dies a horrible death, though swifter & therefore much more merciful than many of the murders of Syrian innocents he perpetrated & ordered.”
Of course everyone’s attention has turned to the Israelis. And fair enough. But just for once, it would be nice if such speculative attribution of credit for such acts of international-relations hygiene gave the honour to those of us whose instructions in global domination and mischief-making derive from the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Ballymakeera. I mean, come on. Just once.
A genuine coincidence: My upcoming column this week, which isn’t funny, is a look-in I’ve been planning for some time involving upheavals in Iran that would be front page news were it not for the disaster unfolding in Ukraine. I’m particularly concerned with the brutal persecution of the brave trade unionist Alireza Saghafi, chair of the Center for Workers’ Rights in Iran, who is on death’s door in Kachuei Prison at the moment.
Another quick digression on the subject of motorcycles and trade unionists, and this being the Victoria Day weekend after all.
I generally refer to my Triumph as a 1977 Bonneville 750 T140E. Strictly speaking, the 1977 model was the T140J, a lovely iteration of the Bonneville produced to commemorate the silver jubilee of the ascension of Queen Elizabeth II to the throne. My bike is a 1977 & a half - an Autumn ‘77 return to the T140E. Its production, distribution and marketing that year was entirely in the hands of the Meriden Workers’ Co-operative, formed after a bitter sit-down strike against the Norton-Villiers company. The workers efforts were backed by the great Trade & Industry minister Tony Benn. The workers saved the Triumph Motorcycle Company from total extinction. Thanks, lads.
Right. Quickly about Huawei, for now.
There is a terribly unhealthy pattern that has set in around the Ottawa Press gallery. It’s not just an assumption that the Trudeau government must be allowed to fall short of coming clean with Canadians when it purports to be be addressing the grim national security threats posed by Xi Jinping’s regime in Beijing. I get that, but what happens is Trudeau and his ministers end up getting away with the most elaborately preposterous circumlocutions, to the point of outright lying to the Canadian people about how or whether they’re genuinely doing something useful about the most dire threats Beijing poses to Canada’s national and economic security.
The giveaway from this week’s sort-of announcement about amendments to the Telecommunications Act and Huawei and ZTE - both global behemoths, both essentially functions of Xi Jinping’s long-game strategy for global domination, surveillance and communications-control - is that nobody on the government side allowed the word “China” to be spoken. At least not that I’ve been able to find. The word “China” doesn’t even show up once in any of the written press statements and policy elaborations issued by Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne.
The concern about Huawei and ZTE is not just a worry about eavesdropping and bugging - a talent Huawei has long cultivated, as we have seen in the Netherlands and most spectacularly in the case of the entire African Union.
The kidnapping of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor should give you at least an inkling of the kind of monkey-wrenching, extortion and outright sabotage that Beijing could commit via Huawei and ZTE, totally compromising the integrity of Canada’s telecommunications, banking, transportation, energy and health care systems, if Xi Jinping felt so inclined.
Instead of being honest about this, a carefully-choreographed logorrhea is we got this week, especially from Champagne. Just watch what happens, despite Vassy Kapelos’ gently insistent and polite determination to get something like a straight answer out of him. It goes on for three minutes. Ask yourself after you watch this whether Champagne said anything that was not utter porridge, let alone anything even remotely relevant to the questions Kapelos put to him:
On the subject of “why it took so long” for Ottawa to say the words “Huawei” and “decision” out loud, nobody’s nose was longer this past week than that of Conservative party leadership contender Jean Charest. Newsletter readers will familiar with Charest’s serial evasions, deceptions, false boasts and falsehoods about what he was doing for Huawei, for $70,000 a month, in the three years immediately preceding his decision to contest the Conservative Party leadership.
This was Charest on Thursday: “While I commend the Gov’t of Canada for finally making the right decision to ban Huawei from our 5G networks, it took them too long.”
The gall of the guy.
Jean Charest’s own handiwork is one of the main reasons it took so long. Charest’s services to Huawei were directly in aid of blocking and delaying the very “ban” that Champagne and Mendicino finally got around to sort-of announcing last week. It’s what Huawei hired Charest to do, and that’s what he did.
So why now, then? Here’s something hardly anybody noticed. On the very same day [more like a year ago, to the day, duh. Sorry, readers] that Champagne and Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino were banging on about who the hell knows what in Ottawa, Joe Biden’s White House issued a blockbuster Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity.
It’s a hell of a thing. It’s written in plain English. It doesn’t specifically mention China, either, or Huawei, because it doesn’t have to. The Americans had already dealt with all that, starting in the early days of the Obama administration. It’s the level of detail the White House provides that will come as a shock to anyone unfamiliar with the difference between American practice and Canadian custom in the disclosure of what should be public information in a democracy.
Are we really expected to believe that Biden would so much as take a telephone call from the Prime Minister’s Office in Ottawa had some indication not been forthcoming that Xi Jinping’s “national champion” telecom giant would not soon have its toxins quarantined up here? Are we really going to believe that the Americans would just sit back and allow Canada to admit Huawei and ZTE into the core “5G” operations of North America’s integrated telecommunications, banking, transportation and continental defence systems?
No. Whatever else they may be, the Yanks aren’t idiots. Readers of this newsletter will have a far better understanding than most about why it is that what we heard out of Ottawa this week was the same old flute music. See? That’s why subscribing is good for you.
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Anyway, about the 5,500-word series I’ve just finished for the National Post. It’s actually the second of two.
The first was that investigation of Samidoun, the shadowy Vancouver-based international network that shows up on Israel’s terrorist list but appears on Canada’s registry of non-profit corporations. Samidoun also seems to be some kind of proxy for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which shows up on Canada’s terrorist list, Israel’s, and the banned lists of just about every country in the free world.
It caused quite a stir. Raised in the Senate, petitions calling for Samidoun’s banning in Canada, counter-petitions accusing me of being a key player in a sinister Zionist plot, a story about my story in the Jerusalem Post, that kind of thing. Right after the story went live, newsletter readers got quite a lot of background that didn’t appear in print, and paid subscribers got all the cloak-and-dagger, spy-versus-spy stuff. Which is why, if you don’t already, you should subscribe, and if you get yours for free, you should make it a paid subscription. Just click this.
So, what’s the behemoth this coming week that I’ve waited until the last minute to say anything about? I’m afraid I’m not able to say much right now, except that it was one of the most unsettling acts of journalism I’ve ever had to commit in my entire career.
Just one small part of it all involves this emblematic photograph from last summer’s Indian Residential Schools upheavals:
I’m afraid I’m not going to be very popular with some of the best-paid editors of some of the most reputable news organizations in this country. It’s not a comfortable position for me to be in, let me tell you.
I think I’ll go for a ride on my bike now.
Porridge indeed. Champagne porridge.
Oh man…I won’t be able to sleep now. You never fail to raise my curiosity. Hope you had a great ride!