... Continued
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US prosecutors not playing with a full deck
The legal counsel for Meng were quick to point out to the presiding judge that the PowerPoint deck presented by the US prosecutors was incomplete. Slides that would have portrayed a different position for Meng in this decade-old affair and indicate that she had been transparent with HSBC were left out.
As observed, it’s highly unusual to go after individual executives carrying out company business rather than indicting the corporation for illegal offenses; indeed, one such example was the case against HSBC. Obviously, the special circumstance for going after Meng was that she was the daughter of the founder of Huawei.
The age of this case in the Canadian court is nearing two years. The original hare-brained idea was to hold Meng hostage to put pressure on her father, Ren Zhengfei. It didn’t work. Huawei has grown stronger and increased worldwide sales in the interim.
The latest Trump-team move was to deny Huawei access to critical semiconductor technology, which will temporarily set the company back, but at great cost to American high-tech industries – read David Goldman’s forecasts in Asia Times and .
With the current attention on denying American technology to Huawei, the US may have lost interest in Meng’s incarceration, but Canada is left holding the bag of a stinky mess not of its making. The Big Brother south of the border has skillfully set up Canada to take the fall, and there is no nice way to put the gloss on this little piggy.
Washington deliberately gave Vancouver authorities just one day to plan and make the arrest. They did not have time to look at the broader picture, consider the international consequences, or consult with Ottawa. Let’s face it, they were played for suckers – OK, if not suckers at least country bumpkins.
Not Justin Trudeau’s brightest moment
However, the prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, has not exactly been a smart national leader and avoided the sinkhole laid out before him. He had plenty of opportunities to tamp down this sordid affair. Instead he lost control of the situation.
Five days after Meng was detained, her arrest was finally made public, and the Chinese Embassy in Canada was furious and demanded her immediate release. Ottawa did not respond.
Ten days later, two Canadians were detained in China, heretofore referred to in the media as the “two Michaels.” Beijing denied that the arrests were related to Meng’s arrest, which of course Trudeau wouldn’t buy. But Trudeau also did not acknowledge the reciprocal nature of China’s action.
Instead, he accused China of using arbitrary detention to achieve political goals and said that to give in to Beijing would put more Canadians at risk.
His reasoning is a real head-scratcher. Urging Canada to release Meng is hardly politics but humanitarian, and it’s hard to see how arranging a prisoner swap would endanger more Canadians – unless Ottawa is planning to intercept more Chinese business executives transiting Canadian airports in the future.
There are plenty of voices within Canada telling Trudeau that he can cut off the extradition process if he wants to. One reads: “The Extradition Act in 1999 gives the justice minister ‘unfettered discretion to withdraw an extradition at any time during the judicial phase of extradition,’ which offers the federal government a very clear option.”
Even though China has significantly reduced its imports from Canada, Trudeau appears undeterred. He apparently treats placating the irascible Donald Trump as more important than Canada’s sovereignty and national interest. He even fired his ambassador to China, a historic first, for publicly suggesting that Trump’s public comments provided grounds to .
Too bad Justin is just not a chip of the old block that was his father, Pierre Trudeau. Fifty years ago, Pierre led Canada to establish one of the first diplomatic relations between a Western country and People’s Republic of China, two years ahead of US president Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing and nine years before formal normalization between the US and China.
Now, it appears unlikely that any surprising turnabout development is likely to take place at the court hearing on Monday. Meng’s fate will have to wait for the outcome of the US presidential election on November 3.
K J Noh and I have outlined the messy legacy created by US Secretary of State and a long list of actions that former vice-president will have to take to right the ship of statecraft if he wins the election.
Assuming that he wins, upon taking over the Oval Office, he will have many things to tend to, but one of his easiest tasks will be to drop the extradition process for Meng promptly. It’s long overdue and the decent humanitarian thing to do.
---------------------------------------------------
US prosecutors not playing with a full deck
The legal counsel for Meng were quick to point out to the presiding judge that the PowerPoint deck presented by the US prosecutors was incomplete. Slides that would have portrayed a different position for Meng in this decade-old affair and indicate that she had been transparent with HSBC were left out.
As observed, it’s highly unusual to go after individual executives carrying out company business rather than indicting the corporation for illegal offenses; indeed, one such example was the case against HSBC. Obviously, the special circumstance for going after Meng was that she was the daughter of the founder of Huawei.
The age of this case in the Canadian court is nearing two years. The original hare-brained idea was to hold Meng hostage to put pressure on her father, Ren Zhengfei. It didn’t work. Huawei has grown stronger and increased worldwide sales in the interim.
The latest Trump-team move was to deny Huawei access to critical semiconductor technology, which will temporarily set the company back, but at great cost to American high-tech industries – read David Goldman’s forecasts in Asia Times and .
With the current attention on denying American technology to Huawei, the US may have lost interest in Meng’s incarceration, but Canada is left holding the bag of a stinky mess not of its making. The Big Brother south of the border has skillfully set up Canada to take the fall, and there is no nice way to put the gloss on this little piggy.
Washington deliberately gave Vancouver authorities just one day to plan and make the arrest. They did not have time to look at the broader picture, consider the international consequences, or consult with Ottawa. Let’s face it, they were played for suckers – OK, if not suckers at least country bumpkins.
Not Justin Trudeau’s brightest moment
However, the prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, has not exactly been a smart national leader and avoided the sinkhole laid out before him. He had plenty of opportunities to tamp down this sordid affair. Instead he lost control of the situation.
Five days after Meng was detained, her arrest was finally made public, and the Chinese Embassy in Canada was furious and demanded her immediate release. Ottawa did not respond.
Ten days later, two Canadians were detained in China, heretofore referred to in the media as the “two Michaels.” Beijing denied that the arrests were related to Meng’s arrest, which of course Trudeau wouldn’t buy. But Trudeau also did not acknowledge the reciprocal nature of China’s action.
Instead, he accused China of using arbitrary detention to achieve political goals and said that to give in to Beijing would put more Canadians at risk.
His reasoning is a real head-scratcher. Urging Canada to release Meng is hardly politics but humanitarian, and it’s hard to see how arranging a prisoner swap would endanger more Canadians – unless Ottawa is planning to intercept more Chinese business executives transiting Canadian airports in the future.
There are plenty of voices within Canada telling Trudeau that he can cut off the extradition process if he wants to. One reads: “The Extradition Act in 1999 gives the justice minister ‘unfettered discretion to withdraw an extradition at any time during the judicial phase of extradition,’ which offers the federal government a very clear option.”
Even though China has significantly reduced its imports from Canada, Trudeau appears undeterred. He apparently treats placating the irascible Donald Trump as more important than Canada’s sovereignty and national interest. He even fired his ambassador to China, a historic first, for publicly suggesting that Trump’s public comments provided grounds to .
Too bad Justin is just not a chip of the old block that was his father, Pierre Trudeau. Fifty years ago, Pierre led Canada to establish one of the first diplomatic relations between a Western country and People’s Republic of China, two years ahead of US president Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing and nine years before formal normalization between the US and China.
Now, it appears unlikely that any surprising turnabout development is likely to take place at the court hearing on Monday. Meng’s fate will have to wait for the outcome of the US presidential election on November 3.
K J Noh and I have outlined the messy legacy created by US Secretary of State and a long list of actions that former vice-president will have to take to right the ship of statecraft if he wins the election.
Assuming that he wins, upon taking over the Oval Office, he will have many things to tend to, but one of his easiest tasks will be to drop the extradition process for Meng promptly. It’s long overdue and the decent humanitarian thing to do.
