#Breaking Global News has learned that the Director General of an intelligence unit at RCMP HQ has been arrested and charged under the secrets act involving espionage by foreign powers. Sources tell Global News this was an extensive national security investigation #cdnnatsec
— Mercedes Stephenson (@MercedesGlobal) September 13, 2019
Just a hunch. Read the whole thread.
h/t PB
Not much, it seems.
Link fixed!
Bio-warfare experts question why Canada was sending lethal viruses to China
Last month, an acclaimed NML scientist — Xiangguo Qiu — was reportedly escorted out of the lab along with her husband, another biologist, and members of her research team. The agency said it was investigating an “administrative issue,” and had referred a possible policy breach to the RCMP. Little more has been said about the affair.
Reassuring.
A researcher with ties to China was recently escorted out of the National Microbiology Lab (NML) in Winnipeg amidst an RCMP investigation into what’s being described as a possible “policy breach.”
Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, her husband Keding Cheng and an unknown number of her students from China were removed from Canada’s only level-4 lab on July 5, CBC News has learned. The students didn’t speak much English and kept to themselves in a group.
A Level 4 virology facility is a lab equipped to work with the most serious and deadly human and animal diseases. That makes the Arlington Street lab one of only a handful in North America capable of handling pathogens requiring the highest level of containment, such as Ebola.
Security access for the couple and the Chinese students was revoked, according to sources who work at the lab and do not want to be identified because they fear consequences for speaking out.
Sources say this comes several months after IT specialists for the NML entered Qiu’s office after-hours and replaced her computer. Her regular trips to China also started being denied.
h/t A Canadian
Huawei Confirms $30 Billion Revenue Hit As Smartphone Sales Drop 40-60%.
Someone else gets it: “Much More Than a Trade War with China”
Amazing how many ‘experts’ think this is only a trade war or trade dispute with China. They then ramble on about this and that, uttering inane analysis, “This will only raise prices for Americans.” As if anyone needs a PhD in economics for this, and as if the policy makers are too blind to see the deer in the road.
This.
Is.
Not.
A.
Trade.
War.
The trade battles are subcomponents of a much larger campaign. We are overthrowing the Chinese government. They’ve waged wars on us for decades.
China warned Canada on Friday that it needs to be aware of the consequences of aiding the U.S. in a case involving the Chinese tech giant Huawei that is believed to have sparked the detentions of two Canadians in China.
Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang’s comments Friday came after U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called for the release of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. […]
“We hope that the Canadian side can have a clear understanding of the consequences of endangering itself for the gains of the U.S. and take immediate actions to correct its mistakes so as to spare itself the suffering from growing damage,”
The accusations of Huawei stealing trade secrets from across the world are hitting a fever pitch, thanks to a new Wall Street Journal expose that blows open accusations of theft and stealing of trade secrets. The article includes insights from lawsuits, Huawei’s competitors and former employees. Allegations run the gamut against the company: from its business practices, to the science behind its 5G, all the way down to copying the text it used in its user manuals. […]
The United States is finally following in the footsteps of places like Australia and putting pressure on the company out of concern for national security. Just last week, the Trump administration unveiled measures to help cut Huawei off from American suppliers and stop it from doing business in the United States. The administration believes that the company takes its orders directly from Beijing and that its standing as the top telecom company in the world makes it a powerful tool for China’s authoritarian government.
Huawei writes the whole thing off as one big misunderstanding and says that it complies with laws in global markets: “We respect the integrity of intellectual property rights—for our own business, as well as peer, partner and competitor companies,” the company said.
The ChiComs are not our friends.
The security establishment gets it.
The ANZAC’s get it.
President Trump gets it.
Now Google and ARM are responding.
Waiting on Sasktel to remove Huawei devices from it’s fusion Internet service for rural customers and their Huawei mobile phones.
China is running out of options to hit back at the United States without hurting its own interests, as Washington intensifies pressure on Beijing to correct trade imbalances in a challenge to China’s state-led economic model.
China said this week it would impose higher tariffs on most U.S. imports on a revised $60 billion target list. That’s a much shorter list compared with the $200 billion of Chinese products on which Washington has hiked tariffs.
Washington has also turned up the heat on other fronts, from targeting China’s tech firms such as
Huawei and ZTE to sending warships through the strategic Taiwan Strait.
[…]
“The medium- to long-term ramifications on supply chains are being deeply underestimated. I would be severely concerned if I was China,” Robert Lawrence, a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, recently told journalists in Beijing, where a group from the think-tank met with senior Chinese officials.
Meanwhile in Chinada: Potatus minor* and the Red Dwarf will “not be rushed”…
* Better
Pinky swear: “We are willing to sign no-spy agreements with governments, including the UK government, to commit ourselves to making our equipment meet the no-spy, no-backdoors standard,” Huawei chairman Liang Hua told reporters in London via an interpreter.
Scheer also said that he would not allow Huawei — the largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world — to participate in the development of Canada’s next-generation 5G wireless network.
Update: and good observations in the comments.
There. I said it.
Well, this is good news! The government says you can borrow more money.
The federal government is poised to announce an expansion of an agricultural loan guarantee program in response to the canola market crisis. https://t.co/MdGZWIH2qn @CBCKatie
— CBC News (@CBCNews) May 1, 2019
It’s a “scientific-based disagreement”, according to Trudeau. So, here’s some advice for Canadian farmers — you might change the name of your crop to “Bombardier”.
Silent Invasion, Clive Hamilton’s ground-breaking book about China’s covert influence on Australian society, has been both applauded as an overdue exposé and criticized as an exaggeration of the problem. But when he finished the book, he received some unwanted validation of its central thesis: three Australian publishers declined to publish it, citing fear of retribution from Beijing or its allies.
Hamilton, a professor of public ethics at Canberra’s Charles Sturt University and former executive director of progressive think-tank The Australia Institute, eventually found a willing publisher, and now is working on a sequel dealing with similar issues in North America. What he’s discovered so far makes him very concerned for Canada. He spoke with the National Post during a visit to Toronto.
First rule of dictatorships — when you sell yourself to dictatorships, they expect you to stay bought.
Winnipeg-based grain handler Richardson International had its registration to ship canola to China cancelled at the beginning of March.
“Canola is our biggest cash crop in the province, so this will affect things right away and quickly,” said Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan president Todd Lewis.
The Chinese government didn’t disclose its reason for blocking Richardson’s access, according to a Tuesday report from the Reuters news agency.
As a nasty diplomatic feud deepens between the two countries over the tech company, involving arrests and execution orders, it hasn’t gone unnoticed that Huawei’s bright red fan-shaped logo is plastered prominently on the set of “Hockey Night in Canada.” TV hosts regularly remind the 1.8 million weekly viewers that program segments are “presented by Huawei smartphones.”
If the Canadian housing market crumbles, Costa said, the banks will be the ones “holding the bag.”
“We think the housing sector is the poster child for all the problems and imbalances we see in Canada today,” Costa said. “It’s pretty clear to us that the financial sector … when the economic cycle turns, are the ones that take the most hits.”
Costa would not speak about individual names Crescat is shorting, offering only that the firm has positions in “all the big liquid ones.”
Costa is also concerned that, according to his figures, 80 per cent of Canada’s non-financial stocks are not cash flow positive. Those numbers are in stark contrast to the economy reaching full employment.
h/t Buddy