The Polls, the Press, and All the Ways the Information Loop Goes Wrong

The Polling frenzy 

In the wake of the Democratic Party changing candidates there has been a frenzy of polls and press releases on the polls in anticipation of the November presidential election.  It is a fitting moment to reflect on the symbiotic relationship between the polls and the press, and how this relationship, this information loop, manages to go wrong.  My first observation, based on a decade of writing this blog, is that the typical scenario is for the legacy media to present a particular narrative--China is corrupt, Russia is evil, Trump is a dangerous clown (to begin with the most obvious examples)--and then to report, with a tone of seriousness and/or surprise, that a recent poll shows a majority of the population in agreement with the established narrative.  The question I always ask is "How could the majority of Canadians and/or Americans possibly think otherwise after they have been submitted to a brainwashing level of the established narrative provided by the media that most of us turn to for our news?"

It's So tempting to believe the numbers

I understand the allure of quantifications of people's feelings and attitudes.  How reassuring to know how the majority of Canadians feel about this or that issue.  And fascinating to know--with numeric specificity--how divorced white men feel about this, and what teenage girls think about that, what the attitudes of the majority of married black women are.  But can and should we believe the polls?  I suspect that the media (and not just politicians) view the polls as evidence that their messages are getting across.  In the other direction, I am also suspicious that pollsters will be tempted to produce polling results that the press will be interested in publishing.  Surveys are very easy to manipulate and corrupt, as demonstrated by a brilliant episode of the satiric comedy Yes, Prime Minister:

Sometimes the polls are just wrong

Sometimes the polls are just wrong to begin with.  When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau refused to release the Huawei CFO from house arrest in exchange for the "two Michaels" imprisoned in China, the Angus Reid poll claimed that 72% of Canadians agreed with him.  Given the recent flurry of prisoner exchanges between the USA and Russia, and the fact that we were holding CFO Meng because of an American extradition request, I wonder how many Canadians still agree with the PM's naive claims that prisoner exchanges are always immoral and dangerous. (See Where's the Canadian Outrage?)  

And the survey is the misinformation

Timing aside, the pollsters got the question completely wrong, then invited Canadians to join in their misinformation.  The survey asked if we Canadians should follow the law and let the "independent" judiciary decide the Meng extradition, or should we break the law and have the government intervene.  Of course, 72% of Canadians said that we should follow the law.  Except, of course, the law in this case--the Canadian Extradition Act--specifies the opposite.  Letting the judiciary decide (if this were possible) would be breaking the law.  Government intervention would be following the law.  (See What Have We Learned from the Catastrofarce?) This is how the information loop functions (or rather, mis-functions).  The survey only proves that the misinformation provided by the government and the media, and reinforced by the survey itself, was getting through to the Canadian public.

Who Did the survey matters

Perhaps the most important question to be asked about a survey, as implied in the Yes, Prime Minister satire, is “who did the survey?”  In October 2022, the Globe and Mail reported that

An August poll by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation, an independent and non-partisan organization, found that only 11.8 per cent of respondents favoured "unification" with China.  Fifty per cent of those surveyed said they would opt for independence, and 25.7 backed the status quo.  

Except it turns out that the “independent and non-partisan” Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation has its head office in Washington, D.C.  The Board and Staff of its parent organization, the Global Taiwan Institute, have significant ties with the US Defence and/or State Departments, and describe themselves as sharing “a passion for greater ties between Taiwan and the USA.”  (See Survey Says . . . .)  

Sometimes journalists can't seem to read

The weirdest way that the information loop goes awry is that some journalists fail to or choose not to accurately quote the survey they are reporting.  In an article entitled “What Putin Really Wants,” published in Quillett, Christopher Miller claimed that "The vast majority of Ukrainians reject them [the Minsk Accords]."  The Minsk Protocol was an agreement between Russia and the Ukraine in 2014 overseen by the OSCE and mediated by France and Germany to end the fighting between East and West Ukraine by granting increased autonomy to the eastern regions.  Miller's source for the claim that the vast majority of Ukrainians reject the agreements is an article in Euromaidan Press:  "Three-fourths of Ukrainians oppose Minsk accords in current form, poll shows."

When Reporting:  Words matter

The key phrase in the headline is “in current form.” What the Euromaidan article and underlying survey reveal is that only 11% of the respondents claimed to be familiar with the content of the accords.  More importantly, the respondents did not “reject” the accords but, as the article highlights in bold, “the majority of Ukrainians (54%) believe that the Minsk accords should be revised.”   If anything, the survey showed that, far from rejecting the accords,  the respondents wanted the accords in some form but differed on the format.  Even the claim  that the poll represented  “the majority of Ukrainians” is disingenuous, since all 2500 respondents to the survey were from western Ukraine and Ukrainians from the east (Donbas and Crimea) were not surveyed. (See On Blaming America for Russian Aggression.)

Conclusion

We may all be familiar with the cliche that “statistics can be made to say anything,” but surely it is an awful exaggeration that the information loop between the polls and the press can go so wrong on some of the most important issues of the day.

"Three Days of the Condor" and the Tenth Anniversary of "The Sour Grapevine"

Sharing Intelligence

I'm still obsessing over "sharing intelligence."  May 15th was the tenth anniversary of this blog.  I wrote the first post 15 May 2013.  My original intention was to create a platform for whistleblowers, a space for all those insights and complaints about university education which circulated behind closed doors.  That collective participation never happened, and the project became the one-man band it is today. Rereading my first post I see my concerns about "education" haven't changed.  Over time, the blog has strayed from language, literature and the university per se,  into those questions I have found "curiouser and curiouser" like money and politics.

Three Days of the Condor

One of my favourite spy flicks, Three Days of the Condor, is approaching its 50th anniversary.  On this the tenth anniversary of The Sour Grapevine, I find myself reflecting on the naive optimism--my naive optimism--in interpreting the ending of Three Days of the Condor.  Here's the ending of the film:

 

 

On "Changing the World"

Condor (played by Robert Redford), a CIA analyst, has discovered a rogue CIA operation to invade the Middle East.  To protect the secrecy of the plan, the CIA hires a contractor to assassinate Condor and his colleagues.  Might sound farfetched but, then again, compared to the invasion of Iraq, it's small potatoes and somewhat more rational.  What catches my attention today is Condor's (and my) only slightly hesitant conviction that the New York Times would publish his story.  In 1975, I thought it was obvious that they would publish.  Today? Not a chance in hell.  Condor's (and my) other assumption was that publication of the story would change the world.  "Change the world" is what we tell kids these days, right around the time they are becoming suspicious about Santa Claus.  The last fifty years of humanity (as opposed to technology and physics) prove that stasis and apathy always prevail.  I find myself submitting to Sabine Hossenfelder's claim that "free will is incompatible with the laws of physics."

On Whistleblowers

Despite our romantic convictions that righteous individuals taking on the system are the heroes of modern times, whistleblowers,  in general, do not fare well.  Joe Darby blew the whistle on the torture and other crimes being committed by the US in Abu Ghraib prison.  Edward Snowden revealed that the USA was systematically spying on American citizens with a program called PRISM.  William Binney, a precursor of Snowden, created  ThinThread, and revealed that the NSA was fraudulently wasting billions on Trailblazer and, at the same time, ignoring the Constitution by collecting massive amounts of data on US citizens.  Katharine Gun revealed that the US was asking British intelligence to help blackmail UN diplomats into voting in favour of the invasion of Iraq. Gary Webb exposed that the CIA was allowing the importation of cocaine into the US in order to provide funding for the Contras in Nicaragua.  None of these whistleblowers have done well from the good they tried to do.

Blogging as a retirement hobby

I have no right to expect this blog to be influential.  I have always declared it "a hobby" and, as such, no more compelling for an audience than toy trains or a stamp collection.  Nonetheless, it is impossible to write a blog for ten years and not wonder what, if any, effect it might be having.  As a professor, I allowed myself the immodest belief that I had a modest effect on my students' thinking.   The blog allowed me to continue at least the illusion of this the most satisfying aspect of academia.

Metadata

Influence online in social media is measured in metadata:  how many views, likes, comments, shares, followers, subscribers, etc.  Starting out I never imagine that this was how I might measure success.  I imagined each of my posts having a long shelf life, potentially being quoted by an avid reader from far afield even after I'm gone.  But that's not how the world rolls these days.  So here's my metadata:  Google tells me that my blog has been viewed 753,405 times.  I have written 204 posts.  I have published 150 posts, the rest are unpublished drafts and stubs.

Most Viewed

My most viewed post is Canadian Politicians Were Caught Like Deer in the Headlights, but Why Are Canadian Journalists Censuring any Discussion of the Merits of Meng's Case? (with 6,490 views).  It's not one of my better-written posts.  It's not even one of my better posts on the Meng extradition case.  However, in this most-viewed post, I criticized the Global journalist David Akin and he had the grace to share the post with his readers.  Additionally, Google sends me a report each month telling me what keywords brought readers to my blog and, apparently, some people end up on this post searching the fairly common name "Richard Donoghue."  Finally, with some reluctance, I must reveal that a substantial number of my readers (47,500 views all total) come from China. 

Least Viewed

My least popular post was If Men Could Get Pregnant . . .  with 39 views, and I did quite a bit of research for that post.  There might be a message in these numbers that I do better when I stick to my lane--education, language and literature.  The message isn't clear, but it doesn't matter.  Only an academic in my field would understand the elating freedom of being allowed to write what you really think.  I have managed to stay within the bounds of "education"; that is, adding something new to what is already known.  I also believe that "learning" frequently requires "unlearning."  The word "narrative" comes from the core of my field. Frequently, the work of the blog has been a resistant reading of dominant narratives.

 Influence and Influencers

In my anniversary reflections, I Googled the term "influencers."  Did you know that Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian each have 450 million followers?  Big-name singers, actors and soccer players each have hundreds of millions of followers.  Make-up, fashion and magic typically attract hundreds of millions of followers.  There are no followers on my blog, but I do have 1,221 followers on Quora, where my answers have been viewed over 5 million times.  (To bastardize a Marshall McLuhan quote:  "The platform is the message.")

Surprises 

I have always imagined that I was writing my blog for a Canadian readership.  My core audience is 68 friends, relatives and acquaintances that I shamelessly email posts to without their permission.  To my surprise, Canada (19,900 views) is fourth on the list of countries where my blog has been viewed.  Apparently, the blog is almost as popular in Russia (17,500 views) as it is in Canada--which is slightly disturbing. My dominant audience is in the USA (506,000 views).  (Should I flatter myself that I am being tracked by the CIA, NSA and FBI?)  The unflattering conclusion is that I haven't really been getting through to my imagined audience, my imagined community, Canada.

My guru has advised me that with so many people using VPN and proxies, I shouldn't take these geographical numbers too seriously.  No matter.  I remain undeterred. The world may not change while I am still in it, but I believe in chaos theory and the analogy of "a message in a bottle."  So stay tuned.

 

USA-Russia Prisoner Swap: Where's the Canadian Outrage?

Where's the Canadian outrage?

The USA has completed the prisoner swap of Brittney Griner, the American basketball player, for Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer.  I was delighted to see Brittney returned home.  But where's the Canadian outrage?  Remember when the "Two [Canadian] Michaels" were in a Chinese prison and our Prime Minister announced that prisoner exchanges were unacceptable, immoral and dangerous.  The Canadian media reported that the great majority of Canadians (72% in fact) agreed with the Prime Minister.  So why aren't the Prime Minister, the government, the media and those millions of Canadians protesting against this unacceptable, immoral and dangerous exchange of prisoners between Russia and the USA?

 

Who's Calling the shots?

There are many lessons for us Canadians to learn from this comparison of cases.  The one I would point out:  before the Government of Canada asks "how high?" we should at least inquire about who exactly is telling us to "jump!"

Protests against the Russia-USA prisoner swap

The Griner-Bout exchange is being protested by right-wing conservatives in the USA.  These protestants point out that the reason the US moved so quickly to propose and arrange a prisoner swap with Russia is that Griner--a woman, a Black women, a lesbian, a married lesbian, etc--tics so many of the boxes in the Democratic agenda.  They are not wrong.  The fact that the Democrats chose not to negotiate the release of Paul Whelan, an American former marine who has been incarcerated in a Russian prison for four years on charges of espionage, castes the political basis of the Griner decision in sharp relief.

Who Was responsible for Canada's arresting the Huawei CFO?

Why should Canadians care?  Our compliance in arresting and holding Meng Wanzhou on behalf of the USA while the "two Michaels" languished in prison for almost three years appears even more ridiculous when we see how the US government moved quickly to arrange a prisoner exchange when political party popularity was in play--not to mention that the US has dismissed all charges against Meng without penalty.  If our elected leaders had seriously asked "why arrest Meng?" (as they are required by law to do), they would have eventually arrived at the question of "who exactly is asking?"  I have repeatedly pointed the finger at Richard Donaghue because he was the public face of the arrest and extradition request.  Thanks to the Wall Street Journal exposé, "Inside the Secret Prisoner Swap That Splintered the U.S. and China," we now know who was behind the half-baked scheme to arrest the Huawei CFO:  John Bolton.

 

President Trump asks the question

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, based on testimony of witnesses, six days after Meng was arrested in Canada, President Trump turned on Bolton and asked "Why did you arrest Meng?" This question says it all.  Bolton describes the December 7 episode in his White House memoir but leaves out this question and anything else which shows his direct responsibility.  From his memoir, we now know with certainty Bolton lied to the Guardian (6 December 2018) when he "said he was not sure if Trump knew of the arrest in Canada when the president sat down to a steak dinner with China’s Xi Jinping in Buenos Aire." In the memoir, Bolton describes making a conscious decision not to inform the President and suggests Trump remained uninformed until "the implications of the arrest spread through the media" (305).

President Donald Trump, right, national security adviser John Bolton, second from right, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, far left, having dinner on Dec. 1, 2018, at a G-20 summit in Buenos Aires. KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS

"World Peace"

Bolton claims that "my contribution to world peace was suggesting that Xi and Trump, each accompanied by seven aids, have dinner on December 1" (296). Anyone familiar with the memoir will recognize that Bolton's use of the expression "world peace" was dripping with sarcasm.  And, of course, in arranging for Meng to be arrested the same day as the dinner, Bolton was undermining any glimmer of "world peace" that the meeting might produce.  The Room Where It Happened (a title borrowed from the musical Hamilton)  is a long list of pathways to "world peace" which Bolton opposed and/or obstructed:  Paris Climate Accords, INF Treaty, the Law of the Sea Convention, the Treaty on Open Skies, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, Iran nuclear deal, the International Criminal Court, UN Human Rights Commission, South Korea's initiative for Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong-un to meet in order to end the Korean War now in its 70th year, meetings between Trump and Putin, Trump and Xi, Trump and Erdogan, entente with Cuba, Venezuela or Nicaragua, military withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan, etc, etc.

Bolton and Trudeau share a doctrine

To his credit Bolton has remained consistent in voicing opposition to the Griner-Bout prisoner exchange and all prisoner exchanges. The Bolton doctrine is the same argument presented by PM Justin Trudeau in his press conference 20 June 2020.  (In the press conference, the PM repeated two basic lies which went unchallenged:  that extradition is an "independent judicial" process and the US-Canada treaty request created an "obligation" to hold Meng.)

Canada's about turn:  how far will we follow anti-China hawks?

If Bolton is our "Pied Piper," it's time we Canadians grow up fast and think twice before following the rat catcher into his cave.  For fifty years--from Pierre Trudeau to Justin Trudeau, with Clark, Mulroney and Harper following along in between--there was an evolving, three-steps-forward-two-steps-back collaboration between Canada and China.  Suddenly one day, we arrested Meng Wanzhou, then China arrested the two Michaels, and we have been in a cold war with our second-largest trading partner ever since.  That cold war has been heating up fast as the Canadian government has announced an increase of two billion dollars in military spending in the Indio-Pacific, and a plan to confront China by increasing "the number of naval frigates deployed in the region."

What if we had obeyed the Canadian Extradition Act and released Meng?

As pointed out in the WSJ, Justin Trudeau came to power with a promise of closer ties with China.  In 2017, the Trudeau government was on the verge of a Canada-China free-trade agreement.  The question I ask myself and you, dear reader: "If Canada hadn't fallen for Bolton's ploy and arrested Meng in 2018, would we still be saber-rattling--to the tune of two billion dollars--against China today?"

What Does "law-abiding" mean?

We might delude ourselves that we have impressed the world with how law-abiding we are, except that anyone who bothers to check would know we refused to follow or even acknowledge Canadian law in holding Meng.  As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the Chinese were quick to point out to the Canadian delegation: "You don't even know your own laws." Ouch.

Double Ouch

When Justin Trudeau asked for a meeting with Xi Jingpin, he was told:  "It would breach protocol for Mr. Xi, China’s head of state, to speak with Mr. Trudeau, merely the head of government of Canada, whose head of state was Queen Elizabeth II."  Double ouch!

Triple Ouch

When Canada's Ambassador Barton met with representatives of the Chinese Foreign Ministry he was told: "You are lapdogs of the United States."  Unfortunately, the Canadian government had shown a great willingness to sacrifice Canadians for what was exclusively a US/Bolton agenda offering no benefit to Canada.

At Least we could depend on US support! (Not)!

Perhaps the darkest irony of the "catastrofarse": when PM Trudeau approached the US President in February 2021 about the "two Michaels," Biden replied “I will not interfere with the judicial process”--the same fallacious justification for inaction that Trudeau himself had been using for two years.

There Is a lesson to be learned

When discussing the US efforts to curtail Huawei, which he claimed"wasn't a company but an arm of China's intelligence services" (305), Bolton mentions that "Former Prime Minister Jean Cretien, never a friend of the US, was arguing that Canada should simply not abide by our extradition treaty" (307-8).  Given the context and the source, "never a friend of the US" is a ringing endorsement.  In 2003, Prime Minister Jean Cretien kept Canada out of the misguided, malign war in Iraq even as the USA, Opposition Leader Stephen Harper, and even members of the Liberal Party attempted to drag us into it.  Herein lies the lesson.  Prime Minister Cretien, Defense Minister John McCallum, and NDP Leader Jack Layton--all stood in opposition to George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq and kept Canada out of a war which should never should have happened.  Sometimes it's possible to act like an independent, sovereign nation and say "no," without a loss of respect and friendship.

 

What if China Isn't Using Forced Labour?

Poor Saddam Hussein!

I can't bring myself to sympathize with Saddam Hussein, but still, I think about the lead-up to the second Iraq war (which, by the way, cost 151,000 to 1,033,000 lives--depending on whose statistics you believe). Over and over again, in anticipation of the 2003 invasion, we were told that all Saddam had to do was turn over his "weapons of mass destruction."  Imagine Saddam's frustration!  He couldn't halt the invasion by turning over his weapons of mass destruction because he didn't have any.  Just saying he had no WMDs wasn't going to do anything because the US had the witness statements of Iraqi defectors, CIA intelligence reports, recordings and leaked documents, and, of course, the satellite images which Colin Powell presented to the UN.

Here We go again!

I've read the Uyghur Forced Labor Act and its earlier drafts, the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force "Report to Congress," and the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (aka USMC Implementation Act) in an effort to figure out what's really going on. According to the draft Act approved by Congress, the USA knows that China is using forced labour in Xinjiang because they have witness statements, "official media reports, publicly available documents, official statements, and official leaked documents from the Government of the People’s Republic of China" and, wait for it . . . "satellite imagery."  Of the reports, articles, documents and statements I've read, some assert that "China is the new evil empire" but none provide conclusive evidence of "forced labour." Of all the human rights abuses the Chinese regime is being accused of--mass incarceration without trial, repression of free speech and religion, coercive family planning, forced assimilation, invasive surveillance--the least evident and most difficult to prove would be "forced labour."

Satellite Imagery

The Australia Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has taken the lead in providing satellite imagery of Xinjiang. The ASPI describes itself as "an independent, non-partisan think tank" but is equally forthcoming that most of its funding comes from Australia's Department of Defence and other government agencies.  Australia is of course a member of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance and has recently reinforced its allegiance with the USA in opposition to China.  

The ASPI's interactive map, indicating images of hundreds of detention centres, mosques and religious sites, still requires a leap of faith that what we are looking at--buildings with walls, turrets and fences--are in fact prisons, detention centres and re-education facilities whose inmates are used for forced labour.  The same suspension of disbelief that Collin Powell invoked when he showed satellite images of buildings in Iraq and told the UN that they were production and storage facilities for "weapons of mass destruction" is once again being called for.

What's really going on?

Just as "weapons of mass destruction" provided the pretext for the war in Iraq when the protection of western oil interests was widely believed to be the more credible and obvious cause, this time "forced labor" is being used as an excuse to escalate the USA's geopolitical contest with China.  Of all the crimes that the USA might accuse China of, why focus on "forced labor"?  China has a history of moving its workforce from one part of the country to another, separating families for long periods of time.  Arguably, "forced labour" has been part of Chinese culture for thousands of years.  Why has Chinese "forced labor" become a US obsession in 2021-22?  How do you prove "forced labor" from thousands of miles away?

Rebuttable Presumption

The Uyghur Forced Labor Act provides a simple solution in Section 3: "REBUTTABLE PRESUMPTION."  "Rebuttable presumption," a concept in law that, in the simplest of terms, means guilty until proven innocent.  Therefore, the US government is instructing Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to assume that anything being imported from China is the product of forced labour until proven otherwise.  

What if China isn't using forced labour?

What if China isn't using forced labour?  It really doesn't matter.  What is or isn't accepted into the USA will be determined through negotiations between CBP (and various other US intelligence services) and the American company doing the importing.  Contrary to my claim in the previous post, Walmart will no doubt lobby for an exemption.  As outlined in the New York Times article, "U.S. Effort to Combat Forced Labor Targets Corporate China Ties," Coke Cola, Nike and Apple have already begun lobbying.

The Tariff Act of 1930

Oh my naivety!  You may not have detected it but, in my previous posts, I was struck by how quickly and easily American legislators seemed to accept claims of genocide and human rights abuses without challenging the sources or questioning the substance of the evidence.  I was confounded by the fact that US legislators focused on "forced labor," the most difficult accusation to prove, rather than any other of claimed abuses.  I was unaware of the Tariff Act of 1930 and its recent amendments.  It is perhaps worth noting that until 2016, US law . . .

permitted the importation of goods made by forced labor “if the goods were not produced in such quantities in the United States as to meet the consumptive demands of the United States.”

US legislators honed in on "forced labor" because the recently amended law was already on the books, in international and US law, against "forced labor."  This was the approach that would allow them to block, on a fairly ad hoc basis, any and all imports from China.  A law designed to protect against child labour, human trafficking, sexual exploitation and slave labour is being used to block the advancement of a global competitor. 

Is Canada going to be played again?

Article 3 of the Uyghur Forced Labor Act requires the US government  . . . 

(3) to coordinate with Mexico and Canada to effectively implement Article 23.6 of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement to prohibit the importation of goods produced in whole or in part by forced or compulsory labor, including those goods mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region;

Did US negotiators anticipate in the summer of 2020 when the USMC trade agreement was being signed and Canada had accepted "the China clause" barring a Canada-China free-trade deal without notifying the US, and Canada had accepted the US request to arrest Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei CFO, further driving a wedge between Canada and China, that they also had Article 23.6, an ace up the US sleeve, to further prevent trade between Canada and China? Will the Canadian government respond to the Uyghur Forced Labor Act and Article 23.6 of USMC, the same way they did the US-Canada Extradition Treaty in the Meng case? Will we once again find ourselves in a trade war with China to the detriment of Canada for the benefit of the USA? And the answer is . . .

It's a Done deal

According to the Government of Canada website entitled "Public Safety," the ban on "forced labour" imports became law in Canada two years ago.

Canada has imposed an importation ban on goods that were produced by forced labour, as described in An Act to implement the Agreement between Canada, the United States of America and the United Mexican States, which received Royal Assent on March 13, 2020. As described in paragraph 202(8), Chapter 98 item No. 9897.00.00 of the Customs Tariff, the law has been amended to include a reference prohibiting goods mined, manufactured or produced wholly or in part by forced labour. These amendments made under the Act came into force in Canada on July 1, 2020, as outlined in CBSA Customs Notice 20-23, Import prohibition on goods produced wholly or in part by forced labour.

What Have We Learned from the Meng Extradition "Catastrofarce"?

The "Catastrofarce"

In his review of Mike Blanchfield and Fen Osler Hampson's book, The Two Michaels, David Moscrop characterizes the #Meng extradition case as a mix of catastrophe and buffoonery.  To describe the three-year-long "farce," Moscrop suggests the neologism "catastrofarce."  "When all was said and done," Moscrop points out, "nothing was achieved and everyone involved came out poorer than when they had started." True enough, but now we can reflect on all that we have learned from the affair, right?  No?

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover

Moscrop assesses The Two Michaels as "a missed opportunity" as it failed to probe the context of a "Cold War between the United States and China."  The Two Michaels left much unsaid.  Obviously, a close focus on "The Two Michaels" as "Innocent Canadian Captives" was bound to exclude details of the broader issues.  Blanchfield and Osler Hampson's review of the Michaels' harsh conditions in contrast to the luxury of Meng's Vancouver mansions seemed the same insistence on the marginally relevant reiterated by Canada's legacy media for three years, the same pandering to imagined Canadian sensibilities--"pandas really aren't nice like beavers"--which I attempted to mock in The Panda and the Beaver.

What The Two Michaels leaves unsaid

Despite the subtitle, The Two Michaels has relatively little to say about "the US-China Cyber War."  In the dozen or so times "cyber war" is mentioned, the book's most interesting observation is left largely undeveloped:

Whatever the differences in their circumstances, Michael Kovrig, Michael Spavor, and Meng Wanzhou were now bound by one shared reality. All three were pawns in a full-blown technology war for control over global communications [. . . .]

 I noted the authors' excluding relevant  detail in the early going of The Two Michaels when I read this sentence:  "The US and Iran have been enemies since 1979, when a group of radical students in Tehran stormed the American embassy and took hostages in a siege that lasted 444 days."  Dating the beginning of US-Iranian enmity to 1979 and attributing the Iranian revolution to "a group of radical students" leaves unsaid that the USA arranged the overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh, the democratically-elected leader of Iran, then installed and maintained an "oppressive, brutal, corrupt," 26-year-long dictatorship under the playboy Shah Reza Pahlavi in order to protect Anglo-American oil interests.

What about Richard Donoghue?

Donoghue's name, of course, gets mentioned in the Blanchfield & Osler Hampson monograph, as he issued the warrant, conducted the grand jury trial, and argued that Meng Wanzhou should be kept behind bars while awaiting extradition.  The rapid rise and fall of Donoghue's career was directly aligned with the pursuit, arrest and attempted extradition of Meng Wanzhou.  Donoghue's position as a litigator for CA Technologies to becoming US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York in 2018 to being named Assistant Attorney General to his disappearance from the spotlight paralleled Meng's indictment, arrest and eventual release.  Blanchfield and Osler Hampson have virtually nothing to say about him, never question his background or motives, barely even mention his central role in the "catastrofarce."

And Jody Wilson-Raybould?

Jody Wilson-Raybould was the Minister of Justice responsible for Meng Wanzhou's arrest and the early stages of issuing an Order to Proceed with her extradition.  Wilson-Raybould had the ministerial authority, by law, to dismiss the American request and release Meng "at any time" and put an end to the "catastrofarce" which led to Michael Korvig and Michael Spavor's imprisonment.  Nonetheless, her name appears exactly once in The Two Michaels, in the context of her having been pressured by PM Trudeau and his minions to stop the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin.  As I have written in previous posts, it mattered that the SNC-Lavalin scandal, the Meng extradition case and JWR's demotion out of justice were all happening at the same time.  (See "Comparing 'Remediation Agreements' and the Canadian Extradition Act, or Did the Liberal Obsession with SNC-Lavalin Prevent Jody Wilson-Raybould from Dealing with the Meng Extradition?")

In The Two Michaels, former Minister of Justice Allan Rock reaffirmed my speculations that fall-out from the SNC-Lavalin scandal made the government reluctant to act on the Meng extradition.  Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour also confirmed that the government was getting the laws governing Remediation Agreements and those governing extradition upside down.  As I pointed out in "A Comparison of Scandals: SNC-Lavalin Versus the Extradition of the Huawei CFO," the government tried to interfere when the law clearly proscribes interference and refused to act when "the law clearly spells out that political (Minister of Justice) action is not just accepted but expected and required."

Oddly (or does this have something to do with ministerial privilege and secrecy?), in JWR's recent memoir, Indian in the Cabinet, there is not a single mention of the Meng extradition case.  Does Jody Wilson-Raybould recognize that her most consequential act over the course of her tenure as Minister of Justice/Attorney General was to authorize the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, or does her preoccupation with the SNC-Lavalin scandal and her demotion out of justice continue to cloud her judgment of the case and her role in it?

Canada Was being played

Was Canda being played?  For an answer look no further than Adrienne Arsenault's interview with John Bolton on CBC.  Arsenault pointed out (Blanchfield & Osler Hampson also note) that after the warrant for her arrest had been issued (22 August 2019),  Meng traveled to the UK and France.  Both countries have extradition treaties with the USA.  Why wait until she was traveling through Canada?  Was it because the Americans judged that only Canada would be "compliant" (and dumb?) enough to follow through on the extradition request?  In response to Arsenault's question, Bolton smiled and giggled slightly, then recovered himself enough to say "it was a matter of logistics" and Canada's being played was "a conspiracy theory."  As I have suggested elsewhere, just because it's a conspiracy theory doesn't mean it isn't true. (See "The Chaos Theory of International Trade, or How Canada Arrested a Chinese Executive on a US Warrant in Order to Protect Israel from Iran.")

The USMCA trade agreement and the "China clause"

Of course, Canada was being played, and the con job is still unfolding.  The same year we were asked to arrest Meng, Canada was negotiating the USMCA trade agreement (the replacement for NAFTA).  The Americans asked for and the Canadian negotiators agreed to the “China clause” requiring three months notice before Canada could sign a trade agreement with  “non-market countries.”  (The list of “non-market countries” includes China, Vietnam, North Korea and 11 others.)  What sovereign nation would give up its right to unfettered trade negotiations?

Just in case forewarning would not be enough to block Canada's trade with China, the USA requested and Canada acquiesced in arresting Meng thereby guaranteeing, entirely for US benefit, a breakdown in the collaboration between Canada and China which had been developing for 50 years under both Conservative and Liberal governments. We, Canadians, might imagine that the self-sacrificing gesture of arresting Meng at the US request would win some future gratitude and consideration from our American neighbours.  Exactly the opposite has been playing out.  With trade between Canada and China stymied, Canada had even less leverage than usual with the USA.  This period of animosity between China and Canada was/is exactly the right moment for the USA to put the squeeze on Canada--and that is what has been happening:

• PEI potatoes: banned from export to the USA. In 2020, the USA signed a deal to export Idaho and Washington potatoes to China.

• Softwood lumber: Canada's trade dispute with the USA has been going on since 1982. The WTO (World Trade Organization) has ruled several times that the US tariffs are unreasonable. In 2021, the USA doubled the duty on Canadian softwood lumber to 17.9%. China is the world's second-largest importer of softwood lumber

• Trump's "Trade truce": As reported in The Two Michaels, "Trump’s subsequent 'trade truce' with China, signed on January 16, 2020, left Canada dangling in the wind. [. . . .] [It] committed China to buy an additional US$200 billion in American goods over the next two years, including US$40 billion to US$50 billion in agricultural products such as soybeans, canola, fresh and frozen pork, beef, wheat, corn, barley, and a range of machinery, all on preferential terms unavailable to Canadian producers."

• Electric vehicles made in the USA: Canada's second-largest export to the USA (after oil and petroleum products) is vehicles. President Biden's new legislation requiring that electric vehicles be produced in the USA would effectively shut Canada out of the American market. 

Ironically, Canada is currently trying to negotiate a free-trade deal with ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) which includes Vietnam (a non-market country).  Presumably, according to the "China clause," Canada will have to officially inform the USA in advance of signing a deal.  For what purpose?  Why would the US negotiators demand advanced notice, if not to consider how the deal accommodates American interests and to scuttle it if it doesn't.  Since China is the ASEAN's largest trading partner and is planning to upgrade its relationship, Canada will have to kowtow to both China and the USA--neither of whom have reason to support Canada's free-trade aspirations--in order to sign an agreement.

What I Gleaned from The Two Michaels

In November 2019, a Canadian delegation led by Alan Rock met with Chinese officials in China to discuss the Meng arrest and the incarceration of the two Michaels.  The leader of the Chinese delegation, Wang Chow, insisted that there was no connection between the two cases--a claim we can now easily categorize as a lie.  But, at the same time, Wang quoted Section 23 of the Canadian Extradition Act,  demonstrating that Canadian claims that politicians could not get involved in an extradition case were patently false.  Canadians may not know the Canadian Extradition Act, but the Chinese delegation certainly did. 

Blanchfield & Osler Hampson describe the Chinese delegate's quoting of Section 23 of the Canadian Extradition as exploiting "an inherent loophole in the government’s argument." "Loophole" here appears a euphemism for a "lie."  Rock attempted to argue that Section 23 was "was not necessarily intended for this kind of case" and that it was "extremely rare" for the Minister to halt extradition proceedings.  Rock was quick to admit that it was a feeble argument and "a non-satisfactory response."  Ironically, returning to Canada, Rock, backed by extradition expert Brian Greenspan's investigation and report, presented the same Section 23 argument to Justin Trudeau that, by law, according to the Canadian Extradition Act, the Minister of Justice could release Meng at any time.

Who Is Greta Bossenmaier?

"Greta Bossenmaier" is a name I had never heard before.  Blanchfield and Osler Hampson identify her as Justin Trudeau's "national security advisor" and quote her briefing notes to the PM stating: “The minister has broad discretion to decide, but [. . . ] there are no examples of the Minister discharging a case for political or diplomatic reasons.”

While giving the impression that Bossenmaier was a key player in the decision to hold Meng, Blanchfield and Osler Hampson give no further information about her.  According to my internet search, Bossenmair began her career as a DND scientist, worked for several departments in the public service and was named head of CSIS (Canadian Security and Intelligence Service) on May 23, 2018--six months before Meng was arrested.  Bossenmaier was appointed to the position when her predecessor, Daniel Jean, retired, and retired herself in December 2019.

Bossenmaier's claim that "there are no examples of the Minister discharging a case [. . . .]" was clearly beside the point.  There are no equivalent cases, no precedents for Canada's arresting a Chinese executive on a questionable extradition request from the USA.  The Canadian Extradition Act wasn't the problem; it was the solution.  It laid out step by step exactly what should be done, what must be done, how and why.  It was "paint by numbers," if Canadian politicians could be convinced to follow the instructions.   The Minister of Justice could and should refuse the extradition request because [46 (1) (c)]  it was for "an offence of a political character."  The Minister could and should refuse:

 [ . . .] if the request for extradition is made for the purpose of prosecuting or punishing the person by reason of their race, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, language, colour, political opinion, sex, sexual orientation, age, mental or physical disability or status or that the person’s position may be prejudiced for any of those reasons. 

The US DoJ (Department of Justice) had cornered HSBC (Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation) into providing evidence that they had been fooled by Meng Wanzhou into moving money in Iran.  HSBC had to go along with the claim that  Meng committed "bank fraud" or, for the second time, pay heavy fines in the USA for financial transactions in Iran.  Could there be any doubt that Meng was being pursued because she is Chinese, because China is a communist country in a Cold War with the USA?  Could there be any doubt that her position in the USA would be prejudiced for reasons of nationality and politics? Could there be any doubt that had she been German, British, French or Swiss and using Deutsche Bank, Standard Charter Bank, Societe Generale, or Credit Swiss (all of whom have been caught and paid fines for transactions in Iran) the USA would never have even considered a criminal proceeding against her for "bank fraud"?  The Canadian Ministers of Justice had only to judge the obvious and yet it appears that neither Jody Wilson-Raybould nor David Lametti ever did.

The Mystery of RCMP Staff-Sergeant Ben Chang

Not surprisingly, given how soon after the Meng and "two Michaels" saga the book was published, there are gaps in the narrative of Meng's arrest.  Blanchfield & Osler Hampson begin the story in medias res when RCMP "Const. Winston Yep’s cellphone rang."  Yep's supervisor was calling with instructions to arrange a warrant for Meng's arrest.  "Yep was successful in persuading British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Margot Fleming to issue a warrant."   But who was Yep's supervisor on the other end of the phone call? Who was giving orders to Yep's supervisor? When Yep finally informed Meng that she was under arrest, he said: "[. . . ] this is a warrant for provisional arrest under Section 13 of the Extradition Act.”  

Section 13 specifies: 

13 (1) A judge may, on ex parte application of the Attorney General, issue a warrant for the provisional arrest of a person, if satisfied that there are reasonable grounds to believe that

(a) it is necessary in the public interest to arrest the person [ . . .]

The authorization was supposed to come from the Attorney General of Canada (Jody Wilson-Raybould), but the narrative suggests orders and instructions were coming from the FBI.

Reading through the details of Meng's arrest brought back memories of my visit to the Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg where a copy of the Magna Carta was on display.  

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms contains clauses with precedents dating back to Magna Carta. Section 9 of the Charter guarantees freedom from arbitrary detainment or imprisonment while section 10 guarantees habeas corpus. Both rights can be traced back to Magna Carta.

On instructions from the FBI passed on to the RCMP and from the RCMP to the CBSA (Canadian Border Security Agency), Meng was "arbitrarily detained" for three hours. The "Canadian Charter" is explicit: 

10 Everyone has the right on arrest or detention

(a) to be informed promptly of the reasons therefor;

Only after three hours of detention, interrogation, and being required to give up the passwords for her cellphone and computer (which were passed on to the FBI) was Meng informed that she was being arrested for "bank fraud."  Canadian officials blithely overstepped the Canadian Charter (and the 800-year-old Magna Carta for god's sake), and the media response was to massage the Canadian national ego with reports that we were all "law-abiding" citizens in a "rule-of-law" country.

As reported in The Two Michaels, Canadian Border Security Agent Scott Kirkland immediately intuited that Meng's detention would be a contravention of the Canadian Charter, but still "had a job to do." The great mystery of the imbroglio remains Staff Sergeant Ben Chang, described in The Two Michaels as "a senior RCMP officer [ . . .] who had dealings with an FBI counterpart, John Sgroi, in the days following Meng’s arrest."

Chang retired from the RCMP and moved to China (!?), "where he now works in security at a casino" in Macau. Chang left behind an affidavit swearing that he did not share information with the FBI but refused to testify at the extradition hearing. 

"The Gang of 19"

In 2020, Allan Rock, former Liberal Minister of Justice, and Louise Arbour, former Supreme Court Justice and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights sent a letter to Justin Trudeau pointing out the justice of releasing Meng.  There was no response, not even an acknowledgment of receipt.  Blanchfield and Osler Hampson opine:  "The Trudeau government chose not to offer a basic courtesy to two Canadians who had served their country with great distinction."

As Blanchfield and Osler Hampson report, on June 23, 2020, 

a group of former government officials, senior diplomats (including two former Canadian ambassadors to Washington), and academics sent a confidential letter to the prime minister suggesting that it was time to release Meng in exchange for the Two Michaels.

Was there a conspiracy afoot?  Within twenty-four hours the letter

was leaked by an unknown source to a variety of Canadian news outlets. Both the letter and photos of the Gang of 19, as they were now called, were plastered on television screens across the nation in what looked like a police lineup. Rock and his co-signatories knew immediately that their enterprise was doomed.

Was there a campaign across Canadian media to discredit Rock and Arbour and seventeen other distinguished Canadians?  What editor or producer would willingly agree to describe this group of renowned Canadians as "a gang"?  Still worse, "Gang of 19" was an allusion to the "Gang of Four," a brutal, repressive, and regressive cadre prominent in the final years of Mao's "Cultural Revolution."

Justin Trudeau's Stubborn resistance

Twenty-four hours after receiving Rock and Arbour et al's appeal to release Meng and save the two Michaels, Justin Trudeau gave a press conference and, with uncharacteristic firmness, announced that the government would not engage in hostage diplomacy.  I had speculated that after having panicked when presented with the original extradition request, Trudeau had no choice but to continue promoting the falsehood that extradition was an independent judicial process. 

As I learned from The Two Michaels, Trudeau's decision was likely predetermined by his refusal, in 2015, to negotiate with Abu Sayyaf, a militant Islamist group in the Philipines, who were holding two Canadians, Robert Hall and John Ridsdel, and a Norweigan, for ransom.  The Norweigan, Kjartan Sekkingstan, was released after a ransom of $638,000 was paid (according to a spokesman for Abu Sayyaf).  The two Canadians were beheaded.

Robert Fowler, a former UN ambassador, who had himself been held hostage by Al-Qaeda, was adamant that the Trudeau government's refusal to negotiate the two Michaels' release was predetermined by Trudeau's refusal to negotiate for Hall and Ridsdel's release, and was "naive, simplistic, and in this case potentially murderous”  (qt in The Two Michaels).

Hostage Diplomacy

As I pointed out in December 2018, the Chinese arrest of the two Michaels made the optics of releasing Meng more difficult.  The Two Michaels offers extensive discussion of "hostage swap" situations.  The general pattern seems to be that, although official government policy is, typically, to refuse to negotiate for the return of hostages, Western democracies and the USA, in particular, frequently find a way around their own public policies. However, discussions of Meng's release in terms of "hostage diplomacy" or "prisoner swap" or "hostage exchange" consistently obscured the fact that in releasing Meng, Canada would be following the law, not breaking it.

Blanchfield & Osler Hampson claim that Canadians, according to an Angus Reid poll, massively supported Trudeau's decision not to release Meng.  The problem with the Angus Reid poll was that their question offered only two possible answers, and both answers were wrong:

Respondents to the survey had to choose between:  🟥 break the law (intervene) or 🟦follow the law (continue).  Of course, Canadians responded that we should follow the law.  If Canadians had been told and the question framed accordingly that to "intervene" would be following the law as specified in the Extradition Act and to "continue" was to ignore the law, I imagine Canadians would have responded in exactly the reverse of the numbers provided in the graph above.

What Did Meng confess to?

The two Michaels are home.  Meng returned to China to a hero's welcome.  Dare we consider a cost-benefit analysis?  Canada paid a heavy price for arresting Meng:   over 1000 days in prison for the two Michaels, blocked Canadian imports of beef, pork, and canola, the collapse of a plan for Covid vaccines to be produced in Canada.  The future costs of the breakdown of our trade and diplomatic relations with China are yet to be calculated.  

What did we gain?  Canada showed that we would not be bullied, that we were an independent nation of law-abiding citizens and politicians who followed the rule of law.  Except we weren't following the law and, therefore, we were not being law abiding and, by all appearance, we were being bullied by a cadre of anti-China super-hawks who had deliberately kept the American President out of the loop, and Canada succumbed to the bullying of a warrant without even questioning its provenance.

According to John Bolton, Meng was "a spy and a fraudster" (qt in The Two Michaels).  Meng accepted a deferred prosecution agreement.  There was no question of prison time.  She didn't even pay a fine.  What greater evidence could there be that we never should have arrested her in the first place? Now that the "Deferred Prosecution Agreement" and "The Statement of Facts" are available online we can finally know what crimes she committed and confessed to and for which Canada and Canadians were required to pay such a heavy price.

In her presentation, Ms. Meng stated, among other things, that Huawei’s relationship with Skycom was “normal business cooperation” and “normal and controllable business cooperation,” and she described Skycom as a “partner,” a “business partner of Huawei,” and a “third party Huawei works with” in Iran.

Ms. Meng stated that Huawei “was once a shareholder of Skycom” but had “sold all its shares in Skycom.”

Ms. Meng stated that Huawei “operates in Iran in strict compliance with applicable laws, regulations and sanctions” and that “there has been no violation of export control regulations” by “Huawei or any third party Huawei works with.”  

According to the "Statement of Facts," each of these quotations above was a half-truth, evasion, trick, or outright lie.  Did these eight quoted sentence fragments fool HSBC, which had already been informed via Reuters that Huawei through Skycom was doing business in Iran?  How did these eight sentence fragments constitute a crime which justice-seeking Canada would sacrifice its interests and citizens to see prosecuted?  To understand Meng's "crime," it is necessary to understand the USA's "weaponizing of the dollar."

"Weaponizing the dollar"

Meng's lawyer attempted to argue that a conversation in 2013 involving a relatively small series of transactions ("US$2 million over thirteen months") between a Chinese business person (Meng) and a banker (from HSBC) which took place in China should not be considered a crime in US jurisdiction.  Blanchfield & Osler Hampson make vague reference to "a practice known as 'dollar clearing'” to explain the debate.

A number of banks, all over the world, are licensed as "clearing houses," which means they can process extremely large transactions between corporations and countries. The issue is perhaps better understood in terms of the recently much-discussed notion of the USA's "weaponizing of the dollar." As Satyajit Das explains in Business Standard:

[. . . ] the US exerts unprecedented control over global economic activity.

Sanctions target persons, entities, organizations, a regime or an entire country. Secondary curbs restrict foreign corporations, financial institutions and individuals from doing business with sanctioned entities. Any dollar payment flowing through a US bank or the American payments system provides the necessary nexus for the US to prosecute the offender or act against its American assets.

The USA has been using its incredible privilege of printing/digitalizing the global reserve currency and consequent control over the finances of the global economy to punish Iran.  As we have seen in the Meng case, anyone who asks a bank to transgress a regulation put in place by the USA risks criminal prosecution for bank fraud.  No-one can stop China or Europe from doing business in Iran, but the USA can prosecute the use of a US-licenced financial institution for transgressing US regulations. 

"Weaponizing of the dollar" is a hotly debated topic, and now we Canadians know what it feels like to be enforcers in a system most of us didn't even know existed.

What the Globe and Mail Won't Publish

Sour Grapes 

Over the years, a couple of my readers have suggested I should aspire to a larger audience by publishing in the mainstream media.  Admittedly, I have made a couple of feeble attempts to be noticed, but when I became aware of a feature in the Globe and Mail called "First Person" where individuals are offered the possibility of  publishing in the paper (for zero remuneration), I thought this was my opportunity to either promulgate my blog in a legacy press or create a sour-grapes moment when the editors declined to publish my submission.  "Sour grapes" wins again.  Here is the article:

How I Became Obsessed with Money and China

In retirement from my position as a professor of English, I knew I wouldn’t miss the turgid prose that passed for peer-reviewed research in postmodern humanities or the administrative duties that every alert academic scurries to avoid.  Contact with students and the vain apprehension that some young people were actually interested in what I had to say: these were hard to give up.  My solution was to maintain at least the illusion of teaching by starting a blog.  A few clicks on Google Blogger, a bit of word processing, a pseudonym, and voilá: I was a blogger.  When I got really serious, for an annual payment of $17.00, I became the owner of the domain name thesourgrapevine.com.

My original intention was to host a whistle-blower site to reveal what went on behind closed doors at universities, but I soon digressed into politics and economics.  I covered my digressions with the by-line “Education is everything.  Everything is education.”

How did I become obsessed with money and China?  The answer begins with the philosopher Karl Jasper’s claim that “failure and breakdown reveal the true nature of things.”  Leonard Cohen put it more poetically:  “There’s a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.” A more homespun version: we should celebrate the child who breaks her toys.  She’s figuring out how they work.

The breakdown which provoked my money obsession was the collapse of the financial markets in 2008.  Wall Street’s massive failure led me to seriously question, for the first time in my life, how the economy worked, how finance and monetary policy worked. Ultimately, I drilled down to the bedrock, Ding an sich/thing-in-itself of it all:  money.  How is it created and distributed?  How do banks lend money that they don’t have? Is money really just imaginary?  Is it really just a yardstick whose only purpose is to measure debt? As I recorded the pursuit of these questions in my blog, I realized that the generator of my writing had become the overarching question:  how could I not know this?  My research into the existential and ontological question of money told me I wasn’t the only one who didn’t quite understand what it was.

         

In everything I read, from conspiracy theories to government websites to Jacob Goldstein’s Money: The True Story of a Made-up Thing to Mark Carney’s Value(s): Building a Better World for All, I found the reiterated, mind-boggling fact that most of the money in the world is created out of nothing by private banks.  How is this possible?  How could I not know this?  Isn’t this something every ten-year-old should know?  I felt both sheepish and vindicated to discover a lesson on the Khan Academy homework website demonstrating the mathematical formula for how every $1000 introduced into the system by the Federal Reserve allows private banks, using the fractional reserve system, to create $10,000.  How money is created might be a mystery to Boomers, but the next generation of ten-year-olds will know the facts by heart and in detail.

Learning about money, I also discovered something about the nature of obsession—or maybe it’s just me.  I have a significant cohort of friends who are accountants, bankers, and financial advisors—men I consider to be experts on money.  Whenever I presented my newfound discovery that private banks created money, there was general staring off into the middle distance and rolling of eyes.  I pressed on with multiple blog posts and email messages. Other than silence, the responses were obfuscations, sarcasm, denials, jokes, and a stalwart defense of the banking system.  If someone had simply told me, “Yes, it is a well-known fact that banks create most of the money in the system,” my obsession might have been tempered.  But no one ever did.

The breakdown at the core of my second obsession occurred on December 1, 2018, when Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, CFO of Huawei on a warrant from  Richard Donoghue, the former chief litigator of CA Technologies, who had recently become a US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.  I accepted as irrefutable fact the claims of Canadian politicians that extradition was a “judicial process” immune from political interference.  As a researcher trained in the concept of “best evidence,” meaning you don’t quote a second-hand source if the original document is available, I went looking for the Canadian Extradition Act which, as it happens, is available online.  What I discovered was a lie.

The lie I discovered was significant, of dire consequence for some Canadians.  But it wasn’t a good lie.  It wasn’t an ambiguous, complicated, shades-of-grey kind of lie.  It was an obvious, explicit, easy to uncover, baldfaced lie.  The lie is that in Canada, by law, extradition is a judicial, non-political process.  The Canadian Extradition Act is explicit that, at every stage, extradition is a political decision to be made by the Minister of Justice.  

Could I have misinterpreted what I read?  The “Treaty on Extradition Between the Government of Canada and the Government of the United States of America” (available online) does not override the Canadian Extradition Act. Still, interpretation can be a slippery business. I kept searching and eventually discovered “USA v. McVey (1992)” in which the Supreme Court of Canada was required to rule on the question of whether extradition from Canada was a judicial or a political decision.  The Justices agreed that an extradition judge had limited powers to deal with discreet points of law, but extradition from Canada was, by statute, assigned to the executive branch of government—meaning it had to be decided by a politician, the Minister of Justice.

How could Canadian politicians repeat, unchallenged, that there can be no political interference in an extradition case when the law clearly says the opposite?  Rather than questioning, Canadian journalists bragged about how we are “law abiding” while carefully avoiding any citation of the law by which we were supposedly abiding.  

Since our arrest of Meng and China’s retaliatory arrest of the two Michaels, we have been repeatedly warned that China is a malign threat to all that we hold dear.  Knowing that it was possible for Canada to ignore its own laws and keep the lie of “judicial, non-political” extradition afloat for three years, how do I judge the veracity of media claims about China?

              

My obsessions have recently coalesced.  In Has China Won?, Kishore Mahbubani notes that the US dollar is a “fiat currency” (meaning there is no underlying commodity guaranteeing its value) and the “global reserve currency” (meaning countries need US dollars to trade with one another).  Mahbubani argues that being the fiat reserve currency allows the USA to address both trade and fiscal deficits simply by producing more paper/pixel dollars, and it is a mistake to risk this incredible privilege by weaponizing the dollar.  Josh Rogin, on the other hand, in Chaos under Heaven, writes that the USA’s best weapon against China is money, and should be used more ruthlessly.  And so my obsessions continue.