CANADA

JEFF J. BROWN—For most of us, likely including Meng, there is a huge difference in perception between dealing with immigration (CBSA) and police (RCMP) officers. Immigration greets us at the airport and stamps our passports, asking mostly innocuous questions about our visits.

Yet, not realized by most of us, immigration can serve court ordered arrests. Thus, why did the RCMP officers, who were standing right there, not arrest Meng directly? I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count. It was likely to give Meng the impression that she only had a problem with her Canadian paperwork, since she had  been a legal resident of Vancouver since 2001, not that she was being set up for extradition to the USA on criminal charges.

Notice in the above timeline, CBSA held and questioned Meng for 2.5 hours (11:45 a.m. – 2:15 p.m.), where,

Meng is (again interviewed by an agent for 14 minutes and is) questioned about her role with Huawei. During this time Meng is compelled to hand over the passcodes to her electronic devices.

This timeline strongly suggests an illegal sting operation to get Meng to innocently spill the beans to immigration about her case and Huawei, give up all her passwords to the electronic devices that CBSA took and later turned        over to RCMP, not to mention the devices of Meng’s still anonymous travel companion from Hong Kong. 

JIM MILES—While listening to Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, François-Philippe Champagne, after the vote, he at best offered the same old platitudes always offered by Canada, including the tired canard about ‘rule of law’ – rules of law that Canada itself does not follow in particular with the initial focus of discussion on Israel.  Israel’s transgressions of international law and humanitarian law throughout its military occupation of Palestine are seldom if ever discussed or debated.  

ARNOLD AUGUST—As the author suggests, Trudeau’s embarrassing role as a glorified Washington poodle is becoming too obvious even for his gang of apologists to wash away. His government has become a virtual tool of the US Dept of State intrigues against Venezuela

ROBERT BRIDGE—Trudeau, who does not strike me as a chess player, expressed his “extreme concern” at the decision, which really should have come as no surprise. The Schellenberg case was clearly a show trial to give Beijing some leverage in freeing Meng Wanzhou, and now it will be very interesting to see how Trudeau responds. Will he cave in to US demands and extradite Meng, or will he hold onto the Chinese national in a possible exchange agreement for the three Canadians? 

JOHN HELMER—One day after Australia was defeated at the World Health Assembly in a joint effort with the Trump Administration to attack China, and after Beijing retaliated, calling the Australian Government a US puppet, a joke, and chewing-gum on China’s shoe, Australia has telephoned Moscow for help. In a call initiated by Foreign Minister Marise Payne, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was asked to boost Russian imports from Australia and send more Russian tourists to the country.