Collegial Business Ties: Canada/China

"One of the punishments that is applied for such charges [drug-smuggling] is the death penalty, and China executes more people than any other country in the world."
"My worry is that he [Canadian Robert Lloyd Schellenberg] may be more likely to be sentenced to death than would have been the case before the current breakdown in relations between Canada and China."
Michael Byers, professor of global politics, University of British Columbia

"Is it going to be affected by the current situation [Huawei dispute]? That would not be surprising."
"It would not be surprising if he gets a harsh sentence, but it may be the amount in question already justifies a death sentence [under Chinese law]."
Donald Clarke, Chinese law specialist, George Washington University Law School

"Another Canadian accused [charged with smuggling a] huge [quantity of drugs]."
"[One must] really admire the courage of this Canadian man to actually dare to smuggle drugs in China. We must know that Chinese criminal law has no sympathy for drug crimes."
runsby.com website, Lianing province, northeastern China

"China has not abolished the death penalty based on its own history and current conditions."
"Chinese courts ... won't give the wrongdoer a way out simply because the criminal is a foreigner."
Global Times, branch, Communist Party's People's Daily

A police officer stands outside a prison in Dalian in northeastern China's Liaoning Province. China still has the death penalty for drug trafficking. (Masao Mizuno/Kyodo News via AP)

Obviously it doesn't take courage but stupidity and a measure of careless audacity for a Canadian to smuggle drugs into China, and get caught doing it. Particularly as even the most dim-minded moving drugs must be aware of the penalties imposed particularly on foreigners, in south-east Asian countries which struggle with their own epidemics of drug abuse. That anyone is senseless enough to smuggle drugs into China, a country infamous for its production of chemical-laboratory-produced drugs of lethal power probably deserves to face some level of punishment.

The death penalty?

This fellow, Schellenberg, has been in a Chinese prison for "several years". He has suddenly come to the attention of Chinese authorities: a Canadian in a Chinese prison for the criminal act of drug-smuggling, what an opportunity for the Chinese government to demonstrate its full-bore displeasure with Canada, an upstart nation that has roiled ill feelings from the powerful trading giant the government of Canada is so eager to do business with in a free trade deal.

Of course, care might have been exercised through official channels to advise Meng Wanzhou that she faces arrest should she venture into Canada, even to visit her two splendid 'summer homes' in Vancouver, now that a U.S. court has issued an alert for her arrest and extradition to the U.S. Canada in honouring its treaty with the U.S. speaks earnestly of its obligation under the law to proceed as it did, naively taken by surprise at the strength of the ensuing Chinese outrage.

Surprise? That a technological communications giant linked to the Communist Government of China has suffered the humiliation of one of its chief executives and daughter of the CEO has been arrested? After all, there's a trade war ongoing between the two trade colossi, China and the U.S. With Canada whom the U.S. has done no favours to in its revision of NAFTA into the USMC trade pact and China playing it cool with a potential free trade agreement with Canada as background.

Chinese punishment under its law for the smuggling of a kilogram or more of heroin or methamphetamine ranges from 15 years to the finality of execution. The two other Canadians arrested, a businessman and a former diplomat are still in play; the third, an English teacher with an expired work permit has been released and returned to Canada. What manner of punishment that can be meted out to the other two is questionable; they can be accused of 'endangering Chinese security', but it is likely only Chinese who face such accusations will also face the death penalty.

The country that executes more prisoners than any other nation on Earth would without doubt balk at extending the final solution to a diplomat and a businessman, not one of their own, but not a drug smuggler. This, from a country that produces immense amounts of deadly fentanyl and even deadlier carfentanil, both drugs increasingly responsible for overdose deaths throughout Canada and the United States, and whose disinterest in cooperating to keep Chinese Internet operators from selling them so freely at bargain rates is partially responsible for the death toll.


On Saturday, Robert Schellenberg who was given a 15-year prison sentence for drug smuggling last month, appealed to the Higher People's Court of Liaoning Province. At the hearing, Chinese prosecutors argued that Schellenberg was, in their opinion, part of an international drug smuggling operation. The appeals court ruled that the "light punishment" of 15-years was "obviously inappropriate", sending the case back to the Dalian Intermediate People's Court for retrial.

"I can't see inside the judge's head or what his instructions from the party might be, but this is just not a good time. We're not going to get the benefit of doubt and the penalties may be more severe."
"Their system works very much more differently than ours. There is potential for party intervention in sensitive cases, in a way that's simply not possible in Canada."
Gordon Houlden, director of the the University of Alberta's China Institute

Neurodegenerative Disease: Youth/Elderly

"Notice the obvious paradox. Teenagers. In an epidemic. In norther Uganda. Dying of a neurodegenerative disease."
"It's totally remarkable. Nodding syndrome is a tauopathy. Our hypothesis is that nodding syndrome is a neurodegenerative disease, like Alzheimer's."
Michael Pollanen, chief forensic pathologist, Ontario

A 2012 image from Uganda shows an 11-year-old boy suffering from nodding syndrome.

JAMES AKENA/REUTERS

Nodding Syndrome is recognized as rare and as a disease whose origins are still unknown, mysterious. Understanding it, however, may give medical science a clue to origins and patterns recognized in Alzheimer's Disease. And Ontario's chief forensic pathologist, Michael Pollanen has produced some pioneering research that has been published recently in the journal Acta Neuropathologica. His insight may lead to a new understanding of the nature of age-related dementia and Alzheimer's; one of the oddities here is that Nodding Disease is a neurodegenerative disease that victimizes children, quite the opposite age spectrum that Alzheimer's strikes.

What Dr. Pollanen found remarkable, is that children were dying of an affliction that everywhere else in the world has symptoms that exclusively strike the elderly, with rare exceptions. What is also noted is that while children are being struck down by this degenerative attack on their neural system, their parents remain unaffected by Nodding Syndrome. "Why are the parents not affected?", asks Dr. Pollanen and the answer to that may very well answer a great deal more, with respect to the much broader worldwide issue of Alzheimer's Disease.

He has a scientist's educated hypothesis based on what he already is aware of that a convergence of genetic and environmental factors may be found to be at play. One such epidemic of Nodding Syndrome broke out in the 1960s in Tanzania, and in South Sudan in 1998. Now it has become an epidemic in Northern Uganda; all African nations, all countries that have been roiled by brutal conflicts, by issues of malnutrition and desperate existential fear.

Where it strikes is in impoverished and insecure environments, where subsistence-farming villages have become susceptible to its mysterious onset, along with those languishing in camps for internally displaced people. Only children between around five and fifteen years of age are affected; the disease peaks around the age of eleven. Societal turmoil appears to unleash its onset; in central Africa when the Lord's Resistance Army abducted children to be trained as soldiers or act as sex slaves.

The epidemic first surfaced in a camp for internally displaced persons in 2004 when children would initially display classical nodding, mistaken for atonic seizures; a generalized brief loss of muscle tone that degenerated to severe intellectual impairment, grand mal seizures and death. Victims become mute, some paralyzed in its later stages -- while others yet exhibit Parkinsonism-like symptoms.

These physical and mentally vulnerable children then become victim in a perilous environment of camps to being accidentlally burned in charcoal cooking fires, drowning in open water, injured when falling from heights, or they become the helpless victims of sexual violence. Strong epidemiological association with a common parasitic infection of a water-borne worm that can cause skin problems, blindness and affects the brain has been theorized.

As another theory would have it, Nodding Syndrome represents a lingering effect of the measles virus infection, leading to a neurodegenerative disease.

According to Dr. Pollanen, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control investigated Nodding Syndrome but it appears found no significant answers. It appeared that the agency found nothing in the dissected brains of the victims, leaving room for more intensive investigation. The brains of five fatal cases were studied by Dr. Pollanen; a typical 14-year-old girl had been malnourished, wasted, dehydrated, had multiple healing injuries and died of dehydration and malnutrition.

In their newly published paper, Dr. Pollanen and his colleagues describe a neurofibrillary tangle; distinctive brain lesions that are seen as playing a central role in Alzheimer's. In addressing an audience of doctors and epidemiologists how it would appear if these tangles were in the frontal cortex, the response was: "memory and cognitive impairments". And if the tangles were in the brain stem? Parkinsonism.

The general consensus reached is that Nodding Syndrome "recapitulates" in a manner not yet understood let alone proven -- in children, not adults, the type of neurodegenerative disease typically found in adults worldwide. Tangles in the neurons, age-related plaques in the brain's grey matter, all somehow appear to figure into the equation. What is also unclear is why it is that children born later in birth order are less likely to be affected.

Vladimir Putin, Toying With Tormenting Ukraine

"This is not a joke [the seizure of three Ukrainian naval vessels and 24 crew, leading to restricted shipping through the port of Mariupol]."
"It is not a Hollywood movie. It is a very serious situation [on the sea of Azov]."
Volodymyr Omelyan, Infrastructure Minister, Ukraine

"We have complete consistency on our concerns and messaging, right now we’re assessing how to get the crew and ships out; there are a variety of options for that."
"[During a North Atlantic Council meeting on Black Sea security, the United States] reiterated that we condemn this Russian act of aggression, that Crimea is Ukraine, and that the Russian action in Kerch is a clear military escalation and violation of international law and freedom of the sea."
U.S. State Department official (unnamed) 

"A city can survive even if it loses the equivalent of an arm or a leg, but this port is the heart of Mariupol."
Marina Pereshivaylova, manager, Port of Mariupol

Cranes are seen in the Azov Sea port of Mariupol, Ukraine, Dec. 2, 2018.

The Kremlin's dustbin of dirty tricks in its on-and-off war with Ukraine under the guise of supporting ethnic Russian Ukrainian rebels whose 'rights' under the government of Ukraine, Russia claims have been abridged, continues. Moscow will not surrender its suzerainty of Ukraine, disrupted when the previous Moscow-appointed President fell victim to a popular revolt that began in Kiev and spread to the rest of Ukraine, to find opposition in eastern Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin's utter disdain for Ukraine's fantasizing that it can consider itself a sovereign nation separate and distinct from the Russian Federation is more than evident in his authorization of Russian undercover military agents joining the conflict against the Ukrainian military upholding Ukrainian sovereignty, refusing to allow the separation of eastern Ukraine to become part of Russia, only to suffer the humiliation of Putin ordering troops into the Crimean Peninsula to annex it under Russian command.

Back in 2014 Putin had designs on Mariupol and a land bridge between Russia and Crimea. What he was unable to grasp with the Ukrainian rebel militias he is undertaking by stealth and compulsion in squeezing Ukraine's humble, elderly and inadequate navy by refusing it access to the Sea of Azov to carry on normal shipping as guaranteed by international covenants on sea passage, effectively locking Ukrainian shipping out of regular, lawful access through the port city of Mariupol.

Ukrainian naval ships seized by Russia are seen docked in Kerch, in Russia-annexed Crimea, in this image from video released by Russia's Federal Security Service, Nov. 27, 2018.

The indignities and violent harm that Russia has imposed upon Ukraine constitute in fact, an act of war. One that Ukraine is not equipped to respond to as an act of war. The military colossus that Russia's armed forces and navy represent simply cannot be challenged by a Ukraine operating vessels from another century, an impoverished state without the resources it would require to fight back and assert itself.

While international reaction condemns Russia as it has done for so many 'irregularities' in its thuggish state actions, Putin treats it all as amusing, nothing else.

The now becalmed Ukrainian port on the Sea of Azov is void of the large ships that normally pass through; Mariupol is in a state of enforced under use since Russian aggression has disrupted sea traffic heading to and from Mariupol to other Ukrainian ports and beyond. Ukraine claims that over one hundred vessels await Russian permission to pass through the Kerch Strait, under the newly-built bridge to Crimea.

The Ukrainian border service is at a standstill. The on-again, off-again blockage by Russia of sea traffic has created a dilemma for Ukraine because no one knows when new orders will come out of the Kremlin to impose further blockages and challenges to the free flow of sea traffic. This has meant that shipowners respond to this instability by sending their vessels elsewhere, bypassing Mariupol.

Mariupol is mostly empty, points out Andrii Klymenko, head of an independent research group in Kiev monitoring maritime traffic "because of the fears of shipowners". Well founded fears to any enterprise.

Mariupol is one of ten regions declared by Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko under martial law, linked to the clash at sea and the decision by the Russian navy to seize three elderly Ukrainian naval vessels, further diminishing its tiny naval strength, as though to find humour in its virtual impotence. The commander at Mariupol's recruitment center, Lieutenant Colonel Volodymyr Levandovsky has called on reservists for medical check-ups awaiting the possibility his government may order a mobilization.

"I can say with one hundred percent conviction that this city will not be taken", he stated with grim intent. It remains to be seen whether Vladimir Putin will take another dramatic move as was done with the annexing of Crimea, to take possession of Ukraine's largest city on the Sea of Azov. But moves by Russia to this point have reduced the port city's traditional shipping traffic to its port to the point where life itself seems to have come to a standstill.

Proceed With Caution...!

"Cannabis is illegal in most jurisdictions outside of Canada. The personal information of cannabis users is therefore very sensitive."
"Some countries may deny entry to individuals if they know they have purchased cannabis, even lawfully."
"Private organizations are required by law to develop policies and practices to meet their responsibilities under the [law]."
Daniel Therrien Privacy Commissioner, Canada

AP Photo/Richard Vogel

Doesn't matter one whit that a number of U.S. states have legalized the possession and use of cannabis. Federally, marijuana in all its manifestations is considered an outlawed drug and federal law brooks no excuses, holding anyone associated with possession of pot to be criminally liable to prosecution. Or, in the case of Canadians routinely expecting they can enter the U.S. as they once did  casually -- for business or pleasure prior to the October legalization of cannabis in Canada -- being stopped at the border if record-checking, or verbal admissions or searches turn up proof of 'drug criminality'.

Suddenly, regular cannabis users are denied entry from Canada into the U.S. Nothing casual about it, either; that denial can result in a life-time ban. As happened just recently to a Canadian investor intent on travelling to Las Vegas to a cannabis conference and to tour a new cannabis facility while there. His frank admission of his destination and the purpose of it was more than enough to earn him a lifetime entry ban, confirmed for his edification through consultation with an immigration lawyer.

Reasonably enough feeling that since California had legalized cannabis his trip there would be without complications. He might have been aware that 64% of Americans favour legalization, that ten states, plus Washington D.C., the very seat of U.S. government, had legalized recreational marijuana use, while 33 additional states legalized medical marijuana. But that Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington have all legalized recreational pot cuts no ice with the U.S. federal government.

Pot sellers and buyers have a need to fully understand their privacy rights and obligations. The first thing Privacy Commissioner Therrien suggests is paying with cash and not using plastic when buying products if the disposition of their personal information is a concern to users. And for many people being barred for life from entry to the United States is a serious concern. Although it seems nonsensical for a Canadian to travel to Vermont which has legalized cannabis, and to get stopped at the border and denied entry, it's federal law not state law that calls the shots for foreign entrants.

Blair Gable/Reuters

Personal information collection can be prevented by bypassing credit cards when buying pot from legal retain outlets; cash is obviously the way to go. An option that isn't available when buying online as a result of a paucity of provincial retail outlets. A privacy breach through Canada Post affecting an estimated 4,500 individuals last month was reported by the Ontario Cannabis Store. Someone used a Canada Post delivery tracking tool, extracting data of roughly two percent of customer orders.

And then there is the compulsion to respond when queried, either at the point of purchase or the point of entry to the United States. Privacy Commissioner Therrien advises purchasers to guard their privacy through the simple expedient of taking steps to not provide more personal information than practically required; stick to what is legally needed to verify qualifying age at point of purchase.

He would also like to remind pot shops that video surveillance should be used only if less privacy-intrusive measures can't be met. Should retailers decide to use video surveillance, then signage should be strategically posed and clearly visible to anyone in a client capacity before they enter the store for business purposes. Moreover, email addresses, not customer names for mailing lists or memberships should be collected by cannabis stores.

Canopy Growth

This Is Not Iraq Where Planes Land Under Rocket Bombardment

"We do have persons of interest and we are working through those with our best teams, our best investigators, and there's a huge amount of intelligence that we're trawling through."
"[Measures to tackle the threat include] technical, sophisticated options to detect and mitigate drone incursions, all the way down to less sophisticated options -- even shotguns would be available to officers should the opportunity present itself]."
Steve Barry, assistant chief constable of Sussex police

"This is an unprecedented event. There's not been anything like this anywhere in the world."
"[Additional] military capabilities [and a range of security measures are in place]."
"[The airport is safe for flights though the drone operator/s not yet apprehended]."
"[The drone flights were] highly targeted [designed to deliver maximum Christmas disruption]."
Chris Grayling, Transport Secretary, London

"This is the second time that my plans have been altered."
"I was supposed to fly out at 9 a.m. this morning and now it looks like I won't be flying out on the 9 p.m. It's horrendous -- hundreds of thousands of people's lives are being affected."
Andrew Duffield, impact investigator, London

The theory that police in London have arrived at is that there could be more than one drone involved,  confusing authorities and making it all the more difficult for police to locate the handler. Britain's Transport Secretary mused it could be a lone-wolf eco-warrior event, but senior detectives have not entirely ruled out that behind the drone attack that has shut down Gatwick Airport at the busiest air traffic time of year could be a foreign state.

The assumption has been made by authorities that the drone had undergone modification with the "intent of causing disruption", as they peruse CCTV coverage in an effort to accurately identify the make and model of the drone. In fact the arrogance of the culprit who took to flying the drone directly up to the air traffic control tower to taunt airport staff, circling the drone around the building while flashing its lights may just have given authorities a leg up on identifying the drone pilot.

In "buzzing the tower" on Friday, a detailed description of the drone resulted in experts being able to determine make and model of the machine, available only from a handful of locations in the United Kingdom. A short list of potential culprits was accordingly drawn up by detectives. The result of which was that two suspects were detained and are being questioned, while a wider hunt is still ongoing. The two arrested for suspected "criminal use of drones" took place around 10 p.m. on Friday night.

The middle-aged arrested couple from Crawley remain in custody. "Our investigations are still ongoing, and our activities at the airport continue to build resilience to detect and mitigate further incursions from drones, by deploying a range of tactics. The arrests we have made are a result of our determination to keep the public safe from harm, every line of inquiry will remain open to us until we are confident that we have mitigated further threats to the safety of passengers", explained Sussex Police Superintendent James Collis.

According to Sussex police, roughly 50 drone sightings between 9:07 p.m. Wednesday and 4:25 p.m. Thursday were seen altogether. The military is now on site with RAF troops taking up position on the roof of the south terminal. Initially a pair of drones disrupted travel for over 120,000 people over the course of a thirty-six hour period. Anti-drone technologies have been deployed and the airport declared flight-safe, though the mystery of the drones' handlers and their end-purpose has not yet been entirely cleared up.

As far as preparedness for emergency situations goes, British authorities have not distinguished themselves in this particular instance. Reaction was slow and disorganized. The expert professionals available to them were not contacted as readily as they should have been. The chaos that ensued demonstrated just how vulnerable Western countries' routine expectations can be to even such a casual mischief as the use of forbidden drones in an air-protected site can be. The immense cost in total of this shut-down of air traffic has far-reaching consequences.

It might be a valuable lesson in catch-up for all concerned if the situation is taken as seriously as it should be. The consequences that will ensue, though costly, are nowhere near as catastrophic as they might have been if drones equipped with incendiary devices, bombs or other lethal weapons were to have been used on flights entering or exiting the airport. Much less a far more sophisticated device such as a miniaturized electromagnetic bomb.

Gatwick Airport is slowly getting back to normal on one of the busiest travel weekends of the year.

China's Global Empire Outreach

"Stability in cyberspace cannot be achieved if countries engage in irresponsible behaviour that undermines the national security and economic prosperity of other countries."
"These actions by Chinese actors to target intellectual property and sensitive business information present a very real threat to the economic competitiveness of companies in the United States and around the globe."
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein with FBI Director Christopher Wray, speaks during a news conference at the Department of Justice in Washington, Thursday. The Justice Department is charging two Chinese citizens with carrying out an extensive hacking campaign to steal data from U.S. companies. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press)

Two Chinese citizens have been charged in the United States when intelligence revealed their extensive role in a data-theft hacking campaign that has taken place over a number of years. U.S. prosecutors allege that Zhu Hua and Zhang Shilong, acting for China's state intelligence agency, pilfered information from a dozen countries they targeted, breaching computers where enterprises involved in banking and telecommunications, to mining and health care, were unaware when vital data was being breached, according to papers filed in U.S. District Court.

Allies of the United States have called China out for its malign acts of industrial espionage. It has always been widely recognized that China has been involved in such internationally illegal acts to benefit its own areas of enterprise to shortcut the time it takes for advances that other countries have made without having to take time and focus themselves to attain like advances in its rush to acquire international status in various types of enterprises as Beijing remains intent on becoming the globe's dominating economic and technological powerbase.

"China's goal, simply put, is to replace the U.S. as the world's leading superpower, and they're using illegal methods to get there."
"The list of victim companies reads like a who's who of the global economy."
FBI director Christopher Wray, United States

"To the best of our knowledge, we do not have reports ... of specific losses, but we are aware of intrusions."
"So the incidents took place, the hacking and compromise took place. Whether there was actually a theft committed or the withdrawal of information or data, that is not information within our domain."
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, Canada

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, shown during an event in Toronto last Friday, says Ottawa isn't aware of any data that was stolen from Canadians. (Frank Gunn/Canadian Press)

On the part of Canada, an admission that its public security is not quite as secure as it would like Canadians and Canadian corporations to believe. And nor does Minister Goodale link these revelations with the detention by China of Canadian citizens; rather as payback for Canadian justice authorities detaining for extradition the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, a worldwide technology empire gathering data on behalf of the Chinese state; no link?

"They are two quite separate incidents. As I've mentioned, the information that we're dealing with today in terms of cyber security was first detected going back to 2016", he elaborated. Only to 2016? Doubt it. "Spearphishing", tricking computer users at business and government offices to open malware-infested emails to allow access to login and password details has been around a long, long time, and similarly, Chinese cyber-espionage has, as well...connect...the...dots.

The two men are linked to a group known as Advanced Persistent Threat 10, out of China. In their pursuit of data they broke into computers serving governments and businesses in at least a dozen countries. Working for Huaying Haital Science and Technology Development Co. in Tianjin, they are accused of linking with the Chinese Ministry of State Security's Tianjin State Security Bureau, providing Chinese intelligence with purloined sensitive business and government data.

"This is outright cheating and theft, and it gives China an unfair advantage at the expense of law-abiding businesses and countries that follow the international rules in return for the privilege of participating in the global economic system", stated U.S. deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein. The APT10 Group gained unauthorized access to computers of an unnamed service provider with offices in New York state, then compromised data of the provider and clients in Canada, the U.S., Britain, Brazil, Finland, France, Germany, India, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, and the U.A.E.

Wrong Move, Trump!

A U.S. military commander, second from right, walks with Kurdish fighters from the People's Protection Units (YPG) at Mount Karachok near Malikiya, Syria, April 25, 2017.

"In one decision, the Trump administration abandoned two allies: Israel and the Kurds."
"The American forces operating in the northeastern region of Syria, especially near​​ Al-Bukamal, bordering Iraq, constituted a final buffer between Iran and the Mediterranean Sea."
"Iran has a presence in Iraq and in Lebanon, of course, as well. The US buffer in Al-Bukamal stopped the connection between the two."

"The departure of US forces foreshadows the construction of a 'highway' that will offer a direct route for Iranians and Shiite militias between Tehran and Beirut. As a senior Arab diplomat explained to The Times of Israel, the development will allow Iranian Revolutionary Guards al-Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani to drive straight from Tehran to the offices of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Dahiya, Beirut."
"Beyond Israel, it is impossible to ignore the future of the Kurdish region of Syria [and in Turkey as well]. The United States has abandoned those who were its most important allies in the war against the Islamic State."
"At one point the Kurds were the only force that managed to stop the Islamist terror organization.
After the Iraqi and Syrian armies suffered losses at the hands of Islamic State, the Kurdish YPG forces endured fierce battles, fought until their last drop of blood, and managed to stop the terror organization on a number of fronts [most notably, in the northern Syrian city of Kobani]."
"It is difficult to find fighters [both male and female] more heroic than the Kurds as they acted in the name of human rights and women’s rights. They were heroes, and especially heroines, who sacrificed themselves for humanity."
Avi Issacharoff, The Times of Israel

"I think it's fair to say Americans will remain on the ground after the physical defeat of the caliphate, until we have the pieces in place to ensure that that defeat is enduring."
"Nobody is declaring a mission accomplished. Defeating a physical caliphate is one phase of a much longer-term campaign."
U.S. special envoy Brett McGurk, December 11

"We're not going to leave as long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian borders and that includes Iranian proxies and militias."
John Bolton, U.S. national security adviser, September

"Pulling troops out of Syria in an ongoing fight is a big mistake. Like walking away from a forest fire that is still smouldering underfoot."
"...Big winner is Iran, then Russia, then Assad. Wrong move."
James Stavridis, former U.S. Navy admiral, former NATO commander

Kurdish fighters from the People's Protection Units (YPG) head a convoy of U.S military vehicles in the town of Darbasiya next to the Turkish border, Syria, April 28, 2017.

Yet another impulsive determination by U.S. President Donald Trump, ignoring the advice of his top-flight military advisers, and leading to the resignation of his Defence chief James Mattis. The Trump decision to withdraw two thousand American military members from their vital role in supporting the Syrian Kurdish-led militias against the presence of Islamic State in their last remaining stronghold while successfully appealing to Islamofascist jihadis to join them, to the point where despite losing thousands of their fighters their fighter strength is back to where it was when their geographic caliphate was still intact, leaves both the courageous Kurds and the Israelis in the lurch.

A scant two weeks earlier General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff declared there was still a long way to go for the U.S. in training local Syrian forces in prevention of an ISIL resurgence and to ensure the gradual stabilization of the country remains on track. It would require, he stated with the conviction of one who knows his trade and the situation before him intimately, 35,000 to 40,000 local troops in Syria's northeastern region to maintain security levels over the long term, while a mere 20 percent had yet undergone training. That speaks of long-term commitment.

Commitment is a will-o'-the-wisp concept to Donald Trump, he relies on his never-failing intuition to guide his decision-making, no hard facts on the ground need intrude on this instinctive, deep-seated process that reflects the certainty of his reliance on his inner moods and convictions. Expert opinion, boots and observations on the ground be damned. Everyone must fall in line behind his behind, preferably humbly if not obsequiously as befits a commander-in-chief's infallible and cunning decision-making, for his decisions are all of that; infallible and cunning and no one can persuade him otherwise.

He is the President of the United States of America. Look on his mighty works and despair -- with apologies to Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Despair is what the Kurds, the sole local fighting forces, both men and women, who have never hesitated to meet the Islamic State terrorists in fierce combat, determined to protect themselves from the jihadis' barbarian influx and intentions must be facing at prospects for their future. Sometimes surprises should surprise no one. Trump, after all, broadcasted just that intention -- to withdraw U.S. troops during the presidential campaign that brought him to the Oval Office. His decision was made not because he consulted with his advisers but because he disagreed with his advisers whom he failed to consult, knowing their advice and opinions and contemptibly dismissing them.

"This is, of course, an American decision", stated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, no doubt as taken aback and concerned as anyone else, with how this will impact on the Islamic Republic of Iran's ongoing controlling and dominating inroads into Lebanon and Syria. A decision which will inevitably bring closer to reality the potential of an all-out war with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Iranian Republican Guard Corps and their Shiite militias enlisted by Iran at the Golan Heights in a presumed effort at a pincer movement that would animate Hamas in Gaza in a concerted, three-pronged attack on Israel.

Aside from Iran, however, another country, a NATO member, Turkey, whose volatile Islamist president Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears to get on swimmingly well with Trump, will be delighted. For Trump's decision gives Erdogan the green light he has long agitated for; that the U.S. discontinue its partnership with the Kurds, in essence protecting them by the presence of American military, from the intention of Erdogan to destroy the presence of Kurds adjacent the Syrian border with Turkey and as far beyond as he can manage.

A senior US official has revelead the US decision to withdraw from Syria was made following a Trump-Erdogan phone call last Friday, despite Trump administration denials.  EPA

"This is a clear declaration of war. We take Erdogan’s threats against us very seriously. He has repeatedly expressed his desire to occupy our land in northeast Syria."
"Our partners in the U.S.-led coalition are well aware of these Turkish moves because a Turkish attack against us can also impact the U.S. efforts to defeat [IS] terrorists."
Nuri Mahmud, YPG spokesperson

Now, it won't. The U.S. efforts have been summarily dismissed. And Erdogan has his green light. U.S. forces will be returning home. The Islamic Republic of Iran has free reign. Israel can prepare once again for its never-ending future of war. And the Kurds have once again been abandoned.

Trudeau's Petty Vindictiveness

"Don't worry, this isn't our first rodeo. We made sure we never used his name. Send back the nil return [access to information request]."
"He seemed proud to provide that response."
"It just doesn't seem right, the way the whole situation played out, when I was thinking back about it."
"I just wanted to make it known, whether it's relevant or not."
Witness for the defence; name protected

"In spite of the fact that I believe my view is clear, I continue to receive enquiries about my position regarding cabinet confidences pertaining to my government as relates to the case involving
Admiral Norman."
"As I recently indicated publicly, I do not assert cabinet confidence for documents relevant to this proceeding."
Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Vice-Admiral Mark Norman's lawyers are accusing the federal government of obfuscation after obtaining an email from former prime minister Stephen Harper confirming he has no objection to releasing secret documents relevant to the case. Vice Admiral Mark Norman arrives to the Ottawa Courthouse in Ottawa on Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2018. Photo: Sean Kilpatrick

"The passive position taken by the Crown throughout this investigation and throughout this application in my respectful submission, is profoundly concerning. [It represents evidence of] obfuscation and gamesmanship [on the part of the Crown]."
"How extraordinary that Vice-Admiral Norman after three years, three years of this investigation, that it is his counsel that has to try to unravel this, that has to try to bring the relevant information before this honourable court."
"To suggest this isn't obfuscation and gamesmanship, when we directly asked again and again [about both the Harper waiver and the government's position on cabinet confidence] they [the government] have refused to answer that question since July."
"After three and a half years, how is it that his counsel has to try to unravel this? And this is the tip of the iceberg."
Marie Henein, counsel for the defence of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman

Mark Norman with his lawyer Marie Henein in September 2018. Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press/File

Vice-Admiral Mark Norman who until the RCMP was requested to investigate him for leaking secret government information, was the second in command of the Canadian Armed Forces, has faced an uphill battle to defend himself against the single charge that has ruined his career and blemished his otherwise extraordinary reputation. The charge the Trudeau government has laid against him is a single count of criminal breach of trust relating to the iAOR -- the interim Auxiliary Oil Replenishment vessel for the Canadian navy.

That vessel is a floating energy source for Canadian warships. The Navy once had two in operation, so old and decrepit they were finally decommissioned. The government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in recognition of the urgency of such a supply ship had put into motion a temporary replacement until new supply ships could be built. Davie Shipyards in Quebec was given the contract. But when the Trudeau government succeeded the Harper government one of the first things done was to place the contract on hold when a Vancouver shipyard lobbied new government Treasury Board President Scott Brison (a Vancouver M.P.) to cancel with Davie and award the contract to Irving Shipbuilding.

It was Brison's intervention and Trudeau's intention to cancel the Davie Shipyards contract that was leaked to a CBC journalist and to Davie by any number of sources who had access to that information that the Privy Council Office was aware of. The public learned of the expense involved in the contract's cancellation and was not pleased. The result was that the Trudeau government was intent on using Vice-Admiral Norman as a target for punishment for embarrassing the Prime Minister into making good on the Davie contract once the scandal was publicly aired.

Vice-Admiral Norman's lawyers have been frustrated in their attempts to have government files released to them in their defence of the man's innocence of the charge brought against an honourable public servant. Where government lawyers have interfered with normal defence access to witnesses and failing to disclose records useful to his defence. Out of the blue two witnesses for the defence have presented themselves. One, a former analyst at the Privy Council Office who routinely took notes of meetings between the PCO and the office of the Prime Minister (PMO) which it advises.

"I think these notes would be relevant to your defence. I brought them to the attention of the government, and I understand that they will be provided to you. But I wanted to make sure", Melissa Burke wrote to the Vice-Admiral's lawyers. Well, the PMO did have the notes but had no intention of sending them over to the defence. And though most background information requested by the defence dates from the Harper government era, the current government, citing security issues, has stalled on releasing them, even though Prime Minister Harper is in support of his government's documents' release.

Another witness that turned up was a member of the Canadian Forces known as "Witness A", whose name has been withheld to avoid repercussions from government. He recounted how a smiling brigadier-general had him withhold documents relating to a request to release them to the defence. "We made sure we didn't use his (Norman's) name", he was told so the automatic file search would not identify the documents in question since his name had been absent on them. Consequently, lead counsel Marie Henein is now subpoenaing that brigadier-general, along with Chief of the Defence Staff Jonathan Vance and former deputy Department of National Defence minister John Forster.

And Ontario Court Judge Heather Perkins-McVey who is holding the relevant hearings, has commented on the new revelations brought before her as "Troubling. Very troubling".

Redress

"I met Marion at the Jewish Museum, where she was patiently waiting for me on a bench in the lobby. Incredibly spry and eloquent, particularly for a woman of her age [90], she was born Marion Sauerbrunn to a Polish mother and Berliner father. As a 16-year-old girl, she fled Germany on a Kindertransport to England in May 1939, yet returned to the country immediately after the war to serve as a German language censor for the U.S. Army. She was reunited with her parents, who had opted to stay in Germany rather than abandon Marion’s 82-year-old grandfather and had survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Upon immigrating to the United States, she worked as a consultant to other survivors, helping them achieve financial redress from the German government (she has also participated, for decades, in a weekly intellectual salon of German émigrés in New York, profiled by the Forward in 2008). And since 2005, she has visited Berlin annually to discuss her life experience with students at the very same gymnasium she attended, and from which she was expelled due to her being Jewish."
"The crowning display of 'The Whole Truth: Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Jews', is a three-sided glass box, where, for two hours every day, a real, live Jewish person sits and interacts with visitors [German citizens who are invited to pose questions to the box-sitter/s]. Initially skeptical of the exhibit, I came away positively affected by my interactions with regular Germans after spending some time in the box myself."
James Kirchick, Tablet magazine 

A German Holocaust Survivor Steps into the Box The controversial Berlin exhibit gets an unprecedented guest

One time-redress payments, nominal in nature, are being offered by Germany to children of the infamous 'Kindertransport' initiative to rescue a relative handful of children and young people, mostly Jews, by separating them from their parents and sending them to haven in Great Britain for the duration of the war years. The evacuation of these children -- most of whom never again had the opportunity to see their parents, who when the children were taken from them, ended up in death camps where they perished -- allowed them to live and of the ten thousand on the 'Kindertransport' 80 years ago, an estimated thousand still live.

Marion House is one such survivor, and her experience was quite unlike that of the majority. She was reunited with their parents who had survived Theresienstadt concentration camp; most did not. New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany had advocated on behalf of the Kindertransport survivors and the German government agreed to payments of $3,800 to be presented to those still living. Of the estimated thousand survivors still alive, roughly half are thought to be living in Britain to this day.

The Central British Fund for German Jewry, later known as Jewish Relief, discovered these documents in 1994. They show photographs and details for three children who were brought to Britain from Austria to escape the Nazis. 

Jewish Chronicle/Heritage Images/Getty Images

The payment, to people in their 80s and 90s obviously represents a "symbolic recognition of their suffering". As symbols go, it's not much of a recognition. On the other hand, it would be hard to imagine what could possibly compensate for such an unforgivable loss as one's parents, one's security, one's loss of a normal life, one's separation from all that is dear and valuable in a child's life; siblings, extended family, friends, neighbours, emotional stability. There is no possible recompense for such a staggering absence in anyone's life. The vacuum that was created, that vast void of emotional yearning is a lifetime pain.

The 48th child transport with 10,000 Viennese children goes to Switzerland.

Getty Images

"In almost all the cases the parents who remained were killed in concentration camps in the Holocaust and they [survivors] have tremendous psychological issues."
"This money is acknowledgment that this was a traumatic, horrible thing that happened to them."
Greg Schneider, negotiator, Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany

The Night of Broken Glass -- Kristallnacht -- stirred Great Britain to permit unaccompanied Jewish children into the country as refugees from Nazi Germany or from Nazi-annexed European territories. The transports had been planned by Jewish groups within Nazi Germany; the first arriving in Harwich on December 2, 1938, as documented by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The final transport left Germany on September 1, 1939, the very day Germany invaded Poland recognized as the day the Second World War broke out.

Three refugee children at the Dovercourt Bay camp near Harwich in December 1938.

Gerti Deutsch/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

May 14, 1940 marked the ultimate transport from continental Europe leaving the Netherlands, the very day that Dutch forces surrendered to the Nazi occupation. Children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland were transported to Britain; of the ten thousand, 7,500 were Jewish children half of whom were placed with foster families, the older children put up in hostels, schools or on farms. Beside the children who remained in Britain others resettled in the United States, Israel, Canada, Australia and elsewhere.

Now in their 80s and 90s those children recall their escape, placed alone onto trains that were to transport them to some unknown place as they parted with their parents and their siblings, most never to be seen again. How to offer 'recompense' for that experience?

Tired and alone, 8-year-old Josepha Salmon, arriving from Germany destined for the Dovercourt Bay camp near Harwich in December 1938. 

Fred Morley/Getty Image

Self-Righteous Hypocrisy

"Among the 3.7 million Quebecers who had a job in 2016 and who worked away from home, 78 percent said they primarily used a personal vehicle to get there [to place of employment]."
Universite de Montreal report on energy use in Quebec

"Yes, there is a certain degree of hypocrisy in all humans, and obviously, with regards to certain positions that Quebecers take [on energy], there is some hypocrisy there."
"One hundred percent of electricity in Quebec is from renewal resources [resulting from Quebec's hydroelectric James Bay source of renewable, non-carbon-producing energy production; a circumstance of geology]."
"Also, Quebecers are less rich than other Canadians, meaning they consume less energy, have less cars [traditionally]."
Professor Pierre-Olivier Pineau, co-author, report on Quebec energy use

Hydro Quebec, Valtech    James Bay hydroelectricity project

Quebec prides itself on its use of 'clean energy'. The province has been gifted by nature with 40 percent of Canada's freshwater resources. It has the monumental James Bay project and Churchill Falls which Hydro Quebec uses internally for energy use at the cheapest rates in North America, and which it also uses as a salable natural resource at prevailing market rates from its 63 power stations to customers in New England, U.S.A. To say that Quebec is smug about its clean energy policies is to understate the situation. Energy from wind farms also play a significant role in energy production.

The general portrait of Quebec and Quebecers is that of environmentally conscious citizens of the world, loyal to the government's vision of green energy, conservation and environmental awareness of the highest order. So much so, that its new Premier Francois Legault spoke publicly of his contempt for western Canadian oil, stating there was "no social acceptability" in Quebec for a "dirty energy" pipeline to be built from Alberta to eastern Canada.

This assertion did not go down very well with the premiers of Alberta and Saskatchewan who in the best interests of those oil-and-gas-producing provinces and Canada as a whole are in dire need of pipelines to move their products to tidewater to ship to markets abroad, much less to Canadians living in the east who would far prefer Canadian oil and gas to imports from the Middle East. Alberta is forced to sell its oil well below market place for want of a reliable, efficient transportation system.

Quebecers enjoy scorning 'dirty oil' as they will have it, from Alberta. Lauding themselves for their 'green' credentials, and paying for their social programs with equalization payments doled out by the federal government from taxes levied against the provinces then re-distributed to the 'have-not' provinces which Quebec has always portrayed itself as, needful of a hand up from other provinces deemed wealthier, among which Alberta is the foremost. So while Alberta struggles with a deficit this fiscal year and Quebec has balanced its books, the facade of green superiority sizzles.



Quebecers, however, represent some of the highest energy consumers in the world. This, according to a newly issued report prepared by researchers at Universite de Montreal's school of business. Quebecers, new data indicate, are purchasing record amounts of gasoline, purchasing gas-guzzling trucks and larger homes. While per capita carbon emissions in the province remain the country's lowest as the province has decreased its overall emissions by 11 percent since 1990, it is mostly attributable to their hydroelectric energy source.

Vehicle sales of trucks, SUVs and pickups in Quebec between 1990 and 2017 increased by 246 percent, while gasoline sales leaped 33 percent in that same time period. Since 2015, yearly sales of larger vehicles requiring more gas have vastly overtaken the sale of cars. Moreover, between 1990 and 2015 the average surface area of a home in Quebec has increased by 17 percent.

The conclusion is that, on a per-capita basis, people living in Quebec consume far more energy than the global average, similar to the consumption seen in countries like China and Germany, almost as much as people living in the United States. Sleight of mind?

Ville Marie, Montreal, Quebec

United In Grief

"[Three-day-old Amiad Ish-Ran had] managed to unite the nation of Israel [like few others had done before him]."
"You brought so much light. And with all the light that you brought [Amiad Yisrael] we will extinguish their darkness."
Rafael Ish-Ran, grandfather, Jerusalem

A funeral was held in Israel for the child of Amichai and Shira Ish-Ran, who were injured in a drive-by shooting on Sunday. The baby died after being delivered prematurely. (Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images)

"They were normal people standing at a bus stop."
"Brand new, young couple, have their own little place, they're renting -- everything you would think of for a nice, normal, young family to be."
"And then it all got destroyed by this terrorist."
Jordan Charness, Montreal lawyer

Wedding Day

Nothing normal, however. They were Jews. Jews living in Israel. Dual citizens; Canadian-Israeli. Targets. Normalization is not viewed favourably by the Palestinian Authority. Normalization means accepting the presence of a Jewish state in an Islamic geography. Islamic theology has it that land consecrated to Islam must never fall to another religion; it is forbidden by Sharia law. Palestinians who sell land to Jews can receive the death penalty. More likelier extra-judicial penalties of immediate death, bypassing and dispensing with the annoying interference of a trial.

The presence of Jews in territory that Palestinian Arabs claim as their own although they also claim the territory on which Israel has been established as their own -- represents an enormous abnormality. One that must be 'resisted' as a hateful 'occupation' of Palestinian heritage. The ancient biblical presence of Judea and the Israelite thousands of years of residence in a geography whose history is chronicled through many sources, both biblical and chronologically historical of the time becomes meaningless and expendable in Palestinian claims of pre-historically occupying the land.

Palestinians throw rocks as Israeli soldiers conduct a search for suspects of a shooting attack in the West Bank City of Ramallah, Monday, Dec. 10, 2018. (Majdi Mohammed/The Associated Press)

Before the Almighty revealed the final scriptures of sacred instruction to the faithful, antedating Jewish regional history, it was all consecrated to Islam. Jews, according to Arab Palestinian authorities, have always been illegal occupiers, millennia distant to the present. So when 30-week-pregnant Shira Ish-Ran with her hisband Amichai waited at a bus stop outside a the West Bank settlement of Ofra along with a group of other Jews it was only logical that they be ambushed by gunmen opening fire at them from a moving vehicle.

The gathered crowd of Jews scattered immediately; recognition of an impending atrocity comes easily to these people who have experienced so many of these killing sprees either personally or through the personal accounts of friends and family, for everyone has mourned those deaths and the survivors' recoveries have become legendary. When the 23-year-old rabbinical student Amichai looked back to see his wife on the ground, he leaped to shield her from the rain of bullets.

Shot three times in the leg, his wife, 21-year-old teacher-in-waiting, shot in the back. They survived, hospitalized, sedated, undergoing surgeries and a gradual recovery. Their son was delivered by Cesarean section with the hope he would live, and he did, for three days. Their baby, wrapped in a prayer shawl, surrounded by family, was last seen by his parents from their hospital beds, then was buried at Mount of Olives cemetery in Jerusalem.

The baby Amiad Yisrael was murdered by 29-year-old Palestinian Salah Barghouti a member of the terrorist group Hamas. Salah Barghouti was taught from the time he was an infant -- through school curricula, through plays and television, through the 'normal' life of Palestinians incited to hate Jews and to pledge their futures to the 'liberation' of Palestine from the unworthy hands of Jews -- to become a martyr in jihad, to restore Palestine in its entirety, that 'Palestine' that was always associated with Jews called Palestinians. Now he has become one such martyr.

Amichai Ish-Ran's brother, a member of the IDF, watched live via surveillance footage as the shooting occurred, reacting by sending emergency personnel urgently to the scene. "He didn't know it was his brother, because it's not that detailed a camera", explained Montreal lawyer Charness, both young men's Canadian uncle.

Shira and Amichai Ish-Ran (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)

"During the three days our baby lived, he united us —secular, religious, ultra-Orthodox, right and left wing, who came to support us. I'm proud to be part of this nation,"