Eradicating Poverty in China

"I insisted on looking at real poverty, understanding the real efforts to reduce poverty, helping those who are in real poverty and achieving real poverty alleviation."

"[The] arduous task of eradicating extreme poverty has been fulfilled."

"According to the current criteria, all 98.99 million poor rural population have been taken out of poverty, and 832 poverty-stricken counties as well as 128,000 villages have been removed from the poverty list."

"The CCP’s leadership and China’s socialist system are the fundamental guarantees against risks, challenges and difficulties."

Chinese President Xi Jinping, Ceremony, Beijing, Great Hall of the People

It took China less than 70 years to emerge from isolation and become one of the world's greatest economic powers.  Getty Images

"When the Communist Party came into control of China it was very, very poor." 

"There were no trading partners, no diplomatic relationships, they were relying on self-sufficiency."                                                                                                                        DBS chief China economist Chris Leung

 

"[The ceremony and propaganda were] aimed at painting Xi Jinping as the victorious commander leading China to success in its millennia-long battle against poverty and allowing him to claim personal credit for this accomplishment."

"This will have dramatic ramifications in terms of Xi's personal power, the extent to which a cult of personality surrounding Xi will be tacitly or directly encouraged."

Professor Carl Minzner, specialist in Chinese law and governance, Fordham Law School

President Xi's address, announcing his country's success in achieving the "human miracle" of wiping out extreme poverty in the most populous country in the world was meant to spotlight pride of achievement linked directly to his presidency. Claiming the milestone was achieved when ten million people in the country for each of his eight years in power broke through the poverty barrier, at a cost of close to $311 billion. Beijing's determination to bring employment to all of its population through the medium of becoming the world's factory.

 

Producing inexpensive, not particularly durable products attractive to a world economy eager to import an impressive range of everyday articles at an irresistible price, reflecting a poorly-compensated workforce, but one that had never before been capable of employing so many people. The process was one of addiction; the West in particular seeing consumers snapping up the cheap bargains, even as a consequence their own production facilities went out of business, unable to compete, completely undercut as China gave the world what it wanted.

 

Beijing was comfortable ignoring copyright, trademark and international norms for competition and business practise. Skilled at theft of other countries' scientific formulae, medical breakthroughs, corporate technology, design and client data helped its economy steadily advance, without the need to invest in research and development of its own. Scrambling up the economic ladder by any means possible, and all were possible for Beijing. The Chinese Communist Party had much to compensate for; its inheritance of the country had come at a steep price.

 

The Great Leap Forward for rapid industrialization of the peasant economy in the 1950s failed to realize its promise and within a decade an estimated ten to forty million people died of malnutrition in an immense famine, thanks to Mao Zedong's vision gone awry. Next up was the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s where China's cultural past was disowned and the culture of Communism instilled at a tremendous cost to the country's social fabric, where just as during the Russian revolution, huge human sacrifice to an ideology that betrayed human nature became a colossal failure.

Xi Jinping in Beijing on Feb. 22. Xi has made fighting poverty one of his main goals since becoming leader of the ruling Communist Party in late 2012. Photographer: Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images

What is beyond doubt is that Xi Jinping's vision and belief in his purpose as the guiding light of China is as egotistical and ambitious as his predecessor's. President Xi's personal power readily equals that of Mao Zedong's. But it is without doubt that his personal legacy has been sealed with this historical accomplishment whose stunning vision and proportional success has no rival anywhere in the world. It is no mean feat; setting aside the highly regimented society heavily reliant on state surveillance of the population and rules of behaviour permitting no criticism of its government.

Freedom of any kind in exchange for economic stability. Freedom from starvation. Opportunity for economic advancement. The large and growing Chinese middle class is now able to live in a way that no other generation could even begin to imagine, accruing to itself ownership of property and goods and enjoying services previously unheard of. China's technological advances in every sphere of human endeavour has begun to surpass even that of the mighty United States of America.

Its influence and far reach globally aided substantially by Beijing's use of investment abroad to cant the world toward its advance and benefit. As a member of the UN Security Council, Beijing's human rights abuses cannot be placed under universal condemnation and the CCP sanctioned for egregious conduct. China's new war is one of propaganda, propagated steadily and stealthily while it spreads its influence socially, economically and politically. Its immense hunger for natural resources gathers up the rare and the mundane.

It has the world at its beck and call, the most industrious manufacturer of badly needed supplies of all manner of finished goods and technologies. During a global pandemic which originated in China, the world became dependent on China to provide scarce personal protective equipment to enable its efforts to control the pathogen that has brought world economies to their knees, infected tens of millions of people worldwide, and killed millions more.

The global manufacturing, technological, military colossus produced a viral pandemic that consolidated its influence and power while it solved the endless cycle of endemic poverty at home, even while manipulating its minority populations to become more Chinese, setting aside 'splittism' in favour of 'harmony', and thus achieving happiness as they eschew their traditions, culture, language, religion and liberty in favour of one great big happy family approved by the Chinese Communist Party.

Revealed Through Gross Ineptitude

"We assess that Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi."

"We base this assessment on the Crown Prince's control of decision-making in the Kingdom, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of Muhammad bin Salman's protective detail in the operation and the Crown Prince's support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi."

U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence report 

Khashoggi said MBS should get rid of his complex against the Muslim Brotherhood [Handout]

 

Henry II was said to have planned the death of his adversary, the Archbishop of Canterbury by simply mouthing the words: "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?". And that would be all that was needed for a plot to be cooked up to motivate assailants in service to the king to perform the deed. Similarly Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince may have used a sentiment to the very same effect: "Would someone kindly rid me of this troubling pest?" and the deed would be assured to be carried out. Despite the distance of a thousand years between those events, they otherwise have much in common.

Supreme rulers have a penchant for things going their way. The means used to achieve the required result are of little moment to them; what is important is that their wishes be carried out. They have no need to know the petty details; only the conclusion that the deed transpired successfully. In this particular instance of incredibly awkward decision-making and planning carried out with an utter lack of finesse by crude assailants it was inevitable there would be a lashback.

The murderous crew was careless and uncaring of consequences. The simple expedient of hauling the man back to Saudi Arabia for permanent imprisonment for irritating the royal power behind the throne would have been simple enough to carry to conclusion; the decision to murder the man, dismember the body and secrete it away somewhere represented a bleak, black slapstick farce of intelligence planning gone amok, which had its inevitable consequences.

Turkey's Erdogan, eager to ingratiate himself with the United States' investigation as a demonstration of just how powerfully cognizant he is about civilized behaviour -- despite that he sees nothing whatever unsettling to human rights by marginalizing, persecuting, and bombing minority indigenous Kurds who prefer that their status reflect that of resident/citizens of their ancient homeland, Kurdistan, not Turkey -- professed to be shocked and indignant over the bloody scene. And in matters of injuring and killing innocent civilians as a byproduct of conflict, the U.S. has no clean slate authorizing its investigation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Byzantine affairs.

 

Jamal Khashoggi. Mohammed Al-Shaikh/AFP/Getty

 

 

Jamal Khashoggi had a chequered past, consorting with terrorists, agitating against Jews and Israel, the perennial scapegoats of the Middle East, himself an enthusiastic member of the Muslim Brotherhood acknowledged as a terrorist organization by Egypt and Saudi Arabia. His slurs against the House of Saud's irritation factor cannot have been carried out without the knowledge that he was making himself a marked man. He lived in the U.S. in self-exile. To name him as a highly respected journalist is to elevate a sow's ear to a silk purse. His death is no great loss to a troubled world.

 

President Joe Biden wanted to break the revelatory news gently to his great good friend, 85-year-old King Salman, who knows realpolitik inside and out. The point of the release of the investigation pointing a finger of responsibility at this favoured son-and-heir-to-the-Saudi-throne simultaneously with a personal video conference was a patronizing exercise in a more powerful country gently handling a collegial country a political grenade; to be carefully handled lest an explosion result harming relations between the two countries. 

But like Turkey's Erdogan, America's Biden was intent on demonstrating how civilized the United States is, and how affronted civil society was in the wake of the details revealed in the ghastly 2018

assassination of the "Washington Post journalist". An odious act of state malfeasance, somewhat similar to Iran's hit squads hunting down enemies of the Grand Ayatollah, or Russian hitmen poisoning unsuspecting Russian dissidents abroad, occasionally succeeding in dispatching victims to lethal poisoning -- sometimes failing.

How Soon Forgotten! Justice Delayed is Justice Denied

The regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has committed crimes against humanity and war crimes by subjecting cities to unlawful sieges that gave civilians no choice but to give up or die.

"[The] ICC has not opened an investigation in relation to Syria."

"Syria is not a state party to the Rome Statute and has not accepted the ICC [International Criminal Court] jurisdiction."

"Thus, crimes committed by its citizens on its own territories do not fall under the ICC jurisdiction, unless the [United Nations Security Council] would refer the situation to the ICC, which has not happened to date."

ICC spokesperson, Fadi el-Abdallah 

"The most heinous of violations of international humanitarian and human rights law perpetrated against the civilian population in Syria since March 2011."

"Such acts are likely to constitute crimes against humanity, war crimes and other international crimes, including genocide."

Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic report

"This matter has not been referred to the ICC, despite the several calls by the commission of inquiry, and numerous recommendations by the Human Rights council for the UN Security council to do so."

"[The Commission is exploring other] areas of criminal justice] to address the matter of Syrian war crimes]."

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

"There were rivers of blood and maggots [exuding from the bodies], once, I couldn’t eat anything for days."

"[Some corpses were totally rotten and their faces] unrecognizable [as if they had been deliberately disfigured with a chemical. It is the stench of the rotting corpses that most disturbed him and continues to date.] The smell stayed in my nose, even after I showered at home."

Syrian undertaker,witness Z 30/07/19

 

"Someone gives evidence that mass graves were still being dug until at least 2017. This is the kind of government, the kind of regime, that you don’t establish relations with."

"[The revelations made in such testimonies and the evidence laid out] will facilitate future trials against regime officials if they were caught traveling to Europe."

"The individual acts of torture only constitute a crime against humanity if they are being committed within a specific context, that being a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population. Z’s testimony establishes the crimes were systematic."

Patrick Kroker, senior legal advisor on Syria, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights

Millions of Syrians have been displaced in a decade of fighting    Getty Images

Syrian war planes strafing civilian Sunni Syrians in bread lines, hospitals and medical clinics bombed, barrel bombs targeting Sunni Syrian neighbourhoods, Syrian towns suffering the agonies of prohibited gas attacks. Children arrested, tortured, murdered. Women raped, imprisoned, murdered. Syrian citizens disappeared, never to be seen again alive or dead. Millions of Syrians internally displaced, fleeing bombardment. Millions more becoming  refugees, flooding neighbouring countries for haven, migrating desperately toward Europe.

Most leaders of countries conceive of legacy projects through which their administrations and their names will be respected and held in gratitude by their public. But not necessarily those in the Middle East, and certainly not the Assad family dynasty with their Alawite tribal affiliations and deadly sectarian hatred; a regime well known to have committed atrocities against its own people in the past and committed to carrying on that tradition. Syria and Iraq, both politically Baathist from opposite ends of the spectrum, both preying on their majority population, Sunni and Shia respectively.

The world watched, transfixed with revulsion at television screens, seeing children in agony from chlorine gas bombs hitting their night-time villages courtesy of their president, Bashar al-Assad, whose military was dispatched to clear Syria of the presence of Sunni Muslim 'terrorists', Syrian civilians who had agitated for equal status and treatment with their Alawite Syrian counterparts. They were rewarded by barrel bombs that wrenched their limbs from their torsos; a regime solution for terrorist activity.

Blood covers the hands of an injured boy following airstrikes believed to have been carried out by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, February 2015.   (Mohammed Badra/REUTERS)

An estimated 350,000 to 500,000 Syrian civilians were slaughtered by their own government, innocent civilians whom their president characterized as terrorists to justify his lethal responses to their pleas for equality as Syrian citizens. The bloody war against Sunni Muslim Syrians created 11 million refugees. A few years in to the civil war that proceeded, the regime battling Syrian Sunni militias attempting to overthrow the government that had systematically destroyed their human rights; the instability attracting actual terrorist groups seeing opportunities to advance their own agendas, among them the notorious Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

ISIL terrorists brought horror to the minds of those looking in at the Middle East, with their expanding capture of territory in Iraq and Syria, and their delight in torturing and murdering captured Europeans and Americans alongside their preoccupation with terrorizing and murdering and enslaving Yazidis, and their threats against Christians. Yet despite the terror they inspired in persuading those loyal to ISIL living abroad to launch attacks against Westerners in Europe and the United States, Islamic State could never match the kill rate of an established government that excelled in war crimes against civilians.

When "60 Minutes" documented the extent of the Assad regime's war crimes, activist Mouar Moustafa was the featured personality, a man who was determined to bring the full extent of the blighted criminality of al-Assad to public view through revealing his cache of documents signed by Assad authorizing depraved mass murder alongside thousands of photographs of civilians tortured to death in an accountability mission against his former president.

With the help of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the participation of Iran's proxy terror group Hezbollah and an assortment of Iran-controlled Shi'ite militias, augmented by the aerial bombardments of Russian warplanes, al-Assad finally had the upper hand, and with the dissolution of the Islamic State 'caliphate' the Syrian regime was enabled to restore its territory, mopping up the remainder of the Syrian resistance. The dreadful crimes committed by the Assad regime against its own people cries out for justice. Logically that should come with a trial against Assad himself and his advisers and military commanders.

But the International Criminal Court is disinterested in opening an investigation of Syria, just as the United Nations General Assembly has little interest in holding Syria to account for its paroxysms of mass murder, and the Security Council was never able to launch a condemnation of the regime with two of its permanent members, China and Russia, refusing to give assent. Finally, an accounting of sorts has arisen with a court in Germany having prosecuted and convicted a former Syrian regime officer for crimes against humanity.

 

A court in the German city of Koblenz sentenced former intelligence officer Eyad al-Gharib, 44, to four-and-a-half years in prison for aiding crimes against humanity. Convicted of accompanying 30 detained demonstrators being transported to prison, while fully aware of the systematic torture that awaited them in the prison. al-Gharib, a junior officer, had been arrested in 2019 along with senior regime officer Col.Anwar Raslan, under the principle of universal jurisdiction whereby a national court jurisdiction is given authority in issues of grave crimes against international law, irrespective of where the crimes take place.

Presiding judge Anne Kerber stands before pronouncing her verdict in the court in Koblenz, Germany, on February 24.

While it's a start on seeking justice, much, much more must be accomplished. Justice will only be served when Bashar al-Assad faces the full extent of international law and faces a penalty commensurate with his unspeakable crimes, and along with him, other members of his administration and the Syrian military which destroyed so many lives. President Vladimir Putin also has much to answer for in establishing support for the Syrian regime enabling it with that support to regain Syria while helping to slaughter Syrian civilians in the process.

There is no question the world is weary of these totalitarian governments persecuting innocent people, destroying countless lives, producing innumerable refugees and displaced populations facing miserable living conditions in lives of  traumatized horror. It is just so much easier to feel the horror, dread the outcomes, wish it would all go away, and turn away from it all, if only to maintain one's own sanity, sense of proportion and comfort in living normal lives in countries that sustain the rule of law and security and equality for all.

"This is a historic verdict. Not only because it is the first to convict a Syrian regime official for crimes against humanity, but also because it recognizes his crimes were part of a widespread and systematic attack orchestrated by the highest bodies of Assad's regime."

"This is only the first of many other trials and investigations we are supporting. It is almost ten years since the crimes Eyad A. [al-Gharib] was convicted for were committed in those early days of the uprising as the regime cracked down on bare-armed protesters." 

Nerma Jelacic, director, Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA)

Free to be Happy and Secure In China

"In the opinion of the House, the People's Republic of China has engaged in actions consistent with the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 260, commonly known as the 'Genocide Convention', including detention camps and measures intended to prevent births as it pertains to Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims".

Conservative motion, House of Commons, Ottawa

"[I was] deeply disturbed by horrific reports of human rights violations in Xinjiang, including the use of arbitrary detention, political re-education, forced labour, torture, and forced sterilization."

"We have the responsibility to work with others in the international community in ensuring that any such allegations are investigated by an independent international body of legal experts."

Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau, Ottawa

"Based on the evidence put forward during the subcommittee hearings, both in 2018 and 2020, the subcommittee is persuaded that the actions of the Chinese Communist Party constitute genocide as laid out in the Genocide Convention."

Parliamentary Subcommittee on International Human Rights, Ottawa

People gather on Parliament Hill on Monday, Feb. 22, 2021, to protest the Chinese government's treatment of the Uighur minority in China. (Andrew Lee/CBC)

 

There, it's done. Elected members of Parliament representing all official parties voted unanimously to declare China an absolute human rights abuser, a genocidal government in Beijing, intent on transforming minority Muslim Uyghurs into Han Chinese citizens; their religion denied, culture denied, language denied; separatist aspirations denied, through an institutionalized disappearance of all that it means to be ethnic Muslim Uyghurs in an irreligious ideology of totalitarian Communism.

Unofficially, that is. In the sense that it wasn't the entire government of Canada that committed itself to that declaration. The sad and sorry fact is that the Cabinet of Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau chose to separate themselves from all other Parliamentarians' decision to label the People's Republic for what it is; a genocidal regime that began with Tibet and now Xinjiang to complete its mission of one-for-all, and all-for-one-Xi Jinping idolatry.

While mouthing an opinion eerily similar to that of the convinced members of Parliament who voted 266 - 0 in support of the motion, Canada's minister of foreign affairs 'abstained' from the vote on behalf of the entire Liberal cabinet. Straddling the fence on China is a Liberal hallmark, after all. Absurdly enough, Canada's ambassador to the United Nations, Bob Rae has stated: "There's no question that there's aspects of what the Chinese are doing that fits into the definition of genocide in the Genocide Convention."

Foreign Minister Garneau's mention of an 'investigation by an independent international body of legal experts' points directly to the United Nations. Where it would be natural under any such circumstances for the Human Rights Council to have a good, hard look at China's ongoing discrimination against and deadly dehumanization of Falun Gong, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Hui people -- if they weren't so busy condemning democratic Israel. 

Interestingly enough, China sits on the UNHRC, alongside Russia, Cuba and Pakistan, all stalwarts of human rights support as it pertains to other countries; certainly not their own. Chinese foreign Minister Wang Yi appeared at the UNHRC's 46th session where he proffered out of the goodness of his heart, insight into China's perception of human rights. Where in China "happiness" and"security" are synonymous with China's drive to see its entire population reduced to CCP-supporting zombies.

They will attain happiness and a sense of comforting security by the simple expedient of abandoning the evils of  free thought, free speech, freedom of religion, where "terrorism and separatism" are unequivocally universally condemned by all the people of the People's Republic of China which exists solely to represent the very best interests of its happy population, free to do as they are instructed.

A man wearing a face mask to protect against the coronavirus walks past the Olympic rings on the exterior of the National Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest, which will be a venue for the upcoming 2022 Winter Olympics, in Beijing, Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2021. A motion passed by the House of Commons today calls on the government to lobby for relocation of the games out of China due to the country's human rights record. (Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press)

Canada, Pushing Back at Trump PPE Restrictions

"New Brunswick Power is the electricity provider to Northern Maine."

"There are at least three hospitals in Northern Maine that would get their electricity through New Brunswick Power."

Kirsten Hillman, Canadian Ambassador to Washington, D.C.

In April 2020, American firm 3M was ordered by President Donald Trump to stop sending N95 masks such as this one to Canada, but refused to comply. Photo by Angus Mordant/Bloomberg

Early in Canada's introduction to the pandemic the issue of personal protection equipment became a leading dilemma; Canada hadn't any to speak of. In a fit of generosity and compassion, the government of Canada had seen fit when China was in its early desperation stages of managing an 'epidemic' of SARS-CoV-2 -- when the rest of the world found difficulty imagining that the virus causing COVID-19 would speedily gravitate abroad -- to gratuitously send along Canada's supply of said PPEs.

 

And then Canada discovered it would need them, after all. It might even had made use of the PPE that had been warehoused past its use-before date which it decided to destroy just before Canada itself become embroiled in the predatory virus stalking through its population and panicking its hospitals traumatized over the notion it would never be able to cope with growing numbers of seriously ill people requiring ventilators, many of whom would soon be beyond medical help.

 

Mind, China returned the compliment; when Canada pleaded with Beijing to supply the country with PPE as the world's largest manufacturer of them, it sent along masks and other equipment leading to a big sigh of relief in Canada -- until it was discovered that the deliveries were next to useless; their specifications not up to par, and not worth the effort nor what it cost to access them.

 

Photograph: Nicholas Pfosi/Reuters

And then there was the trifling issue of Canada's relations with its 'best-friend' neighbour when then-President Donald Trump announced his 'America first' sentiments. And the Trump administration restricted shipments of N95 masks and ventilators early spring of 2020, when Canada was desperate for them. Even 3M protested against Mr.Trump's declared strategy of withholding and refusal to permit its masks to be shipped to Canada.

The result led to Canadian officials responding by politely pointing out there were some hospitals in the U.S. that were dependent on Canadian electricity, on Canadian medical personnel working in U.S. hospitals. Canada's U.S. ambassador produced a list of levers at Canada's disposal that could be extremely persuasive; medical equipment suppliers in Canada, the electrical supply for northern Maine among them.

Other Canadian officials met with their U.S. counterparts emphasizing that Canada had the potential should push come to shove, to cause problems for the United States, pointing out the items contained on the list of Canada's contribution to America's well-being. Including special filters for bio-containment suits from 3M produced in Canada; a requirement for the suits to be effective; a paper mill in Nanaimo, B.C. producing specialized fabric for surgical masks and gowns.

It took quite a bit of prodding to convince the Trump administration of the interoperability and interconnectedness of the two neighbours' economies; that neither country gained even a modicum of advantage from export restrictions. It seemed to work, since Mr. Trump relented, setting aside his trumped-up defence production act in prevention of critically needed items leaving the U.S. The resumption of the 3M shipments an adequate assurance of the message having had the requisite impact.

 

A CargoJet flight bearing tens of thousands of pounds of personal protective equipment landed in Hamilton, Ont., earlier this month as part of a made-for-Canada plan to deliver to medical supplies from China to front line workers across the country. Two cargo planes sent to China for pandemic supplies returned home empty Monday. (CargoJet/Twitter)

 

"As previously mentioned, there is a 40 entering the country, meaning aircrews cannot stay at the airport for an extended period of time to wait for supplies to be unloaded onto planes", explained an email between the prime minister's office staffers on the occasion when a Canadian flight had no option but to leave the Shanghai airport absent its order of masks, when Beijing too found reason to retain PPE internally rather than release the products through legitimizing exports.

A German company, Zoll, producing ventilators in the U.S. signed a contract with Canada early in March for the provision of 200 ventilators to arrive in early April. The ventilators were delayed as a result of the company having a supply relationship with the U.S. department of defense, and President Trump had used the defence production act to halt shipments abroad of medical devices.

"Zoll indicated that all its ventilator production will go to the U.S. [DOD/Department of Defense] for at least the next 60 -90 days", the then-Foreign Affairs Minister informed staff at the prime minister's office. An appeal by Canada's health minister to her U.S. counterpart exacted a promise to exempt Canada from the act, and though the shipment was delayed by a month, it was eventually received.

Sleepwalking Intelligence Alerts : Dereliction of Duty

"None of the intelligence we received predicted what actually occurred."

"We properly planned for a mass demonstration with possible violence. What we got was a military-style coordinated assault on my officers and a violent takeover of the Capitol Building."

"I actually just in the last 24 hours was informed by the department that we actually had received that report."

"[Intelligence reports compiled from information from the Capitol Police, the FBI, the Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security and Washington Metropolitan Police showed that] the level of probability of acts of civil disobedience/arrests [on Jan. 6 ranged from] remote [to] improbable."

"In addition, the daily intelligence report indicated that 'the secretary of homeland security has not issued an elevated or imminent alert at this time'."

"Without the intelligence to properly prepare, the USCP was significantly outnumbered and left to defend the Capitol against an extremely violent mob."

"I notified the two sergeant-at-arms by 1:09 p.m. that I urgently needed support and asked them to declare a state of emergency and authorize the National Guard. I was advised by Mr. Irving that he needed to run it up the chain of command. I continued to follow up with Mr. Irving, who was with Mr. Stenger at the time, and he advised that he was waiting to hear back from congressional leadership but expected authorization at any moment."

Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund

 

"That's very concerning whether or not [there are] procedures for the head of the intelligence on the U.S. Capitol Police to get the intelligence report, to review it, especially when there were significant other indications of potential violence."

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.)  

"What the FBI sent, ma'am, on Jan. 5 was in the form of an email."

"[I would think a warning] that something as violent as an insurrection at the Capitol would warrant a phone call or something."

Robert Contee, acting chief, Washington police

"We did discuss whether the intelligence warranted having troops at the Capitol."

"The collective judgement at that time was no -- the intelligence did not warrant that."

Paul Irving, former sergeant-at-arms, House of Representatives and Senate

 

The United States was and is in a turmoil of political, ideological fundamental social disequilibrium. There was so much grumbling, anger, threats, obvious polarization within the population, divisions between rural and urban Americans on the politics they chose under their system of democratic Republicanism, an overall level of alert awareness should have been front and centre in all plans for the January 6 Congressional certification of the election win of Joe Biden for the U.S. presidency.

 

Ever since the October election and the hugely disputed results, the undercurrent of voter fury, the continued incitement to reject the win as unlawful, conceived in a series of corrupt processes, the din on social media of ardent Trump supporters who vowed they would never accept a Democratic win over the incumbent Republican, mirrored in part the reaction of the Democratic furious over the 2015 ascendancy of a Republican candidate to the U.S. presidency. The non-stop efforts to decertify President Trump's win saw its reflection in the more recent obverse. 

The difference, of course, was that while the Democrats used all defamatory means within the law to express their anger and disappointment, the Republicans saw fit to go outside the law to express theirs. They were in actual fact, doing the bidding of the man they were loyal to, who obliquely instructed them in how to proceed, and they obliged. That violent thugs also took part in the effort at an uprising in the seat of American governance should have been predictable.

 

 

And while President Trump saw fit to urge his followers to violently invade Congress, his vice-president was aghast and refused his president's order to oppose Congressional validation of the Biden win, becoming an instant traitor to the cause, and a target for violent abuse. Lawmakers on both sides of the House failed to cover themselves with glory; all too many among them instead behaved like rioters themselves, stopping short of emulating the intruders, paralyzed with fear. All, however, stoked the fires of national fury that resulted in the rampaging mob desecrating Congress.

The FBI had issued a warning notice of the potential for a protest by supporters of Donald Trump  which had the capacity to become violent. The recipient of the notice was the U.S. Capitol Police which gave them ample time to take necessary proactive steps before the assault occurred. Unfortunately top officials in charge of Congress security happened not to have noticed the heads-up. 

 

We've seen this before. When there was a lack of communication and therefore warning, between the CIA and the FBI prior to the 9-11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

 

 

Two Senate panels studying the failures linked to the January attack on the Capitol building heard testimony that gives no credit to those tasked with the security of the building and protection of its inmates, in particular at a crucial time in the turnover of administrations. They were quite simply unprepared for hundreds of Trump loyalists in tactical gear storming the building. 

 

Conflicting accounts of discussions prior to the assault lingered on whether the National Guard be called in for support and whether to do so would slur the reputation of an open Capitol in injured pride as a free and open democracy, for the American public.

Yet the FBI's Norfolk Virginia office sent out a warning notice the day before giving ample warning that extremists were preparing a violent offence the day to follow, in an effort to stave off the departure of President Trump as Joe Biden prepared to ascend to the presidency and accompanying occupation of the White House. 

Shay Horse/AP

Canada's Failure in Accountability, Deliverability of COVID Vaccines

"Canada was pretty slow to make the initial decisions for domestic vaccine development in manufacturing, despite having internationally recognized expertise in vaccine development."

"[Canada] took a careful, risk-averse and committee-based decision approach that led to a relatively modest amount of scattered funding for companies in Canada to develop domestic vaccine."

"This put the financial risk of vaccine development -- and our country's national security-- on them, which I think was a mistake." 

"This really put the major part of the burden of development on the companies themselves. I think if we'd received up-front funding at the beginning -- we'd be well into phase three and [moving] toward licensure by now."

"...I think it's extremely clear that if you look at the success around the globe, decisive and upfront funding of multiple vaccine candidates all the way through to the end was key to both their success and their speed."

John Lewis,CEO. Entos Pharmaceuticals

"[The task force -- COVID-19 Immunity Task Force -- was focused on identifying safe and effective vaccines and to secure a reliable supply for the country.] In doing

 

so, we were also tasked to look at both domestic and international candidates, and to look at the state of biomedical bio-manufacturing capacity in the country."

"As you will recall, there was no vaccine last summer, nor was it clear whether there would ever be a vaccine. I want to stress that most vaccine journeys actually end in failure. So we were really trying to cover our bases with vaccines that we recommended to government."

"The other domestic candidates; some showed promise, but for a variety of reasons the vaccine task force felt that they were at too early a stage for significant investment at the time we looked at them."

Alan Bernstein, member, federal vaccine task force, president, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research

 

These two testimonies before a parliamentary committee looking into the sad and sorry state of Canada's vaccine procurement heard from both a pharmaceutical manufacturing head, and a member of the task force that was set up by the Liberal government to lead Canada  toward vaccine self-sufficiency. Their perspectives are clearly at odds with one another. The message by John Lewis was confidence in the ability of Canadian science, biolaboratories and pharmaceutical companies to produce an efficient and safe vaccine for protection from COVID for Canadians, contrasting with the explanatory hedging of Mr. Bernstein.

The cost to produce a successful vaccine according to Mr.Lewis is around $350 to $600 million; from discovery to finalization of phase three trials. His company had been given a mere $5 million by the National Research Council to pursue those avenues to conclusion. Either an expression of non-confidence in Canadian biopharmaceutical capabilities or the belief that those pharmaceutical companies could pull miracles out of thin air. 

The success of countries like the United Kingdom and the United States, India and Russia, which invested in their own scientists' capabilities with the confidence that laboratories of their own were up to the job of producing a vaccine and making arrangements with pharmaceutical companies to produce large outputs of vaccine more than validates their trust. Gary Kobinger, director of the Infectious Disease Research Centre at Laval University, agreed that the federal government acted slowly, failing to support domestic vaccine development.

 

Senior clinical research nurse Ajithkumar Sukumaran prepares to administer an experimental COVID 19 vaccine to a volunteer at a clinic in London on Aug. 5, 2020. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Dr.Kobinger has had more than ample experience, having been involved in Canadian teams developing vaccines for Ebola and Zika. He described for the committee his non-profit's struggle to obtain federal funding for its own potential COVID-19 vaccine. A piddling $1-million came his way for a preclinical study. "If you look at what's happened in the United States and Great Britain, really huge amounts of investment there. But here, a million dollars, that's not going to get  you very far."

Where the federal government did make its investment was an agreement with CanSino, a Chinese pharmaceutical company linked to the People's Republic of China's military laboratories. Where Canada's National Research Council ostensibly working in tandem with CanSino Biologics handed over the biological platform at no cost to CanSino, upon which it could build its vaccine. The agreement was that the completed vaccine samples would be sent to Canada for phase three trials and subsequent manufacture.

 

That's where Canada put all its financial eggs, until Beijing decided that CanSino's vaccine could be sent anywhere else in the world but not to Canada. So much for that ill-fated and illogical investment on the part of Canada's government. Which, finding itself with no vaccine after all, hurriedly began pre-ordering vaccines in an order of magnitude far surpassing Canada's population needs, but the orders placed at such a late date, also placing Canada at the 'end of the line'. Leaving the nation waiting for vaccines produced elsewhere and prioritized elsewhere.

 

The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine is shown in Calgary last month. Canada's vaccination effort is facing another hurdle after Moderna said it would delay some shipments of its product next month. (Alberta Health Services)

 

The two vaccines that were approved by Health Canada, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, have had production delays, leaving Canada awaiting a minimum number of vaccines to inoculate its most vulnerable populations, while other countries which made sensible and time-sensitive decisions on vaccine acquisition, moved ahead on vaccinating their public, while Canadians wait in frustrated abeyance. Health Canada has still not approved AstraZeneca although it is being used successfully in Britain where a quarter of its population has now been inoculated. All indications are that AstraZeneca is prepared to begin delivering its vaccines immediately.

"[No firm timeline is yet to be announced until approval in Canada for AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine; questions are still being put to the company...] That dialogue with the company, in terms of the finalization of the review, is ongoing."

"It's complicated. We know that we've got different regulations that are looking at the same data for AstraZeneca and are making different decisions based on the science."

"That's why this is taking a little bit longer than the ones that we have done before."

Dr.Supriya Sharma, Chief Medical Adviser, Health Canada

“We blew it."

"When you take the scientific backwardness, combined with the secrecy that didn’t allow outsiders to detect our missteps in 2020, you end up with the disaster we have in 2021."

Dr.Amir Attaran, immunology health law professor, University of Ottawa

The Government of Canada launched the COVID-19 Immunity Task Force (CITF) in late April 2020 to track the spread of the virus in both the general population and priority populations in Canada.

Confronting China's Dismal Human Rights Record

"We firmly oppose that [a motion in Canada's Parliament] because it runs counter to the facts. And it's like, you know, interfering in our domestic affairs."

"There's nothing like genocide happening in Xinjiang at all."

"I think we respect your values. But I think our core values should be: respect facts. And to stop spreading disinformation or even rumours."

Cong Peiwu, Chinese Ambassador to Canada 

"[The motion and vote to follow are a requirement, to send a] clear and unequivocal signal that we will stand up for human rights and the dignity of human rights, even if it means sacrificing some economic opportunity."

Leader of the Official Opposition, Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole

"There is no question there have been tremendous human rights abuses coming out of Xinjiang. [However, use of the word must be] properly justified and demonstrated so as not to weaken the application of 'genocide' in situations in the past."

"[We -- Liberal caucus -- have] taken careful note of conclusions drawn by experts around the world, including findings of crimes against humanity and genocide."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

MPs pass motion declaring genocide against Uighurs in China, despite cabinet abstentions

 

The targeted brutality by China against Tibetans refusing to surrender their sovereignty to a grasping hegemonic China is well enough known in the public sphere. China's threats toward its regional neighbours in its ambitions to dominate and acquire disputed territories along with geographic areas known to be exclusive to China's neighbours' sovereignty has created an aura of anger and trepidation in relation to Beijing's aggressive threats against any who dispute its regional command.

The world has focused on the plight of Turkic Muslim Uyghurs in a Chinese province that was once the homeland of the Uyghurs until it was swallowed into the maw of the People's Republic of China. The Chinese superpower's persecution of the Uyghurs is no secret; their human rights have been unmercifully trampled; forced sterilizations, culture and language suppression, interference in their religious devotion, and of course the 're-education' formula of mind control.

The claim for genocide in describing the plight of a people coerced by force into slave labour, who cannot live free lives because the dominant occupying power considers them to be 'terrorists' in need of de-escalation, to remake them into model Chinese citizens who will nevermore agitate for separation, appears to fall into the guidelines of the UN definition of genocide. A Canadian House of Commons subcommittee documented the human rights abuses leading to the charge of genocide. 

However, Canada's prime minister, who professes to be extremely sensitive about the use of the word 'genocide' to describe Beijing's campaign against the Xinjiang Uyghurs is a craven act of complicity. No such demurrals were expressed when a commissioned report led by a First Nations judge proclaimed that Canada committed 'genocide' against its aboriginal peoples, and it pleased the prime minister to assent to that language in describing Canada.

Under the Liberal Party of Canada a love affair with China has long since taken root, gripped by the potential for trade and investment and business opportunities with the nation with the largest population numbers on Earth. Under this current Liberal government whose ambition was driven to sign a free trade agreement with the Chinese Communist Party, that commitment to ingratiate Canada with the CCP flowered, and for Justin Trudeau, the heir of his father's prime ministerial decision to open full diplomatic ties with post-revolutionary China, no human rights abuses on China's part are too egregious to interfere with his admiration for the power of a totalitarian government.

China's ambassador to Canada knows full well that Beijing's long arm and persuasive funding has gained it the privilege of having its administrative abuses overlooked in favour of trade opportunities. He knows that China instills both awe and fear in the minds of other countries' political heads. He knows that it is Beijing that is interfering in Canada by harassing Chinese-Canadians who fail to support mainland China and decry its takeover of Hong Kong and threats toward Taiwan. Chinese investment in Canadian universities installing its Confucious Institutes to propagandize for China are sinister intrusions.

No, Beijing does not 'respect Canadian values'; it undermines them whenever and however it can. And its high degree of success in presenting itself as a partner in science, education, culture, business and politics, is a crude and effective choreograph undermining Canadian values. Industrial and military espionage is what motivates China. Its diplomatic missions worldwide with their links to the Chinese military and the CCP's agenda are skilled in what they are trained to do. They act as shills for state-linked corporations in communications, pharmacology and advanced technology.

So today, when the vote was cast in Canada's Parliament, it was overwhelming. Support for the recognition of China's persecution of the Uyghurs (Falon Gong, Tibetans, Christians aside) passed unanimously. With the entire Liberal cabinet of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau abstaining. Establishing beyond doubt that the oft-declared 'values' of this government supportive of human rights is a front for a screen of 'progressive' values. Where Justin Trudeau can see fit to criticize the democracy of India's Narendra Modi for his dispute with farmers with an underlying tone of support for Sikh Khalistanis, yet remain loyal to Communist China's agenda of suppressing Uyghur 'terrorism'.

Protesters gather outside the Parliament buildings in Ottawa, Monday, February 22, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

Germany's Extermination Laboratory

Nazi parade in Amsterdam, early in Germany’s occupation of the Netherlands. ‘The Beehive’ department store, Jewish-owned before the occupation, is seen in the background. (public domain)

"The Dutch armed forces surrendered on May 14, 1940, the fifth day of the German invasion. The Netherlands securely in the hands of the German army, the Nazi regime appointed Arthur Seyss-Inquart as Reich Commissar for the country. His most important subordinate and rival was Hanns Albin Rauter, the General Commissar for Security, a Higher SS and Police Leader dispatched by Heinrich Himmler. These two Austrians, both executed as war criminals after the Third Reich’s defeat, could rely on the National Socialist Movement, an indigenous fascist party led by Anton Mussert, for enthusiastic support."

"The 140,000 Jews residing in the Netherlands thus had good reason to be afraid. Among them were 25,000 foreign, mostly German Jews, who had sought refuge there, including Anne Frank and her family. Over the next several months, the expected anti-Semitic measures came. Seyss-Inquart and Rauter passed legislation barring Jews from holding public office. In October, all Dutch civil servants had to complete forms—one specifically designed for Jews, the other for Aryans. At the same time, Jewish businesses were also forced to register with the government. The process of removing Jews from the civil service then ensued in early November. In January 1941, the Nazis demanded registration of all Jews, as well as people of mixed ancestry. This insidious process, gradually and methodically implemented, of identifying and separating Jews from everyone else, relegated them to pariah status in their own country."

"Following this wave of reactionary legislation, two incidents in February 1941 demonstrated that the Jewish population in Amsterdam would not hesitate to protect themselves. Feeling emboldened, the Defense Division, the paramilitary arm of Mussert’s organization, openly attacked Jews in Amsterdam. Young Jewish men fought back fiercely and, in one confrontation, killed a Dutch National Socialist." "On February 19, German police entered a popular ice cream parlor in South Amsterdam owned by Erich Cahn, a German Jew and refugee. Mistaken for Dutch Nazis, this patrol was sprayed by ammonium gas from an improvised device in the parlor. In retaliation, the Germans arrested, tortured, and sentenced Cahn to death by firing squad."

"Ever mindful to send a message, Seyss-Inquart’s government additionally seized 425 Jews, literally grabbing them from Amsterdam’s streets, and deported them to Buchenwald.  Of them, 389 were sent from there to Mauthausen. Only a few survived. The brutality displayed in these roundups not only shocked people but stirred them to act."

Opposition took shape around the radical Left. The Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN), banned by the German authorities, gave voice and organization to these stirrings. A meeting organized by the Communists and attended by trade-union representatives happened on the 24th. Two CPN militants, Piet Nak and Willem Kraan, called for a general strike. Leaflets were distributed, emblazoned with the words: 'Strike! Strike! Strike! Shut down all of Amsterdam for a day'!" 

Dr. Jason Dawsey, research H\historian, The Institute for the Study of War and Democracy, The National WWII Museum, New Orleans

‘February Strike’ in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 1941 (public domain)

 "We always thought the first deportation train departed in July 1942. These razziamen were already deported on 27 February 1941, so that's much earlier."

"It was a kind of laboratory [for the Nazis] to improve their knowledge of everything that we see at Auschwitz on a much, much bigger scale."

"[Those in command at Mauthausen, where the Dutch Jewish men were temporarily incarcerated could select whether to gas people] during the bus ride, halfway to the castle -- and then at Hartheim, there was a kind of place where no one could see what was going on."

Historian Wally de Lang

Dutch Jews board the train that is to take them to Auschwitz. Photograph from 1942 or 1943. Photographer: Rudolf Breslauer. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Rechten: Public domain

Hundreds of Dutch Jews wee rounded up in a razzia in early 1941, taken off the streets of Amsterdam, marking the first Nazi raids on Jews in Western Europe. This was the beginning of an operation and transport to a killing site that became a training camp for German military personnel who would specialize in the exacting necessity of exterminating European Jews. The fine points of gassing people to death in large numbers on an experimental basis to fine-tune and expedite the process needed a living laboratory for success, and the Netherlands was chosen as the initial round-up site.

This roundup (razzia) was occasioned in particular by the death of a Dutch Nazi collaborator who had been killed in a violent confrontation between Dutch fascists in alliance with the German military which had entered the Netherlands the spring before, and young Jewish Dutchmen who had determined to defend themselves. Aboard a deportation train on 27 February 1941 the men disembarked at the site of a 17th century castle-cum-'hospital' in upper Austria, Hartheim Castle.

The castle had, a year earlier, been transformed into a killing centre with the installation of a gas chamber retrofitted in a room especially adapted for the purpose. According to writer-historian Wally de Lang in her newly published book, the castle was destined to become a training camp preparatory to large-scale gas chamber operations to handle an anticipated expulsion of Jews from all points in German-occupied Europe to the Final Solution death camps.

 

In Amsterdam's Jodenbuurt, Jewish men are rounded up and arrested by German soldiers in February 1941. (Public domain)

These experimental test chambers for gassing prisoners of war at Hartheim pre-dated the creation of the Final Solutio,n in January 1942. Of the group of 340 Jews who had been transported from Amsterdam, 108 were murdered at Hartheim in a three-day period in August 1941. Efficiency was a German byword. The families of these men were sent notices of death, attributed to fictional causes. This, at a time when the full agenda of the extermination of Europe's Jews was not yet openly being carried out.

 

The castle was not meant to be the venue of such a ignominiously horrendous rehearsal for genocide. It had been donated by heirs to the local welfare society decades earlier, to be dedicated to the care of mentally and physically afflicted people, but by 1940, 30,000 of those individuals became afflicted in a eugenics network of annihilation courtesy of the Third Reich, to rid the world of the mentally unstable and physically disabled.

 

German pogrom on Amsterdam’s Jewish Quarter in February 1941 (public domain)

And although the Nazi Eugenics program came to a halt when the public became aware of the situation and reacted with outrage in 1940, the castle went on to lend its premises to the deaths of 12,000 prisoners of war from 1941 to 1944, in accordance with Action 14f13, an ordinance to eliminate concentration camp prisoners no longer capable of performing slave labour. Poles and Spaniards were among the national and ethnic groups that were targeted for elimination by gassing, though Jews remained the primary target.

Mauthausen, Dachau and Gusen concentration camps, all associated with Hartheim, saw their staff handle logistics and administration. Mauthausen qualified as one of the most brutal of Nazi concentration camps, its complex including some 100 sub-camps spaced throughout Austria, holding a total of 85,000 people by 1945. When researching her book The Raids of 22 and 23 February 1941 in Amsterdam, Ms.De Lang discovered that the Dutch Jews were taken frist from Amsterdam to Camp Schoorl, a prison camp in the Dutch dunes.

Of the 525 men originally seized 388 were dispatched to Buchenwald where many died, and 350 were sent on from there to Mauthausen where many others perished. Three months on, 108 of the original group were gassed at Hartheim. As a percentage of their Jewish population that died in the Holocaust, the Netherlands had a higher rate than other Western European countries, partially attributed to the aid given the Nazi occupiers (which was by no means unique to the Netherlands) by fascist Netherlanders.

Organizing the ‘February Strike’ in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1941 (public domain)