Hey everyone. Nathan Rich here again.
Today I want to talk to you about something I haven't really brought up in
several months. Remember back in 2018 when Huawei's CFO Meng WanZhou was
arrested in Canada?
Well she's still just sitting there under house arrest, wondering why
. Officially the charges against Huawei's CFO are that she lied to HSBC and
then HSBC violated the U.S.
sanctions against Iran.
And so therefore it's her fault.
The evidence is a PowerPoint presentation that she gave to HSBC which hid the
fact that Huawei was doing business in Iran.
And so the U.S.
had its northern colony of Canada arrest her.
Last year, I wondered if this arrest was politically motivated.
This year there's not a lot of wondering going on.
John Bolton, a weaselly neocon in the US, wrote a book that essentially showed
that Trump was viewing this arrest as a political arrest.
Later he went back against himself and his book, so it's kind of confusing as
to what exactly he is claiming happened.
But even without that weasel we know for a fact that Trump very publicly
showed that this arrest is being viewed as a political arrest and even
Canadian officials said that this was a highly political arrest.
But even if this is a politically motivated arrest at least we know that this
is the normal kind of arrest for this type of situation, right?
No.
ZTE was fined.
Deutsche Bank was fined.
Standard Chartered was fined.
HSBC was fined.
The Royal Bank of Scotland was fined.
In fact there are so many companies that have violated the US Iran sanctions
, it would take ten minutes to list them all.
And all the ones I could find had the exact same thing happen to them - they
were fined. Amazon violated the U.S.
sanctions against Iran.
They were fined. But Huawei?
The CFO is arrested in another country and held for going on years now,
awaiting possible extradition and potentially spending the rest of her life in
prison. But there's not really any reason to suspect that the U.S.
is specifically targeting Huawei, right?
Wrong. William Barr, another neocon in the US, gave a very long speech
detailing just how much he hated China.
And in it he talked about how technological supremacy was paramount to the
American way of life.
It has been America's technological prowess that has made us prosperous and
secure.
Our standard of living, our expanding economic opportunities for our young
people and for future generations, and our national security all depend on
our continued technological leadership.
In other words America needed to stay technologically advanced so that it
could continue to be number one and be dominant in the world.
And then he specifically called out Huawei as a threat to that technological
supremacy. The question is whether within this window the United States and
our allies can mount sufficient competition to Huawei to retain and capture
enough market share to sustain the kind of long term and robust competitive
position necessary to avoid surrendering dominance to China.
The time is very short and we and our allies have to act quickly.
And some Republicans have gotten behind this message, abandoning all principle
and begging for a much larger and stronger government to control the market
in a very anti capitalistic way.
You see America has led the way in the early generations of wireless
communications but with 5G they've lagged so far behind that several other
countries now have pretty good 5G technology.
And of course the first one was China and Huawei was the company to bring that
to the forefront. Now remember that Meng Wanzhou is being accused of lying to
HSBC so that HSBC would clear money transactions to Iran.
So the whole backbone of this thing is we don't want to deal with Iran.
Which is pretty interesting because William Barr actually gave us two
alternative companies.
So instead of using Huawei, we can use them.
One of them is Ericsson.
That's right, the same Ericsson that just recently got in trouble for paying
huge amounts of bribes and "widespread corruption.
" And by the way when Ericsson got in trouble for violating US sanctions,
which it did, it was fined.
For some reason their CFO wasn't arrested.
Weird. And the other company that we can totally depend on is Nokia.
No I didn't misspeak.
Apparently, and I just did a lot of research and figured this out, apparently
Nokia still exists.
That's true. And it turns out AOL, Lycos, MySpace and a whole host of other
crazy companies that you wouldn't expect like Yahoo, still actually exist.
So we have Ericsson, which is widely corrupt and violates sanctions, and we
have Nokia, which I literally didn't even know still was around until just
now. But at least we know that these two companies don't deal with Iran,
right? Wrong.
Both Ericsson and Nokia have very long histories of doing business with Iran.
In fact the PowerPoint presentation that's being used against Huawei
specifically mentions that both Ericsson and Nokia are doing business with
Iran in it.
So we know this actually has nothing to do with Iran because we're being told
"Well this company has dealt with Iran, so don't use them.
Use these other two that we're friendly with, that also deal with Iran." OK so
if this has nothing to do with Iran then what does this have to do with?
She was arrested when every other company under similar situations was just
fined. She was arrested - totally coincidentally - exactly at a key moment in
the China U.S.
trade war negotiations.
Officials described her arrest as "political." Officials linked her arrest to
the trade war. Huawei was publicly targeted.
OK. Well at least we know that the arrest was done in the legal way, right?
Certainly at least that is true?
No. Her arrest was an abandonment of Canadian law.
We have document and video evidence that shows that the Canadian government
intentionally left a multi hour window in between her landing in Canada and
her official arrest so that they could interrogate her without her being
aware of her rights.
That is illegal in Canada.
And remember all of this is based off of the evidence of a PowerPoint
presentation that allegedly shows that she told HSBC that Huawei doesn't have
business in Iran.
And so they had no idea what was going on and they violated the US sanctions
. A PowerPoint presentation.
This PowerPoint presentation.
You know the one that says on Page 6, "Huawei conducts normal business
activities in Iran and provides civilian telecommunication solutions in line
with global standards and export control requirements..." Which for some
reason wasn't included in the request from America to Canada.
I wonder why they didn't leave that in.
So what did HSBC say when this truth came out?
Well they said "Oh I mean she told us but she just told like some people and
those people didn't tell some of the senior staff members here.
.." So because some HSBC employees apparently didn't tell some other HSBC
employees, that's Huawei's fault.
And not only is it always fault, it's so much their fault that they should be
punished more than any other company anyone has ever heard of, ever.
And another way that this has been described is that Huawei was hiding the
fact that it was using an "unofficial subsidiary" to do its trade.
Now the problem with this whole theory is that they know very well that there
is no such thing as an "unofficial subsidiary." So Huawei was never accused
or charged with anything having to do with an "unofficial subsidiary,"
because it's not illegal - it's not even a term.
It's just totally made up for this case.
So because they just made this word up and they didn't have anything to
charge Huawei with, they came up with something which is, "OK.
Fraud because you didn't clearly explain that you had a relationship with
this company." That is, of course, other than this entire section dedicated
to explaining Huawei's relationship to this company.
Other than that they had no idea that there was any relations.
Another interesting thing here is that Canada has gone out of its way to
block some of the documents from being declassified because "national
security" might be affected.
What could Canada possibly reveal about this arrest that would be a danger to
national security?
I mean really think about that.
Now ,at the time that Ms Meng was arrested we know that HSBC was under
investigation. So one of the theories that I've heard as to what this arrest
is all about is as follows.
The US, operating under advice from such neocons as William Barr, sought a way
to go after Huawei.
And then they thought, "Well we're investigating all these banks (perhaps for
separate reasons) and we found that HSBC is violating sanctions as it has
done again and again and again over the years.
But this time, we can have them shift the blame to Huawei so they won't get
fined; they won't get in trouble.
And then we have this political arrest that we can make.
That way we can ensure that we are the leaders in 5G technology even though
literally speaking, we are not the leaders in 5G technology.
We can just jimmy rig it so that now we are.
On top of that we have a chip we can negotiate with in the trade war." So if
that theory is true then that means this entire arrest is basically about
money and political money.
So to all the people out there who still believe that Meng Wanzhou should be
detained further or even extradited or put in jail or whatever, I just want
to clarify your position and read it back to you, just to confirm.
Canada violated several of its own laws during the arrest.
Canada and the U.S.
have both said that this is a political arrest.
Trump has publicly mentioned using this arrest as a negotiation tool in the
trade war. Evidence surrounding the arrest is being actively suppressed by
the Canadian government as a threat to national security.
The arrest is highly unusual for this type of charge.
Almost completely unheard of, actually.
The timing is extremely suspicious.
The arrest was intentionally set up to leave a multi-hour window of illegal
search and illegal interrogation.
The evidence that we have access to clearly shows that HSBC was notified of
Huawei business in Iran.
The evidence also shows that the alternative companies we're being offered
also have business in Iran.
All signs seem to point to this being a bogus charge.
This appears to be a politically motivated arrest, which was performed
illegally. It seems to be based on dubious charges with evidence omitted and
rights being intentionally violated.
And just to clarify your position, you look at all that stuff and you say
"Well that's the cons, but we still got to do it because.
.. Erickson and/or Nokia should have more money..." Is that right, or?
Is it...
Why is it again?
Why are we destroying the entire international market?
Even though the US and the EU lost this particular market competition we still
deserve the money, so the US should force the entire global market to move
into the direction that it wants it to go, right?
I mean... this is your argument?
If this is what you believe then you aren't talking about American core values
you're just talking about corporatism; you understand that, right?
This has nothing to do with freedom.
Nothing to do with justice.
Nothing to do with what's right.
You're just literally saying "We want more money and so we'll do whatever it
takes to crush the competition when it makes a better product than us, so
that we can get that money.
" That's very weird, complicated belief.
Let me tell you what I believe, OK?
You won't need a pen and paper for this.
You ready?
Meng Wanzhou should be treated exactly as negatively or as positively as any
other CFO from any other company anywhere that has ever been accused of
anything. And I personally strain to understand how people can argue against
that, even for the promise of a lot of money going to your side.
It still seems very bizarre to disagree with something that straightforward
and balanced. I'm going to keep watching this situation but it never ceases
to amaze me how far some people are willing to go to try to be number one.
And that attitude makes them act like a big number 2.
Thanks everybody. Xiexie.