Politics – Page 11 – Spinor Info

Socialist economy

Economy, Health, Politics No Responses »

Mar 172020

There are photos of empty store shelves circulating on the Internet, promoted in particular by Americans supporting Donald Trump, as examples of what stores would look like under socialism.

No, my friends, this is what stores looked like under socialism. Socialism that I experienced first-hand, not some abstraction. And it wasn’t pleasant. But the stores were… well, see for yourself. This is no propaganda photo, but a picture from the collection of my late father-in-law, who was a professional photographer. (The hand-written blue arrow is there to point out that under a sign advertising first-class poultry, there are meats hanging that definitely don’t appear to have come from any chicken):

In contrast, and contrary to what the poster tweeted, the following is a picture of Trumpian capitalism in a moment of crisis:

In fact, as some commenters pointed out, a centrally planned command economy in a police state may be better able to cope with a crisis of this nature than market capitalism, even with competent political leadership.

Xenophobia

Canada, Health, Politics No Responses »

Mar 172020

A Trumpist friend of mine (yes, I have Trump-supporting friends; I refuse to let politicians, left or right, to make me distrust my neighbor just because our political opinions differ) made a disparaging comment about Justin Trudeau, calling him xenophobic on account of Canada shutting its borders to foreigners.

No, my friend, that is not xenophobic. If you want to know why I call the American president a xenophobic asshole (again, forgive my language, dear readers, but I am done being nice to that boneheaded moron), here is a perfect example:

Yes, this is a tweet by a xenophobic schmuck.

Responsible businesses

Canada, Commerce, Health, Politics No Responses »

Mar 142020

Businesses appear to be somewhat freaked out by the COVID-19 pandemic. The good news is that many of these businesses choose to act responsibly, in the public interest, as opposed to trying to turn a global health crisis into short-term profiteering.

Several newspapers and magazines made their COVID-19 coverage accessible even for non-subscribers. In Canada, CBC Newsworld is now carried for free by several cable providers. One of the largest GIS software firms, ESRI, is making tools available for free online.

Even smaller firms follow suit. There is StarNet, makers of X-Win32 and FastX, popular software packages that can be used to access UNIX/Linux servers remotely from Windows workstations. They, too, are now offering free 6-month FastX licenses to anyone, to help facilitate work-from-home arrangements. I have liked this company ever since I first became familiar with their products back in the 1990s; now I like them even more (hence my decision to use their product logo to illustrate this post.)These steps, taken by businesses large and small, give me hope, even as I watch that compulsive liar of an infantile US president who cannot even get his story straight and his opposition who think that the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on Trump’s presidency is more important than the number of people the pandemic kills; or as I watch Canadian opposition politicians (looking at your Twitter feed, Andrew Scheer!) who use even COVID-19 as a cheap excuse for Trudeau-bashing. Can you please put this partisan shit aside, follow the lead of the aforementioned businesses, and start acting like, you know, grown-ups?

About the incompetent-in-chief

Health, Politics No Responses »

Mar 122020

Trump is incompetent. America’s most Stable Genius is probably the most boneheadedly incompetent president in my lifetime, if not in the entire history of the great United States.

Take his announcement last night of the travel ban from Europe. First, let me state that the policy is, I believe, the right one: restricting international travel is the single biggest thing governments can do to slow the spread of a communicable illness. Despite being Draconian, despite inconveniencing hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, it was therefore the sanest thing to do, and I am glad that for a change, Trump listened to smart people in his administration.

Unfortunately, Trump obviously thinks life is a reality show, where bending the truth for the sake of maximizing entertainment value is not only acceptable but expected behavior. Which is why, if you only listened to Trump’s televised speech, without actually bothering to fact check it against the Web sites of the White House or the Department of Homeland Security, you could have come to the false conclusion that there might be a rush on airports as desperate Americans try to get home on one of the last few flights from the continent, or that trans-Atlantic trade is about to be shut down. Neither of which is the case, actually; US citizens can still return home and trans-Atlantic trade continues. The actual ban affects aliens who have spent any time in the Schengen zone within the past two weeks (like me; I presume I therefore cannot travel to the United States for the next couple of weeks, as I am not a US citizen or resident and I just returned from the Schengen zone this Monday.)

And Trump is also a hatemongerer, who feeds off dividing people. I cannot think of any US president in my lifetime: Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama — who would have presented the coronavirus thing as anything other than a global threat to humanity, a shared responsibility, not as an “us vs. them” affair, blaming China for the “foreign virus”, blaming Europe for not taking measures similar to those taken by the US (which is not even true, but that’s besides the point.) But Trump? As I said, like a leech or a vampire, he feeds off hate and distrust.

And then consider the following: This smartest president ever, this “stable genius” as he once characterized himself, actually disbanded his own National Security Council’s Global Health Unit, because, according to Mr. Stable Genius, it’s something that “you can never really think is going to happen.” Well, Mr. Stable Genius, I can offer a few names who actually did think that something like COVID-19 might happen: the aforementioned Messrs. Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr. and Obama… and that’s just in my lifetime.

You know, Mr. Stable Genius, I am trying to give you credit for finally listening to people who, unlike you, actually know what they are doing. But what I really feel… I hesitate to use profanity in my blog, but in this case I will make a rare exception, with apologies to my readers: I cannot wait until you just get the fuck out of that White House and return to obscurity as a failed rich boy, a crooked real estate villain, a reality TV has-been. The sooner you fuck off, the better we all are, Americans and other citizens, Republicans and Democrats alike.

PS: To my Republican-leaning friends who still defend this idiot and think that my criticism is evidence of me suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome: Please look at the facts. Please recognize that this is not about “us vs. you”, not about liberals vs. conservatives, not about The Donald vs. Hillary, not about trying to undo an election. I understand why you voted for Trump and I accept that he actually delivered on a number of fronts, meeting or even exceeding your expectations. That does not make him any less dangerous, as he turns us against each other, makes us distrust each other more than we distrust actual enemies, and takes steps that reek of colossal incompetence. Like that speech last night. And before you dismiss all that, here is one number for you to ponder: 21,200.62. That’s the DJIA tonight, down from 27090.86 just eight days ago. That’s nearly 25% of the investments and retirement savings of millions of Americans and others, wiped out. In a market driven mostly by middle-aged white men. Trump’s primary voting base. Do they suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, too, when they conclude that his speech did more harm than good, driving markets down at an unprecedented pace?

Travel in the time of coronavirus

Aviation, Health, Personal, Politics No Responses »

Mar 102020

I returned from a brief trip to Hungary yesterday.

My return flight was a bit eerie. Here is a picture of a part of the business class section of this Austrian Airlines 767:

It was not quite this empty (I tried to avoid photographing any passengers, for obvious privacy reasons) as there were a few passengers there, but only a few. Most reservations were canceled.

Is this dramatic response to the coronavirus justified? Parts of China, all of Italy under quarantine? Schools, public gatherings canceled around the world? A cruise ship industry in crisis, a global airline industry poised to lose hundreds of billions of dollars? Planes flying empty just to maintain the respective airlines’ claims on lucrative routes, or planes not flying at all, like the A380 fleet of Lufthansa?

Meanwhile, as Trump himself is fond to point out, the number of conformed coronavirus infections (most of which result in a mild illness, nothing more) worldwide is dwarfed by the number of influenza deaths this flu season.

Of course the flu is (more or less) predictable. The coronavirus is not. And its fatality ratio is much higher.

Even so, I have to admit that I wonder if the cure is causing more harm than the disease.

Then again… if we are just one minor mutation away from a Spanish Flu like pandemic, perhaps the drastic steps are justified. After all, at least some folks are criticizing the WHO for not going far enough, for failing to declare a global pandemic.

No matter what, flying back home in the time of coronavirus was an eerie experience. It was a bit like something straight out of the first episode of a science-fiction television series.

And yes, I was using my limited supply of hand sanitizer quite liberally. After all, you can never be certain…

Banana republic

Politics No Responses »

Feb 042020

Before heading to bed, I briefly turned on CNN, to listen to a few minutes of the coverage of the Iowa caucus fiasco.

In light of what I am hearing, I only have one question: Exactly when did the great United States turn into an incompetent banana republic?

Hmmm, actually, I also have a second question. Is this how the Democratic Party planning to beat Donald Trump in November?

Epidemic

Health, Media, Politics No Responses »

Jan 242020

A terrible sickness is upon us.

As of mid-January, just in the great United States 13 to 18 million people have been inflicted. Nearly 6 million required medical visits, and some 120,000 have been hospitalized. Worse yet, though the numbers are uncertain, somewhere between 6,600 and 17,000 people died. And that’s nearly two week old data; since then, I am sure there have been more victims.

Oh, you thought I was talking about the coronavirus outbreak that leads the evening newscast?

No. I am talking about the flu. Specifically, the 2019-2020 flu season, with data from the Centers for Disease Control.

As for the coronavirus, there have been a grand total of two confirmed cases so far in the US. None in Canada.

And that sums up the problem that I see with how we are being informed nowadays. Things that are exceptional and sensational lead newscasts. Things that are mundane are left forgotten, even when they are orders of magnitude more likely to affect you.

That is not to say that I disregard the threat that the coronavirus represents, or that I blindly criticize the response of authorities (in China and elsewhere) who are trying to contain a virus before it becomes more widespread. But keeping things in perspective is important.

Uncanny coincidence

Culture, History, Politics No Responses »

Jan 052020

Back in 1944, Astounding Science Fiction magazine published a short story, Deadline by Cleve Cartmill, about a devastating war on an alien planet, and the development of a uranium fission bomb. The details of the bomb were sketchy, but at least a few of the details provided (about isotope separation, about the concern that a fission explosion might “ignite” nearby matter and cause global devastation) were sufficiently accurate to earn the magazine a visit by the FBI.

Something similarly uncanny happened three days ago, when the New York Times published an opinion piece by a former Obama aid about hypersonic missiles. The article included, among other things, the following paragraph: “What if the former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Qassim Suleimani, visits Baghdad for a meeting and you know the address? The temptations to use hypersonic missiles will be many.”

Hours later, Suleimani was killed at Baghdad airport (although not by a hypersonic missile, just an ordinary drone strike.)

I doubt Mr. Trump was acting on the advice of a former Obama aid, so almost certainly, this was pure coincidence. But that is just uncanny.

The consequences of the Suleimani attack, unfortunately, are another matter. One has to wonder if there was any real thinking, any real strategy. Even Fox’s Tucker Carlson chose to question the wisdom of this act, blasting the hawks who may have been responsible for talking Trump into taking this reckless step.

The attack was a godsend to the ayatollahs. It offers them the best possible way out of an wave of protests unprecedented in the history of the Islamic Republic. It finally prompted Iraq’s parliament to vote in favor of the removal of remaining US troops. And it gave Iran an excuse to completely abandon the nuclear deal.

No, I don’t think the ayatollahs will escalate. They don’t have to. The threat of imminent war is always a more effective means to control the population than actual war. And facing an incompetent imbecile, they can just bide their time, while Trump loses whatever goodwill remains among America’s allies towards his administration by threatening Iranian cultural sites in retaliation.

The roaring twenties

Canada, Environment, History, Personal, Politics, Pop culture No Responses »

Jan 012020

A year ago today, I was looking forward to 2019 with skepticism. I expressed concern about a number of things. Not everything unfolded according to my expectations, and that’s good news. What can I say, I hope 2020 will continue the trend of defying pessimistic predictions.

The political crisis in the United States continues to simmer with Trump’s impeachment, but it remains less dramatic than I feared;
NATO and the EU remain intact for now, though unresolved issues remain;
An orderly Brexit is now possible with Johnson’s election victory; I still think the Brits are shooting themselves in the foot with this idiocy, but an orderly Brexit may be the best possible outcome at this point;
Sliding towards authoritarianism in places like Hungary and Poland remains a grave concern, but there is also pushback;
Russia continues to muck up things in untoward ways, but there was no significant (e.g., military) escalation;
China is ramping up its campaign against the Uyghurs with an ever widening system of concentration camps but there was no significant escalation with respect to their neighbors;
Japan, sadly, resumed whaling, but so far I believe the impact is minimal;
Brazil continues to wreak havoc in the rain forest, but there is pushback here as well;
Lastly, Canada did have elections, but populism was crushed (for now at least) with the defeat of Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party.

And now here we are, entering the roaring twenties! A decade that will bring things like Prohibition and organized crime in the United States, institutionalized antisemitism in Hungary, the rise of fascism in Italy, the Great Depression… no, wait, that was a century ago. Here’s to hoping that humanity got a little wiser in the past 100 years.

Speaking of that century, my wife’s Mom and mine can now both tell us that they lived in every decade of a century, having been born in the 30’s and now living in the 20’s.

Red sky, green sky, blue sky and the post-truth world

Politics No Responses »

Nov 172019

The other day, I used an analogy to describe the likely result of trying to understand a scientifically or technologically complex issue from the media, from political pundits.

Imagine you lived your entire life in a windowless room, but you heard that outside your room, there is this thing called the sky, and it has a color. But you hear conflicting opinions. One side insists that the sky is red, absolutely red, has never been anything other than red, redder than a boiled lobster’s arse as a matter of fact. The other side tells you that the sky is, and has always been, green and anyone who ever said that it was red is a liar, a cheat, committing a crime against humanity.

So by carefully considering both sides, cautiously and meticulously balancing the conflicting views, you finally arrive at the conclusion that the color of the sky is… What exactly?

Chances are that you will never guess its true color.

But wait, it gets even worse. In real-life debates, it is not always red-sky vs. green-sky. Sometimes it is red-sky vs. blue-sky. That is to say that at least some of the time, one side will, in fact, be representing the truth (or at least a reasonable facsimile of the truth.) By giving both sides a balanced opportunity to convince you, then, you are in fact farther from the truth than you would be if you had simply picked the right side in the first place. But how would you know which side is right?

In the end, you’d have to make an actual observation or read the scientific or technical literature, instead of listening to pundits. But this puts you in a difficult situation. Stuck between the red-sky and the green-sky side, you’ll learn what it’s like not to have any friends. But getting stuck in the red-sky vs. blue-sky debate makes it even worse, because now the red-sky folks will see you as just yet another diehard biased blue-sky fan, while the blue-sky folks will think that you are one of them, that you bought into their religion instead of arriving there by way of sound reasoning, and the moment you actually contradict some aspect of their dogma, you will be branded a traitor or worse.

Welcome to the post-truth world.

You will be assimilated – but not by the Borg

Canada, Politics No Responses »

Nov 032019

OK, these days I tend to have mostly liberal political views. Trump gives me the creeps. Though not with great enthusiasm, but I rooted for Trudeau over Scheer. More broadly, I prefer a welcoming, open, tolerant society over one that is isolationist and xenophobic. I prefer a comprehensive social safety net even at the expense of higher taxes. And as a middle-aged white man, I am not the least bit worried that I am being marginalized by women or visible minorities; quite the contrary, my concern is that both women and minorities still often face prejudice and stereotypes, and have to fight uphill battles.

But every once in a while, I run into things that just make me want to root for Trump. As in, “in your face, you clowns”.

Like, when, a license plate that clearly alludes to a Star Trek meme is suddenly banned because some social justice warrior finds it offensive.

A perfectly ordinary English word is now banished from Manitoba license plates because it happened to remind someone of the sad history of aboriginal Canadians.

Yes, it seems that resistance is indeed futile. When SJWs arrive, you will be assimilated. And you will not even be allowed to say so, because the word itself gets banned and you’re only allowed to use words from the list approved by Ministry of Tolerance or whatever.

Darn it, let me present my own, slightly modified version of this license plate, appropriate for this occasion I believe:

Just to make it clear, it is not my intent to make light of the suffering that Canada’s aboriginal population experienced for many generations. The cultural genocide, sexual abuse, forced assimilation, broken up families, broken lives, economic deprivation, not to mention all the things that are still going on, from chronic unemployment and inadequate medical care to the lack of clean drinking water (in a supposedly first world country!)… These are all real tragedies, tangible problems and it is Canada’s shame that they remain largely unsolved in 2019.

But none of these problems will be addressed by this cottage industry of phony outrage over ridiculous things like a dictionary word on a bleeping license plate or the words of a 1940s popular song. If anything, letting people supply their own context and find offense in everything achieves the exact opposite. It cheapens genuine, real concerns and subjects them to ridicule, ultimately harming the very people that these fearless warriors of political correctness are pretending to defend. In reality, of course, that’s not what they are doing. Rather, they are Trump’s counterparts on the opposite end of the political palette: narcissistic poseurs, infantile hypocrites playing the self-aggrandizing role of valiant defenders of the faithful.

Trump letter meme generator

Politics No Responses »

Oct 232019

World, please say hello to my Donald Trump letter generator, which allows you to create and print letters in the style of the free world’s fearless leader’s most recent missive to the Turkish President.

Here is one example. Guess the date is a little off; the meme generator always uses today’s date.

Enjoy!

[All processing is done by your browser. No information is sent to my server.]

De Niro’s opinion on Fox News

Politics, Television No Responses »

Sep 302019

One of the few news shows I still watch is Reliable Sources on CNN, a weekly backgrounder on Sundays.

Yesterday, Robert De Niro was interviewed in one segment.

He certainly did not hide his opinion about Fox News. Gave me a good chuckle, too, but then I remembered why he was saying what he was saying and it no longer felt funny at all.

So this is how the planet is killed…

Environment, Politics No Responses »

Aug 222019

The rainforest of the Amazon burns, like it never burned before.

Image credit: NOAA

And nobody gives a flying fig.

I am officially done. I am in my fifties. I don’t have children. I don’t frigging care what the planet will look like 50 or 100 years from now. I don’t plan to be a jerk: I won’t intentionally pollute, but from now on, I no longer care either. If those who are (much) younger than I, those who have children who will inherit this planet are unconcerned, why on Earth should I worry?

The fact that there is no global outrage, no emergency session of the Security Council, no economic sanctions, no threat of an international intervention, just (apart from social media and a few published articles) deafening silence tells me all I need to know.

Screw the planet, my fellow inmates living on this planet are telling me, and finally, I listen.

That Brexit disaster

History, Internet, Politics No Responses »

Aug 202019

I have been reading dire predictions about the increasingly likely “no deal” Brexit that will take place this Halloween.

Today, I ran across two things that drove the point home for me more than anything else.

First (actually, this came second, but let me mention it first), this warning by GoDaddy to their UK-based customers who happen to hold a .EU Internet domain name:

And then there is this: An article from three years ago by a Fedja Buric (judging by the name, probably from the region) who offers a sobering comparison between the breakup of Yugoslavia and Brexit.

It may have been written back in 2016, but I think its dire warning is even more relevant today, now that a no-deal Brexit is rapidly becoming a near certainty.

No leader of my free world

Humor, Politics No Responses »

Aug 112019

Dear American friends: please stop calling your President “the leader of the free world”.

I live in what you call the free world but Trump is no leader of mine. I have not elected him. He does not represent my values.

On the contrary, he seems hell-bent on destroying the values that I consider fundamental to the free world. He already managed to drag his own country down (though arguably, other politicians and long-term partisan trends played an equally important role) so that it no longer qualifies as a full democracy on The Economist’s democracy index. Why would the rest of the free world want him to lead us down the same path?

Was Apollo 11 not PC enough?

History, Politics, Space No Responses »

Jul 192019

The world is celebrating the 50th anniversary of one of the most momentous events in human history: the first time a human being set foot on another celestial body.

It is also a triumph of American ingenuity. Just as Jules Verne predicted a century earlier, it was America’s can-do spirit that made the Moon landing, Armstrong’s “one small step” possible.

And today, just like 50 years ago, their success was celebrated around the world, by people of all nationality, religion, gender or ethnicity.

But that’s not good enough for some New York Times columnists.

Instead of celebrating the Moon landing, Mary Robinette Kowal complains about the gender bias that still exists in the space program. Because, as we learn from her article, this evil male chauvinistic space program was “designed by men, for men”. Because, you know, men sweat in different areas of their body and all. Even in the office, temperatures are set for men, which leaves women carrying sweaters.

Sophie Pinkham goes further. Instead of celebrating America’s success on July 20, 1969, Pinkham goes on to praise the Soviet space program in a tone that might have been rejected even by the editors of Pravda in 1969 as too over-the-top. Because unlike America, the Soviets put the first woman in space! Their commitment to equality did not stop there: They also sent the first Asian man and the first black man into orbit. Because, we are told, “under socialism, a person of even the humblest origins could make it all the way up.”

Just to be clear, I am not blind to gender bias. We may have come a long way since the 1960s, but full gender equality has not yet been achieved anywhere: not in the US, not in Canada, not even in places like Iceland. And racism in America remains a palpable, everyday reality. Back in 1969, things were a lot worse.

But to pick the 50th anniversary of an event that, even back in the turbulent 1960s, had the power to unify humanity, to launch such petty rants? That is simply disgraceful. Or, as the New York Post described it, obscene.

The New York Post also makes mention of one of the female pioneers of the US space program, Margaret Hamilton, whose work was instrumental in making the Apollo landings possible. Yet somehow, neither Pinkham nor Kowal found it in their hearts to mention her name.

I have to wonder: Are columnists like Pinkham or Kowal secretly rooting for Donald Trump? Because they certainly seem to be doing their darnedest best to alienate as many voters as possible, from what appears to be an increasingly bitter, intolerant, ideological agenda on the American political left.

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra

Politics No Responses »

Jul 012019

I have been thinking about this supposedly historic meeting between Trump and Kim at the DMZ.

One TV talking head criticized Trump’s last-minute invitation. “These meetings should be preceded by months of preparations by experts,” he said, or something to this effect. I remember, I was actually waking down the stairs towards my kitchen as I exclaimed, “Those experts had 65 years at their disposal.”

In short, I am not going to blame Trump for trying something different. Trying, of course, is not the same as succeeding.

Can Trump succeed? Can this meeting be the beginning of something meaningful, like Captain Picard’s meeting with the Tamarian captain, who was speaking in the allegorical Tamarian language in that famous Star Trek: The Next Generation episode?

Or, far more likely, is it just a misguided attempt by a narcissistic world leader who grossly overvalues his own skills at personal diplomacy, reminding me of the last Kaiser of Imperial Germany, Wilhelm II?

I am not optimistic, but for what it’s worth, I am rooting for Trump. If he succeeds, the world becomes a slightly better, slightly safer place.

Bill 21 vs. SJWs

Canada, Film, History, Politics, Religion No Responses »

Jun 182019

So on the one hand… here I am, praising Canada for being true to its values, only to learn yesterday that Quebec’s provincial legislature approved a ban on “religious symbols”. Not once in my life did I worry when I was being served by a person wearing a kippa, a cross, a turban or a headscarf that nature that they might discriminate against me. Should I have been? Perhaps naively, I always felt privileged to live in a society in which persons wearing kippas, crosses, turbans or headscarves were welcome, even into positions of authority. But now I am worried that a person whose religion demands wearing a kippa, a cross, a turban or a headscarf will not be allowed to serve me anymore. And that’s even before I look at the more hypocritical aspects of the bill.

But then, I learn that south of the border, social justice warriors scored another “victory”: at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, they managed to get the name of silent era film star Lillian Gish stripped from the university’s Gish Film Theater because a student union protested on account of her role in the rather racist 1915 silent classic Birth of a Nation.

I fundamentally disagree with the idea of judging the past by the standards of the present. I dare hope that our societies are becoming better over time, and thus our standards are higher, but it is grossly unfair to the memory of those from generations ago when they are judged by standards that did not even exist at the time. But putting all that aside… isn’t it obvious that such acts of cultural intolerance (committed, ironically, in the name of tolerance) are just oil on the fire? That those who are behind the rise of xenophobia, nationalism, racism and intolerance will see such acts as proof that their grievances of valid, that it is truly they (and by “they”, I mean mostly middle-aged or older white men) who are being prosecuted here?

Are these truly the only choices out there? Xenophobic nationalism and Islamophobia vs. social justice militants? Where have all the sane people gone? Please come back wherever you are and help put an end to this madness.

Huawei and end-to-end encryption

Canada, Computer Security, Internet, Politics No Responses »

Jun 132019

The news this morning is that former PM Jean Chrétien suggested that Canada should stop the extradition proceedings against Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, as a means to win back the freedom of the two Canadian hostages in China, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. (Yes, I called them hostages.)

The case against Huawei runs a lot deeper, however, than the financial fraud Ms. Meng is alleged by US authorities to have committed.

There is also the question of espionage, including the possibility that Huawei’s 5G equipment cannot be trusted because of firmware or hardware level backdoors.

I repeatedly encountered the suggestion that this issue can be trivially remedied by using end-to-end encryption. Unfortunately, end-to-end encryption, even if properly implemented (ignoring for the moment our own Western governments’ recurrent pleas to have built-in backdoors in any such encryption algorithms), solves only part of the problem.

It still allows Huawei to steal metadata, such as where calls are routed or the amount and nature of data traffic between specific endpoints. Worse yet, no encryption prevents Huawei from potentially sabotaging the network when called upon to do so by the Chinese government.

For this reason, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that the US ban against Huawei is justified and appropriate. It must, of course, be accompanied by a suitable increase in spending on researching 5G communications technologies, because otherwise, we risk shooting ourselves in the foot by banning the use of equipment that is technologically superior to the available alternatives. This is a new situation for the West: The last time the West faced a great power adversary that matched Western scientific and technological capabilities was in the 1930s, with Nazi Germany.

As for Ms. Meng, I think the suggestion to suspend the extradition process is wholly inappropriate. It would signal to the world that Canada is willing to suspend the rule of law for the sake of hostages. However strongly I feel about Messrs. Kovrig and Spavor, however strongly I desire to see them released, this is not a price Canada should be willing to pay.

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