Canadian Hostages En Route Home.


To those idiots who suggested that Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig weren't being held hostage to secure the release of Hwawai CFO Meng Wanzhou but maybe were real spies, there are two planes in the air at this moment that say otherwise.

Meng has departed Vancouver for the Peoples Republic. At some point her plane may cross paths with the jet carrying Spavor and Kovrig home. 

The two Michaels spent three years banged up in a shitty Chinese prison. That's an outrage we should never soon forget. China is a rogue state and worse. Ask its Uighur population. Ask the people of occupied Tibet. Ask its neighbours who share the South China Sea. Liberal Canadians who are so quick to rally to China's defence of these bully tactics need to get their heads on straight.

Comments

  1. Northern PoVSeptember 24, 2021 at 7:19 PM

    I am happy for the Michaels and happy for Meng. Seeing the Canadian justice system being manipulated to keep Trump happy and destroy a commercial rival was very sad.
    Compromising our system, our rule of law makes it harder for us to hold the phony Chinese justice system to account.

    "To those idiots who suggested that Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig weren't being held hostage to secure the release of Hwawai CFO Meng Wanzhou but maybe were real spies, there are two planes in the air at this moment that say otherwise."


    Show me your 'idiots'.
    No one denied the Chinese were playing chess. Two pawns for your Queen.

    Two things can be true at the same time.

    You don't like Climenhaga's take? Show me any article with an in-depth on these two. Our media was obsessed with the story but never pursued any of what the "Two Micheals" were doing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. TrailblazerSeptember 24, 2021 at 7:25 PM

    Seeing the Canadian justice system being manipulated to keep Trump happy and destroy a commercial rival was very sad.

    And so it goes with US politics and influence.

    Again; Beware of Sam Slick the America trader.


    TB

    ReplyDelete
  3. Northern PoVSeptember 24, 2021 at 8:11 PM

    Too bad they didn't get a third passenger on that plane:

    Robert Lloyd Schellenberg
    Chinese court rejects Canadian's appeal against death sentence for drug smuggling

    ReplyDelete
  4. Bill MalcolmSeptember 24, 2021 at 8:56 PM

    I need no lectures from you about China being a rogue state. What the fuck is that stu;id ass nation to our south if not a rogue nation?

    US written International Rules-Based Order, not internationaI law is all the US recognizes as the world's policeman and judge wrapped up in one. Illegal sanctions controlled through the SWIFT payment system. Non-recognition of the ICC. Illegal invasions of countries by the literal score. Millions killed by bombing. 800 military bases ringing the world. The people of Diego Garcia thrown off their island for it to become a giant US air base.

    I cannot equate China's sins with those of the hegemon to our south which can't even run itself properly these days. Should I? And if so, why?

    I suppose anyone can sit in Canada and yip away like some lame ass cold war warrior if they feel like it. Your idea of the international situation and mine do not mesh at all, nor do I see any valid reason why I should agree with you.

    Stick to the environmental file if you want to bloviate. There at least I can recognize some true worth.

    The US under Trump got its way banning Huawei's 5G system in the EU and Australia and NZ. Meng's detention is of no utile to them anymore; we get the second-rate 5G technology in the West with the built-in NSA port to eavesdrop on every fucking thing. Of course the two Michaels got arrested on trumped-up charges, nuch as Meng was arrested for breaking sanctions, illegal ones. Big power tit-for-tat bullshit. With us in the middle.

    So some Canadians got caught in the big power crossfire over Huawei. Got stuffed in dungeons. Bad indeed. About the way Japan treated Carlos Ghosn making him live on a granite floor, presumed guilty. The Asian mind has its own quirks, just as we do here with chest-thumping pride as more brown people get offed every day by our governments and we boast that we live under the rule of law, which can be broken any time the hegemon next door deems it fit to do so. We still don't know if the Uighurs are that badly treated or if it's just the usual hate propaganda summoned up to keep us saluting our flag, with compliant journos writing BS for money, much like all those Institutes like Fraser or Atlantic keeping tame academics to write right wing economic crap to wow us all that we need to follow their diktats in order to live in paradise under capitalism.

    You're one angry old man, and so am I.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Northern PoVSeptember 24, 2021 at 9:09 PM

      Rant!!

      Delete
    2. The Disaffected LibSeptember 24, 2021 at 10:43 PM

      Well, Bill, I don't recall asking that you agree with me. That must have slipped my mind.

      Delete
  5. Northern PoVSeptember 25, 2021 at 4:50 AM

    "You can argue, with some justice, that the Chinese should have been bigger than that, and ought not to have grabbed a couple of Canadians to apply some pressure the other way, but you can’t argue China was the only party grabbing hostages, or that Canada had no role to play in this sorry affair. "*

    Or you can simply roll out the 'idiot' epitaph to bolster a meager argument.

    *From: a thought provoking, nuanced piece with zero vitriol:
    https://albertapolitics.ca/2021/09/its-good-the-two-michaels-are-on-their-way-home-but-lets-not-forget-they-werent-the-only-hostages/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=its-good-the-two-michaels-are-on-their-way-home-but-lets-not-forget-they-werent-the-only-hostages

    ReplyDelete
  6. GordieSeptember 25, 2021 at 8:01 AM

    I saw Meng Wanzhou's interview on tv. She should have just gone straight home and skipped the interview. She sounded whiny and "poor poor me". She didn't have it nearly as tough as the two Michaels. Hard to feel sorry for her. She should have complained to somebody who cares.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Northern PoVSeptember 25, 2021 at 9:47 AM

    It is all coming out of the woodwork. Business travel/ex-pats is getting risky.

    "A few weeks later, Pierucci flew to New York on a routine business trip. He was arrested by FBI agents as he got off the plane and found himself, within hours, manacled to a wall and under interrogation. Still reeling from shock and jet lag, he was moved to a maximum security prison and in an overcrowded, windowless block in which murder and sexual violence were commonplace, was told that he faced a maximum sentence of 125 years.

    Pierucci was charged under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which allows the Department of Justice (DoJ) to prosecute foreign nationals for crimes – particularly bribery – committed outside its jurisdiction. If a company employs people, trades its shares or even stores its emails (as almost everyone does) in the US, the DoJ has grounds to investigate, imprison and issue huge fines."

    "From a television in the prison common room, he learned that Alstom had agreed to sell its entire energy division to General Electric (GE)."


    Don't like the competition? Arrest them!
    https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2015/03/the-american-trap-federic-pierucci-reivew

    ReplyDelete
  8. The Disaffected LibSeptember 25, 2021 at 10:47 AM

    Well comrades, I have plainly ruffled your feathers. Throwing mud on Americans is a hollow diversion, change the subject. It's the stuff of sheer sophistry and distraction.

    NPoV, there's a point I'm reluctant to raise but it's important. You complain that the Canadian media somehow failed to dig into some imagined skullduggery by the hostages. In a democratic society there's a rule that he who propounds (asserts) must prove. Another is that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

    Throwing out innuendo without foundation is intellectually bereft.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Northern PoVSeptember 25, 2021 at 12:24 PM

      First you smear many of us as idiots with a straw-man argument:
      anyone thinking the Michaels look like spooks based on the little bit of info we do have, somehow can't comprehend that they are also hostages in this dismal affair.

      Then you ignore the very real and absurd dearth of coverage by the usually inquisitive media and tell me to show you something that I am pointing out, is not there

      "intellectually bereft" or just pretzel logic?

      Delete
  9. TrailblazerSeptember 25, 2021 at 5:37 PM

    @ Northern POV.
    Schellenberg is a career criminal ..

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/schellenberg-china-drugs-sentence-death-1.4977808

    He took his chances and failed big time.

    TB

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Northern PoVSeptember 26, 2021 at 7:40 AM

      "Given his apparent line of work, he’s probably a less than ideal Canadian citizen. Still, the Chinese courts goosed his 15-year sentence up to a death penalty to put the screws to Canada in the effort to secure Ms. Meng’s release. "

      As the source of our Fentanyl, China's actions this would be ironic if not so sad.

      Delete
  10. TrailblazerSeptember 25, 2021 at 5:53 PM

    History says;

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-inside-the-final-hours-that-led-to-the-arrest-of-huawei-executive-meng/

    TB

    ReplyDelete

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