Mid-Week Post

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There are concerns about a Chinese firm's involvement in Canadian telecommunications projects:

The former head of U.S. counter-espionage says the Harper government is putting North American security at risk by allowing a giant Chinese technology company to participate in major Canadian telecommunications projects.

In an exclusive interview in Washington, Michelle K. Van Cleave told CBC News the involvement of Huawei Technologies in Canadian telecom networks risks turning the information highway into a freeway for Chinese espionage against both the U.S. and Canada.

Huawei has long argued there is no evidence linking the company to the growing tidal wave of international computer hacking and other forms of espionage originating in China.

Nonetheless, the U.S. and Australia have already blocked Huawei from major telecom projects in those countries, and otherwise made it clear they regard China's largest telecommunications company as a potential security threat.

Van Cleave, who served as top spy-catcher for the Bush administration until 2006, describes Huawei as a potential "stalking horse" for Chinese military and intelligence objectives.

Even Canada's own intelligence agencies have warned the Harper government of the risks of throwing open the door to Chinese telecom companies.

Despite all the warnings, the federal and Ontario governments have rolled out the red carpet to Huawei, officially praising the Chinese company's partnerships in Canadian telecom projects with Telus, Bell, SaskTel and WIND Mobile.

This wouldn't be the first time Huawei Technologies was accused of espionage:

It is official, the joint venture between Symantec and Huawei Technologies has ended because the American IT security firm feared that the collaboration with the Chinese telecommunications producer could have a serious impact on its business....

Huawei (Officially Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.) is a Chinese multinational networking and telecommunications equipment and services company. It is the second-largest supplier of mobile telecommunications infrastructure equipment in the world (after Ericsson).

The Chinese company has been disputed as being too close to the Chinese government and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. Do not forget that the government of Beijing has often is accused of meddling in the private affairs of the nation's companies. Many Huawei is fully under Chinese government control - pointing out that Ren Zhengfei, the founder of the company, served as an engineer in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in the early 1980s.

The Chinese company has been the subject of numerous allegations in the past regarding its proximity to the government, as the company has provided support in the implementation of systems of censorship. Also, Huawei has been questioned in the past for having supported numerous operations of cyber espionage and cyber attacks such as the operation GhostNet.

According to The New York Times report, Huawei is leaving the US market due to increased American government oversight.

**

Motorola has accused Huawei Technologies of receiving stolen company secrets.

Motorola has amended a two-year-old industrial spying lawsuit to include its China-based competitor Huawei Technologies. 

The lawsuit was originally filed in September 2008 against five former Motorola employees, four of whom held Chinese citizenship and another who held both US and Chinese citizenship.  

They were accused in part of accessing and transferring Motorola's intellectual property to a company called Lemko of Schaumburg, Illinois, which the suit alleged they were secretly working for. 

But in the latest 16 July filing, Motorola contends that one of the defendants, Shaowei Pan, had direct contact with Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei.

**

Allowing Chinese company Huawei to take part in the rollout of ultra-fast broadband could cause Western countries to be wary of sharing information with New Zealand, amid allegations the telecommunications giant has committed cyber espionage, a security analyst says.

Australia has shut Huawei out of its national broadband contracts following cyber attacks originating in China, and the United States has ceased doing business with the company due to high-level security concerns.

However, Huawei has signed deals with Enable Services and Ultrafast Fibre Ltd, the New Zealand Government's private partners for the ultra-fast broadband (UFB) scheme in Christchurch and the central North Island.

It has also signed a contract with Chorus to help roll out fibre lines in the rural broadband initiative.

Security analyst Paul Buchanan said the deal could potentially give the Chinese government the opportunity to tap into New Zealand intelligence systems, including Echelon - the world's most extensive eavesdropping system to which China is not privy.

Why, exactly, are we trading with them and handing over our industries?



He's not just Blazing Cat Fur; he's awesome:

East End Madrassah cannot use a Scarborough school for weekend classes until police have wrapped up their investigation into anti-Jewish teachings, the Toronto public board has decided.

“We’ve had a long relationship with this organization and there have been no problems to date, but of course when the situation came to our attention, it was something that we needed to investigate,” said board spokesperson Shari Schwartz-Maltz.

When the online materials were discovered last week — which called ancient Jews “treacherous” and “crafty” — the madrassah immediately pulled them and issued an apology.

(Sidebar: I believe they mean these online materials. Thanks for citing the source, guys.)

York Region police’s hate crimes unit is still investigating.

The Toronto District School Board had not been able to reach the madrassah’s administrators until this Tuesday, when it informed them they could no longer use board property.

“What we said was, we needed to be satisfied with the outcome of the investigation and that they were in compliance with our policies and procedures,” said Jim Spyropoulos, the board’s co-ordinating superintendent of inclusive schools.

The madrassah has been using board facilities for more than 30 years. Spyropoulos said the board has asked for a meeting with school administrators “to have a deeper discussion” around the issue.

This superintendent is the limit.  You should know damn well what goes on in the schools for which you are superintendent. And what "deeper discussion" could you have about this?

"Ever since the Prophet's entry into Madina, the treacherous Jews had vehemently opposed him and his Islamic call, evoking memories of their hostility to the previous Prophet, Jesus Christ (a), half a millennium ago. The crafty Jews entered into an alliance with the polytheist Quraish in a bid to stamp out Islam. They conspired to kill Prophet Muhammad [s] despite the fact that he was lenient towards them and had treated them kindly, hoping to convince them of Islam's truth."

If we changed the wording from "the treacherous Jews" to "the treacherous gays", would it make a difference? Probably not. 

Artist's rendition of BCF after a job well done

UN lackey and French Belgian upstart Olivier De Schutter issues a scathing report against a nation where people starve daily- North Korea Canada:

Despite Canada’s riches, many Canadians are suffering from poverty, inequality and an inability to afford daily food needs, says a scathing United Nations report released Wednesday.

“What I’ve seen in Canada is a system that presents barriers for the poor to access nutritious diets and that tolerates increased inequalities between rich and poor, and aboriginal non-aboriginal peoples,” said Olivier De Schutter, the UN right-to-food envoy.

“Canada has long been seen as a land of plenty. Yet today one in 10 families with a child under 6 is unable to meet their daily food needs. These rates of food insecurity are unacceptable, and it is time for Canada to adopt a national right-to-food strategy,” said De Schutter.

His report was based on an 11-day mission to Canada, his first investigation of what he called “a rich, developed country.”

“This is a country that is rich but that fails to adapt the levels of social assistance benefits and its minimum wage to the rising costs of basic necessities, including food and housing,” De Schutter said. 

Last year, he said, close to 900,000 Canadians were turning to food banks each month.

His report also described the situation in many of Canada’s aboriginal communities as desperate.

“A long history of political and economic marginalization,” it said, “has left many indigenous peoples with considerably lower levels of access to adequate food relative to the general population.”

De Schutter urged Canadian governments to work together to develop a national food strategy.

He also lamented growing obesity in Canada, saying more than one in four Canadian adults are obese, a rate that costs at least $5 billion a year in health care costs and lost productivity.

The report immediately prompted a flurry of reaction on Parliament Hill. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney called it a waste of UN money to investigate developed countries like Canada.

“It would be our hope that the contributions we make to the United Nations are used to help starving people in developing countries, not to give lectures to wealthy and developed countries like Canada,” he told reporters. “I think this is a discredit to the United Nations.”

Kenney dismissed De Schutter’s mission as a political exercise, saying the UN’s own figures rank Canada as one of the best developed countries in the world. 

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, who met with De Schutter after he released his report, strongly objected to his remarks on food issues facing aboriginals.

Aglukkaq told reporters she pointed out to De Schutter, whom she described as “a bit patronizing,” that there are no farms in Canada’s Arctic.

“He’s ill-informed in that he doesn’t understand that Inuit continue to live off the land today,” explained the Nunavut MP, who is also minister for the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency. “I go home and we have seal meat, we have polar bear meat, we have fish. This is our way of life.”

In the Arctic, she said, “the food security issue is not about access to (food). It’s about fighting environmentalists trying to put a stop to our way of life,” a reference to non-Canadian activists who oppose the hunting of polar bears and seals and want to limit fishing.

(Sidebar: Leona Aglukkaq is today's honourary honey badger.)


Two questions: has it ever occurred to this Euro-twit to actually attempt to tackle the problem of state-managed starvation such as one sees in North Korea or give some serious criticisms about places in the Third World which could feed their people if only they put more time and effort into developing basic infrastructure and crop growth instead of genocide and rape. Secondly, why on God's green earth are we still apart of this corrupt, shiftless, toothless communist tool of an organisation? Why?



Wasn't I just saying something about this?



And now,  thirteen dogs napping. Enjoy.