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UN Secretary General Guterres personally oversaw the talks. PHOTO: AFP
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- Yemen's warring parties called a ceasefire in the stricken city of Hodeidah
- The COP24 climate conference produced mixed results
- Police killed the Strasbourg Christmas market shooter Chérif Chekatt
- Emmanuel Macron offered concessions to the gilet jaunes
- Voting machines were destroyed in a suspicious fire just days ahead of the Congolese election
- Sri Lanka's top court ruled the recent parliamentary dissolution illegal
- Israel reinforced its military occupation of the West Bank after a violent flare-up
- The United Nations passed a contentious global migration pact
- Carlos Ghosn was indicted on more charges in Japan even as Renault found no evidence of illegality
- German police solved the 17-year-old murder mystery of Peggy Knobloch
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Sabrina Meng Wanzhou, victim or combatant? PHOTO: Reuters
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The arrest of a telecommunications executive in Canada has brought into focus a hidden war. The stakes are high, possibly higher than the contemporaneous 'trade war' between Washington and Beijing: hegemony over communication technology in the digital era.
An international incident
Up until recently Sabrina Meng Wanzhou lived a blessed life in Canada. Like many wealthy Chinese, Huawei's CFO parked her considerable wealth on the safe shores of Vancouver Sound (where Meng has two homes). But, on the first of December - following a request from American authorities - local police arrested her on suspicion of fraud. The daughter of Huawei founder and chairman Ren Zhengfei was dragged into a growing international conflict.
Huawei is accused of breaching US sanctions by doing business with Iran through shell companies. Meng spent nearly a fortnight in detention while authorities back home raged: in typically retaliatory fashion Beijing detained one Canadian, then a second. This week the imprisoned executive posted a $10m bail and was released back into the community, albeit with an ankle bracelet. The extradition order still stands.
Many have attempted to divine just why the extradition appeared at this moment. The case appears legally sound but President Trump fuelled scepticism by suggesting he would intervene on behalf of Meng, "if I think it's good for the country". Many have taken this as an allusion to the warming trade relations between China and the United States. What's clear is that behind trade disputes and punitive sanctions a conflict is taking shape: the West's war on Huawei.
Splendid act
Everything you need to know about Huawei's vision is in the name. It can be translated in two distinct ways, 'Hua' is either 'splendid' or 'China', and 'Wei' denotes 'action' or 'achievement'. Splendid act. China's achievement.
Huawei was born in China's southern industrial capital, Shenzhen, a child of necessity. It was 1983 and the enterprising Ren Zhengfei sought to drag China's outmoded switchboards into the modern era. The ex-People's Liberation Army engineer presciently understood the national security importance of homegrown telecommunications technology. Ren did what many would go on to do: reverse engineer Western products with an aim to compete with, and one day replace the companies that produced them.
He succeeded. Today Huawei is the largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world, holding contracts with 45 of the 50 largest telcos. It has expanded aggressively into handset production and as of this year replaced Apple as the second-largest phone maker.
5G and Five Eyes
Heavy investment in R&D has made Huawei the world-leader in the next generation of telecommunications networks, known as 5G. Insiders claim that the Chinese firm's technology is superior to its Western rivals (primarily the Swedish powerhouse Ericsson). 5G networks will soon carry the world's data. Cellular wireless networks already carry banking information, health data, private conversations and just about every imaginable form of encrypted and unencrypted information. A proliferation of network-connected devices will add driverless cars, smart locks, fridges, traffic lights, robotic machinery and lighting to this ever expanding web.
There are those who see China's proficiency in developing the backbone of international 5G networks as a clear and present danger. Chief amongst them are the heads of Five Eyes, a coalition comprising America, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand’s intelligence apparatus. This year the spooks began lobbying their governments to break with Huawei (and a similar firm, ZTE). One-by-one the member states have excluded the Chinese firms from bids to build 5G networks.
Even British Telecom, which has a 15-year-long relationship with Huawei, has announced it will remove all Huawei equipment from its current 3G and 4G operations. Britain's signals-intelligence spies at GCHQ vet Huawei technology for backdoors that would allow remote snooping. They allege that they've discovered irregularities between how the networks operate when tested and when installed properly. If we are to take their word, Huawei may have built backdoors that only become operational when updates and patches are sent to the devices.
It's perfectly reasonable to question Ren Zhengfei's connections to the People's Liberation Army. There is every likelihood that the two entities are not - as Ren claims - entirely independent. It's similarly sensible to criticise Beijing's dirty tricks (like hacking the Marriott database, or rerouting Australian internet traffic to steal data). But to paint what China is doing as anything other than standard practice is laughable. Given the record of Five Eyes nations' mass surveillance and data harvesting, the selective outrage rings hollow.
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Theresa May amongst her peers in Brussels. PHOTO: AP
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Just a flesh wound
On Wednesday British PM Theresa May won a vote of confidence from her Conservative Party. The 200 MPs in her corner roared with approval as the ballot results were announced. It was a forceful show of support for their embattled leader. But the noise did little to mask the fact that 117 of her colleagues voted against her. While the margin of 83 votes flattered May, it will concern Number 10 that her detractors are increasing in number (104 vowed to vote down her Brexit deal in parliament).
The victory didn't come cheap. In an act of self-sacrifice - an exceedingly rare phenomenon in modern politics - May told her colleagues that she would not stand in the 2022 general election. Once again May has shown a preternatural knack for parrying (or simply wearing) attacks on her leadership. To this one of her own MPs had the memorable riposte, "stamina is not strategy".
Which leaves us where? Her Brexit deal remains dead in the water and was postponed. For its part, Brussels isn't budging on further concessions. To mere mortals 100 days may seem an age but in the glacial world of diplomacy this is the blink of an eye. It's almost exactly the amount of time before Britain exits the EU (good-, bad- or no-deal). Labour promised to 'throw [the] kitchen sink' at the Tories in the interim. And, of course, don't expect the internal ructions to stop.
Lastly, the spectacle of Brexit was lifted to new heights of farce when one dissenting MP attempted to steal the Royal mace from the floor of the Commons.
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Oval Office theatrics. PHOTO: New Zealand Herald
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Kelly, Pelosi and Cohen
One of the many side effects of having a perpetually embattled White House is that superficial disputes are easily conflated with genuine scandals. This week even more so: clashes over border-wall funding, peacocking lawyers and even more drama in the White House.
First, a serious issue. It was announced that President Trump's Chief of Staff John Kelly would be leaving the White House. The retired Marine Corps general has vowed to stay on for several weeks, perhaps longer, to ensure a "peaceful and pragmatic" transition. When Kelly goes the inner sanctum will be short in both of those qualities.
This was followed by a superficial affair that the American media mistook for a matter of significance: the quarrelsome meeting between Trump, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. There was nothing manufactured about Trump's annoyance, though both Democrats affected displays of parental exasperation.
Late in the week came a pair of convictions. Trump's former lawyer and bag man Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for what the judge described as a "veritable smorgasbord of criminal activity". The charges refer to hush money paid to two women with whom Trump had extramarital affairs. Then came Maria Butina, who pled guilty to acting as a Kremlin agent. It's likely that she will receive a lighter sentence in exchange for divulging information on Russia's apparently successful attempts to infiltrate the National Rifle Association and the Republican Party.
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The Yellowstone herd. PHOTO: Jacob W Frank / Yellowstone NPS
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Buffalo build
Of all the tragedies that European settlement inflicted upon North America's natural landscapes, the annihilation of the bison ranks high. These sturdy beasts have an air of dignity that behooves their size. Yet Europeans wiped them out; first for meat, and then for trophies. National parks and native conservation were all that prevented their extinction. Today, against the odds, native tribes in Montana are beginning the process of re-wilding bison. Like the reintroduction of wolves to national parks, projects like this are deserving of our attention and resources.
Partial recall
While we're on a nature kick: let's talk orang-utans. A new study shows they may display a language ability known as displaced reference - the ability to communicate information about past events. This is one of the fundamental leaps that allowed for the evolution of the human brain - up until now we had no evidence that other primates were capable of it. But in Sumatra a team of researchers has revealed that female orang-utans will wait until a nearby predator has left the area before communicating distress to her offspring. It's believed that the mature females hold that information for some time - up to 20 minutes - to pass on a lesson when it is safe to do so.
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Murdered, assassinated, hunted, jailed. PHOTO: AFP
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The Year of Living Dangerously
Time Magazine's 'Persons of the Year' are the journalists, commentators and media figures who have paid, or continue to pay, an exacting toll for their work.
Jamal Khashoggi's tale is by now common knowledge: the journalist whose recurrent criticism of Saudi Arabia's ruling elite cost him his life. Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman is almost certainly directly responsible for the torture and murder of a man who called out his family's venality. It is a modern equivalent of Cicero's assassination: the killing proves the victim's point.
Also included are the staff of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland. They were at their desks in the newsroom in late June when a disturbed reader strode in and opened fire: five lost their lives. Those who survived worked through the night in a crime scene in order to send the following day's edition to print.
Maria Ressa is known by few in the West. To inkl, she is a partner and an inspiration. The tenacious Ressa is the CEO of the bravest news organisation in the Philippines, Rappler. This feisty website made its name by openly criticising the authoritarianism of Rodrigo Duterte when other newspapers fell silent. She is facing trumped-up charges levelled by a compromised judiciary.
Last, but certainly not least, are Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo. The pair are jailed in Myanmar on entirely falsified charges stemming from their coverage of the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya muslims. Despite considerable international pressure they remain behind bars for seeking the truth from a repressive regime.
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Quote of the week
"Time and time again, I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds rather than to listen to my own inner voice and my moral compass."
- The natural conclusion to Michael Cohen's relationship with former client Donald Trump. It turns out that not only would he not take the promised "bullet" for the president, he wouldn't even take three years.
Headlines of the week
We couldn't decide between these two gems:
'Ice cream shop forced to close down over 'sexy' cow logo blames 'radical liberals'' - The Independent
'Russia's most modern robot revealed to be just a person in a suit - The Independent
Featured long-reads from inkl publishers:
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Tom Wharton
@trwinwriting
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