Are you crazy?!

On request from the United States, Canada has arrested Meng Wanzhou, Huawei's chief financial officer.

Another line has been crossed. Where are we, if it is a part of political and trade relations to arrest a leading person from a economically competing company from a politically competing nation under some pretext? As if the countries of the world were just small appendixes you can treat like pieces of shit. To repeat myself once more, the Romans were in that position, the United States is not. The Europeans may often behave like American puppets, but other powers are too strong for this. Or maybe the American behavior is a compensation for perceived weakness, a sign showing that the United Sates has fallen into Thucydides's Trap. Anyway, it is another clear example of the political decline and the descent back to the law of the jungle.

The United States has been crossing one line after another these last two years. Crossings which make the world more dangerous and push us closer  to barbaric conditions. Clearly other countries have behaved likewise, but one may have expected a more civilized behavior from the “leader of the free world”.

Chinese IT-companies, not least Huawei are accused: They MAY abuse their hardware and software to spy, and they are assumed to do so even more in the 5G-future. Therefore they should be stopped. But in fact there is very little proof of spying by Huawei.

Have the disclosures by Mr. Snowden already been forgotten? The Americans already DO abuse their IT dominance to spy. They sit heavily on the servers and arteries of communications in large parts of the world.

Here to refresh our memory, a few examples of US espionage and control. Some are well-known facts,  some were disclosures by Mr. Snowden and others.

- The American intelligence agencies are connected directly to servers and IT communications in Europe.

- American spy-hardware is built into computers sold to China and who knows where else.

- The NSA is spying on ordinary citizens in the USA and abroad. Metadata from many  mobile phones in the world are stored.

- Also the position of cellphone users is tracked.

- Apparently also all internet activity from almost all users in the world is registered.

- As has turned out, foreign statesmen, ambassadors, EU politicians etc. are being listened to, and other forms of their communication spied.

- Through the british vassals the Americans are also spying in hotels where foreign politicians stay.

- All the thus gained information is being used for political purposes and also economic gains in connection with negotiations at conferences and meetings.

- The methods are also used for economic espionage against foreign firms competing with American companies.

- The Swift system for int'l financial transactions permits US control. The EU was forced to accept this.

- Generally the United States controls financial transactions in dollars all over the world.  And as we see in connection with sanctions against Iran only valid in the United States, this is abused to control independent countries.

The points are examples of real US espionage  and abuse of IT-dominance. Obviously also China and Russia spy on other countries using IT. But in light of the examples of known massive US activities, the accusations against China are highly hypocritical. And even if Huawei is being used for espionage or may be so in the future (!), the arrest in Canada is difficult to justify. Obviously a suspected breech of sanctions against Iran is only a pretext. The suspicions are at least 6 years old. Why suddenly act in 2018?


There has been much outrage over President Trump inside and outside of the United States. But in some countries there does not seem to be a serious will to liberate themselves from US dominance. Partly it is a question of lack of ability to stand on own feet in matters of IT and security. Partly it is a lack of guts.

For Europe it would be wise to have a diversification of their IT-providers and gradually develop its own IT-competences. Europe will be more independent if it from case to case choses which of more than one IT-providing countries to use. This will give a position of strength. With the extreme importance of information technology today, relying on providers from only one country leads to vulnerability, dependency and submission as simple vassals. Many US allies have already been moving in this direction for decades. Remember the embarrassing episode in 2013, where European countries forced the plane with the Bolivian president to land in Vienna and searched it to see if it carried Mr. Snowden. This showed an astonishing degree of European submission. But who except for the Brexiteers wants to be vassals with members of the present US administration as puppeteers?

The arrest of Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou is a sign of an increasing US ruthlessness, unthinkable a few years ago. What would be the reaction if China arrested a leading official of Apple? What may come next? The arrest of leaders of European companies? Or even of a member of the European Commission who works to tax and reduce the monopoly of big US companies? Or why not arrest a PM from an irritating European country? Beware Europe and Canada! It is frightening, but such methods can become a normal part of trade relations and politics.

Gilets jaunes

The centralization of people and social life into bigger and bigger metropoles is typical for later modernities. This phenomenon is obviously evident today all over the world. The process is partly due to an almost diabolic attraction from the big cities and partly due to bad living conditions outside. In some cases in earlier civilizations such processes went very far. Landscapes could be depopulated, and peasants had to be replaced by ‘coloni’ from other parts of the known world.

But the process of centralization should be a voluntary movement and not be driven by disadvantageous and painful living circumstances. Such motivations should  only be the driving force in third-world countries unable to do something about it. As we see today, it creates resentment favoring the political wings to be living in the outback without services, without nearby jobs and looked upon with disrespect or even disgust from city elites. Elites who feel themselves far above people who do not eat organic food, but often themselves are guided by internet-borne viral superstitions like the belief that lactose and gluten are dangerous. In earlier modernities comparable processes could end with insurrections, often started because of taxations. We saw such phenomena in the Oriental modernity in numerous revolts in provinces away from Bagdad and the other big cities which were perceived as exploiting the smaller cities and the countryside. In the Greco-Roman late modernity the peoples in Italy (91-88 BC)  revolted against being exploited by the Romans without equal influence. In the second Chinese modernity in the Sung Dynasty there were truly anti-globalist riots in South China. They resembled right -wing populism in our time by often targeting Arab immigrants.

In our case the protests are difficult to ignore because the marginalized people have the same voting rights as the chosen few in the big cities. Also, through modern means of transportation protesters can easily reach the capital, smash the shining facades (so embarrassing that the tourists should see this) and demonstrate in front of the government.

Right- and left-wing populism is boosted from the margins, not least the geographical margins. Those who want to be an alternative to populism should not marginalize these margins further. Instead the margins could simply be given positive special treatment to counteract their disadvantages. This could be through eg. a tax reduction or a remboursement, both scaled after distance to work, or whatever.