Canada-Ukraine spy scandal smells extra fishy

I've been following the story of the Canadian Armed Forces "intelligence officer" who has been accused of espionage for passing Canadian secrets to a foreign entity. The Globe & Mail has its senior troika of truth tellers on the file, Chase, Fife, and Senior Internet Correspondent Mark Mackinnon. This team has been working overtime spinning anti-Russian propaganda for the past four years, and are spinning this particular security breach as a nothingburger. Turns out the foreign entity in question is Ukraine. As every patriotic Canadian well knows, thanks to being reminded daily by CBC and the Globe, Canada is Ukraine's absolute bestie in the global playground. Nobody, but nobody, has made more (empty) promises to Ukraine than we have. No one has vowed more often or more loudly to "stand with Ukraine" until victory. Needless to say, Ottawa is crawling with Ukraine firsters who don't consider sharing state secrets with Ukraine to be treason. That's why this episode is downplayed. Today's update seems nothing more than a gratuitous smear of journalist David Pugliese by recycling Ukrainian claims that he could be a Russian agent. For my money, Pugliese is by far the best informed and most professional journo covering Canada's military affairs in the mainstream. His forthrightness has often marked him for retaliation, especially when Big Steve's Alliance Church Mafia was running the joint. My read of the Ukraine war is that since the failed counter-offensive of 2023, things have only gone from disaster to worse disaster for Ukraine. We've been treated to the non-stop refrain; "A few more billions and a few more months and Putin will be vanquished." The EU has just found 90billion euros under the sofa cushions that will supposedly do the trick. It won't. At most, it will delay Ukraine's collapse for a few months. Then what?

Huawei or not Huawei, is that the question?

Globe and Mail reporters Steven Chase and Robert Fife have a front-pager in today's paper about the trials and tribulations of the Chinese tech conglomerate. The gist of the story is that Huawei has been loading up with all kinds of lobbyists and strategists for a full-on assault on Canadian public opinion.

The reason for that lies in the controversy over whether or not US allies should be allowed to use Huawei technology in their 5G networks. Uncle Sam has said we'd better not if we know what's good for us. Some US allies, like Australia and New Zealand, have fallen in line, while others, like the UK and Canada, are, at least for the moment, maintaining the fiction that they are sovereign nations who make their own decisions.

Being a Chinese company in the grip of the Chinese Communist Party, the official fear is that the commies are going to use their technology to spy on us. Probably true, but they're going to spy on us anyway, as are the Russians. Most of our allies will be spying on us too. That's just statecraft in the 21st century. Everybody spies on everybody.

Spying aside, there's a far more important reason why we should go slow on the 5G roll-out. Google "dangers of 5G" and over sixty million results come up. I haven't had the opportunity to review all of them, but it strikes me that the technology is a long way from having been proven safe.

The New York Times would have you believe that 5G health concerns are fake news invented by Russia's RT network. After all, Russian and China are moving ahead with implementing 5G in their own countries. Would they be doing so if they really believed it was unsafe?

I don't know, but it's hard to believe that the NYT wants us to set our public health standards at the same level as Russia and China. Does that strike anyone as a prudent strategy?

The history of technological "progress" is littered with really bad ideas that were pushed on us by people who profit from them, from thalidomide to nuclear power to fracking, which in hindsight might not have been such great ideas after all.

The sensible thing to do is to take the focus off the politically motivated Huawei hysteria and pause while we get a better understanding of the health risks associated with this technology, instead of taking the promoters at their word about its safety.