The problems with
1) plea bargaining,
2) coerced confessions,
3) the colloquy,
4) testifying, and
5) the habeas corpus petition requesting a new trial.
1) plea bargaining,
2) coerced confessions,
3) the colloquy,
4) testifying, and
5) the habeas corpus petition requesting a new trial.
1) Plea Bargaining
In plea deals, whether innocent or guilty, a common motive is to avoid the "trial penalty." Anyone professionally involved in the criminal justice system, i.e. prosecutors, defense attorneys, court employees, and judges – will tell you defendants typically receive longer sentences at trial than they would have through plea bargain, often substantially longer.
Most guilty people serving time in prison maintain they are innocent. As of 2017, by some estimates there could be as many as 120000 people in U S prisons that really are innocent, but there’s no way to know for sure. While innocent people incarcerated have obviously been wrongfully convicted, about 10 percent confessed to crimes they did not commit. l and avoid the trial penalty.
The National Registry of Exonerations looked at 1700 people, who have been cleared since 1989, and attribute wrongful conviction to five main reasons:
55% – False accusation, meaning police started by arresting the wrong person.
47% – Official misconduct. Meaning officials involved didn’t follow the law.
32% – Eyewitness mis-identification. Sometimes witnesses are mistaken, and sometimes they just lie.
22% – Bad forensic science. Mistakes are made, and sometimes conclusions were just guesses.
13% – False confessions. Police, prosecutors, and even defense attorneys regularly push for confessions even if they think people are probably innocent.
After the Civil War
In central Virginia lies the quaint and historic town of Appomattox. Events in Appomattox are forever etched in the concluding chapter of Civil War History as the place where the end of the Civil war was initiated. One often repeated slogan is, “where the nation was reunited." Appomattox is a small town with only a few thousand residents who are friendly, charming, trusting, and mainly politically conservative Americans.
Ironically, a lesser known fact is that immediately after the Civil War, as the nation was trying to reunite, courts everywhere were inundated with cases. Thus, a severely overburdened criminal justice system turned to plea bargaining to ease the load. A plea bargain is basically a negotiated agreement. For any given case, both the conviction and punishment are first negotiated between the prosecutor and the defense attorney, and, eventually, taken before a judge for approval. This was done as a practical matter to alleviate the avalanche of cases that fell on the courts across post-war America.
Today, 150 years after General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, the right and tradition of trial by jury has practically disappeared. This right to be tried by one’s peers was affirmed by the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution.
Today, across the nation at both federal and state levels, the plea bargain has nearly made jury trials obsolete. Consequently, people are getting convicted in record numbers and America’s prisons are overflowing. Nationally, various sources report federal criminal prosecutions are resolved by plea bargain. In state courts, the numbers are comparable.
Once plea bargaining became the norm, it opened the door for law enforcement officials to cut corners because there is only a 1 in a 100 chance that the evidence they gather for a given case will ever be closely scrutinized by a judge or a jury in an actual trial setting where rules of evidence and burden of proof are enforced.
I spoke with one venerable defense attorney who was a former prosecutor in Appomattox. He said his win rates as prosecutor at jury trials were extremely high because citizens of Appomattox trusted their prosecutors and law enforcement, and were inclined to believe whatever they presented.
Such "advantage” for prosecutors has long been the norm everywhere until recent years when numerous wrongful convictions have been exposed. Reversals are more commonplace among larger populations where suspicions of corruption among judges and law enforcement is more commonplace. In small towns across America, percentage of conviction rates at jury trials remain high and sentences handed out are extremely harsh whenever jurors think defendants were lying to them.
Prosecutors across the country have the power to start punishment immediately by recommending the defendant be held without bond, or by asking the judge to set bond at an amount the defendant cannot pay a bondsman his fee, which is 10% to cover the bond. Personal losses begin to mount up. In many instances, the moment a defendant is incarcerated, they not only lose their liberty, they also lose their livelihood, and other personal losses begin to accrue from that moment forward. The bills that go unpaid often include rent and car payments. Most things of value are often irretrievably lost for people who are held without bond, regardless of their guilt or innocence. Once the police arrest someone for a serious crime, a process begins and there’s no turning back. The prosecution’s next move is to start applying pressure by isolating (incarcerating) the accused, which means:
1) cut off their communications,
2) restrict their movement, and
3) cut off their financial resources.
Police and prosecutors routinely push for guilty pleas to resolve cases in an efficient manner. That is the normal manner of business. However, when does it become coercion, intimidation, and/or blackmail?
Coerced Confessions
In the criminal justice system, conflicts of interest exist at every turn. Study wrongful convictions of people on death row that have been overturned, and watch how the people responsible for the injustice react. Rather than admit their mistakes the most common response by prosecutors is to continue to impugn the innocent people whose lives they ruined. Rather than cooperate in retrying a case, they would rather an innocent person rot in jail. It is tragic how far we have strayed from the notion of innocent until proven guilty. Whenever an innocent person is accused and immediately incarcerated, chances become much higher for prosecutors to get an easy conviction, and sometimes a false confession from an innocent person.
The Coerced Confession of the President's National Security Advisor
On May 20, 2020, the Washington Post newspaper published this article by George Will:
-----------------------------------------------
"Our plea bargain system can make the innocent admit guilt. Enter Michael Flynn."
"Michael Flynn, who was President Trump’s national security adviser for 24 days and who has been entangled in the criminal-justice system for 40 months, pleaded guilty of lying to FBI agents and now recants that plea. We shall return to Flynn below, but first consider Habeeb Audu, who is resisting extradition from Britain to the United States, where he is charged with various financial crimes.
The Cato Institute’s Clark Neily was asked by Audu’s lawyers to write, in accordance with British extradition practices, a Declaration — an “expert report” — about the risk that Audu would not have a meaningful right to a fair U.S. trial. Neily, a member of the American Bar Association’s Plea Bargaining Task Force and head of its subcommittee on impermissibly coercive plea bargains and plea practices, concludes that extradition would “guarantee” Audu’s subjection to a process that “routinely” coerces through plea bargaining. So Audu probably would experience “intolerable pressure designed to induce a waiver of his fundamental right to a fair trial.”
Plea bargaining is, Neily argues “pervasive and coercive” partly because of today’s “trial penalty” — the difference between the sentences offered to those who plead guilty and the much more severe sentences typically imposed after a trial. This penalty discourages exercising a constitutional right. A defendant in a computer hacking case, Neily says, committed suicide during plea bargaining in which prosecutors said he could avoid a trial conviction and sentence of up to 35 years by pleading guilty and accepting a six-month sentence.
The pressure prosecutors can exert — piling on (“stacking”) criminal charges to expose defendants to extreme sentences; pretrial detention, nearly always in squalid confines; threatening to indict family members — can cause innocent people to plead guilty in order to avoid risking protracted incarceration for themselves and loved ones. Such pressures effectively transfer sentencing power from judges to prosecutors. How exactly are these pressures morally preferable to those that used to be administered by truncheons in the back of police stations?
These are reasons why of the nearly 80,000 defendants in federal criminal cases in fiscal 2018, just 2 percent went to trial and 90 percent pleaded guilty. In 2018, 94.7 percent of criminal convictions were obtained through plea bargains in the Southern District of New York, which is seeking Audu’s extradition.
Prosecutors have discovered that almost any defendant can be persuaded to plead guilty, given sufficient inducements. This discovery has been partly a response to the fact that the over-criminalization of life, and particularly Congress’s indefensible multiplication of federal crimes, means that otherwise the court system would, in Justice Antonin Scalia’s words, “grind to a halt.”
There is, Neily says, “abundant, undisputed evidence” of innocent defendants pleading guilty. Of the 367 convicts exonerated by DNA analysis to date, 11 percent had pleaded guilty. Various studies have concluded that between 1.6 percent and 8 percent of defendants who plead guilty would not have been convicted in a trial. The lowest estimate would mean that in 2009 there were more than 1,250 innocent people incarcerated in the federal system alone, and many multiples of that number in state systems.
Responding to Neily’s Declaration, the Justice Department complacently asserts that U.S. law guarantees fair trials: Coercive plea bargains are forbidden, therefore they do not occur, so innocent people do not plead guilty. Move along, nothing to see here.
The Justice Department should consult Jed S. Rakoff. In a 2014 essay, “Why Innocent People Plead Guilty,” he wrote that since the last third of the previous century, a fair trial — an adversarial process, conducted in public before a neutral judge and a jury of the defendant’s peers — has become “all a mirage.” Rakoff is a senior judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Now, about Flynn. Perhaps he lied in an interview with FBI agents. We must, however, take their word for this, because, in accordance with an archaic and self-serving practice, the agents did not record the interview. They wrote their unverifiable version. This, although all FBI agents carry recording capabilities in their smartphones. After prosecutors threatened to indict his son, who was his business partner (remember the axiom: “A prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich”), a coerced and impoverished Flynn, facing many millions in legal bills, and later selling his suburban Washington house, pleaded guilty.
Perhaps Flynn now regrets leading “Lock her up!” chants at the Republican National Convention. All Americans should regret the need for Neily’s many proposed reforms, including a DOJ Office of Plea Integrity to scrutinize coercive plea bargaining, a national embarrassment.
-------------------------------------------------
The above article is from the washingtonpost.com © 1996-2020 The Washington Post
The Same Playbook
The same tactics outlined in the Washington Post article where used to coerce my daughter Katie to confess to burglaries she didn't commit. The persuasion process began by keeping her incarcerated and away from her children from the day of her arrest and for the next 36 days consecutive. Obstacles were put in place to make it difficult to get bail, which eventually totaled $90,000. After bail was posted she was put on house arrest and wore an anklet monitor. She was not allowed to travel to meet with her attorneys, and could only leave to meet with her assigned probation monitor or to go to the hospital for a medical emergency. During this time the prosecutors in multiple jurisdictions amassed an avalanche of charges that eventually totaled between 50 and 60 felonies divided between breaking and entering, grand larceny, and receiving stolen property. Within a few weeks of her arrest Katie was offered a plea deal to serve between 8 and 10 years. On multiple occasions Katie was told that if she didn't confess and ask for leniency she would never see her young kids until they were grown and had their own kids. We have 3 hours of video tapes of Katie meeting with investigators and prosecutors to beg them to look for the lady who brought stolen goods to Katie's consignment shop. On the video the coercion techniques are easy to spot. For example, one investigator told her he had arrested a man selling cigarettes illegally who refused a plea bargain and insisted on a trial. The found him guilty and he was sentenced to over 60 years in prison. Neither Katie nor any of her family members knew about such tactics, and had naively believed that a person is innocent until proven guilty.
Katie's situation was complicated by her own attorneys hiding information from her that proved her innocence. That's right, after she was sentenced I found 3 alibis and 2 exonerating eyewitnesses that proved someone else was burglarizing homes. Katie filed 5 Habeas Corpus petitions asking for a new trial, one petition in each jurisdiction that wrongfully prosecuted her, showing the coercion, the withholding of evidence (Brady violations), falsifying evidence, and the details of why her own attorneys were so ineffective. For example, since her own attorneys led Katie had been misled to think she had no defense, she finally gave into the coercion and confessed hoping for leniency. However, Katie was then sentenced in 5 different jurisdictions as if she were a 5-time offender and came away with close to 20 years without parole. She was also ordered to pay almost $150,000 in restitution upon her release, which means the victims are now waiting for payments to begin. If Katie's sentence is allowed to stand, she will be in her 60's when she is released and starts looking for work. Based on her pay the court will have her making monthly payments that will be divided among the victims.
The double-edge sword of this type of injustice is that innocent people are going to prison after being coerced to confess, and victims are seldom made whole. Who is primarily responsible for this injustice?
Primarily it's the prosecutors who deserve the bulk of the blame. Even when Prosecutor misconduct causes an innocent person to be sent to prison it's extremely rare to punish the prosecutor.
The Cato Institute’s Clark Neily was asked by Audu’s lawyers to write, in accordance with British extradition practices, a Declaration — an “expert report” — about the risk that Audu would not have a meaningful right to a fair U.S. trial. Neily, a member of the American Bar Association’s Plea Bargaining Task Force and head of its subcommittee on impermissibly coercive plea bargains and plea practices, concludes that extradition would “guarantee” Audu’s subjection to a process that “routinely” coerces through plea bargaining. So Audu probably would experience “intolerable pressure designed to induce a waiver of his fundamental right to a fair trial.”
Plea bargaining is, Neily argues “pervasive and coercive” partly because of today’s “trial penalty” — the difference between the sentences offered to those who plead guilty and the much more severe sentences typically imposed after a trial. This penalty discourages exercising a constitutional right. A defendant in a computer hacking case, Neily says, committed suicide during plea bargaining in which prosecutors said he could avoid a trial conviction and sentence of up to 35 years by pleading guilty and accepting a six-month sentence.
The pressure prosecutors can exert — piling on (“stacking”) criminal charges to expose defendants to extreme sentences; pretrial detention, nearly always in squalid confines; threatening to indict family members — can cause innocent people to plead guilty in order to avoid risking protracted incarceration for themselves and loved ones. Such pressures effectively transfer sentencing power from judges to prosecutors. How exactly are these pressures morally preferable to those that used to be administered by truncheons in the back of police stations?
These are reasons why of the nearly 80,000 defendants in federal criminal cases in fiscal 2018, just 2 percent went to trial and 90 percent pleaded guilty. In 2018, 94.7 percent of criminal convictions were obtained through plea bargains in the Southern District of New York, which is seeking Audu’s extradition.
Prosecutors have discovered that almost any defendant can be persuaded to plead guilty, given sufficient inducements. This discovery has been partly a response to the fact that the over-criminalization of life, and particularly Congress’s indefensible multiplication of federal crimes, means that otherwise the court system would, in Justice Antonin Scalia’s words, “grind to a halt.”
There is, Neily says, “abundant, undisputed evidence” of innocent defendants pleading guilty. Of the 367 convicts exonerated by DNA analysis to date, 11 percent had pleaded guilty. Various studies have concluded that between 1.6 percent and 8 percent of defendants who plead guilty would not have been convicted in a trial. The lowest estimate would mean that in 2009 there were more than 1,250 innocent people incarcerated in the federal system alone, and many multiples of that number in state systems.
Responding to Neily’s Declaration, the Justice Department complacently asserts that U.S. law guarantees fair trials: Coercive plea bargains are forbidden, therefore they do not occur, so innocent people do not plead guilty. Move along, nothing to see here.
The Justice Department should consult Jed S. Rakoff. In a 2014 essay, “Why Innocent People Plead Guilty,” he wrote that since the last third of the previous century, a fair trial — an adversarial process, conducted in public before a neutral judge and a jury of the defendant’s peers — has become “all a mirage.” Rakoff is a senior judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Now, about Flynn. Perhaps he lied in an interview with FBI agents. We must, however, take their word for this, because, in accordance with an archaic and self-serving practice, the agents did not record the interview. They wrote their unverifiable version. This, although all FBI agents carry recording capabilities in their smartphones. After prosecutors threatened to indict his son, who was his business partner (remember the axiom: “A prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich”), a coerced and impoverished Flynn, facing many millions in legal bills, and later selling his suburban Washington house, pleaded guilty.
Perhaps Flynn now regrets leading “Lock her up!” chants at the Republican National Convention. All Americans should regret the need for Neily’s many proposed reforms, including a DOJ Office of Plea Integrity to scrutinize coercive plea bargaining, a national embarrassment.
-------------------------------------------------
The above article is from the washingtonpost.com © 1996-2020 The Washington Post
The Same Playbook
The same tactics outlined in the Washington Post article where used to coerce my daughter Katie to confess to burglaries she didn't commit. The persuasion process began by keeping her incarcerated and away from her children from the day of her arrest and for the next 36 days consecutive. Obstacles were put in place to make it difficult to get bail, which eventually totaled $90,000. After bail was posted she was put on house arrest and wore an anklet monitor. She was not allowed to travel to meet with her attorneys, and could only leave to meet with her assigned probation monitor or to go to the hospital for a medical emergency. During this time the prosecutors in multiple jurisdictions amassed an avalanche of charges that eventually totaled between 50 and 60 felonies divided between breaking and entering, grand larceny, and receiving stolen property. Within a few weeks of her arrest Katie was offered a plea deal to serve between 8 and 10 years. On multiple occasions Katie was told that if she didn't confess and ask for leniency she would never see her young kids until they were grown and had their own kids. We have 3 hours of video tapes of Katie meeting with investigators and prosecutors to beg them to look for the lady who brought stolen goods to Katie's consignment shop. On the video the coercion techniques are easy to spot. For example, one investigator told her he had arrested a man selling cigarettes illegally who refused a plea bargain and insisted on a trial. The found him guilty and he was sentenced to over 60 years in prison. Neither Katie nor any of her family members knew about such tactics, and had naively believed that a person is innocent until proven guilty.
Katie's situation was complicated by her own attorneys hiding information from her that proved her innocence. That's right, after she was sentenced I found 3 alibis and 2 exonerating eyewitnesses that proved someone else was burglarizing homes. Katie filed 5 Habeas Corpus petitions asking for a new trial, one petition in each jurisdiction that wrongfully prosecuted her, showing the coercion, the withholding of evidence (Brady violations), falsifying evidence, and the details of why her own attorneys were so ineffective. For example, since her own attorneys led Katie had been misled to think she had no defense, she finally gave into the coercion and confessed hoping for leniency. However, Katie was then sentenced in 5 different jurisdictions as if she were a 5-time offender and came away with close to 20 years without parole. She was also ordered to pay almost $150,000 in restitution upon her release, which means the victims are now waiting for payments to begin. If Katie's sentence is allowed to stand, she will be in her 60's when she is released and starts looking for work. Based on her pay the court will have her making monthly payments that will be divided among the victims.
The double-edge sword of this type of injustice is that innocent people are going to prison after being coerced to confess, and victims are seldom made whole. Who is primarily responsible for this injustice?
Primarily it's the prosecutors who deserve the bulk of the blame. Even when Prosecutor misconduct causes an innocent person to be sent to prison it's extremely rare to punish the prosecutor.
China Research Notes - Part 3
contact: bill.carico@gmail.com 434-426-2287 m
Note: Since beginning my IT career in 1973, I've guided over 1500 clients in making the best choices. The two most frequent users of my investigative research are IBM, who over an 8 year stretch from 1992 to 2000 had me speak at over 50 events spanning 5 contents. My other most active customer has been the The Government of Canada including their departments of Public Works, Defense, DOC, Health, and Treasury.
--------------------------
Why China Started the Covid19 Pandemic
Since President Trump took office in January of 2017 China has remained the world’s second largest economic power and is close to overtaking the U.S.
When President Trump took office, China’s leading telecom companies, state-owned Huawei and ZTE, were well on their way to dominating the world 5G network market. Telecom is at the heart of the Chinese strategy to achieve world-wide technological superiority by 2025. However, President Trump has put roadblocks in place that threaten China’s very existence, the most recent action being taken May 15, 2020 attempting to block global chip makers from shipping computer components to China.
China has experienced a number of similar setbacks during Trump’s first two years in office. For example, President Trump first persuaded allies Italy and the UK, that technology provided by Huawei and ZTE could not be trusted. Italy cancelled a signed contract with Huawei to build their entire 5G network. The UK also scaled back their plans to use Huawei. Trump is trying to make all countries aware of China’s imminent threat.
The May 2020 executive order was a renewal of one implemented the previous year. Since May of 2019 U.S. companies have been barred from using telecommunications equipment made by firms that could pose a national security risk. In all, there were 114 firms blacklisted, and many were Huawei and ZTE affiliates.
Dependency on the US supply chain has become China’s Achilles heel, and tensions between the US and China are at an all time high.
A second Trump term at a minimum would be devastating to China’s technology roadmap and cause its 5G plans to unravel, but if he can persuade enough countries to go against communist China it could threaten the very existence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Taking a Closer Look
China has created multiple state-owned companies that compete in markets world wide. Two of these, ZTE (created in 1985) and Huawei (1987), are telecom manufacturers of both infrastructure equipment and smartphones.
State-owned means the real owner is the CCP even though they claim they are employee-owned, but they aren't fooling anybody who knows the track record of the CCP.
The Huawei website states:
“Huawei is an independent, privately-held company. We are not owned or controlled by, nor affiliated with the government, or any other 3rd party corporation. In fact, Huawei is owned by our employees through an Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP) that has been in place since the beginning. No one can own a share without working at Huawei, and as of 2018 there were 96,768 shareholding employees. Our founder, Ren Zhengfei, owns a 1.14% stake in the company. Shares confer voting rights. Shareholding employees elect members to form a Representatives' Commission, getting one vote for each share held. Then the Commission elects the company’s Board of Directors and Supervisory Board. At the last election in January 2019, 86,514 shareholding employees voted to elect 115 representatives at 416 polling stations around the world. Employee-ownership is instrumental to our rapid growth. Over the years, it has offered an incentive to our loyal employees and helped us attract talented people. Unlike many publicly-owned companies, Huawei’s decisions are not based on the need for quarterly returns and annual dividends." see: https://www.huawei.com/us/about-huawei/corporate-governance/corporate-governance for more info
Please watch this 2 minute Huawei sales video for 5G networks that promotes putting communist built and managed technology into every home in the world: https://carrier.huawei.com/en/spotlight/5g
.
It appears if the price is right, buyers don’t mind that they are contracting with the Fox to guard the hen house. Being generously subsidized by the CCP, State-owned Chinese companies set product prices 20% to 40% below their international competitors. In a deal with Mexico, on top of the standard deep discounts, Huawei offered Mexico a 1% loan in return for being allowed to build out 80% of Mexico's 5G infrastructure.
As of May 2020 Huawei is still working with prominent telecom companies including British Telecom (BT), Vodafone, Orange, and T-Mobile. As mentioned previously, Huawei’s Achilles heel is its product manufacturing that is totally dependent on obtaining technology and parts from a number of U.S. companies. If access to it’s U.S supply chain goes away it would be catastrophic for China and could even threaten its existence, and that is what Trump is currently using for leverage in his dealings with China.
Here are a few more details regarding how Trump stopped China's telecom juggernaut:
(remember President Trump took the oath of office in Jan 2017)
March 2017 - ZTE pled guilty to illegally exporting U.S. technology to Iran and North Korea in violation of trade sanctions, and was fined by the US Dept of Commerce a total of US$1.19 billion... the largest fine ever imposed by the USA for export violations.
Jan 2019 - the USA filed an indictment against Huawei Technologies for the systematic theft of intellectual property and some other offenses.
Huawei was founded in 1987 and it took 22 years (2009) to land its breakout contract - building a 4G network in Norway. Since then Huawei has expanded operations to more than 170 countries and has signed more than 60 contracts for 5G with international carriers.
Security Flaws Discovered
Security companies and US intelligence agencies have examined Chinese products found backdoors in Huawei’s code along with other security flaws. That's why the US warned allies that the Chinese were positioning to conduct cyber-espionage worldwide. As a result, the US Congress banned the use of Huawei products in federal projects.
Feb 2019 - Italy, who had already closed the deal to have Huawei build their 5G infrastructure, backed out and canceled the contracts, citing strong pressure from the United States. Italy refused to pay China penalties for cancellation, and announced it would ban both Huawei and ZTE from playing a role in the 5G rollout. After Italy embarrassed China on the international stage, exactly one year later Italy became one of first and hardest hit countries by Covid-19.
Aug. 18, 2019: The UK is still on the fence about using Huawei, so President Trump applies more pressure on UK to not do business with Huawei, again raising the "national security threat".
Even though the US exposed Huawei as a threat to the national security of anyone using their products, the UK hesitated for financial reasons. The UK already had so much Huawei equipment in their 4G infrastructure that it would cost a fortune to replace it, so they ended up doing a partial ban, agreeing no Huawei equipment could be used in the core infrastructure, only in the towers.
Overall, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan also banned Huawei from their respective countries.
Jan 2020 – Huawei forecasted a difficult year ahead.
Since Trump has just survived impeachment and the democrats looking weak, anything that could destroy the US economy could also remove Trump from office.
April 2020 - Contrary to its grim business forecast regularly fed to analysts, Huawei still managed to show 1Q revenue growth of 1.4% year over year despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
Huawei (37%) and Ericsson are the current market leaders for 5G infrastructure called "the mobile core." In 2019 only 19 million 5G capable phones total were sold, of which Huawei sold almost 7 million...barely edging out Samsung as the top seller. Nokia and Ericsson are the other main competitors from Europe and Cisco, Qualcomm, and Juniper Networks are in the US.
Other Technology Fronts
In addition to 5G networks, China has a strong presence on a number of technology fronts. China is heavily invested into Artificial Intelligence (AI) and well positioned to dominate the software market for self-driving cars. They are leading the industry in facial recognition capabilities and already have millions of video cameras in place to track movements and activities of their citizens and rank them according to their compliance. Watch this 10 minute video from Bloomberg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydPqKhgh9Mg which includes a segment interviewing foreign workers. One worker from Australia reported having jay walked and 20 seconds later a fine was withdrawn from his Wechat account. Here is a segment of the video transcript including timestamps:
03:50 Narrator:
[referring to finding QR codes on everything:} “America laughed these things off years ago, but here, they run the entire economy. Cash and credit cards are history. Instead you scan QR codes to pay for everything: restaurants, groceries, even buskers. On the surface this is all good. It's the easy, convenient mobile payment system of the future. But there's also a dark side. The Chinese government can peer into the two dominant payment systems, AliPay and WeChat, as it sees fit. It's already started tracking behavior as part of a plan to rank citizens and measure how good and obedient they are. The tech revolution may have brought prosperity to Shenzhen but it's also brought more and more insidious intrusions into people's lives. To dig deeper into life under the Chinese deep state, I've assembled a team of extraordinary foreigners who work at tech startups in Shenzhen.
Hopefully a few beers will encourage them to open up about their thought crimes.
[Host asks the group of several young men:] “Living in a very tightly regulated Communist country - does that bother you, or you don't care?
05:17 [Answers from the young men:] “The presumption at least that I got before I came from Australia was sort of like moving into a sort of like a militarized state, like things are going to be really intense. But like, you take a beer, just like walk down the road, hang out in the park, fine. Do that back in my hometown in Australia, like, straight to the cop-house.
05:30 [person 2] But then, play spikeball on the grass, and then all of a sudden the cops come and stop you.
05:36 Narrator: Well and you got, you jaywalked and you had facial recognition?
05:41 [person 3]... So I was jaywalking in Nanxian. And all of a sudden I got a fine to my WeChat.
05:48 Was it instant?
05:48 It was about 20 seconds after, I guess. I had money in my balance and it just went straight out.
05:54 This is just for the one thing - it just came straight out.
05:59 Didn't even authorize it. That's crazy.
06:02 It's true. Try to jaywalk in certain parts of Shenzhen, and the government's facial recognition will spot you. There's even a board of shame, showing the faces of recent offenders.
I'm surprised and very very worried that they have your face in the facial recognition - like, the facial recognition system. But they have everyone's though. When you go across the border they take that picture, exactly, yeah. So it's all in the system, they know where you are.That's scary.
06:28 [Narrator] It gets even scarier. Because big brother is watching what you do online too.
06:36 Most of the websites we know and love are blocked in China, replaced with Chinese equivalents that the government can monitor: a sort of mirror universe internet.
.(end of video transcript excerpt)
Please feel free to share this info, and contact me to request a copy of the full research report, which is free.
==============================
Part 4 is about the Power of Propaganda and China’s secret plan to replace America
Part 5 is about my findings from examining some of the more plausible claims of corruption in diagnosing and inaccuracies reporting Covid-19
Part 6 is my report on accumulating reliable info on Covid-19 from people who have contracted it and/or who can provide trustworthy information about someone they know who has had it..
======= end of Part 3 ===============================================
contact: bill.carico@gmail.com 434-426-2287 m
Note: Since beginning my IT career in 1973, I've guided over 1500 clients in making the best choices. The two most frequent users of my investigative research are IBM, who over an 8 year stretch from 1992 to 2000 had me speak at over 50 events spanning 5 contents. My other most active customer has been the The Government of Canada including their departments of Public Works, Defense, DOC, Health, and Treasury.
--------------------------
Why China Started the Covid19 Pandemic
Since President Trump took office in January of 2017 China has remained the world’s second largest economic power and is close to overtaking the U.S.
When President Trump took office, China’s leading telecom companies, state-owned Huawei and ZTE, were well on their way to dominating the world 5G network market. Telecom is at the heart of the Chinese strategy to achieve world-wide technological superiority by 2025. However, President Trump has put roadblocks in place that threaten China’s very existence, the most recent action being taken May 15, 2020 attempting to block global chip makers from shipping computer components to China.
China has experienced a number of similar setbacks during Trump’s first two years in office. For example, President Trump first persuaded allies Italy and the UK, that technology provided by Huawei and ZTE could not be trusted. Italy cancelled a signed contract with Huawei to build their entire 5G network. The UK also scaled back their plans to use Huawei. Trump is trying to make all countries aware of China’s imminent threat.
The May 2020 executive order was a renewal of one implemented the previous year. Since May of 2019 U.S. companies have been barred from using telecommunications equipment made by firms that could pose a national security risk. In all, there were 114 firms blacklisted, and many were Huawei and ZTE affiliates.
Dependency on the US supply chain has become China’s Achilles heel, and tensions between the US and China are at an all time high.
A second Trump term at a minimum would be devastating to China’s technology roadmap and cause its 5G plans to unravel, but if he can persuade enough countries to go against communist China it could threaten the very existence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Taking a Closer Look
China has created multiple state-owned companies that compete in markets world wide. Two of these, ZTE (created in 1985) and Huawei (1987), are telecom manufacturers of both infrastructure equipment and smartphones.
State-owned means the real owner is the CCP even though they claim they are employee-owned, but they aren't fooling anybody who knows the track record of the CCP.
The Huawei website states:
“Huawei is an independent, privately-held company. We are not owned or controlled by, nor affiliated with the government, or any other 3rd party corporation. In fact, Huawei is owned by our employees through an Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP) that has been in place since the beginning. No one can own a share without working at Huawei, and as of 2018 there were 96,768 shareholding employees. Our founder, Ren Zhengfei, owns a 1.14% stake in the company. Shares confer voting rights. Shareholding employees elect members to form a Representatives' Commission, getting one vote for each share held. Then the Commission elects the company’s Board of Directors and Supervisory Board. At the last election in January 2019, 86,514 shareholding employees voted to elect 115 representatives at 416 polling stations around the world. Employee-ownership is instrumental to our rapid growth. Over the years, it has offered an incentive to our loyal employees and helped us attract talented people. Unlike many publicly-owned companies, Huawei’s decisions are not based on the need for quarterly returns and annual dividends." see: https://www.huawei.com/us/about-huawei/corporate-governance/corporate-governance for more info
Please watch this 2 minute Huawei sales video for 5G networks that promotes putting communist built and managed technology into every home in the world: https://carrier.huawei.com/en/spotlight/5g
.
It appears if the price is right, buyers don’t mind that they are contracting with the Fox to guard the hen house. Being generously subsidized by the CCP, State-owned Chinese companies set product prices 20% to 40% below their international competitors. In a deal with Mexico, on top of the standard deep discounts, Huawei offered Mexico a 1% loan in return for being allowed to build out 80% of Mexico's 5G infrastructure.
As of May 2020 Huawei is still working with prominent telecom companies including British Telecom (BT), Vodafone, Orange, and T-Mobile. As mentioned previously, Huawei’s Achilles heel is its product manufacturing that is totally dependent on obtaining technology and parts from a number of U.S. companies. If access to it’s U.S supply chain goes away it would be catastrophic for China and could even threaten its existence, and that is what Trump is currently using for leverage in his dealings with China.
Here are a few more details regarding how Trump stopped China's telecom juggernaut:
(remember President Trump took the oath of office in Jan 2017)
March 2017 - ZTE pled guilty to illegally exporting U.S. technology to Iran and North Korea in violation of trade sanctions, and was fined by the US Dept of Commerce a total of US$1.19 billion... the largest fine ever imposed by the USA for export violations.
Jan 2019 - the USA filed an indictment against Huawei Technologies for the systematic theft of intellectual property and some other offenses.
Huawei was founded in 1987 and it took 22 years (2009) to land its breakout contract - building a 4G network in Norway. Since then Huawei has expanded operations to more than 170 countries and has signed more than 60 contracts for 5G with international carriers.
Security Flaws Discovered
Security companies and US intelligence agencies have examined Chinese products found backdoors in Huawei’s code along with other security flaws. That's why the US warned allies that the Chinese were positioning to conduct cyber-espionage worldwide. As a result, the US Congress banned the use of Huawei products in federal projects.
Feb 2019 - Italy, who had already closed the deal to have Huawei build their 5G infrastructure, backed out and canceled the contracts, citing strong pressure from the United States. Italy refused to pay China penalties for cancellation, and announced it would ban both Huawei and ZTE from playing a role in the 5G rollout. After Italy embarrassed China on the international stage, exactly one year later Italy became one of first and hardest hit countries by Covid-19.
Aug. 18, 2019: The UK is still on the fence about using Huawei, so President Trump applies more pressure on UK to not do business with Huawei, again raising the "national security threat".
Even though the US exposed Huawei as a threat to the national security of anyone using their products, the UK hesitated for financial reasons. The UK already had so much Huawei equipment in their 4G infrastructure that it would cost a fortune to replace it, so they ended up doing a partial ban, agreeing no Huawei equipment could be used in the core infrastructure, only in the towers.
Overall, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan also banned Huawei from their respective countries.
Jan 2020 – Huawei forecasted a difficult year ahead.
Since Trump has just survived impeachment and the democrats looking weak, anything that could destroy the US economy could also remove Trump from office.
April 2020 - Contrary to its grim business forecast regularly fed to analysts, Huawei still managed to show 1Q revenue growth of 1.4% year over year despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
Huawei (37%) and Ericsson are the current market leaders for 5G infrastructure called "the mobile core." In 2019 only 19 million 5G capable phones total were sold, of which Huawei sold almost 7 million...barely edging out Samsung as the top seller. Nokia and Ericsson are the other main competitors from Europe and Cisco, Qualcomm, and Juniper Networks are in the US.
Other Technology Fronts
In addition to 5G networks, China has a strong presence on a number of technology fronts. China is heavily invested into Artificial Intelligence (AI) and well positioned to dominate the software market for self-driving cars. They are leading the industry in facial recognition capabilities and already have millions of video cameras in place to track movements and activities of their citizens and rank them according to their compliance. Watch this 10 minute video from Bloomberg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydPqKhgh9Mg which includes a segment interviewing foreign workers. One worker from Australia reported having jay walked and 20 seconds later a fine was withdrawn from his Wechat account. Here is a segment of the video transcript including timestamps:
03:50 Narrator:
[referring to finding QR codes on everything:} “America laughed these things off years ago, but here, they run the entire economy. Cash and credit cards are history. Instead you scan QR codes to pay for everything: restaurants, groceries, even buskers. On the surface this is all good. It's the easy, convenient mobile payment system of the future. But there's also a dark side. The Chinese government can peer into the two dominant payment systems, AliPay and WeChat, as it sees fit. It's already started tracking behavior as part of a plan to rank citizens and measure how good and obedient they are. The tech revolution may have brought prosperity to Shenzhen but it's also brought more and more insidious intrusions into people's lives. To dig deeper into life under the Chinese deep state, I've assembled a team of extraordinary foreigners who work at tech startups in Shenzhen.
Hopefully a few beers will encourage them to open up about their thought crimes.
[Host asks the group of several young men:] “Living in a very tightly regulated Communist country - does that bother you, or you don't care?
05:17 [Answers from the young men:] “The presumption at least that I got before I came from Australia was sort of like moving into a sort of like a militarized state, like things are going to be really intense. But like, you take a beer, just like walk down the road, hang out in the park, fine. Do that back in my hometown in Australia, like, straight to the cop-house.
05:30 [person 2] But then, play spikeball on the grass, and then all of a sudden the cops come and stop you.
05:36 Narrator: Well and you got, you jaywalked and you had facial recognition?
05:41 [person 3]... So I was jaywalking in Nanxian. And all of a sudden I got a fine to my WeChat.
05:48 Was it instant?
05:48 It was about 20 seconds after, I guess. I had money in my balance and it just went straight out.
05:54 This is just for the one thing - it just came straight out.
05:59 Didn't even authorize it. That's crazy.
06:02 It's true. Try to jaywalk in certain parts of Shenzhen, and the government's facial recognition will spot you. There's even a board of shame, showing the faces of recent offenders.
I'm surprised and very very worried that they have your face in the facial recognition - like, the facial recognition system. But they have everyone's though. When you go across the border they take that picture, exactly, yeah. So it's all in the system, they know where you are.That's scary.
06:28 [Narrator] It gets even scarier. Because big brother is watching what you do online too.
06:36 Most of the websites we know and love are blocked in China, replaced with Chinese equivalents that the government can monitor: a sort of mirror universe internet.
.(end of video transcript excerpt)
Please feel free to share this info, and contact me to request a copy of the full research report, which is free.
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Part 4 is about the Power of Propaganda and China’s secret plan to replace America
Part 5 is about my findings from examining some of the more plausible claims of corruption in diagnosing and inaccuracies reporting Covid-19
Part 6 is my report on accumulating reliable info on Covid-19 from people who have contracted it and/or who can provide trustworthy information about someone they know who has had it..
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