The Spectrum of Corruption
by Bill Carico
by Bill Carico
This article considers two examples of injustice caused by corruption. One from the U.S. Department of Justice involving a sitting Senator, the other from a county planning commission meeting where my curiosity led to a startling discovery.
Corruption can take on many forms, but in general corruption is dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power. Perhaps the most familiar form of corruption is bribery in high places. This has frequently been uncovered by journalists and organizations who are public watch guards.
Perhaps the most common form of corruption is participating in decisions while having a conflict-of-interest. This is easier to hide and sometimes impossible to discover because it can exist at so many levels and come up in so many instances.
Consequences
Public servants, from politicians to government employees, could face severe consequences for violating the public trust. Ethics laws exist that stipulate violators could be censured, removed from office, permanently disqualified from holding any state position, paying restitution, sent to prison for many years, and/or fined many thousands of dollars.
The problem is these laws are seldom enforced.
Should someone in power decide to enforce them, how much clout would they have? That depends on the state.
The statutes have been created with the degree of punishment corresponding to how bad each state views an instance of misconduct in consideration of the harm a violation may cause. The most severe consequences are normally reserved for cases of bribery involving large sums or similar types of intentional violations of ethics or anti-corruption laws. for lesser wrongdoings, states vary widely on the details.
Depending on the wrongdoing, violators can face both criminal or administrative penalties concurrently.
Herewith are two examples, one from each end of the political spectrum. In this instance, the word Spectrum is used to suggest a scale exists between two extreme or opposite points. It's important to consider spectrums from different vantage points. For example, politicians are commonly classified as on "the left or the right of the political spectrum." However, a power spectrum exists in politics based on the influence anyone can wield. There is also a spectrum of potential outcomes, meaning the results of actions taken or comments made, created by the degree to which the official is virtuous or corrupt. In this article the high end of the spectrum refers to corruption in the US Office of the Attorney General (AG), and the low end refers to local county planning commissioners. What they have in common is the far reaching damage corruption can cause.
"Licensed to Lie"
"Licensed to Lie...Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice," is a best-selling book by Sidney Powell.
Chapter one begins describing the last day in the life of Nick Marsh, a corrupt DOJ attorney who eventually took his own life. Marsh had been involved in the wrongful prosecution of Senator Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, a beloved and long standing US Senator. The spectacle dominated the news sufficiently that Stevens lost his re-election bid, and shortly thereafter lost his life in a plane crash with several friends on an Alaskan fishing trip. She writes, "The news of the senator's untimely death brought attention once again to his corrupt prosecution and dominated the news for the next several days. Editorials abounded, virtually all of which extolled former Senator Steven's accomplishments on behalf of Alaska, and they all mentioned the injustice of his prosecution and the misconduct of his prosecutors....and the toll the corrupt prosecution had taken on [Stevens], his career, and his family." The defense lawyers stated, "Stevens was innocent and insisted on fighting the charges...He remained profoundly affected by the government's misconduct and its implications for others. His fervent hope was that meaningful change would be brought to the criminal justice system so that others would not be mistreated as he was by the very officials who duty is to represent the United Sates justly and fairly."
It was amidst this renewed publicity that one of three DOJ lawyers being investigated for prosecutorial misconduct to take his own life. The investigation of prosecutorial is rare, but this was an investigation into DOJ prosecutors, who are the ones who are supposed to adhere to the highest ethical standards. "After all," Powell writes, "They investigated public officials for public corruption. They had to be above reproach." Powell then on page 7 delves into the pressure to win that prosecutors face, especially on high profile cases, because they can "make or break a prosecutor's career. A win in these cases was a first-class ticket to seven-figure incomes in the most prestigious national or international law firms or promotions up the ladder in the Department of Justice, the White House, or the leadership of the FBI." It was the next two characters she introduces that aroused my suspicious on the basis of illogical actions.
Powell circles back 2.5 years and describes the actions of a newly appointed acting assistant attorney general of the Criminal Division of the DOJ. She writes, "Within days of the arrival of [Matthew] Friedrich and his deputy, Rita Glavin, they intruded heavily into the Stevens case. They began weekly - sometimes daily- meetings with [DOJ management and prosecutors involved]. .. For unknown reasons, they rushed to indict Senator Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the senate. Friedrich and Glavin took control of the Stevens prosecution and micromanaged it to absurd detail. On the eve of the indictment, they demoted [Nick] Marsh from first chair to third chair for the Steven's trial. After Friedrich and Glavin took over, the prosecution had nothing to problems, yet no one outside of a small circle within the department would know that until long after it all started to unravel. Nick [Marsh] know the truth. When it all fell apart, he and his fellow trial team members became the targets of both an internal department investigation" and a judge appointed an independent investigator so "[Nick Marsh]...feared that everything that went wrong in the Stevens prosecution was going to be hung around his neck. Friedrich and Glavin were way to politically connected and savvy to take the fall."
How Deep Does Corruption Run?
Turns out the judge didn't name either Friedrich or Glavin on the order authorizing the independent investigation, which was an ominous sign for Nick Marsh. The summarize the Stevens case, he was found guilty because Friedrich and Glavin and the team of prosecutors withheld evidence that would have likely led to Stevens acquittal.
The DOJ's special investigation concluded evidence had been withheld, so they dismissed the charges
against Stevens. They turned their attention to damage control, and attempted to stem any efforts to pass laws that would hold prosecutors accountable. Here is the introduction section for the report:
The Department of Justice respectfully submits this statement for the record for today’s hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, on the prosecution of former Senator Ted Stevens. When concerns were first raised about the handling of the prosecution of Senator Stevens, the Department immediately conducted an internal review. The Attorney General recognized the importance of ensuring trust and confidence in the work of Department prosecutors and took the extraordinary step of moving to dismiss the case when errors were discovered. Moreover, to ensure that the mistakes in the Stevens case would not be repeated, the Attorney General convened a working group to review discovery practices and charged the group with developing recommendations for improving such practices so that errors are minimized. As a result of the working group’s efforts, the Department has taken unprecedented steps, described more fully below, to ensure that prosecutors, agents, and paralegals have the necessary training and resources to fulfill their legal and ethical obligations with respect to discovery in criminal cases. These reforms include a sweeping training curriculum for all federal prosecutors and the requirement – for the first time in the history of the Department of Justice – that every federal prosecutor receive refresher discovery training each year. In light of these internal reforms, the Department does not believe that legislation is needed to address the problems that came to light in the Stevens prosecution. Such a legislative proposal would upset the careful balance of interests at stake in criminal cases, cause significant harm to victims, witnesses, and law enforcement efforts, and generate substantial and unnecessary litigation that would divert scarce judicial and prosecutorial resources. As was recently recognized by the Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules of the Judicial Conference of the United States (“Criminal Rules Committee”), which in 2010-11 considered and rejected changes to Rule 16, true improvements to discovery practices will come from prosecutors and agents having a full appreciation of their responsibilities under their existing obligations, rather than by expanding those obligations. [emphasis added]
(ref: download full report https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/testimonies/witnesses/attachments/04/19/12/04-19-12-doj-statement.pdf)
When Senator Stevens was being railroaded, it was already illegal for prosecutors to withhold exonerating information from defense lawyers, and no one can say for sure how often this happens because its easy to hide. Increasingly research done by the injusticeproject.org and others suggests that prosecutorial misconduct is not only commonplace, its a pandemic.
The problem isn't the need for more laws, it's the need to enforce the laws already in place.
What can be said with absolute certainty, when prosecutors have been known to violate the law, they are rarely held accountable, and in the few instances they have been their punishment is inconsequential.
Sydney Powell wrote in the Epilog of "Licensed to Lie," "The collateral damage from a wrongful prosecution is beyond measure. Marriages are shattered, children left parentless, careers ended, families devastated, finances ruined - all for what? To advance the career of a headline-grabbing, ethically, morally, and legally corrupt prosecutor? An indictment and corrupt criminal prosecution fracture lives forever... the corruption of justice by the very people who are sworn and empowered to protect us. When an innocent person is imprisoned, either the guilty person is still free or there is no guilty party at all because no actual crime has been committed. The administration of justice is robbed of any validity, and society loses from all sides. The majority of the public- and now even good lawyers - have no faith in the fairness of our system."
Powell goes on to report that the special investigator found evidence implicating Friedrich and Glavin in the Stevens injustice and corruption, but no one seems to have followed up. All the attorneys involved but were unscathed by their criminal acts, except for the two working with Nick Marsh early on. One of them was suspended without pay for forty days, the other for 15 days.
Ethics Law and Punishment
As mentioned previously, ethics violations and anti-corruption laws pertain to misconduct in the handling of money, services, information, contracts, relationships, or public property, and states vary widely on the details.
For example, in 2005 the Virginia General Assembly adopted ethics laws that included a Conflict of Interest Act so as to assure that Virginia's citizens can maintain their highest trust in their public officers and employees. The Act is built upon the requirements for ongoing disclosure/reporting of economic interests. Here are the opening paragraphs: "The General Assembly, recognizing that our system of representative government is dependent in part upon (i) citizen legislative members representing fully the public in the legislative process and (ii) its citizens maintaining the highest trust in their public officers and employees, finds and declares that the citizens are entitled to be assured that the judgment of public officers and employees will be guided by a law that defines and prohibits inappropriate conflicts and requires disclosure of economic interests. To that end and for the purpose of establishing a single body of law applicable to all state and local government officers and employees on the subject of conflict of interests, the General Assembly enacts this State and Local Government Conflict of Interests Act so that the standards of conduct for such officers and employees may be uniform throughout the Commonwealth."
Regarding punishment, "Any knowing violation of the General Assembly Conflicts of Interest Act is a class 1 misdemeanor, (Va. Code Ann. § 30-123) and shall be punishable by civil penalties."
In Virginia, Class 1 misdemeanors could mean jail time up to a year plus a $2,500 fine. The "Class 1" designation also applies to traffic offenses such as Reckless Driving or DUI, and criminal offenses such as Assault & Battery or Petit Larceny. Class 2 misdemeanors are lesser offenses and are punished by up to 6 months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Help is provided to keep public officials out of trouble, "the Virginia Conflict of Interest and Ethics Advisory Council was established by law to encourage and facilitate compliance with the State and Local Government Conflict of Interests Act (§ 2.2-3100 et seq.) the General Assembly Conflicts of Interests Act (§ 30-100 et seq.) (hereafter the Acts) and the lobbying laws in Article 3 (§ 2.2-418 et seq.) of Chapter 4 of Title 2.2 (hereafter Article 3).Among other duties, the Council is tasked with providing training and guidance, issuing formal advisory opinions to those required to comply with the above laws, and facilitating the timely and accurate electronic filing of disclosure reports. The Council also submits an annual report to the General Assembly and the Governor on its findings and makes recommendations to changes in law." (ref: http://ethics.dls.virginia.gov/about.asp)
If a citizen has a concern or complaint, they are instructed to go the the commonwealth attorney for the county.
Sidebar: Commonwealth attorneys are state prosecutors. Commonwealths existed under British colonial rule as political communities before 1776 and retained this designation. The four commonwealths among the 50 US states are Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts.
Definition - a transaction is any matter being considered.
From Virginia's Code: "Personal interest in a transaction" means a personal interest of an officer or employee in any matter considered by his agency. Such personal interest exists when an officer or employee or a member of his immediate family has a personal interest in property or a business or governmental agency, or represents or provides services to any individual or business and such property, business or represented or served individual or business (i) is the subject of the transaction or (ii) may realize a reasonably foreseeable direct or indirect benefit or detriment as a result of the action of the agency considering the transaction.
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)
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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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