China’s quantum leap — Made in Germany

Germany’s oldest university hosts many scientists conducting groundbreaking work. Little did they know how they would become entangled in China’s quantum military strategy.

The podium is decorated with pink and white plastic flowers. The Chinese man behind it speaks at length about a laser radar system for detecting stealth aircraft. Amid the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, his audience joins him virtually for the talk.

A young participant is curious — why is quantum research so important for Xinjiang? The Xinjiang Association of Science and Technology has organized the online session to showcase groundbreaking achievements in Chinese quantum research.

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China, Pakistan and Turkey Eyeing Kashmir

When India hosted a key G20 conference in Srinagar, the capital of the Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory of India, on May 22 and 23, even though the conference was reportedly attended by around 122 delegates, including 60 foreigners, it was boycotted by Pakistan as well as its longtime allies, China and Turkey.

Pakistan called the meeting “illegal.” Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India, but it is claimed by Pakistan, which has violently targeted the region through terror groups. Hundreds of people therefore rallied in the Pakistan-occupied area of Kashmir to protest the meeting.

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Tom Mulcair: Will Justin Trudeau decide to stick around?

Now that David Johnston has stepped down, the serious work of putting in place a commission of inquiry can begin.

Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc embarrassed himself by saying the Liberals were never opposed to a public inquiry. But at this stage, who cares?

The important thing is that Canadians will finally have a chance to know what really happened with Chinese government interference in our elections.

He’s a delusional wee tyrant, far too much the narcissist to ever consider stepping down.

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John Robson: With Johnston Gone, We Need a Real Public Inquiry With Teeth

So it looks like there’s going to be a public inquiry into Chinese communist meddling in our elections after all. At least Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc is hinting as much. Who saw that one coming?

Not David Johnston, evidently. He finally stepped down from his untenable position, which I greet with the same grace he exhibited in announcing it. Namely in resigning as depressingly ordinary rapporteur he blamed “the highly partisan atmosphere around my appointment and work,” not the real conflict of interest that made him unsuitable from the word go and the shabby initial report that made his position untenable.

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RCMP says it’s opened an investigation into allegations China intimidated MP Chong and his family

The head of the RCMP says his organization has opened an investigation into allegations China attempted to target and intimidate Conservative MP Michael Chong and his family.

Commissioner Mike Duheme made the comments before the procedure and House affairs committee Tuesday morning. It has been studying an alleged 2021 Beijing plot to amass information on Chong’s family in retaliation for his efforts to recognize the persecution of Uyghurs as genocide.

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The David Johnston mess is Justin Trudeau’s responsibility

It was the right decision for David Johnston to resign from whatever his job was, whoever’s decision it was.

Still, amongst the things for which there will have to be a reckoning when this is all over is why he was appointed in the first place. Mr. Johnston himself never seemed to understand what he had walked into or why he should not have walked into it – to the last, in his letter of resignation, he put the opposition down to the “highly partisan atmosphere” – but the Prime Minister and his people did. They appointed him not in spite of his unsuitability, but because of it.

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White House Says No Plans to Invite Canada to AUKUS, a Concern for Canada’s Military

There are no plans to invite Canada to a security pact between Australia, the UK, and the United States focused on defence technology cooperation, says U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby.

The trilateral security pact, AUKUS, was formed in 2021 and has been seen as a way to counter China’s growing military presence in the Indo-Pacific region.

I suspect Canada is excluded because we are riddled with ChiCom assests.

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How the Liberals managed a crisis into a fiasco

The old saw about crisis management is that the goal is to figure out where the crisis ends and get there as quickly as possible.

But when Liberal cabinet minister Dominic LeBlanc met reporters on the Saturday morning after the resignation of David Johnston to talk about next steps, he was back where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was three months ago, on March 6.

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The US Is Preparing Evacuation Plans for American Citizens in Taiwan

The U.S. government is preparing evacuation plans for American citizens living in Taiwan, three sources told The Messenger.

The planning has been underway for at least six months and “it’s heated up over the past two months or so,” said a senior U.S. intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the planning.

h/t Mauser

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Venezuela Has More Than Just Oil and China Knows It

On May 17, Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro received a delegation group led by Lin Mingxiang, vice minister of the International Department of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee, and discussed ways to further strengthen the strategic partnership between the two countries.

Weeks before this happened, after Maduro met with Chinese ambassador Li Baorong, Bloomberg’s Patricia Laya and Fabiola Zerpa suggested that the two were “re-establishing connections after years of cooling ties, with government contacts resuming.”

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What really went on inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid erupted

Fresh evidence drawn from confidential files reveals Chinese scientists spliced together deadly pathogens shortly before the pandemic

Scientists in Wuhan working alongside the Chinese military were combining the world’s most deadly coronaviruses to create a new mutant virus just as the pandemic began.

Investigators who scrutinised top-secret intercepted communications and scientific research believe Chinese scientists were running a covert project of dangerous experiments, which caused a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and started the Covid-19 outbreak.

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Trudeau’s government wants opposition parties to create their own public inquiry? Good luck with that

The same political forces that shredded David Johnston — forcing the former governor general’s abrupt resignation on Friday — are being challenged to find a new person to restore Canadians’ faith in their electoral system.

Well, good luck with that.

Basically, Justin Trudeau’s government is borrowing one the cardinal rules of retail to get out of the political mess that has dominated Parliament Hill for months, telling the fractious opposition parties: you broke it, you bought it.

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Terry Glavin: Justin Trudeau benefits the most from years-long public inquiry

So, David Johnston, the former governor-general, longtime Trudeau family friend and lifelong champion of deep political, institutional and economic collaboration between Canada and China has finally conceded what everybody already knew, which is that he cannot be trusted to shed any useful light on clandestine efforts to keep that catastrophic collaboration on life support.

To get a handle on what happens next in the Trudeau government’s ongoing, puck-ragging refusal to come clean about what it knew, when it knew and what it did about Beijing’s well-documented interference on the Liberals’ behalf in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections, it is necessary to remember why we’re at this clown-show juncture in the first place, exactly, and how we got here.

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How David Johnston embraced China for decades before probing election interference

David Johnston mentioned it repeatedly in speeches and media interviews, a source of pride and an emblem of his family’s closeness to an important nation.

Three of the former governor general’s five daughters spent at least part of their university years studying in China, he would note, one of them learning to speak Mandarin.

“Johnston said frankly that he has also noticed some changes in his daughters after staying in China,” said a China News Service account of a 2013 speech. “They are more curious, they know how to think critically, and their thinking and vision are more broadened.”

It was all a con.

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Cuba is hosting a Chinese spy station, White House says

The Biden administration on Saturday disclosed the existence of a Chinese eavesdropping post in Cuba, and officials said the facility is one of dozens that Beijing has established, or sought to establish, as it seeks to expand intelligence gathering and other military operations throughout the world.

The spy station in Cuba dates back to at least 2019, when it underwent unspecified upgrades, a Biden administration official said, citing newly declassified intelligence. This official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, declined to say when the facility was built.

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