Friday 26 June 2020

Five Eyes; but no 20/20 vision


Since the beginning of the year, the world has been gripped in an atmosphere of constant crisis. With Covid-19 being declared a pandemic and resulting in a recession caused by non-financial factors, enemies of democracy have taken a strategic path to attack the western world. The response has been muted in most cases, and in Canada’s case it has been quasi subservient.
In addition to the pandemic, the Trump Presidency is facing turmoil on many fronts. Early this year in a purely political move, the Democrats impeached the President, with dubious accusations of ‘abuse of power’ and ‘obstruction of justice’ in an attempt to unseat a duly elected president. Ever since his election, he has been hounded by his opponents, and a bias media. To add to his problems the tragic death of George Floyd at the hands of a rogue racist policeman, has resulted in protests against racism and a quasi-civil war.  In an election year this state of chaos has given the enemies of the United States a perfect environment to challenge and conduct attacks on different fronts.
It is said that while the cat is away the mice will play With Trump being undermined by his domestic opponents; the forces of evil are ready to take advantage. North Korea, has resumed its skirmishes with the South in an attempt to garner attention. Iran has declared that they have more nuclear material enough to be close to producing a nuclear bomb. Russia and China are ratcheting their tactics to cause problems in many parts of the world. China has attacked India’s borders, while Russia is increasingly invading the allies’ air space. China has affected a massive cyber-attack on Australia, and these are only a few of the many geopolitical threats.
The ‘Five Eyes’ (FVEY) organization is an intelligence alliance made up of the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. It is the foremost known intelligence alliance in the world. The members monitor and share information about espionage, and they also spy on each other and share information to circumvent domestic regulations on their own citizens. In recent years one of the biggest concerns of the organization has been the expansion of Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant at the forefront of 5G development. With Huawei’s connections to the Chinese Government it is feared that the integrity of networks in the alliance countries may be compromised if they choose to use the system. The U.S has been strongly opposed to the use of Huawei as a provider of 5G technologies, and it has caused frictions in the telecom world and trade with China. Furthermore, the 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou facing fraud charges for allegedly violating U.S. sanctions on Iran and avoiding extradition to the U.S has exposed the retaliatory tactics of the Chinese government.
The Chinese arrest of two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, is seen as a pure retaliation and hostage taking to enable the release of Meng Wanzhou. Not to be left out of the attack on the West, Russia arrested and charged another Canadian Paul Whelan with spying, once again trying to negotiate a spy swap with the U.S.
Since the Five Eyes alliance is all about monitoring online activities of internet users, there is a need for users to keep their online sessions safe. But it seems that in recent days there has been a complete failure in identifying the real threats to western democracy. The riots and protests in the United States and other parts of the western world by anarchists, like Black Lives Matter and Antifa, is no doubt being coordinated through social media. Given the nature of the ‘new cold war’ it would be remiss to think that foreign ‘bots’ are not at work to foment these riots.
What is concerning is that western allies are paying very little public attention to the real nature of the protests, which have completely ignored their original basis – the death of George Floyd. These riots have now included the destruction of statues of historical figures, and demands to re-write history. Governments around the world are being coerced into abandoning law and order to appease a mob which originally had legitimate grievances against racism but which now has morphed into a rebirth of Bolsheviks, and communism supporters, too often supported by Liberal politicians for selfish gain at the ballot box.  The destruction and demands are the result of a generation of protesters being indoctrinated by a Liberal education system. Even politicians and former diplomats, mostly of the ‘progressive persuasion’ are now even suggesting that we should give into blackmail through hostage taking by foreign governments. Ironically, Canada’s PM Trudeau made the decision not to give in to these suggestions. It is not that he was doing the right thing but that it is the common sense thing to do, given that for the past two years he has been absent on foreign affairs while pursuing his selfish goal of getting a seat on the U.N’s Security Council.
The FVEY has been operating under a cloud of political correctness, cancel culture and soft diplomacy while the enemies of democracy have been operating a covert war through cyber space to undermine the very fabric of freedom of speech and democracy. Social media is now fast becoming the weapon of choice for our enemies, and it seems that they are winning. We are now living in a perfect storm which could destroy years of relative world peace. The hate and contempt for Trump, because of his desire to challenge the status quo, has seen even members of his party abandon him on major policies. The danger is that the world may descend into a state of anarchy and move the free world towards more government control and cede national sovereignty to a disgraced and dysfunctional United Nations. Is that the desired vision for the future?

No comments:

Post a Comment