Blog

ate given its academic credentials and its links to similar institutions in the US, Canada, and France. To talk here of a biological weapons lab creates a sinister conspiratorial edge to a story which is about possible human error, not a deliberate act of war against the world community.

Still, there are questions to be answered given the whole mysterious bat cave incident seven years ago, and the remarkable coincidences involved in Wuhan being the epicentre of this latest coronavirus pandemic. By now, though, it's fairly certain that the Chinese will have destroyed any evidence which might provide a link, and the WHO have no interest in that line of enquiry anyway…

eks ago, just before stepping down as US attorney general, William Barr, who was also AG in 1992 and oversaw the investigation and indictment of the case, announced new charges against a Libyan man known as Masud for supposedly constructing the bomb that detonated on the plane. I believe Barr and the Justice Department announced this new indictment purely for the purpose of shoring up Barr’s original, faulty 1991 indictments.

The evidence and logic in the current case against Mr. Masud are as flimsy as the cases were two decades ago when Barr steered focus away from the obvious culprit, Iran.

I know Libya is not behind the bombing because I was the long-time handler for the principal US government witness Abdul Majid Giaka, a Libyan agent who never provided any evidence pointing to Libya or any indication of knowing anything about that nation’s involvement in the two years after the bombing. Yet years later, he testified against the convicted Libyan intelligence officer, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, at the Lockerbie bombing (Pan Am 103) trial conducted at The Hague in 2000.

The US Government prevented my testimony and hid from evidence the cables I wrote that proved Giaka knew nothing. When my cables were finally released to the trial at the demand of the defense, the court dismissed Giaka along with the two CIA operations officers sent to the trial to testify to his credibility.

Yet today, the charade continues. The FBI acknowledges they have not even interviewed Mr. Masud themselves and are entirely dependent on an 8-year-old statement by an unnamed Libyan police officer from a country in the midst of a devastating civil war. Moreover, Masud had no history or signature for making the type of bomb that brought down Pan Am 103 nor for concealing bombs in Toshiba radios. The PFLP-GC (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command) did.

We just observed the 32nd anniversary of the bombing of Pan Am 103. It is time to drop the routine CIA procedure of embellishing intelligence reporting to fit a preconceived outcome rather than following the facts. The families of Pan Am flight 103 victims have suffered long enough and deserve to now be able to rest assured that the real perpetrators of this act of terrorism, Iranian actors, are brought to justice.

It's the case that refuses to die.

fe, Back Church Lane, Whitechapel, Tower Hamletsh Lane, 1986

Closed shop, Westferry Rd, Isle of Dogs, Tower Hamlets, 1984

Lens snack bar, Wapping High St, Wapping, Tower Hamlets, 1984

Joe Edwards Snack Bar, Shad Thames, Queen Elizabeth St, Bermondsey, Southwark – 1986
[All photos © Peter Marshall]

ergo a review and approval process by a task force under the State Council, China’s cabinet. No significant data has been released from those studies.

A blunt message has been sent to any citizens brave enough to question the official narrative of transparency and success. Last week state television highlighted the “rebirth” of Wuhan as thousands of revellers filled the streets for New Year’s Eve celebrations and, in his January 1 speech, Xi championed the country’s handling of the pandemic.

But Zhang Zhan, a lawyer-turned-blogger, was sentenced to four years in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” — a catch-all accusation often used by the Communist Party to prosecute activists and journalists. She had chronicled Wuhan’s plight during lockdown before her work was censored and she was detained.

Three other independent journalists were arrested while working in Wuhan during lockdown. Two have not been seen since February.

Whistleblower doctors and scientists who raised early fears about the disease were silenced. And the small knot of relatives of Wuhan coronavirus victims who went public with grievances about the handling of the epidemic have been ordered to keep quiet.

One persistent complaint from Wuhan was that the government was concealing the scale of the outbreak. New CDC figures appear to confirm that belief. When the agency tested 34,000 people in Wuhan for coronavirus antibodies, it found a rate of 4.43%. In a city of 11 million people, that means nearly 490,000 people were infected, dwarfing the official tally of 50,354 cases.

As the pandemic swept across the world and details of Beijing’s early bungling and cover-ups emerged, China strongly opposed calls for an independent international inquiry….

Even as investigators packed their bags for China this weekend, their hosts were insisting that the WHO search elsewhere.

Chinese officials, media and scientists have cherry-picked foreign research, pushed their own studies and raided the internet to argue that the virus may have originated in Spain or Italy, was bio-engineered in America or imported via frozen food packaging.

In a concession to Beijing, the WHO agreed to allow Chinese scientists to conduct “phase one” groundwork in Wuhan while the foreign experts remained outside China. This research will provide the basis for collaboration between members of the WHO team and their Chinese counterparts.

In other words, China has done all it can to prevent an honest look into the origins of the virus, and this latest WHO investigation is going to be no better than a whitewash. Which, given the WHO's previous incompetence, and its determination not to offend China in any way, should come as absolutely no surprise.

report that about 80 per cent of Saudis are now in favour of normalisation, and 40 per cent of citizens across a range of Arab countries (excluding the Palestinian territories) want their leaders to take an active role in encouraging peace. This is a remarkable and rapid cultural shift.

Significant obstacles remain, of course. Foremost of these is Gaza, where Hamas continue to run the enclave as a belligerent outpost of Islamist extremism. There is also uncertainty over whether the incoming Biden team will build on Trump’s successes, or revert to the old model exemplified by John Kerry, who insisted on scotching regional peace unless a Palestinian state existed first.

Well yes, there's the rub. Will Biden be tempted to follow the Obama/Kerry approach, or will he have the sense to see how dramatically things have changed since those unfortunate tough-on-Israel nice-to-Iran policies? Or has the power of the US in the area now declined to the extent that it doesn't really matter?

amp; out of respect of all my esteemed colleagues.

Congratulating someone for an award doesn't necessarily mean you agree with everything they say – but such considerations seem to have escaped our brave professor, despite his familiarity with post-Kantian European philosophy. But what can you expect when the poor man has to build his career in this brave new gender-obsessed academic world?

The Twitter responses are not kind….

_6398s” class=”asset asset-image at-xid-6a00d83451ebab69e2026be431af76200d img-responsive” src=”http://mickhartley.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/mt_imported_image_1758337631.jpg” style=”width: 550px” title=”IMG_6398s” />

-size: 11pt”>The question that makes me both sad and angry is why LGBT activists stubbornly refuse to concede that these girls represent a different psychopathology. Instead groups such as Stonewall, in the words of Dr Ray Blanchard, a world-renowned sexologist, “circle the wagons”. Why? Because to concede would rock the quasi-religious belief that gender identity is innate and unquestionable; the rise in “trans children” justifies greater resources for trans adults, and this movement is dominated by trans women and gay men, who have not endured the turbulence of female puberty. With few brave exceptions, they decry feminists (including many lesbians) who see in these tortured girls their younger selves.

Naturally Shrier's book has come in for a frenzy of abuse from trans activists. The author detailed how they tried to get it cancelled in an article at Quillette back in November. Chase Strangio, a transgender rights activist and a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), declared that getting the book banned was "a hill I will die on". Grace Lavery, an associate professor at Berkeley University and an editor of Transgender Studies Quarterly, encouraged her Twitter followers to burn the book. But with positive reviews like this, and the recent Keira Bell judgement, the truth will out.

From the Daily NK:

A source recently told Daily NK that toxic substances leaked from Ganggye Chemical Factory (Factory 361) in Ganggye, Chagang Province, have likely polluted the Changja River, which flows from Yongnim through Manpo to Wiwon. North Korean authorities have reportedly launched an investigation into the matter. 

In a phone conversation with Daily NK on Tuesday, the source, who is based in Chagang Province, said that dead fish have been seen floating down the Changja River since late October, and that local residents reported the matter to local authorities. 

Sounds bad. But the Ganggye Chemical Factory is no ordinary chemical factory.

Ganggye Chemical Factory began full-fledged operations on Party Foundation Day (Oct. 10), and signs suggesting that the factory was polluting the river began to emerge soon after. 

It remains unclear what exactly the factory leaked into the river, but the source claimed that if it can kill large numbers of fish, it can also harm humans.

Ganggye Chemical Factory is disguised as a facility for the production of paints and varnish. In reality, however, it is a munitions factory producing chemical weapons.

A factory producing chemical weapons is leaking stuff into the local river? That is not good.

The authorities may be concerned that if word leaks about toxic chemicals from a factory producing chemical weapons polluting the nearby environment, North Korea would come under international criticism.

“The inminban and local police are quietly trying to determine if there are people who ate fish from the river,” said the source, using a term referring to North Korea’s lowest administrative unit. “The Ministry of Social Security is currently stopping people from doing laundry [in the river] or taking water [from the river] for farming in locations near the Ganggye Chemical Factory.”…

“People have to be careful about expressing concerns since the authorities have warned us not to talk about what happened,” the source said. “But 10 years ago, polluted water leaked from a factory and killed everything in the river.”

He added: “With that [situation appearing to be] happening again, friends and relatives are telling each other they are very uneasy.” 

I can't say I blame them.

government in 1928 with a military force that had been built by Soviet Russia. Moscow enabled Chiang to become the first dictator of modern China and, as he turned out to be anti-communist, Stalin backed Mao, who toppled Chiang and went on to build a totalitarian communist regime. It was the propaganda machines of Chiang and Mao that branded democratic China as a failed state.

The existence of those 16 years before dictatorship was imposed through the barrel of the gun gives the lie to the assertion that China has no democratic tradition and is not suited to the system. The fact is that democracy once worked there.

Interesting. But it certainly isn't working there now.