UK talks to 'Five Eyes' allies about potential Hong Kong exodus

AFP / ISAAC LAWRENCESemi-autonomous Hong Kong has been rocked by months of huge pro-democracy protests

Britain's foreign minister said he has spoken to "Five Eyes" allies about potentially opening their doors to Hong Kongers if Beijing's plans to impose a national security law on the city sparks an exodus.

The revelation came as Prime Minister Boris Johnson said London would not "walk away" from Hong Kongers worried by Beijing's control over the international business hub, in his most direct comments yet on the former colony's future.

Semi-autonomous Hong Kong has been rocked by months of huge and often violent pro-democracy protests over the past year.

In response Beijing has announced plans to introduce a sweeping national security law covering secession, subversion of state power, terrorism and foreign interference.

China says the law -- which will bypass Hong Kong's legislature -- is needed to tackle "terrorism" and "separatism" in a restless city it now regards as a direct national security threat.

But opponents, including many western nations, fear it will bring mainland-style political oppression to a business hub that was supposedly guaranteed freedoms and autonomy for 50 years after its 1997 handover to China from Britain.

PRU/AFP / -ritain's Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said he had reached out to Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada about contingency plans if the law sparks a deluge of Hong Kongers looking to leave

In parliament on Tuesday, Britain's Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said he had reached out to Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada about contingency plans if the law creates a deluge of Hong Kongers looking to leave.

"I raised it on the Five Eyes call yesterday -- the possibility of burden sharing if we see a mass exodus from Hong Kong," Raab told lawmakers, referencing the intelligence-sharing alliance between the five powers.

Britain has said it will offer millions of Hong Kongers visas and a possible route to UK citizenship if China persists with its national security law, a commitment Johnson detailed in a column for The Times and the South China Morning Post newspapers on Wednesday.

- 'Path to citizenship' -

"Many people in Hong Kong fear their way of life -- which China pledged to uphold -- is under threat," Johnson wrote.

"If China proceeds to justify their fears, then Britain could not in good conscience shrug our shoulders and walk away; instead we will honour our obligations and provide an alternative."

AFP / John SAEKIBeijing has hit out at foreign criticism of its national security law

About 350,000 people in Hong Kong currently hold British National (Overseas) passports, which allow visa-free access to Britain for up to six months.

Another 2.5 million people would be eligible to apply for one.

Johnson said Britain could allow BN(O) holders to come for a renewable period of 12 months "and be given further immigration rights, including the right to work, which could place them on a route to citizenship".

Beijing has hit out at foreign criticism of its national security law, saying the issue is a purely internal affair, and has vowed to implement "counter measures".

It says Hong Kongers will continue to keep their political freedoms -- although anti-subversion laws are routinely used to quash political dissent on the mainland.

Britain says it views the proposed law as a breach of the 1984 agreement with Beijing ahead of the handover guaranteeing Hong Kong's freedoms and a level of autonomy -- a deal that formed the bedrock of its rise as a world class finance centre.

AFP / Anthony WALLACEPolitical tensions are rising in Hong Kong once more

"Britain does not seek to prevent China's rise," Johnson wrote. "It is precisely because we welcome China as a leading member of the world community that we expect it to abide by international agreements."

His comments came as political tensions are rising in Hong Kong once more.

On Wednesday lawmakers in the city's pro-Beijing weighted legislature restarted debate on a law that would criminalise insults to China's national anthem.

The bill is likely to be passed on Thursday -- a day when Hong Kongers will also mark the anniversary of Beijing's 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, despite city authorities banning the traditional annual vigil because of the coronavirus.

Trump's Wuhan Lab Coronavirus Conspiracy Theory Is Bogus, According to, Uh, Everyone

The WHO and Dr. Anthony Fauci have both poured cold water on the conspiracy theory Trump and Mike Pompeo are spreading.

By Tim Hume May 5 2020

President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s claims that the coronavirus originated in a Wuhan lab are getting little support elsewhere, with the World Health Organization, Western intelligence sources and even Trump’s top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci all saying there is no evidence to back the theory.

Trump made the claims at a White House press briefing last Thursday, claiming he had seen evidence that COVID-19 had originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, before US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo doubled-down on Sunday, saying there was “enormous evidence” to back up the theory.

But the narrative has found little support elsewhere, with leading health and intelligence authorities pushing back on the claim and saying the evidence pointed elsewhere.

“If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what's out there now, (the scientific evidence) is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated,” Dr. Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told National Geographic in an interview published Monday.

“Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that (this virus) evolved in nature and then jumped species.”

The World Health Organization — which Trump slammed last week as acting “like the public relations agency for China” — also dismissed the president’s claims Monday, describing the theory as “speculative.”

“We have not received any data or specific evidence from the United States government relating to the purported origin of the virus — so from our perspective, this remains speculative,” WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan told an online press conference.

Meanwhile, intelligence sources in Britain and Australia told The Guardian that there is no evidence that the virus had leaked from the Chinese lab.

The sources also cast doubt on a recent “15-page dossier” — purportedly leaked from the Five Eyes intelligence network comprising the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and Canada — that was the basis of a report in Australia’s Daily Telegraph on Saturday, claiming that a researcher at the Wuhan lab was the virus’s patient zero, and that China had orchestrated a cover-up.

The sources told The Guardian that the dossier did not appear to be based on classified Five Eyes documents but rather on open source, public domain material.

Three of the four other members of Five Eyes have declined to back up Trump’s claims on the origin of the virus so far, with officials in Ottawa and London saying it was too early to draw conclusions, and that further investigations are needed. On Tuesday, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison went further, saying it was “most likely” that the virus had come from a wildlife wet market in Wuhan, while calling for an independent international investigation.

As the virus has ravaged the U.S., both Washington and Beijing have sought to blame the other for the catastrophic spread of the virus, prompting warnings from the WHO that the politicized blame-laying could hamper efforts to respond to the pandemic.

The Trump administration, which has long angered Beijing by referring to coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” or the “Wuhan virus,” has recently ratcheted up efforts to paint China as the villain, reportedly pushing U.S. intelligence agencies for information that could support the theory that the outbreak began in the Wuhan lab. The push prompted concern among analysts that the intelligence could be distorted for use in a growing clash over the pandemic with Beijing.

For its part, China has sought to portray itself as a country that has successfully contained its own outbreak and has been using its resources and expertise to help the rest of the world, while spreading a conspiracy theory via state media that a U.S. military athlete brought the virus to Wuhan during the World Military Games in October.

READ: China is blaming a lone U.S. cyclist for coronavirus

Ryan, the WHO’s emergencies director, warned Monday against politicizing any inquiry into the origin of the virus, saying that if the questions were framed as an “aggressive investigation of wrongdoing, then I believe that's much more difficult to deal with.”

“Science needs to be at the center,” he said. “If we have a science-based investigation and a science-based inquiry... then that will benefit everybody on the planet.”

Already, the allegations from Trump and Pompeo have drawn a bristling response from Beijing, with Chinese state media editorials accusing the Secretary of State of “bluffing” with his “groundless accusations."

“Since Pompeo said his claims are supported by ‘enormous evidence,’ then he should present this so-called evidence to the world, and especially to the American public who he continually tries to fool,” read an editorial in the state-run Global Times newspaper Monday.

READ: The Chinese government has convinced its citizens that the U.S. Army brought coronavirus to Wuhan

“The truth is that Pompeo does not have any evidence, and during Sunday's interview, he was bluffing.”

Cover: President Donald Trump listens during a meeting with Daniel O'Day, CEO of Gilead Sciences Inc., in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, May 1, 2020, in Washington. U.S. regulators are allowing emergency use of first drug shown to help coronavirus patients that is made by Gilead. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Ex-Canada PM Mulroney calls for revised relations with China

THE ECONOMIST CALLED HIM A BLEEDING HEART CONSERVATIVE WHEN HE WAS PM

IT'S ALL ABOUT I SPY WITH MY FIVE EYES
Issued on: 01/07/2020 - 

Former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, seen here at George Bush's funeral in 2018, said his country needed to revise its ties with China Alex Brandon POOL/AFP


Montreal (AFP)

Canada must have an "urgent rethink" of its relationship with China, former prime minister Brian Mulroney said Wednesday as tensions build over the possible extradition to the United States of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.

Conservative Mulroney backed his Liberal successor Justin Trudeau's rejection of any exchange of Meng, who was arrested in Vancouver in December 2018, for two Canadians who were detained in China in apparent retaliation.

Mulroney said Canada's hope that China would emerge as a constructive partner in international relations had been proven wrong, referring in particular to Beijing's militarization of the South China Sea.

"You can see it everywhere from the South China Sea to our two citizens who were bundled off to jail for no reason at all except to protest an extradition decision in Vancouver," Mulroney told The Globe and Mail.

"There has to be an immediate and urgent rethink of our entire relationship.

"We're a civilized important nation in the world. We have an extradition treaty with the United States of America. We were asked to honour it, and we did, and that's what we should have done."

The Canadians, former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor, were both detained in China nine days after Canada arrested Meng.

The two men have been held largely incommunicado since December 2018 and were slapped with spy charges after a Canadian judge ruled that extradition proceedings against Meng could go ahead.

Resetting the relationship should also mean the US "helping us, working with us to get our citizens back," Mulroney said.

He added that Canada should exclude Huawei from deployment of 5G telecoms in Canada, as it threatened the exchange of information between the "Five Eyes" countries -- United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

"We have to preserve our relationship with the Five Eyes and whatever that takes, that is what we do," Mulroney said, adding that he believed the United States would withhold intelligence from members who allowed Huawei to participate in their 5G networks.
Washington says Huawei 5G poses risks of espionage and sabotage of western networks.

© 2020 AFP

ALBERTA LEADS IN UFO SIGHTINGS IN CANADA

Canada attends first-of-its-kind UFO briefing at the Pentagon

Story by Alexander Panetta • Yesterday

The Canadian government has confirmed its participation in a first-of-its kind international meeting on unidentified flying objects hosted at United States military headquarters.

The gathering at the Pentagon late last month comes amid a burst of activity in Washington and eye-popping news reports related to so-called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP).

It featured a U.S.-led briefing to visitors from nations of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, which includes Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

The Canadian Department of National Defence told CBC News in an email that Canada attended the meeting, led by a Royal Canadian Air Force representative.

"The details of the meeting remain classified," DND said in an email. "It can be characterized as the sharing of information on the subject of UAP and no further details can be shared at this time."

The meeting featured a presentation by Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick — the veteran scientist in the U.S. national-defence establishment who leads the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), a new entity created in 2022 to lead UAP-related activities for the U.S. military.

Kirkpatrick publicly revealed the Five Eyes gathering last week while speaking at a public conference hosted by NASA.

"I have just held our first Five Eyes forum on this subject," Kirkpatrick said.


The Pentagon is seen from Air Force One as it flies over Washington, March 2, 2022. A new Pentagon office set up to track reports of unidentified flying objects has received 'several hundreds' of new reports, but no evidence so far of alien life. That's according to the leadership of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.© Patrick Semansky/AP

He explained the goal of meeting allies: to co-ordinate more closely with friendly nations in pooling information on UAP sightings.

The creation of his office is part of a surge in activity following a 2017 report in The New York Times on bizarre sightings kept secret by the U.S. military.

In the wake of that report, Kirkpatrick's office was created, the U.S. government now produces an annual report on UAP sightings and Congress created a system for government whistleblowers to report sightings.

Whistleblower Accuses US and Allies of Secret UFO Retrieval Program (Wibbitz - News)

Duration 1:31  View on Watch

India TodayNASA |  In a first, the space agency opens up about UFOs; reveals crucial data

2:36

Straight Arrow News NASA holds UFO hearing as Pentagon says alien life has not been ruled out

3:17

TODAY  NASA’s UFO panel holds its first public meeting: Key takeaways

2:13

Now two of the journalists who wrote that watershed 2017 report have taken one giant leap forward — and reported extraordinary new allegations.

This week they described jaw-dropping new claims from a decorated former combat officer who served as the U.S. Department of Defense's representative to a UAP task force from 2019 to 2021.

Jaw-dropping new claims

David Grusch was quoted in their print report, and in a later televised interview, saying the United States has in its possession aircraft of non-human origin.

And not just one aircraft, he says — but many.

He says the discoveries are numerous, involving everything from wreckage up to intact vehicles, and he says these items have been collected for decades — by the U.S. government, by allies and by defence contractors.

He says this information is being illegally withheld from members of Congress and he's alerted them as well as the inspector general for the American intelligence community.

Authors who reported on his allegations for the science site The Debrief quoted other U.S. officials vouching for Grusch's credibility, including Jonathan Grey, an officer in the intelligence community with a top-secret clearance.

"The non-human intelligence phenomenon is real. We are not alone.… Retrievals of this kind are not limited to the United States. This is a global phenomenon, and yet a global solution continues to elude us," Grey says in the report.

NASA and Pentagon officials present UFO preliminary findings

NBC News

NASA’s top scientists and a team from the Department of Defense met today for a first-of-its-kind public hearing on UFOs. NBC News’ Miguel Almaguer has more details on their preliminary findings

This, to be clear, is not the official United States government line.

There is no credible evidence to date of extraterrestrial activity, non-earthly technology or objects that defy the known laws of physics, Kirkpatrick said in recent testimony before the United States Senate.

Additionally, the latest annual UAP report did not cite any evidence of extraterrestrial technology.

It said that of 366 recorded sightings, 163 wound up being balloons or balloon-like entities, 26 were categorized as unmanned aerial vehicles and six were aerospace clutter.

However, it said 171 sightings remain unexplained.

The U.S. military disputes Grusch's suggestion that it holds evidence of alien aircraft.

In an email to CBC News, Pentagon spokeswoman Sue Gough said, "AARO has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently."

She said AARO is committed to following the data and its investigation wherever it leads.

Three UFOs spotted in Canada every day in 2017: survey

 

SEE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanton_T._Friedman

Stanton T. Friedman - Wikipedia 

Stanton Terry Friedman (July 29, 1934 – May 13, 2019) was an American nuclear physicist and professional ufologist who resided in New Brunswick, Canada.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qvd986WnPMQ

ALIEN CHRONICLES (S1E9) - STANTON FRIEDMAN - YouTube 

Jul 5, 2022 ... Famed U.F.O. expert and research Stanton Friedman examines the fear of embracing the U.F.O. phenomenon, his four conclusions about the ...

https://bookshop.org/contributors/stanton-t-friedman

Books by Stanton T. Friedman - Bookshop.org 

He began the civilian investigation of the Roswell Incident; wrote Flying Saucers and Science and TOP SECRET/MAJIC; and coauthored Crash at Corona, Captured!

https://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Science-Slaying-Physicist-Friedman/dp/B07FPRTYVG

UFOs and Science - Slaying the Dragon - Physicist Stanton Fr... 

There are secret government and scientific sources of proof of true alien UFOs, This presentation includes the details of advanced nuclear fission rockets that ...

https://sgp.fas.org/library/ciaufo.html

CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90 

It chronologically examines the Agency's efforts to solve the mystery of UFOs, its programs that had an impact on UFO sightings, and its attempts to conceal CIA ...

https://biblio.uottawa.ca/atom/index.php/friedman-stanton-t

Friedman, Stanton T. - University of Ottawa - Archives and S... 

File consists of correspondence with Stanton T. Friedman regarding various UFO researchers and writings, a presentation by Friedman, entitled "UFO ...

Crabs have evolved five separate times—why do the same forms keep appearing in nature?

by Matthew Wills, The Conversation

Full size blue crab.

Charles Darwin believed evolution created "endless forms most beautiful." It's a nice sentiment but it doesn't explain why evolution keeps making crabs.

Scientists have long wondered whether there are limits to what evolution can do or if Darwin had the right idea. The truth may lie somewhere between the two.

While there doesn't seem to be a ceiling on the number of species that might evolve, there may be restraints on how many fundamental forms those species can evolve into. The evolution of crab-like creatures may be one of the best examples of this, since they have evolved not just once but at least five times.

Crabs belong to a group of crustaceans called decapods—literally "ten footed", since they have five pairs of walking legs. Some decapods, like lobsters and shrimp, have a thick, muscular abdomen, which is the bulk of the animal that we eat. With a quick flick of their abdomen lobsters can shoot off backwards and escape predators.

Crabs, by contrast, have a compressed abdomen, tucked away under a flattened but widened thorax and shell. This allows them to scuttle into rock crevices for protection. Evolution repeatedly hit upon this solution because it works well under similar sets of circumstances.

Five groups of "crabs"

The largest crab group are the Brachyura (true crabs) including the edible crab and Atlantic blue crab. They had an ancestor that was also crab shaped. Some species have evolved "backwards" and straightened out their abdomens again. The other large group are the Anomura (false crabs), with an ancestor that looked more like a lobster.

However, at least four groups of Anomura—sponge crabs, porcelain crabs, king crabs and the Australian hairy stone crab—have independently evolved into a crab-like form in much the same way as the true crabs. Like the true crabs, their compact bodies are more defensive, and can move sideways faster.

This means "crabs" aren't a real biological group. They are a collection of branches in the decapod tree that evolved to look the same.

But crabs aren't the exception.

Something similar happened in the evolution of birds from feathered dinosaurs. Feathers may have first evolved for insulation, to attract mates, for protecting eggs and possibly also as "nets" for catching prey. Millions of years later, feathers elongated and streamlined for flying.

Paleontologists disagree about the details, but all modern birds (Neoaves) evolved from ground-dwelling ancestors just after the mass extinction that wiped out the other dinosaurs. However, feathered wings and flight also evolved earlier in other groups of dinosaurs, including troodontids and dromaeosaurs. Some of these, like Microraptor, had four wings.

Re-running the tape of life

Unfortunately we can't run evolutionary experiments to see if the same things keep happening because that would take hundreds of millions of years. But the history of life has already done something similar to that for us, when closely related lineages evolve and diversify on different continents. In many cases, these ancestral lines repeatedly came up with the same or almost identical solutions to problems.

One of the best examples is our own group, the mammals.

There are two major groups of living mammals. The placentals (including us) and the marsupials (pouched mammals who give birth to tiny young). Both groups evolved from the same common ancestor over 100 million years ago, the marsupials largely in Australasia and the Americas and the placentals elsewhere.

This isolation led to two almost independent runs of the "experiment" to see what could be done with the mammal bodyplan. There are marsupial and placental versions of moles, mice, anteaters, gliders, and cats. There was even a marsupial wolf (the thylacine, extinct in 1936), whose skull and teeth match those of the placental wolf in astonishing detail.

It's not only body forms that evolve independently, but also organs and other structures. Humans have complex camera eyes with a lens, iris and retina. Squid, and octopuses, which are molluscs and more closely related to snails and clams, also evolved camera eyes with the same components.

Eyes more generally may have evolved independently up to 40 times in different groups of animals. Even box jellyfish, which don't have a brain, have eyes with lenses at the bases of their four tentacles.

The more we look, the more we find. Structures such as jaws, teeth, ears, fins, legs and wings all keep evolving independently across the animal tree of life.

More recently, scientists discovered convergence also happens at the molecular level. The opsin molecules in eyes that convert photons of light into chemical energy and enable humans to see have a tight resemblance to those in box jellyfish, and evolved that way in parallel. Even more bizarrely, animals as different as whales and bats have striking convergence in the genes that enable them to echolocate.

Are humans really unique?

Many of the things we like to think make humans special have been reinvented by evolution elsewhere. Corvids like crows and ravens have problem-solving intelligence and, along with owls, can use simple tools.

Whales and dolphins have complex social structures, and their big brains allowed them to develop language. Dolphins use tools like sponges to cover their noses while they forage across stony sea bottoms. Octopuses also use tools and learn from watching what happens to other octopuses.

If things keep evolving in similar ways here on Earth, there's a possibility they might also follow a related course if life has evolved elsewhere in the universe. It might mean extra-terrestrial beings look less alien and more familiar than we expect.

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How does a crustacean become a crab?

ROFLMAO

Canada's climate leadership will help at UN talks in Glasgow, British envoy says

By Mike Blanchfield |October 25th 2021

British High Commissioner to Canada Susannah Goshko is seen at Earnscliffe, the British High Commissioner's residence in Canada, in Ottawa on Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021. 

File photo by The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

Britain's new envoy to Ottawa says Canada still has credibility as a reliable partner on fighting climate change despite a domestic rise of greenhouse gas emissions in recent years.

Susannah Goshko, the newly arrived British high commissioner to Canada, says the current Trudeau government has shown "huge leadership" on the international stage in the fight against climate change.

That's because Canada has doubled its financial commitments to climate financing and raised its emissions-reductions targets, which is putting pressure on other countries, Goshko said


Goshko offered the assessment in a wide-ranging interview as the United Kingdom prepares to host what are seen as pivotal United Nations climate talks in Scotland next month, known as COP26.


Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faced criticism from his political opponents and from environmental groups during the recent federal election because Canada's carbon emissions actually rose from 2015 to 2019, the most recent years for which data is available.

While new Liberal policies might have driven down emissions in the two years since then, the current data has fuelled the narrative that Canada's reputation on fighting climate change has been diminished since Trudeau's 2015 participation in the Paris climate agreement in the weeks after he won power.

Not so, in Britain's view, said Goshko.

"I think that there's no question it's hard to do what needs to be done to reach our climate goals. A transition to a net-zero economy is really, really tricky. And I think the important thing, as far as Canada is concerned, is the commitment is there," said Goshko.

Net zero is the term that means no new emissions would be added to Earth's atmosphere, with nature or technology capturing any that are produced.

Canada pledged this year to reach net zero by 2050, and has also raised its emissions-reduction targets from 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, to 40 to 45 per cent.

Those new commitments, as well as Canada's partnership with Germany to help deliver US$100 billion in financing to poorer countries to help them fight climate change, mean that "Canada's shown huge leadership," Goshko said.

British envoy seeks Canada's climate change help at UN talks in Glasgow. #COP26 #ClimateChange

"It's the kind of leadership we need because we need all countries now to really be stepping up on those commitments if we're to make COP a success."

Goshko said it's crucial that China, as the world's largest emitter, play a role in COP26 but her government is still waiting to find out whether President Xi Jinping will be joining the estimated 120 world leaders in taking part in the opening of the meeting in early November.

Despite China's voracious appetite for energy, including the coal-fired variety, Goshko said it is also the world's largest investor in renewable energy, which makes it a valuable partner in fighting climate change.

Goshko has had a front-row seat to Britain and Canada's fraught engagement with China in recent years. She served two years as the principal private secretary to the recently departed British foreign minister Dominic Raab.

She witnessed first-hand the personal friendship that Raab and his former Canadian counterpart, François-Philippe Champagne, forged during in-person meetings in London before and after the onset of the pandemic. Raab was enthusiastic to pursue a deeper alliance with Canada especially given Britain's departure from the European Union, said Goshko.

That manifested itself in supporting Canada in countering China's imprisonment of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, which only ended in September after nearly three years. Raab was an early supporter of Canada's international effort to create a declaration against arbitrary detention by states, she said.

And Canada was an eager participant in international efforts to criticize China for human rights violations in Hong Kong and bring in sanctions over abuses in its Xinjiang province against Muslim Uyghurs, she said, undaunted by the fact China was holding two of its nationals in apparent retaliation for the arrest of Chinese executive Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition warrant.

"I can't think of a time where we came to Canada and said, 'We'd like to do something on this,' and the answer was no," said Goshko.

Goshko also played down any suggestion that Britain snubbed Canada by forming a new alliance, known as AUKUS, with Australia and the United States. The alliance is designed to help Australia acquire a fleet of nuclear submarines to cope with the rising regional influence of China.

France was angered by the move, but Trudeau has shrugged it off, saying Canada has no interest in nuclear submarines.

Britain's military and security co-operation with Canada remains strong in other areas, including its collaborations through NATO in eastern Europe as a counterweight to Russia, and a recent agreement to deepen co-operation in the Arctic, she said.

Goshko said Britain's alliance with Canada in the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network (with Australia, the United States and New Zealand) remains a top priority that does not clash in any way with AUKUS. All members of the Five Eyes are continually working to strengthen its capability.

"I don't see AUKUS in any way, intention, in conflict with the Five Eyes," she said. "There's no sense for us that one comes at the expense of the other."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 24, 2021.

A dodgy dossier? How News Corp hyped a US government reading list into a China coronavirus 'bombshell'

A Murdoch media exclusive about China covering up the origin of Covid-19 appears to be based on an unclassified US state department reference paper

Daniel Hurst in Canberra
Wed 27 May 2020  

News Corp tabloid the Daily Telegraph carried this report on 2 May 2020 claiming it had a ‘bombshell dossier’ revealing China covered up the origins of coronavirus. Photograph: News Corp


It was touted as a world exclusive – a “bombshell dossier” that exposed China’s “batty science” and backed up Donald Trump and US claims that Beijing was covering up the true origin of Covid-19.

Rupert Murdoch’s Sydney tabloid, the Daily Telegraph, went big with a Saturday morning splash and six pages of reporting attributed to “a dossier prepared by concerned western governments” – and the story was quickly amplified and exaggerated by Trump’s media backers in the United States.

It gathered steam in subsequent reporting as something even more weighty: the New York Post called it “a damning dossier leaked from the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance” while Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked why it was so hard for some people to accept “objectively that the evidence suggests [coronavirus] came from a lab” in Wuhan, China. Carlson’s program contained a graphic that claimed: “Dossier was compiled by intel agencies of the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand.”

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/may/08/murdoch-media-china-coronavirus-conspiracy-trump-kevin-rudd
The Murdoch media’s China coronavirus conspiracy has one aim: get Trump re-elected
Kevin Rudd


But there was a problem: the document at the heart of the reporting did not contain any genuinely new information, it did not outline any direct evidence of the lab leakage theory, and it wasn’t culled from intelligence gathered by the Five Eyes network.

Instead, the material – now reported to have been authored by the US State Department – was a fairly straightforward timeline and summary of publicly available material. A source likened it to a “reading list” or “reference paper”.

The Guardian understands from a source who has read the 15-page document that the material relevant to the Wuhan lab leakage theory makes up only a small portion of the file, and it does not include any conclusive findings.


The Australian Broadcasting Corporation first reported on Tuesday that the original paper was a background research report compiled and widely distributed by the US state department. The ABC went on to say that the US embassy in Canberra has held private meetings with Australian government officials to clarify the matter.

The embassy declined to respond to these claims when contacted by the Guardian on Tuesday.

But the former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, a longstanding critic of Murdoch’s News Corp empire, told the Guardian: “These revelations should be utterly humiliating to the Murdoch media, except that the Murdoch media has zero shame.”

Rudd says the damage has already been done. He believes the document “was leaked to News Corp in Australia with the clear intention that it would be funnelled back into the American media, giving the appearance that Australian spies were backing Trump’s claims”. In reality, though, “Australian intelligence officials don’t believe Trump at all”.
Origins of a suspect scoop

The saga began on 2 May when the Saturday version of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph trumpeted a “WORLD EXCLUSIVE” under the headline “CHINA’S BATTY SCIENCE: Bombshell dossier lays out the case against the People’s Republic”.

The journalist, Sharri Markson, noted in the original story that the dossier included a raft of criticisms of China’s “assault on international transparency’’ and concerns about practices at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but she also referred in other paragraphs to an ongoing investigation by Five Eyes intelligence agencies.


Those two elements got conflated when the story was picked up and amplified by rightwing media in the US and elsewhere, with many reporting that it was a joint report by western intelligence partners.

When Markson was interviewed a few days later on Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News, the graphics referred to a “leaked intel dossier” and the US host declared that “this is the most substantial confirmation of what we suspected that we’ve had so far, and because it’s a multinational effort I think it would be hard to dismiss it as a political document”.

Markson told Carlson everything in the document was “factual” but there were “leftwing sections of the media that don’t want to believe that this virus may have leaked from a laboratory”. She added: “Of course we don’t know that yet, that’s being investigated, but they don’t want to even think about it.”

I would attach no significance to it whatsoever. It’s just a listAllan Behm, Australia Institute

Markson was also interviewed about the story by rightwing Trump backers Sebastian Gorka and Steve Bannon. In the Bannon interview, Markson herself clarified that it was not an intelligence document that formed the basis of her report. “This isn’t an intelligence dossier,” she told Bannon. “This is a factual report that builds the western case against China’s cover-up over this virus and it’s a case that China is denying.”

It came against the backdrop of claims by Trump and his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, that there was “enormous evidence” the coronavirus came from a lab – a view that is at odds with the mainstream scientific view about the likely origins.

The resulting media coverage in the US was part of a “boomerang effect”, according to one Australian official.
What is the ‘dossier’?

The Guardian understands the 15-page research paper doesn’t have any markings on it showing who authored it, and nor does it contain any classification markers, but it includes a chronological list of relevant public open-source reporting from 2013 to late April.

The document points to published news reports and journal articles about a range of issues including the Chinese officials moving to silence doctors and whistleblowers and the delays in acknowledging human-to-human transmission of coronavirus. The ABC reported it had the status of a “non-paper”, a document that can be used to trigger discussion or debate with foreign governments.

Peter Jennings, the executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and a former defence department deputy secretary for strategy, says a “non-paper” usually means a document that does not have “policy weight” behind it.


“It seems very clear that this is not classified intelligence product. It seems to have been a summary of publicly reported information about the outbreak of the virus,” Jennings says.

“I would expect that our own departments would be doing precisely the same thing. Often these things are compiled as reading lists for senior officials. This is absolutely routine business for bureaucracies anywhere.”

Allan Behm, the head of the international and security affairs program at the Australia Institute and a former senior defence official, says the reporting had made “a mountain out of a molehill”.

“I would attach no significance to it whatsoever. It’s just a list,” Behm says.

“I think the net result was to build up a nothing into something and that fed into the kind of shrill hysteria we saw a few weeks ago, and it still echoes.”

Behm says from what he knows about the document he doesn’t believe it was created maliciously or represented an attempt “to set Australia up” with dodgy intelligence. Instead it was “hyped” up in media reporting.

Jennings doesn’t write off the labs theory as a possibility to explain what happened, saying it should continue to be explored, and he argues China’s lack of transparency over the issue “doesn’t help”.

“But equally I think a major concern that does seem to have been lost in the discussion of the labs has been about China’s handling of wet markets,” Jennings says.

Prof Rory Medcalf, the head of the Australian National University’s national security college, played down the significance of the fact the document was leaked to media, telling the ABC all governments were likely to be “trying to persuade media organisations of their world view, their policy positions, their perspective”.
‘Overreach’ to help Trump

Rudd, the former prime minister, says the version of reality repeated in news reports around the globe had the side-effect of “politicising and discrediting western intelligence”.

He argues the dossier was never intended to put pressure on China, but to bolster Trump’s re-election campaign and distract from the US president’s failures to manage Covid-19 at home.

“While it may have helped Trump, the Daily Telegraph’s overreach has only helped efforts by China to wriggle off the hook for the questions they actually must answer – including the role of wildlife wet markets, failures to control the virus early on, and dealings with the World Health Organization,” Rudd says.


Markson declined to comment, saying she had no intention of speaking about confidential sources, while News Corp Australia did not respond to requests for a response. Markson responded to the ABC report by retweeting her original piece:
Sharri Markson(@SharriMarkson)

You can re-read my original story on the dossier that details the factual case of cover-up against China over the COVID-19 pandemic by concerned western governments here! https://t.co/gnVZNmQivWMay 25, 2020

The Guardian reported earlier this month that the Australian government had pushed back at US claims the coronavirus may have originated in a Wuhan lab and had determined that the supposed “dossier” was not a Five Eyes intelligence document.

The saga is one of several to cause tension in the relationship between the US and Australia in recent times. On Sunday, the US embassy moved quickly to clarify comments by Pompeo that communication channels may potentially be severed because of the state of Victoria’s involvement in China’s belt and road Scheme.

The speed of the walk-back of Pompeo’s latest comments suggests, according to one Australian source, that the embassy had learned lessons from the dossier episode.

Downer, Turnbull, Trump and a poke in the Five Eyes

Just a diplomat doing his job? A new book puts the spotlight back on Australia, Russia and interference in the US election.

Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Alexander Downer at Number 11 Downing Street, 24 January 2017 (Jack Taylor/Getty Images)

DANIEL FLITTON

THE INTERPRETER

Published 1 Sep 2022 Australia in the World
 Follow @danielflitton

“What he did would have got any other ambassador sacked. It was reckless and self-indulgent and put the Australian government in a very awkward position.”

Strong comments from Malcolm Turnbull. Even more remarkable considering that the former prime minister was reflecting on the performance of Alexander Downer, a fellow Liberal, Australia’s longest-serving foreign minister, a former UN special envoy and Australia’s one-time High Commissioner in London – the job where Turnbull’s barbs are aimed. “Foolish behaviour … blundering … blurting out political gossip … worst possible way to do it.”

Downer’s notorious 2016 drinks with Donald Trump aide George Papadopoulos have again hit the headlines, the wine bar chat said to have triggered an FBI investigation into Russian interference into the US presidential election that year. Or the “Rigged Witch Hunt”, as Trump would have it.

The latest adventure into this prickly history comes via extracts from a newly released book, The Secret History of the Five Eyes, by journalist and filmmaker Richard Kerbaj. And the book – canvassing the controversies and intelligence ties between Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand – has quickly caused a stir.

Some have described Downer’s actions as “those of a diplomat doing what he was paid to do: gather information in Australia’s national interest”.

Former UK Prime Minister Theresa May reportedly confessed doubts about continuing a “special relationship” with Washington after unfounded allegations of British eavesdropping on Trump. China, meanwhile, is complaining about details in the book of American pressure on Britain to force Huawei out of the country’s 5G network. Canadian spies are accused of knowing that an informant helped smuggle British teenager Shamima Begum into Syria to join Islamic State, a claim that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has now pledged to examine. (Begum is in a long-running legal stoush in a bid to return home after being stripped of citizenship.)

But back to Downer and concern that what Papadopoulos allegedly said at the drinks “should only have been passed on to the Americans via the most discreet intelligence community channels”, as Turnbull put it to Kerbaj.

To refresh the timeline: Downer met Papadopoulos at Kensington Wine Rooms in London in May 2016, hearing, he says, Papadopoulos claim Russia had a dirt file on Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

“It sounded bad, but my attitude at the time was who would know whether this was even true,” Downer is quoted by Kerbaj.

Foreign policy adviser to US President Donald Trump’s election campaign, George Papadopoulos leaves the US District Courts on 7 September 2018. Papadopoulos was jailed for 14 days for lying to FBI agents over contacts with Russians that set off a federal probe into possible collusion with Moscow (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Afterwards, Downer sent a cable back to Canberra reporting the conversation. Some six weeks went by until July when Trump was officially endorsed as the Republican candidate. Downer then decided to bring the Papadopoulos claims directly to the attention of the US chargé d’affaires in London, Elizabeth Dibble.

“He had no authority from Canberra to do this,” Turnbull wrote in his 2020 memoir, “and the first we heard of it in Australia was when the FBI turned up in London and wanted to interview Downer.”

Cue what is by now a long-standing debate.

Some have described Downer’s actions as “those of a diplomat doing what he was paid to do: gather information in Australia’s national interest”. Joe Hockey, who had to contend with the fallout in Washington as Australia’s ambassador at the time and warning it could have put intelligence sharing at risk, has also defended the actions of his former colleague.

Other questions have been raised about the urgency with which the information from Downer’s initial cable was passed on to the Americans (or whether it was passed on at all). Trump pressed Scott Morrison to examine Australia’s role. Papadopoulos, who spent a fortnight in prison for lying to investigators and was later pardoned by Trump, casts the whole episode in vastly conspiratorial terms.

Downer, while admitting he would have voted for Trump, has been dismissive:

I’ve had to put up with four years of Trump and some of his fringe cronies claiming I was part of a conspiracy with Hillary Clinton, the FBI, CIA, MI6, Italian intelligence, ASIS, Ukrainian spies and who knows who else, to bring him down. Twitter is full of demands from the hysterical right that I be sent to Guantánamo Bay.

So, rewind. In 2016 – before the Trump presidency, Brexit, “fake news”, the “deep state” and the passing parade of Putinistas that has turned modern politics into a circus – it might not have been obvious what was about to be unleashed. But in Turnbull’s view, Downer’s action brought into question “the discipline and professionalism of our foreign service”, which was enough for him to be sacked. Why wasn’t he?

“Alexander was a good friend of mine and the foreign minister, Julie Bishop. He is our longest-serving foreign minister, a former leader of the Liberal Party. And at the time we learned of his foolish behaviour we had every interest in keeping it confidential.”

But this raises another enduring and yet unanswered question about this whole messy episode. Why wasn’t Downer’s involvement kept confidential, given the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network is built on trust and secrecy?