Tag: china

Ex-Royal Marine, 37, accused of spying for China on Hong Kong activists after fighting the Taliban and Somali pirates is found dead in a park

A Former Royal Marine accused of spying for Hong Kong has been found dead in ‘unexplained’ circumstances last night.

Matthew Trickett, 37 was found dead in a park near his home just days after being charged with carrying out surveillance and hostile reconnaissance on pro-democracy activists in the UK for the Hong Kong intelligence service.

The suspected spy, who worked as an immigration enforcement officer for the Home Office, due to appear at the Old Bailey on Friday charged with betraying his country.

In a statement, his family said: ‘We’re mourning the loss of a much-loved son, brother and family man.’

Speaking of the Royal Marine’s death, a local resident told MailOnline: ‘This has been extremely disturbing for residents.

‘Police have been going around asking for doorbell cam in the hope of tracing his movements.

‘The next thing we heard, this was an unexplained death and now we hear about the spying charges he was facing.’

Police said they are currently treating the death as unexplained.

But it can be revealed that prosecutors wanted to remand him in custody for his own safety, after a previous suicide attempt following his arrest.

Despite this, the Afghanistan veteran was released on bail last Monday.

In an extraordinary espionage case which is the first of its kind, Trickett and two other men, Chi Leung Wai, 38, who works at Heathrow Airport for UK Border Force and Chung Biu Yuen, 63, a trade official, are jointly accused of carrying out surveillance operations in the UK allegedly targeting dissidents of the regime.

It is the first that anyone has been charged with spying on British soil for the Hong Kong intelligence service.

The trio were charged last Monday under the new National Security Act brought in last year to target those working secretly for hostile states within the UK.

Keep reading

China Prepares For War With Military ‘Robodogs’ – Armed With Machine Guns!

China is preparing for war with the help of gun-wielding robodogs.

The robodogs were showcased during the 15-day “Golden Dragon” military exercises conducted at a secluded training facility in central Cambodia and along the coast. Over 2,000 troops, including 760 Chinese military personnel, were involved in the exercise.

The exercises, known as “Golden Dragon,” included 14 warships, two helicopters, and 69 armored vehicles and tanks. Drills include live-fire exercises, anti-terrorism operations, and humanitarian rescue missions.

AFP reported:

The hardware on show included the so-called “robodogs” — remote-controlled four-legged robots with automatic rifles mounted on their backs. Handlers kept the dogs of war on the leash, demonstrating only their walking capabilities to watching journalists and top brass — not their shooting skills.

Opening the exercises, Cambodian armed forces commander-in-chief Vong Pisen said that they would “enhance the capabilities” of the two armies in the fight against terrorism. Vong Pisen said that Cambodia would never allow a foreign military base on its territory, echoing previous assertions by Cambodian leaders.

China is not the only military power interested in manufacturing these somewhat unfriendly pooches. According to Futurism, the U.S. military has also explored the possibility as part of a futuristic approach to warfare.

Keep reading

NIH official finally admits taxpayers funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan — after years of denials

It’s about time!

At long last, National Institutes of Health (NIH) principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak admitted to Congress Thursday that US taxpayers funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China in the months and years before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Dr. Tabak,” asked Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, “did NIH fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through [Manhattan-based nonprofit] EcoHealth [Alliance]?”

“It depends on your definition of gain-of-function research,” Tabak answered. “If you’re speaking about the generic term, yes, we did.”

The response comes after more than four years of evasions from federal public health officials — including Tabak himself and former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Dr. Anthony Fauci — about the controversial research practice that modifies viruses to make them more infectious.

Keep reading

Mock-Up Patriot System Sparks China-Ukraine Conspiracy Theories

An image has emerged on social media that some widely followed Twitter accounts claim to be a U.S.-made Patriot air defense missile launcher that Ukraine sold to China. One expert, however, tells The War Zone that the undated photograph instead shows a mock-up.

The picture depicts what some have claimed is a Patriot launcher on the back of a flatbed truck being moved in China. This sparked the spread of conspiracy theories on social media.

However, what the undated photograph actually shows is a mock-up a former commander of the Army’s Air Defense Artillery School at Fort Sill tells The War Zone.

“Those are what we call dummy canisters on that launcher,” retired Army Col. David Shank told The War Zone. “The umbilical cables coming from the back end of the launchers clearly show it’s either a training launcher or a decoy. Plus, it is so green. Ukrainian launchers, like other nations, get dirty as you maneuver them on hardball roads and/or dirt roads.”

He also noted that the launcher in question is marked “inert” on the side. The image, he said, shows a mock-up of a Patriot PAC-3 system, evident by the four canisters each holding four interceptors a piece.

Keep reading

Chinese scientists move closer to bringing cryogenically frozen humans back to life – after brain tissue is thawed without damage

Scientists have moved a step closer to preserving our brains forever. 

They are one of the first to successfully thaw brain tissue that has been cryogenically frozen – without damaging it.

Further, after being frozen, their neurons were still able to send signals as normal.

This has been a major challenge for science, because freezing the ultra-delicate, spongy brain usually damages it, making it useless when it’s thawed. 

Not only is it a breakthrough for neuroscientists looking to study new drugs, it could also advance the sci-fi idea of bringing people back to life in the future. 

The idea is that people could freeze their bodies, preserving them indefinitely, in hopes that in the future, science will be advanced enough to bring them back to life, healthy. 

Professor Zhicheng Shao, a Harvard trained neuroscientist who works at Fudan University in Shanghai China, developed a complex chemical mixture nicknamed MEDY which protects neurons from being damaged while frozen. 

He is not shying away from the idea that the research could be used for cryonics, which has been a fantasy among futurists for decades. 

‘MEDY could be used for the cryopreservation of human brain tissue,’ Dr Shao said in his study, published in the journal Cell Reports Methods.

For a range of future-minded people, from the likes of Peter Thiel to Steve Aoki, who are banking on preserving their bodies in ice after they die, this should be welcome news. 

Keep reading

Classified docs from State Dept. give more credence to Covid-19 Chinese lab leak

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic recently reviewed classified State Department documents that credibly suggest Covid-19 originated from a lab related accident in Wuhan, China.

Many experts said this was the case from the start of the pandemic but were censored by the US government, media, and social media.

The lab and research at issue, controversial “gain of function” studies to develop new vaccines, were funded with US taxpayer money via Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The documents also strongly convey that the Chinese Communist Party attempted to cover-up the lab leak and that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) maintains a relationship with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), according to the members of Congress.

Of course this is no surprise since it has long been known that all research in China is looked at with a civilian and a separate military purpose in mind.

Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) is requesting the State Department rapidly declassify this information and share it with the American people.

These documents were previously released in an unclassified and highly redacted Freedom of Information Act production, first obtained and reported on by US Right to Know — a nonprofit working to expose government failures that threaten public health.

Keep reading

Banning TikTok isn’t the flex proponents think it is

TikTok and its parent company ByteDance this week sued to block a new law banning the social media app, claiming it is unconstitutional because it infringes upon Americans’ right to free speech and prevents access to lawful information.

The law, passed in April, would ban TikTok in the U.S. if ByteDance does not liquidate its American assets within nine to 12 months — citing national security concerns about the app. National security has been at the forefront of U.S. bans on Chinese tech, such as the ban on selling telecom equipment and services from Huawei, ZTE, and other Chinese providers.

Another concern about TikTok — data privacy and security — is not entirely unfounded, as about 150 million Americans use it. However, China does not need apps like TikTok to collect that data. U.S. consumer data can be bought on the open market from data brokers, including precise location and financial transaction data. Even the U.S. National Security Agency has leveraged data brokers to collect Americans’ data. Anonymized data is also not the fail-safe measure that it is touted to be, as it can be de-anonymized using data that is not considered personally identifiable, like sex, ZIP code, and birthdate. In some ways, TikTok even collects less private information than Meta. In short, TikTok is no more a unique threat to data privacy and security than are data brokers and other American social media sites.

Banning TikTok or any other Chinese business in the U.S. won’t protect U.S. citizens’ data from exploitation. The sheer profitability of U.S. citizens’ data for businesses — both buyers and sellers – is undergirded by the lack of protections for collecting data or compensating individuals for their data. Solving this problem eventually would require federal-level, comprehensive data privacy and protection regulations. Without such regulation, there is little incentive for social media companies — Chinese or not — to responsibly buy, sell, collect, or otherwise exploit user data. If the U.S. government’s goal is to protect private American citizens’ data to enhance national security, then it must legislate acceptable limits on the exploitation of Americans’ data, perhaps even following a framework like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.

Some believe that banning TikTok and other Chinese apps in the United States could force China to provide more equitable access to the Chinese market and put pressure on China to change unfair business practices towards foreign firms, like intellectual property theft, opaque subsidization and preferential treatment, raids, and fines. These inequities have long been a major concern and subject of high-level conversations between U.S. and Chinese officials. However, the U.S. bans on Chinese businesses so far appear to have neither compelled Chinese businesses nor the Chinese government to change their behaviors, instead spurring them to reduce reliance on the U.S. market and focus on exploring alternative markets.

Keep reading

Border Reporter Schools NGO Director Who Claims Chinese Migrants Are ‘Asylum Seekers’

After reporter Bill Melugin noted that record numbers of Chinese nationals continue to be encountered crossing the southern US border, an immigration NGO director claimed that they are merely asylum seekers, and was immediately proven wrong.

Melugin shared the latest CBP stats showing that over a thousand Chinese illegals were apprehended in just the last week.

Cue one Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a policy director at the ‘American Immigration Council’ who claimed that Melugin was reviving xenophobic “yellow peril” propaganda and that the migrants are just “trying to seek freedom.”

Melugin quickly exposed this outright lie by posting one of many interviews he personally conducted with a Chinese man who admitted to flying to Mexico from Turkey and entering the US purely for economic reasons.

Keep reading

Syrian Hamsters Dead After Chinese Scientists Engineer Horrific Ebola-Enhanced Virus

A group of Chinese scientists have engineered a new virus in which they took a common animal disease (vesicular stomatitis virus, or VSV) and added parts of Ebola in order to mimic Ebola symptoms in a lab setting using animals.

The result? A group of Syrian hamsters that received the lethal injection “developed severe systemic diseases similar to those observed in human Ebola patients, including multi-organ failure, the Daily Mail reports, citing the team’s study.

The team studied five female and five male hamsters that were three weeks old – all but two of which died between two and three days. The females – all of which died, showed decreased rectal temperature and up to 18% weight loss, the males lost 15% of their weight and died – except two, which survived and gained 20% more weight than they started with.

Some of the infected hamsters developed disgusting secretions in their eyes, which impaired vision and resulted in scabs on the surface of their eyeballs.

Keep reading

Documents Reveal US State Department Officials Knew COVID Leaked From a Wuhan Lab and CCP Covered It Up Back in July 2020 – Then They Lied to the American Public for Years!

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released shocking statements and documents on Tuesday night that reveal that the U.S. State Department knew COVID leaked from a Wuhan Biolab and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) covered it up.

The documents reveal that the State Department knew this since July 2020.

The highly redacted documents show enough proof to see the US Government has been lying to the American public since at least July 2020. They knew all along it was a leak from a bio lab.

“These classified documents were previously released in an unclassified and highly redacted FOIA production to US Right To Know. Today, Chairman RepBradWenstrup requested StateDept rapidly declassify the documents and share the truth about the origins of COVID-19 with the American people,” the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic wrote on X.

The letter, addressed to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, reads:

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic (Select Subcommittee) is investigating the origins of COVID-19. Since April 2, 2020, Committee on Oversight and Accountability Republicans have investigated the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) role in obscuring the truth regarding the initial outbreak, and whether any U.S. taxpayer dollars funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s (WIV) dangerous gain-of-function research.’ On February 27, 2023 we wrote to the Department requesting information pertinent to this investigation.’

Pursuant to that letter, the Department recently produced classified documents to the Select Subcommittee that were previously released in an unclassified and highly redacted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) production to U.S. Right to Know.? These documents contain highly pertinent information that credibly suggests:

  1. COVID-19 originated from a lab-related accident in Wuhan, China;
  2. The CCP acted to prevent, and in fact obstructed, a fulsome investigation into these matters; and
  3. A seamless relationship between the WIV and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

The American people deserve to see the information that is hidden under these redactions.

We write to you today to request that you immediately take steps to declassify this information such that the American people have a more complete picture of the government’s evidence regarding the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.

To ensure that these documents are expeditiously reviewed for declassification, the highly redacted FOIA versions are enclosed. In addition to the rapid commencement of a declassification review, the Select Subcommittee requests a staff level briefing to occur before May 14, 2024.

This briefing was previously requested on April 24, 2024 with the goal of it occurring prior to the Select Subcommittee’s hearing with the President of EcoHealth Alliance, Inc.—and known WIV collaborator—Dr. Peter Daszak. However, the Department responded that it could not support a briefing on that timeline.

The Select Subcommittee is authorized to investigate “the origins of the Coronavirus pandemic, including but not limited to the Federal Government’s funding of gain-of function research” and “executive branch policies, deliberations, decisions, activities, and internal and external communications related to the coronavirus pandemic” under H. Res. 5.

The US and CCP hid this from the public.

Keep reading