Niall Ferguson: I Lied, But China Is Guilty Anyway

May 29, 2020 (EIRNS)—Empire-loving Niall Ferguson posted a hilarious, lengthy post on his website on May 26, protesting that Prof. Daniel A. Bell may have been right, but China was guilty anyway. Hilarious, if it were not for the fact that this British Imperialist continues in his effort to provoke war on China.

Prof. Bell issued a definitive exposure of Ferguson’s April 21 London Times claim that China sent infected people around the world after locking down internal travel from Wuhan, simply by observing both international and Chinese flight records. Ferguson admitted earlier that he had mis-read the records showing flights leaving Wuhan after Jan. 23 (the day China shut down Wuhan), but, he now writes, he and his research assistants have gone on a frantic search to prove his lie was justified. After all, he concludes: “whether or not flights departed Wuhan after Jan. 23 is not the critical issue when it comes to accrediting responsibility for the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.” Or, as it is said in Hollywood, “I don’t need no stinking badge.”

Despite acknowledging that Bell was right, he’s still wrong, says Ferguson, since: “What was his source? Why, a Chinese language application from the Civil Aviation Administration of China” (CAAC). Clearly, he adds, Bell is an “apologist for the Chinese government” who has “made clear the extent of his alignment with the Chinese Communist Party.” Truths are not truths, you see, when they come from a “one party authoritarian state.”

In his search to prove an untruth, the Ferguson (who has just taken a job with Bloomberg News—big surprise) dug up information showing that planes left Wuhan after Jan. 23, but then admits that they were all empty other than the crews—i.e., planes stuck in Wuhan after the lockdown were allowed to leave empty of passengers.

He also approached the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), but they couldn’t help him, since, he argues, “the ICAO’s Secretary General Fang Lui is a Chinese citizen who is a graduate of Wuhan University and former Director” of China’s CAAC [Civil Aviation Administration of China].” He goes on to report the horrifying news that “Remarkably, the ICAO is one of four UN agencies currently headed by a Chinese citizen.” Watch for Pompeo calling the UN a front for the Chinese Communist Party and demanding Chinese be banned from heading UN agencies.

Bell had no right to attack me, says Ferguson, and “should learn some humility. Journalism is harder than it looks [!]. There are deadlines to meet, And government agencies do not always tell the truth.” So, if my lies start a war, it’s an honest mistake, and the war was justified anyway—he well might have quoted Tony Blair on why destroying Iraq was worth it despite having no weapons of mass destruction.