Roundup
(1) They’ve found Shackleton’s lost ship Endurance 10,000 feet underwater. It is remarkably intact. Photos and a video at the link; really quite extraordinary.
Without any exaggeration this is the finest wooden shipwreck I have ever seen – by far,” said marine archaeologist Mensun Bound, who is on the discovery expedition and has now fulfilled a dream ambition in his near 50-year career.
“It is upright, well proud of the seabed, intact, and in a brilliant state of preservation,” he told BBC News…
The mission’s leader, the veteran polar geographer Dr John Shears, described the moment cameras landed on the ship’s name as “jaw-dropping”.
“The discovery of the wreck is an incredible achievement,” he added.
“We have successfully completed the world’s most difficult shipwreck search, battling constantly shifting sea-ice, blizzards, and temperatures dropping down to -18C. We have achieved what many people said was impossible.”
My goodness. The day it was found was the 100th anniversary of Shackleton’s funeral.
(2) A prizewinning NY Times reporter admits to Project Veritas that the coverage of January 6th exaggerated the danger, that the demonstration wasn’t organized, and that there were “a ton” of FBI informants present.
(3) What’s Tchaikovsky got to do with it? Nothing, in my opinion. This is just stupid virtue-signaling, and there’s a lot of it going around.
(4) The left and the Democrats have been saying for many years that they want gas prices to skyrocket. I tend to take people at their word when they say something like that. Now they are getting their opportunity.
And no, I don’t think the left somehow persuaded Putin to invade Ukraine so we could apply sanctions that would raise gas prices. But I think they see recent events as a golden opportunity to help raise them.
(5) Oh, and they’re framing high gas prices as being Putin’s fault, despite the fact that they had risen a lot prior to Putin’s Ukraine invasion. This administration, the left, and the MSM think that Americans have the memories of plankton.
‘Endurance: Shackelton’s Incredible Voyage’ by Alfred Lansing written in 1959 is one of the greatest non fiction adventure books ever. I read it when I was a kid and then again a few years ago and it still holds up.
Oil prices rose $10 bbl / 20% in the first month of Biden’s presidency because of action he took. They continued to rise from there.
Leland’s comment reminds me of Obama’s economic team boasting about his economic recovery and the gains in the stock market. Only, the metrics they used had a starting point at the market bottom in March 2008. They conveniently ignored the 20% decline in the market (S&P500) from the day of his inauguration down to the bottom. Most of those declines happened shortly after Obama announced his first policy initiatives.
Don’t look at the whole picture. Just look at the portion we want you to see.
And now we find out the US was/is funding “bio research facilities ” in Ukraine and that those facilities and their materials are not secure.
I’m not sure how much more news I can take anymore. The stress level is worse than the first few months of covid compressed into 2 weeks.
physicsguy,
You miswrote. They are “defensive bio research facilities.” (snark.)
(4) The left and the Democrats have been saying for many years that they want gas prices to skyrocket. I tend to take people at their word when they say something like that. Now they are getting their opportunity.
My sense is that this actually may backfire on them since right now the prices are climbing far, far too quickly.
To be clear, the Democrats absolutely do want oil prices to increase, but gradually over time so people don’t freak out too much and don’t instantly connect the higher prices with Dem policies. They want to be able to hand wave away higher prices, attributing them to “greedy oil company execs”, or dismiss the lack of new domestic production to oil companies not taking advantage of existing leases (without fully explaining why that’s happening). And it’s easier to do that when prices go up say… 5 cents a month, allowing people to gradually acclimatize to the “new normal”. But when the price of gasoline at the pump jumps literally a dollar in a week… people actually notice, and actually start to get angry. People aren’t supposed to notice.
“Shackleton,” the miniseries starring Kenneth Branagh as the explorer, is an engrossing watch of the expedition. It begins with the planning of the trip to the rescue of the crew from Elephant Island. To see these men endure and survive the worst with few “modern” conveniences is astounding.
Would you answer this ad?
____________________________
MEN WANTED: FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. SMALL WAGES, BITTER COLD,
LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS, CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE
RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOUR AND RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS.
SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON
Seems like some in the administration have the audicity to blame shale companies for not increasing output as if the Biden administration hasn’t been actively trying to discourage domestic production since he took office.
Physicsguy. I came across the same information today. It puts the entire mostly peaceful war in the Ukraine in a new light. I wonder if Fauci has his finger prints on this stuff? This is starting to look like the way Watergate started to unravel slowly and then snowballed. The difference is that today’s press is hostile to this information and will try to suppress it.
Be sure to watch Victoria Nuland’s admission in the video near the end of the piece.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/03/biden-official-victoria-nuland-admits-biological-research-labs-ukraine-following-china-russia-accusations-video/
Griffin:
That is a great book, Endurance. There is a recent book of black and white photos taken by Hurley from the expedition. It’s at home, I’ll post the info later.This evening.
An eye opener of an article on how cancelization is now being applied to countries and what it portends for the rest of the world.
“Globalists Are Using the “George Floyd” Playbook to Cancel Russia and You’re Next”
https://www.revolver.news/2022/03/globalists-use-the-george-floyd-playbook-to-cancel-russia/
That pesky Law of Unintended Consequences is about to rise to never before seen levels.
Unlike George Floyd, Vlad has murdered or caused the murder on many people. Sad, poor Vlad. Invading other nations just ain’t what it was in the old days
Griffin, eeyore mood, om:
One book is titled, “The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition” by Caroline Alexander, which contains some of Frank Hurley’s photographs.
Astonishing stuff. The book looked-like a ho-hum birthday present, but totally grabbed me when I started reading.
Loved the Brannagh mini-series too.
So Shackleton’s ship gets trapped in the ice off the Antarctic coast and is then slowly crushed over a period of months. Shackleton orders his men to set up camp on the adjacent ice floe.
The day arrives when they watch their ship succumb to the ice. “She’s going, boys!” Its masts collapse, the hull buckles, and the ship sinks into the sea.
They are left stranded on an ice floe only six feet thick over the frigid ocean and a hundred miles from land, they have no ship–just three life boats with limited provisions, the Antarctic winter will be coming, and no one knows where they are.
It is a time when any reasonable person would give up hope.
What does Shackleton do? He assembles the men and calmly tells them: “Ship
and stores have gone, so now we’ll go home.” He declares a possibility in
the face of no possibility and recruits his despairing crew.
And by God, they make the impossible happen.
Had Shakelton succeeded, his fame today would be far less.
His leading his crew to safety established him in the pantheon of heroes.
Glenn Greenwald does a deep dive into the 26 US/Ukrainian biological weapons labs.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/victoria-nuland-ukraine-has-biological
“Secret Biolabs in Ukraine? That’s Crazy Talk!”
https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/tucker-carlson-opening-statement-focuses-on-ukraine-biolabs/
China, perhaps for once telling the truth is claiming that we have 336 of them scattered around the world.
All looking for a cure for cancer and the common cold… well no but they’re ‘defensive’…
Nothing to see here folks, move along.
Who to trust Fauchi or Xi? Captain Occam says neither.
Love that weird response form Nuland “uh, Ukraine has, uh, bye-l-logical research facilities… which we are now in fact quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to… uh, gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainions on how… they can… prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach”
What were they “researching” the recipe for the perfect chocolate chip cookie?
And this after days and days of emphatic denials on all fronts. Seriously, there’s practically no reason to trust our government anymore when it comes to telling its citizenry the unvarnished truth about this war (no doubt many people will claim that there was never much of a reason to trust the government begin with ). That’s not to say I trust whatever Putin or China says either unless there’s a great deal of verification by unrelated parties.
Well, the news from my Democrat acquaintances is that the whole Russia-Ukraine-gasoline-prices thing is All Trump’s Fault. I’m rarely tempted to chime in on their discussions, but I did wonder if they’d noticed that prices in general, and especially fuel prices, have been rising for quite a few months.
Ok, not *all* Trump’s fault–the fuel prices are at least as much the work of “price-gouging” by the oil companies.
When people don’t want to recognize the truth, the reasonableness of any objection is simply not a concideration.
Feelings over facts. Delusion over reality. It really is a form of mental illness in that it supports dysfunction. It makes the world a worse place. Ah, the irony is literally Shakespearean.
1. Saw this and it is truly amazing. Finding the ship and the shape she is in. We here about Captain Bligh and his amazing open boat navigation after they were set adrift by Christian, but Shakleton’s accomplishment certain rivals it.
2. Many of us already believed it, but nothing will come of it.
3. Yes, a lot of Stupid going around.
4. WH pushing EV’s right now is certainly stupid. IF the Republicans were smart they would use this, now and for the midterms. But know using Smart and Republican in the same sentence is not rational.
5. We know here about the rise of gas prices that began last Jan, but too many will believe that it just started because Biden said so. Can’t cure Stupid.
I see comments about the “bio-labs” with the assumption that the labs were researching “bad things”. I want proof, not assumption. Too much FUD going around.
physicsguy – not only in Ukraine but also in Georgia:
https://journal-neo.org/2016/01/31/lugar-bio-laboratory-in-tbilisi-latest-it-s-getting-worse-by-the-day/
SHIREHOME – I am with you for the proof. I was in Tbilisi during the time the Lugar lab opened. There was a big stir at the time but I am not knowledgeable enough with these facilities to be able to discern if dark activities took place. I wonder if Fauci has his fingerprints on this one as well.
Another shipwreck, this one from Roman times (circa 70 BC), found in the Mediterranean between Crete and Peloponnesus, just off the island of Antikythera….
“The Antikythera Wreck” / “The Antikythera Mechanism”—
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpLcnAIpVRA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWVA6TeUKYU
The mechanism, an astronomical calendar, is extraordinary.
And another shipwreck… (The U.S.S Uncontested Election)
“Ballot Bombshells: 20 episodes exposing fraud, illegalities and irregularities in 2020 election
“Illegal rule changes, ballot harvesting, Iranian voter hack are among the many now-confirmed serious irregularities, putting the lie to the “perfect election” narrative.”—
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/ballot-bombshells-20-episodes-exposing-fraud-illegalities-and
Only 20? They’re just scratching the surface….
But this is not the Bee
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/597554-fossilized-vampire-squid-named-after-biden
Chultu in 2020 was correct after all, “we elected” a living fossil.
from InstaPundit.com
Not only do they think we have the memories of plankton, they are going to lie and lie with the full force of the MSM to lay out what you memory should be.
Also, unfortunately, they are not wrong about the length of many peoples memory.
Greetings all, long time lurker but short time poster. I still remember way way back when the new label got turned over, and honestly I’d say Neo has been consistent in her bright analysis and is one of the people I most identify with the views of (outside of Ace of Ace of Spades HQ, though I admit I still stubbornly cling to the label of “Neocon” and am still more interventionist).
Anyway, let me take a stab at what @physicsguy, @Paul in Boston, and Nonapod are asking re: the US funding of Biological Labs in Ukraine (and why we haven’t heard about this before from anybody- including people like the Russian government who you’d think would’ve been screaming bloody murder about this since 2014).
Quick Disclaimers: In spite of my loud, verbose posts, I do not actually have a whit of training or experience in this stuff directly. I am not a Biologist, a person with military experience more prescient than re-enactment, or someone tied in to the US or Ukrainian governments (unless you count me being the obvious Fed, but that’s just my side job and I’m on break : P). I am fundamentally a literally basement dwelling autist.
However, I am a nerd who has been paying some kind of attention, especially for a lay man. I also have above-average Search-Fu in digging stuff up. And I know a few people (mostly retired military and middle management) I can ask some general things, because they’re not Secret Squirrel stuff or involved in it. I also have no proximate Ukrainian ancestry that I am aware of, though I am greatly sympathetic to their cause. I did however do some work as a charity worker in Russia way back when in my Church trying to do stuff like combat alcoholism, so I have a (super)-modest amount of experience about the country back in the early 2000s and significantly more academic knowledge from researching.
I’d ask ya to keep these limitations in mind, but let’s get to it:
So let’s get the obvious out of the way.
There is no such thing as a purely “defensive” biological research laboratory. Even those meant for purely civilian use will almost inevitably have truly horrible stuff lying around, and HOPEFULLY contained properly. There certainly are “Biolabs” that are really, REALLY not equipped for a military or offensive use, but if one was motivated enough you could take some of the more sensitive or exotic material and do horrible things with it, sort of the Biological equivalent of a Dirty Bomb made using low-grade fissionable materials.
“I wonder if Fauci has his finger prints on this stuff?”
It’s Fauci, and as I’ll show a lot of this has been going on to show he is pretty much the common denominator in terms of who was around when we have evidence this started and who is around now in both US and Ukrainian administrations as well as the all-purpose white coat goon. So probably.
Why did he do it or why is he doing this stuff?
Well, probably for similar reasons to why he does other stuff like the Gain of Function financing for the Wuhan Lab. To avoid US restrictions and standards, as well as accountability if something goes pots up.
That’s bad enough as it is and should be more than enough reason to panic anyone. However, it’s probably nowhere near as colorful, interesting, or bad as the Kremlin wants to make it look for a few reasons, and probably not “Bioweapons.”
“What were they “researching” the recipe for the perfect chocolate chip cookie?”
See above. Probably stuff that’s BAD and that they didn’t want to be accountable to Congress or the Electorate for, but hardly some of the freakshow stuff I’ve seen like “genetically targeting” Russians or trying to make Biological Weapons.
It’s telling that even the Russians are mostly saying they’ve found evidence of the Ukrainian government disposing of “spicy” stuff, like Plague, assorted bacilli, etc, rather than… you know.. “deploying the Bioweapons” since they’re weapons, or even trying to jury-rig one which as I mentioned before, given the incredibly dangerous stuff even mundane Biological research involves ,would not be too hard for trained scientists and military personnel working in concert (it’d take some doing of course but not a crippling, Manhattan Project style amount).
It’s also noteworthy that- again- we are only having this be publicized NOW, in a coordinated campaign by Russian and Chinese regimes, their sympathetic media, and social media influenced by them. What’s also important is that there’s a big disconnect between what they have the spine to put in official writing, going through their proper channels, in this complaint and what the social media nutroots narratives are going through, with stories of grotesque human experiments, “kidnapping Russian children” from “towns along the Russo-Ukrainian border” (Nevermind how those towns have been locked down and militarized to the umpteenth degree for the past several years with the Russian military, meaning the power most capable of doing such abductions would be…. Putin’s Russian Government itself), trying to “genetically target Russians”, and whole lots of stuff that I frankly dismiss as nonsense.
Oh, and some of these idiots are trying to claim that Putin is seeking to “destroy” the Biolabs- which in this narrative are “Biological Weapon Labs”…with artillery and cruise missiles using crude correlation maps showing the locations of the alleged “Biolabs” and MSM graphs of Russian artillery bombardment sites. Because apparently these geniuses think blowing up the contained facility that for all you know is trying to engineer Black Death Mk.3000 or Superthrax is totally a great idea and not at all likely to spread uncontrollable death onto the country at large and your own troops (most of whom probably are not sealed against Biological weapons).
This immediately struck me as off, so I asked my friendly acquaintances with something above my own non-zero personal experience in the matter how you would go about neutralizing a Biological Lab (Or God forbid an actual, real Biological Weapons Lab). And their answers were remarkably consistent, and while they are more about Western Doctrine on the matter (since neither of them are Russian), I imagine on these particular subjects Russian and Western doctrines would be quite similar due to the similar pressures.
Answers from Anonymous 1: “Mhm we’d send a small special forces team in without explosives probably
And in mopp gear so if was a breach they can survive to help contain it
And contact authorities in the country even if invading it
With a temporary truce
Because that more important than the fighting
Atleast thats my guess of how it would go down”
*SNiP*
“Last thing you want wyen chemical biological or nuclear
Is explosives
And the big guns
It would be a small surgical strike on the lab”
This largely jives with the answers I received from a second friend, who as far as I know does not know Anon 1 personally and who worked in a different service from them.
Typos and other stuff preserved because casual social media question.
“Turtler: You there and willing to answer some points?
Because I am hearing a lot of memes about Putn trying to prevent a sorto f BIological Cuban Missile Crisis shit.
But ……. regarding actually taking on an enemy BIoweapons r Biolaogical Lab in general…..
I am guessng Standard Operating Procedure would be “DON’T Blast the fucking thing with a cruise mssile and/or arillery or bombs”?
Anonymous 2
Depends, but ideally yeah you carefully capture it.
I highly doubt Ukraine has any more or less NBC capability than any other former-Soviet republic.
Turtler
I figured
i’m seeing quite the dumb number of takes
Anon 2
There’s a lot of dumb. Like CIA and other deep state leftist groups co-opting Maidan in 2014 to put an equally corrupt shitbag in charge. Can’t leave well enough alone.
Or like “ethnic Russians” who’ve lived in Ukraine since Staling gave away Crimea and Dumbass, who felt “oppressed” by having to learn Ukrainian.
You know. The language they’ve been continuously exposed to their entire lives and the entire lives of their parents.
Turtler
Indeed
But a question.
Um…… what would you say would help cause the “Depends”?
In such a situation?
That might justify a move away from attempts to carefully capture it?
Anonymous 2; If you know for sure what the hazards are, and know that napalming the area will dispense with the hazard, you can just napalm it.
Turtler
Makes sense
Another idea that came to mind- mostly playing Devil’s Advocate with hypotheticals- is if you had damn solid evidence the enemy is about to deploy Biological WMD on you
In such a short window that more…Delicate action is implusible or unworkable
So you go “Well, better you lot take the Lifeater Virus (Ed: Dumb reference to Warhammer 40K) than we do”
And launching big booms
Anonymous 2:
Right.
Turtler
Obviously I don’t think that’s the case here
Given how the Ukrainians haven’t used any “Muh Bioweapons” in nearly a decade of war
But it came to mind as an extreme case
Anonymous 2
Right. Though they likely have the same bioweapons research as everyone else, including “Let’s brainstorm an even-worse strain so that we can then brainstorm ways to fight it.””
My apologies for the long comments, but I think they are valuable enough to be worth it. Which also underlines the fact that at least some parts of the “Nutroots Narrative” about Putin trying to neutralize these labs with missile strikes or the like does not wash (Unless he had a high confidence of what was on site, which is important for reasons I’ll get to).
The reason why I emphasize the messenger (namely Putin and friends), the timing of the message (now), and the disconnect between what the Kremlin’s usual internet farms WANT people to believe or at least be repeating and what it is actually comfortable making formal accusations about are because while the Kremlin will make plenty of blood libels, it probably isn’t going to make public false accusations about things that have literally no evidence, or at least evidence that doesn’t seem to support their claims if you turn your head, douse your eyes with water, and squint at it.
And as even Greenwald etc. al. show by repeating the official charges, the essence and evidence of the charges are rather tame: namely that the Ukrainians are operating Biological “Weapon” Labs with US funding, and disposed of a lot of dangerous stuff (which isn’t that surprising if you see how devastating and destabilizing war is, how nasty mundane Biological Research can be, and how they probably don’t want to risk destabilizing or leaking tests with exotic materials).
And that’s before we get into the exact specifics of the TIMING.
Namely, this. Which I got from one of the sites regurgitating the “Bioweapon Lab” narrative and is- as far as I can tell- an authentic Foggy Bottom Document about Biological Research in Ukraine between US State and the Ukrainian Government.
https://2001-2009.state.gov/documents/organization/95251.pdf
I encourage you to read through it in full yourselves, because there’s a lot here even if there is no smoking gun, and there is plenty to make you nervous (albeit with Fauci).
HOWEVER I’m also going to ask you to look at the date. 2005.
Now at this time, the victor of the “Orange Revolution” Viktor Yuschenko was in power, who was generally held to represent the “Pro-Western” political sides in Ukraine (as opposed to the “anti-Western/Pro-Russian” “Blues”). But he would later fall from power and “grace” due to assorted fights with his own allies, leading to his old rival Yanukovych, representing the “Blues”, reclaiming power in the 2010 Ukrainian elections.
Meaning Yanukovych would almost certainly be able to have access to all or most of what the Ukrainian President had on this stuff.
Which he probably would have passed on to his bald patron in the Kremlin, a guy you’ve might of heard of. Vladimir Putin.
And Putin’s reaction to all this? As far as we can tell, UTTER SILENCE.
A silence that remained through 2014 (when Euromaidan happened and Yanukovych got booted by the Rada/Parliament he was elected alongside, leading to Putin’s invasion of Crimea and the Donbass and the current war). At a time when if the US or Ukraine REALLY WERE working on some secret squirrel, ultra black site stuff like Biological WMDs, you’d THINK Putin might, MIGHT want to have mentioned this in order to help justify his actions. But as far as I can tell, he didn’t.
So I’m going to go out on a limb here and GUESS (and I must emphasize this is a GUESS) that there is no “There” there. That Putin almost certainly knew the broad overview of what these labs were doing no later than 2010 due to Yanukovych, and likely well earlier due to Yuschenko or the US notifying him or the FSB paying off people related to the labs to find out what is going on. And that he did not bother pulling the “Bioweapon Labs” card earlier like in 2014 because he not only didn’t think he needed to, but also knew there was no there there and would probably get him laughed out of the room, especially since almost all of the labs were outside the conflict zone and the Ukrainians could just open them up for inspection, with the most likely outcome being moderate embarrassment for the government in Ukraine and the quote unquote “Medical Establishment” in the US from trying to get around US Med regulations, but a lot of embarrassment for Pooty and co.
It’s now with the combination of the more crushing condemnation from all sides, the bad press, and the sort of instability from the war coming near a lot of these labs (and Ukrainian attempts to destroy potentially dangerous stuff pending evacuation/cover up Biological Weapons research by destroying the evidence/Summon Cthulhu to eat the Plague info) that Putin now thinks he can pitch an accusation like this and have it be credible for at least some people.
Moreover, it’s not like he has too much to lose.
” This is starting to look like the way Watergate started to unravel slowly and then snowballed. The difference is that today’s press is hostile to this information and will try to suppress it.”
Honestly I stopped trusting the press about a quarter century ago and we’ve already seen (like with the great Veritas truth bomb about how the medial iied about Jan 6th and the Fed provocateurs), but I don’t think that’s the main reason this is unravelling slowly and hasn’t really “snowballed.” Because the fact is, Putin had more than a decade and a half to advertise this stuff if he wanted to, and after 2014 he had more of an incentive to due to the first stages of his war in Ukraine.
A large part of the reason why we’re only hearing about it now is because the Kremlin and its friends haven’t been making a stir about it up until now. Which is suspicious if you assume they’re telling the truth, but not really if you assume they’re trying to come up with a convincing-looking lie strung against the basic outlines of the truth (Fauci etc. al. funding questionable Biological Lab Research in Ukraine, Ukraine having Biological Labs, etc).
My gut feeling is that if there were Dark Activities going on there, they were of a significantly different nature than what Putin’s claiming they were at present, and are probably a lot less dramatic than our minds would jump to. Especially with this narrative of the “Biological Cuban Missile Crisis” I’ve seen a lot of people lapping up the Kremlin apologist train claim.
Which is why I have to disagree with Paul in Boston saying “It puts the entire mostly peaceful war in the Ukraine in a new light.”
Not really IMHO, though again I am biased and WAAAY different from infallible.
This war has been going on since 2014 (albeit on a much lower boil than it was) and this information is for the most part even older than that.
Also pace Geoffrey Britain, this is one reason why I have never really liked Greenwald even if he has done valuable work.
Firstly:
“It should go without saying that the existence of a Ukrainian biological “research” program does not justify an invasion by Russia, let alone an attack as comprehensive and devastating as the one unfolding: no more than the existence of a similar biological program under Saddam would have rendered the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq justifiable. ”
Pardon my French, but as someone who is friends with several veterans of Iraq and a history nerd, **FUCK YOU* Greenwald and your bullshit false equivocation! The fact of the matter is that while Biological Weapon research is taboo for all kinds of reasons, Saddam’s Iraq was one of the few regimes that was expressly, specifically banned from undertaking i and, obliged to inventory and have all of its WMD destroyed under sight of inspectors ON PAIN OF RENEWED WAR, as clearly outlined in the Gulf War Ceasefire Resolution.
The fact that our troops found countless stuff such as Sarin artillery shells and Yellow Cake Uranium was Proof Positive that Saddam had violated THIS part of the Ceasefire Resolution (too, he violated a lot of stuff), and proof positive that the invasion was justified from a legal standpoint (even if you wish to argue that it was unwise POLITICALLY or PRACTICALLY).
And oh dear I still remember all the remarkable pretzels leftists and other “Bush Lied People Died” blood libelists turned themselves into by pointing these were mostly old and degraded WMD material to try and prove “See! It’s old WMD! So Saddam didn’t have a WMD program and the war was still unjustified!”, with claims like “The Iraqis didn’t know/forgot they had this stuff” and “See how different it was from what the CIA etc. la. predicted might be there! REEE!”
To which I simply point out that all of the above is *legally irrelevant.* Saddam had a positive obligation to catalogue and destroy this WMD, and was obliged to help weapons inspectors to the fullest extent in doing so. He did not. The fact that this stuff- even if old and degraded- was STILL around is proof positive he did not, and nobody who is not the most boot-polishing of Saddam shills is daft or dishonest enough to try and claim Saddam DID do fulfill his obligations under the Gulf War Ceasefire given all the times he threw inspectors out.
Moreover, as bad as our “Intelligence Agencies” are capable of behaving, the fact remains that the only reason WHY they were in a position to mis-estimate or even outright lie about Iraqi WMD stockpiles… was *because Saddam wasn’t fulfilling his obligations, meaning the door was opened for people to guess.*
Moreover, the fact that this stuff was around, even if you believe the paranoid, micromanaging madman somehow “forgot” about it, shows that Saddam clearly intended to hide it and screw with the terms of the Gulf War ceasefire at a time before he had “forgotten” this stuff.
This is an entirely different kettle of fish from a sovereign, more or less international-law-abiding Ukraine.
Secondly: Greenwald jumps to a false conclusion here with : “Any attempt to claim that Ukraine’s biological facilities are just benign and standard medical labs is negated by Nuland’s explicitly grave concern that “Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of” those facilities and that the U.S. Government therefore is, right this minute, “working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces.” Russia has its own advanced medical labs. After all, it was one of the first countries to develop a COVID vaccine, one which Lancet, on February 1, 2021, pronounced was “ safe and effective
*SNIP*
The only reason to be “quite concerned” about these “biological research facilities” falling into Russian hands is if they contain sophisticated materials that Russian scientists have not yet developed on their own and which could be used for nefarious purposes-”
Firstly: any idiot who believes or trusts “The Lancet” after its blood libel “Death Toll Estimate” in Iraq should be immediately discounted on those matters.
Secondly: This is a strawman. Remember when I said “There is no such thing as a purely defensive Biological Lab” and emphasized how dangerous the materials and processes these labs deal with even for “mundane” or “benign” research was?
The Ukrainians and US would have plenty of reason to want to destroy any research or new developments they had which the Russians did not have, even if these weren’t “Bioweapons.”
Moreover, even if we assume that these labs didn’t discover anything remarkable or that the Russian labs didn’t have, the fact is Russia’s “Advanced medical labs” aren’t in the middle of a FREAKING WAR ZONE and thus at risk for having containment breach or other instability from-say- a stray artillery shell. Now imagine if your medical lab is trying to research-say- Rabies and thus has Rabid animals in residence as well as some synthesized versions of it.
Now imagine Putin or one of his lackies fires a cruise missile at it that breaches those, meaning you have rabid animals wandering the war zone.
Or something even worse, like some of the old cultures of Black Death we have or variants of it.
That alone is ENOUGH reason to want to remove or destroy any dangerous cultures or material there, precisely so that if one of the Strategic Rocket Force’s higher ups gets drunk and chooses where to lob next by throwing a dart at a map, the damage will be minimal.
And finally, ANOTHER reason why you don’t want this stuff to fall in to their hands even if there is nothing “novel” not in Russian labs is because of RAW OPPERTUNITY. It’s one thing to have to haul sketchy biological stuff from a lab in-say- Vorkuta or Moscow. It’s another to have the stuff at hand in Ukraine near or in the Battlefield, because it invites Mischief with the prospect of plausible deniability (especially since the heat would logically fall mostly on the Ukrainian government and possibly the US).
Quick show of hands: Who here would like some of Kadyrov’s Chechen head hackers to take one of these labs and get their hands on a “sophisticated material Russian scientists have already developed” like the weapon Anthrax, or something less bioweapony like a souped up strand of the Flu?
Yeah, me neither.
And while I use Putin’s Islamist Chechen henchmen for this example, this would also extend to Ukrainians, on the off chance someone snapped or decided to try and weaponize these materials in the Great Patriotic War for the Ukrainian Homeland. Which would again be another thing the Ukrainian Government would want to avoid.
None of this means these Biolabs were benign or completely in the clear. Indeed, they likely were not, as the mere presence of Fauci and Nuland should make us suspect. But they’re probably sketchy for reasons rather than “The Ukrainians and US were building bioweapons to attack Russia that they have decided not to use.”
Now, I could be wrong about some or most of this, and I’ll be the first to admit this. But I know I’m not wrong about ALL of it because I can point to stuff like the basic chronology, the gaps in the official Kremlin narrative versus the nutroots narrative, and so on.
No need for foreign biolabs when honest research is being done. Foreign biolabs in a corrupt foreign country is a dead giveaway that ‘research’ is being conducted that the US funders cannot allow the American public to become aware of the actual nature of that ‘research’.
It just occurred to me that the reason why the US has so many secret biolabs scattered around the world is to facilitate experimentation with disparate and parallel lines of research into biological areas best kept secret. Lots of dead ends in that type of research, by using lots of labs you greatly reduce the time needed to reach whatever goal(s) the funders are pursuing.
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo… Well, I’ll be DAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMED!!!1111!!!!
@Geoffrey Britain “No need for foreign biolabs when honest research is being done. ”
To play devil’s advocate, there CAN be a legitimate need for them even with honest research, if your own labs are blocked up or “pre-booked” and otherwise working at capacity. So it can be beneficial to outsource your work to others, much as the British used a lot of American and Dutch labs in 1940 for things like medical production.
And the likes of COVIDiocy would’ve made the demand higher.
Now, do I think that’s what ACTUALLY is happening? With this lot?!?
Hahahah No.
But just a caveat on that front.
“Foreign biolabs in a corrupt foreign country is a dead giveaway that ‘research’ is being conducted that the US funders cannot allow the American public to become aware of the actual nature of that ‘research’.”
Agreed. Which is what I think the real issue is. I don’t think they were researching Bioweapons (almost certainly not ones for immediate or practical use against Russia), but they clearly didn’t want what they were doing to come to public scrutiny because it probably wouldn’t pass muster under US Regs. At the very least.
“It just occurred to me that the reason why the US has so many secret biolabs scattered around the world is to facilitate experimentation with disparate and parallel lines of research into biological areas best kept secret. Lots of dead ends in that type of research, by using lots of labs you greatly reduce the time needed to reach whatever goal(s) the funders are pursuing.”
Brilliantly said, better than I can.
Which is why there’s probably a big story behind all this and one we should know. But also probably one that is less dramatic (well, at least militarily) and less proximate to the Russia-Ukraine conflict than Putin’s propagandists want to claim. Hence why as I pointed out we have evidence of this stuff going back to 2005 and never stopping even under the corrupt pro-Putin oligarch Yanukovych rather than merely corrupt pro-“Us”/Globalist oligarchs.
Whatever it/they are, the stories are probably big and should see people suspended from their jobs Iranian style, but probably not Muh Bioweaponz to “genetically attack Russians.”
How do you determine whether something is a “bio weapon” or not? In a sense the SARS-Cov-2 virus could be defined at as a “bio weapon”, just not precisily a military tactical weapon. So a research lab in a foreign country may not strictly be attempting to design military grade bio weapons. But, for example, they could be conducting the now infamous “gain-of-function” type of research, messing around with existing pathogens oestensibly to better understand and combat them (lol).
But either way, it’s pretty obvious that since the very existence of these labs was a closely guarded secret and there’s panic about them falling into Russian hands, whatever research is going on in these places is potentially very dangerous.
@Nonapod “How do you determine whether something is a “bio weapon” or not?”
That’s a good question and unfortunately I don’t think I really have a good answer to it. Certainly not as much as someone actually trained in the field would have.
But if I had to take a stab, a “bio-weapon” is something biological (particularly microbiological) that’s *weaponized*, usually in the form of trying to adapt it for use as a weapon (along the familiar trinity of Lethality, Reliability, Usability). Now that sounds like a copout or nonanswer, and it kind of is ( I did warn that I didn’t really have a good answer compared to people who know this stuff), but I think it’s better than nothing.
For instance, there are probably countless things lying around Biological Labs around the world that are way more lethal than Joe M-16 or Ivan AK (like say Rabies) but which aren’t bioweapons because nobody is trying to make them amenable to military use (or well, nobody is SERIOUSLY trying to make them amenable to use, though given fringe research and whatnot that is probably going around somewhere). Largely because the stuff is deemed too dangerous, uncontrollable, or likely to lead to blowback if discovered.
Which brings us to the other issue of how we know if something’s been weaponized, and therein lies a problem. Now if something like-say- a Cruise Missile detonated in the middle of a place and people throughout the city started becoming literally foaming at the mouth rabid? Yeah, it’d be pretty easy to say we’ve seen someone weaponize Rabies.
But if for instance a form of influenza ran amok through one of your garrisons, leaving lots of your troops and civilians debilitated but alive just before enemy troops sweep in and capture the region with nil resistance? That’d be a lot harder to track down.
And it’s not like this unfamiliarity is new. One of the most fascinating little sources I read was George Washington making a letter about possible reports that the British were trying to weaponize Smallpox in the American Revolution.
https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/todays-doc/index.html?dod-date=1204#:~:text=During%20the%20seige%20of%20Boston,with%20smallpox%20so%20that%20they
” In a sense the SARS-Cov-2 virus could be defined at as a “bio weapon”, just not precisily a military tactical weapon.”
I’d say it would be if it were intentionally modified (which looks to be the case) for offensive use (not necessarily military use, but offensive use). I’m not ENTIRELY sure I buy the idea it was meant to be a bioweapon (for starters it is way too mild for most) but it certainly is possible.
Which brings me back to my point that there is no such thing as a purely defensive Biolab and how dangerous the applications of a lot of their research and study stock is if you put a devious mind and intent to it.
” So a research lab in a foreign country may not strictly be attempting to design military grade bio weapons. But, for example, they could be conducting the now infamous “gain-of-function” type of research, messing around with existing pathogens oestensibly to better understand and combat them (lol).”
Agreed. If I had to wager a guess, that’d be what Fauci etc. al. have been doing in Ukraine’s Biolabs, much like they were doing in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The issue of course is that it’s really hard to understate how absolutely ubiquitous these kinds of research are, and pretty much everybody does it to one degree or another, with one kind of civilian or legislative oversight or another.
“But either way, it’s pretty obvious that since the very existence of these labs was a closely guarded secret and there’s panic about them falling into Russian hands, whatever research is going on in these places is potentially very dangerous.”
Agreed for the most part, but I wouldn’t say these were a “closely guarded secret.” One thing the “Bioweapon LABZ” conspiracy theorists have done that was good is show that the existence of these labs and documentation about them was in the public domain for about 20 years. Most people just didn’t see it or know where to look, but that’s hardly on par with being a “closely guarded secret” in the world of spycraft, international diplomacy, and so on.
And the thing is that even if this stuff were doing the sort of research that has been fully overseen and approved by Congress and the like at home (…and it’s probably NOT just doing that, as we discussed when talking about why Fauci etc. al. would want to use Ukrainian or Chinese labs in spite of their limitations to side-step US oversight and management), they’d still be using with incredibly dangerous stuff you do not want your enemies to monkey with. Especially not if there’s a question of whether your enemy can control elements in their side or you yours.
An E Coli culture is hardly novel or remarkable (hell, not even freaking yersinia pestis the Black Death is anymore), but it’s still not something you’d want the likes of Kadyrov’s goons to get their paws on because you don’t know WHAT they might do with it.
So most Biological Labs up to code (and most that aren’t) doing research would be very dangerous to be in rogue or enemy hands, regardless of how mundane or not their research is.
The panic at trying to cover up or downplay though is what I think is key. They’re probably panicking to try and cover up the depths of how they’ve sideswiped US regulatory oversight and jurisdiction, especially with St. Fauci’s halo fading and the conflict over the Gain-of-Function research at WIV.
Of course I’ve been wrong before (for instance I thought Putin was engaging in saber rattling on the border and would not launch an official invasion), but if so you can at least see how I’m wrong and why.
}}} have the memories of plankton.
Certainly most of the people on the Left do. :-/
Hasn’t Fauci been uncharacteristically quiet lately? Coincidence, I’m sure.
@sonny wayz Honestly it is likely more of a coincidence than we might think; he’s been remarkably silent for months prior to the start of Putin’s “Special Military Operation”, probably because the Midterms are coming up and it’s understood on some level how much he is utterly hated.
But all of this happening sure as hell is not going to encourage him to come out and see the stagelight or take interviews.
In this case it is not the memory of the left they are just barefaced liars.