Europe under extreme duress

[Hair Warrior]

I know Wikipedia isn't an overall authoritative source, but this article does a good job of explaining how the 'bioweapons labs" Russian propaganda seeped into some US right-wing media (and who those characters are)

Ukraine bioweapons conspiracy theory - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

You can't say I'm just explaining disinformation that RUS used as a pretense for invasion...then throw up your hands at the end, and say who knows?, bc you also believe in some dubious claims about Fauci...

Here’s my point.

The US has partially funded some biolabs in Ukraine (forget the word bioweapon) that are still Ukrainian-owned and -operated labs.

This funding was not widely publicized by the US or Ukraine, enabling Russia to amplify its exaggerated claims that the biolab funding was somehow “secret.”

There is enough nuance here that simply slapping a “TRUE” or “FALSE” banner on a fact checking site doesn’t do anyone any good. People need to understand the nuance.

And the reason for bringing up Wuhan and coronavirus is to show that the word “bioweapon” is a highly subjective and debatable term. An analogy: When a police officer on the street stops and frisks you, and asks first if you have any weapons or needles in your pockets, if you have an icepick in your pocket you need to tell the cop anout the icepick. I get that the icepick is usually just a tool for chopping ice at home, and it’s sold at Martha Stewart’s right beside the lobster cracker and fancy napkin holders. You’re right, an icepick is not a weapon, it’s a tool. And it’s not a needle because it’s not a syringe, got it. But in the context of being frisked by a cop, the icepick certainly needs to be disclosed as something sharp and dangerous in your pocket that can hurt the cop. You cannot say “no” to the cop’s question, while in the back of your mind convincing yourself you aren’t lying about weapons or needles. Carry that logic to the Wuhan manmade coronavirus and sure, yeah, that’s not a bioweapon….just a highly contagious manmade coronavirus that was created in a lab likely through GoF research with no vaccine….yeah got it. Not a weapon. Just killed a lot of people accidentally.

 

[sevenhelmet]

I have a question…

Why are we funding all this overseas bio lab research?

 

[Hair Warrior]

I have a question…

Why are we funding all this overseas bio lab research?

Well, there is a theory that if the US doesn’t continually pay these scientists and laboratories to do “good guy science work,” they will be underemployed, need to put food on the table, and shopping their skills on the open market, therefore increasing the risk of them being hired to do “bad guy science work.” Also if we pay for it, we have a mechanism to know what goes on inside it.

 

[taxi1]

Well, there is a theory that if the US doesn’t continually pay these scientists and laboratories to do “good guy science work,” they will be underemployed, need to put food on the table, and shopping their skills on the open market, therefore increasing the risk of them being hired to do “bad guy science work.” Also if we pay for it, we have a mechanism to know what goes on inside it.

ONR Global's purpose is exactly that, and other things.

ONR Global | Office of Naval Research

ONR Global serves as the conduit between the Office of Naval Research, the Naval Research Enterprise, the naval fleet/forces and the international science and technology communities.

www.onr.navy.mil

 

[Spekkio]

Well, there is a theory that if the US doesn’t continually pay these scientists and laboratories to do “good guy science work,” they will be underemployed, need to put food on the table, and shopping their skills on the open market, therefore increasing the risk of them being hired to do “bad guy science work.” Also if we pay for it, we have a mechanism to know what goes on inside it.

Also... you know how AI and unmanned systems are the modern DoD R&D flavor of the day?

Biotech had that spot about 5-7 years ago.

 

[robav8r]

I have a question…

Why are we funding all this overseas bio lab research?

. . . . . huh, good question, no?

 

[robav8r]

I think what has a lot of folks kurfluffled over C-19, Fauci, and the Ukraine war is a lack of candor by our own government (and, in some cases NATO and the EU). Putin didn't invade Ukraine over the 46 or 48 Bio-Labs in Ukraine, but this fact (the existence of the labs) certainly seemed to be hidden, or unacknowledged by DoD and DoS leadership for an extended period. The timing with the Covid-19 pandemic was interesting.

Fauci lost a lot of credibility trying to hide his (and his wife's) financial interest with Big Pharma, NIH, and Ecohealth during this fiasco. He also didn't garner a lot of public trust and confidence trying to convince the country that George Floyd riots and the ever increasing flow of migrants coming across the southern border was "OK" wrt to masking, social-distancing, and no vaccines, while telling Americans going to church, to the gym, or surfing was more dangerous.

Not trying to dredge up old posts, and something tells me the next 4 years will reveal a lot of facts and uncomfortable truths that the public was not made aware of.

 

[taxi1]

the next 4 years

There is an uncomfortable level of chance that we will have to deal with the H5N1 virus (Avian Flu). We are kind of setting up for a perfect storm of vaccine distrust and raw milk chugging.

Opinion | Could Avian Flu Cause Our Next Pandemic?

Let's not bury our heads in the sand

www.medpagetoday.com

After listening to a full day of "very smart" talks, Ostroff weighed in with a key observation -- namely, that one glaring gap was a plan for systematic research on reasons why people might be reticent to follow government recommendations on issues ranging from farming practices and the interstate movement of potentially-infected animals to environmental surveillance and diagnostic, therapeutic, and preventive interventions for animals and humans.

"It's great to develop diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines," he later told me, "but the problem is: it's kind of like the 'Field of Dreams' phenomenon. And that's the analogy I used, which is -- just as during COVID -- there was this implicit assumption that 'If you build it, they will come.' What happens if they don't come?"

 

[Flash]

No, I’m not. I’m explaining one of Russia’s pretenses for war. It’s part of understanding their perspective. The US media too often ignores inconvenient facts or dismisses them as “propaganda.” We have been down that road and it doesn’t do anyone any good.

We ain't the US media or uninformed citizenry but military professionals who have served much of our adult lives and a much more knowledgeable about these things than the average person. You don't need to lecture us on some half-assed Russian conspiracy bullshit propaganda, AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THIS IS, and tangentially connect it to COVID without apparently doing any research on how the two are completely different other than 'biolab'. It is kind of like me questioning the worth of all INTEL DCO's because one turned out to be a Nazi wannabe.

This ain't a new thing and as old as history, from Nero fiddling while Rome burned to Napoleon being a shorty to Ukrainian politicians buying yachts with US funding. And the Russians are amongst the most notorious practitioners from well before airbrushing photos was a twinkle in Stalin's eye, from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to AIDS being a CIA plot, to whatever bullshit they can come up with today that folks will happily lap up.

 

[robav8r]

There is an uncomfortable level of chance that we will have to deal with the H5N1 virus (Avian Flu). We are kind of setting up for a perfect storm of vaccine distrust and raw milk chugging.

Opinion | Could Avian Flu Cause Our Next Pandemic?

Let's not bury our heads in the sand

www.medpagetoday.com

Then our public institutions need to be honest, forthright and vulnerable to the idea that they may get it “wrong” occasionally. A lot of what Fauci did threw all that in the shitter . . .

 

[taxi1]

Then our public institutions need to be honest, forthright and vulnerable to the idea that they may get it “wrong” occasionally. A lot of what Fauci did threw all that in the shitter . . .

Not super hopeful, but maybe lessons were learned.

U.S. President Donald Trump acknowledged to a journalist early in the coronavirus pandemic that he played down the danger of the health crisis despite having evidence to the contrary, according to a new book.

"I wanted to always play it down," Trump told author Bob Woodward on March 19, days after he declared a national emergency. "I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic."

 

[Flash]

I have a question…

Why are we funding all this overseas bio lab research?

Excellent question! I think President George W Bush put it well when he released a statement commemorating the effort 15 years after the passing of the Nunn-Lugar Act that started the Cooperative Threat Reduction program:

"Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, established in 1992...are a critical tool used to address one of the gravest threats we face -- the danger that terrorists and proliferators could gain access to weapons or materials of mass destruction."

Funding for Ukrainian 'biolabs' was part of the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, a post-Cold War initiative to reduce the threat of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons by neutralizing many of the weapons and providing employment and puprose for the former developers of those weapons in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. This effort was initiated by the Nunn-Lugar Act that started what became the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, now run by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). Specifically the effort involving 'biolabs' under the CTR is the Biological Threat Reduction Program.

Here’s my point....The US has partially funded some biolabs in Ukraine (forget the word bioweapon) that are still Ukrainian-owned and -operated labs.

This funding was not widely publicized by the US or Ukraine, enabling Russia to amplify its exaggerated claims that the biolab funding was somehow “secret.”...People need to understand the nuance.

Putin didn't invade Ukraine over the 46 or 48 Bio-Labs in Ukraine, but this fact (the existence of the labs) certainly seemed to be hidden, or unacknowledged by DoD and DoS leadership for an extended period. The timing with the Covid-19 pandemic was interesting.

Contrary to what many folks claim this effort, to include the funding of Ukrainian labs, has been very public from the start with it being very well publicized at the time and as part of the DoD budget for over three decades. It was widely touted at the time as a major effort to reduce the threat of WMD's, publicly accessible information and press releases touting the program have been released continually since then by the US government and others. President George W Bush commemorated the effort 15 years later as already mentioned and others commemorated the 25th anniversary to include the Secretary of Defense and there was even a conference about the whole effort in 2013.

Just because folks were unaware of it doesn't mean it wasn't widely publicized or that it was hidden, it's just that folks didn't really care or pay attention for a long time until Russia started spewing propaganda about it as a pathetic excuse to invade Ukraine. As evidenced by some posts in this thread, that effort appears to have worked to a degree. A copious amount of information is easily accessible via a few quick internet searches if one bothers to look. That includes a DTRA history of the program from 2014, an NDU paper from 2010 and there is this helpful timeline if 406 or 27 page papers are too long for you.

Not sure if that is a sufficient number of links (to include actual source material!) to refute folk's unsubstantiated claims yet, am always [sometimes] ready to do a quick Google or Bing search to post more.

 

[jmcquate]

 

[Spekkio]

Contrary to what many folks claim this effort, to include the funding of Ukrainian labs, has been very public from the start with it being very well publicized at the time and as part of the DoD budget for over three decades. It was widely touted at the time as a major effort to reduce the threat of WMD's, publicly accessible information and press releases touting the program have been released continually since then by the US government and others. President George W Bush commemorated the effort 15 years later as already mentioned and others commemorated the 25th anniversary to include the Secretary of Defense and there was even a conference about the whole effort in 2013.

This is a disingenuous argument.

Yes, if you dig through government documents you can find the U.S. policy going back over a decade. I don't think that's what robav8er was referring to.

The White House has a press secretary. The DoD has a public affairs department. Wouldn't it be great if they engaged U.S. mainstream media (MSM) with actual facts instead of waiting for them to release headlines about Russia "claiming" that Ukraine had bioweapons? And while not outright calling Putin a liar in the process, MSM certainly implied it with a strong *wink wink, nudge nudge* in the tone and language of the reporting. When that happens, the 80% of people who get their news from the internet and not TV decide to google 'search it up' on the internet and find out that U.S. funded bio research facilities actually exist in Ukraine and then conclude that the U.S. government is the one who is outright lying. Because as HairWarrior points out, drawing a nuanced conclusion between 'bioweapons' and 'bio research labs' is not something that John Q Public is going to do. We don't have to present the issue in U.S. media that Putin says Ukraine has bioweapons and the U.S. says "wudduyamean, we don't do any research in Ukraine! No-sir-eee!"

The media challenge has existed back to Trump's first term when MSM suddenly became more enamored with outrage porn than actually reporting the truth. Suddenly, every "guess what Trump said today!" type headline was a gold-mine. It didn't matter if it was stripped of all context or spliced together statements from different portions of a speech. But it got really bad during COVID-19... there were things Dr. Fauci was saying that was verifiably false at the time he was saying it, and many professionals (people who sign their names with MD / PhD) were silenced when they tried to speak up.

This is not a success of Russian propaganda. It's a failure of U.S. government media relations.

And to the extent that Russia invaded Ukraine over bioweapons...no, that's US propaganda. Russia invaded Ukraine because it a) believes Ukraine is Russian and b) because Ukraine was negotiating alliances with the west. The presence of bio-research facilities is merely a piece of substantiating evidence of that alliance.

 

[Griz882]

… The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to AIDS being a CIA plot, to whatever bullshit they can come up with today that folks will happily lap up.

With reference to the former, I’ve kind of checked out…are we on Protocol 7 or 8?