Mark America

Biolabs abroad operate under less oversight and regulation, often in secret

There’s a good deal of misinformation and pure propaganda flying around in mainstream and social media.  In the mainstream media, the propaganda is mostly an effort to minimize and dismiss the Ukraine biolabs, while in social media, there’s been a bit of Russian propaganda injected into this story.  On balance, however, it’s clear there’s a serious problem.  When Victoria Nuland said in her testimony that they hoped to secure the biological agents and materials in Ukraine before Russia could get their hands on them,  this seemed to conflict with the narrative that the materials were all former Soviet biological warfare materials that were being disposed or otherwise made inert under a US initiative.  The problem with that is: If they are all former Soviet materials, then why would Russia be trying to get their hands on things they likely already have, and if the US involvement was limited to upgrading the labs in order to help dispose of these materials, why have they taken over seventeen years to do so, and why is this destruction not yet complete?  The other problem is that they continue to stress the difference between a “biolab” and a “bioweapons lab” as if this is some insurmountable gulf.  It isn’t, and in truth, the only difference between the two is a simple matter of intentions: What is your operational purpose for this sort of research and experimentation?  The answer is that in truth, despite the dishonest narrative in media, the two are veritably interchangeable.  There is no effective difference in the physical equipment or the way such materials are handled.  Now come the Russians to the UN Security Council demanding answers. The real scandal where Americans should be concerned lies in the fact that we’re funding these labs in secret, with little oversight or regulation, and we’re doing this overseas often because it would be illegal to carry out this research in the United States, or because regulatory costs would make it impossible.

One of the things I’ve long advocated is that the US need pass a law that applies to all agencies, departments, and contractors, as well as politicians and executive officers of the United States government:  We must forbid our government from farming-out work, experimentation, and other dangerous and immoral things to organizations operating on foreign soil in order to avoid US law.  We’ve seen this with experimentation with animals that would be too cruel to pass muster under US law farmed out to overseas labs.  There have been many cases of US intelligence agencies using “black sites” overseas to carry out “enhanced interrogations”(torture.)  As it now turns out, the US DoD along with other agencies of the US federal government may be using foreign sites to avoid oversight as they carry out experimentation in these “biolabs” abroad that would never be permitted on US soil.  There is a reason Fauci sent the money to EcoHealth Alliance that in turn gave funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and it was all about getting around US laws or executive orders against US “gain of function” research.

This is why I was surprised to learn of the existence of labs in Ukraine, or in the US involvement in them.  We need real accountability.  For all we know, the COVID outbreak that began in 2019 was the result of a release of a virus, whether accidentally or not, from a lab conducting research abroad that the US taxpayer had funded.  Who’s the war criminal now?  We must prohibit these sorts of activities to our government, and we must prohibit our government from using agents, organizations, facilities and unaffiliated individuals from carrying out these sorts of activities abroad with US funding.   Otherwise, at some future date, we’re going to find that the American people are on the hook for war crimes too ghastly to imagine.  What is made plain by all of this is that the US Government has been engaged in many things abroad that US law would otherwise forbid or strongly regulate on US soil.  It’s a way for them to traffic in illegal research while maintaining at least a modicum of official, lawful deniability.  This is little different from how the government uses large corporations to carry out censorship on their behalf, leaving the blame with the corporations who are free to act as they please, but who are effectively carrying out the will of people in government.  This speaks to the incredible growth and reach of government, and the complete lack of accountability there’s been for decades.  Even if we were to imagine that the intentions behind the biolabs in Ukraine were perfectly good, that still ignores the other problem:  Does it take two decades or more to dispose of biological materials?  We must get control of this government and punish those responsible.