Letter #46, 2022, Thurs, Mar 10: What?!?

    The Honorable Victoria Nuland, 60, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (link), while giving testimony to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Monday, March 8, three days ago (here is a report on her testimony). Nuland confirmed the existence of a number of U.S.-supported bio-labs in Ukraine for the past decade or so — something which had been widely regarded as a “conspiracy theory” (see, for example, here) until she confirmed the existence of the labs…

    “Then He will judge between the nations and arbitrate for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no longer take up the sword against nation, nor train anymore for war.” —Isaiah 2:4

    ***

    The following is the transcript of the exchange between Senator Marc Rubio and Victoria Nuland on March 8th in Washington D.C:

    Sen. Marco Rubio: Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?

    Victoria Nuland: Ukraine has biological research facilities which, in fact, we’re now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how we can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.

    Sen. Marco Rubio: I’m sure you’re aware that the Russian propaganda groups are already putting out there all kinds of information about how they have uncovered a plot by the Ukrainians to release biological weapons in the country, and with NATO’s coordination. If there is a biological or chemical weapon incident or attack inside Ukraine, is there any doubt in your mind that 100% it would be the Russians behind it?

    Victoria Nuland: There is no doubt in my mind, Senator. And in fact, it is a classic Russian technique to blame the other guy for what they are planning to do themselves.

    Letter #46, 2022, Thursday, March 10: On the Mysterious Biolabs in Ukraine

    I am so saddened and heart-sick by the war in Ukraine, by Russia’s invasion and the terrible fear and suffering of the invaded Ukrainians (not to mention the threat of nuclear war, which could poison or kill many of us around the world), that I have not wished to write about it, but rather to keep silence.

    I am saddened and troubled because I care deeply about both Russia and Ukraine.

    I would do everything in my power to help bring a speedy end to the conflict.

    My faith teaches me that Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior— who guides our steps even in this life — is the “Prince of Peace.”

    Therefore, it is fitting Christians endeavor to make peace, be “peacemakers” — as Jesus encouraged us to be when he preached of the eight Beatitudes, the eight Blessings — “Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God” — in his programmatic Sermon on the grass-covered hillside overlooking the Sea of Galilee.

    I have spent half a lifetime now, traveling repeatedly to Russia and to Ukraine, getting to know people in both countries — as Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI both encouraged me to do — in an effort to try to “build bridges” between the Orthodox of the East and the Catholics of the West, between the Eastern and Western traditions of Christianity, between the Greek Byzantines and Latin Roman Christians, that the Church — and Western culture — might “breathe with two lungs,” to quote the phrase of St. John Paul II.

    Now there is war, fear, cursing, and death, in that beloved region, rather than peace, trust, blessing, and life…

    The war should not have started.    

    And many other actions of the past eight or 18 or 28 years should not have taken place, all of them contributing to the present conflict.

    This war should be ended, and the crops should be planted this spring.

    But the war’s ending should not be in a nuclear — or biological — cataclysm which might cause colossal harm, or even end, human life on this blue-green planet. (Why are so many people talking so animatedly about “pressing the button” to “launch the nukes”? Has everyone gone mad?)

    The war’s ending should be in talks — in negotiation, however difficult negotiation may be — followed by the creation of a structure for a just and lasting peace, however difficult that may be.

    God grant that it may be so, God grant that we may find a way to “beat our swords into plowshares…” (“Then He will judge between the nations and arbitrate for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no longer take up the sword against nation, nor train anymore for war.” —Isaiah 2:4)

    ***

    This brings me to one of the strangest stories I have ever encountered — one I am still trying to unravel and understand, with some, but certainly not all, of the facts, so bear with me if this letter remains inevitably partial and incomplete.

    It is the story of the much-scoffed at, and quite mysterious, biolabs of Ukraine.

    It is my thought that we should at least know about this story, and know what each side has said and claimed about this story, if we are to more fully understand some of the passions and convictions, false or invented or true, underlying this crisis.

    ***

    It is a story so convoluted, and so chilling, that it is almost unbelievable.

    And it is a story that is so chilling that I think it must be told — even if many think the biolabs are a “taboo” subject.

    In fact, precisely because they are a taboo subject, there must be clarity on what was happening in those labs.

    Probably an international commission should immediately be set up, comprised of leading doctors, leading scientists, and also leading religious figures, to go to see these labs and to hear reports on what was really going on there.

    Such a fact-finding committee might include:

    — a representative of Pope Francis and of Cardinal Pietro Parolin (Vatican Secretary of State);

    — a representative of Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (the Ukrainian Church that reunited with Rome four centuries ago, but celebrating the same eastern liturgy as the Orthodox, whose followers are concentrated in western Ukraine);

    — a representative of Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople;

    — a representative of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow;

    — a representative and of Metropolitan Epiphany of Kyiv and All Ukraine (the Primate of the new autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church) and also

    — a representative of Metropolitan Onuphry, Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (still united with Moscow), also of Kyiv and All Ukraine;

    — perhaps representatives also of some of the other religious communities of Ukraine and Russia;

     — leading scientists and medical doctors from both countries, and perhaps also from several other countries as well, as seems fitting.

    — a small press corps to accompany the team and chronicle its activities in video and in writing.

    Such a committee could be organized by the very capable Ambassador of the Holy See to Ukraine, Monsignor Visvaldas Kulbokas, 47, born in Lithuania.

    Such a group might receive a passe-partout (a kind of passport to travel anywhere and everywhere in Ukraine, approved by the Ukrainian authorities and also by the Russian authorities who would instruct their military officials to honor the passport).

    I suggest all this with a certain urgency because of a four-hour conversation I had in mid-December, just before Christmas, with Dr. Robert Malone, at his home in Virginia (link on who Dr. Malone is).

    During the conversation, Malone told me that he had worked for many years in the community of scientists which seeks to understand the human genetic code, and to understand how various viruses and diseases affect different people: young people and old people, people with no vitamin deficiencies and people who are malnourished or badly nourished and deficient in some vitamins, and so forth.

    Among the research that he was aware of, he told me, was the study of different ethnic groups — the Celtic Irish, for example, and the Japanese, or the Slavic Russians and Persian Iranians — in order to determine whether some viruses or diseases might be developed which would affect one group, but not another.

    I shook my head with horror as he described this research to me.

    And I never wrote a thing about it.

    But now Malone himself has made these same remarks in a piece he published yesterday on Substack (a new platform where many writers are publishing their writings), which I republish here below. (link)

    How is this related to the biolabs in Ukraine?

    Well, it has been reported that the labs, located all over Ukraine — some say 13 labs, some say 19 labs, and some say 26 labs… the figures differ — were collecting DNA samples from people all over the country, in the Western part of the country, in the center part, and in the East, where a large part of the population is ethnically Russian.

    The assertion has been made on the internet that this was part of a research procedure aimed at developing special viruses or bacteria which would affect one of these groups, and not the others.

    Is this true?

    I do not know.

    But the Russian government, and the Chinese government, have both said in public statements — this is not something that is just being rumored by bloggers — that they are very concerned to learn what research is being carried out in these labs, and in other similar labs throughout the world.

    British journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote on March 9 (yesterday):

    “Claims that Ukraine currently maintains dangerous biological weapons labs came from Russia as well as China. The Chinese Foreign Ministry this month claimed: ‘The US has 336 labs in 30 countries under its control, including 26 in Ukraine alone.’ The Russian Foreign Ministry asserted that ‘Russia obtained documents proving that Ukrainian biological laboratories located near Russian borders worked on development of components of biological weapons.’ Such assertions deserve the same level of skepticism as U.S. denials: namely, none of it should be believed to be true or false absent evidence. Yet U.S. fact-checkers dutifully and reflexively sided with the U.S. Government to declare such claims ‘disinformation’ and to mock them as QAnon conspiracy theories.”

    ***

    It is now known that advanced biolabs were in fact set up in many places in Ukraine about 10 years ago as joint research facilities, run by the Ukrainian governments, but supported by the United States.

    We know this because US State Department official Victoria Nuland on Monday, March 8 — three days ago — confirmed the existence of these labs in sworn testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under questioning from U.S. Senator Marco Rubio(Republican Senator from Florida). The text of their conversation is transcribed above; here is the video of the conversation (it is very short, and I think it is important to take a look at it for yourself):

    Prior to Nuland’s confirmation that these labs existed, many people were speaking about these labs on the internet, but no one really knew whether they were even in Ukraine, functioning, or not.

    So the internet was filled with rumors.

    And one of those “rumors” was that Russia attacked Ukraine on February 24 in part because it feared an imminent attack on the Russian people by the release — perhaps in flocks of infected birds flying over the border, some speculated — of some sort of “bio-weapon” created in these laboratories, something like the Covid-19 virus, but perhaps much more deadly.

    Of course, such a story would seem to be completely crazy — one more “conspiracy theory.”

    Yet, in the rather stilted, somewhat odd exchange between Senator Rubio and Nuland, it seems clear that two concepts are being brought together by both of them:

    (1) that there are biolabs in Ukraine, and

    (2) that some type of biological agent, a plague, for example, or a Covid-19-like virus, perhaps, might be released by the Russians once they have taken control of these labs, with the Russians claiming that the disease was coming from one of the labs.

    This is why this is such a frightening story: because both sides are actually speaking about the possible release of a biological weapon of some sort.

    It therefore it seems possible that there may actually be such a weapon, whichever side has designed it — and if it is released, it might not be restricted to Ukraine, or Russia — as terrible as that would already be — but in fact it might be contagious, and spread around the globe, just like Covid, but perhaps causing a more dangerous, lethal illness than Covid.

    This is why I think an international team of 20 or 25 people should immediately be constituted to go into Ukraine and gain first-hand evidence about what has been going on at these labs.

    Pope Benedict repeated many times during his papacy — it was a warning that he came back to time and time again — that humans ought not do everything that they can do.

    Some things should not be done, even if we have the intelligence, the genius, to do them, because they are too dangerous, or too against nature, or too likely to cause harm to future generations, or too “clever” but insufficiently wise…

    Brilliant inventions… but lacking in wisdom…

    And among those things, I think, is thus type of research into biological weapons which are man-made, and which we think we can control, as we control a bow and an arrow, or a rifle and a bullet, but these new biological weapons we may not be able to control, and they may get out “into the open” and then cause endless harm even until the end of time.

    For the sake of all our children, and grandchildren, let us, all of us, listen to “the better angels of our nature” — and stop this madness… —RM