Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act by Nicholson Baker, 2020
A major new work, a hybrid of history, journalism, and memoir, about the modern Freedom of Information Act – FOIA – and the horrifying, decades-old government misdeeds that it is unable to demystify, from one of America's most celebrated writers.
@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#USA
#FOIA
#BiologicalWeapons
Spare the vaccine and spoil the child.
The National Archives of Japan has disclosed to researchers the names of members of biological warfare units that the former Imperial Japanese Army had stationed in China. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/05/21/japan/731-member-list/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #japan #china #imperialjapanesearmy #wwii #biologicalweapons #unit731
https://www.alojapan.com/1279030/name-lists-of-former-imperial-japanese-army-biowarfare-units-released/ Name lists of former Imperial Japanese Army biowarfare units released #BiologicalWeapons #China #ImperialJapaneseArmy #Japan #JapanNews #Japanese #JapaneseNews #news #Unit731 #wwii The National Archives of Japan has disclosed to researchers the names of members of biological warfare units that the former Imperial Japanese Army had stationed in China. Researchers hope the disclosure of the name lists will uncover many mysteries surrounding suc…
"The extreme anti-vax movement is now tiptoeing around the heart of gov-ernment. The people who say their freedoms were denied during the pandemic want to deny a basic freedom to all Albertans - the right to be vaccinated."
Wisdom: avoiding disease-ridden Alberta this summer
Integrity: boycotting the fascist separatists attacking Canadians
https://www.pressreader.com/canada/calgary-herald/20240810/281522231384482
https://www.europesays.com/1620577/ Sweden, Finland update civil guides as NATO members prepare for war risks – Firstpost #BiologicalWeapons #ChemicalWeapons #CivilPreparedness #europe #finland #FinlandRussiaBorder #Gotland #kaliningrad #NatoMembership #NordicCountries #NuclearAttack #Russia #sweden #WarSurvivalGuides
In recent weeks, Russian officials have publicly confirmed that the scientists will use the labs to study deadly microbes such as the Ebola viruses, in an effort to strengthen the country's defenses against #bioterrorism as well as future pandemics. Under CDC guidelines, US research on Ebola is restricted to laboratories rated as "biological safety level 4" (BSL-4), equipped to handle the most lethal & incurable kinds of viruses & bacteria.
Satellite imagery over the next 2 years — collected by Google Earth & commercial imaging firms MAXAR & Planet Labs — shows construction vehicles renovating the old Soviet-era laboratory & breaking ground on 10 new buildings, totaling more than 250,000 square feet, w/several of them bearing hallmarks of biological labs designed to handle extremely dangerous #pathogens.
A few months after #Russia began its full-scale invasion of #Ukraine in 2022, satellite imagery captured unusual activity at a restricted #military research facility nestled among the birch forests northeast of Moscow.
The site, called #SergievPosad6, had been quiet for decades, but it had a notorious Cold War past: It had once been a major research center for #BiologicalWeapons, w/a history of experiments w/the viruses that cause smallpox, Ebola & hemorrhagic fevers.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/interactive/2024/russia-biological-chemical-weapons-laboratory-expansion/
If Russia is expanding its development and potential stockpile of biological weapons, in addition to the other observations made by experts in the article, I'd add that this effort would align with Putin's consistent desires to return a diminished Russia to a "superpower empire" historical context. This motivation has already been discussed with regard to Putin's invasion(s) of Ukraine.
"In the satellite photos, ground-clearing becomes visible in May 2022, a few months after the start of Russia’s full-scale Ukraine invasion, and around the time of a Kremlin-led disinformation campaign that accused the United States of helping Kyiv create a secret bioweapons program. Russian officials filed a formal complaint at the United Nations in June 2022, and suggested, without evidence, that Ukraine was preparing to use biological weapons against Russian forces.
The Soviet Union used a similar playbook in justifying a massive bioweapons program in the 1970s and 1980s. Soon after the United States outlawed biological weapons and destroyed its Cold War stockpile in the late 1960s, Soviet leaders began putting tens of thousands of military and civilian scientists to work on an expanded program to weaponize diseases such as anthrax, smallpox and the bubonic plague. Russian defectors, including several of the program’s top scientists, revealed the existence of the illegal weaponization project in the late 1980s. Many said the work was driven by a conviction — promoted by Kremlin officials — that Western countries were making the same weapons in secret.
Intelligence officials see a similar strategy at work in Russia’s recent use of chemical weapons that are also banned under international law. The United States and other countries have accused Moscow of making outlawed nerve agents and using them in assassination attempts against opposition leaders and defectors, including Sergei Skripal, an exiled Russian military intelligence officer who was poisoned by Russian operatives in 2018 at his home in Salisbury, England. The State Department accused Russia in an April report of repeatedly using banned chemicals as weapons in Ukraine, citing videos posted by Russian soldiers showing chemical grenades dropped on Ukrainian troop positions."
#bioweapons #BiologicalWeapons #CBRN
Original https://wapo.st/4hhyzxw
No paywall archive link: https://archive.is/g8MoA
Hey ! If you like #history
and want to learn about chemical and biological warfare through the ages, check out my #podcast
On all major players.
Features a stella episode from @DanKaszeta
#nonproliferation #war #science #slowburn #biologicalweapons #chemicalweapons #cbrne #cbrn #CBRNdefense
