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Thank you. I fear that once opened, Pandora's box can never be closed, and I don't know what to say or do about it.

It's open. We can never go back.

A few years ago there was a TV series called "Counterpart," in which an experiment created two connected parallel worlds (with the bridge between the two in Berlin). It was a kind of cold war-type spy story.

After a few years, one world used their "defensive" bioweapons to send a killer flu out into the other world, which killed hundreds of millions.

A small group in the infected world decided to do the same thing back, and they created an even worse killer virus, which they released in the other world. The show got cancelled in 2019 after two seasons, and was replaced with reality.

It left me thinking about what a small lab could release into the world, not to mention hostile governments, including our own.

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I agree that the technical Pandora’s boxed can’t be closed. Small labs run by skilled criminals will be able to do a lot of damage for the foreseeable future, far beyond the lifespans of any of us.

But the opportunities for bad actors to play around with its contents can be reduced, and the costs — in terms of criminal prosecutions and civil penalties — can be increased.

It’s possible to make chemical, biological and other forms of warfare violations of federal and international law regardless of who engages in them such that prosecutions can actually happen.

And it’s possible to get the US government out of the business of doing those things while claiming that they’re doing those things out of some sort of moral and legal right.

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Agreed, and yet i expect governments and others to keep doing it.

In that TV series I think some of the characters were concerned about their side's creation of "defensive" bioweapons, but were told "If we are thinking about it, they are thinking about it, so we HAVE to pursue them, because they will."

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Reminds me of stuff like this:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9556415/China-preparing-WW3-biological-weapons-six-years-investigators-say.html

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/10/exclusive-reports-uncovered-show-covid-19-planned-bioweapon-chinas-peoples-liberation-army/

Which of course is an excuse for our side to plough billions into the same junk.

How can we stop this spiral from accelerating? I don't trust governments to abide by their agreements.

Because they don't.

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An example of predictive programming.

Turn that sh*t off!

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Oh, i kind of enjoyed it! Except for the gratuitous sex and violence in every episode.

One of the main characters ended up helping the bio terrorists because she had uncovered evidence that her own government had been behind the flu epidemic in the other world, which of course was a secret and only a "conspiracy theory" amongst the people who even knew about the existence of the parallel world.

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Yes, I'm sure a lot of predictive programming is enjoyable.

Turn that sh*t off!

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The whole series is based on "how do our decisions, actions and circumstances make us who we are?" Which is a GOOD thing to think about. All the characters have a counterpart in the other world, whose life has diverged in the decades after the split and an exploration of that theme.

What makes someone vengeful in one world, and happy and content in another?

How can we prevent a man-made global pandemic, and an even worse response to it?

During the depths (I hope) of the pandemic I thought, "wow, this is the dystopian sci-fi future we all wanted to avoid!" As I have mentioned before, I sure hope I don't look back on this time we have right now thinking "You had no idea how good you had it!"

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It's making you used to it, willing to accept it. You've already seen it before.

Thankfully, I have not.

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Please be careful of ascribing certain thoughts to my head!

In my experience, it is the folks who have not thought about any of this stuff at all that are first to accept it.

The series examines what led up to the disasters and what could have been done differently to avoid them.

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A fictional psa from that tv series. 2018.

https://youtu.be/aVfbcZxCViU

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If you think this is the way forward, I'm with you. I am APPALLED to find my country is

the biggest developer of bio warfare in the world.

What use is it to me if my country survives but loses its Constitution?

What use is it to me if I live forever, but lose my immortal soul?

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🙏🏻💜🙏🏻

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Wow

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The U.S. Empire is the biggest and most dangerous terrorist organization on the planet. It has over 800 (yes, 800) military bases around the world, despite the fact we don't have any enemies that could possibly pose an existential threat to the country.

Unfortunately, though, if we want to push for disarmament, we will need to shift our focus away from the U.S. Empire and onto what has become a group of global actors whose only business is war. That shift in focus is clearly outlined by Catherine Austin Fitts in the interview linked below. We may not appreciate how evil these people are, but they focus on the fomenting and supporting wars around the world because war is the one enterprise guaranteed to be profitable, as it has been shown throughout human history. Forcing these evil actors off the war machine dole will be our most important and difficult challenge ever.

https://www.oval.media/en/catherine-austin-fitts/

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That C.S. Lewis quote: just wow... Thanks for sharing that. Godspeed on your goals to disarm the World of biological Death. We need this.

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