In recent weeks, Pope Francis has spoken about war with increasingly urgent rhetoric. The Holy Father has referred for years to a “third world war being fought in pieces.”
Is it “wars and rumors,” or might it turn out to be: “wars and tremors“?
For natural events are bound to be in any series of “future events” (to borrow from a book we recently released).
When it comes to war, it’s hard not to think about a message from the Virgin Mary a year ago (January 25, 2023) that said, “Pray with me for peace, because Satan wants war and hatred in hearts and peoples. Therefore, pray and sacrifice your days by fasting and penance, that God may give you peace.
“The future is at a crossroads, because modern man does not want God. That is why mankind is heading to perdition. You, little children, are my hope. Pray with me, that what I began in Fatima and here may be realized. Be prayer and witness peace in your surroundings, and be people of peace. Thank you for having responded to my call.”
As we pointed out, the message this January (1/25/24) was far shorter (“May this time be a time of prayer.”)
How correct was the Blessed Mother, for in the past year the world has seen the continued Russian invasion of Ukraine, the intense slaughter in Israel and consequent war with Gaza, increased tensions with Serbia and neighbors (in the neighborhood of Medjugorje), terrorist hostilities in the Middle East, the drone attack on U.S. troops in Jordan, intense tension between China and Taiwan, the endless struggle between North and South Korea, warfare in Sudan, a military junta in Myanmar, and internal conflicts in twenty-seven African nations, not to mention that political turmoil in places like Venezuela and Argentina.
How much time do we spend praying versus following political diatribes on social media, cable talk, and the internet?
When it comes to war — and this is the point of our commentary today — many forget about biological weapons.
We’re not to be obsessed with future events. When we focus too much on disaster, disaster can come. Our Lady also said that at Medjugorje.
But we must also be alert and, in addition to prayer, prepare.
We hear much about nukes, cyberattacks, chemical warfare, economic conflict, germ warfare, and the like, but we tend not to give enough thought, perhaps, to “scourge” or plague warfare: a human-engineered pandemic.
Chilling is the notion that viral or bacterial infectants could target specific ethnic groups.
What if China unleashed a pathogen that had no effect on those with Asian genes, but wiped out the rest of us: in the U.S., Caucasians, Latinos, and Blacks?
(Or targeted English? Or Polish? Or Germans? The list is long.)
In 2017, the Science of Military Strategy textbook released by the People’s Liberation Army National Defense University in China in fact introduced the possibility of biological warfare with “specific ethnic genetic attacks” in formal communiques. Zhang Shibo, a former general in the People’s Liberation Army, wrote a book concluding that “modern biotechnology development is gradually showing strong signs characteristic of an offensive capability,” including “specific ethnic genetic attacks.
The same PLA university’s professor in 2020 talked on the “huge war effectiveness” of a “targeted attack that destroys a race, or a specific group of people.” According to a 2021 study by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, the Chinese leadership is motivated to pursue biological weapons because it recognizes it is vulnerable to genetic targeting due to the population’s general homogeneity (more than ninety percent of whom are ethnic Han Chinese).
And the Sunday Times of London revealed, way back in November 1998, that Israel was trying to create a biological agent-filled “ethno-bomb” that would target specific genetic features seen in Arab populations.
How far have secret labs — like the one in Wuhan, China, suspected of accidentally leaking the coronavirus — come since then?
Could — as some propose — a virus be concocted that has only mild effects on most people but kills the U.S. president or another leader?
Russia also has been actively involved in such research.
Prayer need indeed.
Last year a video surfaced of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. claiming that COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” to attack certain ethnic groups while sparing Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people went viral. During a luncheon in New York, Kennedy stated, “COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately.” The New York Post released a video recording of the comments.
“The COVID-19 virus is intended to harm Black and Caucasian individuals. Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people are the most immune,” Kennedy said, later backtracking. “Nobody has suggested that these were deliberately engineered changes and I certainly don’t believe that they were deliberately engineered,” he said, calling it, however, “kind of a proof of concept that you can develop bioweapons that will attack certain ethnicities.”
And the U.S.?
Paul Dabbar, undersecretary of energy for science during the Trump administration, writing in the Wall Street Journal, said: “Around 2017, the Energy Department’s national laboratories started having significant concerns about biosecurity with regard to China. A Chinese general who was head of the National Defense University in Beijing publicly declared an interest in using gene sequencing and editing to develop pathogenic bioweapons that would target specific ethnic groups, which may be the most evil idea I have ever encountered. Taking note, the Commerce Department ordered export restrictions of potentially dangerous biotechnology to China. But the NIH and NIAID refused to believe that there was any risk involved in collaborating with Chinese labs. Their indiscriminate commitment to open science blinds them to threats, even when a country like China is open about its intentions.”
[resources: Michael Brown online retreat, 2/10.24]