US House Votes for Boilogical Drug War Weapons

[motorhead]

US House Votes for Biological Drug War Weapons
by Sunshine Project News release (16 Mar, 2006) On March 15th, The US House Voted to Advance Offensive Biological Weapons Plan
US House of RepresentativesIn an titanic fit of myopia, the US House of Representatives has passed a bill that advances a US plan to wage biological warfare against Colombia and other countries where illicit narcotics are produced. If passed by the US Senate, the bill (HR 2829) will require the US Drug Czar to quickly formulate a plan to field test biological weapons designed to eradicate illicit crops.

The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) prohibits all biological warfare, including attacks on crops. The BWC has no exemptions - not for the Drug War, nor for the US Congress. The US eradication project thus violates the BWC's Article I, which prohibits development and stockpiling of biological weapons.

The Sunshine Project will call upon the BWC to prevent violation of the treaty by the United States. In April, the Sunshine Project will distribute an Agent Green dossier to governments attending a preparatory meeting for the BWC's upcoming 6th Review Conference. If the US bill is signed into law, the Sunshine Project will press for multilateral action by the BWC 6th Review Conference itself, when it meets in November.

Opposition in South America, the primary target of the plan, spans the political spectrum. When first confronted by US biowarfare pressure in 1999-2000, the Colombian government decided against testing and use of biological agents to eradicate illicit crops. Other Andean countries also oppose the plan, as do many environmental and peace NGOs. So do indigenous peoples who grow coca for cultural purposes unrelated to the drug trade, a constituency that includes Evo Morales, the recently-elected President of Bolivia.

Speaking to the Colombian daily El Tiempo on Monday, former Colombian President Andrés Pastrana, now Bogotá's Ambassador in Washington, emphatically reiterated Colombia's opposition to the plan, telling the paper, "During my government we opposed it. And Colombia's position, now under President Álvaro Uribe, has not changed."

Columbian children with dead legal cropsThe main biological weapons agents under US consideration are strains of the fungus Fusarium oxysporum that attack coca and other illicit crops. With its serious human health and environmental risks, F. oxysporum has been dubbed "Agent Green" by civil society opponents, who liken it to the defoliant Agent Orange that was used by the US in Vietnam. In the US conception, huge amounts of specially-formulated Fusarium would be sprayed from large military aircraft to blanket large portions of Colombia and, potentially, other countries.

The HR 2829 provision does not specifically mention Colombia or Fusarium, although it does specify that the testing plan should be for a "major drug producing nation". This opens the possibility that the tests could be conducted elsewhere, such as Central Asia, where the US has supported development of biological weapons for use against opium poppy. Given past events, however, the bill's language is widely interpreted to refer to Colombia.

The Sunshine Project hopes that the US Senate will catch this egregious mistake and that the provision will be struck from any related bill that it considers. With US fear about a biological weapons attack and spending on biodefense both at unprecedented levels, it is difficult to envision a more unwise US policy than for it to field test biological weapons and to seek to perpetrate a biological attack on other countries.


HR 2829:



HR 2829, titled "An Act to reauthorize the Office of National Drug Control Policy Act", was sponsored by Rep. Mark Rep Souder, an Indiana Republican. The Agent Green provision was placed in the bill at the behest of Rep. Dan Burton, another Indiana Republican who is an enthusiastic supporter of using biological weapons against Colombia and other countries. As reported to the US Senate this Monday, the provision reads as follows:

SEC. 6. AMENDMENTS RELATING TO APPOINTMENT AND DUTIES OF DIRECTOR AND DEPUTY DIRECTOR. ...

(n) REQUIREMENT FOR SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF MYCOHERBICIDE IN ILLICIT DRUG CROP ERADICATION.-Not later than 90 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy shall submit to the Congress a report that includes a plan to conduct, on an expedited basis, a scientific study of the use of mycoherbicide as a means of illicit drug crop elimination by an appropriate Government scientific research entity, including a complete and thorough scientific peer review. The study shall include an evaluation of the likely human health and environmental impacts of such use. The report shall also include a plan to conduct controlled scientific testing in a major drug producing nation of mycoherbicide naturally existing in the producing nation.


Plants of every kind are killed by toxic spraySources for Background information

The Sunshine Project maintains an Agent Green web page, including a detailed background report (updated in September 2005) on the human health and environmental risks at: www.sunshine-project.org/agentgreen

Independent researcher Jeremy Bigwood has also extensively investigated the issue. His Agent Green website is: www.mycoherbicide.info

In 2000, the BBC's flagship investigative journalism program Panorama interviewed proponents of the plan, including the US "inventor" of Agent Green, who concedes that it constitutes biological warfare and says that it should be applied by force: News.bbc.co.uk

[Pinkavvy]

good post. everybody should read this.

[Forthesevenlakes]

just...wow. is all i have to say after reading this. the prospect of the US extending its incompetent arm into other countries' policies is bad enough, but the prospect of waging biological warfare against other countries simply because their citizens want to feed their families is terrifying. wonder if theres any chemicals that can counteract or nullify the fungal agents. and, when you think about it, theres no better pretext for someone launching a biological attack against america than in retaliation for something like this.

[StigmataLectron]

I'm going to go kill myself now. I can't fucking take this stupid country and it's drug wars. Did they even consider the probability that Agent Green could suddenly, gee, I don't know, mutate into something else, and sereously fuck up the ecosystem? First off, a GOVERNMENT has no business playing God, especially if it's to KILL OFF A SPECIES with the sole purpose being that people wouldn't get to do what THEY want with their OWN FUCKING BODIES.

This country makes me want to kill something.

[daeron]

^sober up its been doing shit like that for the last 20yrs, but i dont see "the people" doing anything about it.

why is there no civil unrest?

[Nagognog2]

Why no civil unrest? I'll tell ya: If you put a frog (a Human) into a pot of boiling water, they jump out. If you put a frog into cool water, and then you slowly raise the temperature until it boils - Frog Soup!

[Nature Boy]

I still can't believe they legalised homosexuality before pot.

[motorhead]

No there is no civil unrest. The US has fine tuned capitalism and the media to create the perfect society of docile consumers. Ever since its incarnation the United States has protected its culture and way of life, it reached a fever pitch during the cold war. Now they must expand in order to keep the economic juggernaut chugging along. If the US economy were to collapse, like in the 20's, then there would be unrest!-chaos from which the US state as we know it could never recover. Ever since the turn of the 20th century the US has been trying to control the international economics of narcotics, because narcotics markets dont fit into their scheme of things: a docile, non-thinking, heterosexual, white, god fearing, fossel fuel driven mass of sober consumers that keep the american economy propped up on a veil of 'freedom'
Because of their emmense economy and the markets there-in, that is the reason why the international community bends over for the US. Its all about the bling. That and the threat of invasion!!! they got big guns.
Shit does this make any sense to anyone? sorry, kind of rambled. Discuss amongst yourselfs!

[sands of time]

Don't blame the government... Blame the citizans that would rather watch American Idol than the BBC news. Even if people decide to watch the news, they aren't getting much of an idea as to whats going on in the world.

[klaatu]

Originally Posted by motorhead

a docile, non-thinking, heterosexual, white, god fearing, fossel fuel driven mass of sober consumers that keep the american economy propped up on a veil of 'freedom'
Because of their emmense economy and the markets there-in, that is the reason why the international community bends over for the US. Its all about the bling. That and the threat of invasion!!! they got big guns.
Shit does this make any sense to anyone? sorry, kind of rambled. Discuss amongst yourselfs!

Even though I would love to keep the drug-forums here free from international politics and "American-bashing" I have to say that I think your post makes total sense.

I was in America recently and I expressed amazement to my hosts that there weren't riots in the streets. How the hell can you just lie down and in the space of a few years completely surrender all your rights, freedoms and liberties?

Klaatu (drunk on Portuguese Port)

[hazeinmybong2]

In Hawaii, hosts of Fusarium oxysporum include: potato, sugarcane, garden bean, cowpea, Prickly pear, cultivated zinnia, pansy, Assam rattlebox, Baby's breath, and Musa sp.

Fusarium oxysporum

I can see the guy who developed the strain of this that supposedly only attacks coca. "You see, we aren't making the same mistake as Agent Orange because Agent Orange was a chemical. This stuff is a fungus that attacks the roots of the plants and kills them by suffocating the plant. So we don't have to worry about the poor columbian children getting cancer."
What about when this fungus starts attacking all their food crops and all the poor columbian chidren die of starvation?


Yeah great, lets attack developing countries in south america because we don't like cocaine. Didn't most of our forefathers make their fortunes in whiskey smuggling and tax evasion? Are we afraid to see another country coming up? I don't understand how the US government takes it upon its self to govern the entire world. Why can't we take the money used to develop these rediculous crackpipe-dreams and put it into education? Or we could put the money into making real jobs for the average unemployed american.

[Nagognog2]

Oh we did create new jobs for our citizens here in the Untied Snakes. The only minor problem is that we gave these jobs to the people in India and Malaysia who will work for a bowl of rice and elephant dung. As for jobs here - the largest growth industry is opeing new jails to lock our citizens up in for smoking a joint, or stealing a loaf of bread to feed the kids.

[hazeinmybong2]

I read somewhere a couple years ago that 2/3s of the people in prison were there for non-violents crimes. Probably the same artical about how 70% of statistics are made up but you get the point. More people go to jail for having a plant than go there for rape or murder. I know I sleep safe at night knowing that our tax dollars are housing and feeding many thousands of potheads. It is also comforting that police may be wasting their time on these non-violent offenders when some violent crime may be occuring else where.

[melt_000]

and we're paying for it yay seriously i hope we(us) have a depression. once people are too poor to consume anything except food.

[hazeinmybong2]

Yeah I guess that would be fun
?

[Mr. Giraffe]

The ascent to power of George W. Bush represents the end of a journey away from freedom which the US has been taking since the 60's. Today, the very rich are quite clear and blunt about grinding the faces of the poor into the dirt. Look at New Orleans - they don't even bother pretending to give a shit anymore. The DEA and other groups operate as paramilitaries, breaking the law at will... the courts are about to go facist, and if Bush has his way, rich Americans will live in secure compounds while the uninsured, unpensioned plebs shoot each other for food and oil outside.

God bless America!