Biological Warfare On the American People, Dr. Garth Nicolson

Biological Warfare On the American People, Dr. Garth Nicolson



Dr. Garth Nicolson speaks about his experiences and successes combating the quickly-emerging mycoplasma-based illnesses such as Gulf War Illness and other related diseases such as Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia.

A rapidly growing number of people believe that the numerous multi-symptom diseases we now see emerging (Morgellons, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, etc.) are originating from the chemical aerosol (chemtrails) programs currently in progress.


You may link to the Chemtrail forum using this simple URL:
http://urlbam.com/ha/Wz

You may visit The Lay Institute website by clicking the link below:
http://www.layinstitute.org/default.asp

Books of note: Flat Earth News by Nick Davis

How the Spooks Took over the News

By Nick Davies, The Independent UK
Posted on February 19, 2008, Printed on February 19, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/77281/

Editor's note: This is an edited excerpt from Nick Davies' book, Flat Earth News: An Award-Winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media (Chatto & Windus). Davies' book has created enormous controversy in the UK, where many of the newsmakers Davies discusses in the book have fired back with op-eds accusing Davies of relying on the same anonymous sourcing that he condemns the commercial press for using in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.

It’s not surprising that the book strikes a tender spot among many a news-maker. It is the deepest examination of the links between the "public diplomacy" -- sometimes known as propaganda -- pushed by the Bush administration and its allies, and the media’s uncritical repetition of the claims made to justify the invasion.

It's easy to forget just how easy it was to sell an unprovoked attack on a sovereign state. It was the media, after all, that promulgated the novel idea that if Saddam Hussein possessed "weapons of mass destruction," that was in and of itself a justification to go to war. How did the issue of "WMD" become a proxy for the more important question of whether Iraq was a credible threat to the United States and its allies. At the time of the invasion, there were close to 40 countries suspected of having an illicit weapons program. Twelve of them were considered "hostile" to the United States and its allies. Yet, the administration claimed that possession of old chemical or biological munitions was a de facto justification for attacking the only country among the twelve that was well-contained; a country whose air-space and imports and exports were under international control. The media embraced the idea uncritically, never mind that Saddam Hussein had not been rattling his saber or threatening any offensive action against another state.

Hussein was in a great position for a tin-pot dictator -- he and his cronies had extracted over $10 billion in corporate kick-backs and bribes which the Right spun as a UN scandal rather that what it was: the largest corporate bribery scandal in history -- and he was able to blame all of his country’s domestic woes on the U.S./British sanctions program that strangled the country.

It’s always been a curiosity that public opinion could be manipulated so comprehensively, and Davies provides one more piece of the puzzle explaining where our media culture is today.

***

How the Spooks Took Over the News

by Nick Davies

On the morning of 9 February 2004, The New York Times carried an exclusive and alarming story. The paper's Baghdad correspondent, Dexter Filkins, reported that US officials had obtained a 17-page letter, believed to have been written by the notorious terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi to the "inner circle" of al-Qa'ida's leadership, urging them to accept that the best way to beat US forces in Iraq was effectively to start a civil war.

The letter argued that al-Qa'ida, which is a Sunni network, should attack the Shia population of Iraq: "It is the only way to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us. If we succeed in dragging them into a sectarian war, this will awaken the sleepy Sunnis."

Later that day, at a regular US press briefing in Baghdad, US General Mark Kimmitt dealt with a string of questions about the New York Times report: "We believe the report and the document is credible, and we take the report seriously… It is clearly a plan on the part of outsiders to come in to this country and spark civil war, create sectarian violence, try to expose fissures in this society." The story went on to news agency wires and, within 24 hours, it was running around the world.

There is very good reason to believe that that letter was a fake -- and a significant one because there is equally good reason to believe that it was one product among many from a new machinery of propaganda which has been created by the United States and its allies since the terrorist attacks of September 2001.

For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it.

The sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural weakness which now afflicts the production of our news. I've spent the last two years researching a book about falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media.

The "Zarqawi letter" which made it on to the front page of the New York Times in February 2004 was one of a sequence of highly suspect documents which were said to have been written either by or to Zarqawi and which were fed into news media.

This material is being generated, in part, by intelligence agencies who continue to work without effective oversight; and also by a new and essentially benign structure of "strategic communications" which was originally designed by doves in the Pentagon and Nato who wanted to use subtle and non-violent tactics to deal with Islamist terrorism but whose efforts are poorly regulated and badly supervised with the result that some of its practitioners are breaking loose and engaging in the black arts of propaganda.

Like the new propaganda machine as a whole, the Zarqawi story was born in the high tension after the attacks of September 2001. At that time, he was a painful thorn in the side of the Jordanian authorities, an Islamist radical who was determined to overthrow the royal family. But he was nothing to do with al-Q'aida. Indeed, he had specifically rejected attempts by Bin Laden to recruit him, because he was not interested in targeting the West.

Nevertheless, when US intelligence battered on the doors of allied governments in search of information about al-Q'aida, the Jordanian authorities -- anxious to please the Americans and perhaps keen to make life more difficult for their native enemy -- threw up his name along with other suspects. Soon he started to show up as a minor figure in US news stories -- stories which were factually weak, often contradictory and already using the Jordanians as a tool of political convenience.

Then, on October 7, 2002, for the first time, somebody referred to him on the record. In a nationally televised speech in Cincinnati, President George Bush spoke of "high-level contacts" between al-Q'aida and Iraq and said: "Some al-Q'aida leaders who fled Afghanistan, went to Iraq. These include one very senior al-Q'aida leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks."

This coincided with a crucial vote in Congress in which the president was seeking authority to use military force against Iraq. Bush never named the man he was referring to but, as the Los Angeles Times among many others soon reported: "In a speech [on] Monday, Bush referred to a senior member of al-Q'aida who received medical treatment in Iraq. US officials said yesterday that was Abu al Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian, who lost a leg during the US war in Afghanistan."

Even now, Zarqawi was a footnote, not a headline, but the flow of stories about him finally broke through and flooded the global media on 5 February 2003, when the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, addressed the UN Security Council, arguing that Iraq must be invaded: first, to stop its development of weapons of mass destruction; and second, to break its ties with al-Q'aida.

Powell claimed that "Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al Zarqawi"; that Zarqawi's base in Iraq was a camp for "poison and explosive training"; that he was "an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al-Q'aida lieutenants"; that he "fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago"; that "Zarqawi and his network have plotted terrorist actions against countries, including France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany and Russia."

Courtesy of post-war Senate intelligence inquiries; evidence disclosed in several European trials; and the courageous work of a handful of journalists who broke away from the pack, we now know that every single one of those statements was entirely false. But that didn't matter: it was a big story. News organizations sucked it in and regurgitated it for their trusting consumers.

So, who exactly is producing fiction for the media? Who wrote the Zarqawi letters? Who created the fantasy story about Osama bin Laden using a network of subterranean bases in Afghanistan, complete with offices, dormitories, arms depots, electricity and ventilation systems? Who fed the media with tales of the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, suffering brain seizures and sitting in stationery cars turning the wheel and making a noise like an engine? Who came up with the idea that Iranian ayatollahs have been encouraging sex with animals and girls of only nine?

Some of this comes from freelance political agitators. It was an Iranian opposition group, for example, which was behind the story that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was jailing people for texting each other jokes about him. And notoriously it was Iraqi exiles who supplied the global media with a dirty stream of disinformation about Saddam Hussein.

But clearly a great deal of this carries the fingerprints of officialdom. The Pentagon has now designated "information operations" as its fifth "core competency" alongside land, sea, air and special forces. Since October 2006, every brigade, division and corps in the US military has had its own "psyop" element producing output for local media. This military activity is linked to the State Department's campaign of "public diplomacy" which includes funding radio stations and news websites. In Britain, the Directorate of Targeting and Information Operations in the Ministry of Defense works with specialists from 15 UK psyops, based at the defense Intelligence and Security School at Chicksands in Bedfordshire.

In the case of British intelligence, you can see this combination of reckless propaganda and failure of oversight at work in the case of Operation Mass Appeal. This was exposed by the former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter, who describes in his book, Iraq Confidential, how, in London in June 1998, he was introduced to two "black propaganda specialists" from MI6 who wanted him to give them material which they could spread through "editors and writers who work with us from time to time."

In interviews for Flat Earth News, Ritter described how, between December 1997 and June 1998, he had three meetings with MI6 officers who wanted him to give them raw intelligence reports on Iraqi arms procurement. The significance of these reports was that they were all unconfirmed and so none was being used in assessing Iraqi activity. Yet MI6 was happy to use them to plant stories in the media. Beyond that, there is worrying evidence that, when Lord Butler asked MI6 about this during his inquiry into intelligence around the invasion of Iraq, MI6 lied to him.

Ultimately, the US has run into trouble with its propaganda in Iraq, particularly with its use of the Zarqawi story. In May 2006, when yet another of his alleged letters was handed out to reporters in the Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad, finally it was widely regarded as suspect and ignored by just about every single media outlet.

Arguably, even worse than this loss of credibility, according to British defense sources, the US campaign on Zarqawi eventually succeeded in creating its own reality. By elevating him from his position as one fighter among a mass of conflicting groups, the US campaign to "villainise Zarqawi" glamorised him with its enemy audience, making it easier for him to raise funds, to attract "unsponsored" foreign fighters, to make alliances with Sunni Iraqis and to score huge impact with his own media maneuvers. Finally, in December 2004, Osama bin Laden gave in to this constructed reality, buried his differences with the Jordanian and declared him the leader of al-Q'aida's resistance to the American occupation.

Nick Davies is a veteran journalist and author of Flat Earth News: An Award-Winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media (Chatto & Windus).

© 2008 The Independent UK All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/77281/

this morning's great urls .. 6 feb 2008 great snips

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/03/IN8LUO095.DTL

STIMULUS PLAN A SCAM TO BENEFIT THE RICH,

Higher loan limits will lead to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac bailout

Annie's letters: America’s whoredom season By Khalid Amayreh in ...

America’s whoredom season. By Khalid Amayreh in Occupied East Jerusalem. 5 February, 2008. “And the governor said, Why, what evil that man (Jesus) has done? ...
annies-letters.blogspot.com/2008/02/americas-whoredom-season-by-khalid.html - 4 hours ago - Similar pages - Note this

Tuesday, February 5, 2008 Geostrategy-Direct.com

Cheney: Eavesdrop because terrorists don't fight by the rules of international law

Vice President Dick Cheney said last month that the terrorist threat to the United States remains a real danger and so U.S. intelligence agencies need strong authority to conduct electronic eavesdropping and other intelligence-gathering activities.

“The terrorists waging war against this country don't fight according to the rules of warfare or international law or moral standards or basic humanity, and we have to be clear-eyed about the character and objective of these adversaries,” Cheney said in remarks at the Heritage Foundation on Jan. 23.

“They have a strategic goal to create the old 7th century caliphate, an empire stretching from Europe through the Middle East all the way around to Southeast Asia. They want to arm themselves with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and they would not hesitate to use such weapons.”

Banks lose billions

Published on Wednesday, February 06, 2008.

Source: International Forecaster

Banks losing billions, and replace it with more money, Citigroup and Lynch holding lion share of market risk, local services slashed, Yahoo! bounces back from layoffs by buyout notice

Banks are losing hundreds of billions of dollars and those in the banking industry tell us only losing $1 billion is considered a good news event these days. This is the kind of sociopathic insanity we have to listen to these days. Then their answer is to give us more money to throw at the problem and we will solve it. They are lying and they simply can't help themselves. They get totally divorced from reality. They are in total denial. We are also told that the infusion of capital from foreign institutions into the banking system to cover up their mistakes is a sign of strength. That is mindless. All the foreigners are doing is dumping dollars, which are the wages of de-industrialization, deregulation, free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing. Better known as the termination of your livelihood. It has made us dependent on capital from the outside world. We have become junk-bond junkies. We are no longer the most productive nation in the world. We have been converted into sniveling, pathetic debtors who have been betrayed by our large transnational conglomerates.

Colleges and universities are concerned about the state of their financial aid programs. Sallie Mae does not deny it has problems, yet its CEO Albert Lord sold 1.2 million of his shares.

Private loans are available but they have variable interest rates that allow for higher rates.

Concerned about amounts of pension money that are being moved to outside managers and into opaque investments such as private equity, two trustees of the Texas teacher retirement system board, want to curb political contributions from investors, who do business with the fund. These trustees, who are both school superintendents and the only educators on the nine-member board, said that the $115 billion fund needs to disclose more information about the firm's it hires to invest its money and how they got the job.

Besides limits on campaign contributions the board will also consider whether the fund should publicly disclose placement fees and other payments made in connection with hiring money managers.

Texas has become only the fourth state with a pension fund that limits campaign contributions. Others are California, New Jersey and Connecticut. They should all do so.

Sometimes with financial dislocation comes tragedy. A high-ranking executive of a collapse subprime lender killed his wife and then jumped off a bridge in New Jersey.

Junk bonds are off to their worst start since 1990, falling 1.8% in January triggering $17 billion in losses.

In case you missed it at the State of the Union address by our president he said, "and tonight I am pleased to announce that, in April, we will host this year's North American Summit of Canada, Mexico and the United States in the great city of New Orleans." You'll get the same message from McCain and Clinton. Only Ron Paul can give us the kind of government we need.

A quarterly survey from Financial Executives International and Baruch College showed its optimism index sinking 6.6 points. CFOs have steadily for three years been expressing less confidence about the economy. They have seen recession coming. Of the 361 polled, 73% were concerned about the recession over the next year. 46% said a weaker dollar would have a negative impact on their business and 26% said it would have a positive impact.

Mortgage applications jumped to a four-year high as activity rose 75%. Remember the average applicant is submitting three applications, so the numbers are misleading.

Refi applications rose 22.1%, the highest since July of 2003, but the application index fell 17.7%. Refi's were 73% of all applications up from 66%. The 30-year fixed rate mortgage rose 11 basis points to 5.6%.

Banks may have to post additional write-downs of $70 billion or more as credit ratings for bonds are further downgraded.

Citigroup and Merrill Lynch hold 45% of the entire market risk. The fate of mono-line insurers is of paramount importance to financial stocks. If MBIA follows Ambac to double A, the game is over. Such an event could take the Dow to 9,000.

Merrill Lynch will no longer underwrite collateralized debt obligations.

Morgan Stanley wrote down $169 million after helping its money market funds by taking on bonds issued by their SIV's. They bought $1.06 billion in SIV's including $160 million since December the first.

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns are under investigation by the SEC and the FBI, as well as the states of New York and Connecticut in the default of mortgage-backed bonds. The largest banks and securities firms have posted more than $133 billion in credit losses due to subprime loans. The FBI is pursuing violation of subprime lenders, housing developers and Wall Street banks that packaged loans as securities. They are also looking for criminal activity and insider trading.

Cities, towns, counties and states are slashing municipal services past the point of pain. They are cutting police patrols, laying off teachers and slashing municipal services. It's either do that or go into savings and that usually only lasts a year and the savings are gone. Even the more affluent communities are starting to show signs of strain. Spending by states has fallen precipitously forcing communities to rely more on property tax revenues, or use savings or services. The loss in revenue and inflation are killing these entities. Wait until they have to cut real estate taxes due to falling values. That is when the real problems will begin.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing is going to expand layoffs as a result of the recent $4 billion acquisition of Harcourt Education.

A rumor is bouncing around Wall Street, the City of London and in Paris and on Kaiserstrasse in Frankfurt that J.P. Morgan Chase has a $4 billion loss on a derivatives trade coming soon.

Yahoo is preparing to lay off 1000 workers in Sunnyvale, California the largest purge since the dot-com bust seven years ago. Yahoo reported a 23% drop in fourth-quarter earnings.

Yahoo shares then rose 45% when Microsoft offered to buy it.

The Conference Board said the December help-wanted index was 22 versus 21 month on month

Letter Re: A Federal Reserve Balance Sheet Disaster

Dear Jim,
I just read on a[nother] blog about an imminent Federal Reserve disaster.

There's no [mainstream] news coverage on it yet so this qualifies as a serious heads up.

Note the second numeric column. $40 Billion, has been since 1913, by law. Then notice it suddenly drops to $198 million and then two days ago the report lists the banks as minus $8.7 Billion, something which has never happened before.

How bad is it? Think Weimar Republic. The Fed can no longer stop inflation because the banks can't secure new money with debt. People aren't buying debt anymore. Ergo, hyperinflation is the natural consequence. Mark this day on your calendar. Best, - InyoKern

JWR Replies: In case you missed it, I mentioned the following in Friday's Odds 'n Sods: Hawaiian K. pointed out this Federal Reserve chart, showing that the Net Free or Borrowed Reserves (NFORBRES) of Depository Institutions just fell off a cliff. Let's pray that there aren't any bank runs soon, because the till is empty. It is a jolly good thing that the Fed is handing out so much cheap money these days, so the member banks can list part of these funds as "reserves."

Permalink

---

Letter Re: Question on Body Armor "Expiration" Dates

Dear Jim:
There is an "urban myth" that Body Armor "expires" after the official manufacturer warranty runs out. Actually, the standard five year warranty is simply based on the insurance companies legal need to limit their liability - not on the actual performance of armor. (I have a sneaking suspicion that manufacturers don't complain too much about being able to sell new Body Armor every five years either!)

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) has found that 10 year old used armor tests as good as new. Since we deal with a lot of Police Surplus we run tests on the oldest and worst looking vests we see (vests we would never sell because they are over 25 years old, on the old NIJ 0101.02 standard). Oddly enough, these old and beat-up vests always stop 9mm +P FMJ and .357 Magnum +P JSP for us.
Here is a direct link to data and photos.

Of course decertified Zylon vests are not to be trusted - regardless of age. However, good Body Armor lasts much, much longer than the five year warranty/insurance policy.
Thanks, - Nick Taylor, BulletProofME.com Body Armor

Permalink


http://www.urbansurvival.com/c2csnotes20080102.pdf

2007 into 2008
• Linguistically 2007 was the “Year of
emergence” where we see macro trends
forming
• 2008 is “Year of manifestation” and it will be
“ruled” to use the astrological context by two
memes (thought viruses) “Secrets Revealed”
and “Economic Collapse”

George Ure's presentation on coast to coast .. highly recommended

SIBEL FOLDER: Signs Supplement - Ethnic Specific Weapons

This is off the signs of the times website

It is posted to show a systematic, systemic program of genocide that has been covered up which may, if all is fair, soon come to light

IT is my fear that theses strapped on bombs have racially profiled bioweapons in them, that these horrible weapons are now more effective than we are lead to believe. The mass of people is surely not to know about them and those of us who ARE aware of them are mostly shaking in our shoes these days.

Veeger

Ethnic Weapons

We posted a story on the Signs page that David Kelly was involved with ultra secret work at Israel’s Institute for Biological Research.

A report on November 15, 1998 by the Sunday Times suggests that this Institute "is working on a biological weapon that would harm Arabs but not Jews".

Israel planning 'ethnic' bomb as Saddam caves in

The London Times
November 15 1998

ISRAEL is working on a biological weapon that would harm Arabs but not Jews, according to Israeli military and western intelligence sources. The weapon, targeting victims by ethnic origin, is seen as Israel's response to Iraq's threat of chemical and biological attacks.

A scientist there said the task was hugely complicated because both Arabs and Jews are of Semitic origin. But he added: "They have, however, succeeded in pinpointing a particular characteristic in the genetic profile of certain Arab communities, particularly the Iraqi people."

It is widely accepted that Israel has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the region, and it is assumed that this applies to their stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons. A quick search on the web turned up a long list of articles on the subject, including the following:

Report: Secret Israeli chemical tests kill 4, wound 25

Arabic News.Com
August 21 1998

Tests carried out by an Israeli secret laboratory recently killed four persons and other 25 have been reported wounded in Neis Zayouna district near Tel Aviv, an Israeli daily reported.

Israel flatly denied the report. "No person has ever been killed in a work accident at the Biological Institute since its inception 45 years ago," Prime Minister Netanyahu's media advisor stated today.

This just happens to be the Institute cited above. And if these deaths were due to field tests, they wouldn't be "work accidents". But it is evidence that something is going on in Israel that could be related to the development of these types of weapons. There is also this comment from Ariel Sharon, while he was still Foreign Minister. His attitude hasn't changed in the intervening years as his active sabotage of the so-called "Peace Map" shows.

Report: Israel developing biological weapons targeting Arabs

Regional-Israel, Military, 11/16/1998

Last year the Pentagon warned in a secret report against the possibility of developing biological elements through genetic engineering to manufacture new weapons of mass destruction.

Within the same context, Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon reiterated that, "Israel reserves its right to repel any possible Iraqi attack."

At the conclusion of his meeting on Sunday with the US secretary of commerce, Sharon added: "Israel can defend itself and knows how to prevent being attacked."

A different type of evidence is found in the following written by the webmaster at www.konformist.com who published a good article on ethnic weapons in 2000 that we will look at later. He is discussing the reader response to the article:

What is interesting is that, though I received quite a few Emails from the Zionist community, none denied the accuracy of the story. Instead, they brashly admitted it was true, then added it was necessary because Israel needed to defend itself from its Arab neighbors. What is most telling is that many letters included references to Arabs that were derogatory and dehumanizing. That such a destructive philosophy is accepted by so many uncritically in Israel explains much of the vicious thuggery performed against the Palestinians over the last four months (not to mention the last 33 years).

These comments are completely in keeping with Sharon's, so we can put a high probability that Israel is developing something along these lines.

The progress on the Human Genome Project now makes it possible to target specific groups of individuals based upon certain genetic signatures. This is the logical next step in the progression of biological weapons. These weapons have been around for thousands of years. The Romans used to dump dead animals into the water supply of their enemies to inflict disease. The American "settlers" used small pox in blankets to target the Native American populations. The American Native population is still subjected to this type of attack:

#16 Human Genome Project Opens the Door to Ethnically Specific Bioweapens

In this country, continuing a historic policy toward Native Americans, it has been revealed that the American Indian Health Service (IHS—funded by the Federal Government, who employ the doctors and nurses) coerced Native American men and women into forced sterilizations in the early to mid 1970s. The General Accounting Office (GAO) estimated that 3,400 people (mostly women) underwent the treatment, but their study only covered four of twelve IHS regions for four years.

Activists put the estimate much higher, at 60,000 to 70,000. This, coupled with the suspicion raised by the hantavirus outbreak in the Four Corners region of Arizona/New Mexico/Colorado/Utah keeps suspicion and fingers pointed at the federal government and at least some government policies toward the American Indian population. (Hantavirus is one of many "new" diseases that have come under suspicion of having their origins in genetic engineering or biowarfare labs.)

As reported in a 1994 Project Censored update, Utah's Dugway Proving Grounds biowarfare research site was also reopened despite local residents' protests over fears that the facility was originally closed because of safety concerns. Fort Dietrick, the site of the most notorious CIA drug and army biowarfare research in the United States now houses major research facilities of the National Cancer Institute, raising issues of conflict (or collusion) or interest.

But with the development of the chemical industry, bio-warfare took a new turn. Greg Bishop, in the article referred to above, first published at konformist.com, looks at some of the major points:

Ethnic Weapons For Ethnic Cleansing

Greg Bishop
March 2000

[T]his "theoretical possibility" was recognized over 25 years ago, if not before. It was originally brought to the attention of potential customers with the publication of an article in the Military Review of November 1970.

This journal for command-level military personnel was published by the US Army Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The feature, entitled "Ethnic Weapons," authored by Carl A. Larson, outlines the history, desirability, and possibilities of engineered biological pathogens which would affect only those races which historically have no natural defense against certain "enzyme inhibitors."

Larson is listed as head of the "Department of Human Genetics at the Institute of Genetics, Lund, Sweden" as well as a licensed physician. The Hippocratic oath was apparently not administered in Sweden when Larson received his accreditation.

Larson explains that many of the chemical activities and functions within the human body are caused by the interactions of enzymes. One of the more significant activities enabled by enzyme chemical reactions are the contraction and relaxation of muscle tissue. If the activities of these enzymes are blocked, the victim will be paralyzed, even to the point of death by asphyxiation.

Not coincidentally, the enzyme-blocking action of compounds called organophosphates were discovered in Germany in the 1930s when experimental insecticides killed the people unlucky enough to have used them. This discovery led to the mass production of a substance named "Trilon," later used to impressive effect in the extermination of groups of people the Nazis considered little more than insects. This substance and others of similar makeup became known as "nerve gas."

A concentration of 40 milligrams per cubic meter can kill in about 10 minutes. Stronger agents were later developed which can do the job with a single drop on the skin.

[...] Larson is even more explicit in a way that would probably never make it into the mainstream press. In a passage that would make Doctor Strangelove proud, he muses uncontrollably on the possibilities of genetically-sensitive chemicals to subdue enemy populations:

"Friendly forces would discriminatingly use incapacitants in entangled situations to give friend and foe a short period of enforced rest to sort them out. By gentle persuasion, aided by psychochemicals, civilians in enemy cities could be reeducated. The adversary would use incapacitants to spare those whom he could use for slaves."

This was published in a serious, staid professional journal read by US military strategists. He concludes with the statement that "the functions of life [now] lie bare to attack."

According to Charles Piller and Keith Yamamoto in their 1988 book Gene Wars, Larson's article was the first time that the subject of ethnically targeted CBWs was broached publicly, and that in "the military's private circles it was old news." The authors further state that in 1951 the Mechanicsburg, PA Naval Supply Depot was the site of a classified test using a benign organism delivered to personnel to mimic the behavior of an actual bioweapon: "

According to documents declassified in the late 1970s, the site was chosen because 'Within this system there are employed large numbers of laborers, including many Negroes, whose incapacitation would seriously affect the operation of the supply system."

The black workers in the Depot were supposedly more susceptible to a strain of Valley Fever than were whites, but instead of using the actual virus, a substitute fungal organism was used. Valley Fever is more often fatal to blacks than to whites. It was recently revealed that the truth and reconciliation hearings in South Africa had presented witnesses who testified that scientists working for the apartheid regime had pursued efforts along similar lines.

Another possible example of field testing of ethnic weapons (or at least an interesting case for study by those interested in their development) may be the famed "Four Corners" virus, which seems only to affect Native Americans living in northern New Mexico and Arizona. Most reports identified or compared the disease to the Hantavirus, which killed victims relatively quickly following the occurrence of a prolonged fever and fluid which rapidly filled the lungs and asphyxiated the patient. Supposedly contracted through deer mice droppings, the mystery disease has claimed at least a dozen victims in the last ten years.

The most recent outbreak occurred this last summer [1999], coming on the heels of El Niño, which the major news media blamed for the renewed threat. Some area residents believe that the virus may have been released either accidentally or intentionally from a bioweapons cache at Fort Wingate, an army facility a few miles east of Gallup. The munitions storage at Wingate is now officially closed.

We learn that the work on such weapons was begun in Nazi Germany. The victims of these weapons were largely Jews. When Larson published his paper in 1970, "the military's private circles it was old news." Which means it had been discussed for a long time by the US military, most likely with the Nazis brought into the US after World War II via Operation Paperclip. Tests were carried out as far back as 1951 on Blacks working at the Mechanicsburg, PA Naval Supply Depot. For more information on tests carried out by the US government against its own citizens, refer to our timeline.

An early form of ethnic specific weapon were the malororants, developed to control crowds (of people dissenting against the Bush Reich, perhaps?).

Pentagon Tests Ethnically-Targeted Crowd Control Weapons

Sunshine-Project
19. February 2002

Almost sixty years ago, the US developed a nauseating 'bathroom odor' chemical for use as a weapon. But according to the Army, the old malodorant will not work outside of the US and Western Europe, because "it was found that people in many areas of the world do not find 'fecal odor' to be offensive, since they smell it on a regular basis." Therefore, according to the Army, new agents are needed for overseas missions. These new malodorants are to be specifically adapted for their victims. According to a 1998 document: "The objective of this work is the development of a comprehensive set of [malodorants] that can be applied against any population set around the world to influence their behavior."

The documents describe the Army research procedure. A group of subjects selected "based on a diversity of geographic origins and cultural heritage" is systematically exposed to candidate malodorants to develop "culture-response data" based on ethnic categories. That data is aggregated into "odor response profiles" that suggest the types and quantities of malodorants necessary to "elicit a favorable behavioral response" (i.e. incapacitation, panic, or flight) when used for crowd control on a particular ethnic group.

[...] Whether the malodorants work or fail, research on any ethnic weapon raises serious legal questions and could set a very dangerous precedent. If the Pentagon saw any major legal barriers to ethnic weapons it would not have approved the malodorant research. The Pentagon's conclusion that ethnic weapons are permissible must be challenged.

As horrible as these weapons are in their practice and in what they reveal about the people developing them, it was the work on the Human Genome that really opened the door to a new generation of bioweapons, weapons that could be fine-tuned to one's genetic make-up. We have been subjected to reams of paper and hours of air-time discussing the benefits of genetic research, the ability to target individual genes to "repair" them. Look at the flip-side:

GE Biological "Ethnic" Weapons Loom on the Horizon

Date: Thu, Jan 21, 1999
By Patricia Reaney
Reuters

The designer weapon works on a similar principle to gene therapy but instead of replacing faulty genes that don't work it exploits genetic variations to target its victims.

For example, micro-organisms could be genetically engineered to attack known receptor sites on the cell membrane or viruses could be targeted at specific DNA sequences inside cells.

This is the technology that Israel is using. But it did not originate in Israel:

Biowar and the Apartheid Legacy

By Salim Muwakkil, In These Times
June 6, 2003

A two-part story in the Washington Post on April 20 and 21 revealed that biological agents developed by the South African government during its apartheid days have fallen into private hands. Written by Post reporters Joby Warrick and John Mintz, the piece noted that unique, race-specific strains of biotoxins were available on the world market – for the right price or the right ideology.

[...] The top-secret program that Basson directed was called Project Coast, and it lasted from 1981 to 1993. The South African National Defense Force created it at a time when the white-minority regime was under increasing threat by indigenous black South Africans. Daan Goosen, the former director of Project Coast's biological research division, told the Post he was ordered by Basson to develop ways "to suppress population growth among blacks" and to "search for a 'black bomb,' a biological weapon that would select targets based on skin color."

[...] The Washington Post even noted, "Goosen says many scientists kept copies of organisms and documents in order to continue work on 'dual-use' projects with commercial as well as military applications." A May 2002 story on Project Coast in the Wall Street Journal reported that Goosen said he has been "visited by scores of people looking for 'stuff to kill the blacks.'" Race-specific weapons naturally are in hot demand among racists, so it's no surprise that South Africa's race-specific research is highly coveted.

[...] Reported links between Israel's ethnic weapons and South Africa's Project Coast are tentative; some would say tenuous. But the possibility of such links is terrifying, and justifies as much scrutiny as was focused on Iraq's imaginary arsenal.

It also appears that the anthrax incidents of 2001, in which five people died and 13 were sickened, may also have a South African connection. The Post noted that officials found evidence in a Frederick, Maryland, pond that may explain how the perpetrators of the deadly attacks used water to handle the lethal toxin without infecting themselves or loosing the anthrax spores.

On May 11, the Post said the water theory is the result of the FBI's interest in one person, Steven J. Hatfill, a medical doctor and bioterrorism expert who formerly worked for the U.S. Army, and who lists South African diplomas in diving and underwater medicine on his résumé.

A June 2002 article in the Hartford Courant reported that Hatfill also worked with a guerilla unit of the white-supremacist Rhodesian army from 1978 to 1980, when "an anthrax outbreak killed hundreds and sickened thousands of villagers." He also lived in South Africa, "where he completed various military-medical assignments."

The Apartheid regime in South Africa. Israel. The United States. Not the most progressive regimes in the world.

Note the reference to the Great Anthrax Scare following 9/11, the ability to manipulate the anthrax virus without getting infected. And the connection of this to Steven J. Hatfill. Curious, isn't it, how the anthrax story just died when it was discovered that the strain used to attack Americans wasn't from a foreign sourse but came a military base in Maryland?

Anthrax Attacks Pushed Open an Ominous Door

22 September, 2002

PURCHASE, N.Y. -- On this first anniversary of the anthrax attacks, a number of conclusions can be drawn even without an arrest by the FBI. First, the strain and properties of the weaponized anthrax found in the letters show that it originated within the U.S. biodefense program, where the necessary expertise and access are found. Government officials recognized that the anthrax source was domestic less than two weeks after they learned of the letters, and nothing in their investigation has led them to say otherwise since.

One can also conclude that, given the origin of the anthrax and the warnings contained in the letters, the perpetrator's motive was not to kill but rather to raise public fear and thereby spur Congress to increase spending on biodefense. In this, the attacks have been phenomenally successful.[...]

Although biodefense has gotten a shot in the arm, it is important to understand that the goal of defending against bioweapons is not primarily public protection--which is largely impossible, as last year's attacks demonstrated.

It is rather "to allow the military forces of the United States to survive and successfully complete their operational missions ... in battlespace environments contaminated with chemical or biological warfare agents," according to the annual report of the Department of Defense's Chemical and Biological Defense Program. [...]

Two weeks ago, I attended an informal meeting in Geneva where diplomats from six continents struggled in the face of U.S. Intransigence to map out a joint strategy for combating the global biological threat. The United States had demanded that a formal Biological Weapons Convention conference, scheduled to take place during two weeks in November, should instead disband in one day with only an agreement not to meet again until 2006.

To make sure that the American resolve prevails in this setting where international consensus is de rigueur, the U.S. demand was accompanied by an overt threat to disrupt any further proceedings with accusations that would make productive international action impossible.

At that Geneva meeting, the assembled diplomats, representing the political spectrum from our closest allies to declared enemies, were uniformly frustrated. They find it hard to comprehend why a country that has just been the victim of bioterrorism should stand in the way of peaceful efforts supported by all its allies to deter bioterrorism.

The following article suggests that the evidence for a link between the Israeli program and the South African program is neither tentative nor tenuous as the above would suggest. It is the same author writing earlier. Perhaps he found new info. Perhaps something else happened...

DOUBLE STANDARDS HAUNT AMERICA'S FOREIGN POLICY

By Salim Muwakkil.
Published: Monday, November 23, 1998

Goosen's comments jibe well with conclusions reached by South Africa's recently concluded Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which heard testimony that Wouter Basson, the director of the country's chemical-biological warfare program, conducted extensive research on weapons that exclusively targeted blacks.

Incidentally, the commission's concluding report noted that South Africa's chemical-biological weapons team received considerable assistance from their American counterparts during the apartheid era. And it's easy to see why: Ethno bombs are a dream weapon on a planet so preoccupied with ethnic conflicts. Of course, that's also why such weapons are so remarkably menacing.

[...] The article noted that the ethno-bomb claims were given further credibility by a report in "Foreign Report," a publication of the respected Jane's group, that Israeli scientists used some of "the South African research in trying to develop an 'ethnic bullet' . . ."

Once more the thread comes back to the US: "South Africa's chemical-biological weapons team received considerable assistance from their American counterparts during the apartheid era".

So let's look more at America's links to the development of these weapons. We saw above that this started after World War II. But, in fact, there are links back to the Eugenics program started in the US at the turn of the century.

#16 Human Genome Project Opens the Door to Ethnically Specific Bioweapens

The U.S. has a long history of interest in such genetic research. The current home of the Human Genome Project is the Cold Springs Harbor laboratory on Long Island, NY—the exact site of the notorious Eugenics Research Office that was started in 1910 by the Harriman family. The project’s 1910 agenda included governmental imposition of sanctions on such human rights as reproduction, and on U.S. immigration, based on the alleged inferiority of particular ethnic groups.

The Eugenics Research Project established medical and psychological conditions that would qualify one for sterilization or euthanasia. Prominent advocates of the program such as the Rockefeller family, Henry Ford, and Margaret Sanger helped smooth the way for the passage of forcible sterilization laws in 25 states. These laws allowed the forcible sterilization of tens of thousands of people, mostly of minority status, during the first half of the 20th century.

So we have one policy, begun in the early 20th century, funded by the Rockefellers, Henry Ford, the Harrimans, many of the same people who were financing the Nazi Party in Germany during the thirties. The work goes underground after the Second World War until it reemerges as part of the new "genetic research".

Biological Warfare: Genetically-Engineered Weapons Cannot Be Excluded

By K.P. Kavanaugh
Journal of the Federation of American Scientists (F.A.S.)
Volume 52, Number 2
March/April 1999

It has long been rumored that modern biological weapons could be designed to attack specific vulnerabilities of particular ethnic groups. Early in the development of the US offensive biological weapons program Colonel Creasey, Chief of Research and Engineering of the US Chemical Corps, suggested that agents may be selected because of known susceptibility of the target population.

This shows that the differential susceptibility of different populations to various diseases had been considered at that time and, according to scientists at Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is continuing today.

Indeed ethnic-specific biological warfare predated the advent of the biotechnology revolution. Smallpox was almost certainly deliberately used against the Native Americans centuries ago and there are other examples. U.S. and British officials believe an ethnic-specific weapon would be used today if it became available during a severe conflict between two deeply antagonistic groups. [...]

Today, warnings are coming not only from the medical community, but also from other specially credible sources. There have been indications, for example, that the US Secretary of Defense is concerned about the possible development of genetic weapons.

In June 1997, Jane's Defense Weekly reported that Secretary Cohen "quoted other reports about what he called 'certain types of pathogens that would be ethnic specific so that they could eliminate certain ethnic groups or races.'" Then after a later interview with the Defense Secretary in August 1997, it was stated again in Jane's Defense Weekly that "he also continued to insist that the science community is 'very close' to being able to manufacture 'genetically engineered pathogens that could be ethnically specific'".

Early Accounts, Then Silence

In accounts during the 1980s of the possible development of genetic weapons, a frequent source of scientific data was a paper by Carl A. Larson, then head of the Department of Human Genetics, University of Lund, Sweden, published in the journal Military Review in November 1970. Larson's paper was mainly concerned with the possible development of a new range of chemical weapons, including incapacitants.

Individual differences in response to chemical agents had been known for some time, but Larson reviewed what was known of differences between populations in reaction to drugs and saw the basis of such population differences as genetic. Larson seems to have been pointing to possible future developments rather than near-term practical possibilities. The question is whether, almost 30 years later: have genetically engineered weapons become a practical possibility?

There does not appear to have been subsequent detailed open publication by reputable scientists of the application of modern biotechnology to genetically -engineered weapons until the 1990s. Then in 1992 the journal Defense News carried a report which noted a scientist arguing that genetic engineering may enable us to:

...recognize DNA from different people and attach different things that will kill only that group of people...You will be able to determine the difference between blacks and whites and Asians and Jews and Swedes and Finns and develop an agent that will kill only a particular group.

Shown this quotation in February, scientists within the DOD confirmed that defensive research was being done specifically in this area. Thus the threat would appear to slide along the spectrum from the merely theoretical through the potentially possible to the patently workable.

Such arguments have been set out at greater length in an appendix to the 1993 Stockholm Peace Research Institute's Yearbook . The most pertinent aspect of the appendix entitled, "Benefits and threats of developments in biotechnology and genetic engineering," reads:

While modern biotechniques are revolutionizing medicine and agriculture, the possibility exists of their misuse for political ends, for clandestine production and refinement of biological weapons (BW), and for future development of weapons of mass extermination which could be used for genocide.

Particular reference is then made to the possible misuse of knowledge gained from the Human Genome Project and knowledge about genetic diversity. The element of critical significance here is contained in the last sub-section of section VI where the question is clearly stated, "Can't genetic weapons be developed?" The answer is that if:

investigations provide sufficient data on ethnic genetic differences between population groups, it may be possible to use such data to target suitable micro-organisms to attack known receptor sites for which differences exist at a cell membrane level or even target DNA sequences inside cells by viral vectors... [...]

Flashback: Scientists' deaths are under the microscope

So we have governments financing the development of these weapons, envisioning them as the Ultimate Weapon in their battles against their enemies. Or should we say "Final Solution" because it is racially based. It makes targets of people because of their genes.

Note: It is governments that do these things. But when this is discussed in the press, where are our fears turned? Who are portrayed as the real villains?

Genetic weapons: a 21st-century nightmare?

Ethirajan Anbarasan

Most of the nearly 30,000 scientists who were involved in biological research in the USSR during the 1980s are now out of a job because of the country’s economic difficulties. Last year, some of them disclosed that they had been approached by certain countries which have shown particular interest in learning about microbes that can be used in war to destroy or protect crops, as well as genetic engineering techniques that could be used to make deadly germs for which there may be no antidotes.

One prospect that alarms arms control experts is that biological weapons will fall into the hands of terrorist or cult groups.

But they are already in the hands of the Israelis who have not ratified a single international treaty allowing inspections of their nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. No, what is important is to vilify the invisible "terrorist", the "cult", to inculcate in the minds of the readers that the danger is widespread, invisible, and ready to pounce at any moment. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Yes. But be afraid because these governments are prepared to use them on their enemies...and that may well include their own citizens.

Mystery pneumonia is being caused by America's weapons of mass destruction: A theory

by Steve Hesske August 8, 2003

Could America's mainstream media be any more perfidious and derelict in its so-called reporting of the current so-called pneumonia epidemic among U.S. service personnel in Iraq and a few nearby countries?

A quick, informal survey of this week's coverage of the pneumonia story by our bastions of truth and enlightenment — CNN, Fox, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post — shows that while all covered the story, none mentioned Gulf War Syndrome which befell maybe as much as 20% of the 700,000 Americans who served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War (PGW) or depleted uranium (DU) a radioactive weapon of mass destruction (WMD), outlawed by international treaty and world courts, that was used exclusively and extensively by the United States during the PGW and that was used by the U.S. during the recent invasion of Iraq at 10 times its PGW rate.

Here's what the mainstream press does tell you: Army brass have dispatched teams to Iraq and to Landstuhl Army Hospital in Germany to investigate over 100 mysterious cases of pneumonia that have stricken American troops currently serving in the Persian Gulf. The puzzling disease has killed two and put another dozen or so in serious peril. According to the Army, a common geographical thread can not be established, a common bacteria can not be isolated.

True enough. A military spokeswoman goes on to say that those who have fallen ill have not been exposed to biological or chemical weapons, a bald-faced lie. DU is a chemical WMD of the most destructive and virulent kind. The documentation is in. And the connection between DU and a "mysterious pneumonia-like disease" was established over 10 years ago. [...]

The [British] government's microbiological research establishment at Porton Down spread bacteria through the London Underground system in the 1960s are contained in two files released to the public record office in Kew yesterday.

The trials, which were revealed in the Guardian last year, show how a powder compact filled with bacteria was dropped on to the Northern line and samples taken to see how contamination spread over the network.

We again refer you to our Timeline of Cosmic COINTELPRO subversion through the last few centuries to see more of this.

Given that these new strands of bioweapons need to be tested, we might think that the recent outbreak of SARS could be a field test. The pneumonia from Iraq. But these are not the only ones. There have been so many of these new strains recently that the US Government has set up centers to watch for "Unexplained Deaths" in four US states:

Unexplained Deaths Due to Possibly Infectious Causes in the United States: Defining the Problem and Designing Surveillance and Laboratory Approaches

EID Volume 2 * Number 1
January-March 1996

Many new infectious diseases have been identified in the United States during the last several decades (1). Among these are AIDS, Legionnaires' disease, toxic-shock syndrome, hepatitis C, and most recently, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome; all caused serious illness and death.

In each instance, the disease was recognized through investigation of illness for which no cause had been identified. Retrospective studies of these and other newly recognized infectious diseases often identified cases that occurred before the recognition of the new agent; therefore, a more sensitive detection system may make the earlier recognition of new infectious agents possible.

[...] A more systematic public health approach for the early detection of unknown infectious agents is needed. This need was acknowledged in Addressing Emerging Infectious Diseases Threats: A Prevention Strategy for the United States, a CDC publication about emerging infections (13). CDC has established an emerging infections program (EIP) network to conduct special population-based surveillance projects, develop surveillance methods, pilot and evaluate prevention strategies, and conduct other epidemiologic and laboratory studies.

In late 1994, CDC funded four programs based at state health departments and academic institutions in California (Alameda, Contra Costa, Kern, and San Francisco counties), Connecticut, Minnesota, and Oregon. Some projects are conducted at all program sites and others, depending on local interest and expertise, at only one or two sites.

Surveillance for unexplained deaths due to possibly infectious causes (UDPIC) for early detection of new infectious diseases is one of the core activities being conducted at all sites.

Great way to track the field tests, is it not?

In looking over the press reports in the last few years, we see that Israel is being singled out, especially since the "suicide" of David Kelly. This is somewhat normal because much attention has been focused in recent years on the barbarity of the Israeli actions against the Palestinians.

As Greg Bishop writes above, the Germans considered the Jews "insects". Now the Jews turn on the Palestinians in the same way. So Israel, from the Balfour Declaration through today, is being set up and portrayed as villains, maneuvered into a particular situation.

What they do is odious. But is there something even more odius behind the curtain?

---

Relations Between Israel and the Apartheid Regime in South Africa

We looked yesterday at the issue of Ethnic Weapons, biological and chemical weapons that can be built to single out populations by their genetic characteristics. We saw evidence that Israel may be building such weapons to be used in their final solution against the Palestinians.

The technology for this program came from the apartheid regime of South Africa, that is, the Boers who ruled over the Blacks until the last decade of the 20th century.

The close relations between Israel and the apartheid regime go back to the mid seventies.

Profile of Bilateral Relations

State of Israel
HISTORY OF RELATIONS

Israel established a Legation in South Africa in 1952 and in 1974 it was upgraded to an Embassy. In 1972 South Africa established a Consulate General in Tel Aviv which was upgraded to an Embassy in December 1975. Israel continued to enjoy close relations with the Apartheid Government in South Africa.

While many African countries had seen Israel as an ally in the fifties and early sixties, another country struggling to survive in a hostile climate, after the wars of 1967 and 1973, their view had changed and Israel was now the neighborhood bully. For more on this, see the article Africa, Arabia, and Israel: Forty-Five Years of Relations.

South Africa had seen two of its neighbors become "Popular Republics" under Marxist-inspired "People's Armies" after the fall of the Salazar regime in Portugal in 1974. So both Israel and South Africa had a siege mentality, believing they were surrounded by enemies.

Africa, Arabia, and Israel
Forty-Five Years of Relations

(Originally published as Sheen-File #053)

[…] In the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and the joint forces of Egypt and Syria, almost all of sub-Saharan Africa broke off diplomatic relations with Israel completely. And in 1975, the Arab League states succeeded in passing a motion on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly, equating Zionism with racism and South African apartheid. It passed in large measure to the near-automatic support the resolution received from the sub-Saharan African states.

Although there is evidence that several African nations wished to maintain covert relations with Israel, privately insisting that its public condemnation of Israel was merely an act for show, designed to placate the Arab states, to many Israelis, this hypocrisy was an unimaginable slight that could not easily be forgiven. It was said that, in response to this overwhelming rejection, "Israel pursued its relationship with South Africa with an element of vindictiveness."

Israel and South Africa

excerpted from the book
Israeli Foreign Policy
by Jane Hunter
South End Press, 1987

Israel has also been connected with the mercenary forces deployed by South Africa against Angola and Mozambique. In the 1970s Israel aided the FNLA (Angolan National Liberation Front) proxy forces organized and trained by the CIA to forestall the formation of a government led by the MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola-now the ruling party of Angola).

John Stockwell, who ran the CIA operation against Angola, recollected three arms shipments Israel made in cooperation with the CIA: a plane full of 120 mm shells sent via Zaire to the FNLA and Unita; a shipment of 50 SA-7 missiles (all of which were duds); a boat-load sent to neighboring Zaire in a deal that the Israelis had worked out with President Mobutu, even though the Zairian strong man had broken ties with Israel two years earlier.

South Africa's Nuclear Policy

Ruchita Beri, Research Fellow, IDSA

The political changes in the Southern African region heightened the security concerns of South Africa. The end of Portuguese rule in Africa after the 1974 Lisbon coup and the subsequent accession to power of Communist regimes in Angola (MPLA) and Mozambique (Freelimo) enhanced the encirclement by Communist forces regionally. The mid- 1970s also saw the intensification of the anti-apartheid struggle within South Africa-in the apartheid government's perception, sponsored by the Communist forces.

Thus, perceiving itself to be encircled by Communist forces, the South African government promoted a militarist ideology legitimising the use of force by the state to counter that threat, codified in the concept "Total National Strategy" to coordinate its national security planning. This ultimately involved a nuclear deterrent capability.

The arrival of Cuban troops in Angola after the establishment of the MPLA regime provided the final stimulus. Defence Minister P.W. Botha spelled out the defence requirements to meet this challenge as "South Africa can establish a balanced defence force to defend itself against terrorism...and this we are fully able to do....Secondly, we must have a deterrent to be able to resist a fairly heavy conventional attack on South Africa."3 This statement was quite ambiguous; however, one could reach the conclusion that both conventional and nuclear capabilities would be pursued by South Africa. Ambiguity became the trademark of the South African nuclear policy in the apartheid era.

The attitudes of the two countries can be summed up by this comment from Jane Hunter, cited above:

It has also been said that those arms sales are understandable, given the striking similarities between the two countries in their day-to-day abuse and repression of their subject populations, South African blacks and Palestinians under Israeli rule; in their operating philosophies of apartheid and Zionism; and in their similar objective situations: "the only two Western nations to have established themselves in a predominantly nonwhite part of the world," as a South African Broadcasting Corporation editorial put it. That understanding, however, is somewhat superficial, and the focus on similarities of political behavior has somewhat obscured the view of the breadth and depth of the totality of Israeli-South African relations and their implications.

As she suggests, this understanding is "somewhat superficial, as we will see below.

Another factor cementing the relationship was the embargo placed on South Africa following the riots of 1975 and the international outcry over the death of Stephen Biko.

S O U T H A F R I C A: 1 9 6 2 - 1 9 8 9
Access to Critical Events in Recent U.S. Policy Toward South Africa

The second period (1976-1980) deals primarily with the response of the U.S. government and the international community to the South African government's brutal reaction to the June 1976 student revolt, the death of Steve Biko (the leader of the Black Consciousness Movement), South Africa's subsequent security crackdown on opponents of apartheid and the adoption of the U.N. Security Council Resolution that called for a mandatory arms embargo against South Africa.

Because of this, South Africa was isolated, at least "officially", from the world.

One of the projects Israel and South Africa undertook together was the development of nuclear weapons. Hunter continues:

Israel's relations with South Africa are different than its interactions with any of its other arms clients. That Israel gave South Africa its nuclear weapons capability underscores the special nature of Tel Aviv's relations with the white minority government and begins to describe it - a full-fledged, if covert, partnership based on the determination of both countries to continue as unrepentant pariahs and to help each other avoid the consequences of their behavior.

Arms industry

Nuclear Apprentice

There are few areas where the respective needs and advantages of Israel and South Africa dovetailed so perfectly as in the field of nuclear cooperation.

"The most powerful reason for Israeli willingness to bear the undesirable consequences of expanded and more open trade with South Africa may be her desire to acquire material necessary to manufacture nuclear weapons," wrote a military analyst in 1980.' To that must be added Israel's great desire to test the nuclear weapons it already had, and the attractions of South Africa's vast territory and proximity to even vaster uninhabited spaces-the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

Then at the point in its nuclear development where it was fashioning sophisticated bombs (devices which use less nuclear material but have infinitely greater explosive force than the "primitive" bomb dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima), Israel would find it particularly helpful to observe the performance, explosive force and fallout of a detonated weapon.

Since 1984, Israel had been operating a plutonium extraction plant in a secret underground bunker at Dimona in the Negev Desert. Built by the French in the late 1950s, the Dimona plant also included facilities for manufacturing atomic bomb components. At the time of the 1976 accords, Israel was preparing to build an adjoining plant for the extraction of lithium 6, tritium and deuterium, materials required for sophisticated thermonuclear weapons.

Israel's reasons for devoting what had to have been a significant portion of its scant resources to such an ambitious nuclear weapons program - nuclear experts have recently ranked it as the world's sixth nuclear power, after the U.S., the USSR, Britain, France and China - have been variously offered as the desire to develop a credible deterrent to attack by its neighbors and the desire to substitute that deterrent for at least part of the costly conventional arsenal that Israel, with one of the world's most powerful military forces, maintains, and also (with much less frequency) as an "umbrella" over a partial withdrawal from the occupied territories.

This cooperation is discussed as well here:

Abstract:

Note: Details about the Blaauw case are provided in the Africa Confidential article. ..... According to information released regarding the secret mid-1980s extortion trial of Johann Blaauw, a brigadier in the South African army, South Africa and _Israel_ participated in four clandestine nuclear deals in the mid-1970s. Blaauw was found not guilty of trying to extort mining concessions from Minister of Mines Fanie Botha in a trial in 1989 [1].

The first nuclear deal occurred in shortly after the Yom Kippur War in 1973 when "Benjamine," a member of the Israel Council for Scientific Liaison, asked Blaauw to acquire South African yellowcake which Israel could use for weapon-grade plutonium. ("Benjamine" is believed to be Benjamin Blumberg, the head of the Israeli Intelligence division Lish Ka l-Kishrei (Lakam) [2].)

After discussions with Gen. Hendryk van den Bergh, head of the Bureau of State Security (BOSS), South African Prime Minister John Vorster eventually agreed to sell 50 metric tons of yellowcake to Israel. The deal was handled by Minister of Mines Fanie Botha, who replaced Piet Koornhog [Koornhof] after Koornhog opposed the sale. Uranium Enrichment Corporation Chairman Ampie Roux was also aware of the deal.

During his testimony, Blaauw said that "a high degree of confidence was developing between the South African and Israeli governments which involved the exchange of military technology, joint aeronautic ventures, and the supply of 'know-how' by Israel to South Africa in regard to the manufacture of weaponry."

There is evidence of a joint nuclear test carried out in the Indian Ocean in September, 1979. Ruchita Beri, cited above, writes:

1979 Nuclear Test

On September 22, 1979, a US Vela satellite detected an unusual "double flash" indicative of a nuclear test, in an "area of the Indian Ocean and South Atlantic including portions of the Antarctic continent, and the southern part of Africa." In fact, some have claimed it to be a joint Israeli-South African nuclear test. South Africa denied that it had conducted a nuclear test. As late as March 1993, the AEC's Chairman, Waldo Stumpf, is reported to have said, " If it was a nuclear explosion, South Africa was definitely not involved.

I doubt that it was a nuclear [test] because no radioactive fallout was detected." Eighteen years after the event, Aziz Pahad, the Deputy Foreign Minister, confirmed that South Africa conducted a nuclear test in the South Indian Ocean in 1979. This admission has laid to rest the controversy surrounding the test.

We can see that the relations between the two countries were very close.

Not only were nuclear weapons part of the partnership, but strategy and tactics in dealing with their enemies, both internal and external were also an important part of the collaboration. Jane Hunter again:

The South Africans began teaching the lessons of Israel's 1967 war at their maneuver school, and Israeli advisers began teaching the Boers the arts of suppressing a captive population and keeping hostile neighbors off balance...

The white government's practice of domestic counterinsurgency combines outright military brutality with the extensive use of informers and collaborators. It is impossible to know how many refinements of these age-old techniques have been borrowed from the Israelis' occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights.

The Israeli system of village leagues is obviously comparable to the hated town councils imposed on segregated townships by the apartheid government. The collective punishment employed by the Israelis, such as the destruction of a whole family's home when one of its members is arrested as a suspect in an act of resistance, has lately been matched by the recent South African practices of sealing off townships, and assaulting entire funeral processions.

What is perhaps more salient is the South African victims' perceptions of Israel's involvement in their oppression and how readily that perception is communicated...

And when the population you are systematically trying to annihilate fights back, how do you justify it? Of course, you call it "terrorism". Hunter continues:

The Frontline States

The South Africans noted that their May, 1983 aerial attack (dubbed Operation Shrapnel) on Mozambique's capital, Maputo, was analogous to Israel's attack on Beirut the previous summer. One analyst, Joseph Hanlon, believes that one of South Africa's objectives in the attack was to see how its version of events would play in the media. It was received very well indeed, according to Hanlon, with the Western press accepting South Africa's claim that its attack was in "retaliation" for an ANC attack and that ANC "bases" were hit.

Instead, the South African Air Force hit a child-care center and private houses with "special fragmentation rockets," leaving 6 dead and 40 wounded. This follows the Israeli practice in Lebanon of speaking about PLO installations while civilians are the actual targets, and attacking with particularly heinous anti-personnel weapons-cluster bombs and phosphorous bombs.

The victims of South Africa's angst are not blind to the similarity of attacks-or motives.

President Samora Machel likened the Israeli Government to the Pretoria regime. He said that because of its inability to contain the fury of the Palestinian people led by the PLO, the Zionist regime is trying to transfer the war to other regions.

So reported Mozambican radio shortly after Israeli aircraft bombed PI headquarters in Tunisia in October 1985.

The model provided by Israel, which punishes every internal act of resistance and violent act outside its jurisdiction with a bombing raid on Palestinian targets in Lebanon-almost always refugee camps cynically identified by the Israelis as "terrorist bases" or "headquarters"-has served South Africa well. In January 1986, the white government's radio delivered a commentary on "the malignant presence" of "terrorism" in neighboring states and said "there's only one answer now, and that's the Israeli answer." Israel had managed to survive "by striking at terrorists wherever they exist."

In May 1986, South Africa demonstrated that it had assumed the right to attack its neighbors at a time and on a pretext of its own choosing. The chosen time was during a visit by the Eminent Persons Group of the Commonwealth of Nations, which was attempting to establish negotiations between the apartheid regime and its opposition. The victims-Zambia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, all Commonwealth members-were chosen for their alleged harboring of "terrorists"; the real victims were South African exiles and an employee of the government of Botswana. The South Africans said they had attacked "international terrorism" and compared their raids to the Israeli attack on Tunisia and the U.S. attack on Libya in April 1986.

The attack was similar in style to Israel's 1985 attack on Tunisia. Initially, the Israelis had been threatening Jordan and perhaps because King Hussein of Jordan was at the time on an official visit to the U.S., the Israelis chose to take revenge for the killing of three Israelis (believed to be top Mossad agents) in Larnaca, Cyprus on the PLO in Tunisia.

Two weeks after its three-pronged attack on its Commonwealth neighbors, South Africa attacked the Angolan harbor of Namibia, firing their version of the Israeli Gabriel missile.

When Israel reestablished relations with Zaire (in 1982) and began to train Zairian forces in the Shaba border province, Angola had cause for concern. The leader of the FNLA had been Holden Roberto, brother-in-law of Zairian president Mobutu, Israel's new client. In 1986, it would be established that Zaire acted as a funnel for "covert" U.S. military aid for the Unita forces of Jonas Savimbi.

In 1983, the Angolan News Agency reported that Israeli military experts were training Unita forces in Namibia. Since Zaire began receiving military aid and training from Tel Aviv, Angola has been ill at ease. Its worries increased after discovering that:

Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon was personally involved in the organization, training and equipping of "commando" units of the army of Zaire, especially organized for missions along the borders of the RPA [Angola].

In 1984, the Financial Times (London) wrote of "joint Israeli-South African support for Unita forces." Other sources also report the transfer of Israeli arms and financial support to Unita.

In 1983, Angola's President Jose Eduardo dos Santos told Berkeley, California Mayor Eugene (Gus) Newport that an Israeli pilot had been shot down during a South African attack. The Angolan President showed Newport pictures of captured Israeli weapons. The following year, Luanda reported the capture of three mercenaries who said they had been trained by Israeli instructors in Zaire.

Israel has also been involved with the Mozambican "contras," the South African-backed MNR (Mozambique National Resistance or "Renamo"), which has brought great economic and social distress to Mozambique. Renamo has a particular reputation for ideological incoherence, being regarded by most other right-wing insurgencies as a gang of cutthroats. For several years there have been stories coming from Southern Africa of captured mercenaries of Renamo who say they were trained in neighboring Malawi-one of the four nations to maintain relations with Israel after the Organization of African Unity (OAU) declared a diplomatic embargo in 1973-by Israelis. And more than one report has told of "substantial Israeli aid" to the MNR, thought to have been funded by the CIA and Saudi Arabia as well as South Africa and former Portuguese nationalists.

Two countries, both with the mentality of the "besieged", begin carrying out attacks against their neighbors under the cover of "defence". Sometimes "to see how its version of events would play in the media".

In fact, it looks as if they were field-testing the strategies and tactics that the Bush Reich is now imposing upon the US population and the rest of the world.

The links between Israel, the apartheid regime, and the CIA are well-established. It is not too much to suspect that this information was being shared by the intelligence agencis of the three countries.

But as we are trying to see "behind the scenes", as it were, we leave you with one last item to reflect upon. Remember a few years ago how the anti-globalization forces were growing stronger? Remember the Conference Against Racism held in South Africa? Remember how Israel was becoming isolated because of its butchering of the Palestinians in the period following Sharon's provocative visit to the Temple Mount in September 2000?

Israel and US walk out of UN conference on racism

By Chris Marsden
6 September 2001

The joint US-Israeli walkout from the United Nations conference on racism in Durban, South Africa was something of a foregone conclusion. It was a stage-managed affair, the purpose of which was to portray all opposition to the Zionist state's persecution of the Palestinians as inherently racist.

The original draft resolution to the UN conference stated its "deep concern" at the "increase of racist practices of Zionism and anti-Semitism" and spoke of the emergence of "movements based on racism and discriminatory ideas, in particular the Zionist movement, which is based on racial superiority." It made direct criticisms of Israeli repression against the Palestinians on the West Bank as a "new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity."

The US and Israel insisted on the removal of any direct reference to Israel.

[…] Israel has also achieved some success in winning a more friendly response from Russia, which is again seeking to challenge US domination of Middle Eastern affairs by offering itself as an honest broker between Israel and the Arab regimes. During the Durban conference Sharon visited Moscow for talks with President Putin to discuss the common threat posed by Islamic terrorism-Sharon has even indicated sympathy for Russia's bloody suppression of Islamic rebel forces in Chechnya-the possibility of a further one million Jewish immigrants from Russia to Israel, armaments and other trade deals.

[…]Shimon Samuels, the head of the Jewish caucus in Durban, declared, "We saw an NGO document that would have made [Hitler's Nazi Party propaganda chief] Goebbels happy. And now it is clear that we are going to see, at the end of the government conference, resolutions that can be called the UN's Mein Kampf."

Mordechai Yedid, Israel's official spokesman at the conference, insisted there could be no condemnation of Israel in the resolution. He told the plenary meeting prior to the US-Israeli departure, "anti-Zionism, the denial of Jews the basic right to a home, is nothing but anti-Semitism, pure and simple." Yedid derided the Arab regimes proposals to criticize Israel's treatment of the Palestinians as "a group of states for whom the terms 'racism', 'discrimination', and even 'human rights' simply do not appear in their domestic lexicon". The UN resolution, he continued, was "the most racist declaration in a major international organization since World War Two".

His remarks prompted a walkout by Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher, who represents one of the most pro-US of all the Arab states.

Announcing its withdrawal from the conference, US Secretary of State Colin Powell denounced any attempt to single out "only one country in the world, Israel, for censure and abuse'" and any suggestion that apartheid existed in Israel. For his part, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres proclaimed, "We were portrayed in an insulting and baseless manner as a colonial nation... The Arab League, all of it, has come out against peace."

The right-wing media in Israel marched to the same tune. An article in the September 4 Jerusalem Post by Yossi Olmert described the Durban conference as "the mirror image of the Nuremberg rallies, in which the Nazis propagated their anti-Jewish messages, striving hard to delegitimise the Jews, as an inevitable step leading to their eventual liquidation." He conceded reluctantly that "not all the participants in Durban are Nazis, maybe not even a majority of them, but too many are, and they clearly give this shameful gathering its true character".

We wonder what Sharon was discussing with Putin, aside from the "common threat posed by Islamic fundamentalism".

Did you happen to notice the date?

Five days latter the world would explode. The field trials carried out for thirty years by the Israelis and South Africans would be implemented throughout the world. The battle against "terrorism" would become the justification for imposing the New American Tyranny on the world.

Coincidence? We think not.