Americans have always been notoriously blind to the devastation wrought by their government's policies on the citizens of other nations--especially people of color. If you doubt that any of us who grew up in that culture are susceptible to such near-sightedness, try this little self test.
How many Americans were killed in the Vietnam War? How many Americans have died to date in the Iraq War? How many were killed on 9/11? (The official figures appear at the end of the article.)
Most readers wouldn't have much problem coming up with numbers within plus or minus twenty per cent of the actual figure.
Now try this.
How many Vietnamese were killed between 1960 and 1975? How many Iraqis have died since we invaded? (Two estimates appear at the end of the article.)
Was that a little tougher? Outside of a few human rights activists, I suspect few came close.
Mainstream politicians and press critical of U. S. involvement in Vietnam and Iraq have always emphasized American losses in lives and treasure as the primary reason for disengaging from conflict. George McGovern was the exception that proved the rule when he astonished the few listeners who hung on until 3 AM to hear him include in his nomination acceptance speech this reason for withdrawing from Vietnam:
There will be no more Asian children running ablaze from bombed-out schools. There will be no more talk of bombing the dikes or the cities of the North.
More typical is John Kerry's rhetoric urging a timetable for bringing American troops home from Iraq:
A few weeks ago I departed Iraq from Mosul. Three Senators and staff were gathered in the forward part of a C-130. In the middle of the cavernous cargo hold was a simple, aluminum coffin with a small American flag draped over it. We were bringing another American soldier, just killed, home to his family and final resting place.The starkness of his coffin in the center of the hold, the silence except for the din of the engines, was a real time cold reminder of the consequences of decisions for which we Senators share responsibility.
Underlying Kerry's choice of imagery is the assumption that American lives are more precious, that Americans are exceptional.
But that dearly held, Americ-centric view may be fading away. The evidence for the erosion of the belief that Americans enjoy special privilege in this world comes from a surprising source. The decades-long efforts of the antiwar left to get people in the U. S. to have concern and compassion for the people upon whom American bombs fall seems finally to have caught hold of the current Secretary of the Air Force, Michael Wynne.
Secretary Wynne showed a stunning preference yesterday for using new high-power microwave weapons for domestic crowd control as a way of testing the possible side effects of the devices:
''If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation,'' said Wynne. ''(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press.'"
This is the Secretary of the same Air Force that dropped millions of tons of Agent Orange on Vietnam and untold tons of uranium-depleted shells on Iraq. Has Wynne been reading too much Noam Chomsky?
Actually, it was Sulla, not Ceasar who first led the legions into Rome. But those are details. Ezekiel is right: anomaly of life creates anomalies in minds and we have now people who develop those technologies and those applications. But there was Brutus and Ceasar was killed. We need to have the internet list of the ' America's most wanted' and on that list put the names of those who develop those weapons and those who use those, like the Secretary mentioned. And all the people of the US should be welcome to make their own mind on what to do with them. Thus we will survive.
by
Mark Sashine (46 articles, 19 quicklinks, 235 diaries, 3358 comments)
on Wednesday, September 13, 2006 at 7:15:49 AM
Bloody good article, and have no problem whatever with the proposal, what's all the Hoo Ha about anyway ?
After all, what's good for the goose, is also good for the Gander, right ?
The time is long overdue for Americans to get a taste of what they dish out out to so many millions of people all round the World on a daily basis, maybe they MIGHT just begin to see, exactly what it is they are doing to their fellow citizens.
I live in Hope, but somehow seriously doubt they will EVER see.
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Eddy Schmid (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 197 comments)
on Wednesday, September 13, 2006 at 8:18:35 AM
Try this little self-test: Americans have always been notoriously blind to the devastation wrought by their government's policies on the citizens of other nations--especially WOMEN.
Here's your Hoo Ha, bro: If it was only the ganders getting nuked, hey, go at it boys. But, per usual, women and their children will suffer most. But, that would be the point of war, wouldn't it?
by
Mar (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 155 comments)
on Wednesday, September 13, 2006 at 9:15:01 AM
Ezekiel always has way interesting posts. This one as usual, is very thought provoking. If he is reporting this, can we be assured that the administration is not already trying to figure out a way to use this weapon on American protesters, without being found out. Much in the same way that it's been a proposal of someone, to use prisoners for such experiments. I am in total agreement with Secty. Wynne, that we should not use weapons on other countries that we would not use on our own. I do believe the present administration would not hesitate, to do this in a heartbeat, if it could be accomplished with no blame back on them.
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Pat Herrick (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 145 comments)
on Wednesday, September 13, 2006 at 9:51:21 AM
On July 1, 1954 in a little town near the US Air force nuclear weapons storage area at Rome, New York 'ET" shot a US Air force fighter jet out of the air, immolating 4 people on the ground.
The town of Wales ville, New York was the home of Doctor Burton Kheeler, a nuclear weapons applications theorist. The good Doctor was employed by General Electric in the Department of population reduction technology, as it was euphemistically known. This group at 'GE' built nuclear weapons and were called the "Electric Nuts" around the company.
The Doctor did research into the methods to employ which would lead to the greatest amount of casualties amongst humanity, with the correct application of this nuclear genocidal technology.
The 'ET' have now for over 60 years told our nuclear war fighting criminal elite that they must not destroy humanity with nuclear weapons. Our nuclear war fighting criminal elite seem to think that maybe they can slip by the 'ET' and get the extermination of the human race underway.
In the last 2 months our nuclear war fighting criminal elite have attempted to let loose with a nuclear first strike. Both weapons packages were blocked by the 'ET.'
On July 1. 1954 at Wales ville, the pilot of the jet plane sent up to confront the 'ET' was shot with a microwave beam and at that exact moment he was ejected from his plane by remote control. The plane crashed on Dr. Kheeler, and immolated him, his wife and 2 children. Doctor Kheeler while employed by 'GE' spent his life working to perfect the methods that would allow them to burn us all to death with the use of nuclear weapons.
Self Defense is a natural law. If the beast that attacks you happens to be employed by the Pentagon, you have the right to defend yourself against the Beast. Our nuclear war fighting enemy elite are going away, and it appears that it may be sometime soon.
Read your local obituaries and you will see many of them faking their deaths, and running away to hide. They like to drown in Hawaii because it is close to Indonesia, a favorite haunt of our enemy nuclear war criminals.
America is nothing much more than an old extortion Murder Racket, and it is actually a game of sorts that is enjoyed by our criminal elite, while it is played against us. Our murdering rich enjoy their massages, while they keep our underclass 'Hitched to the slay.'
The way the game is played is that everyone gets their turn. Now that it is time for our nuclear war fighting elite and their internal death squad operatives to become part of common knowledge, they are running and hiding because the don't want to get their 'turn.'
Instead they keep hoping against hope, that they can get these nuclear weapons flying to kill us all. It appears that the 'ET' intend to keep them from exterminating us.
We appear to have the grace of the 'Gods' on our side.
Our nuclear war fighting criminal elite appear to have incurred the wrath of the 'Gods.'
Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne should consider his future, and of how his words will sound in front of a Tribunal.
by
Patrick (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 384 comments)
on Wednesday, September 13, 2006 at 1:02:44 PM
- 1931 Dr. Cornelius Rhoads, under the auspices of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations, infects human subjects with cancer cells. He later goes on to establish the U.S. Army Biological Warfare facilities in Maryland, Utah, and Panama, and is named to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. While there, he begins a series of radiation exposure experiments on American soldiers and civilian hospital patients.
- 1932 The Tuskegee Syphilis Study begins. 200 black men diagnosed with syphilis are never told of their illness, are denied treatment, and instead are used as human guinea pigs in order to follow the progression and symptoms of the disease. They all subsequently die from syphilis, their families never told that they could have been treated.
- 1935 The Pellagra Incident. After millions of individuals die from Pellagra over a span of two decades, the U.S. Public Health Service finally acts to stem the disease. The director of the agency admits it had known for at least 20 years that Pellagra is caused by a niacin deficiency but failed to act since most of the deaths occurred within poverty-striken black populations.
- 1940 Four hundred prisoners in Chicago are infected with Malaria in order to study the effects of new and experimental drugs to combat the disease. Nazi doctors later on trial at Nuremberg cite this American study to defend their own actions during the Holocaust.
- 1942 Chemical Warfare Services begins mustard gas experiments on approximately 4,000 servicemen. The experiments continue until 1945 and made use of Seventh Day Adventists who chose to become human guinea pigs rather than serve on active duty.
- 1943 In response to Japan's full-scale germ warfare program, the U.S. begins research on biological weapons at Fort Detrick, MD.
- 1944 U.S. Navy uses human subjects to test gas masks and clothing. Individuals were locked in a gas chamber and exposed to mustard gas and lewisite.
- 1945 Project Paperclip is initiated. The U.S. State Department, Army intelligence, and the CIA recruit Nazi scientists and offer them immunity and secret identities in exchange for work on top secret government projects in the United States.
- 'Program F' is implemented by the U.S. tomic Energy Commission (AEC). This is the most extensive U.S. study of the health effects of fluoride, which was the key chemical component in atomic bomb production. One of the most toxic chemicals known to man, fluoride, it is found, causes marked adverse effects to the central nervous system but much of the information is squelched in the name of national security because of fear that lawsuits would undermine full-scale production of atomic bombs.
- 1946 Patients in VA hospitals are used as guinea pigs for medical experiments. In order to allay suspicions, the order is given to change the word 'experiments' to 'investigations' or 'observations' whenever reporting a medical study performed in one of the nation's veteran's hospitals.
- 1947 Colonel E. E. Kirkpatrick of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission issues a secret document (Document 07075001, January 8, 1947) stating that the agency will begin administering intravenous doses of radioactive substances to human subjects.
- The CIA begins its study of LSD as a potential eapon for use by American intelligence. Human subjects (both civilian and military) are used with and without their knowledge.
- 1950 Department of Defense begins plans to detonate nuclear weapons in desert areas and monitor downwind residents for medical problems and mortality rates.
- In an experiment to determine how susceptible an American city ould be to biological attack, the U.S. Navy sprays a cloud of bacteria from ships over San Francisco. Monitoring devices are situated throughout the city in order to test the extent of infection. Many residents become ill with pneumonia-like symptoms.
- 1951 Department of Defense begins open air tests using disease-producing bacteria and viruses. Tests last through 1969 and there is concern that people in the surrounding areas have been exposed.
- 1953 U.S. military releases clouds of zinc cadmium sulfide gas over Winnipeg, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Fort Wayne, the Monocacy River Valley in Maryland, and Leesburg, Virginia. Their intent is to determine how efficiently they could disperse chemical agents.
- Joint Army-Navy-IA experiments are conducted in which tens of thousands of people in New York and San Francisco are exposed to the airborne germs Serratia marcescens and Bacillus glogigii.
- CIA initiates Project KULTRA. This is an eleven year research program designed to produce and test drugs and biological agents that would be used for mind control and behavior modification. Six of the subprojects involved testing the agents on unwitting human beings.
- 1955 The CIA, in an experiment to test its ability to infect human populations with biological agents, releases a bacteria withdrawn from the Army's biological warfare arsenal over Tampa Bay, Fl.
- Army Chemical orps continues LSD research, studying its potential use as a chemical incapacitating agent. More than 1,000 Americans participate in the tests, which continue until 1958.
- 1956 U.S. military releases mosquitoes infected with Yellow Fever over Savannah, Ga and Avon Park, Fl. Following each test, Army agents posing as public health officials test victims for effects.
- 1958 LSD is tested on 95 volunteers at the Army's Chemical Warfare Laboratories for its effect on intelligence.
- 1960 The Army Assistant Chief-of-Staff for Intelligence (ACSI) authorizes field testing of LSD in Europe and the Far East. Testing of the European population is code named Project THIRD CHANCE; testing of the Asian population is code named Project DERBY HAT.
- 1965 Project CIA and Department of Defense begin Project MKSEARCH, a program to develop a capability to manipulate human behavior through the use of mind-altering drugs.
- 1965 Prisoners at the Holmesburg State Prison in Philadelphia are subjected to dioxin, the highly toxic chemical component of Agent Orange used in Viet Nam. The men are later studied for development of cancer, which indicates that Agent Orange had been a suspected carcinogen all along.
- 1966 CIA initiates Project MKOFTEN, a program to test the toxicological effects of certain drugs on humans and animals.
- U.S. Army dispenses Bacillus btilis variant niger throughout the New York City subway system. More than a million civilians are exposed when army scientists drop lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto ventilation grates.
- 1967 CIA and Department of Defense implement Project MKNAOMI, successor to MKULTRA and designed to maintain, stockpile and test biological and chemical weapons.
- 1968 CIA experiments with the possibility of poisoning drinking water by injecting chemicals into the water supply of the FDA in Washington, D.C.
- 1969 Dr. Robert MacMahan of the Department of Defense requests from congress $10 million to develop, within 5 to 10 years, a synthetic biological agent to which no natural immunity exists.
- 1970 Funding for the synthetic biological agent is obtained under H.R. 15090. The project, under the supervision of the CIA, is carried out by the Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, the army's top secret biological weapons facility. Speculation is raised that molecular biology techniques are used to produce AIDS-like retroviruses.
- United States intensifies its development of 'ethnic weapons' (Military Review, Nov., 1970), designed to selectively target and eliminate specific ethnic groups who are susceptible due to genetic differences and variations in DNA.
- 1975 The virus section of Fort Detrick's Center for Biological Warfare Research is renamed the Fredrick Cancer Research Facilities and placed under the supervision of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) . It is here that a special virus cancer program is initiated by the U.S. Navy, purportedly to develop cancer-causing viruses. It is also here that retrovirologists isolate a virus to which no immunity exists. It is later named HTLV (Human T-cell Leukemia Virus).
- 1977 Senate hearings on Health and Scientific Research confirm that 239 populated areas had been contaminated with biological agents between 1949 and 1969. Some of the areas included San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Key West, Panama City, Minneapolis, and St. Louis.
- 1978 Experimental Hepatitis B vaccine trials, conducted by the CDC, begin in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Ads for research subjects specifically ask for promiscuous homosexual men.
- 1981 First cases of AIDS are confirmed in homosexual men in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, triggering speculation that AIDS may have been introduced via the Hepatitis B vaccine
- 1985 According to the journal Science (227:173-177), HTLV and VISNA, a fatal sheep virus, are very similar, indicating a close taxonomic and evolutionary relationship.
- 1986 According to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(83:4007-4011), HIV and VISNA are highly similar and share all structural elements, except for a small segment which is nearly identical to HTLV. This leads to speculation that HTLV and VISNA may have been linked to produce a new retrovirus to which no natural immunity exists.
- A report to Congress reveals that the U.S. Government's current generation of biological agents includes: modified viruses, naturally occurring toxins, and agents that are altered through genetic engineering to change immunological character and prevent treatment by all existing vaccines.
- 1987 Department of Defense admits that, despite a treaty banning research and development of biological agents, it continues to operate research facilities at 127 facilities and universities around the nation.
- 1990 More than 1500 six-month old black and hispanic babies in Los Angeles are given an 'experimental' measles vaccine that had never been licensed for use in the United States. CDC later admits that parents were never informed that the vaccine being injected to their children was experimental.
- 1994 With a technique called 'gene tracking', Dr. Garth Nicolson at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX discovers that many returning Desert Storm veterans are infected with an altered strain of Mycoplasmaincognitus, a microbe commonly used in the production of biological weapons. Incorporated into its molecular structure is 40 percent of the HIV protein coat, indicating that it had been man-made.
- Senator John D. Rockefeller issues a report revealing that for at least 50 years the Department of Defense has used hundreds of thousands of military personnel in human experiments and for intentional exposure to dangerous substances. Materials included mustard and nerve gas, ionizing radiation, psychochemicals, hallucinogens, and drugs used during the Gulf War .
- 1995 U.S. Government admits that it had offered Japanese war criminals and scientists who had performed human medical experiments salaries and immunity from prosecution in exchange for data on biological warfare research.
- Dr. Garth Nicolson, uncovers evidence that the biological agents used during the Gulf War had been manufactured in Houston, TX and Boca Raton, Fl and tested on prisoners in the Texas Department of Corrections.
- 1996 Department of Defense admits that Desert Storm soldiers were exposed to chemical agents.
- 1997 Eighty-eight members of Congress sign a letter demanding an investigation into bioweapons use & Gulf War Syndrome.
by
Runner (9 articles, 34 quicklinks, 47 diaries, 33 comments)
on Wednesday, September 13, 2006 at 8:53:32 PM
