Book Review: The Silence is Poisonous!

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Thu, 2 Mar 2006 21:50:31 -0800 (PST)

The Silence is Poisonous!

 

 

 

 

http://www.williambowles.info//ini/2006/0306/ini-0398.html

 

 

Biowarfare and Terrorism by Francis A. Boyle, Clarity Press Inc,

Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 2005. $12.95

Buy it through amazon.co.uk or amazon.com

 

 

 

 

The Silence is Poisonous!

Bioweapons - The US government's Nuremburg Crime

 

by William Bowles • Wednesday, 1 March, 2006

A criminal biological weapons programme

that is a threat to the entire planet!

Review: `Biowarfare and Terrorism' by Francis A Boyle

 

Before I even begin to review this `weapon of critical information',

I urge you not only to buy it but when you've finished reading it

(it's real short, so it shouldn't overly tax our attention-deficit

culture), post it to your — MP, Congressman, Senator,- the UN,

- your vicar / priest / imam / holy man / rabbi; — give it to your

neighbour, - teacher,- workmate,- brother,- sister,- mum and dad.

 

In short, shout it out from the rooftops; — that the US government

is an international criminal of staggering proportions

and the entire Bush administration should be

— indicted as war criminals

and every last one locked up and the key thrown away.

 

 

 

Okay, what are we dealing with here?

Boyle's short and impassioned book deals with the US government's

illegal multi-billion dollar biological weapons programme.

A programme, that as Boyle makes abundantly clear presents itself

as " defensive " but of course, in order to produce a `defense',

requires the development of offensive bioweapons.

 

In fact, the penalties involved for engaging in even

the research into biological weapons under US domestic law

are life imprisonment and under certain circumstances,

even the death penalty as well as impeachment for the president

(followed rapidly one hopes by life imprisonment).

 

But not only does it deal with the illegal bioweapons programme

initiated under the Reagan government, continued under Clinton

and vastly expanded under the current regime, it reveals the linkage

between the anthrax attack on Congress and 911;

 

By means of this little charade, the greatest political crime in the

history

of the United States of America since its founding on 4 July 1776

-the anthrax attacks on Congress, which served not only

to deliver a terrorist threat to its members, but actually

to close it down for a period-may remain officially unresolved forever.

 

Could it truly be coincidental that two of the primary intended victims

of the terrorist anthrax attacks-Senators Daschle and Leahe

— were holding up the speedy passage of the pre-planned

USA Patriot Act after the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001

— an Act which provided the federal government with unprecedented

powers in relation to US citizens and institutions? (p. 49)

Boyle goes on

Could it be that what really happened in the fall of 2001 was

the proverbial " one-two punch " against the American Republic

and the U.S. Constitution by the — Pentagon,— the CIA,

— the National Security Council,— the FBI and the rest of what

the former Soviet Union used to call its " power ministries " :

NSA, DIA, NRO, etc. In other words, could America have suffered

- without even remarking it - a coup d'état? (p.50)

 

No wonder the corporate media have ignored

this small but devastating indictment of US war-making

(I searched long and hard for a review of it in the MSM but to no avail).

 

It is also in passing a savage indictment of the media

which has ignored the issue entirely, from the true causes

of Gulf War Syndrome through to the wholesale development

of biological weapons by the US government including

their supply to Saddam Hussein (straight from Fort Detrick).

 

Much of the book is given over to the specifics of

the relevant treaties and laws on bioweapons and how

the US has either ignored or attempted to circumvent them

and Boyle dots the `i's' and crosses the `t's' as he is responsible

for much of the content of these treaties, so who better

to understand how the US has played fast and loose with them!

 

In exploring the nature of the US bioweapons programme Boyle also

reveals the complicity of the universities and of the scientists employed

in bioweapons development with billions of dollars of funding being

channelled into campuses not only across the US but also overseas.

 

He even warns them that they too are liable to life imprisonment

for their work on bioweapons. What makes Boyle's book so important

is that the man, almost single-handedly was responsible for all

the major legislation, both domestic and international covering the

outlawing of biological weapons, in particular the Biological Weapons

Convention and the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989.

 

The United States has had an extremely aggressive, offensive

biological warfare program dating back to World War II " but for

a number of reasons, in 1969 Nixon halted its bioweapons programme.

 

One, because it considered bioweapons

" counter-productive due to " blowback " " two, because " [a] Biological

Weapons Convention (BWC) prohibiting " bios " would enable the nuclear

weapons states of the world to maintain, consolidate and further extend

their near monopoly on WMD that had just been codified

by the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. "

 

Furthermore, the US considered bioweapons the `poor man's nuclear

weapons' and was anxious that Third World countries didn't acquire them.

Finally, in 1972 the US ratified the BWC but this didn't stop the CIA

from continuing its research and development of bioweapons.

Moreover, the BWC had a massive loophole that did not prevent

" research " for " prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes. "

Neither did the BWC prohibit their " use " in warfare.

 

And as Boyle states

" ominously there lurked in the bowels of the Pentagon the remnants

of the old Chemical and Biological Warfare (CBW) Unit, waiting,

wishing, hoping, planning, and scheming to spring back into life. " (p. 21)

And when Reagan got elected in 1981, they got their wish and the

Reagan administration began to pour massive amounts of money

into researching and developing biological agents

for what they alleged to be " defensive " purposes.

 

In fact, in constant dollars, under Reagan the US

" expended as much money on allegedly defensive biowarfare research

as it had done when the US government had on an overtly offensive

and aggressive biowarfare program. " (p.22)

 

But worse was to come.

 

The BWC does NOT cover genetic engineering research, the science

didn't exist when the BWC was enacted, and the same genetic

engineering research can be put to both defensive and offensive uses.

The line between `research' and development is extremely blurred

but according to Article 1 of the BWC,

the development of bioweapons is prohibited.

One way of determining whether the line has been crossed

is whether the bio-agents have been aerosolized for delivery

as most bioweapons are designed to be `delivered' through the air.

 

And it was here that the role of universities and research institutes

across the US came into their own, with billions of dollars

of genetic engineering contracts handed out, all under the guise

of dual-use, defensive-offensive " research " . The programme

was called the " Biological Defense Research Programme or BDRP. "

Under Bush Jnr, the programme became

the Chemical and Biological Defense Program.

 

Boyle points out that by the late 1980s many " life-scientists " were

turning

into " death-scientists " using genetic engineering to develop offensive

biological agents followed by the production of the allegedly " defensive "

vaccine; testing the damnable things on animals; and then

handing over their " research and development " to the Pentagon.

 

" From there the Pentagon could easily produce, stockpile, deploy,

and use biological weapons in further breach of BWC Article 1. " (p.25)

In 1988, the Council for Responsible Genetics (CRG)

asked Boyle to produce an analysis of Reagan's BDRP

as a Detailed Memorandum of Law (which is included in the book).

It became clear to Boyle that the university where he worked,

the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign campus

" were engaged in the development of offensive biowarfare weapons,

despite their public protestations to the contrary, " and Boyle points out

that " American universities have a long history of willingly permitting

their research agendas, researchers, institutes, and laboratories to be

co-opted, corrupted, and perverted by the Pentagon and the CIA. (p.26)

 

The scale of the US bioweapons programme is staggering with

$5.6 billion being spent on " Project Bioshield " , over the next ten years,

and this just one facet of US bioweapons development. Overall, the

amount being spent on bioweapons development is at least $22 billion!

 

Boyle reveals one particularly and very relevant aspect of its bioweapons

development programme; the use of countries such as Iraq

to " weaponize " these novel biological agents; in other words,

get Iraq to test the damn things out on Iranian troops!

This is precisely what happened when the Reagan government

supplied them to Iraq, via the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC)

and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

 

" ATCC is a large private-sector scientific institute that cultures and

stores every known type of disease occurring in nature for supposedly

scientific purposes. It is therefore striking to note that both ATCC and

CDC went along with the Reagan administration's wanton breach

of BWC by shipping these weapons-specific bio-agents to Iraq. " (p.32)

These shipments violated Article III of the BWC

 

Each State Party to this convention undertakes not to transfer to any

recipient whatsoever, directly or indirectly, and not in any way to

assist,

encourage, or induce any State, group of States or international

organizations to manufacture or otherwise acquire any of the agents,

toxins, weapons, equipment or means of delivery

specified in article 1 of the Convention.

 

Under the proposed CRG legislation " these biowarfare transshipments

would have subjected these Reaganite perpetrators to life imprisonment,

so they fought the CRG draft implementing legislation right up

to the time of their (temporary) political demise, which occurred

when Bush Sr. was elected President in November 1988. " (pps.32-33)

And, not surprisingly, it's the same gang of ultra-right, anti-communists

that accompanied the Reagan years who, like the bioweapons programme,

had been biding their time, and were resuscitated under Bush Sr,

just in time for `Operation Desert Storm' and the forced innoculation

of US (and UK) troops with both anthrax and botulin toxin vaccines

" not only prior to vaccine approval by the F.D.A. but without

their informed consent and thereby in clear violation

of the Nuremberg Code on Medical Experimentation. " (pps. 39-40)

And no wonder, as nobody knew that the

" Reagan administration had surreptitiously shipped these weapons

-specific biological agents to Iraq, and it was felt that Saddam Hussein

had weaponized the anthrax and botulin toxin. " (p.40)

 

Boyle makes the criminality of the US actions abundantly clear

" As always, the first illegal misstep compelled the second,

which was criminal. Accordingly, what were then only experimental

medical vaccines were injected into 500,000 U.S. armed forces

deployed for Gulf War I by the Bush Sr. administration, as well as

into the British troops similarly designated, turning the entire project

into a massive live experiment, the results of which-due to its

irregularity

and indeed illegality-neither the scientific research community

nor the Pentagon were able to counteract, since records of the effects

of the vaccines were systematically NOT kept…

 

As of today, more than 11,000 U.S. troops have died-but not from combat

-and most of the rest suffer from the Gulf War Syndrome (GWS). " (p.41)

The scale of this crime against humanity surpasses

that of the Nazi medical experiments conducted

on the unfortunate occupants of the concentration camps.

 

We are talking here about almost 600,000 human beings experimented

on by the US government, without their knowledge or consent.

And we are not even considering the crime of the effects

of depleted uranium on both `coalition' forces and the Iraqi population.

 

Boyle sums it up as follows

" Bush Sr., Cheny, General Colin Powell … General " Stormin' "

Norman Schwarzkopf, and the rest of the U.S. military High Command

inflicted a Nuremburg Crime on United States armed forces

by forcing them to take these experimental medical vaccines

in violation of the Nuremburg Code on Medical Experimentation. " (p.41)

 

And if you think the criminal acts committed under Reagan, Bush Sr,

and Bush Jr excludes Clinton, think again.

" The Clinton administration's self-styled Neo-Liberals decided

to reactivate massive Pentagon funding for dual-use, simultaneously

offensive-defensive DNA genetic engineering biowarfare contracts

despite the fact that the Reaganite Neo-Cons and their BDRP

scientist accomplices had already " researched " most naturally occurring

bio-agents to death almost a decade beforehand …

 

These Clintonite Neo-Liberal biowarfare programs violated both the

Biological Weapons Convention, and the Biological Weapons Anti

-Terrorism Act of 1989, initiated by the Committee for Responsible

Genetics. "

Boyle deals at length with the anthrax attack on Congress following 9/11

that I referred to above, buy the book to get the details.

 

The crimes committed by the US as laid out in Boyle's small book

are staggering and made all the more so by the fact that the

MSM has ignored them almost without exception and no wonder,

were the mainstream media to go for the jugular over the monstrous

crimes committed by US capitalism, almost the entire government

of the United States not to mention the tens of thousands of

" life-scientists " who are involved in the development of these

Weapons of Mass Annihilation, would have to face the reality that

at the very least, they would have to serve life sentences for their

crimes.

 

 

Biowarfare and Terrorism by Francis A. Boyle, Clarity Press Inc,

Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 2005. $12.95

Buy it through amazon.co.uk or amazon.com