Theos-Talk Archives (July 2004 Message tt00064)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Jerry Hejka-Ekins <jjhe@c...> 
wrote:
> most 
> mericans don't read much, are amazingly uninformed about current
> events, history (our own and other countries), and about other 
cultures.

Most people from other countries, too, from what I have seen.

> I have even read studies showing that a significant number of 
Americans 
> are unable to even find Iraq and Iran on a map.

Most high school students cannot find their own country on a map.

> Most people get their 
> news from television. However, most so?called news casters, such 
as 
> Geraldo Riviera and Rush Limbaugh are really entertainers

I have noticed listening to the radio that most conservatives who 
call in to express an opinion sound amazingly alike, even though they 
are different people. Not that they have internalized the same 
opinions, but that they SOUND alike. Then a commentator pointed out 
that many of these people get ALL their information about the world 
from Rush Limbaugh and I figured out they BECOME Rush Limbaugh.

> According to the afore mentioned Pelletiere document, which the US 
> government did not want to be made public, the Kurds 
were "collateral 
> damage" in a battle between Iranian and Iraqi forces. In other 
words, 
> regardless of who dropped the gas bombs, the Kurds were not the 
targets.

I don't believe that is true, since there is evidence Chemical Ali 
targeted them deliberately. What remains to be proved is whether 
Saddam ordered it or was criminally complicit. Not whether he was, 
but whether it can be proved in a court of law, which are two 
different things. Nobody would have been able to prove Hitler 
ordered the Holocaust had he survived the war, because he took care 
not to sign a single order the whole time he was chancellor. So we 
shall see how clever Saddam was or was not.

> Do you know where we can find documentation of US experimentation, 
> development and use of chemical and biological weapons?

I did not seek the information out, but saw a number of documentaries 
on the subject over a period of a lifetime. It is well known that 
soldiers were ordered to stand in the way of atomic radiation so 
scientists could study the effects of radiation poisoning despite the 
fact there were hundreds of thousands of people dying from radiation 
poisoning in Japan. It is also well known that American blacks were 
in an experiment infected with syphilis and denied treatment so 
scientists could watch them go insane and then die. In other 
experiments people have been injected with chemical agents and in one 
a quantity of nerve gas was released downwind from a small western 
town. The wind changed direction with the result a few sheep were 
killed and no people. The experiment was never repeated. Human 
malice was surely at the bottom of the Bhopal, India incident in 
which chemical agents were released from a Union Carbide plant, 
although it appears in this case Indian technicians were the cause. 
The plant was designed with so many safeguards that it was impossible 
for this to happen by accident.

There is no way we can legitimize vivisection (torturing small 
animals to death) and expect that no one is going to want to 
experiment on humans. So I would say Anna Kingsford was right on 
that one. If it is OK for people to amuse themselves torturing and 
killing other species, they are inevitably going to turn on the rest 
of us as well. The eviddnce also disproves the assumption that 
malice is somehow confined to certain geographical areas and 
mysteriously absent from others. Wherever you live in the world, the 
problem is next door.

It has been reported that Internet entrepreneurs offer gene splicing 
kits which can be used nu enterprising individuals to design their 
own viruses. According to the scientist who described this, someone 
who knows how could design a virus which will make Ebola look like a 
skin rash. Terrorists all over the world are working on this. 
Clinton said when he was President they caught some guy in Arizona 
doing it, not as government agent but malicious private citizen.

The technical problems with nuclear and biological agents make it 
likely the next nuclear war will be started by a state and not by 
terrorists and that it will occur in SW Asia. I have nothing against 
Pakistan, but everyone who lives in that area should be nervous that 
these weapons are in the hands of jihadists who are sworn to die 
killing the infidel and who are moreover selling them to anyone who 
wants them (Libya, North Korea, Iran, etc.) It is just a matter of 
time before Bombay and Bangalore are vaporized. It is noteworthy 
that Canada, Argentina, and Brazil all renounced the use of these 
weapons and discontinued their development programs.

As for bio weapons, it appears not even states can figure out how to 
sicken vast populations. The character who released anthraz into the 
environment a few years ago killed only a couple of people, despite 
having high quality product which reportedly must have come from a 
government lab and despite the fact anthrax is the easiest agent with 
which to work.

Nobody knows yet whether Halliburton (Halliburton Dick Cheney's 
company) had anything to do with it or not, but it is now reported 
thousands of millions of dollars appear to have been stolen from 
Iraq. Why am I not surprised? I always thought that was the purpose 
of the war in the first place.