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Weapons of Mass Destruction
- where are they? WMDs? by Linda Waters This entire issue of weapons of mass destruction has been a thorn in my side. The beginning: Nerve gases were formulated for weapons use during WWII, and very effective they were. Not that chemical companies have ever been hurting, but here was more money in their coffers. Okay, war's over- the chemical companies decide well, if this stuff works on people, it should work on insects as well. Voila! New industry- insecticides! Now the chemical companies can be at peace with themselves that their profits during the war will not be diminished; in fact, they decide to dupe the public into thinking that vast expanses of nothing but short little plants that you have to feed, treat for insects, and mow is a viable status symbol. People buy into it - big time. Lawn care is big business, and you can't have a lawn that's better than the Jones' without pouring tons of insecticides on it to keep it looking more fake than real. ChemLawn, Ortho, all these companies happily reaping the profit of what, to me, is an entirely silly idea. Now, here's where the political becomes the personal (one of my favorite axioms that works both ways): Somehow along the way my body accumulated enough of these poisons so that I go into seizures whenever I'm exposed to them. I had to move out into the country after suffering many visits to ICU when I lived in lawn-competitive suburbia. Of course, none of the doctors knew what was wrong- if they had caught on in the beginning, a standard dose of atropine, which all GIs carry with them, would have saved me years of illness. So- it's questionable, in my mind, whether something like industrial-strength pesticides have to actually be in a warhead to cause damage- after all, I was affected by the drift. Pour enough of this stuff in a subway and see what happens... wouldn't that be lethal enough without a warhead? Did they explode warheads when they killed the Kurds? by Craig Johnson Re: Linda's post Chemical weapons were not used in WWII, Blistering agents were the primary chemical weapon of WWI. As far as Chemical and Biological weapons, Russia spent vast amounts of resources putting together the most advanced research and largest stockpiles of all the cold war players. Both Russia and the US have been destroying their stockpiles for I believe about 10 years. Russia still has thousands of sites they can't afford to clean up. The US has financed some of the cleanups for Russia , but for obvious reasons is concentrating on nuclear sites and materials as far as budgeting goes. I believe most of the U.S. stockpiles have been destroyed over this period of time. Like nuclear weapons advances, the US can pretty accurately simulate real world results from Computer Simulation models. That's why the US signed the test ban treaty and hasn't needed to detonate nuclear devices since the early 80's. One of the last known nuclear detonations was to power the x-ray laser the military was working on during the beginning of the Star Wars research. It's been a few years but it's all in the book Star Warriors published in the early 90s? A fascinating read. By the way Chemical Companies do very little defense work. I'm no Chemist but I know most of the "conventional" WMD that comes to most peoples minds are largely produced using ordinary chemicals designed for normal commercial and Industrial applications. Because these chemicals do have the "WMD" stigma attached to them they are really scrutinized through Federal Regulations. This actually would create more costs and headaches for companies that produce them. If you really think that Chemical Cos. are making a fortune off Military applications. I would suggest you look into companies who produce ephedra, I'll bet since it became the big ingredient in meth that the resulting regulations and restrictions pretty much ate up the profit margins they enjoyed from it's original intentions. by Linda Waters Re: Craig's post While it's uncertain if these chemicals were actually used, history substantiates that they were developed as weapons during that time. Again, all soldiers since WWII carry atropine to counter-affect exposure. "Background: Organophosphates (OPs) are chemical substances originally produced by the reaction of alcohol's and phosphoric acid. In the 1930s they were used as insecticides, but the German military developed these substances as neurotoxins in World War II. They function as cholinesterase inhibitors, thereby affecting neuromuscular transmission." http://www.emedicine.com/neuro/topic286.htm Other sites on the history of insecticides: http://www.wspc.com/books/lifesci/p231.html http://www.mitretek.org/home.nsf/Homelandsecurity/HistoryNerveGases Chemical companies don't have to do defense work. All they have to do is produce the stuff and let whatever malignant forces take it from there. Chevron, Dow, Royal Dutch/Shell, BP/Conoco are all listed as petrochemical companies. Since these companies are major oil refiners as well, they have tremendous presence in world affairs because they have the billions of dollars to back them up. Hence the push to for farmers and suburbanites to believe that these chemicals are doing more good than harm. At the same time, a little research shows that even now there's large amounts of people who suffer from exposure, sometimes resulting in death. (I can give you some URLs on that too, if you want.) While the government assures us that exposure to the spray used to control mosquitoes due to the threat of West Nile is not harmful, there's documentation to the contrary. (I happened to be in the city one day when they were spraying- I went home and promptly had seizures.) by Cherrie Lynn Lipsett re: Linda Waters' post From this I take it that you want to call all insecticides put on lawns in the US and else where weapons of mass destruction and that we who live in the country or those who live in less affluent neighborhoods where lawns are not sprayed and keep so neatly or us that live in countries that don't care so well for their lawns should all group together and invade and kill those that live in the well manicured lawns areas of the US and the rest of the world. I can show you how I came to this logical conclusion by going through easy algebra if a +b = c and a+b = e+ d then d+e= c except in place of the algebraic letters we will use your statements. I am getting ready to do this with another post and would be happy to do the same with yours for you. by Trevor Batten Re: Cherrie's post Clearly, military technology is expensive to develop -and, unless actually used in combat, which is often considered a dangerous and undesirable social activity by many people, also offer a rather small financial return on investment. Presumably, financial returns on military investment can be increased (many fold) when military technology can also be exploited for commercial use. This seems to be true for a wide range of consumer products -from internet to pesticides. In some cases, such as computer war games, social acceptance of some technologies makes the psychological transition back to military use somewhat easier -as the principles have already been acceptted. However, considering the financial advantage of commercial systems over military systems (to say nothing of any humanitarian aspects) one would expect military systems to be considered rather a primitive approach to social problem solving and conflict resolution. One wonders if it is not simply a question of marketing: That perhaps those who prefer the military option haven't quite mastered modern techniques. Which, if true, is a strange paradox -as presumably, many of these techniques originated from within the military...... by Duncan Reilly Re: Cherrie's post Maybe the rest of the world should invade the US as the largest of all types of WMD. But I doubt that that is what Linda has in mind. Rather she (to me) is pointing out the hypocrisy of the US in determining who they want to say has WMDs. Further a 'smoking gun' is a metaphor not to be taken in the literal sense. WMD found forwarded by Cherrie Lynn Lipsett Bush Administration finds WMD in Iraq but does not disclose the information. Why? Because it turns out the missiles discovered were secretly sold to Iraq by the Reagan Administration. See the forwarded article written by Stephen Crockett and Al Lawrence (hosts of Democratic Talk Radio): http://groups.yahoo.com/group/QuietPolyJuryFury/message/1874 |
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