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December 4, 2001
Rep. Ron Paul
Keep Your
Eye on the Target
Susan
Herman
Ashcroft
and the Patriot Act
Tariq Ali
The Afghan
King and the Nazis
November 30, 2001
Jordan
Green
Disappeared
in the Southland
Willliam Blum
Rebuilding
Afghanistan?
November 29, 2001
Phillip
Cryan
Defining
Terrorism
Robert Fisk
We Are the
War Criminals Now
November 28, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
A
Continuum of Terror
Patrick Cockburn
Tribal
Council:
Don't Blame It All on Taliban
Robert
Fisk
At
Last, The Truth about the Sabra and Chatila Massacres
Harry Browne
The Bill of
Rights:
They Threw It All Away
Sunil
Sharma
Suffer
Palestine's Children
November 27, 2001
Paul Coggins
Kafka and
the Patriot Act
Tariq
Ali
Tigris
and Euprhates
November 26, 2001
Robert Fisk
Blood and
Tears in Kandahar
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Boeing's
Sweet Deal
CounterPunch Wire
Human
Rights Abuses and
Nuke Waste Shipments
Alexander
Cockburn
Harry
Potter and Terrorism
November 25, 2001
Ralph Nader
The Crisis
in Leadership
Sam Bahour
Israel's
Choice
November 24, 2001
Patrick Cockburn
He Who
Has
the Guns Rules
November 20, 2001
Sam Bahour
Plain
Truths About Palestine
Michael Ratner
Moving Toward
a
Police State
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
November 19, 2001
Edward
Said
Suicidal
Ignorance
November 18, 2001
John Farley
Shame on You,
Chelsea!
Resources:
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About 9/11
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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
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December
5, 2001
Best
Defense Against Biowar?...Diplomacy
Biotech's Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution
By Edward Hammond
Presently, the US Congress' biodefense pocketbook
is wide open. There's no shortage of outstretched hands. Much
of it is pursued by an industry whose public image is staked
on the false hope of creating meaningful protection from biological
attack. In the past week, almost every major US daily has run
articles praising the experimental biodefense "miracle"
or "magic" brewing just around the corner at a local
university or biotech startup. Did the United States have such
a huge and promising biotech defense industry before September
11th and nobody noticed? No. By global standards, our program
is big; but it isn't promising and the professor or Chief Technology
Officer around the corner is no more likely to save you from
a biological attack than a tidal wave.
Through America's preoccupation with
homeland biodefense, the biotech industry believes it has been
granted a license to proceed into a profitable war with no possibility
of producing peace and no durable long-term product but profit.
Congress didn't exactly give biotech a Gulf of Tonkin Resolution;
but sloppy media coverage and shameless opportunism are creating
one.
DynCorp, a spooky US defense contractor
best known for blasting Colombia with wide spectrum herbicides
in the Drug War, is setting up a bioweapons vaccine business.
It's partner is Porton International, a company which sprang
forth from Porton Down, the UK's equivalent of Ft. Detrick, MD.
Before 1969 Ft. Detrick was the US headquarters of biological
weapons research. Now it houses important elements of our biodefense
apparatus. DynCorp has its fingers in many pies and also advises
the US Army and industry on compliance with biological and chemical
weapons agreements.
Another major military contractor, Science
Applications International Corporation (SAIC) already has assets
at Ft. Detrick through contracts with the military and the National
Cancer Institute.
In Texas, Lynntech Inc. proffers organophosphorus
hydrolase as part of its quest to, in the soothing words of a
local newspaper, discover "a single enzyme that will neutralize
all toxic agents." A pipe dream if one ever existed; but
on September 11th the Texans got a call from a general at Ft.
Detrick.
In Seattle, Corixa Corp. publicly complains
that $3.5 million isn't enough for its experimental anthrax vaccine
and wants more help from the government. Corixa's stock is up
more than 50%. There are legions more.
The Vaccine
Push
During the Gulf War, the US realized
that it did not have the ability to vaccinate its troops (much
less those of allies) against anthrax and other biological weapons
possessed by Iraq. Entreaties to the pharmaceutical industry
prompted a flood of antibiotics but little vaccine. Treating
disease has always been more profitable than preventing it.
After further haggling, industry made
clear it wasn't interested in manufacturing bioweapons vaccines
without massive subsidies and relief from liability. The military
effectively agreed, and SAIC drew up a plan for the government
to invest about $3 billion in research and to build vaccine facility
costing $370 million. At this government facility, companies
will produce eight (8) vaccines against anthrax, smallpox, plague,
tularemia, botulinum, "next generation" (read: genetically
engineered) anthrax, ricin, and equine encephalitis. This $3
billion plus buys only eight, only to protect the US military
and, by agreement, some soldiers from Canada and the UK. US civilians
are out of luck, according to SAIC "Beyond the baseline
operating scope of the [government-owned, contractor-operated]
facility design." Foreign citizens aren't even an afterthought.
Avoiding the
Spiral and Invoking Diplomacy
On September 4th, the New York Times
revealed that US Central Intelligence Agency biodefense researchers
had tested mock biological bombs and built a real bioweapons
production facility in Nevada, activities completely indistinguishable
from offensive biological warfare research. The US kept these
activities secret, and did not divulge them in annual confidence
building reports to the Bioweapons Convention.
The US is now pouring billions more into
biodefense. In the current climate, it is difficult to believe
that potential adversaries will not respond with their own investments.
After all, the US itself has failed to comply with its arms control
commitments. The situation could very easily spiral out of control.
The sooner the US understands the impossibility
of effective biodefense, the sooner pressure will build for the
Bush administration to come to its senses and advocate fast conclusion
of the Verification Protocol to the Biological and Toxin Weapons
Convention.
Edward Hammond
is a Director of the Sunshine
Project USA, a non-profit organization working to prevent
development and use of biological weapons.
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