[Peace] FW: Watch out for these Arms Inspectors!

Tue Dec 31 06:16:47 CST 2002

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Von: portsideMod at netscape.net
Antworten an: portside at yahoogroups.com
Datum: Mon, 30 Dec 2002 20:34:15 -0500
An: portside at yahoogroups.com
Betreff: Watch out for these Arms Inspectors!

Two Articles: Canadian Peace Activists Seek to Inspect U.S. Weapons of Mass
Destruction.

=====

'Arms Inspectors' Bolster Canadian Anti-war Movement
by Mark Bourrie

Published on Monday, December 30, 2002 by the Inter
Press Service

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1230-01.htm

OTTAWA - A Canada-based peace and disarmament group
plans to launch ''weapons inspections'' in the United
States to draw attention to its claim that the country
is a dangerous rogue state.

<http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/images/1230-01
..jpg> 
Canadian activists David Langille and Christy
Ferguson of the group Rooting Out Evil, which plans to
inspect US sites they suspect if developing weapons of
mass destruction. (Canadian Press Photo)

The group, Rooting Out Evil, plans to assemble volunteer weapons inspectors
at U.S.-Canada border checkpoints some time next year and says it has
already found 'volunteers' for the campaign from Europe, North America and
Asia. It is asking voluntary inspectors to sign up at its website -
www.rootingoutevil.org.

The action is part of a growing campaign of activists,
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and individuals
trying to keep this country out of a possible U.S.-Iraq
war. Canada's government is under intense pressure from
the U.S. to join an anti-Iraq coalition.

Twice in the past month, Paul Celucci, the U.S.
ambassador to Canada, has publicly called for Canada to
participate in a war against Iraq and suggested that
Ottawa should be spending more on its military.

Canada already has ships with the U.S. force in the
Arabian Sea, but the last of this country's troops
overseas returned from Afghanistan in September.

Polls show Canadians split almost evenly on the issue
of participating in a war against Iraq, and so far the
government has, despite the intense U.S. pressure,
stopped short of committing troops to a U.S.-Iraqi
conflict.

Peace activists are also encouraging the government to
resist pressure to increase military spending.
Recently, the Polaris Institute think tank, the
Canadian Peace Institute and Projet la Paix (Peace
Project) released a report, 'Breaking Rank: A Citizens'
Review of Canada's Military Spending', which argues
against a military build-up.

Caroline Harvey, director of Projet la Paix, warned in
an interview ''not only are we witnessing the
resurgence of the American empire through President
Bush's doctrine of the supreme role of the U.S. as
policeman of the world''.

''Since (the) Sep. 11 (2001 terrorist attacks on New
York and the Pentagon), we've also seen signs of
'Fortress North America' emerging as the U.S. begins to
build a common security regime around this continent
through its new homeland security agency.''

''Important questions remain, including, 'What role is
Canada expected to play in continental
militarization'?''

The report's authors reviewed hundreds of documents and
interviewed defense experts, many of them veterans of
World War II and Korea.

The report says Canadians are being told by the U.S.
and domestic media that military spending is too low,
when, in fact, it is comparable with that in other
developed countries.

''Canada's defense spending is already very high by
world standards,'' said Polaris Institute research
director Steven Staples. ''It is estimated to be 12.3
billion dollars by 2002-2003 estimates, making Canada
the sixth highest military spender within NATO and 16th
highest military spender in the world.''

He added that of Canadians who were asked in a poll to
prioritize government spending, 75 per cent said
education and health care spending should be highest
priorities and only one in 10 said defense.

Projet la Paix's Harvey added, ''most grassroots
organizations don't see the link between globalization
and militarization. We need a military that protects
Canadian sovereignty and keeps peace, not one that is
just part of the U.S war machine.''

In December, 15 prominent church leaders - representing
a broad spectrum of Canadian churches - as well as the
20-year-old peace group Project Ploughshares and the
inter-church justice coalition KAIROS, sent an urgent
message to Prime Minister Jean Chretien, asking him to
resist growing pressure in favor of an invasion of
Iraq.

''This is a time for intense diplomacy and face-to-face
negotiations, not for missiles and high-altitude
bombing. This is especially a time for
multilateralism,'' said a joint letter signed by the
president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic
Bishops, the general secretary of the Anglican Church
of Canada and the moderator of the United Church of
Canada.

The churches warned against supporting any United
Nations resolution that makes it virtually impossible
for Iraq to comply with demands. Such a resolution
''would be a mere cover for an invasion that might be
multinational but would still be unjust'', the letter
say.

The church leaders called on Chretien to ensure that
Canada supports a negotiated, peace-building approach
''consistent with international law and taking the
common good of Iraq's people as its starting point''.

They also want an end to sanctions and reparations
payments against Iraq.

''There must be economic hope for Iraqi society, for
without it Iraqis will not recover the energy they will
need to rebuild their country - nor to change their
government,'' counsel the church leaders. ''The world
should not repeat the errors of the settlement imposed
on Germany after World War I.''

Copyright 2002 IPS

###

Weapons 'inspectors' Canadian activists plan to
spotlight US research on germ, chemical warfare

By Farah Stockman, Boston Globe Staff, 12/30/2002

Massachusetts Institute of Technology biologist
Jonathan King argued for years that the United States
should welcome international inspectors to look at
programs involving chemical and biological weapons
here.

But 25-year-old Christy Ferguson was not exactly who he
had in mind.

Ferguson, a Toronto-based peacenik, plans to travel to
this country in February with a group of Canadian
activists to inspect laboratories the group says are
developing weapons of mass destruction. Never mind that
Ferguson studied philosophy, not physics. Never mind
that she wouldn't know weaponized anthrax if it wafted
under her nose. No one - not even Ferguson herself -
thinks the group will be allowed inside labs that
conduct US military research. Indeed, she's banking on
that, since her group can't afford protective suits or
fancy germ-detectors anyway.

''We might just be able to plant a sign saying, `This
facility is suspected of containing weapons of mass
destruction,''' said Ferguson, an organizer with the
Center for Social Justice, the Canadian organization
spearheading the ''Rooting-Out-Evil'' inspection
initiative.

But, at a time when America is pushing to go to war
over Iraq's alleged stockpiles of chemical and
biological weapons, the publicity-seeking Canadians
have struck a chord with a group of US scientists who
worry that the United States is secretly developing its
own chemical and biological weapons program in defiance
of international law. These scientists, some of whom
are based in Boston, have quietly begun circulating the
activists' e-mails to their colleagues for discussion.

''There is justification to be concerned that we are
getting back into the business of ... hostile
exploitation of biotechnology,'' said Harvard biologist
Matthew Meselson, who recently received an e-mail about
Ferguson's group and was once a close adviser on
biological warfare to Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger.

The United States officially shut down its biological
weapons program in 1969 and led the world in the ban on
germ warfare by helping to draft the Biological and
Toxin Weapons Convention of 1972. Congress ordered the
destruction of US chemical weapons in 1986 and ratified
the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997. The only
research conducted now, the Bush administration says,
is for defending against biological and chemical
weapons, which is allowed by the treaties.

But, in recent months, American scientists have stepped
up efforts to prove that the United States is
conducting secret research that may violate the
international agreements. Perhaps the most compelling
and embarrassing evidence has come from the high-
profile investigation into the weaponized anthrax found
in last year's rash of terrorist letters, which led
investigators to probe American researchers and
conclude that the anthrax was probably made in a US
facility.

''During the course of the anthrax investigation, it
came out that the US has been weaponizing anthrax for
years,'' said Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a member of the
antiwar research and advocacy group, the Federation of
American Scientists, who has conducted a detailed
analysis of the terrorist letters. ''No one realized
that and it has been done secretly. ... The view of
this administration is that we can do it, but nobody
else can do it. And therefore, we're going after
Iraq.''

Scientists also point to the fact that just one month
ago US officials shot down a last-ditch attempt to
enact a new international agreement that would have
sent inspectors to monitor biological weapons in all
participating countries, including the United States.

The protocol, which more than 100 nations had been
negotiating for seven years, would have added monitors
and sanctions to the ban on biological weapons, which
currently operates as a ''gentlemen's agreement.''

State Department officials said they rejected the
proposed protocol because it would be too difficult for
monitors to tell whether biological agents in labs were
being researched for war or for defense. In testimony
before Congress last year, officials also expressed
concern that letting international weapons inspectors
in US labs could provide rogue nations and terrorists
with ''a road map'' of the kinds of defenses the United
States has been able to create and the vulnerabilities
that remain.

A State Department spokeswoman said the issue is not
the possession of biological weapons, but the
willingness to use them.

''The US government does not kill its own people,'' she
said. ''We have democratic values and open elections,
unlike Iraq under Saddam Hussein, who uses gas and
chemicals to kill their own people and their
neighbors.''

Another point of disagreement between the State
Department and many scientists is the definition of the
term ''defensive.'' Government officials say to find
cures or defenses for chemical and biological weapons,
researchers must first manufacture the weapons, an act
that some scientists believe violates the treaties.

Last year, The New York Times published an expose of
three projects the government considers vital defensive
research and advocates say raises alarm bells: a mock
germ bomb, a dummy germ-factory, and plans at the
Pentagon to genetically engineer a more potent version
of the anthrax bacterium.

''The question is not whether the US crossed the line''
on those projects, said Lynn Klotz, a Gloucester-based
scientist involved with the Federation of American
Scientists' working group on biological weapons. ''The
more important issue is that we ought to be taking
moral leadership in terms of the biological weapons. We
shouldn't be anywhere near the line.''

In the cloistered hallways of the labs, the scientists
have practiced their own brand of activism. King, the
MIT biologist, once collected the signatures of 1,500
scientists on a pledge against the military use of
biological research. Rosenberg and Klotz worked on a
''code of ethics'' for biodefense programs and started
a grass-roots education program to warn biologists
about the possible destructive uses of their work.
Meselson was among a group of academics that drew up a
new biological weapons treaty that would make
violations a crime under international law, enforceable
by any court in the world.

''This is a threat to the species,'' Meselson said.
''It rises above considerations of national security,
important as they may be.''

But with all their efforts, the scientists acknowledge
that they have never managed to raise much awareness
among the public. That's why news of the Canadian
activists has stirred intrigue and some support.

''Over the last year, the major force in the world
weakening the biological weapons convention has been
the United States,'' King said.

Such sentiments have sparked news agencies from London
to Japan to contact the activists behind
www.rootingoutevil.org for interviews, and prompted the
interest of at least one Canadian member of Parliament.

''You have to be prepared to actually go in, have a
discussion, view what's taking place there, and be
prepared to follow up,'' said Libby Davies, the
Parliament member representing Vancouver East who once
led a ''citizens' weapon inspection team'' to the doors
of a Washington state nuclear submarine base.

But the group of activists who thought up Rooting Out
Evil over breakfast one morning appear unaware of just
how timely their protest is and unprepared for the
avalanche of serious phone calls and requests for
information. When Ferguson coined the term, she had no
idea that she would be asked so many questions about
chemicals, treaties, or germs.

David Langille, spokesman for Center for Social Justice
and the main organizer of Rooting Out Evil, did not
know that the anthrax in last year's letters is
believed to be US-made, let alone the names or
locations of the laboratories where it could have been
manufactured. He had not heard that the United States
rejected a bid just weeks ago that would have sent real
inspectors to view facilities. ''I'm slightly
embarrassed not to be on top of that,'' the 51-year-old
activist admitted.

Pouring over a map an American group gave him of US
labs where work on biological and chemical weapons
might be taking place, Langille said the activists are
not even sure which sites they might seek to inspect.

''We're still collecting intelligence,'' he said. ''It
has to be within driving distance.''

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