THE HANDSTAND

THE HANDSTAND

NOVEMBER 2002

"SUBSIDIARITY" - will LEGAL EQUALITY be brought to GLOBAL POLITICS - or will "SUPERPOWER" NATIONS CONTINUE TO ASSERT, AND COERCE THE PUBLIC in order to"RULE ALL"??

here is An example of the utterly criminal policy of a SUPERPower that Europe and the USA condone:
Subsequent to months of charges that Saddam Hussein used gas (mustard gas) on 200 Kurds(8,000), and is evil beyond comparison - We now are expected to accept that colateral deaths of over l40 innocent citizens, due to gas used on Chechen hostage takers in a Russian theatre, is not more than a "necessary evil". In contradiction of medical experts (below) the Russians have announced that fentanyl, unknown as an aerosol, was used:

The mystery gas used in Moscow during the hostage rescue likely is not fentanyl, as claimed by Russian health officials, but could be from a class of anesthetic gases that includes halothane, commonly used during surgery, experts told United Press International Wednesday.

Joe Miller, a pharmacologist and professor of cell and neurobiology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, has looked into the reports coming out of Moscow and told UPI the side effects and experiences of the survivors do not fit with the known effects of that drug.
"Fentanyl is typically given intravenously" and not in a gas form, Miller said. The Russians would have had to develop a method to aerosolize fentanyl and "that's no trivial matter," he added.
"I never would've guessed they could've gotten an opiate (such as fentanyl) into an aerosol," said S.J. Enna, professor of pharmacology at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan. "To my knowledge that has not been done.
"Opiates tend to be solids at room temperature, so you have to modify them so that they can be suspended and sprayed in a gas," Enna said.
Further, naloxone -- a drug used to treat heroin overdoses -- is a known antidote to fentanyl overdoses and it makes no sense the Russians did not have this on hand, Miller said.

Public Health Minister Yuri Shevchenko was quoted by Russia's Tass said that doctors had been warned before the attacks that fentanyl was being used and they should use naloxone to treat survivors. This conflicts with earlier reports that physicians were not told what the gas was or that naloxone might be an antidote.
A more likely candidate is a class of gas called halogenated anesthetics, Miller said. These are "bluish-gray in color and taste sweet and they all knock you out in seconds," he said, noting all these characteristics fit with reports coming from the survivors.
Some of the hostage survivors have reported a sweet taste and Miller said there is no other gas class that has that characteristic.
A German toxicologist has reported finding traces of halothane, a member of the halogenated class, in tissue samples taken from two Germans exposed to the gas during the raid.

THE CONVENTION LETTERS ISSUED IN OCTOBER HAVE THE FOLLOWING DIALOGUE PRINTED WHICH INDICATES TO EUROPEAN CITIZENS, PERHAPS, HOW FAR GERMANY, FRANCE AND THE U.K. ARE PREPARED TO RESOLVE THE PROBLEMS of MEMBER STATES,WHICH, AS A RESULT OF THE IRISH "NO" VOTE, ENABLES THESE THREE MEMBERS TO DICTATE ALL POLICIES TO THE OTHER MEMBER NATIONS.
In the event that "small" national members now have no veto; nor can even congregate among themselves to veto a policy dictated by the above nations, "subsidiarity" discussions have been allowed at the CONVENTION DISCUSSIONS to "suggest" the accomodation of disagreement or refusal of a member state to accept a European Policy Directive.

Mr Mendes de Vigo presented the conclusions from the Working Group on SUBSIDIARITY which he has chaired. The most radical suggestion from the working group is to set up a "Early Warning System" where a national parliament can give their voice, if they believe the Commission initiative does not live up to the principal of subsidiarity. If a significant number of national parliaments complain the Commission will have to review its proposal. The national parliaments should also be given a right to appeal to the European Court of Justice, if there is a dispute (between national parliaments and other institutions) on compliance with the principle of subsidiarity.

The working group had considered to give regions with legislative competencies a right to appeal as well, though concluded that it must be up to each member state to organise and channel any complaints thorough their parliament.

Mr. Duff (UK, EP) was afraid that the Early Warning System would be throwing sand in the EU machinery. The system might weaken the Commission instead of strengthening it. On the same lines Mr. Michel (France, NP) stated that he could simply not support the Early Warning System.

Mr. Hain (UK, Gov.) agreed with Duff that the Commission should be strengthened, but did not see the Early Warning System to damage the power of the Commission, as it is not a system that will block the legislative process. On the contrary the system will impose responsibility to the national parliaments on EU affairs. This innovative(!) suggestion of a subsidiarity, an Early Warning System, should rather be seen as a test for the Convention, whether it really has the courage to introduce new mechanisms in the EU system that will bring the legislative process closer to its citizens.

Mr Tuefel (De, NP), Mr Kiljoen (Fi, NP), Mr MacDonnel (Ir, NP) were among the positive responses towards the Early Warning System as they wee in favour of it involving National Parliaments in the implementation of susbidiarity.

Mr Bonde stated that national parliaments should be involved in guarding the principle of subsidiarity, however he found the proposal not to give enough competence to the parliaments.

Mr. Moscovici (Fr. Gov.) believed that the government should also be informed about opinions submitted by national parliaments to the Commission in the Early warning system.

Many speakers were concerned about not explicitly mentioning that the regions with legislative power should have the right to appeal to the European Court of Justice on the issue of subsidiarity. Furthermore, some speakers questioned the legitimacy of the Committee of Regions, thus not finding the right to appeal for the Committee of Regions and the National Parliaments sufficient.

On the Contrary Mr Meyer and Mr Dastis in line with the Working Groups discussion believed that it was up to each member state to sort out there own house, and find out who they will include in the Early Warning System.

Few speakers believed that COSAC should play a greater roll also in respect to the principal of subsidiarity.

Mr Vitorino (Commission) found the Early Warning System to be interesting, although he thought the national parliaments should be able to get involved in all stages of the legislative process, as the Commission's proposals can be radically changed in the Council.

....IN THE EVENT OF READERS REQUIRING FURTHER INFORMATION RE. KURDS GASSED IN HALABJA THE FOLLOWING MAY BE AN EYE-OPENER TO THE TRUTH.

US Suppressed Gas Charge Report
by Raju Thomas
Times of India,
16 September 2002.
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/209A.ht

US Army War College (USAWC) undertook a study of the use of chemical weapons by Iran and Iraq in order to better understand battlefield chemical warfare. They concluded that it was Iran and not Iraq that killed the Kurds.

The repeated American propaganda weapon to rationalise the deaths of more than one million innocent Iraqis since 1991 through economic sanctions is that Saddam Hussein used poison gas against Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war and against Iraq's own Kurdish citizens. The accusation is now being invoked to launch a full-scale American assault on Iraq. This claim of Iraq gassing its own citizens at Halabjah is suspect.

First, both Iran and Iraq used chemical weapons against each other during their war.
Second, at the termination of the Iran-Iraq war, professors Stephen Pelletiere and Leif Rosenberger, and Lt Colonel Douglas Johnson of the US Army War College (USAWC) undertook a study of the use of chemical weapons by Iran and Iraq in order to better understand battlefield chemical warfare.

They concluded that it was Iran and not Iraq that killed the Kurds. In the first report they wrote: "In September 1988 - a month after the war had ended...the state department abruptly, and in what many viewed as sensational manner, condemned Iraq for allegedly using chemical weapons against its Kurdish population...with the result that numerous Kurdish civilians were killed

The Iraqi government denied that any such gassing had occurred...Having looked at all the evidence that was available to us, we find it impossible to confirm the state department's claim that gas was used in this instance. To begin with there were never any victims produced. International relief organisations who examined the Kurds - in Turkey where they had gone for asylum - failed to discover any. Nor were there any found inside Iraq. The claim rests solely on testimony of the Kurds who had crossed the border into Turkey, where they were interviewed by staffers of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee."

Regarding the Halabjah incident where Iraqi soldiers were reported to have gassed their own Kurdish citizens, the USAWC investigators observed: "It appears that in seeking to punish Iraq, Congress was influenced by another incident that occurred five months earlier in another Iraq-Kurdish city, Halabjah. In March 1988, the Kurds at Halabjah were bombarded with chemical weapons, producing many deaths.

Photographs of the Kurdish victims were widely disseminated in the international media. Iraq was blamed for the Halabjah attack even though it was subsequently brought out that Iran too had used chemical weapons in this operation, and it seemed likely that it was the Iranian bombardment that had actually killed the Kurds." [The Iranians thought the Kurds had fled Halabjah and that they were attacking occupying Iraqi forces. But the Iraqis had already vacated Halabjah and the Kurds had returned. Iran gassed the Kurds by accident]

In March 1991 as the massive US-led attack on Iraq ended, I was visiting the USAWC to give a lecture on South Asian security and discussed this problem with professor Pelletiere at lunch. I recall Pelletiere telling me that the USAWC investigation showed that in the Iranian mass human wave battlefield strategy, Teheran used non-persistent poison gas against Iraqi soldiers so as to be able to attack and advance into the areas vacated by Iraqis. On the other hand, Baghdad used persistent gas to halt the Iranian human wave attacks. There was a certain consistency to this pattern.

However, in the Halabjah incident, the USAWC investigators discovered that the gas used that killed hundreds of Kurds was the non-persistent gas, the chemical weapon of choice of the Iranians. Note it was the Iranians who arrived at the scene first, who reported the incident to UN observers, and who took pictures of the gassed Kurdish civilians. However, Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait in August and the truth of the Halabjah incident became inconvenient.

I asked professor Pelletiere in March 1991, when he thought their findings would come out. I recall him telling me that it would probably take about five years after emotions over the Gulf war crisis died down. However, the USAWC report of 1990 has been dispatched into oblivion. The propaganda that Iraq gassed its own Kurdish civilians is constantly invoked by the media. It was reactivated by president Clinton in December 1998 to justify the further bombing and destruction of Iraq.

Meanwhile, estimates of the number of innocents who have died in Iraq from relentless American-dictated UN sanctions range between 1-1.7 million, including more than half-a-million children. An article in The New England Journal of Medicine, assessed through a study of monthly and annual infant mortality rates in Iraq that "more than 46,900 children died between January and August 1991. UNICEF official Thomas Ekfal estimates that about 500,000 children have died in Iraq since the United Nations Security Council imposed economic sanctions on Baghdad.

If the US bombs Iraq, it is not the direct loss of Iraqi lives from "collateral damage" alone that will be the only tragedy, but the unseen and accelerated loss of lives of tens of thousands of more infants, the sick and the elderly from lack of medicine and other healthcare.

Before the US bullies all countries into supporting its bombing of Iraq, major countries such as France, Germany, Russia, China, India and Indonesia should stand up in unison and say "no more [bombs]" to the sole superpower.

The Advantages and Limitations of Calmatives for Use as a Non-Lethal Technique, a 49 page report obtained last week by the Sunshine Project under US information freedom law, has revealed a shocking Pentagon program that is researching psychopharmacological weapons

The Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD)

The researchers have developed a massive calmatives database and are following biomedical research on mechanisms of drug addiction, pain relief, and other areas of research on cognition-altering biochemicals. For example, the JNLWD team is tracking research on cholecystokinin, a neurotransmitter that causes panic attacks in healthy people and is linked to psychiatric disorders.

Powerful Drugs: The drugs have hallucinogenic and other effects, including apnea (stopped breathing), coma, and death. One class of drugs under consideration are fentanyls. The report's cover features a diagram of fentanyl. According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the biological effects of fentanyls "are indistinguishable from those of heroin, with the exception that the fentanyls may be hundreds of times more potent." The report says that the drugs' profound effects may make it necessary to "check for the occasional person who may stop breathing (many medical reasons in the unhealthy, the elderly, and very young...", as well as victims who "'go to sleep' in positions that obstruct their airway".

Modes of Delivery: A number of weaponization modes are discussed in the report. These include aerosol sprays, microencapsulation, and insidious methods such as introduction into potable water supplies and psychoactive chewing gum. JNLWD is investing in the development of microencapsulation technology, which involves creating granules of a minute quantity of agent coated with a hardened shell. Distributed on the ground, the shell breaks under foot and the agent is released. A new mortar round being developed could deliver thousands of the minute granules per round. The team concludes that new delivery methods under development by the pharmaceutical industry will be of great weapons value. These include new transdermal, transmucosal, and aerosol delivery methods. The report cites the relevance of a lollipop containing fentanyl used to treat children in severe pain, and notes that "the development of new pain-relieving opiate drugs capable of being administered via several routes is at the forefront of drug discovery", concluding that new weapons could be developed from this pharmaceutical research.

Edward Hammond is director of The Sunshine Project, based in Austin, Texas. He can be reached at: hammond@sunshine-project.org

Additional information, on relationships between these
weapons and protection human rights, medical ethics, and drug research is forthcoming.