>from: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Subject: Fw: [sn-vesti 8145] US sprays poison in drugs war >Date: Sun, 2 Jul 2000 > >This story is about the use of biological toxins, by the U.S., >against the people of Columbia. There have been reports that similar >chemicals were used to contaminate food crops in Yugoslavia, during >the illegal and NATO bombing campaign. Does anyone have any details >on this? At the time, there were scattered news reports in the >western media, that were quickly surpressed. This is also similar to >biological attacks against tobacco and other crops in Cuba. mart. > >-----Original Message----- >From: doslos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: Ivan Stoiljkovic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Date: July 2, 2000 10:49 AM >Subject: Fw: [sn-vesti 8145] US sprays poison in drugs war > > >Did anyone keep a record of something similar during NATO bombing? >They were reports that something like a fungus was found in the >fields on at least two occasions? Leah > >-----Original Message----- >Date: Saturday, July 01, 2000 8:25 PM >Subject: [sn-vesti 8145] US sprays poison in drugs war > >The Observer > >US sprays poison in drugs war Colombia aid includes plan to target >coca fields with GM herbicide which kills other crops and threatens >humans > > >Ed Vulliamy in New York > Sunday July 2, 2000 > > A torrent of potentially lethal herbicide is set to be unleashed >across great swaths of Colombia as part of a new US aid package which >was finally approved by Congress last week. A hidden and undebated >condition of the $1.6 billion dollar package - meant to finance the >Colombian government's fight against the now overlapping forces of >guerrilla rebels and narco-cartels - is a plan for military aircraft >to spray the country's coca-growing areas. > >The scheme echoes the infamous defoliation of Vietnam because the >plan involves a mycoherbicide called Fusarium EN-4. The Fusarium >fungi is the root for many of the chemical weapons developed by the >US, the Soviet Union, Britain, Israel, France and Iraq. >Mycotoxicologist Jeremy Bigwood - working with a fellowship grant to >carry out research into Fusarium derivatives used in biological >warfare - told The Observer that the use of the fungus in Colombia >would damage crops other than cocaine, and develop mutations >that could lethally affect humans with immune deficiencies. Fusarium >works by infecting crops with a soil-borne mould which secretes >toxins into the.roots, which then putrefy and dissolve the plants' >cells, killing them or - worse still -affecting the animals or humans >who feed off them. > >During the late1980s, a mystery epidemic of Fusarium suddenly >attacked coca-growing area of Peru. Bigwood was working as a photo- >journalist and teamed up with a Latin American expert, >Sharon Stevenson, to publish an article in the Miami Herald detailing >extensive damage to other crops than coca in the Peruvian valley. >Ruined peasants said they had seen helicopters spraying a brownish >smoke across the fields, but it remains a mystery whether the >Fusarium epidemic was an experiment by the US and Peruvian >authorities, as Bigwood and Stevenson suspected. Fusarium next >emerged in 1999 when Colonel Jim McDonough - a former colleague >of White House drug czar General Barry McCaffrey, now in charge of >the present Colombian operation - was hired by Governor Jeb Bush to >run the Florida anti-drug office. > >He proposed to spray the fungus's EN-4 strain on the state's copious >marijuana crops. His adviser in the scheme was Dr David Sands, now a >professor at the University of Montana in Bozeman, who had extracted >the strain for the US Department of Agriculture.The plan was scotched >when the head of Florida's Department of Environmental >Protection, Dr David Struhs, wrote a letter to the colonel dated 6 >April 1999, saying that the 'mutagenicity' of the fungus 'was by far >the most disturbing factor in attempting to use a Fusarium species as >a herbicide. It is difficult if not impossible to control the spread >of the Fusarium species, he wrote. 'The mutated fungi can cause >disease in a large number of crops including tomatoes, peppers, >flowers, corn and vines'. He added that the mutated genus could stay >in the ground for 40 years. During research for his lecture, Bigwood >traced Sands to Colombia where he was an executive with >Agricultural and Biological Control, a company which markets the >fungus. > > He visited scientists to tell them about EN-4, and - according to >the same scientists' accounts to Bigwood - instructed them not to >talk to the press. The government's 'fumigation' of coca-growing >areas of Colombia had been continuing for some time on a small scale, >with Indians in the high Andean villages complaining of nausea, >rashes and stomach problems after the spray-planes had swooped over. >They have also damaged legitimate crops, thereby undermining >government efforts to support farmers who have renounced poppy and >coca growing.The agent used in these cases was Glyphosate, marketed >the Monsanto company (famous for GM foods) as 'Roundup'. Monsanto had >been forced by a court case in New York to withdraw claims that >the product was 'safe, non-toxic and harmless'. > >The limited spraying programme did nothing to curb the mass >production of either cocaine or heroin. Official sources fear even if >the forthcoming programme were to wipe out a third of the drug, that >would send the price of the remaining two-thirds 'through the >ceiling'.US government researchers,says Bigwood, initially insisted >that the EN-4 strain was 'species specific', designed to attack only >the Erythroxylum genus in a coca plant. But, he says, there are >200 other plant species within that genus which do not contain coca >and could therefore affected and destroyed. Even this does not fully >define the threat to other crops because, says Bigwood, ' It mutates >into another organism, capable of attacking another plant. > > The protagonists of Fusarium can then hide behind the fact that when >it attacks something else, it has become something else.' Bigwood's >greatest concern is with the potential effect not on other crops than >coca, but on humans. Among the Colombian scientists who met with >Sands was Eduardo Posada, president of the Colombian Centre >for International Physics, who found Fusarium to be 'highly toxic'. > > His data found that that the mortality rate among hospital patients >who were immune-deficient and in-fected by the fungus was 76 per >cent. To apply a mycoherbicide from the air that has been associated >with a 76 per cent kill rate of hospitalised human patients would be >tantamount to biological warfare', he said. " JC > > __________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki - Finland +358-40-7177941, fax +358-9-7591081 e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.kominf.pp.fi ___________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe/unsubscribe messages mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___________________________________
