Warfare Against Civilian Population

by Eva-Maria Foellmer, Zurich

On 1 July, the Sunshine Project published parts of a secret research report for the Pentagon about the 'The Advantages and Limitations of Calmatives for Use as a Non-Lethal Technique'. A set of drugs, ranging from Valium to anesthetics and illegal drugs, has been prepared for a set of 'military and civilian' applications.

The research report dating from October 3, 2000, now had to be published according to American law. What has come to light almost defies belief: The Pentagon commissioned a study investigating how entire populations can be paralysed by using medicines and drugs, and how medicine can be used as an instrument of torture. The plans aim to use medicine as weapons, e.g. in the form of micro-encapsulation technology, which involves granules of a minute quantity of an agent coated with a hardened shell. Distributed on the ground, the shell breaks under foot and the agent is released. The report also lists the use of psychoactive chewing gum and lollipops containing Fentanyl, which is normally used to treat children in severe pain. But now the Pentagon is to be equipped with medicines whose side effects are so severe that they are no longer prescribed. They are now to be used as weapons in a psychopharmacological war. Other suggested weapons are 'club drugs' such as the 'date rape drug' GHB, which is used by sex offenders in order to make their victims weak-willed. Other sinister methods include mixing drugs into potable water supplies in order to contaminate them.

The report also discusses the development of medicines suitable for specific subpopulations. The authors of the report do not even stop at the idea of exposing hungry refugees to these substances. An 'agitated population' can also be a target group. The 'research report' tendentiously labels people of a different opinion as being psychologically disturbed.

Entire populations or ethnic groups can be set in a condition of lethargy, knocked out, or eliminated with this Chemical Mace. This is an unparalleled attack on human dignity and human rights. This whole way of thinking, however, fits in with the new American strategy that is contrary to international law. It does not aim primarily at hitting the military forces of the enemy but the civilian population in the event of war. Is gagging the political will of the people with the help of psychopharmacological drugs and then crushing them with the boot of power the kind of 'greatness' dreamt up by the western alliance?

There should be an outcry throughout the world against these unscrupulous aspirations to power. Just how much contempt for humankind are we able to stomach? The new princes of power obviously want their subjects to be tools in their hands, arbitrarily available, weak-willed and also expendable 'if necessary'.

These plans are alarming indeed, and people in all parts of the world must stand up in their own defence and spread the news of these plans. The large media have so far managed to hush up the subject. Not long ago the Russians placed certain dissidents in psychiatric wards and gagged them with psychopharmacological drugs. When this became known the Russians were branded of treating their dissidents in an inhuman way.

Should the voice of dissident remain silent throughout Europe, while the Americans are endorsing the very same procedures against entire populations, whole cities, whole regions or ethnic groups?