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>Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2001 13:31:52 -0700
> Samantha Atkins <samantha@objectent.com> extropians@extropy.org Re: Chomsky (was: Christopher Hitchens' Column)Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org
>
>John Clark wrote:
>>
>> Miriam English <miriam@werple.net.au> Wrote:
>>
>> > Are you really angry with him because he is indignant not only about the
>> > slaughter of the people in the WTC but also other people too?
>>
>> Yes. The factory in Sudan was blown up late at night to minimize casualties.
>> It was blown up because it was believed to be manufacturing biological weapons.
>> Now it is possible they were wrong about that, perhaps the murderous power
>> hungry thugs who run Sudan decided to build a baby food factory instead,
>> perhaps they decided to ring the baby food factory with barbed wire, security
>> check points, and anti aircraft guns just for the hell of it. But to put the blowing
>> up of this place in even the same ethical universe as crashing two civilian
>> airliners into the World Trade Center is yet another example of poor
>> Mr.Chomsky's moral tone deafness handicap.
>
>There was no proof that the plant was manufacturing nerve gas
>and so on beyond a precursor chemical commonly used in many
>things including pesticides being found in the soil near the
>plant. This chemical is not listed on any recognized
>international restrictions on possible biological or gas weapon
>production. The claim they were making never gas was largely
>discredited. The plant did manufacture 50% of the countries
>basic pharmaceuticals. We blew hell out of part of their
>pharmaceutical industry. We blew up parts of Sudan and
>Afghainstan supposedly in response to the East Africa bombings.
>We launched missles against the territory and facilities of
>countries we were not at war with. If such a thing was done
>against US targets or over US soil we would rightly consider it
>an act of war. And yet we talk about how humane we were to do
>it in the middle of the night? By current international
>conventions we had no right to do this at all. We ultimately
>did it because we could get away with it and perhaps because it
>took some attentions of Clinton's doemstic woes and because it
>was "doing something".
>
>In short we were major international bullies in this incident.
>We blew up a civilian target in the middle of a country's
>sovereign territory doing a great deal of harm to part of their
>economy for largely domestic political reasons and perhaps to
>give notice that we could "reach out and touch someone" whenever
>we wish regardless of relevant international law and the
>niceties of diplomacy.
>
>There were none of the bizarre contrivances listed above. The
>factory was thrown open to international examination.
>
>An investigation was called for in the UN and was backed by the
>22-nation Arab League. It was blocked by the US and Britain.
>
The Al Shifa plant was majority owned by a Mr. Idris, who obtained such ownership a few months before the attack. He is a Wahhabi Muslim (the same kind, a small miority sect within Islam, that form the vast majority of the Al Quaeda network). There were three separate samples of soil tested; all registered positive for EMPTA, which not only is a precursor of the VX nerve agent, but one formed by only one manufacturing process, the same one terrorists (such as Aum Shinryu and Saddam Hussein) have traditionally employed, mainly because it was the one publicly available in the Web, but not used by either the US or Russia. The question arises as to why such agricultural pesticides would be found in the soil surrounding this plant, as it was not built in the middle of farmland. The fact that the Al Khifa plant produced pharmaceuticals does not preclude its also being used to produce VX. What the owner did was a slick and savvy move; he hired an American PR firm which propose!
d alternative explanations for the indisputably existing evidence, knowing that those who were ideologically predisposed to accept such assertions would do so, even in the absence of any proof for them whatsoever.
>
>- samantha
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