by Dr Khalil Ibrahim Al Isa, a nuclear science researcher, 12-1-2003
Historically the Germans have been the uncontested masters in the discovery, production, and development of lethal poison gases used in warfare, such as mustard gas that is identified by the chemical compound symbol of C1Ch2-Ch2-S-Ch2-Ch2CI. This gas was discovered by German scientists and was first used in 1917. There is also the nerve gas Tabun that was discovered in 1937 by the German scientist G-Farden. Later, a similar gaseous chemical compound called the nerve gas Sarin was discovered….
The German engineering company NPI in Frankfurt expressed its regrets for the conduct of its colleagues in Karl Kolb in providing Iraq with the necessary technology to build its program to produce poison gases. These gases were used by the Iraqi regime in its wars against its neighbors and its own people. The German companies also sold Iraq seven chemical factories and launchers that could be used as chemical weapons. The Karl Kolb company, that has been under judicial investigation and prosecution since October 1985, also built a camp near Baghdad to test six laboratory units specialized in producing chemical materials to protect plants from locusts. These were sent to the complex in Al-Samarra. In the early 1980s, engineers from NVA, an East German company, built a complex near Baghdad to test chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. It was designed like the non-conventional weapons testing center in East Germany. It is equipped to protect against radiation. It consists of special buildings that are equipped with stations to remove traces of toxicity from equipment, personnel, and military materiel.
In 1984 the German economic monitoring organization gave in to pressures from German public opinion and dispatched two experts to Iraq to inspect the two factories in the Samarra complex. After they returned to their country, they expressed strong suspicions regarding the magnitude of the security systems guarding chemical factories that produce insecticides. One of them testified in the lawsuit against Karl Kolb. He now claims that he was duped at the time by the defunct regime.
The factories in the Samarra complex used to produce and stockpile the three lethal gas compounds of mustard gas, Tabun gas, and cyanide acid. Each time the defunct regime claimed that the factories in Samarra was a complex of scientific research laboratories to produce pharmaceuticals and insecticides to protect the fluoride in the soil. German scientists estimate the production capacity of the Samarra complex at thousands of tons per year. This was also confirmed in the 1984 report published by the US Central Intelligence Agency. The report said that the factories in Sammara were producing lethal nerve gases. Later the US government provided the German government with evidence related to the activities of this complex. The evidence was in the form of satellite images that revealed six-story buildings buried underground. The West German government rejected the evidence claiming that it did not prove anything against Iraq. This US insistence really worried the German Karl Kolb engineers and technicians that worked in the Samarra factories. They were so worried that Israel might bomb the Samarra complex that they hastened to build shelters to protect the personnel and the warehouses were the poison gases were stored. The horrible images of death of the victims of Iraq's chemical weapons in the town of Halabja in 1988 drove the West German authorities to take legal action after a lawsuit was filed against the German companies. The German federal organs to prevent customs crimes started procedures to identify the German companies that exported materials and equipment to Iraq that are used in the production of poison gases.
The investigators gathered incriminating evidence and seized large quantities of chemical materials and equipment weighing about four tons while hundreds of witnesses testified. The West German government filed an official lawsuit in the spring of 1991 and the criminal court charged seven senior officials in the large German company of providing the defunct regime with essential components to manufacture chemical weapons in the Samarra complex and the Al-Fallujah complex. By 1989 Germany's huge role had turned Iraq into the biggest country in the Middle East producing gases that can be used in warfare. An Iraqi ambassador attending the Paris conference on chemical weapons has stated, "Iraq is now receiving a huge number of persistent requests from Third World countries that want to buy Iraqi chemical weapons".
The last warning from the US intelligence services to the West German authorities came in the fall of 1990. Germany was warned about the serious dangers entailed in the sale of poisonous gases to Iraq by German companies. Germany was told that the Iraqis were producing the highly toxic cyanide acid in the German factories. This gas is highly toxic when inhaled. Near the end of 1990, this fact drove the United States and the United Kingdom to review the protection equipment of their armies since this type of gas can defeat and destroy gas masks. We can safely say that the two parts of Germany transferred technologies that go in the manufacture and development of chemical weapons by the defunct regime. German scientists and cadres were also highly instrumental on the ground. This was corroborated in all the reports on the criminal investigations that were held by the West German law courts. It was also corroborated in the report published by the Federal Technology Organization in Zurich. The Swiss committee of experts and scientists published a 50-page report that accused West Germany of supplying the defunct regime with chemical plants specialized in the manufacture of mustard gas, Tabun, and cyanide acid. The defunct regime established two German companies that were part of a network of hundreds of fictitious companies to conceal Iraq's purchases and to oversee the exportation of suspect materials to Iraq. These companies are TDG-SEG-Industrieanlagen, Krefeld, RFA and H + H Metalform, Drensteinfurt, RFA.
The scandal that enabled the ousted dictatorship Saddam Husayn to procure means to produce chemical weapons is in fact a scandal that affects Germany first and foremost. As for the other countries -- such as the Italians, Swedes, French, Dutch, Americans and others -- they can claim that they were duped by the defunct regime. https://fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/cw/az120103.html
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6-12-2019 Brazil has approved hundreds of new pesticide products since its far-right president, Jair
Bolsonaro, took power in January, and more than 1,000 since 2016, a study has found. Many of those approved are banned in Europe. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019
jun/12/hundreds-new-pesticides-approved-brazil-under-bolsonaro
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2-13-2015 Unlike the current system in Europe, the 60,000-plus chemicals in production when the US’s TSCA took effect 39 years ago continued to be used without any safety reviews. Most are still in use today, although some have since filed toxicity data.
The US allows the use of many chemicals that are banned elsewhere, and its primary chemicals law has failed to keep up with thousands of chemicals currently in use, including the approximately 2,000 new chemicals introduced each year. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/feb/13/us-senate-toxic-chemicals-law-health-safety
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6-6-2019 PORTLAND, Ore.— The United States allows the use of 85 pesticides that have been banned or are being phased out in the European Union, China or Brazil, according to a peer-reviewed study published today by the academic journal Environmental Health.
In 2016 the United States used 322 million pounds of pesticides that are banned in the E.U., accounting for more than one-quarter of all agricultural pesticide use in this country, according to the study. U.S. applicators also used 40 million pounds of pesticides that are banned or being phased out in China and 26 million pounds of pesticides that are banned or being phased out in Brazil. https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/united-states-uses-85-pesticides-outlawed-in-other-countries-2019-06-06/
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10-20-2020 Monsanto developed dicamba to work in conjunction with corn and soybeans that are genetically engineered by the chemical company to be resistant to it….“The EPA refused to quantify or estimate the amount of damage caused by OTT application of dicamba herbicides, or even to admit that there was any damage at all,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge William Fletcher, a Bill Clinton appointee, in a scathing 58-page decision….
atrazine is the second-most applied pesticide in the United States. More than 70 million pounds are applied every year, though the chemical is banned in more than 35 countries. Paraquat, 1,3-D and multiple pyrethroids were all approved in recent weeks. https://www.courthousenews.com/epa-sued-over-approval-of-controversial-pesticide/
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7-12-21 Biden administration has chosen to defend some of the Trump administration’s decisions on pesticides. These include: The Trump administration’s five-year registration of dicamba, despite Biden administration officials declaring in an Inspector General report that there was undue political influence in past dicamba decisions; the 11th-hour Trump approval of aldicarb, a highly toxic pesticide banned in more than a hundred countries by international treaty because of its harm to humans. The D.C. District Court recently ruled the EPA violated the law in approving it. Also includes the expanded use of the pesticide sulfoxaflor, which has been previously banned by courts because of its link to killing bees. https://thecounter.org/biden-administration-defended-trump-pesticide-decisions-dicamba-epa/
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