Unusual Features
The South African chemical weapons program investigated all the standard CW agents such as irritant riot control agents, lethal nerve agents and anticholinergic deliriants, which have been researched by virtually all countries that have carried out CW research. This led to the investigation of a number of unusual non-lethal agents, including illicit recreational drugs such as MDMA, methaqualone and cocaine, as well as several medicinal drugs such as diazepam, ketamine, suxamethonium and tubocurarine, as potential incapacitating agents. According to the testimony given by Wouter Basson to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a number of analogues of these compounds were prepared and studied, and both methaqualone and MDMA (along with the deliriant BZ) were manufactured in large quantities and successfully weaponised into a fine dust or aerosol form that could be released over a crowd as a potential riot control agent. Wouter Basson was later found to have also been selling large quantities of MDMA and methaqualone as tablets on the black market, but the amount manufactured was far larger than what was sold and the court accepted that at least some genuine weaponisation and testing of these agents had been done.
Read more about this topic: Project Coast
Famous quotes containing the words unusual and/or features:
“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.... He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)