On Friday, October 5, 2001, at 01:13 PM, Tim May wrote:
First case of inhalational anthrax reported in the U.S. in over 25 years, CNN reported, and yet it is happening NOW?
The news reports are that the man may have been exposed during a visit to North Carolina...they're checking on it. However, consider the _SECOND_ odd coincidence: the man is from the same part of Florida (Lantana, or somesuch) that the WTC pilots were training at.
One coincidence is just that. Two...
I thought I'd fill in the details for any of the skeptics: In the anthrax story: "LANTANA, Fla. (AP) - Health officials have begun tracing the steps of a Florida man to pinpoint how he became the first person in the United States in a quarter-century to contract an inhaled form of anthrax, a disease with a much higher profile since the terrorist attacks. " And here's the connection to the flight schools and where Atta and his partners rented apartments: "U.S. agents followed Atta's trail from flight training in Venice on the west coast to an apartment in Coral Springs to another in Hollywood to Lantana, a town on the state's east coast..." Yeah, mere coincidence that the first reported case of inhalational anthrax in 25 years happened at this time, and in the same small town where several of the WTC attackers were living and training. (And that Atta was one of those trying to rent a crop-dusting plane.) It would be paranoid to speculate that the strain is India-1967, the virulent form of inhalational anthrax developed by Biopreparat/Vector and weaponized and tested at Voz. Island in Kazahkstan, north of Afghanistan. When U.S inspectors finally got to the Stepnogorsk facility, weeds were growing in the paths between buildings, the doors were flapping in the wind, and the stockpiles of smallpox, anthrax, Marburg, tularemia, and pneumonic plague had presumably already been sold to the highest bidders. Have a nice day! By the way, with reference to the quote from the enemy of liberty below, it is tempting for those who have not thought about the issues deeply to opine that the horrors of biological terrorism mean that even _more_ civil liberties must be sacrificed (no doubt "Reason" is already preparing a "germs are scary!" piece to explain why there are no libertarians in biohazard suits). Bear in mind it was GOVERNMENTS who spend billions of dollars and rubles finding ways to kill certain ethnic groups with biological vectors, ways to gas cities of millions, and ways to create superbugs uncontrollable by vaccines. (The U.S. government fears the Sovs devoloped variants of smallpox using recombinant DNA techniques that will not be controllable by vaccines.) I speed-read Tucker's "Scourge" several days ago, and yesterday I sat down at my local Borders and speed-read the new Judith Miller, William Broad, etc. book "Germs." (When I "speed-read" I read for the important parts; I can usually absorb a book like this in an hour or so. I would read the book at my leisure, but I hate paying $30 for a book I can skim and get the gist of.) Nothing we didn't already know, except some stuff that goes beyond Ken Alibek's "Biohazard." Especially about the weapons plants in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and other places very close to Afghanistan! I'd thought from Alibek's book that most of the Biopreparat facilities were in Sverdlovsk and other places in Siberia. (Not that shipping a flask of India-1967 or anthrax another 2000 miles is difficult.) Like I said, "Have a nice day." --Tim May, Corralitos, California Quote of the Month: "It is said that there are no atheists in foxholes; perhaps there are no true libertarians in times of terrorist attacks." --Cathy Young, "Reason Magazine," both enemies of liberty.