Posted on 10/16/2001 6:50:42 AM PDT by Merovingian
OWK got bombed?! How is he doing?
If the Democrats can stand behind Bush, and place their political ideology in the background, the folks in the "backwoods militias" beat them to it.
Has ANYONE asked the question, "Why aren't all Middle-Eastern's in the United States being deported for National Security reasons?"
The anthrax that killed a Florida man was not stolen from a Department of Energy laboratory. It most certainly was not manufactured from scratch by terrorists.
And now some scientists are saying it may not even have any connection to Iowa, as earlier reported.
As misinformation and theories abound about the origin of the anthrax found in the offices of a Boca Raton, Fla., supermarket tabloid, scientists are using new methods to compare the genetic fingerprint of the anthrax spores to known strains of the bacteria.
Microbiologist Paul Keim of Northern Arizona University has created a genetic profile of the anthrax discovered there and is now comparing it to other strains, said Martin Hugh-Jones, a close colleague of Keim and a professor of epidemiology at Louisiana State University.
Using genetic fingerprinting, ``you can pinpoint a strain of anthrax to its geographic origin or perhaps even to its laboratory origin,'' said Scott Layne, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California at Los Angeles.
So far Keim has declined to talk about his work, citing national security concerns.
``I've seen many reports in the media saying that we're involved in this investigation but I will assure that there's been no confirmation of that from anyone at this university,'' Keim said during a briefing at the school's Flagstaff, Ariz., campus Thursday. ``It would be irresponsible for me to confirm that type of situation given that there's an ongoing criminal investigation.''
But Hugh-Jones said that if the bacteria used in Florida belonged to any well-known strain, Keim would have identified it right away.
``From all the fancy footwork, it's clear that they didn't get an exact match,'' Hugh-Jones said.
He and other experts declined to speculate how long it could take to identify the Florida strain that killed Robert Stevens, a photo editor for The Sun. Anthrax spores were also found on Stevens' computer keyboard, and two of his co-workers were found to have inhaled some of the spores. They are being treated with antibiotics.
The FBI is investigating how and why the anthrax got into the newspaper offices, but they said they could not tie it to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.
Earlier this week a federal official who asked not to be identified told The Associated Press that the Florida anthrax was similar to a strain collected in Iowa during the 1950s. That led to speculation that the attackers could have used the ``Ames strain,'' an especially virulent form of anthrax taken from a sick animal at Iowa State University about that time. There were even erroneous reports that it might have been stolen from an Iowa laboratory.
But the FBI put those stories to rest on Thursday.
``At this time there is no information concerning any link to Iowa,'' said Larry Holmquist, an FBI spokesman in Omaha, Neb.
Vito Del Vecchio, a bacteriologist at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, said Thursday that federal authorities have asked him to apply a second DNA fingerprinting method to the Florida samples, an indication that their identity probably has not yet been pinpointed.
Keim and Hugh-Jones have been working for about eight years to create DNA fingerprints of as many anthrax strains as they can. So far, they have succeeded with more than 400 strains, a fraction of the many hundreds that are thought to exist.
In May 2000, the researchers published an anthrax family tree in the Journal of Bacteriology that showed the genetic relationships of 89 strains. Hugh-Jones said that tree could be enormously valuable in narrowing down potential sources of the anthrax.
``Even if it's not exact,'' Hugh-Jones said, ``we can say, 'OK, if it's between this and that, this is where we'll find it.' ``
Even a decade ago it would have been very difficult to identify an anthrax strain with such precision. But DNA fingerprinting gives such a distinctive result that it amounts to a smoking gun.
``I think it would be very dangerous for anybody to be found with this,'' Hugh-Jones said. ``They'd have an awful lot of explaining to do.''
(Copyright 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Sorry to hear that, buddy. Glad to see you came through it unscathed.
I was furious yesterday when I heard CNN's Eileen O'Connor immediately suggest this might be the case, especially since it was already known, white powder mailings had been received all over the world, Japan, Brazil, Switzerland, New Zealand, Germany, etc.
But here's proof right wingnut crazies right here in America are out there. These articles are scary. Maddening too, to think that for 8 years the Clintons, aided by the media, have grouped conservatives with these mad men.
http://www7.cnn.com/US/9802/19/fbi.arrest.pm/
http://www.lasvegassun.com/dossier/crime/bio/harris.html
http://www.lsic.ucla.edu/classes/mimg/summer1_01/micro6/Website/webpages/studentprojects6/Loewsp99/bioterro.htm
From what we're being told, the Anthrax is very hard to produce in powder form.
While I don't think this particular wave of anthrax is coming from homegrown terrorists, we do have some people who might be capable of pulling this off--see An Alternative View (Consider this). It's not bad enough we have to fight Middle Easterners on our own soil, but we also have to look out for nutcases.
Austrian Post Office seized three letters containing white powder,
one of which had been addressed to the Austrian public radio
and television broadcaster ORF.
French police sealed off a post office just off Paris'
Champs Elysees avenue, and a bank in the southwest of the
city for tests after two more suspicious envelopes were
found. A day earlier 12 people were taken into hospital after
letters containing powder were sent to a scientific
institute and state financial offices, but tests of the
substance and those exposed to it proved negative.
A German government spokesman said Tuesday that a
powder found in the mail room of Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder's office had not contained the anthrax
bacterium and had been sent for further analysis.
A large mail sorting office in the centre of Liverpool,
northwest England, was evacuated Tuesday after white
powder leaked out of a package.
Tests on three people in Britain who worked in the Florida
and US offices at the centre of the scare and may have
been exposed proved negative, Britain's public health
laboratory service said.
A Finnish television company in Helsinki received a suspect
letter on Tuesday containing an unidentified powder, the
news agency STT/FNB said.
In Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Estonia government
scientists are examining a spate of letters and parcels
containing white powder, police said. Many of the letters
were posted in Italy and at least one from South Korea,
officials said.
White powder found leaking from an envelope discovered
at the central post office in Fukushima city, northern
Japan, was not the deadly anthrax bacteria as originally
feared, police said.
In Ottawa, a section of Canada's main Parliament building
was evacuated and cordoned off after a suspicious package
arrived. 35 people were taken to a detoxification unit but
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said there was no
evidence the white powder contained anthrax.
A train was evacuated at the railway station in the
northwestern Italian town of Sestri Levante after the
discovery of a bottle containing a suspicious white liquid,
Italian railway police said.
Unidentified powder suspected to contain anthrax spores
was found on an Israeli cargo plane arriving from Europe,
according to media reports.
Eleven people were undergoing tests for anthrax in Poland
after opening letters containing a suspicious powder sent
to a police office and a television station, officials said.
Brazil's defense ministry asked that a Lufthansa plane
found carrying a suspicious white powder be grounded until
laboratory tests could be conducted.
In Melbourne, Australia, US Consul General David Lyon said
40 consulate staff members were evacuated for 45
minutes after a letter found to have a suspicious chemical
residue arrived at the office.
In Israel public health officials, police and soldiers rushed
to investigate reports of the white powder at the offices
of the daily Maariv, only to find that an office worker had
confessed to sending a harmless substance as a joke.
And the latest:
Anthrax Scare at London Stock Exchange
Now, I'm sure some of this is hoax action, but I would certainly question the American Militias' involvement.
on this article's linkage of 9/11 and anthrax to armed Christians.
People like Harris are not members of the "far-right." White separatists follow the NAZI model of government, which is a racist, bigoted form of NATIONAL SOCIALISM. Their political theory is authoritarian and centralized in nature, and is based in fear and subjugation. These people are clearly anti-liberty, anti-individual rights and responsibilities. They suffer from group-think and identity politics. Everything about them marks them as being radical leftists who would be more at home in Hitler's Germany, Stalin's USSR or Mao's China. The American Left wants, desperately, to paste them onto the American Right as a tool of discreditation. I suggest the term "left-wing nazi racist" as a suitable replacement phrase. That'll raise some hackles!
Here's a paranoid theory, the recent propping up of the militia bogeyman stems from the liberals desire that during our current zeal to root out terrorism we could "kill two birds with one stone" and take care of our 'domestic terrorists' too(since they see every so-called militiaman as a potential McVeigh).
19 posted on 10/3/01 5:57 AM Pacific by ICU812
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Looney Tunes On Militia Front
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