Novichok, meaning “new guy,” “newcomer, or “novice,” depending on the translation, the group name for deadly nerve agents created in the Soviet Union in the Seventies and developed into the early Nineties. Deployed in Salisbury, England, novichok has been used to poison ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. Rendering both comatose on a bench on March 4, the attack set off a furious response from emergency workers and chemical weapons experts from Britain’s premier lab on weapons of chemical and biologicla mass destruction, Porton Down. Porton Down subsequently identified the poison used on the Skripals, who were in critical condition, as novichok or a related compound, probably through analysis by gas chromatograph-mass spectrometry.
Who is responsible? It points to Russia, the attack order given from Moscow even though the government there has repeatedly denied involvement and that a program to produce novichok never existed. This was immediately exposed as untrue by scientists/employees of the program who came forward to give their thoughts.
Although the novichok name seems new to a lay audience, it’s been known for a long time …
From a computer magazine, about our congressional heroes in the intelligence committee:
The heads of six U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies told the Senate Intelligence Committee this week that they could not recommend that U.S. residents buy Huawei or ZTE products. The implication of this very public warning is that the Chinese brands pose a risk to national security — and possibly to consumer security as well.
But are you really running a higher privacy or security risk if you use a Huawei or ZTE smartphone? Would they be riskier than any other Chinese-made phones? We put the question to some experts in the field.
“Pretty simply, no and no,” said George Smith, a senior fellow at the GlobalSecurity.org think tank. “You can’t avoid Chinese products, anyway, in the market, so one wonders why they would even get around to saying this.”
One change despite general national stasis. Massacres under the Trump administration aren’t accompanied by surges in gun sales. There’s no fear of an imagined coup by liberals.
In the five years since the shooting, which transformed a fairly anonymous Connecticut town into a buzzword in the caustic national debate on gun violence, armed men have killed people at a nightclub, an outdoor music festival, a social services center, movie theaters, a church in South Carolina and a church in Texas.
Massacres are met with a collective shrug; they’re automatically political but with a new president who has no obvious interest in saying anything about them. The brutal killing of twenty very young children and six adults was the moment it became impossible to do anything about slaughters. When the country demonstrated that it would do nothing after a barabarity against children it conceded nothing could ever be done.
“You would think after Vegas we would see some leadership from our country community,??? Crow told the Guardian. “But all I can say about that is if there’s money involved, and fear, these conversations come to a screeching halt.
“There’s no one that I know of in the popular country world that is willing to step out and really to take a stand on this, and that’s really unfortunate.
“I hope there will be people who find a way out of their fear, who stick up for humanity as opposed to sticking with their fanbase or the money that can come along with having those large crowds.???
Crow’s new song, The Dreaming Kind, released on Monday, is a tribute to the 20 young children and six adults who were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut five years ago.
The song was inspired, Crow has told the press, by her “real sense of helplessness” after the recent Las Vegas massacre and how to tell her two sons about America’s shootings.
Continued Crow:
Three days before her Sandy Hook tribute song was slated to debut on ABC’s Good Morning America, she told the Guardian, she still had not sat down with her children to explain what had happened at the elementary school in Newtown. Even contemplating that conversation left her shaken.
“I think they won’t understand,??? she said. “I’m not even able to fathom that.???
Except for one or two outliers, country music’s big stars haven seen silent. Understandably, big portions of their audiences are so locked into 2nd Amendment mythologies, espousing change would be heard as an attack. Careers would certainly suffer.
Five years after NewTown a trip to YouTube to see the DickDestiny-penned “Gun Nut Folk Tube” makes it clear. There’s no grasp of satire but a very noticeable burning anger in the comments section. (Keep in mind this is a tune that’s only been played 680 some times on YouTube, yet it still attracted gunfire.)
“[My parents] imparted loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage,” wrote one man”. They also set me up with a better moral standard to know right from wrong. I now serve this great country and know what individual freedom and personal responsibility are about more than most. Maybe, you should impart those into this song. If not and you feel it is a wrong country then by all means let me know. I will pay you a one way ticket anywhere you want.”
What honor, integrity and so on have to do with documented gun slaughter is anyone’s guess. But it demostrates that point that argument, even without profanity, has been pointless. Invitations to leave the country drop like leaves in the fall.
And satire has been lost in America for decades. What does remain true is Tom Lehrer’s observation that if you’re doing it right someone’s going to get angry. Pain is part of it. It shows that some part of you is still human.
What remains true in “Gun Nut Folk Tune” is the observation: “In this country life is cheap/For it comes with all the creeps.”
There’s an ocean of mean in the national character and it’s ineradicable.
Dowloadable copy of “Gun Nut Folk Tune” from Soundcloud.
Trivia: The photo is from a “shoot a 50 caliber machine gun business” in Las Vegas.
Seventy year old Betty Miller, accused of making ricin powder to use on herself after testing — unsuccessfully, fortunately — on acquaintances at her retirement home had a dog. On a sign at her apartment:
“I wish I could be the person my dog thinks I am.???
Unspecified in court are citations of mental illness (depression?) and attempts at suicide and a story in which Miller researched basic information on plant poisons on the net, apparently settling on ricin because of castor plants readily available in the home’s garden.
Miller, upon feeling ill, drove herself to the hospital where she revealed she may have been exposed to ricin. Doing that in the context of a hospital triggers the entire anti-terror national network set up over the last decade and a half, summoning everyone from the FBI and Homeland Security to an array of local responding agencies including the state of Vermont, in this case.
Although not ill now, an unnamed tenant is said to have tested positive for ricin exposure at the home where Miller is alleged to have tester her powder on others.
Currently, the case is involved in securing Miller’s cellphone so that it may be examined for possible corroborating information.
The FBI says Betty Miller, 70, of Shelburne, was arrested for manufacturing ricin in her apartment. In an affidavit Friday, officials said Miller told them she wanted to harm herself and was testing the toxic poison by sprinkling it on the food and drinks of other Wake Robin residents.
Miller told authorities she found instructions on the internet and over the summer harvested 30-40 castor beans on the Wake Robin campus. She made a total of 2-3 tablespoons of the highly toxic powder and then placed it in multiple servings of other residents’ food and beverages over a period of weeks.
The case developed when “Miller drove herself to the hospital to be checked out.” Regardless of “instructions on the Internet,” no one has been sickened the state health department became “aware of one person who probably became ill with ricin poisoning.”
The update to Arsenic and Old Lace is flabbergasting. Dementia also comes to mind.
Updated — Dementia: “Miller, 70, made her first appearance in federal court on Friday. Judge John Conroy noted that she had a ‘lengthy mental health history’ but did not elaborate.”
Miller’s collection — bottles of “apple seed,” “cherry seed,” and “yew seed” — in addition to her castor seed powder, seem to indicate an ongoing interest iin poisons. Apple and cherry seeds contain minor amounts of amygdalin, a cyanide-group-containing compound. Yew contains an alkaloid.
SHELBURNE, Vt. (WCAX) The FBI is now investigating poison found at a Shelburne assisted-living facility.
Police say they responded Tuesday morning to Wake Robin in Shelburne. That’s when they called the hazmat team.
In a statement, state officials say ricin was found in an apartment…
All areas where the substance was found were evacuated and the FBI is assisting in the investigation. A Wake Robin spokeswoman said all the residents are safe.
The big question for police now– how did the poison get there? And why was it there?
Given my years of experience with the subject, you can still never predict incidences having to do with this particularly unique American fascination.
In only slightly related news, Newsweek reports a Europea “terror chief” warning of ISIS’ potetial use of drones to drop viruses, anthrax, or perhaps ricin.
Bet against. Castor powder is simply not toxic enough. Dispensing small amounts of it in the air would be ineffective. More effective is its use as a psychological weapon because of beliefs on how easy something like this is alleged to be to do.
And, historically, the only terrorist to put anthrax into powder form has been an American from within the biodefense research community — Bruce Ivins.
In addition, there have been no crimes involving the spread of castor powder containing ricin. Although at one time the US had a castor seed milling industry that produced tons of oil and the powder, called castor mash, or pomace.
Corpus Christi fire and police responded to a condominium complex in the 14200 block of Whitecap Boulevard at about 8:30 p.m. Monday.
The call was described as a mental health issue with threats of suicide, police Lt. J.C. Hooper said.
Hooper would not disclose the man’s condition on Tuesday.
Fire Capt. James Brown said the man made the mixture by extracting oil from castor beans. He did not know exactly how he made the liquid.
“He somehow constructed ricin on his own,” Brown said. “I’m not sure on the process, but he extracted oil from the beans and ingested it.”
Corpus Christi Medical Center confirmed that a patient suspected of ingesting ricin was admitted to the Bay Area Hospital.
Confusion reigns. If the young man was unable to get castor seeds, just castor oil, there was no ricin. Ricin is present only in the mash of castor seeds. Castor oil, on the other hand, has various uses in human society.
A factory worker contacted a man he believed was an IS commander to pledge allegiance to IS and ask for “an order”, a court has heard.
Munir Mohammed, 36, from Derby, is on trial at the Old Bailey accused of plotting a terror attack using a homemade bomb with Rowaida El-Hassan.
The jury watched a video about making nerve agent ricin that was found at his home and they were told he exchanged messages with Ms El-Hassan about it.
They deny preparing terrorist acts.
Despite one of the accused’s alleged training in pharmacy, the level of expertise was quite low. One suspect was on video purchasing the wrong ingredient for a notional bomb plot:
Asda CCTV footage shows a suspected ‘bomb maker’ buying the wrong type of nail varnish remover for ‘terror attack’ explosives, a court has heard.
Sudanese immigrant Munir Mohammed allegedly enlisted the help of a chemist he met on a dating website in his plot to make explosives or deadly ricin poison …
The court was shown footage of the defendant visiting an Asda store near his home on December 1 last year.
Prosecutor Anne Whyte QC told jurors when Mohammed was in the supermarket, he spoke on the phone to El-Hassan who sent him a link via WhatsApp to a website advertising a bottle of hydrogen peroxide,
Ms Whyte also told the court his till receipt showed he had bought a bottle of Sally Hansen acetone-free nail polish remover.
The prosecution say he saw the word “acetone” and assumed he was buying a component of TATP explosives, when in fact he had bought the wrong product.
Despite being technology enabled — the Internet, WhatsApp — obviously no remedy for fairly obvious goof-ups.
Sixteen years on, the technical knowledge required to make bombs, exotic poisons and WMDs outside of warzones and government labs remains quite low. In inverse proportion to using a rented truck or a guns as murder weapons, so to speak.
Bioterror defense is out of fashion. Once untouchable, it’s budgeting is now open to cost-cutting so that security agencies and work responsible for building alls — immigtration — can be boosted.
The Department of Homeland Security plans to close a New York-based laboratory that has helped the city’s Police and Fire Departments develop systems to detect nuclear and biological threats, a move that some local officials fear could hamper efforts to prevent and respond to terrorist attacks.
The radiological program that the laboratory, the National Urban Security Technology Laboratory, developed with the New York Fire Department is widely considered the national standard, and technologies it has tested are in widespread use across the country. It has also worked on systems to combat drug trafficking and money laundering: Portable card readers it tested have helped officials recover millions of dollars in drug proceeds smuggled across borders using gift and other prepaid cards.
“The lab has provided an invaluable amount of information to us over the years, including helping us understand biological and nuclear threats when nobody understood that stuff,??? said Gerard McCarty, the director of emergency management at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. “And they continue to provide critical support to us in researching and testing technologies.???
Curiously, the article never precisely specifies what the laboratory does. It’s web presence at the Dept. of Homeland Security is here.
A brief fact sheet indicates it is in involved in first-responder training and monitoring radiological threats through a “radiation network for cities” called REMS. It seems to be a training service for response to the “dirty bomb” threat, too, although the WMD is never mentioned by name. And here is where the New York Times erred big time: The lab isn’t about germs. It’s involved in the network to combat radiological threats and a big partner of the New York Fire Department.
A far more detailed news story shows it’s a primary defense in Manhattan, as far as training and testing goes, against the dirty bomb threat.
Its history reads: “The lab at 201 Varick St. in lower Manhattan was established in 1947 as part of the Manhattan Project and has been a global leader in studying background atmospheric radiation. It provided critical scientific research that helped make the case for the 1963 Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. which banned testing on atomic bombs in the atmosphere, underwater or in outer space.”
That’s quite a provenance, an important bit of information quite overlooked by the New York Times.
“The Trump administration has proposed closing the lab as part of larger cuts it envisions for the Department of Homeland Security’s scientific research and development programs,” reads the NYT. “The administration’s budget would cut funding for these programs by more than 18 percent, to $627 million this year from $771 million…”
For the Times, a local politician that lab’s cost, $3.4 million, was “a pittance” in the federal budget, equivalent toa rounding error. The lab employs thirty in Manhattan. It seems an accurate representation.
The cut allows “focus on the administration’s top priorities, including border security, counterterrorism, explosives and cybersecurity,” reports the NYT.
Of course, countering dirty bombs involves border security, counterorrism and explosives all rolled into one. But it’s robably safe to say the fact that terrorists have neither developed nor used a dirty bomb in the last 16 years, never in US territory, also a big factor.
What was in the news almost daily over a decade ago, often even in common hit television scripts, has faded.
General Electric announced Monday that Jeffrey Immelt retired as director and chairman of the company’s board of directors, about two months earlier than expected.
In June, GE said Immelt would retire from the board at the end of December.
Jeff Immelt was the public face of General Electric when it became known as one of the biggest American corproate tax evaders, paying zero tax in 2010, at the height of the Great Recession. Immelt was aslo a member of President Barack Obama’s jobs board, charged with recommendations on how to increase employment in the US. Famously, Immelt recommended boosting tourism since it was the only immediate way to boost corporate hiring — in the hospitality industry — in the United States.
Around the same time Immelt was seen on television news complaining about Americans who didn’t applaud his company for all the great things it did.
Now Immelt is more famous as the CEO of GE, the country’s biggest corporate tax evader. And as one of the leader’s of President Obama’s Jobs and Economy advisory group who, last week, offered as an unemployment solution the boosting of tourism and encouraging more out-of-work people to return to re-education camp to enroll in community college.
Immelt, in other words, is a major annoyance, a corporate enemy of the middle class, if average Americans know of him at all… Paradoxically, GE’s p.r. arm, in an effort to make people feel good about the company, is pushing commercials featuring the company’s investment and financial services arm, GE Capital.
All the problems, corporate tax avoidance, offshoring, deindustrialization and unemployment/underployment associated with a sluggish plutocrats’ economy and inequality outlined during Immelt’s run remain unadressed. Or they’ve gotten worse.
“GE & Jeff (Taxavoidination)” was my most seen and heard original tune/video for this blog.