05.20.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Ricin Kooks at 9:55 am by George Smith
J. Everett Dutschke’s band, Robodrum, playing his song, “Superhero,” in 2012.
A 25 year prison sentence marks the end of the trail for one of country’s strangest fellows, ricin mailer and industrious outsider musician, J. Everett Dutschke, the only castor bean pounder to ever be a finalist in a Budweiser beer Battle of the Bands. (Last year, Budweiser quietly disappeared its YouTube video of Dutschke and his band performing in St. Louis as part of the brand’s promotion. However, as seen above there is still home video of Robodrum, performing in Tupelo, just prior to the development of his castor powder mailing plan.)
From AP:
A Mississippi man who pleaded guilty to sending letters dusted with the poison ricin to President Barack Obama and other officials was sentenced Monday to 25 years in prison.
James Everett Dutschke was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock in Aberdeen after telling the judge May 13 that he had changed his mind about wanting to withdraw his guilty plea in the case.
From last week:
[Dutschke] reportedly recanted his confession and launched into a rant against Kevin Curtis, the Elvis impersonator he attempted to frame for the letters, comparing him to Barney the Dinosaur. Then Dutschke compared himself to an Olympic gymnast.
Dutschke then said that he would happily empty the contents of the letters he is accused of sending into a peanut butter sandwich and eat it to prove it was not poison.
However, the summer of 2012 had J. Everett Dutschke and Robodrum in St. Louis, competing to win a Budweiser Light Battle of the Bands.
It resulted in what’s now the one and only example of an American accused of bioterrorism in a ritzy promotional video sponsored and paid for by the King of Beers
In make-up, glitter and sunglasses, Dutschke sings he doesn’t need any fancy women, he just needs his guitar because he’ll blow your house down in “Big Bad Wolf,” a song from a Robodrum album of the same name. “Enjoy Responsibly” reads the big beer vendor’s subtitling on the video.
From Bean Pounding: J. Everett Dutschke and the strange saga of outsider music and bioterrorism.
Permalink
05.16.14
Posted in Ricin Kooks at 1:40 pm by George Smith
From a Mississippi newspaper:
“There is no obscurity after you’ve gone international and been framed in a presidential assassination plot by a karate instructor who works for your brother.” — Paul Kevin Curtis, originally arrested by the FBI after being framed by alleged ricin maker, J. Everett Dutschke.
According to the newspaper, Curtis’ career as an Elvis impersonator collapsed after his arrest and release in connection with the ricin case in Tupelo.
Currently, he and supporters are trying to raise $50,000 to fund a documentary on the matter, entitled “I Didn’t Do It.”
“The filmmakers working with Curtis say that beyond telling the bizarre, intertwined story, their film also will raise questions about what happens when federal law enforcement crashes down on an innocent man,” reads the newspaper.
Permalink
05.13.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Ricin Kooks, Rock 'n' Roll at 11:30 am by George Smith
J. Everett Dutschke, the only alleged ricin maker to ever be a finalist in a Budweiser beer Battle of the Bands contest is in the news again. And I cannot do it justice.
So, here, from the local newspaper:
A man accused of sending ricin to President Barack Obama and two other public officials, then framing an Elvis impersonator recanted his confession at a sentencing hearing this morning after pleading guilty four ricin-related charges …
[Dutschke] reportedly recanted his confession and launched into a rant against Kevin Curtis, the Elvis impersonator he attempted to frame for the letters, comparing him to Barney the Dinosaur. Then Dutschke compared himself to an Olympic gymnast.
Dutschke then said that he would happily empty the contents of the letters he is accused of sending into a peanut butter sandwich and eat it to prove it was not poison.
J. Everett Dutschke — and a whole lot more — from WhiteManistan blog’s incomparable archives.
Permalink
04.24.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks at 9:53 am by George Smith
Walter White toasts you, new young ricin men.
American mass media and Google are not your friends. Together, they’ve created a peculiar and abnormal environment which manifests in increasingly unusual pathologies.
Google search now judges the most relevant materials to be those selected through crowd-sourcing by idiots. And so it is elementary to find worthless recipes for ricin with a smartphone app in an instant, along with lots of information that guarantees young men who are broken in some way a quick visit from a federal and state joint anti-terrorism task force.
Today, Preston Rhoads, 30 of Oklahoma City, makes the second young American in 60 days to have been tabbed as influenced by Walter White, Breaking Bad and its secondary plot of ricin poisoning. Rhoads is the fourth young man arrested this year in connection with ricin-kookism, already up one from three arrests in the 12 months of last year.
The first was young Danny Milzman, a student at Georgetown University, of whom much has already been written here.
Walter White said ricin was a fine poison, untraceable. And it is on the net in hundreds of places. Therefore, it must be true.
The prison sentence that would result from a conviction in the Rhoads case is probably around fifteen years.
From the wires in OKC:
Court documents state an Oklahoma City man arrested in a murder plot mentioned a popular television show before revealing he had Ricin.
Federal agents said Preston Rhoads was planning on killing his pregnant girlfriend and her unborn fetus with the deadly toxin.
The Oklahoma Department of Health told News 9 the state has never had a documented case of Ricin toxicity …
The use of Ricin was a plot line in the hit television series, Breaking Bad. Ricin is a potentially deadly toxin made from castor beans. The federal search warrant stated Preston Rhoads asked a friend about the show just moments before showing the friend a vial.
In three of the four ricin cases this year, the young men now in jail talked to a friend or showed them their castor powder concoctions.
Either because they have a subliminal desire to go to jail or because the country won’t know how clever you are with ricin poison, like Walter White, if you don’t tell someone about it. Or both.
Oh, and like Preston Rhoads, ask the buddy if he would like to deliver a pizza to your girlfriend and put your powder on it. Most friends would respond well to such a request, don’t you think? Would Jesse have done it for Walter if he wanted to poison Skyler?
In a very small way it may be satisfying to see how a character and story have so indelibly inspired a special cohort of the American citizenry. But if I were Bryan Cranston, the script writers and the show’s science advisor, I’d actually be kinda bummed at this point. And I enjoyed Breaking Bad. (Google, on the other hand, doesn’t bum out about anything. Part of its function is to raise digital road spikes, oil slicks and cinder blocks hidden in paper bags to the top positions in search on the information superhighway.)
Earlier, on this channel:
The hit TV show “Breaking Bad??? and its dark plotlines played an outsized role in a federal courtroom in Washington this week …
In the case of the Georgetown student, defense attorneys have said Milzman was a troubled 19-year-old struggling with depression. He created the ricin, his lawyers said, because he wanted to hide his suicide plans from his family. If he became ill from the substance, no one would know that he had killed himself.
But the federal prosecutor argued that Milzman’s statements about “Breaking Bad??? suggested otherwise. She told the judge that the show’s protagonist produced ricin not to commit suicide, but to kill someone else. A friend said Milzman was such a big fan of the show he knew the name of each episode by heart. [Italicized — from the WaPost.]
The judge asked if Milzman was such a big fan of the show, why had not the prosecutors brought it up on the day another judge had ordered the young man released to psychiatric treatment in a DC hospital?
The government’s lawyer responded she had been unfamiliar with the show.
“I was not as familiar with the show then as I am today,??? said Assistant U.S. Attorney Maia Miller …
Public service announcement
This blog’s 2006 rendition of the illustration that accompanied Kurt Saxon’s ricin recipe from The Poor Man’s James Bond, one of the original sources of web “manuals” on how to make it. Use your smartphone to share it on social media with your friends! They’ll think you’re as clever as Walter White! Then the armored car circus will visit your neighborhood!
Permalink
04.23.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks, WhiteManistan at 1:08 pm by George Smith
From the bleak tale of 30-year-old Preston Rhoads of Oklahoma City, the country’s latest but certainly not last ricin kook:
A federal affidavit and search warrant just unsealed this afternoon lays out a possible motive behind the alleged murder plot that has Preston Rhoads behind bars.
The 14-page affidavit reveals how Rhoads reportedly asked a former co-worker to kill his pregnant girlfriend and her unborn baby.
Authorities said Rhoads texted a former co-worker telling him he had something serious to discuss with him.
The friend jokingly stated that he can “make people disappear.” Rhoads responded via text, saying not to joke about that if you can’t deliver.
During a face-to-face meeting, the co-worker said Rhoads showed him a vial and claimed it was Ricin. That same co-worker said Rhoads told him he downloaded a manual explaining how to manufacture the poison.
The co-worker said, while at Rhoads’ home, he found what he believed to be equipment to make ricin in the bathroom.
The affidavit reveals Rhoads wanted to use ricin to harm the girlfriend, because he felt it could not be easily traced.
And where do people learn ricin “[can’t] be easily traced”?
Unfortunately, from tv, Google and their smartphones.
Google search is not your friend. Google search relevance is, in many cases — including this one, determined by the wisdom of crowds of idiots. And they know this in Mountain View. Which is probably one reason, among a host, that they won’t talk to anyone on the telephone.
If you are looking for recipes for ricin, Google will give worthless web pages to you, either fine pieces of misinformation, or even more efficiently, perfect as materials for running afoul of the law.
Google will return articles on ricin, perhaps written by a know-nothing journalist at Slate, who explains helpfully how you don’t have to a terrorist to be good enough to make ricin.
Google will not show you any articles or much of the real record on how everyone who “makes ricin” is found out and their neighborhood stormed, with eye-watering speed, by a joint federal and state anti-ricin task force.
Google will not return you any articles that inform you that texting on the matter to others through your smartphone is a known process by which the anti-ricin squad is summoned.
What can you do? I give up.
Remember, as Kurt Saxon, one of the nation’s first and foremost ricin kooks, wrote in the late Eighties (but updated for 2014):
“It is bad to poison your fellow man [and wife], blow [them] up or even shoot [them] or otherwise disturb [their] tranquility. It is also uncouth to counterfeit your nation’s currency and it is tacky to destroy property as instructed in [the chapter] Arson and Electronics …
“But some people are just naturally crude … It is your responsibility, then, to be aware of the many ways bad people can be harmful …
“It is right to share with your enemies, the knowledge in this wonderful [ricin manual Google helped you find so you could download it with your smartphone and text your pals about it] …???
Post this on Instagram or Pinterest! Text the link to your friends with your smartphone! Or just use SnapChat! They’ll think you’re as clever as Walter White!
Permalink
04.21.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks, WhiteManistan at 12:08 pm by George Smith
The now familiar scene: A joint ricin beatdown task force comes to another quiet American neighborhood, this time in Oklahoma City.
Preston Rhoads, 30, of Oklahoma City, is the latest ricin kook, investigated and arrested by the FBI and local police after a tip of some kind implicated him in a murder-for-hire plot. When authorities entered his house, it was declared a no-go zone in the neighborhood.
From the wire:
Test results have confirmed ricin was a substance found in the home of murder-for-hire suspect Preston Rhoads.
A law enforcement source confirmed with News 9 the substance tested 100% positive for the deadly toxin. However, the substance was only found inside the home and police officers were not exposed.
Oklahoma City Police and FBI agents say Rhoads was planning a murder before they searched his home on Thursday. The FBI says it processed his place for hazardous materials after finding the unknown substance, now identified as ricin.
At Rhoads’ home on N. McKinley, the health department has posted a sign saying the home is unsafe and warns people to stay away.
As in the case of Georgetown student Danny Milzman, Rhoads — although much older — was described as a perfect son by distraught friends and family members.
And, indeed, what profiling material exists upon the net supports this view.
Smiling faces of many friends adorn his Facebook page. And a self-made video of Rhoads on Vimeo shows an affable young man describing his career and education as a creator of digital art.
Rhoads art business homepage can be found at evilpreston dot com, although there is absolutely nothing evil about it. And on Twitter he comes off as normal although 140 character tweets furnish little in the way of material for a definitive judgment.
This makes four cases in which young American men have been taken down by the FBI and joint anti-terrorism squads in ricin beefs this year. That is one more than in 2013. And I thought that was a bumper crop year.
Readers are invited to discuss their thoughts on why and how so many Americans regularly become mentally ill, the condition unrecognized by friends and family until the anti-ricin squad shows up in the neighborhood without warning,
I’ve cataloged it for fifteen years and I don’t understand it anymore.
Why does this country produce such a regular surplus of ricin kooks?
The mass media, which has made ricin good fun and storytelling for the sake of entertainment and titillation; the dime-a-dozen national security “experts” produced by the infrastructure erected during the war on terror and their exaggerated cant on weapons of mass destruction and the ease of making them, all have much to answer for.
But don’t hold your breath waiting for one.
Again, with GlobalSecurity.Org (smirk) hat on, I make the case for a diversion track specifically designed for first-timers arrested and convicted in ricin cases.
Is Preston Rhoads more for the legacy of Kurt Saxon’s The Poor Man’s James Bond and Maxwell Hutchkinson’s blighted Poisoner’s Handbook?
Time will tell.
My 2006 version of an illustration from Saxon’s The Poor Man’s James Bond.
“It is bad to poison your fellow man, blow him up or even shoot him or otherwise disturb his tranquility. It is also uncouth to counterfeit your nation’s currency and it is tacky to destroy property as instructed in [the chapter] Arson and Electronics …
“But some people are just naturally crude … It is your responsibility, then, to be aware of the many ways bad people can be harmful …
“It is right to share with your enemies, the knowledge in this wonderful book …??? — Kurt Saxon
Permalink
04.01.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Ricin Kooks at 10:51 am by George Smith
What’s wrong with this picture? Read the post to find out. The now bog standard American response to powdered castor seeds.
From KPCC public radio in Pasadena:
Three people including a Los Angeles police officer and a firefighter were hospitalized after being exposed to what was thought to be a dangerous substance.
Police Lt. Sabrina Kuhn tells City News Service that firefighters responded late Monday to a call of a possible overdose in Van Nuys.
They found a 23-year-old man had injected himself with a mix of an unknown white power and crushed castor beans …
A HazMat team determined that the crushed castor beans were not harmful, but admitted the firefighter and officer to a hospital as a precautionary measure. Ten residences in the area were briefly evacuated.
Police mentioned the unnamed individual may be subject to mental evaluation upon release from the hospital.
One science paper on an extremely rare event, abstract at the National Institutes of Health online library, on a suicide by injection of castor in 2009:
A case report is presented of a 49-year-old man who committed suicide by intravenous and subcutaneous injection of a castor bean extract. He was brought to the emergency department 24 h after injecting himself. On admission, the patient was conscious and he presented with a history of nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, dyspnoea, vertigo and muscular pain. Despite symptomatic and supportive intensive care, the man died 9 h after admission due to multiorgan failure …
Based on the clinical symptoms and the results of the toxicological analysis, we concluded that death was caused by intoxication with plant toxins originated from R. communis L.
A fascinating 2011 scientific review, available for free, entitled Ricinus communis: Intoxications in human and veterinary medicine, is also here.
Excerpted:
A very recent review on the American Association of Poison Control Centers reports 45 fatalities out of more than 2 million plant poisonings between 1983 and 2009, of these, only one fatal case was attributed to Ricinus communis, while the majority (16 deaths) was caused by Datura and Cicuta species. A review by the Swiss Toxicology Information Centre mentioned 130 serious cases including five fatal plant poisonings between 1966 and 1994, among them three non-fatal cases related to Ricinus communis. These reviews of local plant poisonings support the opinion that intoxications with Ricinus communis usually do not belong to the most common or serious poisonings occurring accidentally in humans.
The seeds of Ricinus communis have a long history as medical remedy; it is therefore not surprising to find cases linked with adverse reaction to them: A Korean woman who had eaten five castor seeds in order to treat constipation was admitted to hospital with severe nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and initially near hypothermia; in this case ricin was detected in urine samples, symptoms were treated (fluids, charcoal) and she was discharged after 2 days. Similar cases have been reported from Brazil and Croatia …
In cases of intended uptake of ricin different reports describe suicides by injection of a self-made seed extract in Poland, Belgium and the US (Table 1). A fatal suicide took place in Poland, here a man subcutaneously injected himself with a Ricinus communis seed extract and was admitted 36 h later to the clinic with nausea, dizziness, pain and severe weakness. He deteriorated with haemorrhagic diathesis and multi-organ failure and died after asystolic arrest 18 h later …
Overall-among all plant poisonings reported-human cases of ricin poisoning are rare. With modern supportive care the fatality rate is low, except in suicide cases where a ricin-containing extract is injected, reflecting the higher toxicity after parenteral application.
Rough as well as precise evidence accumulated worldwide on death by castor seed consumption as well as injection over the course of many years yielded the following:
876 accidental cases (including one by injection), of which 13 died — or 1.5 percent. Paradoxically, the one injection case did not result in a fatality.
11 intended poisoning cases, 5 of which were oral and 6 by injection. Of these, none died in the oral sample while 5 expired after injection — or 45.5 percent of the whole.
Permalink
03.31.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks at 12:11 pm by George Smith
After a brief state of grace in which a judge ruled that Georgetown student and ricin-maker Danny Milzman could be released to psychiatric treatment in the nation’s capitol, and then home, his case has reverted to standard procedure.
All Americans who have been caught in ricin cases in the last fifteen years are jailed until trial or plea agreements. At which point they have all been sent to prison.
The ramifications and results of this policy have been discussed at length on this blog, most recently, last week, where analysis of the present and past cases are listed as well as one minor exception to the rule.
From the WaPo, minutes ago:
Chief Judge Richard W. Roberts overruled a magistrate judge’s order that would have allowed the student, Daniel Milzman, to enter an inpatient psychiatric treatment program.
Roberts said Monday that he was troubled by Milzman’s conversation with a close friend in which the sophomore allegedly denied being suicidal and said he was “definitely a threat to someone,??? according to prosecutors.
The judge also said he was concerned that Milzman told law enforcement officials that he learned about the powdery substance from the hit TV show “Breaking Bad.??? In the show, the protagonist uses ricin to poison his adversary – not to kill himself …
In his ruling from the bench, Roberts acknowledged Milzman’s depression but said the student’s mental health issues do not “eliminate the possibility that he intended to use it on someone else??? and “may pose a threat to the community.???
Milzman’s “ability and determination??? to make the ricin, the judge said, “reflects the seriousness of the danger to others should he be released.???
After the hearing, Milzman’s parents — both local doctors — and his two brothers were surrounded by nearly 90 classmates, colleagues and other friends who filled the courtroom.
Milzman will apparently remain in jail. Historically, ricin cases proceed slowly. Among them, previously, there has been no such thing as a speedy trial.
As mentioned last week, the Milzman case should give everyone a headache. All ricin cases should.
The US justice system needs a diversion program for first-time ricin-offenders with ameliorating or extenuating circumstances.
It would only be just and fair.
The US does not get a lot of ricin offenders per year but the cases almost always become high profile. And the American social environment and beliefs about the poison virtually guarantee that every year will always bring a fresh crop of mixed-up, young, or in some way mentally unsound or damaged first-time ricin-makers.
No one has ever died in connection with an American ricin case. No members of the public have ever been injured in any way in American ricin cases. And nobody has died from the consumption, accidental or intentional, of castor seeds or castor powder, if the public record on the matter is accurate, in at least the last 20 years.
Permalink
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks at 9:14 am by George Smith
Someone else who thought his smartphone gave him a technological edge.
Michael Piggin, an English teen who used his smartphone to download the old Mujahideen Poisons Handbook, a bowdlerized copy of Maxwell Hutchkinson’s The Poisoner’s Handbook, has had England’s heavy artillery called out and arrayed against him in court.
A Porton Down chemist was called to testify on the digital text, which has been judged a seditious document in the United Kingdom for over a decade. That is, possession of it potentially gets you jail for having materials deemed likely to be of use to terrorists or in terrorism.
From the unparalleled archives of this blog, 2007:
“Defendant after defendant has discovered that a long-forgotten internet search has left an indelible record sufficient for a conviction under the profoundly disturbing section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which allows prosecution for simple possession of an item likely to be useful to terrorists, and carries a sentence of up to 10 years’ imprisonment,” wrote Gareth Piece for the Guardian on the 21st.
Pierce is a well-known defense lawyer in England. Her firm was notably reponsible for the defense in the trial of the notorious so-called London ricin gang and she has represented many others in England’s ongoing terror trials.
This blog has repeatedly analyzed and published portions — even entire copies — of documents which are now, for practical matters in the UK courts, considered seditious publications. For the legal system, there are only two working justifications for having them: Being a jounalist or a professional tasked with analyzing them.
For the trial of Samina Malik, aka The Lyrical Terrorist, DD was asked by the defense to contribute a short analysis concerning the Mujahideen Poisons Handbook.
It was found in Malik’s possession and is considered, wrongly, to be a document of potential use to terrorists. It contains many errors and some rather large fabrications which, while not obvious to laymen, are glaringly apparent to professionals trained in chemistry and biology.
DD has combed over it many times in the past year, tracing its origins and showing that it is fundamentally just an abridged and Bowdlerized copy of a pamphlet that had been published in the US in 1988, Maxwell Hutchkinson’s The Poisoner’s Handbook (Loompanics).
Samina Malik, from Southall, west London, was found guilty at the Old Bailey of owning terrorist manuals,” reported the BBC simply in November.
“The jury heard Malik had written extremist poems praising Osama Bin Laden, supporting martyrdom and discussing beheading … Malik worked at WH Smith at Heathrow Airport until her arrest last October.”
Malik was convicted for possessing records deemed to be of potential use to terrorists, including the document pictured above. It has been published many places on the web and the above snapshot was published in a Sunday edition of the Washington Post newspaper in 2005. Naturally, it is an object of great curiosity, and not just to aspiring terrorists.
However, if you reside in the United Kingdom, have downloaded it and are swept up in a counter-terror dragnet, you are in big trouble.
“[She] was acquitted on a more serious charge of possessing articles for terrorist purposes, a fact that the judge said he took into account when deciding on a suspended sentence,” reported the Los Angeles Times in early December.
However, Malik’s sentence was subsequently suspended by the judge on the condition she stay out of such trouble going forward. Which apparently she did.
In 2007, the law was used to get those suspected to be in on Islamic terrorism.
In the case of Michael Piggin, the circumstances are reversed.
If one is to believe the BBC, he wanted to firebomb schools and a mosque with molotov cocktails. That alone will, in all probability, guarantee he is kept at Her Majesty’s pleasure for a substantial period of time.
In 2004-2005, the UK government trotted out Porton Down experts for the famous London ricin trial. Porton Down is England’s ultimate biological and chemical weapons defense installation, historically famous.
In the infamous Wood Green ricin trial, Porton Down’s testimony on poison recipes and ricin was ineffective. And that story is retold, in great detail, by me, here in Playtime Recipes for Poisons, which is a good way to describe material similar to that included in the Mujahideens Poisons Handbook [1].
However, Michael Piggin will go down for it, this time. And the Porton Down expert will have been effective.
From the BBC:
Dr Paul Rice, employed at Porton Down since 1987, said fireworks and bleach found in Michael Piggin’s bedroom could be used to make chlorine gas.
Mr Piggin, 18, is accused of planning attacks on a mosque and a school.
He denies two Terrorism Act charges but has admitted possessing explosives.
The Old Bailey heard a copy of the prohibited Mujahideen Poisons Handbook had been found by police, downloaded on Mr Piggin’s mobile phone …
Dr Rice, a chemical and biological weapons expert, told the court that the Mujahedeen Poisons Handbook, was a publication he had come across before and contained details about “homemade chemicals, gases and drugs” …
The handbook contained instructions on how to make poisons such as ricin, which could prove lethal in tiny quantities, the court heard.
Time and the instruments of technology have changed. People haven’t.
Now your ricin recipes are downloaded by smartphone, rather than the old home pc.
Perhaps someone should write a handy app called …
iWantRicin.
Do you think the iTunes store would allow it?
The Piggin trial arrived in the British news in early March.
Excerpting from the Guardian on March 4:
The teenager, who has Asperger’s syndrome, had drawn up a hitlist that included his college, a mosque, a cinema, Loughborough University and the town’s council offices, the Old Bailey heard.
On the back of his notebook, Piggin had scribbled “Fuck Islam – born in England, live in England, die in England”, and inside he wrote that he was a member of the EDL (a far right soccer hooligan gang for English purity) in opposition to the “Islamic invasion of Europe” …
Piggin stockpiled nine partially assembled petrol bombs [molotov cocktails made from beer bottles], as well as improvised explosive devices, air rifles, a gas mask, a crossbow, a camouflage flak jacket and other weaponry, the court heard. Detectives also found the Mujahideen Poisons Handbook in Piggin’s bedroom, the jury was told.
One is taken aback when confronted by an anti-Islamic bigot teenager with a copy of the Mujahideen Poisons Handbook and an alleged plan to take a Columbine-like revenge on his community.
1. From Steven Aftergood’s Secrecy Bulletin at the Federation of American Scientists, in 2005:
“The first time I saw [the Mujahideen Poisons Handbook],” said chemist George Smith of GlobalSecurity.org, “I thought it must be a hoax.”
“Careful examination of the document shows that it is crammed with errors, seemingly the work of someone with little discernible sense, profoundly ignorant of the nature of simple compounds and incompetent in even minor [laboratory] procedures,” Dr. Smith wrote in National Security Notes in March 2004:
Link: http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/nsn/nsn-040304.htm
In short, the Mujahideen Poisons Handbook that was excerpted on the Washington Post web site indicates something nearly the opposite of what the Post article on terrorist use of the internet claimed to show.
“The ‘Poisons Handbook’ is an example of someone professing to know what he is doing on poisons who profoundly and obviously does not know what he is doing,” Dr. Smith said.
Permalink
03.28.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle, Ricin Kooks at 11:03 am by George Smith
Young Georgetown ricin-maker, Danny Milzman, had a favorite TV show: Breaking Bad! In fact, if the lawyers in his case are to be taken at face value, one might say Breaking Bad broke him, in some hard to pin down way.
I liked the show, too. Especially the end where Walter dies to Badfinger’s “Baby Blue” and the screen turns to black. Perhaps not as much as Danny Milzman, though.
But Breaking Bad’s long fascination with ricin had nothing to do with reality of the poison. On the other hand, it has contributed to the weird beliefs Americans cleave to concerning it.
Walter White first made ricin in the desert, with partner Jesse Pinkman, to poison two drug kingpins. They cooked it.
You can’t cook castor seeds or any powder containing ricin. It destroys it. And this is probably what saved a woman, last year, who tried to poison herself.
From this blog’s incomparable archives:
Contrary to American war on terror mythology, castor seeds and ricin don’t make a good weapon. In fact, it is even harder than one might think to achieve simple poisoning.
“A suicidal North Logan woman who survived poisoning with the deadly ricin toxin earlier this month is getting another break: she will not be criminally charged …
“When the woman boiled the beans, she created ricin. The fumes contaminated the home, putting the family of 4 upstairs at risk.
“Police say the woman did eat some of the beans and was taken to the hospital.”
Proteins are denatured by heating. Ricin is a protein. And it is certain that it is destroyed by heat. Boiling the castor seeds is most probably what saved the woman’s life, although she was still hospitalized after eating 30 of them.
Boiling castor seeds does not produce ricin gas. A Hazmat team was summoned. No one except the woman was every really in any danger.
In fact, research has shown it is not elementary to end oneself even eating castor seeds. An abstract on eighty four incidents of accidental and intentional castor seed ingestion over the course of a decade in Kansas was discussed here earlier this week. (Again, why you read this blog. No news organization has ever published such information.)
People who unintentionally consumed castor seeds averaged eight and a half beans per incident. Those who did it on purpose, perhaps some of whom wished to poison themselves, ate ten.
There wasn’t one death.
One person even ate castor seeds and shot up a mix of them and failed to expire although they did suffer bloody diarrhea and vomiting!
(Note to ninnies: This does not mean you should eat castor seeds as a parlor trick at drinking parties to impress friends.)
In the last episode of Breaking Bad, Walter White puts his ricin powder in Brock’s artificial sweetener at a coffee shop. We see it go into her hot tea and later she is shown in the grip of ricin poisoning.
There’s that idea that you can put proteins, like ricin, in hot water again! And that consuming it is a sure death.
There is little to no real support for any of it in the scientific and historical record. But it’s good mass entertainment!
Whoever the science advisors were to Breaking Bad, on ricin — they were dogshite.
Now, from the Washington Post, an hour ago:
The hit TV show “Breaking Bad??? and its dark plotlines played an outsized role in a federal courtroom in Washington this week in the case of a Georgetown sophomore accused of turning his dorm room into a laboratory for the deadly poison ricin.
Lawyers argued over whether Daniel Milzman, a pre-med sophomore, made the powdery substance to poison someone — or to take his own life. In making the case that Milzman should remain behind bars, prosecutors have tried to connect Milzman’s intentions with his statement to authorities that he learned about the lethal toxin from his favorite show …
In the case of the Georgetown student, defense attorneys have said Milzman was a troubled 19-year-old struggling with depression. He created the ricin, his lawyers said, because he wanted to hide his suicide plans from his family. If he became ill from the substance, no one would know that he had killed himself.
But the federal prosecutor argued that Milzman’s statements about “Breaking Bad??? suggested otherwise. She told the judge that the show’s protagonist produced ricin not to commit suicide, but to kill someone else. A friend said Milzman was such a big fan of the show he knew the name of each episode by heart.
The judge asked if Milzman was such a big fan of the show, why had not the prosecutors brought it up on the day another judge had ordered the young man released to psychiatric treatment in a DC hospital?
The government’s lawyer responded she had been unfamiliar with the show.
“I was not as familiar with the show then as I am today,??? said Assistant U.S. Attorney Maia Miller, according to the Washington Post.
Fair enough.
The government argued Milzman’s language on Facebook, threats against someone else, echoed another grisly moment from Breaking Bad, one in which someone’s body is disposed of by dumping it into a plastic barrel of hydrofluoric acid.
According to documents, Milzman posted this to Facebook:
“You would be more useful to the world if you were chemically dis-incorporated and the elements that composed your body were sold to laboratories.???
The case of Danny Milzman should give you a headache. All American ricin cases should.
I’ve argued that ricin cases have been the domain of the senseless for years.
The only exceptions are those very few obviously done out of pure malice, like the J. Everett Dutschke case last year.
Shannon Richardson, the Texas woman, also from last year, who mailed the poison to the president in an attempt to have her husband jailed, aka Ricin Mama, was, like Danny Milzman, mentally unstable.
Matthew Buquet, the to-the-president-ricin-mailer in Spokane the same month has been recently bound over for psychiatric evaluation.
Buquet mailed the president on a company’s stationary where he was a night janitor, apparently because a secretary he took a shine to did not return his affections.
Jeffrey Levenderis, from Akron, Ohio, mentioned all this week, was a deeply depressed man living in a nursing home in 2011 when he was arrested for castor powder in a jar in the refrigerator at his former home.
And Casey Cutler, from Arizona during the height of the war on terror, was merely an addled young man with a drug problem, who did not even make ricin, but someone who impossibly tried to concoct it from castor oil in a plan to defend himself from drug gangsters who had beaten him up for being short on payment.
But because of the war on terror, the news and entertainment media, plus national security experts mythologizing about ricin, an artificial and crazy environment exists in which the US position on it is intellectually untenable.
There’s no diversion program for first time castor powder makers with no criminal priors and extenuating circumstance like mental illness and no harm.
The ruling precedent is that everyone who gets the federal public defender in a ricin case goes to jail. (One exception: Robert Alberg of Kirkland, Washington. An autistic man, the court recognized he was impaired when he made ricin and ordered release under a five year parole guideline. But he went back to making ricin and was subsequently re-jailed.)
A diversion program, or a reset of legal definition at the federal level, would take care of many of the distasteful things now obvious again because of the Danny Milzman case.
Optional: Throw a couple beans in the misery jar. (Page down after link.)
Permalink
« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »