06.01.13
Bean Pounding: Why to read this blog
Shannon Richardson of New Boston, TX, ricin babe?
As I mentioned earlier today, in an abrupt change from the war on terror years, [some] officials have apparently realized that more than a decade of telling everyone that ricin is easy to make and that castor bean mash is deadly has been counterproductive.
One can add that this particular received wisdom has some bearing on why America seems to have more bean pounders than anyone else.
Throughout the decade of the war on terror government (or other counter-terror) people called on to comment on ricin always recited a gospel that it was easy to make with particular emphasis on how little necessary to kill someone.
However, there have been no domestic cases, or foreign incidences, where anyone has produced pure ricin. (Except for the presumed Markov assassination decades ago.)
The recipes available on the Internet don’t do it, as analytic
work on castor powders always shows. Purifying ricin isn’t within reach of the people who are always caught with castor seeds or castor mash containing ricin and net recipes.
But the many years spent yelling about how ricin is easy to make, just by getting castor seeds and browsing the net for instructions, has some relation to what we now see.
People believed all of the cant on ricin passed on by the media. Why not? Read or heard or seen innumerable times, the sheer weight of it convinces anyone not an expert that it must be true. It became received wisdom. And being steeped in this received wisdom has contributed to our very unusual micro-demographic of castor bean pounders.
More simply, people are suggestible.
So it was a bit different to see this published at Fox today:
Officials cautioned that there is “a significant difference??? between a trained scientist weaponizing the ricin extracted from castor beans and an individual “taking some castor beans, running them through a coffee grinder, and soaking them in acetone??? – a crude and ineffective homemade process that officials said would only be liable to induce, in a recipient foolish enough to go so far as to swallow the contents, symptoms as mild as diarrhea.
However, for every piece like it there is always another stock piece of incompetence, news that collects the usual standard counter-terrorism men, people with little or no experience in the biochemistry of terrorism, to act out the standard scripts for the press.
From the Associated Press, in a story entitled “The perfect poison:”
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The key ingredient — castor beans — is easy to find. Crude instructions for extracting the lethal poison in them can be found on the Internet. And it doesn’t require a chemistry degree or sophisticated lab equipment.
Security and counterterrorism expert Michael Fagel, who teaches at Northwestern University and is a veteran of ricin investigations, said ricin may be employed because castor beans are so easy to come by.
The plants grow wild along highways and in other spots in the U.S. They are also considered ornamental by some gardeners and are cultivated for medicinal castor oil and other products.
“And you can go on the Internet and find out any one of a gazillion recipes on how to make ricin,” Fagel said, adding that it takes only a beginner’s knowledge of science to “weaponize” it.
It is shameful to say and publish that “it takes only a beginner’s knowledge of science to weaponize.”
Any one of a gazillion recipes on the Internet! Pathetic.
Our so-called terrorism experts and advisors to Homeland Security, hard at work, illuminating the public.
This is why one reads DD blog. And why it remains important to spread the word. It’s always an uphill battle.
Earlier today, on recent developments, at GlobalSecurity.Org, a reliable source.