11.05.13
Fruit of the national security megaplex
This would have never happened back when I started in the early Nineties.
No one would have been talking about ricin. And on the outside chance they were nobody would have thought much of it.
Two Aiken High School students have been accused of conspiring to make ricin, according to the Aiken Department of Public Safety.
The leader of a school group notified police about some suspicious activity that took place while the group was on a field trip to the zoo and botanical gardens in Columbia, according to an incident report. The two students were heard discussing making ricin, a highly toxic protein produced in the seeds of the castor oil plant.
The students told their group they wanted to go to the botanical gardens at the zoo in order to find a castor oil plant, which is used to make ricin, the report stated. Other students confirmed the reports.
Each of the students told officers it was the other’s idea to find the plant and make the ricin, according to the report. The students’ parents were also contacted regarding the incident.
No charges will be filed, reads the newspaper, although the state and federal governments were contacted.
The students had no materials. “[An official] said the castor oil plant [at the botanical garden] was never touched,” it added.
The country is radically different than it was fifteen years ago.
Does anyone think this has been for the better?
What does it say about the nature of the national security megaplex and how average people and thought have been warped by it when two teenagers on a field trip make trivial talk about ricin, they’re overheard, reports are made and the federal government contacted?
And, worse, this is no longer seen as profoundly abnormal.