Here.

“What about the silicon?” asks the piece.

That question has confounded investigators throughout the probe into the 2001 anthrax letter attacks, which the U.S. government formally concluded in February. Scientists inside and outside the government say there is clear evidence that the high levels of silicon found in the anthrax came not from anything added to “weaponize” the anthrax spores—as researchers had suggested early in the probe—but from the culture in which the spores were grown. That evidence may have settled the issue of whether the anthrax was weaponized, at least for scientists familiar with the case. But it raises a different question: Why did the mailed anthrax have such a high proportion of spores with a silicon signature in comparison to most other anthrax samples?

Whatever the answer turns out to be, it won’t change the FBI’s “conclusion that the attacks were the sole handiwork of now-deceased U.S. Army researcher Bruce Ivins.”

The magazine might also have added it won’t change the minds of those who simply don’t believe Ivins did it, or that he did not work alone, or that because the mailed anthrax was ‘weaponized’ Ivins could not have done it because he did not have the know-how, three beliefs, among others, which make up the hard kernel of anthrax case conspiracy theory.

Paradoxically, it was a news article in Science magazine in 2003 which bundled all the rumors of weaponization in one authoritative spot, laying the foundation for much of this.

Written by Gary Matsumoto and entitled “Anthrax Powder: State of the Art?”, it engaged in a speculation on how the mailed anthrax was weaponized.

It is here.

Near the top of the old article, one reads:

[One group of people] thinks that the powder mailed to the Senate (widely reported to be more refined than the one mailed to the TV networks in New York) was a diabolical advance in biological weapons technology. This diverse group includes scientists who specialize in biodefense for the Pentagon and other federal agencies, private-sector scientists who make small particles for use in pharmaceutical powders, and an electronics researcher [in Texas] …

The piece continued with an almost maniacal rumination on how things like “polymerized glass” or “Aerosil” had possibly been mixed with the anthrax in the crafting of a diabolical weapon.

Who could have done it? Battelle (or as it has been puckishly expressed, the Umbrella Corporation) or perhaps Dugway, the article implied, hastily adding “None of this argues that Battelle or any of its employees made the Senate anthrax powder.”

The FBI science exhibit on the Ivins case in 2008 attempted to put this to rest, delivering a set of facts Science magazine repeated again yesterday.

“We found no additives; no exogenous material on the outside of the spores,” said Joseph Michael, a materials scientist at Sandia National Laboratory in 2008. “We did have the opportunity to look at weaponized material to compare it to the letter material and they were very different. And [in] the weaponized material the additives appear on the outside of the spore. Again, in the letter materials the silicon and oxygen were co-located on the spore coat [which is] within the spore. In fact, we found some vegetative cells that were going through the sporulation process and the spore within the mother cell had this same signature.”

From Science, yesterday:

Examining the spores under a scanning electron microscope, [an Army group of] scientists detected silicon and oxygen and concluded that the spores had been coated with silica to make them float easily, enhancing their power to kill.

A more detailed analysis by Joseph Michael and Paul Kotula of Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contradicted that conclusion. Studying individual spores with a transmission electron microscope, they found that the silicon was located within the spore coat, well inside the cell’s exosporium (outermost covering). By contrast, when they looked at surrogate spores weaponized with silica, the silicon was clearly outside the exosporium.

In 2008 it wasn’t enough to dampen the conspiracy theories. And one does not really expect anything to change now.

From the beginning of a Register story on the FBI exhibition in 2008:

The posting to the net of a transcript of the FBI’s briefing to the press on the science behind the anthrax case is remarkable for two things: first, for its explanation of the development of microbial forensics and the team of scientists behind it; and second, for the determination of some members of the press to run off on a conspiracy theory hinging upon whether or not the anthrax was ever weaponized.

As to the second part, the FBI and its team of independent scientists unequivocally said it wasn’t, after repeated badgering by one journalist – unnamed in the transcript – who insisted other scientists at Ft. Detrick and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology had determined the anthrax to be weaponized because silica was allegedly seen on the surface of the spores.

Dr Joseph Michael, a materials scientist at Sandia National Laboratories who had, with others, analyzed the anthrax powders in depth, flatly denied this. “They are mistaken,” the man replied to repeated questioning.

That journalist in question was the one who had written the news piece for Science in 2003.

Well, yes. Yes it has.

There is daily proof, often from the grassroots. Here is some, beyond satire — school science projects in Delaware.

“I surveyed like 50 people and asked them if they had ever been discriminated at an amusement park because they were too short or overweight, and there actually are a lot of people who are too overweight for rides,” she said. “There were like 30 of them who were too big for at least one ride.”

Some people have to stand in line in the sun for a couple of hours before they find out they are too big to fit. Having adjustable belts could rectify that, [someone named] Meekins said.

“I don’t understand why every theme park can’t do that,” [the person named Meekins] said.

Or, there’s this:

Schoolmate Ben Ross also chose a summertime subject for his senior project: “Shark Repellent Technology.”

“I found out what sharks are allergic to is magnets. Not necessarily allergic to, but most sensitive to,” he said. “Sharks have what’s called electric sense in the tip of their nose. That’s what helps them attack prey. I figured I could make buoys that could line the shore. Then I could place an electromagnetic pulse generator on each buoy to keep sharks away during the summer.

“I figured I could turn it off from dusk to dawn, because that’s when sharks normally feed,” he added.

Well, other than they don’t really work there’s the thing that lotsa people often swim in the ocean at night.

Anti-shark electromagnetic pulse rays. This is what it’s come to?

Here.

What’s the matter with a chemical volcano , trial and error composition of gunpowder, or learning what a guinea and feather tube illustrates?

Montgomery County school officials have not yet closed gaps in their computer system that allowed students at a high-performing Potomac high school to change dozens of grades using a device that can be bought from Amazon.com for $69. And other school systems, including Fairfax County, remain just as vulnerable, school officials said Tuesday.

At least eight students at Winston Churchill High School are believed to have used the readily available device to obtain teachers’ passwords for the school system’s grading system. The school system, Maryland’s largest, has determined that the grades of 54 students were improperly changed in 35 teachers’ records.

From the Washington Post here.

“That’s the first hack that every kid who becomes a criminal has done,” Alan Paller, “director of research at the SANS Institute,” told the newspaper. “Right now, attack software is so good that the average user in a small business or a school cannot protect himself and still get his job done.”

Previously in the Paller-Scope – from the archives.

This in a short essay, “The Cyber War Has Not Begun,” here.

Lewis writes:

No nation has launched a cyber war or cyber attack against the United States … Pronouncements that we are in a cyber war or face cyber terror conflate problems and make effective response more difficult.

This is a bit like seeing the town whore swearing she’ll attend regular meetings of the Church Universal and Triumphant. One can’t help but be impressed — but only in a jaundiced way — wondering how long this ‘conversion’ will last.

Lewis, readers have seen, has been one of the chieftains of the Cult of Cyberwar. And DD blog’s survey of citations of his name, and a few others, in media databases over the past few months shows his footprint clearly.

Here is the unscientific master list, taken from a search on cybersecurity/cyberwar through newspaper databases over the past year, current only to January 19:

1. Alan Paller, SANS — 84
2. McAfee — 80
3. James Lewis, CSIS — 47
4. Booz Allen Hamilton — 38
5. Symantec — 31
6. Mike McConnell, BA — 25
7. Paul Kurtz, Good Harbor — 11
8. Richard Clarke, Good Harbor 4

‘Control values’:

1. Gene Spafford, Purdue 25
2. Marcus Ranum 0

 

Here, we don’t split hairs over the precise syntax used by each of the Cult of Cyberwar’s chieftains. Lewis cannot escape that he was one of the major contributors to the bad state of affairs to which he now says nay.

If readers have followed this specialized topic, they know this in response to US cyberczar Howard Schmidt’s recent statement to Wired that the United States was not in a cyberwar. And this was in the context of Booz Allen Hamilton’s Mike McConnell, who had been in the mainstream media repeatedly over the past few months — from 60 Minutes to the editorial pages of the Washington Post — mercilessly pimping the idea that the country was in a cyberwar and that it was losing.

DD has written about this a number of times, most recently here and here.

A couple things lend themselves to helpful repeat use:

In the case of Mike McConnell’s list of citations, one remarkable feature [was] that not a single reporter writing these things identified him as the chief salesman of Booz Allen’s cybersecurity business operation. It’s a computer security business which rides on stories about looming cyberwar and the national shortage of computer security workers, to be trained on the taxpayer dime and then poached so that they can be leased to the government by Booz Allen and its competitors.

All this, even though the big aimed-at-the-US-government consulting and contracting business gleefully flogs McConnell and whatever he’s saying or doing on its homepage daily.

And here:

What could be better than to have a VP on 60 Minutes telling everyone about the lurking menace of cyberattack, being able to feature that on your homepage right next to your links for cybersecurity job staffing for positions like “Defense Intelligence Critical Infrastructure and Homeland Defense Analyst” or “Iranian Cyber All-Source Analyst”? In case that country is planning to cyberattack us.

“Booz Allen Hamilton, a leading consulting firm, helps government clients solve their toughest problems with services in strategy, operations …” reads the website.

One sees the work afoot here. It could not be more obvious. One has the right to make a good living and there is no better place to present a sales pitch refined into a story of national menace then at 60 Minutes.

As for the James Lewis’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, it sold itself to one of the country’s biggest computer security vendors recently, for the sake of providing ‘research’ on the universal menace of cyberattack throughout the country.

And this was encapsulted in another vignette taken from the archives of recent national news:

Globally, widespread cyberfacilitated bank and credit-card fraud has serious implications for economic and financial systems and the national security …

Power plants, oil refineries and water supplies increasingly dependent on the Internet are under relentless attack by cyber spies and thugs, according to a McAfee report.

The “Critical Infrastructure in the Age of Cyber-War” analysis by the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said the price of “downtime” from major attacks exceeds six million dollars a day.

“If cyberspace is the Wild West, the sheriff needs to get to Dodge City,” concluded the study commissioned by McAfee, which sells computer security software.

The Wild West analogy is one of James Lewis’s favorites. And while there may be truth in it, it’s purpose has been to merely feed hyperbole on the subject.

Well sorry, the man can’t have it both ways now.

James Lewis can complain that the manipulative hyperbole on cyberwar on the media isn’t helpful and that the US is now not in a cyberwar. But he should also have mentioned that he’s been one of the primary contributors to the hype. And that the selling of the services of the think tank shop one works out of to a large computer security vendor, for the purpose of furthering the message of cybercatastrophe, is also not much in the way of a confidence builder.

So why is the US not in danger of being crippled in a a cyber-ambush staged by another country?

Lewis answers this question in his essay, but even that is a fairly obvious revelation.

We’d start bombing the hell out of them. With or without ironclad proof of some other country’s complicity has never been an impediment to violent action in recent history.

It couldn’t come soon enough.

During 2008-09 the Graham-Talent Commission acted as an instrument of Tara O’Toole’s biodefense shop, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Biosecurity.

Writing here in December, we summarize:

More accurately, [the commission's public faces] — Bob Graham and Jim Talent — are little more than fuglemen for the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and a small consortium of biodefense firms called the Alliance for Biosecurity. And the ‘commission’s’ top two staffers are indistinguishable from the Center for Biosecurity.

The special interest group known as the Graham-Talent commission, though, does have a script it efficiently delivers.

It’s an apocalyptic one, a dire and extreme claim delivered free of correspondingly extreme or convincing evidence in support of it. It lives on the idea that if enough people can be rounded up to repeat it in press, it will be taken as fact by others who should perhaps know better.

And that script, delivered through the end of 2009 for the purposes of bonking the Obama administration over the head on the nation’s unpreparedness for bioterrorism was this, as taken from an example in USA Today:

“[Anthrax spores] released by a crop-duster could ‘kill more Americans than died in World War II’ and the economic impact could exceed $1.8 trillion in cleanup and other costs.”

An anthrax attack, in other words, would make World War II and the economic collapse seem like walks on a sunny day.

The Graham-Talent bioterror defense industry lobby regularly astro-turfed this substance-free meme into the mainstream press.

For the Miami Herald, Bob Graham, in an opinion piece:

“Is the biothreat overblown?” Graham asked. (The correct answer is “Yes.” And he has been one of the parties overblowing it.)

“No,” continued Graham’s opinion piece. “Just two or three pounds of anthrax scattered over a major city could kill more Americans than the number who died in World War II, according to the National Counter Terrorism Center. Cleanup and other economic costs could exceed $1.8 trillion.”

And in various other newspapers, various third and fourth tier right-wing pundits like Cliff May and Deroy Murdock delivered the same item.

“In an October 21 progress report, [Graham-Talent] cautioned that ‘a one-to two-kilogram release of anthrax spores from a crop duster plane could kill more Americans than died in World War II,’ specifically, 380,000.” — Murdock

“A scenario perhaps even more frightening: terrorists using biological weapons, setting off epidemics of smallpox, Ebola virus or other hemorrhagic fevers; a crop duster spreading 10 pounds of anthrax causing more deaths than in World War II.” — May

But despite the pliant and suggestible nature of various newspaper editors, the general public would seem to have virtually no interest in this much foretold catastrophe.

Which is sort of good news, considering the amount of effort Graham-Talent brought to the table in trying to manipulate opinion.

Another matter worth noting is the gracelessness with which parties in the bioterror defense industry deal with each other. Having done so much for the cause of the O’Toole shop, the UPMC Center for Biosecurity, you’d think those folks — with their plan for a big bioterror defense installation – might have thrown some money at Graham-Talent.

Where’s the love?

But perhaps they’ll still come through.

“One wonders which pharmaceutical firms will fund this ‘non-profit’ organization,” writes Jason Sigger today at Armchair Generalist. “Interestingly, the commission is not going to address the nuclear weapons or proliferation prevention aspects of its report, but only the issue of biopreparedness.”

“We’re not a lame duck. We’re not going away,” was one promise, delivered by the commission’s executive director before a women’s group in Washington, DC.

Anything will do — stories in major newspapers and magazines, opinion pieces or long letters. Even when a journalist writes a weakly critical piece for something like Foreign Policy, as Sharon Weinberger did about a month ago (see here), the Cult uses it as an opportunity to thunder back with an article just as long.

So Foreign Policy lays out the red carpet for Peter Pry, one of the original floggers of electromagnetic pulse doom.

Pry is mad as hell and won’t abide it. “The Boogeyman Bomb” article wounds him deeply. So he goes through the usual arguments, delivering the standard claims of which the Cult has grown so fond.

Say such things often enough, or turn up the volume sufficiently, and that will do it. This works partly under the assumption that Americans judge the rightness of something by the number of people who can be convinced to chant it in unison.

“Weinberger accuses the EMP Commission of deliberately ‘exaggerating the capabilities of a potential EMP attack,’” complains Pry. “This is a serious allegation, as deliberately misrepresenting the facts about the EMP threat would constitute an ethical and legal violation.”

Perish forbid anyone would have done such a thing from the Cult of EMP Crazy.

Now let’s count the number of scripts Pry delivers.

One scenario of particular concern is a nuclear-armed Iran transferring a short- or medium-range nuclear missile to terrorist groups that could perform a ship-launched “anonymous” EMP attack against the United States. Iranian military strategists have written about EMP attacks against the United States, and Iran has successfully practiced launching a ballistic missile off a ship and flight-tested its Shahab-3 medium-range missile to detonate at high altitude, as if practicing an EMP attack.

The Bomb Iran script, beloved by the missile defense lobby, the Heritage Foundation, and anyone in the GOP far right who wants to, well, just bomb Iran.

There will always be individuals who disagree with any commission’s findings — no matter that the methodology, research, and analysis are excellent — just as there are those who disagree with the 9/11 Commission, the weapons-of-mass-destruction commission, the Warren Commission, or any other commission.

This is a uniquely new script, one exhibiting a bit of megalomania. It compares the EMP Commission, which few Americans have heard of or give a shit about, to the Warren Commission – set up to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the 9/11 Commission, which many, many, many Americans did know of and give shits about, for obvious reasons. So much so that books issued by both were best-sellers.

How’s that EMP Commission book doing, by the way?

Weinberger alleges that the EMP Commission and concern about the EMP threat is strictly partisan. But the EMP Commission’s bipartisan credentials are impeccable. It was established by a Republican-dominated Congress in 2001 and re-established by a Democrat-dominated Congress in 2006. Commissioners were appointed on a bipartisan basis. The EMP threat, and the necessity to do something about it, is one of the few issues on which Democrats and Republicans in Congress are working together.

The ‘bipartisan’ script. This one omits that the Cult of EMP Crazy has always been the exclusive property of the GOP far right. From ex-Congressman Curt Weldon, to EMP doom eminence grise Newt Gingrich, to hawk/birther Frank Gaffney, to birther Arizona Congressman Trent Franks, to Fox News star Mike Huckabee, to everyone at the Heritage Foundation ever, to the old white guys club listed down the side of the EMPAct America booster page here.

This only proves that Foreign Policy editors are weak, being unable to make Pry tell the entire story in favor of just the sole item that, yes, occasionally the Cult of EMP Crazy gets to appear before Congressional meetings which are attended by both Democrats and Republicans. And that sometimes Democrats make polite noises and nod their heads at these things.

As to Weinberger’s complaints that Newt Gingrich and others concerned about the EMP threat sometimes recommend to popular audiences the novel One Second After, which describes a hypothetical EMP attack on the United States: Since Uncle Tom’s Cabin there has been a venerable tradition in U.S. democracy of educating and building popular support for causes through novels.

Script which must mention William Forstchen’s not really famous novel. This time accompanied by implied comparison, in terms of importance, to famous novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe. See megalomania reference, above.

An EMP attack is the only option for a single nuclear weapon that offers terrorists or rogue states any realistic chance of defeating the United States, perhaps eliminating the United States as an actor from the world stage, permanently.

The total destruction of American civilization script. In this case, not accompanied by the standard statistics in which almost the entire population starves or passes away in the year following attack due to absence of all basic amenities.

And here — right on time — another dose of stock Cult of EMP Crazy from Heritage Foundation central casting at Fox News Video.

Update:

A reader writes: “A (non-nuclear) EMP device was employed by terrorists at the end of this week’s episode of 24 — which no sensible person watches anymore.”

This marks the second time an EMP bomb was used in the series, at least. One was deployed in Los Angeles a couple seasons back.

In “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Terrorists,” someone at New York magazine writes of the latest 24 episode:

Yup, everything was coming up roses for the good-until-proven-otherwise guys. That is, until Kayla unknowingly drove an electromagnetic pulse bomb into the office and short-circuited CTU. This looks like a job for Absurd-o-Meter.

In an only slightly related note, the 24 character, the snivelling Dana, could prove crippling to Katee Sackhoff’s career.

Sadly, Sackhoff has been in a number of roles ranging from dreadful to merely bummerish, including that of a publc sex-crazed anethesiologist in Nip/Tuck, since Battlestar Galactica.

1. Think for the Boss

Find out the key initiatives your company president wants to achieve.
If the president said in the annual report that he wants to increase profit by 15 percent at the health insurance company, focus on that goal. Your work needs to be connected with what the company cares about right now. So get to work writing computer software that will sift clients for penny-ante mistakes on their insurance papers, so they can be targeted for cancellation immediately when they get sick.

2. Be a highly visible lickspittle, not just a cubicle toady

If you stay cloistered in your cubicle, you’ll probably be disappointed when raises are announced — no matter how hard you work. To ensure that you and your hard work are seen, request projects that will get you in front of others — like dunning your colleagues for your boss’s favorite charity — United Way — instead of letting him do it.

This will make it easier for your boss to plead your case to any necessary approvers. “If a boss is in meeting and says, ‘I want to give a raise to Bloor, it’s going to be hard if no one knows who Bloor is. On the other hand, if Bloor has been visibly helpful in collecting monies or in the newspaper defending the company against allegations of fraud or criminal misconduct, they’ll say, ‘Oh Bloor, he’s terrific!’”

3. Be a charismatic apple-polisher

Being a suck up is terrific. But if you really want to go places, your suck-upitude must be infectious, capable of spreading its enthusiasms to your co-workers. Executive coach Lisa Blankfein-Pandit says this kind of interpersonal skill plays a huge role when compensation is discussed.

4. Be subtle

No boss will ever actually come out and say, “I love to give raises to ass-kissers.” So how do you draw attention to this quality without seeming like a finagling braggart? The president and CEO of the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations says that giving your boss a quarterly report on his or the company’s milestones — be it downsizing 100 employees without experiencing any theft or damage to office equipment or how the chief executive figured out how to put a lot less product in a box that looks lots bigger — and asking for feedback is a subtle way to get noticed.

5. Feel for the Boss

The highest-earning employees understand that their job is to make their boss’s life easier. Think about the things that your boss doesn’t like doing — well, just about everything except collecting his end of year bonus or meeting high rent hookers at the Serbian Crown Room or Ruth’s Steakhouse — and ask if you can help by taking over those tasks. It’s also important to understand that your boss can’t always give you what you want, no matter how great your efforts have been to uplift his days. “Most people get keyed up to ask for a raise and when they hear ‘no’ they respond really negatively,” says one career-adviser. “If you instead say, ‘I understand, but when wages are unfrozen, please sir, I would like to be the first in line, remember the many good happy hours you had at the Serbian Crown Room,’ you’ll have a much better chance of getting the raise when they can give it.”

“Recent cases show challengeds of US terrorists,” reads the latest, from Associated Press.

Reporters Eileen Sullivan and Devlin Barrett lash together a collection of designated bad people in the news and consults a variety of experts to read the future. The future, in these stories, being always rotten and getting worse. No context in terms of what problems the US faces by comparison, or the amount of miscellaneous mayhem that goes down every month on US streets, is furnished.

It reads:

One was a drywall contractor and father, another a petite woman who cared for the elderly, another a U.S. military officer. The most alarming thing about a string of recently arrested terror suspects is that they are all Americans.

And there’s the crazy guy who shot and wounded guards to the entrance of the Pentagon and the man who wandered around as a construction worker nobody at nuclear plants in the US and then went off to crawl the dunes of Yemen for years. The crazy kid is left out because he was not a Muslim. Same for the poor man’s Ted Kaczinski who flew his airplane into an IRS building. And the deadliest bioterrorist in history, against which individuals like Jihad Jane seem silly — Bruce Ivins — is also not here.

Just not the right religion.

And of the terrorists selected for this story, only the US Army-minted Nidal Hasan proved truly capable — killing thirteen.

One might venture to say the number still seems quite small in a country as diverse and vast as the US, particularly when considering the poor state of mind imposed on nearly everyone by current economic conditions.

” ‘These cases, [one counterterrorism expert] said, ‘underscore the constantly evolving nature of the threat we face,’” reads the AP piece.

Another way to look at it, logically, is to see that it’s a rather bad argument for endless war and increasingly oppressive snooping, vigilance and intolerance. And that next to everyday problems like rising unemployment, broken government, and the failure of the United States to effectively educate and lead as befits a country of its history and size, these are only small annoyances which — by their exaggeration — point to a self-imposed increasingly bleak future.

A drift into terrorism is “a combination of psychology, sociology and people who, just for cultural reasons, gravitate” [to Islamic extremism] … We can’t assume we’ve got months and years,” Michael Chertoff opines.

Chertoff can always be counted on to reliably deliver the noxious disguised as wisdom. Just last month he was part of a program which CNN ran repeatedly over the course of one weekend, a feature presentation selling the idea that cyberattacks will deliver the new WMDs.

Chertoff’s observation on US terrorists implies one ought to take up the very bad idea that we need to quickly develop the right amount of observation and surveillance, marked up against a scientifically approved list of social character markers, so that these troublesome people can be ferreted out sooner — before too many of them show up and the streets run red with blood.

I know there are more of them out there,” says someone named Jack Tomarchio, another former Dept. of Homeland Security employee.

In these stories the most toxic quote always seems to be delivered by the ubiquitous Bruce Hoffman, a “terrorism expert at Georgetown University.”

“The spate of cases over the past two years shows the conventional wisdom about who is a terrorist is dangerously outdated,” the AP says Hoffman informs.

“There really is no profile of a terror suspect; the profile is broken … It’s women as well as men, it’s lifelong Muslims as well as converts, it’s college students as well as jailbirds.”

These words work to create the impression that terrorism is sort of like a hard to diagnose disease or a trace poisonous gas, floating through the air, capable of infecting or tainting anyone at anytime depending on a panoply of inner weaknesses. And that the only way to stop it is to go to the source and deliver a regular prescription of root terrorism-killing antibiotic or antidote — the burning and stamping out of Muslims who look at the US with anger from other countries.

It is the most meretricious thing, a prescription for endless war, more threats to blow out of proportion next to more urgent problems diminishing the quality of life and blighting futures nationwide. Except for those in the business of explaining and countering terrorism.

This is after it was compelled to separate from the old ‘Alliance for Biosecurity’ last year because of the taint of cronyism which news articles attached to it, the Department of Homeland Security’s then incoming undersecretary for Science & Technology, Tara O’Toole and deceased congressman Jack Murtha.

Collectively, a reporter at the Weekly Standard dubbed this aggregation of bioterror defense enterprise and politics “the Murtha/O’Toole favor factory.”

Articles discussing it are at the Washington Times, the Standard and one on this blog are consecutively — here, here and here.

Separated from the Alliance for Biosecurity, the UPMC has continued to be be busy with other partners in order to secure more bioterror defense loot from the US government/taxpayer as a consequence of Bruce Ivins of Fort Detrick’s little stunt with anthrax.

At Armchair Generalist, Jason Sigger writes of the p.r. announcement as it was channeled through the Pittsburgh Business Journal:

Now that the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine dropped out of the “Alliance for Biosecurity,” its leadership must have been desperate to find another way to get to the cash cow of bioterrorism industry. And find one it did …

And from the PBJ:

Battelle, IBM and Merck & Co. Inc. are partnering with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in the development of a first of its kind vaccine factory, the hospital network announced.

The new partners join GE Healthcare in pursuing construction of the facility, which UPMC wants to operate in partnership with the federal government as a way to respond quickly to chemical, biological or radiological threats such as a bioterrorist attack.

The plant would be funded by the federal government and operate as a nonprofit UPMC subsidiary

In the United States post-9/11, most people instinctively realize that when one declares that your goal is to build a ‘non-profit institution’, what you are actually doing is building a very much ‘for-profit institution.’

And profit there is to be made as one can tell from an eyeball of Tara O’Toole’s ethics and financial disclosure statements, on-line last year at Pro Publica and the Washington Post.

Readers will also notice that IBM, GE and Battelle are not names any reasonably informed people normally associate with improving general health, welfare and the practice of curing the sick in this country.

They are, however, big names with a lot of clout and significant lobbying power.

“[It's] a funny thing, how non-profits like Battelle can be so aggressively driven by profit-chasing,” writes Sigger puckishly. “‘Battelle is investing today in key initiatives that will deliver a safer, healthier, and more productive tomorrow’. So was the Umbrella Corporation.”

Tsk-tsk, Mr. Sigger.

With the impression of cozy dealing attached to the UPMC Center for Biosecurity’s work with Jack Murtha (and, well, his subsequent untimely demise), another politician of influence had been sought and found in 2009.

D nee R Senator Arlen Specter was recruited into the role of UPMC bioterror defense/vaccine manufacturing facility enabler. As can be seen by his use of the thing as a job-builder in his campaign for re-election here.

The operation, it was said, would create “70,000 jobs.” Which is overselling it by quite a bit.

The UPMC Center would allegedly revolutionize vaccine manufacture by magic use of something called GE “disposable plastic technology”. This explains GE Healthcare’s involvement, “disposable plastic technology” being apparently its proprietary contribution to a promised great leap forward in vaccine production.

“UPMC worked on its proposal for a public-private partnership for several years, according to Rep. John Murtha’s office. Murtha, D-Johnstown, chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, held hearings and consulted with UPMC on the need to increase [bioterrorism] vaccine capacity in the United States,” reported the Pittsburgh Tribune last year in an article telling about a Congressional hearing called by Specter to further push it down the rails.

“At a hearing Murtha called in Washington last year, officials testified a public-private partnership, possibly with an academic institution, could be a viable option that likely would cost several billion dollars.”

Alarmed by the potential reaction that an estimate of “several billion dollars” might cause in government, since it is the taxpayer’s money, the UPMC has subsequently revised its “estimate” downward to only one billion.

“Improving vaccine capacity probably will involve several public-private facilities in case contamination or a terrorist attack disables one …” one booster of the UPMC effort told the Pittsburgh newspaper.

This was a rather strange statement, as the one bioterrorist that the US has seen in recent years did not disable any bioterror defense installations.

Bruce Ivins, the most famous bioterrorist in the world, did not attack Fort Detrick with anthrax in the mail, a public private military taxpayer-funded facility which is central to biodefense research and preparedness. Ivins was a senior researcher at Fort Detrick, one who worked on the anthrax vaccine.

Anyway, in short: This announcement is just the latest news in the effort to more efficiently transfer taxpayer treasure to the biodefense research infrastructure.

Some very informed sources consider it a done deal.

However, it’s possible Arlen Specter could lose in his bid for re-election this November. With regards to this case, the election of Republican Pat Toomey could be a good thing as it would at least cause the UPMC to go to the trouble of enlisting a new government fixer.

A greater emphasis on “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s.” This means not only increased favorable mentions of Schlafly, the founder of the antifeminist Eagle Forum, but also more discussion of the Moral Majority, the Heritage Foundation, the National Rifle Association and Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America.

One would be hard-pressed to name one substantial thing the Heritage Foundation has contributed to the US.

Paul Revere’s? Uh-uh. Great inventors? No. Scientists? No. Great advancers and defenders of civil rights and the rule of law? No. Healers and philanthropists? No. Eradicators of smallpox? No. Discoverers of electricity? No. Great astronauts of our time or first makers of the electric guitar? No and no. Arms controllers and peace workers? No. House of Nobel laureates? No. Invented the Internet? Sadly, no. Heroes of bloody Tarawa or the Meuse-Argonne? No.

Haters of homosexuals. Yes. EMP Crazies? Yes. Despisers of Democrats? Yes. Upholders of old-right-wing-white-guys political club? Yes. Dumping ground and sounding board for out-of-power GOP pols? Yes. Bomb Iran lobby central. Check. Advocates of using lasers to battle pirates? Yes!

A reduced scope for Latino history and culture. A proposal to expand such material in recognition of Texas’ rapidly growing Hispanic population was defeated in last week’s meetings—provoking one board member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out in protest. “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist,” she said of her conservative colleagues on the board. “They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.”

It’s a damn shame when the last and only way to learn about the intertwine of American and Mexican culture — like if you don’t live in California or Arizona — is through the record catalog of ZZ Top. I heard it, I heard it, I heard it on the X!

A more positive portrayal of Cold War anticommunism. Disgraced anticommunist crusader Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator censured by the Senate for his aggressive targeting of individual citizens and their civil liberties on the basis of their purported ties to the Communist Party, comes in for partial rehabilitation. The board recommends that textbooks refer to documents published since McCarthy’s death and the fall of the Soviet bloc that appear to show expansive Soviet designs to undermine the U.S. government.

Can we have a shout out for Roy Cohn, too, while you’re at it?

Language that qualifies the legacy of 1960s liberalism. Great Society programs such as Title IX—which provides for equal gender access to educational resources—and affirmative action, intended to remedy historic workplace discrimination against African-Americans, are said to have created adverse “unintended consequences” in the curriculum’s preferred language.

Thomas Jefferson no longer included among writers influencing the nation’s intellectual origins. Jefferson, a deist who helped pioneer the legal theory of the separation of church and state, is not a model founder in the board’s judgment. Among the intellectual forerunners to be highlighted in Jefferson’s place: medieval Catholic philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas, Puritan theologian John Calvin …

How Calvinist. Stoning should have never fallen out of favor.

[The] recommendations include an entry listing Confederate General Stonewall Jackson as a role model for effective leadership, and a statement from Confederate President Jefferson Davis accompanying a speech by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.

A recommendation to include country and western music among the nation’s important cultural movements. The popular black genre of hip-hop is being dropped from the same list.

To DD this is more richly amusing than dismaying.

In education, we could get exactly what we’ve been working to deserve. If one believes in a God, he apparently has a very finely developed dry sense of humor.