Does the answer really matter?

I suppose it does to somebody, not to any of the dead or their families.

The “Health officials” are still not to sure where the nasty little killer came from. More importantly, they do not know how to keep this from happening the next time.

Health officials have mistakenly identified the source of the deadly E. coli outbreak more than once.; All they really know is an outbreak has killed at least twenty-two people and left more than 600 in critical condition.

Authorities have tested eighteen sprout mixtures, but their results showed that they were not the source of the outbreak. A few weeks ago authorities pointed to Spanish cucumbers, only to have to admit they were wrong. Yet the big news continues to be that the food guys are losing as much as $290 million a week. Spain is left holding the bag and their reputation is sullied.

Authorities have tested eighteen sprout mixtures including beans, peas, garlic, and radishes, but results showed that they were not the source of the outbreak. The sprouts in question originated from an organic farm in a region near Hamburg.

Further tests have revealed that the E.coli found in the cucumbers contained a different strain of bacteria than the current outbreak.

The bogus identification has greatly impacted the Spanish economy with officials estimating that Spain’s fruit and vegetable exporters are losing nearly $300 million a week.

Despite the German government’s findings that Spanish cucumbers were not the cause of the outbreak, wary consumers across Europe have stayed away from all of Spain’s produce. Russia and Qatar have even gone so far as to halt all fresh-produce imports from Europe.

Are you getting a feeling about how huge this mess really is? And how powerless the “Authorities” really are to stop it?

The current outbreak plaguing Germany is from a particularly rare and deadly strain of E. coli that has affected more than 1,700 people.

The infection results in bloody diarrhea, sever cramps, and fevers, but more than 500 patients are suffering from a deadly complication known as hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), where the bacteria begins producing toxins that attack the kidney and nervous system.

According to the World Health Organization, 103 people in twelve countries have been affected by the outbreak. All but one were found to have recently travelled to Germany.

American health officials have reported four suspected cases of the infection from people who recently travelled to Hamburg, Germany.

I’ve recounted all this to just ask a very simple question, “Is relying on the “Authorities” to solve all our problems serving us well?

All one needs to do is look at the record. Then start to figure out, “how can I be a bit more self reliant to protect myself and my family?”

Advnt’s product’s are focused on being simple to use, yet very robust, specific and sensitive to detecting the biological targets which can make you dead.

Thanks for reading. I’ll try to bring more articles for your interest.

Please share your thoughts about my perspective.

My Best to You and Yours,

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May 2009

Terrorists attacking a major city with nuclear or biological weapons is “more realistic” than ever, British officials warned as they lifted the secrecy from six years of counter-terrorism efforts.

Called “Contest,” the U.K. anti-terror strategy contends that new technologies and lawless nations boost the odds of a WMD attack leading to massive death and destruction.

Titled “Pursue, Protect, Prevent, Prepare: The United Kingdom’s Strategy for Countering International Terrorism,” the 176-page report presents an updated British strategy for combating terrorism.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith describes Contest as “one of the most comprehensive and wide-ranging approaches to tackling terrorism anywhere in the world.”

Dr. Marvin Cetron, the futurist and founder of Forecasting International, a firm that advises U.S. counter-terrorism agencies, reports that British authorities have every reason to be concerned.

“The terrorists are getting better qualified, more technically trained people as we’ve seen in Britain,” Cetron says. “And they’re trying to get the capability. They’re still working on getting nuclear fissionable material. That’s a low probability, but it is a high-impact event.”

Since 2001, the report reveals, British authorities have thwarted over a dozen terrorist attacks. One measure of officials’ concern: U.K authorities have trained and equipped over 7,000 police officers to respond to WMD incidents. They have also built facilities for mass decontamination’s, should a WMD attack occur.

“Contemporary terrorist organizations aspire to use chemical, biological, radiological and even nuclear weapons,” the report states. “Changing technology and the theft and smuggling of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear and explosive (CBRNE) materials make this aspiration more realistic than it may have been in the recent past.”

A letter from Prime Minister Gordon Brown accompanying the Contest report states: “This new form of terrorism is different in scale and nature from the terrorist threats we have had to deal with in recent decades. It is intent on inflicting mass casualties without warning, motivated by a violent extremist ideology, and exploits modern travel and communications to spread through a loose and dangerous global network.”

One question counter-terror experts will no doubt be asking: Why after six years is the British government lifting the veil of secrecy over its counter-terrorism strategy and assessments?

Smith said the government seeks to “provide the people of the UK and our partners overseas with as full and as open an account as possible of why and how we are tackling this threat.”

The new report lists four main terror threats facing the U.K., all of them linked to al Qaida:

Universal Detection Technology (UNDT.OB), a developer of monitoring technologies, including bioterrorism detection devices, announced that the company is working with the U.S. Department of Commerce to promote its anthrax and other bioterrorism detection equipment in China. Universal Detection Technology is a reseller of handheld assays used for detection of five bioterrorism agents, radiation detection systems and antimicrobial products.

40 al-Qaeda terrorists dead after failed experiment with plague weapon

Published 22 January 2009

40 al-Qaeda members died after being exposed to the plague during a biological weapons test; test took place in cave hideouts in Tizi Ouzou province, 150 kilometres east of the Algerian capital Algiers.

Last month (23 December 2008 HS Daily Wire) we reported that leaders of the U.S. Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism said that the Obama administration must do more, much more, to prevent a terrorist attack on the United States. The most urgent task:

Focus on bioterrorism. The united States must raise the priority of the most likely form of attack — bioterrorism — by mobilizing the life sciences community to develop protocols that prevent misuse of scientific research; tightening oversight of U.S. high-containment laboratories and the security of those around the world; improving U.S. response time in the event of an attack; and educating the American people in order to prevent panic. “We must lead the international community in the development of an action plan for universal adherence to and compliance with the anemic 36-year-old Biological Weapons Convention.”

The commission, led by former senators Bob Graham (D-Florida) and Jim Talent (R-Missouri), is apparently correct in its assessment. Peter Goodspeed writes in the National Post that the very day Barack Obama was sworn in as president, warning Americans “our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred,” there were reports an al-Qaeda affiliate recently abandoned a training camp in Algeria after forty terrorists died from being exposed to the plague during a biological weapons test. The report, which first surfaced in the British tabloid The Sun, says members of al-Qaeda in the Land of the Maghreb (AQLIM) hurriedly abandoned their cave hideouts in Tizi Ouzou province, 150 kilometres east of the Algerian capital Algiers, after being exposed to plague bacteria.

The newspaper said they apparently became infected while experimenting with biological weapons. Algerian security forces discovered the body of a dead terrorist alongside a road near the abandoned hideout.

U.S. intelligence officials, speaking anonymously with Eli Lake of the Washington Times on Tuesday, could only confirm the sudden base closure after an unconventional weapons test went wrong. The officials said they intercepted an urgent communication in early January between the AQLIM leadership and al-Qaeda’s top leaders in the tribal region of Pakistan. The Algerian terrorists said they were abandoning and sealing off a training area after a leak of a chemical or biological substance.

AQLIM, once known as the Salfist Group of Call & Combat, is one of the most radical and violent Islamist groups operating in North Africa. It has ties to Moroccan terrorists who carried out the 2004 Madrid train bombings and bombed the UN headquarters in Algiers in 2007, killing 41 people.

Plague comes in two types of plague. Bubonic plague, which is spread by bites from infected rat fleas, killed a third of Europe’s population in the fourteenth century but can now be treated with antibiotics. Pneumonic plague is less common but more deadly. It is spread, like the flu, by airborne bacteria, and can be inhaled and transmitted between humans without the involvement of animals or fleas.

Goodspeed reports that for years, U.S. Defense Department officials have warned al-Qaeda operatives have been actively pursuing sophisticated biological weapons research.

News of the latest al-Qaeda threat broke four days after Mike McConnell, U.S. director of national intelligence, said Osama bin Laden’s third-eldest son and heir apparent, Saad, has been released from house arrest in Iran. The 27-year-old, who was groomed by his father to assume a leadership role in al-Qaeda, had been detained since after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. U.S. intelligence says that during his detention, Saad bin Laden was allowed to continue to operate. He played a prominent role in ordering a 2002 suicide bombing of a Jewish synagogue in Tunisia, commanded a series of bombings that killed 45 people in Casablanca, Morocco, in May 2003, and sent suicide car bombers who killed 35 people in Riyadh, also in May 2003.

During his final news briefing of the Bush administration, McConnell said Saad bin Laden is now “probably in Pakistan.” His departure could signal a new relationship between Iran and al-Qaeda, but it might also suggest al-Qaeda is moving to consolidate its leadership in territory under its control in Pakistan.

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WASHINGTON – The terrorism threat to the United States during the next five years will be driven by instability in the Middle East and Africa, persistent challenges to border security, and increasing Internet savvy, says a new intelligence assessment obtained by The Associated Press.

Chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear attacks are considered the most dangerous threats that could be carried out against the U.S. But those threats are also the most unlikely because it is so difficult for al-Qaida and similar groups to acquire the materials needed to carry out such plots, according to the internal Homeland Security Threat Assessment for the years 2008-2013.

As a Bioweapons industry participant for the past five years it is reassuring to see the increasing momentum and some very significant changes to “policy initiatives” by two of the leading Federal Agencies responsible for validating leading edge detection technologies becoming available in the US marketplace in 2008.  These “policy changes” are actually allowing the First-Responder communities to move forward in acquiring new technologies which are expanding our country’s capabilities in preparing for the seemingly inevitable CBRNe attack that “reportably” is headed our way sometime in the next five years.

My next post will be focused on an increasing threat, “The Coming Threat of Agri-Terrorism”.

Thank you in advance for your interest in our country’s coming fight on our own soil.  Be strong. Be prepared. Be vigilant.

The Shadow Warrior.

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