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Ricin

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Terrorist Chem Weapons?

From the BBC:

'A radical Islamic group has been testing biological weapons at a small facility in northern Iraq, the US Government says - but American plans for covert action against the facility have been shelved.
US officials have confirmed media reports that Ansar al-Islam - a group allegedly linked to Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda organisation - had been conducting the experiments over the last couple of months.

"Information indicated they might be experimenting with [the toxin] ricin, including experiments with barnyard animals and reports of experimenting on at least one human," an official said quoted by news agencies.

BBC correspondent Steve Kingstone says the Pentagon considered some form of military action to destroy the facility earlier this year, although officials have refused to elaborate.

Bush administration officials apparently concluded the testing facility was too small and crude to be worth risking American lives over and it was not worth the outcry that might follow a US military operation...

...US media reports said the Ansar tests included exposing a man to the toxin in a market place and then following him home, where he later died.'
 
Hmm, I'm not convinced - but expect more such stories as the proposed US military action against Iraq picks up speed.
 
A couple of oddities , though one is merely personal. I had never heard of ricin until last night, when I watched a rerun of the network crime drama CSI, which I had never bothered to watch, though I understand it's pretty popular (my brother really likes it). Anyhows one of plots involved a woman who kills herself by cooking up some ricin in her kitchen.:confused: Now I wake up and read about the stuff in the paper. As "they" say, though, there are no coincidences, only conspiracies.

The other thing that makes this strange, IMHO, is that Bushy has been beating the wardrums for months now about how Saddam is the evilest guy on the planet, and has all these chemical weapons, so we need a big war to stop him, many etcs.

But this facility is in Kurdish controlled northen Iraq. So let me get this straight: we're going to invade Iraq to get rid of Saddam, help install Kurds as part of a power sharing agreement, who just happen to let al-queda use some of their land to make chemical weapons. More
:confused:
 
AFAIK, none of Iraq is ostensibly outside of Saddam Hussein's control.
 
Both South Iraq (home of the marsh Arabs) and North Iraq (home of the Kurds) are under a strict no fly zone, meaning Saddam's capablities are severly limited. Both zones are also constantly montiored by the USA/UK.
I'm not sure about South Iraq, but the no fly zone in the North is basically an automonous state.
 
Ricin is often cited as one of the most lethal of poisons, requiring
only a tiny dose for fatality. It was supposedly used in the murder
of a BBC Journalist called Markov (Sp?). He was said to have had
a tiny pellet of the poison injected into him by collision with an
umbrella spike on the streets of London.

I think ricin is produced from the Caster Oil plant. :eek:
 
wasn't Markov some kind of dissident, killed by the Bulgarian KGB. (apparently it was the same wet work squad (can't get enough of those cold war spy novels) that set up the hit on the Pope)
 
Yeah, it is from Castor Beans, so I guess accurately it's a biological, not chemical weapon. And I believe the program I referenced said he was a Czech dissident/emigre. But of course fictional televison shows would never have sloppy fact-checking.
 
chatsubo said:
I'm not sure about South Iraq, but the no fly zone in the North is basically an automonous state.
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I very much doubt that.

As for Ricin, it's classed as a chemical weapon because it's a poisonous substance.
 
JerryB said:
I very much doubt that.
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Jerry-Saddam withdrew from the three most northern provinces of Iraq in 1991.
While life is still difficult because as an ill-defined autonomous area things like getting an area code or mailing a letter are close to impossible, these people are a million times better off than their Kurdish brethern in Iraq or especially Turkey, which you never hear anthing about because they're our NATO allies.

An article about a professor who recently came back from nine months in the three provinces. http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/nea/iraq/text/0820rubin.htm
 
Ricin in London

News Here

Anti-terrorist police are questioning six men after finding traces of the highly toxic poison ricin at an address in London.
They were arrested, along with a woman, on Sunday morning at houses in North and East London by officers from the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch.

The men, of North African origin, are in their late teens, 20s and 30s, and are being interviewed by officers.

The woman has since been released.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said the find highlighted the threat still posed by international terrorism.

He told an audience of diplomats in London: "The arrests... show this danger is present and real and with us now and its potential is huge."

The arrests were made following an intelligence tip-off and involved officers from the Anti-Terrorist Branch, Special Branch and the Security Service.

Materials and items of equipment were found at a residential address in Wood Green, north London, where one of the men was arrested.
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and Iraq was briefly mentioned in the news earlier on bbc btw.
 
Makes you wonder how they found out it was there in the first place. Apparently its a by-pruduct of Caster oil.

Weird :p
 
Apparently also, it was first 'invented' by the Americans around WWII. Trust a war to prompt mankind's discovery of a poison derived from a common plant which is deadly in small doses and has no antidote... And I especially like the bit in the BBC article about -

'Deputy chief medical officer Dr Pat Troop told the BBC that the public health system has been alerted.

Doctors and the telephone helpline NHS Direct have been briefed so they can answer questions from patients. '

What on earth have they been briefed to SAY?? 'Yes, you have between 3 and 14 days to live, no there's nothing we can do about it, but stock up on the Vicks and take lots of vitamin C and you won't feel a thing'?!?
 
Anyone see that MOD bod Geoff Hoon on C4 News this evening ?

John Snow asked him quite a general question about the Ricin story and Hoon suddenly said it was "just a coincidence that the arrests have been made on the same day as Tony Blair's speech"

But John Snow hadn't mentioned or asked anything about the timing of the arrests or even mentioned Blair.
 
Dashwood said:
But John Snow hadn't mentioned or asked anything about the timing of the arrests or even mentioned Blair.
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Did Shaw miss his prompt to ask or did Hoon mishear him. I think all these interviews are scripted.
 
wilbur said:
Apparently also, it was first 'invented' by the Americans around WWII. Trust a war to prompt mankind's discovery of a poison derived from a common plant which is deadly in small doses and has no antidote... And I especially like the bit in the BBC article about -

'Deputy chief medical officer Dr Pat Troop told the BBC that the public health system has been alerted.

Doctors and the telephone helpline NHS Direct have been briefed so they can answer questions from patients. '

What on earth have they been briefed to SAY?? 'Yes, you have between 3 and 14 days to live, no there's nothing we can do about it, but stock up on the Vicks and take lots of vitamin C and you won't feel a thing'?!?
Click to expand...

Apparently the usual 'generalized' poison treatments of lots of fluids (and gastric lavage?) to flush out the system is 'quite effective' in helping people survive small to medium doses of ricin. Whatever a 'small to medium dose' might be. Larger doses however...

(That was according to a lengthy soundbite from Troop on the early evening BBC news.)
 
i find it confusing, as reports have varied from having found 'Traces' which could be Naturally occuring, to an 'Amount' which could only be from chemical weapons processing. That hospitals have been put on alert in case of mass attack, to it is only really effective as an 'Assasination' weapon, unlikely to affect more then 1-3 People. Always reports are followed by a story on Iraq.

Does anyone know any 'Hard Facts' about Risin?

and now this...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,1271,-2304363,00.html
Police fear more ricin suspects could be at large

Ananova
Wednesday January 8, 2003 12:17 PM


Police fear more people could be at large with ricin in Britain.

Their warning follows the discovery in north London of what appears to be a makeshift laboratory for producing the fatal toxin.

Six men are being questioned after anti-terrorist police raided a flat in Wood Green.

GPs and hospitals across the UK have been alerted to look out for anyone with signs of ricin poisoning. Only minute amounts of the poison, which can be administered by injection, ingestion, inhalation or simply by physical contact, are needed to kill.

There is no known antidote.

Experts say ricin is most suited to being used, possibly through an aerosol, in an assassination attempt on a leading public figure rather than a mass attack on a busy civilian target such as the London Underground.

The six arrested men, who are all of north African origin, are being questioned about possible links to al-Qaida.

Inside the flat police found traces of ricin, castor oil beans - from which the poison is made - and equipment and receptacles for crushing the beans.

It is the first time since September 11 that such a poison has been found by anti-terrorist police in Britain.
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Inside the flat police found traces of ricin, castor oil beans - from which the poison is made - and equipment and receptacles for crushing the beans.
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Maybe they were experimenting with bio-diesel?
 
How to..............

http://www.totse.com/en/bad_ideas/irresponsible_activities/163208.html

Here's the formula for Ricin. The reason I place this on here is because if you try to make this poison (kills in 4 days, no good cure and the cure is rare) you will probably get some on your skin and die. I wanted the fomula just so I could know it. This stuff is extrodinarily poisonous -- arsenic takes 100 granuals to kill someone, ricin takes 1-2 granuals.

Procedure:


Obtain some castor beans from a garden supply store.
Put about 2 ounces of hot water into a glass jar and add a teaspoon full of lye. Mix it thoroughly.
Wait for the lye/water mixture to cool
Place 2 ounces of the beans into the liquid and let them soak for one hour.
Pour out the liquid being careful not to get any on exposed skin.
Rinse the beans off with cool water and then remove the outer husks with tweezers.
Put the bean pulp into a blender or coffee grinder with 4 ounces of acetone for every 1 oz. of beans.
Blend the pulp/acetone until it looks like milk.
Place the milky substance in a glass jar with an airtight lid for three days.
At the end of three days shake the jar to remix everything that’s started to settle then pour it into a coffee filter. Discard the liquid.
When no more liquid is dripping through the filter, squeeze the last of the acetone out of it without losing any of the bean pulp.
Spread the filter out on a pan covered with newspaper and let it dry stand until it is dry.
The final product must be as free of acetone and other contaminants as possible. If it is not powdery but still sort of moist and pulpy it must be combined with the appropriate amount of acetone again and let sit for one day.
Then repeat steps 9-12 again until a nice dry powder is produced.
 
Re: How to..............

escargot said:
Put the bean pulp into a blender or coffee grinder with 4 ounces of acetone for every 1 oz. of beans....

....Then repeat steps 9-12 again until a nice dry powder is produced.
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Chuck in the word 'pukka' and a few 'Lovely jubblies' and it could be a Jamie Oliver recipe.

'Jamie's anarchist kitchen', perhaps ?
 
I'm glad I found this thread, I've been wanting to comment on the story since I first heard the news. To be honest one of my first few thoughts were 'Planted.' The immidate comments of 'being linked to Al quieda' made it susspect to me too. Tony B and G 'dubya' have shot themselves squarely in the foot as far as their propoganda and scaremongering goes. (No, I'm not being anti-American, just anti Bush, and Blair of course.). I for one don't know what to belive. I thought it was appalling when I saw news fotage of 'cops' (Whatever they were.) strolling along with their gigacounters pointed at party goers on New Year. Yeah yeah, fair enough if something happened and they hadn't been there...blah blah. I have this attitude as I don't think things are any different now as to when they were in the cold war. Or even at any time in the last centuray. Look at that 'poison gas' nut, the cult leader that gassed people in a Tokyo subway. And the guy blackmailing a British bank with threats to put cut glass in bread. It only takes one nut job and that threat has always been there.
Besides, who are we to know what goes on behind closed doors as the recent revalations about Ted Heaths government shows.
I for one am sick and tierd of these so called 'Leaders' squabbling like little boys with big boys toys and making peoples lives from one end of the scale, a living hell, to the other, being constantly frightened of weather the world will blow up today. Aren't these people elected to give us all a better standard of living? Don't they realise by now that violence in whatever extream isn't the answer? What hope has human kind got if these are the people we have as role models and to set an example to us all?

My rant over. Thanks for listening.
 
Warning, Warning!!! Danger Will Robinson!!

Beware of Dark and Moustachioed Men carrying furled umbrellas! :eek!!!!:
 
Wintermoon said:
I'm glad I found this thread, I've been wanting to comment on the story since I first heard the news. To be honest one of my first few thoughts were 'Planted.' The immidate comments of 'being linked to Al quieda' made it susspect to me too.
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To be fair, it was primarily the media that was doing the "they are all in AQ" thing. The police, etc. were quite reasonably investigating if there was a link, but there has been no statement to the effect that they are AQ.

The the thing that I find particularly unpleasant about this episode is the way that a number of newspapers (you can guess which ones) had headlines shouting about two of the suspects being asylum seekers living on state handouts. The media appall me. :( (Not long back they were claiming that asylum seekers would lead to an increase in kidney disease, for god's sake.)
 
Fortis said:
The the thing that I find particularly unpleasant about this episode is the way that a number of newspapers (you can guess which ones) had headlines shouting about two of the suspects being asylum seekers living on state handouts. The media appall me. :( (Not long back they were claiming that asylum seekers would lead to an increase in kidney disease, for god's sake.)
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Eh? But if they were asylum seekers living on state handouts, what's the problem? :confused:

Anyway, everyone knows the media never lies.

I'm surprised they haven't linked the recent rise in TB and STDs to asylum seekers yet (or maybe they have, I haven't read the tabloids for a while). :hmph:
 
Firstly, with regard to Asylum Seekers, the news that some of the alleged "ricin" terrorists got here on the Asylum card doesn't surprise me at all. The Govt have suicidally poor border controls. Now, more than ever, we need to be extremely careful - picky - about who we let in. For years now Australia have been allowed to be selective, so too the USA. Britain is supposed to be above all that. Why? Are we less entitled to homeland security than other countries???
Most asylum seekers here are not genuine. They have shopped for the best deal. I accept that some are genuine and we should do everything we can to support them. But if only 0.1% of asylum seekers have subversive intentions, then we're still in grave danger. Like most people I bitterly resent my taxes going to sustain certain suspected terrorists wanted for crimes in other countries. If the ricin scare comes to fruition, our ruling politicians are more than a little to blame.

Secondly, to veer off the point a little, a Sunday newspaper a few weeks ago published an article about "Death Squads" coming to Britain. No, they weren't referring to Al Qaeda; they were referring to members of American and French security services coming over to Britain to "eliminate" suspected terrorists. Apparently one senior CIA man as good as stated: "If you (Britain) won't deal with them effectively, we'll do it for you."
Of course, the article may not be genuine but I got the kind of gyst that our Government gave some kind of tacit permission for these squads to operate here.
At the risk of sounding cold and naive, I always thought our own security services were perfectly capable in making murky citizens "disappear".
 
Hayzee Comet said:
Most asylum seekers here are not genuine. They have shopped for the best deal.
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If i were them i'd ask for a refund:D
 
Now, come on Nutmeg. Britain may not be the "best deal" in handouts but it surely the safest bet when it comes to getting in and staying. A potential terrorist just has to set foot on our soil and he's literally home and dry. There's no need for him to immediately prove anything. While his claims of persecution are being investigated there is plenty of time for him to plant a bomb or hi-jack a plane.

As for asking for a refund, any expression of disgust at our services would be best voiced by voting with one's feet. ;)
 
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