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Originally posted by mmiichael
Various governments and agencies co-operate and benefit from this huge industry. Notably the Islamic extremists have been more active in the past few years. There has been much activity in South America based mainly in Paraguay which is essentially a lawless state, as well as Mexico.
An integration with the Coke trade apparently as the same distribution networks are used. There is a lot of ambivalence from the terrorist networks of using the drug trade as a way to further political goals. Devastating the policing and legal systems of Western countries particularly the US and Britain are considered desirable. But there is reticence, I gather, to infect the product line and harm the end users and reliability.
Originally posted by DeltaPan
it isn't the sort of mindset of Islamic terrorist networks to perpetrate a scenario such as i've mentioned, still a potential risk, but doubtful.
It's other terrorists which are not sensationalised in the media and so are common knowledge like Al-Qaeda that i am concerned about, as much as individuals or groups who are not necessarily ideology driven but sick people who would love to wipe out huge numbers of a population, similar types to those who'd seek to detonate an old Soviet warhead if they could get hold of one and slaughter hundreds of thousands of people in one foul swoop, etc, a virus vectored as i've said would potentially reach thousands if not hundreds of thousands before an outbreak could be dealt with, job done as far as the same sick bastards who'd seek to detonate an ex Soviet nuke would be concerned, objective achieved, they want to murder as many as possible to punctuate a sick statement to the establishemnt, that's a major security concern, so should what i've said here be, both are deadly on a massive scale but my concern about using drugs to deliver a pathogen much easier for some psycho to acheive.
It wouldn't take much for a group of psycho's ideology driven or not, to infiltrate a distribution network and have control of a large shipment to whatever country, infect it and it goes down the distribution chain and so infects a number of users who essentially become infection factors.
This doesn't need to be a factor of the drug producers themselves and i don't think Islamic extremists would do it either, even a lone psycho could get hold of a few kilo's, selling it on after infection with an engineered virus, so onto consumers who start a chain of infection before the outbreak can be noticed which could be as much as 2-3 weeks after infected drugs were released into the user community.
[…]
The U.N. has admitted the social harms of criminalisation are not the objective and recognise a need for change, have ceased the war on drugs, Antonio Maria Costa apologised and retracted his assertions about 10 months ago, there was a lot of dissent against him in the U.N. assembly, he was lucky not to get sacked right there and then the assembly was so disgusted at his inhumane attitudes towards simple end users because they aren't scum who deserve to be poisoned by greedy criminal dealers usually involved in many others areas of criminality not just dealing, money chains often leading back to terrorist networks, the greed of those people being what creates the user associated crime in lower echelons of society and causes more harm than the drugs themselves, the reality is there is more degeneracy and harms in Alcohol abuse than is the reality of recreational substances which are in fact less harmful but deemed illegal, all prohibition does is cause harm to the end users because of contaminates in adulteration and at a huge cost to the taxpayer on various levels, health services, policing, crime from addicts having to afford high cost of class A/schedule A substances, they can legally buy an el cheapo litre of Alcoholic spirit and overdose and die or turn into a psycho and behave antisocial/violent or kill somebody in Alcoholic rage but cannot access a class A or B whatever, drug without paying a huge markup from the dealer back to supplier to producers, where regulated industry in a climate of tolerance would negate such crime figures in significant figures if not completely by lowering costs to end user with safe unadlulterated substances, the risidual drug associated crimes would be minimised significantly, as much as negate the risks i've outlined in a terrorist context.
That's how easy vectoring an infectious pathogen would be, already so many street drugs are already adulterated for profit to the dealers and it's not small amounts, replace that adulteration with an engineered virus, you have the scenarios i've mentioned.
Not the main known terrorist networks nor drug producers i am concerned about in the context of the thread and my posts, it's anarchists and psycho's ideologically driven or not who are misanthropic and don't give a damn about Human life.
The Health Protection Agency said a second case of anthrax had been confirmed in an injecting heroin user in London, adding to two previous cases in England, 24 in Scotland and one in Germany. A total of 12 people have died in Europe of anthrax infection since the first cases emerged in Scotland in December.
European health authorities said in January they believed a batch of heroin was circulating in the region that had been contaminated with anthrax, a fairly common bacteria whose spores can be used as a biological weapon. Experts have said the heroin is unlikely to have been deliberately contaminated.
Rachel Heathcock from the London branch of the HPA stressed there was no evidence of person-to-person transmission in any of the recent anthrax cases and the risk to the general population, including those close to infected patients, was "negligible."
"It is extremely rare for anthrax to be spread from person to person," she said in a statement.
Anthrax is an acute infectious disease caused by spores of bacillus anthracis bacteria. It occurs most often in wild and domestic animals in Asia, Africa and parts of Europe.
Humans are rarely infected but touching contaminated hides or hair can cause skin lesions. If the spores are inhaled, the infection can take hold quickly and by the time symptoms show, it can be too late for successful treatment with antibiotics.
Lindsey Davies, a director of public health for the British capital, said heroin users needed to be aware of the risks.
"I urge all heroin users in London to be extremely alert to the risks and to seek urgent medical advice if they experience signs of infection such as redness or swelling at or near an injection site or other symptoms... such a high temperature, chills or a severe headache," she said in a statement.
"This is a very serious infection for drug users," she added. "Early antibiotic treatment can be lifesaving."
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), which monitors health in the European Union, said last month that other EU countries may be at risk.
"Considering the complex international distribution chain of heroin and the link among cases in Scotland and Germany, the exposure to a contaminated batch of heroin distributed in several EU member states is probable," it said on its website.
But it added that it was also possible the German and English cases are due to small amounts of heroin originating from Scotland, "in which case other EU member states than UK and Germany might not be affected."
Originally posted by TaxpayersUnleashed
As far as im aware the taliban and Al Qaeda have 0 biological capabilities.
www.nationalterroralert.com...
An al Qaeda affiliate in Algeria closed a base earlier this month after an experiment with unconventional weapons went awry, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Monday.
The official, who spoke on the condition he not be named because of the sensitive nature of the issue, said he could not confirm press reports that the accident killed at least 40 al Qaeda operatives, but he said the mishap led the militant group to shut down a base in the mountains of Tizi Ouzou province in eastern Algeria.
He said authorities in the first week of January intercepted an urgent communication between the leadership of al Qaeda in the Land of the Maghreb (AQIM) and al Qaeda’s leadership in the tribal region of Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan. The communication suggested that an area sealed to prevent leakage of a biological or chemical substance had been breached, according to the official.
“We don’t know if this is biological or chemical,” the official said.
The story was first reported by the British tabloid the Sun, which said the al Qaeda operatives died after being infected with a strain of bubonic plague, the disease that killed a third of Europe’s population in the 14th century. But the intelligence official dismissed that claim.
via Source.
The Sun – Terrorists Killed By Own Black Death Experiment
The terrorists planned to wreak havoc on Western targets but fell victims to their own weapon, a leading expert on chemical warfare believes.
The Sun revealed yesterday that Black Death, also called the Plague, killed at least 40 fanatics at a terror training camp in Algeria earlier this month.
It was thought they caught the disease through poor living conditions in their forest hideouts.
But Dr Igor Khrupinov, of Georgia University, said: “Al-Qaeda is known to experiment with biological weapons. And this group has direct communication with other cells around the world.
“Contagious diseases, like ebola and anthrax, occur in northern Africa. It makes sense that people are trying to use them against Western governments.”
Dr Khrupinov, once arms adviser to Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev, added: “Instead of using bombs, people with infectious diseases could be walking through cities.”
Black Death has been researched as a biological weapon before.