A steady stream of press releases from the private sector homeland security industry demonstrates corporate welfare on a daily basis. As example, take one recent announcement on a Department of Homeland Security contract for ricin detection. Like many it shows a company that pretty much wouldn't exist without taxpayer money.
Keep in mind the only market for ricin detection is the artificial one created by the rise of powder hoaxing as hobby for the disgruntled white survivalist nut or felon in the United States. And, primarily, that owes much of its existence due to the explosive growth of the homeland security complex, one which has spent the last ten years loudly telling everyone that ricin is easy to make.
Now to the press release, from a company called PositiveID:
PositiveID Corporation ("PositiveID" or "Company") PSID +32.14% , a developer of medical technologies for diabetes management, clinical diagnostics and bio-threat detection, announced that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ("DHS") Science and Technologies ("S&T") division has directed and funded the development of the Company's immunodetection assay for the identification of Ricin toxin to meet the specific needs that DHS has in securing the nation against biological threats. Ricin, a chemical warfare agent, is derived from the seeds of the castor oil plant Ricinus communis and has become a tool of terrorist groups across the world due to its effortless production and high toxicity.
Straight off there's a substantial twisting of the truth for purposes of justification.
In ten years, ricin has not been much of a tool for terrorists. Only 22 castor seeds were found in the infamous Wood Green case in 2003.Castor powder cake was found in Iraq, ground after we invaded the country. And -- of course -- more recently, there was the well-publiciized rubbish story about potential ricin bombs being made somewhere in the wastes of Yemen.
Over the last decade the overwhelming majority of incidences of ricin in the news come from stories about powder hoaxes or cases where white American loners (and the occasional British neo-Nazi) have decided to grind castor seeds into a mush.
These are the facts. Amply documented in the Ricin Kooks archive over many years.
Consider this: The country can lay off public sector workers en masse -- 250,000 teachers. But no expenses have ever been spared for research and development of detection for a "threat" that has killed absolutely no one in the last ten years.
One can now think of this particular way of homeland security investment as something of a Ponzi scheme, entitlement spending, or a small but still significant Keynsian jobs program akin to paying people to dig holes and fill them back in the next day. For years.
In other matters, earlier in the week we were all informed Rick Perry would use Predator drones to secure the border. Herman Cain would use alligators and electrical fences. And the unemployed and poor could be booed. Before we hit them with guided missiles.
It just so happens there was a movie for that and I'll get to it in a minute.
Anyway, Mr. Rick has missed the boat on Predator drones on the border by at least two years although General Atomics must have certainly been thrilled to hear him say it.
And drones for everything had a hand in inspiring Sleep Dealer, a foreign film with a great premise: Use of drone camera live streaming of people being Hellfire'd in reality entertainment shows in the US, use of Mexican labor to operate robots in America, and US multi-nationals buying up all water in Mexico, gouging for it, and using remote-controlled machine gun posts to kill people trying to steal it.
And here's the trailer.
This post was published in an earlier edition at Dick Destiny blog.
