Comments on: Protecting the nation’s milk supply

By: jet

jet — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 15:42:54 +0000

Jeremy, This might shed some light on your soymilk questions. Henry Ford is pretty much only remembered for this revolution in auto-production (and intense racism). But what is little known is that he was financed in his early days by the soy empire he'd built.

During the mid-1930s Ford became deeply interested in soymilk. When he informed his first reporter that he was developing a "synthetic milk," he was greeted with a howl of laughter and disbelief. As part of his ongoing research on soyfoods and industrial soy products he built a demonstration soymilk plant in Greenfield Village and it produced several hundred gallons of soymilk daily.

By: rollo

rollo — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 04:02:29 +0000

An easier, more certain-to-succeed, and far more thoroughly effective method would be to get the target population to poison themselves, something the botulized milk scenario only hints at. Getting your victims to enthusiastically take themselves out.
This could be done by getting them to accept the necessity of say, burning some kind of fuel that whose exhaust would give off toxic and environmentally-damaging gases. Finding a powerful enough fuel to create an addiction-like syndrome shouldn’t be too hard, and once the process has begun demand should create its own reinforcement mechanisms – vested interests, the necessity of denial etc.
Starting the attack by making the fuel-agent cheap and widely available would almost guarantee success. Encouraging the parallel creation of an industry devoted to utilizing it coupled with an appeal to the basest selfishness, in quantities tied to population growth, would make success inevitable; the timeline necessary making it an act of revenge that, as the proverb says, is best served cold.
We should move now to establish security protocols that will stand against this type of pernicious sabotage, something even uneducated terrorists could come up with, eventually.
I did it in about 3 minutes, without even using Google.

By: Steve LaBonne

Steve LaBonne — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 19:34:34 +0000

NAS made a considered judgement that this is the former. Do you have a reasoned argument that they made the wrong call?

By: james

james — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 19:23:39 +0000

There is a difference between calling attention to a security risk and drawing map with a red arrow labeled “attack here”. Which one is the report closer to?

By: Ray

Ray — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 19:17:28 +0000

Going off topic, I know, but Bush did make a point of saying in his speech that the US was fighting terrorists in Iraq so as not to fight them in the US. But then he’s always been a little confused about the reasons for the invasion.

By: Jeremy Osner

Jeremy Osner — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 18:52:03 +0000

Tangientially—does anyone know whether soy milk was originally invented in a search for a cow milk substitute? Seems to me like it would not have been but I don’t know. (And I have no idea whether words for soy milk in various Asian languages are similar to the words for cow milk in those languages.) It’s been made and consumed at least as long as tofu, right?

By: jet

jet — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 17:52:26 +0000

Hate to lead this discussion off topic, but Ray and Uncle Kvetch, if you were responding to me then perhaps you somehow misread “Afghanistan” for “Iraq”. Completely understandable since the US has invaded both countries, but most reasonable people recognize keey differences surrounding their arguments for invasion.

Darren, there already is artificial milk (Soy, coconut, etc). The problem is that the dairy lobby makes sure that their $800/per dairy cow subsidy is used to make milk an American staple forever.

By: Darren

Darren — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 16:47:31 +0000

Tangential.

Shouldn’t work be done to produce artificial milk? Apart from getting milk from a bloody, pussy udder (ever wondered why it has to be sterilised?) isn’t it a bit cruel?

By: Steve LaBonne

Steve LaBonne — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 15:08:03 +0000

Back to the topic- I would generally err on the side of openness. I believe that secrecy on such matters is likely to hinder those charged with developing and implementing preventive measures more than it hinders potential attackers. The latter are highly motivated to consider, and seek out information (which is always out there somewhere) about, many possible modes of attack, whereas the former may not even advert to a particular area of vulnerability unless there is public discussion of it. Scientists understand that concept, securicrats generally have a very hard time grasping it.

By: Uncle Kvetch

Uncle Kvetch — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 14:58:22 +0000

Pick one, people, and stick with it:

1) We’re in Iraq to help the Iraqis create a stable, prosperous democracy.

2) We’re in Iraq because we need an arena in which to fight “the terrorists”—and better them than us.

You can’t have both.

It’s bad enough that people are batting around no fewer than a half-dozen “reasons” for the invasion and continued occupation of Iraq (now that the original reason has been rendered utterly moot). The fact that a number of those reasons are mutually exclusive is nothing short of maddening.

By: Ray

Ray — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 14:49:40 +0000

I think it was Jim Henley who pointed out how immoral the flypaper theory really is.
The US didn’t invade Iraq to free the Iraqi people. The US invaded Iraq so that it would be Iraqi civilians caught in the crossfire of their war. Freedom on the march.

By: jet

jet — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 13:40:10 +0000

After the DC sniper case, I was sure that a few terrorists, armed with $50K, could make sure that a new rifle and car was used at each site, making it impossible for the FBI/local enforcement to ever stop their murder spree.

In the same vein, going on a tour of a dairy farm would provide a terrorist with every opportunity to empty his vial of botulinum into a container of milk, long before it is placed in a locked/unlocked tanker. He would only have to contaminate a hose fitting or container lid for the damage to be done.

Bush may, especially in light of the WMD’s, have been very wrong about Iraq. But he was absolutely correct in that if a war against terror must be fought, it must be fought on their territory. There is just no decent way to defend our society from well planned acts of terror. I fully expected the US to look like Isreal soon after 9/11, but it never happened. Perhaps the terrorists were too busy in Afghanistan?

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 09:05:39 +0000

Damn! They got Quiggin. The bastards!

… with one bound, JQ was free!

Guessing that a terrorist would Google this at least as quickly as me, I’ve reaffirmed my decades-old policy of avoiding milk.

By: Barry Freed

Barry Freed — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 07:43:10 +0000

I’d guess that a terrorist

Damn! They got Quiggin. The bastards!

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 04:19:02 +0000

It took me about 75 seconds to find this quote ‘Terrorists might resort instead to using an agent to contaminate food or beverage supplies, but this method probably wouldn’t inflict mass casualties. Botulinum toxin might be the best candidate for food or beverage contamination, even though it is killed by cooking.”, but the search was longer because there are lots of references to the recent study

I’d guess that a terrorist