When was the last time we heard anything about the anthrax attacks of October 2001? As a news story, it seems to have been buried rather quickly. Yet nothing in the case was solved. Is it even an open case? We still have no idea who might have released half a dozen envelopes filled with Anthrax into the postal service, killing a number of people. Is this being hushed up? Perhaps because the FBI has absolutely no leads? At first, it seems that it was going to be used as a pretext for attacking Iraq. After all, we had just suffered the largest terrorist attack in American history (9/11 for those of you who weren't paying attention) and Rumsfeld was hopping to get into Iraq then. The BBC reports that Tony Blair held him off with promises of support for that invasion later.

But what about the Anthrax? It didn't come from Iraq, so where did it come from? Nobody claimed responsibility for it. Just about every terrorist worth his salt claims responsibility for his attacks, otherwise he doesn't get people's attention in order to publicize his ideas. The media reported that the anthrax came from the Ames strain of the microbe. That's Ames, Iowa. Not the Baghdad strain or the Shanghai strain or the Kiev strain. It was a home-grown strain of a deadly disease that had been studied by the US for military application of bioweapons. If you like conspiracy theories, here is an interesting idea. Let's say that the US wants to keep people scared in order to keep the population under control. If there were a series of massive terrorist attacks, killing thousands, there were a seemingly random release of a deadly bioweapon on the US population, and they were linked to a worldwide radical islamic conspiracy and a brutal dictator, wouldn't you want the government to do something about it? See this website for more on this idea.

Well, in order for the US to do something about it, they would have to convince people to "relinquish personal and social freedoms for the mirage of health, safety, and security. Once habituated to modern lifestyle restrictions, such as enforced health and travel restrictions, the general population might become virtually "enslaved" with little effective resistance, widespread pharmaceutical dependence (particularly using anti-depressant drugs), through the use of PSYOPs. Media distractions and manipulations [are] considered essential in achieving this objective." For more on this particular conspiracy theory and its application to the SARS virus, check out this website.

There are a few ways to look at it, either 1) some cabal of the military industrial complex is sponsoring terrorist attacks and creating and releasing diseases on the public at large in order to enslave the American populace, 2) a similar military industrial cabal is using the events of the past couple of years (disease, terrorism, etc) opportunistically to enslave the American populace, or 3) the American populace is panicking itself into enslaving itself and the military industrial complex as an institution which is part and parcel of the American populace is cooperating willingly. By enslavement, I mean "relinquishing personal and social freedoms for the mirage of health, safety, and security." By military industrial complex, I mean the people that run our economy and government.

What is my opinion? I don't really believe in any intentional activity on the part of a secretive cabal. The media in this country is free enough to uncover any sort of activities which smell of coverups and secrecy. I do believe in the military industrial complex and I do believe that the American public is panicking about terrorism and worldwide disease outbreaks. I think the truth regarding these issues probably lies somewhere in between 2 and 3. I think that the American population is willingly relinquishing personal and social freedoms to the military industrial complex and it is doing it in public view and with public approval. However, I also think that the military industrial complex is being opportunistic in advocating for increased power and is using the public's fear to gain it.