The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

Anthrax Is ALREADY in the Wrong Hands

Mar 21, 2005

On March 14 and 15, news reports prominently featured an anthrax bioterrorism contamination in the Washington, D.C. area.

The Pentagon closed down one of its shipping centers and issued an alert. The U.S. Postal Service closed down the post office that served the shipping center. Employees were told they should take antibiotics. Reporters were called. The public heard another scare story about bioterrorism.

On March 16, the scare was traced–not to terrorists, but to a private contractor running a testing laboratory for the government. The lab had evidently allowed some of its anthrax to get loose and to contaminate the item being tested.

Did the lab’s germs escape or was there a danger? No one knows because few details came out in the media. In any case, what danger there was did not come from terrorists. The danger came from the tests and procedures of the very people who claim to be fighting terrorism!

It’s a mirror of the entire "war on terror." We are put more in danger from those who are administering the war, than from anyone they might label a terrorist.