Entry for September 11, 2006 A Choice Of Poisons2
The safety report from the environmental company was in the tray of the fax machine. It began to dial. The numbers toned out like the numbers on the keno machine. I had found the report that the agency refused to release. They were sending it to me. Then the owner walked in and killed the call. “I have to get permission from the agency before I can give this to you” he said.
My heart went down with the phone receiver.
There was still time to do research at the city and county buildings permit library. I had already been to the lieutenant governors office. I had spent time with my congress people from Hawaii and Florida. I had talked to the police and the FBI. I had been to OSHA and the Health Department.
At the peak darkness of the valley of the shadow, sick and on my own, I headed for the bus stop. I no longer had gas money. The two hour ride to Honolulu was wildly disorienting. A group of ethnically Filipinos recited the rosary in the back where I was, in the horseshoe of seats where the kids and working people grouped at the end of the day. Kids with headphones on sang along with their mp3 players. The scenery slipped by in a haze of colors as the sunlight and shadows strobed the windows.
Sometimes people would talk around me, to each other, but giving me information I needed about the clinic and what was going on. Disheveled and confused I met a group of clients from the adult team who knew who I was and what I was doing. They too fed me information.
I had come up with the name of the architect and the name of the construction company that had built the clinic and put in the carpet. I interviewed the key people. The architect told me that he had only used “green” materials in his plans. There were no toxins. He said the agency had cut corners to save money. They had not put in the elevator for the disabled. Upstairs there was a door that led into an empty shaft. In the darkness you would see the cables loop the pulleys and drop to the bottom floor. Raw sewage came through the shower nozzle in the basement of the clinic. Something was wrong with the septic tank.
I talked to the owner of the construction company that built the clinic. He told me exactly what they had done.
The carpet was never meant to be glued in, he said. It was supposed to be tacked in. The chemicals in question, Bigelow Nu-Broadlock, Afta P and BM and Ethoglyconol were mixed to stretch them out. There wasn’t enough of the glue to cover the clinic. The combination of chemicals ate the backing off the carpet adding another layer of toxic stink to the swamp gas that inundated the clinic. The inexperienced crew tried to get rid of the smell. The did the one thing they should not have done. They attempted to steam clean the carpets. The steam continued to fuse the chemicals into a toxic bomb. A dangerous situation got more dangerous.
In talking to my peers on the bus, many of whom were at the clinic in those first weeks, I found out that the clinic had been a disaster site. One of the people who I talked with worked in the office at the time. He said his job was to file the safety reports as they were rewritten. He counted five drafts. He described the office as a place of total pandemonium. The fumes were so strong that the administrative staff had to take a breaks every fifteen minutes to keep working. People were passing out as they worked. Big fans were brought in to keep the air circulating in the office. People were beginning to have major memory and cognition problems. Still, the denial was as thick as the fumes. The clinic stayed open and business ran as usual.
The Afta P and BM were a controlled substance. These chemicals were often used to make methamphetamine. The information Web Sites on the chemicals were monitored. The clinic had stockpiled a supply in a closet downstairs. People were known to drink the green bile for its high, an amphetamine like buzz that ended in rage and extreme muscle tension as it wore off. It also made you keenly paranoid.
The Bigelow Nu-Broadlock had been banned in the continental United States, but as was typical, was available in Hawaii for a reduced price. It was like the Depo-Provera they were giving local women for birth control at the local clinics. It was banned everywhere in the United States except Hawaii. It was cheap and available on the Leeward side of the island.
The federal government had dumped these well intentioned, huge lump sum grants on the poorest communities. The money was usually channeled into local people’s hands who had never had any significant money available to them in their lifetimes. Frequently there were community shenanigans nation wide around the money, how it was spent and by whom.
It would have been better for everyone if the money had been performance based instead of pork barreled out. As it was, the large sum of money available must have tempted even the strong in that small community.
In court I fought for the release of documents to document what had happened.
Later, I fought for the intervention of the attorney generals office in the case to obtain information.
Nothing worked.
In fact nothing could have worked in those circumstances. My papers weren’t filed on time. There was no case. Why it dragged on for two years is a mystery to me. How I kept it alive in the state I was in is even a bigger mystery.
I am grateful to my federal marshal peers for keeping me laughing at the courthouse and the support of the federal clerks in the courts main office for keeping me on time and straight with my efforts. I thank the Hawaiian people I met there, who as individuals and families continue to fight for the land that was stolen from the over a hundred years ago. There example, as always was very sustaining for me.
I am thankful to individual plaintiffs, many of whom were women fighting sexual assault and harassment cases for their company and companionship.
My treks to federal court at dawn to drop papers in the box are an experience I’ll never forget. Getting there meant going down the coast at sunup, driving or riding besides the raging pacific ocean as it crashed into the reef line near the highway. Then, after I made it into town and through Chinatown and outdoor markets I get to the citadel of the federal building. Winding my way in I’d find the filing box outside the door of the court. The machine stamped the documents, took them and dropped them in a box that resembled the crane and pebble machines with the teddy bears and rings in the supermarkets.
In 2001 my physical condition was at a point where I could no longer work or sustain myself in Hawaii. I left for Florida in January, where I had a massive congestive heart failure. I was told I needed a heart transplant. My focus and orientation shifted from the lawsuit to staying alive.
By the time the Supreme Court had bounced my petition out of court I was no longer heavily involved with the outcome of the case. I had a narrative that read like horror and spy fiction. Dutifully I continued to hack the memorandums out until there was nothing left to say and no recourse to law.
Though I could not stand up to do the dishes or lay down to sleep, my breathing was so labored, I started to take the steps I needed to take for to survive. And I did.
Thank God almighty for my family.
And my obstinacy.
And the willful, living spirit of my Buddhism that helped me let go of all of it and watch the dark until the sun came up.
When the daylight flickered on the horizon I was still there.
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Edit TagsMonday September 11, 2006 - 11:19pm (EDT)
Edit Delete Permanent Link 0 CommentsEntry for September 10, 2006 A Choice Of Poisons
Let’s keep it relevant.
In terms of fact there is nothing new here. Everything mentioned in these next few posts can be found in the text and content of Federal Lawsuit No. 03-15367, Lower Court No 00-99-0072 DAE-KSC. The information here was filed as evidence. The lawsuit was filed in Honolulu, Hawaii, in the 9th Circuit Court. It progressed to the Supreme Court of the 9th Circuit in San Francisco where I officially lost the case.
It was not a total loss. The decision reaffirmed that I was guilty of “no misconduct” in terms of how I left my position as a manager in a federally funded program. I was given unemployment insurance. The defendant admitted in summary judgment arguments there were toxins in the work environment and that there was a “possibility” of exposure. This was good. In terms of OSHA reporting that’s all that’s required for further action. I reported it.
During this time period the OSHA investigators were denied access to the property to conduct tests.
I had done what I set out to do. I had entered evidence into the public record for later investigation. I felt an obligation to my clients, my friends, my coworkers and my clients to do so.
Why did I lose?
In short, my lawyer failed to file on time. As a point of fact no evidence was heard. As I have mentioned, before, I had an admission from the clinic that there were toxins in the building. I had gotten this confirmation in mediation and in court by the opposition. I had a termination contract that was clearly illegal under the ADA. I had a mandate under executive order to report all crimes. I had financial discrepancies documented. Some of missing money came directly from my salary. That amounted to about $10,000 a year. The clinic had no insurance per se. They had a million dollar slush fund held in reserve in case of liability. Insurance had been denied.
Everything was in place.
As my financial resources dwindled, I could no longer justify borrowing money for a lawyer. After I lost the summary judgment I took on the case myself. I ended up representing myself. I felt more in control. Over all, the process was more satisfying. I learned a lot about the courts. I had motivation to do more investigation while the case dragged on. It was another year before I had exhausted lower court options.
As stated, my goal was simply to document what happened. I was very sick by this time. I remember the absolute low point as being after a consult with my lawyer in Honolulu. On the way back from the meeting I could not find my car in the parking structure. I was in a state of profound physical and mental exhaustion. The parking garage looked like a slaughterhouse, a long series of multi-leveled mazes with stalls. I wandered from floor to floor in confusion. It took me two and a half hours to find the car.
I was in tears by the time I found it. It was sitting right where I left it. My memory was shot. My cognition was weak. Breathing was very difficult. I looked terrible. I had to count pennies from my change bank to pay for parking and gas. It was a thirty mile drive back home in rush hour traffic. It was like going from one maze into another.
How the hell did I get there?
Clearly the end of my employment was death-knelled by a visitation of Federal Monitors in 1997. I worked under CASP grant at a mental health agency. I had excellent evaluations. I ran two pilot projects on the Leeward coast. One program was a therapeutic foster care program and the other provided in-home intensive therapy for families in crisis. I worked with kids. I was not prepared by management as to what to discuss at this meeting. I was not told what to say or not to say to the monitors. I was on my own. That’s the way it usually was. So I put together a culturally appropriate presentation and answered their questions. I brought clients and employees in to be available for the monitors.
One of my foster parents, a Native Hawaiian women chanted. The prayer was O’ he'emai. It was a prayer to “be heard,” for the federal monitors to "hear our cry.”
I viewed this as an opportunity to tweak Federal involvement. I thought that was what it was all about. The monitors wanted to know about problems. I told them that I had no access to budget information and little or no supervision. I pretty much ran the program on my own. I didn’t like the home intensive model. I felt it was culturally inappropriate and not as effective as a less intensive intervention. The monitors appreciated our candor.
I got a good mention and write up in the federal monitors report on the Leeward Coast of O’ahu in 1997. The report is available from the Health Department in Washington D.C.
It felt good. We felt good. I cared deeply about what I was doing as did the people who worked for me and the clients we served. I was committed to the community and to working in Hawaii. After all, I lived in the community I worked in.
Management, however, was livid.
I got my budget and supervision. A casual examination of the budget was enough to tell me that the figures did not crunch. I had rewritten the RFP for funding that year for the state. I spent about twenty hours nonstop editing the thing. I got very familiar with how things were set up. It wasn’t right. Things were getting increasingly uncomfortable at work. In the lawsuit I made the allegation that management used every trick in the book to get me to quit from that point on. Their tactics, according to my affidavit, involved racist jokes, attacks on my religion and violations of my disabilities contract with the agency.
There were other concrete legal issues.
We were working in a brand new building. It was built on ceded land granted to the agency by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. The agency was responsible for the building. OHA retained control of the land. There were clear care taker issues as well.
In the previous year, the administrative staff had moved into the building. The clinical staff soon followed. I was placed in a small office in the Children’s section of the clinic. It was the room that was the least ventilated in the complex. I of course had my faithful negative ion generators going at full blast. I spent a lot of time on the carpet with the kids. I was newly in love and happy with my job.
I was usually the first person to arrive at management meetings on Monday mornings. On one particular morning, one of the administrators had already arrived and was setting up equipment. He had with him a safety report on the building. He told me I could read it. As he fiddled with his laptop and projector, I did. It stated that the carpet had been installed wrong and there were toxic fumes in the building. They had run short of the adhesive used to hold it in place and had mixed chemicals. The resulting fumes were extremely dangerous. It listed some of the results of exposure to the fumes as blindness, dementia, liver, kidney, brain, and lung and heart damage.
One of the administrators, the grant writer, had gone to her doctor to get details on what these chemicals did to the human body and forced the issue in the management meeting. She was very concerned. She left the agency shortly afterwards. Administrative staff talked about the impact on the carpet workers who glued the carpet in. They were temporary workers hired for the job, local people. They were very sick. In the meeting we were assured that everything was under control and the situation could be effectively dealt with by “leaving the windows open” over a couple of weekends, letting the place air out. They passed the report around.
We accept this information at face value. But it nagged at me. It still does.
Things had gone from good to bad overnight. When I was fired I filed a complaint with the EEOC. The agency did not cooperate with the EEOC investigators. They provided none of the requested documents. They did provide a copy of the termination agreement. The EEOC agent spotted the ADA problems immediately. We went into a federal mediation sponsored by the EEOC.
As we entered this phase of the negotiations, I was feeling increasingly sick. I wondered if my illness was connected to exposure to the toxins in the clinic. I had also received the anthrax filled letter from Nigeria. Things were going wrong with my body.
In mediation the management was prepared in advance to talk about toxins. They had a version of the safety report with them. It was used as a bargaining chip in negotiations. If I settled, I would get the medical information I needed to seek treatment. I was offered a small sum of money for settlement and references. I considered it. In a fit of consciousness, the mediator provided the names of the chemicals to me on the phone. He also provided the name of the company that did the safety report. He had a strong ethical base and a federal obligation under law to do so. It was enough information to keep me going.
I felt like I was being held hostage for medical information. I filed the lawsuit.
The EEOC signed off and promptly lost all records pertaining to the case. They were obligated to retain them until the legal process had completed. To date, the whereabouts of those files remains a mystery.
I was truly and completely on my own.
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anthraxandtoxicexposure Edit TagsSunday September 10, 2006 - 03:47pm (EDT)
Edit Delete Permanent Link 0 CommentsEntry for September 09, 2006 A Slight Digression
I went to high school in Bellevue Nebraska. In the summer I did Ag work one year. I detasseled corn in 110 degree weather. Not for very long though. I came home exhausted and wrung out. One day I got separated from the rest of the crew I was working with. Up ahead as far as I could see was the muddy row and the corn towering above and arcing over my head. In back of me the same infinite tunnel of corn. I broke into a blind panic and began to run. I tripped, and tumbled face down into the mud, regaining my senses. It was a satori of sorts, an awakening of something deep inside of me. A nameless dread. The next summer I worked as a janitor for the school system. I worked at a little elementary school with an elderly man who seldom spoke to me. He listened to easy listening radio station KFOR. I remember the haunting, ascending electric piano of Stevie Wonder on "You are the sunshine of my life" all summer long, the chills that tingled up my spine when the piano hit G# and twinged the central nervous system. I was lost in a dream, pushing my mop bucket down the long empty hallways. The next year I started selling records and stereos at the Brandies department store. That's where by chance I met radio announcer Jimmy O'Neill. Jimmy O'Neill was working at WOW in Omaha. He was famous. He had been the host of the ground breaking 1960s show Shindig on TV. I use to watch him in Spanish when I lived in Puerto Rico. I watched him work intensely on the phone doing a remote for the store. He gestured fanatically as he delivered the commercial. He enunciated every word. Boxed with the consonants. He literally shook when he talked he was so intense. He was as kinetic as hell even planted in the corner of the record shop. Between stop sets I asked him how to get into radio. I wanted to do what he did. I was already shaking. He told me I should go to the Columbia School of Broadcasting in Kansas City. I almost went. I got the catalog. I got some broadcast training in a special program in high school. I had decided that I wanted to be on the radio. That much I knew. I played guitar in the church choir. I played in a USO band. I played in a basement band called Queen Anne's Revenge which morphed into Grunt. I spent all my time playing guitar and piano. Don Fawn, a friend and guitar player in all those incarnation contacted me recently. He has a tape of us playing Carl Perkins’s "Honey Don't." I didn’t. We played the state prison once. We got paid in cake. Another job one night promised real cash. It was at a church dance somewhere out in the country. We climbed into the van and did the dance. When it came time to be paid, the minister scratched his head and shrugged his shoulders. He mumbled bible words. We didn't get cash. We got a carton of hot dogs and a case of Orange Crush. We drove the van to the local drive in and watched "Fritz the Cat" from the back of the open van. All night we gorged ourselves on the best hot dogs and orange soda I ever had. We had it made. That is my work experience, summed up in three stories. I was still playing guitar and singing in a weak voice when I went to college. It was a big part of my self image and identity. The Italian blues kid. I sought out opportunities to play. At the Centennial education program, Jeff Table let me sit in with his bands, Crumbhunger and the Permanent Waves. Ric Marsh, my advisor and friend tolerated my lack of focus, timing and pitch and jammed with me. At the University one night I went solo. I played did a night in a little coffee house in the student union. It was big time. And truly awful. I decided that night that I would never be a great performer. Music went from 100% of my life to zero overnight. I decided to write instead. I got hired by the Daily Nebraskan in 1975.Vince Boucher was the editor at that time. I could write music and art pretty well. I was groomed to replace the star writer of that time, Dave Wood. My parents moved to Florida that year, leaving me at school in Lincoln. I started off at the University of Nebraska majoring in Journalism and Political Science. I was in the School of Broadcasting where I was told by the head of the department that there was something wrong with my voice. I didn't sound like anybody else there. I didn't have the pipes. My instructor sent me off to a doctor to get the vocal nodes sliced off my vocal chords like deli baloney. After the doctor stuck a mirror down my throat and noodled around for awhile, I passed on the operation. Despite the alleged grunge in my throat I carried on. I did OK in broadcast news and photography. I did good interviews and framed things well. I learned my base radio skills on the air at KRNU, the University of Nebraska radio station. A friend of my brothers, Dennis Dorgherty, who was the resident manager at my dorm, knew Doug Agnew, the station manager at KFMQ. He was the son of Steve Agnew, the owner of the progressive rock station. Dennis got me an interview. He knew they were desperate for an overnight personality. They had just lost their night announcer. Doug was going down to the station with a case of beer and a couple of friends to keep the station on the air. He usually shut it down by 3 a.m. They hired me for the midnight shift. I didn't have the pipes, but I was the first one in my class to get a radio job. Steve Agnew, the extraordinary air personality and engineer hired me. They told me not to talk. Maybe it was the uncut baloney on my vocal cords, I don't know. I do know I ended up talking anyway. They let me. I played good sets and segued records really well. Roger Agnew, who had the best radio voice I ever heard, got me up to speed. He said they had hired someone from California to come and take over, but after he got to the station I could do weekends. He told me to have a good time. I was sad, but exhilarated to be on the air at all. I was working seven days a week, midnight to six in the morning. The guy from California finally arrived. He got off a bus in the middle of the night and came down to the station. It was over just like that. Or so I thought. It turned out that he had a few problems. He was at the station 24 hours a day telling people how to cut commercials, how to run the station, and what music to play and how to be on the air. He had all the signs of someone with a strong PTSD. He drank all the time. He didn't sleep. He couldn't stand to be alone. He was locked into his anger. He was a control freak. They fired him and hired me. I continued to work seven days a week. I'd sleep two hours in the morning and get up and go write and edit for the Daily Nebraskan. The fired guy called me a couple times a night. I could not get him off the phone. He said he didn't want me to get fired like he did. He’d tell me how to survive. He started off friendly and got increasingly hostile. He broke into the station one night drunk. And stole records. He threatened to castrate me. I was getting to the point where I was carrying empty coke bottles into the parking lot in case I needed something to defend myself. As Senator Dave Landis said, "a coke bottle, now there's the weapon of choice." Dave did a jazz show on the weekends. David Kappy, Captain Classics, the guy who did the weekend classical show agreed. I finally told the program director and the station called the police. It turns out he had just gotten out of prison for assault and did not want to go back. That was my introduction to radio. KFMQ was a one hundred and fifty watt station, one of the last in the country. The big ones were usually a hundred thousand watts. What you would call a stick station. We covered a tri-state area, and sometime were heard as far away as Canada and Wyoming. I was there for ten years. That is my fourth and final telling work tale.
I left ten years later to the day I was hired.
That was my work experience going into grad school. I worked in a library, built a bridge, washed dishes, managed a gift shop, and was a file clerk and a telephone operator.
I worked as an audio tech for work study. I sold what I wrote.
That’s what I learned from work.
Nothing could prepare me for the year 1997.
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kfmqlincoln'sbestrock Edit TagsSaturday September 9, 2006 - 02:19am (EDT)
Edit Delete Permanent Link 1 CommentEntry for September 08, 2006 How the elephant got into my pajamas
Photo by Fred Rackle
Post card from the condo.
Caption: "Located in scenic Makaha Valley, these 586 luxurious apartments equipped with central air-conditioning and cable T.V. are immediately adjacent to two eighteen hole championship golf courses. Swimming and surfing at famous Makaha Beach are within walking distance."
Despite a somewhat notorious civil rights history in the 1960s, the condos attracted a variety of people. It is filled with retirees and newlyweds. Built on a spot sacred to the Hawaiian Royalty. It is said that the buildings are haunted and cursed by the amakua of those kapuna who came before. The condos have survived mudslides and shifting real estate prices and still captivate the mind and spirit. It is a holy spot. Despite the curses. The view is killer. The condos are surrounded on three sides by Volcanic Mountains that crumble like German chocolate. About three hundred wild goats live up there. There are waterfalls that cascade behind the condos in the winter. They are generally followed by mud. Peacocks parade the idyllic. Down the valley two miles is the ocean.
The cable lanes that ties the condos together is a subject of some speculation. Exactly how private are these condos? What kind of intrigues fills this place? The famous have stood at the railing and looked down the valley at the rising moon. Are there spies lurking about? Did the population of the two entire buildings narrowly escape eradication in 1998 by an anthrax attack from a foreign power? Its' a wild tale indeed. "A ripping good tale" as Earnest Hemmingway wrote. But let’s start here. 1998.
Prelude
Let me review what I know to be true.
In the late summer or early fall of 1998 I received a letter from Nigeria.
The letter was a type-written document. The body of the letter was an attempt to recruit me to set up a bank account. It offered a base fund of $150,000. I was not to touch the money in the account but could have the interest accrued on an interest baring account.
In the folds of the letter was a little more than a gram of white powder.
I called the FBI immediately. In a phone interview with the FBI agent (who did not identify himself) the agent said that the letter was of a type that he was receiving reports on. The letter was similar to letters received by others. It was regarded as a scam. The unidentified white powder was most likely talcum powder. Talcum powder, he explained, was used to obscure finger prints.
In the previous decade, the first cases of anthrax exposure in 50 years had been reported in the United States. There had been fatalities. The anthrax was of a weapons grade, stolen from a secure government facility. The accused perpetrator was an employee of the facility, who evidently smuggled the anthrax out of the facility. The first cases were apparently random mailings. One of the victims, an elderly woman, is perplexing. The victims in Vero Beach, employees of the Globe Newspaper in Vero Beach, are evidently more explainable. The Globe is a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper which does investigative reporting. I believe it also does stories on tea parties with aliens. It is what my mother would call a “scandal sheet.” The current issue has the following headlines:
HILLARY ATTACKS BILL’S SECRET LOVER. HE FORCES HILLARY INTO SEX THERAPY.
JACKO WAS FRAMED
BRAD AND ANGELINA MOVING IN TOGETHER
KENNY CHESNEY’S OTHER WOMAN REVEALED
The magazine describes itself as publishing “true life stories and fun.”
Their Web Site is
http://www.globemagazine.com/It is clear that these individuals were highly traumatized by their experience and have researched what happened extensively.
The incident itself is more explainable. No one likes journalists.
According to my cardiologist, who was informed on the initial attack, the weapons grade anthrax was lethal within a couple of seconds.
In short, a typical knowledge of such exposure would indicate that this powder was not of the same variety of anthrax in those initial attacks. It came from outside the country. All known cases of anthrax exposure originated in the United States, with stolen United States government-issue anthrax as a likely source of contamination.
According to the 70 year old Berkley study on negative ions, as well as standard operational procedures for medical and research facilities, negative ions contain or kill anthrax. The following site is by no means definitive, but it is simplified to a degree that you can quickly absorb the information. It will give you enough grounding to do further research. http://www.superforce.com/
I lived in a high-density, negative ion infused environment. I had two high density negative ion generators going full blast for seven years prior to the getting the letter. I lived in a controlled, air conditioned environment. The floors space was of a studio type.
It consisted of a single room condo, a hall way, and a two chambered bath and dressing room. It was inter-connected to nineteen or twenty floors of other occupied condos.
The FBI agent had me fax a copy of the letter and the envelope to him. I had to remove the white powder from the envelope in order to do this. No sample of the white powder was collected.
So what happened to the letter?
I was working at radio station KCCN AM at the time. A newswoman, Mandy Armstrong, was interested in what had happened. She later became the News Director on the FM side of the band. I gave the letter to her. I don’t remember if there was powder in the envelope or not. We can assume that there was some residue in the envelope. I’ll attempt to call Mandy today to find out if there is additional information.
I got progressively sicker, culminating in a congestive heart failure. I almost died. Organ damage was such that a heart transplant was recommended for my survival. I am currently on 100% disability for toxic exposure and well.
That’s another story.
Is there another explanation for the illness? That’s next.
Alternative speculation as to the nature of the crime:
It is a frequent organized crime and espionage tactic to create the appearance of a pattern crime with many victims. It is used to mask specific crimes. In this way the whys of the crime can be covered up. Attacks appear to be part of a random splattering of violence or criminal aggression. It’s explainable by a wider pattern of events.
If so, why was I targeted? To what end?
Was I meant to be disabled by a lower quality anthrax exposure?
Was the offer based on truth?
Is there a link to a financial network, or “battle funds” set up for unnamed parties to pull on while remaining anonymous?
I was out of work. I was engaged in a Federal Lawsuit against my former employer.
I was economically vulnerable. That vulnerability was increased by an increasing inability to work and isolation.
The plot, as it is unfolded like the letter from Nigeria.
In the folds of the letter is the unknown white powder of whys, whose and whereas. Contained in it is the spore of events that set the next seven years in motion.
These are the known facts of these events as I know them. I do for swear it.
Addendum:
What is anthrax?
Anthrax, named after the Greek word for coal because of the dark skin lesions it causes, is a caused by the Bacillus anthracis bacterium. Spores can exist in the soil for years and, herbivores such as cattle, sheep and goats are most likely to become infected while grazing. Human cases are rare.
How dangerous is it?
The bug can infect humans through a cut on the skin, more rarely by inhalation of spores or, even more rarely, by eating infected meat. Inhaling spores in sufficient numbers is likely to lead to death, although early antibiotics can reduce the risk. Ingested anthrax is similarly deadly, but more than 80 per cent of those with a skin infection survive.
What are the symptoms?
Generally feeling unwell with a flu-like illness and breathing difficulties are the early signs of inhaled anthrax. Skin infections cause an itchy, inflamed pimple that turns into a blister with extensive swelling. Several days later this turns into an ulcer with the classic black marks.
Can it spread between humans?
Anthrax does not spread person-to-person, although there have been extremely rare reports of skin infections apparently transferring from one person to another.
Related topic
·
Anthrax http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1490