For those of us not immediately affected by the World Trade Tower assaults the reality has sunk in I expect.

4,777 plus individuals not found, unaccounted for beneath the rubble. Rubble which in effect has ground their bodies into oblivion.

As the clean up continues, a spore-forming bacterium has taken center stage. Bacillus anthracis, front and media center. Media specialists, postal employees and Washington politicos are under this gun. Bio-warfare big time in the U. S. of A.

Not very pleasant

Bio-warfare. Insidious, silent, merciless and oh so very effective. Odd that someone had not thought to loose such before. Whoa...lemme think. Bio-warfare? Loosed before? Here? Damn right!

Let's drop back a bit to 1703 and what was to become Pennsylvania:

Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander-in-chief of the British Forces...wrote in the postscript of a letter to Bouquet the suggestion that smallpox be sent among the disaffected tribes. Bouquet replied, also in a postscript, "I will try to inoculate them[m]...with some blankets that may fall into their hands, and take care not to get the disease myself..." To Bouquet's postscript Amherst replied, "You will do well to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this exorable race." On June 24, Captain Ecuyer, of the Royal Americans, noted in his journal: "Out of regard for them (i.e., two Indian chiefs) we gave them two blankets and a hankerchief out of the smallpox hospital. I hope it will have the desired affect."...Smallpox Immunization of the Amerindian, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 13: 601-13, Stearn, E. Wagner and Allen E. Stearn

It is said that smallpox, caused by the variola virus, was eliminated from the "world" in 1977. According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) there is no proven treatment so one would hope that what was commented on by the Plymouth (1620-1691) Colony's then Governor William Bradford regarding a local smallpox epidemic never surfaces again:

For want of bedding and linen and other helps they fall into a lamentable condition as they lie on their hard mats, the pox breaking and mattering and running one into another, their skin cleaving by reason thereof to the mats they lie on. When they turn them, a whole side will flay off at once as it were, and they will be all of a gore blood, most fearful to behold....American Holocaust, pp. 108

...of course, Bradford was referring to The People.

Now, this mention of smallpox and the deliberate act which qualified as the first documented act of bio-warfare on the North American continent is not an effort by me to beat a dead horse. I've said all along that what is important to me is that a "frame of reference" must be established for relation to the First Nations. So, the current anthrax scene must be considered in light of General Amherst, the town of Amherst, Massachusetts and, finally, Amherst College. When one thinks "Amherst," one must think of smallpox, of bio-warfare. One must think "slap in the face."

For those of you visiting here who were unfamiliar with Amherst et al, I ask that you visit a site titled Jeffrey Amherst and Smallpox Blankets. Check all the links. Establish a "new" frame of reference. Perhaps, just perhaps, it will add a new perspective to the current state of anthrax affairs.