07.06.10
Seminars at Catastrophe U: Pick your favorite end scenario, there’s no shortage
Another big seminar at some allegedly important place, another batch of messaging on how doom is almost upon us.
This example, courtesy of the Aspen Institute, fond of importing journalists so opinion page readers of the country don’t miss the wisdom dispensed.
From the Aspen Times, a warning from some guy who sells “state of the art security systems”:
Emerging from the political dust plumes that still seem to be dissipating from the Sept. 11 attacks are a number of new, creative and, perhaps most importantly, cheap ways for terrorists to dismantle the way the United States operates, terrorism experts said Wednesday at The Aspen Institute’s Security Forum.
And many places that might be targeted in this country are not ready for them, they said.
“For the first time in history, small organizations have the power of destruction that once only lay in the hands of nations,??? said Mati Kochavi, the CEO for an international company that manufactures state-of-the-art security systems.
And from another guy — Jim Talent — long known for advocating more taxpayer money for the development of allegedly state of the art bioterror preventing security systems:
“This is not 15 years from now,??? he said, mentioning numbers in a recent study he conducted that placed a possible [bioterror] attack occurring in 2013.
A potential attack, he said, could be conducted in a large city during a parade by spreading pathogens from a float with a paint sprayer.
On another front, there was the imported journalist — David Ignatius — warning of another flavor of menace, courtesy of the same meeting:
Electronic spies have already stolen tens of billions of pages of documents and penetrated strategic nodes of the global economy, from banks to power grids. They can turn off radars (as the Israelis did when they bombed Syria’s nuclear reactor in September 2007) or shut down Internet access (as Russia did when it invaded Georgia in August 2008). The future is now.
Did terrorists cause the Deepwater Horizon disaster? Did they perhaps inflitrate Wall Street and cause the economic meltdown?
Rhetorical questions, obviously. Mostly as a thought exercise, one asking readers to note Paul Reveres — patriots all — warning of approaching disasters, and the ease in which terrorists can cause them, never really mirror any of the real life catatrophes impacting the place.
The it’s easy-for-terrorists industry, noted previously.