05.24.10
Posted in Cyberterrorism, Extremism at 12:08 pm by George Smith
Finally, there’s blood in the water. And it’s the Cult of Cyberwar’s.
DD got enough cuts in over the last few months that even those most inclined to blind endorsement of whatever some celebrity voice of authority has to say can’t overlook it.
So recent reviews of Richard Clarke’s Cyberwar tell a story of waning enthusiasm.
Sure, the standard scripts and memes of cyberwar doom are deployed, but they’re just on display for show. Everyone has written them and the overkill has squeezed all the zip fresh out. The reviewers realizes they’re getting a hot and canned delivery of something, not necessarily the truth, more likely a sales pitch.
From the Financial Times:
Poison gas clouds over Wilmington and Houston. Serial crashes on the New York subway and the Washington Metro. Aircraft plunging to the ground. The president of the United States clueless as to what to do next.
This scenario belongs not to Hollywood but to Richard Clarke, who has served four presidents, from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, as national security adviser. In short, his startling new book, Cyber War, argues that the sky is about to fall on our heads.
“Cyber War will strengthen Clarke’s claims as one of the founding fathers of cybersecurocracy,” it continues.
“While enjoying the verve of his writing, the question must still be asked: is he right? Because if so, he and his fellow securocrats will be the recipients of huge sums of taxpayers’ cash … Take Clarke’s warnings with a pinch of salt but do not dismiss them out of hand.”
Coming from a well-known establishment publication, it’s the equivalent of someone saying, “Run along now.”
And from the Washington Post:
Still, few seem too worked up about [cyberwar]. On a recent “Real Time With Bill Maher” episode, for instance, Clarke’s cyber-scare stories fell flat.
Even backward North Korea is exercising its cyber-muscles. Last year, on July 4, the hermit kingdom reportedly sent a virus to attack commercial and government Web sites in the United States, including those of the New York Stock Exchange and the White House, as well as sites in South Korea. Little damage seems to have been done …
Not nearly as much as one torpedo, I might add.
“It will probably take ‘an electronic Pearl Harbor’ to wake us up, Clarke says,” adds the reviewer.
Clarke ought to know, he was one of the founding fathers of ‘electronic Pearl Harbor’ scare stories — more than ten years ago.
And he’s flogged it in the media big time. To a seemingly endless number of reporters willing to be nothing more than stenographers.
However, you can’t Google it anymore without running into a few dissenting voices.
The Richard Clarke publicity circus — from the archives.
More on the Cult of Cyberwar.
Permalink
Posted in Extremism, Rock 'n' Roll, Ted Nugent at 9:51 am by George Smith
Run off the pages of the Waco, TX, newspaper for being too much the name-caller, Ted Nugent has been pumping out more hilariously extreme columns for the Washington Times.
Railing against ‘Fedzilla’ in every one, he’s found his perfect audience — the lunatic extreme right of the same said ‘Fedzilla.’ So while Nugent works his way through the classic rock oldies ag fair circuit this summer, he still will generate a great deal of accidental humor through weekly trainwrecks of thought committed to print by the Times.
A recent best of:
“Pay attention. Get involved. Demand action. Trample the weak. Hurdle the dead.”
The rest is here.
I am not entitled to a paycheck if I don’t produce. Unless, of course, I am a dependent, bloodsucking punk who expects others to cover for my ineptness. Savings are unemployment benefits for responsible people.
See Greece crumble under its own weight? That’s what happens when you discard accountability and totally disregard the importance of apple quality, apple production and apple value. Or you could always burn down the orchard like Zimbabwe.
Literally. Ignorant goofballs. No bail out for you.
Spend like a gluttonous, spoiled brat with no consideration whatsoever for next year’s crop, and you get a nation of denial-strangled idiots who have convinced themselves that their compensation has no connection to their productivity and sales success rate. Soulless.
Are you listening SEIU? AFL-CIO? Are you listening Fedzilla, you gluttonous, blind pig, you.
The rest is here.
But the absolute finest of Ted’s May declamations are these bon mots.
The New Deal was a raw deal, and the Great Society was for losers.
Who can believe that Fedzilla is taking Goldman Sachs to task …
We are shocked that the president of the United States surrounds himself with self-avowed communists, Marxists, socialists, tax cheats, lawbreakers, far-left animal rights goons, Mao and Che fans, and czars …
A prime motivator for the Tea Party is the example of Martin Luther King Jr. …
Truth, logic and common sense drive our lives and remain common and sensible to us all.
Here.
Krugman’s chart showing the biggest gains for average Americans corresponding to Nugent’s personal belief that ‘the Great Society was for losers.’
Ladies and gentleman, the mean old coot will now play “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang” on the stage next to the pig show pavilion at the Donna Corn Maze.
Permalink
05.19.10
Posted in Crazy Weapons, Extremism at 9:00 am by George Smith
“Less than a minute after we’ve met, William Saxton has launched into an explanation of how easy it would be for terrorists to detonate a nuclear bomb 10,000 feet above ground,” reports a Palm Beach newspaper today.
“The electromagnetic pulse generated could knock out computers and electronic communication for ten square miles,” he tells the newspaper.
“He has conducted a site survey of a local Cinemaplex, where he documented how simply someone could detonate a bomb at the refreshment center and take out 2,000 moviegoers.” continues the newspaper.
“He believes that the recent Wall Street computer glitch that sent the Dow plummeting 1,000 points was ‘a test’ by terrorist organizations …”
Surf out to the story. The picture speaks thousands of words.
What do you do in your wealthy Florida retirement, granddad?
Why sonny, I warn about the perfidious menace of Islam in public schools sapping and impurifying the precious bodily fluids of our children.
Oh.
Writes the newspaper:
Dr. William Saxton is sitting at a Starbucks in West Boca Raton, clutching a bulging black briefcase. But he’s having trouble concentrating on our conversation. He keeps looking around for a better table. “I’d prefer to have more privacy,” he says.
Saxton is the founder and chairman of Citizens for National Security, a nonprofit think tank based in Boca Raton whose mission is to educate and activate U.S. citizens concerning the dangers of “homegrown” fundamentalist Islam, particularly the long tentacles of the Islamic Brotherhood. Saxton has a Harvard PhD in physics and a degree from MIT, and he’s worked as a consultant for NASA. Now he’s devoting himself full time, and without pay, to documenting what he sees as the pernicious effects of Islam in the U.S.
But we’re meeting to talk about how fundamentalist Islam has infiltrated the social studies textbooks of Florida schoolkids. Saxton headed the CFNS task force that spent months collecting examples of fundamentalist Islamic influence on the gullible “hearts and minds of Florida’s young people.”
He furtively pulls a black spiral-bound notebook from his briefcase — the 60-page report compiled on 67 Florida school districts. Saxton believes that the Council for Islamic Education, which he calls an arm of the Islamic Brotherhood, exerts influence on U.S. textbooks from both ends. The “bad guys” act as go-betweens, lobbying publishers on behalf of school boards and school boards on behalf of publishers. They sit on the committees that choose the textbooks and act as editors and advisers to the textbook industry.
“I can’t show you this report,” he says. “This is very valuable research, and we have to be careful with the way we reveal our information.”
========
Saxton says he first realized the extent of the problem when he was in California, looking at his grandchildren’s textbooks. The problem isn’t limited to Florida. “This is an epidemic,” Saxton says.
Sad are the ignored Paul Reveres of our time.
Permalink
05.06.10
Posted in Extremism, Rock 'n' Roll, Ted Nugent at 9:11 am by George Smith
Too over-the-top for the Waco, TX, city newspaper, Ted Nugent has a column at the Washington Times.
Where it gets to be more extreme.
It, along with a love letter he wrote form the exteme right wing Human Events two years ago, probably has something to do with why TIME magazine editors asked him to write a one paragraph hagiography of Sarah Palin.
Of course, they probably cut all the real good parts. Or laughers like this one from 2008:
Gov. Palin is an executive. The mark of an effective executive is to surround herself with bright, talented, capable professionals who share her vision to accurately represent the people they work for: Americans.
Anyway, according to one recent Nuge piece in the WaTimes, the Democrats have evil designs on illegals:
You would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to see that the grand plan of the Democrats is to entrap illegal immigrants by giving them legal status and then enslave and destroy them with numerous Fedzilla handouts …
While I applaud Arizona for its bold and brave new law, putting illegals in jail is the wrong move. That costs too much. I say Arizona should follow its own American hero, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County.
Sheriff Arpaio keeps crooks in a large outdoor holding facility and makes them sleep in tents. Among other things, he feeds them bologna sandwiches. I hope they are not fresh.
All this from “Immigration Lesson for Numskulls,” of which all not Ted Nugent are guilty of being. Unless you’re giving stale balogna sandwiches to illegals kept in an outdoor tent jail.
And it’s not Wall Street that caused the worldwide economic collapse, it’s the US guvmint. But you saw that coming, right?
America is going bankrupt not because of crooked and unethical Wall Street investment bankers. We are in this financial morass because of a bloated, ineffective, unaccountable and wasteful Fedzilla
I’ll bet the president a backyard beer at the White House that many more Americans would entrust their future to Wall Street bankers than to the elected frauds and idiots who have plundered the national treasury and put America’s future on thin ice.
November is hunting season. No bag limit.
Here.
The last time we looked at Ted Nugent, he was Massey Coal’s celebrity talking parrot.
Next week: Ted explains how massive oil spills show American values and uphold freedom.
DD just bought Joan Jett’s photobiography by Todd Oldham. It’s an excellent example of how to grow older playing rock and roll, keep your self-respect and remain a human being.
Instead of turning into a rotted old public disgrace.
Permalink
05.03.10
Posted in Crazy Weapons, Extremism, Ricin Kooks at 8:00 am by George Smith
DD’s artist’s conception of how ricin is recommended for use in the Poor Man’s James Bond.
England has neo-Nazis, too.
And one in the news now, Ian Davison, is an average example of a similar genus found in the US: A white supremacist who trolls the net for mayhem manuals, cobbling together home-made weapons based on notes from old US neo-Nazi/survivalist literature.
The Northern Echo newspaper reports in ‘Keyboard warriors or threat to the republic’:
IAN and Nicky Davison posted offensive racist material on their website over a long period of time, but it was when they showed footage of a homemade bomb being detonated that police moved in to arrest them.
It was only then that the potentially deadly store of ricin was found in Ian Davison’s home.
The trial at Newcastle Crown Court heard much debate about whether the pair were simply “keyboard warriors??? or whether they posed a genuine threat to the public.
=========
In public, Ian Davison was an unemployed lorry driver and part-time pub DJ.
In private, he was the founder and leader of the Aryan Strike Force, described in court by Matthew Feldman, of the University of Northampton, as believing itself to be: “The pinnacle and most uncompromising of the neo- Nazi groups in the UK.???
Police believe the pair were in touch with about 300 neo- Nazis across the globe, as far afield as Canada and Australia.
Davison posted racist messages on his website and also placed several videos on You Tube, including a four-and-ahalf minute tribute to Adolf Hitler, who he described as “a true hero of the white race???.
But the posts on the Aryan Strike Force website were becoming more sinister.
One showed footage of what appeared to be a paramilitarystyle training camp in a forest in Cumbria, which featured men wearing balaclavas and combat fatigues, parading through the woods carrying swastikas.
=========
When police raided Nicky Davison’s home in Annfield Plain, County Durham, they discovered a number of terrorist manuals on his computer, including the Anarchists’ Cookbook, which detailed how to make bombs, and the Poor Man’s James Bond, which included details on how to make incendiary devices, poisons and even napalm.
There was also evidence the pair had researched the creation of an electromagnetic pulse bomb, which disables computer systems
========
THE ricin discovered in Ian Davison’s home was an unrefined sludge [the grind of castor seeds] but, say police, was still capable of killing up to 15 people.
Traces of the deadly toxin were discovered in a sealed jam jar inside Davison’s Myrtle Grove home in June last year – the only time the poison has been discovered in the UK.
It is thought the ricin had been produced in 2006 and had remained undisturbed in Davison’s kitchen ever since.
Although it was fairly crude and had not undergone the purification necessary to turn it into an effective weapon [and so on]…
Ian and his father face a long time in prison.
Definitive posts on this subject, published in the past on DD blog include:
From the Poisoner’s Handbook to the Botox Shoe of Death
The Jailbird Bookshelf
The A-to-Z of ricin crackpots
Permalink
05.01.10
Posted in Crazy Weapons, Cyberterrorism, Extremism at 2:50 pm by George Smith
As an appendix to today’s earlier Cult of Cyberwar piece, DD brings you an editorial writer at a Dallas newspaper who can’t help but conflate it with electromagnetic pulse doom, or the Cult of EMP Crazy. After recommending Richard Clarke, he goes on an electromagnetic pulse weapon jag.
It’s not uncommon but always surprising to see what rubbish people will publish, just for the sake of convincing you that something very dangerous out there is about to hurl us back to the Stone Age.
[Forget about BP’s oil spill, dangit, that’s just nothing compared to EMP and cyberwar.]
Opines an editor at the Dallas Morning News:
[Retired Lt. Gen. Harry Raduege Jr.] spent most of his 35-year military career studying the effects of electromagnetic pulses. The good news, he said, is that the fiber-optic cable that makes up much of our ground-based communication network would survive an EMP attack. But anything that uses micro-circuitry would be “tremendously impacted,” he explained; the pulse would “literally fry” such components.
A single electromagnetic pulse weapon, he says, “can kill electronic systems in an area the size of a tennis court or throughout the entire United States.”
We know this because our country has developed and tested such weapons, clearly with plans to deploy them in the event of war against another technologically advanced country. But it would be naive to think we’re the only ones with this weaponry.
More chilling is the fact that an electromagnetic pulse bomb would be relatively easy for terrorists to build and deploy. In 2001, Popular Mechanics magazine described an electromagnetic-pulse bomb that it said could be built for $400 and would be capable of sending out a pulse that “makes a lightning bolt seem like a flashbulb by comparison.” It wouldn’t harm humans but would fry all the microcircuits we rely on, including in our cars. Imagine real disaster scenes like those depicted in ABC’s hit show Flash Forward.
Over the last decade, a constant feature in talks on notional electromagnetic pulse bombs and/or rays is that they can do just about anything. In this case, a single weapon could fry electronics in a tennis court, or in the entire nation. And they’re so easy to make anyone can have them for a paltry few hundred dollars.
For instance, from Congressional testimony ten years ago:
During [a] June [Congressional] hearing, [retired Army general Robert Schweitzer] made seemingly contradictory claims during the course of his presentation. At different times, Schweitzer claimed that electromagnetic pulse guns could be made for $800, that they could be made for $35, that they had been used against London banks although he was informed this was a hoax, and such weapons were now capable of disrupting Wall Street.
??? . . . the cost is about $800 to do this,??? Schweitzer said at one point.
As for knocking out Wall Street, Schweitzer later commented to Congressman Saxton, “[It] can be done with going to RadioShack and buying the components . . . And the prices are from $35 to $200 to buy components and do a number on Wall Street.??? Schweitzer also alluded to, but did not mention by name, a generic hacker tech catalog that claimed to sell parts and schematics for such a weapon.
Further, Schweitzer testified that London banks were attacked by radio-frequency weapons, a myth that has been touched on in Crypt Newsletter.
“I was told that was a hoax,??? Schweitzer said to Saxton. “. . . and it’s disputed in the Intel community and elsewhere but I think, frankly, and having gone into this in great detail, the dispute is to protect the fact it happened.???
Schweitzer added later: “I validated [this]. It isn’t just taking rumors or drivel off of the tabloids. These are solid facts that I’m giving you.???
As a matter of fact, it was rumors and drivel. And Schweitzer died a few years later, never having seen his electromagnetic pulse weapons.
And from April of last year, on the old blog:
The second category of crazy associated with electromagnetic pulse doom lobby is filled with ‘experts’ who believe electromagnetic pulse weapons can be easily made from stuff cadged at Radio Shack. (Well, not quite, but for the sake of this post, the demographic extends into this domain of consumer electronic store junk.)
“Electromagnetic pulse weapons capable of frying the electronics in civil airliners can be built using information and components available on the net, warn counterterrorism analysts,” reads a very recent piece of EMP crazy emission at the New Scientist. (If you saw it originally, readers will note the other ‘most read’ story on the site — how masturbation might protect one from hay fever, certainly puts the entire matter in proper perspective.)
Written for decades — the original electromagnetic pulse gun stories date from at least as early as 1994 — this flavor always has one thing of note: EMP rayguns are easy to make from plans found on the web and materials available in every town.
The New Scientist story obfuscates this cliche only slightly. Instead of using the word ‘easy,’ practical synonyms are employed.
“[An ‘expert’] told delegates at the annual Directed Energy Weapons conference in London last month that … basic EMP generators can be built from descriptions available online, using components found in devices such as digital cameras,” reads New Scientist. “These are technologically unchallenging to build and most of the information necessary is available,” she said.
And DD wrote a syndicated news piece from just before the war, from which I will now draw:
“Talk of the secret electromagnetic pulse bomb was mythology as news, taking on a uniquely American demented quality,” wrote Crypt News in a syndicated feature published around the beginning of the second war in Iraq, the one we’re still in.
“No other single weapon — real or imagined — rivaled its power for sensation. In fact, in a nation where photographs of all weapons, no matter how trivial, are either officially distributed by the Department of Defense or leaked to the public, it was simply astonishing that absolutely none existed of the e-bomb.
“Bubbling over with excitement at something they’d never seen, the media mused openly on a wondrous capacity to destroy the Iraqi military without harming people. How the bomb would stop soldiers with old-fashioned artillery, automatic weapons, or tanks was nowhere to be seen. And guerrilla warfare was completely off the radar.
“Instead, the U.S. media furnished hyperventilated comment on the wonder bomb, exclamations suitable for Hollywood script.
“‘ Kabammy! A huge electronic wave comes along and sends out a few thousand volts,” blared one newspaper. ‘. . . like man-made lightning bolts!’ crowed another. Weeeee! Watch out Iraq, said the American buffoon corps, it’s the e-bomb.
“Reporters certainly believed this copy. As non-embedded journalists moved into Baghdad in the days prior to hostilities, editors contacted military analysts asking for advice on how to e-bomb-proof the electronic tools of the profession. Would cell phones survive? Could a microwave oven be used as an improvised microwave-proof carrier?”
Yes, the invisible e-bombs certainly took care of Iraq.
If DD goes back even further, to the time of the old Crypt Newsletter, we read that home-made or guvmint electromagnetic pulse weapons have always been arriving but never quite appearing. Or they are said to already be here though no one has seen them.
Or because someone has seen them in a computer game or on a TV show like 24 they must exist. Just like the bioweapon that caused rapid onset Alzheimer’s disease in Jack Bauer curable just in time for the next season.
From Crypt News:
A collection of comment and blurt from various EMP weapon kooks was originally [published under the title] “Calling Victor von Doom.”
That piece, from the Crypt Newsletter, cites an original electromagnetic pulse gun story from 1994 in Forbes magazine, one in which hackers are interviewed for their expertise in such things.
The EMP-weapon-used-against-Iraq (this time in the first war) myth was deployed:
“Forbes writer: Have you ever heard of a device that directs magnetic signals at hard disks and can scramble the data?
“Dangerous ex-hackers, in unison: Yes! A HERF [high energy radio frequency] gun.
“Dangerous ex-hacker A: This is my nightmare. $300: a rucksack full of car batteries, a microcapacitor and a directional antenna and I could point it at Oracle . . .
“Dangerous ex-hacker B: We could cook the fourth floor.
“Dangerous ex-hacker A: . . . You could park it in a car and walk away. It’s a $300 poor man’s nuke . . .
“Dangerous ex-hacker A, on a roll: They were talking about giving these guns to border patrol guards so they can zap Mexican cars as they drive across the border and fry their fuel injection . . .
“Dangerous ex-hacker A, really piling it on: There are only three or four people who know how to build them, and they’re really tight lipped . . . We used these in the Persian Gulf. We cooked the radar installation.
“In other parts of the article the “dangerous ex-hackers” discuss the ease of building what purports to be a $300 death ray out of Radio Shack parts and car batteries. In a rare moment of intellectual honesty and self-scrutiny the ‘dangerous ex-hackers’ admit there are a lot of ‘snake oil salesmen’ in the computer security business.”
Permalink
Posted in Cyberterrorism, Extremism at 11:04 am by George Smith
Richard Clarke’s publicity campaign bulldozes the media. Note Google ads for Raytheon and Northrop Grumman cybersecurity business operations tied to it.
From the WaTimes:
A cyber-attack could disable trains, Mr. Clarke says. “It could blow up pipelines … [or] damage electrical power grids. … It could confuse financial records, so that we would not know who owned what.”
From the New York Times in 1999, as sampled by me ten years ago:
“US Monitors Millennium Trouble Spots Around the World” was the title of a Tim Weiner penned piece in the New York Times.
“From now until after the New Year’s holiday, hundreds of FBI agents will be monitoring cyberspace for warnings, like ancients searching the skies for a sign, looking out for electronic assaults by hackers and tracking political extremists by computer.
“Civilian and military officials across the country, worried about an organized attempt to take down government computers, are watching everything from reservoirs to the Federal Reserve.
——
” . . . Richard A. Clarke of the National Security Council, repeatedly warns them that ‘cyberterrorists’ could launch computer attacks ‘shutting down a city’s electricity, shutting down 911 systems, shutting down telephone networks and transportation systems,’ as he said in a recent interview.”
From the Washington Times, in November of 1999, on someone else — not Richard Clarke, peddling a book on cyberwar:
“China could launch a devastating computer-run sabotage operation by attacking U.S. oil refineries, many of which are grouped closely together in areas of Texas, New Jersey and California.”
“A [Chinese] computer attacker could penetrate the electronic ‘gate’ that controls refinery operations and cause fires or toxic chemical spills . . . “
However, in November of 1999, from Richard Clarke, as reported by the Associated Press:
“We could wake one morning and find a city, or a sector of the country, or the whole country have an electric power problem, a transportation problem or a telecommunication problem because there was a surprise attack using information warfare.”
“Clarke compared the reliance [on computer networks] to former drug addicts enrolled in a recovery program,” read the AP article.
“We need to take a lesson from that — at least they know they have a dependency problem. Many of you are still in denial.”
From the Los Angeles Times, in October of 1999:
Richard Clarke: “An enemy could systematically disrupt banking, transportation, utilities, finance, government functions and defense.”
And the granddaddy of all Richard Clarke cyberwar placemat stories — Signal magazine’s “Hidden Hazards Menace U.S. Information Infrastructure,” from August of 1999:
“The greatest threat to U.S. security may come from internal software or hardware trapdoors lying dormant in the nation’s critical infrastructure. The digital equivalent of Cold War moles, these hidden threats would serve as access points for criminals, terrorists or hostile governments to extort money, impel foreign policy appeasement or ultimately launch crippling information attacks on the United States,” stated Signal.
There is “a very real possibility of an electronic Pearl Harbor,” said Clarke to the magazine.
“Without computer-controlled networks, there is no water coming out of your tap; there is no electricity lighting your room; there is no food being transported to your grocery store; there is no money coming out of your bank; there is no 911 system responding to emergencies; and there is no Army, Navy and Air Force defending the country . . . All of these functions, and many more, now can only happen if networks are secure and functional.
“A systematic [attack] could come from a terrorist group, a criminal cartel or a foreign nation . . . and we do know of foreign nations that are interested in our information infrastructure and are developing offensive capabilities that would allow them to take down sectors of our information infrastructure.”
For Signal, Clarke claimed “trapdoors” unspecified and theoretical, “some of which may already be in place, as the greatest potential threat to the information infrastructure. Residing in the operating systems of key networks that support the U.S. critical infrastructure, these trapdoors would provide windows of opportunity for any ill-intentioned adversary to wreak considerable havoc. ‘It is at least theoretically possible that a nation could insert such trapdoors, and then make demands of the United States under threat to our infrastructure.'”
The cyberwar scenario was delivered:
“One possible scenario would feature a demand leveled by a foreign government or terrorist group. When the U.S. government refuses to comply, this adversary demonstrates its capabilities by reducing a region of the United States to chaos. ‘I think the capability to do that probably exists in the hands of several nations,’ Clarke stated. ‘I think it could exist in the near future in the hands of criminal and terrorist organizations.'”
—-
“Envision all of these things happening simultaneously -electricity going out in several major cities; telephones failing in some regions; 911 service being down in several metropolitan areas. If all of that were to happen simultaneously, it could create a great deal of disruption, hurt the economy . . . “
Sources in a longer piece here.
Citations from Google News tab today including “Richard Clarke,” “Cyberwar” and the turning off of the electricity: at least 10
From non-cybersecurity expert, Michi Kakutani, in the New York Times this week:
Blackouts hit New York, Los Angeles, Washington and more than 100 other American cities. Subways crash. Trains derail. Airplanes fall from the sky.
Gas pipelines explode. Chemical plants release clouds of toxic chlorine. Banks lose all their data. Weather and communication satellites spin out of their orbits. And the Pentagon’s classified networks grind to a halt, blinding the greatest military power in the world.
The only things left out: The sky turning the color of sack cloth and cats and dogs fornicating in the street.
Permalink
04.28.10
Posted in Crazy Weapons, Extremism at 8:29 pm by George Smith
One of the more dubious ‘gifts’ of the Cult of EMP Crazy — a richly manipulative group, if there ever was one — is the cruel brain haircut it imposes on its lessers. Think of it as a cynical tax on the IQ reserve for the sake of the missile defense/Bomb Iran lobby.
It’s quite the accomplishment. Thanks to the Heritage Foundation’s press machine, GOP voters in a placid place like Lancaster, Pennsylvania, think they have to worry about national collapse.
Put this notch in your belt, cynical Heritage boys:
You’ve frightened a middle-aged woman into preparing for something that has almost zero chance of ever influencing life in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, with your EMP doom promotional campaign. Job well done!
From Lancaster news services:
Recent stories about solar flares and electromagnetic pulse bombs that could supposedly destroy communications networks have put her more [one Lancaster woman] on edge, she said.
—
But what if some catastrophe undermines law and order?
[One woman] said she has no intention of taking up arms, “Mad Max” style: “I’m the first person in the stew pot, I know that. I can’t fend off a gang of mutant zombie bikers.”
She won’t have to, she added, because her neighbors are already on the same self-reliant page.
Whether this ethic is infinitely adaptable to the nation’s neighborhoods is an open question.
Markman lauds backyard chicken raising. And he says personal fitness and health care awareness are especially sensible.
“I think that recognizing that things can go wrong … is a good thing,” he said.
However, he added, “I think that, in general, people underestimate the complexity of really doing everything yourself.”
Martin said he has no warm, fuzzy illusions about what would happen if political and economic systems should fail.
“I doubt if you’d get a Utopian society out of it.” On the other hand, he said, “if a disaster comes through and nobody’s prepared, your instinct cuts in and it’s a fight for survival.”
That’s just the kind of scenerio Giffin wants to avoid, especially for her children.
Previously, on Survivalism USA at Dick Destiny:
“[Some white Americans, all Republicans] think an electromagnetic pulse — EMP for short — set off by a hostile nation exploding a nuclear device in space could fry computer chips — shutting down everything from toasters and cell phones to trucks moving food, medicine and other essentials around the nation,” reports the Oregonian.
[A precious metals] dealer, said some of his customers ‘are actually making sure they have a vehicle that’s not going to be impacted by an EMP.'”
“Failure of the power grid is a common theme — say if huge federal deficits trigger inflation and workers abandon their jobs, or if solar flares damage the grid the way they fused telegraph lines in 1859.”
“[Some fellow in the countryside] has factored predatory gangs into his plans to flee to his Snake River hideout with his wife … and their supplies.”
Keep up the great work, asshats.
Permalink
04.23.10
Posted in Extremism, Rock 'n' Roll at 8:35 am by George Smith
Today Allentown hard rock band Poker Face’s campaign paid off big-time in an unexpected place — Springfield, Ohio.
In the Springfield News Sun, the opinion page of this Allentown Morning Call-sized newspaper, it was said:
The level of craziness that has been whipped up over the last year or so is now the dominant posture of America’s conservative wing.
Not that the left has always been sane — the 1960s are witness to that — but recently the right has hands-down cornered irrational exuberance.
A by-product is the rise of militias to fight off some danger perceived in the minds of talk radio personalities and handed off to their foot soldiers tramping about in the woods in their fatigues and guns.
Locally, there is a website for something called the Constitutional Militia of Clark County, which is a bit of a mystery. The site’s only point of contact with its creator is an e-mail address which doesn’t work.
The page does mention that the militia “is proud to announce the adoption of our new official anthem: ‘I’d Rather Die Than Be Your Slave’ by Pokerface, a political rock band from Allentown, PA.???
(Sample verse: It didn’t matter who shot first that day /
They killed my brothers, they laid dead by me — I’m covered in their blood /We hit them hard we made them pay that day / We hung the traitors from the highest trees — No mercy from me)
Leaving aside the questionable use of the word “laid,??? this song is clearly off the planet in terms of lyrics you’d like floating around in the head of someone with access to weapons.
========
This week marks the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing that took the lives of 168 people, a monument to the irrational mood that comes over our country sometimes.
Let’s turn down the volume.
This despite the quick removal of the ‘US Military Knows Israeli agents did 911’ thing from Poker Face’s website. (DD posted a snapshot of it here earlier this week.)
From the American kook far far right, conspiracy thinking produces a muddle of thought in which denial is the watermark for everything, from 9/11 ‘truth’ movement to the Holocaust and all points in between, no matter the cost to reputations.
In keeping with that, the Poker Face guy quickly followed up with a post today on 9/11 denial:
Sad thing about our accusers, is that they are all living in fantasy land, and dont want to wake up out of their soma coma. They love the entertainment to death drip going in their arms.
Thankfully, others are waking the F-up and have no problem telling the same TRUTHS we tell.
Go back to sleep clueless ones. you only get in the way.
This in a preamble to an article posted from the Holocaust denial publication, the American Free Press, addressing Jesse Ventura’s struggles to keep his cable series on conspiracy theory alive after he associated with 9/11 deniers.
The details of Ventura’s increasing kookiness were explained by Katherine Kersten of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune two years ago. I’ve excerpted some of the best bits from that column, which itself samples from a piece that ran in the Weekly Standard.
Recently, the Weekly Standard’s Matt Labash was in town to report on something we hear little about in the local press: the comings and goings of a guy with “the demeanor of a deranged homeless man.??? Why was Labash interested in this man, when every other reporter in the universe was crammed into the Republican National Convention, which was going on across the river?
The guy in question was our former governor — Jesse Ventura. “The Body??? was back under the big lights, speaking to thousands at the Ron Paul convention at Target Center. Organizers billed the event as a return to Republicans roots. Apparently, they saw Ventura as worthy of star billing.
Labash didn’t pretend to journalistic objectivity. Here’s a sample of his report:
“Backstage I find Jesse Ventura holding court. In jeans and a Navy SEAL T-shirt under a sports jacket, his large shiny head ringed with long wisps of unkempt hair, he has, since leaving office and moving to Mexico, taken on the demeanor of a deranged homeless man.”
=======
The Ron Paul organizers worked hard to prevent fringe groups from hi-jacking their event, according to Labash. They were particularly concerned about “9/11 Truthers,??? who deny mainstream accounts of the World Trade Center’s destruction. The Paul folks saw Ventura as a serious risk in this regard, and convinced him not to broach the subject, says Labash.
But when he chatted with Ventura backstage, Labash says he learned that Jesse was going to break the taboo:
“I decide to bait Ventura, offering that some of the 9/11 Truthers in the crowd are disappointed their viewpoints aren’t being represented.
“‘They will when I get up there,’ he growls. He says he’s been studying the issue ‘for well over a year and a half,’ and he feels ‘very strongly that the truth has not been forthcoming.’
“When asked what the truth is and whether the government had something to do with it, he says, ‘I don’t know. But I know this, I do have somewhat of a demolition background, being a member of the Navy’s underwater demolition team, and I spoke to a few of my teammates a couple weeks ago. We’re all in agreement that buildings can’t fall at the rate of gravity without being assisted. And that’s called physics, that’s not an opinion.’”
Sure enough. Ventura’s speech threw 9/11 red meat to the boisterous crowd, according to Labash. Although he stopped short of accusing the U.S. government of complicity in the attacks, his speech was loaded with enough cryptic questions and innuendo to make clear where he stands on the issue, says Labash.
Elsewhere, Ventura has gone beyond questions and innuendo. Recently, he endorsed Kevin Barrett – who believes the U.S. government was behind the attacks — for a Wisconsin congressional seat, according to the Star Tribune.
========
How did this man get involved with the fringe agenda of the 9/11 deniers?
“Oh God, kill me now,” wrote a waggish critic at TV.com.
“TruTV, which carries such enlightening fare as Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura and Rehab: Party at the Hard Rock Hotel, has okayed Wicked Summah, a reality show in the same vein as Jersey Shore but with “Massholes”—those white-hat, Tom-Brady-jersey-wearing, frat heads—instead of Guidos. Hopefully the house they film the show in will be right next door to the the house where they film I’m Going to Kill My Annoying Neighbors.”
“Hilarious … Oh wait, it’s not supposed to be. Never mind,” judged Newsday.
“Maybe you just want someone to validate a bunch of cockamamie garbage,” opined the Kansas City Star.
“So while it makes for some of the worst investigative television this side of Dateline, seeing a former United States governor sit down and attempt to have a serious discussion with a fat, bearded, middle-aged yokel wearing an undersized 50 Cent t-shirt is the kind of markedly hilarious scenario one could only find on Conspiracy Theory,” said another publication.
Perhaps too unappreciative of art, they are collected at Metacritic here.
The last time DD chatted about Ventura was in December in From Tough Guy to Kook.
Permalink
04.21.10
Posted in Extremism, Rock 'n' Roll at 9:18 am by George Smith
Snapshot from the local Allentown, PA, chapter of the white Christian identity movement and rock band, Poker Face:
Good news, lads! Good news! This will certainly show the ADL and Southern Poverty Law Center what for!
Permalink
« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »