Not surprisingly, William Broad’s front page cover of the Newt Gingrich and his obsession with electromagnetic pulse attack myth-making ignited many other original stories and echoes throughout the media sphere.
They repeat the script described yesterday.
At the top of the list was DC’s far right newspaper, The Washington Times.
We also could fall victim to the devastating effects of an electromagnetic pulse. With an EMP, almost everything powered by electricity would effectively be wiped out – not physically, but practically. Such things would simply cease to work.
Imagine the havoc this could cause. Your cellphone? Useless. The same goes for your TV, radio and computer. Your car might still run, but good luck driving on roads with no working stoplights, accessing your GPS devices for directions or buying gasoline from pumps that won’t pump. We’d be in the dark, literally – plunged into the early 19th century in a matter of seconds.
Back to the time of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Always. No matter who peddles it, from Newt Gingrich to some astroturfing flunky on a conservative blog, robotic in its recitation.
Today William Broad of the New York Times put Newt Gingrich’s role as one of the chieftains of the Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy, into that high button newspaper.
DD blog touched on it last month, along with Gingrich’s numbing videos for the electromagnetic pulse doom lobby, here.
Indeed, I’ve covered the Cult of EMP Crazy, and the spectacularly loathsome Gingrich’s regular shilling, for it for years.
Now that Newt Gingrich is enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame atop the heap of horrid GOP presidential hopefuls I can use it as an excuse to show him back when he was basically the famous person for a group of relative nobodies (but persistent nobodies) in the Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy.
Here are three videos of Newt on Youtube, doing his EMP doom tap dance. Two of them are for the [far right] lobbying group, EMPAct America.
The third is for Fox News where he advocated for starting a war with North Korea back in 2009. (This was subsequently pulled by its poster after I linked to it.)
Gingrich’s robotic script on the subject, completely in line with everyone else in the lobby, is that electromagnetic pulse doom is easily achievable and that it will end US civilization. It is not. But to argue it gives the people who own the script way too much he said/she said stage time. It’s what they live for.
This is frequently extended to encompass the collapse of the entire western world. The passing of the United States from the world scene takes down all Anglo civilization.
This is always coupled to pleas for more spending in ballistic missile defense and recommendation for preemptive sneak attack on Iran. And it is delivered in a stream of movies, seminars, op-ed pieces and straight news stories, one which has flowed steadily for a decade. At least.
And why special attention for Iran?
Because in all the common electromagnetic pulse doom scenarios peddled by the lobby, it is either a potential Iranian nuclear bomb, or an Iranian-made one given to terrorists, launched from a barge off the coast of the eastern US, which brings on the second coming of the Dark Ages.
It is a persistent lobby with no constituency anywhere but in the far right.
And like a large bit of dog dung festering in the sun attracts green bottle flies, over the years the story of electromagnetic pulse doom has also attracted fundamental Christian super-church preachers who believe and sermonize that the attack will herald the second coming, a final battle between good and evil, their natural ascent into heaven, and the damnation of everyone else.
In addition, it has also inspired a small congressional caucus of worthless and demonstrably incompetent nobodies — most notably the ancient Republican Rep., Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland who made it one of his life’s causes. More recently, Bartlett’s Cult of EMP Crazy leadership baton has been taken by a GOP politician from Arizona, birther and believer that sharia law is permeating the precious bodily fluids of American justice, Trent Franks.
Surviving EMP Doom will come by rule of the gun and those who have prepared themselves (the new Tom Doniphons) for it in the countryside, preferably with lots of pemmican, jerky, gold and silver, canned foods, stockpiled gasoline, underground dugouts full of ammunition and a corral of horseflesh or lovingly maintained old cars not reliant upon chip technology.
A far right Christian religiosity runs through electromagnetic pulse attack mythologizing . It’s the good and Godly in a struggle for what’s left of America principles and pieties against the ravening, formerly fat and lazy Democratic liberal hordes, spilling out of the cities like the zombies in AMC’s The Walking Dead.
Broad touches upon it briefly, as taken from the central book of electromagnetic pulse doom mythology, William Forstchen’s One Second After (also a Gingrich co-author):
The book describes an electromagnetic pulse attack on America, conjuring a world in which cars, airplanes, cellphones and refrigerators all die, and gangs of barbarians spring to life.
Despite being blown off by almost everyone (except the lunatic right and the repellent homophobe and Gingrich presidential competitor, Rick Santorum), — “Mr. Gingrich’s warnings remain persistently urgent,” writes William Broad for the Times.
Which, honestly now Mr. William Broad, just doesn’t quite describe the entire flavor of the matter.
“Some people praise Mr. Gingrich as an atomic visionary,” reads the Times piece. Near the end.
Now that Newt Gingrich is enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame atop the heap of horrid GOP presidential hopefuls I can use it as an excuse to show him back when he was basically the famous person for a group of relative nobodies (but persistent nobodies) in the Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy.
Gingrich has been called a a whore/”rental politician” (most recently by George Will) for anyone who’ll pay him to show up or provide “strategic consulting.” And one of the lobbies that loved him most was the pulsers/bomb Iran group — famous for using EMP doom to push ballistic missile defense.
Here are three videos of Newt on Youtube, doing his EMP doom tap dance. Two of them are for the lobbying group, EMPAct America.
The third is for Fox News where he advocated for starting a war with North Korea back in 2009.
The long version.
If he was President…
So far Newt hasn’t dropped “permanent continental shutdown” and the end of US civilization in the debates.
Why not?
Update, from the evening debate: Gingrich worked electromagnetic pulse doom into it for a minute. And everyone ignored him. No love for EMPAct America.
Sampling from the wires:
He said the biggest undiagnosed danger to national security was an EMP pulse.
It makes more sense than Rick Santorum’s claim that the unspotted danger was Hezbollah in South America.
— BBC North America
Gingrich rattles through a doomsday list: electromagnetic pulses, weapons of mass destruction in an American city and cyber attacks.
— The Daily Telegraph
New Gingrich says he worries about nuclear/WMD attack; electro-magnetic pulse attack, and cyber attack.
Yesterday the Maddow Show devoted a short segment to non-lethal weapons and the OWS protests.
It started with a showing of graphics and citations on the more exotic and menacing versions developed for the US military in the last few years. First up was the microwaving pain ray, aka The Sheriff, written about many times on this blog.
MADDOW: From the files of accurately nicknamed weapons, this is the so-called giant pain ray. It`s technically called the active denial system, but really the nickname pain ray is so much more descriptive. This giant satellite looking thing, it shoots electromagnetic radiation at a target, also known as a human. It’s intended to cause a lot of pain. The top layer of skin is supposed to absorb the radioactive rays and get very hot.
In tests people could endure the pain ray for about three seconds.
Nobody lasted more than five seconds. So it hurts a whole heck of a lot, but in theory at least it does not kill you …
[Maddow goes on to say that non-lethal weaponry is rationalized as “an alternative to deadly force.”]
But it turns out it`s not the way nonlethal weaponry gets used.
Often, instead of substituting for lethal force, nonlethal weapons just
increase the number of occasions, the types of occasions on which force is used at all. Seattle police, for example, probably would have never used guns and live ammunition to shoot this 84-year-old woman who was the defining image [as someone who had been pepper sprayed] of Occupy protests last week.
Another small homeland security industry now of importance is the one devoted to “non-lethal” weaponry in the United States. Small and large businesses, as well as the big arms developers, got involved in peddling various new arms to the government and police forces, all using the argument that technological advances would allow for non-bloody crowd control.
The most public example was The Sheriff, a high-powered microwave gun mounted on a Hummer and developed by Raytheon. The Sheriff took over a decade of taxpayer investment and an incredible public relations effort to push it (one that failed spectacularly) as a revolutionary weapon which could be used to disperse crowds.
Publicly, it was a disaster. The Sheriff was taken to Afghanistan a year or so ago and quietly brought back without firing one microwave shot in anger. It was, and still is, simply viewed as a device for torturing people who can’t fight back.
At which point in time Raytheon began peddling a much smaller mounted version of it for use in the California prison system.
The essential point to be made is a simple one. All the arguments for the development and use of “non-lethal” weapons rely upon the success in getting people to believe there is some magic point of force application in which people are not irrevocably injured or killed.
In real life, this point is imaginary. It does not exist. And there is no scientific method that can be used to find or elucidate it. As any perusal of the literature on use of tasers, rubber bullets and tear gas quickly reveals.
However, the argument remains seductive particularly when governments or law enforcement need rationalizations for using force short of bullets on the unarmed.
What the “non-lethal” weapon does is set the bar downward for the use of force. When one equips a military or law enforcement agency with weapons which the average soldier or policeman believes will not hurt people because they have been told there is a science to them making them safe, the problem becomes obvious.
The point to be underlined is that weaponry sold as stuff that doesn’t kill you only lowers the threshold for its use in the militarized police forces of this country. Restraints are removed.
And you wind up with what we have: Appalling incidents like the one in which the campus police officer blithely empties a canister of pepper spray into students — then goes for more.
On MSNBC Maddow has covered the pain ray before.
One of her producers, Laura Conaway, was also one of my editors at the Village Voice years ago.
In December 2002 I authored a column, “Weapon of the Week,” for the Voice. Conaway was my editor and one of the first pieces we did was on the pain ray.
At the time it was advertised for coming use in the imminent invasion of Iraq.
What is the microwaver’s target? It must be unarmed civilians, because as described, the VMAD wouldn’t seem to offer much against terrorists or regular soldiers ready to fire back with conventional weapons. What is certain is that the Pentagon’s microwave projects lack oversight and common sense.
However, pepper spray, as everyone knows now, is more than bad enough. We’ll probably never get to the pain ray because the old-fashioned stuff — capsaicin, tear gas rounds and rubber bullets — have been more than sufficient at horrification.
Use of non-lethals on unarmed crowds in the United States has led, and will only lead, to more civil unrest. And that’s because the rationalization for their use is totally rotten. Their practical use is in handing out severe punishments for stepping out of line. Everyone knows it, too.
Give it a couple days until eruption of all the potentials for attacks on the national infrastructure, stories with headings loosely based on “Have we just had an electronic Pearl Harbor?” and “Our new electronic Pearl Harbor!”
The LRAD, or long range acoustic device, is a sonic cannon. I posted on it here and here in the last year.
From one of the posts, on a police-vehicle mounted version:
[A] motorized crowd control system, it generates loud screeching noise with the idea that ear pain makes people run away, was deployed in Pittsburgh where it has been mostly just a nuisance.
It came out of the idea that sound could be used to shatter the ear drums of “terrorists” on airplanes, without killing passengers.
If common sense is telling you that such a thing is fairly dubious, you’re not alone. However, that has never impeded the development of such things.
But anything that comes from the non-lethal industry has always been dubious, from machinery to claims about said technology. Exotic non-lethal weaponry has been pushed for military and police use for almost twenty years, getting an extra shove during the war on terror. And it is no surprise that LRADs would have been sold into the NYPD in the last decade.
The LRAD company’s rationalization that the things are for communicating does not stand close scrutiny when considering the nature of the OWS protests.
It is not readily apparent that a beamed highly directional sound cannon, particularly the size shown in TPM photos, would be any good in shouting directions to a large moving crowd determined to go somewhere, a mass not particularly interested in police instructions or warnings. Which would be expected, anyway.
On the other hand, if you want to spray a crowd with random bursts of irritating noise that hits individuals, perhaps with the aim of instilling some manner of trepidation in them — well, that’s just what a beam-projecting weapon would be able to do.
The LRAD manufacturer concedes to TPM that it only sells to military and police force clients. So much for the handful of feeble humanitarian uses described for them. And it’s worth adding that LRADs and similar devices have been shown on American television on shows expressly interested in making entertainments out showing applications in weapons technology. For the US Navy, in addition to the non-lethal role (which is nil), they have also been sold as devices to be used in hailing, which is significantly different than use against a crowd in close quarters.
LRAD can broadcast in any language with authoritative and highly intelligible communication. LRAD provides military personnel with a powerful, penetrating warning tone that can be followed by clear voice broadcasts in host nation languages to warn and shape the behavior of potential threats.
If you read the details, there’s indication that up close — at distances of one meter — the portable LRAD can be damaging.
It also indirectly speaks to the relative ineffectiveness of the devices, other than as purposeful irritants to a few.
The broadcast, even designed to be directional, dissipates in power geometrically at distance. And it can be fought with barriers and ear plugs.
What needs to be understood is the long-term nature of the non-lethal industry in the US.
The purpose of it was to sell to the military and militarized police forces technology for use on unarmed crowds. And the major sales argument for all of it is that it puts into the hands of its users technology that allows them to do something without hurting the subjects being targeted. In other words, it’s always been sold by exploiting military and police force susceptibility to magical thinking.
Right now the LRAD is, at worst, a nuisance. At best, it’s a complete waste of money delivered with the delicious irony that if you were a taxpayer any time in the last decade (before losing your job and going to protest), in a general sense you helped pay for it.
However, a civil unrest propagates and grows in the United States, the potential exists for other more threatening “non-lethal” devices to appear in the hands of those the empire dispatches to quash it.
From the standpoint of the private sector businesses that make these things, it’s a sell-sell-sell time.
A University of Texas Dallas scientist is working on developing a technology that would delight Harry Potter fans everywhere–an invisibility cloak.
Ali Aliev uses carbon nanotubes–which look like pieces of thread–and then heats them up rapidly until the objects beneath them effectively disappear …
Aliev only has the capacity to make tiny sheets from a few threads … Luckily, many other scientists around the world are also working hard on this technology.
It’s brainless drivel. Luckily, “other scientists” are working on this. If we get any luckier there will be 30 percent real unemployment and a war with Iran in two years.
Remember my inner bias. After twenty years of this repetetive gee-whiz-miracles-galore puffing and blowing I despise Alvin Tofflerian military gadget freak stuff and the groupie journalism industry that caters to it.
And who and where are the invisibility scientists we’re lucky to have boffining away at this? In England, trying to make a tank harder to see at night. Like, in case, there’s a war against someone else with big tanks in the distant future, or something.
The last time a giant bomb story showed up it was used in an exercise to intimidate Saddam Hussein and thrill the newsmedia. Much of the joy exhibited in monster bomb tales comes from the phallic symbolism. Ours is bigger — way, way bigger — and more tumescent puissant than yours. And there is a significant population in the United States, almost exclusively male, that gets erections thinking about what happens when you drop monster bombs on others — preferably poorer, smaller, weaker and of unsuitable religion.
At the advent of the original monster bomb I was writing a column called “Weapon of the Week” at the Village Voice.
Exultation over the new MOAB—perhaps the ugliest and most stupid of new weapons in the U.S. armory—reveals a poverty of intellect and heart in the country. A clumsy multi-ton monster bomb tested in Florida last week has no practical war purpose other than terror, in a military whose signal achievement in the last decade has been to make smaller weapons unerringly accurate.
The MOAB is the natural result of allowing munitions engineers to run amok, a design by the aggressively mediocre who in a better time and place would be sent into early retirement for the good of the taxpayer.
The Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or Mother of All Bombs (quite the rib-tickler), is so big it must be shoved out the tail of a lumbering transport plane on a sled attached to a drag parachute.
A small part of the blame for the MOAB must go to Dynetics, one more in a dismaying number of corporations that exist to provide applications in mayhem. The company’s logo on the MOAB’s tail was probably thought of as a coup in corporate advertising, although a bracing “Fuck You!” might have better created the impression that the thing was made by real people rather than a labful of killer androids on Eglin Air Force Base.
Today, the tale is of delivery of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator or MOP, a 15-ton monster bomb to be used against underground targets.
The MOP has been in the works for the entire decade of the war on terror.
And it would seem no coincidence it’s publicly and loudly entering the arsenal in an effort groomed to get the attention of the mullahs in Iran.
At the LA Times, W. J. Hennigan is the point-person for the Empire’s Dog Feces beat. The reporter has the scoop, fresh and hot.
Aerospace giant Boeing Co. has delivered the first batch of 30,000-pound bombs, each nearly five tons heavier than anything else in the military’s arsenal, to the U.S. Air Force to pulverize underground enemy hide-outs.
At a total cost of about $314 million, the military has developed and ordered 20 of the GPS-guided bombs, called Massive Ordnance Penetrators. They are designed to be dropped on targets by the Boeing-made B-52 Stratofortress long-range bomber or Northrop Grumman Corp.’s B-2 stealth bomber.
In an age of new emphasis on drones and lightweight weaponry, the Air Force’s purchase highlights the Pentagon’s ongoing need for defense contractors to build the kinds of big bombs and other heavy-duty ordnance they have produced for decades.
Boeing developed and built the massive bomb at its Phantom Works facilities in St. Louis, where the company works on top-secret projects.
Although illustrations and models of the bomb have been made public, no photos have been released. But the Air Force did disclose that it took delivery of the weapon in September, along with a few other details.
The weapon’s explosive power is 10 times greater than its bunker-buster predecessor, the BLU-109. And it is nearly five tons heavier than the 22,600-pound GBU-43 MOAB surface bomb, sometimes called the “mother of all bombs.”
The MOP would seem entirely appropriate to Ted Rall’s dubbing us the “fuck you” country.
Because nothing quite sez “fuck you” to everyone in 2011 (except the arms manufacturer and the USAF) like a 30,000 pound bomb.
In a manner of speaking, it’s a national monument to “fuck you-ism.”
The Atlanta Journal Constitution had someone call today in order to discuss the literature of ricin-making in the US.
I’m the expert. Hit Google with “ricin recipe” or “recipe for ricin” and the I Feel Lucky button and all roads lead to stuff I’ve written.
What’s remarkable about ricin recipes — all those pertinent here originate in the neo-Nazi survivalist backwoodsman far right — is how durable they have been.
I told the newspaper’s reporter that Kurt Saxon had coined it without knowing much about ricin at all in 1984 for his pamphlet, The Weaponeer. And it had been published again in 1988 in The Poor Man’s James Bond.
And there is some real disgrace in the hard fact that Saxon’s legacy is one in which his work has some responsibility in the sending of many people he wrote his materials to advise — to jail.
However, in spite of this and the passage of decades it has persisted. Although sent around the world and copied into many different digital forms, in this country it has remained signal in the unusual subculture of exclusively white guys who are really angry with the government.
Young, middle-aged or old, they all share a virulent and deeply entrenched common paranoia.
The government is taking away their rights in many ways, threatening their existence, and inevitably expected to come for them.
The irony in this is that post-9/11 and the expansion of homeland security domestically, the acquisition of improvised weaponry — in particular castor seeds and the recipes from the extremist far right — seem to guarantee that their belief will come true.
When the US government finds out you’ve been talking about ricin and fiddling with a few castor seeds, it will come for you.
Historically, whenever a Democrat is in power, their presence in the land becomes much more visible. And the Presidency of Barack Obama, for the obvious reason that he is black, has brought them out like never before.
Frederick Thomas is a man of clear loyalties. In his yard, deep in the woods of White County, a yellow flag with the image of a snake warns: “Don’t Tread On Me.??? Nearby, affixed to the wall of his imposing wood home, a sign proclaims: “Frank Sinatra Fan Parking Only.???
So, which is he? An ordinary American of advancing years who calls his Sinatra-loving wife of 51 years each night from jail to say he misses her? Or the angry, alienated man who emerges from federal affidavits, his own heated rhetoric online and the pages of a novel he allegedly took as a blueprint for revolt?
One thing is certain — until last week, local officials had no reason to suspect him of leading a plot to assassinate federal officials, blow up buildings or murder innocent Georgians with deadly nerve toxins.
In [on-line militia forums], Thomas broadcast his determination to resist a government of “the Obummer,??? which he accused of destroying the Constitution.
“Most of my adult life has been spent in service to America, and here in the twilight of my years I find that my sacrifice and the blood I’ve shed for this country has led to the enslavement of me and mine,??? he wrote in January 2009 on a forum maintained by the Militia of Georgia.
“I’ve decided I can sit idly by no longer, and so I freely join with you to do something about this intolerable situation.???
Thomas’ wife and acquaintances were interviewed for the story. They say only that he was very old and seemingly harmless, so aged “He can hardly walk.”
We should treat elderly people more respectfully,” adds the neighbor.
Over the years, mental and physical fitness have never meant beans in cases such as this. The US government has jailed a troubled autistic man, an enfeebled drug addict who couldn’t get ricin but indicated he had tried to make it from castor oil (you can’t) and others who fair people would judge to be impaired in one way or another.
My briefing of the Atlanta newspaper resulted in an article asserting ricin could not have been used as the Ricin Beans Gang envisioned. I told the newspaper the same thing last week. So the newspaper went out and found a couple of other experts to buttress it.
In any case, blog readers know all there is to know on the issue:
George Smith, who analyzes bioterror threats for GlobalSecurity.org, said the men were “steeped in poison lore” spread through the Internet.
“What is absurd about it is how this lore has become so solidified in a certain subculture,” Smith said. “People are utterly convinced of the realness of it.”
He added he thinks the people who subscribe to these beliefs have let their imaginations outpace their ability to accomplish their goals.
He believes the men lack the training to convert castor beans into a weapon of mass destruction.
“Ricin is a protein … the more you purify it, the harder it is to keep it around. People don’t understand that,” Smith said, explaining that proteins are easily broken down by heat, ultraviolet light, acids or elements such as lye.
The Ricin Beans Gang discussing their (actually quite ludicrous) plan to use the poison:
Sam Jerry Crump: What I’d like to do is make about ten pounds of that … Give you 2, me 2, Ray (Adams) 2, Dan (Roberts) 2 and somebody else 2. Put it out in different cities at the same time: Washington DC, maybe Newark, Atlanta, Jacksonville, New Orleans. Dump that little (unintelligible) … that’s all you gotta do is lay it in the damn road, the cars are gonna spread it.
FBI Informant: Yeah, but what’s it take to make it? I haven’t got a clue.
Sam Jerry Crump: Just some seed. I got the, got -uh — one more ingredient, and I’ll get it today …
Other statement concerning ricin from Samuel Jerry Crump:
“Ya got, ya can’t let none of it get on your skin. Got to be a closed environment when it’s made. No wind. If it gets up your nose there’s no cure.”
[Ricin is not a contact poison.]
Samuel Jerry Crump also mentioned another toxic substance, probably botulinum toxin:
“That other kind, 1 pound can kill 30 million people … We need somebody to back us with money so we can make that other shit … This is worse than anthrax … That shit’s deadly! There ain’t no damn, there ain’t no cure for it. And it works, I think, in 2 hours.”
Finally, on prodding, Ray Adams names the more deadly toxin.
Crump: “Kills about 30 million people at one time, one pound of it. It’s caused from dead food.”
Ray Adams: “Oh, botulism.”
Crump goes onto to roughly describe the ricin recipe devised and distributed by Kurt Saxon in his pamphlet, The Weaponeer, back in 1984.
Further along, he goes into details on his plan to disburse it. First the castor powder should be mixed with charcoal to make it black. Presumably so it would be hard to see at night, one guesses.
Later, Sam Jerry Crump makes one astute observation:
“[But] if they find that shit on your computer you’re hung.”
Crump later mused on “going to Africa” to get “botulism”:
“Well, I thought you can’t make that botulism (unintelligible) … got some good backers … go to Africa, uh, and get some of that to make.
“We’d bring it back over here. Ya don’t make it over there. You just get the samples of the stuff out of the soil. It comes from dead animals, from rotten meat. That’s where botulism comes from. It’s more potent than the stuff (ricin) … I know somebody can make it.”
Ray Adams, another member of the Ricin Beans Gang, alleged to a lab technician at one time, discussed making ricin:
“Well, I’ve never done it (made ricin) but I have laboratory experience and once you extract that stuff enough just splashin’ it on your skin can kill ya. Once it dries, while it’s wet, any kind of solvent, like anything, it just takes water solution to soak through your skin. It’s highly permeable through the skin. There’s no antidote.
“I’ve handled all kinds of deadly stuff, pesticides and that kind of stuff, so … ”
[To emphasize the level of knowledge on display, it’s worth repeating that ricin is not a contact poison.]
