ATLANTA — Four men who were indicted in alleged terror attacks had the weapons they wanted and were one ingredient away from making deadly toxin ricin, according to a criminal indictment.
Two days before they were arrested defendants Ray Adams and Samuel Crump said they needed just one more ingredient to produce ricin, according to the indictment. Adams said he needed one pound of lye and was ready to begin the process of making the deadly toxin.
This means the ricin beans gang had a copy from Kurt Saxon’s Poor Man’s James Bond, or something similar descended from it.
Soak castor seeds in lye, Saxon advised as early as 1984 in The Weaponeer, one of his pamphlets later incorporated into the Poor Man’s James Bond volumes.
Ricin is a protein. Proteins are destroyed by strong base. Lye is a a strong base.
Saxon had no real idea what ricin was. The Poor Man’s James Bond contains a couple methods for working with it, some seemingly made up out of whole cloth. At one point there’s a procedure recommending using a strongly acid solution, which is also very harsh on proteins.
And article discusses using ricin on bullets, an absurd idea since the heat and explosion in the barrel of a gun would destroy all the poison. The idea here was that if you only winged somebody — a “degenerated person” — the poison would do them in later. Quaint.
However, another part of the news story shows the ricin beans gang repeating the treasured old and undying script of the far right extremist:
Thomas is quoted in the affidavit from a recorded conversation with the informant: “There is no way for us, as militiamen, to save the country, to save Georgia, without doing something that’s highly illegal. Murder. That’s (expletive) illegal, but it’s gotta be done. When it comes time to saving the Constitution, that means some people gotta die.”
Saving the country, saving Georgia, saving the Constitution — by, among other things, following almost thirty year-old poison recipes manufactured by the US backwoodsman neo-Nazi survivalist right.
A member of the Ricin Beans Gang, photo taken in 2001.
YouTube gee-whiz, complete with bad but wishful computer animation, for man groupies who get erections over technical applications
for making slipping it to others far poorer more tactically efficient.
Consider for a moment the wonderland on display here, completely isolated and out of touch with the rest of the country.
(“Nearly 15% of the U.S. population relied on food stamps in August, as the number of recipients hit 45.8 million,” read the WSJ on Tuesday. “Food stamp rolls have risen 8.1% in the past year, the Department of Agriculture reported, though the pace of growth has slowed from the depths of the recession.”)
You may have seen things tank in the last decade but the contractors and boffins in the business of research and development of flying war robots are in the same general vicinity as the 1 percent.
No better than Wall Street when you get right down to it.
The last decade, as well spawning many bad big things, gave birth to entire industries devoted to making bad, if only in ways a magnitude smaller or so than economic collapse.
Chief among these was the private-sectoring of homeland security. Across the country, small shops set up everywhere to sell security and intelligence contracting to state and city governments.
The businesses, often called terrorism research businesses and intelligence fusion centers, are probably already taking a bead on Occupy Wall Street and selling themselves to authorities only too willing to take advantage of such services. All in the name of the grand phrase, public safety.
Last year I wrote about one such company briefly, uncovered by the local newsmedia in Pennsylvania, when it began distributing terrorism reports naming various progressive groups, and the indie film-maker auteur responsible for Gasland (the expose on the natural gas “hydro-fracking” industry.)
What to do if you’re in the business of counter-terrorism in, say, a place like Pennsylvania? And there just aren’t enough jihadists around to fill a decent report for the state government client. Answer: Reclassify democratic activity as trouble. Problem solved!
From my old homestate of Pennsylvania, this bit of unintentional dark humor, courtesy of the Associated Press:
Information about an anti-BP candlelight vigil, a gay and lesbian festival and other peaceful gatherings became the subject of anti-terrorism bulletins being distributed by Pennsylvania’s homeland security office, an apologetic Gov. Ed Rendell admitted.
Also in the anti-terrorism bulletin: “[Events] likely to be attended by environmentalists …”
And who was getting the funding for this valuable intelligence on the state of homegrown terrorism?
Something called the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response, in Philadelphia, to the tune of $125,000 …
On page 11 of the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response’s sample May 2009 anti-terrorism briefing, the organization lumps a number of equally surprising activities under the topic “Domestic/Eco-Terror Alerts.”
Among these, “the Rainforest Action Network is holding training at campuses across the [continental United States]. The training is designed to inspire ecological activity — from legitimate canvassing to illegal direct actions.”
The very legit Rainforest Action Network is here. It looks like a happy place.
In another posting, the company’s Terrorism Research bulletin, entitled “Actionable Intelligence Briefing,” reads: “Ecological activists in [San Francisco, Phoenix, Tuscon and Sonora} will be protesting the intent of Mexico to build a toxic waste dump on land belonging to the O’odham Indians.”
Other “domestic/eco-terror alert” entries include notes on protests of the Bank of America bailout scheduled for Senator Dianne Feinstein’s office, “a protest march … held by people opposed to the closing of some schools in New York City, “eco-activists” from Earth First! holding a summer training camp, institute analysts noting an appearance by Karl Rove as an opportunity for “anarchist groups,” as well as a variety of anti-war and anti-cruelty-to-animals protest events.
The anti-terrorism briefing booklet makes a practice of classifying people and groups who protest corporate activities as anarchists.
“Working with organizations that refuse to surrender their domestic or international operations to terrorism,” reads the pamphlet.
Terrorism, in this case, seeming to broadly rope in constitutionally protected activities contrary to the interests of corporate and government clients.
What would actually be surprising would be if companies like this, all fruit of the homeland security boom, weren’t already working OWS. Readers, and many Americans — generally, know there is certainly no shortage of people at the top of national government, as well as at the bottom of local townships, willing to immediately renew contracts to local goons promising to keep them appraised on people alleged to be causing civil unrest.
Invariably, all these businesses are spin-offs from the national security infrastructure, employing ex-law enforcement, military and intelligence
men only marginally interested in rights, due process of law and democracy. On a much smaller level, they follow the business practices of the big mercenary army/private security companies like Blackwater.
And they have exploded with taxpayer funding during the past decade.
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.
With the images of tear gas and people wounded in Oakland and other protests flashing around, you can bet there are at least pitches being made to sell use of more non-lethal weaponry. The only consolation is one of coincidence. Economic collapse has made it much harder for local government to buy the newer non-lethal weapons developed during the war on terror. The money is no longer there.
An example of the companies involved in this kind of thing was written about a couple of months ago here.
One 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.
When still free-lancing for the Village Voice, I wrote a little about this.
[The company] certainly has expertise in this [non-lethal] area. It has manufactured something called the Sticky Shocker, a technological annoyance that looks like the giant cocklebur from hell. It’s designed to lodge on people with “tenacious glue” and barbs in order to dispense stunning volts.
Although the latest hazard to humanity hasn’t been tested on live subjects, Jaycor material claims it is voltage-regulated according to some Underwriters Laboratories standard of acceptable partial electrocution. One can only wonder at the way such a remarkable standard was arrived at—perhaps by dropping hair dryers or radios into bathtubs occupied by volunteers?
It is patently obvious that a vehicle-mounted shocking water hose is an atrocious mechanism that would instantly doom the career of anyone who ordered its use on American streets.
While this particular thing no longer appears to be around, the logic behind is still alive and well.
It’s no secret mainstream journalists have a hard time describing complex realities with even remote accuracy. Today’s breed can’t even get history when it’s right at their fingertips on the web.
Best example, right now, Associated Press’s story on the disassembly of a large Cold War bomb, the B53.
The last of the nation’s most powerful nuclear bombs — a weapon hundreds of times stronger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima — is being disassembled nearly half a century after it was put into service at the height of the Cold War.
The final components of the B53 bomb will be broken down Tuesday at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo …
According to the American Federation of Scientists, it was 600 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of World War II.
The reporter, Betsy Blaney, gets the name of FAS wrong.
She neglects to mention the yield of the B53 — 9 megatons or the equivalent of 9 million tons of TNT. (By contrast, the Hiroshima bomb was 12-15 kilotons, or 12-15 thousand tons of TNT.)
The B53 was a thermonuclear device (which means fusion triggered by a fission “fuse”). The Little Boy at Hiroshima, as many know, was an atomic fission bomb. Details, but important ones and easy to make clear. There’s a big difference between the two, one obviously germane to the story of nuclear weaponry, a bit gone entirely missing from the Associated Press story.
AP’s story is so poor the best the reporter comes up with is a factoid about 300 lbs of explosive needing to be taken part. In a bomb that weighed 8-10 tons and blew up with the force of 9 megatons.
The news agency even failed at accurately doing the simplistic, “Hey, lookit the big old bomb!” story.
Rick Perry would use Predator drones to secure the border. Herman Cain would use alligators and electrical fences. The unemployed and poor could be booed. Before we hit them with guided missiles. (Even Joe Arpaio blanched a little at this today when questioned by Martin Bashir at lunchtime on MSNBC. We can’t give people a death sentence, or something to that effect, he stammered out. Oh, no?)
Anyway, Mr. Rick has missed that boat by at least two years although General Atomics must have certainly been thrilled to hear him say it.
And drones for everything had a hand in inspiring Sleep Dealer, a foreign film with a great premise: Use of drone camera live streaming of people being Hellfire’d in reality entertainment shows in the US, use of Mexican labor to operate robots in America, and US multi-nationals buying up all water in Mexico, gouging for it, and using remote-controlled machine gun posts to kill people trying to steal it.
Sadly, over the course of 90 minutes or so the movie just wasn’t very good.
The trailer makes it seem better which may indicate it could have used a good editing.
Predator drone used in border patrol at 1:45.
Now, The National Anthem would be a great tune to use as part of the soundtrack for a dystopian reality-based movie along the lines of Sleep Dealer. Reality-based because you can’t satirize this country anymore. Anything you think might work at that is already happening.
Anyway, you’d pay to see my idea executed as a movie. I just know it.
Earlier in the week some clown at the Washington Post called the advent of the Stuxnet virus the “Hiroshima” of cyberspace.
Yesterday’s news of the Duqu virus generated some queries to your host. And if the world computer virus proliferation network works the way it always has, soon some windbag will have to talk about the cyberspace equivalent of a massive thermonuclear exchange.
However, to make this one short, I’ll describe one of the basics of computer virus proliferation.
Once out, there is no controlling what others might do to your creation. So, at this point it cannot be known with absolute certainty if Duqu’s creators were Stuxnet’s.
In any case, I’m sure the media will fill up with all kinds of spontaneously-generated theories on the subject.
The nut of my argument is this:
The history of malware generation and proliferation tells us that once a certain piece is in circulation others build upon it. In fact, there has always been a great enthusiasm for doing so.
Therefore, malicious s code eventually either gets distributed or becomes an open book to those in the malware art interested in adopting pieces of it for their own purposes.
It becomes game for others to analyze and use.
Stuxnet was widely distributed to many computer security experts. Many of them do contract work for government agencies, labor that would perhaps require a variety of security clearances and which would involve doing what would be seen by others to be black hat in nature. When that happened all bets were off.
So, to summarize, once a thing is in world circulation it is not protected or proprietary property. Such malicious code may contain hindrances to copying or reverse engineering but these can be overcome given enough effort. Add to this the fact that source code for malware has never been secure. It always becomes something coveted by many, often in direct proportion to its fame.
Therefore, it would not be surprising given the Byzantine and
secretive interlinked nature of this world, that Stuxnet code had leaked, even if only in bits and pieces.
New Empire’s Dog Feces material, lads, Wired and Reuters on the excrement stick about a computer virus (a keystroke logger) on the Creech AFB network used to control Predator drone missions.
No links.
Full of anonymous sources, obvious US mil tech geeks getting erections over spilling the beans, readers are informed no one is panicking yet.
It’s safe to say malware as well as spyware has probably been found wherever we have networked computers involved in killing various paupers around the world.
“Holy s—, man!” I hear someone mutter. “It’s Predator drones!”
Yeah, so? All things considered, what took so long?
In an unrelated matter [at a town board meeting], a resident warned about the potential threat of an electromagnetic pulse, commonly known as an EMP.
“People don’t understand,??? said Dolores Schlee of Hywood Drive.
She explained that if a terrorist organization used an EMP against the United States, all electricity would be lost. She recommended reading “One Second After,??? a novel by William R. Forstchen about how an EMP would affect the nation.
DD blog has noted it regularly.
One of the benefits of Heritage Foundation robots regularly flogging the threat of electromagnetic pulse doom in the nation’s newspapers — large and small — is the embedding of the mythos of it in the heartland.
The susceptible audience is almost exclusively old white, not particularly well-educated, and Republican. This is not an opinion.
Another threat we can’t afford to ignore is an electromagnetic pulse attack. An EMP is produced by a nuclear weapon detonated at a high altitude. This underscores the need for missile defense — a ballistic missile is the most effective means of delivering an EMP weapon. A successful attack could decimate America’s electrical infrastructure and cause a catastrophe such as a large urban blackout — or worse.
A missile delivered to produce an EMP wouldn’t have to be launched from 5,000 miles away. Short-range missile can be placed on cargo vessels off the U.S. coast to launch a missile at the homeland (the “Scud-in-the-bucket” scenario).
In 2004, a congressionally mandated commission found that an EMP attack is “one of a small number of threats that has the potential to hold our society seriously at risk and might result in defeat of our military forces.” Five other commissions and major government studies have independently concurred. Despite this, there has been a bipartisan failure to address this threat — and virtual silence from the Obama administration.
A Scud-in-the-bucket EMP strike could be followed by cruise missile attack. A cruise missile could be fitted with a biological or chemical spray unit.
A typical Heritage Foundation snapshot showing its robots diligently working the electromagnetic pulse doom beat.
For at least the last five years, Heritage Foundation flunkies have worked this script, with merciless lack of variation, into the nation’s newspapers. Every three months or so, like clockwork, it’s the same old thing, in news agencies scattered about the land, wherever some bone-headed editor unaware of how many times it has already been published nationwide can be exploited.
It’s bewildering. Pathetic. Frightening. And it seems that the mainstream media avoids talking about it for fear that Americans will panic. Well, Americans ought to be panicking — anything to get them to bang on Congress’s door and force our representatives to immediately act … The disaster I am referring to is an electromagnetic pulse (EMP).
Since it’s a far right hobby-horse for missile defense and bombing Iran, there is also the political component. The socialist Kenyan in the White House is asleep at the switch over the menace:
The [EMP] conference “Standing Up to Ahmadinehad: Military and National Security Policy Experts Call on President Obama to Confront the Iranian Threat” presented the undeniable fact that the Iranian regime is prepared to use its nuclear weapons in the form of an EMP detonation in the skies 70-100 miles above “the great Satan” and to do so without attribution …
All I can say after listening to this panel is that the Obama administration would be much wiser to invest American taxpayer dollars in our national security than it is having issued loans to Solyndra for solar panels! With such a simple solution possible, it is unimaginable that the grave threat of an EMP in America is not being talked about in every news medium …
This is a bit disingenuous. The Cult of EMP Crazy does, in fact, ensure that EMP doom is talked about in every news medium.
One of the more dubious ‘gifts’ of the Cult of EMP Crazy – a richly manipulative group … 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 …
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!
Hurricane Irene hit the East Coast and left more than 6 million homes and businesses without power. Transportation services were disrupted as a result of the hurricane. More than a million people got an idea of what it would be like if the United States were attacked by an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapon …
To address this threat, it is essential to expand the ballistic missile protection of the U.S. homeland.
Today, the Cult of EMP Crazy infiltrated the New York Times website via Greenwire, a “blog on energy and development.”
Written by Peter Behr, it has all the features common in an electromagnetic pulse crazy plant — sources almost exclusively from the cult lobby.
DD blog has dealt with most of the matters and individuals previously.
Today’s post agains swims under the common cover of protecting the grid from a solar flare, a point the Cult has cynically used to get itself into the news many many times.
Customarily, the Cult is only interested in using electromagnetic pulse doom stories as rationalizations for increased missile defense. The “unquiet angry sun” bits furnish them an extra argument used to publicize the standard agenda on a repeated basis.
The electric power industry is challenging an analysis of the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) threat that was an instrumental part of the 2004 report by the congressional EMP Commission. The commission focused on surges affecting the power grid from a high-altitude nuclear detonation. The same analysis, by prominent researcher John Kappenman and the California-based firm Metatech, also underpins warnings of widespread grid damage from geomagnetic currents triggered by a massive, once-in-a-century solar flare.
The electric power industry, not having been born yesterday, knows exactly where this is coming from — a small lobby with no real political power.
The researcher mentioned is not prominent but, rather, someone from a very small business which has been attached to the EMP lobby for a good long time.
Regular pieces on DD blog have made it impossible to avoid the many valid criticisms of the Cult of EMP Crazy.
The Greenwire blog mentions them, elliptically, giving the lobbyists their opportunities to respond with the usual lame dodges:
There may also be political and ideological differences over the EMP response.
The impetus for action began with concerns by some leading conservatives over the threat of EMP from a terrorist-launched missile. The EMP campaign has stirred opposition from some liberals who see a conservative interest in reviving a Reagan-era missile defense debate, some EMP action advocates say.
“Within the administration and among some of my Democratic friends, there is a willingness to close their eyes to anything that is nuclear generated,” said Rep. Trent Franks (R-N.M.), a leading member of the congressional EMP caucus. He said the nuclear scenario is “broader and more dangerous if it occurs” than the solar storm. “I am concerned that terrorists the world over are beginning to dial in to the grid’s vulnerability.”
The “congressional EMP caucus” has always been a small pest group, traditionally led by Roscoe Bartlett, now by Republican Trent Franks. Its members produce no legislation in any other areas of endeavor and it is “bipartisan” only in the sense that its GOP principals usually find one or two trivial Democrats willing to be their pets for cosmetic purposes.
Trent Franks is the very picture of a GOP extremist. He’s a birther and was also the politician who accepted Frank Gaffney’s “Team B” sharia-law-impurifying-the-American-justice-system report, something regarded as a bona fide piece of trash by all reasonable people.
The electromagnetic pulse lobby is defined by the company it keeps with many bad ideas. Traditionally, journalists — perhaps like Greenwire’s — don’t like to deal with the sprawling and odious crackpot nature of all of it.
However, there have been some exceptions. Notably, last week Frank Gaffney, and by association the EMP lobby, were made appropriate fools of on the Alyona show at RT.
Paradoxically, the Alyona Show was mentioning Gaffney in connection with a big Cult of EMP Crazy confab at the Heritage Foundation, one memeant to lobby for a National EMP Awareness Day. (We’ve dogged that previously, here.)
At the EMP Awreness Day “summit” cult members spoke about what they usually like to talk about — Iran attacking the US, terrorists attacking the US with a nuclear missile, or terrorists attacking a United States city with an electromagnetic pulse suitcase of doom.
The electromagnetic pulse suitcase story is a common one with the Cult. (There’s a picture here.)
Sometimes the electromagnetic pulse suitcase is souped up into a larger mobile device, said to be easy to get or in the hands of terrorists. The threat scenarios are always peddled by the small number of specialty businesses within the electromagnetic pulse doom lobby.
Pry, for today’s example, is another source in the Times story.
Anyway, as with lobbyists, the Cult of EMP Crazy is no exception, it is considered important to seed various claims into government reports, or — even better — to actually be able to author such reports.
This is where the Times’ Greenwire blog is dishonest.
The story intimates that the electric power industry (NERC) and the Energy Department were formerly “on the same page” concerning the electromagnetic pulse threat.
FERC, NERC and the Energy Department appeared to be on the same page. NERC and DOE were sponsors of a workshop on the EMP threat in November 2009. The workshop’s report (pdf), “High-Impact, Low-Frequency Event Risk to the North American Bulk Power System,” was issued in June 2010 by NERC and DOE.
It concluded, “Recent analysis by Metatech and Storm Analysis Consultants suggests … that the potential extremes of the geomagnetic threat environment may be much greater than previously anticipated.” The workshop’s EMP task force was chaired by Kappenman, a principal with Storm Analysis Consultants, and Metatech President William Radasky, and they were instrumental in writing that section of the 2010 report, industry officials say.
Common sense would seem to dictate that leaders of corporations ought not to be empowered by the US government to provide threat assessments which stand to directly enrich their interests.
But that’s how the US conducts business. From top to bottom, people read of agencies subverted by the businesses they are supposed to regulate.
And sometimes people then come to the conclusion that the US government is only a tool for the accelerated transfer of taxpayer dollars into the coffers of such mentioned businesses.
Which is a pity …
The latest example … comes to you courtesy of the Department of Energy and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (or NERC).
Reads the New York Times, courtesy of Matthew Wald:
A report just issued by the Energy Department and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, known as Nerc, an industry group that polices the power grid, lists three categories of threats to the grid: coordinated cyber- and physical attacks, pandemic disease and electromagnetic damage.
What Wald does not mention, or perhaps has failed to notice, is the “report??? has essentially been written by the small interests which make up the Cult of EMP Crazy, with government workers as their staff.
Three of the report’s authors are part of the bomb Iran/ballistic missile defense lobby. (Follow the link.)
These include John Kappenman — billed as being part of something called Storm Analysis for the report, William Radasky of Metatech and Michael Frankel of Roscoe Bartlett’s old EMP Commission.
For the past couple of years this group has been given short shrift. Under the wing of Roscoe Bartlett, members of the EMP Commission went before Congress repeatedly, only to be appropriately brushed off.
Compared to the businesses in the North American electrical power industry, these authors — members of the EMP lobby — are in very small and insignificant business operations. Metatech, for example, was able to slip into the NERC report a graphic on notional mobile electromagnetic pulse devices attacking the United States. (The report is here — see page 92.)
At one point, the Times’ Greenwire blog addresses the conflict of interest point raised here last year.
Kappenman said he agreed that the EMP threat should be thoroughly studied but that the complaint that his and Metatech’s analysis is not verifiable is off-base. “Essentially what NERC has decided to do is not allow commercial firms like mine to be a provider of this sort of simulation software. … The fact that I and others would like to be compensated for providing the code isn’t reason to think it is invalid.”
Kappenman said he also hears concerns that his studies are influenced by the opportunities to sell hardware solutions to protect the grid: “We should talk about that elephant in the room, I guess.” He said he has been involved in researching protection against EMP threats since the early 1990s, at EPRI’s request.
“I have never attempted to patent that technology. … It has been in public domain for 20 years. I have no control over it,” he said. While he is involved in commercial solutions to the EMP threat, if utilities begin to buy the safeguards, bigger firms will step into the picture “and will no doubt do a better job than I ever could in competing for the marketplace,” he added.
“We should talk about that elephant in the room, I guess,” concedes Kappenman. Who them proceeds not to actually talk about it, instead changing the subject by saying bigger companies might be able to compete better than his.
If DD were a betting man, he’d wager the electric power industry simply doesn’t want to have to put up with these small businesses. And it considers the electromagnetic pulse lobby a nuisance, one that — in the past — has been fond of hauling it before meetings chaired by Roscoe Bartlett. These are always meetings virtually no one attends but lobby members.
And so it made a tactical error when it originally allowed the EMP lobby to author a report, one then given weight by publication on its website.
Now it legitimately wishes to correct the matter.
NERC can do this by generating a new report, one separated from the EMP lobby and its small businesses. And it has valid arguments for doing so.
The power industry knows the score behind the scenes.
The electromagnetic pulse lobby has no real political power. And it owns an issue that not even half of the Republicans in the House really care about.
Brushing the kooks off once again is eminently doable.
