Over at Armchair Generalist, J notes the US military has withdrawn the Active Denial System, formerly known as the Sheriff, aka the Hummer mounted millimeter wave pain ray — from Afghanistan.
He’s not entirely pleased with the decision for reasons made perfectly clear if you go to AG. It’s supposed to be a non-lethal weapon, after all.
Be that as it may, I’ve written about the pain ray off and on for a long time, starting at the Village Voice in the old Weapon of the Week column. And the tale of the ADS escaped DoD’s very stage-managed publicity. In observing how this story unfolded, the reasons for the weapon’s withdrawal become clear.
The Department of Defense’s bland name for this electronic heat ray is the Vehicle-Mounted Active Denial (VMAD) system, a mouthful of jargon that yields few clues about the weapon’s nature. Allegedly designed for an Orwellian task—”humanitarian missions”—the VMAD is a giant version of your microwave oven, without the safety box surrounding it. The generals want to move it around on a humvee.
Official propaganda on the device is that it makes one’s skin only lightbulb hot, enough to force a person to run but not enough to cook him. Of course, there is no proof this can be achieved, because the results of tests on people are classified. It’s safe, insist the inventors, the air force’s Directed Energy Directorate in Albuquerque.
But anyone with first-hand experience broiling hot dogs and other non-robust meats in their tabletop microwave might be chary of such an assertion. Struck by the heat ray, “Sssss,” went the eyeball.
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. In one manic, grandiose claim, the Defense Department calls VMAD “the biggest breakthrough in weapons technology since the atomic bomb.”
The lust for military microwaving has also been a sinkhole for tax dollars. While much of the work remains deep in the shadows, the Directed Energy Directorate (DED) does allow that $40 million went out the door for the VMAD over the last decade. An additional $15 million was awarded to ITT Industries for research on high-power microwaving applications in bombs and other types of ray guns.
Microwaving facilities pictured as part of the Directorate also look to have cost a small fortune. One 27,000-square-foot concrete monolith is worth $9 million, resulting in a “cost-effective and timely capability.”
Vendors capitalizing on the VMAD include Raytheon, CPI (Communications and Power Industries), and Veridian Engineering—a tech firm menacingly cited for its part in researching “biological effects.”
The hype on the Sheriff, as it was called then, was so thick a German television crew asked me just before the outbreak of war in Iraq if the Pentagon would use the “death ray.” This was the perception overseas. Back in 2002.
Over the years, DoD’s publicity campaign for the ADS was always the same.
Noxious and intelligence-insulting, it boiled down to:
Recruit some journalist to be the gimp in a strapped down chicken test, the piece of meat to be left out standing in the field as a target.
In return the reporter got to visit wherever the pain ray was stationed — in the past couple years, Moody AFB in Georgia — to write a story about how great the thing was.
The pain ray was always said to be a revolution in military less-than-lethal technology. It was something needed by our boys, pronto!
Richard Machowicz of Futureweapons was one strapped down chicken a couple years ago. Even 60 Minutes was recruited.
In 2008, on the 60 Minutes advertisement for the ADS, from el Reg:
The omega in our story is another weapon that’s never done anything but win the hearts and minds of its handlers and the journalists commissioned to write about it after it had shot them. Just prior to the war, the Vehicle Mounted Active Denial System, since shortened to just Active Denial System, was ridiculously hailed by people in the Department of Defense as the biggest breakthrough in weapons technology since the atomic bomb. From there, it’s been almost all downhill for the Hummer-mounted pain gun that heats the top layer of skin with millimeter waves.
It had been hoped that the ADS, nicknamed The Sheriff, would arrive in Iraq in time to aid pacification and occupation operations. But a peculiar thing happened.
In their quest for publicity, the weapon’s minders worked out a system whereby reporters would be given the opportunity to be burned and awed by it in return for cheerleading notices. The practice worked but not in the way ADS pushers had hoped. Many stories, all glowing, were generated. But at the same time, the US gained a world reputation as a nation that tortures prisoners. This cognitive dissonance erased the value of the ADS publicity scheme. A Hummer-mounted ray gun that agonizes people, even if only non-lethally, is seen as a potential instrument of America-style torture, one aimed at unarmed foreigners.
Since the beginning of the Iraq war, the ADS has been regularly promised and every year it has failed to show, left to languish by Pentagon men who probably don’t want to see their careers go down in flames over it. Moved from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Moody Air Force Base in Georgia, the ADS has had progressively less money devoted to it, a sign that at least a part of the DoD wishes it would go away. Its liabilities include factors ranging from possible foreign public relations nightmare to its being recently described on “60 Minutes” as against the ingrained culture of a military that wants weapons which kill people as fast as possible.
The Air Force resorted to something of a Hail Mary pass for it earlier this month, farming the ADS out to “60 Minutes” where, as usual, it was described as a wonder weapon, one that could have solved a multitude of big woes that are now water under the bridge, like the blasting of Fallujah. “Pentagon officials call it a major breakthrough which could change the rules of war and save huge numbers of lives in Iraq,” claimed CBS News’ David Martin. Like many who had so bravely gone before him, Martin allowed himself to be shot by the ADS in return for a puff piece explaining that the reason it wasn’t already in Iraq saving lives was because of lack of proper backbone among Pentagon leaders.
In five years of war, the ADS became politically untenable. “You don’t ever, ever, ever want a system like this to be thought of as a torture weapon,” Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Sue Payton told “60 Minutes.” Payton also told the news operation she “loved” the ADS and “started giggling” after being shot by it, adding another negative – a whiff of craziness – to the stigma of the pain ray.
Since the war began, few ADS stories have been complete without indication that it was going to Iraq soon. This time it’s for summer fun. The bright side is that if it continues true to form, it’s just another in a five year-long list of assorted threats and promises never quite delivered as billed.
The ADS program was also contaminated by the Pentagon’s reliance on kooks. And its inability to control them once they’ve been released from active duty.
The US military’s pain ray, aka the Active Denial System, is a certified excrement magnet. In March Reg readers learned that the US Air Force wonder weapon is still being pitched as a game changer in Iraq, a prediction that’s never even been close to being tested.
ADS defenders claim the Pentagon, afraid that using it would be a public relations disaster, won’t give the non-lethal pain ray, a gun that shoots millimeter waves, the green light. It’s something the US would use to torture foreigners, preferably smaller and not as well-armed as our boys.
Ah, but maybe it’s not just a pain ray – maybe it’s a death ray, too! And it’s been hiding in plain sight under cover of a non-lethal weapons program.
Seeing undercover Muslim subversion everywhere in the US, Gaubatz via TPM:
[Said] in September 2008 on a now scrubbed blog post at www.jihadishere.blogspot.com that: “We are now on the verge of allowing a self admitted ‘crack-head’ to have his finger on every nuclear weapon in America.”
But back to the ADS and what was written at el Reg:
[The] interesting [death ray] allegation comes by way of a man named Dave Gaubatz, and FrontPage magazine.
Gaubatz, described as a former veteran of the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations, informed FrontPage that 60 Minutes, as well as everyone else, had been fed a crock on the pain ray. It was originally designed, he said, as a straight lethal ray gun and it’s been operational for years. It was ready for use in Iraq where it could have slain the enemy and saved American lives. And 60 Minutes made a big mistake by not getting the truth of this and “putting our soldier’s lives in danger everyday.”
“Each day that goes by and another soldier dies should weigh heavily on every member of 60 Minutes,” said Gaubatz.
Well into the weird, Gaubatz explained that journalists have all been fed a story about the non-lethal weapon. This is true, but only to a point – one not yet in crazy world. Then the narrative jumps the cliff. The journalists are culpable because they’re “liberals who know less about the Ray Gun [yep, that’s in caps] than they do basic fundamentals of war.”
And readers now see what happened to the Active Denial System.
Although the Pentagon’s careful publicity campaign for it spanned many years and many journalists, it backfired badly.
While various big name reporters were consenting to be shot by the ADS, in order to transmit stories on the great new non-lethal wonder weapon, the rest of the world — not being stupid — perceived it much differently.
That message: The US had invented a nefarious device to be sent to the Muslim world for the agonizing of civilians. Just another instrument of torture.
One imagines very few sane US military leaders would want to see their careers incinerated upon publicized or leaked news on use of the wonderful pain ray on civilians in Afghanistan.
So the ADS — while sent there for a brief period — never fired a shot, according to reports. And has now been shipped home for obvious reasons.
There’s a book in this story. One on how really stupid ideas, packaged in futurism, whizz-bang technology, the hype of sycophants and the belief in American exceptionalism in all things, blow up when the rest of the world doesn’t agree to drink the Kool-Aid.
Or, more simply: Just because you can make such a thing doesn’t mean you should.
The Department of Defense also commissioned the programming of a war game to model use of the pain ray. I had a copy of the game, played it and reported on the technical aspects of it here.
It looks to be as full of made-up rubbish as everything else he has done, which according to Media Matters, is plenty:
That’s right. Breitbart, delusional nut that he is, thinks that his and Frank Gaffney’s “reputations” will help “provide a check and balance” that will keep the site from publishing “false information or propaganda.”
Good grief.
Breitbart’s “reputation” is that of a liar whose websites run wild with fringe conspiracy theories. Gaffney himself fits right in, with a record of pushing bizarre, obviously false claims
Gaffney is a card-carrying original member of the Cult of EMP Crazy from when Pennsy GOP kook Curt Weldon was in the House of Representatives. Weldon was and is also part of the Cult. And he was also certain that Soviet suitcase nukes were on the loose.
However, Weldon was run off the reservation permanently by voters when the FBI started investigating him for influence peddling in 2006. But Gaffney thought he was tops.
“The nightmare scenario is this: A rogue nation like North Korea or a stateless terrorist like Bin Laden gets hold of a nuclear weapon and decides not to drive it into a large city but rather to launch it on a Scud-type missile straight into the atmosphere from a barge off the East Coast,” claimed Gaffney.
Many years ago, Gaffney was not quite so famous as the crank he is now. He just hated on arms control, non-proliferation pacts and peace. The right-wing GOP noise machine changed that, giving him bigtime amplification, allowing him to reveal his much broader tastes.
“You may remember Gaffney from his crackpot claim earlier this year — published on Breitbart’s Big Government, no less! — that the Missile Defense Agency’s ‘new’ logo ‘appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo,’ which Gaffney identified as a ‘nefarious’ ‘symbolic action’ that he suggested represented an ‘act of submission to Shariah,’ continued Media Matters.
Wait. The last bit is a DD joke. Sun Tzu was never a member of the Cult of EMP Crazy. But he is part of Big Peace. Go ahead, click that link. Don’t worry about feeding the trolls.
Big Peace was announced with a bang, according to Media Matters.
To DD, it wouldn’t seem to matter so much. Its many gobble-wallahs from the far right have already been getting whatever needs to be written published in many other older crank venues like the WaTimes, Family Security Matters, blogs at the Heritage Foundation, Human Events, the Examiner and World Net Daily.
Its very practical function is as another glorified spam machine, the standard tool of the GOP.
Hard to watch warning: DD jumped on the grenades so you don’t have to.
Lonely Frank Gaffney, ranting and screeching at the EMPAct America conference. Turn down the volume. Eleven views and rising fast.
Lonely Frank, lamenting — in 2009 — the Obama administration’s fascination with health care reform and energy policy, instead of electromagnetic pulse attack. Which would result in the “cratering” of the United States.
Curt Weldon at EMPAct America. SCUD in a tub, electromagnetic pulse doom presents us with a “moral dilemma.” Lose some weight, already.
National Georgraphic’s special on electromagnetic pulse doom was hijacked to the web just prior to the weekend.
Originally, it was briefly shamed by Jason at Armchair Generalist here where you could see the initial trailer.
However, publishing the entire thing to YouTube, where one assumes it will soon be yanked for copyright violation, allows the viewer to skip through segments without having to endure the entire thing.
And the immediately noticeable central feature is its total reliance on catastrophism. More specifically the potential imminent arrival of national doom.
What viewers of extended cable service wouldn’t notice is that the show was essentially the work of the small but fanatical special interest lobby — the Cult of EMP Crazy’s poor man’s Umbrella Corporation, so to speak, EMPAct America.
In essence, National Geographic Channel was captured — made into a zombie for the sake of EMPAct America’s end-of-the-nation script. One which will surely come true if we don’t listen to them.
EMPAct America is a reprehensible nuisance. Since catastophe is its only tool of messaging and so determined has it been to push it, this little lobby has actually contributed measurably to end-times hysteria in the US. The kind that’s now the special property of the extremist Republican party.
Here’s the final segment on YouTube, starring Forstchen — who’s usually heard but not seen on Coast to Coast radio — and his small town, persuaded to enact an exodus scene — the hungry and thirsty lost trudging along a rural road, passed by an occasional flivver, the only thing that can still run.
I’ve written repeatedly that the Cult of EMP Crazy is notoriously manipulative.
It plays to the extremist crank, as if craziness and fractured ideas need to be encouraged and amplified in American society. It captivates fundamentalist religious zealots who welcome the end times because of the punishments they think will be meted out to everyone not on their “to-be-saved” lists.
In fact, if you’ve followed Cult of EMP Crazy videos and newspaper claims on this blog, you’ll have sensed the undercurrent.
The Paul Reveres, the proper followers of Jesus Christ, the survivalists and the stalwart GOP rump are kind of hoping for an electromagnetic pulse attack so they’re vindicated and the unbelievers are struck down in one blow. And they won’t share their stash of pemmican with such scum when civilization fails
Anyway, it also hypnotizes stupid white guys in baseball caps. Guys training to work in homeland security.
DD knows the next video is hard to endure.
Our Paul Revere in a Guinness cap waves around the book of William Forstchen. He has the script memorized although his delivery is stumbling. And then the good parts: Our enemies will pounce. Al Qaeda will get the EMP scud in a tub. The Russians will come out of Venezuela. The Chinese will come out of Panama.
Heck, the Chinese will storm out of the port of Los Angeles or the yards in Long Beach! He knows, he grew up on southern California. Boy, are there lots of Chinese people here.
And here are the grinning fundamentalists, Jack and Rexelle van Impe, their smiles revealing they’d be pretty tickled if 90 percent — all the heathen — were killed off after an electromagnetic pulse disaster.
Naturally, one expects exploitation from the Heritage Foundation and the GOP. It’s called inspiring the base.
Here National Geographic gets into the game, massaging its ratings for the last couple of weeks, hoping to pick up the viewers who fall into the baseball cap man demographic.
Coming from what used to be regarded as an august source, it’s more mainstreaming of extremism in 2010 America.
In the blink of an eye the Huffington Post has established itself as another flugel horn for the Cult of EMP Crazy. As well as a place where posters couldn’t be bothered in the slightest to read what their compatriots are writing on the same subject. Just as long as it all gets into the Google News feed, pronto.
“Learn more about what would happen if an EMP bomb were ever detonated in the video below,” teases Bianca Bosker.
It’s the double opportunity for National Geographic-style info-adver-tainment and catastrophism.
Dig the title:
How an EMP Bomb Would Be a Deathblow to Life as We Know It
The new story which the Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy now regularly shills is that of the angry sun.
The sun is waking up from a long period of quiet — which is true — and erupting solar storms and mass ejections may shatter advanced civilization, it goes.
Just like in “The Road,” the movie nobody went to see (or maybe “The Book of Eli,” another apocalypse-themed flop).
“Some of us read the book ‘The Road’ [a post-apocalyptic tale by Cormac McCarthy],??? said Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI). “Lots of different scenarios are out there. We need to be prepared.”
And Fox News has covered it, using the screen headline “Solar Flare Could Mean End of Life as We Know It.” All explained by the current dancing bear of ‘science’ as infortainment on cable TV, Michio Kaku.
It’s a new meme, a fresh piece of groupthink for non-thinkers.
You’ll see it everywhere because it panders to entrenched American extremist beliefs in tech superstitions and catastrophism. (Bubbling underneath are messages that white people will lose their piles to ravening hordes unleashed by the fall.) And the entertainment industry and parts of the corporate national security biz can monetize this by peddling titillation and fear, respectively.
Which brings us to the Huffington Post, a place where anyone can repeat what someone else said five minutes ago and get it in the Google News feed.
The sun is growing unquiet, writes D. K. Matai. This caused bad juju in lightning bolts:
1. BP temporarily suspended siphoning operations on its Gulf of Mexico oil gusher after a drill ship collecting the oil was hit by lightning;
2. A 62 feet — six storey [sic] — tall statue of Jesus Christ in Ohio came to a blazing end when it was struck by lightning in a thunderstorm and burned to the ground; and
3. A bolt of lightning struck a local gasoline storage tank in North Carolina, erupting into a wall of flames that leapt as high as 100 feet and belched a plume of smoke in the shape of an arch across eight lanes of US interstate highway.
To this stew is added the news of a ‘brown dwarf’ nearing or entering the solar system, the Nemesis object popular with fans of end-of-times tales set for 2012:
Some scientists believe an incoming brown dwarf star, several times the mass of Jupiter, is responsible for disrupting our solar system’s heliosphere. The brown dwarf has disturbed Pluto’s orbit. It is also disturbing the orbit of Jupiter and the rest of the celestial bodies in our solar system. The sun is emitting Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) during the last few months that are having a significant impact on the earth’s geomagnetic axis and electromagnetic field.
Matai runs a company called mi2g. And he used to be infamous for press releases warning about Y2K and cyberterror.
“The chief charge against mi2g is its regular predictions of withering cyber-assaults which, critics say, rarely seem to materialise,” wrote the Register a number of years ago in a piece entitled “Why is mi2g so unpopular?”
However, the disturbed angry sun story is now ascendant.
“Several causal factors are now in play that could bring life as we know it to a stand-still,” writes Nora Maccoby at something called the WIP.
“My husband and I are both extremely concerned about a catastrophic disruption to our electrical grid,” she adds. “Though the government and military have emergency plans in place, when you look at what happened with Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf oil spill response, it is egregiously naive to believe that the government will be able to handle the impacts of an event that will collapse the power grid.”
Iran might launch an electromagnetic strike via ballistic missile. This is the old and common overused story, beloved by the Heritage Foundation.
Or it could be much worse:
While details remain classified, some scientists believe an incoming brown dwarf star, several times the mass of Jupiter, is responsible for disrupting the solar system’s heliosphere, as well as celestial bodies throughout our solar system.
“We have bought property in the mountains, we are working out bartering arrangements with neighbors, and we are planting fruit trees and growing our own food,” asserts Maccoby.
“Deep in California’s Mojave Desert, about halfway between Barstow and Las Vegas, a real estate entrepreneur is counting on a big catastrophe,” reports one newspaper. “He’s building a string of luxury disaster shelters. Investors believe it’s their best hope in the event of natural disaster, terrorist attack or worse.”
“If your house burned down because of wildfires, you’ll have to find other accommodations,” the disaster bunker developer tells the newspaper reporter. “This is a mega-catastrophe facility … ”
“Think nuclear war. Or an electromagnetic pulse attack that knocks out electrical grids across the U.S.”
At $50,000 per person, the bunkers are marketed to those who can’t quite afford them — specifically, I’m talking about chumps. The rich, after all, can buy much more spacious disaster resorts.
Or as the Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday, they buy contiguous and adjacent compounds in Bel-Air.
“The middle class may be able to buy Louis Vuitton bags and nice holidays but they can’t buy two mansions in Bel-Air,” reads one prime quote. “This is the way the global elite differentiate themselves.”
However, the newspaper story on the electromagnetic pulse doom bunker developer reveals a much more prosaic and overstretched class of buyer:
[A] 40-year-old former civilian military employee is married with three kids. [The man] says he wants to be ready, and more importantly he wants his family to be safe. Hodge is trying to pull together the $25,000 needed just to reserve spaces in the Terra Vivos bunker. It’ll cost another couple hundred thousand dollars to actually close the deal. He may dip into family savings, or seek a bank loan. If it sounds risky to put up your family savings for a piece of property you may never use, [the buyer] doesn’t think so.
It’s the stuff of science fiction. A strong blast of energy from outer space knocks out electricity over much of the planet, imperiling millions of lives.
But it’s not fiction.
The danger of geomagnetic storms and a human-produced electromagnetic pulse is the subject of “Electronic Armageddon,??? a show airing Tuesday on the National Geographic Channel. John Kappenman of Duluth is one of the experts featured in the program.
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.
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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.
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What [a New York Times reporter] does not mention, or perhaps has failed to notice, is the “report??? [had] 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.
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.
“Electronic Armageddon also looks at the damage caused by the high-altitude detonation of a nuclear device,” reads the Duluth newspaper. “The electromagnetic pulse would have effects beyond those of a geomagnetic storm, including gamma rays that would fry computer chips.”
DD has written about beliefs in catastrophism as it relates to the Cult of EMP Crazy previously. Most recently, here in “Scared Stupid.”
It read:
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.
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.
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, a smaller one than the national Minerals Management Service, comes to you courtesty of the Department of Energy and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (or NERC).
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.
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.
And the only hedge against its usual nonsense comes in the title of the
report: High Impact, Low Frequency Event Risk to the North American Bulk Power System. [Emphasis mine.]
Conspicuously, the “report” cites the “research” of one of its own steering members, Radasky of Metatech.
Metatech’s business is allegedly in defending against the threat of man-made electromagnetic pulse attacks on businesses and the nation.
So getting to help write a government report on the danger of electromagnetic attacks on the nation, and what ought to be done, is convenient.
On Metatech’s website some time is spent vaguely describing the threat of intentional electromagnetic attack. (See here.)
As another example, see this PowerPoint slide — from a presentation given to Poles in 2000 — of how criminals allegedly use malicious electromagnetism.
Notably, the DoE/NERC report contains a Metatech graphic of a notional attack by an electromagnetic pulse weapon.
It reads: “Of course [sic] other scenarios are possible including briefcase weapons taken inside by a visitor or disgruntled employee.”
Briefcases and suitcases of electromagnetic pulse were discussed here and here yesterday and today.
Wald’s blog at the New York Times is advertised as “about energy and the environment.”
A closer look by the Times might have shown that, in this — ahem — brief case, the real news is really not about either of those.
Overnight, tales of the electromagnetic pulsing suitcase begat the cure for everything on American borders.
This due to the well-known phenomenon in which journalists never have to see anything work or even consult the long and whack history of such claims to proclaim the future has arrived.
“[The stupidity and ignorance] of Americans has long been a topic of hilarity in Europe,” wrote Paul Fussell in BAD, DD’s book of the week.
It’s an explanation.
However, one thing Fussell closed his book with was one of the things that was not BAD in 1991. And apropos this post, today it’s just sad.
“Some things, indeed, range from good to VERY GOOD, like the American open borders when they’re not being compromised by follies … and the American assumption that its citizens are free, and indeed are practically invited, to travel the world,” he wrote.
Sadly, on the electromagnetic pulsing briefcase — which still has not been properly used to assail Wall Street — from the political blog known as The Hill:
Two Texas congressmen want the government to consider using new technology at the border that would allow law enforcement officials to remotely disable the engines of boats and vehicles they are pursuing.
Republican Michael McCaul and Democrat Henry Cuellar said in a statement Tuesday that the so-called electromagnetic pulse (EMP) device – which fits inside a suitcase – generates electric fields that can disable electronics …
“This is cutting-edge technology to meet the spectrum of 21st century threats facing our borders and ports of entry. Technology like this puts one more tool in the toolbox for our federal law enforcement at the borders. It’s empowering equipment to combat illegal activity.???
The device fits in a case developed by Applied Physical Electronics of Austin, Texas.
The Pentagon has been using electromagnetic pulsing briefcases and suitcases for a long time, even though the rest of us have somehow missed it.
“Similar prototypes from the firm have been used by the Pentagon during the last 12 years,” adds the Hill, without a hint of satire.
“The lawmakers, who sit on the House Homeland Security Committee, witnessed a demonstration in which the device was used to remotely disable a computer,” it added.
“It’s really hi-tech equipment … ”
DD wagers their must be some Randy “Duke” Cunningham or Jack Murtha-type thing going on to explain the hard sell on the junk.
The EMP Suitcase Compact 2100 Series, developed by Austin-based Applied Physical Electronics, emits high-amplitude electronic fields powerful enough to disable various devices “without causing permanent physical damage or endangerment to individuals,” as Cuellar’s Web site says. Similar devices have been used by the Defense Department for the past 12 years.
“Advertising is the sine qua non of BAD, of course, for BAD depends upon and arises only out of it,” wrote Fussell in 1991. “To have a fraud, you have to have a large distance between the touted grand appearance and commonplace actuality …”
Good news, lads! Good news! We can stop a computer a yard away with the electromagnetic pulse suitcase of death! Gulf Oil spill, though, not so much.
And DD can total a PC with a ballpeen hammer made in China for a couple bucks.
Anyway, the Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy has been populated with small businesses promising revolutionary weapons for as long as I can remember.
Two members of Texas’ congressional delegation on Tuesday toured a technology company that is developing a system that could be used for border security.
U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo , and Michael McCaul, R-Austin , said the technology in development at Applied Physical Electronics could stop smugglers in their tracks by shutting down vehicles’ electrical systems. Some workers likened the device to an electronic weapon.
The equipment is being developed in several sizes. Engineers are working on a handheld device that would be used at a very close range. There are also more powerful versions that could be mounted trains plains automobiles on boats, automobiles and aircraft and be used from a hundred or more yards away.
The Department of Defense already has been testing the Spicewood company’s gear, which works by sending crippling electromagnetic pulses that disable electrical systems, the company said.
For the last fifteen years, electromagnetic pulse ray technology has always been cutting edge, always desired by the military, always promised soon, always a Swiss army knife full of security applications.
And then another years go by and the world is not transformed.
“[The Texas politicians lobbying directly for money] — both of whom serve on the Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism — said the system could be an effective tool for border agents to stop the boats, cars and other vehicles used by drug smugglers and human traffickers,” added the newspaper.
Plus, the electromagnetic pulse suitcase is a hedge against potential EMP suitcase gap.
“Located on a nondescript lot off Texas 71, Applied Physical Electronics was founded in 1998 and has 16 employees,” continues the news article. “Its annual revenue is about $3 million a year, the company said. In addition to developing security devices, the company also is working on countermeasures against similar electronic weapons that other countries are developing.”
News flash: The small company tinkerer isn’t going to change the world of weapons technology by any order of magnitude.
Years and years and years of electromagnetic pulse crazies and promises — from the archives.
One notes that if electromagnetic pulse crazy funding had to be justified by some actual test of usefulness to society, some people would just be plum s— outta luck.
Paul Fussell on BAD ideas, from the book – BAD: “Bad ideas are those that are palpably unsound, like constructing a building from the top down or like trying to run a car on water with a pill in it. Some people can always be persuaded to accept such notions but most would argue that except as material for jokes, they are a waste of time.”
The kook parade that’s the Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy will always be with us. It possesses a solid underground.
And it is up for display regularly on the premier radio show for nutcases who believe in the paranormal, Coast to Coast with George Nori.
If you’ve ever watched SyFy channel’s Ghost Hunters for more than five minutes and felt your intellect being amputated, enduring Coast to Coast will give your brain an even more radical haircut.
Here’s a segment from a recent show. Newt Gingrich pal William Forstchen is a guest. This clip begins with a caller who gets talking about how Ahmadinejad could become the anti-Christ and put an end to humanity.
A little further in an old lady calls to inquire about the building of secret bunkers so that the government can ride out electromagnetic pulse doom. Or something like that.
Well, maybe not so much. The agency certainly ain’t what it used to be.
Can you name one astronaut or scientist not from the Mercury, Gemini or Apollo programs (or one who didn’t die in a space shuttle disaster)?
Didn’t think so.
Jumping back to last week, we take another look at a different specie of EMP extremist, William Saxton and his civilian national security group for worrying about electromagnetic pulse as well as spying on Muslims so that the impurifying of the precious bodily fluids of textbooks used to teach children be curtailed.
It’s a whole different breed of paranoid crazy, seemingly more high button than what’s delivered by Coast to Coast.
If one surfs to Saxton’s Citizens for National Security group, one sees Peter Leitner, mostly infamous for a bit before Congress about a decade ago, delivered during a House hearing on electromagnetic pulse which became notorious for the amount of frank lies and rubbish disseminated.
I wrote a few days ago:
At the time, the Chinese were said to be sending in sleeper agents to contaminate southern California public schools.
Why? To make our kids feel bad.
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[Testimony] — presented by author Dr. Peter Leitner on alleged Communist Chinese “yellow peril???-like subterfuge: “I’ve heard rumors . . . One I found particularly disturbing . . . [and] I haven’t seen any recorded documentation of these incidents . . . where very young-looking Chinese students were going to the United States and placed in high schools in the U.S. except their ages were 24 – 25 years old . . . They were brilliant students . . . Well, it turns out it’s an example of a sleeper agent, somebody who is put in position. He already has advanced degrees before coming in, then is put into the position as a seed and then is allowed to flourish in a totally unfair competition with U.S. student counterparts.???
Dan Pipes, who recently advised that Obama could save his presidency by bombing Iran, is also listed as a Citzens for National Security adviser.
CFN’s “task forces,” described here , aim at spying on various Muslim groups and compiling files on them.
“Once we have compiled this treasure-trove of persuasive evidence, we will offer it to those who need it most: prosecutors, law enforcement officials, media reporters, judges, congressional staffs, college professors, government at all levels, think tanks, public school administrators – the list is endless,” reads the mission statement.
And here’s a recent Fox News segment on electromagnetic pulse doom in 2012 due to solar flare — a new meme, one featuring an alleged “NASA scientist” (actually, Michio Kaku’s primarily a cable television fringe personality) who has been seen on TV trying to explain how he would make a flying saucer.
“Each 30 minute episode [of his TV show] discusses the scientific basis behind such imaginative schemes as: time travel, parallel universes, warp drive, star ships, light sabers, force fields, teleportation, invisibility, death stars, and even superpowers and flying saucers,” reads the man’s bio on Wiki.
“Solar flares could mean of the end of life as we know it,” reads the Fox News caption.
