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The economic crash of 2008 has been as hard here as everywhere else.
Since stepping into cyberspace in the early Nineties everything written has been provided largely pro bono. And this is the first fundraiser of any kind that I’ve held.
Originally, I went under the rubric of the old electronic Crypt Newsletter, an e-zine devoted to hacker culture, specifically that centered on the worldwide network of young computer virus-writers.
Much of the work published through it was aimed at increasing public understanding of issues in cybersecurity and the hype-laden subjects of cyberterrorism and cyberwar. That continues to this day.
In 1994 some of the earliest published content was used in The Virus Creation Labs, a book on the old computer virus underground published by American Eagle. Interesting side fact: While the book is now technically out of print, the publisher decamped to Central America before 2000, convinced the country would overturn or that hyperinflation would come about as the result of the Millennium Bug.
By 2004 I had moved to a slightly different place at GlobalSecurity.Org, still doing pro bono public research on various security topics.
This work moved into the domain of poison recipes, specifically those for ricin and alleged home-made chemical and biological weapons, which had originated in the American survivalist extremist fringe during the Eighties. By the Nineties these tracts had been migrated to the Internet and simultaneously translated into Arabic.
In terms of practical things, this was one of the first places you could see at least one of the claims made by the US government, delivered by Colin Powell in his address to the UN Security Council, on reasons for war in Iraq, shot to pieces.
The London ricin ring as a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda had been part of Powell’s presentation and the material published at Globalsecurity destroyed it.
At the time, the US news media largely ignored this but the work could not be erased. History had its way. (Examples of the news on the ricin trial in the US news media are here, at the Washington Post; and from Newsweek.)
Around 2006, the public work was formally moved to Dick Destiny blog.
Material published through here pushed back against mainstream and government claims that al Qaeda had capability in biological chemical weapons and that documents found on the Internet conferred equal capabilities to any jihadis interested in them.
While unpublicized that effort has been a success.
With the help of others the official public position was modified. One example was the grudging concession in the 2008 report from the US Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism: “We accept the validity of intelligence estimates about the current rudimentary nature of terrorist capabilities in the area of biological weapons … ” (Page 39.) Those intelligence estimates were not furnished by the US government’s analytical apparatus. They came from the work of outsiders, from here and analysis provided by colleagues.
Other proof is the anecdotal evidence that mainstream news is no longer littered with scare pieces insisting that al Qaeda men in some broken down hideout can make WMDs because of global access to terror capabilities granted by the Internet. Still, occasionally I have to issue burn notices on retired CIA men who resist getting the message. One example of such, from last year, is here.
Not bad for a blog.
Since then regular readers know I’ve kept up the fight while expanding into system domestic problems of economy and inequality which threaten the nation’s security in ways foreign threats during the war on terror never could.
This short history touches upon why the work has mattered. And so I ask for your help in keeping it moving forward and vital. Please help spread the word.
Donations are taken through PayPal. And you can still contribute without a designated PayPal account. Just page down to “Don’t have a PayPal account?” and click “continue.”
DD blog needs your help. I’m not too proud to beg.
The economic crash of 2008 has been as hard here as everywhere else.
Since stepping into cyberspace in the early Nineties everything written has been provided largely pro bono. And this is the first fundraiser of any kind that I’ve held.
Originally, I went under the rubric of the old electronic Crypt Newsletter, an e-zine devoted to hacker culture, specifically that centered on the worldwide network of young computer virus-writers.
Much of the work published through it was aimed at increasing public understanding of issues in cybersecurity and the hype-laden subjects of cyberterrorism and cyberwar. That continues to this day.
In 1994 some of the earliest published content was used in The Virus Creation Labs, a book on the old computer virus underground published by American Eagle. Interesting side fact: While the book is now technically out of print, the publisher decamped to Central America before 2000, convinced the country would overturn or that hyperinflation would come about as the result of the Millennium Bug.
By 2004 I had moved to a slightly different place at GlobalSecurity.Org, still doing pro bono public research on various security topics.
This work moved into the domain of poison recipes, specifically those for ricin and alleged home-made chemical and biological weapons, which had originated in the American survivalist extremist fringe during the Eighties. By the Nineties these tracts had been migrated to the Internet and simultaneously translated into Arabic.
In terms of practical things, this was one of the first places you could see at least one of the claims made by the US government, delivered by Colin Powell in his address to the UN Security Council, on reasons for war in Iraq, shot to pieces.
The London ricin ring as a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda had been part of Powell’s presentation and the material published at Globalsecurity destroyed it.
At the time, the US news media largely ignored this but the work could not be erased. History had its way. (Examples of the news on the ricin trial in the US news media are here, at the Washington Post; and from Newsweek.)
Around 2006, the public work was formally moved to Dick Destiny blog.
Material published through here pushed back against mainstream and government claims that al Qaeda had capability in biological chemical weapons and that documents found on the Internet conferred equal capabilities to any jihadis interested in them.
While unpublicized that effort has been a success.
With the help of others the official public position was modified. One example was the grudging concession in the 2008 report from the US Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism: “We accept the validity of intelligence estimates about the current rudimentary nature of terrorist capabilities in the area of biological weapons … ” (Page 39.) Those intelligence estimates were not furnished by the US government’s analytical apparatus. They came from the work of outsiders, from here and analysis provided by colleagues.
Other proof is the anecdotal evidence that mainstream news is no longer littered with scare pieces insisting that al Qaeda men in some broken down hideout can make WMDs because of global access to terror capabilities granted by the Internet. Still, occasionally I have to issue burn notices on retired CIA men who resist getting the message. One example of such, from last year, is here.
Not bad for a blog.
Since then regular readers know I’ve kept up the fight while expanding into system domestic problems of economy and inequality which threaten the nation’s security in ways foreign threats during the war on terror never could.
This short history touches upon why the work has mattered. And so I ask for your help in keeping it moving forward and vital. Please help spread the word.
Donations are taken through PayPal. And you can still contribute without a designated PayPal account. Just page down to “Don’t have a PayPal account?” and click “continue.”
Because a 21-year-old man was caught on a security camera urinating into a city reservoir, Oregon’s biggest city is sending 8 million gallons of treated drinking water down the drain.
Portland officials defended the decision Monday, saying they didn’t want to send city residents water laced, however infinitesimally, with urine.
The 21-year old, a fellow named Josh Seater, has had his emission video viewed many, many more times than his first ultimate fighting cage match, here.
This afford an opportunity to again attack the myth that water supplies are easy targets for terrorism.
As explained in the news story, the problem facing any would-be despoiler is dilution.
Urine, which isn’t particularly noxious, well — Josh just couldn’t supply enough of it. By about six orders of magnitude.
This apparently meant nothing to the local heevahavas who came to the decision, because of public revulsion, that eight million gallons had to be dumped.
During summers of my college years, I managed the Pine Grove community swimming pool, which held half a million gallons and was served by a two story pump-and-filter house, the water purified by drop percolation through granulated coal and sanitized by elemental chlorine injection.
Of course, customers urinated in the pool all the time. The chlorine kept the water free of fecal bacteria. The coal pulled out all the ammonia.
Any large standing body of water, the community pool was no exception, attracts animals.
The critters most frequently fished from the swimming pool were snapping turtles (from a nearby canal) which were always alive. And frogs, which were dead about half the time.
The urine-in-the-water supply near Seattle mentions dead animals being found in the reservoir, as well as regular use by water fowl.
There aren’t any poisons which, in small amounts, can threaten a water supply of this size. Theoretically, botox is poisonous enough, but the toxic protein complex simply wouldn’t survive long enough once dumped, in any quantity, into the water. The US had a cracked plan to do this during the Cold War. Developed in 1953, it was nonsensical.
The only “sort of” controlled experiments using poison to toxify large bodies of water in recent times have been in California.
“Late in 2009, reports of Northern Pike showing up in angler catches began again, indicating another failed attempt [at Lake Davis],” says an entry at Wikipedia. It is hard to know if it is true.
Anyway, even this type of thing is quite beyond the capabilities of any terrorists.
There is one way to contaminate water and most people know it with a little prodding. Oil spills.
Between one and two quarts of motor oil was enough to contaminate the Pine Grove community pool, forcing its closure for about a week, in the mid-Seventies. The lifeguards and janitorial staff had to remove the oil, which had maliciously been put in the pool overnight by a couple of local vandals, by skimming.
LONDON — A British man appeared in court on Thursday accused of having instructions to make a bomb and being in possession of a recipe to make the deadly poison ricin.
Asim Kauser, 25, an unmarried British national whose family hail from Pakistan, is charged with four offences under anti-terrorism legislation after material was found on a USB key.
Kauser, from Bolton in Lancashire, was arrested at his home on June 6 “on suspicion of possessing information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing, or preparing an act of terrorism, between January 2009 and June 2011”.
He was charged with having “various instructions in how to make an improvised explosive device”.
They’re cheap tickets for enjoyment of the hospitality of Her Majesty. Or a bunk in the bighouse.
This is not progress in service of the rule of law, it’s decline.
This was published, in very readable form, in the Washington Post years ago. In England, it’s good for a conviction if in your possession.
The UK has a solid record of jailing people for possession of “terror documents” judged to be useful in facilitating terrorism. The enthusiasm for it has waxed and waned over the course of the war on terror. But it is always present.
And here, in a case in which Samina Malik — a hapless person with what turned out to be legally hazardous curiosity, was convicted. (Disclosure: Malik’s defense, at one point, asked me to describe — for her defense — the nature of the materials she had downloaded.)
It is entirely remarkable that ten years into the war on terror, when all these things first came to mainstream media notice, fools everywhere still download the same old rubbish.
And the same old trash shows up in court cases again and again, the moldy mythology of printed out useless terror tracts — originally minted by the American right wing survivalist fringe in the Eighties, still very capable of sending people over. (This is the legacy of publishers who specialized in this market, like Loompanics, which went out of business a couple years ago.)
And then there’s the common story of the young man of Pakistan, or Pakistani descent, and the fascination with downloading bomb recipes. It is also a measure of the amount of scrutiny they now all receive, deserved or not, from counter-terror agencies.
The rest of the world doesn’t give a shit what America thinks about castor seeds and ricin.
So it continued running castor mills all through the war on terror.
And this is because they were not WMD plants and allowed export of a commodity, castor oil, back into the US — which quit the business long ago because it wasn’t competitive against petroleum-based lubricants.
Now, the fly in the ointment in getting US firms back into castor oil production is price. It’s done cheaper overseas.
LUBBOCK – Castagra, a Canadian bioproducts company, has entered into an agreement with Texas AgriLife Research, part of the Texas A&M University System, to test production of a new castor bean with less ricin.
The West Texas project will investigate production potential and sustainable production practices that do not conflict with other commodities grown in the state, according to officials.
Castor oil and gypsum are the two main ingredients in the vegetable plastic and castor beans were farmed in Texas back in the 1970s, officials said. Approximately three acres of low-ricin Brigham castor will be seeded at the AgriLife Research Station in Pecos. The produced seed will be used for crushing and processing trials to determine yield and quality with the remainder dedicated to potential 2012 castor production as planting seed.
Dr. Travis Miller, AgriLife Extension program leader and associate department head for soil and crop sciences at Texas A&M University, said castor previously had a bad reputation because of its potential to contaminate grain crops.
[We] are creating jobs and bringing jobs to America that moved offshore several years ago when castor production was discontinued in Texas in the 1970s. AgriLife ( Research ) has done excellent work recently in improving oil yields while greatly reducing the amount of ricin toxin found in castor beans by as much as 90 percent.???
Dr. David Baltensperger, head of the department of soil and crop sciences at Texas A&M, said new castor varieties have increased salt tolerance and are more drought resistant, “so lands in the Pecos area may once again become productive.???
“Additionally, castor can now be fully mechanized unlike in other castor-producing countries, such that we can now effectively compete against countries like India that export millions of tons of castor oil each year to other countries, including the U.S.???
In terms of “new jobs” for three acres of university-sponsored castor production, estimate this means about five people.
As elliptically referenced by the press release, the rest of the world simply didn’t care what the US thought of castor seeds. “Low ricin” castor seed is an invention nobody cares about, except, possibly — here.
Since “low-ricin” castor plants will not be competing alongside castor plants and seed peddled by garden centers, the invention has virtually no meaning for the usual US white survivalist kooks who buy packets of seeds for fighting off their many imagined enemies.
Expect this to silently piss out and disappear — or be permanently consigned to only very marginal supply — by 2012.
A law enforcement source told CBS News that the man detained in the discovery of a suspicious car found outside the Pentagon Friday morning was carrying a notebook that contained the phrases, “al Qaeda,” “Taliban rules” and “Mujahid defeated croatian forces.”
“It seems to be washing out at this point, but it is still being drilled down on,” the source told [the news].
Drilled down on. All you kook belong dead Osama in pajama. Oot greet.
A mock “ricin” emergency drill in Taos, outside of the general procedural rules adopted for these kinds of white powder incidents, gets it all wrong on the nature of the hazard. For example, ricin intoxication, is not contagious so there is no need for quarantine.
If one cannot assume anything on the nature of the powder, then the only procedure to follow is to quarantine everyone. Which is obviously not done in these types of drills or in the many actual hoax white powder incidents around the country.
Ricin is a toxic protein present in the castor seed and you simply can’t purify enough of it to fashion into any even remotely effective WMD. DD put a stake through it back in 2004 at Globalsecurity.Org, a time when people seriously thought the procedure in the patent worked and complained that public access to it on the web was a serious threat.
Since then there have been no successful cases of ricin use as a WMD despite much wishful thinking on the subject. That’s in over a decade.
Therefore, blowing a small amount of castor seed powder out of an envelope is, practically speaking, no hazard although, since the war on terror, everyone must act like it’s so. The fear factor now associated with it, although virtually groundless, is real.
Continual exposure to castor seed powder — which never happens in the US anymore because there are no longer any castor mills — can result in allergy.
This is briefly described here at a network for physicians in the business of treating asthma and allergy.
Years ago it became pointless trying to explain any matter having to do with this to anyone in the government or national security industry.
Fact free hazard drills are now often simply the only way to do things.
Pakistan’s opposition politicians have joined the fray, spurring public disenchantment with the military, for decades the dominant political and economic powerbroker in the country. And we’re both obsessed with militaries.
The roughly 1,000-word statement—at various points apologetic, belligerent and strident—was the clearest indication to date that in striking a balance between the competing demands, Pakistan’s military leaders are looking to first assuage their own people, even if that means scaling back ties to the U.S.
The statement also offered an indication of the crisis now gripping Pakistan’s military and the lengths its leaders are potentially willing to go to restore public respect. The statement also said the army would be willing to divert U.S. military aid to help improve the lot of ordinary Pakistanis.
What? They’re going to give up golfing in Abottabad? Instead of new F-16s, ask for cash money they can hand out in the streets?
This is what the pantywaists will do. They’ll quietly ask for more weapons from Uncle Sam and sooner or later we’ll order ’em up for them.
“Gen. Kayani in recent weeks has attempted to rally his troops, going from garrison to garrison to explain that he shares their sense of humiliation over the raid …” continues the piece.
“After the speech, a colonel in attendance pointedly asked: ‘How can we trust the United States?’ ”
Straight from the mouths of the 98-lb. weaklings, a few weeks after having the sand of the bin Laden raid kicked in their faces.
Pakistanis are insulted [by the thought that they’re reluctant pantywaists.] They point out that they have caught numerous al Qaeda members. A third of Pakistan’s army is arrayed along the border with Afghanistan fighting local Taliban militants, a campaign in which almost 3,000 Pakistani soldiers have died. Many generals, Gen. Kayani included, say the nation is now critically exposed to attack from archrival India on its eastern flank.
The alert reader will note Pakistan and the US have something in common. Neither country makes much of anything except for one really famous product. We make weapons. Pakistan makes terrorists.
More arms for different pantywaists
From the WaTimes:
Congress is stepping up pressure on the Obama administration to sell more F-16 jet fighters to Taiwan as the island’s air defenses deteriorate and China’s air power grows.
They only want 66 of them. And Lockheed is threatening to close the F-16 production line if we don’t approve the sale. Americans will lose jobs because weapons are the only reliable manufacturing, besides cars and some jet engines and guitars, we have!
“What’s in a name???? Shakespeare asked. How about when someone calls you a “pantywaist???? Formerly “a child’s undergarment in which a shirt and pants were buttoned together at the waist,??? pantywaist was often bandied about in masculine circles in my youth.
Lane Bryant, a women’s and children’s clothing outlet, sold these “pantie waists” (more commonly spelled “panty waists”) in their 1935 catalog for boys and girls from 2 to 8 years of age. The term panty waist later became a slang term of abuse for boys who were sissies or disinclined to behave in a properly masculine way …
Technically a “panty waist” was nothing more than an alternative term for underwaist with strap reinforcements for buttons and garter tabs. The buttons, usually attached to the waistline by tapes to make them more flexible and more difficult to pull off, were principally for attaching button-on trousers and skirts, but were also used by girls for buttoning on panties or bloomers, hence the term panty waist. The term panty waist was also used by many mothers to refer to any undervest for children up to the age of at least twelve, and sometimes fourteen, which could serve as a garment for anchoring hose supporters for long stockings …
A few times this week I was contacted by news reporters who wanted to discuss cybersecurity and terrorism.
I spent time on the telephone with each and won’t mention names. The stuff that’s critical of the general received wisdoms just never gets into the news narrative. And you can count the number of national security experts in the news who aren’t shills for the status quo on less than the fingers of one hand. In fact, no one like this even seems to exist anymore.
Anyway, all these journalists were tracking stories which have no real currency.
The primary threat to American security is the economy. Full stop.
If it fails disastrously again, or the nation is run aground by nuts people who have steered it irresponsibly, that’s a threat to everyone.
When half the political leadership structure in the US believes global warming is a hoax, that’s a long term threat to the world.
If it were the leadership of Lichtenstein or Andorra, this would be on no consequence. But it’s us and it has great consequence.
So when someone asked me if al Qaeda can launch a devastating cyberattack against the US, I had to take a mental step back and think about how to gently deliver an answer like: “What on earth made you think that was realistic?”
Al Qaeda can easily be dismissed as a cyber-threat. No one will go broke taking the short position that they’re never going to amount to anything in this area.
I pointed out that if there’s any evidence that they might wish to use cyberspace to attack the US it’s the same order of wishful thinking that made the terror men think it would be easy for it to make weapons of mass destruction.
Which says something about their actual capability and powers of discernment and critical thinking.
The other question that has been coming up is one having to do with what would a devastating cyberwar look like?
Dunno. And I don’t make predictions. However, I do know many normal people find laughable, as do I, the idea that we need to be really concerned right now about cyberterrorists attacking Wall Street and the American financial system.
You mean to argue that’s more a threat than what our insiders have already done? On the other hand, how ’bout a cheer for a cyberattack on Wall Street.
And then there’s one last point. If it’s not an attack on Wall Street, or something by al Qaeda, what about a cyberwar that has consequences in the physical world?
In a related matter it has to be said that America’s national security think tanks are havens for people who are simply threat-mongering salesmen or high button warehouses for those currently out of power.
After over ten years of reading their reports and pronouncement I can assert with absolute confidence that they generally produce no “analytic” product we couldn’t live without.
I’m going to give you some current copy, something that’s a workmanlike sample from an alleged academician at the RAND Corporation.
What are economists, good ones, writing about in their many blogs now?
Not a trick question. You know the answer. The wretched economy, stupid.
Given how markets are responding thus far, Osama Bin Laden’s death is likely to have a modestly positive and buoyant effect on equity markets. Business abhors uncertainty. With Bin Laden gone, one major source of uncertainty is removed …
Business abhors uncertainty. Gnomic, like something my dad would have said.
Everyone who works for RAND lives in the high rent zipcodes on the west side of LA. Maybe a couple are little different and have places in the mansion districts of Pasadena and San Marino.
They sure know what’s going in national security threats to the country.
Everyone would laugh at America’s think-tankers if the reality wasn’t that they’re really well compensated to actively ignore reality so that more better crap can be made up to support the various endless war efforts.
“It is very hard to see change,” said Capt. Tye Reedy. “It was very hard to get that across to my soldiers.”
Major General John F. Campbell described … losses in military lingo. “We had some very, very kinetic events,” he said after arriving home at Fort Campbell. But he said the hardships bonded the troops in an indelible way.
Very, very kinetic events.
One week after Memorial Day, DD notes that on AMC that weekend was dedicated to a loop of the movies Midway, Patton and The Longest Day, the latter which featured a running time, with commercials, of four hours.
Today’s endless counterinsurgency battles couldn’t be farther from them in subject matter.
They will generate books that nobody but journalists and the families of those who were there will read. If they make it to the occasional movie, they will generate some critical praise but have no star power, no box office and little if any public interest. (Like the most recent, The Battle for Marjah. Incidentally, that review was read thousands of times, generating as little enthusiasm in Facebook “likes” as the documentary then passing into the oblivion. Americans don’t even like to read the truth about documentaries on the Forever War.)
Here’s another quick framing question.
Can you even remember the title of HBO’s serial dramatization of the Iraq War? Didn’t think so. (See bottom for answer.)
Our national paradox, dripping in cynicism and marinated in bad faith, is one in which the military industrial complex has been so successful at removing the average citizen’s involvement in the Forever War, only complete indifference to it, along with a weird guilt-tripped reflexive genuflection to soldiering on holidays, remains.
Answer to HBO serial on Iraq War question: Generation Kill. Yes, what everyone wanted to watch was a movie on the first two weeks of a war launched on frauds five years after all the bunting from our Mission Accomplished moment had blown away.
HBO wasn’t running it over the Memorial Day weekend.
