04.12.13
Tar Sands Timmy
Another reason for the slow demise of FutureGen and “clean coal” …
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Sequestration and capture of C02 (gales of laughter fill room).
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Jim Moriarty explains cyberwar to Sherlock
Starting at about 2:40, Sherlock Holmes’ arch enemy, Jim Moriarty, blows a hole in the cyberwar meme:
You don’t really think a few lines of computer code are going to crash the world down around are ears, do you? I’m disappointed, I’m disappointed in you, Sherlock …
I knew you’d fall for it. That’s your weakness. You always want things
to be clever.
From the second season ending episode, The Reichenbach Fall, which I heartily recommend.
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04.11.13
Fundraiser — a basic plea
See the headline. It is truly about budgets: The president’s, ours — as a nation, and mine.
Implied in the wire service headline and text is one of the big lies of our time: The idea that cyberwar, waged by nations or groups, can switch off the United States.
It has grown and metastasized like an untreated cancer, spreading corrosive, deadening myths, frank lies and gross exaggerations. The financial system could be crippled, the power turned off, the water corrupted. Indeed, cyberwar has been packaged as an event, or series of them with destructive power in excess of natural disasters.
What it comes down to is money. There are no statistics on what cyberespionage or cyberwar costs (or could cost) the nation, just claims and wild estimates based on nothing.
By contrast, charts and graphs of hard statistics are published weekly on the horrifying state of the economy for the middle and lower class. They show that among western civilized nations, yawning inequality that dwarfs the rest has grown. They show that foodstamp usage has ballooned to an all time high because the American economy does not produce jobs that pay a living wage. They show that corporate profits have soared but that the great majority of people have seen nothing except shrinkage or, even, total collapse in their worth and fortunes.
Yet today we are saddled with an administration that has actively worked to create the impression that defense against cyberattack is one of the country’s most pressing problems.
And last year, in an attempt to get cybersecurity legislation through congress, it empowered people like the National Security Agency’s Keith Alexander to state that cyberattacks and espionage against the United States were constituting the “greatest transfer of wealth in history.”
It was and is a lie stupefying in its audacity.
All for the sake of toxic legislation and the expansion of money for cybersecurity services from in the national security megaplex.
As the sequestration slowly starts to grind at the sick, the poor, the elderly and the other parts of the middle class, the cyberwar-is-coming campaign is all about realignment of taxpayer dollars for the preservation and expansion of security jobs and services, a transfer of wealth from the bottom and the middle of American society, to the top.
And this is immoral. It is just that simple. Because we’ll never benefit from it. Only the recipients of the contracts do.
I have never argued that the daily securing of the world network is not a significant problem. It is global in size. The job has grown with the times but it continues to be a matter of risk management and amelioration by everyone involved, not an excuse to spread fear and misinformation in the cause of making the cybersecurity arms of America’s defense industries more wealthy.
As a writer, journalist, author and expert on the issues, I’ve been on the beat since 1994. That’s almost twenty years and I’ve grown old doing it.
During the time, serious journalism and writing on the subject — which was always scarce, just withered away and died to be replaced by stenography of whatever is the current official or private sector word on the matter. It went away for the same reason serious journalism has collapsed on just about everything. The net destroyed the model by which journalism supported itself and replaced it with nothing, only the illusion that the same thing could be carried out by websites like grains of sand on the beach, and free labor.
These days I’m interviewed about once ever two weeks, almost like clockwork, for minor comment or background on transiently newsy matters on cybersecurity or some cyberattack.
And in the past ten years of this there have been no big questions addressed, or encompassing stories issued.
What is all this about? What’s the history? Why does this go on?
No one asks and very few, less than the fingers to be counted on one hand, even attempt to talk or write on it. To my knowledge, no one has ever dug into the moral component which is not that hard to understand and briefly describe.
It’s the story of modern America in the last twenty years, corporate capture of government for the sake of extracting as much public money as possible for the coffers at the top.
Another way to refer to it is “rent-seeking” for the corporate and government national security complex.
Rent-seeking behavior is the abandonment of providing a good product or service to customers (or one of even slightly minor social benefit) for the sole pursuit of wealth through private sector/government collusion.
The headline at the top of page is national corporate computer security rent-seeking.
And that is exactly what is happening inside the topic of cyberwar and the alleged peril of digital attack on the national infrastructure.
In the immediate term, it’s resulted in toxic legislation, CISPA, which immunizes already too-big-to-fail companies to transfer network monitoring information without any oversight or legal accountability.
And this is sold on the back of the corporate and national computer security sales pitch that this is the only way to protect the United States from the potentially disastrous consequences of cyberwar.
I’ll make a prediction. In 1994, I said “electronic Pearl Harbor” wasn’t likely. It was a good one.
Here’s another.
In the next five, or even ten years, Pasadena — or all of southern California — will lose electrical service from an earthquake before any cyberwar. And an earthquake in Los Angeles and the surrounding counties will give the federal government a much bigger emergency problem to deal with.
Anyway, to sum up, the idea of cyberwar and cyberespionage cutting down the United States is nonsensical. It’s been inflated into one of the major bullshits of the country of the USA.
I’d like to continue my work and I plan on it. But I need your help. The last year’s been a hard one and that’s my humble plea.
Sincerely, the Proprietor.
Idiot citizens obsessed by idiot country, New Serbia
U.S. Web users are searching for information about North Korea with astounding, unprecedented frequency. Google searches for “North Korea,??? currently seven times the previous peak during the country’s 2006 nuclear test, are dramatically outpacing those for Beyonce or even President Obama.
Last week, North Korea was the third most-popular term on Twitter, following only Easter and Good Friday. And these Web trends appear to reflect broader American views: Pew estimates that 36 percent of Americans are following the news “very closely??? – that’s unusually high for an international news story – with 56 percent saying the U.S. should take the threats “very seriously.???
Oddly, that skyrocketing interest does not appear to have translated into a better understanding of the North Korean threat …
The same Pew poll found that 47 percent of Americans think that North Korea is capable of launching a nuclear missile that can hit the United States, which is false …
It’s not clear why Americans who pay more attention to news reports about North Korea are so ill-informed about its military capability …
Beware the revenging pummeling labonza-belting fists of the enraged New Serbians.
The Ricin Kook
One of the old American ricin kooks occasionally mentioned on this blog during the war on terror years was found dead this week.
An AP story explains:
NORTH PLATTE, Neb. (AP) — A body found nearly a year ago in western Nebraska was that of a Wisconsin fugitive who’d been convicted of trying to produce a biological weapon, authorities say.
DNA samples and other evidence led investigators to conclude that the remains were those of 64-year-old Denys Ray Hughes, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release Thursday. Hughes was being transferred by bus from a Colorado prison to a halfway house in Milwaukee when he disappeared in May 2011; authorities believe he got off the bus somewhere in Nebraska.
The body was found April 20, 2012, on private land on the southern side of North Platte, along the South Platte River. Medical investigators said tests on the body showed the man probably died between November 2011 and February 2012. The cause of death was unclear, though Hughes had a handful of health problems.
Hughes, adds the newspaper, had a heart condition and was diabetic.
From the old DD blog entry entitled The Jailbird Bookshelf:
The evidence list from US vs. Hughes is illuminating in that it shows the standard books discussed previously in “From the Poisoners Handbook to the Botox Shoe of Death??? here.
From Hughes’ “library:??? “The Weaponeer,??? a Saxon pamphlet with a ricin recipe, “The Poor Man’s James Bond, Vol. 3“, also containing a ricin recipe, “The Poor Man’s James Bond, Vol.2,??? Festering Publication’s “Silent Death,??? containing yet another ricin recipe, “Deadly Brew,??? “Deadly Substances,??? and an assortment of what Dick Destiny blog calls really bad science books — cf., “Grandad’s Wonderful Book of Chemistry??? — for idiots or young boys.
Accompanying the books in evidence were a mortar and pestle, bottles of castor seeds, castor beans in a package, castor beans in a bin, and Red Devil lye — which is another reagent dumbly recommended by survivalist literature as useful in purifying ricin. Lye, or sodium hydroxide, is a strong base. Strong bases destroy proteins, like ricin, but for decades the literature of the domestic terrorist has cited it in their ricin recipes and it has become a marker of intent in federal cases where the US is going for a conviction on making or attempting to make a biological or chemical weapon.
Another incriminating marker is dimethyl sulfoxide, also attributed in the Hughes case. Ricin is not a contact poison but because the domestic terrorist-in-training takes seriously material like Hutchkinson’s “The Poisoner’s Handbook,??? which insists it would be handy to combine dimethyl sulfoxide with ricin in plans to poison the Pope or a government employee through the skin, it has been adopted as key part of their chemical armory.
The federal case against Hughes appeared to be an easy one, based simply on showing the jury the man’s books, chemicals, equipment for bomb-making — and one pipe bomb.
For example, it cannot help a defendant to have the jury shown any of Saxon’s books. They tend to include drawings, like Dick Destiny blog’s similar rendition (to the left), on how to attack someone with poison or explosives …
A copy of the original complaint against Hughes from last year describes ATF/FBI flypaper –gunpowder, fuses, road flares, instructions on how to build a bunker, an assortment of guns, silencers and pipe-bomb-building materials.
“Hughes was prosecuted in Phoenix and convicted of trying to produce a biological weapon and for possessing a pipe bomb and illegal gun silencers,” reads the AP report. He received a sentence of 87 months.
During the last twelve years all domestic arrests of people involved in fiddling with castor seeds has been a white man thing. No terror plots have gone forward.
And everyone arrested with the misbegotten recipes for making ricin and castor seeds has been convicted and given to the pleasure of state hospitality. No exceptions.
Castor seed fiddling always ends badly.
04.10.13
New Serbia, the mighty cyberpower
Today’s laugher, beware the avenging and pummeling fists of North Korea’s cyberwarriors:
The regime’s next move could be to break into US computer networks to steal information and spread viruses, Jang Se-yul, who defected to the South in 2008, told the Observer. North Korea’s hackers are suspected of being behind recent cyberattacks that paralysed computer networks at several South Korean banks and broadcasters.
“It would demonstrate that North Korea is a strong cyberpower,” Jang said. “Their prime target is the US, and they’ve been preparing for something like this for years, including when I was there in the 1990s. I can’t say how successful they would be, but it’s a possibility.”
The barrage of threats have failed to unnerve people in Seoul …
Related, from Fox News, which had to admit it probably wasn’t so:
The House Intelligence Committee is warning that “time is running out??? before the next major cyberattack: The Russians, Iranians, Chinese and others are likely already on your computer.
“You have criminal organizations trying to get into your personal computer and steal your personal stuff. And by the way, the Chinese are probably on your computer, the Russians are probably on your personal computer, the Iranians are already there,??? House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers (R.-MI). told Fox News.
The Revolutionary Guard on my computer?! Is it too late to remind everyone that I always thought the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was the greatest man, ever?
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‘Clean coal’ dead
Browsing through Congressional Rsearch Reports today at Steve’s Secrecy blog I came across FutureGen: A Brief History And Issues for Congress.
The cryptic name drew a blank until I suddenly remembered it was clean coal project once supported by Barack Obama.
If you download the CRS .pdf, here, you’ll quickly come to the conclusion that “clean coal” technology is finished in the United States.
Which is a good thing.
It’s all over. The only thing left to do is to admit it.
And that’s shown in the report on FutureGen. It is a mere fifteen pages long, the first five devoted to mostly white space, title and a table of contents.
To put it in a nutshell, FutureGen, a clean coal demonstrator factory and business, formed as a collaboration between the private sector and the government in 2003 during the Bush administration, has gone nowhere in a decade.
The plan to make a coal plant and sequester the produced carbon dioxide as a liquid squirted into underground rock formations has failed. Indeed, it never even really got started.
Technical problems associated with the process kept revising the price to the government upward. And with no milestones met or set, FutureGen has just served as sink for escalating cost estimates, from 1 billion, to 1.4 to 1.6.
In the intervening time period the US government failed (or didn’t even try) to assign a tax to carbon emission which would have provided American industry some incentive to get behind things like FutureGen.
And fracking, the controversial method of extracting natural gas from underground reservoir rock formations, took off.
It is easier and more lucrative to pollute water and mine natural gas, which releases less carbon dioxide than the burning of coal, then to pursue the technical fantasy of “clean coal.” There is nothing to be done with carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion except work to generate less of it. Or to at least mine sources that produce more energy for every metric ton of it generated.
The report on FutureGen and its clean coal carbon sequestration effort, or more accurately, the analysis of its slowly cooling body, is here.
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WhiteManistan Entrepreneur & Toastmaster
From the Houston Chronicle, a columnist who knows what Ted Nugent is about:
Nugent, the motor-mouthed madman of the American conservative movement, brought his self-touted business expertise to downtown San Antonio when he delivered the keynote address at a convention hosted by the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, a network designed to help business owners learn from each other.
A cuddly Uncle Ted made only one joking reference to his wish that he could mow down South Central Los Angeles with an M-4 rifle; only dropped about 10 f-bombs in 50 minutes; paid tribute to the comedy stylings of the late Richard Pryor by laughing deliriously at the thought of Pryor’s “Afro on fire??? as the comedian ran from his home in 1980 with his body engulfed in flames; and showed great restraint by only once referring to President Barack Obama as a “Chicago gangster.???
Reminds me of a good Nightclubbing.
Would have loved to be in the room to see the reaction of small businessmen to what Nugent thinks is a great joke about Richard Pryor.
Someone should offer Ted a self-help book contract for a title called “Mean, Profane, Crazy: How to max your business as a professional psychopath.”
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‘Must not shoot foot! Gaaah!’
Working hard to guarantee 2014 is like 2010 all over again. The President talks populist but never actually means it.
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04.09.13
The old southern sentiment
While on the topic of the living heirs of John Wilkes Booth, Ted Nugent made news again today for threatening the president again, twice in a little over a year now, for a NRA audience . He immediately disguised it with a transparent semantic trick, presumably to keep the US Secret Service off his back.
The left dominates the public discourse. And here we are, with the Chicago gangster, ACORN rip-off scam-artist-in-chief because we, who know better, were silent. I suppose we were being tolerant and moderate. And the Nugent guy, well he’s a radical. And again, it’s not about me. I don’t want a pat on the back. I don’t need one. I don’t seek one. It’s inconsequential.
But when I kick the door down to the enemy’s camp, would you help me shoot somebody? Just help me clear the room. And again, that’s a metaphor ladies and gentleman, I’m not recommending shooting anybody. It’s a metaphor of how to counterpunch the enemy if someone is willing to be on the frontline.
And, the Obama Hitler:
A lot of people, Cam, I’m afraid, listen to the outrageous examples, the freedom-stomping and jack-booted thuggery. And they wince a bit and they furrow their brow and they shake their heads. But then they still don’t do anything.
If you read, or listen, to the entire thing you’ll come away with the impression Nugent has plainly been driven nuts by Obama’s re-election and is still chapped from the US Secret Service visit in April of last year.
And he definitely does not like being reminded that he said he’d be dead or in jail by this time if the president won another four years in office.
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