Witnesses say a surveillance drone has crashed into a refugee camp in the Somali capital.
Drones have been used by the U.S. to attack or observe al-Qaida-linked militants in the Horn of Africa nation.
Refugees and soldiers in Mogadishu’s Badbado camp say they watched the drone crash Friday into a hut made of sticks, corrugated cans and plastic bags.
Sacdiyo Sheikh Madar, a refugee at the camp, says African Union peacekeepers came to remove it.
Police officer Ali Hussein says the drone was shaped like a small plane. A similar drone crashed into a house in Mogadishu last year.
Are we threatened by those who live in huts of sticks, corrugated cans and trash bags?
Our national security leadership apparently thinks an awful lot of stupid or just-don’t-care people do.
There’s a deep immorality here. If you don’t see it why are you reading this blog?
Formal addition of a new category: Bombing Paupers.
Best song, ever. Share and post it to places where it will be sure to infuriate. Some people need to be kicked and informed there are many who don’t share their views on US military and technological supremacy.
Working hard at it, another bog standard journalist churns out his bog standard feature on electrical doomsday, at the Boston Globe.
Contained therein, all the assertions and scenarios delivered by authority, again demonstrating what I’ve come to believe is a profound defect in the American national security mind brought on by US paranoia and the growth of the fear-based economy.
A few months back, I made the mistake of falling asleep with the television on, tuned to C-Span. While a torpid House hearing on finance lulled me to sleep, sometime during my REM rebound I found myself in the middle of a Day After-style nightmare. Turns out, I was emerging from my slumber during a forum dominated by EMPact America, a well-funded advocacy group spreading the word about the looming threats of an EMP attack.
These guys know how to scare the daylights out of you. The most prominent EMP hawk is Newt Gingrich, who peppered some of last year’s presidential debates with mini-lectures about the threat. “Without adequate preparation,” Gingrich said at one EMP conference, “we would basically lose our civilization in a matter of seconds.” There is real science behind the EMP fears, though some energy and national security analysts contend the EMP lobby greatly exaggerates the threat. (Boldface mine. It took years to force this unattributed concession.)
Analyst Sue Tierney is far more concerned about cyber threats. No bomb needed – just serious hacking qualifications, and these days it seems everybody knows a gloomy 17-year-old who’s got those. In what is widely believed to have been an Israeli-American covert effort, the Stuxnet computer worm was unleashed on the Iranian nuclear program in 2010, ruining about a fifth of the centrifuges the country uses to enrich uranium. It would be naive to think our country won’t eventually find itself on the other side of a similar attack.
Several years ago, Tierney was part of a National Academies task force charged with identifying the grid’s vulnerability to terrorists. With the World Trade Center in mind, the task force largely concentrated on trying to anticipate another Al Qaeda-style conventional attack. If Tierney were serving on the task force right now, she says, she would push for even more focus on guarding against cyber threats.
But the chairman of the task force, Granger Morgan, says that what continues to worry him the most is the havoc that bad guys could cause with relatively little technological savvy. “If I’m a terrorist, I can shut down the power system in a lot simpler ways than using a valuable nuclear device,” says Morgan, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University and a noted authority on the grid. “All I need to do is destroy a bunch of major substations.” Despite all the talk about strengthening security after 9/11, he says, “big transformers continue to sit there on pads out in the open, with only chain-link fences around them.”
Any way you look at it, these are real threats that need to be treated seriously. Don’t take my word for it. After Morgan’s task force finalized its report, the US Department of Homeland Security swooped in and classified the document. Federal officials didn’t want to give the terrorists any ideas. Not that they need any.
“Don’t take my word for it.” Good advice many sensible people will probably heed.
One would assume the Department of Homeland Security has classified many things. This being the case classification is not necessarily any imprimatur of a dangerous reality waiting to unfold.
Anyway, here again: National security experts like grains of sand on the beach, each with their version of doomsday. Always reliant on argument from authority in a country where the government and business interests aligned with security spending have spent the past decade destroying the legitimacy of such argument.
In a side note it’s worth mentioning the national publicity accruing to Newt Gingrich has actually hurt the relatively insignificant Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy lobby. It’s easy to see he’s utterly despised by a majority in Washington. So are his ideas.
Even though they may appear on C-SPAN, anyone can really if they throw a luncheon/talk in DC, EMPAct America is so out of power in recent months they resorted to employing a spammer to post backlinks to themselves in the comments sections. My spam filter kept catching them. Eventually they gave up on it. (Oops, spoke to soon. Just spied another in the spam filter for the old blog which stopped updating over a year ago.)
Found in my my inbox yesterday: “It is not difficult, nor does it take a nation-state, to compromise the North American electric grid.”
Taking up the first 130 words of a 1700 word piece on the potential for cyberattack, an Asbury Park Press reporter presents what’s standard practice — the fictional doomsday.
Power generators at a plant in New Jersey spin wildly out of control, then grind to a halt.
Other utilities step in to carry the extra load, but they, too, suffer internal malfunctions. Soon, cascading outages take out the power grid in the eastern half of the country – all carefully timed to happen in the dead of winter. Gas utilities are next.
But this isn’t like the week without power in parts of Central Jersey caused by downed limbs and trees felled by the freak October snowstorm. Power is out for much longer because the heavily damaged equipment is difficult to replace.
No heat, no running water, no toilets, no phones. Small generators die when fuel quickly runs dry. Hospitals, transportation, the banking system, the telecommunications grid – all down.
An apocalyptic fantasy or an actual threat? The prospect is something political and military leaders and security analysts have been raising alarms about for several years.
Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen, who retired in September, said during his tenure that cyberattacks pose an “existential threat” to the United States.
Over the holidays I was a source for the piece. For the phone chat, which lasted long enough, the readers gets:
Yet not every expert buys the grim scenario of a downed electrical grid.
It’s almost progress. Most of the time such stories don’t contain anything but the presentation of a future doomsday and then three or four business interests or government men saying it’s all true.
But first, a detour. Which Doomsday will strike the country first?
The consequences of a successful attack against critical infrastructure makes these cost increases look like chump change. It would put people into the Dark Ages”, commented Larry Ponemon, chairman of the Ponemon Institute.
The Dark Ages.
To a person, all the journalists I’ve spoken with (and there have been lots over the last decade) never step outside their beats to see how regular the warnings about doomsday are in every domain having to do with national security. If they do, these things either don’t register or are considered unimportant, not part of their world.
I’ve not infrequently asked something like which doomsday is it to be? All of them? One? Some? None? How can you tell from reading the usual public testimony of the experts?
I’ve come to believe there’s a defect in American thinking, one brought about by the conjunction of national paranoia after 9/11 and the fear-based economy. And that defect paralyzes the ability to think critically, to take time to consider the passage of recent history, context and perspective. It can also be said that it’s virtually impossible to get someone to look at things a little differently when their job and usefulness to higher ups depends on them always predicting disaster.
It’s far easier to just shut up and unquestioningly accept all the arguments presented from authority. The only silver lining, and it’s a really thin one, is that reality just often doesn’t give a shit about what’s printed in newspapers, shown on tv and emitted in policy documents.
And this is, at the root, fundamentally what the Asbury Park Press news report, a long one for the topic, does. It presents two views but the one that gets the most attention is the one asserting that electrical grid collapse is probably coming because we’re not doing enough about it. And this is the problem in all future doomsdays. There’s never enough being done. We cannot imagine what trouble awaits if the warnings are not heeded now.
For this the reporter commits one sin. But it’s one I repeatedly touched upon with him.
And it has to do with the claim that “cyberintruders” caused power blackouts in foreign cities.
This is the infamous story of the Brazil blackouts.
Reporter Ken Serrano uses it as one of three examples of infrastructure cyberattack, given to him by James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
It reads:
“A blackout in Brazil – it is hotly contested whether a cyberattack was responsible.”
Fair enough. Then the newspaper puts its fingers every so lightly on the scale.
Two or three paragraphs on Serrano writes:
In May 2009, President Barack Obama spoke about the risk of cyberattacks.
“We count on computer networks to deliver our oil and gas, our power and our water. We rely on them for public transportation and air traffic control,” the president said. “Yet we know that cyberintruders have probed our electrical grid and that in other countries cyberattacks have plunged entire cities into darkness.”
Early in his presidency, Obama issued a preliminary cybersecurity strategy and this official statement was part of the news surrounding it.
One data point to demonstrate an argument cannot be made into two simply by passing it through different sources from authority, even if one of them is the president.
General interest readers are certainly unlikely to know such a thing. And they certainly do not know, nor should they be expected to know,
the genesis of all the myths, or contested claims.
However, it is the journalist’s job to tell them. And the Asbury Park Press, for this feature, was apprised of the details.
In any case, eventually the “opposing view” is presented — in small print. (Read the story, note how all the bold print is employed. I had to grin a bit.)
Here is the opposing view, mine. And it’s a challenge none of the other sources polled for the story have any good answer for:
“If you make extraordinary claims, you need to produce extraordinary proof,” said [George Smith, GlobalSecurity.Org Senior Fellow) who has been writing about national security and technology issues for more than a decade.
As for a blackout in Brazil in 2007 being caused by a cyberattack, he said, “It’s been debunked. They’ve never produced any extraordinary proof.”
Many in our government have become very accustomed to never providing extraordinary proof to back up anything. It is a very bad habit, one that has had horrible results for the country.
And James Lewis, resourced for the story and formerly an employee of the US government, simply goes back to the stock play book to answer the criticism:
Lewis stands by his sources on the Brazilian blackout, adding that it involved an insider and software manipulation.
Translated: I know it because I have sources.
James Lewis often appears in the news to discuss matters of national cybersecurity and cyberwar. Often what he is reported to say is informative and reasonable.
But for the newspaper this was lame. Everyone knows the standard abuse — the government man, or the ex-government man, always has the inside information. Their say trumps everyone else’s, no proof necessary. QED.
“Lewis fears that it will take a catastrophe for changes to occur,” reads the newspaper. Then, the inevitable mentions of Pearl Harbor and 9/11.
Of course, this will remain a topic for serious discussion at the national and the grass roots level for a good long time. And the Asbury Park Press attempted to do this. However, it’s also a topic that is not well-served by now far too overused appraisals of what’s going to happen.
Footnote:
Reads another quote from the Asbury Park Press:
“Stuxnet demonstrated how all industries can be at risk,” said Joe Weiss, a blogger on cybersecurity and consultant to companies using Industrial Control Systems.
That consultant was responsible for a recent viral news story, now withdrawn, on alleged attack on a heartland water system, commented upon here.
Soligenix, a small company from the old Alliance for Biosecurity, recently acquired about six hundred thousand dollars from a New Jersey government state tax division function. Essentially, it looks like an accounting trick installed by the state to keep poorly-performing companies alive for a little while.
In the last ten years Soligenix hasn’t brought anything to market. And its main claim to funding has been for development of a ricin vaccine, called RiVax.
There is no demand or need for a ricin vaccine except perhaps among other researchers who work with pure ricin.
More recently it has also hitched its dray to anthrax vaccine manufacturing — another area of endeavor where the taxpayer is a guaranteed buyer.
Soligenix has received $574,000 in funding in a non-dilutive financing through the State of New Jersey’s technology business tax certificate transfer program, the company said Thursday …
The funds boost the company’s cash position to $6.2 million, or $0.028 per share, with no debt or preferred stock outstanding.
Soligenix expects the cash to last until the third-quarter of 2013, it said …
The technology business tax certificate transfer program allows approved and unprofitable biotech companies to sell their unused net operating loss carryovers (NOLs) in addition to unused research and development tax credits for at least 80 percent of the value of the tax benefits to “unaffiliated” profitable corporate taxpayers in the State of New Jersey … This allows biotech businesses to turn their tax losses and credits into cash proceeds to fund additional research and development, buy equipment or facilities, or cover other allowable expenses …
Local pharmaceutical developer Soligenix sought yesterday to shore up its stock price by doing a 1 for 20 reverse split, effectively converting 20 shares into 1, ending at yesterday’s market close with a price of less than a dollar.
The company’s shares have been in a long, slow decline.
This is not precisely true. Soligenix’s stock price went from being worth very little to worth almost nothing overnight, according to the graph.
Soligenix was formerly known as DOR Biopharma. The name change never helped.
“Israel, Finland and Sweden are more prepared than larger nations to fight a conflict in cyberspace, according to a McAfee-backed cyber-defence study,” reports the Register. (No link.)
Next:
The study, Cyber-security: The Vexed Question of Global Rules, is based on interviews with experts in the nascent field by by McAfee and Security & Defence Agenda, a defence think-tank. No metrics are involved in the study, which even McAfee admits is largely subjective. Brussels-based SDA based its conclusions on “in-depth interviews with some 80 world-leading policy-makers and cyber-security experts” …
Yes, the vexed question of global rules. Indeed it is proof they have scoured the corporate IT landscape for the talent to write a title only those paid to do so would read. And found it in Wallonia.
Today I point you to an article in the Western Farm Press on the attempted revival of the castor industry in the US. Castor oil has value in industry but in the Seventies it died here for reasons having to do with price. It was produced much more cheaply overseas and today India owns most of the business.
Castor mills existed in the US and the plant was cultivated in Texas and other places. No significant hazard was associated with its growth and use.
Since castor was cultivated and milled, trucks carrying castor seed and the mash of them traveled the roads of the land.
[Castor seed oilcake] and seeds containing ricin would have had to travel the roads of the country. If one searches further, reference to it can be found in municipal codes for the transporting of “hazardous materials” via trucking. Castor seed oilcake [was] a material that [did] not require a 24-hour emergency phone hotline listed on the shipping manifest. In the Texas city of Laredo’s municipal code, the materials, referred to as “castor bean,” “castor meal,” “castor flake,” and “castor pomace” are things deemed of the same hazard, or lack of it, as “dry ice,” “fish meal,” “fish scrap,” “battery powered equipment,” “battery powered vehicle,” “electric wheelchair” and “refrigerating machine.”
The war on terror changed everything. Good science, common sense and a regard for the value in history were tossed out for the equivalent of old wive’s tales, a belief in rubbish minted by the US extremist right in the Eighties, and very bad counter-terror forecasting.
Castor seeds, because they contain about five percent protein — most of which is assumed to be ricin — were deemed easy to make into a weapon of mass destruction. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
However, it became the received wisdom. It hasn’t mattered that no terrorists have ever successfully used ricin. And it has not mattered that there has only been one instance, ever, (one I’m not going to mention because it’s cited ad nauseam, anyway) of the use of ricin in a state-instigated assassination.
So any attempt to revive castor cultivation in the US immediately runs up against belief from the war on terror and the homeland security apparatus.
An article published today, by BusinessWeek, entitled “Biological Attack Threat Cited as Pentagon Bolsters Defenses,” illustrates the problem.
First, the article is based on no actual evidence other than the now bog standard claims about what is easy for terrorists and supposition.
“I would put ricin at the top of the list” of threats, Kelsey Gregg of the [Federation of American Scientists] said. “You can get a deadly amount of it pretty easily.”
What you can get is an amount of castor powder, or the grind of castor seeds. And it contains some ricin but not quite enough to make a weapon of mass destruction although it has occasionally been used in domestic poisoning attempts — one, I believe — in the last decade. It’s put into food in such instances and, even then, often the victim stubbornly refuses to die.
And any larger purchases or attempts to get bagloads of castor seeds in the US are now monitored to a certain extent.
In any case, no terrorists have ever produced purified ricin. None. It hasn’t been done.
And that’s because it isn’t the elementary procedure lay people, and this includes most counter-terror experts in the employ of the US government, believe it to be.
The idea that ricin was easy to make comes solely from the extremist survivalist right in the United States. This group had authors with names like Kurt Saxon and Maxwell Hutchkinson, individuals who put their notional ricin recipes, sloppy inexact procedures for simply grinding and degreasing castor seeds, into pamphlets and books published by the fringe press in this country.
But after 9/11, the US national security apparatus, along with the mainstream media, worked the angle that al Qaeda could whip up anything dangerous with very little effort.
And one component of the hysteria always contained assertions that chemical and biological weapons were easy to make from recipes available from the Internet in seconds.
These recipes were all descendants of the trash printed by the US neo-Nazi/survivalist right. However, that material had gone around the world and been translated in documents subsequently found in hideouts in Kabul and Kandahar after the US overthrow of the Taliban.
But I’ve wandered far from my promise to point to the article on tentative steps toward a renewal of castor agriculture in the US, published in the Western Farm Press.
In a time when bio-security and foreign oil dependency share the spotlight as major issues facing the nation, it comes as no surprise that the idea of growing castor on U.S. soil and extracting castor oil for biofuels and industrial use is a growing controversy with supporters on both sides of the question: Would the benefits outweigh the risks?
On one hand there is little or no commercial castor production in the U.S. Nearly all castor oil used in the U.S. is imported from India, China and Brazil. But because of its high seed oil content, castor has tremendous potential as an oilseed crop in North America, especially in parts of the Southwest. The increasing demand and potential use of castor oil in the production of specialty chemicals, biodiesel, and RFS2 renewable fuel has generated considerable interest by several companies in developing commercial castor oil production in this country. Since castor grows well on marginal land, it represents an alternative crop suitable for production in select areas of Texas.
On the other hand, castor production comes with a reputation, largely related to the fear of growing a potentially toxic crop. Ricin, a protein toxin found only in the endosperm of castor seed, can represent up to 5 percent of the meal weight remaining after oil extraction. It could pose a threat if not carefully isolated and controlled as there is a concern the meal could be refined and used as a bioterrorism agent.
“With castor seed producing as much as 50 percent oil and its ability to grow productively on marginal land, it represents a crop that could address a growing demand for castor oil. India virtually controls the global market now, and there is potential for domestic production,” reports Dr. Calvin Trostle, associate professor and research scientist at Texas A&M AgriLife in Lubbock.
“Castor production will play a major role for many years to come,” agrees Dr. Dick Auld, oilseed crop specialist and research scientist at Texas Tech University. “At one time some 70,000 acres in Texas were dedicated to castor farming. But when prices fell in the 1970s interest faded, and concerns over ricin and the potential for contamination of food crops overshadowed interest for its return.”
Castor/ricin contamination of food crops is not something that seems to concern that part of the world that still uses it for bulk oil and fertilizer production. India, China and Brazil simply do not care what beliefs the United States has twisted itself into accepting because of the war on terror.
Yet, the agricultural scientists working on the worthy idea to bring this industry back must act like ricin toxicity is a substantial obstacle. For practical purposes it is but this is far more due to the nature of the time we live in than any real need to come up with new methods and plans for growing and milling castor plants.
It wasn’t this way in the past. It isn’t anywhere else, either. And in the city of Laredo they once did not worry much about a spilled truck load of castor mash or castor seeds.
Clean it up, sweep it to the side of the road, let the sun and weather take care of it, whatever. But it in no way merits fear like a potential weapon of mass destruction.
“[Calvin Trostle] adds that researchers are recommending stringent management and control measures, such as dedicating combines to castor-only applications, taking safeguard in transportation and storage of castor seed to eliminate contamination and restrictions on growing food crops on fields used for castor,” reads the Western Farm Press near the end.
In the United States this procedure, which here is presented for the isolation and analysis of the chemical properties of castor oil, would be considered a ricin recipe because it also yields de-greased castor mash.
Indeed, the crime one is convicted of when caught pounding castor seeds in the US is that of taking a significant step toward the making of a chemical or biological weapon. And everyone who has been brought up on such a charge, or a related one in the last decade, has been sent over.
“The castor meal or cake is mainly used as fertilizer, this is because it is unsuitable as an animal feed because of the presence of toxic protein called ricin and toxic allergen often referred to as CBA (castor bean allergen),” write the Rufus Giwa authors. “However, it is noteworthy that none of the toxic components is carried into the oil.”
My favorite unique social protest group, the Ukrainian FEMEN, again in a collection of photos, this time in Zurich, Schweiz (the well known country for stealth banking and corporate wealth tax evasion), protesting the Hockey World Cup.
A collection of photos taken of FEMEN, a unique Ukrainian social protest group, at the World Economic Forum in Davis, Schweiz, is here at Cryptome.
Do go there at once to see them full size and — ahem — in the flesh.
The Davos World Economic Forum is where all the parasites and arch-villains masters of the global economy and idea farm meet each year to discuss how things are to be messed up in the coming months.
I think you’ll agree, though, the action to not be missed was all outside and of more humble origin. It was good to be a policeman on that day.
Those now dispensing judgment from on high are not gods, though they must feel like it. The people striking mortals down with drones are doubtless as capable as anyone else of self-deception, denial and cognitive illusions. More so, perhaps, as the eminent fictions of the Bush years and the growing delusions of the current president suggest …
These power-damaged people have been granted the chance to fulfill one of humankind’s abiding fantasies: to vaporise their enemies, as if with a curse or a prayer, effortlessly and from a safe distance …
[One] danger is acknowledged in a remarkably candid assessment published by the UK’s Ministry of Defence, which also deploys drones, and has also used them to kill civilians. It maintains that the undeclared air war in Pakistan and Yemen “is totally a function of the existence of an unmanned capability – it is unlikely a similar scale of force would be used if this capability were not available”.
The author also seems to argue that by not being put at risk, as Americans were when they had to dispense with the Japanese and the Germans in WWII, there is no deterrent to use.
However, deterrence can be thought of as deferred, put off to some future date as vengeance since the only way those attacked can retaliate is through terrorism, should the created enmities last long enough.
However, the use of terrorism on the US, or on clients, is always seen in this nation as a reason to turn loose more drones.
And I’m still waiting for someone, other than here, to dig into the issue of the haves bombing the have-nots. Strictly speaking, it’s a war of impunity against paupers. Drones will never be turned loose on those who have the money to immediately take action.
In this, Iran has a deterrent should they get the bomb. And Pakistan has the ability to make a similar threatening noise.
Through diplomatic channels it becomes plausible to suggest to American leadership that unless the war of impunity ceases, there are other far less pleasant methods of escalation than standard state-sponsored terrorism they’re prepared to let us come to grips with. Maybe such a thing would be a bluff. And maybe not.
In the old Star Trek episode — Mirror, Mirror — the evil Kirk had something called the Tantalus Field, a weapon to disappear enemies with impunity. The good Kirk chose not to use it to get himself out of a jam although in the hands of his alternative evil Federation girlfriend, it was.
Readers will recall the absurd public relations program launched a month or so ago, one designed to increase tourism and therefore spur economic growth and jobs in the hospitality industry.
You see, it’s recognized we have a bad rep. Lotsa people don’t wanna come here anymore. They don’t dig being run through the anti-terrorism infrastructure.
So the public makeover was sold as a rebranding — visit the United States of Awesome Possibilities.
Say hello to “the United States of Awesome Possibilities” as it looks to visitors from abroad to help lift it out of the economic doldrums.
By soft-pedaling patriotism, the newly-formed US national tourism board tasked with getting more tourists — and their money — onto US soil is reinventing the nation as a hip new land of diversity and possibilities.
“We’re rebranding America for the first time,” said Jim Evans, chief executive of the Corporation for Travel Promotion, ahead of the World Travel Market that opened Monday in London.
“Over the last 10 or 12 years, people have seen America as unwelcoming as we’ve focused on security …
Today from the wires, two young Englishes, refused entry at Los Angeles International because of exuberant Twitter tweets reported on the national anti-terror tip and squealer network.
A pair of U.K. tourists were arrested after landing in Los Angeles on terror charges after joking on Twitter they were going to ‘destroy America’ and ‘dig up Marilyn Monroe.’
Leigh Van Bryan, 26, was detained last Monday after landing in Los Angeles with his friend, 24-year-old Emily Bunting, according to the British Daily Mail.
Bryan was flagged as a potential threat after tweeting this message about his upcoming trip to Hollywood “@MelissaxWalton free this week for a quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America? x”
Bryan and Bunting told officials the term “destroy” was British slang for “party.” Despite the explanation, they were held on suspicion of planning to commit crimes and their passports were confiscated, the Daily Mail reported.
Bryan was also questioned about another tweet quoting the animated show, “Family Guy:” “3 weeks today, we’re totally in LA p****** people off on Hollywood Blvd and digging Marilyn Monroe up!”
Bryan’s luggage was searched for spades and shovels as a result.
Boost jobs in travel and tourism. This industry is one of America’s largest employers, but the U.S. has lost significant market share. By making it easier to visit the U.S. through improved visa processes, we can win back market share in travel and tourism and create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
But as head of Obama’s expired jobs advisory council Immelt was nothing if not an odious fellow, unmoored from all reality except his own private Idaho.
Apparently homeland security and the TSA never got the memo and sent the Englishes home as undesirables.
