- We've received several emails about very early Reuters
stories which stated there were reports of one or more remotely-located
transmission towers which had come down and probably caused the blackout.
-
- Despite official statements and 'absolute' assurances
that the blackout is not a 'terrorist' event, it is not hard to envision
a lone individual bringing down a major transmission tower in a remote
area with a single charge of explosives.
-
- Further, for reasons of 'national security' it seems
rather obvious the administration would have nothing to gain by admitting
the blackout was caused by a single person bringing down a tower or two
in the somewhere in the vast US back country. How many vulnerable main
transmission towers are there in the US? 50,000? 100,000? More?
-
- Below is a suspicious story we ran several months ago
which raises a basket full of questions. - ed.
US Soldier Tried To Plant Explosive At Fl Power Plant - Police
By Noelle Phillips
Savannah Morning News
5-23-2
-
- Jacksonville police arrested a Fort Stewart soldier Saturday
after finding him armed, wearing black clothes and leaving a power plant
where he allegedly left an explosive.
-
- Spc. Derek Lawrence Peterson, 27, is being held on a
$5 million bond by the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Department of Corrections.
He has been charged with attempting to detonate an explosive device.
-
- Peterson belongs to B Company, 1st Battalion, 64th Armor
and has been stationed at Fort Stewart since March, said Dina McCain, a
Fort Stewart spokeswoman.
-
- McCain said she did not know whether Army investigators
were involved with the case and referred all questions about it to Jacksonville
police.
-
- An officer with the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office stopped
Peterson at 11:15 p.m. Saturday for speeding. The officer found Peterson
wearing all black clothing and black, plastic pads on his knees and elbows,
according to a sheriff's department report. He also had a pistol in a shoulder
holster.
-
- The officer recognized Peterson's black 2002 Chevrolet
Silverado pickup because he had noticed it backed up to the Florida Power
and Light station's main gate 30 minutes earlier as he drove to assist
another officer.
-
- The officer searched Peterson's truck and found a 12-inch
knife, a six-inch knife, a 12-gauge shotgun, shotgun shells, .45-caliber
bullets, four ammo magazines, a six-volt battery, duct tape, speaker wire
and plastic from an explosive device, the report said.
-
- After being informed of his rights, wrote arresting officer
D.F. Valiante, "the suspect advised me that he was on the power plant
property to practice recon tactics."
-
- Police followed footprints on a dirt road at the power
plant and found an explosive device underneath the power lines, the report
said.
-
- Peterson allegedly told police he had placed a Hoffman
explosive device, equal in power to a half-stick of dynamite. He had planned
to detonate the explosive but was worried that he would be injured in the
blast, the report said. Instead, Peterson removed a six-volt battery and
threw it into the woods.
-
- A bomb squad disposed of the explosive.
-
- Peterson's next court date is June 4. He is not allowed
visitors at the jail, according to the corrections department.
-
- Military reporter Noelle Phillips can be reached at phillips
@ savannahnow.com or 652-0366.
-
- http://www.savannahnow.com/stories/051602/LOCsoldierarrest.shtml
-
-
-
-
- Comment
-
- From Name Witheld
8-16-3
-
- Jeff,
-
- With regards to your article http://rense.com/general40/blow.htm
"Did One Person Blow One Tower And Cause Blackout?"
-
- Last month, the article below appeared on the Politechbot
mail list. It seems to make some very good points. Now we hear that the
US power outage may have been the result of someone doing exactly the kind
of remote, low-personal-risk attack the article talks of. (Taking down
a power transmission pylon, or a power station control system with a computer
virus.)
-
- Did someone in the US war-cabal decide they'd better
make it look like 'those dammed terrorists' were trying everything possible?
The timing is very suspicious. No such attacks - until someone wonders
publicly _why_ no such attacks.
-
- Regards,XXX
-
- Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003
To: xxxxxx
From: xxxxxxx
Subject: FC: Anonymous reply to terror attacks and protecting infrastructure
-
- [Anyone who's ever explored the steam tunnels under a
university can attest to this! ]
-
- This discussion prompts me to offer a thought I've had
for some time. I belong to an Australian ad hoc group of 'urban infiltration'
enthusiasts. We explore civil infrastructure of all kinds - whatever we
can find and get into, regardless of its supposedly 'off limits' status.
There are branches of our group in most major cities in Australia. Naturally,
we keep records of what we find, to share with other people with like interests.
We also communicate with similar groups overseas. It is quite a common
passtime, both in the USA, and Europe, and doing a google for 'infiltration'
'draining', 'souterains', 'urban exploration', etc will turn up many web
sites of such groups world wide.
-
- Anyway, getting back to the point. Over the years, it
becomes glaringly obvious to explorers such as ourselves, that almost all
of the critical infrastructure of large cities is _totally_ vulnerable.
Electricity, water, gas, communications, sewage, drainage, rail - all of
them could be shut down over wide areas for days or weeks by simple acts
of vandalism, at remote and unguarded locations. If several different services
were taken out at once, in ways requiring significant effort to repair
(not difficult to arrange), it might be very hard to organise the restoration
of services within a timescale compatible with maintenance of social order
within a large city.
-
- We joke among ourselves that its lucky we just like looking
and taking pictures, because if we wanted to it would be child's play to
totally shut down virtually any city. There are just _too_many_ critical
services exposed in too many places, almost all of them with little or
zero security (and virtually impossible to provide security.) In the present
'crisis', there have been some ostentatious (but not very effective) upgrades
to security at prominent landmarks and key facilities. For instance, the
Sydney Harbour Bridge now has a few security guards on foot patrol, and
a few more video cameras. But even that national icon would still be vulnerable
to a determined and creative attack. Elsewhere, at less visible but still
critical locations, there have been precisely zero changes in security
arrangements.
-
-
- And yet, so far there do not seem to have been any serious
incidents of infrastructure sabotage, in any of the 'coalition of the willing'
countries. Or anywhere else not actually in the middle of a war, for that
matter. To those of us with some interest in politics, this is an interesting
contradiction to official assertions of frequent impending terrorist attacks.
If I were one of these hypothetical terrorists, with a grudge against western
nations, I suspect the idea of causing great economic havoc would be just
as attractive as committing acts of mass murder. Possibly more so, actually,
since it would make a point without at the same time creating violent nationalistic
hatred of whatever cause was motivating me.
-
- So we have two observations: 1. It would be easy for
anyone wishing to massively disrupt society, to successfully attack the
crucial infrastructure (and escape free.)
-
- 2. Such attacks do not seem to occur. Instead we have
(in the USA) one instance of spectactular, suicidal, localised destruction
(WTC), and one instance of a generally disruptive (but politically targeted)
biological attack. (The anthrax mailings.)
-
- The only possible conclusion, is that there is simply
no one seriously interested in committing major infrastructure attacks.
And that implies there are actually no true (or even wannabe) 'terrorists'
among us. And never have been.
-
- Which in turn implies that all the actual and threatened
attacks were not initiated by 'terrorists' (as advertised on TV), but by
people with quite different motivations.
-
- As for who they are, and their motivations, I notice
the rest of the internet has a few things to say about that. Hovever, it
is curious to note that our governments, while doing their best to scare
the citizenry with tales of impending attacks, and making a great show
of upgrading security around high visibility 'targets', tend to be doing
virtually nothing of substance to protect the _real_ soft and vulnerable
spots of our society - the critical service infrastructure of the cities.
-
- Its as if our governments are certain these targets will
not be attacked. Which is quite fortunate, since the effort required to
harden all that infrastructure, including things like the fiber optic lines,
and create a truly 'secure society', would be astronomical. I suggest that
the ideal of a 'secure society' would be completely beyond the realm of
the possible. Physically, it would require the laws of thermodynamics to
be suspended. (More energy needed to run the security apparatus than the
rest of society.) Economically, nothing could be profitable under the burden
of massive security system cost overheads. Politically, it would require
the elimination of almost all freedoms.
-
- If there were any real terrorists, our entire western
way of life would be untenable. The combination of technology and centralization
makes us just too vulnerable to survive determined and creative attacks
on our infrastructure.
-
- Regards, [deleted]
-
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