Project Hydra: “Attack-Proof” Power Line to be Installed Under New York
May 22nd, 2007Do you ever wonder why “the terrorists” don’t attack the undefended power and data infrastructures in the United States?
You hear a lot about “the terrorists” trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction, but you don’t hear much about the damage that could be done with bolt cutters, shovels and wrenches. I guess we are to believe that “the terrorists” can obtain and use weapons of mass destruction, but don’t have access to Home Depot.
I need to be very careful about writing anything which may be viewed as providing specific operational guidance (for example, the locations of things that any 12 year old could find using Google), but keep this quote in mind from my old cyberwar essay:
They can’t move trillions of dollars around per day without the Internet. What happens to the richest country in the world without its money? [Actually, its ability to go further into debt.] Remember, today, information equals money. You take away the information, you take away the money. You take away the flow of information, you take away the flow of money.
And this quote from my Wall Street Chop Shop piece:
Entirely new computer networks were built that linked the systems of these up-start, sub-prime lending corporations that—if you’re fortunate—you’ve never heard of, to what we called “The Mother Ship” in New York, a firm that just about anyone with a net worth of a million dollars or more would probably recognize.
I was present at one of these 3am infrastructure sessions (getting paid double time), in a machine room with servers stacked floor to ceiling, cooling fans screaming, and black coffee going down by the pot full. We were taking orders from the “global ops center” in New York. The blinking lights on the “big-iron” Cisco routers indicated that roughly US$5 billion in funny money was going to move between the red-headed stepchild operation I worked for and the polished halls of The Mother Ship each month.
They’re going with a nice name for the project, though… The hydra, a terrifying, multiheaded beast is being used to describe an “attack proof” power backup system for New York. As usual, I couldn’t make it up if I tried.
Via: Reuters:
Consolidated Edison, Inc and American Superconductor Corporation have agreed to put a superconducting power line under midtown New York that should lead to a sturdier power grid able to withstand extreme weather and attacks.
The move is part of an effort by Con Ed to upgrade the power grid in New York. A power outage in Queens, New York last summer, and the August 2003 blackout that hit parts of the U.S. Northeast, Canada and the Midwest, have raised concerns about power delivery in New York’s financial district, seen as vital to the nation’s economy.
The Department of Homeland Security will fund up to $25 million for the nearly $40 million superconductor cable, it calls “Project Hydra,” after the mythical Greek monster that grew back multiple heads when one was severed.
The cable will link two substations in Manhattan. The department said the project could lead to further deployment of the technology which also suppresses power surges.
“We have asked AMSC and Consolidated Edison to demonstrate superconductor solutions in New York City that will serve to keep our centers of commerce on line under all conditions – including grid events related to severe weather, accidents or terrorist attacks,” Jay Cohen, the Department of Homeland Security’s undersecretary for technology, said in a statement on Monday.
California to Spend More on Prisons than on Higher Education
May 21st, 2007Via: San Francisco Chronicle:
As the costs for fixing the state’s troubled corrections system rocket higher, California is headed for a dubious milestone — for the first time the state will spend more on incarcerating inmates than on educating students in its public universities.
Based on current spending trends, California’s prison budget will overtake spending on the state’s universities in five years. No other big state in the country spends close to as much on its prisons compared with universities.
But California has all but guaranteed that prisons will eat up an increasingly large share of taxpayer money because of chronic failures in a system that the state is now planning to expand.
Under a new state law, California will spend $7.4 billion to build 40,000 new prison beds, and that is over and above the current annual operating budget of more than $10 billion. Interest payments alone on the billions of dollars of bonds that will be sold to finance the new construction will amount to $330 million a year by 2011 — all money that will not be available for higher education or other state priorities.
UK: Police Using Surveillance Drones Designed for Military
May 21st, 2007Via: thisislondon:
The UK’s first police “spy drone” took to the skies today.
The remote control helicopter, fitted with CCTV cameras, will be used by officers in Merseyside to track criminals and record anti-social behaviour.
The drone is only a metre wide, weighs less than a bag of sugar, and can record images from a height of 500m.
It was originally used for military reconnaissance but is now being trialled by a mainstream police force.
A New Improved America
May 21st, 2007Via: Fred On Everything:
Something is wrong with the United States. I think most of us have noticed it. There is a mortal rot in the country, made manifest by many little rots that are hard to integrate mentally yet are, I think, somehow related. The change is grave, accelerating, probably irreversible, and fascinating. Things are not as they were.
The United States is the most hated country on the planet, followed by, to the extent that there is a distinction, Israel. So far as I know, there are no other contenders. You can say “Who cares?†as many will say, or “Screw’em if they can’t take a joke,†or “I’d ratherh be feared than loved.†All very droll. Still, it is an interesting datum. No country ever lives up to its own PR, but there was a time when America was widely admired. Now, almost universally, it is seen as a rogue state. And is.
Research Credit: D
Woman Lies Dying on Hospital Emergency Room Floor, Janitor Cleans Around Her, Cops Arrest Her, She Dies
May 21st, 2007Via: Los Angeles Times:
In the emergency room at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, Edith Isabel Rodriguez was seen as a complainer.
“Thanks a lot, officers,” an emergency room nurse told Los Angeles County police who brought in Rodriguez early May 9 after finding her in front of the Willowbrook hospital yelling for help. “This is her third time here.”
The 43-year-old mother of three had been released from the emergency room hours earlier, her third visit in three days for abdominal pain. She’d been given prescription medication and a doctor’s appointment.
Turning to Rodriguez, the nurse said, “You have already been seen, and there is nothing we can do,” according to a report by the county office of public safety, which provides security at the hospital.
Parked in the emergency room lobby in a wheelchair after police left, she fell to the floor. She lay on the linoleum, writhing in pain, for 45 minutes, as staffers worked at their desks and numerous patients looked on.
Aside from one patient who briefly checked on her condition, no one helped her. A janitor cleaned the floor around her as if she were a piece of furniture. A closed-circuit camera captured everyone’s apparent indifference.
Arriving to find Rodriguez on the floor, her boyfriend unsuccessfully tried to enlist help from the medical staff and county police — even a 911 dispatcher, who balked at sending rescuers to a hospital.
Alerted to the “disturbance” in the lobby, police stepped in — by running Rodriguez’s record. They found an outstanding warrant and prepared to take her to jail. She died before she could be put into a squad car.
KUWAIT FORCED TO END LINK WITH U.S. DOLLAR
May 21st, 2007Via: Telegraph:
Kuwait has surrendered to speculators by breaking the tie with the dollar in a move that has dismayed Arab oil producers and will have a knock-on effect in currency markets today.
The Gulf oil state said it had been forced to end the link and tie the dinar to a basket of currencies which will include sterling because of the long-running dollar slide and the increase in the rate of domestic inflation.
Sheikh Salem Abdul-Aziz al-Sabah, governor of the central bank, said the step was part of the bank’s efforts to curb inflationary pressure.
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Kuwait’s decision took other Gulf states by surprise and raised further question marks over plans for monetary union in the region, although the governor insisted the state remained committed to the concept. Currency markets in the Gulf almost ground to a halt as dealers attempted to assess the impact of the move and the effect on international markets.
Related: I’m Nibbling at Some Gold in Here
Why the U.S. Doesn’t Stop Importing Tainted Food from China
May 21st, 2007Always low prices. Always.
At least a crock of shit would be useful. You can compost it and put it on your garden.
“Typical Americans” are nourished on increasing amounts of petroleum, empty calories and toxic slag from slave labor camps in China. I wouldn’t allow what “typical Americans” are eating everyday into my compost heap.
Society is now a zombie consumer death cult, with uncontrollable self destructive urges. Everything is being turned to poison and the goal of the zombies is to consume as much of that poison as possible before their carcasses simply give out. Oh yeah, they want to make more zombies in the process.
But is it time to get excited about the next election?
Someone sent me an email asking me which candidate I’d like to see win the next U.S. Presidential Election.
I’m not sure if the person was serious, just taking the piss or trying to insult my intelligence, but here was my response:
“Are you out of your f*@*^%$ mind? Have you been paying attention to ANYTHING I’ve been posting here for the LAST FIVE F&@&%$! YEARS!?
Run for your life.
If you get cornered by zombies, aim for their heads.
Kevin
Don’t get taken in by the zombie mind trick which tempts you to engage in worthless political debates. If I catch myself reading or viewing corporate propaganda and starting to think in terms of a political solution to this shit we’re in, this mantra helps me get through it:
You are a zombie. You are undead. I will not join you.
It’s weird, but it works well. Try it, the next time you’re thinking about mainstream politics in the U.S.
I don’t know what you’re going to be eating in the meantime, but if you keep the zombie scripts out of your mind, eventually you’ll figure out how to grow your own food.
Via: San Jose Mercury News:
Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical. Frozen catfish laden with banned antibiotics. Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria. Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.
These were among the 107 food imports from China the Food and Drug Administration detained at U.S. ports just last month, agency documents reveal, along with more than 1,000 shipments of tainted Chinese dietary supplements, toxic Chinese cosmetics and counterfeit Chinese medicines.
For years, U.S. inspection records show, China has flooded the United States with foods unfit for human consumption. And for years, FDA inspectors have simply returned to Chinese importers the small portion of those products they caught – many of which turned up at U.S. borders again, making a second or third attempt at entry.
Now the confluence of two events – the highly publicized contamination of U.S. chicken, pork and fish with tainted Chinese pet food ingredients and this week’s resumption of high-level economic and trade talks with China – has activists and members of Congress demanding the United States tell China it is fed up.
Dead pets and melamine-tainted food notwithstanding, change will prove difficult, policy experts say, in large part because U.S. companies have become so dependent on the Chinese economy that tighter rules on imports stand to harm the U.S. economy, too.
“So many U.S. companies are directly or indirectly involved in China now, the commercial interest of the United States these days has become to allow imports to come in as quickly and smoothly as possible,” said Robert B. Cassidy, a former assistant U.S. trade representative for China and now director of international trade and services for Kelley Drye Collier Shannon, a Washington law firm.
‘Kowtowing to China’
As a result, the United States finds itself “kowtowing to China,” Cassidy said, even as that country keeps sending American consumers adulterated and mislabeled foods.
It’s not just about cheap imports, added Carol Tucker Foreman, a former assistant secretary of agriculture now at the Consumer Federation of America.
“Our farmers and food processors have drooled for years to be able to sell their food to that massive market,” Foreman said. “The Chinese counterfeit. They have a serious piracy problem. But we put up with it because we want to sell to them.”
British Police Chief on “Orwellian Situation”
May 20th, 2007Via: BBC:
A senior police officer has said he fears the spread of CCTV cameras is leading to “an Orwellian situation”.
Deputy chief constable of Hampshire Ian Readhead said Britain could become a surveillance society with cameras on every street corner.
He told the BBC’s Politics Show that CCTV was being used in small towns and villages where crime rates were low.
Mr Readhead also called for the retention of some DNA evidence and the use of speed cameras to be reviewed.
His force area includes the small town of Stockbridge, where parish councillors have spent £10,000 installing CCTV.
Mr Readhead questioned whether the relatively low crime levels justified the expense and intrusion.
‘Every street corner?’
“I’m really concerned about what happens to the product of these cameras, and what comes next?” he said.
“If it’s in our villages, are we really moving towards an Orwellian situation where cameras are at every street corner?
“And I really don’t think that’s the kind of country that I want to live in.”
There are up to 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain – about one for every 14 people.
The UK also has the world’s biggest DNA database, with 3.6 million DNA samples on file.
Symantec False Positive Cripples Thousands of Chinese PCs
May 20th, 2007Not as destructive as a powerful EMP weapon, but this is an impressive result for a software bomb.
Via: Computerworld:
A signature update to Symantec’s anti-virus software crippled thousands of Chinese PCs Friday when the security software took two critical Windows .dll files for malware.
According to numerous blog entries from Chinese computer users, a virus signature database seeded yesterday mistook two system files of a Chinese edition of Windows XP SP2 as a Trojan horse which Symantec dubs “Backdoor.Haxdoor.” The anti-virus software — Norton AntiVirus, for example, or the anti-virus component of the Norton 360 or Norton Internet Security suites — then quarantined the netapi32.dll and lsasrv.dll files.
“With these files removed, Windows XP will no longer start up, and even the system Safe Mode no longer functions,” said one user writing to the alt.comp.anti-virus newsgroup this morning.
Excessive Network Traffic Blamed for Nuclear-Plant Shutdown
May 20th, 2007Via: Security Focus:
The U.S. House of Representative’s Committee on Homeland Security called this week for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to further investigate the cause of excessive network traffic that shut down an Alabama nuclear plant.
