First, a personal note:
I want to thank all those who have sent their condolences re: my recent injuries and well wishes for my recuperation. I also want to reassure you all that I'm far from done for. Yeah, I trashed the scooter and mangled my leg, but the rest of me's intact. These things happen sometimes. It comes with the address. Grasshopper always wrong in argument with chicken. By world standards, I'm still a lot better off than a lot of people. So not to worry. I'm not dead yet.
The hospital was no fun, of course, especially the food. To make it worse, for a while I had a roommate who was recovering from having been shot in the back and left for dead in a robbery. I expected his assailants to burst in at any minute and finish him off. They'd be stupid not to. He's a witness. Since they are obviously also very poor shots, they probably would have wasted me in the process. Since my roomie was neither a rich man nor a cop, there was no police guard at the door. Since there was nothing much I could do to protect myself if they did come, I just lay there and worried. Oh well. It's always something. At least it kept my mind off the pain.
I'm home now and being well guarded and cared for, 24-7. I'm eating healthy, so at last I can begin to heal. Nutrition is everything. You really are what you eat. My X rays make me look like a Borg inside. But this Halloween I think I'll go as Frankenstein. It'll save me a bundle on makeup. I'm still kind of whacked out on pain killers, and I don't like it very much at all . Don't get me wrong. I'm glad they're here. I'd be in a lot worse shape without them. But damn if they don't lower my I.Q. 50 points a pill. I don't like this. Either the world's a dangerous place, or I'm paranoid. Opinions vary. Either way, I'd feel a whole lot safer with a clear head.
Then there's my job. I'm faced with the choice of being too distracted by the pain to write or having my attention span reduced to a gnat's length by the pills. Today, for the first time, I've managed to lower my dose enough to allow me to finish my overdue column. I hate feeling like I owe you one. Please forgive any discontinuity or redundancies. It's not me. It's the drugs. Cut me some slack; I'm an outpatient. I'll do better next time, promise.
I know I promised to let you know what happened at the Wesley Clark demo in Berkeley on the 17th, but I've had to renege. Sorry. It wasn't my choice. I'll try to see that it doesn't happen again. I don't heal as fast as I used to, so it's going to take a little bit, but I'll be back in action as soon as possible. You can bet the farm on it. It's only a matter of time. Healing is a process, and while there are no short cuts, all I have to do is ride it out and keep exercising and I'll get most of my leg back by New Year's. Already I can navigate around the Bunker on crutches, though I'm clearly not going outside alone anytime soon. With a little luck and a lot of work, though, I'll graduate to a cane by Thanksgiving, maybe sooner. That's the plan, anyway. I've been in worse shape before, much worse shape. I snapped back then. I'll do it again. I'm a very resilient guy. You haven't heard the last of Nessie, not by a long shot. Don't count me out till my corpse stinks. Even then, double-check to make sure that it's actually mine. So far at least, I'm harder to kill than Rasputin.
Now, on to the column:
As we saw last time, the much ballyhooed dichotomy between state terrorism and private terrorism is patently false. A terrorist act is a terrorist act, no matter who the perp is. But what, then, is a terrorist act? Does it matter if the target is people or property? I think not. The traditional definition more than suffices. It is neither the nature of the target nor the identity of the perp that makes a terrorist act what it is, but the motive behind it. If the act is primarily intended to strike fear into the heart, it's terrorism. And alas, to a certain extent and under certain circumstances, terror works all too well. So its practice is not coming to an end anytime soon. It will be a long time and a lot of work before human society matures enough for the motivation behind terrorism to no longer exist. The technology itself will always exist. And new technology is coming. The possibilities are endless.
It is even possible to strike terror in the heart without harming a soul or damaging anything. Sometimes a simple turn of phrase is all that is necessary. "We know where you live. We know what your car looks like," for example, has long stood the test of time. And, as half a century of "mutually assured destruction" demonstrated conclusively, simple possession of the right weapon adds immeasurable psychological heft to any threat. In the immortal words of Al Capone, "You'll get more with a kind word and a gun than you will with a kind word and no gun."
Guns are by no means obsolete. Projectile weapons in general will be with us for a very long time for a very simple reason. They still work. Even in this age of wonder, when cities can be vaporized in an instant and a single vial of the right virus could conceivably kill us all, the prehistoric sling still has a noticeable effect on politics in the Middle East. Even clubs still have a prominent role in deciding who decides what happens next. I myself once escaped by the breadth of a gnat's eyelash succumbing to a pointed stick in the hands of a psycho. But that's another story. For now we must look to the future. It is vital that we understand the new technologies of terror as well as, if not better than, we understand the old.
The incessant propaganda of the corporate-government complex would have us believe that the greatest terrorist threats we face are twofold. First, we are told, we must fear the proliferation of nuclear and missile technology in the so-called rogue states. This threat, some would have us believe, is so great that it justifies our squandering billions on a Star Wars scheme that has been discredited since Reagan's day. Second, we are being conditioned to be willing, at the drop of a public announcement, to surrender our cherished civil liberties to allow the government to save us from the Damoclean menace of chemical-biological weapons. CBW are a "poor man's nuke." For all you know, some twisted soul is stockpiling homebred anthrax in the house across the street. So much for the Fourth Amendment.
Be afraid, we are told, be very afraid. To a certain extent, I concur. Fear is appropriate, even if panic is not. To a certain, limited, extent, rogue nukes and CBW are real threats. Not all propaganda is composed entirely of lies. Yet this particular propaganda campaign, despite the kernel of fact at its core, is essentially deceptive because it omits a great deal and exaggerates the rest. Yeah, rogue nukes and CBW can indeed ruin your whole day. But how big a threat are they really? Are they big enough to justify draining precious resources from infrastructure and education? Are draconian surveillance and a large defense budget the best, or even the only, way to deal with them? More important, by focusing on these particular threats, what perhaps greater threats are we ignoring?
A barrage of nuclear CBW-tipped "rogue state" missiles is highly unlikely to be launched anytime soon. The most cost-effective way to counter them is to stop making enemies. Put an end to economic imperialism and military adventurism. Reach out instead to all of fellow humanity with respect, in equality, and bearing goodwill. Hey, it couldn't hurt. But it's clearly not about to happen anytime soon.
Neither can we realistically expect, this year or next, to see societies like ours transform into a place where you can be absolutely certain that some religious cult or gang of racial separatists is not even now distilling nerve gas or extracting ricin with which to slaughter your family. This is not to say that we should allow ourselves to become discouraged. We cannot. We must not. We must strive daily, and as hard as we can, to create that world. So what if we have to do it with our own hands? That doesn't make the job worse. That makes the job better. Besides, there is no reasonable alternative. So strive your butts off. Start today. Remember, if we just keep at it long enough, we will succeed.
But in the meantime, if we're smart, we'll stay on our toes. Above all, we'll stay informed. We'll not let anybody in the media, not even Nessie, tell us where the real dangers lie. We will find out for ourselves. To do this, we must look past the narrow focus of the corporate-government media and at the entire array of new terrorist threats. It's a broad array. Recent science has been very busy. There are a great many potential abusers. No government can realistically be expected to protect you from any of them. This is less the fault of politics than it is the fault of science.
Electromagnetic weaponry is an entire class of new potential terror tools that has been virtually ignored by corporate-government propaganda. Why? We can only speculate. It's certainly not because these tools are not intriguing. While the era of guns, clubs, and even fire is by no means over, the era of E.M. weapons has already begun.
As instruments of terror, antipersonnel weapons are not always the best choice. There are too many far scarier things out there. Besides, people are replaceable. Certain data can't be replaced. Society's overwhelming reliance on the information infrastructure, the electric grid that powers it, and in many cases the information itself can give the modern terrorist a far more effective target than does any individual. And it's a target rich environment. Some of these targets can affect a great many people indeed. Others expose the economy itself, and not just terrorists, either.
Common criminals can go high tech, too. "We know where your servers are. We know what your data looks like," is the last thing a lot of people want to hear from an aspiring extortionist armed with a HERFgun.
Of course, the modern terrorist need not go as high tech as E.M. weaponry to threaten the information infrastructure. There are certain key points in the power grid where a lone sniper, plinking ceramic insulators with a .22, could black out a whole group of states. Were the perp to take care not to leave any forensic evidence, and also keeps his or her mouth shut later, chances of capture would be virtually nil. A team of such snipers could black out the continent. Even without sniping, the same effect could be produced by shorting out the transmission wires with a steel chain bola weighted with lead fishing weights. So much for gun control as a prophylactic. There is no defense, legal or otherwise, against a determined terrorist.
Taking down the grid in order to strike at specific data is inelegant at best. It's like slicing a cake with a baseball bat. Sometimes a single switch or wire holds the key. Six weeks ago a gnawing rodent knocked Las Vegas's new $6 million 911 emergency call center off line, even though it was supposed to have a backup system in case of blackouts. Metropolitan Police officials were left scrambling for an hour while they waited for the 911 computer system to reboot. A rat or field mouse apparently got tangled in wiring at the MacDonald substation in southwest Las Vegas. It gnawed through a cable and was electrocuted. The animal burned beyond recognition, making an exact identification of its species difficult. About 800 customers and the 911 call center two blocks away at Russell Road and Cameron Street temporarily lost electricity. Despite weekly testing, backup systems succumbed to a glitch. So much for 911.
This is not to say that 911 is any guarantee against the malefaction of knaves. It's not. There's a name for people who rely on the police to protect them. They are called victims. For personal protection, I don't call 911, I call 1911. But that's another story. A great many people, though, do rely on 911. And while, like hokey religions, it's no substitute for a good blaster at your side, it's still a pretty good way to summon an ambulance when you need one. You can quote me on that. Taking down 911 on purpose is a crime against the working class. Do it in my zone, and I'll hunt you down myself.
Was this incident another skirmish in the ongoing war between law enforcement and the Animal Liberation Front? Hardly. On the whole, animals have been singularly unsupportive of the ALF's efforts. Maybe they read Ecclesiastes 3:19-20. Or maybe they read Darwin. It's hard to tell the difference, sometimes.
But was this incident food for thought for an aspiring terrorist or two? Pretty likely. Even the commonest of criminals must be able to imagine the possible outcome of Las Vegas's alarms, lights, and police communications going down at once. Rocket science it ain't. They all run on computers. Computers run on electricity. Computers control the power grid. Do the math. The equation is simple. The factor to solve for is power.
Which brings us to HERF guns. But what are they, exactly? First, be clear that they are not EMP bombs. EMP stands for electromagnetic pulse. The source can be a nuclear or a nonnuclear detonation. It destroys the electronics of all computer and communication systems in a large area. It can be delivered by special forces teams that infiltrate the enemy's territory and detonate a device near targeted electronic devices. It can also be delivered by air drop, cruise missile, rocket, or remotely piloted vehicle.
Typically it is used to damage not a single target but to damage all equipment near where it goes off. An EMP is not aimed in a single direction. The HERF gun is aimed. It is the surgeon's scalpel to the EMP bomb's billy club. But an EMP bomb smaller than a HERF gun can cause a similar amount of damage. Such bombs were reportedly used in the Gulf War. The April 15, 1992, issue of Defense Week stated:
"The U.S. Navy used a new class of highly secret, nonnuclear electromagnetic warheads during the opening hours of the Persian Gulf War to disrupt and destroy Iraqi electronics systems, including air-defense weapons and command and control centers, military and industry sources say."
HERF stands for high energy radio frequency. In essence, HERF guns are nothing but special-purpose radio transmitters. HERF guns are able to shoot a high-power radio signal at an electronic target and put it out of function. The damage can be moderate or severe, depending on the amount of power used. Moderate damage is when a system shuts down but can be restarted. Severe damage is when the system hardware has been physically damaged and must be replaced.
Electronic circuits are more vulnerable to overload than most people would suspect. And certain elements of society, especially businesses and law enforcement, are a lot more vulnerable to electronic disruption than they would care for us to know about. Perhaps this explains corporate media's near exclusive focus on "rogue state" ICBMs and home-brewed biowar as terrorist threats. Perhaps our attention is once again being cynically diverted by experts who have an agenda of their own.
But if you pay enough attention, you will occasionally notice a HERF gun in the media. The scale of such incidents varies. Presumably, some incidents go unreported, and some are blamed on other causes. In April 1998 police in Japan arrested two yakuza in a peculiar act of theft. They were hacking a pachinko machine with a HERF gun. According to the police, one of the arrested yakuza hid a HERF generator on his waist and an antenna on his left hand. He shot a radio signal toward a pachinko machine in order to interfere with the computer that controls the machine. Using this device, they successfully hit a bull's eye worth 30 thousand yen. The HERF generator was 15 centimeters by 7 centimeters by 3 centimeters. The report neglects to explain how the apprehension of the yakuza came about. Presumably, as in most arrests, the cause was not forensic police investigation, but the word of a snitch. Maybe the perps had been bragging. It's hard not to brag sometimes, especially when you've been really, really slick. It's much easier to be stupid. The consequences are predictable.
Electronic disruption of computers by electromagnetic forces can take place on a large scale, too. It doesn't even have to be intentional. According to the College of Aerospace Doctrine Research and Education (CADRE), Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama:
"In the early fall of 1992, a U.S. naval ship entering the Panama Canal forgot to turn off its radar systems, which operate on the same principle as HERF, but in the form of HPM, or high power microwaves. In this case the Canal Zone computer systems got zapped. The radar hits were so strong that nearby computers were fried and had to be replaced."
All this makes one wonder how much economic havoc could be wreaked by a determined crew of terrorists with a cogent plan and a brace of trusty HERF guns. But more than economic havoc is at risk. In theory at least, one of these gizmos could drop a plane right out of the sky. It may be more than a theory. We'll learn more about that next time, as the E.M. weapons story continues. We'll also take a look at how HERF guns actually work. And we'll try to clarify a little the hazy line between art, vandalism, and terrorism, because it's not always all that clear.
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