Ted Koppel on America's Vulnerable Power Grid in 'Lights Out':

Months or years of uninterrupted blackouts. A rising death toll from disease and societal chaos. And all because of a preventable vulnerability.

The new book "Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath" looks at the risk of cyberattack facing the power grid in the United States and the inadequate measures being taken to protect it, despite clear warnings from an array of experts.

"Lights Out" is the new book from veteran journalist Ted Koppel, most widely known as the anchor and managing editor of "Nightline" on ABC from 1980 until 2005.

"It's not me giving this as a figment of my imagination," Koppel said on "Chicago Tonight." "Back in 2010, 10 former senior top officials–two former directors of the CIA, two former secretaries of defense, two former national security advisers–wrote a letter to a congressional committee. It was a secret letter, which spelled out their findings after dealing with the best experts they could find within the government. They came to the conclusion that tens of millions of people, in the wake of a cyberattack on one of the grids, could be without power for a period up to two years."

"The likelihood is great," Koppel added. "The current director of the NSA, Admiral Mike Rogers, said only a couple of weeks ago it is inevitable that one of our enemies will launch an attack like this, a cyberattack, on our infrastructure. The current commander of CENTCOM, General Lloyd Austin, told me it's not a question of if, it's only a question of when."

Since the Iraq war is being used as a reason to doubt our security agencies:

Other posters have pointed this out, like KittyWampus, and I'll do the same:

The CIA and the Bush Administration were in conflict over the danger of WMD's in Iraq.

The Bush Administration ignored the input of the CIA's top Iraq experts who had good reason to doubt claims that the U.S was in danger based on intelligence from two reliable CIA sources in the Iraqi Government. There was always push back against the Bush Administration by our intelligence community regarding the threat of Iraqi WMDs and it was left to Cheney & Co to make the case- and they did by deceiving the country.

There were chemical munitions found around 2004 as I recall, I could be wrong, but no sufficient intelligence ever pointed to intent by Iraq to threaten the U.S. using those munitions.

In this case of Russian hacking, it is extremely rare for all our security agencies to speak with one voice about threats to national security - on top of the work done by independent cyber-security firms like CrowdStrike.

It's one thing to be a skeptic , another to be in denial.

Russian cyber warfare is part of a long tradition of Russia expanding their espionage capabilities.

They have interfered in Europe, it shouldn't be shocking they'd interfere in the U.S. elections.

A rationalisation of Trump's corruption we're gonna hear more of:

courtesy Larry Kudlow, from Jonathan Chait's ‘The Wealthy Would Never Steal’ — A Credo for Trump’s Party

"Kudlow makes the case not only that Trump and his administration are not corrupt, but also that they cannot be corrupt, by virtue of their wealth. “Why shouldn’t the president surround himself with successful people?” reasons Kudlow, “Wealthy folks have no need to steal or engage in corruption.”"

And on conservative hypocrisy:

"What has been exposed is not only the lie at the heart of Trump’s campaign, but a delusion embedded in conservatism itself. Conservatives like to imagine that their policy represents a challenge to the power structure, which they see as “crony capitalism,” a form of corruption threatened by their free-market ideas. The failures of the Bush administration (which, in fact, followed the tax-cutting, deregulatory agenda that conservatives had promised would usher in prosperity) were dismissed as the byproduct of the administration’s departures from market purism. Bush and the Washington Republicans allowed power and wealth to corrupt them, the argument went. As Bush’s popularity plunged, conservatives lacerated their party with polemics like Matthew Continetti’s “The K Street Gang,” which depicted the GOP as a self-enriching elite.

The conceptual distinction between the good kind of wealth, earned through the free market, and the bad kind, earned through political favoritism, is an absolutely vital one for right-wing intellectuals. And yet Trump is showing how easily it collapses in practice. Conservatives have treated a first family using the powers of office to enrich itself — not theoretically or in the future but right now, on an ongoing basis — as, at worst, a distraction or a problem of optics. In practice, conservatives share Kudlow’s belief that a government of and by the rich is necessarily virtuous.

Kudlow touts another pro-Trump column, this one written by Wall Street titan Ray Dalio. In the course of touting Trump’s agenda, Dalio makes the key point that Trump is driven by veneration of the rich and contempt for the poor:

If you haven’t read Ayn Rand lately, I suggest that you do as her books pretty well capture the mindset. This new administration hates weak, unproductive, socialist people and policies, and it admires strong, can-do, profit makers. It wants to, and probably will, shift the environment from one that makes profit makers villains with limited power to one that makes them heroes with significant power.

Again, a strict Randian would draw a distinction between rich people who succeeded through pure capitalism and those who succeeded through political favoritism. But Dalio glides over the distinction, as one must when venerating a government led by the ultimate crony capitalist. Likewise, Continetti has a new column reframing Trump’s differences with (or ignorance of) conservative doctrine as a virtue. “Trump’s relation to the intellectual community of both parties is fraught because his visceral, dispositional conservatism leads him to judgments based on specific details, depending on changing circumstances, relative to who is gaining and who is losing in a given moment,” he writes.

We can be pretty sure that Trump, his family, and his friends will be among the people who gain from his policies. Conservatives appear distinctly unalarmed by the prospect."

This: In a nutshell

On Trump Supporters and Empathy:

I know a Trump supporter who doesn't fit the stereotype : my cousin.

My cousin supported Trump, because he likes Trump's "machismo". . My cousin doesn't follow politics much, but he likes men like Trump and he is a bit like Trump himself : He loves to "tell it like it is", even when he's wrong. He sees Trump's gaffes as comedy and the times Trump's rhetoric veered dangerously into authoritarianism , he explained it away as Trump getting a raw deal by the press, and that he's "misunderstood". He also doesn't believe Trump will do what he says he will do.

My cousin is probably not the only Trump supporter who connects to Trump in this way. His supporters generally like his brashness, and in times of uncertainty, someone coming along and saying "I will fix it" , whatever that "it" is, has appeal. No further inquiry of what he's going to "fix" is necessary because the resentful , the fearful and the frustrated love Strongmen.
And when he targets "others" unlike themselves, they feel safe.

Trump knows that divisions and scapegoating makes his most ardent supporters cling to him ever more tightly, because it's only ever been about Trump.

This is not just a Trump supporter problem, but a voter problem. Instead of us focusing on effects of systemic and historic failings, we rather devote our energy to either falling in love or hating a personality or candidate- because it's satisfying to either love or lay blame at another group or a specific person.

So I can empathize, I understand the mindset.

But in all these calls for empathy, what of those most affected by Trump's bullying and dog whistling and hate?

And what of ALL OF US and our future if Trump has his way.

It's my empathy that inspires me to not give up on my cousin. We actually agree on many things but I don't have to gloss over inconvenient facts to engage with him. I don't need to compromise the truth by pointing out Trump's lies and deceptive nature, and I don't avoid asking him whether he considered the consequences of his support for a demagogue - the good news is that I think I'm getting through to him.

Trump is my cousin's blind spot but his flaw is a flaw I'm guilty of occasionally: i.e. the blind spot of not being honest about ideas and beliefs, people and institutions in which I place my faith and trust - and pointing out blind spots helps us gain a clear understanding of the world.

The Trump support spectrum ranges from extremists to those who are just plain uninformed and ignorant, yet even for Trump's most mild supporters, Trump's intent couldn't be more clear when he announced his run: he corralled support initially because of his deplorable comments about Mexicans , on top of his birtherism . Obviously this would make him attractive to racists and bigots. And we all know racists and bigots. Some of them are otherwise great fathers, mothers , daughters ,sons ,friends and colleagues. This is not an inconvenient truth to shy away from but an ugly truth to confront.

Confronting it doesn't make me a liberal elitist who is out of touch with the rust belt..

We can discuss strategies and methods of engaging people , but we should never deny , excuse, diminish or sweep under the carpet ugly motivations which inspired people to vote for a narcissistic bigoted egomaniac.

I will not coddle Trump supporters who get high off of the suffering of others, who believe it's their time now, and indulge in sick fantasies of retribution based on some false, misguided sense of persecution.

I will not coddle Trump supporters who disrespect not only me, but people who happen to not be white and christian, and relish the idea of liberals fearful of a Trump presidency .

Because our fear is real. It is a fear that our environment will be totally fucked, that Trump will turn the clock back to 1925, and I'm not here for the narcissism of anyone who thinks their guy winning is more important than the good of the country.

If a Trump supporter behaves like a disgusting human being , don't expect me to respect them.

There are limits to my kindness and empathy, especially if I am not afforded the same courtesy -

EMPATHY IS A TWO WAY STREET.

Life In Obamacare's Deadzone.

Don't fight the wrong battle on Sessions.

In Trump's horror show of nominees/picks, Sessions is the one who frightens me the most.

Democrats need to aggressively block his nomination using the right tactics.

We're already familiar with his racism, and while important, Jennifer Rubin notes:

Confirmation hearings have two audiences — the Senate (which must confirm) and members of the base (who want to see that their team is fighting for core beliefs). Highlighting past statements on race may satisfy the latter, but the vast majority of senators will not hold comments from 30 years ago against Sessions. Given how readily the country discounted Donald Trump’s comments from the campaign, there is reason to believe words have limited effect in the confirmation setting. There are, however, a few issues that Democrats might raise that will not only appeal to their base but also rattle Republicans.

This is a serious question:

Why is Donald Trump tweeting on serious matters like Nuclear Warfare ?

He has not held a press conference in ages, and twitter isn't the best platform to discuss complex policy.

So why?

We know he's a moron/asshole/douche <insert preferred insult> but aside from that, his team clearly isn't alarmed and haven't stopped him.

So why?

Roots of the black/white divide...

I've been taking in some good stuff at redneckrevolt which got me thinking about the conflation of liberal "identity politics" and "divide and rule" - often used interchangeably by those with an anti-liberal agenda.

I think this was a ploy by rightwingers to project their tactics onto liberal efforts to address the particular concerns of groups .

Divide and Rule tactics form the bedrock of the American Story and this is a fascinating example of how Black/white unity has long been suppressed ..

Allegiances, traditionally, are made among people who have common interests. Throughout American history, white working people have generally believed that our interests are based on looking out for each other, and we've seen our community as folks who have the same skin color as us. We've felt it was important to work for the betterment of other white folks, for our culture, for our shared identity. The truth, however, could never be further away. Whose interests have our actions really served? White workers? In the short term, the answer may be "yes". Working for the advancement of the white race at the cost of other folks does buy us relative privileges, occasional access to better jobs and neighborhoods, and even some luxuries. In the end, however, we're still poor, we're still breaking our backs to make other people money... and those people aren't working folks of color.

The true, long-term interests of white workers lie with the fate of all other workers, no matter what their race. All workers, of all races, are exploited. We are exploited because we put in the lion's share of the work, skill, and experience, and we bear the scars and lifelong pain from working class life, but we never actually get ahead enough to breathe free. We work multiple jobs to barely meet our needs, while bosses and the people in charge profit from that labor. We are born where we're at, and we die where we're at while rich politicians and white collar business owners live in the lap of luxury. Who are these rich people? Who are these politicians? The truth is that 95% of them are white. They are also mostly male. Almost all of them are English speaking. They are also mostly Christian (or at least pretend to be so). And yet, in spite of having so many superficial things in common with one another, our lives are completely separate. When we stay up late at the kitchen table with a stack of bills, trying to figure out how the budge is going to work, they're eating at restaurants where they'll never even look at the amount on their bill. Tonight, when we finally go to bed in our noisy apartments, our modest houses, or our crowded trailers, they will go to bed in luxury and comfort, with no worries at all. Tomorrow morning, they'll wake up hours after we do, and they won't have to rush through getting their kids to school, or pray that their car starts so that they won't be late for work again. They might look like us, but they don't actually know us at all

"Support the Syrian people not the USA or Russia"

Insightful interview with Leila al-Shami:

"Much of the left internationally has given open or covert support to the Assad regime in Syria. The Morning Star in Britain went so far as to call the defeat of Aleppo a “liberation”. Why do left-wingers support a murderous regime instead of people fighting for their freedom? What is the role of Islamist forces in the conflict? Leila al-Shami, co-author of the book “Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War”, gives an interview which provides some answers to these questions. She was interviewed by Max van Lingen, editor of the Dutch newspaper “The Socialist”. The interview was translated into German by Frank Simon, and then into English by Colin Wilson.

Excerpt of Interview:

"What was the main reason you wrote the book [Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War]?

Robin Yassin-Kassab and I felt that reporting about Syria was poor. It wasn’t that there were too few reports, but that they rarely represented Syrian concerns. The media reports mainly about the humanitarian crisis or the rise of Islamic groups and extremism. Syrians are seen either as victims or as terrorists.

We wanted to challenge this point of view by letting people speak for themselves. We wanted to offer a platform for activists who were involved in the revolution and were affected by the war. A left-wing analysis should be based on what the people are doing – not just on what is happening in terms of high politics between states or what the international repercussions of the crisis are.

How did you choose the people you spoke to?

We were connected with the revolution in Syria from the beginning. We already knew a lot of people. When we spoke to these activists, they brought us into contact with other people. So we gained a variety of insights into life in Syria from people from both rural and urban areas, both women and men. We interviewed people in Syria from all religious communities and nationalities: Muslims, Christians, Ismailis and Alawites as well as Kurds and Arabs.

Syria and the Arab Spring

Why do you think a large part of the international left was either very guarded as regards the revolution or even openly hostile towards it?

Many leftists look at Syria within a framework of existing ideas. Before the Arab Spring, their experiences of the Middle East were limited to the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the US war and subsequent occupation of Iraq. When the Arab Spring began and the revolution in Syria grew, the left looked at Syria in the context of US imperialism.

What is wrong with this approach?

The situation had changed dramatically in 2011. Suddenly there was an international revolutionary wave in the region, which caused a huge change in people’s thinking. People said they no longer wanted to live under these regimes, which had suppressed them for so long. Most of the left, however, did not respond to the fact that there existed a mass movement from below. They saw the Assad regime as a secular socialist regime that was at war with the US and Israel. But that’s not true.

Can you explain that in more detail?

To start with, it is not a secular regime. In the course of the revolution, we have seen how the regime made use of the various religious communities to carry out a policy of divide and rule. Secondly, it is not a socialist regime. The implementation of neoliberal policies had already begun under Hafez al-Assad, and this increased under Bashar al-Assad.

Bashar al-Assad aimed to integrate Syria more closely into the world economy, for example through an economic “Association Agreement” with the EU. The neoliberal policies he pursued led to a concentration of wealth in the hands of his relatives and the people associated with the regime, while large sections of the population lived in poverty. As a result, one of the main demands of the revolution was social and economic justice.

"Syria, the USA and the “regime change”

Some left-wingers reduce the Syrian revolution to a US attempt at “regime change” by supplying arms deliveries to Syrian groups. What do you think of that view?


It is not true that the US has delivered large amounts of weapons to Syria. The US delivered some supplies, but for a long time only light weapons, night vision equipment and ready-to-eat meals. Subsequently, they provided some anti-tank weapons so as to maintain a stalemate. The US did not provide the heavy weapons that Syrian rebels would need to defend themselves against the regime’s air attacks, such as air defence missiles.

What is the specific US military strategy?

The US is looking for proxies to carry out the “war on terror” on its behalf. The Southern Front – an alliance of democratic and nationalist groups which refused to work with Islamists – was forced by the US and Jordan to stop fighting the Assad regime. This allowed the regime to concentrate on other areas, including Daraya, which has fallen to the regime after a long siege and systematic starvation of its people. The US has also provided weapons and air support for the Syrian Democratic Forces, which are dominated by the Kurdish YPG, because they fight only against Daesh.

The “Islamisation” of the revolution has without doubt reduced its international appeal. How significant do you think this development has been?

A large part of the military struggle is led by Islamists of different kinds, ranging from moderate Islamist groups operating within a democratic framework to Salafist hardliners. International jihadist groups such as Daesh, on the other hand, are counter-revolutionary, they represent a third force. Syrians have fought against Daesh, as they have also fought against the Assad regime. The Free Syrian Army still exists, and has widespread support, but it is no longer the only actor.

The Islamisation of the Revolution

What were the reasons for the “Islamisation” of the revolution?


After the poison gas attack on Ghouta in 2013 at the latest, the Syrian people knew that they were not going to get any help from the West. So they turned to the Gulf States. The result was a more pronounced Islamic vocabulary. Many fighters switched to Islamist groups because these were able to provide weapons and funds. These groups were able to provide pay, which was decisive in the face of economic collapse and hunger.

Although the military struggle is the biggest part of the picture, a strong civil society also exists, which still plays a very important role in the Syrian revolution. In Maarrat al-Nu’man there were more than 200 days of continuous protests against Assad and against Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (the Front for the Conquest of the Levant, the new name of the al-Nusra Front). [The Al-Nusra Front are jihadists, with links to Al-Qaeda until July 2016 – ed.] The people of Maarrat al-Numan clearly rejected Fatah al-Sham, but the situation in Aleppo is quite different. There, Fatah al-Sham played a major role in breaking through of the siege of East Aleppo, in which 300,000 people were liberated. While the international community abandoned the people of Aleppo, Fatah al-Sham came to their aid. It is absurd to think that people in this situation will reject them."

https://rs21.org.uk/2016/12/16/support-the-syrian-people-not-the-usa-or-russia/