Archive for the ‘The Perfect Storm’ Category

Hacker intrusion on US power grid sparks security fears

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

“The severity of what we’re seeing is off the charts,” said Tom Kellermann, vice president of security awareness for Core Security Technologies and a member of the Commission on Cyber Security that is advising President Barack Obama.

“Most of the critical infrastructure in the US has been penetrated to the root by state actors.”

SAN JOSE, California – Spies hacked into the US electric grid and left behind computer programmes that would let them disrupt service, exposing potentially catastrophic vulnerabilities in key pieces of national infrastructure, The Associated Press has learned.

The intrusions were discovered after electric companies gave the government permission to audit their systems, a former US government official told the AP. The ex-official was not authorised to discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.One possible future

The inspections of the electric grid were triggered by fears over a March 2007 video from the Idaho National Laboratory, which had staged a demonstration of what damage hackers could do if they seized control of a crucial part of the electric grid. The video showed a power turbine spinning out of control until it became a smoking hulk and shut down.

Although the resulting audits turned up evidence of spying, the former official told the AP that the extent of the problem is unknown, because the government does not have blanket authority to examine other electric systems.

“The vulnerability may be bigger than we think,” the official said, adding that the level of sophistication necessary to pull off such intrusions is so high that it is “almost without a doubt” done by state sponsors.

The Wall Street Journal, which reported the intrusions earlier, said officials believe the spies have not yet sought to damage the nation’s electric grid, but that they likely would try in a war or another crisis.

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World’s water supplies at risk, UN says

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

Surging population growth, climate change, reckless irrigation and chronic waste are placing the world’s water supplies at threat, a landmark UN report said on Thursday. Compiled by 24 UN agencies, the 348-page document gave a grim assessment of the state of the planet’s freshwater, especially in developing countries, and described the outlook for coming generations as deeply worrying.

Water is part of the complex web of factors that determine prosperity and stability, it said.

Lack of access to water helps drive poverty and deprivation and breeds the potential for unrest and conflict, it warned.

“Water is linked to the crises of climate change, energy and food supplies and prices, and troubled financial markets,” the third World Water Development Report said.

“Unless their links with water are addressed and water crises around the world are resolved, these other crises may intensify and local water crises may worsen, converging into a global water crisis and leading to political insecurity at various levels.”

The report pointed to a double squeeze on fresh water.

On one side was human impact. There were six billion humans in 2000, a tally that has already risen to 6.5 billion and could scale nine billion by 2050.

Population growth, especially in cities in poor countries, is driving explosive demand for water, prompting rivers in thirsty countries to be tapped for nearly every drop and driving governments to pump out so-called fossil water, the report said.

These are aquifers that are hundreds of thousands of years old and whose extraction is not being replenished by rainfall. Mining them for water today means depriving future generations of liquid treasure.

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Nuclear Power Cannot Solve Climate Change

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

A new report finds that nuclear power plants cannot be built quickly enough and in a safe and secure manner to be a major global solution for climate change

Nuclear power plants cannot be built quickly enough and in a safe and secure manner to be a major global solution for climate change, according to a report released yesterday from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The report says the nuclear industry, under current policies and financing, won’t be able to build enough new reactors to make a difference in climate in the next 20 years.

“Without major changes in government policies and aggressive financial support, nuclear power is actually likely to account for a declining percentage of global electricity generation,” the report says.

The International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook 2008 projects that without policy changes, nuclear power’s share of worldwide electricity generation will drop from 15 percent in 2006 to 10 percent in 2030.

But policymakers should be aware of the timeline, costs and risks nuclear power brings as compared to the possible benefits, before expending a tremendous amount of resources on it, the report says.

Bottlenecks in the nuclear supply chain, weak infrastructure in developing countries and tighter credit risk management strategies in the wake of the economic crises will severely limit all countries’ capabilities to significantly expand their nuclear fleet, while the current fleet of reactors is likely to be retired by 2030, the report said.

The earliest the first new U.S. reactor could be finished is 2015, but the report notes that it takes about 10 years to put a new plant in service, from licensing to connection to the grid. In two dozen countries that are interested in obtaining civil nuclear energy but have not previously built a reactor, it will take even longer, the report says.

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More Australian Weather Records Tumble

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

The Big Dry Down Under just got a whole lot drier. The first three months of 2009 in the already parched Murray Darling basin had the least amount of rainfall since Australian weather records began 117 years ago.

This massive drainage supports $9 billion in agriculture but has been hammered by what some are calling the worst drought in 1000 years. Authorities in Australia make no bones about the cause of this freaky weather.

“We’ve had big droughts before and big floods before, but what we didn’t have was climate change,” said Rob Freeman, the chief executive of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority.

The Murray Darling is home to 2 million people who may not even have enough water to survive in the future. “I’d be loath to say that critical human needs will always be secure”, warned Freeman.

The recent rainfall record was not the only smashed. Water inputs for three-year period ending March 2009 were less than half of the previous record from the great drought of 1943-1946.

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Global crisis ‘to strike by 2030’

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

Growing world population will cause a “perfect storm” of food, energy and water shortages by 2030, the UK government chief scientist has warned.

By 2030 the demand for resources will create a crisis with dire consequences, Prof John Beddington said.

Demand for food and energy will jump 50% by 2030 and for fresh water by 30%, as the population tops 8.3 billion, he told a conference in London.

Climate change will exacerbate matters in unpredictable ways, he added.

‘Complacent’

“It’s a perfect storm,” Prof Beddington told the Sustainable Development UK 09 conference.

“There’s not going to be a complete collapse, but things will start getting really worrying if we don’t tackle these problems.”

Prof Beddington said the looming crisis would match the current one in the banking sector.

“My main concern is what will happen internationally, there will be food and water shortages,” he said.

“We’re relatively fortunate in the UK; there may not be shortages here, but we can expect prices of food and energy to rise.”

The United Nations Environment Programme predicts widespread water shortages across Africa, Europe and Asia by 2025.

The amount of fresh water available per head of the population is expected to decline sharply in that time.

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African leader embarks on bizarre witch-hunt

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

– Sorry, but I think some folks should just drink the kool-aid.

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A state-sponsored witch-hunt has begun in Gambia where as many as 1000 people have been kidnapped from their villages and taken to “secret detention centres” then stripped, beaten and poisoned.

The campaign in the tiny West African nation is the latest manifestation of the increasingly brutal and bizarre rule of President Yahya Jammeh, who has claimed he can cure people of Aids. Now the President is thought to believe he is under attack from witches.

Witnesses and victims of the abductions told Amnesty International that the President’s personal guard, with armed police and intelligence agents, accompanied witch doctors to round up suspects.

Many of those taken from their homes were elderly people who were held for up to five days in appalling conditions, made to drink hallucinogenic concoctions and forced to confess to black magic powers.

“At 5am, the paramilitary police armed with guns and shovels surrounded our village and threatened the villagers, saying anyone who tries to escape will be buried 6 feet under,” one witness said.

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Needed: A Fiscal Framework–Not a Stimulus

Monday, April 6th, 2009
“America ranks 22nd out of 23 high-income countries in public social outlays as a percent of national income (ahead only of Ireland), for health, pensions, income support, and other social services. “

The economic debate in the U.S. regarding the fiscal stimulus package has revealed, once again, the soft underbelly of modern economics. It’s perhaps inevitable that a public debate over the allocation of trillions of dollars of taxes and spending should be cacophonous and confused, but the poor quality of the scientific discussion about the fiscal stimulus plan is unjustified. Economists have not helped the public to sort out crucial issues in the debate, leaving public policy to a hurried mish-mash of conflicting interests.

The stimulus debate has centered heavily around the question of “bang for the buck,” that is, whether tax cuts or spending increases would produce more jobs. This perspective is very limited and misleading, however: the implications of tax cuts, for example, depend importantly on whether they are perceived to be temporary or permanent. A temporary tax cut is more likely to be saved, or used to pay down credit-card debt, than consumed, a lesson demonstrated by the failed $100 billion tax-rebate stimulus last spring.

There is a far more important point, however. The choice of spending versus taxes should turn first and foremost on the purposes of government, or on what economists quaintly call “the allocation of resources.” It’s silly to debate whether investing in a $100 million bridge creates more jobs than a $100 million tax cut if we really need the bridge! The American Society of Civil Engineers has credibly documented for years the crumbling state of U.S. infrastructure—roads, bridges, water supply, waste treatment, mass transit, toxic waste cleanup, dams and levees—and the urgent need for more than $2.2 trillion of investments for our wellbeing and competitiveness.

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Key: Afghan ‘sexual desire’ law unacceptable

Monday, April 6th, 2009

Prime Minister [New Zealand] John Key said the Shi’ite law in Afghanistan saying a wife is obliged to fulfil the sexual desires of her husband is “unacceptable”. But it would not threaten New Zealand’s commitment to Afghanistan.

Mr Key said last night that he would write to Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai to express New Zealand’s views on the law.

“But there is no doubt that our voice will be strongly heard, that we find this an abhorrent act and totally unacceptable to the New Zealand Government.”

But Mr Key is unlikely to follow the example of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper who said it would lead to “a clear diminishment in Allied support” in Afghanistan.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has telephoned President Karzai about the issue.

“I think in the short term, it would be unlikely to have any impact on our commitment to Afghanistan,” Mr Key said. “We are fundamentally there to try and reduce the threat of global terrorism. We need to deal with that situation first and foremost.”

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Our Sick Farms, Our Infected Food

Sunday, April 5th, 2009

Yum - antibiotics in excess– One aspect of the world’s increasingly dire problems that one sees over and over again, is how special interest groups push their agendas to the top of the stack to the detriment of the whole.

– It is a short sightedness that happens over and over and over again.   And again, ‘No single raindrop thinks that it is responsible for the flood’.

– Here’s a story about American farms and how a decision that was for all of our benefits was pushed quietly aside by the Farm Lobby.

– Their profits will hold up a bit better over the next few years because of their actions, but all of us will suffer badly in the long run.

– When we do this sort of thing to ourselves over and over again, how can anyone have any real hope that we’re suddenly going to wake up and save ourselves collectively from the impending global environmental and climatic crises?

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Congress and the FDA must upend the nation’s agricultural policies to keep its food supply safe

Agriculture has fueled the eruption of human civilization. Efficiently raised, affordable crops and livestock feed our growing population, and hunger has largely been banished from the developed world as a result. Yet there are reasons to believe that we are beginning to lose control of our great agricultural machine. The security of our food supply is at risk in ways more noxious than anyone had feared.

The trouble starts with crops. Orange groves in Florida and California are falling to fast-moving blights with no known cure. Cavendish-variety bananas the global standard, each genetically identical to the next will almost certainly be wiped out by emerging infectious disease, just as the Cavendish’s predecessor was six decades ago. And as entomologists Diana Cox-Foster and Dennis vanEngelsdorp describe in “Saving the Honey bee,” on page 40, a mysterious affliction has ravaged honeybee colonies around the U.S., jeopardizing an agricultural system that is utterly dependent on farmed, traveling hives to pollinate vast swaths of monoculture. The ailment may be in part the result of the stresses imposed on hives by this uniquely modern system.

Plants and animals are not the only ones getting sick, however. New evidence indicates that our agricultural practices are leading directly to the spread of human disease.

Much has been made in recent years of MRSA, the antibiotic-resistant strain of Staphylococcus bacteria, and for good reason. In 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available, about 95,000 MRSA infections caused the deaths of nearly 19,000 Americans. The disease first incubated in hospitals the killer bacterium is an inevitable evolutionary response to the widespread use of antibiotics but has since found a home in locker rooms, prisons and child care facilities. Now the bacteria have spread to the farm.

Perhaps we should not be surprised. Modern factory farms keep so many animals in such a small space that the animals must be given low doses of antibiotics to shield them from the fetid conditions. The drug-resistant bacteria that emerge have now entered our food supply. The first study to investigate farm-bred MRSA in the U.S. amazingly, the Food and Drug Administration has shown little interest in testing the nation’s livestock for this disease recently found that 49 percent of pigs and 45 percent of pig workers in the survey harbored the bacteria. Unfortunately, these infections can spread. According to a report published in Emerging Infectious Diseases, MRSA from animals is now thought to be responsible for more than 20 percent of all human MRSA cases in the Netherlands.

In April 2008 a high-profile commission of scientists, farmers, doctors and veterinarians recommended that the FDA phase out the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in farm animal production, to “preserve these drugs to treat sick animals, not healthy ones” in the words of former Kansas governor John Carlin, the commission’s chair. The FDA agreed and soon announced that it would ban the use of one widespread antibiotic except for strictly delineated medical purposes. But five days before the ban was set to take effect, the agency quietly reversed its position. Although no official reason was given, the opposition of the powerful farm lobby is widely thought to have played a role.

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Escape from the Zombie Food Court

Sunday, April 5th, 2009

– How can you not like Joe Bageant’s writing?   He’s just a laser beam.  We’re so deeply buried within the world we’ve created (what he calls the “American Hologram”), that it is really hard to see that there are other ways of looking at life and existence.  

– Joe has managed to step outside the mainstream consensus reality and here he’s bringing us a report of what it looks like from the outside looking in.   Good stuff!

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Joe Bageant recently spoke at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University at Lexington, and the Adler School of Professional Psychology in Chicago, where he was invited to speak on American consciousness and what he dubbed “The American Hologram,” in his book, Deer Hunting With Jesus. Here is a text version of the talks, assembled from his remarks at all three schools.

By Joe Bageant

I just returned from several months in Central America. And the day I returned I had iguana eggs for breakfast, airline pretzels for lunch and a $7 shot of Jack Daniels for dinner at the Houston Airport, where I spent two hours listening to a Christian religious fanatic tell about Obama running a worldwide child porn ring out of the White House. Entering the country shoeless through airport homeland security, holding up my pants because they don’t let old men wear suspenders through security, well, I knew I was back home in the land of the free.

Anyway, here I am with you good people asking myself the first logical question: What the hell is a redneck writer supposed to say to a prestigious school of psychology? Why of all places am I here? It is intimidating as hell. But as Janna Henning and Sharrod Taylor here have reassured me that all I need to do is talk about is what I write about. And what I write about is Americans, and why we think and behave the way we so. To do that here today I am forced to talk about three things — corporations, television and human spirituality.

No matter how smart we may think we are, the larger world cannot and does not exist for most of us in this room, except through media and maybe through the shallow experience of tourism, or in the minority instance, we may know of it through higher education. The world however, is not a cultural history course, a National Geographic special or recreational destination. It is a real place with many fast developing disasters, economic and ecological collapse being just two. The more aware among us grasp that there is much at stake. Yet, even the most informed and educated Americans have cultural conditioning working against them round the clock.

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