Unless you live under a rock you know that two electric substations were damaged, leading to a power outage in North Carolina.
I’m not interested theories about who did it or why. Frankly I don’t give a shit; not my circus, not my monkeys. Though I do think it’s funny that the FBI announced they’ll get out of the “causing crime” business long enough to “solve” this one. Given their track record, they’re more likely to freak out and kill 86 innocent Jesus freaks than use their Bat computer to sleuth out this mystery.
(It’ll be interesting to find out if the dipshit that did it is on their payroll, as is often the case. If they come up with a cockamamie story about a lone actor using 24 guns before they memory hole the entire event he or she or it was one of their wind up toys. If the dipshit wasn’t on their payroll they’ll pin it on the nearest person who didn’t vote Democrat. Then they’ll get back to their real job of disappearing evidence that embarrasses Democrats or hassling some parent at a school board meeting.)
What interest me, is that they (the press) called it “vandalism”. Not once, but all over the place. (I took examples from one article but you’re welcome to read others for yourself. Check and see if you hear the same word repeated over and over.)
“As utility companies began responding to the different substations, evidence was discovered that indicated that intentional vandalism had occurred at multiple sites,”
At least two substations were vandalized “with criminal intent,”
“We are also investigating signs of potential vandalism related to the outages,”
I call bullshit. Pay attention kids because this will be on the final exam. Get out your pencil and write this shit down:
There is a difference between vandalism and sabotage.
Yes indeed, this is a whole new kettle of fish. It’s yet another step on the decline. When you see something new it behooves you to observe. Take time, breathe in the air, accept the passing of one world and the beginning of the next. Mark where you were and what you were doing as this new thing became part of your world. Commit the new knowledge to memory because in the future, as shitty situations level up into full shitstorms, you’ll reflect on this moment of change.
And for God’s sake, don’t deny the obvious. Taking out the grid is not in the same category as some fuckwit painting his name on a boxcar!
Someone instructed (or perhaps it developed as emergent behavior in the school of fish) that the only word to use is “vandalism” (at least until they can pin it on some MAGA Trump patsy and call it terrorism). I’m starting to theorize that the press (and the monkeys running DC) know this is a big deal. They’re pants shitting, flat out, no holds barred, panicked. They don’t even want to speak the world aloud, lest they call Voldemort into existence. Except, the world isn’t social media. What they call it doesn’t matter. They can call it “rainbow happy time” and it’s still fucking sabotage!
I clicked on a few online dictionaries to back me up but they’re getting pretty NewSpeak. Rather than waste brain cells sorting this week’s gaslighting from last years shenanigans amid the current of a rapidly declining populace, I tried a different approach. I looked at one of my dead tree dictionaries.
Go ahead propagandists, censors, and woke morons, try to fix the “misinfomation” on a printed & bound college edition dictionary from 1959!
Lets start with “vandalism” (sorry for the blurry photos, I just took a few snapshots):
Vandalism: malicious or ignorant destruction, especially of that which is beautiful or artistic.
Is a power substation beautiful or artistic? Not unless you get off on industrial wiring. Ya’ freak!
Was it ignorant destruction? I don’t think so. It seems the very exact opposite of ignorant. Nobody else thinks it’s ignorant either:
“It was targeted, it wasn’t random,” he said.
“The person, or persons, who did this knew exactly what they were doing,”
Nope, this absolutely wasn’t an attack on beautiful art by people who were ignorant. (That’s a thing that has happened lately, but not here.)
Lets check out “sabotage”:
Sabotage: “Intentional destruction of machines, materials, or some productive process or organized activity. Examples include labor disputes, and enemy agents in time of war.
Damn! Clearly sabotage is a whole lot more serious. Vandalism is some kid spray painting a dick on a wall. Sabotage is when someone targets serious things to cause serious problems; like power substation, a factory, or a pipeline.
I don’t know why everyone is so afraid of using the true name of things. Words are words. Reality is reality. Regardless, whatever happened… it ‘aint vandalism.
Also, I want to make the point that this is definitely a bad thing. I’m not happy with the decline in civilization. I don’t want to be the medieval loser left to scratch out a living amid the ruins of Roman marble halls. Shitting in a bucket next to an aqueduct that no longer functions sounds horrible. The power grid is probably one of the greatest achievements in human existence. It’s gonna’ suck if it all falls apart after only 100 +/- years.
To avoid ending on a dire note I’ll provide this:
P.S. Before I put the dictionary away, should I check? You know you want it! Fine; here it is:
Vaccine: a causative virus or preparation of dead bacteria induced into the body to produce immunity by causing antibodies.
Hm…
Was it a virus or dead bacteria? No.
Did it produce immunity? No.
I just sayin…
I posted this elsewhere and thought you and your regulars might benefit. As an old EE the press reporting on the matter also struck me as purposeful obfuscation.
Commentary:
Just in case you all are not aware of the reality of our power grid and the companies that maintain them. Regional depots have maybe 1 or at most 2 of those larger HV transformers sitting in a warehouse, these are the ubiquitous monsters about 10×10 ft that convert the high tension down to more usable voltages for local distribution in our towns and factories. The smaller pole mounted units, perhaps in the few hundreds per depot, seeing they are a more common failure point due to heat, leaks, lighting strikes, trees falling or wayward ordnance.
What this means is that if there is ever a real effort to damage our grid by enemies, foreign or domestic, there is not enough replacement equipment on the ground in the entire country to fix it quickly.
Now the cute kicker or as they say, “and now the rest of the story”. Most of our grid maintenance parts come from, yep, the PRC. And guess who will conveniently have “issues” in ramping up production for the export market, especially when they themselves are using most of the factory output internally (remember those 5 new coal plants going live/week over there)? Yes good sirs, we are royally screwed if any untoward events suddenly ramp up.
I needed that BB video. Always brings a smile. thanks
A guilty pleasure. Back in the day I really wanted to hate the Beastie Boys but gosh darn it their songs were fun.
There is no pravda in Izvestia and no izvestia in Pravda.
We live in a delusion that there was once a ‘Golden Age’ where ‘reporters’ (not journalists) and newspapers (experts, bureaucrats or politicians for that matter) told us the unvarnished truth, untainted with their personal ideologies, mercenary biases or political leanings. The fact is, this was never true, it was just not quite as open, and extreme as it is now (and boy, are they seeing just how far they can go, or what?!?). They have always tinged, selectively edited, censured and manipulated facts to fit their agendas, telling us only that which they want us to know.
The ‘thing’ which has always bemused me the most is the Gell-mann amnesia. We have all, when reading a ‘story’ or article about a subject we know well, seen behind the curtain of how the entire story is a mishmash of poorly, if at all, understood concepts, filtered and cherry-picked ‘facts’ and outright lies. That most then simply turn the page and accept the following stories, on subjects they know less well, as the unvarnished truth is … unbelievable to me.
The simple fact is that the only way to have some vague approximation of access to the truth is … to read between the lines, see what it is that they ‘aren’t’ saying (or saying, in lock-step, in a manner we have all grown to realise deliberately hides an inconvenient fact – such as failing to mention a perpetrators political leaning or ethnicity in a crime). Only by noticing those ‘absences’ can you begin to sense a ‘shape’ of what the truth ‘might’ be.
Call me a conspiracy theorist* if you wish, but I’ve reached the point that whatever the MSM narrative is, I automatically assume the exact opposite is the truth. Honestly, read a newspaper, view a TV news article, a political pronouncement, etc. from 10 or 15 years (or last year for that matter) and then compare it to what we’ve subsequently learnt. If you can find more than a handful, of the billions, where there is even the vaguest association with what we now know to be the truth, you’re a better man than I Gunga.
I admit, it ‘is’ nice to see others have noticed, and I’m not the only ‘crazy loon’ about, though.
[*Excuse me. I must leave it at that, as I have a fitting appointment for my new tin-foil beanie]
Orwell spoke to this
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
― George Orwell, 1984
“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”
― George Orwell, 1984
“You are a slow learner, Winston.”
“How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.”
“Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”
― George Orwell, 1984
Sometimes I find myself singing quietly Mike and the Mechanics “Silent Running”.
Just remember the important thing about electronic surveillance.
Electronic. Smart devices, even the more modern cars, cell phones on or off no matter ping.
This was awesome. Now do “decimate”, lol.
Bwa ha ha ha… yes that’s another word that nobody understands. I may wind up with a series.
I have known since I was a boy what decimate means. I was going through a Roman phase at the time. I stopped correcting people after a few years.
I commend to everyone’s attention this work – though the publication date is obviously wrong in the listing. Hardcover release in 1981, softcover release in 1983.
Energy, Vulnerability and War, by Clark and Page:
https://www.amazon.com/Energy-Vulnerability-War-Alternatives-America/dp/0393000591/
It explained the vulnerability of America’s energy infrastructure in detail, particularly electrical generation and transmission, and natural gast transmission and storage..
It dealt exactly with the scenario in NC.
Kurt
Google “electric substations near me” click on first result.
Says there are 75,328 in the US.
Is a power substation beautiful or artistic? Not unless you get off on industrial wiring. Ya’ freak!
Hey now. Some people are just wired differently. >:)
Nice! I knew my audience was special.
I don’t know why everyone is so afraid of using the true name of things. Words are words. Reality is reality. Regardless, whatever happened… it ‘aint vandalism.
Dusting off my internet psychoanalysis license: I’m not sure the word-worker (Eloi, in my mind) types understand machinery or productive processes, at some fundamental categorical level. To them everything is aesthetic, or about aesthetics, so when an act of destruction happens, those are the words they reach for. They also get offended aesthetically by every useful process their attention is called to, from iron mines to oil refineries, to garbage incinerators, to something as inoffensive as a cooling tower or heat exchanger. (Then again, these jerks vandalized the Portland Elk, so … ?)
If there was some emergency where someone’s intestines were exposed, they’d be holding their nose in disgust at the olfactory violence of it all. When the guts of civilization intrude on their worldview, they fly into a rage and duct-tape themselves to fences in protest.
“When the guts of civilization intrude on their worldview, they fly into a rage and duct-tape themselves to fences in protest.”
I’d add that the people who create civilization are sick of Eloi messing things up. If someone is taped to the fence the obvious solution is to let the rutting bull out of the barn and watch the show. Much of modern life’s endless drama is fomented by kindly disposed people who have (so far) let the freaks run amok. Who knows when this will end? (One clue might be that everyone loves the videos of pissed off French commuters handily and efficiently dragging “protesters” out of the street like the limp sacks of nothing they really are.)
To quote Terrapod:
The smaller pole mounted units, perhaps in the few hundreds per depot, seeing they are a more common failure point due to heat, leaks, lighting strikes, trees falling or wayward ordnance.”
I can remember back in the 50s & 60s that occasional “wayward ordnance” would damage pole transformers. Was this vandalism or terrorism? As you stated, these are two very distinct things. It may have indeed been vanldalism, but the PTB decided to use it for propaganda purposes.
Terrapod’s comments were accurate. These very weaknesses have been exposed as part of the analysis about EMP damage and recovery.
Anyone with any experience working with high voltage knows how easy it would be to trip or damage the grid. There are plenty of videos on the web showing people doing stupid things (such as releasing Mylar helium balloons under high tension lines) and accidentally causing a blackout. If several such “accidents” were to occur simultaneously within a region, it could very well cascade into a large blackout. There are a lot of more destructive things, in addition to shooting transformers, that could result in having to wait on replacing equipment that may or may not be readily available. Most of these weaknesses have been pointed out in various studies, but would require the power companies to spend money to prepare. Therefore it won’t happen. Someone executive might not get their bonus if the money was spent on hardening the grid.
I am not advocating acts of terrorism, just pointing out some of the many weaknesses of our current system. Anyone who has been seriously involved in disaster preparedness planning for a city/county/parrish/state likely knows how fragile our situation is. I’ve seen what happens when a tornado or ice storm causes widespread damage to the power infrastructure. People these days are much less prepared to cope than people were even 25 years ago. Sorry about being so long winded.
Don’t fret, I love long winded comments! The rest of the internet may be memes and six word slogans but my blog is a place for people who can read and write. Heck, I’m barely able to keep my posts under 2,000 words.
I think there is room between sabotage and vandalism. What should we call destruction for no purpose other entrainment ? As Michael Caine’s character says in that Batman movie, “Some people just want to watch the world burn”
I think that falls under vandalism; wanton destruction simply for entertainment. To me sabotage implies some sort of end goal.
Wanna bet what happens if it turns out the perp(s) have significant melanin content in their skin?
They jus’ be practicin’ their culture, bro! And never forget: “All cultures are equal!”
Are the unions in the area of these substations negotiating any new contracts?