Shooters armed with assault rifles and some knowledge of electrical utilities have prompted new worries on the vulnerability of California's vast power grid.
A 2013 attack on an electric substation near San Jose that nearly knocked out Silicon Valley's power supply was initially downplayed as vandalism by Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the facility's owner. Gunfire from semiautomatic weapons did extensive damage to 17 transformers that sent grid operators scrambling to avoid a blackout.
But this week, a former top power regulator offered a far more ominous interpretation: The attack was terrorism, he said, and if circumstances had been just a little different, it could have been disastrous.
Jon Wellinghoff, who was chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission when the shooting took place, said that attack was clearly executed by well-trained individuals seeking to do significant damage to the area, and he fears it was a test run for an even larger assault.
"It would not be that hard to bring down the entire region west of the Rockies if you, in fact, had a coordinated attack like this against a number of substations," Wellinghoff said Thursday. "This [shooting] event shows there are people out there capable of such an attack."http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-grid-terror-20140207,0,5892405.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fbusiness+%28L.A.+Times+-+Business%29#axzz2sbT6vV8Z
What is even scarier than finding out just how vulnerable a major element of our national infrastructure is to a coordinated attack, is some of the views expressed in the comments section of this L.A. Times article. There are comments in there that are so noxious and moronically conspiratorial in nature, that it truly does make The Gadfly wonder if some form of mass hypnosis hasn't been employed against the weakest minded individuals in this country and turned them all in to pants-shitting, nonsense spouting Alex Jones clones.
And it doesn't take a whole lot of detective work to figure out which side of the political spectrum these lunatic commenters are from. Let's just say that whenever there is a mention in the press of nefarious doings involving assault style weapons, these goons swarm like cockroaches on to the message boards of the press outlets publishing the story and spare no amount of cockamamie virulence in defending their precious toys and propagating their bug-eyed conspiracy theories.
While the article does not provide any confirmed evidence of who was responsible for the bullet-blazing attack on the electrical substations, it is not a far-fetched proposition in The Gadfly's view that the people likely responsible were NOT dressed like this:
But much more likely to look like these bozos:
And here's the story associated with those four knuckleheads which leads The Gadfly to be of that opinion:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/08/28/killing-former-soldier-and-girlfriend-reveals-alleged-plot-to-kill-president/
Ever since the Kenyan, terrorist appeasing, communist usurper was elected to the Presidency, and then re-elected, the far right in this country has lost it's collective shit and their fevered imaginations have been working overtime manufacturing all manner of clownish conspiracies about Obama wanting to forcefully confiscate all of their killing toys, wanting to mass arrest conservatives and herd them in to FEMA concentration camps, and of conspiring with Muslims to impose Sharia law across the land (among other dopey claims).
As such, The Gadfly would not for one moment consider beginning the search for culprits of a foreign bent first when it comes to investigating this attack. Nosiree - not for one moment.
----TFG
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