Red Button didn't flash?

ABC - August 18, 2003

"...Efforts to nail down the source of Thursday's massive blackout have shifted to Ohio and FirstEnergy Corp., the nation's fourth-largest investor-owned utility and No. 159 on the Fortune 500 list. FirstEnergy said a system that is supposed to flash a red warning on computer monitors at the company's control center was not operational when the lines began failing Thursday afternoon.

Daralhayat -August 18 A communiqué attributed to Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the power blackout that happened in the U.S. last Thursday, saying that the brigades of Abu Fahes Al Masri had hit two main power plants supplying the East of the U.S., as well as major industrial cities in the U.S. and Canada, "its ally in the war against Islam (New York and Toronto) and their neighbors."

The communiqué assured that the operation "was carried out on the orders of Osama bin Laden to hit the pillars of the U.S. economy," as "a realization of bin Laden's promise to offer the Iraqi people a present." The statement, which Al-Hayat obtained from the website of the International Islamic Media Center, didn't specify the way the alleged sabotage was carried out.

Iraqear.ru -Monday, August 18, 2003

Although government and energy-industry officials have continued to state that Thursday's massive power blackout was not an act of terrorism, they are unable to rule out the possibility that a computer hacker plunged 50 million people into darkness, a source told Fox News Monday.

There were also reports that Al Qaeda had claimed responsibility for the outage, although U.S. officials said Monday that those claims should be taken with "a giant grain of salt."

A source in the midst of the investigation into the blackout told Fox News there were signs the power grid was becoming unstable as early as Thursday morning.

The final power outage took place at 4:11 p.m. EDT, cascading across lower Michigan, northern Ohio, southern Ontario, most of New York and New Jersey and parts of New England and Pennsylvania in just 9 seconds.

Did Bush & Cheney "Order" The Great Blackout?

Baltimore Indymedia/GlobalResearch - 17 August 2003

The timing was way too convenient - just days to weeks before crucial votes on Bush's sweeping energy plan and Clear Skies Initiative - both designed to dramatically overempower and expand the fossil-fuel-driven electrical power generating industry.

Afterall, if the 9/11 disaster got G.W. the Patriot Acts, why shouldn't a massive power outage get him "Energy Acts"? The timing of the Thursday blackout was amazingly coincidental. It occurred just weeks before Bush plans to shove a sweeping energy plan through Congress that wiill not only force America to be ever more dependent on fossil fuel for decades to come, but will turn the American electrical utility system into a giant megacorporation sans competition, sans recourse by consumers. It also occurred just as Bush's sick-joke of an alternative to the Clean Air Act, 'The Clear Skies Initiative' was facing a very uncertain future -as of August 5, Bush had resorted to using the EPA website as a 'sales promo' for the plan (see http://www.epa.gov/clearskies/ ).to try to drum up public support he was highly unlikely to obtain. The Clear Skies scheme, hiding behind its deceptive corporate euphemism, would give the electrical power generation industry a license to pollute: According to David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Clear Skies will allow power plant carbon emissions (the top greenhouse gas) to increase by up to 16 percent between 2000 and 2010 -and this at a time when the ravages of global warming are becoming alarmingly obvious and air pollution related asthmas among children have been steadily climbing.

Says Vivian Stockman of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition: "If there were requirements for truth in government labeling, the 'Clear Skies' initiative would be called 'Clear Lies.' This is just another sadly typical case of doublespeak, which the administration uses in attempts to hide the truth about its environmental policies."

The Bush energy plan, also up for consideration in Congress, is nearly as bad, aiming just a little lower, at the pocket instead of the lungs. Here's how the New York Times put it in their August 15 edition:

"The focus of the energy bill has been on a controversial plan from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to rewrite power grid rules and require U.S. utilities to join super-regional grid groups...The industry needs about $50 billion to $100 billion in new investment, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, an industry funded group in Palo Alto, California."

What this would mean, physically, is the construction of an unbelievably massive, unbelievably ugly network of giant new power lines marching across the countryside. This means that millions of acres of land could be claimed by the federal government as 'public domain.' Your nice little suburb or farmhouse could soon be sitting in the shadow of power lines and/or switching stations.

What this will mean, economically, is disaster for the consumer. Bush plans to deregulate the industry as well as calling for tens of billions in grid 'upgrades.' To the average electrical engineer, an upgrade would no doubt mean a renovation of an existing utility. To Bush, an 'upgrade' means handing his corporate pals billions of dollars and a license to screw the public, environment, and future. In fact, when the Farr Amendment was introduced in 2001, calling for funds to be devoted to real grid upgrades, guess who killed it? Yep: Bush & Co. In any case, does anyone not a permanent resident of Romper Room seriously imagine that this will not translate into skyrocketing power bills -a cost that will hit the poor, the ill, small business, and strapped local governments the hardest?

What truly shows the Bush lie in his quest for new power plants is that there is NO POWER SHORTAGE. There is in fact a SURPLUS of power in the U.S. It is just the distribution system needs an overhaul -which can be done with sophisticated computerized distribution centers and interfaces that more efficiently shunt power from place to place...