Martin Armstrong Asks: "Is There Something Behind The Power Outage In Washington DC?"

(EXCERPT)
The April 7th, 2015 power outage in Washington DC is curious to say the least. Virtually instantaneously, the government declare it was not a terrorist attack. After all, how could that possibly be when the NSA guards the country. If there was an attack on the power-grid, then the NSA would have to answer for their failure. So clearly, if it was an attack, they would never admit it.

Instead, this has been attributed to a piece of metal breaking loose from a power line 43 miles southeast of the District of Columbia, which knocked out electricity to the White House, State Department and wide area including parts of Maryland. Can a simple piece of metal break and shut down that much power of a strategic area as DC? That seems to be an excuse like some drunk driver knocked over a power pole.

OK ATSers, Is this another one of our Tin Foil Hat Forays into The Realms of Cyber Conspiracy? Or, do we have a situation here where these shadowy punchers of the keys may have actually brought some damage to The Big Bad Govs of The West, who are now in denial that anything untoward actually happened to trip them up a little by The Ants of Electronic Warfare?

It seems that a denial came about awfully quickly as to the cause of this event. The PTB usually take a while to come up with some sort of palatable cause for these mysterious occurrences. Maybe it's just me , but it seems by the chain of events in different countries around our Western Sphere that there has been a few of these similar type situations going on in the last week or two. Could it be hackers probing the actual defenses our societies have against these sort of attacks? Are they sharpening their Bags O' Tricks to see how much damage that they can do to us with just a few keystrokes?

Anywaze, If any of Y'All have any Comments etc. on this particular item as always they would be most welcome. Thanks for Reading Guys and Gals and Peace to Y'All Arjunanda.

(ARTICLE)

Only six days before Obama had to switch to emergency power was on April 1st in Rome where the power supply was out for hours effecting the Lazio region. That included the major Roman airport of Fiumicino. The cause of that event somehow remains unknown.

Just the day before in Turkey there was another power failure. That was the worst blackout since the devastating Marmara earthquake of 1999. Chaos in the capital and much of the country drew more than 70 million Turks into chaos. Public transport was paralyzed, traffic lights were dark, conveyor belts continued. Elevators halted and mobile phones were silent. Even hospitals switched to emergency mode and the NSA style surveillance cameras in the capital Ankara went black.

There, left-wing extremists broke into the Palace of Justice and kidnapped a prosecutor during the massive power outage. The prosecutor had worked on the case of a protester who had been shot in Gezi Park. Even Prime Minister Davutoglu suspected spontaneous “sabotage”.

Are we dealing with a series of unfortunate events, enriched with a touch of typical government mismanagement? According to the Turkish newspaper Hürryiet , the national energy grid in Turkey was quite sophisticated and mismanagement was not enough to explain the massive power failure. Many in Turkey suspect a cyber attack. The Turkish Internet is full of speculations and theories, including the allegation to the Government, the blackout was staged to make propaganda for the development of nuclear energy.

Then there was Amsterdam. In the Netherlands, on March 27th a series of questionable blackouts took place is a very dubious chain of events. Large parts of the Northern Netherlands with nearly three million people experienced a devastating power failure. Thousands were stuck on trains, trams and elevators. The official statement was that a high-voltage switch-gear in the Amsterdam suburb Diemen failed due to the power overloading. Was Europe’s fourth largest airport and the entire rail network in the north of the country simply a victim of an accident or perhaps the target of a cyber-attack?



The technology age is highly vulnerable and the movement to electronic money is interesting for if the power-grid goes down for any prolonged period, what new risk factors will the economy absorb? During war, it is common for the other side to counterfeit their opponent’s currency. The way to accomplish this today is to take out the power-grid

www.zerohedge.com..." target="_blank" class="postlink">www.zerohedge.com... news/2015-04-10/martin-armstrong-asks-there-something-behind-power-outage-washington-dc

I'd be more concerned about what's going on while these power outages were going on than what caused them.

Steering people's attention to a cause diverts lots of attention from other factors that may occur while the power is down. For example, there's talk that the recent fire in a London railway tube was to give un-alerted access to diamonds recently stolen while the power was down.....or was the whole theft a "ruse" to something more sinister?

Trust nobody.

Did Hatton Garden jewels gang start underground fire in the City?

Current joke in Russia is when Washington DC lost power and went dark, so did Al Quaida and ISIS websites. Good thinking Thinking nerbot, I had some little suspicions going through my little ticker while reading this article initially. A Star for U Arjunanda a reply to: nerbot

While power is out, hack in or brake into 'something' to set up fir a future incident??

Could very well be the case clearmind, That's what I love about ATS, Lots of people here thinking about things from all sorts of angles. Good Reply and A Star Arjunanda. a reply to: clearmind

Well it does seem to be somewhat small areas so we could rule out solar incident considering a larger area would be affected if caused by the sun. The sun has been shooting small CME and hydra flares at us recently also filament snaps.

I would think that with all of this big brother rhetoric about infrastructure security that if it was malicious in nature then they would surely know especially if they caused it.

I don't know what to think to be honest there are soooo many fluid things going on all over the place it wouldn't surprise me if they are testing the waters on scenarios. I do know this the "electric pole down by DUI" story smells like dead fish or is that me actually smelling dead fish from the pacific!? Just another: lets project what we want the masses know while the left hand is doing something or not doing something.

It is interesting that a failure 43 miles from DC would be a major factor. First, don't all of these high priority sites have instantaneous failover protection that puts a battery bank/inverter (think UPS [uninterruptible power supply] ) and then switches on a generator of some sort. Also, in terms of having a common failure point so far away would seem to be very poor planning at the least. There should be two sources of power brought in from two different grids for each site that needs 99.99% uptime.
I had better service with my server hosting facilities in SF. Redundant, isolated (separate source) power + generator on-site + two different internet backbones. If I could get that why would I believe the white house and other critical structures would have a single power feeding them all.

I smell fish!

originally posted by: arjunanda
OK ATSers, Is this another one of our Tin Foil Hat Forays into The Realms of Cyber Conspiracy? Or, do we have a situation here where these shadowy punchers of the keys may have actually brought some damage to The Big Bad Govs of The West, who are now in denial that anything untoward actually happened to trip them up a little by The Ants of Electronic Warfare?

Don't rule out that the power outage was orchestrated by the government itself, possibly an intentional reboot of their systems to clean out some particularly nasty unwanted incursion. All these places have multiple redundant backup systems to prevent power outages. If the power went down, it was because they wanted it to.

originally posted by: evc1shop
It is interesting that a failure 43 miles from DC would be a major factor. First, don't all of these high priority sites have instantaneous failover protection that puts a battery bank/inverter (think UPS [uninterruptible power supply] ) and then switches on a generator of some sort. Also, in terms of having a common failure point so far away would seem to be very poor planning at the least. There should be two sources of power brought in from two different grids for each site that needs 99.99% uptime.
I had better service with my server hosting facilities in SF. Redundant, isolated (separate source) power + generator on-site + two different internet backbones. If I could get that why would I believe the white house and other critical structures would have a single power feeding them all.

I smell fish!

Indeed this many times over this incident has to be a distraction for some yet to be determined reason
because it is inconceivable that key infrastructure sites like those dont have more than one grid feed point or
standby generators and or UPS systems.

Yeah ShaneJUK, You would think that they'd have some of the fanciest back up devices on the planet around DC. Makes me think back to 9/11 when we found out that they really didn't have missiles on the roof of The White House like we had come to believe for so many years...Very Strange indeed. Good Reply and A Star Arjunanda a reply to: ShayneJUK

a reply to: Blue Shift

BINGO

originally posted by: arjunanda
Current joke in Russia is when Washington DC lost power and went dark, so did Al Quaida and ISIS websites. Good thinking Thinking nerbot, I had some little suspicions going through my little ticker while reading this article initially. A Star for U

Arjunanda a reply to: nerbot

Well, not to get off topic, BUT Anonymous #opisis DID find that nearly all pro-ISIS/ISIL and recruitment Web sites WERE being run from the US/UK, with hosts that refuse to shut them down even after being confronted by the news.

Could have just been the "war on coal" catching up to Obama

originally posted by: evc1shop
It is interesting that a failure 43 miles from DC would be a major factor. First, don't all of these high priority sites have instantaneous failover protection that puts a battery bank/inverter (think UPS [uninterruptible power supply] ) and then switches on a generator of some sort. Also, in terms of having a common failure point so far away would seem to be very poor planning at the least. There should be two sources of power brought in from two different grids for each site that needs 99.99% uptime.
I had better service with my server hosting facilities in SF. Redundant, isolated (separate source) power + generator on-site + two different internet backbones. If I could get that why would I believe the white house and other critical structures would have a single power feeding them all.

I smell fish!

No. Our power grid really is that weak, there are many points like this where a single failure can knock out power to a large area. There have been numerous simulations in the past where losing the right piece of minor equipment like a transformer could take out the entire eastern seaboard if the conditions are right.

The electric infrastructure is nearly a century old and the designs are flawed.

Let me reverse the question, do you think that if they could offer up some solid proof (even falsified), that they wouldn't use the power outage as a pretext for a terrorist attack? The NSA would love that type of example for the next round of Patriot Act funding.

The email I read I thought I read something about a problem with a transformer. Ekectrical equipment does occassionally break down. Nothing lasts forever. It may have been made by some European company. I do not know for sure. I could check next week if I didn't delete the email if someone wants to know more specifics.

a reply to: Aazadan
I am not questioning that the electrical power distribution grid in the US has flaws, just questioning the fact that our central government buildings and other high priority installations would not have a contingency plan to alleviate a single grid failure takes all condition. Many smaller businesses have their own emergency power and some larger corporations have electricity sourced from at least 2 independent sub stations to prevent loss of business and data. The places in DC that experienced an outage should have only noticed a slight flicker in the lighting as secondary power or backup generators were brought online to overcome the initial fault condition.

It was either poorly planned or has been exploited for a reason....

originally posted by: evc1shop
a reply to: Aazadan
I am not questioning that the electrical power distribution grid in the US has flaws, just questioning the fact that our central government buildings and other high priority installations would not have a contingency plan to alleviate a single grid failure takes all condition. Many smaller businesses have their own emergency power and some larger corporations have electricity sourced from at least 2 independent sub stations to prevent loss of business and data. The places in DC that experienced an outage should have only noticed a slight flicker in the lighting as secondary power or backup generators were brought online to overcome the initial fault condition.

It was either poorly planned or has been exploited for a reason....

You're over estimating people. They probably don't have very good back up systems. If something were to happen there, it would make sense to head to a more secure location so there's probably no need to have solid backup systems.

I can only agree with you on that point Aazadan, The Old Cheney Secret Secure Location Shuffle. Makes more sense than actually having someone competent really hardening the infrastructure LOL Good Post and A Star a reply to: Aazadan