Armchair Generalist

Casual Fridays

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The Year in Politics

Green Lantern Theory

More than four years ago, Matt Yglesias proposed the Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics, which simply stated, notes that Very Serious People in the Beltway believe that any foreign policy challenge can be solved with the appropriate level of sustained willpower. Whoever blinks first, loses. Duncan Black notes that this attitude is still very much alive, at least with David Ignatius at the WaPo talking about Afghanistan.

Like any war, this one is ultimately about willpower, and America has an advantage in Petraeus, one of the strongest-willed people you could hope to meet.

This is the classic neo-con/idealist attitude, that moral strength and the will to use military force (despite all odds against you) will somehow result in foreign policy successes. In Ingatius's defense, Black didn't print the entire paragraph, the context of which redeems Ignatius as more of a realist than an idealist.

But this winner's psyche is not sufficient. History shows that three variables are crucial in countering an insurgency: a real process of reconciliation, no safe havens for the enemy and a competent host government. None are present in Afghanistan.

And then Ignatius goes on to offer a set of questions that Petraeus should be considering as he charges off to "complete the mission," however poorly its strategy is defined and however low the odds of success are. Ignatius (and others) have yet to come to grips with the point that Teh Surge didn't achieve strategic success in Iraq, and Teh Surge 2.0 isn't going to acheive strategic success in Afghanistan.

National Guard's Misplaced Priorities

In a really weak effort to mimic David Letterman's "top ten" lists, the National Guard Bureau released its top ten list of 2010 missions. At number nine, it lists the DoD's decision (not completion) to develop ten Homeland Response Forces that will aid in the response to a CBRN incident - even if that incident never happens.

The National Guard added a Homeland Response Force package to its Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and high-yield Explosive response capabilities, providing a more robust response to any homeland incident.

When activated, HRFs perform search and extraction from collapsed buildings, victim decontamination, medical triage and transport to stabilization facilities, where doctors treat victims before they are moved to a hospital or other designated medical facility.

HRFs offer a bigger force, providing command and control of multiple CBRNE Enhanced Response Force Packages, weapons of mass-destruction, civil support teams and other Guard assets.

Ten HRFs -- one for each Federal Emergency Management Agency region -- are scheduled to stand up by Oct. 1, 2012.

Really, guys? This makes your "top ten" list? You're that proud of the 2010 QDR decision to add 5700 NG troops across the country to join the 57 WMD Civil Support Teams and the 17 CBRNE Emergency Response Forces that are already sitting quietly, bored out of their minds, waiting for any excuse to do something other than respond to "white powder" scares and other false alarms?Amazing to be so proud of such a collossal waste of federal funds aimed at developing such an overprotective response to an over-rated threat. Yes, these NG troops do help train state and local emergency responders on CBRN hazard response, but this technical skill isn't unique to DoD. It's not 1998 anymore.

By the way, the HRFs do not, in fact, provide command and control of the other Guard assets. The general model is to form a joint task force for the state under which all the collective NG assets would be controlled. This is because (and I know this will shock some of the CBRNE crowd) not all incidents will be CBRN-related (and thus not require being led by technical experts), and not all CBRN incidents will require DoD technical specialists (in fact, other medical, logistics, and security assets may be more valuable). The command and control equipment is more to integrate with any state/local responders (regardless of exact equipment) and to assist in coordinating with higher military headquarters.

Combating Terrorism the Right Way

The British government demonstrates, for anyone who would like to notice (*cough-FBI-cough*), how responsible nations charge terrorists who like to use high explosives and other improvised weapons of destruction.

Nine men charged with conspiracy to bomb high-profile London targets in the run-up to Christmas have been remanded in custody after appearing in court.

They were also charged with preparing for terrorism by agreeing potential targets and testing materials.
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The accused men have also been charged under 5(1) of the Terrorism Act 2006 of engaging in conduct in preparation for acts of terrorism on dates between 1 October and 20 December.

They are alleged to have done this by carrying out reconnaissance, agreeing potential targets, downloading and researching materials and igniting and testing incendiary material.
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Five of the defendants are also facing a third charge of possessing documents and records containing information likely to be of use to terrorists.

See, Department of Justice lawyers? No WMD charges. No phony bullshit about "attempted use of a WMD" to inflate an otherwise routine investigation and arrest. Bad guys get punished, using public courts to convict terrorists does in fact work, and the world continues to spin. What a concept.

Hat tip to Ray.

Painting Retired Generals as Villains

Brian Bender at the Boston Globe has joined USA Today and the NY Times in declaring that retired general and flag officers have no business staying in the defense business. He focuses on a group of officers who retired in 2007, suggesting that they just can't be trusted, after 35+ years of dedicated service to their country, to do the ethically correct thing.

The Globe analyzed the career paths of 750 of the highest ranking generals and admirals who retired during the last two decades and found that, for most, moving into what many in Washington call the “rent-a-general’’ business is all but irresistible.

From 2004 through 2008, 80 percent of retiring three- and four-star officers went to work as consultants or defense executives, according to the Globe analysis. That compares with less than 50 percent who followed that path a decade earlier, from 1994 to 1998.

In some years, the move from general staff to industry is a virtual clean sweep. Thirty-four out of 39 three- and four-star generals and admirals who retired in 2007 are now working in defense roles — nearly 90 percent.

And in many cases there is nothing subtle about what the generals have to sell — Martin’s firm is called The Four Star Group, for example. The revolving-door culture of Capitol Hill — where former lawmakers and staffers commonly market their insider knowledge to lobbying firms — is now pervasive at the senior rungs of the military leadership.

The article uses, among its many examples, a case that Gen. (ret) Jack Keane went into the Pentagon to talk to Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Chiarelli, in an effort to convince him that the Army should purchase more AMC-built HMMWVs. You might have noticed the recent hysterical push to get every soldier inside of the armored busses they call "Mine Resistant Ambush-Protected" (MRAP) vehicles. Is this a bad thing? Only if you think that HMMWVs have no place on the battlefield, and that's a point where I side with Keane. It would be in the Army's best interest to continue buying more HMMWVs for military transportation instead of over-priced, over-engineered MRAPs.

The USA Today witch-hunt effectively killed the military's ability to tap into the experience and talent of numerous retired general/flag officers, all because someone was "concerned" about the appearance of impropriety. They couldn't exactly identify where the impropriety was, but look out!! the ethical background that shaped those retired general/flag officers' 35+ years in the nation's service just might vanish overnight.

Educating the Media

Gary Stoller at USA Today has really outdone himself. He's discovered that the majority of mass transit stations outside of airports are, in fact, vulnerable to terrorist threats. Can we ever feel normal again?

"Mass transit systems are much less secure than the aviation sector or certain key government buildings," says Clark Kent Ervin, the Department of Homeland Security's former inspector general.

And they'll likely remain that way, USA TODAY has found in its examination of rail security, which included an analysis of the National Counterterrorism Center's incident database and interviews with Congress, federal security officials, transit authorities, rail operators, independent security experts and passengers.

The nation's vast network of more than 3,200 stations and more than 20,000 miles of track combined with the impracticality and cost of screening every passenger leave U.S. subways and rails exposed to the type of terrorist attacks 22 other nations have experienced the last five years.
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In an April report, the American Public Transportation Association said public transportation systems "are facing unprecedented funding challenges due to widespread declining state and local revenues."

The association, which represents transit agencies and rail and bus operators, found 70% of 151 transit systems that responded to an association survey project "budget shortfalls" this year.

William Millar, the association's president, says transit authorities don't have the necessary resources. More than $30 billion has been allocated for aviation security since 9/11, compared with $1.7 billion for subway, passenger rail, cargo rail, bus and some ferry security, Millar says.

Yes, this is one area that you just can't throw enough money at. Because if you're set on providing protection to all the mass transit centers, what about the public shopping malls, major league sports arenas, national landmarks, and government buildings? One might suggest that a risk management approach could be useful, noting from the NCTC incident database that the overwhelming majority of terrorist incidents DID NOT OCCUR in the United States - for instance.

This is a particularly useless "investigative journalism" piece (as Andrew Sullivan notes, kind of an obvious news story at that). There does need to be a balance between what local and state officials do with their own funds plus the federally-allocated DHS funds they receive every year, and what the federal government ought to be doing. And in fact, Stoller does get around to mentioning that role - in the last paragraphs of the story.

Ultimately, analysts say, the key to thwarting terrorism on the nation's rails is intelligence to prevent an attack — which has worked.

No shit? Really? No, the real danger here is when congresspeople get "concerned" about this rather obvious situation - that the federal government isn't putting Jersey barriers around every vulnerable public meeting spot and peppering the landscape with chemical and biological agent detectors. They can't simply say, "Yeah, it's an accepted risk, and we're not going to throw billions of dollars against protection schemes when we've been successful using intelligence and law enforcement to stop the incidents from happening."

It would be nice if they did that, but I'm not holding my breath. The Congress needs its security theater to show the public how responsive they are against imagined threats.

No Threat in DIY BioLabs

David Hoffman, author of "The Dead Hand" and contributer to the Foreign Policy Magazine, notes this study discussing the potential threat of "do it yourself" biological labs that have been popping up across the United States. Short answer - not really that dangerous, for all the hype that's gone on about this topic.

The commission’s report says: keep an eye on it, but don’t regulate it now.

On the question of risks, the report says “that presently there appears to be no serious risk of completely novel organisms being constructed in non-institutional settings including in the DIY community.” The commission said there is no need to impose special limits on the DIY labs.

Overall, the panel’s report suggests that the authorities should be on the lookout for risks, but the state of the science does not warrant a moratorium or further government regulation. Indeed, the panel warned that too much oversight might strangle innovation. The commission called for a handful of new studies over the next year and a half to see how synthetic biology unfolds.

I'm hoping that studies such as these might reduce the hyper-sensitivity of those Very Serious People who see bioterrorism as a near certainty in the future, merely because of the availability of laboratory-quality equipment and starter material. T'aint necessarily so, and it's good to know there are somber professionals who can advise policy-makers on that point.

Disaster Tourism

This article in Foreign Policy Mag points to the town of Pripyat, near the Chernobyl nuclear incident, as the site of increased international tourism, now that radiation levels have dropped to acceptable exposure levels. Make your plans now for the 25th anniversary extravaganza in April 2011!

Defense Budget Fun

Well, this news in the Army Times will certainly make developing the next FY13-17 defense budget really, really exciting. Seems the White House is going to take the first steps in cutting back the defense budget. Fun and hillarity to follow.

White House budget officials have ordered the Pentagon to shed $78 billion from its annual budgets over the next five years, starting with a $12 billion cut in 2012, sources told Military Times.

Pentagon budget officials late last week already were busy determining how to respond to the 2012 budget reduction, which was first reported by Defense News. Now, one budget source said Pentagon officials “are scrambling” to determine how they will trim Defense Department plans to meet a new Office of Management and Budget directive to trim $78 billion over the future years defense plan, which will span 2012-16. [note, this is wrong, they mean 2013-17, which is the next FYDP, since the FY12 budget is locked for submission]

So that's a total of $90 billion in cuts for FY12-17 in total, or roughly a 2.5% cut for each year. Not a killer by any means, but painful decisions will have to be made, since plans to get out of Afghanistan are, shall we say, flexible at the moment. For all the Republicans blustering about the need for cutting spending and not sparing defense, I predict lots of bombastic speeches about how this proposal is unacceptable. Michael "No, seriously, I'm not a conservative" O'Hanlon suggests that a combination of troop cuts and defense acquisition cuts, plus "efficiency" drills, would be required to meet the budget goal. Not exactly rocket science there, but hey, it's tough being a defense analyst at a top national think-tank and churning out drek on a constant basis.

Of interest, the Army Times article suggests that the Obama administration may delay submitting its FY12 budget until April or May (instead of February), because of the Senate's abject failure to do its job and pass a defense bill for FY 2011 instead of a continuing resolution (thank you, Sen. Mitch "Party of No" McConnell). If the Senate-House committe resolutions don't get around to passing the FY11 defense budget until February, literally half the fiscal year will have passed already. No new spending can be authorized without that bill's passage. This will cause all kinds of havoc with ongoing and new defense contracts and deciding what can actually be obligated in 2012, given this five month delay and its impact on 2011 spending (trying to get 12 months of spending done within six or seven months time).

Ah, good times. It's stuff like this that keeps the Defense Acquisition University very busy teaching people how the defense business "works."

Tactical Nukes Are Next to Go

Matt Eckel at Foreign Policy Watch points to this NYT article discussing the Obama administration's next arms control topic - "non-strategic" or tactical nuclear weapons. From the NYT:

Today, the United States retains about 500 tactical weapons, according to the figures released this year, and experts say about 180 of them are still stationed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. Russia has between 3,000 and 5,000 of them, depending on the estimate, and American officials have said Moscow moved more of them closer to NATO allies as recently as last spring in response to the deployment of American missile defense installations closer to its territory.

“In the 21st century, there is no plausible military, political or deterrent justification for the Russian government to deploy several thousand such weapons,” said Frank Miller, a former national security aide to President George W. Bush and now now at the Scowcroft Group in Washington.

Baker Spring of the Heritage Foundation believes that any deal to withdraw tactical nukes from Europe would ultimately benefit Russia in the Great Game that is war. And of course, neither belief here is entirely true. Given that Russia has a rather weak conventional military force, it relies on tactical nuclear weapons as a defensive measure to discourage any ideas of invasion or border challenges.  As Matt notes, it's all in the context of general military operations and strategy.

Without getting into the specifics of where tactical nuclear weapons are deployed, or the minutae of their operation, I'd simply point out that, for all the well-intentioned efforts to depict nuclear war as its own ballgame with its own rules, war is war. People are killed just as dead by conventional weapons as by nuclear ones. Thus, the balance of conventional forces needs to be considered when assessing the wisdom of a given nuclear deal. In other words, NATO presumably relies less on tactical nukes than the Russians because NATO's conventional forces are more capable than those of Russia. Even if a deal with Russia allowed Russian tactical nukes to be more readily deployable than American ones, that would not ipso facto give Russia an overall strategic advantage. It may be that, even with Russian tactical nukes more easily deployed, NATO forces would still prevail in a ground war. And in the meantime, there would be far fewer tactical nukes overall, reducing the (far more plausible) likelihood of theft or unauthorized use.

We don't need US tactical nukes in Europe, nor do we really need US military forces in terms of Army brigades and Air Force fighter/bomber wings in Europe. Both are there for "security assurance" reasons, so European nations can continue to underfund their defense programs maintain a minimal defense posture in respect to other economic priorities and not worry about the Russian bear coming across the border. It's so indicative of a twen-cen mindset. And what will become an ironic satire of the New START talks, all the Republicans who were moaning about how tac nukes weren't addressed in the treaty will be sure to argue vehemently that we cannot afford to take any out of Europe in the near future.

UPDATE: Fixed for clarity.

I Am Shocked, Shocked to Hear...

...that security conditions in Afghanistan have, in fact, been deteriorating over the past year and are not, in fact, improving.

The Wall Street Journal was able to view two confidential "residual risk accessibility" maps, one compiled by the U.N. at the annual fighting season's start in March 2010 and another at its tail end in October. The maps, used by U.N. personnel to gauge the dangers of travel and running programs, divide the country's districts into four categories: very high risk, high risk, medium risk and low risk.

In the October map, just as in March's, nearly all of southern Afghanistan—the focus of the coalition's military offensives—remained painted the red of "very high risk," with no noted improvements. At the same time, the green belt of "low risk" districts in northern, central and western Afghanistan shriveled.

The U.N.'s October map upgraded to "high risk" 16 previously more secure districts in Badghis, Sar-e-Pul, Balkh, Parwan, Baghlan, Samangan, Faryab, Laghman and Takhar provinces; only two previously "high risk" districts, one in Kunduz and one in Herat province, received a safer rating.

I am confident that General "Super Dave" Petraeus will have a good explanation why his "population-centric" counterinsurgency operations, featuring more frequent and powerful air attacks, have not been working. It must be the fault of those dirty hippies and media reporters not backing the troops.

Overconcern About Overflights

The Washington Post takes a moment to worry about planes that are overflying, but not landing, in the United States. Who knows what's in those cargo holds?

Scanning all the cargo that flies over the country "is totally unrealistic," said Yossi Sheffi, director of the Center for Transportation and Logistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "We have tens of millions of packages flying almost every night. We can't stop the huge flow of packages from all over the world. There has to be a balance between acceptable risk and the economy."

But Richard Bloom, a longtime U.S. intelligence operative who teaches counterterrorism courses at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona, said a terrorist could "explode a plane with a dirty bomb or a biological weapon or an actual nuclear weapon on board, and that material will spread wherever it crashes."
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"There is an unfounded fear out there that other countries don't have security standards on a par with the United States," said Steven Lott, communications director for the International Air Transport Association, the trade group for 230 airlines that account for more than 90 percent of international passenger flights. "It's a myth to say these overflights are the Wild West."

It's not a particularly enlightening article, but interesting only to watch so-called experts quickly conflate any situation into a WMD terrorist issue. This isn't the threat you're looking for. Overblown, over-exaggerated.

Educating the Public on Terrorism

There's a repeating theme in some combating terrorism circles about the need to "educate the public" on how to prepare for a terrorism incident, so that (in the event of an incident) the public won't panic. Ideally, they might even be prepared to assist victims and casualties of an incident. So Doyle McManus, a Washington columnist for the LA Times, wants to tell us about the importance of this issue, because it isn't stressed enough by the feds (so he believes). Of course, the example he falls back upon is nuclear terrorism a la Sigger's Law.

In the case of a nuclear explosion, a study by Stanford professor Lawrence Wein estimated that a small nuclear device in Washington, D.C., could kill 120,000 people if most people sought shelter in buildings -- but 180,000 if most people tried to evacuate.

Brooke Buddemeier of Lawrence Livermore recently estimated that an explosion in Los Angeles could cause 285,000 deaths or injuries from fallout among people a mile or more away from the blast if they took no shelter, but only a small fraction of that number if they found shelter in brick or concrete buildings. Even a wood-frame house would provide some protection.

[Stephen] Flynn [former Coast Guard CT expert] offers three ideas for reducing deaths and injuries in an attack: First, make sure everyone knows that if a bomb goes off, the first thing to do is seek shelter -- preferably underground. Next, teach airline passengers to recognize bombs and detonators, so the next Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab doesn't have a better chance of success. And third, develop national standards for emergency planning that communities would have to meet -- or see their insurance rates go up.
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Still, in practice, the administration hasn't talked about much about preparedness. "There's a concern about sounding as if you're no longer focused on preventing attacks from happening," one official acknowledged.

But Californians know what to do in an earthquake. Kansans know what to do in a tornado. Floridians know what to do in a hurricane.

Everybody ought to know what to do in the event of an attack -- of any kind.

Just two quick points. I don't think that investing millions of dollars into public education is going to do any good because the American public doesn't have the desire to take the time and energy to learn about preparing for a terrorist attack - even if it's paid for. Here's the difference between man-made incidents that cause mass casualties and natural disasters - people know natural disasters are not just possible but probable, depending on where you live. Terrorism incidents, not so probable, even if possible. And the odds of nuclear terrorism is just too microscopic to really worry about.

Mayors and governors don't really want to invest in massive public education drills about terror incidents. Yes, they expect the federal government to prevent the attacks. It's not an unreasonable request, considering the $80+ billion now invested annually in intelligence operations and $700 billion in defense, not to mention the billions in homeland security and law enforcement. It's not that public education isn't good or possible, but it's irrational to expect much practical returns from it. Far better to invest most funds into educating the emergency responders and government officials who have to deal with the public during terrorist incidents, industrial accidents, or natural disasters. It would be a much better investment.

In Defense of Realists

Prof Walt rises to the occasion in pushing back on Michael "Asshat" Gerson's idealist view of the world - one that disparages realism. Gerson uses a moment in time where Henry Kissinger is talking to Nixon about what the United States ought to do about the plight of Soviet Jews. Walt suggests that Gerson is misapplying the issue.

Gerson is wrong to claim that realists are indifferent to moral concerns. (See here for a thoughtful discussion of this issue). Realists emphasize the role of hard power and are generally skeptical of idealistic crusades, but not because they think morality has no place in human affairs. Indeed, most realists that I know are deeply moral individuals who wish that humans (and states) behaved in a more ethical fashion; unfortunately, history makes it abundantly clear that bad behavior is commonplace and that prudent leaders have to take that possibility into account.

Realists are cautious and prudent because they know that misguided moral crusades can place one's own country in danger and get lots of innocent people killed. Realists also know that states often have to make uncomfortable compromises, as the United States did when it allied with Stalinist Russia during World War II. For that matter, it made good strategic sense for the United States to move closer to communist China in the 1970s -- doing so put more pressure on the USSR -- even though this policy involved tacit cooperation with a government led by Mao Zedong, one of history's greatest mass murderers. A simple-minded focus on "good versus evil" is useless when the choice is between two equally despicable tyrants.

This isn't a new argument by Walt, but it bears repeating when asshats venture out to cast dispersions against the realists' point of view. And as Walt notes, of all people, Gerson ought to be able to recognize the failures of idealism when that community puts its view of reality into action (see preventive invasion of Iraq, failure of).

And for the record, Henry Kissinger responded to Gerson's charges by basically saying, "Fuck off. I was dealing with important national security issues before you were a gleam in your daddy's eye."

Merry Christmas

Also have a Happy Festivus and a Merry Saturnalia, one and all!

Casual Fridays

Just so wrong. Other examples of troll-baiting the geek community.

Best Govt Acronym Ever

Via TPM:

The Central Intelligence Agency has created a new group dedicated to analyze the impact of WikiLeaks on the United States's foreign relationships and the agency's operations. The name of this new department is the WikiLeaks Task Force. WTF indeed.

CIA officials say that they are already making an "extensive inventory" of all the information released by WikiLeaks so far. The panel is being driven by the CIA's Counterintelligence Center, but "has more than two dozen members from departments across the agency." [Washington Post]

The original version of the story appears here.

Kudos to the govt officials who decided on this name, even though they probably didn't understand what they had done when it was decided. Hilarious comment at the gizmodo site: "Due to the misleading acronym, the WTF is now considering a name change to Federal Agency of Information Leaks."

Sensationalizing CBRN Terrorism

If you wonder why more than 40% of the American public believes the chance of a successful terrorist attack on the homeland is about the same as it was on 9/11, maybe it's because of the Mainstream Media's eagerness to sensationalize any possibility, any rumor that terrorists - preferably foreign-based, violent extremists - are coming to kill Americans as we go about our daily routines. CBS News boasted this "exclusive story" that DHS has warned restaurants and hotels about the potential threat of terrorists (again, no specific group or timeframe) using ricin and cyanide to contaminate salad bars and hot buffets.

A key Intelligence source has confirmed the threat as "credible." Department of Homeland Security officials, along with members of the Department of Agriculture and the FDA, have briefed a small group of corporate security officers from the hotel and restaurant industries about it.

"We operate under the premise that individuals prepared to carry out terrorist acts are in this country," said Dec. of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano on Dec. 6, 2010.

The plot uncovered earlier this year is said to involve the use of two poisons - ricin and cyanide - slipped into salad bars and buffets.
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Manuals and videos on jihadist websites explain how to easy it is to make both poisons.

First of all, this kind of a threat has only been a concern since 1985, when a religious cult in Oregon decided to poison salad bars with salmonella. Not really a new idea. Second, notice that they're not discussing the use of anthrax or nerve agents - rather, there's a default to the common poisons more associated with the Anarchist's Cookbook than any state-sponsored WMD program. Small amounts of ricin and potassium cyanide are relatively within the realm of possibility to obtain, but not necessarily in bulk. And as George Smith will tell you, there are far, far more injuries and deaths resulting from poor regulation of the agrobusiness than by terrorist CBRN plots.

This last point is important because it goes to the alleged terrorist plot - is he an insider, a cook who prepares the food and decides to liberally sprinkle ricin or cyanide on the dishes in quantities large enough to cause mass casualties? Or is it someone who is going to surreptitiously walk up to the buffet line and casually toss powder into the buffet as he examines the dishes? The latter might only cause food poisoning to a small number of people, as opposed to mass casualties. Either way, these forms of terrorism are not very flashy, not like a good truck bomb outside a federal building or a solo attack on a subway with handguns blazing.

But here's the real deal. Let's get past the fact that we haven't seen a salad bar/hot buffet poisoning attempt for the past 25 years. If there is a particular form of attack in the works, sure, it's good to alert the particular targets, if it is in fact credible evidence. But if there is credible evidence of such an attack, that would imply a particular person or persons or group. One would expect the law enforcement community to slam down on such a group before they attacked, unless the tactic is to infiltrate the group, give them a jar of inert white powder, and exhort them to go do bad things to public food.

No, I think this is just another dead end. Rather than a shocking exclusive, this story amounts to sensationalistic tripe, more pandering to a fearful audience that is unable to come to grips with what Europe and Asia has handled as status quo for decades. Move along, nothing to see here.

Total Lunar Eclipse

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse from William Castleman on Vimeo.