{"id":1027,"date":"2009-08-21T14:35:33","date_gmt":"2009-08-21T14:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=1027"},"modified":"2009-08-21T14:35:33","modified_gmt":"2009-08-21T14:35:33","slug":"hydro-plant-disaster-and-terrorism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=1027","title":{"rendered":"Hydro plant disaster and terrorism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An inexplicable disaster destroyed the turbines of Russia&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sayano%E2%80%93Shushenskaya_hydroelectric_power_station\">largest hydroelectric plant<\/a>, killing many workers and putting the plant out of commission for years. According to official reports, the aging infrastructure is to blame, but apparently, a Chechen terrorist group <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moscowtimes.ru\/article\/1010\/42\/381084.htm\">also claimed<\/a> responsibility.<\/p>\n<p>Russian officials deny this, but it&#8217;s hard to decide whom to believe, since they don&#8217;t exactly have a spotless track record when it comes to truthtelling. Yet on the other hand, even if they lie, perhaps it&#8217;s the right thing to do in this case. Terrorism, by definition, relies on publicity to achieve its intended purpose; it can be fought most effectively by denying that publicity.<\/p>\n<p>Of course if you actually want to fight, an act of terrorism may be precisely what you need to justify a war. Which, I suspect, is just what happened back in 2001, when America&#8217;s political leadership, inspired by the ideology of the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_American_Century\">Project for the New American Century<\/a>, used the terrorist attacks as pretext to launch its neverending &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/War_on_Terrorism\">war on terrorism<\/a>&#8220;, complete with the illegal war in Iraq, secret indefinite detentions on communist Cuba&#8217;s soil, torture, and deportations.<\/p>\n<fb:like href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=1027' send='true' layout='standard' show_faces='true' width='450' height='65' action='like' colorscheme='light' font='lucida grande'><\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An inexplicable disaster destroyed the turbines of Russia&#8217;s largest hydroelectric plant, killing many workers and putting the plant out of commission for years. According to official reports, the aging infrastructure is to blame, but apparently, a Chechen terrorist group also claimed responsibility. Russian officials deny this, but it&#8217;s hard to decide whom to believe, since <a href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=1027' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1027"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1028,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027\/revisions\/1028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}