Substations beware: 'Accelerationists' see power grid attacks as way to create chaos, end contemporary society

Photo from TPM via Getty Images

If all forces result from interactions, the cross-mix of technology and capitalism has supporters and haters. Hunter Walker describes one of the latter in Talking Points Memo: "The first chapter of the black-and-white PDF magazine begins with an ominous warning. Over four dense pages, the anonymous writers paint a picture of 'an anti-tech revolution, beginning with the annihilation of the U.S. energy grid,'"  "'Hospitals would fail. . . the collapse of the system. . . . chaos, agony, and death.' . . . Along with a depiction of a widespread blackout, it included a precise list of the locations of 'The Most Critically Important Electric Substations in the U.S.'"

Walker writes, "This apocalyptic brand of extremist rhetoric — and the focus, specifically, on targeting substations — is part of a growing phenomenon . . . . Experts have attributed the wave to the digital spread of right-wing accelerationist ideology, which aims to hasten societal collapse. . . . It is easy to dismiss these writings as digital bluster, but law enforcement and academic experts have repeatedly attributed the frightening online rhetoric to the real-world rise in assaults on power stations."

Over the past 10 years, the pairing of anti-capitalism ideologies with an actionable plan has evolved. "The electric grid has increasingly come into the crosshairs since an April 2013 sniper attack on a Pacific Gas and Electric substation in Metcalf, California," Walker reports. "Since then, the idea of shooting attacks on the power grid has gained traction. . . . The proliferation of extremist materials online is a challenge for law enforcement. According to the Department of Homeland Security, there are over 79,000 substations that play a vital part in the nation's electrical grid. Many are in remote locations and are privately owned, which means they have varying standards for security."

"Relatively simple shooting attacks from far-right white supremacist terrorists have emerged as a major threat to the grid," Walker writes. "Thirteen individuals associated with the white supremacist movement faced federal charges related to 'planning attacks on the energy sector' between 2016 and 2022, according to a report from the George Washington University Program on Extremism. . . There is a consensus among federal law enforcement agencies that white supremacists have become the top domestic terror threat."

Michael Edison Hayden, spokesperson for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, told Walker, "Thinking about how the power lines function. . . it is the central nervous system of contemporary society, and that's why it's so important to accelerationists. . . . As they see it ... the system that is oppressing them cannot function … without power. . . . Things around gender and sexuality right now are animating extremists on the right more than race. . . . That reverberates from the White House when Trump was there all the way down to accelerationist cells." Walker adds, "White supremacists are not the only adherents of accelerationism. There are anarchists and some on the far left who could be described as accelerationists."

Remembering 9/11 with an editorial written the day after

This week, it seems that the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is being remembered by most newspapers, even weeklies that pay little attention to national affairs. 9/11 was an event that defied geography and made Americans rural and urban think a little more about what they had in common. Many of this week's 9/11 stories and editorials are interviews and reflections about that day, but most of them likely pale in comparison to writings done the day after, when feelings were raw and confused but retain the immediacy that makes us re-appreciate the significance of those events and their aftermath. Here is an editorial written on 9/12/01 and published on 9/13/01 by The Canadian Record of Canadian, Texas.

By Laurie Ezzell Brown    

    THE STACK OF LAST WEEK’S newspapers is abandoned on my living room floor, unread during a long weekend away, and unreadable now as this day dawns. I suppose, eventually, I will throw them away, knowing that the news they report is not just old—it is at best, absurdly imprecise, and at its worst, simply no longer true. The world today is a different place, and we have changed along with it.

    Whether or not we have discovered all of the sharp new edges—the fresh, jagged scar where life has fallen away from us—our own personal geography has changed. The ocean is no longer where it was. The coastlines to the east, and to the west, now join in the center—in the heartland, as we have called it, in other perilous times. The continents have moved closer in the seismic shift that hatred has caused.

    The angle of light has changed, ever so slightly. It shines eerily where it once did not, could not. It shines darkly. Ashen clouds are now part of the skyline. They have formed a layer between us and the rest of the universe, whose existence we are now prone sometimes to doubt.

    Our thoughts change shape and are re-formed constantly as each death is named, each horror filmed, each sorrow spoken. Certainty escapes us, now when we most need it.

    Our words collapse—hollowed out from the intense heat and impact of what we are feeling. Words crumble—they disintegrate, really, all air and ash and no longer what they once were. We have scraps of words, scraps of knowledge, but their true substance is lost. The wind blows them lightly away.
    We are part of the wreckage. We will comb through the debris of what we believed, or thought we knew, hoping that something has survived. And we will celebrate the heart that still beats, the pulse that still races, knowing there is no real measure of the life that was lost.

    From the rubble and ruin, voices cry out in anger and pain. Those are our voices. We are the victims and the witnesses. There is this sudden need to tell these stories, to commit this history to raging memory.

    But we are also the terrorists. We, too, seethe with hatred, like any true believer who has identified an enemy who does not believe as we do, or look like we look, or value those things that we hold most dear, or speak the same language. We, too, tear other’s lives apart with our intolerance and impatience. We, too, act with too little thought, or fail to act, allowing others’ actions to speak for us.

    We, too, believe we can mask our fear and strike out at those we fail to understand. We, too, believe one violent act justifies another, even greater one. We, too, long for vengeance. We, too, are terrorists.

    Today, when we revile the inhumanity of others, we must seek out our own humanity. How much more courage must it take to go into the wreckage, to seek out life, to face death, to cast off fear?

    We watch on television, unable even to comprehend the self-sacrifice of those who put themselves in harm’s way to save others’ lives. In every slumped shoulder we see the exhaustion of rescue workers, who sleep briefly and uneasily at the edge of mayhem before venturing back inside. We hear the voice of the narrator break, feel the clinched fear of the firefighter facing what others reasonably flee.

    These are our heroes—those who seek evidence of life at its outer margins. They are a remarkable affirmation of our dependence on, our responsibility to, each other.

    It is difficult to remember our lives two days ago when, as one writer said, “We lived on the other side of history’s rift.” But we who are able must remember those lives. We should fill our lungs with air, take a deep breath, and learn now the lessons that history will inevitably write, and has written many times before.

    We should commit ourselves to the greatest act of anti-terrorism by accepting the challenge to be ever more mindful of our lives, and how precious they are.

    On September 1, 1939, Hitler’s army invaded Poland. W.H. Auden wrote these words:

    Defenceless under the night

    Our world in stupor lies:

    Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light,

    Flash out wherever the Just

    Exchange their messages:

    May I, composed like them

    Of Eros and of dust,

    Beleaguered by the same

    Negation and despair,

    Show an affirming flame.

Fact-checking President Biden's inauguration speech

President Biden "delivered a traditional speech at his inauguration that offered little for fact-checkers," FactCheck.org says. "When he did offer us some facts to check, the 46th president of the United States largely hit his marks on domestic threats, Covid-19 and the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913." 

Biden said there has been a rise in "political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism." He's correct about the rise in political extremism, FactCheck says. The Department of Homeland Security's Homeland Threat Assessment report in October said as much. As for white supremacy, the Southern Poverty Law Center said in 2019 that the number of white nationalist group chapters had increased from 100 in 2017 to 148 in 2018. The Federal Bureau of Investigation reported a 19.5% increase in hate crimes from 2016 to 2019, and noted that hate-crime perpetrators were increasingly white: In 2016, 46.3% of known hate offenders were white; that rose to 52.5% in 2019. In September, FBI Director Christopher Wray said "racially motivated violent extremism" made up the largest share of domestic terrorism, especially white supremacist movements.

Biden said the coronavirus pandemic has "taken as many lives in one year as America lost in all of World War II." FactCheck acknowledges being nit-picky on this one, but says "Biden would have been on firmer ground had he said there have been more Covid-19 deaths than 'battle deaths' from WWII. As of Biden's speech, 402,997 had died in the U.S. from Covid-19. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, 405,399 soldiers died in World War II, but 113,842 of them were not in battle.

Biden said millions of jobs have been lost and hundreds of thousands of business have closed during the pandemic. Though the U.S. has 9.8 million fewer jobs now than in February 2020, the total number of businesses that have permanently closed due to the pandemic is unknown. "Hundreds of thousands" is likely correct though, according to several different estimates.

The president also referenced the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913, during which he said "thousands of protesters tried to block brave women marching for the right to vote." That's accurate, FactCheck reports: "On March 3, 1913, the day before President-elect Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, more than 5,000 marchers paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in support of women’s right to vote." Crowds of men, mostly in town for Wilson's inauguration, blocked and harassed marchers. "In all, 100 marchers were injured and taken to the hospital, and a troop of cavalry from Virginia was called in to control the crowd, according to the Library of Congress essay," FactCheck reports.

For extra reading, The Washington Post has created an annotated version of Biden's speech that analyzes key statements.

Republicans tout Trump's law-and-order bona fides on third day of Republican convention; Pence gets fact-checked

On the third day of the Republican National Convention, speakers continued to stress familiar themes: that President Trump "is on the side of blue-collar workers and African-Americans; that he is the only credible candidate for pro-life voters; that he has saved the nation from what could have been a much worse coronavirus pandemic; and that he is the last bulwark standing in the United States between order and anarchy," David Knowles reports for Yahoo! News. "Meanwhile, a pattern solidified in which the president’s perceived weaknesses were portrayed as strengths and the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, was portrayed as a radical, intent on letting the far left burn the country to the ground. On a night whose theme was 'Land of Heroes,' the program made the case that Trump was one of them.

Here's some fact-checking from The New York Times:

• Several speakers, including Vice President Mike Pence, said Democratic nominee Joe Biden has said he would "defund the police." In July, asked if whether he would support redirecting “some of the funding for police into social services, mental health counseling and affordable housing,” Biden said "absolutely."
• Speakers did not frequently mention the pandemic, but when they did, they "largely downplayed the threat or misstated the government’s response, as one lawmaker did when he said the administration 'authorized testing requests at blazing speed.' It did not," the Times reports.
• Pence, in an attempt to paint Trump as the stronger candidate on terrorism, said Biden opposed the 2011 mission that took out Osama bin Laden. The Times called that misleading, saying was more skeptical than other Obama-administration officials at the time, "saying that he opposed the raid outright is at best a selective interpretation of the available evidence."
• Pence also slammed recent-police brutality protests, and lamented the death of Dave Patrick Underwood, an officer in the Department of Homeland Security's Federal Protective Service who was killed in Oakland, Calif. He didn't mention that the man charged with killing Underwood was an Air Force sergeant who has been linked to the far-right, anti-government "boogaloo" movement, the Times reports.

States get ranked for their health emergency preparedness; how does yours stack up?

Map by the National Health Security Preparedness Index; click the image to enlarge it.

The nation's overall ability to manage health emergencies has improved significantly over the past six years, though some regions lag behind, according to a nationwide study.

The 2019 National Health Security Preparedness Index, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, analyzes 129 measures for each state and for the nation as a whole, such as the number of paramedics and whether bridges are in good condition. Such measures help determine how well states could respond to and recover from a health emergency caused by infectious diseases, terrorism, extreme weather, and more.

The index offers granular data for each state, including trends over time and how states stack up against others in measures that affect their preparedness, such as health security surveillance and incident and information management. Click here to see how your state stacks up.

Fact checking the final presidential debate on voter fraud, national debt, border security, refugees

The final presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump contained plenty of factual errors. We only have room here for a few. If you want to re-publish them, we encourage you to look at reports by The Washington Post's Fact Checker unit, PolitiFact.com and FactCheck.org for full context and things you may want to add.

Trump, who has suggested the election could be rigged, cited a Pew Center on the States study, in saying, "If you look at your voter rolls, you will see millions of people that are registered to vote … that shouldn’t be registered to vote.” Post fact-checkers Glenn Kessler and Michelle Ye Hee Le point out that the study did not indicate there was widespread voter fraud, but found "more than 1.8 million records for people who are deceased, but whose registrations were still on voter rolls. About 2.75 million people were registered to vote in more than one state. This could happen if voters move to a new state and register to vote without notifying their former state. Outdated technology, shrinking government budgets and paper-based registration systems contributed to inaccuracies and inefficiencies."

Clinton said her economic plans "do not add a penny to the debt," but "the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which has analyzed the economic impact of every proposal by both nominees," concluded that her plan would "add $200 billion over a decade, which is a relatively small amount compared to the debt," the fact-checkers note. "That $200 billion could be canceled out by Clinton’s business tax reform plan, which is estimated to generate $275 billion in revenue. . . . Trump’s plans would add $5.3 trillion to the debt."

Trump, who supports building a wall along the Mexican border, said, "Hillary Clinton wanted the wall. Hillary Clinton fought for the wall in 2006 or thereabouts. Now, she never gets anything done, so naturally the wall wasn’t built. But Hillary Clinton wanted the wall.” Kessler and Le write, "Clinton supported the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which authorized the construction of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. The fence is mostly vehicle barriers and single-layer pedestrian fence. Trump has called for a border wall of precast concrete, as tall as 30 to 60 feet."

Trump said, “She’s taking in tens of thousands of Syrian refugees, who probably in many cases — not probably, who are definitely in many cases, ISIS-aligned, and we now have them in our country.” Kessler and Le write, "Trump has no evidence to make this claim. The U.S. accepted about 13,000 Syrian refugees in the 2016 fiscal year, and Clinton wants to increase that number. But refugees spend as long as two years being vetted by U.S. counter terrorism experts. So not only would it be difficult to infiltrate the system, but it would be time-consuming, compared to simply getting a tourist visa to enter the country." (Read more)

Rural-urban gap grows on immigration, trade, led by Trump's call for walls, border restrictions

Sadiq Khan

Integration, inclusion and openness, not walls, suspicion and profiling, are the best chance to defuse terror and maximize economic growth, London mayor Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim elected mayor of a major Western city, has been preaching during a tour of the U.S., Ronald Brownstein reports for The Atlantic. Those differing ideals have created a rural-urban divide in many countries like the U.S., especially among rural Donald Trump supporters, who favor border walls and immigration restrictions.

Like many industrialized nations, these issues have divided the U.S, creating an increasing rural-urban gap, fueled by Trump's growing strength in places that feel left behind, Brownstein writes. Most urban cities in the U.S. view immigrants "as a source of economic and cultural vitality, trade as an engine of prosperity and integration of Muslim communities as the central defense against radicalization and terror. All of this collides with the bristling defensive nationalism championed" by people like Trump.

People like Trump "raise alarms against trade and immigration and portray greater restrictions and surveillance as the key to fighting Islamic terror," Brownstein writes. "Stressing isolation over integration, Trump responded to the New York attacks by reiterating his calls for limiting Middle Eastern immigration and expanding law enforcement profiling of 'people that maybe look suspicious.'"

"Almost everywhere, these messages have struggled in large urban areas and resonated in smaller places, especially those that have little tradition of racial diversity or have lost manufacturing jobs to trade," Brownstein writes. "The choice between Trump and Hillary Clinton is virtually certain to widen an already imposing metropolitan divide: in 2012, President Obama won America’s 100 largest counties by a combined margin of 12 million votes while losing the other 3,000 by about seven million votes." (Read more)

Rural areas that attract many tourists should be on alert for terrorist activity, suspicious behavior

While major cities are often the target of terrorist attacks, officials say rural areas, especially ones that attract large numbers of tourists, should be on the alert, report Cara Chapman of the Press-Republican in Plattsburgh, N.Y., and Joe Mahoney, state reporter for the paper's owner, Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. (Best Places map)

Craig DuMond, undersheriff of Delaware County, said "targets may include schools, electrical transmission lines, reservoirs that supply New York City with drinking water or anyplace where people gather, such as county fairs," Mahoney and Chapman write.

The federal government has labeled the area around Buffalo and Niagara as a "high threat target area," because the region, which includes Niagara Falls and the Peace Bridge, the most heavily traveled footbridge on the U.S./Canada border, draws millions of visitors per year, Mahoney and Chapman write. "The region is also home to key infrastructure, such as the Niagara Power Project, the hydroelectric power station above the falls."

David Rousseau, interim dean of the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity at the State University at Albany, told reporters, "Violence and terrorism have occurred in lots of different rural areas of the U.S, and all jurisdictions have to be in a position to respond and try to prevent these incidents."

Fact-checking convention claims on national debt, taxes, Benghazi

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, vice presidential nominee
(Photo from The Detroit News)

The Republican National Convention has completed its third day, and we take a look at what fact-checkers are saying about Wednesday's speeches. The Rural Blog will be providing excerpts from both conventions. If you want to re-publish them, we encourage you to look at The Washington Post's Fact Checker, FactCheck.org or Politifact for full context and things you may want to add. The fact-checkers looked at a lot more assertions yesterday than we have room to publish here.

Donald Trump's running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, "said that Hillary Clinton’s 'only answer' to the debt 'is to keep borrowing and spending,'" Lori Robertson writes for FactCheck. "But the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that Trump’s tax and spending plan would cause a 'massive increase' in the debt, while Clinton’s plan would result in a 'relatively small' increase."

Trump's son Eric "claimed that the U.S. is 'one of the highest-taxed nations in the world,' but U.S. personal taxes aren’t even in the top 10 among industrialized nations," Robertson writes. The U.S. does has one of the highest business-tax rates. "Florida Gov. Rick Scott claimed the U.S. has 'world-record high debt'— it actually ranks 39th out of 178 nations in terms of debt as a percentage of GDP. And he said the U.S. economy is 'not growing,' when it is."

Pence took out of context a Clinton quote about the Benghazi terrorist attacks, which left four Americans dead, report Glenn Kessler and Michelle Ye Hee Lee of the Fact Checker. At a congressional hearing, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) "pressed Clinton repeatedly why she did not directly speak to survivors of the attacks to find out if it had been prompted by a protest, as initial media reports indicated. Her answer was an FBI investigation into the attacks had been launched and that it would have been inappropriate to speak to people who were being interviewed by professionals."

"Johnson called that 'a good excuse' and asserted the administration misled Americans about whether the attacks were preceded by a protest," Kessler and Lee write. Clinton replied: “With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.”

Pence said Indiana has "a $2 billion surplus, the highest credit rating in the nation, even though we've cut taxes every year since I became governor four years ago." Actually, it's tied with 14 other states for highest, Allison Graves and Neelesh Moorthy write for Politifact.

Poll: Large farmers and ranchers favor Trump, dissatisfied with current government

U.S. farmers and ranchers are more likely to support a Republican presidential candidate and favor businessman Donald Trump as their top choice, according to the 2016 Producer Survey Results by Aimpoint Research consultants in collaboration with Agri-Pulse Communications, Inc. and the American Farm Bureau Federation. The survey, which consisted of 750 phone interviews of producers with more than 200 acres of farmland, was made up of 70 percent Republican leaning respondents, 19 percent Democratic and the remainder independent. The majority of respondents—83 percent—were male, 41 percent were 65 and older and 68 percent were 55 and older.

Of Republican-leaning respondents, 40 percent said they favored Trump. The next highest was Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, 15.1 percent, with 12.6 percent of voters undecided, 11.1 percent favoring Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and 9.9 percent for Dr. Ben Carson. Independent respondents also favored Trump—25.8 percent—but 24.7 percent said they are undecided, and 13.4 percent refused to give an answer. Among Democrats, 48.9 percent said Hillary Clinton, 40.9 percent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and 10.2 percent undecided. (Most important issues facing the country)

Respondents were mostly dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country today, with 59.6 percent saying they are very dissatisfied and 77.6 percent dissatisfied. Respondents were also dissatisfied with the current administration, with 65.2 percent saying they strongly disapprove of the job the president is doing and 77.9 percent saying they disapprove. Respondents also said they disapprove of the job Congress is doing, with 60.7 saying they strongly disapprove and 85.6 percent saying they disapprove.

Also, 18.9 percent of respondents said national security/terrorism is the most important issue facing the country, choosing that over immigration/ag labor (13.9 percent), economic growth (9.2), the farm bill (7.6), healthcare (4.7), other ag/farming issues (4.1) and renewable energy (3.1).

Sara Wyant, Agri-Pulse editor and founder, told the publication: “It's clear that GOP-leaning voters are very dissatisfied with the direction of the country, the way President Obama is doing his job and the way that Congress is doing its job. And there was not much variance by age or farm size, although a higher percentage of younger voters expressed dissatisfaction with how Congress is functioning. They want to elect someone who can make major changes.”

Tim Marema of the Daily Yonder points out that two-thirds of U.S. farmers have less than 200 acres in production: "Larger operators have some unifying characteristics that set them apart from the rest of farmers and ranchers, let alone the rest of rural America and the nation overall. In short, they are a bloc with a unified set of interests and a common political persuasion. . . . Don't mistake it for representing rural opinion."

Rural residents say relocating Guantánamo Bay inmates to Southern Colorado will hurt tourism

Rural residents in Southern Colorado, which is home to seven state and four federal prisons that house some of the most notorious criminals in recent history, say they don't want inmates from Guantánamo Bay, Jack Healy reports for The New York Times. President Obama has promised to close Guantánamo Bay, and Southern Colorado is a site officials have considered for relocating prisoners. (Best Places map: Florence, Colo., a town of 3,800 is one location being considered for Guantánamo Bay detainees)

Colorado prisons are already home to unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaeva, a Sept. 11 conspirator and 10,000 other inmates, Healy writes. "While some people here say the prisoners would be safely locked away, like the thousands of others who are already here, other residents worry their community could become a target. And some have legal objections to imprisoning dozens of detainees who have not been convicted criminally."

Sheriff James Beicker of Fremont County, which is home to the United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, one of the locations being considered for Guantánamo Bay detainees, was one of 40 Colorado sheriffs who signed a letter to Obama last week opposing any Guantánamo transfers to Colorado. He told Healy, “It just doesn’t make sense to bring these dangerous people to our ground. Why put any extra level of threat to our state or my county?”

Residents say "they do not want the added notoriety of housing 61 Guantánamo detainees," Healy writes. "The tourism-reliant county recently lost out on an effort to attract a call center, and a recent sexting scandal at the high school in nearby Cañon City scared away a business looking to relocate." Keith Ore, mayor of Florence, told Healy, “Something of that magnitude could just come in and destroy this town.”

"While state and federal corrections officers handle security inside prison walls, the police and sheriff deal with any issues outside the gates," Healy writes. "They geared up when protesters gathered to condemn a 60-year prison term for a Colombian rebel leader. They investigated last year when two middle-school girls got Facebook messages from a stranger asking them for photos of their school." (Read more)

Editor in Davis' native county: Roof 'may have also killed some of the last remnants of the Old South'

In the Kentucky Capitol rotunda, Jefferson
Davis looks at Abe Lincoln (Courier-Journal)

Almost four weeks have passed since the killings at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., time enough for writers across the country to reflect on the deed, its ramifications and their meaning. In Jefferson Davis's home county, the local publisher called for removal of the Confederate president's statue from the state Capitol, to Todd County, where his birthplace is marked with a 351-foot obelisk. Another violent tragedy in the county prompted Ryan Craig of the Todd County Standard to write again last week. His piece is long, but wonderful, as you will see from these excerpts and the full version, posted on our site (the Standard doesn't put much online):

Dylann "Roof, filled with ideas that should see no resurrection in this or any future century, may have also killed some of the last remnants of the Old South. He might have brought down a Confederate flag from a state capitol and untold statues and flags from government grounds. He might have shaken a nation so hard that it stopped and looked at itself and asked why things aren't better."

Noting the passage of civil-rights and voting-rights laws in 1964 and 1965, Craig asks, "Why . . . is racism not a relic of another time? Also, why are the ghosts of 150 years ago still floating around among us all? No one, it seemed, could have predicted the consensus of almost all as we elected to move symbols of the Confederate states to curation in a museum."

The second part of Craig's essay, punctuated by Bible verses, deals with faith and science; the third part is manly about a home invasion in which a Mennonite man was "beaten to death for money" as his wife, feeble from surgery, "did the thing a woman of faith does -- she started to sing hymns and she started to pray." He wonders when the attacker felt the hesitation that Roof told police he felt before opening fire in the church, and concludes, "May the terror for evildoers like Dylann Roof and those who would murder a 79-year-old man and nearly beat his wife to death, first and foremost, be the realization that, at some point, they had a moment of hesitation for a reason. And they should have listened."

Drug dealers and terrorists using drones; unmanned aircraft are hard to detect or stop

Drones are becoming the hot new toy for criminals and terrorists because they are unmanned and difficult to detect and stop, Jack Nicas reports for The Wall Street Journal. "Law-enforcement officials have discovered criminals smuggling drugs and other contraband across the U.S. border and into prisons using the types of consumer drones increasingly popular with entrepreneurs and hobbyists. And authorities in the U.S., Germany, Spain and Egypt have foiled at least six potential terrorist attacks with drones since 2011." (Associated Press photo: Police last week in Tijuana, Mexico found this crashed drone that they suspect was carrying drugs from Mexico to the U.S.)

Features that have made drones attractive for businesses and photographers—they are small, easy to fly and can capture high-definition images—also make them a potentially powerful tool for criminals and terrorists, Nicas writes. "U.S. authorities are worried that the problem is growing and that drones could be modified to mount attacks with explosives or chemical weapons, according to a presentation this month by federal intelligence and security officials to their counterparts in law enforcement and people who oversee critical infrastructure."

Earlier this week a drone crashed onto the White House lawn. While the operator said he lost control of the drone, the incident raises safety concerns about the inability to "track drones to protect potential targets like critical infrastructure, government buildings, prisons and crowded stadiums," Nicas writes. That has led to a growing industry working to build devices to detect incoming drones and alert authorities. (Read more)

County-level maps detail all federally declared disasters from 1964-2014

Disasters are more likely to occur in California and Oklahoma, but no U.S. county is immune to them, according to county-level data of disasters declared by the Federal Emergency Management Agency from 1964-2014, Christopher Ingraham reports for The Washington Post. (Post map: to view county-level data, click here)

The map above details disasters in which a state governor requests a federal disaster declaration applying to one or more counties and the president approves it following review, Ingraham writes. Disasters consist of: Severe storm, flood, hurricane, snow, fire, ice tornado, drought, coastal storm, freeze, typhoon, earthquake, volcano, fish kill, tsunami, mudslide, chemicals, toxic waste, human-caused, terrorism and dam break. Severe storms, fire and flood are the most commonly declared disasters. (Federally declared severe storm disasters from 1964-2014)

Los Angeles County, California, has had the most declared disasters since 1964, at 53, Ingraham writes. San Bernadino County, California, has had 45, followed by Riverside County, California (44), Oklahoma County, Oklahoma (39), San Diego County, California (36), McClain County, Oklahoma (35), Essex County, Massachusetts (34), Ventura County, California (34), Collier County, Florida (34) and Delaware County, New York (33).

Texas' anti-terror law on ammonium nitrate fails to keep citizens safe, Dallas Morning News finds

Dallas Morning News map; click it for larger version

In 2007, Texas passed a law to keep ammonium nitrate away from terrorists, but the law says nothing about its safe handling, which has some concerned about another explosion like the one in April in West, Texas, that killed 15 and injured 300. James Drew and Matt Jacob of The Dallas Morning News found that "More than half of all facilities licensed last year by Texas to carry ammonium nitrate lacked either secure fencing or locked storage areas for the potentially explosive chemical compound," they report. "But the state didn't consider them a security risk."

The investigation found that the anti-terror law "sets a lax standard for keeping Texans safe. According to the state agency charged with enforcing the 2007 law, it has acted only once to temporarily bar a facility from selling ammonium nitrate that had recurring problems," Drew and Jacob write. This report comes on the heels of one released by the newspaper in August that found that the government has no idea how many chemical accidents occur in the U.S.

Of the 115 Texas facilities registered to handle ammonium nitrate in fiscal 2013, 62 lacked secure fencing or locked storage areas, Drew and Jacob write. "The law says an ammonium nitrate storage facility must be 'fenced or otherwise enclosed and locked when unattended.' The state chemist says a facility fails inspection if it lacks both secure fencing and locked storage areas, and added that there were no such failures in fiscal 2013. Using that double criteria, the News found two facilities in the state’s records that should have failed inspection in the last fiscal year and 40 over the fiscal 2008-13 period. The agency said it did not tally the number of failed inspections until receiving inquiries from the News and other public record requests. Last week, the agency’s director said it had always kept such a tally."

Many of the sites are in rural areas, and some are close to schools, homes and other inhabited structures, Drew and Jacob report. So, what's the law in your state, and how is it being enforced?

Pure form of chemical that caused West Fertilizer explosion is banned in some countries

Several countries have banned pure ammonium nitrate because it is so explosive. The chemical is being blamed for the West Fertilizer explosion that killed 15 people, injured 200, destroyed more than 100 homes, and has caused more than $100 million in property losses. (Photo by Michael Ainsworth, Xinhua/ZUMAPress)

The worst part is that the explosion didn't need to happen, Tim Murphy writes for Mother Jones. "The U.S. Department of Defense has pressured manufacturers overseas to neutralize their own products, warning that anything less constitutes a threat to American personnel," Murphy writes. "But in the United States, with the backing of the chemical industry, explosive ammonium nitrate has held onto a small but powerful share of the market as the fertilizer of choice for citrus growers."

Lawmakers have had plenty of chances to ban the substance, most notably after Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh used it, and after 9/11, when "the Department of Homeland Security began offering incentives to companies that sought to neutralize the explosive properties of fertilizer," Murphy writes.

The Fertilizer Institute, "the nation's leading lobbying organization of the chemical and agricultural industries, successfully squashed all regulatory efforts," after Oklahoma City, Murphy writes. Some companies have started to come around since 9/11, but the progress has been slow. (Read more)

Donations for Boston victims far surpass those for victims of more damaging fertilizer blast in Texas

Donations for victims of the Boston bombings have surpassed $26 million, which shows the support of the nation when disaster strikes. Yet, the more damaging explosion at the West Fertilizer plant in rural Texas has generated far less support, with donations estimated at less than $1 million. The blast killed 14 people, injured 200, destroyed more than 100 homes, and has caused more than $100 million in property losses, reports Blake Ellis for CNN Money. (Getty Images photo by Chip Somodevilla: Damaged apartments in West, Tex.)

Residents of West are in dire need of food, shelter, transportation for displaced families, medical help, and will need assistance in rebuilding, Ellis writes. Dan Ford, a resident of nearby Waco, said that while he understands the support Boston has received, he said, "We've been greatly overshadowed by the Boston tragedy. We need help."

While the Boston bombings and the West explosion are both national tragedies, media attention has focused more on Boston and the emotions and fears raised by a terrorist attack. Ethan Austin, co-founder and president of GiveForward, told Ellis, "The explosion in Texas was an accident. The reaction was sadness. The bombings in Boston were a heinous and malicious act that brought back memories of 9/11. The reaction was anger. Stories inspiring high-energy emotions like anger have a much higher likelihood of going viral. Stories inspiring low-energy emotions like sadness do not tend to go viral."

Also, Boston is a major city, with 600,000 residents in the city limits and about 4.6 million in the metropolitan area. West is home to 2,800 people, and the closest big city is Waco, which has just over 200,000 residents. (Read more)

Small daily newspaper's conservative editorial page tells local 'dim bulbs' to stop stereotyping Iraqis

Some Americans have developed an intolerance or even fear of people of Middle Eastern decent, often thinking anyone from a place like Iraq is somehow linked to terrorism. The Daily News of Bowling Green, Ky., a university town of 55,000 about 110 miles south of Louisville, published an editorial last week calling for an end to intolerance towards those Iraqis who have supported the U.S., and who are making an honest living in our country.

The editorial refers specifically to families who were granted special immigration visas for helping the U.S., and ended up in places like Bowling Green. The editorial said these patriots "came here seeking a better life, but sadly an ignorant few individuals are attacking them with stares and racial slurs." The editorial refers to a pair of men who both lost family while trying to help the U.S. but have been subjected to "people telling them to go back to their own country and catcalls of 'terrorist'."

"Those who throw racial slurs and unpleasant stares at them and their families should be ashamed of themselves," opines the locally owned paper, which has a conservative point of view and a circulation of about 25,000. "America doesn’t turn its back on its friends. Sadly, there are a few dim bulbs who haven’t gotten that message. These men have earned the right to be here and deserve the gratitude and utmost respect of all our citizens." (Read more)

Western foresters think terrorists might start fires

Western land managers said they received notice from the Federal Bureau of Investigation yesterday that terrorists might start forest fires in stands of beetle-killed trees to cause widespread chaos and cost the federal government millions in fighting them, Robert Gehrke of The Salt Lake Tribune reports. It's unlikely the threat will be realized, even though it could make forest neighbors more wary. There's also the possibility that media coverage could spread the idea in the wrong circles.

Utah Division of Forestry director Dick Buehler said the agency is taking the threat seriously. It was reported in May that an al-Qaida-affiliated magazine published articles encouraging people to set fires in the U.S., particularly in Utah, Idaho and Montana, Buehler told Gehrke. The threat referred to dry conditions and stands of dead, beetle-scarred trees, which he said was an indication that someone was paying attention to forest conditions. The division investigates every forest fire, and said none of this summer's were started by terrorists. FBI spokeswoman Deborah Bertram told Gehrke she couldn't confirm that an FBI bulletin regarding terrorist-started forest fires was sent, but Utah Rep. Ken Ivory said a "terrorism expert" told him forests were a target. (Read more)

Remembrances of, and resources for, 9/11

The Rural Blog is published primarily for rural news media, most of which stick to events and issues in their own communities, especially if they are weekly newspapers. But on rare occasions, a national news event is so significant and touches so many local people that it makes the front pages of such papers. The most recent was the killing of Osama bin Laden, and the next one is likely to be the 10th anniversary of the terror he wrought on Sept. 11, 2001.

This item has 9/11 material that rural media are using or may find useful at this time, such as The Associated Press's September 11 Style and Reference Guide.

Michael Perry of Napa, Calif., has spent the last 10 years collecting newspapers from Sept. 11 or 12, reports Howard Yune of the Napa Valley Register. (Register photo by J.L. Sousa) He has 790 papers, "from nearly every state and more than 20 nations," Yune writes. "Newseum curator Carrie Christoffersen admired Perry’s labors in pulling so many headlines together into one place, but decided his asking price of up to $250,000 was too much for the museum." (Read more)

The Kentucky Press Association collected state political figures' recollections of 9/11 and newspaper front pages, mainly from weeklies, accessible at http://www.kypress.com/911/.

The Mississippi Press Association established a website to share newspapers' 9/11 content.

In a column for Associated Baptist Press,William Leonard of the Wake Forest University School of Divinity wrote about 9/11 at his school, where "Catholics and Protestants, Pentecostals and Anglicans" gathered to support each other, and earlier, at a previously scheduled weekly service, "Undergraduates galore came streaming through the doors, packing pews, leaning against the walls and sitting cross-legged on the floor of the sparse Davis Chapel. Staggered by the news, they grasped for sacred space to help them comprehend the moment." There's a lot more, including an amazing passage from the Book of Jeremiah in the Revised English Bible. Read it here.

Perhaps the main aftermath of 9/11 is what Greg Jaffe of The Washington Post calls "the American era of endless war," with far-reaching ramifications. Read about them here.

Television networks and magazines "have followed different paths in covering a solemn occasion that is also a business opportunity," The New York Times reports.

The U.S. Department of Education published a resources page for teaching about 9/11. USA Today reports on the topic. "Fewer than half the states explicitly identify the 9/11 attacks in their high-school standards for social studies, according to a forthcoming study," Erik Robelen of Education Week reports.