Peace activist pleads guilty to damaging more than 20 power line towers in four states

Associated Press ^ | 11-19-03 | ANNA OBERTHUR

[Oldeconomybuyer]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- A peace activist pleaded guilty Wednesday to tampering with high-voltage power line towers in what he has said was an effort to draw attention to lax security for the nation's energy infrastructure.

Michael Devlyn Poulin, 62, of Spokane, Wash., had admitted damaging or attempting to damage more than 20 towers last month in California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. Bolts were loosened or removed from the legs of the steel towers.

[pageonetoo]

"He served eight years of a life sentence for attempted murder in the 1970s, the FBI said."

Life? Sentence? 8 Years? Life? Sentence? 8 Years? Life? Sentence? 8 Years? Life? Sentence? 8 Years? Life? Sentence? 8 Years? Life? Sentence? 8 Years?

Whose life, a cats? A hamster? Michael has hope!

[pageonetoo]

Oh, yeah, I forgot he was...("Poulin has been a member of Peace and Justice Action League..") a peace activist!

[null and void]

8 years is about the average time served for murder.

[pageonetoo]

"8 years is about the average time served for murder. "

I remember when rape was a capitol crime... and now you get more time for having a "joint"!

[null and void]

Well DUH! Pot is eeeeeeeeevil!!!

[_Jim]

Do you know the differnce between a mechanical engineer and a civil engineer?

The latter builds targets, the former builds 'platforms and ordnance' that 'takes out' the latter's efforts ...

[meyer]

A peace activist pleaded guilty Wednesday to tampering with high-voltage power line towers in what he has said was an effort to draw attention to lax security for the nation's energy infrastructure.

Draw attention? No, he was just trying to wreak havoc on the western grid. What does he suggest - guards at every transmission tower?

[null and void]

Bingo! But I like the order in my tag line better because it puts the punch line last.

[meyer]

He served eight years of a life sentence for attempted murder in the 1970s, the FBI said.

Maybe he was trying to draw attention to the lack of security around individuals.

[null and void]

What does he suggest - guards at every transmission tower?

Before this is all done, we may have to.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

LOL

[meyer]

- with this ONE caveat; that #1 works, and it didn't back on August 14th (FirstEnergy's control facility was 'hosed up' for some reason that day and the operators NEVER made any of the required 'right moves' - like load shedding GIVEN the generation available and the lines they had to work with. It also didn't help that deferred 'right of way' tree-trimming came back to haunt them that day and took important lines out of service) ...

Actually, #1 and to a lessor extent, #2 both failed, but #2 was a direct result of #1.

[meyer]

Before this is all done, we may have to.

Unfortunately, that's a lot of real estate to cover.

[_Jim]

If people can design and build it, other people can figure it out and destroy it.

Today's large, interconnected, redundant, supervised systems ususally fail when a number of factors come together in/at the MOST unfortunate time; it takes/it took the involvement of human error in the BIGGEST events we've seen, sometimes spurred by an induced failure or two and three PLUS the failure to have certain 'backup' systems or procedures in place or 'practiced' by operations to REALLY screw up these LARGE systems; a few lines, a few dozen lines simply 'felled' by persons with devious intent very most likely WOULD NOT result in a widesprad blackout per se; localized outages (due to proper load shedding) due to both intended operator action and load shedding relays would save the system in islands (sine 'lines' also called 'tie lines') between systems would be 'missing' ...

It still looks to me like you're 'subsetting' (looking at isolated subsets on this issue) rather than getting a bigger, more realistic, picture. I moved on from simple 'boxes' (black box design) and onto 'systems' issues long ago; MANY concepts applicable to single 'black box' failure analysis need to be discarded in favor of 'models' that allow some measure of 'self-healing' and recovery or degraded operation when analyzing something as complicated, diverse, widespread and dynamic as 'the grid' ...

[Plutarch]

A peace activist....

Left wing sabotage = "Peace activist"

Right wing peaceful demonstration = "Extremists"

[McGavin999]

These people are just plain nuts.

[_Jim]

Actually, #1 and to a lessor extent, #2 both failed, but #2 was a direct result of #1.

What I was addressing was the general and desired case and certainly not what happened with First Energy!

The case you describe and I have described before (and fits the FE failure scenario) also fits a few scenarios which have occurred in the past - like the New York City Blackout in 1977.

[Calpernia]

Now see, "I" understand this. It is a lot different than reading these articles and drawing paranoid perceptions of the unknown.

Thank you!

[null and void]

Unfortunately, that's a lot of real estate to cover.

Depending on how you cover it. We're pretty good at remote sensing, and getting better at it by the day.

[Calpernia]

ROFL! That was great. And needs emphasis.

"Life? Sentence? 8 Years? Life? Sentence? 8 Years? Life? Sentence? 8 Years? Life? Sentence? 8 Years? Life? Sentence? 8 Years? Life? Sentence? 8 Years?

Whose life, a cats? A hamster? Michael has hope!"