Explosions at Boston Marathon
[UPDATE 9:40: Now we’re hearing more about the terrible injuries, which include a lot of amputations. I haven’t watched the more graphic images, and don’t intend to. But it occurs to me that one of the few pluses of this having happened in Boston (a city involved in 9/11 as well, because two of the four planes involved took off from there, and a great many of the airplane victims were therefore local to the Boston area and New England) is that it has one of the very best medical systems in the world.
UPDATE 9:30: I’ve been watching local TV coverage, and the reporter was saying that we don’t know who did this, or why.
Although that’s certainly true, and although it certainly matters what the answers might be, I would submit that to a certain degree we do know. A terrorist or terrorists did it, and the object was to cause terror.
Terrorists, whether foreign or domestic, whatever philosophy they are promoting (and there’s no question that Islamicists are disproportionately represented) among them) have the goal of disrupting daily life—especially happy celebratory times, or ordinary times when people feel safe and relaxed—and making people feel fundamentally unsafe. A subsidiary but not unimportant motive is terrorists’ desire to blow people up, watch the commotion, and feel their own power to wreak havoc. Sometimes there is a further goal of inspiring a backlash against the terrorist act that can then be exploited in myriad ways.
UPDATE 6:35 PM: the JFK Library explosion appears not to have been the result of a deliberate act.
And I’m not sure whether this report on a suspect is true, or just a rumor. I’ve heard both. Here are the denials.
UPDATE 5:30 PM: The news is even worse than originally reported. Two people are dead, and many many more are injured. See also this.
Another explosion has been confirmed at the JFK Library in Columbia Point, a bit south of Boston. In that one, fortunately it appears that no one was injured.]
Dozens of people have been injured after an explosion at the finish line of the Boston Marathon Monday afternoon. At least 12 people were seriously injured and transported to local hospitals, according to Boston ABC affiliate WCVB.
The Boston Globe cited witnesses who reported hearing two large explosions shortly before 3pm ET, more than four hours into the race. The Associated Press reported at least one of the explosions came near the entrance of the Fairmont Copley Hotel. Meanwhile, photos posted on Twitter showed several people severely injured along Boylston Street–at the center of the Boston’s main shopping district. Local news reporter Jackie Bruno wrote that she saw some people with their limbs blown off.
Note that there were two explosions, which indicates terrorism. As for potential perpetrators, there are many possibilities. The leading one would always be Islamicists, but because of the target it’s by no means certain that’s the case. Someone with a grudge against the Marathon? Someone from either side of the political spectrum who wants to make a point about Patriots Day? Someone who just likes to see things blow up in a venue where there are a lot of cameras?
Of course, terrorism at sporting events is nothing new. Remember Munich, 1972? And the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bomb?
Whatever the source, terrorism wants to instill terror, to make people feel unsafe in the seemingly safest of places. I’ve been at the finish line of the Boston Marathon (not as a runner). It’s ordinarily a festive, happy, delightful occasion, like a big party. Now, this.
America is soft targets everywhere.
We’ve had enough mass-murdering crazies of varied stripes – some without any coherent agenda at all – it’s hard to guess who might be responsible for this and why. It’s like a virus.
“Note that there were two explosions, which indicates terrorism.”
And the use of ball bearings in the explosives to maximize the carnage. That’s been a long-time specialty from the local muzz in my country.
No conclusions yet, but may both the terrorists and whatever crisis-exploiting politicos rear their ugly heads be brought to justice soon.
ball bearings were used? That shows an intent to cause casulties.
Suspect a Saudi national per this report by the NY Post.
My rule of thumb: Wait one week for the truth to start leaking out. But to make a guess, they’ve finally decided to attack on the ground here. They being our enemies from overseas ( Islamists, North Koreans, Syrians, Iranians, take your pick), who have taken this administrations measure and are acting.
Of course this also came out almost immediately:
“NBC News reporter Luke Russert speculates on Waco link to Boston bombing”:
http://dailycaller.com/2013/04/15/nbc-news-reporter-luke-russert-speculates-on-waco-link-to-boston-bombing/#ixzz2QZLg4LSq
Sympathy and tears to all the people dead or injured and their families. And, as is typical MSM from the get go is blaming the vast right wing conspiracy. They are ghouls.
Maybe our bomb control laws are inadequate.
It is a time, it has long been past time, for more than “sympathy and tears.” It is a time for anger. The anger that faded so quickly on the Democratic front after 9/11.
A site I read-don’t recall which- said officials reported surveillance cameras had shown an individual placing multiple backpacks in the area. Surveillance? Who surveills? In retrospect?
When seconds count, the cops are only minutes away.
I am sure that BHO will express no more than the minimal “Our hearts go out to the dead and injured” and a “resolve” to bring the perps to justice. But a real fix? No way, Jose.
That this occurred in the heart of gun-control land is an irony that will be lost on the many that live and vote there.
Psst: “Instill”, not “install” in the last paragraph.
rickl: thanks, fixed.
Interesting typo. I think they’re trying to “install” it, too.
More knee-jerk politicization, this time on Chris Matthews’ show:
“Now, we have an international event, the marathon, the oldest marathon,” Keating said. “And we also have Tax Day, April 15, so we don’t know if that’s the kind of symbol a domestic terrorist might use as well.
http://dailycaller.com/2013/04/15/chris-matthews-democratic-congressman-suggest-tax-day-tie-to-boston-attacks/#ixzz2QZjt1Hcs
Just horrible.
Don Carlos,
I’ve felt anger and a burning desire for revenge for all the jihadi since the taking of the embassy in Tehran. Those feelings do not stop the sadness I feel for their victims.
Tax day?! Seriously?! Yeah, because people who are fed up with taxes would demonstrate their anger by targeting marathon runners, as opposed to, oh, say, an IRS building.
Keating doesn’t know jack all, apparently, but like so many democrat politicians he’s happy to share his inane thoughts with the media.
This type of device, in essence a homemade claymore, is weapon used by the IRA,Red Brigades , Fatah,PLO, Shining Path…. Dealt with them all. This is what once might have been described as a mechanical ambush .
Not to worry, Chrissy Matthews is on the job, Rednecks from Mississippi did it .
As an American and a runner, this made me sick to my stomach. The Boston Marathon is a dream goal for most of us. I heard that many runners went straight to the local hospital to give blood. God Bless America!
Dave, MSNBC, Russert & CNN, WANT the mis information of blaming a disgruntled American first, most people listen to initial coveraage than tune out but they will have accomplished their Alinsky goal, “to confuse everybody” there by muddying public thought, some listeners will indeed believe it was a domestic, disgruntled even after it s proven otherwise. In fact that misinformed person may even further confuse his acquaintances by saying Matthews says it was a red neck !
BTW is anyone lookinh at O’s buddy Bill Ayers !
“BTW is anyone lookinh at O’s buddy Bill Ayers !”
Good one.
Not to worry though. J-Nap is on the case – she’s scheduled for a conference after her and the girls are finished up at the bowlin’ alley.
Whoever did this deserves a quick trial and a slow painful execution.
parker,
I do not mean to deprecate sympathy and tears, which I too feel.
What I seek is righteous anger, of the sort we do not see in Deval Patrick or any of our esteemed public servants.They see sheep, not people.
Sheep do not anger. Sheep do not bare their claws, do not growl, do not bare their fangs, and do not charge.
Here’s an article from last year that was linked at Ace of Spades tonight:
Of massacres & media myths
All the MSM needs to do is plant the idea in the minds of the low information voters. Then they will accept it as proven fact.
After the spate of crazies killing in recent years, I suspect that was the case here.
No agenda, just a crazy with an urge to kill.
How many of the crazies also had explosives that didn’t go off? Maybe this time, the difference is the crazy led with explosives instead of guns and enough of the explosives worked.
“No agenda, just a crazy with an urge to kill.”
I don’t think that’s the case. From what I’ve seen in the videos, explosions this powerful and this synchronized speak of either a very talented amateur or professional involvement. We have so many foreign enemies which our Aministrations’ failed foreign policy has essentially turned loose, that the culprits could one of a host of choices. Anyway the week ahead will be interesting and the Medias’ reaction will be telling.
An aside; you know the media is breathing a sigh of relief in that they can now safely ignore the Philly abortion trial.
Bush kept us safe.
Let’s build lots of pipelines and drill everywhere so we don’t have to send money to unfriendly places or maintain oil demand that enriches nut jobs.
i do not know just what our national reaction to this event will be, but i fear it will lead to another bit of lost liberty. There is a strong tendency to try to buy security at the price of liberty. A fortress, no matter how impregnable, is nevertheless a self-imposed confinement.
“From what I’ve seen in the videos, explosions this powerful and this synchronized speak of either a very talented amateur or professional involvement.”
A crazy can be a talented amateur, too, and lucky. We hear all the time about a crazy’s bombs that didn’t work due to a technical flaw or a lucky break. Maybe the only difference is this time the bombs worked.
I cant believe this happen in boston
What we need is to hear from Hillary again
“what difference does it make,? 3 americans have all ready died”
Why dosent MSNBC, Cnn & the rest of Pravda
play (sarcasm here) Hillary’s brilliant righteous indignation comment !
“I cant believe this happen in boston”
I am mystified that bombings don’t happen in a major city every few weeks. 4 dead in Benghazi and Team Obama plays 3 card monte or golfs. Weakness invites attack. Team Obama is either aiding and abetting or they are wearing ideological blinders. Above all I trust Team Obama to use any tragedy to their advantage to demonize their opponents and the MSM to parrot the latest line of propaganda with stern faces and shrill rhetoric.
Bravo. MollyNH
Live Free or Die
I am serious.
You can’t win a sword fight when you’re only parrying blows.
Know what I mean?
“But it occurs to me that one of the few pluses of this having happened in Boston . . . is that it has one of the very best medical systems in the world.”
Yes, thank goodness for that. I remember the East Africa U.S. Embassies, and later, the Bali bombings and I thought of the opposite – they didn’t have the first-world hospitals to be able to handle such carnage.
Let’s hope Obamacare doesn’t decimate our hospitals too much.
So far, a Saudi man was captured, and another of Somali origin is hunted for.
It seems that security measures were very slack. The bombs were planted into trash cans – the first place to look for at any major public event. When there was a series of terror atacks in Paris, all trash cans at major streets were removed.
I believe that this terrible crime will be solved very soon. The bombs that failed to detonate have valuble clues to the origins of explosives and triggering devices.
I’ll ask the question. What traumatizes Americans more, the terrorist events of yesterday or the media frenzy that followed it?
This morning Americans will be treated to somber music on Good Morning America and get spoon fed speculation and propoganda. American media and the progressive ideologues that man it has to be dismantled somehow if we’re to ever have a decent society for people to live in.
Good, so far the Saudi National senario is holding true.
Awful shameless THAT the MSM & Leftist apologists will want a domestic terrorist to be blamed. Beyond that dirtball Tim McVeigh & his ghastly slaughter of his fellow citizens ( remember that fireman cradling that poor dead baby) it’s so egregious that MSM would speculate that Tax disgruntled, or 2nd amendment defenders would target bystanders, including kids of course, & ordinary citizen runners. It just shows how vile these people truly are, It s always about the Marxist agenda, always.
For the most part Americans think a human life is worth more.
(criminals & thugs are an exception) curiously maybe that is why we hold so much to capital punishment. * You take a life you should pay with your own!* It’s a simple primitive philosophy but on the other hand to execute a person wrongly convicted is awful too !
I mean criminals & thugs here in America do not think much of human life, not that WE think them less human, looking at the often light sentences they receive, we always give them second chances.
Don Carlos,
We are “live free or die” in NH. Practically totally the opposite of Massachusetts, sadly many Mass residents relocate to NH & bring their progressive/ lib voting habits along.
And we are a form of a nanny state since our ENTIRE congressional delegation is female plus our governor ( a Mass native BTW) despite the fact that very capable men were running against these nannies, the women won out. Kelly Ayotte (senator) is the exception, a republican, pro life, pro traditional marriage, pro second amendment, thank God for her.
(Plus a rising star in Republican ranks, the left cannot diss her, she was the attorney general for NH & argued a case before the Supremes a while back, can t remember what it was though, hmmm it may have been the need for parental notification for minors prior to abortion )
The left, including Tingles, is trying to inform the public that everyone knows that such things are mostly from the right. despite Weathermen, despite Rote Zora, and a list so long i could completely swamp them with
BF has shown a new low: BARNEY FRANK: ‘No tax cut would have helped us deal with this’…
the Saudi National they have is just someone that another person tackled, and so may have nothing to do with it other than standing there…
the device was anti-personel
you can tell by how SMALL it was. no one died of the actual shock wave, but only by flying ball bearings (yes, ball bearings). those closest to the blast basically shielded most others from the blast… so the family where the boy was shredded and the two men to either side waiting to see dad, and lost their legs tells you a lot.
if you look at the image in the daily news, you can see that the blast was a trash can.
the device was much like the device the weathermen were building that blew up, except theirs had nails.
this shows a very nasty tactical turn. ie. the move towards small easy to conceal devices that are intended to harm people, not infrastructure. they set more than one off, because the news tends to report some accident that makes it sound like the explosion was not an attack. when more than one thing goes off, its easy to tell, hard to deny
in this case, there may have been as many as 5 devices… the US is very vulnerable to this kind of thing and its main result will not be people being afraid, but the economic system that relies on free movement and so on to earn and do business.
many small devices in many cities will paralyze the system for a while given how the left is prepared to take care of themselves, and deal with reality
even now some of the stupidest things possible i have heard on the news. like a huge police presence. what would that do? not only that, but the tactical police have idiotic habits that make them super targets. like 8 of them standing next to each other gabbing with each other, rather than 8 of them spread out covering hundreds of square feet and seeing things from many perspectives.
and you can be sure that peoples response is to force people to cue up on line, and pack them together so that they are rounded up and compressed into a crowd. how that helps is beyond me, as the person wishing to do something will not wait till they are at the table, but will choose the center of the huge back and forth cue lines.
the devices were timed, not set off by cell phone
[if by cell phone they would have picked a more optimum time closer to the first finish people, and when the luminaries were mostly there… ]
sadly the same people that are discussing guns, and are so ignorant a fence post has more, are going to be in charge of doing things, and they are leftist cargo cult. so what they do LOOKS good to idiots who dont think, but is abysmally bad to the intelligent who do
i said that they are going to want to maximize the situtaion of obama. the first term was not enough time to set the chess peices up on the table, but the grabbing of a second term said there WAS enough time. and now, we are going to see, as i predicted, everything going real hot because if obama cant handle and prevent tiny things, and his ideas of gaming his base dominate, then he is a easy opponent. and i said, they are not going to let such an easy opponent and all that go past them and ignore the opportunity.
while TINGLES decides to try to smear the tea party with this by claiming its cause of Tax day and how blowing up innocent people to protest taxes works, is beyond me. especially when TINGLES was so happy that his man killed OBL…
so this is a tea party tax day protest which decided to attack innocent people at a race, make no claims and leave no notes to explain how it relates to tax day.
its not a response to OBL being killed, and Obama bowing a show of weakness?
how about the fact that the bombing covered over the fact that some entity, released 20 or more billion dollars in gold and so caused the market to plumet.
hours before the explosion, the big story was the sellout panick in the gold market due to someone dumping on it. (i dont know who, but i did predict that this time around, this would happen, as external forces attempt to collapse the places where people naturally go to store their wealth… real estate, stocks, gold, diamonds, etc… in this way, they gathered together so that their wealth coudl be devalued in one brash move… think of it as an economic camp where the attendees get burned (thats a valid monetary expression, no?))
gold went from near 1600 down to near 1300 in the past few days…
30 day
http://www.kitco.com/LFgif/au0030lnb.gif
one year (should make eyes pop a bit)
http://www.kitco.com/LFgif/au0365nyb.gif
and the one that people who dont read charts will think makes it ok.. (except that they wont realize the dates on the bottom, and the lack of a sudden down line that is near verticle in the total history of that chart)
http://www.kitco.com/LFgif/au3650nyb.gif
IF your clever, and you can see beyond hyper micro views, to a macro view, or a supra macro view, the pools of capital are being attacked and these are the reserves of VALUE.
most people don’t know why rich people spend a million on a painting… because its value appreciates better than gold, and it retains its value… and its expensive enough to hold a large amount of it. it don’t matter if the person cares for it, when you have a lot of cash, where do you park VALUE… as nothing has a fixed value, and so what you have is never safe, and EVERY container you put it in leaks!!!!!!!!!!!
the other thing that is happening is that the talks and moves of the state, are unilaterally destroying the mathematical points upon which peoples planned their future over the past 50 years…
ie. you thought it was going to be X so you did one thing, if you knew it was going to be Z, you would have chosen another thing. now your stuck in the same position as a person too stupid to chose Z but never actually made that choice yourself.
explosions this powerful and this synchronized speak of either a very talented amateur or professional involvement
this explosion was VERY small…
not to mention had a lot of smoke
so its probably black powder and other stuff
however, that stuff is easy to make, and get
even if you controlled everything that can go into it, you still cant control caves with bats, imports with the 2 tons of cocaine, and so on
but it was small… and the explosive was not fast, but slow… look at the image of the whole area with the big black dot and everyone fallen in directions mostly away from that spot… thats the blast center… you can see people within 5 feet of it… if the material was a fast burn material, the shock wave would have been higher, and would have killed them without any ball bearings as the shock wave would tear up their organs.
the damage by far was by the objects, and that means low intensity, and the smoke means certain materials over others… if you notice the blasts in military videos, NOT HOLLYWEIRD, you don’t see fireballs of flames… that’s cause they blow up so fast chemically, not through the spreading of a fire in their matrix.
so what you generally see is a big whoosh, and lots of material, but you dont see a fireball… when you watch the video of the explosion, you see a big fireball…
if you watch the runners, you will see an old guy go down. IF you watch carefully, he got hit with stuff too small to see, then got hit with bigger stuff, including a white object….
the truth is that low intensity actions that focus on soft targets are more effective at causing the dometicated public to freeze in irrational fear… (while others, like brett baire, give idiot commentary that points out how we cant stop someone from boarding the 6 train in ny).
ultimately, this is a financial war we are already in
just cause you EXPECT a nuclear war for WWIV, doesn’t mean that’s what you would get. a financial war is more devastating, ruins less of the reward you seek, and pacifists refuse to fight it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You can’t win a sword fight when you’re only parrying blows.
Know what I mean?
you can…
ever see the scarlet pimpernell?
the man seeking revenge for the death of his friends, runs the other man ragged till he can no longer defend himself. its a form of attrition…
i had three friends who were triplets, one being quite sickly…. the kids would draw them in to play things like tag knowing that they could not get away from them, and they could not catch them… so it was a cruel way to pretend to play, but set up a sadistic teasing thing that looks the same to the teachers watching.
but after that day, we never were asked to play again… why? because like before, they went and they tagged one of them… but the outcome was not what they expected as these kids went with me to bronx science, and they were not as domesticated away from real world principals, they worked out the tactics that would win.
they settled on the cruel person that starts this, then walked after them. never running, always turning like a robot. the responding tactic should have been to walk at the same speed a fixed distance, but people are abysmal at such. so the kid ran around… teasing the whole time…
after 45 minutes of this, the kid was completely exhausted, was tagged, and way too tired to go after anyone else to tag them..
in general, guys see this kind of thing better than metrosexuals or the femin classes. they work by real world principals, not memorized rules that are untested…
its how we are made…
if ladies applied the same kind of knowledge within the social sphere of the society they bind up, there would be no society. but the opposite is true… men who did not see this, would not be alive today, would they? nor would their society or women within that society.
fighting and defeating is an art and not at all easy
which is why we are in such dire straights, the people who don’t do it well are in control and deaf to the people who DO do it well, and we are up against people as good as or better than that who are not skewed that way
the Bali bombings and I thought of the opposite — they didn’t have the first-world hospitals to be able to handle such carnage.
Bali is a lot different than Africa..
they have good medical… often better than other places
bali is a world tourist destination, and those people don’t like bad care, so its not as bad as you assume… especially IF you have the money
It seems that security measures were very slack. The bombs were planted into trash cans — the first place to look for at any major public event. When there was a series of terror atacks in Paris, all trash cans at major streets were removed.
two problems with this Sergey…
(though your point is good as always)
the problem is that if you look at this area, you will see that this is one of those places with fancy garbage cans that are bolted to the ground… so you cant remove them… the other problem, and i will bet, is that if so, the can is a shell with a liner… like the new ones that ny put in after 9/11
they are engineered poorly… and they leave a space at the bottom where its pretty easy to put something and it looks like the bottom.
ANOTHER problem is that we are assuming its a garbage can… we dont know yet… it MAY be one of those dumb ass free papers kiosks… that is, in ny, and other places, companies randomly place sand filled kiosk containers in which they place free papers for sales, or things like the village voice. i never paid much attention to them, except hat a week before the 9/11 event, i had photographed one with the Arabic on it for god is great… it would be easy to pick up one from one area of a city, replace the sand in the bottom of the base, and then bolt it in place… people would not notice it, it would pass examination, as no one would take apart the base to examine the material there, and a lot of the new ones are safety plastic, so the assumption is that if something goes boom, the plastic will not hurt others.
this sadly is how they think…
they do not think in a way that is smart and anticipatory, but in a way that is dumb, reactive, and cargo cultish… as the power is not with people who know physics or that kind of thing…
sadly, each event now is being billed for the police and other things that go along with it, so there is a economic thing as well. collecting all trash bins, and all news kiosks, and such, would be cost prohibitive along a 30 kilometer run… as would be putting them back
heck, given the stuff that i see every day in ny, i am amazed too that things dont happen more, especially given that a minimalist approach could wreak havoc for a long time. just look at what Malvo did and imagine what a person trained and funded could do.
of course your going to hear them want to tie up the explosives, but Sergey, i know you have a lot of chemistry knowlege as i do, and so i know, that you know, this wont work. as with guns, you cant restrict such things in a country where there are natural resources, economic resources, mechanical resources and chemical resources…
you either make a choice of vibrant economic ability
or dull economic activity as few can get near anything
and despite that, it still goes on and on
I believe that this terrible crime will be solved very soon. The bombs that failed to detonate have valuble clues to the origins of explosives and triggering devices.
you would think so..
but, if they were not crazies or incompetent malcontents who could build simple devices, then this assertion may not hold.
Theodore Kazinsky made all his own materials, and the people searching for him could find nothing on him, as he went so far as to make his own screws…
it all depends on whether the persons are dumb and order the parts they need, or if they are patient, smart, methodical, and collect what they need over time from refuse.
if the latter, you wont find anything useful..
just as with a professional set of thieves as with organized crime, you don’t solve murders and robberies… most of them sit for years and require someone to tell the story… not that you found evidence of who did what.
in the past we are saved by the fact thaat most people that have the intelligence to do this, do not do this. we produce thousands and thousands of people every year who would find the building and placing of such a device trivial in terms of engineering and ability.. but their intelligence tends to lack the desire to act in such ways due to various negative reasons, including being ineffective for the person doing it and so needs to be on behalf of others to have a reason
so most of the people who act in the play are not very bright, and so, they tend to mess up. their knowlege is vocational, not comprehensive. if the rules they follow are not really good, then the rules fail, and the things fall apart… if they were not what they were, the person doing it could adapt
in fact, we are very lucky as this limitation tends to also limit what can be done or what they think they can try to do. so most of these things are very crude, and not maximally effective, just easy
wait… the next thing your going to see is politicians thinking that if we control ball bearings, we can limit damage… then what if they move to nuts you can buy by the 50lb box? or scrap metal?
in fact, i find that when i talk about this stuff, i have to be careful as a passing example to win the debate becomes a good idea for some numb nut..
given tunnels under the mexican border, there is no way to stop anything…
artfldgr,
I agree with your point on the relatively low level of sophistication of the bombs. People are assuming the event is the imported product of an organized network or at least a conspiracy. Not necessarily. The plan seems simple enough. Two crude portable sized bombs left in crowded, busy locations, mixed in with the random clutter. It could have been a lone wolf, a crazy, with no coherent agenda who just wanted to blow up people in a way that would gain maximum attention and stir things up. Hacker mindset, but bloodier.
The crazy may not even be someone with especial technical ability, who just followed a basic easily obtained IED recipe and got lucky with it.
now the left are saying Sarah Palin inspired the people behind the Boston massacre 2013…
(still waiting for them to label it that)
and to ERIC
thanks… its just that the difference between a tin hatter conspiracy theorist, and a person who is often looking at the same pool of info, is that the assessment is limited to what you actually know
and that is all i did…
limit it to what we know…
and all we know is what we saw, and from waht i saw, this is how it is… i cant add more to it, until there is more to add. and the kind of device, when not some military thing, does not tell you much of anything.
heck.. would you believe that such a device could actually be purchased? that they dont get lucky with an online set of instructions, but in meeting someone who would put somethig like that together for someone else…
it may be a surprise, but people build such things to play with them… most never ever hurt anyone, except maybe themselves or friends with them if not careful…
if you look all over the world, at what you can buy
combine it with open borders, low crime leading to unguarded resources, and ways for people with training or interest to enter… we have been blessed so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OBama takes tingles lead would be a better headline
Axelrod: Obama Thinks Bombings Could Be Related to ‘Tax Day’…’
’25, 30 people have at least one leg missing’…
[in war, its better to maim than to kill, ergo war is so bad…. its not about killing… its about maiming.. ]
I’ve run Boston four times and I would have been there if I could have. I last ran it in 2011 in 4:15 and my wife was watching about where the second bomb went off. That’s a little too close for comfort. I have lots of friends who ran yesterday. One was at 26.1 when the bombs went off. Thankfully, they are all safe.
I just missed qualifying for Boston last Sunday, but I will try again so I can be there on Patriots Day 2014. The terrorists are not going to take this great race away from us.
The officials have a problem…
according to the news, the devices were made from pressure cookers…
so whats the problem?
the people who made it are not stupid…
pressure cookers are made a certain way
and it takes a certain amount of imagination to locate them in the sphere of what you can use, and not fall back onto the “classics” over the years.
ALSO, such a thing would be ignored… its out of place, but its normalized, so people used to seeing hollywierd, will not think of it as such. they are looking for wires, sticks like road flairs, a clock with a big bell, or a countdown timer… (which of course goes off at zero, not 33 seconds or some other number).
its one thing to have someone that has to be provided, or has to be given things. its a whole other thing if the person is well trained enough whether officially or on their own, to invent, design, and be resourceful as to what can be done.
this latter is really something that we as a nation have rarely ever had to deal with. its been a theme in the movies, but not in real life… (read above as to my point that intelligence and knowing tends to diffuse most of such knowledge into a curiosity)
a pressure cooker is well designed to contain force, and has a hole and all that put in it already.
this can still go either way…
if more things happen, and they are not copies of the same things, then it may be even more scary than most people would be able to think
artfldgr: it has been my impression (and I am by no means an expert on this) that there is so much information in the public domain, in particular via the internet, that no one really has to invent anything at this point in order to make a bomb like this (or many other kinds of explosive devices that are very destructive), or get any special controlled substance. If a person has even a small bit of intelligence, can read and follow instructions and directions, and has a small bit of mechanical ability as well (and is lucky enough to not have an accident and blow him/herself up in the process, as sometimes occurs) such devices are not outside the grasp of most people if they happen to be motivated to blow people up (which, fortunately, most people are not motivated to do).
For example, pressure cookers have been used before, according to this article:
I agree that this sort of device would be very very hard to control for and/or detect.
http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/16/a-short-history-of-pressure-cooker-bombs/
The pressure cooker shrapnel bomb is now being turned into a meme by the media. It’s been known as a favored design by Islamic terrorists, but it’s just as favored by anarchists and other aspiring insurgents. Easy to make from commonly available materials, hard to detect, proven effective.
Still no word on who and why. Could be a self-actualized terrorist with no group affiliations, a crazy with an excuse. I still suspect, without proof of course, that a crazy with no political agenda is fulfilling a fantasy to make the world dance to his (or her) tune, but this one is doing it anonymous hacker style rather than in a suicidal blaze of glory style.
All: The Anarchist Cookbook referenced using pressure cookers as bomb making essentials — over forty-years ago.
If we follow the maladministration’s logic: we must now ban ball bearings, pressure cookers, and perhaps trash cans.
@blert: No, we don’t have to ban anything. All we have to do is destroy the perpetrators. You don’t see many Nazis or Japanese Imperialists around these days. do you? We have the means; we still lack the will.
Oh, but they are terrorists, and we can’t distinguish them from civilians. But we know who finances the terrorists and we can destroy them with drones or cruise missiles or whatever it takes.
FDR was a lousy President but a ruthless war leader. We need that spirit today.