Current Affairs Boston bombing

[leviramsey]

SWAT team outside Brigham & Women's Hospital...

Edited April 16, 2013 by leviramsey

[leviramsey]

[leviramsey]

[leviramsey]

Pyongyang marathon from earlier in the day

[leviramsey]

Charles Pierce

The very worst two words in the English language in Boston, where the latest reports say at least two have been killed and dozens have been injured, this afternoon were these: “secondary device.”

The first time I heard them was at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Commonwealth Avenue where a police officer told me, “Across the street we have a secondary device on a bench down the block.” The second time I heard them was four blocks East — closer to the bloodied finish line of this year’s Boston Marathon, which is not going to be remembered like any other Boston Marathon, or any other footrace in the history of the world — another police officer told me, "Across the street we have a secondary device on the island in the middle of Commonwealth Avenue.” I crossed the street and walked east across an alley between the buildings. The third and last time I heard it was at the corner of Clarendon Street and Commonwealth Avenue. I had walked down an unguarded block and had come out one block below where the afternoon’s bloodshed had taken place. A policeman told me, “We have the possibility of another device. You are not safe here. Please move along for your own safety.” She did not appear to be kidding. You could smell the blood a block and a half away. On a day like this, everybody’s nervous. Everybody’s scared. Nobody knows anything. And everything is a secondary device.

It was always going to be something like this. After the Olympic Park Bombing in 1996, it wasn’t going to be a big event. It wasn’t going to be the Super Bowl. Or the World Series. Or college basketball’s Final Four. It was going to be a happy gathering that everyone took for granted. It was going to be the average college football game. It was going to be a small college basketball game. It was going to be the Boston Marathon, one of the last big open events in a society closing in on itself from every direction.

Once I got to Copley Square, I sat down and talked to an EMT. He had been one of the first on the scene. The problem the EMTs had was that the bomb went off inside the security barricades. The barricades meant to protect the spectators briefly prevented the EMTs from reaching the injured. This was not the last of the day’s cruel ironies. The EMT told me that the first person he saw was a 5- or 6-year-old with blood on his face. He did not seem to be in any way injured. One of his parents lay on the ground next to him. The parent wasn’t moving.

It was always going to be one of these. It was going to be a smaller, happier less grimly secure event. And now it’s one of these. And you can smell the blood two blocks away.

[Genie]

Not heard anything of the arrest pictured on the previous page. Are the Police keeping it quiet for now or was it unrelated (maybe a looter?).

[leviramsey]

Looks like it was unrelated.

Apartment on Revere Beach (in the building on the left) was raided with evidence removed...

[leviramsey]

You could practically hear the doctor from New York that CBS brought in struggling to admit that Boston has the best hospitals in the world.

And you know, this whole thing kind of makes me happy.

Anywhere else in the world, if a similar thing happens, there's on the order of at least ten times more deaths and other casualties. Even Jerusalem, you're talking double digits.

Which is fitting, I guess. Boston is the City Upon a Hill, the New, the True Jerusalem, going back to the Arbella. The Hub of the Universe. America's not God's Country, but Boston is God's City.

You don't **** with Boston.

Edited April 16, 2013 by leviramsey

[LondonLax]

And you know, this whole thing kind of makes me happy.

Anywhere else in the world, if a similar thing happens, there's on the order of at least ten times more deaths and other casualties. Even Jerusalem, you're talking double digits.

Which is fitting, I guess. Boston is the City Upon a Hill, the New, the True Jerusalem, going back to the Arbella. The Hub of the Universe. America's not God's Country, but Boston is God's City.

 

 

 

WTF are you talking about??

[The_Rev]

 

http://youtu.be/pcVqZl5JBBo

 

Simpsons Family Guy did it. 

[LondonLax]

More like "Four Lions".

[Awol]

 

And you know, this whole thing kind of makes me happy.

Anywhere else in the world, if a similar thing happens, there's on the order of at least ten times more deaths and other casualties. Even Jerusalem, you're talking double digits.

Which is fitting, I guess. Boston is the City Upon a Hill, the New, the True Jerusalem, going back to the Arbella. The Hub of the Universe. America's not God's Country, but Boston is God's City.

 

 

 

WTF are you talking about??

 

Er, his home has just been bombed and he's feeling a bit emotional? Maybe? Give it a rest and use your head.

[The_Rev]

And you know, this whole thing kind of makes me happy.

Anywhere else in the world, if a similar thing happens, there's on the order of at least ten times more deaths and other casualties. Even Jerusalem, you're talking double digits.

Which is fitting, I guess. Boston is the City Upon a Hill, the New, the True Jerusalem, going back to the Arbella. The Hub of the Universe. America's not God's Country, but Boston is God's City.

WTF are you talking about??

You do know where Levi is from, don't you?

[Zatman]

think the thing that would worry me is that can happen anywhere especially close to a major sports event,. Its a terrible thing to happen to innocent human beings just out for a run and some fun

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

Hm, no suspect, no one claiming it.

[Kingfisher]

And you know, this whole thing kind of makes me happy.

Anywhere else in the world, if a similar thing happens, there's on the order of at least ten times more deaths and other casualties. Even Jerusalem, you're talking double digits.

Which is fitting, I guess. Boston is the City Upon a Hill, the New, the True Jerusalem, going back to the Arbella. The Hub of the Universe. America's not God's Country, but Boston is God's City.

WTF are you talking about??

Er, his home has just been bombed and he's feeling a bit emotional? Maybe? Give it a rest and use your head.

It's more than a feeling.

[leviramsey]

Just awkoke to a text from a good friend that he was there (didn't know they were heading in to see the Marathon)...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-ZjNl5aOoU

It's not a matter of mercy

It's not a matter of laws

Plenty of people will kill you

For some fanatical cause

It's not a matter of conscience

A search for probable cause

It's just a matter of instinct

A matter of fatal flaws

[leviramsey]

Hm, no suspect, no one claiming it.

There's a theory for every view

AQ doesn't have a history of claiming credit, but the fact that the bombs appear to have been intended to be somewhat more powerful than they were argues away from professionals of one description or another.

The fact that there's extremely plausible connections to a host of different motivations (here's one that hasn't been: there's a not insignificant number of consulates within a few blocks (though the UK's consulate is across the river)... The Portuguese consulate is on that block) points me to lone wolf crazy (which doesn't preclude a motivation beyond wanting to visibly kill people) amateur.

[leviramsey]

One of the first deaths is unidentifiable beyond female.

The runner in orange who fell to the ground and appeared in a few photos is a 70-something serial marathoner (he's run something like 30). He got helped up and insisted on running across the finish line.

[leviramsey]

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