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Aqua Teen Art 'Terrorist' Describes His Ordeal
destinyland writes "Boston police arrested artist 'Zebbler' for installing L.E.D. devices that promoted Aqua Teen Hunger Force (after police mistook them for bombs). He's finally shared the real behind-the-scenes story about his arrest and release. He describes his interrogation ('My interrogator gave me nothing but carrots to eat') and remembers a surreal exchange with a police officer. ('My daughter is a huge fan of you ... So, did you really mean to blow up Boston?') Now his latest project is a cool high-definition/surround sound installation for an event called RIP.MIX.BURN.BAM.PFA."
Considering the amount of explosions in ATHF, I consider the threat to be completely valid. Remember everyone, terrorists clearly mark the bombs with flashing lights, to be widely apparent to everyone, so that they have a chance to observe the bomb before it explodes.
It is so bizarre and still indicates the rigidness of the public service to go so over the edge that it can only be fully described as a work of surrealistic art.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
it must be a bomb.
Anyway, that was a bit of a rant but my point is, I liked the way this guy handled the media way back (because the media, frankly, deserves that...I appreciate what they do, but every now and then they need to be reminded that they aren't the ones in control but the ones who document and their emotional manipulation and constant spinning deserves to be checked). But on this interview two quotes in particular made me realize he is separate: [Psychedelics] did not seem to offer a path to salvation, just a widening of perspective. and One doesn't need psychedelics to achieve those kinds of realizations however. I really think it was good of him to say that, because yeah, he's clearly someone who isn't a stranger to drugs but he offers a level headed view that's not overly self serving a biased. Too many people think drugs (especially psychedelics) answer all their questions and solve everything and sound like selfserving douchebags. They talk about discovering the answer while taking LSD and it's so pretentious and dickish and done to fit an image. Here's a guy who does them (no problem with that here) and then proceeds to say they helped a bit but they aren't necessary and maybe he enjoyed them but he's clearly not going to judge someone who doesn't do them. I've never tried psychedelics and I also no longer smoke marijuana, but I am most definitely not an anti-drug type; I just am glad to see someone saying drugs can be fun but they aren't necessary. People who do drugs and say that's the only way are almost worse than people who don't do drugs and say that's the only way because people who do drugs generally take pride in their self-described "open minds". So kudos to him for basically saying "yeah I used drugs but you don't have to and you can still get to the same point regardless of your choice."
Because a bomb squad, who should have handled the dismantling of these devices, should have known in 5 minutes it wasn't a fucking bomb. Now either: 1) they weren't called in so the police are incompetent. 2) they were called in and ignored so the police are incompetent. 3) they were called in and thought it was a bomb so they were incompetent. In any event, someone was incompetent in reacting to these LED sticky thingies. It certainly wasn't the PR company.
With your incredible mental acuity, you have a promising career ahead of you in the Boston Police Department, or perhaps the Department of Homeland Security.
So, if I were to go into business with a fleet of ice cream vans, and one fine summer's day my vans are driving around Boston giving away promotional ice cream and drawing quite a crowd, you would say the police ought to close down the roads, bring the whole city to a standstill, and arrest me on charges of perpetrating a bomb hoax, because my vans might be bombs?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
If you get into a time machine and get back to the dark ages and you put an image of a dragon in the middle of a mediaeval city you can laugh as you watch the crowd getting crazy and paranoid... until they catch and burn you as a witch (and if you don't look like one, they will make you look like a witch, probably by comparing your weight with that of a duck).
Now, fast forward to 2007. Modern enlightened age you think? Think again... If you install some electronic stuff in a modern US city, you can laugh as you watch the crowd getting crazy and paranoid... until they catch you. What happens next depends very much on how white your skin is, whether you have a beard, and whether your name sounds Muslim. An English name combined with white skin and no facial hair will result in you getting your freedom after some interrogation in a police station, but if you have the "wrong" demographic characteristics then you will end up in a nasty camp in Cuba (By the way I find it interesting how they chose to set up Guantanamo on the same island as a communist dictatorship).
The same can happen if you get into an airport with an electronic nametag on your chest.
Or, perhaps if you walk to enter a train with your iPod wires visible from your pocket.
Welcome to a society where everything that deviates from what is considered normal is equated with terrorism. Very soon every kind of behaviour, from what you see on your computer screen (Treacherous Computing will help with this) to what clothes you wear will be controlled by formal bureaucracies by force of violence if you don't comply. Not really because your behaviour will constitute a real threat, but only because your behaviour is inconsistent with that of a slave.
When (or if) this terrorism fear paranoia passes, future historians will discuss our post-911 age with great interest and will consider it as a prime example of how civilisations can sabotage themselves and self-destruct forgetting hundreds of years of societal and civil evolution.
They made him eat carrots? Were they overcooked?
The cops may well have believed it was all a misunderstanding, but their job is to gather evidence of any possible crime. After you've been Mirandized, it's a game in which they try to get as much information out of you as possible without overstepping their constitutional limitations. If they act hostile towards you, it doesn't mean they are actually hostile, any more than a friendly act means you can trust them.
Good cop or bad cop, it doesn't matter, once they've brought you in for something they're going to try to get you to give them evidence of a crime, or if they have solid evidence of a small crime, to get you to give them evidence of a bigger crime. In this case, by the time these guys were being interrogated the cops knew the devices weren't bombs. The cops were trying to get the guy to say something like this, "We weren't planting bombs! We just thought if we could close the subways down we'd get a lot of free publicity for our movie!" Bingo, they've just promoted a case of advertising without the proper permits into the intentional creation of a public nuisance. Armed with this, they throw the small fry back in order to get the genius behind the stunt, which is good police work. The corollary of this is that when there is no larger crime, the small fry endure some tough and threatening sounding talk.
While normally I think cops should be polite and deferential to citizens, this one process is inherently ugly and manipulative, which is why you want a lawyer present in a police interrogation, even if your conscience is clear. You don't want to admit to a crime greater than the cops have evidence for, just because they are threatening to pin an even larger crime on you. Without a lawyer present, the system is inherently unfair and dangerous to the innocent.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If you read the timeline of that day you'll see that the police did determine pretty quickly that is wasn't a bomb. The main issue during the day was that the streets had to be be closed so investigators could safely access the devices - even if the authorities didn't think it was a bomb, the street would still have to be closed to workers could safely remove them. There was also the issue that a real pipe bomb turned up at New England Medical Center during that ordeal.
As I wrote before, the biggest mistake those guys made was hanging the devices off of public property - even before 9/11, doing something like that is just guaranteed to get the bomb squad out there (and contrary to popular opinion, the device that was first called in to the police had only been there for less than 24 hours). Some of the other devices on storefronts though had been there longer.
IMHO the police reaction in this one instance was reasonable - up to the arrest & prosecution part. There were no mass evacuations, no arrests of Middle-eastern people for being Middle-Eastern. They closed the roads, investigated the devices, and reopened the roads. The arrests and press releases after that though were clearly CYA.
On the other hand, the arrest of Star Simpson was a fucking travesty, and my alma mater's response to the incident ("reckless"? WTF? Is wearing a blinking tie to the airport also reckless?) has ended my participation in their alumni fundraising activities.