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Explosions at the Boston Marathon
Reports are coming in that the headquarters at the Boston Marathon have been locked down after two explosions were reported near the finish line. According to reports "dozens of people have been seriously injured." CNN has live coverage. Google has a Person Finder up for Boston.
Update: The Boston Police Dept. says 2 people have died and 23 are injured. News conference scheduled for 4:30 ET.
Update: The Boston Police Dept. says 2 people have died and 23 are injured. News conference scheduled for 4:30 ET.
Saw a clip of the two explosions. First one occurs right at the finish line and then the second one within 20 seconds 2 blocks away. It appears clear that this was a coordinated attack.
Sports are good for your health, they said, but I'm the one laughing now in the basement.
Well, some people go to foreign countries and shoot people from flying drones, others place bombs. Everyone thinks they are the good guys.
I just felt a tremor in the force, like the Bill of Rights being stripped from hundreds of millions of Americans...
Who shall we blame this time? Dem dirty communist hippi anarchs? or ye good olde muslims?
Fortunately, every time some whackaloon goes crazy and kills people some fool makes the mistake of announcing the political message of the attack before it comes out that the dude was just a whackaloon.
That being said -- if this isn't an accident -- there are so many ways to go with this one. First, it's April 15 - which is the TEA party day of action. (got to listen to a "what will you do to defend your country" speech at lunch today). Second, the last mile of the Boston Marathon was dedicated to the victims of Newtown -- so there's that lead in. Third, various politicians et al attend the race -- so there's the assassination angle.
Best course -- pray it turns out to have been a big gas leak.
If we wanted to read about ALL news, we would go to news.google.com or something.
Actually, I was reading about it at google news just a few minutes ago, and slashdot tends to be a bit late to the party in reporting stories like this. I'd agree that it's a bit of a waste of bandwidth, disk space, etc. for /. to bother with it. Unless, of course, it turns out eventually that there's an interesting tech component to the story. It's likely that anyone interested in such "public interest" stories has a window open to one or more of the general news sources. So /. shouldn't bother.
OT prediction: If it turns out that the act was committed by an American nutjob, as with the Oklahoma City bombing the media and political system will quickly forget about it. If it turns out that it was done by a "furriner", we'll hear lots about those awful "terrists" for some time, everyone will make vicious pronouncements, and they won't forget about it. In either case, little if anything will be done that's relevant to preventing future such acts.
(But this is just based on history. I could be wrong, so stay tuned. ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Today I think you have it backwards. If it does end up being an american, it will be all over the media, used as an excuse to take away more rights. If it is a "furriner" it will be just a misguided man who is angry with america, and we should tolerate it.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
>> Gonna be interesting to see who they nail for this.
Same as every other time this happens: Lady Liberty.
Mmmm...
I wonder what other parts of the constitution they will rip up to protect us from explosions?
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Isn't it sad that the first thought I have after, "those poor people, I hope they're OK!", is, " Oh, great, *now* what civil rights is the US government going to shit all over?"
What is this wait and see you're talking about? Let's bomb some country and then ask the questions! It worked last time didn't ti?
No, it's called "not jumping to conclusions"
We ONLY know two facts: there were two explosions and people injured - maybe explosions.
For all we know, some truck with tanks of CO2 for soda machines lost its strap and a couple tanks fell off and exploded when they hit the ground.
I mean really, are you that much of a scare whore that you want to put people into panic?!
And let's say - just say - it's a fucking terrorist attack - douzens of people were hurt. That sucks but ... big fucking deal! It's not like it's 3,000 jumping there deaths!
Cooler heads Prevail!
Repeat that 10,000 times.
Repeat 100 billion times - the media ALL THE MEDIA - are a bunch of cock sucking whores and will make a flea bite out to be a terrorist attack.
If anyone remembers 9/11, most US media websites could not handle Internet traffic. slashdot was able to scale traffic and keep information flowing in a time
of horror and chaos. this is before the day of social media and citizen journalism.
maybe, if you were in Boston now or had friends or loved ones who might have been near the finish line on Boylston Street at the time of the explosionsyou'd be concerned when you could not reach the local newspaper website. maybe then, you would not ask what this has to do with news for nerds.
>> What does that have to do with this?
> water board the bastards all day if we have to
Only problem is, you already did that. What's the civilian body count in the "war on terror" now? Including the Afghan and Iraq invasions, and continuing drone attacks all over the Middle East. Half a million? One million? And then you're surprised there are a few people who are looking to retaliate?
Violence only produces one result: more violence.
are you seriously comparing targeting civilians to military drone attacks?
I usually disagree with the stooges who ask why stuff of legal or societal interest is on slashdot, but why is this on slashdot?
News for nerds, stuff that matters.
Good chance that this is stuff that matters.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Tell me again how gun legislation would have prevented this???
Why stop at gun legislation, I would like a full accounting of all laws that are completely unrelated to an explosion (whether intentional or not), and how those laws could have prevented this.
Hardly flamebait people. All you got to do is look at all the coverage of sandy hook and the politicians love affair with it, and then take a look at bengazi, which is never spoken about at all.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The timing is precisely when the world would be watching, and the location is precise as well at the finish line.
Congratulations, you have been awarded the Wolf Blitzer award for the most reprehensible evidence-free speculation about the causes of a mass killing.
Today I think you have it backwards. If it does end up being an american, it will be all over the media, used as an excuse to take away more rights. If it is a "furriner" it will be all over the media, used as an excuse to take away more rights.
There, fixed that for ya. A common mistake to think our current Government in any way wants to serve us, defend our rights, and generally do the right thing. You're not the first to make that mistake.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
>Best course -- pray it turns out to have been a big gas leak.
A war on decrepit infrastructure would probably be a good thing.
Je me souviens.
In either case, little if anything will be done that's relevant to preventing future such acts.
You seem to be implying that there are things we should be doing that would prevent future such acts. So what should we be doing? I can understand hardening specific point targets like critical infrastructure, and general intelligence gathering. But we are already doing those things. In fact, many people feel that we are already way past the point of diminishing returns. What additional action could we have taken that would have prevented this?
"We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"You're a fucking cunt. These were innocent people, at a wedding".
see how it works now ? sit down fatty and learn something
Since, at the moment, we do not even know what 'this' was in any real detail, hard to say what if anything could have been done.
The world has changed in the last 12 years, Slashdot is now a little fish in a much bigger pond. In case you haven't noticed, there's now many sites with live video coverage that suck waaaaay more bandwidth and server power than this little mostly text based site.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/rahmemanue409199.html
"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." -Rahm Emanuel
Former aid to President Obama and current mayor of Chicago which is undergoing major budgetary and violent crime crisises as we speak.
Drones killing civilians is an accident; people thought there was a military target there. Sometimes mistakes happen, and innocent people die, but the intent is to target military forces and largely that is what happens.
Civilians being killed as in Boston - there is no possibility of it being a military target, the target is as explicitly non-military as you can get.
Can you truly not discern any kind of difference?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Lay off the weed a bit, "ganjadude," it's making you paranoid but doing your analytical skills no favors. Benghazi was "never spoken about at all," except by just about every media pundit and political campaigner for months (whining on every prime-time TV media show about how there was no media coverage). Do you know anyone in this country who didn't hear endless re-hashes of the Benghazi attacks? So far as the Benghazi incident didn't prompt calls for immediate changes in domestic policy like Sandy Hook did, have you considered that might be because Benghazi isn't in the USA so there's fuck all changes to domestic policy that would be relevant to "preventing the next Benghazi"?
Today I think you have it backwards. If it does end up being an american, it will be all over the media, used as an excuse to take away more rights. If it is a "furriner" it will be all over the media, used as an excuse to take away more rights.
There, fixed that for ya. A common mistake to think our current Government in any way wants to serve us, defend our rights, and generally do the right thing. You're not the first to make that mistake.
This. I'm actually far more afraid of what the government will do in response to stuff like this than actually being a victim of something like this.
"Drones killing civilians is an accident; people thought there was a military target there. Sometimes mistakes happen, and innocent people die, but the intent is to target military forces and largely that is what happens."
According to whom, the government that won't officially acknowledge the program exists?
It's stuff that matters to me and I'm in Romania. it's important because it is likely to affect much more than a few Bostonians (Bostonese?).
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Iran wants to start a war? That's news to fucking everyone who pays attention. Get a grip.
The only way to prevent all possible violence against all possible targets is by definition a police state.
Dont want that? Accept the possibility that someone could ruin your life at any possible time, and that as a free society we deal with crimes after they happen, not before.
First, it's April 15 - which is the TEA party day of action. (got to listen to a "what will you do to defend your country" speech at lunch today).
You mean the Tea Party that had the most peaceful protests in the history of this country? The ones who were assaulted by union thugs, called racists by the media and were called every foul name under the sun by the losers in the Democratic party, including Anderson Cooper calling them "teabaggers" on national TV?
I'm sick of pathetic scum bags like you trying to write the narrative on the tea party. They've done absolutely nothing to you and in fact have worked their asses off to specifically preserve your constitutional rights. So fuck you and your ignorant left wing bullshit. You're going to get exactly the type of government you deserver and go fuck yourself when it happens because my wallet will be closed to your sorry ass and mommy and daddy will be broke and unable to help you.
Go occupy wall street and rape some more people in tents, defecate on some cop cars and attempt to blow up some bridges. Asshole.
AND... the analysis here is , by and large, logical and rational. Compare that to the wildly inaccurate, scoop-driven 24 hour news cycle. In a pinch, I'd rather hear from people who think for a living.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Let us assume that the act is due to a jihadi. The solution is clear, strike at the *ideology* of jihadis. At the moment the US is fighting a war on jihadi terrorism but completely ignoring (or, under the Obama Administration, suppressing) the *facts* about Islamic ideology that grows these jihadis. Just wait for the media to start using the words "extremist" which is a complete lie - jihad is a mainstream and central tenet of Islam. Until the US is honest about the problem it is facing it will never win. At the moment the Us is on a course to becoming progressively Islamicised under the guidance of Leftist "political correctness". Until the US tells the truth about Islamic teachings it cannot win the important war - the *ideological* one. Once the US properly understands the teachings of Islam as Muslims believe them (not as Western apologists do) then the Free World has a chance of surviving the coming Caliphate.