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Bombs detonated at Boston Marathon finish line

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jim-jam bongs said:
Fucking hell, it's not about throwing out any notion, it's about not jumping to moronic conclusions without any justification.
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Where did I say that it was Al Queda who did it? I have not made any such conclusions.

All I said was that it being the possibility of them, is not that unreasonable.
 
Vire said:
No, not at all.

Timothy Mcveigh was an act of domestic terrorism.

Sandy Hook elementary was not. That doesn't mean that it wasn't an unspeakable tragedy.

My point wasn't that it couldn't be someone of any denomination, creed or color, it was that recent terrorism or terrorist threats have been mostly been led by Islamic extremists and to simply throw out the notion that it couldn't be them - is silly.

If the Time Square bombings actually took place, this would be an entirely different conversation, but since 9/11 is for some a distant memory of the past, this sentiment is being poo pooed.
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I don't see the reaction being, "it's impossible that this is an Islamic attack". More "Assuming that it is an Islamic attack is premature". The backlash isn't to the possibility, it's to the people who immediately 100% assume and the horrible comments that arise from them.

Making any sort of statement about the attacker is premature right now and will only lead to horrible arguments and sad statements by prejudiced people. It's really hard right now, but all we can do is wait.
 
Vire said:
No, not at all.

Timothy Mcveigh was an act of domestic terrorism.

Sandy Hook elementary was not. That doesn't mean that it wasn't an unspeakable tragedy.

My point wasn't that it couldn't be someone of any denomination, creed or color, it was that recent terrorism or terrorist threats have been mostly been led by Islamic extremists and to simply throw out the notion that it couldn't be them - is silly.

If the Time Square bombings actually took place, this would be an entirely different conversation, but since 9/11 is for some a distant memory of the past, this sentiment is being poo pooed.

Their threat is still present and to think that what we experienced 10 years ago was the last of it, is foolish.
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I can see what you're saying, and yes, it would be silly to throw out the notion that it could be a Muslim. Yet kicking people off of planes out of discomfort seems to go beyond that in my opinion. That's targeting the wrong people for the wrong reasons. (Not sure if you commented on the plane thing so I don't want to target you, but I'm typing this as a larger point for everyone to see)
 
Valjean Lafitte said:
Sharks kill beach-goers. Even though only 3 people at average are killed by sharks per year, more deaths are caused by sharks than anything else you might encountered at the beach.

- You're a lifeguard at a beach.

- There's a crowd of children playing somewhere beyond the shoreline.

- Hear screams.

- A child goes under.

- Children are scrambling back to the shore.

- You dive in, are able to locate the child who went under and pull it away from whatever had grabbed. The child's foot is missing.

- No one saw anything, and you lack the medical training to properly discern the cause of the child's severed foot.

Jumping to the conclusion that a shark is responsible is quite unreasonable. The dismemberment could have been caused by getting tangled in seaweed and sharp debris.
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And, here's somebody comparing Muslims to sharks.
 
APF said:
I was born in Boston and lived there most of my life. Can someone please remove this tag from me? It's incredibly insensitive to victims of terrorism and human beings.
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As one with an insulting tag, I would gladly accept mine in permanence if a Mod would be kind enough to remove APF's....
 
Valjean Lafitte said:
Sharks kill beach-goers. Even though only 3 people at average are killed by sharks per year, more deaths are caused by sharks than anything else you might encountered at the beach.

- You're a lifeguard at a beach.

- There's a crowd of children playing somewhere beyond the shoreline.

- Hear screams.

- A child goes under.

- Children are scrambling back to the shore.

- You dive in, are able to locate the child who went under and pull it away from whatever had grabbed. The child's foot is missing.

- No one saw anything, and you lack the medical training to properly discern the cause of the child's severed foot.

Jumping to the conclusion that a shark is responsible is quite unreasonable. The dismemberment could have been caused by getting tangled in seaweed and sharp debris.
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Stupid analogy because the results of the two things are not consistent, unlike in this case where the perpetrators do not change the result.
 
I guess if you limit terrorism to muslim terrorism, then... meh. Let's not get into semantics between high profile, and quantity...

2000s
  • 2000 October 13, Firebombing of Temple Beth El (Syracuse)
  • 2000: 2000 New York terror attack Three young men of Arab descent hurled crude Molotov cocktails at a synagogue in The Bronx, New York to "strike a blow in the Middle East conflict between Israel and Palestine".[30]
  • 2001 May 21 The Center for Urban Horticulture at the University of Washington burned. Replacement building cost $7 million ($9,076,000 today). Earth Liberation Front members pleads guilty.[36][37]
  • 2001 September 11: September 11, 2001 attacks carried out by Al-Qaeda. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 civilians, and were carried out by Islamic fundamentalists using hijacked commercial airplanes to damage the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, ultimately destroying both 110-story skyscrapers. The Pentagon near Washington, D.C., was also severely damaged. Building 7 of the World Trade Center was also destroyed in the attack. A fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania before it could reach its target.
  • 2001 September 18 - November: 2001 anthrax attacks. Letters tainted with anthrax kill five across the U.S., with politicians and media officials as the apparent targets. On July 31, 2008 Bruce E. Ivins a top biodefense researcher committed suicide.[38] On August 6, 2008, the FBI concluded that Ivins was solely responsible for the attacks, and suggested that Ivins wanted to bolster support for a vaccine he helped create and that he targeted two lawmakers because they were Catholics who held pro-choice views.[39]
  • May 2002 Mailbox Pipe Bomber: Lucas John Helder rigged pipe bombs in private mailboxes to explode when the boxes were opened. He injured 6 people in Nebraska, Colorado, Texas, Illinois, and Iowa. His motivation was to garner media attention so that he could spread a message denouncing government control over daily lives and the illegality of marijuana, as well as promote astral projection.
  • 2002 July 4: 2002 Los Angeles Airport shooting Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, a 41-year-old Egyptian national, kills two Israelis and wounds four others at the El Al ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport.[40] The FBI concluded this was terrorism, though they did not find evidence linking Hadayet to a terrorist group.[41]
  • October 2002 Beltway sniper attacks: During three weeks in October 2002, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo killed 10 people and critically injured 3 others in Washington D.C, Baltimore, and Virginia. The pair were also suspected of earlier shootings in Maryland, Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, and Washington state.[42] No motivation was given at the trial, but evidence presented showed an affinity to the cause of the Islamic jihad.
  • 2006 March 5: Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar injured 6 when he drove an SUV into a group of pedestrians at UNC-Chapel Hill to "avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world".[43]
  • 2006 July 28: Seattle Jewish Federation shooting, Naveed Afzal Haq, an American citizen of Pakistani descent, kills one woman and shoots five others at the Jewish Federation building in Seattle. During the shooting, Haq told a 911 dispatcher that he was angry with American foreign policy in the Middle East.[44]
  • 2007 October 26: A pair of improvised explosive devices were thrown at the Mexican Consulate in New York City. The fake grenades were filled with black powder, and detonated by fuses, causing very minor damage. Police were investigating the connection between this and a similar attack against the British Consulate in New York in 2005.[45]
  • 2008 February: In the first reported incident of animal-rights extremists physically assaulting the family members of animal researchers, six masked activists attempted to force their way into the home of a University of California, Santa Cruz, researcher and injured the researcher's husband.[46][47]
  • 2008 March 3: Four multimillion-dollar show homes place in Woodinville, Washington, are torched. The Earth Liberation Front is suspected.[48]
  • 2008 March 6: A homemade bomb damaged a Recruiting Office in Times Square[49]
  • 2008 May 4: Multiple pipe bombs exploded at 1:40 am at the Edward J. Schwartz United States Courthouse in San Diego causing "considerable damage" to the entrance and lobby and sending shrapnel two blocks away, but causing no injuries. The F.B.I. is investigating links between this attack and an April 25 explosion at the FedEx building also in San Diego.[50]
  • 2008 July 27: Knoxville Unitarian Universalist church shooting: Jim David Adkisson enters the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee with a shotgun, killing two and injuring several congregants before being tackled to the ground. Adkisson stated to the police and in a manifesto that he desired to kill Democrats, liberals, African Americans and homosexuals. Adkisson pled guilty to the crime in February 2009 and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.[51][52]
  • 2008 August 2, August 3 University of California-Santa Cruz molecular biologist David Feldheim's home was firebombed. A car belonging to another researcher from that university was destroyed by a firebomb in what is presumed to be related. FBI is investigating incidents as domestic terrorism related to animal rights groups.[53][54]
  • 2009 April 8: According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, intruders left malware in power grids, water, and sewage systems that could be activated at a later date. While the attacks which have occurred over a period of time seem to have originated in China and Russia, it is unknown if they are state-sponsored.[55]
  • 2009 May 31: Assassination of George Tiller: Scott Roeder shoots and kills Dr. George Tiller in a Wichita, Kansas church. Roeder, an anti-abortion extremist who believes in justifiable homicide of abortion providers, was arrested soon afterward. Roeder was convicted of convicted of the crime and sentenced to 50 years in prison in 2010. Tiller, who performed late-term abortions, had long been a target of anti-abortion extremists; he his clinic was firebombed in 1986 and Tiller was shot and wounded five times in 1993 in a shooting attack by Shelley Shannon.[56][57]
  • 2009 May 25: 17-year old Kyle Shaw sets off a crude explosive device at a Starbucks at East 92nd Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, shattering windows and destroyed a bench at the coffee shop. There were no injuries. The attack was a "bizarre tribute" of the movie Fight Club, in an attempt to emulate "Project Mayhem", a series of assaults on corporate America portrayed in the film. Shaw took a plea agreement and was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison in November 2010.[58][59]
  • 2009 June 1: Arkansas recruiting office shooting: Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad shot and killed one military recruiter and seriously wounded another at a Little Rock, Arkansas Army/Navy Career Center in an act of Islamic terrorism. Muhammad, a convert to Islam, had vised Yemen for 16 months, where he spent time in prison and became radicalized. Muhammad, said he was part of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and upset over U.S. killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.[60]
  • 2009 June 10: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting: 88-year-old James Wenneker von Brunn, a white supremacist and neo-Nazi, walked into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., shooting and mortally wounding Stephen Tyrone Johns, a security guard. Von Brunn was wounded when other museum guards immediately returned fire and on January 6, 2010, von Brunn died of natural causes at a hospital near where he was imprisoned awaiting trial.[61][62][63]
  • 2009 November 5: Fort Hood Shooting: Nidal Malik Hasan, a US Army Major serving as a Psychiatrist, open fires at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 and wounding 29.
  • [edit]
  • 2010–present
  • 2010 February 18: The 2010 Austin suicide attack occurred on when Andrew Joseph Stack III, flying his Piper Dakota, crashed into an IRS office complex in Austin, Texas killing one person besides himself and injuring thirteen.
  • 2010 September 1: Discovery Communications headquarters hostage crisis: James J. Lee, armed with two starter pistols and an explosive device, takes three people hostage in the lobby of the Discovery Communications headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland before being killed by police. After nearly four hours, Lee was shot dead by police and all the hostages were freed without injury. Lee had earlier posted a manifesto railing against population growth and immigration.[64][65]
  • 2011 January 6: Three packages detonate in the mail rooms of two Maryland state government buildings, causing minor injuries to the fingers of two government workers.[66]
  • 2012 July 20 2012 Aurora shooting: A gunman entered a movie theater showing The Dark Knight Rises and threw teargas into the audience before killing 12 and injuring another 58. Shortly after, 24-year-old James Eagan Holmes was arrested while trying to escape. Holmes had dyed his hair red and called himself "the Joker", a villain in the Batman series.
  • 2012 August 5 Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting: 6 killed, 3 injured including a police officer who was tending to victims at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Wade Michael Page age 40 killed himself after being shot by police.[67] The shooting is being treated by authorities as an act of domestic terrorism.[68][69] While a motive has not been clearly defined Page had been active in white supremacist groups.[67]
  • 2013 April 15: Boston Marathon bombings: Two bombs detonated within seconds of each other near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Another suspected device was intentionally exploded in Copley Square. 3 dead and 176 injured.[70][71]

edit: 1 islamist terrorist group act, a couple more if you extend that to just muslims taking part in terrorist acts in the US...
 
APF said:
I was born in Boston and lived there most of my life. Can someone please remove this tag from me? It's incredibly insensitive to victims of terrorism and human beings.
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Yeah, agreed, I would be really bothered too. See if you can PM a mod about it. This thread is still moving at a fast rate, wouldn't want your post to fall on deaf ears.
 
Sanjuro said:
This one right here.

http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/...usive-fbi-investigating-photo-that-shows-bag/

Haven't seen that photo to my knowledge prior.
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second explosion

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(blurred by the news station)

exp15-4416.jpg
 
Mortalias said:
I can see what you're saying, and yes, it would be silly to throw out the notion that it could be a Muslim. Yet kicking people off of planes out of discomfort seems to go beyond that in my opinion. That's targeting the wrong people for the wrong reasons. (Not sure if you commented on the plane thing so I don't want to target you, but I'm typing this as a larger point for everyone to see)
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I completely agree with that.

The whole kicking people off the plane just because they were speaking Arabic is completely absurd.

I never ever would support that.
 
MIMIC said:
Wow. That's great news if that was sent in by an viewer. Definitely helps the FBI piece this together.

People see that and go through their own photos to see if anyone was carrying it.

EDIT: But wasn't the bag holding the explosive supposed to be black or something?
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From the press conference: Black Nylon bags are not confirmed to have been used on both sites said FBI Special Agent Deslauriers.
 
Mortalias said:
If you don't think the slaughter of innocent children nor a theatre attack on innocent moviegoers acts of terrorism, then it only gives credibility to your assertion that terrorism = "Muslims have to do it."

Your logic makes no sense. The bottom line is, anyone of any color, creed, or religion could be responsible for the attacks and your "research" doesn't change that fact a bit.

And it's "you're."
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There is no solid definition of terrorism due its politically charged nature. From Wiki: "Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, often violent, especially as a means of coercion". Going off of this broad definition then it's clear why most (but not all) mass shootings are not categorised as terrorism.

This bombing could be a number of different groups with differing goals, but Islamists are one of the more likely candidates imo, especially since hearing about the use of the pressure cookers, which are commonly used in IED's in the Indian Subcontinent and against ISAF forces in Afghanistan. But it could obviously be a variety of other groups.
 
PotatoeMasher said:
The one thing that's guaranteed is a monster did this.
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i understand what you mean, but calling a person a monster before we know anything about them makes me uneasy. i just think it dehumanizes them and feeds the terrorist stereotype versus trying to understand the psychological conditions that cause a person to do such a terrible thing. i'd hesitate to call a teenager indoctrinated from a young age in a terrorist training camp a monster - though in other cases, like the sandy hook shooter, i wouldn't really have a problem with it
 
APF said:
I was born in Boston and lived there most of my life. Can someone please remove this tag from me? It's incredibly insensitive to victims of terrorism and human beings.
Click to expand...

I don't mean to be rude but come on man. It's not insensitive to victims of terrorism or human beings. Please.
 
Bo-Locks said:
There is no solid definition of terrorism due its politically charged nature. From Wiki: "Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, often violent, especially as a means of coercion". Going off of this broad definition then it's clear why most (but not all) mass shootings are not categorised as terrorism.

This bombing could be a number of different groups with differing goals, but Islamists are one of the more likely candidates imo, especially since hearing about the use of the pressure cookers, which are commonly used in IED's in the Indian Subcontinent and against ISAF forces in Afghanistan. But it could obviously be a variety of other groups.
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I don't think anyone is ruling out islamists, just pointing out the prejudice isn't the most reasonable thing.

Ps. Love it when people spout facts.
 
The tree does not align in both pictures. The first has no tree while the second one does. Unless that mailbox got pushed over somehow.

EDIT: but then again the people are probably blocking it and the view is zoomed in.
 
rar said:
i understand what you mean, but calling a person a monster before we know anything about them makes me uneasy. i just think it dehumanizes them and feeds the terrorist stereotype versus trying to understand the psychological conditions that cause a person to do such a terrible thing. i'd hesitate to call a teenager indoctrinated from a young age in a terrorist training camp a monster - though in other cases, like the sandy hook shooter, i wouldn't really have a problem with it
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I get where you're coming from. I'd still consider the indoctrinated teenager a "monster", but of a different sort. I'd consider them a pitiable monster. At this points, it's more semantics than anything. I could totally see why that'd make you uncomfortable.

The fact of the matter is, no matter the case, this person did something awful. Nothing can change that. The circumstances may color things a bit, but the act is of someone who's not in their right mind.
 
rar said:
i understand what you mean, but calling a person a monster before we know anything about them makes me uneasy. i just think it dehumanizes them and feeds the terrorist stereotype versus trying to understand the psychological conditions that cause a person to do such a terrible thing. i'd hesitate to call a teenager indoctrinated from a young age in a terrorist training camp a monster - though in other cases, like the sandy hook shooter, i wouldn't really have a problem with it
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what? how could you disagree that soneone who kills innocent people (children even!) is a monster? His psychological background doesnt matter here at all
 
Meelow said:
As for this, it's still weird how they haven't caught at least one of the people that did this, or how nobody (a group) didn't own up to this like how it usually happens, but I'm not going say the government did this because there is no proof of that.
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This isn't a movie. It could take days, months, or years, to catch the person(s) responsible for the attack. And they in fact may never catch him (or possibly but not as likely, her).
 
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