Boston: of motives and munitions
[ by Charles Cameron — the prayer response at least is wordless and direct ]
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The most deeply felt post about the Boston Marathon massacre I’ve seen was Caitlin Fitz Gerald‘s Boston’s best Day:
If you’ve never been to Boston on Patriots’ Day, you might not know this, but it’s the best day of the year in Boston. It’s a state holiday, spring is hitting, the Red Sox play a morning game, and thousands of runners and hundreds of thousands of people come from all over the world for the Boston Marathon. The marathon is a 26-mile party. Every runner hears cheers from every person the whole way down the route. It is a gorgeously international event, with runners and spectators coming from all corners of the earth, filling the city and lining the marathon route. In the ultimate Patriots’ Day experience, you can go to Fenway to see the Sox, then walk out to Kenmore Square to watch the runners come through. They are tired then, they are in their last mile, but people line the route 10 and 15 deep hooting and cheering and clapping to help them through to the end. It’s amazing to watch the elite runners fly through the toughest course in the world, and just as amazing to watch the regular runners, most of them raising money for charity, people who have trained months and years to do this superhuman thing.
This didn’t just hit close to home, it hit my home.
Caitlin is also responsible for the elegant Clausewitz for Kids.
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The most sensible response to the various premature speculations as to who’s to blame is JM Berger‘s tweet:
The speculations themselves ranged from dangerous incitement (Muslims or North Koreans, kill em all) to dangerous incitement (d’oh, it’s the Mossad)
The least expected insight came from Charli Carpenter:
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Pressure cookers:
For background, here’s a DHS release on pressure cookers from 2010.
It’s beginning to seem likely that the bomb or bombs were made with a pressure cooker or pressure cookers — normally unsuspicious items that can be found in many homes, or easily purchased online.
JM Berger would be my resource for ongoing analysis of the Boston event, but Betsy Ross sees to be the one to follow for information about pressure cookers as weaponry. Their history goes back at least as far as the Croatian nationalist hijacking of TWA flight 355 in September 1976, although the “pressure cooker bomb” in that case was a threatening fake rather than the real thing. Max Fisher tells us their use in bomb-making is mentioned in the Anarchist’s Cookbook — I’m not about to spend money on something that would only tell me how to maim people in any case — but Berger pointed out (first in my feed) that AQAP’s Inspire magazine featured them:
The Inspire mention appears in their first issue, in a piece by “AQ Chef” titled Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom.
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But you know what most interested me in that article?
It’s not the recipe, no sireee, I have no interest in how to blow things — much less, people — up. It’s the warning that the writer attached. Explosive devices can easily — all too often and all too literally — blow up in the faces of those who are trying to make or set them.
Bomb making is a hazardous occupation — and that’s why the order and emphasis with which the AQ Chef [promotes his three dafety precautions interests me so much:
The following are a few safety precautions:
1. Put you trust in Allah and pray for the success of your operation. This is the most important rule.
2. Wear gloves throughout the preparation of the explosive to avoid leaving behind fingerprints.
3. This is an explosive device so take care during preparation and handling.
Did you get that? The most important advice is to trust in God and pray for success — taking care during preparation and handling comes a distant third.
That’s piety, people — piety before practicality.
And — as if to prove the point — three Palestinian would-be suicide bombers were killed by their own devices back in 1999, because they refused to comply when Israel announced a “premature switch from daylight savings time to accommodate a week of pre-sunrise prayers“.
So much irony, so much stupidity, so much sorrow.
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A few other pages to note:
Bruce Schneier, The Boston Marathon Bombing: Keep Calm and Carry On
Jeff Stein, How They Will Investigate the Boston BombingAndy Kroll, Question Everything You Hear About the Boston Marathon Bombing
Dana Liebelson and Tim Murphy, 6 False Things You Heard About the Boston Bombing
Adam Serwer, Terror Attacks on Sporting Events, Especially Marathons, Are Surprisingly RareMike Adams via Alex Jones, Boston marathon bombing happened on same day as ‘controlled explosion’ drill by Boston bomb squad — conspiracist, reminiscent of Ruppert on 9/11
XKCD, Pressure cooker: the worst thing? — see graphic above
Zoketsu Norman Fischer, In Times of Trouble — a Zen view from just post 9/11.
April 16th, 2013 at 11:07 pm
Addendum:
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JM Berger, What Extremists Are Saying About the Boston Massacre
April 16th, 2013 at 11:41 pm
The Bruce Schneier link is broken. Maybe this is the one you want?
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The celebrations are far bigger than just the marathon. They start early in the morning – at Lexington Green and Concord Bridge they reenact the battles each location is famous for. Actors also travel down the Minuteman Bikeway in honor of Paul Revere. School is out. Boy scouts and American Legions have breakfasts. Town halls have big shingadings. Some townships have parades. And of course, all of Boston is a party. I have only seen two days to which I could compare it – The Fourth of July and the night the Bruins won the Stanley Cup. And on those days half the party is the drunk people.
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This one cuts deep.
April 17th, 2013 at 12:47 am
Thanks for the pointer re Schneier — and I’ve corrected my link, which was to his Atlantic article, mentioned in yours.
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Thanks too for the further detail on the marathon festivities. Deep indeed.
April 17th, 2013 at 2:04 am
Used to be quite familiar with part of that route – at one time.
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Very sad.