[NeoTifa]

I'm pretty sure all nations feel that way.

It looks like in some of the pictures you can see a hooded figure on top of a roof, but that could just be Reddit speculation.

[xclite]

If I've learned anything in my repeated exposure to nationally-covered tragic events, it's to ignore the speculation for at least 24 hours.

This post has been edited by xclite: 15 April 2013 - 04:05 PM

[NeoTifa]

True. Could have been a mechanic, or a rooftop spectator, but considering there were no other rooftop spectators, it looked fishy. Anywho, last I looked they detained a person of interest.

[creativecoding]

I really wonder what the motive was. My money's on some anti-government idiot who just watched V for Vendetta.

Interesting thought I had while browsing Al-Jazeera. There were some more bombings in the Middle East today. Maybe now to people further away from that area will know how serious attacks like this really are, and will think a little bit more about them when it happens to other people. I'm not saying the attacks that went on today were good, I'm just saying hopefully they'll change some of the perspectives of some people for the better.

[Craig328]

My money says it's domestic. One of the things I heard early on (and yes, discounting all the media "facts" reported in the first 24 hours is wise advice) was that ball bearings were found at the scene. To me, that says that it wasn't a device cobbled together in someone's garage (where they'd use more commonly available AP projectiles like nails and such). I also noted that the scene had 4 devices, 2 of which maybe failed to explode. The explosions, from what I could see on TV weren't within the crowds at the curbside but seemed instead to be up against the buildings and perhaps just inside them (like maybe in a doorway or inside a facing window). The two bombs went off a few seconds apart which probably suggests timers rather than command detonated. The outlier is the explosion that had at that other location...hotel of some kind, wasn't it?

My guess is given the distance between the two devices that went off, the two duds were probably spaced evenly in between with the bombers hoping to pretty much clear a swathe of crowd on that side of the street. The ball bearings (if that turns out to be a fact) would suggest access to such materials and the knowledge that they work better at causing directed trauma than things like nails and crap. The locations, if they were indeed away from the crowded curbside, says the bombers were well aware of security presence on the sidewalk so chose a softer, apparently easier to plant, site.

In fact, what was most interesting was that if it was some muslim terrorists, they chose not to employ a series of suicide vest bombers who, mixing with the crowd at the curb, could have caused a lot more carnage than they did. The lack of claims of responsibility from Jihad du Jour overseas also seems to say this wasn't the work of someone like Al Qaeda (although OBL denied his folk were behind 9/11 for some time). Seems whoever wanted to bomb the race and send their message wanted to live to see the aftermath and weren't all that interested in martyrdom for their "cause".

Finally, the blasts seemed fairly powerful which is counter to a homemade explosive mix (like a small nitrate/fuel bomb) which would need to be a fair size to cause the explosion we saw. Both blasts at the race site were much larger than say grenades. That could mean something more sophisticated for an explosive.

I just find it curious that someone would go to, what seems in retrospect, an awful lot of trouble to bomb a high profile event that was guaranteed to be in front of cameras as though they want to send a message...and then not claim responsibility and actually...you know...send the message.

The investigation into this one should be most interesting. A downtown area in any decent sized American city is going to have an assload of various surveillance cameras and such around. Something will turn up and likely probably fairly quickly. My guess is whoever did it is already out of the country.

Be nice if we can start locking down the truly anti-social nutbags again. That'd seem to be a step in the direction of improved public safety.

[Lemur]

xclite, on 15 April 2013 - 06:05 PM, said:

If I've learned anything in my repeated exposure to nationally-covered tragic events, it's to ignore the speculation for at least 24 hours.

Just 24? That's being rather generous.

[jon.kiparsky]

Lemur, on 15 April 2013 - 09:03 PM, said:

xclite, on 15 April 2013 - 06:05 PM, said:

If I've learned anything in my repeated exposure to nationally-covered tragic events, it's to ignore the speculation for at least 24 hours.

Just 24? That's being rather generous.

Considering there are still loonies wandering around talking about "9/11 was an inside job" I'd say it's a good idea to be extremely skeptical for at least twelve years after any such event. Of course, there are still people working the Kennedy assassination, so fifty years might not be too much.

[farrell2k]

jon.kiparsky, on 15 April 2013 - 09:46 PM, said:

Who? Well, pick your loonie. Some nut job who thinks that blowing people up is a good way to "send a message". Maybe someone whose religious convictions were stirred by the thought of women running around with their legs exposed, or some anti-tax nutbag who figured the marathon gets some tax dollars from somewhere (and hey, it's tax day), or maybe someone protesting Patriot Day (yes, that's a holiday here in Mass...) on the grounds that "patriotism" has killed a hell of a lot more people than terrorism, or maybe some random asswipe who just wanted to blow people up because they're crazy.

Hard to say, really. There's no shortage of crazies these days.

True.

My money is on it being domestic terrorism. The first thing that raced through my head with all the recent gun debates is that some pro gun fanatic wanted to prove that you could kill just as many people with explosives as you could with a gun. Only time will tell.

[jon.kiparsky]

Craig328, on 15 April 2013 - 08:50 PM, said:

My money says it's domestic.
/ speculate, speculate, speculate

This is an excellent example of the sort of thing that should be ignored at length. I mean, it's all rather nice and clever, but don't you think you should wait for a few facts before you start explaining who and how and why and where?

Quote

The outlier is the explosion that had at that other location...hotel of some kind, wasn't it?

Are you talking about the John F. Kennedy Library? No, not a hotel. Presidential library. Totally unrelated incident. How do I know? My girlfriend is an archivist, she worked there for two years, so she knows a lot of people there. It was some sort of wiring issue, apparently. The sprinklers did more damage than the fire. (remember, we're talking about a building that houses irreplaceable paper - sprinkler can do a lot of damage there!)

[supersloth]

to be fair to craig, they did say earlier in the day they were treating the JFK event as though it were related for the time being.

[jon.kiparsky]

supersloth, on 16 April 2013 - 01:42 AM, said:

to be fair to craig, they did say earlier in the day they were treating the JFK event as though it were related for the time being.

More evidence that we should dismiss all rumors and speculation for at least 24 hours, no?

[depricated]

supersloth, on 16 April 2013 - 12:42 AM, said:

to be fair to craig, they did say earlier in the day they were treating the JFK event as though it were related for the time being.

I wouldn't be surprised if they were treating a kid falling off his bike as a related incident for the time being.

The thing that drives me nuts about this is that I wasn't able to go 5 minutes before I started hearing racist remarks about it. I shit you not. In the middle of the office, we're all kind of eyeing the news on the TV going "wow, really?" when people start piping up "I bet it was them Iranians!" "No it was the Middle Easters!"

I hate rednecks. My first thought was that it reminded me a lot of McVeigh and Kaczynski. We'll see how winds up getting fingered for this, but my money is on it being a domestic attack. As I type this I see they've arrested a Saudi national and are pinning it on him for the time being. We'll see how that develops.

[eugenerudenko]

All this is just terrible. Just can't think of any possible reason why exactly a Boston marathon was aimed at... The event that should celebrate healthy way of life turned into horrible catastrophe.

[jon.kiparsky]

depricated, on 16 April 2013 - 07:19 AM, said:

As I type this I see they've arrested a Saudi national and are pinning it on him for the time being. We'll see how that develops.

Searching for "boston marathon bombing arrests" brings up no reports of this. Source?

(in fact, the reports from this morning all say "no arrests have been made"...)

[Craig328]

jon.kiparsky, on 15 April 2013 - 09:44 PM, said:

Craig328, on 15 April 2013 - 08:50 PM, said:

My money says it's domestic.
/ speculate, speculate, speculate

This is an excellent example of the sort of thing that should be ignored at length. I mean, it's all rather nice and clever, but don't you think you should wait for a few facts before you start explaining who and how and why and where?

So, despite the fact that what I said was indeed speculation...is speculation somehow illegal now? About the only piece of "fact" that I mentioned that may turn out to be total crap was the mention of the ball bearings (and I prefaced that by saying it's what I heard and could turn out to be totally wrong). Other than that, the count of explosive devices, the number and location of the duds, the distance between the two blasts, the apparent location with respect to buildings/curbside...those are readily discerned from viewing the widely circulating video...so that's not what I'd call speculation.

The rest is inferred, informed thinking using some fairly well established baselines as the starting point. The lack of suicide bombers isn't speculation, is it? I'm pretty sure that's fact. Muslim terrorist organizations have a hard on for martyrdom so putting those two together may indeed be speculation but it's probably well founded speculation. But, yes, it is speculation all the same.

Let's just go ahead and say that it's perfectly okay to speculate (because, hey, that's exactly what the Boston Police and FBI are doing this morning when they're not gathering evidence) but maybe not draw conclusions. Maybe that's what you meant to caution against. I was pretty clearly not stating that "X is what I believe happened".

And yeah, the arrest of the Saudi national that's being reported would actually be a bad thing. If it turns out it was some kind of arab/muslim plot that succeeded then we've got an entirely new problem on our hands. Despite the TSA, Border Patrol and all the other things our security and intel organs have done to protect us, such a scenario (if proved to be the case) would mean they've failed...again...to protect Americans on our shores. Just as easily as they were able to plant 4 bombs at a race that, presumably, had security to guard against just such an event...they could possibly do something more serious. If this does turn out to be foreign based then it means they were able to plan, infiltrate, supply and execute what appears to be a pretty sophisticated bombing mission...without a sniff of detection.

Again, that's speculation but that's what happens at times like this. Law enforcement calls such speculation theories, gut instinct, etc. It's what guides some of their investigative actions.

jon.kiparsky, on 16 April 2013 - 07:51 AM, said:

depricated, on 16 April 2013 - 07:19 AM, said:

As I type this I see they've arrested a Saudi national and are pinning it on him for the time being. We'll see how that develops.

Searching for "boston marathon bombing arrests" brings up no reports of this. Source?

(in fact, the reports from this morning all say "no arrests have been made"...)

First Google hit for "boston marathon Saudi".

Edit: An excerpt from a story the AP is running:

Quote

Dr. Stephen Epstein of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center says he saw an X-ray of one victim's leg that had "what appears to be small, uniform round objects throughout it - similar in the appearance to BBs." He said it remained to be determined what exactly the objects were.

This post has been edited by Craig328: 16 April 2013 - 06:06 AM