I was in Nevada at the time, in a bank with a live tv because god forbid anyone go more than 30 seconds without looking at a screen. Immediately, an absolute explosion on all news channels of reports of bombs found around Boston. I followed this story intensely as I had a lot of friends in the Boston area. You could smell the excitement on the breaths of everyone on the news. Potentially dozens of suspicious packages stuck to buildings and bridges and roads, huge ratings, a major terrorist conspiracy, and no deaths to pretend to temper their fun.
The thing I remember most was the petulance. They had this big juicy story and they weren't going to give it up just because of "reality." After an hour or so of breathless reporting, they released pictures of the "bombs" and the entire internet exploded. Twitter wasn't as big then, but every blog was pointing out that this was bullshit, dozens of people were emailing them, it was the top story on all webforums and Digg. Very shortly thereafter, Cartoon Network released a statement that these were not bombs but just viral marketing signs. This might have been anticipated by anyone with the slightest electrical or bombmaking experience, or by considering the fact that real bombers are not the Joker and don't make their bombs light up on visible locations.
Did the media give a damn? No. They kept humping this for hours in increasing desperation. I understand that it might have been an honest mistake at first; CNN is well within its rights to ignore some neckbeard who emailed them that, actually, that was Ignignot from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, adjust fedora. But as time went on it became clear that they knew they were reporting bullshit or at least something much more complicated and unclear than their ardent terrorism narrative.
With visible annoyance, over time as I watched live, they without explanation or statement downgraded the bombs down to "bomb-like devices," which they were not, "suspicious packages," which they were not, and then later to a "bomb hoax," which it was also not and frankly slander. You could taste the bile on the air, not from commentators or opinion panels but from ostensibly impartial news anchors, after the "bomb hoaxers" were released on bail and openly mocked the media and Boston police. How dare they not take this crisis seriously??
Eventually they just stopped running anything about it at all, suddenly cutting their losses and going back to bear goes to suburbs, never mentioning anything about the story again, never apologizing or changing. The "hoaxers" quietly had all charges dropped within a week and it came out later that there were the exact same signs in half a dozen other cities which had never caused incident.
This was at the forefront of my mind yesterday as I drove from Boston to Worcester, which is the second biggest city in the state, almost squarely in the middle of the state, and a shithole. Point being, over this hour drive I got to listen to a lot of local news, and see a lot of light-up road signs and I think I'm able to explain why I found the response to this current bombing so deeply horrifying.
First, the signs. This isn't something you'll probably see living out of state, but every light-up road notice sign on the highway reads "WE ARE ONE BOSTON." Probably dozens of these fuckin things in the 50 miles between points. There were also billboards thanking and praising the police. The local news ran round the clock hagiography. This is all in addition to the regular stuff I'm sure you all can watch on tv, specifically the spontaneous pro-police chants and demonstrations.
Second, anything that attempts to tell us that "we are all one" should be scrutinized carefully on suspicion of opportunism at best and likely fascism. Maybe this does not turn out to be true, and it is mere liberal "community togetherness," but this seems unlikely coming draped in the flag and wrapped around the dong of a cop.
Police are the enemy, do not forget that. The individual cop may be decent, but the system for which he works is corrupt and in order to be truly reformed would have to be faced with violence.
And what, precisely, are we praising the police for, anyway? Doing their fucking jobs, apparently, and shittily at that. Hundreds of local, state and federal troops from Bawston irish mongs, to CIA career sociopaths, were tearing apart an area only three miles on a side and not even that densely populated. They got jack and crap for 12 hours until some random person called 911. Great detective work, fellas. You're lucky that you were dealing with morons in the first place; god alone knows why these guys didn't flee to a different state or country in the three fucking days it took for you to release a picture in an area covered by live news cameras, a dozen surveillance cameras, and hundreds of slackjawed townies instragramming pictures of their splattered testicles.
I read a story here about Croatians holding an open air art exhibit during the Balkan Wars, and continued it even during incoming shelling. We know that life went on to some extent in Japan during US mass bombing and in France during Nazi occupation. By contrast, four people died in all of this. Three during one initial attack, one fatbody glorified rent-a-cop. In response, what is arguably the fifth most important city in America basically shut down, costing hundreds of millions of dollars. People hid in their houses like the angel of death was on the winds. They let militarized black-garbed police squads go through their homes based on nothing, a tactic that could not possibly be both legal and effective.
Boston Strong: The strength in panicking, shutting down civil society, hiding indoors, abdicating your rights, and then chanting in praise of the police.
Edited by Goethestein ()
Goethestein posted:after the last big snowstorm the governor declared using any road in massachusetts illegal
Good, it’s important for the state to be able to use its power to ensure the safety of its people; individuals generally have very poor risk assessment skills and the time, money and risk spent rescuing them from their own stupidity can be avoided with temporary restrictions.
‘brah brah rabble my RIGHT to swerve off I-93 into a ditch’
a) People in Boston are cowards who did what the state told them to
b) Obeying the state is a good thing from the perspective of the state
c) Alex Jones types are probably on the right track in their predictions of growing militarization and ‘emergency’ powers
d) This increasing dysfunction and disruption of business weakens the American hegemon and is good for humanity
Goethestein posted:in fairness the BPD are actually decent as far as cops go, which isn't far, but certainly less actively malevolent than the police departments of New York, DC, Chicago, LA, Phoenix, or the entire United States south
babyhueypnewton posted:Boston seems like a terrible city, nothing is worse than white people who pretend to be an irish stereotype and make it a city wide identity.
Compilation of Bostonians celebrating after the crisis was resolved
believe it or not when this happened they did not put a major city on lockdown for 36 hours until they caught the guy
Goethestein posted:http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/08/14/3-women-killed-in-dorchester-shooting-identified/
believe it or not when this happened they did not put a major city on lockdown for 36 hours until they caught the guy
Fat, fat, fat.
getfiscal posted:make this the frontpage image
Fat, fat, fat.
Alex Jones bashed Glenn beck yesterday because GB plans on releasing damning info , info wars revealed the deported Saudi angle like 5 days ago
All I want is to eat the cake not just look at it
discipline posted:do you feel like they're starting to shift some troop love to cop love now that the pigs are becoming more militarized? do you think the former troops constantly demand the slovenly praise of the civvies? I can't imagine the sort of embarrassment we're seeing in a city not "as white as boston" lol
many former troops become cops. also i don't feel anything is being shifted per se but rather the ante for cop love is being upped. the more militarized the police are becoming the more disliked they are. also the only way troops aren't loved as much is because they're not marching into countries in more wars we need to do, obama is happy conducting shadow wars with drone strikes. but yeah as long as they can create or identify domestic threats then cops will be the new heroes saving us from the violent people who aren't too afraid to be the change they want to see in the world
discipline posted:do you feel like they're starting to shift some troop love to cop love now that the pigs are becoming more militarized? do you think the former troops constantly demand the slovenly praise of the civvies? I can't imagine the sort of embarrassment we're seeing in a city not "as white as boston" lol
i didn't know love was a possibility in a new england city.
discipline posted:do you feel like they're starting to shift some troop love to cop love now that the pigs are becoming more militarized? do you think the former troops constantly demand the slovenly praise of the civvies? I can't imagine the sort of embarrassment we're seeing in a city not "as white as boston" lol
boston is less than 50% white
Goethestein posted:discipline posted:
do you feel like they're starting to shift some troop love to cop love now that the pigs are becoming more militarized? do you think the former troops constantly demand the slovenly praise of the civvies? I can't imagine the sort of embarrassment we're seeing in a city not "as white as boston" lol
boston is less than 50% white
irrelevant little sleight of hand Mr Goat, that's the City of Boston only which doesn't include Cambridge or Watertown or many of the other Que-eah-Filled Subahbs whose actions and views are obviously very germane to this story. If we look at the metro area then
The suburbs remain almost lily-white: Boston is the third-whitest major metropolitan area in America, behind only Pittsburgh and Minneapoli
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/divided-we-stand
Watertown where the dude was caught is 91% white, these Chechnyan-cats weren't rampaging through Roxbury...pretty sure I haven't seen a black person anywhere in this story apart from a couple of token cops.
Greater Boston and all of Mass is whitey mcliberaltown and hence has some of the best welfare in the country: people feel more comfortable that their tax dollars will be going to people like themselves. The doyen of Tech-Sector/Creative self-congratulation, the Other bay-area, the Beta city where even the jocks and tough guys and big talkers wrapped themselves in their clapboard blankets and prayed to Twitter.
Ironicwarcriminal posted:The FEMA Camps may not be operating yet
yeah, that shit is happening already, it's out in the open, theyre called prisons, and they're not for white people
the funny thing about 'FEMA camps' is that the origin of the conspiracy is in a Miami Herald expose on Reagan contingency plans for detention camps, originally designed in case of a black uprising. and now those rightwing conspiracy boys point out potential sites that could be used for mass incarceration of whites, most of em already are used for mass incarceration, as part of the largest mass incarceration in recorded history, except its not targeted at whites
Ironicwarcriminal posted:Goethestein posted:in fairness the BPD are actually decent as far as cops go, which isn't far, but certainly less actively malevolent than the police departments of New York, DC, Chicago, LA, Phoenix, or the entire United States south
Flow My Milk, the Policeman Said
Time Person of the Year 2013: Boston
Time Person of the Year 2013: The Boston Cop
Time Person of the Year 2013: Petey's Friend, the Dead Little Boy
