The "terrists" have won

[altivo]

When people believe that anything with like "wires and batteries" is a bomb:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/31/boston.bombscare/index.html

This is incredibly childish and stupid. Have we fallen so far that there is no common sense left at all? Apparently so.

Better ban all cell phones from everywhere. Flashlights too. No more PDAs or laptop computers either, because they have wires and batteries in them. Jeez! Maybe we should just ban all batteries and make the sale or distribution of batteries illegal?

This is what terrorism really is, folks. Making you so afraid of everything that you are a quivering pile of jelly unable to perform the daily necessities of life.

The real terrorists in the US are the people promoting this "fear everything, trust nothing" attitude.

Comments

[plushlover.livejournal.com]

Americans have become such complete pussies. It's absolutely shameful...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You won't like this answer, probably, but it's in part due to the constant harping on "terrorists, terrorists, terrorists" coming from the administration in Washington.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

Reading between the lines on this story, it seems that they were arrested more because they embarrassed the police than anything else.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, and it would be even worse had they embarrassed big bad [stupid] federal agents. Yet these same advertising gadgets were distributed in a dozen other cities without incident.

Lemmings. All it takes is one to do something stupid and hundreds more will follow.

[atomicat.livejournal.com]

Terrorism! Fear your neighbor! Buy a gun! Lock your doors!

When I was in town today (a nice lil' place of 5,000), I didn't bother taking the keys out of the car when I went into a cafe for lunch. When I go to the city overnight I don't bother locking up the house. Gosh, we must be armed to the teeth here to feel so safe!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

No, you just don't have a political regime that is promoting fear in order to keep its own power secure.

[alaskawolf.livejournal.com]

you know i cant wait to see the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Movie :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Oh, well. I think I can bear to skip that.

[murakozi.livejournal.com]

I still haven't seen an article that actually says *why* they thought the things were bombs or whatever. Admittedly, placing them at bridges/tunnels/hospitals would make me slightly concerned if I were the one receiving reports of devices found around the city, but still it just smacks of stupid overreaction.

The things are basically souped up Lite Brites. Sheesh.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

The things are basically souped up Lite Brites. Sheesh.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that. Or even, "What, theses guys never saw a Lite-Brite?" Even though I am not all familiar with the character being depicted, seeing one photo of the device(s) made it clear the thing was a display.

I disagree with Altivo on this one, overall. This is not the result of big scary administration stuff (And there is much overreaction in implementation I will agree. It's good to be alert, but one must think and be able to decide what is a real concern and what is not.), but the much more real and much more insidious general ignorance and zero intelligence (mistakenly called zero tolerance) policies that are designed to relieve people of the burden of thinking at all. This leads to "I don't know what it is. It must be bad. EVERYBODY PANIC!" nonsense that just happened.

The interesting (and perhaps reassuring?) is that these things were in other cities and there was no big scare in those places.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Actually I had never seen nor heard of a Lite Brite until now. There's still no chance that I would have mistaken that thing for a bomb. Jeez, how ignorant can someone be?

[calydor.livejournal.com]

The article uses the phrase "in a post 9/11 era" at one point to say why this is such an unacceptable practice.

I guess that's why gas stoves were made illegal after World War II, right?

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but seriously - yes, 9/11 was a tragedy, mourn the losses and all that, but then GET OVER IT AND MOVE ON. We had a fireworks factory blow up a couple of years, eradicated EVERYTHING in about a 3/4 mile radius. Fortunately very few deaths. Do we constantly fear seeing fireworks? No. We made some stricter rules about fireworks handling in general, and that was it! We moved on, and so should America.

Of course, on TV right now is a cult-like Danish series from the 70s, depicting life as it was in the 1930s and onward in Denmark. Scary thing is, a lot of it is like hearing about America in the present day.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. Like the reason that hemp fiber can't be grown in the US, because federal agents are too stupid to tell it from marijuana.

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

Someone at Time Warner was really dumb to think this sort of thing wouldn't raise eyebrows, at least.

But having said that, I must admit to a little fantasy where the apprehension of the guys putting up the devices was the opening shot in the ultimate exposure of how STUPID this fear foisted off on us by the Bushies has become. Time Warner on the side of common sense, leading the battle against the war on tare-ism?

Nah, it could only happen in the movies. <sigh>

[altivo.livejournal.com]

In the days of Henry Luce, it might have happened. In the day of the AOL-Time-Warner media conglomerate board room, not a chance they would take any action that might embarrass the Republican party or any of its adherents.

Take my word for that. I'm a survivor of Life at Time Inc. Eight years of it in fact.

[miktar.livejournal.com]

I was quite shocked myself. Not because people reacted in this way, I expected that. Not because the bomb squads were called in, that bit seems perfectly normal in the fear-centric America these days.

What shocked me, is how I only found out about this today, when I was checking news yesterday like a vulture (Wednesdays are Newsday for me). The media practically ignored the whole thing, /until/ it became a bombscare. Several reports indicate the advertising campaign has been running for a week now in several states - but not a chirp about it anywhere, not even Boingboing.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, it was just advertising. Nobody cares about advertising except ad executives and the advertisers. The rest of the world tolerates or ignores it. The campaign sounds stupid to me, but the overreaction in Boston is moronic. Right up there with the old H.G. Wells "War of the Worlds" panic.

[mymaimary.livejournal.com]

Hear hear

Laughs histarically at the silly gov.:P

[bladehorse.livejournal.com]

I was rather concerned about this till I heard that it was a poor marketing scheme. Then i just had to laugh.. Yup the terrorists are getting exactly what they want.. Terror at omfg what is it?? A damn diaper:pSilly mundanes... Its really rather sad what were giving up.

Re: Laughs histarically at the silly gov.:P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Its really rather sad what were giving up.

You mean like we're giving up having brains? I agree it would seem to be so.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I bet it really helped the ad campaign :D
You can't buy exposure like that.

It's like the anti-American activities commission all over again, there are commies under the bed OOooooooOOoooo.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's exactly like that. Only now they are "tare-ists" instead of commies.

The worst terrorists of all have been people in the government who continue to whip up fear, uncertainty, and doubt in order to justify their own nefarious schemes.

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

A: The Boston police are idiots because they can't tell a PC board full of D batteries and LED's from a bomb.
And they're obviously so out of touch that they've never even heard of ATHF.

B: I read that the flashing LED Moonenites were around for at least a couple of weeks. If they really HAD been bombs, Boston would have really been forked. It's nice to know that it would take 2 weeks for anyone to notice anything suspicious.

C: The local media is making the whole thing out to be the crime of the century. They've arrested the two individuals that Interference, Inc. hired to put up the LED arrays and I wouldn't be surprised to hear Boston authorities call for a good old fashioned hangin'

The Boston Police overreacted, made a big huge panic (along with the Boston media outlets), got everyone whipped up into a firestorm of panic, and now they're really pissed off because somebody called their bluff and they failed, big time. So now the Boston Police look like the morons that they are, so they're trying to fine and arrest anyone they possibly can and keep the "OMG, we were in mortal danger" thing going for as long as possible.

Sure, I would have expected some initial panic perhaps, particularly given the whole "LOOK, TERRORISTS!" attitude of late, but how many PC boards with LED's do you have to look at before you can tell they aren't bombs? I could certainly tell; don't they have people on staff who are supposed to be able to determine whether something is a bomb or not-a-bomb?

Besides, only the Joker puts LED smiley faces on bombs (or maybe the Green Goblin). I seriously doubt anyone with nefarious intentions would light up their bombs with cartoon characters.

Geez Louise...the terrorists already won years ago.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, I still don't know (or care) what "adult swim" or "athf" are. But I can certainly tell from nothing but a photo that the devices in question are definitely NOT bombs nor are they terrorist plots of any sort. Boston will have a damned hard time making any such charges stick against the people who put those up. The best they can probably do is something like littering or trespassing.

But watch out for your state legislators to propose a new law against putting up LED advertisements or some such idiotic thing.

[octatonic.livejournal.com]

You have lots of posts here so I'll keep it quick.

The Mayor of Boston went to school on the liiiiitle bus.

DOH!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

And, apparently, the chief of police, the governor, and the state attorney general. But I saw another story today saying that the feds are pressing charges against Paramount for some advertising stunt they pulled last spring that involved battery powered music boxes of some sort. I don't remember hearing about that, but it provoked similar hysteria somewhere. Soon it will be illegal to poke your nose outside your door.

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Could not open the video because Opera thinks I don't have Media Player 9 installed (it is). But I agree, bomb scare has gone too far :P

*holds up a set of decorative lighting with wires and a battery in it*
Is this a bomb? :)

P.S. Back again, I have had a lot to think about, more of that in a post I am going to put up within a few days.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Better not try to fly to a US airport with that in your luggage.