Explosions at Boston Marathon

[Hauldren Collider]

Nobody really cares about alex jones, oerdin.

[Alexander's Horse]

I hate to say it but you can't rule out a disgruntled veteran like Timothy McVeigh.

That attack had all the hallmarks of a complex IED attack - one blast followed by a secondary ten seconds later, both command detonated with a mobile phone, the use of a cooking pot and improvised shrapnel, all too familiar to some of us.

[Hauldren Collider]

It's not a complicated device, AH. Anyone with a modicum of skill could build one.

[Dinner]

Aside from April 15th being tax day, it really wasn't much of a symbolic target for extreme right-wing hate groups. I have to agree. He left open the possibility that it could be domestic inspired by jihadi... or just some lone wolf nutcase.

I think you're wrong about that as there was the whole Sandy Hook benefit/Gun Control fund raising drive as well as it being tax day. Again, we don't know who did it and this could have just been coincidence but it isn't correct to say there is nothing else besides the date.

[DaShi]

It's not a complicated device, AH. Anyone with a modicum of skill could build one.

Define "modicum of skill." I think you'll find that the majority of the US population, let alone the world, would not be able to carry out such an attack this successfully.

[DaShi]

HC, would it really destroy your world, if the perpetrator turned out to be a right-wing fanatic?

[Docfeelgood]

Is Alex Jones that pratt on CNN? Yes, you might be onto something Doc

I was thinking of Piers Morgan..

Alex can find a conspiracy in a non working toilet.

[Dinner]

If it's a random crazy person, he could be next to impossible to track down.

It took 20 years to track down the uni-bomber and even then it was only due to good luck because someone remembered his style of writing back at college in the 1970's.

[Docfeelgood]

He is an absolutely insane right wing conspiracy theorist who is beloved by a certain sigment of the American far right. Think doomsday preppers, Glenn Beck listeners, extreme libertarians, the anti-federal reserve "gold nut" conspiracy theorists, and of course the armed right wing militia groups who seek a revolution. Some of the militia guys just want to "take their America back" in some sort of armed revolution to create their ideolized right wing paradise while another large slice of them are white supremacists dreaming of a race war so they can "purify" the US by killing everyone they don't like.

BTW Doc's talk about Alex Jones might not be that far fetched but there is no hard evidence to back it up as yet. Jones has be screaming about the Newtown mass shooting some how being a "false flag attack" where Obama secretly ordered it and had it carried out in some vast conspiracy to steal everyone's guns. I'm not making this **** up. Further more Alex Jones and other right wing extremist media personalities have been claiming all the Sandy Hook school shooting victims are still alive and that the grieving families are all just liars and paid actors; so they've really smeared those poor families calling them traitors and demonizing them in every way possible.

It just so happens that the final mile of the Boston Marathon, where the bombing actually took place, was dedicated to the victims of the Sandy Hook mass shooting, several of the Sandy Hook families were on hand, and the event was raising money for both Sandy Hook victims as well as money to lobby for stronger gun control measures. Yes, I can see a possible motivation there for an Alex Jones style raving right wing extremist but as I said we'll have to wait to see what the investigation brings.

****, honestly, I wouldn't put it past those nut jobs to create a conspiracy if one could not be found.

[Sava]

Why not just use digital cooking timers? Sync them. Press start. Plant.

I hear they found part of a circuit board. I wouldn't use anything like that unless I made the board myself. It's too easy to trace stuff like that. It might take a long time and a lot of cross-referencing... but it's possible. They even do mass spec analysis and compare anything that sticks out to particular lots. It's not hard to compare results and find out where such components were shipped. Even when such items are produced on an assembly line, there are variations in composition that make determining date of manufacture easier.

In an age where law enforcement has enormous data analysis capabilities, a would-be bomber should be wary of using any kind of commercial product. Hopefully, such fools don't end up getting wise to this. The real danger comes from some uber-hobbiest who can craft everything. I've seen guys who leech chemicals from soil and make KNO3 that way.

Usually, the combination of intelligence and bloodlust comes with other sorts of proclivities... OCD type stuff. If this bomber is a lone wolf crazy person, his tendencies to favor particular methods, devices or designs may end up making it easier to identify him.

Thankfully, that combination of intelligence, experience, craftsmanship and psycho is pretty rare. There are lots of psychos. Most of them are dip****s. There are lots of smart guys. Very few are psychos.

[Docfeelgood]

It's not a complicated device, AH. Anyone with a modicum of skill could build one.

Leaves you out.

[Docfeelgood]

I hate to say it but you can't rule out a disgruntled veteran like Timothy McVeigh.

That attack had all the hallmarks of a complex IED attack - one blast followed by a secondary ten seconds later, both command detonated with a mobile phone, the use of a cooking pot and improvised shrapnel, all too familiar to some of us.

X2

[Dinner]

I hate to say it but you can't rule out a disgruntled veteran like Timothy McVeigh.

That attack had all the hallmarks of a complex IED attack - one blast followed by a secondary ten seconds later, both command detonated with a mobile phone, the use of a cooking pot and improvised shrapnel, all too familiar to some of us.

McVeigh was also a right wing extremist, militia member, and part of the militant "Christian" movement (think of the sorts who have repeatedly bombed family planning clinics, assassinated doctors, and who planted a bomb during the Atlanta Olympics). McVeigh and his accomplice said they thought their attack would launch a new right wing revolution in America in which he would be the new George Washington to lead the nation. These militia movements reportedly specifically seek out disgruntled vets so they can help train other members in combat arms tactics. As you said, it very well could be someone like that or it could be half a dozen other groups. We'll just have to wait to find out.

[Dinner]

Nobody really cares about alex jones, oerdin.

Speak for yourself. Doc brought it up and AH asked a question which I then went and answered so it seems at least one person specifically asked for information.

[DaShi]

I had trolled with this before (), but it seems more relevant here.

http://www.economist.com/node/21560566

Domestic terrorism
The benefits of hindsight
The need for more monitoring of domestic terrorism
Aug 18th 2012 | ATLANTA | from the print edition

Watching the right people?
ON APRIL 7th 2009 a unit of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) charged with monitoring domestic, non-Islamic terrorism released a paper warning that the economic downturn and the election of the first black president “present unique drivers for right-wing radicalisation and recruitment.” Other causes included fears over illegal immigration and the possibility of more restrictive gun laws, and the challenges faced by returning military veterans. It compared the economic and political climate of 2009 to that of the early 1990s, “when right-wing extremism experienced a resurgence fuelled largely by an economic recession, criticism about the outsourcing of jobs and the perceived threat to U.S. power”; that period culminated in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh, a disgruntled veteran who found a home in America’s right-wing fringe movements.

The report, released just as the “tea-party” movement was heating up, came under withering criticism from the right. Commentators complained that it unfairly placed conservatives under suspicion. John Boehner, the House Speaker, said it cast veterans as “potential terrorists”. Daryl Johnson, who headed the unit responsible for that report, said that DHS promptly caved in to the pressure. Within months his unit, which had six-full time analysts and two supplemental staff—fewer by far than the team that monitored Islamic threats—was gutted, “out of malice and risk aversion”, Mr Johnson maintains, and out of fear of politically motivated budget cuts. Training and publications were cut too.

Nor is this imbalance limited to the DHS: since coming under Republican control in 2010, the House Homeland Security Committee has held five hearings on Muslim radicalisation, and none on right-wing threats. Yet America’s right-wing extremists commit a vastly greater number of murderous attacks (though leading to fewer deaths) than Muslims do. According to the Extremist Crime Database (ECDB), published by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, between 1990 and 2010 right-wing extremists carried out 145 murderous attacks, resulting in 348 deaths, 168 of which resulted from the Oklahoma City bombing. During that same time period Muslim extremists committed around 25 attacks, which killed over 3,000 people; but 9/11 accounted for 2,977 of these.

The Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC), which monitors right-wing extremists, saw the number of such groups wane during the 2000s, before soaring back following the election of Barack Obama and the economic downturn, as Mr Johnson predicted: by the end of 2011 it counted 1,274 anti-government “Patriot” groups, far more than existed in the mid-1990s and up from a nadir of 131 just four years earlier.

The murder of six Sikhs at a gurdwara in Wisconsin by a white supremacist earlier this month brought calls to redress this balance. But talking about right-wing extremist threatens howls of protest. Nice idea, shame about the politics.

If it does turn out to be a domestic terrorist, it's a shame that partisan politics caused the very people who may have caught this early to be cut.