Two Bombs for the Price of None

Further proof, if any were needed, that the Mooninites really *ARE* smarter than the rest of us - or at least smarter than Bostonians...

*sigh*

Now, besides feeling compelled to apologize for unleashing Mitt Romney on the rest of the world, I feel like I have to try to convince everyone else that we're not *ALL* completely clueless bozos on this bus.

...again... *sigh*

Yes, I'm going to weigh in on the "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" promo stunt that went awry.

For anyone who has been living in a cave on Mars for the last few days, Turner Broadcasting's Cartoon Network hired a guerilla marketing company (whose name I'm currently too lazy to Google-ize) to promote their ATHF (see above; I'm also too lazy to keep retyping the name of the series everytime I mention it!) series and the apparently soon-forthcoming feature film which probably NEEDED the publicity, since this is the first that I've heard of it and I watch CN fairly regularly... but I digress...

The promotion consisted of hiring locals in a numbeer of cities to place magnet-backed blinking signs featuring one of the afore-mentioned Mooninites giving passers-by the finger. It's pretty much a naked circuit board, a couple-dozen lights, and a battery pack. A number of these displays were planted in Boston, New York, Los Angeles and other cities and have, apparently, been up for two to three weeks.

The first one found was, apparently, spotted around 8 AM on Wednesday on I-93 in Charlestown and blown apart with a water cannon some two hours later. Other devices, now that people were lookig for them, were spotted later in the day and, eventually, according to the Boston Globe (http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/02/01/froth_fear_and_fury/), "Sometime between 2 and 3 p.m., ... a Boston police analyst..." looked at one closely enough to say, "Y'know..."

The two people hired in Boston were arrested, with much fanfare and hoopla, by local poloce and charged with "placing a hoax device in a way that causes panic and disorderly conduct", or something similar. Note that they are *NOT* charged with actually planting bombs, but with carrying out a hoax to cause panic.

As near as I can tell from the news reports, the only ones who panicked and caused disorder were the POLICE!

Maybe I'm missing something here...

Now before anyone says anything: Yes, I possibly WOULD be one of those people lambasting the Boston Police if they HAD been bombs and had started going off around the city - because my understanding is that THEIR JOB IS TO NOTICE WHEN SOMETHING'S WRONG AND TAKE CARE OF IT BEFORE ANYTHING HAPPENS!!!

Now, these things have, supposedly, been in place for AT LEAST TWO WEEKS and, again supposedly, the local police are patrolling the SAME streets that these were intended to be visible from, and NEVER NOTICED THEM!!

THEY WERE FRICKIN' **BLINKING*** AT NIGHT, PEOPLE!!!!

Two weeks - That's 336 hours... for 196 of which these things were in darkness - flashing - and NO public safety people spotted a single one: not the Boston Police, nor the Charlestown Police, nor the MBTA Transit Police, nor the State Police...

NONE OF THEM!!

And when one is finally pointed out to them, they shoot it with a water cannon two hours later.

Now, I'm no expert, so maybe I'm missing something, here... But it seems to me that, at some point in those two hours, SOMEONE from the bomb squad HAD to have said, "Yeah, it's got wires and... that's probably a battery... but I don't see any thing that looks like an EXPLOSIVE...?" I mean, except for those lights on it, it'a all of about a sixteenth-of-an-inch thick..."

Now, I had wondered about the actual size and layout - that is: *COULD* it have been reasonably taken for a bomb - until I finally found a picture of one here:
http://www.myfoxboston.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?contentId=2233130&version=17&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=1.1.1

I have to say; it doesn't look it to me, but then - as noted above - I'm no expert. Maybe to someone who KNOWS bomb technology inside and out it fairly screams "I'm a BOMB! I'm a BOMB! I'm a BOMB!" ... but I have to say that, somehow, I doubt it.

So clearly, what this REALLY is, is an embarrasment for the city and the commonwealth and their various public safety agencies... their, apparently, very EXPENSIVE public safety agencies since, according to Boston's Mayor Menino, they ran through $750,000 in the six hours that this whole fiasco took. (I'm going to be charitable here and assume that Hizzoner isn't counting the Police Department's regular daily running expenses, but ONLY the extraordinary expenses... overtime, fuel for driving out the water-cannon truck, etc. He wouldn't try to inflate the figures to make the situation look bigger than it really was, would he...? *NAH!!*)

And worst of all, he didn't even get a personal apology from Ted Turner! Again, according to the Globe article: "Menino was also upset, he said, because top executives at Turner Broadcasting did not contact him directly to discuss what happened. The mayor said he did not receive a call from the company until about 9 p.m., and it was from a low-ranking press official."

...no comment...

Compounding the problem is that Boston's Police Commissioner, Edward Davis, has only been in the position since December, and Governor Deval Patrick and Attorney General Martha Coakley started just a couple weeks ago. None of the three, even if they WANTED to, can afford to say anything that could be POSSIBLY be construed as making them look soft on crime and/or terrorism.

So two men have been arrested and charged with "placing a hoax device in a way that causes panic". Now maybe it's just me - and I'll freely admit that I am as competent a lawyer as I am a bomb-disposal specialist - but doesn't part of "placing a hoax device in a way that causes panic" sort of require INTENT - i.e., to intentionally make something that LOOKS like a bomb and then to INTEND that it cause panic? I mean, if I carry a toy gun in my pocket and rob a bank by showing the bulge to a teller -- that's armed robbery, since I THREATENED the teller and CONVINCED her/him that I was armed. If I made a "gun-shape" in my pocketr with my finger and did the same - same thing. If I stuck a digital clock, some batteries and some wire onto a five-pound block of modelling clay and left it under the seat of a subway train, THAT's "placing a hoax device in a way that causes panic" and is, as I see it, a slam-dunk.

But being hired by a major corporate entity to stick up illuminated signs that, as far as you can tell, do not resemble bombs, is NOT a slam-dunk and, as far as I can see, there was no intent involved; case dismissed. (The lack of apparent intent was a fact which the judge in the case noted to the Assistant AG prosecuting, while leaving it as an item to be taken up at a later hearing.)

And, yes; I actually DO understand that these two prosecutions are just so that the city and commonwealth can get at Turner Broadcasting's far deeper pockets, but it disgusts me that they are potentially ruining two lives by doing so.

One defendent, in particular, is in an extremely tenuous position. Peter Berdovsky, 27, is a freelance video artist who is in the U.S. with a green card and is seeking asylum in the United States. Even if he is not convicted, I could imagine that merely being charged with a felony relating to terrorist activities might not work in his favor in his asylum request and could result in his being deported back to Belarus.

...And they have the nerve to say that a little honest work never hurt anybody...

HAH!

...And SHOULD these two be convicted, it sets what I see as -potentially - an extremely dangerous precedent. From that point on, anyone who accidentally leaves a package on a bus or a train or a bench could conceiveably find him/herself in court, attempting to prove that the package NOT intentionally left so as to "...(cause) panic and disorderly conduct." Federal inspectors open your luggage at the airport and your bottle of baby powder has poofed a little bit out...? It'll be up to you to PROVE that you didn't intend people to think it was anthrax, or botulinum, or ricin...

Am I exaggerating? Am I overreacting? HOW FREAKIN' MANY bottles of her own breast milk did a nursing mother have to drink in order to convince a government-issued moron that she wasn't going to blow up an airplane with it...?!!?

...Yeah... I'M overreacting, and none of THESE nitwits are...
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Closing Thought for Today:

Actually, I'm torn - they both relate - pick one:

"In a mature society, 'civil servant' is semantically equal to master.” -- Robert A. Heinlein

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- attributed to Benjamin Franklin