Posted on 02/01/2007 5:02:47 AM PST by Puppage
BOSTON -- Nine blinking electronic devices planted at bridges and other spots in Boston threw a scare into the city Wednesday in what turned out to be a marketing campaign for a late-night cable cartoon. At least one of the devices depicts a character giving the finger.
Highways, bridges and a section of the Charles River were shut down and bomb squads were sent in before authorities declared the devices were harmless.
"It's a hoax -- and it's not funny," said Gov. Deval Patrick.
Turner Broadcasting, parent company of Cartoon Network, said the devices were part of a promotion for the TV show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force."
"The packages in question are magnetic lights that pose no danger," Turner said in a statement. It said the devices have been in place for two to three weeks in 10 cities: Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Ore., Austin, Texas, San Francisco and Philadelphia.
"We regret that they were mistakenly thought to pose any danger," the company said.
Police said only that they were investigating where the device came from. The Department of Homeland Security said there are no credible reports of other devices being found elsewhere in the country.
An angry Mayor Thomas Menino said a stiff penalty will be pursued against whoever was responsible for the devices.
"It's about keeping a city on edge. It's about public safety," he said.
Authorities said some of the objects looked like circuit boards or had wires hanging from them.
The first device was found at a subway and bus station underneath Interstate 93, forcing the shutdown of the station and the highway.
Later, police said four calls, all around 1 p.m., reported devices at the Boston University Bridge and the Longfellow Bridge, both of which span the Charles River, at a Boston street corner and at the Tufts-New England Medical Center.
The package near the Boston University bridge was found attached to a structure beneath the span, authorities said.
Subway service across the Longfellow Bridge between Boston and Cambridge was briefly suspended, and Storrow Drive was closed as well.
Wanda Higgins, a 47-year-old Weymouth resident and a nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, heard about the threat as she watched television news coverage while preparing to leave work at 4 p.m.
"I saw the bomb squad guys carrying a paper bag with their bare hands," Higgins said. "I knew it couldn't be too serious."
Messages seeking additional comment from the Atlanta-based Cartoon Network were left with several publicists.
"Aqua Teen Hunger Force" is a cartoon with a cultish following that airs as part of the Adult Swim late-night block of programs for adults on the Cartoon Network. A feature length film based on the show is slated for release March 23.
The surreal series centers on a talking milkshake (Master Shake), fries (Frylock) and a meatball (Meatwad).
The cartoon also includes two trouble-making, 1980s-graphic-like characters called "mooninites," named Ignignokt and Err -- who were pictured on the suspicious devices. They are known for making the obscene hand gesture depicted on the devices.
Jumping is useless.
So... the next time there are six or so calls from all over reporting suspicious boxes that all sound similar, say in various shopping malls, they should just blow it off? Just tell the caller to kick one of the boxes and see what happens?
Yeah... we'd respect that decision here. I'm sure Freepers would be first in line to say "well, at least they didn't overreact". No... we'd be calling them idiots.
heheh.. What a bunch of morons. What sort of bomb squad to they got there in Boston? The things are a big yawn in the NINE other cities where they are up, but Bostonians have a heart attack. BAHAHAHA!
That..... was the threat????
Let's leave this primitive rock, because there's nothing but cavemen here.
That's not what I said and you know it.
They should absolutely go check it out.
But they shouldn't go shut down the city without making some educated evaluation of the suspicious item(s). Especially ones that were in plain sight including its internals for more than a week.
Yep...
Gee I guess everything is a potential bomb.
I wouldn't be so flippant,its said that the soviets used booby traps designed to look like toys,and a one inch wide sheet of plastic explosive in a claymore like device designed to attract attraction especially kids is a real terrorist possibility
--Most TV is either drivel, propaganda, or a sales pitch. I rarely watch it.--
Try the Animal Channel, History Channel, Discovery Channel. There is another channel that shows a lot of episodes on how things are made.
I don't know, but a lot of times you can find them with muslims attached.
Octoberfest, Munich, 19(80?)...
I and some friends left the festival through a gate, and 15 minutes later, a bomb in a trash container exploded, injuring several people..
If you want to "be safe" then you'll have to clear the streets of everything that could hide something including cars.
Take a look at Iraq / Baghdad.. The biggest bomb threat there is car bombs..
Along with the 2 other terrorist faves, roadside IED's and human bombs, the car bomb is probably one of the hardest to stop / prevent..( Assuming the driver is dedicated..)
In this country, where no one is seriously searching vehicles for bombs, every inch of america is a potentially vulnerable target..
You mean as opposed to filling an everyday object, like a car or truck, with tons of explosives they are going to switch to small conspicuous signs?
They're NOT POORLY DRAWN..
They are representations of early computer game sprites..
They're supposed to look like that.. It's the whole point behind their characters..
I'm with you on this one. I wouldn't have recognized the image as a character from a cartoon show. Whatever happened to dressing people up in character costumes to advertise a cartoon movie? Putting gadgets with wires and batteries, and nothing to otherwise identify them at sites (bridges, subway stations) known to be terrorist targets wasn't the brightest ad campaign decision.
Man, don't you understand we are living in a post 9-11 world?
That means governments gets to freak out over nothing, make themselves look like idiots, then arrest those who did little more than post bills on a light post? This is vengance on the part of the authorities for being shown their own ignorance.
With the full support of a bunch of "limited governemnt" "consertvatives". FR is quickly becoming a joke.
The whole city of Boston was shut down? C'mon... who's overreacting here? Or did they close a bridge because it was where they were sent to look at one of these gizmos?
Look, I wasn't there. I'm gathering you were, or at least some posters were, and got stuck in traffic jams because of this. Unfortunately it doesn't take much to mess up a city, especially trafficwise.
Here in Seattle, I can imagine a similar situation. If somebody called in a report of some kind of bomb threat to one of the floating bridges in the city I have little doubt they'd close the bridge to investigate. Such a closure would take only minutes to start to affect traffic. An hour or more and the effects would ripple to the other bridges and routes, paralyzing the city.
But remember: WE are the ones that have made it that way. WE are the ones that demand that "the authorities" have a zero-mistake quota. They're not allowed to use judgement. Whenever they do, and they're wrong, we make sure they lose their jobs.
All that police chief, or whoever, is thinking about is what happens if a bomb really does go off, and they had warning but didn't close the bridge. He's seeing the headline in the Boston Herald the next day screaming: "THEY HAD WARNING BUT DID NOT ACT".
I don't blame them. We did it to them.
Especially in a city where one has to cross a bridge or go through a tunnel to enter or exit that city.
It's a possibility. But it's not a likelihood.
When it comes to airports, Freepers are up in arms about the inconvenience they undergo at the security screenings. "Profile!" they cry. "Look at past offenders and use that to screen future threats! You have limited resources and they must be applied economically!"
But that lesson doesn't seem to apply here, for some reason I can't figure out. "Don't profile!" they cry. "Anything could be a bomb! Shut down entire cities over anything reported to be suspicious, no matter how un-bomblike it is!"
Claymores are antipersonnel devices, BTW. A smart terrorist wouldn't attach one to a structure many meters above ground level over vehicular traffic; he'd put it close to ground level in an area full of pedestrians. He'd point the "face" towards those pedestrians so the ejecta would hit them, instead of flying over their heads or hitting other concrete structures. He'd also camouflage it, instead of putting glowing Mooninites all over it. And the objects in question weren't big enough to hold a 1" sheet of explosive. Caution was prudent until these facts were ascertained, but after that, someone should've thrown a rock at the thing so everybody could go home.
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