What’s up with that San Diego Courthouse bombing?
I saw this earlier today and thought it was a low-level intimidation attack. But it looks like this pipe bomb packed a bit of a wallop:
“The damage from the shrapnel didn’t stay concentrated just in front of the door,” Slotter said.
One piece of shrapnel lodged in a window about eight stories up the AT&T building that faces the courthouse. A damage estimate was not immediately available.
They set it off at 1:40 AM, so thankfully no one was hurt. There were security guards in the building, though, who might have been.
And if I understand Bill Ayers’ parsing of what’s terrorism and what isn’t, then that makes it just a bit of high-spirited juvenile activist prankery as far as he’s concerned. I wonder if any intrepid reporter will try to get Ayers’ reaction to this event? It could be informative.
Nobody’s claimed guilt yet, but maybe the Weathermen are active again. They used to do courthouse bombings.
Inaccuracy in that article, by the way:
It was the first and - until the World Trade Centre attack in 1993 which killed six people - only time anyone had died in the terrorist-related bombing of a building in New York.
Actually, the Fraunces Tavern bombing by the FALN in 1975 killed four people and injured sixty. Of course, there’s a 2008 electoral angle on that, too.
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More: Jammie Wearing Fool points out another San Diego pipe bombing, similar time, at a Fed Ex building on April 25th.
Fed Ex?
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{Post by See-Dubya. I’ll update if there’s anything new on this tonight.}
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Are there any high (or low) profile trials scheduled for tomorrow at that courthouse?
By the way, Fraunces Tavern is my favorite restaurant/museum in NYC. Love that place.
Amazing, isn’t it?
zorro–the article mentions one about a church suing the city of San Diego. Not the sort of thing that usually leads to this.
I don’t think it was an Al-Qaeda wannabe because he took pains to do it at night and minimize the casualty count. Just speculating here: probably a domestic p***ant, maybe right-wing, probably not.
this is serious business. Using a bomb to send a message is terrorism, pure and simple. As anyone that has deployed would tell you, it can take mere seconds to emplace an IED, the results of which can be catastrophic. The builder or emplacer of any type of bomb should be hammered by law, regardless of their intent, in order to shut this down.
Thanks for remembering the the 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing in Lower Manhattan, dub.
In addition to the four people killed and 60 “reactionary corporate executives” who were injured during their lunch break, the damage to this downtown building, where General George Washington prayed, cried and bid farewell to his victorious Colonial Army, was sacreligious.
Yep, I read the church reference and discounted it as well.
And a crazy one at that.
What about the Sept, 16, 1920 bombing of J.P Morgan
As someone who is about to serve jury duty there, I’m thrilled. /sarc
The first thing that comes to mind: local meth heads love them some pipe bombs. Other than that, I’ve got nothing.
We don’t know what happened, so lets replace ignorance with fiction. Let’s get mad just in case someone we don’t like was behind it.
I don’t know much about Bill Ayers, but none of the links in the post say he committed terrorist acts or even advocated them. Some of the people he had known earlier became more radical than he and did commit terrorism. It’s as though we call everyone against abortion a terrorist because acts of terror have been committed against abortion clinics.
lgm
try looking for information before you crap all over the place:
A substantial portion of Ayers’ book Fugitive Days discusses the author’s penchant for building and deploying explosives. Ayers boasts that he “participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972.” Of the day he bombed the Pentagon, Ayers says, “Everything was absolutely ideal. … The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them.”
lgm, leave me out of your “we” i’m not a nut case like you…back under your bridge.
A weak link, see-dubya, but the courthouse and Fedex share “Federal” in common. In any event, I hope the local FBI office is on alert.
Yet another indication of your lack of intelligence.
Where have you been the past few months or for that matter the past few decades??? He and his wife are some of the most violent domestic terrorists of the last half of the 20 th century. You are either a liar or a buffoon and I have no use for both.
BTW is your first name Jonathan Livingston?
Well, now that you have peaked my interest, lgm, where were you before 1:40am on the morning of this incident? Do you have any witnesses? Mind providing a voluntary DNA sample? Have you been in the presence of William Ayers at any point in your life?
Inquiring minds and all that jazz.
Ooops. Peaked should be piqued in #14.
#7 tmitsss said:
Great linked article, #7. As a trader on the NYSE for 12 years, I was unaware that Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted on September 11, 1920, and that Wall Street returned to work and defy the anarchist bombers on September 17th, the exact same date that Wall Street returned to work after 9/11/01.
If I may digress a little, the blogging on NYC history (The Turtle, Fraunces Tavern and the 9/16/20 Wall Street Bombing) at this site has been excellent.
There is a little park in downtown Manhattan, called Bowling Green, that is encircled by an impressive, black wrought iron fence. If you look closely and feel the jagged tip of every fifth column, you will see evidence of where NYC Patriots sawed off iron symbols of the English Crown. These Patriots melted down the vandalized iron into bullets and cannon balls for General George Washington’s forces.
NYC is brimming with rich history like this. Sorry for this thread digression!
LGM, how about we get mad at the use of explosives by anybody against a building that represents the government? You think you could muster up any irritation? Just the tiniest bit of anger at this attack? Oh, wait, there were no casualties, so they must have been speaking truth to power, and it was okay? Or maybe you actually condon it?
The SDS and their ilk and cohorts agenda live on in the hearts and minds of gullible people who think blowing things up is the best way to tear things down. That Ayers name comes up is not by coincidence. Looks like lgm could use a little more time researching before posting naive remarks.
No one has claimed responsibility so this little boom should not be discounted as a random act of a young foolish person or persons, nor can it be ruled out it was a test run to guage the response and behaviour of the device or devices used
On May 4th, 2008 at 9:11 pm, lgm said:
Soooo…one of your usual posts then.
Unfortunately, you have never let your ignorance get in the way of posting more drivel.
The FBI thought he was a terrorist, and he claims he was one and advocated terrorism, so what is the mystery?
Given that, are your comments ignorance or fiction?
Actually, I think abortion enthusiasts such as yourself are terrorists of a sort, if the definition includes killing (or being an accomplice by providing tacit support of the killing) innocent babies in the fashion of “the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature.”
The definition fits, particularly when innocents are being exterminated for a political purpose (or worse, convenience).
Now I have to scrape the rest of your ignorant (”I don’t know much about Bill Ayers,…etc.”) comments off the sole of my figurative shoe.
3 days after mayday, San Diego:
My guesses, in descending order of who-cares-what-you-think probability:
* Militant Immigration/Reconquistadors, sympathizers
* Local anti-US/”corporate globalization”/ BusHitler cuckoos
* Local wingnuts/previously napping Al-Qaeda after having been woken up by the appearance of Rev Wright’s NOI Bodyguards (ok, that last bit is just silly)
You ever notice, no matter the topic, lgm posts his usual lame moral equivalence, and then the whole thread becomes about him(or her)? Some lonesome loser looking for attention. How sad.
LGM LGM LGM
I’d say liking them or not has nothing to do with it, LGM. Again you say that we should wait. For what? The MSM to figure out a way to spin this to help out Obama?
TU Owls said:
Bill Ayers is not running for anything and should not be an issue in this campaign. The fact that Obama may have known him when he was a community organizer doesn’t tell us much. Is Obama supposed to do due diligence on everyone he meets as a kid fresh out of college?
You should make the campaign about the things Obama has done and said, not about what people he barely knows did in years past. That’s misdirection.
The only way McCain is going to win is by misdirection. On the issues — Iraq, health care, education, immigration, global warming — the people are (in large majority) with Democrats this year.
Barack is a Bolshevik. Having a few bomb-throwers for friends is a plus in radical Marxist circles. Its ‘lefty chic’ and Barack has plenty of it. LGM probably has a Che t-shirt, or perhaps one featuring Timmy McVeigh.
LGM is correct that McCain will win because of “misdirection”. The electorate is getting wise to Hill and Barry’s efforts to misdirect (lie to) the nation.
ptg said:
The Bolshevik’s were a murderous band of thugs who rivaled the Nazis in badness. If conservatives call Obama Bolshevik, can liberals call McCain Nazi?
Get real. Advocating government assisted health care insurance (to be purchased from private companies) is not the same as single payer health care like they have in the rest of the developed world.
Advocating single payer health care does not make you a socialist. German Prime Minister Merkel is not a socialist — she’s the conservative who defeated the Social Democrats (still not socialist).
Advocating socialism does not make you a communist, let alone a Communist, let alone a Bolshevik.
Calling everyone you disagree with a Bolshevik or Nazi or whatever makes you a wingnut.
lgm: One of these days perhaps you will learn to discriminate between a metaphor and ‘calling someone something’. Taking private property to satisfy a non-compelling public want is wrong. No matter what you call it.
Marxist thought by any other name would stink as bad.
And is it a harmless metaphor if a liberal says Bush is a Nazi?
Evidently. If not, then what you said applies.
When you absolutely, positively have to set off a bomb overnight…
Like the fund-raising at the Ayers?
at the Ayers home (sigh, not enough coffee)
Are there any high (or low) profile trials scheduled for tomorrow at that courthouse?
No, but one of the guys I work with has a court date tomorrow.