News: April 2004 Archives
Behind the curve as usual, I just read about a somewhat credible terrorist threat against an unspecified West Los Angeles mall -- supposedly near the Federal Building. The Federal Building is very close to UCLA, but there aren't any malls in the immediate vicinity.
As the article notes, the Westside Pavilion is probably the closest, and Santa Monica Place isn't too far away either. Also nearby are the open-air Century City Mall and the Third Street Promenade (which is near Santa Monica Place).
It's strange that terrorists would pick Thursday for an attack, since that's one of the slowest retail days in the week. Nevertheless, I'm going to continue my policy of visiting malls as infrequently as possible.
What's most interesting is that malls apparently get bomb threats "all the time".
Gene Thompson, vice president of corporate security for Macerich Co., which owns Westside Pavilion and Santa Monica Place, said the malls will stay open Thursday with existing security plans in place.I guess most of them are bluffs!"This just happens all the time. We take these things very seriously. This is no different than any anonymous bomb threat that gets called in all the time," Thompson told the Los Angeles Times.
Maybe the media ignored some details, or maybe I wasn't paying attention, but there's apparently a lot I didn't know about Columbine.
The killers, in fact, laughed at petty school shooters. They bragged about dwarfing the carnage of the Oklahoma City bombing and originally scheduled their bloody performance for its anniversary. Klebold boasted on video about inflicting "the most deaths in U.S. history." Columbine was intended not primarily as a shooting at all, but as a bombing on a massive scale. If they hadn't been so bad at wiring the timers, the propane bombs they set in the cafeteria would have wiped out 600 people. After those bombs went off, they planned to gun down fleeing survivors. An explosive third act would follow, when their cars, packed with still more bombs, would rip through still more crowds, presumably of survivors, rescue workers, and reporters. The climax would be captured on live television. It wasn't just "fame" they were after—Agent Fuselier bristles at that trivializing term—they were gunning for devastating infamy on the historical scale of an Attila the Hun. Their vision was to create a nightmare so devastating and apocalyptic that the entire world would shudder at their power.I forget which blog pointed me to this piece... sorry.
Although I'm sure I'm late to the party, I'd like to point out that the language used by Florida Democrats in their recent ad explicitly calls for Donald Rumsfeld to be killed
Campaign 2004 turns extreme in Florida with the placement of a newspaper ad calling for physical retribution against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld!The club that placed the ad is apparently backtracking, or something."We should put this S.O.B. up against a wall and say 'This is one of our bad days,' and pull the trigger," the ad reads.
Club Vice President Edna McCall told the DRUDGE REPORT Tuesday morning: "We want to get our country back. In Iraq, we're in deep trouble. If we don't try to get this situation cleared up, we are finished."But, of course, when you call for someone to be put "up against a wall" you're invoking firing-squad imagery, and in that context it's not clear how "pull[ing] the trigger" could be taken any other way.When asked if the ad was a challenge to inflict violence on Rumsfeld, McCall explained: "'Pull the trigger' means let Rumsfeld know where we stand, not to shoot him!"
The ad even offers an excuse for the violence, should it happen to shock anyone's conscience: "This is one of our bad days." You don't need to make excuses for telling Donald Rumsfeld where you stand, but you do need a good reason to actually kill him.
Jesus is alive.
