Aqua Teen Hunger Force unleashes terror on Boston

An advertising campaign for a late-night animated series went seriously wrong today when police in Boston mistook the ads for explosive devices and shut down half the city. The discovery of five suspect devices sent authorities into a tailspin, closing off major roads, suspending rail services and river transport and causing major disruption in the city as police investigated.
After some hours, Turner Broadcasting issued a statement saying that the so-called suspect devices were actually part of a marketing campaign for the series Aqua Teen Hunger Force on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim section.

"The 'packages' in question are magnetic lights that pose no danger,'' said the statement from Turner Broadcasting System, according to ABC television. "They are part of an outdoor marketing campaign in 10 cities in support of Adult Swim's animated television show Aqua Teen Hunger Force. They have been in place for two to three weeks.''

It said the company was in contact with police on how to resolve the issue. "We regret that they were mistakenly thought to pose any danger,'' it said. Police Commissioner Edward Davis earlier in the day said he was unaware who was behind the devices, but a police spokesman later said authorities were digesting the statement from Turner.

"There's nothing that we have found that indicates any danger to the people who are coming into or out of the city,'' Mr Davis said, describing the day's security operation as a major strain on police resources. "I think we are all relieved that the devices found so far have proven to be hoax devices,'' Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick said.

One of the five devices was destroyed in a controlled explosion.

Local reports said that officials had described one device as containing an electronic circuit board with some components that were "consistent with an improvised explosive device" but that it contained no explosives. Other reports said the devices contained circuit boards featuring a cartoon that lit up a figure making an obscene gesture. Security alerts have become a frequent occurrence in the US ever since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the vast majority of which turn out to be false alarms or hoaxes.

Is this normal? Or rather, is this what passes for normal behavior in America today? If so, then I have to concede that I am certifiably insane, because for me, when I see a dolphin at a Sea World-type park playing with a softball-sized black and white glass jar, I generally do not think "Jesus, he's got a bomb!"

Likewise, if I were to hear movie theme music coming from a newspaper box, I doubt I would automatically understand it to mean that an explosion was imminent. As for a circuit board made up of LEDs depicting a cartoon character 'flipping the bird': if 'Improvised explosive device' was the first thing that came to my mind, I would seriously consider therapy.

That American citizens are reacting in such an fearful and irrational way to mundane everyday objects is deeply worrying. Can anyone image this happening 10 or 20 years ago? What has happened during that period of time to create such a degradation of what used to be the American people's ability to think and act in a relatively sane way to their environment? This question is, of course, somewhat rhetorical because the root cause of the current malaise that afflicts the American mind is, or at least it should be, screamingly obvious. It is the last 6 years of the tenure of the Bush government, its relentless beating of the "war on terror" drum, and most importantly, the defining moment in the recent history of the United States - the self-inflicted wound of 9/11.

If dolphins, music and cartoon characters on bridges are now being interpreted by the average American as evidence of "terrorism", then the plans of the Bush government to radically reprogram the American mind with thoughts of an omnipresent yet wholly fictitious threat of "Islamic terrorism" have been much more successful and have progressed much further than even we suspected.
It goes without saying that none of this augurs well for the ability of the American people to protect themselves against further US government-sponsored "terror attacks", the perpetration of which is now even more likely and indeed has been rendered as effortless as taking candy from a baby.