Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Just More Islamophobia, I'm Sure

From May 14, 2013 CBS Boston:
BELCHERTOWN (CBS) – Shortly after midnight Tuesday, seven people were caught trespassing at the Quabbin Reservoir.

State Police say the five men and two women are from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore, and “cited their education and career interests” for being in the area. The men told police they were chemical engineers and recent college graduates.

The Quabbin, in Belchertown, is one of the country’s largest man-made public water supplies. Boston’s drinking water comes from the Quabbin and the Wachusett Reservoirs.
Note the time: "shortly after midnight."  Isn't that when college students usually make unauthorized visits to public water supplies?

4 comments:

  1. "When full, Quabbin holds 412 billion gallons of water."

    Seven people literally couldn't do anything to that that you'd even be able to detect* without pretty specialized hardware, I think, let alone hurt anyone.

    So this makes me think they were probably just being college kids and lying about "education and career interests" to not look like partiers.

    Or, if they're baddies, they're wonderfully incompetent and thus harmless.

    (* Certainly not using chemicals, and I can't think of any biological agent that would do anything and make it through chlorination, either...)

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  2. Two things make this incident something to investigate beyond mere young people out and about.
    1. There are too few women in the group for innocent post-midnight kanoodling.
    2. May is still kind of cool in the Boston area for kanoodling outside of their car.

    This was a reconnoiter.

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  3. I agree with Windy. Perhaps they weren't there to poison the water but to disrupt it's flow. I've heard that terrorists do quite well with explosives.

    More disturbingly, the police just hand them summonses for trespassing. Ladies and gentlemen, please come to court in 3 weeks for a hearing.

    After Boston, they should have been held for questioning by people who know how to read and right not some flunky local cop.

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  4. Sigivald,

    There's other things you can do than poison people. Blowing up the dam/levee would ruin the day of a lot of people, for example.

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