Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

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Re: Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

Postby FourthBase » Fri Dec 06, 2019 3:58 pm

After reading all I could from McGowan on Laurel Canyon this weekend, I decided to read his Marathon stuff out of a sense of intellectual duty to revisit my convictions and reevaluate seemingly improbable or impossible scenarios. I figured that if McGowan was disturbingly 70% right on the money about Laurel Canyon, then I should see how much he might be right about my dear Boston, because him even being 10% right in that case would be paradigm-shifting. Him not completely wrong about his theory on the Marathon would be a complete mindfuck. So I read it all, and conjured common sense explanations to counter most of his hypotheses and assumptions, but, oops, there are a few things he doesn't seem to be wrong about. If he's right about even one thing, then that means, horrifically, that he is mostly right. So let's revisit, for the sake of intellectual integrity, McGowan's crisis actor theory.

For starters, there's Mery Daniel.

Image

She seems shaken, but okay. Right?
Anyone see any grievous injuries? I don't.

Here's Mery in the press afterward.

https://www.oregonlive.com/multimedia/2 ... ery_d.html

Boston Marathon amputee Mery Daniel reinvents her life after bombings
Updated Jan 10, 2019;
Posted Oct 15, 2013
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Gallery: Boston Marathon amputee Mery Daniel reinvents her life after bombings
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By The Associated Press
BOSTON – In late May, Mery Daniel went back to Boylston Street.

Six weeks before, on April 15, she had joined the throng of spectators at

the Boston Marathon
. She’d treated herself to hot chocolate and a pancake at a cafe before heading alone to the finish line to cheer runners at the end of America’s most famous race.

“This is where I was,” she said, her wheelchair gliding to a stop outside the Marathon Sports store.

It was on this spot that everything changed – where twin pressure cooker bombs exploded, killing three people and injuring more than 260 others, including at least 16 people who lost a limb or limbs. It was on this spot where the world came to regard Daniel, a 31-year-old medical school graduate and Haitian immigrant, as a victim.


“God bless you,” a young guitarist told Daniel outside Marathon Sports, before quickly taking his song somewhere else on the street.

Before the bombing, she had loved to roam and explore Boston, the city where she had become an American citizen five years earlier.

“Please save my legs,” she had begged the doctors before blacking out in the operating room.

But they amputated her left leg above her knee before she woke up. It was the price she paid for her life. Her heart had stopped twice after she lost consciousness.

Daniel’s wheelchair stood out when she returned to Boylston Street. Strangers saw her on the street, and a question flickered in some of their eyes: Was she one of the marathon bombing amputees?

She no longer could blend easily into a crowd, or go where she wanted when she wanted. But Daniel was determined to go forward without fear, and to see herself as a survivor, not a victim. To do that, she knew she would have to walk again.

Daniel heard the boom seconds after staking out a spot across from Boston Public Library's central branch.

Suddenly, she was on the ground, her lower left leg dangling by skin, its bone split open and arteries and nerves blown to bits. A pancreatic laceration left Daniel bleeding on the inside. Projectiles ravaged the rear of her right calf, and doctors had to cut away ruined muscles and tendons and graft skin from elsewhere on her body to repair what they could.

Daniel did not cry when she awoke from surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. And she did not cry on all the days after, even when she went back to Boylston Street.

The kind of determination she would show in the aftermath of the bombing was not new. She had emigrated from Haiti just before turning 17, graduating from Brockton High School before attending University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She headed to Europe for medical school after college, doing some traveling when she wasn't studying.

Before the marathon, the international medical graduate had been studying for the last part of her medical boards so she could qualify to work as a doctor in the United States. She'd been thinking about pursuing psychiatry as her specialty.

But now, she turned all that energy to her recovery.

After leaving Massachusetts General, Daniel spent about three weeks at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, where she exercised for three hours a day.

But when the time came to leave, she couldn't go home. Before the marathon, Daniel had lived in a second-story apartment with her husband, Richardson, their 5-year-old daughter, and her husband's parents in Boston's Mattapan section. But the location wouldn't work with a wheelchair, forcing Daniel and her husband to move to a hotel near Spaulding for a while.

Without a permanent home, Daniel worked to transition from using a wheelchair to crutches, refusing to use a walker to smooth the way from one to the other. Going down stairs was especially tricky.

Sometimes she forgot her leg was gone and tried to get up. She also suffered constant phantom pains, sensations experts say start in the nervous system and cause discomfort that feels like it's coming from a missing limb. Sometimes she felt itchy on toes she didn't have anymore.

Daniel craved mobility and she wanted her family back together, and neither could come soon enough.

In late May, prosthetists made a plaster mold of her left leg above where her knee had been to help fashion her first artificial limb. A team from United Prosthetics worked on the casting at Spaulding on a day when some other marathon bombing amputees had the same procedure.

"I'm hoping you'll be back for prosthetic training in three to four weeks," said Spaulding physiatrist David Crandell, who'd treated 15 marathon amputees.

"Two to three weeks," Daniel told the doctor.

She was in a hurry, but the changes she wanted would not come fast or easily.

"Talk to me and breathe. I need you to breathe, OK?"

"I'm breathing."

"OK, good."

Prosthetist Paul Martino was trying to keep Daniel comfortable. It was early June and the time had come for her to stand on her own again.

Inside United Prosthetics in the city's Dorchester section, Martino helped her slide into the kind of socket that would encase the top of her left leg and connect to a replacement knee and foot to form her first artificial limb.

The fit was awkward at first and Daniel cringed with pain. She hadn't put any weight on her injured limb until then.

"Could I walk funny? I feel funny," she said.

Prosthetist Julianne Mason helped tweak the fit so Daniel could try some practice steps in a narrow hallway with support bars on both walls. When Martino closed a door, Daniel saw her new reflection in a mirror.

"That's you, standing up," he said.

"Hmmm," she said softly. "The bionic woman."

The prosthetists had her try two different knees, and Martino guided Daniel as she learned to shift her weight back and forth and begin to walk.

"Oh, I took a tiny step," Daniel said as she started down the hallway.

Still, even the most advanced technology was clumsy compared with the leg Daniel lost.

"I had one that worked perfectly," she'd told Martino.

"Yeah," he said. "You did."

But Daniel was getting messages of support from near and far. She'd met war veterans who'd had amputations and pro athletes who honored her before their games. President Barack Obama had come to her bedside at Massachusetts General, telling her not to lose hope.

The day after Daniel's first steps, children who rode the Weymouth school bus her father drove took part in a walkathon on her behalf that raised $8,275.

Daniel's custom-made prosthetic leg wasn't ready yet and she hadn't brought her crutches to the event. But she borrowed a pair and rose from her wheelchair that morning to lead hundreds of students for the first quarter-mile of their walk.

"Mery strong!" they shouted, pumping their small fists in the air.

As summer started, Daniel moved into an apartment in the city's South End. The first-floor unit was just steps from Cathedral of the Holy Cross, where the president rallied Bostonians three days after the marathon bombings and spoke about the recovery that survivors like Daniel would face.

"We will all be with you as you learn to stand, and walk, and yes, run again ...," Obama had said. "Your resolve is the greatest rebuke to whoever committed this heinous act."

As she exercised to build strength, Daniel tried to put distance between her journey and any thoughts about the bombing suspects, immigrants like herself. For her, the American way of life was about freedom. The evil she'd seen on Boylston Street was nothing she could understand. She'd leave it to the justice system to deal with innocence or guilt and to mete out punishment.

Sometimes, when Daniel and her husband went out, strangers recognized her from news reports and thanked her for serving as an inspiration. As she grew used to the new shape of her body, Richardson saw another change, too.

"She's more humble and accepts life the way it is and tries to move on," he said. "I like that."

Richardson had worked as a dermatologist in Haiti, and had a job helping autistic children in the Boston area. With his wife coping with physical challenges, more household and parenting duties fell to him. She still couldn't maneuver well enough to give their 5-year-old a bath, and Richardson's parents pitched in to help raise their grandchild.

Daniel's focus was two-fold: growing comfortable with her new, custom-made prosthetic and finding a job in the medical field that could help her land a residency after she passed her medical boards.

She went to Spaulding for two weeks of inpatient training on the man-made limb. It had a computerized knee, and Daniel's stride was robotic as she learned how to rebalance her body. The bulk also added 10 pounds to her frame.

But the device was what prosthetist Paul Martino had called a starter model, and Daniel tried to keep her expectations low. What mattered was she was walking again.

By the time autumn arrived, Daniel was leaving her crutches behind when she left her apartment.

She was venturing into Boston by herself in taxis and even considering riding mass transit again as the six-month anniversary of the bombings grew near. She also had participated in road races, riding a handcycle powered with her arms.

"A lot of the things that I used to do, I can no longer do them," Daniel said. "I don't say permanently, but for now. I'm still learning how to do little things, step by step."

Once in a while, she cracked open her books and did some studying for her medical boards. She'd had a job interview at a city hospital, and was hunting for a house for her family. Three siblings who also had lived in Haiti had come to live with Daniel and her husband, including a 14-year-old sister she'd enrolled in a Boston public high school.

The timing wasn't perfect, but Daniel took on the responsibility. They needed her, she said.

Others had been there for Daniel. Some of that support came by way of donations – including more than $1 million from The One Fund – to help her cope her injuries.

Daniel still went to physical therapy at Spaulding, working out both alone and with other marathon bombing amputees with whom she'd found fellowship and friendship.

And she returned to United Prosthetics, determined to swap the bulky socket of her prosthetic for a sleeker model that might let her wear skinny jeans again.

The prosthetists made another plaster cast of what remained of her left leg to make a second custom socket. Then they adjusted the microprocessor in her artificial knee to loosen her stride. Daniel even picked out a cosmetic cover for the metallic parts of her prosthetic that was designed to match her complexion.

"That's very important to me," she said.

Later, Daniel decided to stop for something to eat before she headed home. Her ride dropped her off near her apartment, and she walked a block to a South End cafe she'd come to like.

Then Daniel snagged a table out on the sidewalk, where she dined by herself as she took in the view, just another Bostonian enjoying a fine September afternoon.


So, a few possibilities.

Maybe that's not Mery Daniel in the picture on that stretcher, but another black woman innocently misidentified as Mery Daniel. That happens.

Maybe it's another woman fraudently claiming to be Mery Daniel, while the real Mery Daniel is somewhere else with her leg destroyed.

Maybe it's Mery Daniel, and she is some sick fuck who's agreed to let a sinister cult of medical professionals who are part of a conspiracy amputate her leg for a million dollars. Perhaps that cult then eats the leg in a secret ritual.

Who knows, but if that's her on the stretcher, then it's all one big lie that implicates dozens if not hundreds of very, very evil people. So, is it her?
“Joy is a current of energy in your body, like chlorophyll or sunlight,
that fills you up and makes you naturally want to do your best.” - Bill Russell
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Re: Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

Postby FourthBase » Sat Dec 07, 2019 1:35 am

Is no one shocked by me posting that? Does anyone remember how much I hated hoaxers? Can anyone please point out some way that the picture of her with an undamaged left pant leg can reconcile with her losing her leg below the knee because it was nearly severed? Was it damaged in such a precise, focused way that the wound and the extensive damage to the fabric is hidden from the viewer at that angle?
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Re: Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

Postby Elvis » Sat Dec 07, 2019 6:22 am

FourthBase wrote:Maybe it's Mery Daniel, and she is some sick fuck who's agreed to let a sinister cult of medical professionals who are part of a conspiracy amputate her leg for a million dollars. Perhaps that cult then eats the leg in a secret ritual.


There are people with apotemnophilia, "a rare condition in which individuals seek the amputation of a healthy limb or desire to be paraplegic." Take it from there.

I read the whole McGowan Boston series, and all I can really say about it is, who the fuck knows. Everything about it seems fishy, but everything can be explained, right? \<]


Do keep going—are you really having second thoughts? I remember you were very skeptical about a false flag or hoax; if a second look brings fresh insight, I'm into it.

(One day I want to return to the San Bernardino shootings, once I collate some info.)
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Re: Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

Postby FourthBase » Sat Dec 07, 2019 10:31 am

Elvis » 07 Dec 2019 05:22 wrote:
FourthBase wrote:Maybe it's Mery Daniel, and she is some sick fuck who's agreed to let a sinister cult of medical professionals who are part of a conspiracy amputate her leg for a million dollars. Perhaps that cult then eats the leg in a secret ritual.


There are people with apotemnophilia, "a rare condition in which individuals seek the amputation of a healthy limb or desire to be paraplegic." Take it from there.

I read the whole McGowan Boston series, and all I can really say about it is, who the fuck knows. Everything about it seems fishy, but everything can be explained, right? \<]


Do keep going—are you really having second thoughts? I remember you were very skeptical about a false flag or hoax; if a second look brings fresh insight, I'm into it.

(One day I want to return to the San Bernardino shootings, once I collate some info.)


Mery Daniel is giving me second thoughts, yes. More like 1002nd thoughts in a flood of paranoia. My first thought is still that the bombings were 1000% real. But then I look at her legs and her pants and I think, if that's not real, if a single victim is faking, then it could all be fake. Which would necessitate a relatively vast conspiracy of extremely evil people who work as first responders and doctors. Much vaster than whatever I imagined when I had doubted the official narrative before. More along the lines of a little city-within-a-city comprised of sinister ghouls posing as decent people, a vast network of Rosemary's Baby style villains. Which is possible, perhaps. Pizzagate opened me up a little bit to previously unthinkable scenarios.

So she could definitely be some psycho who had always dreamt of fulfilling an amputation fetish. Maybe that's what secretly fueled her ambition to be a doctor. An ambition seemingly thwarted by the bomb, but in actuality this was a Haitian chick who'd gone to public high school in Brockton and had only learned English as a teenager, so I doubt she was even remotely properly prepared to become a doctor, and maybe she didn't do so well in her pre-med biology program at UMass or on her MCAT hence the need to study medicine in fucking Poland of all places. (Unless she feels a unique love for Polish people, as a descendant of the Haitian Revolution?) Maybe this was also her chance to have a wonderful public excuse for dropping her doctor dreams, a perfect fundraising opportunity to make up for the shitload of cash she would never earn as a non-doctor and to pay back whatever money she borrowed. And maybe she also worships an evil deity, or plural since she almost certainly grew up practicing Vodou. I don't know. It's possible.

But all those paramedics and nurses and doctors and technicians would have to be lying and part of the plot, too. That's what gradually dissipates the paranoia, because while I can certainly imagine there being some evil motherfuckers working in those professions, many even, the task of directing fake victims to only those evil motherfuckers and not some random non-evil medical pros would be impossible. Right?

So I look at her left leg again, and I can see that maybe the shadow is tricking my eye into thinking the leg under her knee is whole and undamaged. Maybe the back of her leg really is missing a deep, focused chunk of flesh and bone, just like the back of her right calf, and it only appears like the left leg is intact, all normal. Maybe. I'm hoping. Gonna ask medical pro friends and family for their opinions. Also gonna ask my military friends and family if they've ever seen an IED explode in such a way that one person can have their legs completely blown off, another person a foot away can have only a few deep laser-focused wounds and minimal pant damage, and another person a foot away can come away completely unscathed except for dramatically torn away pant fabric.
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Re: Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

Postby Belligerent Savant » Sat Dec 07, 2019 12:09 pm

.

4thBase:
But all those paramedics and nurses and doctors and technicians would have to be lying and part of the plot, too.



Is that necessarily the case? Can it be that an explosion did occur, but perhaps not as damaging as portrayed, so there'd be both genuine victims/paramedics and also staged scenarios and 'actors' in tandem?

I haven't yet looked at McGowan's work on this event, though I've followed his work since the days after 911 (his commentary on 911, laurel canyon, and even the alleged 'moon hoax' are largely spot-on, in my view), and will need to revisit his Boston bombing content in earnest given your follow-up/reconsiderations.


We've been living in an era, especially during and since September 2001, of perpetual 'narrative misdirection' and 'optics/perception management'. Very little of what we see on the screens can be trusted at face value.

Then again, neither can 'reality', per theoretical physics.
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Re: Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

Postby FourthBase » Sat Dec 07, 2019 1:05 pm

Belligerent Savant » 07 Dec 2019 11:09 wrote:.

4thBase:
But all those paramedics and nurses and doctors and technicians would have to be lying and part of the plot, too.



Is that necessarily the case? Can it be that an explosion did occur, but perhaps not as damaging as portrayed, so there'd be both genuine victims/paramedics and also staged scenarios and 'actors' in tandem?


I meant all the ones who treated Mery, if she's a phony. If her legs were really fine, then every single pro who examined her is an evil liar. Every single one. That is a very stark either/or. Sure, there could have been a mix of real bombing carnage and staged performance. But, again, how could you possibly control whether the phony victims are sent to the right medical teams who are part of the evil plot? Impossible, unless the entire medical world in this city is so full of evil monsters that no matter where the phonies got sent it'd be safely covered up.
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Re: Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

Postby Elvis » Sat Dec 07, 2019 6:19 pm

Refresh my memory: wasn't there a first-responder training exercise going on that day? Seems like that was a source of some confusion.
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Re: Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

Postby FourthBase » Sat Dec 07, 2019 6:23 pm

Trigger warning.

Image

So that's the extent of the right leg's damage. Obviously the initial wound would have been a little smaller and then enlargened by removing dead tissue, etc. If that wound is real, as in, really caused by the explosion, then it's also invisible in the stretcher pic, and the pantleg damage is comparatively minor. It is, as the left wound would have to be to be invisible, rather focused. But the left leg, then, is worse? And there seems to be no damage to the fabric, at all? Perhaps the damage was even more focused, as it would have to be, but deeper. Perhaps there's just enough tissue left to keep the bottom and top looking aligned normally but if we could lift the leg we'd discover a gruesome absence of flesh and the sickening looseness of the connection. Perhaps there's more blood pooling under the legs than it appears. Perhaps. But I'm still shook, because the other unthinkable scenario seems at least as plausible as all that, still. I wish once of us were a trauma nurse or a war veteran.
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Re: Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

Postby FourthBase » Sat Dec 07, 2019 6:28 pm

Elvis » 07 Dec 2019 17:19 wrote:Refresh my memory: wasn't there a first-responder training exercise going on that day? Seems like that was a source of some confusion.


There was some kind of drill, yeah. Honestly, if they weren't constantly doing drills like that for target-rich events like that, they'd be failing in their duty. But there was not any confusion a la 9/11 that I know of. No one who responded is supposed to have been under the impression the bombs were a drill. The professionals are supposed to have immediately recognized it was a real attack with real casualties.
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Re: Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

Postby Elvis » Sat Dec 07, 2019 6:54 pm

But the left leg, then, is worse? And there seems to be no damage to the fabric, at all?


My impression is, that the left leg in the photo is an artificial leg, from the knee down. But need more context: when & where was the photo taken? Are there more like it?
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Re: Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

Postby FourthBase » Sat Dec 07, 2019 7:40 pm

Elvis » 07 Dec 2019 17:54 wrote:
But the left leg, then, is worse? And there seems to be no damage to the fabric, at all?


My impression is, that the left leg in the photo is an artificial leg, from the knee down. But need more context: when & where was the photo taken? Are there more like it?


Right, good call, that would be another possibility. She had already lost it, maybe. But then that'd still mean that she and every medical professional who examined her are unthinkably evil.

As far as I can tell, that's the only photo of her from that day besides the grainy Thorndike series. Would very much like to see more.
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Re: Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

Postby Elvis » Sat Dec 07, 2019 9:52 pm

FourthBase wrote:Right, good call, that would be another possibility. She had already lost it, maybe.


What I meant was, I had the impression that it was a post-recovery (post-amputation) photo taken much later, after an artificial leg was fitted.

It's difficult to determine much without knowing for sure when & where the photo was taken. Is it even the same person's legs?—presumably it is, but a more context is needed.
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Re: Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

Postby FourthBase » Sun Dec 08, 2019 2:25 pm

Elvis » 07 Dec 2019 20:52 wrote:
FourthBase wrote:Right, good call, that would be another possibility. She had already lost it, maybe.


What I meant was, I had the impression that it was a post-recovery (post-amputation) photo taken much later, after an artificial leg was fitted.

It's difficult to determine much without knowing for sure when & where the photo was taken. Is it even the same person's legs?—presumably it is, but a more context is needed.


Ohhhh, I thought you meant the stretcher photo.

Nah, the photo of the ghastly right calf wound is real and is really Mery Daniel's. What I don't get is, if she was standing next to Bauman, how were Bauman's legs both pretty much completely blasted off, but her legs were damaged in a very focused way that barely damaged her pants...and but then there were other people right there next to them whose legs were unharmed except for massive superficial fabric damage. It baffles me. An expert on IED injuries may know why. Or, maybe it's all a fucking lie. Still undecided and still spooked.
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