Hacker News Reader

Comment by herendin2 | Hacker News Reader

But the (video documented by multiple sources) sequence of events on the day fits the scenario of an accidental detonation very well: repair work involving hot welding the door, a slowly growing fire, then successively larger explosions capped by an enormous blast after an hour. It all took so long that the fire department had arrived

If one has access and just wants to destroy the evidence in a big boom, there's no need for so much complication and the uncertain results of it. Just pour gas on the pile, light a long fuse and run, fast.

View on HN

Also, blowing up the fertilizer (and the port) to hide the fact that you were stealing fertilizer isn’t exactly a plausible story.

People can be dumb, but come on.

Are you suggesting it's unthinkable that someone would burn down a crime scene?

It happens a lot. Crime concealment consistently places among the top 6 motives in studies of arson.

I'm not saying it's a very likely cause, but it would be hasty to rule it out

Are you suggesting that someone trucked away two thousand tons of ammonium nitrate without anyone noticing, presumably for the purpose of recycling it into explosives and thus in full knowledge of its explosive properties, and then capped this incredible achievement in stealthy theft by setting off the rest of it as an improvised bomb that drew every eye in the world?

Because I'm not sure how that isn't what this claim of yours really adds up to, and I'm not going to call it impossible, but I am going to say it needs more substantiation than you have as yet seen fit to give it.

I'm saying it would be premature to discount the possibility.

A low-level dock supervisor could have been peddling this stuff for years, got spooked, and decided to cover his tracks, perhaps underestimating the size of the explosion, and assuming that the blame for an explosion would be spread too thin for his own liability to outweigh his personal, severe liability for his previous crimes.

The comment I was replying to seems to assume this scenario is ridiculous without giving it due consideration.

Again, I'm not saying this is a likely hypothesis, just that it's a credible possibility and didn't deserve the knee-jerk ridicule it was given.

The nitrate being stored in the port was a public secret, there is no way Israel and quite likely the US didn’t had surveillance covering it. If there was a shred of evidence suggesting that a regional actor siphoned any substantial amount of it it would’ve been released by now.

Israel would’ve jumped on the opportunity to lay the blame on Hezbollah, Syria or Iran.

Why? Israel gains nothing by disclosing the information if they have it. Telling the world about it won't stop it, staying silent and watching the situation will help identify Hezbollah agents and facilities. It's the same as Hezbollah's vast arsenal of rockets in southern Lebanon. Right under the noses of the "peacekeepers" they bring in tens of thousands of artillery rockets and the world doesn't care.

> I'm saying it would be premature to discount the possibility

So you have no evidence, but demand that your theory be put on equal footing, just because.

If you have evidence for a purposeful detonation, provide it. Otherwise you’re just selling conspiracy theories, something this forum has little patience for.

Not my theory. I didn't initially suggest it, I don't believe it, I don't even like it. I certainly made no demands. A hypothesis doesn't require evidence. Others have made some strong points toward falsifying the hypothesis elsewhere in the thread.

It really seems to me that you're eager to bicker with someone who is actually credulous of this theory and didn't find any, so you decided to lash out and distort statements from a person who suggests we refine our falsification of the hypothesis a little further than just saying "I mean, come on"

> A hypothesis doesn't require evidence.

It does if you want it to be taken seriously. Especially when there are other hypothesis available with evidence.

> It really seems to me that you're eager to bicker with someone who is actually credulous of this theory and didn't find any, so you decided to lash out and distort statements

Follow the rules, please. This is pretty deep into uncivil territory.

> refine our falsification of the hypothesis a little further than just saying "I mean, come on"

This seems like a demand that I prove a negative. The purposeful detonation theory has currently no evidence put forth, while we do have evidence for the accidental detonation theory. Demanding that I refine the hypothesis further for something that is currently evidence free is to put the whole thing backwards.

If you believe that the purposeful detonation theory deserves serious consideration, provide evidence. Otherwise don’t get angry at people who are credulous about a theory that’s just been thrown out there.

You mean "incredulous", and the responses 'addingnumbers gave to the question I raised are in every respect what I was hoping someone's would be - measured, thoughtful, thought-provoking, and elucidatory of a possible chain of events which I had theretofore not considered.

Their behavior here has in every respect exemplified the highest among the reasons why I continue to value participation in HN discussions - sure, I've passed the occasional glib comment about the place betimes, but I know no other place on the public Internet where such worthwhile discussions reliably occur.

I'm glad of the light 'addingnumbers has shed - not, as they also noted, by trying to say what did happen, but by describing something that might have which had not and may never have occurred to me. ('dogma1138, too.)

Of your own participation in this thread I regret I cannot honestly say anything so laudatory.

Never (definitively) ascribe to (high-level) malice what can credibly be ascribed to (low-level) incompetence. Words risk analysts live by every day.

Yup. Malicious conspiracies do happen, but nowhere near at the same rate that sloth and incompetence does.

There was a person who fixed dishwashers, who said "don't buy brand X, every one of them I see is broken!"

How many people knew it was there before they blew up the entire port with it? Blowing it up certainly drew a lot of attention to both the ammonium nitrate, but also all the corruption surrounding it.

Incompetence is always a more likely cause for these things than conspiracy. Not only do we have a long record of this stuff being stored in poor condition, we would also have tons of people leaking about the planned detonation of it were it purposeful.

>Are you suggesting it's unthinkable that someone would burn down a crime scene?

No, they're suggesting that the other, far more specific scenario, that was described was implausible.

Are you suggesting that 1+1=5?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com