quote:Originally posted by Anthonie: Looks like those in the video are not the culprits. Link from USA Today
Yikes! That is wrecklessly irresponsible of the NYPost. Could anyone honestly believe it's a coincidence that the NYpost incorrectly accused a Muslim for the second time. The blatant racism alone disgusts me, but what's even worse is their using the tragedy to incite more fear and hatred of Islam.
One of my students, who was from India, was severely beaten for "looking Arabic" after 9/11. If you know the history of terrorism in India, then you understand the full irony of that. Why are so many American's incapable of empathy with anyone outside their own ethnic group or national borders?
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quote:Originally posted by Anthonie: Looks like those in the video are not the culprits. Link from USA Today
Yikes! That is wrecklessly irresponsible of the NYPost. Could anyone honestly believe it's a coincidence that the NYpost incorrectly accused a Muslim for the second time. The blatant racism alone disgusts me, but what's even worse is their using the tragedy to incite more fear and hatred of Islam.
One of my students, who was from India, was severely beaten for "looking Arabic" after 9/11. If you know the history of terrorism in India, then you understand the full irony of that. Why are so many American's incapable of empathy with anyone outside their own ethnic group or national borders?
I was wrong. JTK's link was to video released by the FBI at a press conference, not the NYPost stuff. I mixed the two up. Sorry about that confusion.
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What the hell is going on in Boston? Those updates are indicating a (controlled?) explosion and a bomb team sweeping through cars to clear "multiple devices."
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Short summary: around 10:30pm an MIT officer was killed, responding to a robbery.
Around 12:30 there was carjacking of a black Mercedes by two men, near the Shell Gas Station on Memorial Drive. They kidnapped/hostaged a third individual. This car was later sighted in Watertown.
The police apparently caught up with the black Mercedes and were fired upon. That's when we heard them yelling about explosives/grenades and over the scanner.
Reporters (ABC5) caught up with the police, heard rapid gunfire and explosions. They state they could smell gunfire. They could hear officers over the radio saying that they were being shot at.
There was one individual on the ground being held at gunpoint. Photos of this individual on the ground have been circulated online. This individual is, I believe the one in custody. Apparently there is a second individual who is not in custody.
There are a number of bags/boxes in the area that the police think may be bombs. They have evacuated the surrounding area and are performing controlled explosions.
It's not immediately clear as to whether or not this is actually related to Monday's events.
This is roughly transcribed from the anchors recounting of the situation on WCVB-TV moments ago. And I've gotta say - listening to all of that as it happened was insane.
edit: there is, in fact, a tape of the gunfight in Watertown. WCVB is airing it, and when it comes online I'll try to post it assuming it's actually related.
[ April 19, 2013, 02:15 AM: Message edited by: James Tiberius Kirk ]
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Feed just said that the individual at large is the individual in the white hat from the photos.
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By the way, I feel like I'm watching the old media die tonight. CNN is literally hours behind.
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News Conference from the Colonel of the Mass State Police right now, begins with recap:
10:30p: Robbery at 7-11 MIT Security shot afterward Carjacking, pursuit to Watertown Exchange of gunfire, explosives deployed by suspects. MBTA officer struck during gun battle and was transported. Suspect 1 - black hat - struck during gun battle and "accounted for" Suspect 2 - white cap - got away. 7-11 provided video footage of Suspect 2. Armed and dangerous. Door to door search of Watertown happening now. Do not open your doors. Do not pick up any hitchhikers.
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Do you have a link to listen to some of the BPD radio feed from earlier? I'm morbidly curious to hear it as it went down. I've heard snippets, and it sounds like an episode of something on TV.
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It appears that the first suspect had an explosive on his person that exploded when was being transported. Not sure, hard to keep up with all this police jargon.
Police just cautioned that the second suspect might have the same thing.
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I believe that they said the first suspect may have had an explosive on his chest when apprehended. Second one still at large.
I'll try to find a tape for you Lyr. There are something close to 100K listeners, so someone must have recorded it. It was the most riveting thing I've heard in a long time.
Media is reporting that there are potential bombs all over Watertown right now, and police are asking people to STAY AWAY from anything that looks suspicious. It is suspected that they were on MIT's campus to plant a device.
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Is anyone else struck by how terrible the mainstream media have been during the last 72 hours?
During the actual Marathon bombings, they reported a ton of stuff that wasn't true and they didn't bother to confirm. In the last few hours, they've proven hopelessly behind the curve.
Reddit seems to be crushing them.
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Also remember that foreign training does not does not mean "acting on the orders of a foreign state."
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The first image that popped into my head was a training camp in the desert. "Foreign military training" means anything these days.
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Media reporting that the suspects are Chechnyan, have been in the USA <= 1 year, legal residents of the USA.
Not what I expected.
*
People are waking up, and it's hard to find a recap, so I'm reposting mine:
At 10:30p there was a call for an armed robbery at at 7-11.
Soon afterward, an MIT Police Officer was ambushed and killed.
Around 12:30a: There was a carjacking of a black Mercedes SUV which was pursued to Watertown. The suspects confessed to the driver that they were the bombers.
The car was caught, and there was a gunfight.. Explosives and grenades were deployed by suspects from the window of a moving car.
An MBTA officer was struck during gun battle and was transported.
Suspect 1 - black hat - struck during the above gun battle. He was brought to the hospital with both gun and blast shrapnel wounds to his torso, experienced a cardiac arrest, and could not be resuscitated. Some reports state that he was run over by a police vehicle as well.
Suspect 2, white cap, is on the loose. He is known to be Chechnyan. He is armed and dangerous. A door to door search of Watertown is happening now, and residents are warned not to open doors and not to pick up hitchhikers. The MBTA is shut down by order of the governor. All vehicular traffic into and out of Watertown has been halted. MIT is closed, Northwestern U is [allegedly] closed.
[ April 19, 2013, 07:09 AM: Message edited by: James Tiberius Kirk ]
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I'm just glad that these are the same guys. I went to sleep after the first of MANY texts MIT sent out warning of the shooter and woke of to a see of messages. Still have no idea what happened.
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I also want to say that Cambridge is a place chock full of foreigners who only want to kill people by making them too much tasty food.
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:siren:Current Status::siren:: White Hat is still at large
Summary: (All Times are EDT) - Thursday before 10:20pm A 7-11 in Cambridge is robbed by the men believed to be the Boston Marathon bombing suspects. - 10:20pm An MIT police officer, Sean Collier, 26, was shot and killed while sitting in his squad car, responding to a report of disturbance in Cambridge. - 11:30pm An armed carjacking by two men took place in the area of Third Street in Cambridge. The victim was held in the car for approximately a half hour - 12:00am The carjacking victim was released at a gas station on Memorial Drive in Cambridge. He was not injured. Police immediately began searching for the vehicle involved. - 1:00am Officers from several agencies were involved in a pursuit into Watertown. Gunshots and explosions were heard in the area of Dexter and Laurel streets in Watertown. Explosive devices were reportedly thrown from car by the suspects. The suspects and police also exchanged gunfire in the area of Dexter and Laurel streets. An MBTA police officer was shot and seriously injured during the pursuit. - One of two Boston Marathon bombing suspects was injured and captured. - Suspect 2 supposedly ran over his brother while escaping. - 1:35am The injured Boston Marathon Bombing suspect died at the hospital. - 2:00am The FBI released new photos of the suspect who remained on the run. - 8:40am Suspect possibly pinned down in home - 9:30am Law enforcement still clearing area around possible suspects location - 10:00am White hat still at large, no word as of yet if the surrounded home is where he might be at
- The bombers had automatic weapons, grenades, explosives - One of the bombers (The tall one) was shot multiple times - Supposedly detonated an explosive device on himself, was pronounced DOA at Beth Israel - Suspect 1 Confirmed to have had a triggering device - Suspect 2 from the FBI photos confirmed to have fled on foot
- At some point they managed to steal a State Police truck
- Massive manhunt is ensuing - A perimeter has been set up around the area where he is believed to be - The search continues
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The more information that comes out, the more confused I get. Historically, the United States has supported the Muslims in the areas around the old Soviet Union. We helped free them from Milosevic, and have always demanded that Russia show restraint with Chechnya. Has the Obama administration done anything to change that policy?
I am also slamming my head on my desk at the republicans online calling these guys leftist commies because they were educated in Massachusetts, when by definition devout Muslims would be right wing conservatives that hate communism more than we did.
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Just a quick snippet but Pres. Obama said of the people of Boston,
"The people of Boston will not submit."
Gosh, I sure hope one of the oldest cities in the United States with a population of millions doesn't collectively allow themselves to be yoked by two men. I call New York if it's really that easy.
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quote:Originally posted by Stephan: when by definition devout Muslims would be right wing conservatives that hate communism more than we did.
I don't think that follows.
Which part?
Conservative -
Adjective Holding to traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation, typically in politics or religion. Noun A person who is averse to change and holds to traditional values and attitudes, typically in politics.
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quote:Originally posted by Stephan: Historically, the United States has supported the Muslims in the areas around the old Soviet Union. We helped free them from Milosevic, and have always demanded that Russia show restraint with Chechnya.
This sounds tragic for everyone really. If you want the drone war to be pulled back, then nope. If you're Muslim-American, bad news. Tragic for the victims, especially the international ones like Lu Lingzhi that were just "there" and were unlikely to have been targets.
The only silver lining I can see is that maybe some heat will be redirected away from brown people in general since these two were white and we've had an incident in Canada with four Muslim terrorists, one of whom was a Korean convert and one was a white Greek European convert.
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The MIT police officer was killed literally steps from my former school office. Over the past eight years, I've stood on that corner hundreds of times, although seldom at 10:45 at night.
Based on the various news articles I've read, it seems unlikely that the men are linked to more organized, radicalized al-Qaeda allied Chechen separatists. Rather, it seems like they were inspired by remote viewing of Chechen-separatist and Jihadist propaganda, but acted alone. This is consistent with the fact that their bombs were quite amateurish. So more like the London Underground Bombings than 9-11 or the Bali nightclub bombing.
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quote:Originally posted by James Tiberius Kirk: Also remember that foreign training does not does not mean "acting on the orders of a foreign state."
Heck, if not for my bad eyes, I'd have foreign military training: To wit, the Norwegian army would have conscripted me. From what my friends tell me, I might have been better trained at broom-pushing and boot-polishing than, you know, actual weapons; but hey! Training is training!
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: The United States has also been blowing up Muslims in the areas around the old Soviet Union for a good ten years now and counting. The entirety of their adult lives have been concurrent with the current "war on terror."
But these men were radicalized due to Chechen nationalism, not due to Wahhabist or Qutbist ideology or Afghani, Pakistani or Iraqi nationalism. The jihadist links from their various social networking sites don't seem to be about striking out against the US for its wars, its drones or anything else. They were mostly about the Chechen struggle.
Personally, I think their motivation was much less rational. They were probably feeling frustrated and powerless, personally and socially. The violent sermons of radical clerics gave focus to that frustration, glorifying (abstractly) the idea of jihad. If they'd lived in Chechnya, they would have struck out against the halls of power in Moscow. If they'd lived in England, they would have bombed London. In Syria, they'd have joined the fight against al-Assad. My point being, it doesn't seem like they, or others who seem to have felt similarly, are trying to strike at the US due to a perception of anti-Muslim political policies. Rather, they're lashing out from their sense of dislocation and disaffection in a way that helps them feel powerful, by attacking whatever powerful interests they can.
<edit>That's not to say there aren't terrorists who are primarily motivated by the reasons Mucus has cited, or that such reasons played no role in the antipathy the Tsarnaevs felt (and almost certainly played a role in the anger felt by the radical clerics to whom they listened). Just that, based off the information I see, it seems like this could have happened anywhere conservative Muslims are living in a secular society.</edit>
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Peter, you have no idea what their motives are. Everything is pure speculation at this point. We have no idea if they are angry about Chechen nationalism, or religious fundamentalism or what. They could have been radicalized on a visit overseas, they could have been radicalized right here in America, or they might not have been radicalized at all. Pure conjecture.
As far as Stephen goes, if by "devout" you mean "radically conservative" in the way that we tend to think of Muslim extremists, then yes, they would be on the extreme right of the political spectrum, not the left.
quote:From Mucus: The only silver lining I can see is that maybe some heat will be redirected away from brown people in general since these two were white and we've had an incident in Canada with four Muslim terrorists, one of whom was a Korean convert and one was a white Greek European convert.
I think your hopes are misplaced. I was talking to my mom today and the first thing she asked me was "Are they foreigners? They look like foreigners to me." I tried to explain that they were about as Caucasian as you can get by the literal definition of the word, so they're white, but it didn't really sink in. It just goes to show that our ethnic definitions are as fluid today as they were 100 years ago. It remains to be seen, but somehow I doubt this will enter the zeitgeist as white guys committing violence. Either they will be viewed as ethnic foreigners, or they won't be racially categorized at all, they'll be religiously identified, and people will automatically associate Muslim with Brown.
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I don't think it's fair to say we have *no* idea, but I agree the question of motivation is still very uncertain. I tried to appropriately hedge by saying things like 'based on the information I've seen'. That said, we do know what YouTube videos Tamerlan was linking to from his VK account, and they're not the sort of videos that would suggest he was angry in any specific way about American militarism. I think Andrew Sullivan gets it mostly right here:
quote:In many ways, this is enough to explain a huge amount. Why does someone do something like hold up a 7-11? What’s the point of all this? America has not occupied Chechnya. Chechnyan terrorists have targeted Russia in the past almost exclusively. The point of this is that you can be liberated into violence by the Apocalypse.
A little lost in modernity; finding meaning in the most extreme forms of religion; in many ways assimilated by the West but finding new ways to feel deeply, internally alienated by it: this is a classic profile of an Internet Jihadist.
quote:Originally posted by SenojRetep: [QUOTE] Personally, I think their motivation was much less rational. They were probably feeling frustrated and powerless, personally and socially. The violent sermons of radical clerics gave focus to that frustration, glorifying (abstractly) the idea of jihad. If they'd lived in Chechnya, they would have struck out against the halls of power in Moscow. If they'd lived in England, they would have bombed London. In Syria, they'd have joined the fight against al-Assad.
Sounds like you're right to me.
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New round of gunfire, plus explosions. The news reporting suggests Johar is pinned down, likely injured, in a backyard in Watertown.
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He's pinned down on a boat which is parked in the driveway of a house surrounded by dozens of police and FBI. They've tossed a couple flashbangs at him. Choppers with thermal in the air report he is moving, and thus alive, though they think he is injured.
They're moving assets into place and discussing attack plans. It doesn't seem likely he's getting away.
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Another round of gunfire about five minutes ago. No more reports of movement. Helicopters have left the immediate area. It seems like he's either given up or he's dead.
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Lryhawn: What can I say, I'm an optimistic. But on the other hand....
quote: Oliver Cooper (@OliverCooper) tweeted at 7:14 PM on Fri, Apr 19, 2013: The Czech ambassador to the US had to issue a statement explaining his country is not Chechnya. God bless America. http://t.co/3kLpBKJ4Bt (https://twitter.com/OliverCooper/status/325387030970376192)