
Boston Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Apprehended Alive - jeeringmole
http://mashable.com/2013/04/19/boston-bombing-dzhozkar-tsarnaev-is-found/
======
frisco
I can't help but feel like these brothers are also victims here. Of course,
their victimhood is nothing like what they inflicted on the people of Boston
and the marathoners, but they're victims nonetheless. Humans are glorified
chemical reaction vessels; somehow, they ended up going down a path that led
them here. Was there any alternative? Was it the education system? Social
circumstances? I'm sure the magnitude of what he's done must be setting in on
Dzhozkar now. Provided that this case is how it appears, his life is over;
he's committed terrible crimes. But provided that he's not a biologically-
determined sociopath, somewhere down the road he become subject to forces that
ended up with him hiding from FBI HRT in someone's backyard after a prolonged
shootout-chase with his brother dead. Even if this is justice, it seems
tragic.

EDIT: I'm not denying agency or free will, I'm just expressing the belief that
you are the product of your environment. I like the saying that an individual
will tend towards being the average of their friends. If all of your friends
are into running, you'll probably end up being into running. If all of your
friends are into music, you'll probably end up interested in music. Certain
books, movies, or other cultural experiences can affect individuals in
differing, significant ways. All of these forces act on people to create who
they are tomorrow.

There's no statement about free will, in a strong sense, in there. It's all
about social and cultural context, and brownian motion. He's still responsible
for his actions. I would reserve the term "human monster" for measurable
psychopaths. Those do exist, and are a different matter entirely.

~~~
marknutter
This kind of thinking is very dangerous and can be used to excuse all sorts of
terrible behavior. We are all responsible for our actions. I can't prove that
we have free will, but I feel it's important to believe it.

~~~
frisco
I think that's looking at it backwards. I'm not saying that he should be given
any kind of leniency or have anything be "excused" because of this. I'm just
wondering what a society would look like that started with the hypothesis that
this was a failure in developing a citizen as opposed to a failure in
preventing a crime.

Obviously when you've gotten to this point, it's time to apply the law, not
justify things away.

------
ericb
I'm impressed with the professionalism of the Boston police. After cops
killed, and a day-long adrenaline filled hunt, they managed to remain
professional for the sake of the greater good and take this schmuck alive.

edit: I guess only 1 cop was killed?

~~~
rdl
It's interesting comparing their behavior to the LAPD/etc. during the
Christopher Dorner manhunt a few months ago.

~~~
chadillac83
I think the Dorner thing has some factors you're not quite taking into
account.

1\. He was a trained professional 2\. He knew their hand, their next move even
3\. He was an outed cop on a rampage based on inequality in the ranks of the
LAPD

I don't think Dorner was ever going to be brought in alive, the LAPD didn't
want him to have a soap box to preach from or to give him hero status. I
remember shaking my head as I listened to police scanner while they started to
set the cabin on fire.

This was a scared confused kid hiding in a boat with the nation watching and
wanting to hear what he had to say. The other seemed more like a shut it up,
sweep it under the rug, the guy is a nut, let's all just forget this happened
kinda thing.

~~~
rdl
#2 and #3 support the thesis "BPD > LAPD", along with your other points.

#1 might be countered with "he was a radical Islamic jihadist" (in the worst
case).

------
citricsquid
Earlier I was reading through the Twitter account of the now apprehended
suspect and what is most striking is just how normal he is. Every one of his
tweets could have been attributed to a completely normal teenager, he couldn't
be more generic. It's strange how Twitter offers an insight into his life...
but really it doesn't show anything. When someone blew people up in the 90s
the news would report they're crazy, we'd all accept it and move on but now
with platforms like Twitter we can see how this could be any one of us, maybe
we're all one shitty situation away from doing terrible things. Unnerving.

~~~
kmfrk
Some of the people I regularly follow on Twitter were literally in disbelief
over hearing this about someone they thought they knew - "please take him
alive" they pleaded.

It was awful to see someone be so wrong about a person, as it became more and
more certain that he was indeed one of the people involved in the bombing.

~~~
mynameishere
Wait, what? You follow people on twitter who knew this nobody?

~~~
stephengillie
There are probably lots of people who are within 2 degrees of separation of
this guy.

~~~
khuey
Anyone who went to college in Boston can probably find a connection in a
couple degrees.

------
simonsarris
"Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult
than to understand him." -Dostoevsky

On twitter a lot of people are essentially saying "Good, now we'll get
_answers._ " I'm sorry to say I don't believe there is typically anything
satisfying about the answers of people who become deranged. Maybe this time,
but if reading about madmen past is any guide, its very unlikely that we will
be enlightened by any testimony.

~~~
nostromo
I interpret that quote differently than you. To me he's saying not that we
won't learn anything from evildoers, but that it's important that we really
try.

And I think that's exactly right. The younger suspect seems by all accounts to
be a smart young man. It's important that we try to understand what drove him
to do something so terrible, even as we denounce it.

~~~
incision
> _To me he's saying not that we won't learn anything from evildoers, but that
> it's important that we really try._

I read it the same way.

Though, I don't think it's about literally learning from any individual, but
to attempt to understand the underlying mechanisms.

~~~
kanda
No offence, but this was islamic terror, read thenews. What explanation do you
expect to find ? That there are muslims in America that try to teach every kid
they can get their hands on to massacre their neighbors for not being muslims
?

Because if history is any guide, that's all you'll find.

Oh and it's the same story Russians (google "Beslan" and see how lucky the US
has been so far), Britons, Spaniards, Chinese, Taiwanese, Philipinos, ...
encounter. Which makes it very hard to believe those few extremely weak
explanations like "it's the Iraq/Afghanistan war" that are given.

Sorry to state the obvious. Someone has to.

Let me just say : this is very likely to intensify from this point on. The
attacks I mean. Why don't we just start the "but drone strikes justify random
attacks on civilians" thread ? We all know it's coming. Don't expect me to
post anything though.

~~~
cmhamill
In all honesty, what the hell are you on about?

------
arjn
Glad to hear they got him alive, it must have been hard to do that. Having him
alive is important to understand and analyse the sequence of events, the
motivation, the planning etc. There is also a possibility they had help and
more people may be involved and if he were dead that would be very hard to
discover. Kudos to the FBI and the Police authorities of Boston.

------
pvnick
Thank God. While I'm honestly not concerned about the man's well-being - that
8-year-old boy should be alive in his place - I am very curious as to why they
did this.

~~~
corwinstephen
They come from a very Islamic country and it's been said that they'd recently
started wearing traditional Muslim clothing--a switch from the european
clothing they'd been wearing for most of their lives. It's easy for kids to
become obsessed with a cause... even if it's a terrible one. Basically, all
signs point to this being just another religious extremist attack.

~~~
anigbrowl
The big question is to what degree it was organized, or whether the older
brother's social problems (inability to connect etc.) so alienated him that he
just seized on the most empowering role model he could think of, an Islamic
rebel. Chechnya is a country that has been ruled pretty poorly by Russia at
it's not so long ago that Chechen Muslims were seen as heroic freedom fighters
in the west.

In short, it's unclear whether they were actually involved with any organized
jihad groups or just developed a personal obsession with the ideas and copied
the methods.

------
TallboyOne
Did they ever figure out the motive of James Holmes?

I'm wondering what ever happened with that.. any reason WHY?

~~~
InclinedPlane
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Eagan_Holmes#Events_leadi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Eagan_Holmes#Events_leading_to_the_shooting)

------
signed0
Now that the full audio[1] transcript of the police scanner is available, I'd
be interested in whether police ever actually mentioned the the two other
individuals that everyone seemed to think had done it.

[1][https://soundcloud.com/producermatthew/scanner-audio-from-
wa...](https://soundcloud.com/producermatthew/scanner-audio-from-watertown)

~~~
endianswap
They did indeed mention the uh Mulugato guy (however it was spelled, I'm going
from memory.) I was listening to it live last night, but what is unclear is
why they were saying/spelling his name. They never said he was connected to
this, they just mentioned his name/spelling on the same radio as the Boston
Bombing investigation. Probably around 2:30AM EST if I had to guess (I heard
it live.)

Edit: Mulugeta, I guess, is how you spell it. I certainly didn't hear a first
name, though, when I was listening, just the last name plus spelling of it.

~~~
signed0
I think that name was mentioned in relation to a completely separate crime
that was going on a the same time.

------
clawrencewenham
The ending to The Blues Brothers seems prophetic.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2quc-iQ96R0>

To edit and elaborate: they shut down a large portion of New England,
affecting millions of people. Amtrak service, for example, was suspended north
of New York City at 12:30pm today. Private taxi service in the Boston Metro
area shut down until 11am. Other public transit, such as the T, shut down for
most of the day. People didn't go to work.

I know it sounds callous, considering how many died or were maimed, but we now
have to consider that a couple of pressure cookers are on par with hurricanes,
blizzards and power blackouts when it comes to anesthetizing the North East
corridor. I think we should think about this.

~~~
Anechoic
* they shut down a large portion of New England*

No, "they" really didn't. Life was pretty much normal outside of 128.

~~~
clawrencewenham
I don't know what 128 is, but I know of people who were taking Amtrak to
Connecticut but had to get off at NYC and travel uptown to Grand Central
Station to get on a commuter train. They weren't going to Boston. Amtrak
service was halted north of NYC because of this manhunt.

I do know that much of Boston had no choice but to take a day off on Friday. I
know the Bruins game was cancelled, and that Comic Con was "postponed" and
likely cancelled because of the difficulty of re-booking the conference center
anytime before next year.

Not even considering the salaries and overtime of the officers involved, it is
not wrong to say that this manhunt may have cost hundreds of millions, perhaps
billions of dollars in economic losses. For example, some of the speculation
from The Washington Post this afternoon:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/19/t...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/19/the-
entire-city-of-boston-has-shut-down-how-much-will-this-cost/)

This is as if an entire city went into anaphylaxis.

~~~
Anechoic
_I don't know what 128 is_

Route 128 is the loop highway running around Boston.

 _I do know that much of Boston had no choice but to take a day off on Friday_

Much of Boston is not the same as "a large portion of New England." New
England is ~14 million people. The affected areas covered about 600K people.

 _may have cost hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of dollars in economic
losses._

Your own link doesn't support "billions of dollars in economic losses." In any
event, extraordinary events require an extraordinary response. In any event, I
can't see how having those streets packed with cars and pedestrian traffic (as
happens on a normal Friday) would have done anything but hinder the manhunt.

~~~
clawrencewenham
> Much of Boston is not the same as "a large portion of New England."

Alright, much of Boston is not "a large portion of New England" but to use
your figures, even 600 thousand is still huge. Does it really disprove my
point that this manhunt will have enormous economic consequences? Even if our
economy can absorb it, we must address the fact that the cost was staggering
in proportion to what it cost the bombers to conduct their attack.

> In any event, extraordinary events require an extraordinary response.

Bruce Schneier pointed out, once, that airport security was brittle because it
couldn't contain an event to the gate: it had to shut down a whole terminal
and often--such as with the LAX evacuations after 9/11, an entire airport.
This event shut down the work of perhaps 600,000 for the price of some
pressure cookers and black powder.

If it cost a few hundred dollars to shut down 600,000 hosts or terminals on
the Internet, we would be looking at ways to improve security and protocols so
that such an inexpensive attack could not force such enormous losses.

I think we should brainstorm ways to block this vulnerability. It should not
be possible for two guys, 26 and 19 years old, to freeze a major city.

------
TallboyOne
Why are the parents saying 'he didn't do it' when they were throwing exploses
out of a car and killing officers. Wtf??

~~~
campnic
Its the stages of grief. Something you've invested a considerable amount of
your _life_ in was revealed to you in the last 24 hours to be not what you
believed it to be. That causes grief and causes denial.

------
ghc
For me this will be the enduring image of the manhunt:
<http://i.imgur.com/lV7CMQA.jpg>

Even if there's a manhunt, shelter in place order, and an officer with an
assault rifle on every corner, life will go on.

~~~
geuis
I don't understand what this is an image of. The quality is very poor, is this
because its a crop of a much larger image?

~~~
ghc
It's actually poor quality because it's at max zoom on a Galaxy Nexus. It was
an Italian wedding party with raucous singing by the men and I wanted to stay
a respectful distance. This happened at about 5PM as I went in search of
someplace open where I could get something to eat.

------
lifeformed
So who gets to be his lawyer?

~~~
rdl
Alan Dershowitz?

~~~
cema
Unlikely. He is very much against Islamic terrorism, and this is apparently
just that case.

~~~
pekk
If someone who happens to be Christian carries out terrorism, is this
Christian terrorism? Or do we have a special exception for Muslims who carry
out terrorism, that their terrorism is Islamic terrorism?

~~~
kps
It depends. If the act is clearly motivated by religion and directed at
perceived enemies of the religion then it is plainly religious terrorism. If
the religion of the perpetrator is clearly irrelevant (e.g. a political cause,
and the terrorists and perpetrators are of the same religion) then it is
plainly not religious terrorism. In between are grey areas that can be argued
case by case.

~~~
cema
Yes, and I guess I could have verbalized it more, but it seems like that need
(to verbalize) appears every time anything like this is mentioned. So maybe
the verbalization is not so important after all.

