Those do not include the most ridiculous thing they've done.
The absolutely most bizarre thing is that, being "Chechnyan separatists", they attacked the US, precisely the one country they shouldn't have. An attack of Russia, while stupid in its unlikelihood to mobilize popular support for their country, would be at least understandable. Russia is, after all, raping their country every fucking hour. An attack of revenge, maybe against the military or police forces, would be what's expected.
Instead, they attacked the country which they should have tried to ally with, the US. With United-Statesian support, at least they could have a shot at independence, or at least some favourable publicity. There are plenty of reasons for that to happen [1]. The ironic thing is that, even though it was a passional, senseless move, the kind that no serious terrorist planner would consider, it could bring a better understanding, and better publicity for Chechnya in the West. I hope. Or maybe they just ripped to shreds the only good card their country had.
Every terror attack that is attempted, the more convinced I am of Bruce Schneier's views on terrorism: terrorist are fundamentally stupid, emotionally fragile, intellectually lazy people
[2].
There is fairly strong evidence that they were not "Chechnyan separatists" and more likely had an Jihadist motivation. Although it is also highly likely that they acted completely alone and are just stupid.
I think most facts point to two very confused and deluded youngsters, it's a joke even calling them "terrorists" or "Jihadists". Their madness adopted an Islamic tinge because of their roots, but IMO they're not very different from all the other disturbed American young people who commit gun violence.
I think you're wrong here. The vast, vast majority of gun violence is directed against specific targets. And for the remainder who start randomly shooting people, they seem concerned with notoriety and don't make any attempt to conceal their identity or get away with it.
I figure this probably began with the domestic violence conviction that derailed the older brother's plans for his life in the US. If you come from a society where a given behavior is considered normal and you move to a new society which think that not only is that behavior wrong but that it makes you an intrinsically bad person, well, that's a hard pill to take. More so in that to accept that this is so bad you now have to accept that everyone you knew and respected back home are then bad people.
Or you could just listen to those who say that you and your people are fine, it's just America that's corrupt and decadent. And here's a template for acting in a way that'll make you the hero, rather than someone who blew his chance.
Completely agree, that is what I was kind of trying to say. The evidence points to two very angry and confused young men and there may have been a slight influence of fundamental Islam. I wouldn't be surprised it this influence was self imposed through YouTube and such though.
They had a Jihadist motivation like a metalhead has a Nazi motivation. Their father was a Russian anti-separatist enforcer and the older brother's act of rebellion was to act like a jihadi. And the younger brother thought that was cool.
The most American terrorists imaginable, actually. I'm surprised they weren't wearing bin Laden tee shirts or something.
Cool, I thought that might have been a mistake. I only asked because it changes the meaning entirely, like a foo without a bar is like a fish without {water, a bicycle}.
I think its fairly clear that they had done very little planning and were completely unprepared for what would happen after the attacks. They even seemed to think they could just carry on with their lives and not get noticed. But I don't think that is a reason to discount an extremist religious motivation, although it may be only part of it.
Ironically Ingush and Chechen islamic terrorists are persistently referred to as "rebels" and "separatists" by Western media, BBC which is perceived as more "independent" news outlet didn't utter once word "terrorist" even during the coverage of the heinous terror attack against children.
People committing acts of terror are terrorists regardless of their aims.
"The word 'terrorist' itself can be a barrier rather than aid to understanding. We should try to avoid the term without attribution. We should let other people characterise while we report the facts as we know them."
That actually sounds pretty sensible to me.
These guys probably weren't part of some organisation that is trying to achieve political goals through acts of terrorism (e.g. like the IRA) - labelling a pair of nutters as "terrorists" really doesn't achieve very much in terms of news reporting or public understanding.
WMD charges don't help either. A pipe-bomb has been considered a WMD for a decade now. The term has been cheapened so much some schools ban the term as useless and carrying almost no information.
But these particular two guys were attending a top university in the United States so they can't have been too deficient in the IQ department. Why they would attack the country that gave them shelter is beyond me.
For run-of-the-mill suicide bombers I think that fewer brains is actually preferable from the perspective of their higher ups. The less they think things through and the more impressionable they are the bigger the chance they will go through with whatever stupidity they are being tasked with.
Essentially this is an education problem, if you'd manage to get people to think for themselves early enough then you might be able to head off a lot of misery before it gets off the ground.
Top university in the United States? Suspect #1 had been sporadically attending classes at a community college. Suspect #2 had been attending UMass Dartmouth, a state school. No offense to either, but top universities they are not.
Unless you meant Cambridge Rindge and Latin, which, while a decent urban public high school, is not to be confused with the prestigious Boston Latin, which is also public but requires admission by way of a highly competitive exam.
I know a lot of absolutely brilliant people (in their own fields) who I'm sure need help tying their own shoes and hold either pure Pollyanna or tightly-wound conspiracy theorist views of the world around them. Intelligence does not always translate well across magisterial boundaries.
I suppose we should be glad that most of these "terrorists" are incompetent fools, that means that the competent people of even the die-hard radicals have decided that there are better things to do than blow people up; hopefully something a bit more productive.
Humans are nearly universally bad at doing things they've never done before and never seen someone do before. Experience and institutional experience are really important in doing anything effectively, and tacit knowledge is often hard to convey in training videos. The perpetrators here don't seem to be particularly smart or brave, but I don't see any reason to think they were particularly dumb either.
I didn't say that they were dumb, I said that they were incompetent fools. Incompetent for not managing to cause more destruction, fools for not escaping when they had the chance.
It's quite likely that I would be a bad terrorist too, but I would at least study the effects of explosives and explosions and how to maximize the result before trying to use them. It's not like there's not a lot of research in the area, given that it's been a priority for the world's armed forces since forever.
They did study the effects of explosives and explosions and they did pretty well given the constraints they were working under. It's very hard to get access to high explosives without the FBI nabbing you, and trying to make them from scratch without a chemistry degree is a recipe for blowing yourself up or having them fizzle like the Time Square Bomber's. The US isn't like Iraq where you can buy an artillery shell from a looted depot for $5.
I was actually thinking of the placement of the bombs. Putting them on the ground in a crowd means that the people nearest the explosion will act as shields for those further away.
Completely agreed. The military definition is reasonable. the domestic criminal code and FBI definition is a bit silly: any IED with over a tiny quarter ounce of explosive.
They've essentially made WMD a synonym for explosive when we already had the perfectly serviceable word bomb. And now there's no room for a more serious charge (ahem).
There are things that could be made at home that would count as WMD. Aum Shinryko made and released aerosolized anthrax. (Luckily, wrong strain of anthrax, and thus no widespread death.)
Its interesting. When the US + UK went into Iraq looking for WMD's I imagined they were after something more menacing than something a kid knocked up in his apartment.
If that is a WMD then what classification do we give the bombs that level buildings that have frequently been used in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan?
The most troubling thing I find about the prosecution is how they listed damaging interstate trade, presumably to keep the death sentence open. Massachusetts doesn't have the death penalty.
Perhaps the most troubling thing about the bombings is how two people apparently so disorganized successfully carried out a double bombing..
> If that is a WMD then what classification do we give the bombs that level buildings that have frequently been used in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan?
"Conventional ordnance". Military materiel has long been treated separately from civilian scope though. Just try to buy a gun in Europe if you don't believe me, and then compare and contrast with a German Army armory. Military and civilian are two different worlds.
> The most troubling thing I find about the prosecution is how they listed damaging interstate trade, presumably to keep the death sentence open.
A Chinese national died due to this. That's not only interstate in scope, it's international in scope. "Damaging interstate trade" is the Feds piling on, they could probably easily come up with 14 other ways to ensure jurisdiction remained at the Federal level if they felt like it. Even as much as buying a pressure cooker online and having it shipped from out-of-state would be sufficient to allow Federal jurisdiction.
But it makes them way easier to find next time a government invades another country. Politicians do not like to get "caught" twice - well unless it is an indiscreet sexual liaison. (cynical me?)
The only mystifying thing they did is getting up in the morning and decide that they want to kill innocent people. They've done it in a country that gave them citizenship and great possible future. That's the only question we should ask here.
None of this is mystifying if you realize one fact; they are idiots.
Also the whole "Numbered List of Things" article format is a cancer on the internet and has been for a long time. It's unworthy of Mother Jones and it's unworthy of this subject.
None of this is mystifying if you realize one fact; they are idiots.
So much hand-waving in here, and I think that in itself tells the biggest story. We don't know if what this was; but IF it was a false flag thingy, it could and would be explained away in the same fashion. When something bad is done and the media rub it in deeply enough, anything you can say about the hated villain will be accepted as long as it makes them look even worse, and makes yourself feel superior. When worse things happen and the crickets chirp, well, let's go ride bikes.
You can rationalize it however you want, you can moderate, flag and pout all you want; you've been trained well, and your comment is projection. You project your own irrelevance.
Also the whole "Numbered List of Things" article format is a cancer on the internet and has been for a long time. It's unworthy of Mother Jones and it's unworthy of this subject.
Your response is unworthy of that article and the subject. It's not even a padded list, so wtf do you think you're spouting other than sophistry?
The assumption is that the Mother Jones list is accurate (and other 'official reports' for that matter). I would like to see more people express a broader view about what's possible regarding the Boston circumstances.
I hope that there are people here that do not completely trust law enforcement/FBI and realize that there are shady ties between persons of violent means and the "intelligence" world + power-mad elitists.
I recently found a site called TragedyandHope.net which has some useful info that covers topics from the history of compulsory schooling to "black ops."
These kinds of incidents create a lot of messy unquestioned details that replace knowing with belief, no?
I have a weapon of mass destruction at my home! Just chill guys, I use a pressure cooker to boil potatoes sometimes. Actually I have another one as well, a BB gun. I don't really know which one is the government referring to as a WMD.
Military definition is what we think of as WMD. The FBI definition of WMD, though, is any improvised explosive device with more than 1/4 ounce of explosive.
(Used to be able to buy firecrackers stronger than that so it seems like a trivializing definition to me.)
Oh they did care, that's why they hide and fight back. they are probably just morons filled with hatred and no plan other than "bomb this people". they just assumed that they won't be caught, didn't consider the possibility that they would be identified.
actually attempt to hide identity in the crowd would look more suspicious. the idea of hiding in the crowd requires to blend in, not look like you are hiding something.
If I could add a 12th item to this list, it would be that one brother accidentally killed the other by running him over with the stolen car while trying to get away.
I don't see that as very mystifying. He was escaping in the middle of a death-defying gun battle and staying alive was literally the only thing on his mind. He panicked, and possibly thought his brother was already dead.
So frustrating. When I click te article on my phone, I get redirected to this page http://app.debka.com/n/ It's going out of its way to make it more difficult to use the site.
The absolutely most bizarre thing is that, being "Chechnyan separatists", they attacked the US, precisely the one country they shouldn't have. An attack of Russia, while stupid in its unlikelihood to mobilize popular support for their country, would be at least understandable. Russia is, after all, raping their country every fucking hour. An attack of revenge, maybe against the military or police forces, would be what's expected.
Instead, they attacked the country which they should have tried to ally with, the US. With United-Statesian support, at least they could have a shot at independence, or at least some favourable publicity. There are plenty of reasons for that to happen [1]. The ironic thing is that, even though it was a passional, senseless move, the kind that no serious terrorist planner would consider, it could bring a better understanding, and better publicity for Chechnya in the West. I hope. Or maybe they just ripped to shreds the only good card their country had.
Every terror attack that is attempted, the more convinced I am of Bruce Schneier's views on terrorism: terrorist are fundamentally stupid, emotionally fragile, intellectually lazy people [2].
[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/04/wha...
[2] https://www.schneier.com/essay-242.html