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by Laodicean » Tue Apr 23, 2013 6:22 am
Boston Bombing Suspect Shootout Pictures
On Thursday night [Friday morning] at 12:45am EST. I was in my living room working on my computer when I heard multiple “pops” coming from outside. At that point, I had no idea that I was about to become an eye witness to the biggest news story in the country.
by 8bitagent » Tue Apr 23, 2013 7:13 am
by stoneonstone » Tue Apr 23, 2013 7:51 am
by Julian the Apostate » Tue Apr 23, 2013 8:17 am
by seemslikeadream » Tue Apr 23, 2013 10:30 am
Random Notes from the Police State
Tuesday, 23 April 2013 09:13
By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed
Woke last night to the sound of thunder,
How far off, I sat and wondered...
- Bob Seger
I had just finished feeding and changing my infant daughter late Thursday night, and was putting her down again, when I heard a low rumble off in the distance. I walked out to my front porch and listened as the swell of sirens filled the stillness. Earlier, when the reports came that an MIT police officer had been shot down, I resisted the temptation to think it had anything to do with the two marathon bombers loose in the city since Monday afternoon. Don't jump to conclusions, I told myself as I turned off the TV. As I listened to the sound of the sirens from my porch, I said it again: don't jump to conclusions. It's probably a fire, I told myself, and went back inside to catch a couple hours of sleep before the next feeding.
Three hours later, I woke up again to feed my little girl, and realized as soon as I turned the TV back on that I would not be sleeping again for a while. Those sirens I'd heard came from Watertown, which is a solidly-struck golf shot from my home. The two suspects - brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev - had shot an MIT police officer dead before leading police on a miles-long fast-rolling shootout and bomb-throwing festival that ended with a second police officer clinging to life, Tamerlan Tsarnaev dead after his brother ran him down in a frantic effort to flee, a whole neighborhood rattled to the core, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the loose somewhere in the winding, old-world neighborhoods I call home.
My neighbors and I gathered to talk about recent events while looking up at the helicopters that dotted the sky. The smokers went looking for cigarettes, the drinkers went looking for beer, the coffee-drinkers were cheered to hear that every Dunkin' Donuts would be open and set off for the one on the corner...and we all very voluntarily did what had been asked of us: stay off the streets, don't travel, and don't open your door for anyone who you don't know and who doesn't have a badge.
But guess what? Tony, one of my upstairs neighbors, hopped on his motorcycle and went to work. Bill, another of my upstairs neighbors, hopped in his car and motored right out of town. I went for a walk on two separate occasions, and when I did, I saw lots of other people also out and about, walking dogs or just enjoying what actually happened to be the nicest day of the year so far.
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None of us were arrested, detained, or threatened, and we were smack-dab in the middle of the so-called "lock-down" zone.
And the Dunkin' Donuts was open.
And the Tedeschi's was open.
And the local pub was open.
And the sub shop was open.
And there were cars driving by.
Contrary to a number of addle-brained pontifications offered by people who have never set foot in the 617 area code, we were not "cowering in our homes," and Boston was not transformed into a "police state," and it was not "martial law." The governor asked us to stay inside - there was a bomber on the loose who made his own bombs, several of which were thrown out the window of a car during a miles-long shoot-out, so maybe there was also unexploded ordnance in the streets between where the brothers started running and where they stopped, and maybe the surviving brother had more such explosives with him, along with the gun he used to shoot at police in a well-recorded battle - and so we did.
How is it a police state if all the Dunkin' Donuts were open? Fascists need caffeine, too?
Or maybe it was voluntary, a city-wide community action. We're pretty good at that here in Boston. We get huge snowstorms every winter, and our public officials always ask us to remain indoors and not to drive so they can clean it up. When the blizzard hit in February, our public officials asked us to stay inside and off the roads. They were the exact same public officials who asked us to stay inside on Friday...and gloriosky! It worked!
I had a beer at my local on Saturday with a guy who lives next door to the house where they found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev bleeding out in the boat. He showed me a picture of the boat taken from his bedroom window. When a toast was raised to the way Boston law enforcement handled the situation, his was the first pint in the air.
That happened because I live here. I know better than you, and he knows better than me, how all this went down.
Work that into your argument about the people getting screwed by the police on Friday. Go ahead, I'll wait.
I have some bad news for those who think they are battering down the walls of fascism and authoritarianism by fostering and spreading what in reality is nothing more or less than misinformation and angst regarding the situation in Boston. You've joined a pretty rotten and disreputable club.
First it was CNN reporting in the middle of the week that an arrest had been made and that the suspect was being transferred to the federal courthouse, which caused a massive crowd scene outside the building and brought on a bomb threat...except CNN was wrong, there was no arrest, and they looked really stupid. Then, on Friday afternoon, it was the blivet on MSNBC going on and on about how amazing and terrible it was that suicide bombers were loose in Boston, and we need to do all sorts of crazy things because of these suicide bombers, look at the suicide bombers, look look look...except they weren't suicide bombers, because neither of them committed suicide with a bomb, and MSNBC looked really stupid.
Guess what, you intrepid sleuths with your theories about the "police state" in Boston and "martial law" and Miranda? That's you, too. You're just as bad as CNN and MSNBC. You're in the same chapter of this story, titled How I Spent A Week In April Making A Fool Of Myself In Front Of Everybody.
Comes the cry, "But but but we're just trying to get to the truth!"
No, you're not. You are masturbating in public, and you are using our city and our experience as lube. You are short-stroking the idea that you are a constitutional scholar, terrorism expert, law enforcement expert, ballistics expert, Chechen expert, lawyer, doctor, sociologist, psychologist and seer all at once, and I know it feels really good, because you can't stop no matter how many times you get the facts wrong.
I'm not asking you to stop. I'm not asking you to do anything. I am washing my hands of you, and good riddance to bad rubbish.
Feel free to call me a fascism-enabler, a lover of the police state, or whatever you will. I will wear it as a badge of honor, as it comes from hopeless self-empowering outrage junkies like you. Ever heard the old story of the man who watched a donkey pass through a hole in a fence and exclaimed, "Of course! The nose causes the tail!" That's you.
To those of you wondering what I'm talking about: yes, these people actually exist, and say these things. A decade ago, they were sending you very insistent (!!!!) emails claiming that a missile, and not a plane, hit the Pentagon, proving for sure that it was an inside job, etc. etc. etc.
(...psssst...to everyone who has sent me emails about that, I have a confession to make: one of my friends saw the plane fly right overhead as he was on his way to work at the Pentagon, and another of my friends - a 30-year airline veteran - lost one of his best friends, the pilot, when the plane hit the building...I never wrote back to you with this information because I knew you wouldn't believe me, because you'd figure out a way to include my friends in the massive conspiracy, because you'd just send me more stupid emails, and I just didn't have the energy to bother...sorry...but it's true...)
When you hear hoofbeats, it's probably not zebras. That's Occam's Razor, condensed.
Those who have spent this week attacking the Boston police, attacking Boston's officials, and attacking Boston's citizens have offered very few angry words for the two people who bombed the marathon and shot a couple of cops. I'm sure they have as much disgust for the perpetrators as I do, but it is telling that they have spent all their energy dumping on the people trying to deal with this frightening and unique situation and virtually no time dumping on the people who caused it.
(And yes, they have the right guy; no prosecution in the history of humanity will have more evidence at its disposal than the one to come for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev)
Worried about your civil liberties? Ask the bastards who committed murder about that before venting your spleen on the ones tasked to deal with the bombs thrown in the street and the shooting and the fleeing and the hiding and the guesswork, ask the bombers about your curtailed rights before going after the people who have to balance the Constitution against public safety when a killer is loose in a neighborhood.
It was the bombers who ruptured your rights, you damned daft self-absorbed outrage-junkie jackasses. The Boston police restored them. I know that's not the hip, cool, anti-authoritarian thing to say, but it is a fact nonetheless. Period, end of file.
Boston law enforcement did their best in a terrible, dangerous and deranged situation. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is alive and in custody (memo to Los Angeles PD), and has a good lawyer actively representing his interests (for those of you who can't be bothered to understand what Miranda is and what Miranda isn't). We who live here went along with the stay-in order willingly, as it was the same one we get when two feet of snow falls, and it worked as it always does. This community works together for each other, and Friday night - after word went out that the guy had been captured alive - will stand tall in Boston's long history among the greatest party nights of all time, because we were celebrating ourselves.
If you don't believe me, if you think we're all hapless dupes playing along with the fascist takeover of America, by all means, come to Boston and see for yourselves. Ply your theories on Boylston Street.
I dare you.
by stickdog99 » Tue Apr 23, 2013 10:59 am
by Freitag » Tue Apr 23, 2013 11:00 am
8bitagent wrote:is there a link to that triple murder
by Jerky » Tue Apr 23, 2013 11:20 am
by Jerky » Tue Apr 23, 2013 11:21 am
by Hunter » Tue Apr 23, 2013 11:29 am
Julian the Apostate wrote:My first thought, when I awoke to this craziness on Friday morning, that he was going to break into a house, hold a family hostage, and go out in a blaze of glory. Remember that in the initial chaos, nobody knew what the hell was going on, all we knew was that they had killed one cop, wounded another, robbed a convenience store (which turned out to be false), were throwing “military-grade explosives” at the police, one had been killed in a shootout, and nobody knew where the other one was. If they hadn’t locked down he might have taken hostage the first person he came across, or jacked another car as it drove by. In hindsight it looks like heavy-handedness but at the time, and considering what might have happened, it seems appropriate. It did end up lengthening the search for him but all he was doing was lying in a boat wounded the whole time so no big deal, considering.
by ShinShinKid » Tue Apr 23, 2013 11:30 am
by Peachtree Pam » Tue Apr 23, 2013 11:38 am
April 22, 2013
America the Ugly
The scene is dispiriting in its familiarity in a certain kind of cheap, derivative fiction. A gang of bullies -- let's say, a high school gang, although it could be another kind -- finally corners and badly injures the lone, geeky guy (who wears glasses, of course). The gang is made up of big, strong, athletic boys, most of whom weigh at least 100 pounds more than the geeky guy. The geeky guy is smart and clever; he had managed to elude the bullies for a long time. But they get him in the end. There are eight bullies, any one of whom could easily dispatch the geek in a contest of brute strength. And on the geek's side -- well, there isn't anyone else on his side. So the bullies beat him up very badly, even breaking a few bones.
The bullies then celebrate with an orgy of self-congratulation. "We showed him!" "Yeah, no one'll ever mess with us again!" They chant: "We're the best! We're the best!"
This kind of "message" fiction (or "family drama" in television or film) is intended to show what pathetic, even vile people the bullies are. What can there possibly be for the bullies to celebrate, if they were honest for even a second? The odds were all in their favor; it was impossible that the geek would elude them forever. In fact, there was no contest or battle of any kind. Brute, cruel strength visited destruction on a lone, comparatively very weak individual who never had a chance. No one wants to be like the bullies. We want to help the geek, we want to fight on his side.
Yet, as the events in Boston conclusively demonstrated, in America today, almost everyone does want to be like the bullies. They love the bullies. This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one:
Our children are taught that we equate "manliness" and "strength" with close to complete disregard for other people, with emotional repression and insensitivity to the point of catatonia, and with a willingness to resort to physical violence at the slightest provocation, and even in the complete absence of any provocation at all. We tell those people who suffer great emotional pain and even agony, often when they contemplate the terrible suffering of others, to "suck it up" and to have "thicker skins." The greatest virtue is to feel nothing, or as close to nothing as possible. There is one exception: you can feel unreasoning, unfocused rage, and you are free to act on it. You may lash out in any direction you choose. The innocence of your victim is irrelevant.
Our government acts in this manner repeatedly. Our political leaders all applaud it, and offer a lengthy series of "justifications" for our unending national cruelty. ...
[Our children] learned that cruelty and violence are not to be condemned, but constitute the coin of the nightmare realm of our culture: cruelty and violence are enacted many times every day in films, on television, in our personal lives, and by our government on a national and international scale. You will be rewarded for cruelty: the crueler you are, the greater the reward. ...
Our children learn all this, and many more lessons of the same kind. Of course, they are often vicious bullies. Our government is a murderous bully on a scale that beggars description; most politicians are bullies; the majority of adults are bullies to varying degrees. Why wouldn't these children be bullies? It's what they've been taught. In the most crucial ways, it's all they've been taught.
These children are the perfect embodiments of the central values of our culture. They have learned well.
(See "Bullied, Terrorized and Targeted for Destruction: Our Children Have Learned Well" for much more on this theme.)
Such children grow up -- and they become the adults who "celebrated" in Boston, after a vast metropolitan area and millions of people welcomed the bullies into their midst and enthusiastically followed every one of the bullies' orders. I repeat: Americans love the bullies. They want to be exactly like them.
If you can stand it, watch this video of the bullies at work in just a single house. (Thanks to ohtarzie for the tip.) If you haven't yet seen it, I will grant you a kindness in advance: the dog is not killed. A dog puts in an appearance at about the 3:40 mark. And the dog keeps barking periodically. When I first watched it, I started murmuring: "Please, please stop barking." I was sure one of the brave heroes with their terrifying weapons would kill the dog. Miraculously, they don't (at least, the dog is still alive when the video ends). With hideous regularity, dogs are killed by our brave bullies in similar situations.
I am not suggesting for a moment that I would expect or advise anyone to resist when the bullies arrive on your block in their war machines, laden with their war weapons. If I had been in that house, I would have done exactly what I was told to do.
But I wouldn't be grateful for it afterwards. And I certainly would not celebrate, nor would I congratulate myself for my astonishing courage. There are many words to describe the eager prostration before power, and the enthusiastic willingness to ally oneself with the overwhelmingly stronger side. "Courage" is not one of them.
"Bravery" and "strength" are similarly not words that bear any relation to how the vast majority of people in the Boston area chose to act. Among many revealing anecdotes from this cavalcade of bullying bellicosity were the wildly applauded remarks by David Ortiz, one of the Red Sox players: "We want to thank you, Mayor Menino, Governor Patrick, the whole police department for the great job they did this past week. This is our f***ing city, and nobody is going to dictate our freedom. Stay strong."
With no exceptions that I saw, our media refused to print or convey (the live utterance aside) what Ortiz actually said: "This is our FUCKING city..." It is doubtless the case that this refusal is yet another instance of remarkable courage and bravery. And: "nobody is going to dictate our freedom. Stay strong." It's not every day that you hear people (many people, of whose vast number Ortiz is but one bathetic example) proclaim their independence and strength from the position of submissive prostration.
The comedy didn't end there. Quickly following Ortiz's inspiring and courageous Declaration of Independence (in the revised version to suit the times) came the official benediction for what might have been perceived as an impermissible breach of the language etiquette we recognize as one of the bulwarks of civilization. The head of the FCC tweeted: "David Ortiz spoke from the heart at today's Red Sox game. I stand with Big Papi and the people of Boston - Julius"
This is so ridiculously absurd that I wouldn't dare include such a detail in a novel. I would expect any semi-intelligent reader to throw the book in the trash immediately. Why read a book containing such stupidly outlandish inventions? Millions of people celebrate their own non-existent bravery and courage, which bravery and courage consisted of doing precisely what the bullies demanded, and one of them dares to say FUCK while doing so. Yet another highly-placed bully immediately swoops in, to tell the children (for all such people remain children even if they have grown to adulthood, and children who are very badly damaged psychologically): "It's all right that you said a bad word this one time. You spoke from the heart." And we can hear the implied warning and threat: "Remember: you should always ask permission first. But I'll let it go this once."
Translation: You're taking part in the charade just as we want you to. Julius Genachowski and the other bullies are delighted beyond measure by these events, for the charade's purpose is to glorify the State, and to glorify subservience to State power.
I remind you of Albert Jay Nock's remarks about "mass-man" and the State:
The mass-man, ignorant of [the State's] history, regards its character and intentions as social rather than anti-social; and in that faith he is willing to put at its disposal an indefinite credit of knavery, mendacity and chicane, upon which its administrators may draw at will. Instead of looking upon the State's progressive absorption of social power with the repugnance and resentment that he would naturally feel towards the activities of a professional-criminal organization, he tends rather to encourage and glorify it, in the belief that he is somehow identified with the State, and that therefore, in consenting to its indefinite aggrandizement, he consents to something in which he has a share -- he is, pro tanto, aggrandizing himself. Professor Ortega y Gasset analyzes this state of mind extremely well. The mass-man, he says, confronting the phenomenon of the State, "sees it, admires it, knows that there it is ... Furthermore, the mass-man sees in the State an anonymous power, and feeling himself, like it, anonymous, he believes that the State is something of his own. Suppose that in the public life of a country some difficulty, conflict, or problem, presents itself, the mass-man will tend to demand that the State intervene immediately and undertake a solution directly with its immense and unassailable resources ... When the mass suffers any ill-fortune, or simply feels some strong appetite, its great temptation is that permanent sure possibility of obtaining everything, without effort, struggle, doubt, or risk, merely by touching a button and setting the mighty machine in motion."
This is the mechanism that was on display in Boston, and in much of the United States. (More from Nock and on these issues will be found here.)
But I have only begun to identify the idiocies and horrors revealed by this most recent episode in our national descent into hell. And make no mistake: hell is the destination. We are now closer to it than we were even a week ago.
To be continued.
(I should note that the comment the poster appended to the Youtube video reads: "Boston Bombing Lessons: Martial Law Doesn't Work," with a link to this. As I would hope regular readers here realize, this analysis is exactly ass backwards. "Martial law doesn't work"? But surely, that depends on what the goal is, does it not? If the goal was control and ensuring obedience -- and it was -- it worked splendidly. But there's a lot of this ass-backwards analysis going around, and I will offer some comments about it next time.)
posted by Arthur Silber at 12:49 PM
by Laodicean » Tue Apr 23, 2013 11:43 am
ShinShinKid wrote:Found this site, has images of what appears to be the shootout...
http://www.getonhand.com/blogs/news/774 ... t-pictures
by seemslikeadream » Tue Apr 23, 2013 11:52 am
by IanEye » Tue Apr 23, 2013 11:58 am
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