Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

[Iamwhomiam]

Alchemy, he could have been looking for Hashish, for all we know, no?

You're entitled to your opinion Burnt Hills. Some family we have here.

[Canadian_watcher]

What do you think would have been an acceptable police response?

Overall, I think what appears to have happened in Boston was an acceptable police response; moreover, much of that response may have been exemplary.

While I acknowledge that there are real conspiracies, both small and large, the readiness with which some appear eager to believe the newest one is unsettling, and perhaps even a bit embarrassing. In the end, I don't know precisely what happened behind the Boston Marathon bombings, and neither does anyone else here. It may be that facts will emerge that change my picture entirely, but as things now stand — with a mixture of open questions added to a few facts, and blended together into a mix from which some people are drawing conspiratorial conclusions — I don't see any grand "government conspiracy" in this case, at this time.

With respect, Sim, I think you are conflating two separate issues.

Whatever happened wrt to the bombs in Boston is one thing. What happened with the police/ military response is another. One we don't know much about in fact, and the other we have a really clear picture of.

I am disturbed by the second part more than the first, and disturbed further by the reaction of people to it. it is no laughing matter to have your right suspended. I know a handful of people who were jailed due to a martial law scenario in the city where I was born. Tanks on the streets is not funny - it is so not funny that thousands of people moved from the province in the intervening years. Meantime, citizens were asked to produce their papers at various 'stations' - the schools being one of them.

It is not a state of affairs that a community can live with, and certainly not one that it can thrive with. it's dangerous, straight up. Fear of bad guys will convince people that the government getting out of hand is "all right, for a while" but what happens when the bad guys get into the government and everybody is already used to being subjected to these types of extra judicial searches, lock downs, spying, etc. ? Unless you believe that the government cannot be taken over by bad guys, is that what you believe? is that what some of you believe?

[IanEye]

IAN is that an actual picture of Misha or what, I just cant tell anymore which posts are serious and which are some sort of joke that I am not getting. Sorry if I am dunce, I just cant keep up with all of this and try and earn a living at the same time but I am certainly willing to try.

That is a picture of comedian Louis C.K. hanging out with Osama Bin Laden.

Apparently they shared the same dentist.

[The Consul]

The "Bad Guys" have been in government for quite some time. One Count Orlok is replaced by another, one "Max Factored Actor" (as Dylan Thomas said) after another. We are in a choose your brand democracy, but there are only two brands and they are both fascist. Mussolini is not as bad as Hitler, but Hitler gets more results!

It is so surreal. Djochar, he is so cute. I feel sorry for him, but I also feel sorry for all those people he blew apart; if, indeed, it was him. If indeed he exists and if indeed Boston is not a hologram and we all died a long time ago and this is our final episode of Lost consciousness trying to make sense of how we perished so suddenly, so needlessly.

Any one of us they finger. Knock knock knock. Out you go. Into the Van. Maybe you get Mirandized, maybe you don't. Maybe no one every hears from you again. Maybe they screw up and hang you by your wrists and ankles from an undisclosed location an beat you so bad that they burst your liver. This happens right before they find out they got the wrong guy. They got your phone number off the ph book of a pizza deliverty guy named Achmed Mahood Mamia Brando, who they had been tracking since he exhibited pre natal fantasies of blowing stuff up; and it turns out he was innocent, too and was sadly lost in the gulag of black sites. Knock knock knock. Bam bam bam. Off you go.

So I hear lots of tough sounding patriots say "I would be willing to die to protect your right to _______." I have yet to hear anyone say "I would be willing to suffer abduction and extraordinary rendition to a foreign dungeon to be tortured undlessly without even access to the Red Cross - if it meant you could be free!" Or maybe those without the stomach for such insanity invoking sessions of agony can opt or plan B. "I am willing to be blown apart instantly, even by mistake, with my children or family, in the name of making this a safer America that is a better place to do business."

What did George Harrison call it? "A tidal wave of bullshit."

[Burnt Hill]

Alchemy, he could have been looking for Hashish, for all we know, no?

You're entitled to your opinion Burnt Hills. Some family we have here.

I am happy to look at this site as a family, its exactly what I've striven(word?) for as I wander through. Having a family of my own, there comes a time when a member needs a time out, or to be sent to his room, or we find a quiet place to talk, i think that was attempted by the mods unsuccessfully. Whats so bad about a week off? When my kids mis behave they lose privileges, it works. When someone is actually traumatized , as you suggested, that can be the worse time to stay in the trauma and question the motives of others as FB was doing. I have no bad feelings toward FB, I find most of his work here incredibly interesting considering his background as he has written. And I dont think any less of him for having been banned for a week.
We are off topic but if you want to start a new thread in re: this issue I will be happy to contribute.

[0_0]

“I can’t think of any comparison in contemporary American society where we have seen anything like this,” said Tom Nolan, a retired 27-year veteran of the Boston Police Department, former homeland security senior policy adviser and Boston University criminal justice professor. Nolan said he worries the operation could blur the line between police and military functions. “The question is: Is this now going to be the new norm?”

I for one think it's great those troops can finally patrol at home: it saves commuting time to afghanistan, less languageproblems and -unlike some- the bostonians seem truly sincere in their gratitude.

[Simulist]

Hi Canadian_watcher. I know we disagree on this, but any two thinking people are going to disagree sometimes.

I think you're right that there are (at least) two issues here, but I don't think they are separate issues in the minds of some who appear to be suggesting that the bombings were staged in order to suspend civil liberties a little further; one such suggestion was made at a news conference last week, if I recall correctly. My remarks were written with those voices in mind. But I agree with you that in general, and at least in my mind too, these are separate issues.

And I would be uncomfortable — in the extreme — with a show of police force as happened last week in Boston, were this a normal state of affairs in America. But it isn't; this was an extraordinary show of force against what is arguably the greatest act of terrorism on American soil since 9/11.

What continues to concern me are matters like the Patriot Act, indefinite detention, the Military Commissions Act, the continuation of Guantanamo, extraordinary renditions, drone strikes, warrantless wiretapping, and the abuse by police against citizens occurring throughout the United States with increasing regularity and as a matter of course. In view of all this, some people are understandably concerned with the overwhelming police response last week in Boston. I am not yet one of them — but if this kind of theater on American streets becomes a sort of slippery slope, I'm likely to become one of them pretty fast.

[Not particularly well-written on my part, because I have somewhere to be soon, and I've got to get going.]

[Hunter]

Alchemy, he could have been looking for Hashish, for all we know, no?

You're entitled to your opinion Burnt Hills. Some family we have here.

Absolutely, we just dont know, but if you saw the tweet he was responding to someone else, we cant see the others tweet, and Dzhokahr says "I have been looking for THOSE, there is a shortage of them on the black market if you want to make a quick buck, nuff said..."


So yea it could be anything, I was just pointing out that a black market connection could bring FBI informants to in to play but I am not saying that is the case for sure, just wild eyed speculation.


IAN--thanks for clearing that up and sorry you had to explain an otherwise seemingly great joke, I am unfortunately not familiar with Mr CK, I have seen him on HBO but never got the chance to watch him perform. Good stuff though about the dentist LOL.

[barracuda]

like last night when barracuda pulled severe shenanigans by invoking Jeff AND having a whole post of mine deleted AND then editing his own post further upthread to make it look like I'd dome something I hadn't done.

Yes, I reported your post. You violated board rules and pettily used my username to do so. However, the rest of your assertion is simply a lie.

[Project Willow]

More door-to-door search videos from Watertown:

I don't like it, not one bit, exigent circumstances or no.

Boston's Door-to-Door Searches Weren't Illegal, Even Though They Looked Bad
Jessica Rinaldi/Reuter

There were two components to last week's shelter-in-place request in Watertown, Massachusetts. The first was a request that people not to leave home. The second was a door-to-door search by heavily armed law enforcement officials. Those are two very different things, with different implications. But neither was illegal.

No one in Watertown had to stay at home. The shelter-in-place was optional, largely an effort to ensure public safety in the classic sense of such requests. Time explains the difference:

“The lockdown is really voluntary, to be honest with you,” says Scott Silliman, emeritus director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke Law School. “The governor said he wants to use sheltering in place. Sheltering in place is a practice normally used if you’re dealing with a pandemic, where you’re telling people, ‘You may have been exposed and we want you to stay exactly where you are so we can isolate everything and we’ll come to you.’”

The “shelter in place” request is legally different from a state of emergency, which Patrick declared earlier this year as winter storm Nemo descended on the Bay State.

The ACLU agreed. In a phone interview Monday, Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, told The Atlantic Wire that her organization was in contact with attorneys for the city, state, and the Department of Homeland Security on Friday. While the organization was concerned about how open-ended the request seemed to be, it was assured that the order was voluntary and that no one would be arrested if he or she left home in the midst of it. It would have been hard for the police to crack down anyway, given that various Dunkin Donuts locations were allowed to remain open.

But the image of a family sitting around a table, nervously riding out the order by playing board games, is very different than the one presented by the searches.

Under the Fourth Amendment, homeowners have the right to refuse a request for a search if the police don't have a warrant. But that rule has an exception. If there are exigent circumstances, like the threat of imminent danger, a warrant isn't necessarily needed, but the police must still have probable cause.

It seems unlikely that many residents of Watertown felt like exploring that particular legal nuance by refusing the police entry. Nor is it not clear if any did; a spokesman for the Watertown police department didn't answer a question to that effect. It is clear that doing so would have required a great deal of courage. The conservative blog Poor Richard's News transcribes a YouTube video that has since been removed.

The gentleman here (if you can call him that) notes that both times his house was searched the law enforcement officers “asked” permission to do so, but he didn’t feel like he had much of a choice as the police team had guns pointed at his face. On the one hand, he expresses relief that the terrorist was caught and that he’s still alive, but he seems to struggle with questions about whether the police action was appropriate.

The ACLU would like to hear from the person in that video. Rose said that the organization had received a number of concerned comments from people about the searches that took place, including some from residents of Watertown. None, however, from people whose homes had been searched. (The Watertown police spokesperson, Michael Lawn, wasn't able to say how many homes had been searched, saying only it was "a lot." When asked if that was because the FBI was leading on the effort, Lawn indicated that it was just because it was "hard to tell.")

Calling the searches "a fourth amendment question that wouldn't change whether or not the shelter-in-place" was in effect, Rose explained that the organization's hands were tied. "We're concerned about any precedent that this might set," Rose said. "and are interested in hearing from people whose rights may have been violated."

The day's searches were themselves not without precedent. Following the Atlanta Olympic bombing in 1998, authorities searched the woods of North Carolina. Earlier this year, cabins near Big Bear Lake, California, were searched in the hunt for Christopher Dorner. Neither of those incidents involved as many homes or as much media attention, nor did either occur in heavily populated residential communities. And, as with Friday's hunt, they were likely perfectly legal.

"Courts look at it differently when there's a threat of public safety than if the police just want to search," the ACLU's Rose pointed out. She noted a situation several years ago in which the Boston police wanted to conduct door-to-door searches seeking out illegal firearms. In that case, the ACLU spoke out against the proposal, and it was dropped.

The images from Watertown were scenes from a movie brought to life. Heavily armed and armored law enforcement officials knocking on doors with rifle-toting backup. But there's no reason to assume it was an infringement of civil liberties. "We're trying to get facts on the ground of what really happened," Rose said. Unless they do, what happened in Watertown was just an extreme example of law enforcement at work.

[brainpanhandler]

What do you think would have been an acceptable police response?

Overall, I think what appears to have happened in Boston was an acceptable police response; moreover, much of that response may have been exemplary.

I tend to agree. As far as I know innocent people were not spirited off in white vans and tortured. No one was brutalized, as far as I know. I don't understand what people expect the police should have done if not go door to door doing house searches. How else do they expect the police should have searched. Is it that they appear to have been less than polite in the videos?

While I acknowledge that there are real conspiracies, both small and large, the readiness with which some appear eager to believe the newest one is unsettling, and perhaps even a bit embarrassing. In the end, I don't know precisely what happened behind the Boston Marathon bombings, and neither does anyone else here. It may be that facts will emerge that change my picture entirely, but as things now stand — with a mixture of open questions added to a few facts, and blended together into a mix from which some people are drawing conspiratorial conclusions — I don't see any grand "government conspiracy" in this case, at this time.

Neither do I. But neither do I see any harm in speculating, rationally. Which I assume you don't either.

Although depending on the facts as the emerge there are some interesting potential implications to the story I posted on the previous page:

Providence police: 'very possible' that body found is Sunil Tripathi

Sunil Tripathi went missing on 16 March and was wrongly implicated by Reddit users in the Boston Marathon bombings

...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/ap ... l-tripathi

What continues to concern me are matters like the Patriot Act, indefinite detention, the Military Commissions Act, the continuation of Guantanamo, extraordinary renditions, drone strikes, warrantless wiretapping, and the abuse by police against citizens occurring throughout the United States with increasing regularity and as a matter of course.

I would echo this and further add that by overreacting to the police response in Boston it gives the defenders of the police state a talking point. They can point at the "irrational left" and say things like, "what did they want the police to do? Stand in the street and politely ask the perps to give themselves up?" When we protest reasonable police actions it undermines our credibility when we want to protest unreasonable police actions.

[barracuda]

The death + injury toll in Boston is now approaching three hundred.

[Hunter]

Hi Canadian_watcher. I know we disagree on this, but any two thinking people are going to disagree sometimes.

I think you're right that there are (at least) two issues here, but I don't think they are separate issues in the minds of some who appear to be suggesting that the bombings were staged in order to suspend civil liberties a little further; one such suggestion was made at a news conference last week, if I recall correctly. My remarks were written with those voices in mind. But I agree with you that in general, and at least in my mind too, these are separate issues.

And I would be uncomfortable — in the extreme — with a show of police force as happened last week in Boston, were this a normal state of affairs in America. But it isn't; this was an extraordinary show of force against what is arguably the greatest act of terrorism on American soil since 9/11.

What continues to concern me are matters like the Patriot Act, indefinite detention, the Military Commissions Act, the continuation of Guantanamo, extraordinary renditions, drone strikes, warrantless wiretapping, and the abuse by police against citizens occurring throughout the United States with increasing regularity and as a matter of course. In view of all this, some people are understandably concerned with the overwhelming police response last week in Boston. I am not yet one of them — but if this kind of theater on American streets becomes a sort of slippery slope, I'm likely to become one of them pretty fast.

[Not particularly well-written on my part, because I have somewhere to be soon, and I've got to get going.]

Good post and I most certainly agree with the last paragraph. That said, would anyone like to share their opinion on how exactly the govt benefits from the list of things you posted---- Patriot Act, indefinite detention, the Military Commissions Act, the continuation of Guantanamo, extraordinary renditions, drone strikes, warrantless wiretapping, and the abuse by police against citizens--- how exactly do these things benefit the US govt and those in political office, further how do these things benefit private industry (ignoring the obvious that it does benefit the Military Industrustrial/Security Complex if for no other reason than it is good for their business and bottom line) but in what other ways do these things actually benefit the President, the Congress, Governors, State Legislatures, the Police, the Military. Can we list specific ways that it does benefit the govt and/or private industry to have these things at their disposal, specfic ways it benefits and helps those who rule this country.


The obvious answer is more control over people but how specifically does more control over people help them, what does it do for them and keep in mind that these people do not serve in office forever, they have to become private citizens again at some point and thereby be subject to the same oppression that we are, to some extent, so who and what are they doing this for and how does it benefit this person, people, organization, group etc?


Then, if you you want we could then take a look at how the attacks benefit radical Islam, how does 9-11 help radical Islam, from what I see it makes it harder for their fellow Muslims to live in the US, it invites the us Military to invade their homeland and kill their children, the only benefit I can see is if they hate our freedom the attacks have certainly allowed the govt to take away some of that freedom which could be a win for radical Islam I suppose, it is also costs us a lot of money to deal with, some say our current economic problems, and even world wide economic problems are all, at least somewhat, the result of the costs of the war on terror since 9-11, in short it has bankrupted everyone.


I am just trying to get a feel for what others think about who and what really benefits from all of this because honestly I do not know. How did Bush Jr benefit from 9-11, now that he is a private citizen what good does the patriot act and all that other horrible shit, do for HIM, besides making him and his oil buddies rich perhaps? Is it really just all about money and greed or is there something more than we arent able to see, pinpoint and really grasp?


This is a very hurried post, I am at work and trying to do two things at once so forgive any typos, grammar etc.

[barracuda]

Is it really just all about money and greed...?

Yes, but control of money has a few perqs that ride along.

[Iamwhomiam]

Can we please use PMs to continue the interpersonal arguments?

You too, BH. I have nothing further to add regarding 4thB.

Consul, aye, there's the rub! Laws offer us no protection whatsoever, only the right to redress, if you live through the experience. Anyone could be scooped up, but better they have a some evidence of a past criminal record.

Alchemy, my first thought were that he was looking for handguns. He could have been referring to young children, for all we really know. Remember Belushi in the Blues Brothers... "How much for the little girl?" that evoked peals of nervous laughter. Not funny anymore. Never was, really.