Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

[pianoblues]

Why would the FBI delete the photographs of a witness?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... sRQyHmlLBA

[seemslikeadream]

Instead, the indictment suggests the Internet played a central role in the suspects’ radicalization

Grand jury returns 30-count indictment against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in Boston Marathon bombings

By Associated Press, Updated: Thursday, June 27, 1:51 PM

BOSTON — Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev downloaded bomb-making instructions from an al-Qaida magazine, gathered online material on Islamic jihad and martyrdom, and later scribbled anti-American messages inside the boat where he lay wounded, a federal indictment charged Thursday.

The 30-count indictment includes many of the same weapon-of-mass-destruction charges, punishable by the death penalty, that were brought against the 19-year-old Tsarnaev in April.


But prosecutors added charges covering the slaying of an MIT police officer and the carjacking of a motorist during the getaway attempt that left Tsarnaev’s older brother, Tamerlan, dead.

Three people were killed and more than 260 wounded by the two pressure-cooker bombs that went off near the finish line of the marathon on April 15.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured four days later, hiding in a boat parked in a backyard in Watertown, Mass.

According to the indictment, he scrawled messages on the inside of the vessel that said, among other things, “The U.S. Government is killing our innocent civilians,” ‘’I can’t stand to see such evil go unpunished,” and “We Muslims are one body you hurt one you hurt us all.”

The Tsarnaev brothers had roots in the turbulent Russian regions of Dagestan and Chechnya, which have become recruiting grounds for Islamic extremists. They had been living in the U.S. about a decade.

But the indictment made no mention of any larger conspiracy beyond the brothers, and no mention of any direct overseas contacts with extremists. Instead, the indictment suggests the Internet played a central role in the suspects’ radicalization.

The papers detail how, after using the Internet to study jihad propaganda and bomb-making instructions, the brothers placed knapsacks containing shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs near the finish line of the 26.2-mile race.

The court papers also confirm that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev inadvertently contributed to his brother’s death by running him over during a shootout with police.

The charges also cover the slaying of Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier, who authorities say was shot in his cruiser by the Tsarnaevs during their getaway attempt. The brothers tried to take his gun, prosecutors said.

___

Tom Hays reported from New York.

[pianoblues]

http://my.firedoglake.com/efbeall/2013/06/28/dzhokhar-tsarnaev-indicted-jihad-in-reverse/
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Indicted: Jihad In Reverse
By: E. F. Beall Friday June 28, 2013 4:45 pm

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On Thursday a Federal Grand Jury in the District of Massachusetts charged Dzhokhar Tsarnaev with, as the saying goes, everything but the kitchen sink. The 30-count indictment runs to 74 pages, encompassing 154 numbered paragraphs in the first 64 of them, plus auxiliary matters in the remainder.

After some preliminaries describing general matters ranging from the Boston marathon as an event to the confession Dzhokhar Tsarnaev allegedly left on the side of the boat where he was captured (paragraphs 1-10, pp. 1-4), the first count is stated as “Conspiracy to Use a Weapon of Mass Destruction Resulting in Death” (pg. 5), as detailed in paragraphs 11 through 40 (pp. 5-12).

Notwithstanding the assertion of conspiracy (meaning with his brother Tamerlan) to use “a” weapon of mass destruction, the paragraphs in question cite several: the two bombs that exploded at the marathon on April 15, resulting in three deaths; four IEDs used against officers during the shoot-out of April 18, resulting in no deaths; and a Ruger 9 mm semiautomatic pistol (considered to have been fired by both brothers), used against those officers and against MIT Officer Sean Collier earlier in the evening, resulting in his death, and brandished against a car-jacking victim (here called D.M) at an intermediate time.

I am not a lawyer, but let me interject here that it seems strange to call a pistol a “weapon of mass destruction.” And it seems a stretch to make an ongoing conspiracy out of the events both of April 15 and of April 19. Did they know on the first date that they were going to get into a confrontation on the second?

In addition, besides such points as getting bomb-making instructions from an on-line magazine published by al-Qaeda, the elements of the conspiracy are said to include (paragraph 17) downloading an article about jihad from “an extremist web forum,” which article “glorifies martyrdom in the service of violent jihad.” Apart from the rhetorical values implicit in this characterization, is reading about jihad equivalent to engaging in it? Or to put it differently, is the right to read radical literature only available to non-Muslims?

And here is my favorite paragraph in the entire document. Followers of this case will remember that one officer was injured by friendly fire during the shoot-out. Well, here he is (paragraph 39)

In the course of making his escape in the Mercedes, DZHOKHAR A. TSARNAEV also caused Richard Donohue, a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority officer, to sustain serious bodily injury.

In short, if someone is shooting at you and hits someone else by mistake, it’s your fault.

Counts 2 through 15 treat the April 15 explosions of the two bombs (Dzhokhar is considered responsible for both) as committing 14 different crimes, whose differences (such as between “firearm” and “weapon of mass destruction”) you can read yourself between pages 13 through 39. Then counts 16, 17, and 18 are different crimes associated with allegedly killing Collier. Then 19 through 22 concern the alleged car-jacking, and 23 through 30 with the confrontation with police (some of which also blame the April 19 area-wide lockdown on the brothers).

It is perhaps curious that there is no count of kidnapping, a federal crime, although the concept is mentioned in connection with the alleged car-jacking.

It can be said that the rhetoric of the document spares nothing in making it clear that the alleged crimes were heinous. For example, the phrase “a dense crowd of Marathon spectators that included men, women, and children” is used twice to describe the location of the bombs.

Now I am inclined to view this document, not as a serious statement of what the government intends to prove at trial, but as a combination of a negotiating position and of a rhetorical device designed to silence dissident discussions of this case.

Consider the alleged murder of the MIT Officer. To prove it the government would certainly have to demonstrate forensically that the bullet or bullets that killed him came from the gun that leaks have told us was recovered from the scene of the shoot-out with city police, and demonstrate from chain of custody that the weapon indeed had been in the possession of the brothers. I say that because Russ Baker’s article a month ago discredited everything else that has been claimed about the alleged incident. (For instance, why would the brothers go to the MIT campus, of all places, to steal a weapon?) My guess is that the government would just as soon not have to prove this one.

There are also problems with the government’s case on the bombing incident itself, as I have previously discussed (summary here). And the credibility of the Boston FBI office, which has had the responsibility for the investigation, has not been helped by its killing of a Chechen immigrant in Florida in late May in suspicious circumstances.

No, I think the indictment is a rhetorical onslaught designed to silence the “conspiracy theorists,” undercut the New England resentment of the federal government taking over a case so that it can secure a death penalty where state law does not sanction it, and stir up more Islamophobia in the Boston area, all to improve the government’s position in negotiations with Tsarnaev’s defense team.

[compared2what?]

Perhaps this explains why "Danny" told the Tsarnaevs, "“Chinese are very friendly to Muslims!"

The Uighur thing immediately popped to mind when I read about that comment. The people you posted above definitely look like a mix between Eastern European and Chinese.
Now, again noone here gives a toss about race. It's just, the convenient store guy was convinced "Danny" was white(though he would be correct in calling the Tsarnevs Caucasian in the most literal sense)

I would have said in every sense. They're white.

and I cant see how someone could mistake a full blooded Chinese man as white(Im half Korean and half White/Euro mut and noones ever mistakenly me as white)

However, the accent to me sounded Chinese in the interview, despite the voice modulation being used.

What kind of Asian-looking dude could maybe be mistaken at first as white?
Hmmm. Perhaps...an Asian-looking dude from central Asia, like the roommates?

I think (not totally sure) Asian-looking dudes from Kazakhstan might very well actually be Uyghurs.

The thing is....No one who was would say that the Chinese are very friendly to Muslims. And I'd half-quasi-kinda figure that most people who'd spent as many of their formative years in Krygyzstan as the Tsarnaevs wouldn't be unaware that Central Asia is home to many Asian-looking dudes who might be Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, or some other thing. Because Krygyzstan is Central Asia.

Dagestan and Chechnya are on the other side of the Caspian. But I'm pretty sure they have Asian-looking dudes in those parts, too. Kalmyks, or whatever.

There also might or might not be some issues with how/why a Uyghur from China was driving around Boston in a Mercedes, being all assimilated and culturally content. We used to be their imaginary pals. But we stabbed 'em in the back. And while I'm not sure where that's at now....I don't know. I'd guess it would have left some scars:

Selling Out the Uyghurs
Why 8,000,000 People You've Never Heard Of Hate Us

(As of 2004)


by Ted Rall


A four-day ride on the westbound express train out of Beijing takes you to China's Wild West. The massive Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, hundreds of miles beyond an eroded mound that was once the Great Wall, lies southwest of Mongolia, east of Afghanistan and north of the Tibetan plateau. Full of dusty deserts, soaring mountains and eight million Muslims, Xinjiang is--like so many geopolitically sensitive places--the middle of nowhere. (Early 20th century British explorer Aurel Stein noted the region's "desolate wilderness, bearing everywhere the impress of death.") Today Chinese-occupied Central Asia is a case study in how American foreign policy turns pro-American Muslims into deadly enemies.

"From the premodern era until the mid-18th century, Xinjiang was either ruled from afar by Central Asian empires or not ruled at all," Joshua Kurlantzick writes in Foreign Affairs. Mao's Communist Party worked to consolidate power during the 1950s by centralizing Chinese culture and politics in Beijing. That meant suppressing cultures and religions out of step with the ruling majority Han Chinese, such as the Tibetans and Mongols. The jackboot came down hardest on Xinjiang, where in 1955 more than 90 percent of the population were Turkic Muslims--mostly Uyghurs along with smaller portions of such Central Asian tribes as Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Tajiks and Tatars. The Uyghurs, whose rich pre-Muslim Buddhist culture gave their language (which can be written in Arabic and Roman script) to Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire, were a threat to national cohesion. After all, they had revolted against pre-communist China 42 times in 200 years.

"Thousands of mosques were shuttered, imams were jailed, Uyghurs who wore headscarves or other Muslim clothing were arrested, and during the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party purposely defiled mosques with pigs," wrote Kurlantzick. "Many Muslim leaders were simply shot. The Uyghur language was purged from school curricula, and thousands of Uyghur writers were arrested for 'advocating separatism'--which often meant nothing more than writing in Uyghur."

The demographic manipulation has been even more devastating. The Chinese imposed forced birth control on the Uyghurs while shipping 300,000 Han settlers west every year. By 1997, the Uyghurs had become a minority in their own homeland. But Xinjiang was far from pacified when I visited the provincial capital of Urumqi that summer.

You could feel the tension in the hot stinking air of the most landlocked city on earth. Uyghur separatists had set off bombs all across China, including three buses blown up in Urumqi a few months earlier. The Chinese dispatched hundreds of suspected Uyghur dissidents to reeducation camps. Scores were put on trial and summarily shot. Good jobs in government and private business were reserved for Han Chinese only, adding sky-high unemployment to cultural apartheid. Han policemen manning roadblocks surrounding the old Muslim quarter tried to discourage me from entering the quarantined zone. "There's nothing of interest there," a cop told me. I insisted. When I arrived at the square in front of a dilapidated mosque, Uyghur men wearing white skullcaps glared menacingly at Han colonists driving past in shiny new Volvos. Fortunately, they brightened up when they learned that I was American.

"We love the United States!" one man told me. "They will come help us kick out China." The largest Uyghur independence group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), seeks the recreation of the free Republic of East Turkestan declared by earlier Uyghur rebels.

"I listen to Radio Free Asia," knowingly added an older guy. Radio Free Asia aired broadcasts in the Uyghur language. "America is coming to give us our freedom, we know that, but when exactly?"

How could I tell these people that most Americans had never heard of Uyghurs, East Turkestan, or Xinjiang? That the cavalry wasn't coming? Even being on the backburner (like the Kurds) would be an improvement given their status as non-entities.

By the time of my 1999 trip to the Silk Road city of Kashgar in southern Xinjiang, what Western media call "a low level insurgency" had heated up. The Chinese had torn down all but a few blocks of the ancient old town to put up prefab apartment buildings. But the Uyghurs weren't taking it lying down. ETIM separatists, some of whom had trained at jihadi camps in Afghanistan, were blowing up a Chinese government office every few days. "Goodbye, Interior Ministry!" gloated my server at a sidewalk noodle joint after the sound of an explosion ricocheted down the boulevard. "We are fighting hard against China to show you Americans we are serious. The U.S. stands for freedom."

Then came 9/11. The Bush Administration, wanting to avert a Chinese veto of its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in the U.N. security council, drafted China into the "war on terrorism" by granting it a free pass to beat up its Tibetans and Uyghurs. Citing the fact that ETIM members had received arms and training from the Taliban (but only to fight China), China convinced the U.S. State Department to declare the group a "terrorist organization" affiliated with Al Qaeda. In "Xinjiang: China's Muslim Borderland," Graham Fuller and Jonathan Lippman write that this "U.S. declaration [was] catastrophic" for the Uyghurs. The United States had given Beijing "carte blanche to designate all Uyghur nationalist...movements as 'terrorist.'"

Twenty-two Uyghurs have since joined the ranks of the "terrorists" incarcerated at Guantánanamo concentration camp. Two Uyghur men, 29 and 31, faced a U.S. military tribunal on November 19, charged only with membership in ETIM and attending a Taliban training camp for anti-Chinese fighters. Military insiders say most of the Uyghurs will eventually be released, but not to China--our ally in the "war on terrorism"--because they would probably be tortured and/or executed.

Martial law remains in force in Xinjiang. The post-9/11 crackdown began with hundreds of arrests and the executions of nine "religious extremists and terrorists." One of the dead, convicted of "contributing to disturbance by nationalist splittism forces," had been overheard joking that he hoped America would come to Xinjiang to free the Uyghurs from Chinese rule.

Very sad and ugly story.

[compared2what?]

Also....Wait. I'm confused.

If he's a possible Uyghur, why wouldn't he just go for the solidarity directly? They're Muslims.

I'm missing something.

[elfismiles]

‘Free Jahar’ Chant As Boston Bombing Suspect Heads To Court
July 10, 2013 1:23 PM
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/07/10/f ... -to-court/

[MacCruiskeen]

After three months of expensive medical attention:

In court today Dzhokhar's face was swollen on one side and his left hand was bandaged.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/accused-b ... d3N2uXNNjs

BOSTON -- His arm in a cast, Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev pleaded not guilty to terrorism charges Wednesday in his first courtroom appearance since his capture at the end of a chaotic week in April.

Tsarnaev, 19, smiled crookedly – he appeared to have a jaw injury – at his sisters in court as he arrived.

...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/1 ... 75176.html

Rough justice, or something. Maybe he fell out of bed. Anyway: true to form, Liberal America (as represented in the HuffPo comments box) just knows he is guilty, is enraged by his uppitiness in daring to deny it, and looks forward to seeing him either gassed or electrocuted very soon, or else raped every day for the next half-century or so:

AbeMartin
2286 Fans
7 minutes ago ( 4:20 PM)
Of course he plead not guilty. His mummy, the fugitive shoplifter, describes him and his murdering brother as "Angels." But even he must be aware that every single orifice in his nineteen year old body is going to be violated, daily, everyday that he manages to survive in a Super-Max prison.
I hope he suffers a long, long, long painful life.


Ladyliberal
mother &wife&worker
904 Fans
8 minutes ago ( 4:29 PM)
Why do we have to give American justice, a fair trial to this person. Poor baby needs to be sent to Gitmo.

IGotsMine
23 Fans
19 minutes ago ( 4:18 PM)
Death penalty. Invite his concerned family to front row seats. They can all have a nice cry right before the State justly takes his life.

MisterBongo
199 Fans
31 minutes ago ( 4:10 PM)
He's gonna make nice boyfriend for somebody in federal prison.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/1 ... 75176.html

Et cetera. Voices of reason are few and timid. One HUFFPO SUPER USER does state a likely truth, though:

HUFFPOST SUPER USER
charleshbuchannan

857 Fans
40 minutes ago ( 4:04 PM)
If he wants to go the the gas chamber, he is on the right track.

His only chance to live to an old age is to plea and do it soon.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/1 ... 75176.html

I wonder how much longer this boy will manage to resist the obscenity that is plea-bargaining. ("Plead guilty or we'll kill you.") Always presuming, rashly, that the pastel drawing is in fact who we're told it is.

[Bandit Manatee]

Does anyone else find it slightly irritating that on one hand we get wall to wall coverage of the George Zimmerman and Casey Anthony trials, and footage from inside the courtroom broadcast 24/7 on major news channels. However, in this case we have to rely on courtroom sketches. Is this because it is a federal case?

[Hunter]

Does anyone else find it slightly irritating that on one hand we get wall to wall coverage of the George Zimmerman and Casey Anthony trials, and footage from inside the courtroom broadcast 24/7 on major news channels. However, in this case we have to rely on courtroom sketches. Is this because it is a federal case?

Yes I dont think the feds allow cameras in federal trials, would be interesting to see though. The main reason is because there is a lot of classified stuff being discussed.

[conniption]

After three months of expensive medical attention:

In court today Dzhokhar's face was swollen on one side and his left hand was bandaged.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/accused-b ... d3N2uXNNjs

BOSTON -- His arm in a cast, Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev pleaded not guilty to terrorism charges Wednesday in his first courtroom appearance since his capture at the end of a chaotic week in April.

Tsarnaev, 19, smiled crookedly – he appeared to have a jaw injury – at his sisters in court as he arrived.

...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/1 ... 75176.html

Rough justice, or something. Maybe he fell out of bed. Anyway: true to form, Liberal America (as represented in the HuffPo comments box) just knows he is guilty, is enraged by his uppitiness in daring to deny it, and looks forward to seeing him either gassed or electrocuted very soon, or else raped every day for the next half-century or so:

AbeMartin
2286 Fans
7 minutes ago ( 4:20 PM)
Of course he plead not guilty. His mummy, the fugitive shoplifter, describes him and his murdering brother as "Angels." But even he must be aware that every single orifice in his nineteen year old body is going to be violated, daily, everyday that he manages to survive in a Super-Max prison.
I hope he suffers a long, long, long painful life.


Ladyliberal
mother &wife&worker
904 Fans
8 minutes ago ( 4:29 PM)
Why do we have to give American justice, a fair trial to this person. Poor baby needs to be sent to Gitmo.

IGotsMine
23 Fans
19 minutes ago ( 4:18 PM)
Death penalty. Invite his concerned family to front row seats. They can all have a nice cry right before the State justly takes his life.

MisterBongo
199 Fans
31 minutes ago ( 4:10 PM)
He's gonna make nice boyfriend for somebody in federal prison.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/1 ... 75176.html

Et cetera. Voices of reason are few and timid. One HUFFPO SUPER USER does state a likely truth, though:

HUFFPOST SUPER USER
charleshbuchannan

857 Fans
40 minutes ago ( 4:04 PM)
If he wants to go the the gas chamber, he is on the right track.

His only chance to live to an old age is to plea and do it soon.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/1 ... 75176.html

I wonder how much longer this boy will manage to resist the obscenity that is plea-bargaining. ("Plead guilty or we'll kill you.") Always presuming, rashly, that the pastel drawing is in fact who we're told it is.

*

Yeaaaah...well.. (sigh), Thanks for blowin' my high.

Those comments are probably being generated and dispersed by bots. Mean, stupid, contemptible bots. At least I'd like to think they are. I mean real people wouldn't...nvm.

*

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev pleads not guilty

2:31 min
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUSHcW5P2co

[barracuda]

I'm reading in various poorly sourced places on the net that Tsarnaev's medical records were released to his mother and showed that he was wounded 16 times before his capture. Left hand and left cheek bone shattered, deaf in his left ear from bullet that went through his throat and bullet wounds in both legs. I'm not sure why this would result in a change in his accent, though.



Also: FBI Is a No-Show at Boston Bombing Hearings

[8bitagent]

http://www.alrasub.com/fbi-blocks-relea ... pects-pal/

[elfismiles]

Boston Marathon Bombings Suspect Featured On Rolling Stone Cover
July 16, 2013 11:59 PM
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/07/16/b ... ing-stone/

[seemslikeadream]

good job Rachel Maddow...asking questions ....watch it here...2 segments

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26315908/#52494989


Susan Zalkind, freelance journalist and close friend of Waltham murder victim Erik Weissman, talks with Rachel Maddow about the unresolved questions, secretive investigations and dubious excuses from federal authorities susrrounding trhe shooting death of a key suspect in an unsolved triple murder in Waltham, Massachusetts believed to have a connection to Boston Marthon bombong suspect TamerianTsarnaev

[MacCruiskeen]

So much for not prejudging the accused. So much for a fair fucking trial:



Encouragingly, the BBC reports that Americans, too, are at last voicing their outrage at this sick farce of a show-trial. Oh, wait a minute...

17 July 2013 Last updated at 12:02 GMT

Rolling Stone's Boston bomb suspect cover sparks outrage

More than 5,000 people have left angry comments on Rolling Stone's Facebook page

Related Stories

Boston bomb accused denies charges
Profile: The Tsarnaev brothers

A Rolling Stone magazine cover featuring Boston bomb suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has caused outrage online.

Thousands of people posted on social media networks calling it "tasteless" and "disgusting".

Tsarnaev, 19, who pleaded not guilty to all charges in connection to the bombings in April, is profiled in the forthcoming issue.

The image, which Tsarnaev posted online himself, has also featured on the front page of the New York Times.

"What a disgrace, trying to make [Tsarnaev] look like a rock star. Horrible," Steve Simon posted on Rolling Stone's Facebook page, where more than 5,400 people have commented in the 12 hours since the cover was revealed online.

On Twitter people said the picture of Tsarnaev looked similar to an old cover featuring singer Jim Morrison of The Doors.

Singer Pink retweeted a message by radio presenter Ted Stryker who wrote: "Horrible, classless, stupid choice Rolling Stone. It's not smart or edgy. Very disappointed."

Boston punk band Dropkick Murphys, who recently donated $300,000 (£197,000) to victims of the bombings, also expressed their anger.

"Rolling Stone you should be ashamed," the band tweeted. "How about one of the courageous victims on your cover instead of this loser scum bag!"

...

[etcetera, ad nauseam]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23340329

Related: Some ancient history:

Rock music has also embodied and served as the vehicle for cultural and social movements, leading to major sub-cultures including mods and rockers in the UK and the hippie counterculture that spread out from San Francisco in the US in the 1960s. Similarly, 1970s punk culture spawned the visually distinctive goth and emo subcultures. Inheriting the folk tradition of the protest song, rock music has been associated with political activism as well as changes in social attitudes to race, sex and drug use, and is often seen as an expression of youth revolt against adult consumerism and conformity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_music

If rock 'n' roll will never die, how come it smells so funny?