Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

[Jerky]

I really needed to read those two last postings on this board here today. I was beginning to think sanity was lost.

[FourthBase]

As far as better questions, here's a couple I posed in an email a few days ago to Russ Baker, who said they were good questions:

Why hasn't Peter Furth's name ever appeared in print anywhere in connection to the carjacking story of Dun/Manny/Danny Meng given that he was Meng's advisor and was also quoted in a Moskowitz article circa 2011?

Also, is there any way to find out what Meng's family does in China? Perhaps they're prominent and that's the reason why he maintained anonymity for so long?

As far as I can tell, this post will be the first place anywhere online that mentions the name Peter Furth in the context of the bombings/carjacking. All I did was google "Dun Meng" + advisor. Second result. Then I googled "Peter Furth" + Moskowitz. First result. Voila, there's the mysterious advisor who hooked "Danny" up with Fox, and the mysterious Northeastern contact who got Moskowitz the scoop. He doesn't seem all that special, just a dry urban planning academic, except maybe for his position on the staff of the Dukakis Center. Looking forward to see if Baker turns up anything of significance or not.

[Jerky]

Sounder - and anybody else who considers him or herself a Boston Bombing "Truther" - I'm still waiting on an answer.

Here, let me repeat the question:

So, Sounder, if I understand you correctly, it is your contention that - with untold numbers of cameras, both professional and amateur, rolling and recording (this being the finish line of the famed Boston Marathon we're talking about), that dozens of co-conspirators waited in situ for the grand distraction of two loud and smoky but otherwise ineffectual bombs to go off, and then, taking advantage of the resultant haze and confusion, performed the greatest single coordinated wardrobe quick-change act in the history of all mankind, doffing their previously pristine duds and replacing them with unconvincingly torn ones? Is that what you're trying to tell me you think happened?

MT

[MacCruiskeen]

I really needed to read those two last postings on this board here today. I was beginning to think sanity was lost.

Why? The most charitable thing to call either of those postings is idiotic. Idiotically point-missing. Idiotically question-begging. Completely immune to argument or evidence. Completely indifferent to argument or evidence, and proud of it too. QED. (See the posts. I am not being even remotely unkind or unjust. In fact they show not just indifference but a positively rancorous animosity towards evidence and argument.)

The less charitable and more accurate term for both of those postings is "fascist", of course. Fascist and proud of it. The brutality and the sanctimoniousness both come as part of the package, along with the little and big lies.

FourthBase and IanEye have had their designated villain handed to them by The Authorities and they ain't gonna let any bleedin' heart pinko liberal faggot spoil their fun by casting any doubt on the boy's guilt. Don't pester them with any of that evidence or due process or burden of proof crap. 'Cause -- get this, commies -- only a Bay Stater can understand. Bay Staters alone can identify a guilty defendant by a process of mystical intuition that Outsiders simply cannot begin to comprehend. That's how the law works, these days.

Case closed.


Bay State Strong. Boston Big and Tough.

[MacCruiskeen]

Russ Baker and the WhoWhatWhy team are just about the only journalists in the empire making a sustained effort to report honestly and seriously on this scandalous farce fascist show-trial:

Tsarnaev Case Judge: FBI Interview Reports Are Unreliable—And Cast in Stone

May 20, 2015 by James Henry

Categories: Boston Bombing Investigation

http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/05/20/tsarna ... -in-stone/


FBI interview reports were used in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s trial instead of witness testimony. Tsarnaev has been sentenced to death. Photo credit: FBI.GOV

The Federal Bureau of Intimidation?

The presiding judge in the case against convicted marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev warned jurors last week against automatically assuming the reliability of FBI interview reports.

US District Court Judge George O’Toole’s admonition inadvertently bolstered long-standing criticisms of FBI interview practices—that the FBI creates its own “truth” by refusing to electronically record interviews, and then forcing witnesses to go along with it using threats of jail time under the federal “making false statements” statute.

His warning came after he took the unusual step of allowing Tsarnaev’s defense team to read aloud FBI witness interviews, known as “302 reports,” from two of older brother Tamerlan’s friends. The defense team, as part of their “mitigating factors” strategy, read selected excerpts of the reports in order to show that Tamerlan was “radicalized” long before Dzhokhar was. Much of the partially redacted 302 reports were not read in court.

This unusual “testimony” was allowed because the two witnesses refused to testify in person. One invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, while the other witness just plain went missing. And in the penalty phase of a death penalty trial, the rules of evidence are more relaxed than in the guilty-or-not-guilty phase.

O’Toole advised jurors that FBI 302 reports are not “verbatim transcriptions of the conversation, but summaries, and they may be made from the agents’ notes and then put together in a report either that day or perhaps the next day.”


Judge George O’Toole admitted FBI interview reports in lieu of witness testimony, though the reports are third-person summaries of the events that led to Tsarnaev’s death sentence. Photo credit: US District Court

In fact, the resulting report is a summary of an FBI agent’s interpretation of what was said during an interview—not what was actually said. Even assuming complete good faith on the part of the interviewing FBI agents, anyone familiar with the parlor game of “telephone” could guess what might go wrong here—particularly if the summary report were written “the next day.”

What O’Toole said next pointed to a kind of Catch-22 in FBI procedures that seems designed to intimidate interviewees into supporting the Bureau’s version of what happened.

The judge told jurors that, “It is a federal crime to impede a federal law enforcement investigation by giving false information, but a witness interviewed under these circumstances is not placed under oath, as a witness in the courtroom would be.”

In other words, although 302 reports are actually the interviewer’s summary of what happened during an interview, the FBI nevertheless has the power to prosecute an interviewee for “making false statements” if he or she contests what an agent has written down.

Just how imperfect can those 302 summaries be? That’s hard to say, because the FBI refuses to electronically record interviews under most circumstances. Instead, agents work in pairs—one does the questioning while the other takes written notes.

In an age of the ubiquitous smartphone and with the ever-expanding proliferation of recording technology, this may strike observers as odd. Wouldn’t FBI agents want an indisputably accurate record of what was said?

Actually, they don’t. And the stated logic undergirding the non-recording policy is particularly troubling to critics.

An internal FBI memo made public by The New York Times spells out the policy’s reasoning. Here’s an excerpt:

“[A]s all experienced investigators and prosecutors know, perfectly lawful and acceptable interviewing techniques do not always come across in recorded fashion to lay persons as proper means of obtaining information from defendants. Initial resistance may be interpreted as involuntariness and misleading a defendant as to the quality of the evidence against him may appear to be unfair deceit.”

In other words, if the actual interview were presented to juries, agents’ interrogation techniques may come across as unfair or coercive to lay people, according to civil liberties advocate and longtime critic of the FBI policy, attorney Harvey Silverglate. He writes:

“[W]hat the agency leaves unsaid is that human experience demonstrates that coercive and misleading tactics have a tendency in some situations to produce false rather than true testimony. Therefore, rather than risk such juror skepticism in response to a verbatim recording, the FBI feels that a jury will more likely be led to the FBI’s version of the truth by reading an FBI agent’s form 302 than by listening to the actual interview.”

Even more insidiously, as O’Toole noted in his warning, witnesses are not “placed under oath, as a witness in the courtroom would be.” Nor are they informed that what the interviewers later write down can become a de facto transcript of the witness’s own statement.

This is where the “federal false statements law” comes into play. According to Silverglate, the federal statute known as Section 1001 “provides that it is a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, to make a material misstatement to any member of the federal government.”

He says this creates “tremendous pressure” on a witness to testify “consistently with what the 302 report claims he told the agents when interviewed.” It works like this:

“When the feds suspect that a witness might tell a tale at the grand jury or at trial that is inconsistent with the prosecution’s favored factual scenario, the prosecutors will usually show him or his lawyer the 302 report. It becomes clear to the witness that he either must stick to the 302 version, or else risk a false statement or perjury charge when he testifies differently under oath.”

And as an example of the sort of “misleading” trickery that can be obscured by the FBI’s non-recording policy, interviewing agents are under no obligation to warn their interviewee, as arresting officers must in accord with the familiar “Miranda” rule: “anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

Could that be why the two witnesses interviewed in the 302 reports refused to show up at Tsarnaev’s trial?

To read more about the FBI’s apparent “war on witnesses” in the Boston Marathon bombing investigation, read here and here.

http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/05/20/tsarna ... -in-stone/

[FourthBase]

I really needed to read those two last postings on this board here today. I was beginning to think sanity was lost.

Why? The most charitable thing to call either of those postings is idiotic. Idiotically point-missing. Idiotically question-begging. Completely immune to argument or evidence. Completely indifferent to argument or evidence, and proud of it too. QED. (See the posts. I am not being even remotely unkind or unjust. In fact they show not just indifference but a positively rancorous animosity towards evidence and argument.)

The less charitable and more accurate term for both of those postings is "fascist", of course. Fascist and proud of it. The brutality and the sanctimoniousness both come as part of the package, along with the little and big lies.

FourthBase and IanEye have had their designated villain handed to them by The Authorities and they ain't gonna let any bleedin' heart pinko liberal faggot spoil their fun by casting any doubt on the boy's guilt. Don't pester them with any of that evidence or due process or burden of proof crap. 'Cause -- get this, commies -- only a Bay Stater can understand. Bay Staters alone can identify a guilty defendant by a process of mystical intuition that Outsiders simply cannot begin to comprehend. That's how the law works, these days.

Case closed.


Bay State Strong. Boston Big and Tough.

Insane bullshit like this would have angered me in the past. Seeing "antifascists" like yourself projecting your own fascist tendencies only makes me sigh and chuckle now.

[Sounder]

Sounder - and anybody else who considers him or herself a Boston Bombing "Truther" - I'm still waiting on an answer.

Here, let me repeat the question:
Jerky » 23 May 2015 13:40 wrote:So, Sounder, if I understand you correctly, it is your contention that - with untold numbers of cameras, both professional and amateur, rolling and recording (this being the finish line of the famed Boston Marathon we're talking about), that dozens of co-conspirators waited in situ for the grand distraction of two loud and smoky but otherwise ineffectual bombs to go off, and then, taking advantage of the resultant haze and confusion, performed the greatest single coordinated wardrobe quick-change act in the history of all mankind, doffing their previously pristine duds and replacing them with unconvincingly torn ones? Is that what you're trying to tell me you think happened?

No, that’s not how I see it.

There seems to have been a bomb placed on the street side of the barricades, in a paper bag. If so, then the patsies backpack is not likely as the source for the explosion.

Anyway, it’s still my opinion that this is a psyop, and that there is little to be gained by being ‘invested’ in whatever one may ‘think’ happened.

[MacCruiskeen]

Insane bullshit like this would have angered me in the past. Seeing "antifascists" like yourself projecting your own fascist tendencies only makes me sigh and chuckle now.

If you object to being called a fascist, then stop saying fascist things and stop defending fascist show-trials. ("Fascist" is not just some random insult like "poopy-pants", you know, although you appear to believe that it is.) You're the one justifying a brutal and ridiculous kangaroo court, not I. Of course you would claim it's "insane" (sic) for anyone to notice that fact. Your views of what constitutes sanity are clearly somewhat idiosyncratic (though I'm sure you have company in Boston). Since you returned to this thread you have offered precisely nothing in the way of way of argument or evidence. Indeed, you contradict yourself at every turn:

I wonder what happened to 4B. He sure was all over this "Boston Strong" thing back then (when the whole city was on lockdown) and then he went away. This thread is way too long to read again. I just remember being the "first one" skeptical of anything about this morass. I remain so and agree it is a patsy ridden psy-op in order to see if they could get a big city to capitulate. But what do I know really? Just what I do and closing down an entire city for this is basically ridiculous and needs to be somehow explored honestly by someone "high up", just like all the assassinations of note that we talk about here, oh and 9/11.

Hi. Today I was just telling someone what happened to me, actually.

I left the reservation soon after the Boston Marathon bombings. Didn't turn me into a right-winger so much as expanded my sight to encompass the possibility of truths taboo to both the left and the right, a stereoscopic cynicism. Which leaves me as an orphan, lol.

I still doubt the official story, of course. All the same alternative explanations are still at play, in my opinion, except for the despicable hoaxer variety. I just have more ideas about what the unofficial story might involve than anyone here would care to entertain. It would bore me (or enrage me) to defend Boston again, as nothing has changed over the last two years about my opinion on the police response. I've grown tired of groupthink, no matter how rare or well-researched or eloquent the form it takes.

In case this hasn't been posted yet...

http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/03/03/fbis-s ... snt-exist/

I don't think Tsarnaev is innocent, I think he and his brother fully intended to murder a bunch of people. (While I'm not happy he got the death penalty, I don't particularly give a shit, either.) But there must be something in the video quite inconvenient to the government for that smoking gun to never surface.

Of course you don't condescend to inform us what those "truths taboo to both the left and the right" (sic) might be. Presumably they're just too scary, just too avant-garde, for anyone but a Strong Bostonian.

Test us.

Didn't turn me into a right-winger so much as expanded my sight

Yeah, right. You're transparent. Your sight has expanded to include truths invisible to mere humans and incommunicable by merely human means.

It would bore me (or enrage me) to defend Boston again

What is this sentence intended to mean, if anything? I think we should be told.

I've grown tired of groupthink

Are you a surrealist?

I've grown tired of groupthink

Fixed. Clearly you are tired of think. It makes your brain hurt. You acknowledge that the government is hiding something important, but still you're perfectly content with a show trial. You think your sacred Authorities might well be lying, but still you insist, "the boy dunnit" (and that's good enough for you). You link to WhoWhatWhy and ignore everything they document. You claim to be a daring avantgarde out-of-the-box Beyond-Left-And-Right thinker, but still your main priority is to see your (silent and invisible) designated victim either fry or rot. You claim, condescendingly, like some jaded intellectual dandy, to be "tired of groupthink", yet you regurgitate the most bovine antithought fed to you by the telly. You are clearly a bit confused.

If you have nothing better or more honest or more rational to offer, stay out of the thread. It is a waste of time talking to you.

[FourthBase]

Insane bullshit like this would have angered me in the past. Seeing "antifascists" like yourself projecting your own fascist tendencies only makes me sigh and chuckle now.

If you object to being called a fascist, then stop saying fascist things and stop defending fascist show-trials. ("Fascist" is not just some random insult like "poopy-pants", you know, although you appear to believe that it is.) You're the one justifying a brutal and ridiculous kangaroo court, not I. Of course you would claim it's "insane" (sic) for anyone to notice that fact. Your views of what constitutes sanity are clearly somewhat idiosyncratic (though I'm sure you have company in Boston). Since you returned to this thread you have offered precisely nothing in the way of way of argument or evidence. Indeed, you contradict yourself at every turn:

I wonder what happened to 4B. He sure was all over this "Boston Strong" thing back then (when the whole city was on lockdown) and then he went away. This thread is way too long to read again. I just remember being the "first one" skeptical of anything about this morass. I remain so and agree it is a patsy ridden psy-op in order to see if they could get a big city to capitulate. But what do I know really? Just what I do and closing down an entire city for this is basically ridiculous and needs to be somehow explored honestly by someone "high up", just like all the assassinations of note that we talk about here, oh and 9/11.

Hi. Today I was just telling someone what happened to me, actually.

I left the reservation soon after the Boston Marathon bombings. Didn't turn me into a right-winger so much as expanded my sight to encompass the possibility of truths taboo to both the left and the right, a stereoscopic cynicism. Which leaves me as an orphan, lol.

I still doubt the official story, of course. All the same alternative explanations are still at play, in my opinion, except for the despicable hoaxer variety. I just have more ideas about what the unofficial story might involve than anyone here would care to entertain. It would bore me (or enrage me) to defend Boston again, as nothing has changed over the last two years about my opinion on the police response. I've grown tired of groupthink, no matter how rare or well-researched or eloquent the form it takes.

In case this hasn't been posted yet...

http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/03/03/fbis-s ... snt-exist/

I don't think Tsarnaev is innocent, I think he and his brother fully intended to murder a bunch of people. (While I'm not happy he got the death penalty, I don't particularly give a shit, either.) But there must be something in the video quite inconvenient to the government for that smoking gun to never surface.

Of course you don't condescend to inform us what those "truths taboo to both the left and the right" (sic) might be. Presumably they're just too scary, just too avant-garde, for anyone but a Strong Bostonian.

Test us.

Didn't turn me into a right-winger so much as expanded my sight

Yeah, right. You're transparent. Your sight has expanded to include truths invisible to mere humans and incommunicable by merely human means.

It would bore me (or enrage me) to defend Boston again

What is this sentence intended to mean, if anything? I think we should be told.

I've grown tired of groupthink

Are you a surrealist?

I've grown tired of groupthink

Fixed. Clearly you are tired of think. It makes your brain hurt. You acknowledge that the government is hiding something important, but still you're perfectly content with a show trial. You think your sacred Authorities might well be lying, but still you insist, "the boy dunnit" (and that's good enough for you). You link to WhoWhatWhy and ignore everything they document. You claim to be a daring avantgarde out-of-the-box Beyond-Left-And-Right thinker, but still your main priority is to see your (silent and invisible) designated victim either fry or rot. You claim, condescendingly, like some jaded intellectual dandy, to be "tired of groupthink", yet you regurgitate the most bovine antithought fed to you by the telly. You are clearly a bit confused.

If you have nothing better or more honest or more rational to offer, stay out of the thread. It is a waste of time talking to you.

1. I'm not staying out of the thread.
2. I'm not responding to you again.

[MacCruiskeen]

[IanEye]

I think it is possible to be a pawn and a shitbag simultaneously.
I have no problem with the idea that Medgar Evers' assassin was a pawn.
I have no problem with the idea that Medgar Evers' assassin was a shitbag.
These ideas are in no way mutually exclusive.



The video of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev arriving at the area where a bomb goes off and his leaving the scene right before said bomb goes off is enough for me to believe he is the individual who placed the bomb at that area.
The fact that he eases the backpack off his right shoulder, then goes out of his way to leave without the backpack, then as soon as he is out of harm's way there is an explosion is enough for me to believe he knew he was carrying a bomb when he arrived at 753 Boylston Street.

I have no problem with someone stating that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's actions that I describe are the actions of a pawn. That there is someone unmentioned who wielded Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a pawn. That this unmentioned someone is getting away with their part in a conspiracy.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is still a shitbag.


When I mention the specifics of the Boston Marathon, when I mention how it winds it's way through several neighborhoods before the finish line, it is to point out to those who seem unaware that the Boston Marathon is not like a NASCAR race. Runners do not go around and around an oval until they have run for 26 plus miles.

People on this thread seem honestly flummoxed as to why the greater Boston area was so willing to have the police search as many neighborhoods as they did in order to find the Tsarnaev brothers.

It is because they took it personally.

If part of one's neighborhood happens to be on the marathon route, it does not matter that the bombs did not go off in one's immediate vicinity, one still takes it personally.
The Tsarnaev brothers seriously fucked up.

I don't think one has to be from the Baystate in order to comprehend the magnitude to which the Tsarnaev brothers fucked up. I think any one who cherishes a local tradition, any one who takes pride in how a local event attracts people from all over the world to attend, any one who has participated directly in the event itself, any one of those people can understand why people were very angry that the Boston marathon was chosen as a target for terrorism.

It does help to be aware of this particular aspect of the Boston marathon, how it has woven itself into the identity of a larger community.

I would imagine that if someone attended the Edinburgh Festival Fringe during the first week, only to find that a bombing occurred at the festival in the second week, their reaction wouldn't be how smart they were to attend in the first week. I would imagine they would empathize with those second week attendees, not heap scorn on them. If they were told that pictures taken from the first week's events might be helpful in catching those who set off the bombs in the second week, I think they would share whatever pictures they had taken, in the hope that they could be helpful in catching said bombers.

Fourth Base has offered his thoughts on the aftermath of the bombing.
His thoughts do not concur with yours.
Your solution is to say,
"If you have nothing better or more honest or more rational to offer, stay out of the thread. It is a waste of time talking to you."

It is clear that you don't want anyone to have a narrative that in any way differs from yours, even if their particular narrative doesn't immediately challenge yours.

One can agree that there are all sorts of unanswered questions that surround this case, but one can still think the Tsarnaev brothers are shitbags.
One can think that the Tsarnaev brothers are guilty, but that the case is not closed.

If I live in a neighborhood, and one day a person is caught trying to set my house on fire, it is possible that another neighbor of mine paid that person to set the fire. The person caught is in fact guilty, but that doesn't mean the whole story has been told.

I am fine with people still looking for answers to questions about this case, but I feel fine stating the Tsarnaev brothers are shitbags.



when the shadowy sun sets on the one
that fired the gun
he’ll see by his grave
on the stone that remains
carved next to his name
his epitaph plain:
only a pawn in their game

.

[norton ash]

This is bloody damned difficult difficult lemon difficult. Dzhokar shouldn't be executed, although I think his participation in the plot is evident. And when I say 'the plot' I think it's very broad and spook-laden and stinks to high heaven. Everybody loses on this one. I appreciate the vigor and rigour on both sides, Mac and Ian... and somehow... you're both right.

[MacCruiskeen]

Ian, I may or may not think you are a shitbag (or, indeed, a pawn) for posting this unconscionable, sanctimonious, wilfully ignorant, stubbornly point-missing, deliberately question-begging crap (again), but let's suppose for the sake of argument that I do. Let's suppose your posts in this thread are evidence enough for me. Exactly what, then, is the legal consequence (for you) of my fascinating opinion?

None.

By contrast: The legal consequence of your fascinating opinion that Dzokhar Tsarnaev is a shitbag is that he will be either a) fried soon or b) left to rot in solitary for decades. Why? Because you share that fascinating opinion with most of your compatriots -- exactly as presumed, planned, desired and intended by your National Security State via its mass media -- and therefore the fascist show-trial could go ahead smoothly without anyone ever asking any serious questions, protesting angrily, or even laughing out loud. Clearly, your government knows its people, nearly 15 years after 9/11. They know you watch a lot of TV. They know you don't spend much time thinking about editing techniques, stills vs motion pictures, the power of suggestion, the influnece of the alphabet agencies on the mass media, etc. They know you like big bangs and feeling tearful and outraged and uplifted. And they know that hardly anyone, especially in the sacred "Bay State," is going to care one single solitary shit about identifying the shitbags who run the pawns. Least of all you.

So you win, Ian. Rest assured, the kid will fry. Go out and celebrate. You're a free man, after all, in the land of the free. Fascism? It couldn't happen there.

PS What's this bizarre obsession of yours with Boston's alleged uniqueness in having a marathon that actually runs through the city (as opposed to going round in tiny circles somewhere on the outskirts)? I hate to break this to you, but it's just like every other marathon everywhere else, including the one in this here city.

[Wombaticus Rex]

By contrast: The legal consequence of your fascinating opinion that Dzokhar Tsarnaev is a shitbag is that he will be either a) fried soon or b) left to rot in solitary for decades.

I think your claim that Ian is part of the US Judiciary might not have standing.

I'll leave it to him to verify, but I'm pretty sure he didn't preside over this case, and is only offering his opinion as a citizen observer.

[MacCruiskeen]

Post-9/11 Law Exam:

1. Should everyone be entitled to a fair trial or only those we agree aren't shitbags? Discuss.

2. (Multiple choice, one answer only): When there is evidence to suggest that someone is a pawn, should we a) just ignore it, or b) ignore it and also pour scorn on conspiracy nuts? Give reasons for your choice.