Two explosions at Boston marathon finish line

[FourthBase]

Meanwhile, in Roslindale...

[Nordic]

An individual can not believe the official story of the events in Dallas, Texas on November 2nd 1963, while at the same time refrain from condemning every citizen of Dallas, Texas.

An individual can not believe the official story of the events in New York City, NY on September 11th 2001, while at the same time refrain from condemning every citizen of New York City, NY.

An individual can not believe the official story of the events in Boston, MA on April 15th 2013, while at the same time refrain from condemning every citizen of Boston, MA.

This thread is full of individual instances of board members using a tragedy for no other purpose than to show us their moral and intellectual superiority.

Because it is obviously possible to state one's disagreements with official accounts without denigrating an entire population.

Denigrating an entire population in no way serves an intellectual argument that the Tsarnaev's are not the only culprits in the Boston Marathon bombing.
That is not what the derision and scorn is there for, the derision and scorn is there because the individual making the argument has no interest in justice.

They are arguing to show us that they are better than us, they are smarter than us, they are morally superior to us.
They are not arguing on behalf of the Tsarnaev's, they are arguing on behalf of themselves.

There are any number of threads where this same supposed superior behavior exists.
I don't bother with those threads.
I do not live in Texas.
I do not live in the Five Boroughs.
I live in the greater Boston area.

Anyone who comes here and stands on top of the dead bodies in Boston in order to heap scorn on them and trumpet their own superiority can count on me calling them out for what they are.

Anyone who comes here and points at the disfigured citizens of Boston in order to call them crisis actors and trumpet their own superiority can count on me calling them out for what they are.

Individuals who mock the people of Boston, and what they have been through are not worthy of respect.
They will not be treated with respect.

They will be treated like an individual who is standing at the grave of their own child because of their own negligent actions.

They will be treated like someone who has fucked up and cannot in any way rectify their fuck up.

They will be treated like someone who has put their own ego in front of justice.

I don't think that anyone here is saying that because the official story seems suspicious and the surviving suspect was likely railroaded, and his "defense" attorney throwing him under the bus on day one, and that the whole thing seems very fishy MEANS and = "crisis actors" and "fake bombs" and all that other stupid shit that someone has decided to manufacture (clearly) as disinfo in order to discredit people who have doubts about the official story.

I'm not seeing that here. Maybe I missed something. But I don't see Mac talking about fake sawdust bombs and crisis actors and fake blood.

The story and the actions of "law enforcement" (for whom we should all have zero respect at this point) seem like there is far more to this story than meets the eye.

[FourthBase]

Hey, remember PTech?

http://thephoenix.com/Boston/News/72381 ... onnection/

One PTech employee was very public about his allegations that federal investigators had shut down his and other PTech workers' accounts unfairly, and from purely anti-Arab motivations. He is Hassan Aljabri — now the president of the Roxbury mosque's board of directors.

Aljabri gave nearly $50,000 to the mosque between 2000 and 2002. He was one of several PTech employees who were actively involved with the mosque, including the company's CEO, who donated more than $10,000.

It's actually Hossam.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hossam_AlJabri

Might as well flirt with this board's third rail. I don't understand the seeming disconnect here when it comes to dot-connecting methodology. If PTech + government agencies + thinktank ideology = solid ground for a conspiracy theory, then why isn't that kind of thinking also applied to mosques and religious ideology? Why is it assumed as a rule that whatever bad shit gets associated with Islamic institutions it must be inauthentic, must be a false flag, infiltration, provocation? Again: I'm not a lone-nutter, I'm not a lone-wolfer. I'm not saying that the FBI doesn't entrap and frame, that is obviously also something that happens. I'm not saying that warmongering right wing profiteers aren't scheming to create pretexts, that is obviously also something that happens. But I don't see why Islamic institutions generally get the benefit of the doubt, why they can't also, at the same time, be guilty of some of the same kind of shit Western institutions are suspected of, world-dominating schemes, mass murder, etc. Just because shrill wingnuts are paranoid about it, doesn't mean it's not actually happening, too. Just because the government pulls some unconstitutional bullshit, doesn't mean it's totally lying, doesn't mean suspects are totally innocent. Just because ghoulish right wing masterminds try to shape and exploit a phenomenon, doesn't mean the phenomenon wasn't already a terrifying real thing with its own independent momentum, its own conspiratorial network, its own sinister agenda. I can understand not wanting to swim in the same side of the deep end of the pool as Geller & Co. since their water is contaminated with the vile feces of bigotry. But what if there's still taboo truth over there to examine and parse out? What if terrorism isn't wholly manufactured as a psyop, what if radical Islam would exist in pursuit of the same shit in the same way with the same energy even if all the spooks and vampire squids vanished tomorrow? What then?

[Nordic]

You mean Muslim organizations like the royal family of Saudi Arabia?

[IanEye]

Case closed.


Bay State Strong. Boston Big and Tough.

This thread is full of individual instances of board members using a tragedy for no other purpose than to show us their moral and intellectual superiority.

Because it is obviously possible to state one's disagreements with official accounts without denigrating an entire population.



Individuals who mock the people of Boston, and what they have been through are not worthy of respect.
They will not be treated with respect.

I'm not seeing that here. Maybe I missed something. But I don't see Mac talking about fake sawdust bombs and crisis actors and fake blood.

[IanEye]

To paraphrase Sally Field: "You hate me! You really hate me!"

What's with all the vitriol?

I know firsthand there are jerks in the film industry.
That does not mean everyone in the film industry are jerks.

I do not think Timothy McVeigh was the only one involved in the OKC bombing, that doesn't mean I get to treat every citizen of OKC like they are Nazis.
Timothy McVeigh was a shitbag.


The members of this family are not crisis actors.
The members of this family are not part of the Nazi Party.


Mac does not like that I keep my focus on people like the Corcoran family, it does not fit his agenda.
Anything that does not fit his agenda is the target for scorn and ridicule.
Mac tells other members whether or not they can comment on this thread according to his agenda.

Mac can go fuck himself.
Every time he pulls his bullshit act I will call him out for what he is.

Mac takes what other people like Russ Baker have worked on and just adds his own poison to it.
Russ Baker is not a shitbag.

[FourthBase]

You mean Muslim organizations like the royal family of Saudi Arabia?

Yes, of course. And also the ones that aren't in a devious alliance with American military and business interests. The countries, institutions, and movements that the left habitually redirects the focus away from, shields from direct blame...those too.

So, like, imagine: The spooks and vampire squids disappear, the military withdraws, America is dethroned, capitalism is overthrown, Israel packs up and moves to Antarctica, your wildest dreams come true, your champagne is popped. But wait, Islamism under a handful of banners is still there, still dreaming its own dreams of domination, still waging an offensive jihad, lo and behold, still up to the same evil shit characterized today as nothing more than FBI-sting intentional own-goals or little more than the inevitable byproduct of Western colonialist interference, just with different excuses now. What then? And what if it has more or less been that way for a while, that no matter what there would still have been some form of a 9/11, a 7/7, a Madrid, a Mumbai, a Marathon, an ISIS, an Al Qaeda, a Taliban, a Brotherhood, etc.? When would it start to be okay to theorize about Islamic conspiracies on their own terms?

Or would there always be some non-Islamic root cause to shift the blame to? Would you first need to wait a hundred years or so for grievances to take root and grow to full maturity against an Islamic version of supremacism, colonialism, militarism, social injustice before you felt comfortable enough articulating deep suspicions? Are you banking on people power to overcome Islamism, too, to transform Islamist culture into a something egalitarian? That's what I'm trying to understand.

[FourthBase]

The dot-connecting, though, how it's applied inconsistently -- or rather, consistently for one thing, and never for the other: That's what specifically confuses me. It's the mirror image of how the dots are connected by the anti-Islam right. The way that they connect the dots for Islamic entities is how the dots gets connected here for Western entities. Their blind spots are conmeasurate with the blind spots here, just flipped.

"Look at that wolf! It's forcing that sheep/abused-pitbull into wolf's-clothing, and then attacking it! Oh, wait...oops, that was also a wolf." I don't expect the right to have the breadth of mind to contemplate wolf-duality, but I expect the left to. Or, I used to, anyway. I'd love to be surprised.

Is it conceivable that a network of Islamists with a pseudo-moderate veneer is secretly plotting most of this bad shit and needs no help or impetus at all from any plant or puppetmaster? (While at the very same time the plants and puppetmasters could still be trying to trigger and assist the bad shit according to their own needs and specifications.) It's conceivable, right?

If it were far-right skinheads committing or getting caught attempting to commit mass murder, in the same quantity, with the same frequency, and they all traced back to an intimately-connected set of social and economic nodes, the same recurring handful of extremism-laundering fronts, the same community centers and leaders, the same funds, the same propaganda...people here wouldn't be shitting their pants? There'd be a tendency to write off the incidents as just the product of government subterfuge, only that? I doubt it. Does anyone really give a fuck if a neo-Nazi with a hankering to murder minorities gets entrapped by law enforcement? No, I doubt it. If this shit were a neo-Nazi phenomenon, there'd be furious waves of Casolaro-like dot-connecting, giant diagrams of connectivity. Not just about links to intel agencies, not just about subterranean connections to non-neo-Nazi entities, but also and perhaps more emphatically about the neo-Nazi world itself. I don't see why Islamism should be any different.

[Wombaticus Rex]

The dot-connecting, though, how it's applied inconsistently -- or rather, consistently for one thing, and never for the other: That's what specifically confuses me.

Indeed, it's almost like primates aren't actually equipped to build rigorous, accurate 1:1 maps of a reality composed of 8 billion other primates where events unfold based on 10k+ years of accumulated history, almost all of which is still a subject of active contention.

[FourthBase]

The dot-connecting, though, how it's applied inconsistently -- or rather, consistently for one thing, and never for the other: That's what specifically confuses me.

Indeed, it's almost like primates aren't actually equipped to build rigorous, accurate 1:1 maps of a reality composed of 8 billion other primates where events unfold based on 10k+ years of accumulated history, almost all of which is still a subject of active contention.

Ha, but humans are smart chimps, though. Lots of sublime dot-connecters here. This kind of tentative pattern recognition need only scan a minuscule fraction of 8 billion people, as few as 100-200 total could be enough, for an intuitive start. The last 15 years would be a sufficient window for the purpose. Dot-connecting an equivalent neo-Nazi network would not even necessitate revisiting the 20th century, let alone the 100th century BC, because all that'd matter at first is whether such a network might exist right now, not how precursor organizations were formed 100 years ago, not yet -- definitely not how our ancestors first farmed vegetables, etc. Active contention is another term for...all-or-nothing narrative warfare between ideologically pot-committed tribes? All it takes is a willingness to crack open the unused atrophied eye while squinting with the bloodshot hypertrophic one, and then the world isn't in mono. It's not that hard. Just a matter of occasionally testing out the hypothesis of "I might be wrong" or even just "I might be only half-right", for, like, an hour, every other week. Hell, in this case, your lunatic antipodes have already done most of the work. No assembly required. Just need a mesh net to scoop out and toss away the narrowminded feces.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Ha, but humans are smart chimps, though. Lots of sublime dot-connecters here. This kind of tentative pattern recognition need only scan a minuscule fraction of 8 billion people, as few as 100-200 total could be enough, for an intuitive start.

And intuitive start - and a hard-wired finish line, too.

Dunbar's Number

[FourthBase]

Ha, but humans are smart chimps, though. Lots of sublime dot-connecters here. This kind of tentative pattern recognition need only scan a minuscule fraction of 8 billion people, as few as 100-200 total could be enough, for an intuitive start.

And intuitive start - and a hard-wired finish line, too.

Dunbar's Number

Let's say it's 150 separate newsworthy acts of neo-Nazi mass violence, tied to 50 of the same nodes, in a relatively short span of time. That wouldn't be a small sample, seen through the limited scope of your immediate surroundings, subject to severe confirmation bias. It'd be legit evidence of a very, very troubling pattern. Every single person here would think so, and would shit a trail of bricks in a rush to learn more. If anything, there might be a tendency to go wildly overboard and claim it's an undeclared full-on war. (Or, not-all-that-undeclared, as it may be.)

[divideandconquer]

Zoom out, then take a peak. Cui bono?

Only a minuscule fraction of the 8 billion people benefit from the murder and mayhem that takes place around the world. PTech + government agencies + thinktank ideology, mosques and religious ideology and even nations function as imperialist tools of the global elite. Just follow the money...

According to the United Nations Development Program’s 1998 Human Development Report, the 15 richest people in the world enjoy combined assets that exceed the total annual gross domestic product of sub-Saharan Africa. At the end of the 1990’s, the wealth of the three richest individuals on earth surpassed the combined annual GDP of the 48 least developed countries. And according to Oxfam, the richest 85 people on the globe – who between them control as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population put together – could squeeze onto a single double-decker.

Granted, there would be no game of global Chess if the pawns refuse to play but fortunately for the elites, the pawns don't even know that the game is being played.

[Nordic]

You mean Muslim organizations like the royal family of Saudi Arabia?

So, like, imagine: The spooks and vampire squids disappear, the military withdraws, America is dethroned, capitalism is overthrown, Israel packs up and moves to Antarctica, your wildest dreams come true, your champagne is popped. But wait, Islamism under a handful of banners is still there, still dreaming its own dreams of domination, still waging an offensive jihad, lo and behold, still up to the same evil shit characterized today as nothing more than FBI-sting intentional own-goals or little more than the inevitable byproduct of Western colonialist interference, just with different excuses now. What then? And what if it has more or less been that way for a while, that no matter what there would still have been some form of a 9/11, a 7/7, a Madrid, a Mumbai, a Marathon, an ISIS, an Al Qaeda, a Taliban, a Brotherhood, etc.? When would it start to be okay to theorize about Islamic conspiracies on their own terms?

Or would there always be some non-Islamic root cause to shift the blame to? Would you first need to wait a hundred years or so for grievances to take root and grow to full maturity against an Islamic version of supremacism, colonialism, militarism, social injustice before you felt comfortable enough articulating deep suspicions? Are you banking on people power to overcome Islamism, too, to transform Islamist culture into a something egalitarian? That's what I'm trying to understand.

"Islamism"?

What is that? "Under a handful of banners"?

There are always religious extremists in any society. We have them here. Plenty of them. Every now and then one of them kills somebody or blows something up. So what?

Is that any existential threat to any nation? Are a bunch of guys riding around in the desert with (suspiciously new) Toyota pickups and AK47's (if they weren't actually funded by the PTB) be an existential threat to a country with standing armies, tanks, airforce? No.

I see what you're saying but I don't see a bit of logic behind it. Instead I see a bit of racism, and media-fueled fear. ( Turns out even the Chechen terrorism was backed by the U.S. )

It's really difficult to think of an example of successful terrorism anywhere, that WASN'T backed by some global empire of some sort.

As opposed to random groups of nutjobs who might do some really stupid and violent crap but don't really constitute a threat to any particular country or place or group.

Can you think of one? From history?

[IanEye]

It's really difficult to think of an example of successful terrorism anywhere, that WASN'T backed by some global empire of some sort.

As opposed to random groups of nutjobs who might do some really stupid and violent crap but don't really constitute a threat to any particular country or place or group.

Can you think of one? From history?

Quantify this individual from your above thesis:

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

.