Terrorist attack at Boston Marathon

[Phil H]

But the brothers (one now dead) are from the Caucasus are they not? According to a report on the BBC, the elder brother (Tamerlin?) went to Russia last year and stayed there for 6 months - so the hand of the "foreigner" cannot be entirely dismissed can it?

The question is surely: were they influenced from outside, or are they "home grown" terrorists (clean skins is, I believe the phrase of art) entirely self-motivated.

Phil

[Mayerling]

Hi Jeff

But we still have citizens making accusations.The bag thing is a definite parallel. And there's still a determination to see the hand of the foreigner behind it all.

Hi Robert,

Good point, but maybe they were. We'll see.

Jeff

[kensei]

When I posted last night and gave the names of suspects who are now apparently uninvolved, I was only relating what official sources were saying at the time. When I woke up today and turned on the radio, I listened for a moment and groggily went, "What?"

I'm really losing faith in our ability to be sure what the truth is.

[Robert]

Hi Jeff

But we still have citizens making accusations.The bag thing is a definite parallel. And there's still a determination to see the hand of the foreigner behind it all.

[Mayerling]

Actually, the news that I heard this morning was a 7/11 was robbed by two men (who are brothers), and that they murdered an MIT campus policeman, and stole (at gunpoint) a car (not harming the driver). They were pursued by the police firing guns and throwing bombs. The police shot and killed one, and the other was apparently wounded. The authorities basically closed down Boston to protect the citizens there, and they were searching the neighborhood in Cambridge (slowly - they don't want to trigger any booby traps).

The brothers are from a Chechnyan family that has been here over a decade. One was a boxer, the other a wrestler. They may have been influenced by Islamic extremist websites in Turkey and Chechnya. There was a report of a new bomb found in Boston and defused. They may have accomplices.

That was what I heard at 10:30 A.M.

I do not think that this is at all like 1888. Things did not move so quickly in 1888 - they did not have cellphone/cameras/videos. The mass media was only newspapers and magazines. Few newspapers (in 1888) carried photos, or drawings (the magazines were frequently illustrated). Actually I find this investigation running very smoothly in comparison.

Jeff

[Robert]

A trip down memory lane to the problems the police faced in 1888.

[Archaic]

NOT Suspects!

Hi everyone. I talked with a good friend who lives in Boston last night, she was still awake at 12 AM my time, which was 3 AM EST. She said the whole city was on lockdown and everyone was told to lock their doors and stay inside. This whole thing is so surreal. I grew up in Connecticut and my family often made the short drive to Massachusetts and the city of Boston, enjoying the wonderfully preserved historical sites...it's hard for me to conceive of Boston as a place of such horror.

There are new breaking developments, apparently the dead suspect has been identified and his brother is barricaded in a house surround by the police. According to reports, the two bombers are brothers, originally from Chechnya. I'm not posting their names as I want to be sure the info is correct.

Just for the record, the two men named in a post above as suspects, Mike Mulugeta and Sunil Tripathi, ARE COMPLETELY INNOCENT AND ARE NOT SUSPECTS.

I read quite a bit of the online chatter about Sunil, a missing Brown University student whose family is frantically looking for him. On the internet he was painted as "suffering from depression", born in Morocco, his father the CEO of a company and that was offered as his "motive"- ??? Photos were shown saying he matched the photos of suspect #2. I didn't think so, and the suspect photos were much too grainy for accurate identification, except maybe by very close friends and family. But the armchair detectives of the internet proclaimed Sunlil guilty. I took the time to read Sunlil's family's "Missing Person appeal", what his many friends said about him, and he sounded like such a kind-hearted and genuinely sweet person that all night I was praying it would turn out to be somebody else... and it is.

I don't know anything about Mr. Mulegeta, but he is innocent too.

Earlier members of the public erroneously "identified" a 17 year old boy as one of the bombers. He's a high school track star whose dream is to compete in the Olympics, which is why he was at the finish line. He was photographed in a blue track suit carrying a shoulder bag and talking to his coach, who also carried a bag.

The Daily Mail published a huge photo of them labeled "BAG MEN" along and circled their duffel bags in red, saying they were "too heavy" to be normal bags. My God, to put people in danger like that is unconscionable, especially when one of them is a MINOR. When the two individuals found out on the internet that they were being fingered by members of the public they were terrified of becoming the victims of vigilante 'justice'. Each went immediately to the police and was quickly cleared. The teenage boy is a really good kid whose family immigrated from Morocco, and he was TERRIFIED that someone would believe the false rumors and hurt his family. He was especially worried about his two little sisters.

It's great that people took photos and video of the bombing and turned them over to police so they could be searched for clues, but it's just plain WRONG for members of the public to publicly announce that THEY have identified a "Suspect" and then post their name, information, Facebook page, etc. Think how traumatic it would be if YOU were named in public as the one who carried out a sickening massacre and YOUR family was placed in danger.

Some poor man was beaten up in an Applebees restaurant because some idiot identified him as a "foreigner" and therefore somehow complicit in the bombing.

I think it should be pointed out that one of the greatest heroes in the aftermath of the bombing was a man named Carlos Arredondo. Carlos immigrated from Costa Rica years ago, is an American citizen, and his American son Alexander volunteered for US military service at the age of 17. Alex became a United States Marine, and was killed in Iraq. Carlo's other son Brian was despondent over the death of his brother, and ended up committing suicide. So Carlos lost BOTH of his children to the Iraq war.

Carlos coped with his overwhelming grief by becoming an activist in the effort to put a human face on the cost of war. He also became a trained Red Cross trained medic. Carlos was there at the finish line of the Boston Marathon to cheer on the Marines taking part in Operation Tough Ruck, whereby Marines honor fallen Marines. They run the marathon in full battle gear complete with 45 lb military rucksacks on their backs. One of the Marines was running in the name of deceased U.S. Marine Alexander Arredondo. When the blast happened Carlos didn't run away in the fear of more bombs; instead he rushed directly into the carnage and began working to save lives.

Carlos in the man in the cowboy hat in the famous photo that shows him and others rushing victim Jeff Bauman to an ambulance. Jeff had horrif injuries. He lost both of his legs above the knee, and if you've seen the full photo before it was cropped I swear to God you'll never forget it. Carlos is seen running beside Jeff's wheelchair, grasping something in his hands-he was holding Jeff's severed femoral artery in his hands, pinching it off so Jeff wouldn't bleed to death. Jeff's face is utterly ashen in the photo; it's obvious that he had lost a lot of blood and was in shock. Carlos's courageous action saved his life.

So before bashing "foreigners" as terrorists, please remember Costa Rican-American Carlos Arredondo, who tragically lost both of his two children to our war in Iraq, yet saved many lives in Boston.

In my opinion Carlos is an American hero.
http://lightbox.time.com/2013/04/18/the-hero-in-the-cowboy-hat-carlos-arredondos-story-by-eugene-richards/?iid=lf|around#1

And I sincerely hope that the missing college student Sunil Tripathi returns safely to his friends and family.

Best regards,
Archaic

[Robert]

I wish I had the time to keep up with this story. Things are moving pretty fast.

[caz]

Then you get a major explosion and fire at a fertilizer factory located in a little town next to Waco, Texas, made unfortunately famous by David Koresh and the Branch Davidians.

What did Timothy McVeigh use to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City? A fertilizer bomb.

Not only that, Archaic, but McVeigh chose the second anniversary of Waco for his own atrocity.

It does begin to look like more than a just tragic coincidence, coming pretty much on the twentieth anniversary of Waco.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

According to the LBC radio website, the fire at the fertilizer plant remains 'unexplained'. In addition:

The explosion comes on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the Waco siege - a deadly confrontation between federal authorities and heavily armed locals.

The Dallas Morning News said that the fertiliser company previously reported to the US Environmental Protection Agency and local public safety officials that there was no risk of fire or explosion at the plant.

All rather worrying.

Love,

Caz
X

[Limehouse]

Hi Robert and Julie.

Have they discovered what started the fire?

One would think there would be very stringent fire codes and protections in place to prevent such a horrible explosion. High-tech automatic sprinkler systems, blast containment doors, a wide exclusion zone around the factory's perimeter, etc.

It may just be a sad coincident, but with Waco so close and it being fertilizer that exploded, I'll be interested to hear what the fire investigators will have to say later.

For God's sake, if fertilizer plants are such blast dangers, why was it located in such proximity to neighborhoods, houses, even a nursing home?
I've driven through that part of Texas. Most parts of Texas for that matter. Believe me, there is plenty of empty Texas prairie as far as the eye can see in the vicinity of Waco - it's not like there isn't enough space to put a dangerous fertilizer plant farther away from the townspeople.

What a sad week for America.

And you just know that somewhere, there are sick individuals "celebrating" all this suffering.

I think the world could use some Instant Karma.

Best regards,
Archaic

I think those are very good points, and, with the intensity of the fire/explosions and the damage done, it makes you wonder whether they will ever establish the cause.

Looks from Kensei's post above that there are very troubled times right now and I truly hope everything calms down soon.

[kensei]

Furious action tonight in the Boston suburbs. A campus police officer was shot dead at M.I.T., leading to scores of officers converging in a chase of two suspects in the marathon bombing. Witnesses report dozens of police vehicles with blaring sirens and flashing lights, up to 50 gunshots being heard as well as a couple of EXPLOSIONS, and residents in the town of Watertown being warned not to open their doors to anyone. It is still ongoing as I write this, but the latest word is that these suspects are the two people earlier shown in photos/video frames captured in crowd footage at the marathon, and that they are college age men named Mike Mulugeta and Sunil Tripathi. Tripathi is a Brown University student who went missing a month or so ago, asked for time off from school but then just vanished. He is the one pictured wearing a white baseball cap worn backwards. Word is that one of them first reported as captured is actually now dead, and that the other is still on the run. I've seen/heard conflicting reports as to which is which. Whichever of them is still running, I hope they take him alive because I can't wait to hear why he says they did this.

Of course, I've also already heard conspiracy theory (which, let me contend, is a term NOT always synonimous with crazy and untrue) that the bombing was actually a black ops false flag operation and that these two guys are just patsies. It is so hard to know what to believe anymore. I just hope that justice is being done right now because more lives were lost tonight.

[Archaic]

To judge from the report that the authorities told two boys to leave because the plant was about to explode, it seems that it was the fire that did it and not a bomb.

Hi Robert and Julie.

Have they discovered what started the fire?

One would think there would be very stringent fire codes and protections in place to prevent such a horrible explosion. High-tech automatic sprinkler systems, blast containment doors, a wide exclusion zone around the factory's perimeter, etc.

It may just be a sad coincident, but with Waco so close and it being fertilizer that exploded, I'll be interested to hear what the fire investigators will have to say later.

For God's sake, if fertilizer plants are such blast dangers, why was it located in such proximity to neighborhoods, houses, even a nursing home?
I've driven through that part of Texas. Most parts of Texas for that matter. Believe me, there is plenty of empty Texas prairie as far as the eye can see in the vicinity of Waco - it's not like there isn't enough space to put a dangerous fertilizer plant farther away from the townspeople.

What a sad week for America.

And you just know that somewhere, there are sick individuals "celebrating" all this suffering.

I think the world could use some Instant Karma.

Best regards,
Archaic

[Beowulf]

[QUOTE=Beowulf;258403]I'm not surprised but I am suspicious. Still.

and now this comes out...

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/18/ice-official-responds-to-blaze-report-categorically-false/

[Beowulf]

As for the Saudi character, I am surprised that Kerry agreed to release him at all to his country. I'd have held onto him until every secret he knew about Al Quaeda was spilled out of him. But the same "special treatment" was given to members of Osama Bin Laden's family (also wealthy and prominent in Saudi Arabia not only in the U.S. but abroad after 9/11. Oil money talks louder than outrage.

Jeff

I'm not surprised but I am suspicious.

Lots of thought flying around about it:

http://www.infowars.com/obama-coveri...oston-bombing/