Boston Marathon bombing and the rush to judgment

DocZaius · Post by **DocZaius** » Tue Apr 16, 2013 12:19 pm

http://www.popehat.com/2013/04/16/richa ... r-apology/

Eric Robert Rudolph has never apologized to Jewell. Nor, for that matter, have the people of Georgia who spat on him. All Of Us.

If the FBI, and CNN, and NBC, and the New York Post, and the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and All Of Us, could get the Atlanta bombing so tragically wrong in 1996, they, and we, can do it today. In the days to come, it would behoove All Of Us to take what the FBI, and CNN, and NBC, and the New York Post, and their ilk, have to say about suspects and motives with a grain of salt.

Lest we find outselves owing someone a Richard Jewell-sized apology.

Perhaps the best apology we, All Of Us, can give to Richard Jewell is to be a little more skeptical of what we're told by the FBI, and CNN, and NBC, and the New York Post, and the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and their ilk.

It will do Richard Jewell no good whatsoever, but it will make All Of Us better citizens.

a1bion · Post by **a1bion** » Tue Apr 16, 2013 12:30 pm

I've pretty much tuned out all of the media coverage because it's really nothing more than disaster porn. When they have someone in custody, we'll all know.

a1bion · Post by **a1bion** » Tue Apr 16, 2013 12:46 pm

And of course, because an event like this also brings the tards out.

At Deval Patrick's 9:00 press conference on today's bombings, the first question, the very first question, contained the words: "Is this another false flag attack staged to take our civil liberties?"

I honestly wonder what his best-case scenario was for what Patrick might say. "Yep. You got us."

Strap in, media consumers. Things are only going to go downhill from today.

a1bion · Post by **a1bion** » Fri Apr 19, 2013 2:55 pm

I will say that watching the way this thing is unfolding is fucking crazy. It's like a full military deployment in the city of Boston right now looking for the younger brother. I never would've imagined a city the size of Boston being shut down the way it is. My older brother lives in New Hampshire and works in Boston and got word this morning to not take the train in.

Red Sox game tonight cancelled. Bruins game tonight cancelled. They gonna pop this kid if he doesn't surrender.

DocZaius · Post by **DocZaius** » Fri Apr 19, 2013 4:09 pm

How bizarre. All this for a single 19 year old? Looks like the terrorists have won again.

a1bion · Post by **a1bion** » Fri Apr 19, 2013 4:31 pm

You have to admire the balls on Putin, waiting to send condolences until after it's revealed that these guys were Chechen. That's some quality trolling.

DocZaius · Post by **DocZaius** » Sat Apr 20, 2013 8:19 am

http://m.theatlantic.com/national/archi ... on/275014/

DocZaius · Post by **DocZaius** » Sat Apr 20, 2013 8:20 am

[quote=a1bion]You have to admire the balls on Putin, waiting to send condolences until after it's revealed that these guys were Chechen. That's some quality trolling.[/QUOTE]

Putin is awesome. Bad guy, probably, but also awesome.

DocZaius · Post by **DocZaius** » Sat Apr 20, 2013 6:55 pm

More comment and discussion at Popehat:

http://www.popehat.com/2013/04/20/secur ... ver-heard/

DocZaius · Post by **DocZaius** » Sun Apr 21, 2013 8:16 am

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news ... ng-1844844

FBI now believes the brothers were part of a sleeper cell because the bombs were too sophisticated for these two to have built from plans on the internet.

Also, it should come as no surprise that the Boston police recklessly fired at the boat without knowing who or what was inside and with no threat to anyone evident.

I am still trying to figure out why we should be praising the BPD. They essentially declared martial law, probably conducted illegal searches and dispersed lawful assemblies of law abiding citizens, all in the name of catching one guy who had a hand in killing three people.

In Detroit or Chicago, that kind of violence is called Tuesday.

a1bion · Post by **a1bion** » Mon Apr 22, 2013 11:13 am

I understand the impulse to do whatever it takes to get that kid off the streets, but the militarized lockdown of an entire city is disturbing. At some point in the 90's, I was living in Ireland and made the mistake of going to Belfast and seeing what it was like to live under what was essentially a military occupation. It fucking sucked and they at least had the excuse of having an active terrorist organization to deal with in the IRA. Boston had a couple of wannbe yo's.

I would say it doesn't help that we have certain self-serving politicians who immediately started spouting off shit over the weekend about global jihadist and other crazy fucking rhetoric. Child, please. The one person who got it right, in my opinion, was the local Boston reporter that NBC cut over to Friday night without telling him who, when told they wanted him to tell what he knew about the latest in the search for the younger kid, commented, "I don't know shit" live on air.

a1bion · Post by **a1bion** » Mon Apr 22, 2013 11:53 am

And this was probably the best journalism to come out of the coverage of the aftermath of the bombing: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/culture/lu ... ng-wartime

One guy's account of going out, getting drunk, hooking up on a one night stand, then waking up to a city on lock down so he can't even execute the walk of shame.

a1bion · Post by **a1bion** » Wed Apr 24, 2013 5:41 pm

The 9/11 truther squad is now out there claiming that the brothers were trained by the CIA. And now we learn that the older brother was himself a 9/11 truther. Delicious irony.

Hope the CIA paid them in bitcoins.

DocZaius · Post by **DocZaius** » Wed Apr 24, 2013 5:49 pm

[quote=a1bion]
Hope the CIA paid them in bitcoins.[/QUOTE]

Lol

DocZaius · Post by **DocZaius** » Mon Apr 29, 2013 3:21 pm

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gavin-shu ... 56038.html

I gotta be honest, I'm kind of over the Boston Bombers. Don't get me wrong, I was definitely totally obsessed with them last week, when they were all the rage, but now it turns out they're just kind of lame. They're just kind of shitty, boring bros. The kind that probably go sunglass-shopping together. They're really just a set of Euro-trash tools. And the more we learn about them the less interesting they become. All this debate over whether they're white, or whether they're Muslim, or whether those two categories are mutually exclusive, who cares? They're just a couple of douchebags. And every race is replete with those.

I mean look at the pictures of them. The older one is a douchebag and the younger one is a dumbass. That's pretty much the scoop. The older one looked like he'd wear a track suit to a family function, and the younger one looks like the type of drug dealer that would make you smoke a joint with him after because he wants someone to hang out with. Like you're going to have to build into your schedule that you have to get high with this weird Russian dude because you feel bad just leaving. I'm not saying investigators shouldn't try to learn all they can from them, I'm just saying they seem like fucking losers.

They've had their fifteen minutes of shame, let's not grant them any more. What's something interesting you've read about them this week? Exactly. Even the conspiracy theories are sort of cliché. Oh, the government did it? To derail marathons. I see. It all makes so much sense now. The whole thing started as a gripping tragedy, then turned into a thrilling action movie, then a nail-biting mystery, but now it's just a boring legal drama. It's time to return to our regularly scheduled programming. Sure, I'll still watch the interview with the kid, but I'm no longer DVRing.

a1bion · Post by **a1bion** » Mon Apr 29, 2013 3:27 pm

That guy gets it.