Globe won't let it die:
"Marathon bombing suspect buried in Virginia" by Wesley Lowery and Matt Viser | Globe staff, May 11, 2013
DOSWELL, Va. — A day after the controversy swirling around the burial of Tamerlan Tsarnaev subsided in Worcester, it resurfaced 500 miles to the south, engulfing a rural Virginia hamlet.
As word trickled out that one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects had been stealthily moved to Caroline County and buried, county officials Friday said they were blindsided by the news and vowed to investigate whether the burial was done to the letter of the law.
“I’m sure that if no laws were broken . . . there’s nothing we can do,” said Floyd Thomas, chairman of the board of supervisors of Caroline County. “What we would do is make sure that all of the laws regarding this particular burial were adhered to. If they were not, then I believe we would have to look at undoing what happened.”
But the Worcester funeral home director who spent nearly a week as the body’s caretaker insisted that all of the appropriate measures were taken in accordance with state laws....
His body had been washed and prayed over by his uncle Ruslan Tsarni last week....
The uncle who worked for the CIA and had been estranged from the kids?
Word was beginning to spread. One local man heard about the burial on the news and drove near the site. But he did not want to see the grave, saying if he did, he would spit on it.
“They should have burned him and sent him back to his mama,” said Wayne Pierce, a 61-year-old restaurant owner. “I just can’t believe this. I don’t know how they slipped him in like this.”
Amurkns are the same everywhere, I guess.
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Dozens of protesters and onlookers gathered on a small stretch of sidewalk across the street from the funeral home, enraged that the body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been brought to Main Street.
On Tuesday, Worcester Police Chief Gary J. Gemme stared into television cameras that had stood sentinel for days outside the funeral home and pleaded for someone to come forward and provide a burial site. That same day, a woman sitting in a Virginia Starbucks had grown disgusted listening to reports about the protests in Worcester.
“It portrayed America at its worst,” said Martha Mullen, a mental health counselor who works with trauma victims. “The fact that people were picketing this poor man who was just trying to help really upset me.”
It sure has.
Mullen, who said she holds a degree in theology, said her Christian faith compelled her to assist in the burial. “Jesus says [to] love our enemies,” Mullen said. “So I was sitting in Starbucks and thought, ‘Maybe I’m the one person who needs to do something.’ ”
First, she conducted Internet searches to familiarize herself with Muslim burial requirements. Then, she began looking for cemeteries near her hometown, Richmond.
Related: Virginia woman’s help led to burial site for Tamerlan Tsarnaev
Soon, she located the Islamic Funeral Services of Virginia, a nonprofit that owns Al-Barzakh Cemetery, the first of its kind in the state.
Within an hour of sending an e-mail, Mullen got a response from Islamic Funeral Services: They could provide a burial plot for Tsarnaev.
“We pretty much started talking, saying, ‘OK, how can we do this?’ ” Abdel-Alim said. “If we’re the only option, how can we do it?’ ”
Then Mullen reached out to the Worcester police, who had been standing guard at Stefan’s funeral home and who promised to put the funeral home in contact with the Virginia nonprofit. But Stefan was no longer calling the shots....
Frustrated with what had been a lengthy and unsuccessful search for a burial plot, the uncle, Tsarni, told Stefan on Wednesday that he was taking control of the burial and that, by the end of the day, the body would be en route to a cemetery.
Worcester police put Tsarni in contact with Islamic Funeral Services, which spent hours Wednesday on the phone with the uncle working out details....
Worcester spent much of Thursday returning to life as normal. The harsh signs and American flags, remnants of the protesters, came down.
Nothing is ever going to be "normal" again.
But 24 hours later, when Tsarnaev’s death certificate became public, the wave of emotion and outrage that had festered for a week in Worcester had followed the body south.
“He’s a Muslim; we don’t need that here,” Margaret Stevens, a 68-year-old retiree, said as she bought items at the Frog Level Market near Doswell. “All that stuff started in Boston. It’s just not right. They shouldn’t have brought him. It didn’t happen here.”
“I don’t care what they do with [the body] as long as they don’t bury him here,” she added.
Some residents who live near the cemetery approached Islamic Funeral Services officials to voice their complaints.
“People in Boston had their right to protest; we didn’t get a right to say yea or nay,” Gwen Green, a 53-year-old who works at Caroline High School, told Abdel-Alim. “I just think it was a slap in the face to Caroline County.”
County and state officials in Virginia could not confirm that Tsarnaev’s body had been buried in the state. Worcester police and the cemetery, they complained, had kept them in the dark. County officials asked the Virginia attorney general to investigate the legality of the burial, but a spokesman for the attorney general’s office said Friday night that the office had no jurisdiction over the burial.
“It caught all of us off guard,” Caroline County Sheriff Tony Lippa Jr said. “None of us know anything about this.”
Warning that defacing a grave is a felony, Lippa vowed to provide security for Tsarnaev’s burial site.
“Are we taking security measures?” Lippa said. “I can assure you we are.”
It is unclear if the gravesite will eventually be marked. Mullen said in an interview Friday evening that Tsarnaev’s uncle paid for the $850 burial plot. Abdel-Alim said his organization harbors no regrets about providing Tsarnaev a final resting place.
“The only regret that I would have is that he wasn’t buried sooner,” he said. “Whether he was Christian, Muslim, Jewish, atheist, when you’re dead, you need to be buried.”
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"The decency to bury a body" by Derrick Z. Jackson | Globe Columnist, May 11, 2013
Rather than lead, our most powerful politicians catered to the hysteria of those who said they would leave Massachusetts if Tsarnaev was buried here, or that they would dig up the body if it was buried anywhere in the United States. This contrasts with the relatively quiet burials of the worst criminals in American history....
By catering to the worst instincts of some people — a desire for revenge that even included scattered physical and verbal attacks on area Muslims — our so-called leaders took some of the luster off the most inspiring acts in Boston’s living memory....
The bombers were inspired to build the bomb, so is that a good choice of words there?
A reason for the political cowardice over the body was that in the otherwise cleansing atmosphere of heroism, caring, and global outpouring, we fell into a subtle trap. We came to view the Marathon bombing as a unique event, and Tsarnaev as uniquely evil, which justified a sense of anger so vast that it was self-poisoning. Being Muslim probably made Tsarnaev seem just that much more “evil” in post-9/11 America.
Comparing this whole thing to 9/11 and its aftermath is disgustingly shameful.
Instead of suggesting a quick, secret burial, political leaders stoked the anger by figuratively kicking the body around the state. The only person making sense was the unlucky Worcester funeral home owner who was stuck with the body. Peter Stefan said, “If they had asked me to bury Adolf Hitler, I would have buried him.” Because even a dead Hitler can’t hurt anyone anymore.
But his ideas.... bulletproof. Which is why history must be distorted and the man demonized.
The battle over Tsarnaev’s body brought to mind Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1967 differentiation between disliking and hating an enemy. “I can’t like anybody who would bomb my home,” King said. But he added, “I’ve seen too much hate to want to hate . . . hate is too great a burden to bear.”
Quote from the King when it proves useful.
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"Bombing suspect burial divides Virginia residents; But Tsarnaev’s interment is legal, sheriff says" by Brian MacQuarrie | Globe Staff, May 11, 2013
DOSWELL, Va. — Even after Tamerlan Tsarnaev was finally buried Thursday, his body’s presence under a small, unmarked mound of clay-colored earth here continues to cause divisions.
The schoolteacher who donated the land that holds Tsarnaev’s remains considers himself blessed; a Richmond imam calls the interment “irresponsible;” and police are monitoring a tiny cemetery tucked in the pine woods far from the capital city’s high-crime areas.
“It’s something that’s bringing a lot of negative reaction and attention to people who are not connected to the affair,” said Ammar Amonette, the imam at the Islamic Center of Virginia, the largest mosque in Richmond.
Amonette, whose mosque lies in a comfortable middle-class neighborhood, said he is wary of the consequences of the burial. When asked if he expects a backlash against the area’s estimated 10,000-plus Muslims, he hedged his reply.
“I don’t believe we’re going to be affected, but you never know,” the imam said outside the mosque Saturday. “There’s always some sick individual out there.”
Tsarnaev was interred Thursday, facing toward Mecca, after a week long controversy in which cemeteries in at least three states, as well as the cities of Boston and Cambridge, Mass., refused to accept the body of the Boston Marathon bombing suspect.
In Massachusetts, Governor Deval Patrick described the search as a “circus” that had drawn the focus away from the April 15 bombings....
With the Globe as the ringleader.
In Doswell on Saturday, the man who donated the land for Al-Barzakh Muslim Cemetery, Charles H. Abdel-Alim, 63, said the cemetery has not attracted any protesters, just an occasional visit by the curious to this wooded region 20 miles north of Richmond where the great racehorse Secretariat was born and trained.
“I thank my lord, Allah, that I was part of that brother being buried there,” said Abdel-Alim, an African-American who converted to Islam about 45 years ago....
Abdel-Alim said he had not paid much attention to the controversy in Massachusetts, where protesters in Worcester gathered daily outside the Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlors, the funeral home that had taken Tsarnaev’s remains.
Then, Abdel-Alim said, he got a call last week from the Islamic Funeral Services of Virginia, which owns the cemetery, saying that Tsarnaev might be buried there. Between 6:30 a.m. Thursday, when he left to teach computer design in the Richmond schools, and the time when he returned, the burial had been completed.
Amonette, the imam, acknowledged the good intentions of local residents who had helped broker the burial here, including Martha Mullen of Richmond, a private citizen who brought together the Islamic funeral services group, Worcester funeral director Peter Stefan, and Worcester police.
But he questioned whether the cemetery will ever be “viable” as a burying ground for other Muslims, and what the impact will be on the families of others buried there....
Amonette said Muslims in the Richmond area have good relations with people of other faiths, but offered an example of how far they have come. When construction began on the Islamic center in 1985, he said, a neighbor protested by standing in front of a bulldozer that had arrived to clear the land.
The standoff ended, Amonette said, and the mosque is now seen as an integral part of the community.
Caroline County Sheriff Tony Lippa, whose deputies are including the cemetery in their patrols, said late Saturday afternoon that the surveillance is meant to prevent a traffic hazard at the site and to reassure residents that police are watching.
Lippa also said that social media are being monitored for indications that the cemetery might become a target....
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Time for a prayer at the mosque:
"In life and words, Boston’s Muslim leader bridges cultures" by Lisa Wangsness | Globe Staff, May 12, 2013
The heightened focus on Boston’s Muslim community offered an opportunity for Charles Jacobs, a longtime critic of the cultural center and its sister mosque in Cambridge (they are both owned by the Islamic Society of Boston but run separately), to revive his allegations — picked up by USA Today — that the mosques are breeding grounds for hatred and extremism.
Writing in his column in the Jewish Advocate newspaper and on his website, Jacobs suggested that William Suhaib Webb, imam of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center in Roxbury, was disinvited from speaking at the interfaith service because organizers feared he was an extremist. He charged that Webb was surreptitiously teaching a curriculum promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood that “teaches vicious hatred and calls for young Muslims to engage in Jihad against non-Muslims in order to establish a global Islamic state.”
“We think he is being publicly dishonest,” Jacobs said of Webb in an interview.
To the imam, the notion was ridiculous.
“I don’t have any private classes . . . where we meet in some bat cave and we lay out blueprints of how to conquer America,” he said.
The charge made just as little sense to outside observers. Todd Helmus, a senior behavioral scientist with the RAND Corporation who has worked extensively on counterterrorism, said Webb’s virtual mosque is one of the more active and influential Muslim voices against radicalism in the country.
“The problem isn’t Suhaib Webb. The problem is there aren’t more imams like Suhaib Webb,” he said.
And Diana Eck, a Harvard professor who teaches a case study of the saga of Jacobs and Boston’s mosques, said Jacobs’s argument that Webb and other moderate Muslims are operating a “stealth jihad” movement belies logic and evidence.
Translation: this guy Jacobs is a lying, Zionist jerk -- and yet he gets picked up by USA Today!
“For years, they were asking, ‘Where are the moderate Muslim voices?’ ” she said of Jacobs and his allies. “Now, we have a lot of moderate Muslim voices, and they are saying that these are the most dangerous people because they are involved in civic society.”
But Webb, in an apparent effort to project both transparency and strength, soon found himself drawn into a back-and-forth on Twitter with Jacobs and the reporter who wrote the USA Today piece — and yet the period after the bombings presented opportunities to burnish relationships with Christians and Jews that Webb had begun developing long beforehand....
Webb surprised Jewish leaders by attending — and live tweeting — an event at Andover Newton Theological School about a new book on Jewish megatrends, and tweeting about a conversation with Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis, on parallels between challenges Muslims face today and those that confronted Jews a century ago.
That goes to show you there ingrained and Torah-taught supremacism.
Jeremy Burton, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, said his group still has significant questions about the organization that manages the Roxbury mosque, the Muslim American Society. There have been concerns about whether the society maintains a relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization that has helped topple dictatorships in the Arab world but that also advocates Israel’s destruction....
Honestly, I'm sick of seeing that particular sermon.
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Also see: Slow Saturday Special: Marathon Sermon at Boston Mosque
Btw, how is that investigation going?
"Unrecorded testimony" by Harvey Silverglate | May 11, 2013
Those concerned with the survival of American civil liberties during the post-9/11 (and now post-Boston Marathon) “age of terror” most commonly fear the federal government’s technical ability to record and store virtually all telephonic and electronic communications. But a more immediate threat to liberty lies in what one particular agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, refuses to record, as Robel Phillipos is now learning the hard way....
Phillipos underwent four FBI interviews. He is not alleged to have had any advance knowledge of, much less role in, the bombing itself. The FBI was apparently trying to obtain his information and cooperation concerning the role and knowledge of Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, the two Kazakh students who allegedly found and disposed of Tsarnaev’s backpack and laptop after he was named a suspect in the bombings.
The public and the media should withhold judgment not only as to what Phillipos did or did not do, but also as to what he did or did not say when questioned by FBI agents. Indeed, the public should look skeptically at the accuracy of any FBI claim regarding what transpires in the bureau’s infamous witness interviews. Here’s why.
Oh, we are and we do!
FBI agents always interview in pairs. One agent asks the questions, while the other writes up what is called a “form 302 report” based on his notes. The 302 report, which the interviewee does not normally see, becomes the official record of the exchange; any interviewee who contests its accuracy risks prosecution for lying to a federal official, a felony. And here is the key problem that throws the accuracy of all such statements and reports into doubt: FBI agents almost never electronically record their interrogations; to do so would be against written policy.
It's called a tool of pressure.
In 2006 the FBI defended its no-electronic-recording policy in an internal memorandum, which The New York Times later made public. The memo in part attempts to defend the policy as logistically necessary, but given that virtually every cellphone today has sound recording capabilities, any “inconvenience” or “non-availability” excuse for not recording seems laughably weak. The more honest — and more terrifying — justification for non-recording given in the memo reads as follows: “. . . 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.” Translated from bureaucratese: When viewed in the light of day, recorded witness statements could appear to a reasonable jury of laypersons to have been coercively or misleadingly obtained.
By the FBI? No?!?!
But the FBI leaves out the even more potent criticism of its practice — that such interview tactics seem virtually geared toward establishing as fact what the FBI wanted to hear from the witness.
That is WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING for a LONG, LONG TIME!
Frightened and confused interviewees, who, if they deny they said what any 302 report claims they uttered, can then be indicted for making false statements. The FBI is thus able to put words into a witness or suspect’s mouth and coerce him to adopt the FBI’s version as his own.
That is what I have been saying since they took the three kids into custody. Sign this, and we drop charges and deport.
The FBI thus establishes the official version of what a witness said, and the pressure on the witness to adhere to the 302 version is enormous. Any deviation, after all, raises the question: “Were you lying during your FBI interview, or are you lying now?”
That last part is funny because it happens in the newspaper all the time.
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The lesson: The FBI is not entitled to any presumption of credibility in these situations.
They never get any here.
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Related:
"The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth is bolstering security for commencement this weekend, boosting police presence, prohibiting bags and backpacks, and limiting admission to two guests per graduate. The school says such steps are necessary in light of the Boston Marathon bombings. “People understand the world we’re living in.”"
Also see: Berklee, UMass Dartmouth speakers reflect on Boston Marathon bombings
The Boston bombers ruined graduation!
And business (even after Globe told me it was flourishing in the wake of the attack)!
"The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth is bolstering security for commencement this weekend, boosting police presence, prohibiting bags and backpacks, and limiting admission to two guests per graduate. The school says such steps are necessary in light of the Boston Marathon bombings. “People understand the world we’re living in.”"
Also see: Berklee, UMass Dartmouth speakers reflect on Boston Marathon bombings
The Boston bombers ruined graduation!
And business (even after Globe told me it was flourishing in the wake of the attack)!
"Boston merchants hope bombing not labeled terrorism" by Casey Ross | Globe Staff, May 11, 2013
Back Bay businesses that collectively lost millions of dollars from the Marathon bombings are now counting on the Obama administration to declare that the single most devastating attack on Boston was not, legally speaking, an act of terrorism.
What?
Illogical as that may seem, such a declaration might be the only way these businesses — many of which did not have specific coverage for terrorism — can get reimbursed for their losses by their insurance companies.
Gee, who do you think the feds will side with there?
“A lot of businesses in the Back Bay will be greatly harmed if they do declare it terrorism,” said Chris Jamison, owner of Lolita Cocina & Tequila Bar near the corner of Dartmouth and Boylston streets. “I basically would have no plan whatsoever.”
The Marathon bombings are the first test of an insurance law Congress passed after the 9/11 attacks caused a record $32 billion in losses. The law requires that the government officially certify whether an act of terrorism has occurred in order to determine liability for losses. If a business did not buy specific terrorism coverage — as many small businesses on Boylston Street did not — an official designation could make it much harder to get reimbursed.
Hey, look, that's the price of an agenda-pu$hing false flag, sorry.
While the law is meant to provide clarity, it is failing to do so thus far in Boston, as it still could take many weeks, if not months, for federal officials to determine whether the bombings constitute terrorism, and longer still before it becomes known who will foot the bill for millions of dollars in losses.
Actually, it's more like billions, but who wants to quibble about such things?
“At this point, there are more questions than answers about all these matters,” said Jon Cowen, a lawyer and insurance specialist from Posternak, Blankstein & Lund whom the Menino administration has consulted on coverage issues. “The bottom line is that it’s doubtful we will know very soon whether this will be treated as terrorism.”
For President Obama, the matter presents a conundrum: He initially faced pressure to label the bombings terrorism to strengthen law enforcement powers, and he made that declaration before a national audience. Now his administration is being asked to state the opposite to save businesses along Boylston Street from a serious financial hit.
Looks like the declaration has already been made.
To determine whether the bombings constitute terrorism, the administration must work through a technical, multipart test, with the ultimate decision to be made jointly by the offices of the Treasury, the secretary of state, and the attorney general. The law does not set a deadline for making that determination.
The federal law is just one of several thickets businesses are negotiating on the insurance front. Most of their losses resulted from the closure of Boylston Street as a crime scene, not from the explosions themselves. Proving a loss thus becomes a complex and tedious matter of tallying old receipts from a prior comparable period and making the case to insurers that they accurately measures the cost of being forced by authorities to close....
No offense, but I don't care. Pay the price of lies if you aren't willing to speak the truth.
As the process unfolds, the business owners and their employees are also working overtime to restock supplies, fix broken equipment, deal with vendors and contractors, and help employees with lost wages, traumatic memories, and, in some cases, serious injuries.
“I don’t think anybody is really back to normal yet,” said Dan Donahue, managing director of the Lenox Hotel. “For a lot of businesses, being closed down for more than a week is a catastrophic event. It’s going to be a long process to recover.”
Related:
Boston Marathon Bombing: It's All Been Done Before
Sunday Globe Special: Boston Back to Normal
And they said that within days!
Donahue said he is working with an accountant to tabulate losses that he expects will be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. He said the hotel does have terrorism insurance. But since the federal government has not ruled on the designation, he does not know which provisions of his insurance will be relevant or how much the hotel will ultimately recoup.
“I think we’re going to be covered either way,” Donahue said. “But everybody is holding their cards very close to the vest right now. For the small businesses around us, you sort of hope it’s not determined to be terrorism.”
At Forum, a restaurant on Boylston Street where one of the bombs exploded, dealing with insurance is part of an extraordinarily long to-do list. The restaurant is undergoing a renovation, with an opening expected next month.
Meanwhile, the restaurant’s owners are still calculating their financial losses....
Jamison, the owner of Lolita Cocina & Tequila Bar, said his initial hope that the process would be straightforward disappeared quickly after he contacted his insurance carrier.
No one ever likes dealing with them.
He declined to provide a precise estimate, but said his losses are easily in the tens of thousands of dollars. Jamison said his insurance firm, which he declined to identity, has so far balked at covering his claim.
“It has not been a smooth, easy, or helpful process,” Jamison said. “Our doors are not going to close if we don’t get this settled, but this is real money. Your bills don’t just go away because you’re closed for nine days.”
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“Unfortunately, it comes down to a matter of policy language.”
"Merchants must be transparent about bomb victim aid" May 11, 2013
‘Proceeds will go to charity.” That’s the message affixed to a variety of products — from pizza to candles to country music — now being marketed as “Boston Strong.” That local businesses are stepping up to help collect funds to support Marathon bombing victims is noble, but retailers also have an obligation to consumers to be transparent about how much money from such sales will end up actually going to charity and which charities will benefit.
Cause marketing, as this practice is known, often comes down to the fine print. Consumers should always ask a lot of questions before they donate or make a purchase. But retailers should also make finding answers easier....
Is anyone troubled that the greatest economic system the world has ever seen is based on obfuscation and deceit?
Many buyers naturally assume 100 percent of their payments will aid victims, and some local corporations such as Saucony, Harpoon Brewery, and New Balance have made that generous pledge. Other businesses that may want to help but can’t afford to donate production and other costs — or still want to make a small profit from their efforts — should be upfront about that. Doing otherwise suggests more interest in selling than giving.
Hey, never let an opportunity go to wa$te, right?
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"Boston police may head overseas to train foreign law enforcement" by Todd Feathers | Globe Correspondent, May 10, 2013
The Boston Police Department is set to join a US State Department initiative that will send officers overseas to train their foreign counterparts and build intelligence channels aimed at tracking international crime, a State Department official said.
Related: NYPD Now a National Police Force
Make it international.
Maybe it's just me, but this has such a Nazi feel to it.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis will formalize the agreement at a signing ceremony Monday, said Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield, who leads the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.
Other large police departments — such as New York, and Chicago — have used the partnership to develop information on narcotics trafficking channels and terrorism threats, said Brownfield.
“The events in Boston of three weeks ago show just how close the connection is between what happens overseas and what happens on our streets,” Brownfield said.
Davis and city officials had agreed to the partnership prior to the Boston Marathon bombings, but the attacks and subsequent disclosures about Russian intelligence on alleged bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev drove home the need for international cooperation, said Brownfield....
Officers from Los Angeles, for instance, have trained police in Laos and Thailand in containing gang violence, he said. In return, they bolstered their knowledge of Asian gangs in California.
Just wondering why THIS was CUT for the web version:
Officers are deployed in teams, sometimes for several months, and work in advisory roles, seldom joining their trainees on patrols or other operations, Brownfield said. The State Department covers the cost.
That means they do join them.
"We don't send US law enforcement officers overseas to put them in harm's way," Brownfield said. "I will not ask a Boston police officer to put himself or herself in danger in any way."
However, he said, after the signing ceremony Monday his agency will honor several participating officers who died overseas.
Somehow the danger must have found them.
'bout had it with lying government officials and obfuscating omitter mouthpieces yet?
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‘‘Few will ever forget the end of the pursuit in Watertown, Mass. Suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev died following a gunbattle with police, and residents cheered and gave police high fives after his brother Dzhokhar was apprehended. ‘‘We don’t always get that opportunity to stand and applaud the men and women who keep us safe,’’ Obama said. ‘‘But they’re out there — hundreds of thousands of you patrolling our streets every single day. And we know that when we need you most, you’ll be ready to dash into danger, to protect our lives, even if it means putting your lives on the line.’’
And they kill more citizens every day than the "terrorists."
"Imagining outcome of Marathon bomb attempt in Israel
As I read the Globe’s comprehensive recap of the events surrounding the Boston Marathon bombing (“102 hours in pursuit,” Page A1, April 28), I fantasized about a different outcome on Patriots Day. If the suspects had attempted their murderous assault in Israel, a different outcome would have been likely.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Running of the Bull
We are nothing but adolescents, huh?
In Israel, from a young age, people are schooled to avoid any left objects in the street or other public places. Had the accused dropped their lethal backpacks or bags in a crowd in Israel, it is likely that someone would have immediately shouted, in Hebrew, “Left article!” The crowd would have been herded away, and authorities alerted.
Someone would likely have noticed the bombing suspects, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, leaving the packages, and many people would have pursued them and tackled them.
But wimpy Americans.... oh, man, I can't even type anything I'm so insulted.
Our intelligence services are valuable in many ways and stop some would-be assailants. However, we in America, England, Spain, and other countries must assume some of the responsibility for our own safety and incorporate the Israeli mindset into our daily activities in public. It becomes second nature.
No thanks. My head has been filled with enough Zionist propaganda over the course of my life.
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"Despite what happened at their first Boston Marathon, Michael and Nicole Gross remain fans and hope to return for another. Over the years, they have traveled to dozens of races and marathons, none of them quite like Boston. “Nothing matches what this city does,” said Michael. “It’s a big party. Nothing else compares to the spirit and the support the runners receive. The Boston Marathon is just amazing.”"
With all due respect, who is so positive about a horrifying experience that they look forward to returning (contrary to human nature) other than crisis actors?
Also see:
The Boston Marathon wounded: Eric and Ann Whalley
The Boston Marathon wounded: Brittany Loring
FBI’s Boston leader brushes off talk of friction
Fleeting and forever, true to a city that won’t forget
"While the whole story behind the Boston Marathon bombings is not yet known, certain parts of the picture are becoming clearer. The response to the April 15 attack is a testament to training efforts put in place after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. When bombs went off in Boston, police and first responders were prepared. They knew what to do, and doing it saved lives and minimized chaos.
That's because they were RUNNING a DRILL! Those are the photos you have seen!
Yet questions remain about the FBI’s inability to identify the suspects once surveillance photos were obtained. Someone in the FBI questioned Tamerlan Tsarnaev; who was it and why didn’t the person recognize Tsarnaev once photos of the bombing suspects were in FBI hands? What happened before the April 15 bombing — or, rather, what didn’t happen — also points to a need for greater systemic reform."
Always about pushing the agenda.
Time to rebury this issue and event.
