Category Archives: Terrorism

04.23.13
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Yahoo News: Tsarnaev’s condition improves; brothers reportedly motivated by U.S. wars

Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev informed investigators that he and his brother were not directed by a foreign terrorist organization. Instead, they were “self-radicalized” and motivated to kill, in part, by U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Washington Post reported.

The 19-year-old also acknowledged his role in the attack while being questioned by investigators in his hospital bed, the report said. Tsarnaev, who has a gunshot wound to the throat and was sedated, responded in writing. He also suffered gunshot wounds in the head, neck, legs and hand during a late-night shootout in Watertown, Mass.

Meanwhile, Tsarnaev’s condition is improving, the FBI said on Tuesday. The college student, who had been listed in serious condition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center since his capture on Friday, is now in fair condition, the bureau said.

The update comes a day after Tsarnaev was charged with two federal counts of using a weapon of mass destruction to kill, injure and cause widespread damage at the marathon. Tsarnaev was informed of the charges and read his rights in his hospital room on Monday morning, and placed in the custody the U.S. Marshal Service. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

Three people were killed and more than 200 others wounded when two powerful homemade bombs exploded near the race’s finish line. Dzhokhar and his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed by police as the two attempted to avoid capture, are suspected of planting those bombs.

Tamerlan was an ardent reader of jihadist websites and extremist propaganda, U.S. officials told the Associated Press, suggesting the brothers were motivated by an anti-American, radical version of Islam.

Meanwhile, U.S. investigators traveled to southern Russia on Tuesday to speak to the parents of the brothers, a U.S. Embassy official told the news service. Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of the suspects, and their father, Anzor, are in Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim province in Russia’s Caucasus.

After the bombings, Anzor said he believed the brothers were set up and called Dzhokhar a “true angel.” Maret Tsarnaeva, the brothers’ aunt, who lives in Toronto, also said she believes her nephews were framed.

Family members are not the only ones expressing doubt.

Many Twitter users have been expressing support for Dzhokhar using the hashtag #freejahar.

And just like the conspiracy theorists who claimed last week that the Boston Marathon attacks were staged, the support for Dzhokhar has been fervent despite his reported confession.

A Change.org petition to “guarantee Dzhokhar Tsarnaev the right to a fair trial,” addressed to President Barack Obama, has more than 6,000 supporters.

“We believe that within the chaos caused by the Boston Marathon explosion, two young men were wrongfully accused of something they did not do, and one of them has lost his life before even getting the opportunity of a proper trial,” Anita Temisheva, the user who launched the petition, wrote. “We do not wish to see blood of yet another innocent victim, someone who, by U.S. law, is innocent until proven guilty. It is vital to end this persecution, as all the conflicting information shown by the media, and footage from the incident, seen by people from all corners of the world, doesn’t manifest itself as enough evidence to condemn Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of this heinous crime.”

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Click below for the full article and a video as well.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/tsarnaev-condition-motive-wars-193132367.html

04.23.13
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ABC News: Simple Boston Bomb Plot Hatched Without Foreign Help, Authorities Believe

In the hours before Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was charged with the crime that could lead to the death penalty, authorities tell ABC News the 19-year-old accused terrorist has started to provide his version of the events that led to the deadly Boston Marathon bomb attacks.

For all the power of the two explosions at the Boston Marathon finish line, and for all the dramatic gun fights on the streets of Watertown, and for all the suppositions about the role of disciplined, well-trained terrorists, the college student reportedly told investigators the whole attack was devised from the Internet. The two brothers, he said, had no direction or financing from governments or rogue groups overseas.

Authorities tell ABC News they now believe the two foreign-born brothers were inspired to violence by the Internet preaching’s of al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki, the charismatic American-born radical jihadist, who has been dead now for more than a year. They used instructions from an al Qaeda Internet magazine to make their pressure cooker bombs. And Dzhokhar, the younger of the brothers, may not have even known about the plot until a week or so before the attack, sources told ABC News.

Seth Jones, a counter-terror expert at the RAND Corporation, said the attack’s simplicity and home grown origins may wind up being some of the most chilling aspects the Boston bombing.

“This is kind of the al Qaeda modus operandi now, not relying only on operatives, but trying to get people do it yourself radicalization to build their own bombs without coming to a training camp in Pakistan or Yemen or other locations,” Jones said.

“They ad-libbed part of it and made some decisions on a few elements of the bomb making but what’s different about this is they took a very simple recipe and then targeted the Boston Marathon,” Jones said. “And why the marathon? Because it was there, essentially, and easy. Not long in the planning.”

Authorities also told ABC News it is increasingly likely that the older of the brothers, Tamerlan, devised the plot and did most of the work in pulling it together.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died during a firefight with police early Friday morning.

“The older brother appeared to be the more radicalized of the two and was the one that drove the need to conduct the attack as well as the preparation for the attack that is building the bombs,” Jones said.

As to what drove Tamerlan to violence, his younger brother has apparently told investigators it was his hatred of America, and its policies in Afghanistan and Iraq, law enforcement sources said.

Officials say they do not plan to take what the younger accused bomber has told them at face value, and that the probe will continue to examine whether there were overseas terror connections of any kind. “It would be in his interest to minimize his own role,” one official said.

But the younger brother is reportedly telling investigators is consistent with what many of those who knew Tamerlan were observing — his disgust with things American and Christian.

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Click below for the rest of the article.

 

04.23.13
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Fox News: Army warns of deeper cuts in troop numbers unless automatic budget reductions are stopped

Senior Army officials are warning they may have to cut as many as 100,000  more soldiers over the next decade unless the automatic spending reductions  forcing the military services to slash their budgets are stopped.

Army Secretary John McHugh tells a Senate committee Tuesday the losses would  undermine the service’s ability to be prepared for wartime missions. He says the  Army is already planning to trim its ranks by 80,000 active duty troops due to  previously planned budget reductions approved by Congress in 2011.

But if the automatic cuts, known as sequestration, continue into future  years, thousands more soldiers, including reservists, will have to be let go due  to a lack of money, McHugh says.

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So it seems the game of chicken to either raise taxes or pile on more debt continue from all angles.  Click below for the full article.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/04/23/army-warns-deeper-cuts-in-troop-numbers-unless-automatic-budget-reductions-are/#ixzz2RLCkDyxw

 

04.22.13
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ABC News: Boston Bombing Suspect to Be Tried as Civilian Over Strident Objections

The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, will not be tried as an enemy combatant, the White House said today, rejecting calls from some lawmakers to do so.

“He will not be treated as an enemy combatant. We will prosecute this terrorist through our civilian system of justice,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters today. “Under U.S. law, United States citizens cannot be tried in military commissions. And it is important to remember that since 9/11, we have used the federal court system to convict and incarcerate hundreds of terrorists.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., today blasted the decison as “premature.”

“It is impossible for us to gather the evidence in just a few days to determine whether or not this individual should be held for questioning under the law of war,” Graham told reporters.

In the wake of 9/11, Congress passed a joint resolution called the Authorization for Use of Military Force, which granted the president the power to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.”

A Supreme Court ruling three years later seemed to suggest that a U.S. citizen captured while fighting for al-Qaida could legally be held as an “enemy combatant,” but left unanswered was how to proceed if the accused is nabbed on U.S. soil.

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Click below for the full article.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/boston-bombing-suspect-civilian-strident-objections/story?id=19016171#.UXX-l1_D_HY

04.21.13
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Daily Kos: The Slow Death of the Fourth Amendment

The government has been chipping away at the 4th Amendment since the start of the War on (some) Drugs. The stop-and-frisk policy in New York is just one of the latest steps in destroying privacy in this country.

Now the DHS has decided that the freedom from suspicionless searches doesn’t apply near the nation’s borders.

 “We also conclude that imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits,” the executive summary said.

 The President George W. Bush administration first announced the suspicionless, electronics search rules in 2008. The President Barack Obama administration followed up with virtually the same rules a year later. Between 2008 and 2010, 6,500 persons had their electronic devices searched along the U.S. border, according to DHS data.    According to legal precedent, the Fourth Amendment — the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures — does not apply along the border. By the way, the government contends the Fourth-Amendment-Free Zone stretches 100 miles inland from the nation’s actual border.

Did you catch that? 100 miles inland. That includes shipping ports. That means that around 2/3rd of the nation’s population, around 190 million, lives in these areas that are free of the 4th Amendment restrictions.Photobucket

The DHS has already set up 33 “internal checkpoints” deeper in the country.

The expansion of the police state in America would be mindboggling to anyone living as recently as the 1980’s or 1990’s. It doesn’t seem to matter which political party is in power.

Click below for the full article.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/10/1185972/-The-slow-death-of-the-4th-Amendment

04.20.13
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Bloomberg: Obama Decision on Interrogating Suspect Draws Criticism from Civil Liberties Groups; Republicans argue still not tough enough

The Obama administration’s decision to interrogate the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing without first warning him of his rights has sparked criticism from both sides of the political spectrum about the best way to prosecute terrorism cases.

Justice Department officials have said their move to question bombing suspect Dzhokar Tsarnaev, 19, without reading him the Miranda warning of his right to remain silent is a necessary legal tool in cases of domestic terrorism.

Civil liberties groups said yesterday the tactic raises concerns about infringement of Tsarnaev’s constitutional rights, especially since he’s a naturalized American citizen. At the same time, four Republican lawmakers criticized the administration for not being tough enough, saying Tsarnaev should be designated an enemy combatant with no right to counsel……..

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Holder’s push has been criticized by civil liberties groups that say delaying Miranda warnings poses risks to the constitutional rights of suspects.

“Obama’s Justice Department unilaterally expanded the ‘public safety exception’ to Miranda in 2010 beyond anything the Supreme Court ever authorized,” Vincent Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy group that focuses on civil-liberties litigation, said in a statement yesterday. “Each time the administration uses this exception, it stretches wider and longer.”

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As we stated before, Republicans and Democrats (at least some of the key players in both parties) seem to think that the constitution only applies some of the time and to a subset of the citizenship.  What do you think?

Click below for the full article.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-21/obama-decision-on-interrogating-suspect-draws-criticism.html?cmpid=yhoo

04.20.13
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Yahoo News: Boston bombing suspect’s arrest presents intelligence opportunity, legal challenges

BOSTON – Keeping bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev alive and able to answer questions would be a badly-needed intelligence coup for terror investigators, a former U.S. District Attorney told Yahoo News on Saturday.

“The fear of law enforcement has always been the small, insular cells that are kind of under the radar,” said Richard Roper, a federal prosecutor for 21 years. “Either the lone wolf or the small cells … they’re difficult to obtain intelligence on. I hope they get some good stuff out of him.”

On Saturday, Dzhokhar was reportedly clinging to life and under heavy guard at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He apparently suffered gunshot wounds to the neck and leg during separate gun battles with authorities on Friday.

Tsarnaev, 19, and his brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, are believed to have planted the two backpack bombs near the finish line of Monday’s Boston Marathon. The twin explosions killed three people and injured 180 others……..

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“There’s a need to immediately question the guy whether you Mirandize him or not to save lives,” Roper said. “The question is how far do you go before it turns into a custodial interrogation?”

Republican Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina went a step further, suggesting Dzhokhar be treated as an enemy combatant like a soldier captured in war. The move drew the ire of longtime McCain aide and speechwriter Mark Salter.

“My friend, Lindsey Graham, is wrong on this,” Salter posted on his Facebook page. “However unforgivable his crimes, he’s a US citizen, arrested on US soil, with, at this time, no known associations with foreign terrorist organizations at war with the U.S. To declare him an “enemy combatant,” and deny him his rights is un-American.”

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What do you all think, does the constitution only apply to some citizens or all?

Click below for the full article.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/boston-bombing-suspect-arrest-presents-intelligence-opportunity-legal-183858408.html

04.19.13
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The Week: The insanity of blaming Islam

We are still speculating about virtually everything right now, but I feel as though I need to explain why I find the quick and easy conversation about Muslims being radicalized in America to be so illogical and laced with bigotry.

Of course, there is a global violent jihadist movement, loosely organized, that wants to recruit young men to influence policies at home and abroad and perhaps usher in the global caliphate. That ideology motivates some Muslims to kill innocent people.

But you’re allowed to be a radical Muslim in America. You’re allowed to believe that the Qu’ran proscribes the most elegant set of laws. You’re allowed to believe that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. And you can say, in America, pretty much anything you want. Not everything, and after 9/11, a little less, but you can still make very unpopular arguments.

So just for the sake of argument, let’s assume that the only factor that motivated these two brothers from Chechnya to set off bombs and kill police officers is their decision to accept some form of radical Islamic teachings as their foundational belief system. (I highly doubt this is the case, but let’s just throw it out there.)

We ask: “We have to look at the whole issue of radicalization. What prompts someone raised as an American to cause such carnage?”

That’s what Peter King, the Republican chair of the Homeland Security committee, asked. So he goes right to the religion; somehow, he slides very quickly past the possibility that something about America is radicalizing people of all sorts.

He commits the sin of essentialism.

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Click below for the full article.

http://theweek.com/article/index/243051/the-insanity-of-blaming-islam