Image 01 Image 03

Boston Marathon Bombing Tag

Via The Times of Israel, Thwarted Israeli bus blast similar to Boston bombings:
The bomb that tore through a Dan No. 240 bus in the central Israeli city of Bat Yam on December 22 was assembled in a pressure cooker and activated by cellphone, much like the devices that killed three people and wounded hundreds more during the Boston Marathon in April 2013, the Shin Bet investigation has revealed.... The bomb, which exploded at the corner of Mivtza Sinai and Katzenelson streets in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bat Yam, caused no injuries because an alert passenger had noticed the bag containing the device left unattended by the bus’s rear door. The driver evacuated the bus, and the device was detonated as an Israeli sapper attempted to defuse it. The bus was wrecked, but there were no injuries.... According to information released by the Shin Bet, the bomb, consisted of two kilograms of improvised explosives surrounded by nails and screws and stuffed into a pressure cooker. This was a method akin to the one used by Boston murderers, brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. It was made popular by an al-Qaeda manual placed online.
More on the plot, via Haaretz:
Israeli security forces carried out a series of arrests in the West Bank city of Bethlehem following the attack, detaining members of the Islamic Jihad militant group. The Shin Bet believes that two of the central suspects in the plot to bomb the bus are former security prisoners in Israel: Shahada Ta'amri, 24, and his 21-year-old brother Hamdi Ta'amri, a former cadet in the Jericho Police officers' course. Another central suspect was named as Yousef Salame, 22.

This seemed inevitable. With all the efforts to tie the Tea Party and "right wing" to violence committed by others, it wouldn't be long before the Islamic radical Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was tied to "right-wing" causes. With the slenderest of proof, The BBC goes there:
One of the brothers suspected of carrying out the Boston bombings was in possession of right-wing American literature in the run-up to the attack, BBC Panorama has learnt.

BBC Tsarnaev Right Wing

So, what was this supposed "right-wing" literature? Was Tamerlan reading about lower taxes and federalism, more restriction of federal versus state government? About shrinking entitlements or stopping the growth of the welfare state? About the deficit? Reversing Roe v. Wade? No. Here's the BBC's list of Tamerlane's supposed right-wing causes:
Tamerlan Tsarnaev subscribed to publications espousing white supremacy and government conspiracy theories. He also had reading material on mass killings... The programme discovered that Tamerlan Tsarnaev possessed articles which argued that both 9/11 and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing were government conspiracies. Another in his possession was about "the rape of our gun rights". Reading material he had about white supremacy commented that "Hitler had a point". Tamerlan Tsarnaev also had literature which explored what motivated mass killings and noted how the perpetrators murdered and maimed calmly. There was also material about US drones killing civilians, and about the plight of those still imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay.
Let's take them one by one.

This isn't going over so well. When I was a teenager, I used to wait anxiously for my issue of Tiger Beat to arrive (yes, I'm ashamed to admit that).  I think some folks have it right - this Rolling Stone cover is more like Tiger Beat with a mix of Newsweek desperation. https://twitter.com/MoRocca/status/357378616952242176 https://twitter.com/michellemalkin/status/357279858688139266 https://twitter.com/caroljsroth/status/357338368297799680 https://twitter.com/MichaelEHayden/status/357494372608135168 https://twitter.com/MattMackowiak/status/357356533073448961 Jim Geraghty nails it.

The Al Qaeda magazine, Inspire, is celebrating the Boston Marathon bombings and mocking US security in its current issue, while insinuating unavoidable future attacks on Americans. From the NY Post: Inspire, known as the Vanity Fair of terrorism, also tried to parlay recent ricin-laced letters sent Congress...

The FBI said early Wednesday that it was reviewing a fatal shooting incident in Orlando, Florida in which an individual being questioned by law enforcement in connection with the Boston bombings and an unsolved 2011 triple homicide had engaged in a “violent confrontation” with law enforcement personnel. Just prior to being killed, the man, identified as Ibragim Todashev, reportedly confessed to involvement in the 2011 slayings of three men in Waltham, Massachusetts, one of whom had been a friend of deceased Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev.  CBS News is reporting that Todashev also implicated Tamerlan Tsarnaev in those slayings. It all began Wednesday morning with the following press release from the FBI:
The FBI is currently reviewing a shooting incident involving an FBI special agent. Based on preliminary information, the incident occurred in Orlando, Florida during the early morning hours of May 22, 2013. The agent, two Massachusetts State Police troopers, and other law enforcement personnel were interviewing an individual in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing investigation when a violent confrontation was initiated by the individual. During the confrontation, the individual was killed and the agent sustained non-life threatening injuries. As this incident is under review, we have no further details at this time.
As more details emerged throughout the day, it was revealed that Todashev was a Chechen who resided in Boston at the time of the 2011 killings.  He was said to have been an acquaintance of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and of the victims of the 2011 killings. From CBS News:

Three college classmates of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were arrested and charged Wednesday in connection with the investigation. From the FBI's official press release: Dias Kadyrbayev, 19, and Azamat Tazhayakov, 19, both of New Bedford, were charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy to obstruct...

Whoa. Details to follow. https://twitter.com/Boston_Police/status/329612972521558016 BREAKING: Three college students taken into custody in connection with the Boston Marathon bombings.— Jason Tuohey (@jtuohey21) May 1, 2013 BREAKING: A source tells the Globe that the three were connected to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev at UMass Dartmouth and helped him after the fact.— Boston.com...

Previously, we brought you reports on the Boston Marathon bombings investigation and details into the lives of the suspects, first in The Lives of the Boston Bombers: What We Do and Don’t Know and then in a follow-up, New Developments in the Boston Marathon Bombings...

There have been several new developments today in the Boston bombings case. Authorities are searching a landfill for a laptop believed to be tied to the Boston Marathon bombers, according to CNN.
Information from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev himself, plus other leads, spurred authorities to look through the New Bedford, Massachusetts, landfill, the official told CNN's Susan Candiotti. The 19-year-old went to school -- at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth -- in an adjacent town, and he was spotted in his dorm room there in the days after the April 15 twin blasts that left three dead.
ABC News also has more on this development. The lead regarding the laptop resulted from interviews authorities conducted with acquaintances of the suspects. From the same ABC News report, we learn that the two acquaintances, who are from Kazakhstan, have been arrested by immigration officers on a violation of their student visas.

As Professor Jacobson has noted, there's no shortage of denial about Tsarnaev Brothers, the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing. Barry Rubin observes: Now that the two (primary, at least) terrorists from the Boston Marathon attack have been killed or captured, we enter a new phase in...

Can I call 'em or what? On Sunday, I wrote about how the media and left-blogosphere were trying to move the Boston Bombing narrative to focus on what is wrong with how we treated the bombers as immigrants and away from the problem of Jihadism, Politically correct...

And you thought it was bad here. Via Tim Blair's blog (h/t sdog), an image that ran last Friday morning in the Sydney Morning Herald, as part of a column praising Obama for not  jumping to conclusions as to the source of the bombing, Bomb response refreshingly...

No one cares about the skin color of the Boston Marathon Bombers except to push back against people like David Sirota of Salon.com who infamously hoped that a "white American" was responsible, and others in the media and left-blogosphere who were hoping that another Timothy McVeigh-looking person was the perp. I'm...