Boston Marathon - why is Obama quickly deporting the Saudi suspect?

[cobben]

Re: Boston Marathon - why is Obama quickly deporting the Saudi suspect?

Oh yes, neither are fully believable at this point, so I would tend to look at who might benefit from the Boston attacks.

As far as I can see so far, only the various and sundry security organizations of the US and the Russian Federation, who can all expect more funding and more power after this.

This is good, via Yves, the comments are quite good too, read the rest at NC.


Boston Bombing: Links and Commentary


The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images. — Guy DeBord
By Lambert Strether of Corrente


It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. On Monday we the dilatory paid our taxes and then began to follow the story of a bombing at the Boston Marathon along with everyone else. On Tuesday two of the most powerful and very political economists in the world would have been humiliated by a grad student were they capable of shame. On Wednesday another powerful political economist and policy maker called the moral environment of Wall Street “pathological” and the political system “corrupt to the core” with both parties “in it up to their necks.” And then 10,000 cops locked Boston down but couldn’t find an amateur fleeing on foot from a crime scene while leaving a blood trail. Can’t anybody here play this game? So I’m feeling a bit woozy, and this isn’t going to the best post EVAH, the golden candlestick I send out in the world.

So, okay, three parts. First, I want to put forward the concept — and I know this may come as a shock to you — that the official narrative is not always completely trustworthy. And I won’t even have to mention WMDs, or any discourse that ends in “-er.” Then, I want to put forward another surprising idea: There are many narratives that are not trustworthy, even if unofficial. Finally, I’d like to raise some issues of method, or at least issues about method.

So, about that official narrative and whether you should trust it. In a word, no. Especially you should not trust it when the nice folks from our organs of state security are involved, for the good and sufficient reason that they have a track record of manufacturing the raw materials of narrative — we might call these “events” — to suit their purposes. Anybody ever read James Ellroy’s wonderful LA Confidential? Like that, except reality — making assumptions here — is plus noir plus more densely plotted: “I’m prepared for whatever displays of gratitude [Chief] Parker has to offer,” says Edmund Exley, hero detective, having constructed three alternative narratives for Parker to make an executive decision about and splash on the front pages of The Los Angeles Times (p. 45). Does anybody really believe nothing like that could happen in the city of Boston?

Anyhow, events. Here’s an oldie but goodie from Mother Jones. You know they’re not from the loony left or the tinfoil hat crowd because they publish Kevin Drum, okay?

Over the past year, Mother Jones and the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkeley have examined prosecutions of 508 defendants in terrorism-related cases, as defined by the Department of Justice. Our investigation found:

• Nearly half the prosecutions involved the use of informants, many of them incentivized by money (operatives can be paid as much as $100,000 per assignment) or the need to work off criminal or immigration violations. (For more on the details of those 508 cases, see our charts page and searchable database.)
• Sting operations resulted in prosecutions against 158 defendants. Of that total, 49 defendants participated in plots led by an agent provocateur—an FBI operative instigating terrorist action.
• With three exceptions, all of the high-profile domestic terror plots of the last decade were actually FBI stings. (The exceptions are Najibullah Zazi, who came close to bombing the New York City subway system in September 2009; Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, an Egyptian who opened fire on the El-Al ticket counter at the Los Angeles airport; and failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad.)
• In many sting cases, key encounters between the informant and the target were not recorded—making it hard for defendants claiming entrapment to prove their case.
• Terrorism-related charges are so difficult to beat in court, even when the evidence is thin, that defendants often don’t risk a trial.

“The problem with the cases we’re talking about is that defendants would not have done anything if not kicked in the ass by government agents,” says Martin Stolar, a lawyer who represented a man caught in a 2004 sting involving New York’s Herald Square subway station. “They’re creating crimes to solve crimes so they can claim a victory in the war on terror.”

So that’s one reason never to trust the official narrative, and especially not this narrative. Anybody who doesn’t take that history into account isn’t thinking with their brains.

But even when the FBI isn’t building and firing its own gun so it can later put a notch in it, the press — and we, the readers and citizens — often get narratives wrong, especially when there’s a moral panic involved, and especially when black or brown or, like, The Others are involved.

. . .

[don]

Re: Boston Marathon - why is Obama quickly deporting the Saudi suspect?

Paul Craig Roberts thoughts on the event . . .

Boston Marathon Bombing

Dear Readers,

A number of you have asked me my take on the Boston Marathon Bombing and subsequent events.

I am flattered that so many look to me for leadership on so many issues. However,
I have not followed closely the Boston event. My website hasn’t the resources to field an investigative team, and in my opinion the TV and print news is part of the misinformation or disinformation. While driving (April 19) I listened to a NPR program on the Boston bombing and was disheartened by the absence of hard questions and any thought.

Alex Jones has made a definitive statement that I lack the information to verify or contest. (See here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axQtAFtmtVA )

The video shows numerous military type guys on the scene prior to the explosion in identical garb--black baseball hats with white insignia, black shirts or jackets, tan pants and combat boots with cell phones in their hands. All have identical backpacks.

The backpack straps match those on the remains of an exploded backpack, which the media has attributed to the backpack of one of the two brothers who are alleged to have committed the bombing. But they also match those of the guys who seem to move at ease among the police. No cop demands to search any of the backpacks.

The video also shows prior to the bombing bomb-sniffing dogs patrolling and the Boston Globe’s report that a mock bomb attack would be part of a drill at the marathon.

These documented facts have disappeared, to the extent that I have paid attention, from the media’s reports.

What strikes me about the event is the ease with which authorities were able to lockdown entire metropolitan areas, preventing US citizens from leaving their homes in order to go to their jobs, to doctor’s appointments, to the grocery store, or to walk their dogs. This is a precedent. It sets the stage for martial law, although it is not being called that, and for daylight curfews. Is this what Homeland Security meant two years ago when its leader said the agency had shifted its focus from terrorism to domestic extremists?

All of this is happening because of 4 or 5 deaths including one of the alleged perpetrators of the bombing. The response of the authorities is disproportionate to the crime.

Lockdowns of metropolitan areas because of a hunt for one guy that might be a patsy? This is a new development. It is ominous for our future as a free society.

[vinoveri]

Re: Boston Marathon - why is Obama quickly deporting the Saudi suspect?

A civilized country may do uncivilized things, just as a wise and moral man will do stupid and immoral things. The British are said to be responsible for a number of famines in India during the time of British rule. But does this make the British system of civil law less civilized than civil law under Mussolini's rule in Italy?

What matters is the relatively consistent pattern of behavior exhibited that determines likely future behavior. Law, culture, and history are the primary drivers.

In the case of the U.S., the perpetrator of a mass killing is unlikely to be slaughtered in a staged shootout as is the case in Saudi Arabia. He is more likely to be captured. A particularly troublesome journalist may die in prison in Russia under suspicious circumstances, but this is highly unlikely to occur in the U.S. A "corrupt" politician in China who gets on the wrong side of laws that are applied differentially by the courts is more likely to find himself in a mobile executions van than a corrupt politician in the U.S., if for no other reason because there are no mobile executions vans in the U.S. And so on and so forth.

Vigilance plays an important role in protecting American constitutional law and a law enforcement culture that protects civil liberties. Constant pressure on those who would tend to reduce our freedoms is a necessary part of protecting them. But it is worthwhile to take a moment from time to time to appreciate the reality that the U.S. is far from a police state. In fact, I think one of the difficult discussions that will come out of this is the apparent decision by the FBI to put the civil liberties of the perpetrators ahead of those of their eventual victims. The Russian government notified the FBI in 2011 to question the older brother. They did but determined that he was not a threat. Then the FBI closed the file and did not track him. I imagine that if I was a family member of one of the victims of the attack or a survivor who was gravely injured, or both in the case of the mother of the eight-year-old who was killed, rather than a police state I might take the view that law enforcement needs to adapt to balance civil liberties protections quite differently in response to new threats.

Yes, and U.S law and culture are in the midst of transformations, which for some,e.g. Lockian- Jeffersonian and/or natural law advocates are not positive, but are threats to the bases of "beacon on a hill" vision; others of a more secular bent applaud the "liberation" from cutural traditions and normative value and rely on the state=gov to enforce their POV. Political correctness, dubious views on the value of family unit as basis of culture, centralized planning with dictates from secularized experts in economics, education, sociology, law, etc continue to result in the decline of our society (not saying its all bad, just taking issue with the relativistic activism in both law and top-down control - something our constitution was meant to prevent.

The reason we are headed toward unpleasantness is that many more folks are realizing that they have no voice and their "vote" does not matter - just look at TARP for one small example and the BS primary system we have. When the government is bought and paid for corrupt, the populace tends to emulate the "what the heck, everyone is doing it" - good will among people is all that will still save us.

When I was in college and the war on drugs was beginning and the US created the Drug Tzar position, my classmates were unsympathetic to my complaints about losing liberties - the reponse I kept getting was "so what, we're still a lot freeer than the USSR" - I knew things were only going to get worse with attitdues like this. We're an instant=me culture now - who thinks about what the US will be in 50 yrs, 100yrs? We should, just as our predecessors did. Franklin, I would guess, would not think we are doing well to keep the "REpublic" his generation gave us .... but what the hell, we're still more free China ...

[Polish_Silver]

Paranoia, the destroyer!

Gandhi's strategy of Civil Disobedience only worked because the foe, the British, were civilized. The same strategy applied if the national occupation of India was by, say, Benito Mussolini? Not so effective.

Civilian defense works as well as it does in the U.S. because Americans are civilized as is our police force. This must infuriate those who try to stir us to violence. It's hopeless. They can never turn the U.S. into a state of violence.

I think the US is losing it's integrity. The Patriot Act and NDAA are steps towards a police state.
Congress keeps expanding the ability of government to imprison people without charge, torture them, etc. And those laws include people on US territory and US citizens, wherever they are.

Meanwhile, Corzine is as free as a bird.

I don't think Americans really want these laws, but many of our politicians and law enforcement officials do want them.

About a week after 9-11, I was riding my bicycle to work in Silicon Valley. I daily went past a mosque/Islamic school without thinking about it. But that day I noticed that there were two police cars parked near the drive way. The policeman were standing guard over the entrance to the school. I never felt so proud to be an American.

[BadJuju]

Re: Paranoia, the destroyer!

Don't forget CISPA. Now private entities will be able to freely share your private information to the government without any oversight.

[reggie]

Re: Paranoia, the destroyer!

+1

Seeing incoherence and stupidity as evil and cunning is fun and exciting but ultimately an unproductive way to deal with the real world. Thanks for posting this.

How can the untrained mind determine "incoherence"? We "see" sensory inputs with our minds and not our eyes, ears, etc. So, if the neural networks in the brain of the observer have not been developed, significant "inputs" will not be seen nor cognitively processed. Hence, one without the bio-ability simply won't possess all of the inputs necessary to analyze for coherence.

The above is why it is so critical that ALL media narratives are controlled... thereby controlling the neural networks developed amonst target audiences. ALL sources of media are designed to provide varying levels of propaganda from various perspectives so that no target audience is allowed to gain accurate insight that would allow them to act/react appropriately. It's a system of deception that is designed to keep the target audience confused and disoriented, no matter the particular flavor of media consumed.

Finally, arrogance on the part of the subject only exacerbates frame boundaries within the subject's neural networks, providing further resistence to processing of essential new inputs that are outside the boundaries of the subject's existing neural networks.

The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images. — Guy DeBord

Thank you for referencing DeBord.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soc..._the_Spectacle

Debord traces the development of a modern society in which authentic social life has been replaced with its representation: "All that once was directly lived has become mere representation." Debord argues that the history of social life can be understood as "the decline of being into having, and having into merely appearing." This condition, according to Debord, is the "historical moment at which the commodity completes its colonization of social life."

With the term spectacle, Debord defines the system that is a confluence of advanced capitalism, the mass media, and the types of governments who favor those phenomena: "the spectacle, taken in the limited sense of 'mass media' which are its most glaring superficial manifestation". In his follow-up book, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, Debord referred to the spectacle as coming to existence in the late 1920s

[Master Shake]

Re: Boston Marathon - why is Obama quickly deporting the Saudi suspect?

How reliable is Infowars?

Alex Jones: need anyone say more?

Of course, even paranoid, nutcase squirrels will find an acorn now and then.

[Master Shake]

Re: Boston Marathon - why is Obama quickly deporting the Saudi suspect?

PCR jumped the shark a long time ago.

[cobben]

Re: Boston Marathon - why is Obama quickly deporting the Saudi suspect?

Here the authorities did a good job, no overreaction, no-one got killed or even hurt, despite multiple attempts at bank robbery.
Is that because this happened in Virginia?

Fascinating story, gives an idea of what the police are up against.

In Virginia’s Fairfax County, Robbing Banks for the CIA

. . .

“If I tell you, you’re not going to believe me,” Torres said. He was crying as he told them an incredible story about being recruited by the Defense Intelligence Agency to participate in a secret operation testing the security of Washington-area banks. He said he’d been assigned to rob a half-dozen banks over four days. And he told them about Theo, the man who hired him and gave all the orders—even though Torres had never met him.


Angry, his interrogators accused him of making up a ridiculous story. Still, Torres persuaded them to look at the text and e-mail messages on his cell phone; he also gave them the password to his Facebook (FB) account and urged them to retrieve a copy of the Defense Intelligence Agency immunity letter from his glove compartment. The police locked up Torres on a charge of attempted robbery and examined the evidence. By the end of the night, they weren’t sure what was going on, but they suspected Torres might be telling the truth.

. . .

[flintlock]

Re: Boston Marathon - why is Obama quickly deporting the Saudi suspect?

With respect, you are comparing apples and oranges. This guy was captured alive for a reason- information that could
prevent further atrocities. The ex cop in California who went nuts was treated rather differently and met a gruesome end. I wish people would stop commenting on corruption in EM countries when things a not so rosy in the old democracies

I have to agree here. The capture of suspect #2 was more about getting information than any high values. But I do give credit for the way the police handled the situation. Good job. Given what had happened earlier, they would have been well justified in just playing it safe and turning that boat into swiss cheese.

[flintlock]

Re: Boston Marathon - why is Obama quickly deporting the Saudi suspect?

Yes, and U.S law and culture are in the midst of transformations, which for some,e.g. Lockian- Jeffersonian and/or natural law advocates are not positive, but are threats to the bases of "beacon on a hill" vision; others of a more secular bent applaud the "liberation" from cutural traditions and normative value and rely on the state=gov to enforce their POV. Political correctness, dubious views on the value of family unit as basis of culture, centralized planning with dictates from secularized experts in economics, education, sociology, law, etc continue to result in the decline of our society (not saying its all bad, just taking issue with the relativistic activism in both law and top-down control - something our constitution was meant to prevent.

The reason we are headed toward unpleasantness is that many more folks are realizing that they have no voice and their "vote" does not matter - just look at TARP for one small example and the BS primary system we have. When the government is bought and paid for corrupt, the populace tends to emulate the "what the heck, everyone is doing it" - good will among people is all that will still save us.

When I was in college and the war on drugs was beginning and the US created the Drug Tzar position, my classmates were unsympathetic to my complaints about losing liberties - the reponse I kept getting was "so what, we're still a lot freeer than the USSR" - I knew things were only going to get worse with attitdues like this. We're an instant=me culture now - who thinks about what the US will be in 50 yrs, 100yrs? We should, just as our predecessors did. Franklin, I would guess, would not think we are doing well to keep the "REpublic" his generation gave us .... but what the hell, we're still more free China ...

Yep. Bread and Circuses. So what if the Roman Senate became a joke. At least they knew how to throw an orgy.

[flintlock]

Re: Boston Marathon - why is Obama quickly deporting the Saudi suspect?

Paul Craig Roberts thoughts on the event . . .

Boston Marathon Bombing

Dear Readers,

A number of you have asked me my take on the Boston Marathon Bombing and subsequent events.

I am flattered that so many look to me for leadership on so many issues. However,
I have not followed closely the Boston event. My website hasn’t the resources to field an investigative team, and in my opinion the TV and print news is part of the misinformation or disinformation. While driving (April 19) I listened to a NPR program on the Boston bombing and was disheartened by the absence of hard questions and any thought.

Alex Jones has made a definitive statement that I lack the information to verify or contest. (See here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axQtAFtmtVA )

The video shows numerous military type guys on the scene prior to the explosion in identical garb--black baseball hats with white insignia, black shirts or jackets, tan pants and combat boots with cell phones in their hands. All have identical backpacks.

The backpack straps match those on the remains of an exploded backpack, which the media has attributed to the backpack of one of the two brothers who are alleged to have committed the bombing. But they also match those of the guys who seem to move at ease among the police. No cop demands to search any of the backpacks.

The video also shows prior to the bombing bomb-sniffing dogs patrolling and the Boston Globe’s report that a mock bomb attack would be part of a drill at the marathon.

These documented facts have disappeared, to the extent that I have paid attention, from the media’s reports.

What strikes me about the event is the ease with which authorities were able to lockdown entire metropolitan areas, preventing US citizens from leaving their homes in order to go to their jobs, to doctor’s appointments, to the grocery store, or to walk their dogs. This is a precedent. It sets the stage for martial law, although it is not being called that, and for daylight curfews. Is this what Homeland Security meant two years ago when its leader said the agency had shifted its focus from terrorism to domestic extremists?

All of this is happening because of 4 or 5 deaths including one of the alleged perpetrators of the bombing. The response of the authorities is disproportionate to the crime.

Lockdowns of metropolitan areas because of a hunt for one guy that might be a patsy? This is a new development. It is ominous for our future as a free society.

The though occurred to me that the lockdown of a major city might perhaps be giving the enemy a bit too much power, but then I'm not sure I would have done anything differently.

The guys wearing identical outfits were wearing 5.11 brand pants. Very common among law enforcement and private security firms. I think its a stretch to turn that into a conspiracy, but before the bombers were identified, that definitely got my attention. More likely we are not seeing any more coverage of them because their existence has been explained. They were part of security.

[c1ue]

Re: Boston Marathon - why is Obama quickly deporting the Saudi suspect?

But does this make the British system of civil law less civilized than civil law under Mussolini's rule in Italy?

The question isn't whether Mussolini's rule is worse than the British system - though I think of a lot of Zimbabwe-ans/Rhodesians might disagree.

The question is, what was the civil liberty situation in Italy like before Mussolini?

[wayiwalk]

Re: Boston Marathon - why is Obama quickly deporting the Saudi suspect?

Except that he's dead, killed by a guy on the rifle range about a month or so ago. What's really disconcerting is the proliferation of security organizations, both government and private, that seem to saturate our country. The Third Reich was run along those lines, with multiple ever-competing security organizations. As a state turns more authoritarian, is that a predictable path?

Ok. Not so easily.

[shiny!]

Re: Boston Marathon - why is Obama quickly deporting the Saudi suspect?

Originally Posted by don Except that he's dead, killed by a guy on the rifle range about a month or so ago. What's really disconcerting is the proliferation of security organizations, both government and private, that seem to saturate our country. The Third Reich was run along those lines, with multiple ever-competing security organizations. As a state turns more authoritarian, is that a predictable path?

Ok. Not so easily.

My tinfoil hat says that if nefarious people wanted to use his organization to do an act of terrorism as a false flag event, and he was a decent guy who would have said "no", they would have had to get him out of the picture in order to execute their plan. Photos did show blown up backpack strap identical to the one carried by the Craft security man...