GOP terror scarers out in force

The same crowd who demanded we not mention 20 murdered schoolchildren in the debate over gun safety reform immediately leapt to making a couple of crazy kids in Boston the new existential threat to national security. Led by Lindsey "Huckleberry Dunderhead" Graham and John "Grumpy Gramps" McCain, a gaggle of GOPers are clamoring to designate the Boston bombers as enemy combatants.

It's not that they don't know their demands are stupid and illegal under the rule of law. They just don't want an exploitable domestic terror event to go to waste. A good dose of fearmongering and pandering to Islamophobia never hurt a Republican, especially with reelection campaigns coming up and a crackpot voter base who threaten to kick them out every time they catch the barest whiff of co-operation with a single Democrat.

I don't think it's wrong to call this domestic terrorism. Every mass murder, successful or not and every bombing no matter how few the deaths is rightly termed as such. Every avoidable industrial accident such as the explosion in West, Texas, could rightly be called the same. The real problem is we only use that designation when the perps are non-white Americans of foreign origin. Thus the media paints Timothy McVeigh as a lone wolf, the Newtown killer as a troubled kid and so on, yet these two kids with foreign names are to be deemed existential threats when they killed less people and clearly were bumbling amateurs.

Indeed, the rush to portray the Boston bombers as larger than life villians is more dangerous to our security than the crimes they committed precisely because it breeds the sort of unreasonable panic which ultimately leads to further degradation of our traditional civil rights. The best take I've seen on this point so far, is this warning against misplaced paranoia. Definitely read the whole thing, but this is key graf.

It is a surreal and difficult-to-explain dynamic. Americans seemingly place an inordinate fear on violence that is random and unexplainable and can be blamed on "others" – jihadists, terrorists, evil-doers etc. But the lurking dangers all around us – the guns, our unhealthy diets, the workplaces that kill 14 Americans every single day – these are just accepted as part of life, the price of freedom, if you will. And so the violence goes, with more Americans dying preventable deaths. But hey, look on the bright side – we got those sons of bitches who blew up the marathon.

The ordinary threats to the public safety surround us but the daily death toll is as unnoticed as the scenery on our daily commutes. If we actually want to find the real existential threats to our way of life, we should be looking in the board rooms of multi-national corporations instead of pinning the blame on a misguided, hapless teenager.

Drudge baiting UK style

The Daily Mirror, one of many UK tabloids, has apparently mastered the art of netting a Drudge siren having baited the hook with a sensational claim that ZOMG, Boston bombers were part of sleeper cell of scary foreign terrorists. They breathlessly "inform" us:

More than 1,000 FBI operatives were last night working to track down the cell and arrested a man and two women 60 miles from Boston in the hours before Dzhokhar’s dramatic capture after a bloody shootout on Friday.

A source close to the investigation said: “We have no doubt the brothers were not acting alone. The devices used to detonate the two bombs were highly sophisticated and not the kind of thing people learn from Google.

Which of course would explain why they botched their getaway so thoroughly. Maybe they didn't stay in terrorist school long enough to get to the part of the lesson where the other cell members drive the getaway car. Preferably out of town.

If you bother to read the post, which I don't recommend, you would find it's basically a rehash of the US coverage of the last five days. Not only does it verge on plagiarism, they didn't even copy it well. Many errors of fact. None of which stopped the outrage patrol of the far right wingers from adopting it as pure truth. What the hell. It totally validates their world view. They all linked to it, which of course was the point. Web traffic.

If you look at the front page of the Mirror online you'll find many interesting stories, if by interesting you mean, three posts about One Direction (it's a band the kids like), one of which exposes girlfriend boob envy among the band members. You'll also learn the Bieber is mean to his grandfather and see the tragic story of a four year old child addicted to the iPad.

And then there's the author of this huge scoop, Chris Bucktin, appointed assistant editor of the Mirror's US operations in January 2013. In the UK Mr. Bucktin was "head of content" which appears to mean person in charge of making shit up to fill the white space. He rose to that high position from his former perch as showbiz editor.

Certainly requires no stretch of credibility to imagine how he so easily cultivated inside sources at the FBI who would be passing on confidential information that could jeopardize the investigation in just three months.

What really happened in Watertown

Everybody's an armchair tactician. One of major sources of contention on the internets in the last 24 hours has been over how law enforcement handled the search for the Boston bombers. Early on it was all about whether they should have crowdsourced the photos. That sequed into the wisdom, or lack thereof, of shutting down the city. I'm not judging anybody's take. I'm as guilty as the next guy of second guessing the primary tactics in any given major event.

Tom Watson made the best case for why shutting down Boston was unwise. I'm sympathetic to the argument that it sets a bad precedent for overblown LEO responses to less than super extraordinary events. It discomfited me to see tanks on the streets of Watertown, MA to take down a 19 year old kid. I'm concerned when I see citizens ordered to stay in their homes while SWAT teams conduct house to house searches. This is not the America I grew up in.

Thing is, the America I grew up in has changed many times over the years. There are millions of more people in it. Lots of them are crazy. And violent. Society changed. It's greedier. More restless. Easily bored. The demand for instant amusement is constant and insatiable.

So I can see what the LEOs were thinking. The intertubz were exploding like busting pipes in an aging water system. It was flooding false leads into the media that were about to drown out any semblance of reliable information. The public was being assaulted with conflicting reports. Panic and hysteria ensued. Innocent people were being hounded. From their point of view it must have been a choice between chaos and controling the search zone.

Tom Watson lives in NYC. He's seen bigger stuff. So have I in my worldly travels. But Boston is not New York. Watertown is not downtown Boston. People live quiet lives in their houses with flowers along the front walk and maybe a boat parked in the back yard that they put in the water on weekends. Nothing ever happens in Watertown. Until it did.

Easy to dictate what's best in the big picture when it's not your neighborhood hosting major gunfights on a street where shots haven't been heard since the Revolutionary War. In the end I look to the people who live there to judge the wisdom of the tactics. I think this pretty much tells that story:

Dan Adams: Incredible scene at #WatertownPD HQ. Grateful, tearful residents arriving every minute w home cooked meals, pizza, flowers, cards.

And then read Charlie Pierce's eyewitness account of the bomber's capture. In fact read Charlies blog for the last few days. It's a whole different picture than the manufactured media hysteria on the TV.

State of confusion

Public obsession number one is still Boston today. The internets tells me the TV newsers are down to interviewing the cousin of the brother-in-law who's a friend of a friend who knows somebody who once worked in the very same store where the bomber was once seen buying a bag of Doritos. Meanwhile there's a murmuration of post analysis on the print side. Wear your safety glasses if you wade into that one so you're not blinded by the sparks from all the grinding of axes.

Most useful post I've seen all day was this interview with the Watertown police chief. It clears up one point of interest that most of the media doesn't seem to have picked up on. How the older brother died.

The fight ended when Tamerlan Tsarnaev, after leaving cover to close in on the officers while firing his weapon just “five to ten feet” away, ran out of ammunition. He was tackled by multiple officers and handcuffed. ...

In the confusion, Dzokhar Tsarnaev returned to the stolen car and made his escape — apparently fatally wounding his sibling in the process.

In other words he drove over his own brother to get away. More details at the link.

The other thing that strikes me in the cacophony of coverage is no one is asking about the guns they had. The focus is on the IEDs but five days later and I still don't know what kind of guns they used. I'd rather like to know what they were and where they got them.

Boston right now

There's too much hysteria to say much about what's going on in Boston today. Seems pointless to obsess about every thinly sourced rumor or repeat what little actual information is on every media news outlet in America. For the moment, this photo, which is surely destined to one of the iconic images of this event, seems to say it all.

Fenmore Square. Been here many times in my life. I've never seen this street so completely empty.



[via Buzzfeed]

FBI to media: STFU you idiots

The New York Post made a mockery of the concept of responsible journalism on Monday, splashing one inaccurate report after another on their front page. Today CNN led the media fail of the century, erroneously reporting a suspect in the Boston bombing had been IDed and arrested. The FBI is not amused:

Contrary to widespread reporting, no arrest has been made in connection with the Boston Marathon attack. Over the past day and a half, there have been a number of press reports based on information from unofficial sources that has been inaccurate. Since these stories often have unintended consequences, we ask the media, particularly at this early stage of the investigation, to exercise caution and attempt to verify information through appropriate official channels before reporting.

Most of the media, old and new, rushed to report CNN's erroneous "scoop" in a hot race for ratings. This mad horde reporting is not only stupid and useless, it's damaging to the investigation. If a suspect really had been IDed, prematurely reporting some vaguely sourced leak could tip him off. He could escape because of it and do it again somewhere else.

The sort of perps who commit these mass murders generally are acting out because they feel invisible in society. They seek this sort of massive media attention. The more they get, the more incentive they have to continue killing. No doubt the perp is seeing this media scrum in front of the courthouse and feeling pretty damn important right now.


[LaurenWBZ photo]

I'm told there's over 1,000 reporters covering the bombing. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, the world's greatest deliberative body is killing gun safety reform by filibuster and last I heard Wolf Blizter was carrying a pressure cooker pot around the set, just in case you don't know an empty one looks like. I swear, media malpractice is going to kill us sooner than any terrorists will.

Counting our blessings after the Boston bombing

Every time there's a major attack of some kind in America, whether it be 9/11, or Newtown, or yesterday's bombing in Boston, we as a nation are instantly traumatized. We personalize it, as if it had happened to us no matter how remote our connection. Not to minimize the tragedy of the these events, but these are small horrors in the greater world.

In the Middle East this sort of violence is part of their "normal" lives. I mean, while we were all glued to the media yesterday, watching in disbelief, this was happening in Iraq:

Officials said more than 30 bombings and a shooting hit 12 different areas of Iraq, leaving 50 people dead and nearly 300 injured, making Monday the country's deadliest day since March 19.

The deadliest attacks were in Baghdad, where eight bombings struck in seven neighbourhoods across the capital despite tougher checkpoint searches and heightened security.

Among them was a car bomb in a parking area used by vehicles making their way to Baghdad's heavily guarded airport, a rare bombing on the road famously known as "Route Irish".

In Tuz Khurmatu, 175 kilometres north of Baghdad, six people were killed and 67 wounded by three near-simultaneous car bombs, and in Kirkuk, five people were killed and 44 wounded by six more car bombs.

Attacks elsewhere killed nine people and wounded 92 others.

A total of 14 election hopefuls have already been murdered and just 12 of the country's 18 provinces will be taking part in this weekend's vote.

The worst part is, for Iraqis, this is an improvement over the years of terror they suffered during the war when the stench of death was never absent from the streets, not for a single day. These horrors happen to innocent men, women and children regularly, all over the world. So while we obsess over our own trauma about the senseless violence in Copley Square, we might also take a moment to remember how lucky we are that it doesn't happen more often.

Boston Marathon bombing: One runner's story

I have to step away from the horror. I can't deal anymore but one last link from Charlie's place to Jon Marcus who was there when the bombs exploded in Boston. It's a somber but inspiring story.

It turns out the race was already won long before the bombs exploded. But it's a big race. The rest of the runners would be coming in for a long time yet. Boston Marathon isn't about winning. As Jon Marcus tells us:

For runners from around the world, the marathon is a life goal. They train not for months, but years, to meet the daunting qualifying times. Crossing that small strip of pavement is an accomplishment that’s as hard to explain as the attack that bloodied it is impossible to understand.

This time, some of the last runners to cross kept going, to the hospitals to give blood. Doctors and nurses among them volunteered to help.

But all of that extraordinary generosity couldn’t reverse time. ...

Even if you're feeling as overwhelmed by the horror as I am, this is worth reading in full. I found oddly comforting.

Bombing at the Boston Marathon - Updated

[CBS News photo]

Breaking news so not going to say much as it will be well covered and there's always so much misinformation in the initial confusion. What's clear is two bombs went off at the Boston Marathon a little while ago. Hearing one of them was at Mile Marker 26 which had been dedicated to the Newtown victims. Trying not to jump to conclusions about the symbolism in that.

Clearly going to be a lot injuries. Local TV reporter reported to be sobbing at the scene. And this tweet seems legit, so some serious injuries.

@JackieBrunoNECN: I saw people's legs blown off. Horrific. Two explosions. Runners were coming in and saw unspeakable horror.

Also this photo showing some serious blood on the sidewalk. Hearing reports there may still be unexploded devices in the area. Just horrible. A curse on the soulless perps who would ruin this tradition and hurt innocent people.

Update: Boston.com has a live blog going. Probably as reliable a source as you're going to get in the instant confusion. Reports just keep getting worse. Too horrible for words.

Update two: Been glued to the interwebs all afternoon. Only good news is, everyone I know personally who was likely to be there has checked in and is safe.