Tamerlane, the 15th century Muslim ruler who is believed to have slaughtered 90,000 in a single day.

ONCE AGAIN, we see the obvious turned into the mysterious. The New York Times describes the factors behind the Boston bombing as “cryptic,” “inscrutable” and baffling. The nation is “searching for answers.” Scott Shane writes:

Even President Obama, when he addressed the nation on Friday night after Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured, seemed to be searching for answers. “Why did young men who grew up and studied here, as part of our communities and our country, resort to such violence?” he said.

It remains to be seen whether personal grievance or some type of ideology was behind the attack, in which investigators say the Tsarnaevs packed black powder into pressure cookers to kill and maim people.

Both brothers were open about their devotion to Islam, and Tamerlan’s Web postings suggested an attraction to radicalism, but neither appears to have publicly embraced the ideology of violent jihad. [emphases added]

And once again, we turn to the relatives of Muslim terrorists — their relatives!! — for answers. So strong is the desire for and presumption of psychological motives only that reporters consider the relatives of terrorists reliable informers. This is comparable to going to the families of urban gangsters or mobsters for information about their characters and motives. Was the father of Al Capone the best person to shed light on his motives? Shane writes:

Their relatives have expressed anguished bafflement, and it is conceivable that the motive for the attack will remain as inscrutable as those of some mass shootings in recent years.

Anguished bafflement. Cryptic motives. We are searching for answers. But we will probably never know the answers. The attacks will remain inscrutable. Go back to your own lives. When it comes to the inherent nature of the Religion of Peace, there is reflexive uncertainty, which is just comforting denial and submission. As Bill Warner of the Center of Political Islam says in this video, “Muslims expect submission and they get it.” Westerners possess the mentality of a captive victim who on an internal level identifies with his captor and believes he deserves to be abused. The Western mind can no longer summon the will to obtain its freedom.

—- Comments —

Lena S. writes:

Why do you assume guilt? There has been no trial and there are many unanswered questions. At least let’s not presume guilt based on nothing but mainstream media reports. Circumstantial evidence is not enough to prove guilt.

Have you nothing to say about the swift application of martial law in Boston, infringing on the civil liberties of millions of Americans, to hunt for one teenager? Does this aspect worry you? There are things that don’t add up on both sides and it all seems to have been wrapped up with a bow slapped on; convenient at the least.

 Laura writes:

Lena S. writes:

Why do you assume guilt? There has been no trial and there are many unanswered questions. At least let’s not presume guilt based on nothing but mainstream media reports. Circumstantial evidence is not enough to prove guilt.

If there’s anything more weak-minded than the pronouncements of Obama and the media that the Tsarnaev’s motives are baffling, it is this contention that we don’t even really know the Tsarnaevs are guilty.

Innocent men do not exchange gunfire with the police while trying to avoid apprehension. An innocent man does not run over his own brother in a hijacked car while trying to escape.

The real question that is “unanswered” at this point is not the guilt of the Tsarnaevs, but who else was involved. I fully expect the government to contend these two were “lone wolves” and that there was no foreign involvement, which is manifestly absurd.

Joe A. writes:

Naturally the Ruling Class and their electron-stained wretches of the New York Times are “searching for answers.” This could only be the inevitable act of Tea-Partying, Bitter, Racist Anti-Semitic Gun Nuts with (durst I say it?) white skin, blond hair and blue eyes.

Does not compute!

Lena S. responds to Laura:

Fair enough on the previous post. Nevertheless, you appear to be standing by your presumption of guilt based on circumstantial evidence, which was my main point, and you don’t appear to want to think about it further than going along with the mob mentality, possibly because it is too disturbing to contemplate that the FBI and police might frame someone (I’m sure that’s never ever happened at any time in history anywhere).

I don’t know that they are innocent or guilty, and neither do you, but there is supposed to be a presumption of innocence until proven guilty, not a trial by media and mobs. Do you trust the FBI and police completely? Are you certain you wouldn’t run if you felt you were being framed and persecuted? That they ran proves nothing, as there are many possible reasons for people to run and many are not based on logic but on emotion. It is circumstantial evidence. I await the FBI telling us how to be good Christians!

If you really believe the basis of the things you write, I hope you say those two men (or the one who hasn’t been killed by the police, assuming he is able to talk eventually given that he has injuries to his neck – kind of odd, no?) should be judged by a jury of their peers, meaning men with balls and principles. What about the press conference the FBI held instructing the public not to look at all the pictures being released but to only pay attention to the ones they release? Do they have something to hide? Don’t pay attention to the man behind the curtain!

How ever ‘strong’ you consider the evidence to be, that is no excuse for writing as though they have already been found guilty.

Laura writes:

Oh, please.

I have not called for the sentencing or punishment of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev without a trial. There will be a trial. These men are suspects. I have referred to them as suspects. We will await further evidence, but so far there is no evidence of an FBI conspiracy and there is a great deal of reported evidence that these two men were involved. I am also relying entirely on media reports to believe that there even was a bombing at the Boston Marathon, and you are too.

Instead of complaining that I am prejudicial, please provide me with some plausible evidence of deception or an FBI conspiracy. It would take some evidence for me to believe that on multiple ranks of the FBI and local police, there was a concerted effort to accuse innocent men of mass murder. Yes, they may be wrong not through malice, but through incompetence, but we must await proof of that too. In the meantime, what is being said about these two suspects is based on the reasonable theory that they committed these crimes.

Jay from Goshen writes:

It gets worse.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was not denied citizenship due to the petty domestic incident, but because of security concerns. (If you have maxed out of your NY Times free articles, get around it by accessing it via Twitter. That is how I do it.) Tamerlan visited a radical imam in Dagestan, and Homeland Insecurity knew about it!

Yet, no security official thought to question these two after the bombing. Dzhokhar was partying and smoking pot on campus in the nights before their apprehension. He tweeted, “I’m a stress-free kind of guy.”

With authorities like ours, why not?

I’m still completely baffled by the crazy Thelma and Louise robbery-carjacking-careening episode, which led to Tamerlan’s death and Dzhokhar’s apprehension.

I sincerely doubt they are smart enough to put together those pressure cooker bombs. Not saying pressure cooker bombs are the Manhattan Project, but they are still too sophisticated for these two clowns.

Jay adds:

Expanding upon the Keystone cops apprehension of Dzhokhar, and the mystery of the two-and-a-half days that elapsed between the bombing and the murder of Sean Collier, which seems to have dropped down the memory hole:

Lena’s charge that the FBI “ran” after anyone is nuts. I was working nearly straight through from Wednesday morning to Friday night, so I had to piece together information after the fact. Compounding the problem is that many Internet sites update their accounts as more information becomes available so we can’t get a good picture of what we knew at the time. But this site gives an account of the events of the evening of April 18, 2013, as they occurred.

I had heard that the “two suspects” (at the time, it wasn’t known that they were the Tsarnaevs) had robbed a convenience store. That appears not to have been the case. But they did murder a policeman, and carjack a man.

Suggestion to Lena and to mad bombers: if you do not want the FBI to “persecute” you, do not shoot policemen, and carjack people. That’s going over the line. The security services will not “persecute” you if you have ties to radical imams, friends with vanity plates on their cars that say “Terrorista,” as well as friends who die in shady drug deals, or put things up on Youtube that approve of Jihad.

In the two-and-a half days following the Marathon bombing, the Tsarnaevs were completely free and at large, partying, tweeting, having fun, until the photos were released on Thursday. Then they went on their rampage. The FBI didn’t run after them – they ran after the FBI!

As I have already written, the FBI and Homeland Insecurity knew about Tamerlan, and should have immediately “visited” him after the bombings. He should have been taken in for questioning, at which point, even the FBI would have cracked the case. And Sean Collier, father of a six-month-old, might be alive today if they had done their job.

If I were a conspiracy-monger, this is what I would be questioning. Sixty Minutes had a puff piece earlier tonight. The reporter, Scott Pelley, told us nothing that we couldn’t have learned from a Google search. Of course there was the usual flag-waving about the apprehension of the dazed and confused young dummy, Dzhokhar. I know that the MSM is hopeless, but this was bad even by their low standards. In any case, no one is asking why Tamerlan, a known extremist, was at large for 60 hours, after a terrorist bombing, and what set them off on Thursday evening?

Bill R. writes:

I would like to say in response to the commenter Lena S. that we in this country most emphatically do not presume innocence, nor indeed could any jurisprudence in a civilized country ever do so. I say this knowing full well how deeply the phrase “presumption of innocence” is rooted in our cultural consciousness, and how revered it often is. But it is obviously not absolute, nor can it possibly be taken literally. Furthermore, I find retreat to it a bit too convenient and too quickly resorted to for those who have some personal reason of their own for not wanting to call parties “guilty” that most assuredly do deserve the public’s presumption of guilt. (Like “racism,” the phrase “presumption of innocence” is all too often intended to bring further conversation to an end and infuse with guilt and shame the person it’s directed at for daring to say even as much as they did.) After all, our authorities have arrested and are holding Mr. Tsarnaev, are they not? Do we not defer at all to their judgment? If they presume the suspect innocent, as Lena S. is asking you to do who, unlike the authorities, have no power at all over the fate of Mr. Tsarnaev, what, pray tell, are they holding him for?

Think about the phrase for a moment. If we really “presumed innocence” in any broad or literal sense it would be questionable whether anyone could even be arrested; certainly they could not be incarcerated until trial, nor would the bail system have any moral or legal justification. No. What we obviously do in the cases of those accused or even suspected of crimes is, in fact, to presume guilt, but with the all-important corollary that that presumption cannot become a certainty for the purpose of sentencing the accused to a term in prison until that presumption is proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s the only limited context, critically important though it is, in which the notion of a “presumption of innocence” can be considered possessing any serious meaning. It is for the jury only that is charged with determining the fact of guilt of an accused that we ask anything approaching it. There is no “presumption of innocence” that is required of the public at large, and even if the “media” and “mob” did try Mr. Tsarnaev, as Lena S. fears, neither one of them has the power to put Mr. Tsarnaev in prison or have him, as a matter of legal fact, found guilty of anything. So, in fact, until proven otherwise it makes more common sense to presume the same guilt that the authorities we have entrusted with such power in our society are obviously themselves presuming as they guard the suspect very heavily and, as soon as he is able, will no doubt immediately transfer this “presumed innocent” to a very secure jail cell as he awaits trial.

Laura writes:

Thank you for that excellent clarification.

If the press presumed innocence in the absolute sense, it could not inform the public about anything regarding dangerous criminals, or judge the actions of police and prosecutors, until after crimes had been adjudicated. A news blackout of that kind would make false charges more likely, not less.

Journalists have the duty to remind readers that a criminal is charged, not convicted, but they also have the obligation to make reasonable judgments about evidence provided outside of court.

Buck writes:

Lena S. is not a serious thinker. “Circumstantial evidence is not enough to prove guilt.” That is so wrong that it’s ridiculous. I suppose that she does not believe that the alleged nineteen actually hijacked those planes. Think about it. We have nothing but circumstantial evidence, a mountain of it for sure, but all circumstantial; that the identified nineteen hijacked those planes. There are no living witnesses, so anyone on those planes could have done it.

Circumstantial evidence is routinely and mostly used to secure convictions. The overwhelming majority of the evidence that is presented in courtrooms is circumstantial. If it is known to a certainty that only two people are in a secure room in which gunshots are heard, a smoking gun is found next to a dead-by-gunshot person on the floor, and only the other person’s finger prints are on the gun, yet that person denies any knowledge of what happened, then all there is, is circumstantial evidence. Forensic evidence is circumstantial. No direct evidence exists. Would Lena S. say that there are “too many unanswered questions”? 

You’re free to go. If you think of anything that might help us solve this mystery, please give us a call. Boy, if we only had an eyewitness.

There already exists a mountain of evidence that the Tsarnaev brothers detonated the bombs. But no one actually saw them detonate the bombs. Dropping packages into trash containers, and running and shooting it out with the police is circumstantial. If the surviving brother denies doint it, does Lena S. want him set free? With apologies?

Bill R. writes:

Lena S. writes:

That they ran proves nothing, as there are many possible reasons for people to run and many are not based on logic but on emotion.

By itself alone, it may prove nothing. But it is a fact hardly alone. As to there being “many possible reasons” why suspects in the circumstances described would run, I would suggest that there are conceivably a few — a very few — possible reasons, but there is only one probable reason, and that is guilt.

Now, as for their reasons for running likely being based on emotion, I think Lena S. is on to something. How about this emotion: scared to death of getting caught?

Jay writes:

At the risk of sounding tiresome, the brilliant Bill R. is a little off, here:

“Now, as for their reasons for running likely being based on emotion, I think Lena S. is on to something. How about this emotion: scared to death of getting caught?”

They weren’t running anywhere Thursday night. They were on a rampage, bound to get them either caught, or killed. (Both happened.) They went to the MIT campus, murdered a policeman, carjacked a man, got into a gun battle with other cops, seriously wounding one, a fact I neglected to add to my previous comments, because I didn’t know it.

This is not running. Running away is…running. Quietly and discreetly. Shave, cut and dye hair, change clothes – amscray. Of course they would have eventually been caught, but that is irrelevant to the discussion, which is about the definition of the word “running away.”

The actions of the Tsarnaev brothers of the night of Thursday, April 18, 2013 bear the closest scrutiny. Of course, our sloppy media can be trusted to do the exact opposite. But that doesn’t excuse US from paying attention to what really matters. People who read The Thinking Housewife think.

Jay adds:

I ask your forgiveness for being such a pest, but this whole business is consuming me. [Laura writes: You are not a pest!]

Why did Tamerlan Tsarnaev go to Chechnya? I am going by memory from several news reports and the editorial in NR that a reader of yours linked. He entered Russia in January 2012, and stayed for seven months. That’s quite a long time for someone with a wife and baby, isn’t it? Meanwhile wife and baby are home, without his protection.

My job requires me to be on the road for several days at a time. I am always preoccupied about my family’s safety. That is the way a man is built.

During that lengthy stay, he went to Chechnya. His parents (now divorced) live in Dagestan. The Tsarnaev’s weren’t even born in Chechnya – they were born in Kyrgystan. There was no good reason for him to visit Chechya. I somehow doubt he was on a sentimental “roots” visit, like Irish-Americans visiting Ireland, or Jewish Americans visiting the Wailing Wall.

If I may conjecture (reasoning backwards), he visited Chechnya to link up with unsavory elements, both terrorist, and drug-related, likely interlinked, or the same. His brother was a huge pothead. How does one afford all that pot on a student’s budget? Here’s some information on the Chechnya and drugs and connections to Islamic fundamentalism.

To quote you, “Oh please!!”

Bill writes:

I will defer to Jay’s brilliant analysis of the Tsarnaev chronology as I did not follow the details that closely. I was merely trying to make a point on general principles, to wit, that Lena S.’s idea of emotion perhaps being behind any suspect “running away” is no doubt correct but also does absolutely nothing to mitigate said suspect’s guilt. Conversely, that the brothers had, from their perspective, a logical reason for running to the MIT campus, specifically as Jay reminds us, to spread more mayhem, also does absolutely nothing to mitigate their guilt (which I appreciate Jay is not trying to do, by the way).

Sincere compliments to Jay on his mastery of the details regarding these two sociopaths. Very informative indeed. Even his conjecture was interesting.

As for myelf, however, I ask no forgiveness for being a pest, for it has been lifelong malady I’ve been repeatedly informed by reliable sources is, in my case, utterly incurable. I neither run to nor from it; it simply is. I can ask for patience, however, for that I surely need.

By the way, keep up the good work, Laura. I found your website only recently (and Lawrence Auster’s not too long before he passed away). A welcome refuge indeed; another precious island in this sea of lies surrounding us that is so painfully persistent in its dominion.

Joe A. writes:

Presumption of innocence applies literally only to the justice system, specifically the judge and the jury. No one else, especially the Court of Public Opinion, pays it any attention. Just ask your basic Pro-Lifer, Gun Owner, Taxpayer or Divorced Father.

I wish there was a presumption of innocence but the simple fact is that the U.S. and its population are about as judgmental as can be imagined, precisely because of political correctness aimed at the truly native Americans of 1776.

Jay writes:

Read about Tamerlan’s possible involvement in the murder of his friend.

Jay adds:

Here is the criminal complaint against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev from the U.S. District Court. There is nothing about the MIT campus in this document. I suppose state charges are forthcoming. But I’m confused as to why there is no reference to the murder of Officer Collier in this document – perhaps Bill can explain why.

It clarifies a little about the timeline. The photos of the suspects were released at 5 p.m. on April 18th. The carjacking occurred near midnight, which was after the murder of Officer Collier on the MIT campus. The big gap is what happened between 5 p.m. and midnight.

A reader writes:

I think the bomber’s older brother pressured him into it, personally.

Laura writes:

Judging from the photos, he did not seem unwilling.

Jay writes:

People like Lena are right to be skeptical, because we are told so many things that just can’t be accepted.

I am suspicious of the whole carjacking story. I do not believe the man who was carjacked is a victim. I suspect he is an accomplice. Please read this account. It raises many questions. At 10:20 p.m., multiple gunshots were heard and reported; shortly thereafter Officer Collier’s body was found with multiple gunshot wounds. So far, so logical.

Then: “Authorities launched an immediate investigation into the circumstances of the shooting. The investigation determined that two males were involved in this shooting.” How did the investigation determine that two men were involved in the shooting so soon afterwards? Authorities haven’t been able to solve a murder in which three men’s throats were slit two years after the fact, but they were able to figure out that two men were involved in shooting Officer Collier? [Laura writes: On the MIT campus, there were probably witnesses.]

Further, it appears that the carjacking “victim”s name hasn’t been released to the press – why? Is he a minor?

I am expected to believe that after shooting a cop, the two bombers, knowing that the authorities had photographs of them, carjacked someone, even though they had a functional vehicle, and ditched the driver when they stopped to buy snacks.

This story is totally fantastical. I don’t buy a word of it.

I have a sneaking suspicion that they went to the MIT campus to meet someone (probably the “victim” or a friend of his), Officer Collier saw them, they panicked and killed him, and then they all took off in the “victim’s” car. They ditched the “victim,” and the rest is history.

Just my opinion.

Laura writes:

A compelling theory.

Bill writes:

Jay may be on the right track when he suggests state charges are forthcoming; the complaint (although I just skimmed it) appears to be focused on the bombing, and given, too, the affidavit from the FBI agent, it perhaps represents only the federal charges? The Feds, of course, wouldn’t have jurisdiction over the murder of Officer Collier unless he had been one of theirs.

The Daily Mail article on the unsolved murders was fascinating. That was Tamarlane’s best friend, and brutally murdered with two others, and he doesn’t even attend his funeral!? Very strange to say the least! Or as the cops like to say, that’s a real red flag. A genuine mystery in its own right, that triple murder, but now that they know what one of the victims’ best friends is capable of (pardon me, Lena S., suspected of being capable of) — well, as they say, the plot thickens. The marijuana strewn over the bodies was also strikingly symbolic. Somebody obviously thought leaving that particular message was worth the extra trouble and expense. It made me think of the murder of Bob Crane, how the murderer had wrapped a video cord around the neck of the sex-videotape-obsessed actor after bludgeoning him to death. When symbolic messages like that are left at a murder scene, that’s not random; that’s somebody who knows the victim and only too well — like a best friend.

April 24, 2013

Judd Wilson writes:

Before these two Chechen suspects were identified, the SPLC, liberal news pundits, and even the VP were making explicit or implicit allegations that white, Christian, conservatives had orchestrated the Boston bombings. Once they were identified, news reports still tried to connect the bombings with white people by describing the Chechens as “literally Caucasian.

Notwithstanding the fact that the Chechens bore some very faint resemblance to the typical white American male, their culture and religion were at complete odds with those of the United States. Since its inception in 622 A.D., Islam has had an adversarial relationship with the Christian nations of the world. European nations from Russia to England have fought to defend themselves and their fellow Christians against the assaults of the “religion of peace” for nearly 1,400 years. Remember, most of the nations that we now think of as “Muslim nations” were once Christian — including Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and so on. They didn’t become “Muslim nations” by choice, but by conquest and coercion.

Western nations have the right and obligation to limit immigration to those whose way of life is compatible with their own. Every family has this right when it comes to questions of marriage. The nation has the same right. If an Asian George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had founded America on the Quran, the question would not be one of preserving our Christian, white heritage, but preserving our Islamic, Asian heritage. But such is not the case.

Additionally, if an European nation falls under the political and religious power of Islam, and then becomes intermixed through assault and/or marriage, (i.e., the Albanians, Bosnians, and some others) those nations have ceased to be essentially Western. They may be outwardly “Caucasian,” as in the case of the two Boston suspects, but they are not culturally or religiously our kinsmen. They are not European, or white in the American sense of the term.

Laura writes:

Well said.

Buck writes:

Speculation over the assorted revealed and revised details, verified or not, and absent the withheld details, can and will go in any imagined direction, even after the facts are “all in.”.Skepticism is healthy and necessary. But, often the simple and the obvious is true. We may or may not find out if Jay’s theory, or some similar theory is correct. Each of his suspicions could be given an alternate explanation. I’d like to think, and I hope, that these savages are not much smarter than any of the other terrorists that we know of, with the possible exception of 9/11, which required elaborate execution and preparation, though nothing complicated and unmanageable by ordinary, obedient and dedicated drones. Imagine choosing and totally committing to the day, manner and certainty of your own death and your path to heaven. Imagine then how unencumbered and focused you would be on your simple task. What they do, for the most part, is never terribly complicated. It’s the finality and total commitment that stuns our sensibilities and often leads us to look for a complexity and intelligence and a mystery that simply isn’t required.

They have our number. We’re easy. These acts are classic sucker punches. Any cretin could walk into a crowd and sucker punch a good number of unsuspecting innocents before someone or group would react to stop him, after the damage has been done. Terrorist pick a time and place that will give them the maximum bang for there effort, large or small. They assemble the best explosive or other weapon that they can and they expect to die. They decide to die first. It’s the commitment to die that makes them so effective.

The brothers were no different. One seems to have cut it close, but both could have blown up with their victims or died in a shoot out. I’m sure that once the deed was done, anything else was gravy. Keep going until they capture or kill us. They had already committed their lives. It’s quite a commitment. But, it doesn’t require a lot of complicated thinking, timing or mastermind team work; just the opposite. That’s why they have us under their thumbs and will continue to do so. If we can’t stop these ordinary, moderately intelligent drones, then making them into serious, sophisticated and complex networks allows us to shrug our shoulders; an evasion so to speak.

Anyone one of us could do what they did. I’d suggest that we don’t loft these evil, suicidal zombies into brilliant tacticians who spent months or years getting PhDs in dying and killing. A random roomful of college freshman could, in one week, come up with a strategy to shut down a dozen major cites with these kinds of home-made explosive devices, if they were willing to die doing it.

Laura writes:

I agree, their willingness to die is their most powerful weapon.

Paul writes:

Here is a piece I wrote in response to an article at the site Patriot Update, which says we must contain “radical Islam:”

“The article is admirable, but using the phrase radical Islam is misleading when naming the enemy.  If you don’t name the enemy accurately, you can’t fight the enemy effectively.  The enemy is Islam and its believers. This is proven by the uninterrupted aggression of Muslims towards “infidels” since its founding (in the eighth century) and the collection of hateful, incoherent utterings of its declared founder, Muhammad (or whatever spelling is vogue).  Just try to read the  Koran.

Many of us, including myself, have had relationships with kind, gentle Muslims.  But that is not a decisive fact.  SS troopers were kind, gentle people to their friends, co-workers, and relatives.  But when faced with an identified enemy, they were monsters.  Islam identifies Christians as an enemy.  When you have a large number of kind, gentle people doing and saying nothing to stop the monsters, for whatever reasons, you end up with the situation we have.  This is why all Western Muslims must be repatriated.

Just because the solution does not seem possible at the moment is a poor reason for ignoring it.”

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