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Opinion Reactions To The Boston Marathon Bombing

findingmyway

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The Boston bombing produces familiar and revealing reactions

As usual, the limits of selective empathy, the rush to blame Muslims, and the exploitation of fear all instantly emerge

Glenn Greenwald

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 16 April 2013 14.52 BST


Explosion-at-Boston-marat-011.jpg


Explosion at Boston marathon
Runners continue to run towards the finish line of the Boston marathon
as an explosion erupts near the finish line of the race Photograph:
Stringer/REUTERS


There's not much to say about Monday's Boston Marathon attack because there is virtually no known evidence regarding who did it or why. There are, however, several points to be made about some of the widespread reactions to this incident. Much of that reaction is all-too-familiar and quite revealing in important ways:

(1) The widespread compassion for yesterday's victims and the intense anger over the attacks was obviously authentic and thus good to witness. But it was really hard not to find oneself wishing that just a fraction of that compassion and anger be devoted to attacks that the US perpetrates rather than suffers. These are exactly the kinds of horrific, civilian-slaughtering attacks that the US has been bringing to countries in the Muslim world over and over and over again for the last decade, with very little attention paid. My Guardian colleague Gary Younge put this best on Twitter this morning:

Juan Cole this morning makes a similar point about violence elsewhere. Indeed, just yesterday in Iraq, at least 42 people were killed and more than 250 injured by a series of car bombs, the enduring result of the US invasion and destruction of that country. Somehow the deep compassion and anger felt in the US when it is attacked never translates to understanding the effects of our own aggression against others.

One particularly illustrative example I happened to see yesterday was a re-tweet from Washington Examiner columnist David Freddoso, proclaiming:

Idea of secondary bombs designed to kill the first responders is just sick. How does anyone become that evil?"

I don't disagree with that sentiment. But I'd bet a good amount of money that the person saying it - and the vast majority of other Americans - have no clue that targeting rescuers with "double-tap" attacks is precisely what the US now does with its drone program and other forms of militarism. If most Americans knew their government and military were doing this, would they react the same way as they did to yesterday's Boston attack: "Idea of secondary bombs designed to kill the first responders is just sick. How does anyone become that evil?" That's highly doubtful, and that's the point.

There's nothing wrong per se with paying more attention to tragedy and violence that happens relatively nearby and in familiar places. Whether wrong or not, it's probably human nature, or at least human instinct, to do that, and that happens all over the world. I'm not criticizing that. But one wishes that the empathy for victims and outrage over the ending of innocent human life that instantly arises when the US is targeted by this sort of violence would at least translate into similar concern when the US is perpetrating it, as it so often does (far, far more often than it is targeted by such violence).

Regardless of your views of justification and intent: whatever rage you're feeling toward the perpetrator of this Boston attack, that's the rage in sustained form that people across the world feel toward the US for killing innocent people in their countries. Whatever sadness you feel for yesterday's victims, the same level of sadness is warranted for the innocent people whose lives are ended by American bombs. However profound a loss you recognize the parents and family members of these victims to have suffered, that's the same loss experienced by victims of US violence. It's natural that it won't be felt as intensely when the victims are far away and mostly invisible, but applying these reactions to those acts of US aggression would go a long way toward better understanding what they are and the outcomes they generate.

(2) The rush, one might say the eagerness, to conclude that the attackers were Muslim was palpable and unseemly, even without any real evidence. The New York Post quickly claimed that the prime suspect was a Saudi national (while also inaccurately reporting that 12 people had been confirmed dead). The Post's insinuation of responsibility was also suggested on CNN by Former Bush Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend ("We know that there is one Saudi national who was wounded in the leg who is being spoken to"). Former Democratic Rep. Jane Harman went on CNN to grossly speculate that Muslim groups were behind the attack. Anti-Muslim bigots like Pam Geller predictably announced that this was "Jihad in America". Expressions of hatred for Muslims, and a desire to do violence, were then spewing forth all over Twitter (some particularly unscrupulous partisan Democrat types were identically suggesting with zero evidence that the attackers were right-wing extremists).

Obviously, it's possible that the perpetrator(s) will turn out to be Muslim, just like it's possible they will turn out to be extremist right-wing activists, or left-wing agitators, or Muslim-fearing Anders-Breivik types, or lone individuals driven by apolitical mental illness. But the rush to proclaim the guilty party to be Muslim is seen in particular over and over with such events. Recall that on the day of the 2011 Oslo massacre by a right-wing, Muslim-hating extremist, the New York Times spent virtually the entire day strongly suggesting in its headlines that an Islamic extremist group was responsible, a claim other major news outlets (including the BBC and Washington Post) then repeated as fact. The same thing happened with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, when most major US media outlets strongly suggested that the perpetrators were Muslims. As FAIR documented back then:

"In the wake of the explosion that destroyed the Murrah Federal Office Building, the media rushed — almost en masse — to the assumption that the bombing was the work of Muslim extremists. 'The betting here is on Middle East terrorists,' declared CBS News' Jim Stewart just hours after the blast (4/19/95). 'The fact that it was such a powerful bomb in Oklahoma City immediately drew investigators to consider deadly parallels that all have roots in the Middle East,' ABC's John McWethy proclaimed the same day.

"'It has every single earmark of the Islamic car-bombers of the Middle East,' wrote syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer (Chicago Tribune, 4/21/95). 'Whatever we are doing to destroy Mideast terrorism, the chief terrorist threat against Americans, has not been working,' declared the New York Times' A.M. Rosenthal (4/21/95). The Geyer and Rosenthal columns were filed after the FBI released sketches of two suspects who looked more like Midwestern frat boys than mujahideen."

This lesson is never learned because, it seems, many people don't want to learn it. Even when it turns out not to have been Muslims who perpetrated the attack but rather right-wing, white Christians, the damage from this relentless and reflexive blame-pinning endures.

(3) One continually encountered yesterday expressions of dread and fear from Arabs and Muslims around the world that the attacker would be either or both. That's because they know that all members of their religious or ethnic group will be blamed, or worse, if that turns out to be the case. That's true even though leading Muslim-American groups such as CAIR harshly condemned the attack (as they always do) and urged support for the victims, including blood donations. One tweeter, referencing the earthquake that hit Iran this morning, satirized this collective mindset by writing: "Please don't be a Muslim plate tectonic activity."

As understandable as it is, that's just sad to witness. No other group reacts with that level of fear to these kinds of incidents, because no other group has similar cause to fear that they will all be hated or targeted for the acts of isolated, unrepresentative individuals. A similar dynamic has long prevailed in the domestic crime context: when the perpetrators of notorious crimes turned out to be African-American, the entire community usually paid a collective price. But the unique and well-grounded dread that hundreds of millions of law-abiding, peaceful Muslims and Arabs around the world have about the prospect that this attack in Boston was perpetrated by a Muslim highlights the climate of fear that has been created for and imposed on them over the last decade.

(4) The reaction to the Boston attack underscored, yet again, the utter meaninglessness of the word "terrorism". News outlets were seemingly scandalized that President Obama, in his initial remarks, did not use the words "terrorist attack" to describe the bombing. In response, the White House ran to the media to assure them that they considered it "terrorism". Fox News' Ed Henry quoted a "senior administration official" as saying this: "When multiple (explosive) devices go off that's an act of terrorism."

Is that what "terrorism" is? "When multiple (explosive) devices go off"? If so, that encompasses a great many things, including what the US does in the world on a very regular basis. Of course, the quest to know whether this was "terrorism" is really code for: "was this done by Muslims"? That's because, in US political discourse, "terrorism" has no real meaning other than: violence perpetrated by Muslims against the west. The reason there was such confusion and uncertainty about whether this was "terrorism" is because there is no clear and consistently applied definition of the term. At this point, it's little more than a term of emotionally manipulative propaganda. That's been proven over and over, and it was again yesterday.

(5) The history of these types of attacks over the last decade has been clear and consistent: they are exploited to obtain new government powers, increase state surveillance, and take away individual liberties. On NBC with Brian Williams last night, Tom Brokaw decreed that this will happen again and instructed us that we must meekly submit it to it:

"Everyone has to understand tonight that, beginning tomorrow morning early, there are going to be much tougher security considerations all across the country, and however exhausted we may be by that, we're going to have to learn to live with them, and get along and go forward, and not let them bring us to our knees. You'll remember last summer, how unhappy we were with the security at the Democratic and Republic conventions. Now I don't think we can raise those complaints after what happened in Boston."

Last night on Chris Hayes' MSNBC show, an FBI agent discussed the fact that the US government has the right to arrest terrorism suspects and not provide them with Miranda warnings before questioning them. After seeing numerous people express surprise at this claim on Twitter, I pointed out that this happened when the Obama administration exploited the attempted underwear bombing over Detroit to radically reduce Miranda rights over what they had been for decades. That's what the US government (aided by the sham "terrorism expert" industry) does in every single one of these cases: exploits the resulting fear to increase its own power and decrease everyone else's rights, including privacy.

At the Atlantic, security expert Bruce Schneier has a short but compelling article on how urgent it is that we not react to this Boston attack irrationally or with exaggerated fear, and that we particularly remain vigilant against government attempts to exploit fear to impose all new rights-reducing measures. He notes in particular how the more unusual an event is (such as this sort of attack on US soil), the more our brains naturally exaggerate its significance and frequency (John Cole makes a similar point).

In sum, even if the perpetrators of Monday's attack in Boston turn out to be politically motivated and subscribers to an anti-US ideology, it will still be a very rare event, one that poses far less danger to Americans than literally countless other threats. The most important lesson of the excesses arising from the 9/11 attacks should be this one: that the dangers of overreacting and succumbing to irrational fear are far, far greater than any other dangers posed by these type of events.

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/16/boston-marathon-explosions-notes-reactions
 

findingmyway

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Re: Deadly Attack at Boston Marathon - Reactions & Opinions

Wounded Man in Iconic Marathon Photo Helped Identify Alleged Bombers

MARATHON BOMBING

APR 19, 2013 9:20 AM
Maggie Lange

Before the blast took both his legs below the knee, Jeff Bauman says that he looked into the eyes of one of the alleged bombers. According to Jeff's brother Chris:

"He woke up under so much drugs, asked for a paper and pen and wrote, ‘bag, saw the guy, looked right at me.'"

Bauman's testimony, provided just moments after he revived in the hospital, has likely helped the FBI narrow the bombing suspects.

In one of the most graphic and wrenching images of the marathon bombing injuries, Bauman is the man in the wheelchair pushed by first responders moments after the explosions. Bauman was waiting for his girlfriend to cross the finish line of the marathon just before 3 p. m. According to Chris Bauman, Jeff saw a man in a cap, a black jacket over a hooded sweatshirt, eyes behind sunglasses look at him, and drop a bag at his feet.

Two and a half minutes later, the bag detonated. First responders rushed the severely wounded Bauman to the Boston Medical Center. While still in intensive care, he gave descriptions to the FBI and helped them isolate the suspects from hours of video of the attack.

Bauman's report of a face-to-face confrontation may have been one the key clues that helped the investigations team identify the current suspects—Dzhokar A. Tsarnaev, 19, of Cambridge and his now deceased 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan. The hunt for these two alleged bombers resulted in a violent shoot-out and a temporary lockdown for the city of Boston. Dzhokar A. Tsarnaev is still at large.

[Bloomberg, image via AP]

http://gawker.com/5995048/wounded-man-in-iconic-marathon-photo-helped-identify-alleged-bombers
 
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Brother Onam

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Re: Deadly Attack at Boston Marathon

Waheguru ji ka khalsa Waheguru ji ki fateh,

Terrorism is terrible every time, wherever it occurs. Blowing up innocent people is the action of devils.
At this point, about 800 civilians have been killed by drone strikes; about 170 of them children. I know the whole world must stop and mourn when white people are attacked, but in the sight of Har Har, Lord of Life, every single child is priceless, even in Yemen or Pakistan.
Blowing up innocent people is the work of devils.
 

Ambarsaria

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Re: Deadly Attack at Boston Marathon

Onam ji thanks for your post.
Waheguru ji ka khalsa Waheguru ji ki fateh,

Terrorism is terrible every time, wherever it occurs. Blowing up innocent people is the action of devils.
At this point, about 800 civilians have been killed by drone strikes; about 170 of them children. I know the whole world must stop and mourn when white people are attacked, but in the sight of Har Har, Lord of Life, every single child is priceless, even in Yemen or Pakistan.
Blowing up innocent people is the work of devils.
I hear you loud and clear and I was also made aware of the same comparative dichotomy by one of my friends a while back when one of the first people were videotaped being murdered through beheading. Somehow we seem to be less shocked by bombs thrown or dropped out of planes, helicopters or drones where lot more of innocents can be killed.

I do believe that one needs to keep couple of things straight in this stuff,

  1. The bombs, etc., are dropped with at least a good measure of certainty against a specific target.
  2. If Governments were assessed comparatively the amount of damage they can do with the power they have is almost limitless.
    • One needs to note why it is not used in such indiscriminate ways even at times when due to innocents being embedded in a target causes lot more innocent lives to be lost.
    • The terrorists throw it all in and many a times without a specific person as target as is the case in Boston or Sunnis bombing Shia Mosques or processions in Iraq or Pakistan.
  3. I find even the greatest difference in noting, how the terrorist acts of indiscriminate targeting of innocents rarely,
    • Regret collateral damage.
    • Target children, old, young, officials etc. without much discrimination
      • Much driven by just frothing hate embedded in such individuals by their brain-washers and handlers
    • Most reprehensible part for me is the rejoicing that follows in terrorist actions even when civilians are the target
    • Most reprehensible also is when their is joy in desecration of human corpses
      • Much a domain for the terrorists handlers who fan hate and emotion to control the sheep or followers



So whereas at very high level a life lost in a bomb from a plane or a terrorist bomb is life lost, there are substantial points of note.

I find the most abhorrent part of terrorist actions is when they are brainwashed by certain religious mind manipulators in the name of,

  • Concubines waiting for you in heaven after you die
  • Rivers of milk
  • Salvation
  • Etc.
We know full well how their handlers live in the grand style on earth while selling this mirage potion to innocent young gullible.

I wish there was no killing of such type that as humans we rise above it.

Regards and Sat Sri Akal.
 
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spnadmin

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Ambarsaria ji

Many thanks for your balanced and sage discussion of events. Where did the word "marathon" come from? From a legend of courage, stamina, and completion.

The name Marathon comes from the legend of Pheidippides, a Greek messenger. The legend states that he was sent from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated in the Battle of Marathon (in which he had just fought), which took place in August or September, 490 BC. It is said that he ran the entire distance without stopping and burst into the assembly, exclaiming "νενικηκαμεν’ (nenikekamen)", ("We wοn"), before collapsing and dying.​
from Wikipedia

What I want to say is that any marathon is about winners. Everyone who runs and anyone who is witness to the end wins. The Boston Marathon is not about Boston or the United States. The tragedy on April 19 was not about Boston or about the United States. The legendary story of Marathon, about the Greeks and the Persians, was a lesson about staying in the game no matter what. The modern story of the marathon is about the same thing. Boston has been the host since 1897. For all that time, more than 100 years, the Boston Marathon has been the stage where people from every country, every race and religion, rich and poor, educated and illiterate, run together, sharing a common course. Charities worldwide benefit from the stamina of those who stay in the game. Runners from impoverished parts of the world, who started life with almost nothing and who finish first, gain recognition because it was a marathon. At the beginning of the race no one is high or low. At the end of the race all those who finish prevail. They stay in the game, and they become victors in their own right.

The brothers who bombed this event made a different choice. They did not choose to run the distance. They came to a different end. They did not prevail. No lessons about courage, stamina or completion were learned from their actions. Their soul's torment prevented them from celebrating courage in league with humanity at the marathon, and everything the Boston Marathon, or any marathon, symbolizes. The anthems sung at Fenway Park remember the human soul will not be discouraged from completing the race.
 
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