We should have done what was talked about briefly after 911 and that was to close our borders to any immigration for 10 years. And start deporting anybody left that doesn't swear total and complete allegiance to the USA. Post a very large Peace Bond and surrender their first born male child...ok maybe that is a little bit to much but we should stop all immigration for 10 years, should look at the Peace Bond idea to especially from Muslim countries.Originally Posted by carl
People matter in CT investigations
We all now know it was a citizen's call that led to the second suspect's hiding place being identified, so I was interested to read this in a WaPo summary:Plus:(Boston Police Commissioner Edward) Davis said he was told that facial-recognition software did not identify the men in the ball caps. The technology came up empty even though both Tsarnaevs’ images exist in official databases: Dzhokhar had a Massachusetts driver’s license; the brothers had legally immigrated; and Tamerlan had been the subject of some FBI investigation.Link:http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...1_story_3.htmlOnce the photos of the men in caps were made public Thursday, the FBI tip line filled with calls, including one from the brothers’ aunt, who provided her nephews’ identity, according to federal law enforcement officials.
davidbfpo
The times are a changing?
Carl in his response to Anne Applebaum's article commented:I don't know about the French suburbs, often mainly North African around Paris and other high density, mainly non-indigenous suburbs across Europe, but know something about those here in urban England.This isn't anything like Europe with its Algerian suburbs the police can't go into.
The police here can go into such areas, it is whether they are effective once there in their law enforcement role and in gaining public support (usually referred to as trust & confidence in the UK). There is a big difference between responding to emergency calls alongside undertaking overt 'normal' criminal investigations and the often covert way of investigating terrorism, organised crime and drugs. The differences are not religious or party political or ethnic, but a mixture.
In my limited time with US LE in urban areas it was quite obvious in some urban areas LE had access, little overt public support and could easily be seen as an 'occupying' power. A topic SWC have discussed before.
Now back to Boston. Amidst all the media reporting and I have read only a little I have yet to see a report(s) that US LE had been alerted by the suspect's family, friends and community about their changing character. Yes that is a big issue itself, for example do families notice and want to tell others?
Maybe that is what Anne Applebaum is talking about:Our response is going to have to be different — very different — as well.
davidbfpo
Zenpundit
Link to zenpundit and his excellent series on the Boston attack.
http://zenpundit.com/
US gun law bigger threat than terrorists
Unfortunately this irrational behaviour is not limited to the US. Another article in the same paper is titled: ‘Heightened security at London Marathon’. This is the same London that the author mentioned here:
That other article starts with:But Londoners, who endured IRA (the Irish Republican Army - the paramilitary group who fought for Northern Irish independence from the UK) terror threats for years, might be forgiven for thinking that America over-reacted just a tad to the goings-on in Boston.
So how much of this is real versus media hype? Was the heightened presence a real attempt at increasing the probability of thwarting a similar ‘terrorist’ action? Was it an attempt to satisfy the ‘something must be done’ syndrome? But mostly, what was security in London like during those IRA days? Is our true approach to security different now from what it was then, or is our perception of it different? I was a child at the time so my memory of it is irrelevant.The London Marathon takes place amid a heightened police presence following the Boston Marathon bomb attacks…
Here is one of the more interesting terrorist actions in Dutchland in that same period. Again, I have no recollection of how that affected our attitude, fear, and behaviour towards the ‘threat’ of violence and terrorism.
Nothing that results in human progress is achieved with unanimous consent. (Christopher Columbus)
All great truth passes through three stages: first it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
(Arthur Schopenhauer)
ONWARD
If you go back 100 years you can see the same type of thing happening, disenchanted people in various parts of the world blowing up innocents. They were the Anarchists. People calling themselves Anarchists killed a US President, set off a bomb on Wall Street killing dozens, knocked off a Tsar etc etc etc.
This is an article I found about the Anarchists. It was written in 2009. It could have been written yesterday.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...s-1801195.html
The article contains these words about the motivations of the Anarchists then and the Jihadists now:But neither had a very clear picture of what the world would look like after the smoke from their bombs had cleared. Their visions of the future were vague: both no-state and the caliphate were hazy hope-dreams. Below and beneath them, there were deep structural similarities.
Both groups believed their violence was justified by the larger illegitimate state violence they witnessed as young men.
They justified their attacks to themselves by claiming they were trying to give the wealthy, or the West, a taste of how "their people" felt. Yet in both movements, intriguingly, it was largely middle class intellectuals who turned to violence.
There is a lot more in the article. I was impressed. What we are seeing doesn't seem to be all that new in its essence. It may be new that the impulse is being given a slightly, only slightly, more coherent political direction by groups like AQ this time around.
One thing I noted during the manhunt for white hat was they got nowhere until they told the people of Boston they could move around, then white hat got made seemingly within minutes. So the authorities in Boston, by locking down the city, deprived themselves of millions of eyes to help in the search. When they availed themselves of those eyes things went much better.
I know why they did it, they were afraid that white hat had a suicide belt and they didn't want to chance it. But they could find him until they chanced it. That is something that will have to be considered in the future.
Last edited by davidbfpo; 04-22-2013 at 07:04 AM. Reason: Cited text in quotes
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
Aside from the fact that this author is wrong about how the Brits are reacting to Boston (as you pointed out), the comparison falls flat for another reason: The IRA's bombings in London were always preceded by a phone warning to ensure that authorities evacuated civilians from the blast area. Jihadists and their ilk aren't the same way; civilian deaths are the intent, not just collateral, in their bombings. So I think Americans can be forgiven for not feeling the same way about them that the Brtis felt about the IRA.
(Of course, after the 2005 bombings in London, I imagine that most Brits, contrary to what this guy claims, actually do feel the same way about radical Islamic terrorism.)
Last edited by MattClimbs717; 04-22-2013 at 06:31 PM.
There was a guy on the Fox News Sunday show today that made a point about false positives. He said that if you pursue every thing that comes along, you will end up tracking thousands of people who would have done nothing. The main point he and other guests made was that sometimes, there are things you aren't going to stop. Perfection isn't possible.
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
Here's a question that I haven't seen a lot of speculation on. These two young men were able to make at least 3, and likely more, homemade bombs that all went off as designed. Judging by the ineffectiveness of other bombmakers (unibomber took a little while to figure it out, the guy who tried to blow up Times Square got it wrong, and others), that's a pretty good record. So, where'd he get this expertise from? Or did he have the expertise? I'm a smart guy, and a smart guy who worked with explosives (in a limited capacity)...I don't think I could have pulled it off, or would have without a few test shots. Even military grade stuff doesn't always work as desired.
The older one studied engineering, as far as I know. I think a key factor of those quite 'efficient' bombs might have been his long stay in his home region. Without knowing much it could be a good place to learn the craft and test your knowledge if you know the right guys and if you come with the right intentions...
Just a potential facet of his long visit, among others like political, family and religious ones.
... "We need officers capable of following systematically the path of logical argument to its conclusion, with disciplined intellect, strong in character and nerve to execute what the intellect dictates"
General Ludwig Beck (1880-1944);
Speech at the Kriegsakademie, 1935
Ken,
Most of us that know don't talk about it.
The pressure cooker has been around for at least 13 years in Greece, India and France. They are not expensive and by no means even remotely remarkable. What's inside besides all the fragmentation ? Fuel (sensitizers) and an oxygen source (oxidizers) and voila
The great thing about a pressure cooker vs a pipe bomb, is you don't have to do anything other than close the lid
If you want to blend in, take the bus
The CT dilemma; well here is one suggestion
A commentary by Raffaello Pantucci, now @ RUSI, whose has written on 'lone wolves' before and this point is well made:The case referred to in Texas I'd forgotten:The key conclusion for security agencies is that such terrorist cells are notoriously difficult to uncover prior to event. Some work can be done in targeted public information campaigns aimed at chemical companies, storage firms or other industries that might be conduits for individuals to obtain transformative material for homemade explosives. This will help give authorities leads like those that led to Khalid Aldawsari's detention.Link:http://www.rusi.org/analysis/comment...ikPxU1.twitter...Aldawsari attempted to purchase chemicals from the Carolina Biological Supply company, using a commercial shipping company to have them delivered to his home in Lubbock, Texas. Both the chemical company and the shipping company flagged the purchase as one of concern to authorities, leading to an investigation by the FBI that uncovered Aldawsari as a loner terrorist cell building a bomb whose diary was full of menacing jihadist ideas. He was convicted in November last year and sentenced to life imprisonment.
davidbfpo
Stan,Ken,
Most of us that know don't talk about it.
The pressure cooker has been around for at least 13 years in Greece, India and France. They are not expensive and by no means even remotely remarkable. What's inside besides all the fragmentation ? Fuel (sensitizers) and an oxygen source (oxidizers) and voila
The great thing about a pressure cooker vs a pipe bomb, is you don't have to do anything other than close the lid
It looks like more information about the construction and components of the devices are coming out now.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/nationa...33jEe63afQsseK
It still doesn't change the fact that were I in their shoes, I'd want to test my design before kicking it off. It's a lot of trouble and risk to end up like the Times Square bomber. Then again, I'm an experienced manufacturing engineer, so some of that is probably fruit of my own experience at work. Never fails, anything we don't prototype/plan meticulously goes horribly wrong on the first try, doesn't matter how similar it is to something else we already make. I suppose smarter minds than mine are working on the test shot angle.
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