Still not a Bruins fan, as a team they're a bunch of thugs. However, the fans singing the anthem was not bad.
CNN has access to the pictures of the suspects, but they aren't releasing them yet for security reasons. CNN just said that "one suspect has a white baseball cap, the other one is wearing an athletic jacket." Earlier they reported that "one of the men was a person of color." Now look at those pictures again.... Maybe 4chan was onto something.
You mean like the DHS report released shortly after Obama's first term started that listed conservatives, evangelical Christians, gun-rights advocates, pro-life activists, and best of all veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq (but not radical Muslims) are potential domestic terrorists?? Or the repeated noises that have been made over the last couple years about restricting veterans' gun rights for vague "mental health" reasons?? Or the Army cultural awareness training slide that came to week that named Catholicism and evangelical Christianity right alongside the KKK and radical Islamists as extremist groups?? You're half right, in that white people as a whole are not stigmatized for the actions of people like Lanza and Holmes. There are two primary reasons for this. First, the most prominent white male mass murderers in recent memory haven't been political or religious activists of any stripe, they've simply been crazies--Lanza, Holmes, the Columbine killers, etc.--none of them were trying to make any political point, they weren't terrorists per se, they were just killing people for the hell of it. Terrorists--whether Islamists, far-right extremists (not that we've really seen any in the US other than McVeigh/Nichols and that guy in the backwoods in North Carolina), far-left extremists (the Unabomber, ELF, etc.), political terrorists in other countries (PIRA, Basque separatists, etc.)--have a political agenda. Recent white mass shooters in the US have not. Second, the people doing the stigmatizing are mostly white themselves. The media is controlled by urban liberal elitists....but most of them are white. They're self-loathing whites, but they're still not going to stigmatize themselves as potential terrorists. No, they'll find subgroups of white people to stigmatize--and that's exactly what they've done. Remember the attempted car bombing in Times Square a few years ago, where police were initially on the lookout for a fat middle-aged white guy?? The media practically jizzed itself with glee....that fascist piece of shit Bloomberg railed about "Tea Party extremists"....and then the story promptly fell out of the headlines after a Pakistani immigrant was arrested. The same shit is going on here. You can bet your ass the authorities aren't suspecting a domestic right-wing group or individual because if they did, we'd be hearing all about it (there'd also be no reason for the stepped-up security in London that we're hearing about). So no, white people as a whole aren't stigmatized when a white person commits a horrific act. But subgroups of white people--namely those that are unpopular among the liberal media elite--are, and the best part is that no one from those subgroups even has to commit a horrific act in the first place. Practicing Christians, veterans (particularly Iraq/Afghanistan combat veterans), anyone associated with the Tea Party, gun owners, anyone who opposes abortion, any white person who lives more than 25 miles from a major city and/or speaks with a southern accent, the list goes on. In reality, the one thing that every mass shooter in recent memory has in common is not skin color (the VT shooter was Asian)--it's a history of taking the psychotropic drugs that are force fed to horrifically large percentages of American schoolchidren, mostly boys who are stigmatized essentially for the crime of being normal male children.
What? I'm saying, I've encountered several people saying things like "Why are we making such a big deal out of this, people die in Iraq every day." Which is horseshit.
Here's an article that got me really thinking: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-boston-bombing-arrest-muslims-20130417,0,4336914.story I know we have talked about this already and I do feel bad for the Muslim community because they are already being eyeballed in this. Though that isn't the point I want to make, from the article: As this doctor works at Brigham & Women's. This story came out after the BPD commissioner said during a press conference, point blank, that they weren't holding a person of interest at this hospital. I understand that this is an ongoing investigation and that they aren't going to share everything they know with the public but this is flat out lying to the public. In addition, how many times yesterday did news break to be unbroken five minutes later? Authorities and Journalists are quickly losing what little credibility they started with....at least with me. If they lie about something as simple as a "person of interest", not even a bona fide suspect, what stops them from lying about ongoing threats?
NPR's coverage immediately following the bombing was an anti-terrorism expert (read: professor) who was brought on as a guest to discuss why the bombing was probably a right-wing American with some sort of anti-tax motive. I don't think spitballing theories like that is at all helpful before any sort of information has come out, but so long as you're going to do it, I think it's a valid theory to bring up. The bombing looked like something a lone wolf could do, lone wolf attacks in the US have been mostly white dudes, and it was on tax day. What was terrible with the NPR coverage is that they spent about an hour with this guest and no one mentioned any other possibilities, or evidence suggesting it wasn't some ultraconservative nut (for instance, they tend to target symbols of the government, like the IRS building that the dude flew a plane in to).
On top of which, Muslims have actually committed or attempted to commit large scale terrorist attacks in the US at least a dozen times since 9/11. Whereas right-wing extremists haven't even had a credible attempt to pull off any sort of large-scale attack since the Olympic bombing (which, like Boston, was intended to cause mass casualties but didn't--nothing else that Rudolph guy did was even an attempt to be large-scale). That despite the fact that there are a hell of a lot more conservative white dudes living in the US than there are Muslims. So yeah, there's a reason most sane people's first thought when there's a terrorist attack or attempted terrorist attack in the US is "Muslim" and it's not entirely because of racial bias. Hell, we live in a country where 53% of the voting population or whatever the number was voted to re-elect a man who doesn't even have the fucking balls to call the Fort Hood shooting a terrorist attack, so the "everyone is biased against Muslims" wahhhmbulance doesn't get very good mileage with me.
Aaaand this is exactly why I don't pay attention to the news immediately after events like what happened in Boston or shootings. Let the dust settle before you try to get a clear picture of what happened and let the government do the investigating. News isn't about information, it's about ratings.
Well the truth is probably not that NPR just had on an anti-terrorism expert with this theory, NPR likely went and sought out an anti-terrorism expert with this theory just to spin it into their usual narrative. Otherwise it wouldn't make much sense. These theories are just as bogus and politically motivated as the straw-man Muslim ones. It's quite sad that people are already aligning themselves along their usual sides, ready to point the finger at the other before the facts even come out. THIS is what's wrong with this country. People think its some Republican Congress or some Democratic President? Forget it. It's the stupid fucking citizenry.
On a less-political note, sounds like they got the guy behind those ricin letters. Dude lived in Mississippi, was an Elvis impersonator, signed the letters with his real initials, and is a certifiable idiot
They look middle eastern to me. Definitely not the jarhead Timothy McVeigh style you'd expect from ultra-right-wing elements. If these are the guys who did it, I'm still angling for second-generation immigrant homegrown terrorists who radicalised over the internet.
I'm still angling for the hope-they-get-caught-and-prosecuted-to-the-fullest-extent-of-the-law. I don't care what race they are, what background they are, what religion or ideology they have, none of that -- none of it matters. What matters is that they are murderers, who injured hundreds and saddened a nation. That's it. That should be the whole discussion. Because if you bring race, religion, all that into all of this, then ultimately more people get hurt, more people get discriminated against, more innocent people become victims of these terrorists. And that's exactly what they want. I won't do that.
To me, it's primarily of interest from an academic standpoint. That being said, if they ARE homegrown terrorists rather than foreign radicals, it opens up a whole new - and dangerous - kettle of fish. The UK is having serious issues dealing with radicalisation occurring within its own borders as a consequence of internet propaganda, bullshit parents feed their kids at home, and inflammatory talks at mosques, prayer groups and even universities. I can think of almost a dozen plots, foiled plots, attacks and planned attacks that were orchestrated and perpetrated by UK citizens, born and raised in the British Isles. The consequence, of course, is paranoia, fear and mistrust. If this type of behaviour is on the rise in the US as well, it means trouble. It's (relatively) easy to guard against the enemy without, even if requires you to be insular. The enemy within is another matter. Expect to see a hell a lot more religious profiling in the near future if this plays out how I think it will.
I find it surprising that these are the best pics they found of these guys. Blurry as hell. Surely they could find better quality pictures of their faces from the crowd. I always wondered why shit like this didn't happen more often post 9-11. I guess we were waiting for a new generation of shit heads.
What do you think the over/under is on a group like 4chan/Anonymous or Reddit identifying these guys before the FBI or someone else does?