In the early stages of the investigation a lot of new information comes out & I often have to modify or change my views based on that. As a result sometimes I feel pretty stupid about initial comments I made & wonder if it makes any sense to even comment during the early phase. But I guess it is the same for the investigators themselves and depends on ones interest in the subject. Certain events can affect you deeply and you feel compelled to try and make some sense of it.
Mayel wrote:
Of course, it's not only religion as in an ideology that they used to justify their doings. It just recently emerged that the younger brother told the police his older brother wanted to defend Islam and just one day after the bombing the younger brother told a colleague that "tragedies like these happen everyday, look at Afghanistan". Retaliation if you will but they see it as defense. Nonetheless, that's more of a structural and political reasoning behind it.
I do believe that individually it was about feeling wronged, torn apart (may it be culturally and/or through the family) and alienated. Striking their very identities they tried to build for themselves.
Religion does increasingly seem to be a key element, maybe the main path on which the older brother traveled. In the last days a personnal Mentor has been partially identified, an Armenian covert to Islam, only know as Misha. Referring to what we discussed earlier more confirmation has come out that not only boxing but also music which the older brother began studying at college were abandoned by him specifically for religious reasons. He also discontinued drinking.
That is a large ammount of personnal furniture to remove at once, and under normal circumstances would leave quite a void. As an aside I sometimes think it is better to ween more slowly away from such things then do an abrupt volte face, though it would be difficult to explain why. The only aspect I can mention briefly is that I think it is important to remember what you were like and retain an understanding of those that remain that way, so as not to take on a detached/superior view.
In trying to find the 'why' they did it (bombing), the recent expanation of being angry about the American wars in Iraq & Afganistan does make some sense in that it is a view many have held, and some have been motivated by it to violence. What seems a bit strange is it comes now, after most forces have left Iraq and those in Afganistan are scheduled to leave by the end of next year.
Another possibility, that it was somehow related to the Chechnyan Militant movement has not built up any evidence yet, and seems to make even less sense. There is a lot of focus on the older brothers stay in Russia and spectulation it had some important effect on his decision to turn to violence, but that may or may not turn out to be true. By one accounts he found he did not quite fit in, in Chechnya either.
Something I consider very important in piecing this together is what they find out about the older brother's involvement in an earlier violent episode, an unsolved triple murder that occurred in the Boston area in 2011 I believe. In 2010 the older brother would write he had not a single american friend. I am not sure that was strictly true as he seems to have regularly had girlfriends, but by 2011 it was certainly no longer true as he made a close friend through boxing named Brendan Mess. They were friends perhaps 6 months when Brendan, along with two other men was found murdered in Brendan's apartment (or house). The first story published on this mentioned the loss of his friend as a possible contributing factor. That has changed now to the older brother now being retro investigated by the local police as a possible suspect in the murders.
The murders had at least three unusal circumstances. One was all three had their throats slit. Another is that the victims were found with over $2000 cash still on them. The third was that they were found covered/sprinkled with Marijuana. The older brother was not a suspect in the initail investigation and there currently is zero evidence connecting him to the murders. But their is enough there to have made the police department formally announce they are investigating him as a possible suspect.
Depending on what they find, could shed some new light on the sequence of events, the older brother's movements and motivation of the Boston Bombing.
Quote:
...First, the would-be extremist “splits” the world into a rigid division between good and evil as a bulwark against feelings of — real or perceived — helplessness. Unfortunately, there are any number of ready-made ideologies which can serve to encourage this splitting. Next, the extremist constructs a double life that enables him to design, plan and carry out an attack in a “deadly calm state” characterized by single-minded determination...
That was helpful in plainly explaining a strange phenomenom, and not just in a religious context..
When I was In High School on Long Island I was on the track teams for a few years. We had two very quiet and unassuming kids on the team. One had an serious obsession with being a Firefighter and thats what he eventually did as a profession and rose to be a Captain in the New York City Fire Department. That was Dan Brethel and he was unfortunately killed on 9/11. The other kid started but then dropped out of college and seemed to fall into lawn and yard maintenance as a job. He then became a serial killer and murdered something like 17 prostitutes over a few years before being caught and sentenced to Life Inprisonment. That was Joel Rifkin, and it was noted by the police throughout his arrest, trial and imprisonment how he remained quiet and unassuming.
22 Apr 2013, 1:14 pm
