Boston Suspects Are Seen as Self-Taught and Fueled by Web
Source: NYT
The portrait investigators have begun to piece together of the two brothers suspected of the Boston Marathon bombings suggests that they were motivated by extremist Islamic beliefs but were not acting with known terrorist groups and that they may have learned to build bombs simply by logging onto the online English-language magazine of the affiliate of Al Qaeda in Yemen, law enforcement officials said Tuesday.
The investigation into the bombings is still in its earliest stages, and federal authorities were still in the process of corroborating some of the admissions that law enforcement officials said were made by the surviving suspect in the attacks, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19. But they said some of his statements suggested that the two brothers could represent the kind of emerging threat that federal authorities have long feared: angry and alienated young men, apparently self-trained and unaffiliated with any particular terrorist group, able to use the Internet to learn their lethal craft.
Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters after emerging from a two-hour classified briefing with F.B.I. and intelligence officials Tuesday evening that the suspects were most likely radicalized over the Internet, but that investigators were still searching for possible sources of inspiration or support overseas.
The increasing signals are that these were individuals who were radicalized, especially the older brother, over a period of time radicalized by Islamist fundamentalist terrorists, basically using Internet sources to gain not just the types of philosophical beliefs that radicalized them, but also learning components of how to do these sorts of things, Mr. Rubio told reporters.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/24/us/boston-marathon-bombing-developments.html?_r=0
Pholus
(4,062 posts)Just kidding. That's only true if they're white and Christian. This is terrorism of course.
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)These guys were not lone anything. There were two of them.
Pholus
(4,062 posts)refers to the tactics, not the head count. A "lone wolf" acts without material support from outside groups, without orders coming from a command structure and without personal contact with the group with which they identify. That makes them hard to catch by classic law enforcement techniques (since they work by watching who is talking to who through surveilance).
To continue cribbing from Wikipedia and adding the emphases...
According to the Anti-Defamation League, the term "lone wolf" was popularized by white supremacists Alex Curtis and Tom Metzger in the 1990s. Metzger advocated individual or small-cell underground activity, as opposed to above-ground membership organizations, envisaging "warriors acting alone or in small groups who attacked the government or other targets in 'daily, anonymous acts.'"[1] He referred to these warriors as "lone wolves".
Now in the U.S. both Timothy McVeigh and John Allen Muhammad were both deemed classic examples of lone wolves by law enforcement. Neither acted completely alone. I seem to remember both had helpers (Terry Nichols and Lee Boyd Malvo).
onehandle
(51,122 posts)Militias are full of these types.
IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)In the MidWest boonies. They've made it plain enough that their first targets in the race war they anticipate and try to provoke will be whites who stood against them. I make it quite clear right back that if they ever try any such foolishness (which privately I figure they will someday), then they will find out what federal power can do.
A few weeks ago I sent in another of my usual polite letters to the editor of our local weekly (wide regional circulation) with my standard pro-Democrat stance on things, and the next week there was a reply from another reader whose screech could be heard around the world. Besides calling everything out of a Democrat's mouth untrue, he bellowed that we were "LYING HYENAS OF SOCIALISM!" (My knees really shook at that one.) Oh, and we're all lazy and greedy too, just in case you didn't know.
FailureToCommunicate
(14,012 posts)THat's NOT what young men should be using the internet for...
eggplant
(3,911 posts)cats.
FailureToCommunicate
(14,012 posts)Earth_First
(14,910 posts)cprise
(8,445 posts)They are mostly Web-based these days, and they play a key role in inciting senseless violence.
You see how easy that is?
It amazes me how establishment corps like these turn into propaganda organs for the knee-jerk set.
treestar
(82,383 posts)for not realizing a mere trip overseas to a location where his family is from should not have informed them he would commit a bombing in the future.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)treestar
(82,383 posts)This article is about how they had none.
Some on DU would be screaming about the government surveilling people just because they were Muslim.
The FBI can be interviewing people today. They have no idea what those people will do in 2015. This practically calls for a surveillance state.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)It's remarkable how many people went from "government surveillance is tyranny" to "why didn't they have a wiretap up this guy's ass wherever he went?"
treestar
(82,383 posts)I've been listening/watching MSNBC a lot more since the bombing and I am tired of hearing about the FBI "dropping the ball" - as if the government can have a wiretap up the ass of everyone they get any information on, and as if the government was supposed to think there was something super suspicious about someone traveling to a country their family is from.
Deny and Shred
(1,061 posts)Let's ban self teaching (learning) and the Web. Problem solved.
IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)had a guest last night who was former CIA, and his opinion was that the bombing had just as much Columbine in it as jihad, because neither of the two brothers had a deep intellectual understanding of history and background. They were alienated young men who seized upon jihad as a handy excuse to wreak the havoc they wanted to inflict just for its own sake. Whereas the older al Qaeda captives were soaked to the bone in ideology and would never repent of their evil, Charlie's guest believes the youngest brother this time probably will eventually. Not that it will do him much good on earth, because he's probably going to get the death penalty.
warrprayer
(4,734 posts)seems to be pounding the "no outside connection" drum very loudly. Which sets off bullshit alarm in my head, especially since they are pounding it just days later before any in depth investigation could possibly be made.