So who gets to be his lawyer?
Alan Dershowitz?
Unlikely. He is very much against Islamic terrorism, and this is apparently just that case.
Boston Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Apprehended Alive
41–50 of 132 posts
Re: Boston Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Apprehended Alive
#42I can't help but feel like these brothers are also victims here. Of course, their victimhood is nothing like what they inflicted on the people of Boston and the marathoners, but they're victims nonetheless. Humans are glorified chemical reaction vessels; somehow, they ended up going down a path that led them here. Was there any alternative? Was it the education system? Social circumstances? I'm sure the magnitude of…
I see this argument boiling down to two trains of thought. One is that people are fundamentally good and only external forces make them do bad things. That appears to be the opinion you have expressed. The second is that people are fundamentally bad and that external forces are required to keep them from doing bad things. I think the more you look at the world the more you find this second postulate is the right one,…
Third viewpoint- that people make choices about their reactions to external forces and they are responsible for those choices.
Re: Boston Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Apprehended Alive
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
They come from a very Islamic country and it's been said that they'd recently started wearing traditional Muslim clothing--a switch from the european clothing they'd been wearing for most of their lives. It's easy for kids to become obsessed with a cause... even if it's a terrible one. Basically, all signs point to this being just another religious extremist attack.
The big question is to what degree it was organized, or whether the older brother's social problems (inability to connect etc.) so alienated him that he just seized on the most empowering role model he could think of, an Islamic rebel. Chechnya is a country that has been ruled pretty poorly by Russia at it's not so long ago that Chechen Muslims were seen as heroic freedom fighters in the west. In short, it's unclear…
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Re: Boston Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Apprehended Alive
#44I can't help but feel like these brothers are also victims here. Of course, their victimhood is nothing like what they inflicted on the people of Boston and the marathoners, but they're victims nonetheless. Humans are glorified chemical reaction vessels; somehow, they ended up going down a path that led them here. Was there any alternative? Was it the education system? Social circumstances? I'm sure the magnitude of…
Here in Canada one of our party leaders is under fire for having an ounce of concern about what led these men to this point. For asking how a person gets so disconnected from society that they can wage war against it like this. The right-wing backlash against these questions has been immense.
Who was it (which party)? I'm canadian too but haven't kept up with our local press.
Re: Boston Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Apprehended Alive
#45"Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him." -Dostoevsky
On twitter a lot of people are essentially saying "Good, now we'll get answers." I'm sorry to say I don't believe there is typically anything satisfying about the answers of people who become deranged. Maybe this time, but if reading about madmen past is any guide, its very unlikely that we will be enlightened by any testimony.
Re: Boston Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Apprehended Alive
#46The ending to The Blues Brothers seems prophetic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2quc-iQ96R0 To edit and elaborate: they shut down a large portion of New England, affecting millions of people. Amtrak service, for example, was suspended north of New York City at 12:30pm today. Private taxi service in the Boston Metro area shut down until 11am. Other public transit, such as the T, shut down for most of the day. People…
* they shut down a large portion of New England* No, "they" really didn't. Life was pretty much normal outside of 128.
Even inside. I live in, uh, 10 minutes' drive up north from the Charles river, and my life was not disrupted at all.
Re: Boston Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Apprehended Alive
#47I can't help but feel like these brothers are also victims here. Of course, their victimhood is nothing like what they inflicted on the people of Boston and the marathoners, but they're victims nonetheless. Humans are glorified chemical reaction vessels; somehow, they ended up going down a path that led them here. Was there any alternative? Was it the education system? Social circumstances? I'm sure the magnitude of…
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Re: Boston Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Apprehended Alive
#48The ending to The Blues Brothers seems prophetic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2quc-iQ96R0 To edit and elaborate: they shut down a large portion of New England, affecting millions of people. Amtrak service, for example, was suspended north of New York City at 12:30pm today. Private taxi service in the Boston Metro area shut down until 11am. Other public transit, such as the T, shut down for most of the day. People…
* they shut down a large portion of New England* No, "they" really didn't. Life was pretty much normal outside of 128.
I don't know what 128 is, but I know of people who were taking Amtrak to Connecticut but had to get off at NYC and travel uptown to Grand Central Station to get on a commuter train. They weren't going to Boston. Amtrak service was halted north of NYC because of this manhunt.
I do know that much of Boston had no choice but to take a day off on Friday. I know the Bruins game was cancelled, and that Comic Con was "postponed" and likely cancelled because of the difficulty of re-booking the conference center anytime before next year.
Not even considering the salaries and overtime of the officers involved, it is not wrong to say that this manhunt may have cost hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of dollars in economic losses. For example, some of the speculation from The Washington Post this afternoon:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/19/t...
This is as if an entire city went into anaphylaxis.
Re: Boston Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Apprehended Alive
#49I can't help but feel like these brothers are also victims here. Of course, their victimhood is nothing like what they inflicted on the people of Boston and the marathoners, but they're victims nonetheless. Humans are glorified chemical reaction vessels; somehow, they ended up going down a path that led them here. Was there any alternative? Was it the education system? Social circumstances? I'm sure the magnitude of…
This kind of thinking is very dangerous and can be used to excuse all sorts of terrible behavior. We are all responsible for our actions. I can't prove that we have free will, but I feel it's important to believe it.
The kind of thinking that is dangerous is the line that we deserve to have these things happen - those people deserved to have their limbs blown off - because America's foreign policy is "bad." At that point, you are agreeing with people like Bin Laden and you are just about set to contribute to these kinds of attacks yourself, because you agree with the reasons.
Acknowledging that we live in a material world and there are multiple causes for things is incredibly minor by comparison, and isn't an ideological basis for carrying out terror attacks. Causes aren't the same as reasons.
Re: Boston Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Apprehended Alive
#50Earlier I was reading through the Twitter account of the now apprehended suspect and what is most striking is just how normal he is. Every one of his tweets could have been attributed to a completely normal teenager, he couldn't be more generic. It's strange how Twitter offers an insight into his life... but really it doesn't show anything. When someone blew people up in the 90s the news would report they're crazy, w…
I'm not sure I get what you're saying about traditional media. It's a well-accepted trope about mass murderers and serial killers that whenever their neighbors and family interviewed them it would be said that they we're quiet and kept to themselves.