Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Recline and fall...

So the talking heads on the televisor are saying that the Brothers Kablamazov acted alone. Certain outlets towards the right side of your internet dial are incredulous at the very suggestion.

It says something that nominal conservatives in this country have become so passive and sedentary and reactive themselves that they don't believe a couple of motivated young men could engage in a kind of entrepreneurial industriousness without some sort of chain-of-command hierarchy and official support; missions and orders and sanctions.

This wasn't the Manhattan Project: in terms of planning and scale it made 9/11 look like an Apollo launch. This was the lemonade stand of terror plots, with bombs barely more complicated than a pinewood derby car. (But then I suppose a lot of people have their dads build those for them, too.)

Seventeen years ago, American boys still had this kind of gumption.

57 comments:

Angus McThag said...

Gumption is actively punished these days.

We grew up in a different country.

JD said...

The problem with the acted alone thing I have is that this is MA. I think they had help getting the guns and explosives. maybe they made the explosives themselves but I still think they had help getting guns and ammo at a minimum. that and they don't seem to have had jobs that we have heard of so who was supporting them? too many questions still

Stuart the Viking said...

Hmm... maybe that has something to do with why AMERICANS aren't blowing things up nearly as often as foreigners. American boys are all like "I would blow up stuff... but it seems like too much work." (While they are reaching for their video game controller).

See... we could at least admire their work ethic.

s

Pakkinpoppa said...

"Brothers Kablamazov".

That's why I stop here every day.

That, and the secret codes.

Today, "wapultu 6469".

Tasso said...

Ignoring the technical side, it is not unusual for jihad to be waged using impressonable youth as disposable ordnance delivery vehicles.It would play to type for a grey bearded money man to be hiding in the shadows quoting the prophet.

Jake (formerly Riposte3) said...

What JD said. It's MA, and neither one had a FOID, so unless they stole them, someone had to at least supply them with the guns and ammunition. Until we find out how they got them, saying they acted alone is premature (though the .gov may know and just aren't saying).

As for money, other than the guns this was really a low budget operation - gunpowder, nails, pressure cookers, and pipes aren't all that expensive. A little "under the table" work could have easily paid for the whole thing.

Boat Guy said...

I'm with Tasso. It's not beyond possibility that the two "Kablamovs" (love ya for stuff like that, Tam) were merely "Thinking Globally and Acting Locally" but there are frequently grey-bearded, prohpet quoting money men in the shadows. No shortage of them -and certainly no shortage of money in some circles.

Dave said...

What pegs my skepticism meter is the claim that they were recently radicalized by a guy who was introduced to our robot assassins a few years ago. If this was true, why wouldn't they have gone allah snackbar on their neighbors around the time their mentor was exploded?

I suspect he's protecting someone who more recently gave him advice online.

Also, what's the odds of googleing for ied directions and not getting bad advice from the anarchist's cookbook or worse advice from an FBI informant?

Anonymous said...

What I don't like is being reminded of the implications of this apparently low-budget terror op. Just like the Beltway Snipers, these 2 guys essentially got an entire major city put under arrest and the 4th Amendment suspended.

Granted we're talking about the hysterical East Coast, but even if they acted alone, I'm sure the grey-beards are watching and asking themselves, "how can we capitalize on this?"

jf

Anonymous said...

Except that most young American men don't spend six months in crackistan doing God knows what.....

Joanna said...

You know the people who take turns standing at major intersections with the "Homeless, God Bless" signs? I know someone who's convinced they're managed by a higher-up who assigns them their spots and takes advantage of them. Not that it's not a possibility -- these things do happen -- but the idea that people could just show up on their own and start collecting money was just completely ungrokable.

Joanna said...

The prior comment, of course, is to illustrate that some people just don't like the idea of someone acting outside the established infrastructure.

Woodman said...

I seem to remember someone mentioning one of the brothers in a photo with his Mercedes, and one of their roommates has a nice BMW.

They went to a pretty nice school, had nice clothes, lived in a decent area. There was money for everything else they needed apparently. How hard would it be to get the $500-1,000 or so scratched up for a gun and ammo each? I haven't heard what they used in the shootout, but I haven't heard anything about fully auto AKs or Evil Bushmasters, so I assume they weren't factors.

If Bubba and Ray-Ray can get Glocks on public assistance, how hard could it be for Achmed to get them on daddy's money? Or, Allah prevent, they actually had jobs. I imagine the trip to Russia might have cost more than their weapons did.

"What I don't like is being reminded of the implications of this apparently low-budget terror op. Just like the Beltway Snipers, these 2 guys essentially got an entire major city put under arrest and the 4th Amendment suspended."

And even in a state less weapon restricting, people are going to keep their heads down lest they be mistaken for terrorists themselves.

Tam said...

JD,

Oh, I don't discount that they may have received a little help here and there, but even then the help may not have known exactly what they were helping, other than The Cause.

(And Allah knows it's impossible to get a heater in MA without a FOID. That's why they have to use their bare hands to kill people in Southie... ;) )

Anonymous said...

It could be true but color me skeptical. The feds have run every contact to ground and finished the investigation in less than 7 days?

It sounds more like move along people, nothing here so see.

Gerry

BobG said...

I'm still waiting for more info before forming a definite opinion.

Tam said...

Unlike a lot of people on the internet, I do not proclaim my opinion to be fact.

But everybody above in comments who said "Where's they get the gun? They didn't have a FOID!" gets a billion irony demerits for posting that in a gun blog...

I suppose Al Qaeda's behind all the shootings in Chicago, too?

Let's hope that a BATFE trace of the gun's serial number doesn't trace it to Joe Blow, who sold it in the parking lot of a Manchester, NH gun show to "some guy... I dunno, yeah, he kinda looked like that. It's been a while... No, I didn't ask to see his driver's license."

perlhaqr said...

Yeah. The gun thing doesn't carry too much water with me. It's not like MA is that big of a state. Going somewhere else and buying a gun isn't exactly a long drive.

And, yeah. The bombs don't sound exceedingly sophisticated, either. If they were using C4 or some other really high-tech stuff, I'd be more inclined to believe it.

Actually, do we even have a confirmation on what they used yet?

WV -- "omplexam 94": Not the explosive used in the Boston Marathon Bombing.

Anonymous said...

(EBM here, having trouble logging in.)

We have been kind of lucky, in a way. Thanks, in part, to 9-11, the local jihadists have been fixated on trying to carry out large-scale attacks, the kind of attacks that need logistical support that seems to end up coming from a FBI informant. If what I read elsewhere is right, al Qaeda has been preaching small-scale grassroots attacks.

These two clowns have shown the way to others. They caused an entire city to go into lockdown. I expect that 99% of your readers could rig up a blackpowder bomb without any instructions, and the rest can easily find out how.

This is going to get worse.

bluesun said...

I read they had a cache of "over 250 rounds of ammunition"! How in the world did they find so much on their own in this day and age! How, I ask! It's a conspiracy, I knows it!

Cormac said...

How often does it take more than a few days for the media to get us all the scandalous details of a gun used in a high-profile crime?

Didn't the Philly PD recently "lose" two M-16s?
Actual full-auto machinery-type evil killy things...?

It's not like we haven't seen the feds get involved in a "sting" that went badly before...

Bram said...

I'm impressed that the FBI and Boston cops were able to make this determination in a day - with a suspect in intensive care and unable to speak.

I guess it really is possible to prove a negative. Not even that hard if you believe it hard enough.

Ed Foster said...

Best guess seems to be acetone peroxide, or something similar, commonly found near anyplace that does a lot of fiberglass work. Tricky stuff to mix up unless one is well trained. What exactly did they study during those months abroad?

My best guesstimate is that the kids got training "over there", and were encouraged to operate independently when they got back home.

Best of both worlds from the terrorist's point of view. Independent operatives, no command chain to be compromised, and maximum publicity for minimum effort. Dirac Angestun Gesept anyone?

Robert said...

The older one was married (to a natural American citizen) and his wife worked, so not too hard to get money from that direction as well. Did she get the guns for them?

Anonymous said...

"But everybody above in comments who said "Where's they get the gun? They didn't have a FOID!" gets a billion irony demerits for posting that in a gun blog..."

I think MSNBC just reported they got their guns from "Federal Officers" who were required to sell their weapons to buy food for their families because their overtime was cut by the sequester.

Steve Skubinna said...

Major Hassan, of the regrettable Ft Hood "workplace violence" incident, acted alone as well. However, he was nonetheless in contact with jihadis. These two knuckleheads are likely the same.

But al Qaida always was a distributed network. Just because a jihadi doesn't show up on the org chart doesn't put any daylight between his motives and those of the organization. Our fixation on "getting" bin Laden let too many of us assume it was just something personal between the United States and one scrawny scraggly bearded dude in a cave. Even our mushmouthed "War on Terror" label obscures the fact that we are fighting an ideology and not one specific organization. Killing Hitler would have ended WWII. Killing bin Laden, while good in itself, could never have had any effect on the spread and activities of jihadism. These two "losers" may very well represent the wave of the future, and will be much more difficult to deal with than one single SPECTRE-like organization.

I fear that several more incidents like this one will have more people paying attention to Gauleiter Bloomberg's earnest prescription to curtail our liberties in order to preserve them.

staghounds said...

"It's not like MA is that big of a state. Going somewhere else and buying a gun isn't exactly a long drive."

Which is the antis' argument for why Vermonters should have Massachusetts gun laws.

NAVIGATOR said...

BOYS AND GIRLS SOME OF THE RECIPES
FOUND IN YOUR FOLKS OLD COPY OF THE
ANARCHISTS COOKBOOK ARE HIGHLY FLAWED

PLEASE DONT TRY THIS AT HOME

SOME SILLY PEOPLE CALLED THE WEATHERMEN LEFT SOMETHING ON THE STOVE OF THEIR TOWNHOUSE IN GREENWICH VILLAGE

SUDDENLY THEY CONTRIBUTED TO INSTANT URBAN RENEWAL AND CITY PLANNING

IT ALSO HELPED WITH NATURAL SELECTION PROCESS IN CULLING THE MORE STUPID GENETIC FACTORS IN SOCIETY IT ALSO PROVIDEDED EVERYONE WITH A LESSON AS TO WHY IT WOULD HELP TO PAY ATTENTION IN CHEMISTRY CLASS

AND TRY NOT TO CRIMP BLASTING CAPS
WITH YOUR TEETH

Scott J said...

It might be a short drive out of MA but buying a handgun in another state is a violation of existing federal law for both buyer and seller.

Since that didn't stop them then passing another would have stopped them...how exactly?

Matt G said...

"'This generation is so dead,' he said at one point. 'You ask a kid, ‘What are you doing this Saturday?’ and they’ll be playing video games or watching cable, instead of building model cars or airplanes or doing something creative. Kids today never say, ‘Man, I’m really into remote-controlled steamboats.’ They never say that.'"

--Jack White (formerly of the White Stripes.)

Justthisguy said...

17 years ago, hell. Now, back around 1969, well, we were Real Boys in Those Days. Every quarter at Ga. Tech, there were several explosions every hour during Finals Week, what with people feeling the need to blow off some head pressure.

Why, I remember the time some people in my dorm blew a hole through the door to the Resident Advisor's room. I didn't think a shaped charge would work with just black powder and told them so, but somehow they managed it. I think it had to do with the tamping, m'self.

Tam said...

"17 years ago, hell."

A smart person would try to figure out what happened 17 years ago that made me pick that number. Hint: I didn't yank it out of a hat.

Tam said...

Scott J,

"Since that didn't stop them then passing another would have stopped them...how exactly?"

Exactly.

Never underestimate our opponents' enthusiasm for making things "double secret illegal", though. Their motto should be "Do it again, only harder."

Rob said...

The youngest was a college student. He probably got the guns from the same guy he bought weed from, or at least used him to connect to the seller.

And if that doesn't make you realize how absolutely pointless our country's War on Drugs and gun control laws are, nothing will.

Chris said...

1996 - Menendez brothers?

Anonymous said...

Unabomber

Tam said...

Eric Rudolph.

Scott J said...

Indeed, Tam. No sooner had I posted that when I had the thought that such logic is pearls before swine when presented to our enemies.

Anonymous said...

They won't rest until it's physically impossible to break the law. It's the goal of all well-meaning tyrants.

jf

wv: on-sheeple (I might have slightly edited that.)

Woodman said...

"They won't rest until it's physically impossible to break the law. It's the goal of all well-meaning tyrants."

They won't rest until it's physically impossible to not break the law.

That's how you enforce a tyranny. If everyone is a criminal then no one has any rights.

Bob said...

"Brothers Kablamazov" = instant classic.

Stuart the Viking said...

"AND TRY NOT TO CRIMP BLASTING CAPS
WITH YOUR TEETH"

Correction. If you are the type of assbag who goes around detonating bombs in crowded areas just to get your point across, please DO crimp the blasting caps with your teeth. It makes the bombs better... more personal or something... snerk...

s

Anonymous said...

"Seventeen years ago, American boys still had this kind of gumption."

Oh, come on, that's just a really intriguing first sentence of the next paragraph. Please don't leave us hanging, there had to have been some follow-on thoughts to go with it.

Mike James

Anonymous said...

Seventeen years ago. Derp, me stupid.

Mike James

Anonymous said...

I'm still in wonder that even with several guns, seveal hundred rounds of ammo, explosives, the run of the country, and complete and utter surprise, these two only idiots only manage to kill 4 people ..... drunks in some states manage more that on a weekend with only a car and some beers ....... these have to be the Most. Incompetent. Jihadis. EVAR.

OTH, the MSM and the .gov managed to salvage their mission for them, in spite of their fecklessness: Over a Million people remained locked down for days, cowering in Terror .....

Nice Job, right?

Keep Calm, and most importantly, Carry ON.

-jimbob86

Anonymous said...

They won't rest until it's physically impossible to not break the law."

That's the goal of the not-so-well-meaning tyrants. :-) Not quite sure which ones we've got right now.

jf

Motor-T said...

Not to be "that guy" but 4/19/95 was 18 years ago.

NAVIGATOR said...

STUART
THE CAUTION WAS FOR THE BOYS AND GIRLS
AT HOME WHO WERE WORKING FOR THEIR EOD
MERIT BADGE AND WERE ENGAGED IN THE WHOLESOME GOODNESS OF LEGITIMATE EXPLOSIVE DEMOLITION FOR AGRICULTURAL AND CONSTRUCTION AND RECREATIONAL USAGE NEVER FOR ANTISOCIAL ACTIVITIES

Tam said...

Motor-T,

"Not to be "that guy" but 4/19/95 was 18 years ago."

7/27/96 wasn't.

Woodman said...

Ohh, now you aren't even "that guy" your the "wrong guy".

I'm horribly shitty at dates (Except Birthdays thankfully)and not energetic enough to look them up so I just read everyone's guess until she confirmed it above. The Atlanta Olympics we 17 years ago.

Reading comprehension FTW. ;-)

Anonymous said...

It's not that hard to find black market guns here in Taxachussets... or so I've heard... third hand... from a guy whose name I don't remember ...

staghounds said...

Oddly enough, Mother Jones has the best and most careful "What we know about their guns" reporting I've seen. Go figure.

Drang said...

Meanwhile, the Mounties are not shy at all about saying that the guys who were planning to blow up the Niagara Falls railroad were being "guided" from Tehran.

Anonymous said...

I wonder why they didn't use nitrocellulose powder, a better low explosive than blackpowder.

Then there's tannerite(ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder) and ammonium nitrate and nitromethane.. and so on... all legal, uncontrolled substances.

Not so smart these brothers.

Justthisguy said...

I really don't remember what got blown up in '96. All of these kaboomish things tend to run together in my mind. USS Cole? Truck bomb at world trade center? I forget.

Justthisguy said...

Now that I've read some of the comments above, well, yeah. I remember the scandal about the FBI hounding the wrong guy nigh to death, but that figures that they would do that.

People blow up other people all the time these days. This is another good reason to avoid crowds. Monkeys and their crowds!

Rob Crawford said...

You know the people who take turns standing at major intersections with the "Homeless, God Bless" signs? I know someone who's convinced they're managed by a higher-up who assigns them their spots and takes advantage of them.

You do realize that's been documented as happening, right?