April 21, 2013

By Christopher Bucktin, Andy Lines
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Boston bombers: FBI hunting 12-strong terrorist “sleeper cell” linked to brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

21 Apr 2013 00:01

Police believe the pair were specially trained to carry out the devastating attack

The FBI was last night hunting a 12-strong terrorist “sleeper cell” linked to the Boston marathon bomb brothers.

Police believe Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were specially trained to carry out the devastating attack.

More than 1,000 FBI operatives were last night working to track down the cell and arrested a man and two women 60 miles from Boston in the hours before Dzhokhar’s dramatic capture after a bloody shootout on Friday.

A source close to the investigation said: “We have no doubt the brothers were not acting alone. The devices used to detonate the two bombs were highly sophisticated and not the kind of thing people learn from Google.

“They were too advanced. Someone gave the brothers the skills and it is now our job to find out just who they were. Agents think the sleeper cell has up to a dozen members and has been waiting several years for their day to come.”

A specialist team of CIA and FBI interrogators was yesterday flown to a Boston hospital to grill wounded Dzhokhar, 19, about the secret group. The University of Massachusetts student was caught on Friday after hiding out in a boat parked in a garden in locked down Watertown the day after a gun battle with police left his 26-year-old brother and a rookie cop dead.

Dzhokhar is said to have run his brother over as he escaped in a stolen car while Tamerlan lay handcuffed on the ground. They were carrying six bombs with them at the time, three of which exploded, as well as a handgun and rifle. The devices were thought to be pipe bombs.

Last night Dzhokhar – badly wounded but alive – lay handcuffed to his hospital bed under armed guard. The other three arrested in the port of New Bedford are also believed to be of college age.

Still infrared image from police search of boat where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found hiding — An aerial infrared image shows the outline of Dzhokhar hiding in the boat

Dzhokhar even went to a college party two days after the bombs wreaked havoc at the finish line. According to fellow students, he “looked relaxed” as he joined in a party at the campus on Wednesday night.

Hours later he was involved in the shootout which saw his brother killed.

Investigators have begun piecing together how the “well-mannered” brothers of Chechen origin were radicalised. Neighbours of the family said older brother Tamerlan had recently become obsessed with Islam. He mysteriously left the US in January last year to spend six months in Russia. Yesterday senior FBI counter-terrorism official Kevin Brock said: “It’s a key thread for investigators.”

It also emerged the Bureau interviewed Tamerlan two years ago, at the request of the Russian government, but could not establish that he had ties to terrorist radicals.

This was despite his worrying Russian-language YouTube page featuring links to extremist Islamic sites and others since taken down by YouTube.

One link showed an hour-long speech by an Islamic teacher called Shaykh Feiz Mohammed, while other videos are labled “Terrorists” and “Islam”.

The radical cleric, with links to extremist British Muslims, encouraged his followers to become martyrs for Islam. He said: “Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid.”

Yesterday the brothers’ mother Zubeidat, speaking from her home in Russia, added further intrigue to her sons’ murky past when she claimed the boys had been framed by the FBI over the two bombs last Monday that left three dead and 178 injured.

Chechen bombers: Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev at the Boston Marathon

She claimed the FBI had been keeping watch on her eldest boy for up to five years. She said: “They knew what my son was doing. They knew what sites on the internet he was going to.

“They were telling me that he was really an extremist leader and that they were afraid of him. They told me whatever information he is getting, he gets from these extremist sites. They were controlling him.”

The bombers’ father Anzor wept at news that his youngest son had been captured alive. In a phone interview with a US news channel he told his

son: “Tell police everything. Everything. Just be honest.”

US Government officials have said the brothers were not under surveillance as possible militants. And an FBI statement said the matter was closed because interviews with Tamerlan and family members “did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign”. But now they believe the pair, who emigrated to the United States from Dagestan about a decade ago, were part of a terror cell.

College dropout Tamerlan’s American wife Katherine Russell, 24, and their three-year-old daughter Zahara were yesterday thrown into the spotlight. She was a Christian before they married but converted to Islam. Her parents Warren, a doctor, and Judith were said to be “stunned” by their son-in-law’s involvement in the tragedy.

Judith and Warren issued a joint statement saying: “Our daughter has lost her husband today, the father of her child. In the aftermath of the Patriot’s Day horror, we know we never really knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Our hearts are sickened by the horror he has inflicted.”

Katherine, wearing a black hijab, was picked up by FBI agents at their home in Cambridge near Boston on Friday. Dope-smoker Dzhokhar was captured after a Watertown resident called police to say the fugitive was hiding in a boat in his back garden.

David Henneberry had gone into his garden for a cigarette after police lifted restrictions on people leaving their homes, believing the bomber had left the area. He noticed that the cover over his boat had blood on it and a strap had been cut. He went back into the house to get a stepladder and looked inside.

His stepson Robert said: “He stuck his head under the tarp and noticed a pool of blood and something crumpled up in a ball. Instead of being a hero of the moment and yelling at what we now know was the suspect, he did the right thing and called 911.”

Police immediately evacuated the family and surrounded the house, using a megaphone to tell Dzhokhar to come out with his hands up.

When he failed to respond they opened fire at the boat’s hull. Robert said: “They wound up shooting a couple of rounds through the boat. He wasn’t going to like that.”

Dzhokhar was wounded by the volley of gunfire and police were able to move in and arrest him. They later released infrared pictures taken from a helicopter showing Dzhokhar hiding in the boat.

Investigators will interrogate the bomber, still seriously ill last night, without reading him his rights – using special “public safety” powers.

The family of eight-year-old bombing victim Martin Richard welcomed the arrest of Tsarnaev. “Our community is once again safe from these men,” the family said in a statement.

Shortly before Dzhokhar’s capture, President Obama spoke by phone to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The White House said Obama “praised the close co-operation the US has received from Russia on counter-terrorism, including in the wake of the Boston attack”.

There were scenes of celebration across Boston as news spread of the capture of the remaining bomber.

Boston Celebrates Capture

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April 20, 2013

Changed Twitter account to read, "Salam aleikum."

4:44 PM, APR 19, 2013 • BY JERYL BIER

A website that places a "value" on Twitter accounts has increased the estimated value of suspected Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's from $37 to more than $37,000 as of late Friday afternoon due to the tens of thousands of new curious followers. Multiple news organizations reported the existence of the account Friday afternoon even as the manhunt continued. While Tsarnaev's current Twitter icon is a picture of a roaring lion, a cached version of the site shows his previous icon was a photo of himself.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: 'Probably the Only Chechen Dude You Know'

The cached version of the Account-Market site also shows that Tsarnaev's bio used to read "lazy but i get **** done" instead of the current "Salam aleikum," which means "peace be upon you" in Arabic. An even earlier version of his bio read "probably the only Ch

WATERTOWN POLICE CHIEF: DZHOKHAR KILLED BROTHER BY RUNNING OVER HIM

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by TONY LEE 20 Apr 2013, 3:19 PM PDT 39POST A COMMENT VIEW DISCUSSION

Watertown police chief Edward Deveau said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old suspected Boston Marathon bomber who was captured alive on Friday, killed his older brother Tamerlan by driving over him and dragging his body through the street with a carjacked SUV Thursday night.

Deveau, in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Saturday, said police officers were handcuffing Tamerlan, who had run out of ammunition, when Dzhokhar came at them in a carjacked SUV. Watertown officers were able to get out of the way.

The brothers were armed with pipe bombs, firearms, and explosives and had been in a firefight with officers on Thursday night after they reportedly "assassinated" an MIT police officer. Deveau said a pressure cooker bomb also went off during the firefight, causing a major explosion. The brothers threw explosives at the officers.

Dzhokhar eventually abandoned the SUV, fleeing on foot. He hid in a land-docked boat in a Watertown neighborhood, where law enforcement found him Friday evening.

According to Deveau, a person who had gone out for a walk and noticed a trail of blood leading to the boat called authorities.

When officers first arrived on the scene, Dzhokhar fired at them, and heat-sensing helicopters told law enforcement when there was movement in the boat.

After the initial "heated exchange," Deveau said there were no more shots fired.

Based on Thursday night's shootout, Watertown officers were afraid the younger brother would have explosives strapped to his body. Officers forced him to lift his shirt up so they could see his bare chest to make sure he did not have explosives strapped on him.

Police are not sure what kind of weapons Dzhokhar had, and the crime scene is still live. Deveau said he does not know what is in the boat.

April 19, 2013

Boston Bomber Could Have Been Deported After 2009 Conviction

April 19, 2013 | No Comments

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One of the Chechen terrorists who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings could have been deported years ago after a criminal conviction and the other was granted American citizenship on the 11^th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old killed in a wild shootout with police, was a legal U.S. resident who nevertheless could have been removed from the country after a 2009 domestic violence conviction, according to a Judicial Watch source. That means the Obama administration missed an opportunity to deport Tsarnaev but evidently did not feel he represented a big enough threat.

Adding insult to injury, the other bomber, little brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was rewarded with American Citizenship on September 11, 2012 in Boston, according to JW’s source. The 19-year-old, who is still on the run, was granted asylum in Arlington Virginia on September 27, 2002, JW’s source reveals.

Years before these Chechen terrorists carried out the Boston Marathon bombings Judicial Watch uncovered critical intelligence documents detailing al Qaeda’s activities in Chechnya, including the creation of a 1995 camp—ordered by Osama bin Laden—to train “international terrorists” to carry out plots against Americans and westerners.

The goal, according to the once-classified documents obtained by JW in 2011, was to “establish a worldwide Islamic state capable of directly challenging the U.S., China, Russia, and what it views as Judeo-Christian and Confucian domination.” Further, radical Islamic regimes were to be established and supported everywhere possible, from “sea to sea,” including Chechnya. “Terrorist activities are to be conducted against Americans and westerners…” according to the report issued by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

In other words, it was only a matter of time before terrorists from the predominantly radical Islamic republic carried out an attack on U.S. soil. Chechnya declared independence from Russia in 1991 and Chechen militants are quite the savvy terrorists because they’ve successfully targeted Moscow with bombings and hostage plots for more than two decades.

In 2004 Chechen Islamic militants attacked a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, Russia and they murdered 380 children, parents, teachers and visitors after holding more than 1,000 captive for three days. Judicial Watch also obtained intelligence documents from the government detailing that terrorist attack. Jointly released by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the October 12, 2004, report analyzes the Beslan terrorist attack with a view toward gleaning lessons for potential attacks on schools in the United States.

There’s no telling how many of these Chechen terrorists have infiltrated the United States or how many opportunities the government has missed to protect the country by deporting them. Osama bin Laden specifically chose Chechnya as a terrorist training camp because it’s an “area unreachable by strikes from the west,” according to the intelligence report obtained by JW years ago.

April 12, 2013

Walter E. Williams Column: Black Unemployment

By Walter E. Williams | April 12, 2013 | 18:53

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A couple of weeks ago, Black Entertainment Television founder Bob Johnson, speaking at The National Press Club, said the nation "would never tolerate white unemployment at 14 and 15 percent." Black unemployment has been double that of white Americans for more than 50 years. The black youth unemployment rate is more than 40 percent nationally. In some cities, unemployment for black working-age males is more than 50 percent. Let's look at this, but first let's look at some history.

From 1900 to 1954, blacks were more active than whites in the labor market. Until about 1960, black male labor force participation in every age group was equal to or greater than that of whites. During that period, black teen unemployment was roughly equal to or less than white teen unemployment. As early as 1900, the duration of black unemployment was 15 percent shorter than that of whites; today it's about 30 percent longer. To do something about today's employment picture requires abandonment of sacred cows and honesty.

The typical answer given for many black problems is racial discrimination. No one argues that every vestige of racial discrimination has been eliminated. But the relevant question is: How much of what we see can be explained by discrimination? I doubt whether anyone would argue that the reason for lower unemployment, higher labor force participation and shorter duration of unemployment among blacks in the first half of the 20th century was that there was less racial discrimination. I also doubt whether anyone would argue that during earlier periods, blacks had higher education and greater skills attainment than whites. Answers must be sought elsewhere.

I was a teenager during the late 1940s, living in North Philadelphia's Richard Allen housing project. Youngsters in my neighborhood who sought after-school, weekend or summer jobs found them. I picked blueberries in New Jersey, caddied at Cobbs Creek Golf Club, shoveled snow for the Philadelphia Transportation Co., delivered packages for a milliner, performed janitorial work at Horn & Hardart restaurant, and huckstered fruits and vegetables. As a high-school student, Christmas employment for me included after-school and weekend work at Sears, Roebuck and Co.'s mail-order house, and one year, I delivered mail for the U.S. Post Office.

Such opportunities for early work experiences are all but gone for today's teens living in Richard Allen homes. A major reason is the minimum wage law, which makes hiring low-skilled workers a losing economic proposition. In 1950, only 50 percent of jobs were covered by the minimum wage law. That meant the minimum wage didn't have today's unemployment effect. Today nearly 100 percent are covered. Today's child labor laws prevent youngsters from working in perfectly safe environments. The minimum wage has destroyed many jobs. That's why, for example, in contrast with the past, today's gasoline stations are self-service and theater ushers are nonexistent.

Then there are super-minimum wage laws, such as the Davis-Bacon Act, which were written for the express purposes of excluding blacks from government-financed or -assisted construction projects. Labor unions have a long history of discrimination against blacks. Frederick Douglass wrote about this in "The Tyranny, Folly, and Wickedness of Labor Unions," and Booker T. Washington did so in "The Negro and the Labor Unions." To the detriment of their constituents, black politicians give support to labor laws pushed by unions and white liberal organizations.

Then there's education. Black youths are becoming virtually useless for the increasingly high-tech world of the 21st century. According to a 2001 report by Abigail Thernstrom, "The Racial Gap in Academic Achievement," many black 12th-graders dealt with scientific problems at the level of whites in the sixth grade; they wrote about as well as whites in the eighth grade. The average black high-school senior had math skills on a par with a typical white student in the middle of seventh grade. The average 17-year-old black student could only read as well as the typical white child who had not yet reached age 13. That means an employer hiring the typical black high-school graduate is in effect hiring an eighth-grader.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

April 11, 2013

Sebelius Tries To Blame GOP For Coming ObamaCare Failures

Posted 07:00 PM ET

Health Care: As Democrats grow increasingly worried that ObamaCare will explode on the launch pad just as midterm elections get going, the Obama administration seeks to pin blame on Republicans. Good luck with that.

Earlier this week, Health and Human Services head Kathleen Sebelius admitted that she didn't realize how complicated getting ObamaCare off the ground would be.

Sebelius complained that "no one fully anticipated" the difficulties involved in implementing ObamaCare, or how confusing it would be with the public.

She wasn't talking about the massive and impossible task of imposing central planning on one-sixth of the nation's economy.

Instead, she was trying to find a way to blame Republicans for ObamaCare's failures when the inevitable problems start emerging.

Rather than say "let's get on board, let's make this work," recalcitrant Republicans have forced her to engage in "state-by-state political battles," Sebelius said at a Harvard School of Public Health forum. "The politics has been relentless."

So let's see if we get this. Democrats shoved an unpopular, expensive, ill-conceived and poorly written law down the country's throat with no Republican support, and without bothering to see whether states would want to take on the thankless and costly task of helping the feds implement it.

And now that many of these states are rebelling, it's the Republicans' fault?

Sebelius' fellow Democrat, West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, had a more accurate take on the problem the administration faces: the law is "probably the most complicated piece of legislation ever passed by the United States Congress" and "if it isn't done right the first time, it will just simply get worse."

Rockefeller, like a growing number of Democrats, realizes that ObamaCare is shaping up to be a political disaster for the party next November.

The influential Cook Political Report noted earlier this month that almost all of the Democratic insiders they talked to "voiced concern about the potential for the issue to hurt Democrats in 2014."

And just what could explain these concerns?

Maybe it's because even Sebelius now admits that ObamaCare will force insurance claims up 32%.

Or possibly it's because, despite endless assurances that the insurance exchanges would be ready on time, the administration had to delay for a year a key feature meant to give small business a choice of health plans.

Or because neither Sebelius nor the states have provided evidence they can get the rest of the exchanges ready by Oct. 1, when ObamaCare's open enrollment begins.

Or perhaps Democrats' fears stem from state insurance commissioners warning of a rate shock once ObamaCare's "community rating" rules and benefit mandates start. Or from rising evidence the law is hurting job growth as small businesses try to avoid its costs.

None of this, mind you, has anything to do with Republicans. And if the GOP were smart, it'd be focused on making sure that, come next November, the public knows that, too.