Yes, I’m as shocked as I’m sure you all are to learn that she is also on a terrorist watch list. The more that comes out on this, the more our government looks like Keystone Cops.
But at least we can agree with her on one thing. Like her, I’m sorry that she ever brought her murdering sons to the United States.
Wait…I had assumed that since she was not here, that the father had brought them here.
No, they were all here. The father went back to Russia to die, and she went with him.
Another perspective:
http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/4292794.html
“Basically, if you Hate America, you’d be better off buying a badly run and unsafe factory in some state where lives have no value. You could level a town and stack the bodies like cord-wood and the odds would be good no charges would result. In fact, if the insurance companies paid out (or the state and federal government kicked in some $$) you could do it again and again until you got bored.”
That seems to be a perspective that is neither relevant to this post, or sane.
Um Rand, I think you are missing a point. There is this moral equivalency going around left-liberal circles between the Boston Marathon and what happened in the town of West, Texas.
Owning a facility that stores a substance (anhydrous ammonia) that allows ranchers and farmers to grow the food that we eat is morally equivalent to blowing up a young boy and two young women for no apparent reason. Having that storage tank fail under your watch, for a cause that is still not fully understood and is still under investigation is the same as ambushing a police officer and shooting him dead, also for no good reason as that officer was not in pursuit of anyone.
I was in a restaurant discussing the news regarding the Miranda Warning/No Miranda Warning controversy, explaining the difference between non-Mirandized disclosures, sought for investigative purposes in the search for accomplices and Mirandized speech, that can be used against you in a court of law, when I was interrupted by a stranger.
A stranger who had just finished eating a plate of sausages and eggs, you know, the kind of thing made possible by “industrial agriculture” and synthetic ammonia. A person who drew the equivalency between the guy with the ammonia tank terminal and the two guys with all of the bombs with nails in them meant to cut people’s legs off. A self-identified school teacher by the way (I was going to suggest that the Lord help us, but I respect the fact, Rand, that you are not a Believer).
You see, Tank Terminal Guy is a Rich Guy and he has no excuse for the tank terminal blowing up, especially since he has failed safety inspections in the past, although I don’t know if that is an outlier or if “people in the business” fail those inspections all the time and they have to make corrections and get reinspected. The two brothers have an excuse, especially the younger brother, because such people are young, often come under the influence of an Evil Older Brother, and such people are often mentally ill, and the schools and the teachers in those schools are deprived of resources on account of all of the budget cutting fervor to properly refer-out their young, misguided, mentally ill charges.
Forget the nonchalence exhibited on the security cameras, forget the IEDs designed with mayhem in mind, forget shooting dead the MIT officer (the U has a proper police force constituting a branch of the Wisconsin State Police, and one of the officers expressed his condolences about the passing of a brother officer at MIT), forget the shootout with the expenditure of 100’s of rounds, forget running over and dragging your brother and partner in all of this to save yourself (from being lawfully taken into custody). The dude is young, misguided, and perhaps mentally ill; some other guy sleeps comfortably in his bed.
Remember Rand, some other guy sleeps comfortably in his bed and we make a big deal about the young, misguided, mentally ill guy in Boston. I am sure this is a “meme” making its way around the Left Blogosphere. We need to get hip to such things.
Oh, I know all that. I was simply pointing out that the moral equivalence doesn’t exist, and so it has no relevance.
The relevance was that both cases were a failure of big government to restrict freedom sufficiently to prevent a preventable explosion. But hey, freedom isn’t free. And better to have Keystone Cops checking our papers and our factories than to have competent inspectors do it.
I didn’t see the quote as an expression of moral equivalence — I saw it as something to be read literally: this is a viable plan to become a serial town devastator.
Also, who cares about moral equivalency? Leftists do! And only leftists! Google “intentions” and “site:transterrestrial.com” to read about how only leftists think “good intentions” matter; about how leftists think “good intentions” can excuse tragedies and travesties.
Clearly we need a backpack ban. The terrorists could have used other vessels (including the traditional galvanized pipe) for a container, so a pressure cooker ban wouldn’t do any good, but they couldn’t have carried them around unnoticed without a backpack.
It might be hard to get a nationwide backpack ban in place–maybe we should start first with schools. Think of the children!
A backpack ban would help, but then the terrorists would switch to baby carriages which can actually deliver a greater payload in urban settings.
What we should probably focus on is cutting the terrorists funding, which in this case seems to be Massachusetts’ welfare system.
Bob,
if this, “a failure of big government to restrict freedom sufficiently” is the basis of ANY argument, you’re living in the wrong country Bob, OUR Constitution doesn’t provide nor threaten us with such thoughts.
My suggestion for you, and the MILLIONS of others who ‘want’ or ‘need’ such a country…PACK your SH1T and GET the F*^K OUT!! There are any number of places on Earth where they ‘restrict freedom’ for the greater good. And if my history books are any guide Bob, actually I have a caveat for my next, if OUR country survives the current deranged nightmare in the WH, my grandchildren will brutally ‘storm in’ and kill the leaders of your new country BOB, to STOP said Leaders from PROTECTING your grandchildren TO DEATH, as we have any number of times over the last 100+ years!
But in the present, in the 21st Century, with all that goes on, via evil and evil doers, HOW in the hell people like you continue to exist I simply do NOT understand! It’s got to be the same law of averages that keeps sheep in a herd safe from coyotes, wolves or bears. YOU personally haven’t had the teeth on YOUR throat, YET! So, being unscathed and unwilling to pick up a stick, rock or, God forbid, a GUN, and protect yourSELF. You likewise don’t want ACTUALLY directly look at the people who DO perpetrate evil and hold JUST them responsible, you wish to see WHY they blow up marathons or kill for [enter their idiot cause du jour here].
Instead of holding the people responsible for mass murders who actually commit the crimes, you like to think there’s a ‘bigger, underlying’ question, that invariably goes back to some group the Hive Mind has previously found LACKING. [lately that’s been anyone unwilling to vote for a (D), give up more than half their pay in taxes or anyone or who prays] Instead of enforcing the laws we HAVE, you think the ‘shepherd’ needs to build a better fence, better coyote detector, shorter CHAIN on YOU and ALL of US, to protect YOUR life, and the rest of the herd, to keep the herd safe. […and screw the sheep who don’t want a chain…you’re FAR wiser than are they and YOU know what’s best or them..]
Bob, got a wife, GF, FBFF, MBFFsignificant other, gay lover, same sex partner, any KIDS [real, imagined, blended or adopted] pets, even a freaking GOLDFISH Bob? Then pull your head outta your@$$ and FIND even one instance where restricting freedoms saved anyone! Find the semi- [or fully] Totalitarian gov’t that ever WORKED and saved anyone other than those in power.
And don’t quote me the usual ‘restrictions’ about speed limits, food safety or bridge construction requirements.
When I say ‘restrictions’ I mean things like the decades long ‘curfew’ for citizens of parts of the Philippines, which Marcos had in place. I mean ‘ restrictions’ of free speech, or that Godawful 2nd Amendment Bob, like the one that ‘saved’ Nazi Germany from Communists and Anarchists! I mean ‘restrictions’ like the need for travel ‘papers’ that the Soviet Union had that kept illegal immigration and EMIGRATION [as if!] to a minimum Bob.
Show me a “big government to restrict freedom sufficiently” so sufficiently run that it solved ‘A’ problem, a SINGULAR problem, without causing 100 other cascaded problematic effects. But, puh-lez, do it while you and the Hive Mind are packing for restrictive parts elsewhere.
The fertilizer plant operated for 51 years. It had one OSHA violation in 1985 ($30 fine). That’s the entirety of the failed safety inspections. It was purchased by its current owner in 2004, who had one complaint of ammonia smell (outgassing) in 2006, in which it had to resolve the problem to regain its permit to operate from the EPA. Apparently the only thing the company didn’t have is a permit from DHS to have over a ton of fertilizer stored, as if achieving that permit would have been difficult based on the facility’s long history of operations.
I’m failing to see the relevance between this and the Boston bombers. But then, I’m racist according to bob, so there is that too.
“I’m failing to see the relevance between this and the Boston bombers. ”
Leland it’s obvious no?
“The relevance is…..shut up!”
Apparently the only thing the company didn’t have is a permit from DHS to have over a ton of fertilizer stored…
So, it wasn’t “illegal” storage, but “undocumented” storage?
Do you consider the permit from EPA not to be a document?
this is a viable plan to become a serial town devastator.
The notion remains stupid.
Also, who cares about moral equivalency? Leftists do! And only leftists! Google “intentions” and “site:transterrestrial.com” to read about how only leftists think “good intentions” matter; about how leftists think “good intentions” can excuse tragedies and travesties.
Intentions matter a great deal when it comes to crime. That’s why we distinguish between manslaughter and first-degree murder.
I took my own advice regarding this site and “intentions”. You should try it too.
I made the exact same point you’re making — that there is a reason that we distinguish between manslaughter and first-degree murder, and you dismissed it.
And this site is full of little nuggets of wisdom from you on the matter of intentions, such as:
“Bob, you make the typical leftist error of thinking that the paving stones to hell are the most important, or even a significant issue. But it doesn’t matter to the millions of brutalized and/or murdered victims.
Honest. I know they’re being unreasonable, but they just don’t give a damn.”
But then I came across some stuff BBBeard had posted, and it reminded me that life is really much too short, so that’s it for me — I think we agree more than you’d like to think, and me making unwanted comments pointing out that you are more inconsistent than you think seems like a silly thing for me to do. Have a nice weekend, enjoy every sandwich.
To Bob, deliberately murdering children is exactly the equivalent of (insert unrelated issue here).
Always, all the time.
The FBI, in spite of the warnings from Russia, was unable to find any evidence of radicalization. These clues were very hard to find; the elder brother was posting jihadist videos on youtube under his own name. The only way the FBI could have found them was by going to outrageous extremes such as googling the name of the suspect.
Clearly, this (the attack) is all Russia’s fault.
Why? Because if they’d wanted us to take their THREE (at least) warnings about this family seriously, they’d have implied that one of them was a Tea Party member. The family would then have been deported forthwith as a threat to national security.
/snark
A CJ,
why should we trust ‘Russians’? They’ve got such an axe to grind with radicalized Muslim Chechens in the first place. I’m betting they did this via the old KGB to make it ‘look’ like these kids are guilty.
Just ask their mother!
“why should we trust ‘Russians’?”
Well trust…but verify.
The Russians aren’t lying ALL the time. But they are serving their interests all the time. I wouldn’t stop listening to them just because they are competitors. But I would verify what they say.
But… But… But… Don’t you realize that the Russians set these poor boys up to take the fall, the way the CIA did with Lee Harvey Oswald? If that isn’t clear to you, then you are obviously a sheeple.
(Posters at The Puffington Host told me this, so it’s gotta be true!)
Bob spends his days lamenting that the federal government allows us too much freedom.
“Because you don’t have to be Swedish to have the Stockholm Syndrome.”
What I’m seeing from the juxtaposition of the Boston Marathon bombing and the explosion at the West, Texas fertilizer plant is that terrorists seem to have a strong element of grandiosity in their psychological makeup, such that they go for very showy targets that, while inflicting terrible harm on numerous individuals, don’t actually do that much substantial damage to the fabric of the nation and, in the absence of the diseased social dynamic that substitutes security theater for real responses, should actually produce an outrage as counterproductive to their desire to defeat us as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (which instead resulted in the Empire of Japan getting curbstomped, and having the distinction of being the recipient of the only use of nuclear weapons in war).
I think this may have to do with the mindset of most terrorists, which seems to have a strong element of not just disaffectedness, but also of ressentiment and of anger at their own insignificance, leading to their efforts to do us harm having a strong element of Pay Attention To Me. Thus they gravitate toward symbolic targets rather than to the actual industrial infrastructure that could hamstring us if it were systematically sabotaged by an actually competent covert operations team.
When I saw the news about the West, Texas explosion, I felt pretty confident right away in calling it as an industrial accident, with any criminality being of the “overweening greed, stupidity and a belief on the part of certain business executives that actions shouldn’t have consequences” variety. Part of it may be having a good friend who’s an industrial hygienist, but a fertilizer plant in a small town in Texas just didn’t have the feel of Terrorist Target.
Leigh Kimmel – Precisely. I can think of all manner of things that could be done with small amounts of explosives (or even flammables) in London, for example, that would cause immense death and mayhem and also colossal amounts of economic loss. For obvious reasons I don’t detail them, but consider the mileage of tunnels under London among other things.
But that sort of thing wouldn’t suit the ideas of terrorist theatre.