Hint—Don't Google Pressure Cookers!

She’s a writer with a 20-year old son and a husband. The son is a news junkie, and the husband is curious about things. So they’re all on the Internet a lot; she had looked up pressure cookers. Her husband had researched backpacks. And her son had followed a lot of links in the days surrounding the Boston bombing.

Wanna see what happened?

Yup, six armed guys from the Joint Terrorism Task Force had come to Michele Catalano’s house at nine in the morning. Her husband went out to greet them; they asked if they could enter the house. Here’s Catalano’s description of the event:

They asked if they could search the house, though it turned out to be just a cursory search. They walked around the living room, studied the books on the shelf (nope, no bomb making books, no Anarchist Cookbook), looked at all our pictures, glanced into our bedroom, pet our dogs. They asked if they could go in my son’s bedroom but when my husband said my son was sleeping in there, they let it be.

Meanwhile, they were peppering my husband with questions. Where is he from? Where are his parents from? They asked about me, where was I, where do I work, where do my parents live. Do you have any bombs, they asked. Do you own a pressure cooker? My husband said no, but we have a rice cooker. Can you make a bomb with that? My husband said no, my wife uses it to make quinoa. What the hell is quinoa, they asked.

Guys—do any of you feel significantly safer by having the federal government running around asking people if they have any bombs?

They got to equally tough questions—had he ever looked up how to make a pressure cooker bomb? Sure—said the husband, whom Catalano dubs, “ever the oppositional kind”—haven’t you? Two of the guys admitted they had.

The officers asked to do a cursory search—they missed two rooms (undoubtedly crammed with bombs, boys!) and never touched the computers. Oh, and they dropped the news that they do this a hundred times a week, and “99%” of the time, it turns out to be nothing. Catalano rightly wonders—what about the other 1%?

Well, the task force spent 45 minutes chatting with Catalano’s husband, and went pleasantly off to investigate the next terrorist. Here’s how Catalano concludes her piece:

This is where we are at. Where you have no expectation of privacy. Where trying to learn how to cook some lentils could possibly land you on a watch list. Where you have to watch every little thing you do because someone else is watching every little thing you do.

All I know is if I’m going to buy a pressure cooker in the near future, I’m not doing it online.

I’m scared. And not of the right things.

Well, the question is—since the government is not supposed to be reading anyone’s email, how did the Joint Terrorist Task Force know Catalano’s family had googled “suspicious” sites? Were they connected to suspected terrorists? If so, how?

The bad news is that almost all of us are connected to suspected terrorists; here’s Yahoo News on the subject….

It hinges on what's known as "hop" or "chain" analysis. When the NSA identifies a suspect, it can look not just at his phone records, but also the records of everyone he calls, everyone who calls those people and everyone who calls those people.

If the average person called 40 unique people, three-hop analysis would allow the government to mine the records of 2.5 million Americans when investigating one suspected terrorist.

Right—so we have the Joint Terrorist Task Force investigating people who google pressure cookers, but not following up on Tamerlan Tsarnaev when the Russians go out of their way to tip off the FBI?

In the meantime, the head of NSA held up a placard stating that they had foiled 54 terrorist plots by using telephone and Internet data. Predictably, nobody in Congress trusts them. Who could?

Look, if it hadn’t been for Edward Snowden, they’d still be lying on their stack of Bibles. They were asked direct questions; they lied.

Which, by the way, is contempt of Congress. Anybody remember Rita Lavelle, the EPA official who lied to Congress in 1983? Here’s what she got, according to Wikipedia:

Indicted for lying to Congress; convicted; sentenced to 6 months in prison, 5 years probation thereafter, and a fine of $10,000

Throw the book at ‘em!

Wrong, Again

Hmmmm—so maybe I was wrong, signing that petition in my knee-jerk fashion this morning. You know, the online petition supporting Edward Snowden, the 29 year-old guy now somewhere—supposedly—in Hong Kong.

I’m thinking this way because of Thomas Friedman and his column this morning, “Blowing a Whistle,” in The New York Times. Here’s the crux of his argument:

Yes, I worry about potential government abuse of privacy from a program designed to prevent another 9/11 — abuse that, so far, does not appear to have happened. But I worry even more about another 9/11. That is, I worry about something that’s already happened once — that was staggeringly costly — and that terrorists aspire to repeat.

I worry about that even more, not because I don’t care about civil liberties, but because what I cherish most about America is our open society, and I believe that if there is one more 9/11 — or worse, an attack involving nuclear material — it could lead to the end of the open society as we know it. If there were another 9/11, I fear that 99 percent of Americans would tell their members of Congress: “Do whatever you need to do to, privacy be damned, just make sure this does not happen again.” That is what I fear most.

Friedman argues as well that, to date, there have been no known abuses of the data mining programs and goes on to quote David Simon:

The question is more fundamental: Is government accessing the data for the legitimate public safety needs of the society, or are they accessing it in ways that abuse individual liberties and violate personal privacy — and in a manner that is unsupervised. And to that, The Guardian and those who are wailing jeremiads about this pretend-discovery of U.S. big data collection are noticeably silent. We don’t know of any actual abuse.

Simon makes a point: there’s a big difference between collecting data—in this case collecting phone numbers or emails—and actually analyzing the data—that is, listening to the calls or reading the emails. To listen / read, the government has to go before a judge and give good reasons. Yes, the public won’t know—no suspected terrorist should be reading in The New York Times that the feds are on to him. And yes, it’s a little difficult to ascertain that the government is really playing by the rules. But still, it’s a system.

OK, you say, but why not go after the data when you have a suspect, and a court order to do so? Are you seriously going to give me the have-to-have-a-haystack argument?

Looks like I will. Why? For reasons of time and space.

Look, let’s pretend there a terrorist with a dirty bomb that he intends to put in Times Square at 9AM on Monday. He knows that; you don’t. Do you collect his phone history while the clock is ticking, or do you have the material at hand and then race to analyze it?

OK—that’s time, what about space? Well, you may be dealing with foreign governments, some of whom may not be in any hurry at all to comply with or honor requests from the US government for data. Which, by the way, they may not even have.

“Nobody is listening to your calls,” said Obama, who went on to say that if we don’t trust the executive, judicial and congressional branches of the government…um, don’t we have a problem?

Two thoughts.

As I wrote a day or two ago, the analysis of data tends to come in to an investigation after a tip is received, a laptop is discovered, and interrogation reveals a plot or a suspect.

Now two cases.

First case took place in Orlando shortly before September 11, 2001, when José Meléndez Pérez, a US Custom and Border Protection agent, confronted a Saudi national, Mohammed al Qahtani, and smelled a rat. Al Qahtani didn’t have a place to stay, he didn’t have a return ticket, didn’t have a credit card, but guess what? He had $2800 in cash. Some of his answers were contradictory; he was hostile.

Remember, now we know—no credit card because he didn’t want the trail, hence the large amount of cash. And probably a member of his cell was picking him up and giving him shelter, and as for the return ticket? Meléndez Pérez didn’t know any of that. But Melendez Perez said no way: the story didn’t add up, and he denied Qahtani entry. And that’s why Flight 11 had four, not five hijackers.

Second story—Russia tells the FBI about a guy in Cambridge, MA, who may need a bit of looking into. They do, they drop the ball, and two years later, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, completely unscrutinized by our sophisticated systems, drops the bombs at the finish line to the Boston Marathon.

So my first thought? A system is as good as the people who use it, and I worry that the bells and whistles of technology will dazzle people and delude them into thinking that that’s enough.

And my second thought?

It’s so damn hard to believe a president who says, “trust me,” when his director of national intelligence tells a lie to a congressman. Wyden asked a simple question, and deserved an honest response.

So did we all.

1984 Is Not Behind Us

There’s something screwy about it. The United States government has collected this enormous amount of information about whom we’ve called, how long we’ve talked; it also has connections to the largest servers in the country, and so it knows—minimally—who we’ve emailed. And if the government has access to servers, it seems logical to me that it can also monitor Internet use.

We cannot have, says Obama, 100% safety and 100% security: there has to be a trade-off. And he says that these programs have thwarted terrorist attacks in the past. What he doesn’t say is what attacks, and how the information helped identify the threat.

And according to at least one guy, Shane Harris, this kind of data mining is really only useful when you have a specific lead. And where do those leads come from? Here’s Harris on the subject:

Those leads tend to come from more pedestrian investigative techniques, such as interviews and interrogations of detainees, or follow-ups on lists of phone numbers or e-mail addresses found in terrorists' laptops. That shoe-leather detective work is how the United States has tracked down so many terrorists. In fact, it's exactly how we found Osama bin Laden.

So we have an enormous pile of data, and yet we’re still relying on tips, interrogations, or information found on terrorists’ laptops. Why collect all this information? Couldn’t the government get a court order when needed?

It’s also a little screwy that the government, with all this data on its hands, was unable to prevent a couple Boston kids from making bombs, killing several people, maiming scores more, and shutting down a major American city for a day. The Russians had told the FBI—watch out for this guy. That said, why wasn’t the government looking at all Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Internet usage, which presumably is where he was “radicalized” and / or where he learned to make the bombs?

I also understand that the last thing Obama wants is to have a terrorist attack on his watch. And God knows, I would have continued the program, too—what president wouldn’t? But the real question is whether a president, with the help of Congress and the Supreme Court, should be making these decisions.

And let’s be honest, if given the power, the government will use it. But is it legal, collecting all this data? Well, here’s what James Sensenbrenner wrote in the Guardian last Saturday:

In his press conference on Friday, President Obama described the massive collection of phone and digital records as "two programs that were originally authorized by Congress, have been repeatedly authorized by Congress". But Congress has never specifically authorized these programs, and the Patriot Act was never intended to allow the daily spying the Obama administration is conducting.

To obtain a business records order like the one the administration obtained, the Patriot Act requires the government to prove to a special federal court, known as a Fisa court, that it is complying with specific guidelines set by the attorney general and that the information sought is relevant to an authorized investigation. Intentionally targeting US citizens is prohibited.

The point should also be made—how do you get the genie back in the bottle? We have invested billions to obtain the technology to spy on our citizens. Is it likely that the government will walk away and leave it rusting there?

We went nutso after September 11. But actually, our freedoms had been eroding for years before. Am I the only person in the US who thinks that being asked to pee into a plastic cup in order to get a job stocking cereal in Wal-Mart is an unjustified invasion of privacy? And why is it that I am photographed countless times a day, sometimes without my knowledge? Since when did walking out onto the street mean implied consent?

“If you’re not doing anything wrong,” goes the line. Yeah? What if a major al-Qaeda figure dials my phone number by mistake? What if he emails the wrong person? Or what if my vengeful ex-wife, working away for our homeland security, decides to tap into the system, read my emails, and then start stalking my girlfriend?

Even if I trust this president not to misuse the information, will I trust the next one? Oh, and by the way, what if I write the sentence, “It is completely untrue and without basis that I want to kill Obama?” Will that ring alarms bells for Homeland Security? Am I to expect a knock on the door shortly?

The guy who leaked the information is 29, and though making a pot of money, wasn’t particularly high up in the hierarchy. He’s intelligent and speaks well; I believe him when he says that his intention was to force the issue onto the national stage.

Guess what.

He has.

One Down, One to Go

OK, the standard version goes that Tamerlan Tsarnaev ran into a guy named Misha, who filled Tamerlan’s ears with invective and hatred, thus radicalizing him. Then, Tamerlan went off to Russia for six months, where he picked up his bomb-making skills. Then he came back, went up to New Hampshire, bought the fireworks, and came home to make the bombs. Oh, and he recruited his younger brother, as well.

This story may be true, wholly or in part. What it leaves out is the crucial question—why? Or it may be that the version stated above rests on an unstated premise: the Muslim world is inherently antagonistic to the West. Any Muslim at any moment can be radicalized.

Also implicit is the assumption: there’s nothing wrong with us. And for that to work, we then need to invent a simple theory. There is evil in the world, and those who attack us are evil.

So the two brothers have now been explained—right? Mystery all cleared up?

Don’t think so. First question—could I be radicalized? If I met the odious Misha, would I be powerless to resist his insidious, vile indoctrination? How long would it be before I—or even you—would be slinking into the housewares department of J. C. Penny, seeking half a dozen or so pressure cookers?

Well, the New York Times sees it a bit differently. Their theory goes something like this: Tamerlan, a guy who never fit in, saw his dream dissolve when the Golden Gloves of America, the organization that oversees amateur boxing, decided that only American citizens could compete.

Right—so let’s look at that. Why had Tamerlan never fit in?

Probably age—he would have gotten to the United States sometime in his high school years, and, when there, was put into an English as a Second Language program. So who were his classmates? People who, like him, were just starting the process of assimilating into and understanding a new culture.

It’s a long-simmering debate in education: do these programs help kids by giving them the extra support they need, or do they foster dependence, create a sense of inferiority, and block the process of going from outsider to insider? Tamerlan said he had no American friends; that’s not surprising if he had been studying in a program with other new immigrants.

And his dream is to box, and even in that he’s different. First of all, he boxes European style, standing upright instead of crouching. He’s also consistently overdressed, and he’s got a little work to do on the social skills.

That, actually, was what triggered the dispute… but wait—I’m getting ahead of myself.

In 2009, Tamerlan participated in the New England Golden Gloves of America, and faced a young man from Chicago, Lamar Fenner. By all accounts, Tamerlan was the better fighter and won the match; there were boos when the judges decided to give the match to Fenner.

Tamerlan came back again to compete in 2010. And this time, he completely blew it in a preliminary round of the competition by walking into his opponent’s dressing room—which is forbidden—and telling both his opponent and the opponent’s trainer, “you are nothing. I am taking you down.”

The trainer, Héctor Torres, raised a fuss—why is a non-citizen, a resident alien, allowed to compete? The Golden Gloves of America was just then changing its policy: it allowed resident aliens to compete on all years but those years when the Olympics were to be played.

So Tamerlan was out—cut off from the one thing he wanted to do. So were two or three others. And he wasn’t getting younger, and it would be another year before he could apply for citizenship.

Right—and then he got arrested for slapping his girlfriend at the time. She had called 911, he was arrested but not charged.

Apparently, the incident wouldn’t have imperiled his citizenship application, but it was one more thing to worry about.

We now have a guy who has channeled all of his not-inconsiderable aggression into an activity—boxing—which is now barred to him, professionally speaking. He is sitting at home taking care of his infant daughter while his wife is working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, to scrape up the 1300 bucks they need for rent.

Easy for us to say what he should have done—gone out and gotten a job, attended community college at night, put himself together, gotten over the loss of his dream.

I came to Puerto Rico when I was about thirty-five. I spoke no Spanish, I had had little contact with Puerto Rican culture (Mr. Fernández having convinced himself if not me that he is British), and all my friends had jobs and were working all day. And, like Tamerlan, I had a dream that I saw vanish. I failed the auditions because I choked—I know that now—but there is another truth.

A cellist who has gone through the six years of the Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico has developed a special and usually very close relationship to all of the members of the jury. They know him, they know his family, they have watched and nurtured him for more than a decade. I would have had to be twice as good to have defeated a prized, cherished student. And I knew—or sensed—that going in to those auditions.

Those years of assimilating, of going from outside to in, were some of the most difficult years of my life. Like a 1950’s housewife, I waited for Raf to come home; he, of course, had been dealing with the world all day, and just wanted to eat in peace. I was starved for human contact.

There the similarity ends between Tamerlan and me. I did not come from a part of the world torn by senseless violence. I did not believe that the West was at war with my religion. And I did not come from one hyper-religious country to another hyper-religious country—if materialism can be considered a religion.

Tamerlan was a box of very dry kindling; Misha was the match.

The real question, I think, is Dzhokhar. 

The Missing Voice

It was my shrink who posed the question: where are the Imams? We can do things, he felt—install more video cameras, get better surveillance, collect intelligence better—but look, that’ll never be enough. These two kids—who everyone describes as polite, outgoing, typical young adults—couldn’t have been more Americanized. So why aren’t the Imams saying this: anyone who kills an innocent bystander is not Muslim, he has violated the religion, he is out of the church.

Well, that was something to think about, on the bus on the way home. And interesting to reflect on the people I had seen, since the tragedy unfolded. There were the family members: the mother fiercely defending her sons; the father, incredulous and also insisting on the innocence of his children; both uncles, one who voluntarily came forward, the other who had deferred to (presumably) the elder. There were the neighbors: the woman who heard Tamerlan’s angry wife shout at him late on summer nights; the car mechanic who asked how much Dzhokhar’s fancy shoes cost. There were former classmates and teachers, as well as boxing and wrestling coaches. In short, anybody who had passed one of these brothers on the street and said hello was getting up and telling the world about it.

So who didn’t phone in?

The Imam of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC).

Who is not, according to him, a coward. Instead, he’s a six-foot-five-inch guy named Suhaib Webb who started life out Christian, lost his faith and joined a gang, got tangled up in a drive-by shooting, and emerged Muslim from it all in 1992. So he gave up being a DJ, went to the University of Oklahoma, got a degree in Education. Then, from 2004-2010, he studied at Al-Azhar in Cairo. He has been the Imam of the ISBCC since 2011.

And there’s stuff to like about him. He joined, in 2010, a group of Imams who went to Auschwitz and then denounced those who refused to believe the existence of the Holocaust. He raised 20,000$ for widows and children of firefighters after September 11.

There’s something else. In a YouTube clip about “Yes, There can be an American Islam,” he seems to come out as a centrist, not an extremist. It should be about synthesis, he tells his kids, it should be about being in the center. And certainly he comes across that way on a “Face the Nation” clip that I watched, also on YouTube. There, he appears with three or four religious leaders, and he’s quick to establish his credentials—his love of the Celtics, his Oklahoma roots. Then he throws in a little nugget—his is the fastest growing faith in the US, with 2 million members, 65% of whom are young. That’s as big as the Episcopalians.

Right—so am I being fair to this guy, when I make the charge that every clerk who sold a pair of sneakers to one of the brothers was on TV last week: where was the (presumed) spiritual leader of at least the elder brother?

Well, I’m a son of a newspaper guy…I had to balance this out.

And today, in fact, I read his “No Room for Radicals” post on his website, SuhaibWebb.com. Originally published in the New York Times, it is not much, despite its title, of a condemnation of the Tsarnaev brothers actions. Webb’s point is that there is no need, as Peter T. King, the Republican Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence is asking for, for increased scrutiny of the Muslim community. Why? Because the younger Tsarnaev apparently never stepped foot in a mosque, and the older found the moderate views expressed there “unpalatable.” In short, the mosque didn’t “radicalize” the brothers; blame the Internet.

It’s a point of view.

And there’s more. You know, of course, that I had to check out the guest post entitled “Gay Muslims: The Elephants in the (Prayer) Room.”

Well, it’s painful to read—no, not because it’s hateful or even condemnatory. It is, in fact, a plea for tolerance by a man, still in the closet, who has clearly struggled with being gay and Muslim, and who (sorry to drop the news here) is not quite out of the woods. “The number of times I have wished I weren’t gay…” he writes, and I remembered a time when I myself would have written the sentence.

About 30 years ago….

So I applaud Webb for taking it on, for addressing the issue. The question does rise to the surface, though—has American Islam made the progress that the Episcopal Church has on the issue? Do we have gay Imams, as we have gay bishops? (By the way, I am capitalizing “Imam” following the style of Webb’s website—why am I not capitalizing “bishop” in the same sentence?)

And I also could applaud the Imam’s reluctance to give Tamerlan Tsarnaev a proper burial; check out this quote from an article in the Christian Science Monitor:

Adds Yusufi Vali, executive director of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, in an interview with CNN: “I don't care who or what [the alleged] criminals claim to be, but I can never recognize [them] as part of my city or my faith community.”

In fact, at least one Boston cleric, Imam Talal Eid, has refused to bury the elder Tsarnaev according to Islamic rites. “I would not be willing to do a funeral for him," he told The Huffington Post. "This is a person who deliberately killed people. There is no room for him as a Muslim.”

Hey—good words! And to answer a question raised by my shrink, there is no excommunication in Islam; it is theologically impossible for a group of Imams to get together and decide when to kick out an errant member out of the faith.

Another point—it might not be possible for a group of Imams to get together and speak out. Here’s what one website had to say about Islam:

There is no formal clergy, no ordaining body, and no hierarchy. The relationship between the individual and God is a direct one. No one besides God can declare what is lawful and what is sinful. No created being can bless another. Each individual is directly accountable to his or her Lord and Creator.

Right—so where are we left?

Not, to me, in a particularly good place. Even if the Tsarnaev brothers had no or minimal contact with the ICBCC, Webb is still the preeminent Muslim in the city. He’s perfectly justified in distancing himself and his organization from the brothers—in fact, that’s exactly what I want him to do.

There’s something else, and I’m gonna say it. Readers of this blog know that I am a very bad Buddhist, and also that I am as tone deaf to spiritual matters as my brother was to the trombone. So what do I know?

Right—here goes.

Each day, I take my walk, in the middle of which I come to the end of the path. To my right, the centuries-old walls to the city of San Juan soar up, to my left the mouth of the harbor is receiving cruise and cargo ships. In front of me is the ocean, which is battering the rocks, hurling spumes of white, frothy water to splatter on the blue sky. Mozart or Monteverdi or Mahler is filling my ears and brain. I stop for several minutes, I ponder, I contemplate. Mostly, I just…am.

I turn around and walk home again.

That’s as close as I can get.

The problem?

I look at the videos below, and I feel nothing of the peace, the serenity, the awe, and the joy of water leaping against a sky, of a breeze whispering across my skin, or of a mind meeting and melting into a trumpet.

Question Time Redux

Well, the cop speaking to the media at the funeral of the slain MIT officer had the answer: “my coworker was shot at point-blank range for no reason—the two brothers are just plain evil.”

I’d probably feel the same way if I were in his shoes. But being that I’m not, I’m prepared to have questions.

Well, let’s start with a woman who also has the answer: “my two boys DID NOT do this, they are innocent. I know. I am mother,” she stated fiercely. Right—I get denial, I appreciate a mother’s love. But her credibility is just a bit dented by the fact that she skipped out the country in order to avoid a little court appearance on a charge of stealing 1600$ worth of clothing from a Lord and Taylor store in Natick. Was she set up on that, as she alleges that the two brothers were set up? Seems a bit of a stretch.

OK, so the media is trying to put it into our heads—the youngest brother was “brainwashed” by the elder, who in turn was “radicalized” by a 30-year old heavyset red-bearded Armenian named Mischa.

Um?

I’m trying to remember what being 19 was like—would I have put a bomb in front of an 8-year old child if my brother John had told me to? I have the feeling that I wouldn’t—I’ll call Johnny and get back to you on this. And do I believe that a person can be “radicalized?” What is it, exactly? Where is the line between intense devotion to Islam and “radicalized?” When you go into the kitchen and take the pressure cooker out of the cabinet?

OK—I don’t know how else to say it. Nothing justifies putting a bomb at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, but would the brothers have acted as they did if they hadn’t been watching the United States doing much the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan?

The whole story is screwy. What’s the deal with the fireworks shop in New Hampshire, who two months ago sold four hundred bucks worth of fireworks to one of the brothers? “We don’t get a lot of Russians up here in New Hampshire,” stated the clerk, explaining why she remembered the guy. Right—but how many people buy 400 dollars of fireworks? And if the FBI—whose star is glowing rather dimly lately—is checking out people purchasing large amounts of fertilizers, shouldn’t they also be checking fireworks stores?

Now then, move back to—perhaps—the tenth anniversary of September 11, or about 18 months ago. In the town of Waltham, quite close to Cambridge, MA, a friend of Tamerlan’s and two other young men were brutally slain (their heads were pulled back, and their necks were slit ear to ear…). Authorities are now wondering whether Tamerlan was in any way responsible for the murders.

And may I ask—how are these kids getting the money they apparently had? The auto repair guy across the street from where the two brothers lived reports that Dzhokhar was wearing a pair of shoes that cost 900$. It hurts me to drop 70$ for a pair of crocs—how are these guys doing it?

Oh, and Tamerlan’s wife—the girl who works seven days a week to support the family, while Tamerlan stays at home as Mr. Mom? This “radicalized” fundamentalist Muslim is sending his wife out to bring home the bacon?

Right, so as usual I have more questions than answers. I am, however, delighted to report that there is absolutely no question in my mind about the commentary piece on CNN titled “History’s Jury Still Out on George W. Bush.”

Not with this blogger…..  

Monday Morning Workout

Well, it’s Monday morning and let me get right down to work. The question of the day is whether or not the FBI possibly dropped the ball in not following up a request from the Russian government to check out why Tamerlan Tsarnaev wanted to spend six months in Russia.

For those of you who have just emerged from spending last week at a Buddhist retreat—in which case you definitely had a better week than the rest of us—Tsarnaev, the elder of the two brothers who put a bang into the Boston Marathon, wasn’t working, wasn’t going to school, and had a wife and infant. So the FBI looked into the matter, and went to the house to ask, presumably, “hey, you’re not a terrorist, are you, Buddy?” And he said, “Nah, who, me?” 

(Sorry, been a while since I’ve written any dialogue—wanted to see if I still could….)

Well, that was absolutely the right answer, so the FBI went home, turned on the TV, and forgot the whole thing. Now, some of our good senators—that loveable bunch of nearly all white guys who squelched background checks last week—are raising the question. Did the FBI blow it?

Gentlemen, skip the investigation, save yourselves the dough (or better, send it to me…). Here is your answer:

Duhhhhhhh….

It’s right up there with the 20 or so Saudi Arabians who were so interested in flight school, in flying the plane but had not interest in getting it down. Or the immigration people, who months after 9/11 authorized one of the terrorists to continue to stay in the US.

OK, let me proceed to the next issue (wow, working at this pace, I’ll have the deficit whittled down by the weekend….). Should we hold the younger brother as an “enemy combatant?”

Well, you know who’s coming down where on this issue. The Republicans say yes; the Democrats say no. Now then, what’s my answer? Well, let’s rephrase the question: is it justified, in this case, to suspend the 800-year old right of habeas corpus?

The New York Times has already quoted an official who says he’s not going to “Mirandize”—and I’m surprised the Times let that get by—Dzhokhar, something that is, apparently, now constitutional. But calling him an enemy combatant puts him in the same status as all those prisoners in Guantanamo, with presumably the same stuff directed at him as at the prisoners in Cuba.

“Hey,” you say, “this kid KILLED four people, maimed over 150, and spread terror over the entire city of Boston. Of course he’s an enemy combatant!”

OK—but be careful, driving down that road; I give you the case of José Padilla, our very own Puerto Rican Taliban.

Or not—just a guy of Puerto Rican descent who grew up in Brooklyn but was arrested in Chicago and charged with some serious stuff—traveling to Afghanistan to work with al-Qaeda, planning to stage attacks in the US, and finally plotting to build and detonate a “dirty bomb,” an explosive containing radioactive material. So for three years, Padilla was held as an enemy combatant, where, in his version, this was done to him:

Padilla alleged that he was subjected to prolonged isolation; deprivation of light; exposure to prolonged periods of light and darkness, including being “periodically subjected to absolute light or darkness for periods in excess of twenty- four hours”; extreme variations in temperature; sleep adjustment; threats of severe physical abuse; death threats; administration of psychotropic drugs; shackling and manacling for hours at a time; use of “stress” positions; noxious fumes that caused pain to eyes and nose; loud noises; withholding of any mattress, pillow, sheet, or blanket; forced grooming; suspensions of showers; removal of religious items; constant surveillance; incommunicado detention, including denial of all contact with family and legal counsel for a 21-month period; interference with religious observance; and denial of medical care for “serious and potentially life-threatening ailments, including chest pain and difficulty breathing, as well as for treatment of the chronic, extreme pain caused by being forced to endure stress positions.”

–      United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, May 2012.[1]

Nice, hunh? Well, for three years lawyers wrangled about the whole thing, and finally it was decided: Padilla had to be tried as a civilian. And then the government finally had to charge him, and guess what? Well, let Democracy Now tell you the story:

There is no mention in the indictment of Padilla's alleged plot to use a dirty bomb in the United States. There is also no mention that Padilla ever planned to stage any attacks inside the country. And there is no direct mention of Al-Qaeda. Instead the indictment lays out a case involving five men who helped raise money and recruit volunteers in the 1990s to go overseas to countries including Chechnya, Bosnia, Somalia and Kosovo. Padilla, in fact, appears to play a minor role in the conspiracy. He is accused of going to a jihad training camp in Afghanistan but his lawyers said the indictment offers no evidence he ever engaged in terrorist activity."[26]

Oh, so I guess they were wrong. So sorry! Here’s what a guy named Andy Worthington had to say:

[Seventeen] years and four months seems to me to be an extraordinarily long sentence for little more than a thought crime, but when the issue of Padilla's three and half years of suppressed torture is raised, it's difficult not to conclude that justice has just been horribly twisted, that the president and his advisers have just got away with torturing an American citizen with impunity, and that no American citizen can be sure that what happened to Padilla will not happen to him or her. Today, it was a Muslim; tomorrow, unless the government's powers are taken away from them, it could be any number of categories of 'enemy combatants' who have not yet been identified.

Right—we have or we think we have a video of Tsarnaev putting a backpack with a bomb right in front of an eight-year old boy. That’s pretty hard to defend.

Which may be my point—does anyone think that Tsarnaev is not going to prison? Of course not. My question is should we throw out our constitutional rights to get information through torture, information which most experts say is unreliable?

Answer: no.

Well, quite a morning’s work!

Update from Boston

I might just as well be honest—I have wasted an hour and a half looking at police, ATF agents, FBI agents, drug agents with dogs, and other assorted law enforcement personnel, all of whom…are looking at a grey house at the corner of….

…oh wait, the media has been asked not to reveal precise locations.

So, if Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, one of the two brothers suspected in the bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, is reading this…HAH! You won’t get it from me!

I tell myself, ‘hey, if nobody is working in Boston, why should you? Who needs to read Iguanas every day?’ And at any moment, the cops could move in, there could be a gun fight, and maybe even an explosion, since authorities—I know this fact because I’ve heard it thirty times—at a Boston-area hospital have reported that Dzhokhar's brother, who is now dead, came in with gunshot wounds AND shrapnel. This means that he had an IED—please notice how casually I’m using the term—strapped on him. (For those who don’t know, I can now smugly tell you that it’s an “improvised explosive device.” (¿Bíjte?)

There is a nineteen-year old kid (the media reports him as armed and extremely dangerous—“we know,” said one broadcaster darkly, “just what he is capable of…”) who last night robbed a convenience store, shot dead an MIT policeman, wounded critically an MBTA agent, and hijacked a black Mercedes Benz. As well, he kidnapped the owner of the vehicle before releasing him unharmed half an hour later.

And now, the entire Boston metropolitan area is under lockdown. Stay in your homes, we are warned. Do not open your door to anyone but a duly identified policeman.

Well, let me take a break here to show you this photo:

Readers—attention! The individual on the right with his arm place over the torso of the other individual and in front of the glasses containing an orange fluid that might be orange juice is the highly dangerous suspect, Dzhokhar. If you see this individual you should NOT try to apprehend him, but rather seek shelter immediately and then proceed to notify your local law enforcement agencies by calling this number: 1-800-494-TIPS.

OK—so I’ve done my duty here both to my readers and to society at large. I can also inform you—since I went to the bathroom and then just thought I’d update myself on this emerging situation—that the president was briefed overnight on the developments and has activated the situation room at the White House. Great—we got Barry on it, and if he can bring down bin Laden, a 19 year-old should be child’s play. 

I myself am thinking of contacting—no, not official enough—of communicating or putting myself into communication with local, state, or federal law enforcement personnel to notify them that the individuals in question seem to be in a kitchen with two stoves. This appears to me to be a fact of extreme importance, though at this point in time and in the investigation process it may be premature—or even dangerous—to speculate or make hasty conclusions. More important is the fact that both stoves appear to be functional—at least one of them there appears to be a pot that may be connected with the recent activity of food preparation, as evidenced by the presence of apparent food items on the table. There is a steam kettle on the other stove. This could be significant if the brothers are, as media reports them to be, of Russian origin. The Russians love their tea!

This just in—the grey Honda with the license plate CRV-E58 has been located, so we can all cross that off the list of things to monitor in this fluid and emerging situation. Oh, and no fear, Canadian readers—the border patrol is monitoring the border and working in close communication with United States officials. So you’re safe up there.

I break to report—with shame—that ABC news has made a horrible gaffe and is very wrongly reporting the name of a Watertown street which is being evacuated. Guys! Get a little professionalism here, hunh?

Well, I’ve done my duty, I do think, down here in sunny Puerto Rico, of keeping my readership abreast of the troubling developments taking place even as we speak in the city and neighboring communities of Boston, Massachusetts. I’d like to urge you, as so many others have done, that your personal safety and the personal safety of those you love is the number priority for you at this point in time.

Lastly, all indications are that, yet again, the two suspects were quiet, good students, fine athletes, courteous, and even played the piano! So, if you or anyone you know should happen to know an individual with some or all of those characteristics, I urge you immediately to contact local authorities and report any suspicious behavior or activity.

Thank you for your cooperation in this matter. 

Bombs or Redbuds?

I won’t do it, of course, tempting as it might be. But I do have to wonder—is it advisable for the New York Times to tell everybody that the al Qaeda magazine Inspire has an article titled “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom?”

What I won’t do is check that out—do I need Homeland Security knocking at my door? And what would I do with the information, anyway? Besides, the NYT has given me all the rudiments of the recipe: place small nails, ball bearings, or metal shards in a six liter pressure cooker, reads the opening sentence of the recipe. Presumably, we top with melted cheese (gruyere if fancy, Velveeta otherwise).

News flash—and remember you read it here first—we’re never gonna know who made the bombs, put them in the garbage cans, and left the scene, after having set the kitchen timer on each of the bombs. All we’ll know—I’m guessing or perhaps extrapolating here—is that it took ten seconds for him (sorry, guys, but I think it’s one of our own….) to set the timer of the first bomb and then walk to the next garbage can, where he set the second.

Garbage cans, as you will know if you’ve been to London recently, are very lethal affairs, as deadly as pressure cookers. Unbelievably, unimaginably, the Boston Police Department (BPD) is unaware of this simple fact, a datum a 3-year old child could easily grasp and expound upon.

Yes, the danger is everywhere—kitchen timers, pressure cookers, garbage cans. And now, with the Internet, it’s easy to slip into the kitchen, get down to work, and cook up a little bomb or two. And in the case of the Boston Marathon, you can run out and get the ingredients months in advance. The brads that tore through so much flesh may have been bought in December, during the Christmas rush.

“We can never be safe again,” is the take away (nod to my corporate past) from one writer, a man generally wise and perceptive (read—I usually agree with him….).

Well, yes and no. Susan said it best in her comment about yesterday’s post. Remember that line in the Bible about living by the sword? Well, we’ve been doing that for too many years now, and we’ve pissed off too many people. Now, of course, we don’t like it when the “terrorist” walks into the kitchen to conjure up a bomb, not mac and cheese.

Which leads me to ask—what did you make in your kitchen two days ago? What would it have taken to impel you to take the pressure cooker, put the brads, BBs and metal shards into the pot, to glue it, to fix the timer, to put it into the back pack, and then to repeat the whole process? Because there’s an extra though vital ingredient to that recipe for a bomb, something besides the brads and metal shards—rage, hate, vengeance.

OK—kookiness. Somebody, breaking news on Yahoo informs me, sent a letter with suspicious white powder to Obama. Somebody also sent a letter with ricin to a senator from Mississippi. All the nuts, apparently, are stepping up to the plate and pitching right in.

In the days after September 11, 2001, I used to amuse myself with all the ways you could create disaster. Well, everybody was doing it—imagining subway gassings, warning us never to eat at salad bars, giving gloves and masks to the receptionist, as she opened the morning mail. And since the entire United States was filled with terrorists, just itching to bring down the God-fearing US of A, and since they were willing to give their lives to do it, I conceived a very simple way to create mass mayhem.

No, I won’t tell you. I love my country—as batty as it is; as paranoid as it is; as horribly as it acts, on occasion. We’ll struggle on. And no, I don’t think it’s impossible ever to be safe. I think if we could ever start acting well, if we stopped torturing people and bombing civilians in illegal and immoral wars, the rest of the world might be better off. Oh, and they might stop hating us, or at least not hate us as much.

More breaking news—the Senate, which is supposed to be thinking about gun control today, was locked down briefly when someone without clearance was found delivering packages. Oh, and Obama is speaking live right now about the suspicious letters.

Lastly, I leave you with the image that somehow encapsulates this whole ridiculous and tragic affair. Yes, I acknowledge the menacing Haz Mat truck, the police cars, the men ducking into the secured building, the whole scene one of response to menace and peril. I prefer to look, however, at the lovely redbud tree, in glorious and full flower, serenely sure that there is no, no danger.