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Boston Marathon bombing

  • SOURCE: Washington Times
    4-24-13

    Daniel Pipes: Education by Murder in Boston

    Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2013 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.What will be the long-term impact of the Apr. 15-19 Boston Marathon attack and the ensuing action-movie-style chase, killing a total of four and wounding 265?Let's start with what its impact will not be. It will not bring American opinion together; if the "United We Stand" slogan lasted brief months after 9/11, consensus after Boston will be even more elusive. The violence will not lead to Israeli-like security measures in the United States. Nor will it lead to a greater preparedness to handle deadly sudden jihad syndrome violence. It will not end the dispute over the motives behind indiscriminate Muslim violence against non-Muslims. And it certainly will not help resolve current debates over immigration or guns.

  • SOURCE: The Nation
    4-22-13

    Richard Parker: After Boston -- The Banality of Shock and Sentiment

    Richard Parker,a Nation editorial board member, is an Oxford-trained economist who teaches at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He serves as an adviser to Prime Minister Papandreou. He is the biographer of John Kenneth Galbraith....My parents lived through the Depression and Second World War; they’d been children in the First World War; and they’d taught us in the Cold War fifties and sixties not to be fearful but to be brave—and quiet about our bravery. When President Kennedy was assassinated, we all wept—but I don’t remember Walter Cronkite offering therapeutic advice to viewers or Lyndon Johnson keening on about “our” suffering and fears.

  • Filling the Empty Battlefield

    by Tom Engelhardt

    Federal Street in Boston, deserted during the manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on April 19, 2013. Credit: Flickr/Brian BirkeOriginally posted on TomDispatch.com

  • Who Are The Chechens?

    by Brian Glyn Williams

    A Chechen man picks up a loaf of bread in Grozny in 1995. Credit: Wiki Commons.In the aftermath of the killing and arrest of the Tsarnaev brothers, responsible for the Boston marathon bombings, the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11, there has been much speculation and interest in their ethnic origins. The media was quick to report that the brothers had Chechen ancestry, but few Americans know what that means. Having taught what is perhaps the only class in America, if not the world, on this obscure land for nine years at University of Massachusetts -- Dartmouth, I thought I would take advantage of this unique moment to shed some light on the brothers’ little known homeland and its ancient people.  

  • Murder! Madness! Terror!

    by Walter Laqueur

    A member of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September during the infamous Munich Olympic massacre in 1972.During the ancient Olympic games a sacred truce (ekecheiria, the stress on the penultimate syllable -- literally a holding of hands) prevailed. It was an elaborate procedure: runners (spondophoroi) were sent out all over Greece to announce the beginning of the truce which lasted a month and sometimes longer. Violators were heavily punished. In the High Middle Ages the Treuga Dei, the truce of God imposed by the church, persisted for centuries. On certain days there was to be no fighting and certain categories of people were never to be attacked. This armistice, not specifically connected with sports, was universally respected. 

  • Chechyna: What You Need to Know

    by David R. Stone

    Russian artillery bombarding a Chechen village in 2000, during the Second Chechen War. Credit: Wiki Commons.Editor's Note: With the identification of two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings -- Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, killed by police; and his brother Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19 -- as immigrants of Chechen origin, it's worth taking a look back at Chechnya's bloody history.

  • SOURCE: Fox News
    4-19-13

    Brian Glyn Williams of UMass Dartmouth says Boston bombing suspect sought help ‘rediscovering’ Chechen roots

    The Boston bombing suspect who is the subject of a massive manhunt reached out to a Massachusetts professor two years ago for help on research "rediscovering his Chechen origins," the professor told FoxNews.com Friday. Professor Brian Glyn Williams, who teaches the only course in the U.S. on the Chechen wars, said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev emailed him in the spring of 2011, asking questions on Chechen history for a research project he was doing at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. Williams said that based on conversations with a friend who taught Tsarnaev -- and who recommended he reach out to Williams -- he learned that Tsarnaev was "studying his past."...

  • Historians React to Chaos in Boston

    [View the story "Historians react to chaos in Boston" on Storify]Related LinksOn Topic: Boston Marathon Bombing Walter Laqueur: Murder! Madness! Terror! Daniel Martin Varisco: No, Senator Graham, Domestic Drones are NOT a Good Idea Historians React to Chaos in BostonOn Topic: Chechnya

  • Farewell Lu Lingzi 吕令子

    by Andrew Meyer

    Lu Lingzi, from a Facebook photo.Cross-posted from Madmen of Chu."How happy it is to have friends come from afar." This line from the opening passage of the Confucian Analects greets one everywhere that tourists congregate in China. Despite its having become a marketing cliche, it still expresses a profound truth. Bridging the distance between people is a basic human act. It is what makes families from isolated individuals, communities from disparate families, nations from disconnected communities, and what makes peace possible in a divided world. That joy is today mixed with sorrow, as we have lost a friend who came from afar. Lu Lingzi, a young graduate student from the city of Shenyang in the northeastern province of Liaoning, China, was killed in Monday's attack in Boston.

  • SOURCE: Time Magazine
    4-16-13

    Duke historian Martin Miller on meaning of terrorism

    In the aftermath of the deadly explosions in Boston, one word quickly became attached to the tragedy: terrorism. The major media honed in on the presence of the term in President Barack Obama’s speeches, and as the investigation continues into the motives of its unknown culprit or culprits, so too will speculation into the terrorist pathologies underlying it all. In post–9/11 America, terrorism is the frame through which we now instinctively make sense of seemingly senseless violence.