Posted on 04/19/2013 6:51:00 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a shootout with Boston police earlier this morning, perhaps killed by bullets, his own IED, or the fact that his brother Dzhokar reportedly drove over him in order to plow through a police barricade after the shootout. He will live on in a photo essay taken when he competed in Golden Glove boxing, thanks to photographer Johannes Hirn, linked by an alert Dave Weigel a few minutes ago. The accompanying interview raised at least a yellow flag about the isolation of Tsarnaev from his community in the essay titled “Will Box for Passport”:
Tamerlan, who studies at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and wants to become an engineer, took the semester off from school to train for the competition.
Tamerlan fled Chechnya with his family because of the conflict in the early 90s, and lived for years in Kazakhstan before getting to the United States as a refugee.
Originally from Chechnya, but living in the United States since five years, Tamerlan says: “I don’t have a single American friend, I don’t understand them.”
If he wins enough fights… Tamerlan says he could be selected for the US Olympic team and be naturalized American. Unless his native Chechnya becomes independent, Tamerlan says he would rather compete for the United States than for Russia.
Tamerlan says he doesn’t drink or smoke anymore: “God said no alcohol.” A muslim, he says: “There are no values anymore,” and worries that “people can’t control themselves.”
Accordingly, Weigel and others claim that this is Tsarnaev’s YouTube channel (which I already posted in the main thread). It’s not confirmed, and there may well be more than one Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but if it’s his, a certain theme emerges almost immediately. It’s odd that Tsarnaev wanted to compete for the US rather than Kazakhstan, perhaps, where he might have fit in better; if this really is his YouTube account, it’s even more odd.
Update: Some are claiming that this is Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Amazon wish list. I’d approach this with a grain of salt, but again if so, it’s certainly interesting. Quite a few items on making fake IDs, but they’ve all been on the list for almost six years. Not sure if I’m buying this.
Update: More from the AP on the background of both brothers, including this tidbit, emphasis mine:
In May of 2011, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, then a senior at a prestigious high school, was awarded a $2,500 scholarship from the city of Cambridge, Mass., to pursue higher education. Now, Tsarnaev is on the run, described as “armed and dangerous” and suspected of the Boston Marathon bombing. …
According to the website spotcrime.com, Tamerlan was arrested for domestic violence in July 2009, after assaulting his girlfriend.
He was an amateur boxer, listed as a competitor in a National Golden Gloves competition in 2009.
Assuming that boxing profile preceded the arrest, that might be an inflection point for Tamerlan’s radicalization.
Update: Reuters reports that the younger brother’s website promoted Islamist websites:
Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev posted links to Islamic websites and others calling for Chechen independence on what appears to be his page on a Russian language social networking site.
Abusive comments in Russian and English were flooding onto Tsarnaev’s page on VK, a Russian-language social media site, on Friday after he was identified as a suspect in the bombing of the Boston marathon. …
His “World view” is listed as “Islam” and his “Personal priority” is “career and money”.
He has posted links to videos of fighters in the Syrian civil war and to Islamic web pages with titles like “Salamworld, my religion is Islam” and “There is no God but Allah, let that ring out in our hearts”.
Have you ever been there?
The young men who are mostly students look very girlie and the women for some reason have to have short hair and look boyish.
Even on TV I can see the background and people walking about and there are so many looking freaks there.
Even in neighboring NH the people don’t want Ma folk and then up in ME they’ve had it with MA people too.
RE: IMO applying doesn’t count. Being engaged doesn’t make you married.
Let’s put it another way.... Most applications for citienships get APPROVED after you pass the residency requirements.
We don’t know if they did apply. But let’s assume that they did apply ( and they can by law because they’ve lived here for over 10 years ) and the application is approved, and they were sworn in as citizens like millions of others.
That makes them Americans.
Please provide a reference for that information concerning length of residence.
“Holy Sh*t, he’s really in trouble now.”
Not really. Seems to me NOW is OK with Muslim domestic violence. It’s a cultural thing, you know?
We agree to disagree. There are some I will never accept as my fellow countrymen. They do not assimilate they are not American.
RE: Even in neighboring NH the people don’t want Ma folk and then up in ME they’ve had it with MA people too.
Too bad, NH has already been overrun by MA folks attracted to their ZERO state taxes.
How do I know that?
NH ( the live free or die state ), voted for OBAMA ( yep. he of Obamacare fame ) TWICE — in 2008 and 2012.
Live free or Die — They chose the latter.
RE: We agree to disagree. There are some I will never accept as my fellow countrymen. They do not assimilate they are not American.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you.
Being born an American does not guarantee that you will grow up to love this country. See The American Taliban — John Walker Lindh for instance.
Conversely, being born overseas does not necessarily make you a terrorist and an American hater.
I know of MANY overseas born immigrants who love this country ( and will fight for her ). I also know of many native born Americans who hate this country and who will betray her.
We ought to take things on a case by case basis.
I agree with case by case but I am leaning toward an exception for Muslims. Allow none. I try to be impartial toward the “moderate” ones but there silence and refusal to turn in their fellow satan worshipers has dulled my sympathies.
I take it since he doesn’t understand Americans he doesn’t want to be friends with us rather than Americans don’t want to be friends with him.
I’m watching CNN and surfing the web.
I’ve read the the family had green cards, and as for as the info about the younger brother, his former high school coach and a friend from high school have been interviewed.
He was definitely radicalized by older brother, and I hope he’s realizing that, now, even if he will publicly say otherwise.
The engineering background seems to be common for Islamic terrorists.
But both are somehow REGISTERED VOTERS. This is infuriating.
Perhaps if he and his brother hadn’t spent all their time building up what now appears to be a huge arsenal, they’d have been able to socialize a bit with their neighbours.
How many other cells have been planted in the U.S. waiting to be sprung at some other place where crowds gather. Any holiday parade or festival, or small town high school football game attracts a sufficient number of people to ensure similar carnage using the same tactics. If the jihad comes to America in its full fury, we’ll be seeing a lot more of these types of incidents. While we’re watching the airports and ports, there could be hundreds of terrorists already in America waiting to spring. And there is very little that can be done to stop them.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is said to have lived in Turkey before relocating in Massachusetts and commencing studies at the Cambridge Rindge & Latin School.
His name is listed among the recipients of Cambridge scholarships in 2011 .
His page on V Kontaktye page – the Russian equivalent of Facebook – states that he went to school in Makhachkala in Dagestan, which adjoins Chechnya.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev speaks English and Russian, his profile states. His “worldview” derives from Islam, while his personal priorities are “career and money.” He is also said to belong to organizations supporting an independent Chechnya.
An online gallery of images assembled by photographer Johannes Hirn purports to show his older brother Tamerlan working out at Boston’s Wai Kru Mixed Martial Arts center where he practised boxing.
It quotes him as saying, "I don't have a single American friend, I don't understand them."
After fleeing the former Soviet Union with his younger brother, Tamerlan studied at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and aspired to be an engineer, the photo gallery states, but took time off from school to train for a boxing tournament, the National Golden Gloves competition in Salt Lake City, Utah.
He drove a Mercedes to the martial arts center, the photo essay states, and usually didn’t take his shirt off out of modesty, because "I'm very religious."
Tamerlan Dzhokar was also said to have given up alcohol and tobacco because he was a devout Muslim and "God said no alcohol."
The brothers’ uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, told CBS that his nephews arrived in the U.S. around 2001.
“They do not deserve to exist on this earth,” he said.
“I just wished they never existed. I am wordless.”
Their parents live in Russia, the uncle said.
Dzokhar was a quiet boy, Ruslan Tsarni said. He called Tamerlan “a loser” and said of his death “he deserved it.”
But the younger brother, who in the spring of 2011 received a $2,500 scholarship from the city of Cambridge, has been “a nice, quiet boy," the uncle said.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev also left behind a YouTube file of his favorite clips, which included Russian rap videos and testimonial from a young ethnic Russian man titled “How I accepted Islam and became a Shiite,” the New York Times reported.
An AP file from the city of Makhachkala in Russia quoted the brothers’ father as saying his younger son, the fugitive Dzhokar, is a smart and accomplished young medical student.
"My son is a true angel," the father told AP.
"Dzhokhar is a second-year medical student in the U.S. He is such an intelligent boy. We expected him to come on holidays here."
Alvi Karimov, spokesman for Chechnya leader Ramzan Kadyrov, told the Times the Tsarnaev family had not lived in Chechnya for many years.
“In such a way, the figures who are being spoken about did not live in Chechnya at a mature age, and if they became ‘bad guys,’ then this is a question that should be put to the people who raised them,” the spokesman was quoted as saying.
According to the Associated Press, militants from Chechnya and other restive regions in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus have targeted Moscow and other areas with bombings and hostage-takings, but the allegations of involvement in the Boston Marathon explosions would mark the first time they had conducted a terror attack in the West.
The conflict in Chechnya began in 1994 as a separatist war, but quickly morphed into an Islamic insurgency whose adepts vow to carve out an independent Islamic state in the Caucasus.
Russian troops withdrew from Chechnya in 1996 after the first Chechen war, leaving it de-facto independent and largely lawless, but then rolled back three years later following apartment building explosions in Moscow and other cities blamed on the rebels.
Chechnya has stabilized under the steely grip of Kremlin-backed local strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, a former rebel whose forces were accused of massive rights abuses. But the Islamic insurgency has spread to neighbouring provinces, with Dagestan, sandwiched between Chechnya and the Caspian Sea, becoming the epicentre of violence with militants launching daily attacks against police and other authorities.
Militants from Chechnya and neighbouring provinces have launched a long series of terror attacks in Russia, including a 2002 hostage-taking raid in Moscow’s theatre, in which 129 hostages died, a 2004 hostage-taking in a school in the southern city of Beslan that killed more than 330 people, and numerous bombings in Moscow and other cities.
In recent years, however, militants in Chechnya, Dagestan and other neighbouring provinces have largely refrained from attacks outside the Caucasus.
The allegations of the Caucasus men’s role in the Boston’s explosions would reinforce long-held claims by Russian officials that insurgents in the Caucasus have been linked to al-Qaeda.
Live free or Die — They chose the latter.
Don't lump everybody in the state into the same category. 48% of us chose anybody but Obama.
Thank you,
It is interesting how both young men lived here for so long and do not seem radicalized.
I wonder if they were part of a group led by the Saudi, Al-harbi, who is now under Obama’s protection.
Obama could have reason for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s death.
Classic predisposition for becoming a member of a mass movement. Self-sacrifice, self-annihilation.
Although I'd like us to be a Christian nation -- I know that is never going to be the case - until Christ comes back again. So non-criminal Buddhists, atheists, pagans, Hindus, etc, should be allowed in through the legal immigration channels. But Islam IS different. Their 'holy' book tells their cult to either convert, enslave, or kill those who won't join their cult. That is a fundamental difference from all of the other so-called 'religions'. Yes, there are whack-jobs amongst all people -- but when you have a group that swear allegiance to a book that tells them to destroy those that don't join, you have to have a death wish to invite them onto your shores.
I understand that many of us know Muslims that are up-standing and wonderful people. It is God's mercy that a large percentage of Muslims don't pay attention to their book - but unfortunately a lot of them do, and you never knows if the ones that don't (the ones that are wonderful today) are ticking time-bombs waiting to be 'infected' with that old-time religious fervor. Great when this happens to a person who becomes a Christian as they are changed for the better, deadly when it happens to a person who becomes a believing Muslim.
Chechnyan SICKOS.
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