I see that two crude backpack-bombs brought millions of people in New England to their knees this past week, and brought some degree of fear to many or most of the 300-some-million Americans. In that sense, it was a majorly-successful terror attack.
John A. Muhammed
“Beltway Sniper”
“Beltway Sniper”
My mind wanders. Imagine a group of terrorists such as the Chechen brothers, with as much elusiveness as 2002’s John Muhammed, the “Beltway Sniper”. I remember it well: The “talking heads” all said it was a McVeigh-type. They told us to watch out for white vans. I remember telling myself at the time, This whole ‘white van’ thing may be wrong. Even if it’s not, the chance that the sniper’s white van cruises along anywhere near me [I lived in Arlington, VA at that time], in broad daylight, must be very slim. Getting anxious at the sight of a white van is silly. The italics are what I told my young self. Yet I did get a bit anxious when I saw those vans. The media is powerful — a week or so of conditioning had vindicated old Dr. Pavlov again. I was now scared of white vans!
It turned to out be a Black-American ex-soldier who’d joined the Nation of Islam and legally changed his name to “Muhammed”. He was driving a vehicle that was neither white nor a van. He killed 21 people, and eluded capture for a month. That was October of 2002.
It turned to out be a Black-American ex-soldier who’d joined the Nation of Islam and legally changed his name to “Muhammed”. He was driving a vehicle that was neither white nor a van. He killed 21 people, and eluded capture for a month. That was October of 2002.
In post-32, I wrote about two coincidences: (1) martial law was imposed in Boston on the same night 238 years apart. (2) Paul Revere and the Tsarnaev terrorists were cornered at the exact same time (1 AM April 19th), 238 years apart.
I don’t mean to ‘compare’ the American rebels of 1775 with a pair of Chechen terrorists of 2013. A more-valid synchronicity to note would be this:
- October 2002: The sniper terror attacks around Washington, DC (discussed above) occur.
- October 2002: The Chechen Tsarnaev family arrives in the USA. The family came in on a tourist visa, claimed to need political asylum, and were allowed to stay indefinitely. The future-terrorist brothers were 9 and 16.
Finally, I find it interesting that the younger one’s Twitter account shows he was a bit of a “whigger”. It’s likely he would have protested if you’d called him “White” to begin with, though (a prerequisite for being a “whigger”).