Although evidence from the first interrogation allegedly suggests the suspects in the Boston Marathon attack were “motivated by religion” and “US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan” investigators are still struggling to understand the motives behind the deadly Boston bombing, maintaining the two had no evident ties to Islamist terror groups.While the Tsarnaev brothers – like many Chechens – practiced Islam and appeared to have a strong sense of ethnic identity, neither of them was a religious fanatic according to their relatives and friends. The two had only spent a small and early portion of their lives in their homeland. Both were ethnic Chechens, but Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was born in Kyrgyzstan while brother Tamerlan was born in the Russian republic of Kalmykia.By the time of the Boston attack, both brothers had been living in the United States for over a decade and it is unlikely they had direct links to militants in the North Caucasus, Matt Clements told RT.RT: Why would Chechen militants be interested in staging this attack in the US – a country that at the very least used to sympathize with Chechen armed groups?Matt Clements: You’re right, they wouldn’t be interested in striking at the US. The Chechen ethnicity of the two suspects is somewhat misleading. Their actual time spent in the north Caucasus was relatively small. I think the most likely outcome is that these guys are going to be self-radicalized rather than having direct links to militants in the North Caucasus.RT: How could that happen that the suspects got self-radicalized?MC: There is a number of reasons for which people could get self-radicalized. The details surrounding Tamerlan and his younger brother are somewhat sketchy at the moment. Going in to too much detail would be to speculate too far. But there seems to be some signs around the older brother Tamerlan in particular to suggest that he was struggling to adapt to life in the US. Which is similar to previous people who became radicalized in this sort of way. Disengagement with society can often lead people to look for alternative sources. And radical Islam can be one of those factors which people turn to as a means to direct their lives.RT: What do you think about the FBI’s failure to take proper action after Russia’s warning over the eldest brother a couple of years ago? Why did that happen?MC: Difficult to say what the FBI’s situation was back then, what they were able to find out about Tamerlan. But linking back to the north Caucasus, I think the difficulty we have here is that the North Caucasus militants themselves have little interest in striking targets in the US and the West more generally. They are very much locally focused. Their interest is creating an Islamic caliphate in the North Caucasus itself. In the last couple of years it stepped away from even launching attacks against civilians within other parts of Russia.Doku Umarov, the leader of the Caucasus emirate ordered in Feb 2012 that civilians would no longer be targeted. And since the Domodedovo airport attack in January 2011 there haven’t been any major attacks in other parts of Russia. All of which suggests this group is no longer interested in operations beyond its co-area operations in North Caucasus. For them being suggested to have been making attacks in the US is quite a step for them, which is not likely at all.RT: There are rumors that the attack could further see America or NATO putting its positioning more along the southern areas of Russia. Do you read any truth to that?MC: I don’t think that the particular attacks in Boston would lead to any major realignment of the US major strategic, alignment globally. The plans that the US has regarding its military and other operations around the world are already likely to be in place. I don’t think that this attack itself, particularly because the links to NC are likely to be very minimal, would lead to US strategic thinking on that part. … Read More
New Zealand passes same-sex marriage bill
The bill amended the country’s 1955 Marriage Act, making it not only the first in Asia-Pacific to legalize same-sex marriage, but the 13th worldwide.Conservative religious organizations have voiced opposition to the bill, saying it would undermine the traditional family institution.“This is not about church teachings or philosophy. It never has been,” said Labour Party MP Louisa Wall, who is openly gay and was involved in the promotion of the bill.“It’s about the state excluding people from the institution of marriage because of their sex, sexual orientation or gender identity.”Homosexual civil partnerships, or de facto relationships, were recognized in the country in 2005. However, MPs voted 77-44 in favor of actual marriage.Legalized gay marriage is likely to come into effect in New Zealand in August. Last year, Australia shunned a similar proposal, making New Zealand’s adoption of the legislation a landmark event. The 12 countries which have already passed same-sex marriage legislation include Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, Argentina and Iceland. … Read More
Take Xanax, Lose Your Guns?
The SAFE Act, the
gun control law
hastily passed by the New York legislature in January, included
a provision requiring physicians, psychologists, registered nurses,
and licensed clinical social workers to report any patient they
deem “likely to engage in conduct that will cause serious harm to
self or others.” The report goes to a county mental health
official, who, assuming he agrees with the clinician’s assessment,
passes it on to the New York State Division of Criminal Justice
Services (DCJS), which determines whether the patient holds a
firearms license. If he does have such a license, which is required
to legally buy a handgun in New York, the DCJS
must ;notify the local licensing official, who
must suspend or revoke the patient’s license and instruct
him to surrender all of his firearms, including rifles and
shotguns. If he fails to do so, police are authorized to seize
them.
Which is how David Lewis, a 35-year-old Amherst librarian, was
stripped of his guns and his Second Amendment rights. Except that
state police now
say it was all a big misunderstanding, and Lewis is expected to
get his guns back. The precise cause of this mistake is hazy. Erie
County Clerk Chris Jacobs, the local licensing official, says he
got bad information from the state police. “Today we all look like
fools,” he
told WIVB, the CBS affiliate in Buffalo. “They did not do their
due diligence; they did not appropriately and fully investigate
this to make sure it was the right person.”
That makes it sound like a case of mistaken
identity. But according to Jacobs, state police said Lewis could
not be trusted with guns because he was taking anti-anxiety
medication. Lewis’ lawyer, Jim Tresmond, says his client did in
fact receive a prescription for such a drug. Yesterday the state
police issued a statement
saying “no guns are being taken because an individual is on
anti-anxiety medication” and declined to comment further on the
case. But the state police should not have known anything about
Lewis unless a doctor, nurse, psychologist, or social worker who
was treating him reported him to a county mental health official,
who agreed he was dangerous and passed the information on to the
DCJS. Even then, neither the DCJS nor the state police should have
known details such as the condition for which Lewis was being
treated or the drug he was taking. The law
says “information transmitted to the Division of Criminal
Justice Services shall be limited to names and other non-clinical
identifying information.” But once the DCJS received a report on
Lewis, the law left no room for discretion. ;Under the
SAFE Act, suspension or revocation of Lewis’ firearms license and
surrender or seizure of his guns were mandatory. So if someone
screwed up, it looks like it was the clinician whom Lewis made the
mistake of trusting and the county mental health official who
rubber-stamped the clinician’s determination that Lewis was
reportable.
According to the New York State
Office of Mental Health, any patient who meets the legal
standard for reporting under the SAFE Act also meets the legal
standard for “emergency removal to a psychiatric hospital for an
examination.” That did not happen to Lewis, which suggests the law
was misapplied (or that clinicians are not reading it the same way
the Office of Mental Health does). But legislators are also to
blame, because they created incentives to err on the side of taking
away someone’s guns. As Jacobs
observes, Lewis’ experience “stems from a flawed law that was
passed so quickly without forethought on how something would be
implemented.”
The SAFE Act requires mental health professionals to
report patients they think are likely to harm themselves or others;
the only exception is when a clinician believes that reporting the
patient will itself endanger the clinician or someone else. The law
immunizes the clinician from civil or criminal liability as long as
he reports the patient “reasonably and in good faith.” In these
circumstances, the fear of failing to report a patient who later
shoots someone is apt to encourage overreporting. Likewise, the
county health official has little incentive to second-guess the
clinician’s judgment; if his main concern is covering his ass, he
will be inclined to pass all such reports on to the DCJS—just in
case. Once DCJS gets a report, the loss of Second Amendment rights
is automatic. So although the state police insist that “no guns are
being taken because an individual is on anti-anxiety medication,”
that is exactly what seems to have happened in this case. What
message does this send to troubled people, including those who
might actually be prone to violence, about the merits of seeking
help from a mental health professional? ;
“If you try to read the legislation on the mental health
provision and how this is supposed to work, it doesn’t look like
it’s going to work on paper, and now we know it really doesn’t
work,” Jacobs says. “And as a result, in this case, we had somebody
who was, I think, probably embarrassed. Name was dragged out in
public; they were deprived of their property and their rights
here.” Tresmond, who plans to file a civil rights lawsuit on Lewis’
behalf once he figures out exactly what went wrong, adds: “Due
process should come before the suspension. That’s where due process
comes in. Before your rights are taken, due process must occur.
That’s our constitutional right, not the reverse.”
[Thanks to Laura Struble for the tip.] … Read More
Researcher explains why federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act is needed
New research from Rice University shows that non-discrimination laws protect LGBT individuals from being unfairly denied jobs. Though currently no federal law prohibits job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act would change that….
Microsoft study reveals a third of all software is counterfeit
A recent white paper released by the International Data Corporation (IDC) on behalf of Microsoft revealed that roughly 33 percent of all software is counterfeit. The paper further highlights the fact that issues related to counterfeit software like identity theft, repair and data recovery cost $22 billion worldwide. … Read More
Arizona lawmaker wants to ban trans people from using the “wrong” bathroom
Last month, the Phoenix City Council passed a package of nondiscrimination protections to ensure that people have equal access to employment, housing and public accommodations regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. And it’s precisely this new law that Arizona State Rep. John Kavanagh (R) is targeting with his proposed legislation to ban transgender people from using the correct bathroom.As Think Progress notes, Kavanagh used a senate bill about a Massage Therapy Board as a vehicle for the blatantly transphobic proposal, which would prohibit a person from entering a “public restroom, bathroom, shower, bath, dressing room, or locker room” if the sex designation of that facility does not match their birth certificate.Defending the bill to a local news affiliate, Kavanagh likened transgender people to people who want to go into “opposite sex facilities” because “they’re weird”:Continue Reading… … Read More
Rudy Giuliani hawks Lifelock identity theft protection
What’s a mayor to do when he’s no longer mayoring? In the case of former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, the answer is appear as a paid spokesman for cable news commercial mainstay, Lifelock.In November, the identity theft-prevention outfit announced a partnership with “America’s Mayor,” who will be a “Strategic Advisor” who will “be providing strategic counsel to LifeLock’s leadership and working with LifeLock to stay ahead of the constantly evolving threat of identity theft.”Now, as Mediaite points out, Giuliani is finally popping up in ads for the company, telling prospective customers: “Looking forward to your tax refund? So are identity thieves, and they can steal your identity without you knowing it, in order to get your refund.”"You have to be proactive when it comes to identity theft, especially during tax season,” he says in the ad.Watch:Continue Reading… … Read More
