By Ramy Osman, M4L-Virginia
April 2013
Note: Marathon runners have nothing to do with politics or war. It is pure evil to target runners and spectators who are getting ready to celebrate the end of a race. Those who kill innocent people are spineless and soulless, no matter if they claim legitimacy from a scholar with a turban or from a leader with a presidential seal. Nothing can justify their actions; Not religion, not patriotism, not revenge, not depression, not even the persuasiveness of FBI informants.
People have accepted the official narrative that there were two Boston Marathon bombers. One has been killed, while the other has been wounded and captured. The suspects were on the run for 5 days after the bombing, and America was transfixed on seeing them captured dead or alive. Before the Tsarnaev brothers were declared guilty (I mean suspects) by law enforcement, both mainstream and social media were in a frenzy of speculation. At first, the news and Internet were filled with pictures of alleged suspects. People were sharing pictures and footage of the bomb scene, and were collaborating with each other to figure out who could qualify as a suspect. People on Reddit, Facebook, Twitter and other websites turned into a mob of Internet vigilante investigators. They were trying to ignite a witch-hunt against anyone who is collectively declared a suspect. For a brief moment, the phrase “police state” took on a new meaning where citizens and police became one in their efforts. The citizens were hoping to win one for the collective, and maybe even redefine the meaning of “mob justice”.
But instead of achieving mob justice, the mob was relegated to being spectators in an intense display of drama and suspense. It was reminiscent of the 1987 movie “The Running Man”, which is a story about a futuristic police state. Arnold Schwarzenegger played the main character, Ben Richards, who was part of a military unit that massacred 100 people. He unsuccessfully tried to stop his unit from committing the massacre, and so his unit turned on him. To get even, they framed him for the massacre. A doctored video of him shooting civilians is even produced and then broadcast to the entire country to convince them of his guilt. He was convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, and a sequence of events eventually lands him into a game show where the contestants play a death match of cat-and-mouse. The death match is between a number of “hunters” who have to chase a number of “runners” (who the public believe to be criminals). The game show is broadcast live for all to see. The audience cheers for the “hunters” hoping they catch and kill the “runners”.
This game show sounds frighteningly familiar to the recent live broadcast of a “police man-hunt” for suspects who were “on the run”. In this Boston episode, law enforcement declared who the “runners” would be by releasing pictures of two people, each with big red circles around their heads (tell-tale signs of their guilt). Many people were sucked into becoming the audience for the unfolding drama. They were on edge watching the latest developments. With every house search, every civil rights violation, every car chase, and every shoot-out, the audience cheered for the “hunters”. They cheered when one “runner” was killed, and celebrated when the other was wounded and captured.
Now that the drama is over, people are asking why did the “runners” do it? And once again people will rely on the collective to provide the narrative. Headlines and sound-bites will guide the discussions. Statements from “Officials” will be taken for granted. And difficult questions will never be investigated. The concept of “blowback” (or as brother Malcolm called it, “the chickens coming home to roost”), will not enter public discourse. The real danger is that people will accept the official narrative and will have a sense of closure on the subject. How else can people feel safe and get on with their “normal” lives?
But there are those who don’t buy the official narrative. They demand answers and evidence instead of blindly following the government’s narrative. The aunt of the “runners” is even quoted as saying: “So what do you think, that I would believe easily anything that [government] would throw into my face?”. Many people are all too familiar with the numerous examples of government incompetence or deception in situations like these over the years. Many people are also familiar with the false terrorism that the FBI has been manufacturing over the last decade.
An investigative journalist named Trevor Aaronson recently published a book presenting his research about the 500+ terrorist prosecutions in America since 9-11. He dismisses half the cases as visa and paper violations that were spun into a terrorist context in order to generate sensational headlines. While for the other half, almost all involved FBI informants. These informants were used to influence their targets into getting involved in a make-believe terrorist plot. The FBI used teams of agents, psychologists, and informants to exploit the mental or economic weaknesses of their targets to create their make-believe terrorist. It’s not that they caught someone in the act of committing a crime, rather they exploited someone’s weaknesses over a period of time to get him to do something he was never involved in to begin with.
When one accepts that the FBI has been illegally and immorally creating make-believe terrorists, you see that the FBI is more capable at creating terrorists in America than Al Qaeda. A number of media outlets have taken notice of this disturbing trend. Some outlets have even started making fun of the FBI whenever they foil one of their own make-believe plots.
The reason why this is relevant to the Boston bombing is because the FBI have been tracking the movements and habits of the Tsarnaev brothers for years. The FBI was fully aware of what the brothers were up to, the mother of the two even said, “they were under the control of the FBI”. Looking at the FBI’s track record over the last decade, it’s likely they could have played a role in setting them up. One might argue that the FBI never used live bombs in any of their scripted plots before. But the 1993 bombing of the WTC was a scripted FBI plot from beginning to end. Just like the trend of the last decade, in ’93 the FBI used an informant who created the terrorist plot and the bomb. The informant persuaded a group of people to go along with him. But back then, the FBI was foolish enough to actually used a live bomb instead of a fake bomb. The result was a tragedy that killed six people and injured hundreds.
There simply isn’t enough evidence to make any conclusion about the Boston bombing. There are too many unknowns and too many variables. Are there more people involved? Were the Tsarnaev brothers thinking that they were doing a dry-run exercise, only to unexpectedly find that it went live? Or was it that the FBI thought they were orchestrating a “controlled” dry-run, only to lose control of the operation and be surprised with a live bomb? If the FBI were already monitoring the brothers, then are we to believe that the brothers were that skilled in hiding their plans from the FBI? Is this FBI incompetence where they only know how to catch make-believe terrorists that they create? Or is this a case where another agency (local or foreign) were working with the brothers, unknowing that they stumbled into an FBI-run plot, and things went terribly wrong? Or is this a case of a rogue agent(s) using this to get “their narrative” back on track in the public’s perception?
Maybe we’ll never know. The world of terrorism and counter-terrorism is in a continuous state of faked, botched and compromised operations. Or maybe, just like in the “Running Man” movie, a time will come when the real undoctored story will be revealed to the public. But then again, do we really need the government and mainstream media to tell us what is and isn’t reality? Are we still convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole person involved in the assassination of JFK? So it’s up to you if you want to believe the conspiracy theories that the government promotes. Or you can take a more critical approach by not being a blind follower, and instead be reserved about making quick and hasty conclusions.
The “Running Man” movie was set in the year 2017. And much like Orwell’s book “1984”, it wasn’t predicting the future. Rather, it was showing what has happened in the past, what was being repeated during the time the movie/book was written, and what will happen again in the future. There have been many “runners” throughout history. The “runner” in the JFK episode was Lee Harvey Oswald. Dozens of episodes have happened since then, and there was even a California episode earlier this year. Some of the “runners” might be guilty of a crime and some might be innocent. But they’re all part of the same game show, and they all have an audience.
People have different images of what a police state is supposed to look like. Most people dramatize it to be a futuristic tyrannical state that has total control over a certain segment of society. That’s easier on the psyche to envision, as opposed to coming to terms that you currently live in a tyrannical police state. But rest assured that episodes of the “Running Man” will continue to be released. You might unexpectedly find yourself part of the audience. Or God forbid, you might find yourself part of the game show as either a “hunter” or a “runner”… Stay tuned.