Re: The Events in Boston.

A few days ago the journalist David Sirota published a specious column in which he expressed the hope that the Boston criminals would prove to be native Americans, and not Muslims. Even though it turns out that they actually were Muslims, Oliver Bullough tries to rescue Sirota's thesis by comparing the most recent perpetrators to the murderous Columbine boys. 

I say "Fail"--for this reason. In reality there are ethnic and religious valences attaching to many such atrocities. Rarely are they simply random expressions of individualism, but reflect group values. If one can acknowledge this point in the case of Timothy McVeigh, who represented a kind of far-right insurrectionism, why not mutatis mutandis with the perpetrators in Boston? Reflecting the intensity of the quarrel with the Russian authorities, Chechnya has proved an exceptional breeding ground for jihadists. It is idle to pretend otherwise. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/20/opinion/beslan-meets-columbine.html?_r=0