Were the Boston bombers right-wing extremists?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

For what it's worth, from the BBC:

One of the brothers suspected of carrying out the Boston bombings was in possession of right-wing American literature in the run-up to the attack, BBC Panorama has learnt.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev subscribed to publications espousing white supremacy and government conspiracy theories.

He also had reading material on mass killings.

Until now the Tsarnaev brothers were widely perceived as just self-styled radical jihadists.

Panorama has spent months speaking exclusively with friends of the bombers to try to understand the roots of their radicalisation.

The programme discovered that Tamerlan Tsarnaev possessed articles which argued that both 9/11 and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing were government conspiracies.

Another in his possession was about "the rape of our gun rights".

Reading material he had about white supremacy commented that "Hitler had a point".

He may have been, and his brother may still be, a Muslim, of convenience or otherwise, and maybe even a self-styled jihadist. And that -- with the implication that the violent Other, the great threat, is Muslim -- is obviously part of the simplistic narrative that has arisen in response to the bombing, so very popular in particular on the right.

But Tamerlan, at least, appears also to have been an angry, bitter young man who frequently lashed out violently at those around him. He may have been radicalized into a violent, anti-American strain, and perversion, of Islam, but any such radicalization only would have worked because it found fertile soil in the form of the Tsarnaev brothers.

In any event, it would be similarly simplistic to suggest that they were right-wing extremists along the lines of the American political spectrum.

I would just note, however, that domestic terrorism in the United States these days is almost entirely the product of right-wing extremism.

For what it's worth.

Thoughts on the Rolling Stone cover with alleged Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Oh, there's just so much righteous outrage over Rolling Stone's supposedly controversial, supposedly inappropriate cover photo of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. How dare they? It glamorized him, it glorifies him, it disrespects the victims, it's so very, very wrong, the shame!

Please.

Here are some comments before I turn to Frank Rich:

First, this is a "selfie," a photo the young Tsarnaev took of himself. Yes, he looks a bit like a rock star, but that's the point of the article. This isn't the sort of guy you'd expect to find at an al Qaeda training camp in some remote part of some hellish part of the world. He seemed "normal," and most of those around him, most of those close to him, talk of how wonderful he was, of how promising his life was, how he seemed to be your basic American kid.

But that's too complicated, apparently. People want to vilify him, to find him evil incarnate, refusing to acknowledge that there was, and likely still is, much more to him than that, that even if he's guilty, as he likely is, it's not as easy as saying he's a good-for-nothing killer.

This troubled me at the time and troubles me even more now. Did he do horrendous things? Does he have innocent blood on his hands? Yes, it appears so. But why did he do those things? Why did he -- this promising young man -- follow his brother into an act of terrorism and the additional bloodshed that followed? This outstanding article by Janet Reitman tries to answer that question, or at least tries to get us closer to the person, to see him for what he was, and is, the human being instead of the evil psychopath who is held up in the media and by those who have no interest in understanding anything.

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This is CNN. And it sucks.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Particularly after what happened after the Boston Marathon bombing, I don't really think there's a good reason to watch CNN. Okay, maybe for breaking news, just because they cast such a wide net both domestically and internationally, but even then there are usually better options. I only turn to it out of convenience, and forgetfulness, but then quickly realize what I've done and turn the channel. And for politics, well, don't even bother. If you get your "news" from Wolf Blitzer and John King, and the grotesque morons who inhabit their "expert" panels, and so if you prefer to remain grossly uninformed, you deserve the collapse of American democracy that may well be coming.

Of course, it wasn't just the botched coverage of the bombing afternath, and specifically reports of an arrest when there wasn't one. We've long known that CNN, at least in its domestic form (International is far better), is a news network dedicated mostly to sensationalism, hence the focus on murder trials, natural disasters, and other such fare. But for whatever reason many of us keep hoping, keep thinking that CNN can right the ship, and so keep caring.

But enough already.

That's Jay Rosen's view, and he makes a compelling case. You may not care enough about CNN to bother reading his piece, but it's worthwhile for what it says about news media generally. CNN isn't alone in its sensationalism drift, after all, nor in its quest for ratings at all cost, including integrity.

But to Rosen, whom I like a great deal, I would just say this:

Anthony Bourdain. Parts Unknown.

And also Morgan Spurlock. Inside Man.

But mostly Bourdain's Parts Unknown. Like No Reservations before it, on a different network, it's one of the very best shows on television.

Sometimes, just sometimes, CNN gets it right.

So Peter King is sure the Tsarnaevs didn't act alone...

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Republican blowhard Peter King is convinced the Boston Marathon bombers didn't bomb alone:

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), the former chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said Sunday that he did not believe the suspects in last month's Boston Marathon bombings acted alone.

"It's very difficult to believe these two could have carried out this level of attack with this level of sophistication and precision acting by themselves, without training overseas or having at least facilitators at home," King said.

King, who sits on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said it appeared from the effectiveness of the dual bombings that Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, had some help.

"To me, there had to be assistance and that's why the FBI, I think, is going after this so vigorously," King said.

Maybe, maybe not, but King is one to know.

I mean, he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and where would that terrorist organization that left so many civilians dead (in the United Kingdom, a close U.S. friend and ally) have been without so much enthusiastic (and political/financial) support from across the ocean, from King and his terrorism-enabling ilk?

He was, and remains, a shameless hypocrite.

(And really, the Tsarnaev brothers acted with "sophistication and precision"? I would say the opposite is true, which is why there wasn't more damage and why they were identified and caught so quickly. Indeed, as former CIA Deputy Director Philip Mudd put it, the attack was more Columbine than al Qaeda. Yes, King is apparently that stupid as well.)

Because I was not a terrorist...

By Frank Moraes 

Everyone knows Martin Niemöller's "First they came for the communists..." poem. These days, we mostly hear it from conservatives because it is based on the slippery slope argument that is so beloved on the right. But I think the poem is fundamentally wrong; oppression doesn't happen that way.

I was thinking about this yesterday while reading Glenn Greenwald. He was writing about some reporting in the Los Angeles Times that quoted an anonymous source who said that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev repeatedly asked for a lawyer and was refused "since he was being questioned under the public safety exemption to the Miranda rule." This is a big deal if it is true. It is one thing to not tell a suspect his rights, it is quite another to withhold those rights. And there is nothing in the public safety exemption of the Miranda rule that allows the government to refuse a suspect his right to representation for hours or even days.

And that's what got me thinking about the Niemoller quote. It is not that we don't speak up for the "communists" because we are not one. It is that we don't speak up for them because we hate them. I know the reaction of the vast majority of people in this country to my belief that Tsarnaev deserves all of the guarantees of the Constitution. They would say something along the lines of, "He's a terrorist! We shouldn't give him any rights at all!" So may I humbly offer a rewrite:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I hated the communists.

And that really is the way rights are lost. This is why we allow the Nazis to have parades. It isn't because we like them. As a culture, we hate them. But as John Adams wrote, we have "a government of laws, and not of men." And if we can't listen to him, perhaps we can listen to that hippy Jew, "Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even the least of them, you did it to me."

I don't have any specific fondness for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. But I have a great fondness for this country and especially its ideals. And if one criminal can destroy that, we are all lost. 

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Ron Paul has a point about that whole Boston "military-style occupation" thing

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm not saying he's entirely right, but he's certainly got a point:

Former Rep. Ron Paul said the police response to the Boston Marathon bombings was scarier than the bombing itself, which killed three and wounded more than 250.

"The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city," Paul, a Texas Republican, wrote [yesterday] on the website of the libertarian writer Lew Rockwell. "This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself."

Paul said the scenes of the house-to-house search for the younger bombing suspect in suburban Watertown, Mass., were reminiscent of a "military coup in a far off banana republic."

"Forced lockdown of a city," he wrote. "Militarized police riding tanks in the streets. Door-to-door armed searches without warrant. Families thrown out of their homes at gunpoint to be searched without probable cause. Businesses forced to close. Transport shut down."

And he's right to remind us of this key fact:

"The suspect was not discovered by the paramilitary troops terrorizing the public," Paul wrote. "He was discovered by a private citizen, who then placed a call to the police. And he was identified not by government surveillance cameras, but by private citizens who willingly shared their photographs with the police."

As a civil libertarian myself, I do sometimes find myself in agreement with Paul's libertarianism, even though his version of it is generally a rather extreme right-wing one.

In this case, I understood the over-reaction to the Boston Marathon bombing, particularly after the shootout in Watertown that left an MIT officer dead, but I also found it worrisome.

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Terrorist watch list

By Mustang Bobby

John Yoo is one of those people who will go down in history as one of those benignly evil people who don’t actually do terrible things like commit torture or genocide themselves but enable those who do and defend them:

"Apparently the FBI interrogated the younger Tsarnaev for 16 hours," wrote torture memo author John Yoo at National Review. "And then, for reasons that are still unknown, the government read him his rights."

Yoo has never met a right he didn't want to ball up like a piece of paper and toss into a trash can in the name of national security. But despite being an attorney and professor at the prestigious University of California Berkeley School of Law, Yoo is either misleading his readers about why Tsarnaev was read his rights or unaware of a basic legal rule.

The judge appeared at the hospital because the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure state that suspects have to be brought before "a magistrate judge, or before a state or local judicial officer" and it must be done "without unnecessary delay." The Supreme Court has held that, absent exigent circumstances or the suspect waiving the right to go before a judge -- as wannabe Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad reportedly did -- a suspect has to appear before a judge within 48 hours of being apprehended. This is usually referred to in legal shorthand as "presentment," as in, "presentment before a judge."

He is also one of those people who tell us that our rights and the Constitution don't really matter if you're dead, and that the Founding Fathers certainly didn't intend to protect the rights of people who were indoctrinated by foreigners to blow us up. And he does it all without getting that faraway stare in his eyes or wearing a hat with teabags dangling from it.

He's the one who should be on the terrorist watch list.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

More Columbine than al Qaeda?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As Crooks and Liars reports, former CIA Deputy Director Philip Mudd told Fox News yesterday that the Boston Marathon bombing looks "looks more to [him] like Columbine than it does al Qaeda." He added:

Two kids who radicalized between themselves in a closed circle go out and commit murder. I would charge these guys as murders, not terrorists...

What I'm saying is we want to categorize this... with a simple term, and at looking at the psychology of clusters like this -- which I did for 20 years -- the psychology is not that simple. It's two kids who decided, for whatever ideology, that they wanted to commit murder. And the murder piece is significant as the terrorism piece.

Of course, it's still to early to draw firm conclusions. But it's clear that many in the media and on the right, including some leading Republicans, are looking for easy answers and proposals based on their biased preconceptions and agendas: it's radical Islam (or, for the real bigots, Islam generally); it's jihad; it's al Qaeda or some such terrorist group (possibly Chechen); it's part of a much larger operation with further attacks possible; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be designated an enemy combatant (and so denied constitutional protections even though he's an American citizen); the FBI, which had been warned by the Russians, should have known better and didn't do enough to prevent the attack; America is under attack; we need to ramp up national security; etc., etc.

It's not wrong to consider the various possibilities and examine with great care what was behind the bombing, which seems to be what law enforcement officials are doing, but it's awfully dangerous to presuppose the outcomes of the investigation, or to act as if we already know all the answers.

And that's Mudd's very sober point: this was a crime, and it may be connected to radicalism, but that doesn't necessarily make it terrorism, let alone terrorism sponsored by an enemy of the United States.

Come back, Obama

By Frank Moraes 

Just one more quick note about all the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing. I believe that Obama was so quick to call the bombing a terrorist act because, as usual, he's a wimp. I'm sure he is worried that just like in Benghazi, the right wing will attack him for not calling it a terrorist attack. I'm all for being a wimp when it protects a person. I've managed to avoid fights all my adult life by being a wimp. But Obama will not avoid fights this way. If he hadn't called it a terrorist attack, the right would have attacked him. If he said that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be given his Miranda rights, the right would have attacked him. As it is, he has indicated that Tsarnaev will be tried in our regular court system, so the right is attacking him for that.

Will the president never learn that the right will attack him regardless of what he does?

I have an idea for the president. It's radical, I know, but here goes: why doesn't President Obama try to please his base? It is very possible he would actually succeed at that. Trying to please the Republican Party is a fool's errand. In fact, trying to please the centrist Washington insiders is also a fool's errand. Did you read Maureen Dowd over the weekend? The defeat of the gun bill is apparently Obama's fault. She's a great example of how Obama just can't win with the only people he seems to care about winning with.

The clock is running out for the president. He needs to come back to the liberals he was courting all the way through 6 November of last year. Because despite everything, we still like him. And we're the only ones who ever will as long as he is in power.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

A crazy day: The Boston bombing, the police state, and the media orgy

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Well, what is there to say? It's been a crazy day, at least if you've been following the ongoing story in Boston, with one suspect dead and one on the run. And of course it's crazier if you're actually there -- the whole city is locked down, people being told to stay in their homes, and the police presence on the streets, particularly in Watertown, makes the whole thing look like a military zone. (I went to college in the Boston area, at Tufts, and so I know the locations fairly well. It all seems very immediate to me.)

I've spent the morning watching TV (mostly CNN and CBS), alternately soaking up the reporting and getting more and more annoyed with the media's recklessness, irresponsibility, and narcissism.

I've also been in twitter, tweeting and re-tweeting a lot -- you can find me here. And here are a few of my tweets and re-tweets:

Even after second guy is caught/dead, everyone needs to take a step back and pause. We don't need to rush to conclusions about why. #boston
— Michael Stickings (@mjwstickings) April 19, 2013

Things we'll do to keep people safe: Lock down an entire city for hoursThings we won't do: A 5 min background check before you buy a gun
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) April 19, 2013

Sad we can't summon this level of alarm, intensity and energy for other existential crises. If we did, we'd save many lives. #boston
— Peter Daou (@peterdaou) April 19, 2013

Stupidest tweet of the day: "@howardfineman: There is no 'there' anymore. All the world and all history are here, on the streets of Boston."
— Michael Stickings (@mjwstickings) April 19, 2013

And my pick for tweet of the day (so far), and perhaps even for tweet of the whole damn thing:

Forget who they are or why they did what they did. Think about how this event normalizes the police state in America: twitter.com/seanpaulkelley…
— Sean Paul Kelley (@seanpaulkelley) April 19, 2013

Death in Boston

By Capt. Fogg

The only sure thing early this morning is that gun sales are going to escalate further. Car chases, explosions and gunfire -- it needs only a collision with a fruit cart to be eligible for a Clint Eastwood movie. Despite the media effort, most of us, or at least a great many of us are not staying home, mourning and healing and simpering in baby-talk about not hurting people -- they're looking for a gun shop that still has AR-15 and AK47 clones and ammunition.

CNN is busy as of 9 am Eastern assuring us that we can't just assume these two brothers are Muslim or that if they are it's irrelevant. If you're a Muslim, it's relevant to you and you have my sympathy. This isn't going to make your life easier.

No, I don't think America is mourning. America is arming, once again, and just like 2001, it isn't going to be pretty. Did everything change on 9/11? Hell no, we were just finally dragged out of our sheltered nursery and into life on Earth where people get hurt, safety is relative and ephemeral, and life just isn't fair.

Video of the two Boston Marathon bombing suspects

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As the Times reports, "[i]n a direct appeal for help from the public, the F.B.I. on Thursday released pictures and video of two young men who officials believe may be responsible for the explosions that killed three people and wounded more than 170 during the Boston Marathon."

I hope the FBI is right and that these are in fact credible suspects. Not becasue of who they are -- we don't know who they are -- but because, well, enough with the reckless and irresponsible "reporting" of "suspects" who turn out to be nothing of the sort.

CNN blew it with some bad reporting the other day, but at least John King et al. didn't identify specific people. (And I've noticed that CNN has been very careful since then, actually doing some responsible work.) For that, for the very worst "reporting" of all, just turn to the New York Post, which reported on "photos being distributed by law-enforcement officials among themselves," even putting a photo of two "potential suspects" on its front page under the typically outlandish heading "BAG MEN," no doubt thinking it had a coup in the whole rush to be first nonsense that plagues the media generally, then later pulled back after the two men were cleared, but not with any sort of mea culpa retraction and while still running wild with what its "sources" were saying, clearly having learned nothing at all, or perhaps just not giving a shit. By the way, one of the two young men, the guy in the blue track outfit, turns out to be a local high school kid who, yes, runs track. But of course as a Moroccan-American he looks the terrorist part to the right-wing idiots/bigots at the Post.

Anyway, enough of all that. Here's the FBI video of the two real suspects:

Reckless reporting: CNN, the Boston Marathon bombing, and the relentless rush to be first

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So were you following what was happening today -- not just in real life, but in the media's (atrocious) reporting of real life? Whether you were on Twitter or surfing through the 24/7 cable news channels, or whatever, it was impossible to miss. There were were all manner of rumors flying around, and all manner of speculative reporting masquerading as "breaking news," but basically, the thing to know is that CNN got it pretty much entirely wrong, reporting that an arrest had been made when, of course, there was no arrest at all. (John King was the one who got it wrong on TV. On its website, the now-changed headline was "Authorities arrest suspect in Boston bombings, source says.")

This is not to say that CNN should take the fall for what is a much broader problem in the media (the rabid quest to be first, for example, to "win," which leads to what happened today). It's just that today of all days, with so much attention on the aftermath of the Boston Marathon attack, and with everyone desperately searching for clues and even more so for answers, for some sort of resolution, if not also for justice, for some explanation, for the who, what, and why, for the responsible, yes, with all that, it was CNN blew it. As I tweeted:

See, it's not that there's a liberal bias in the media, it's that there's a reckless, irresponsible, stupid bias. Thanks @cnn! #bostonattack
— Michael Stickings (@mjwstickings) April 17, 2013

And it was TPM that did us all a great service with this mash-up of CNN's reckless irresponsibility:


Look, I don't want to go too hard on this. You're a reporter, or an editor, or whatever, you hear things, you have to make what seems like a split-second decision, and, well, mistakes are often made. A lot of the time, news outlets do admirable work and get it right, and it's rather unfair for any one outlet to be brought down by a single mistake, or even for its various mistakes to define it entirely.

But this was bad. And unnecessary. And, alas, not so much the rare exception -- not just at CNN but everywhere in the media -- but yet another example of what's wrong with the media. (Fox News and that sort of hyper-partisan media outlet are a separate problem. I'm talking about news reporting here, about getting the story out, not spinning it for political purposes.)

CNN pulled back, as it had to, and is now, like others, taking things more slowly, cautiously:

Investigators have pinpointed two men as "possible suspects" who were seen in images near the finish line of this week's Boston Marathon -- moments before twin bombs there exploded, killing three and injuring about 180 others -- a law enforcement official said.

A circular sent out Wednesday to federal and state agencies features the photos "in an attempt to identify the individuals," who were described as being of "high interest" to investigators.

Okay, that's all we know. For now.

We rely on the media, including CNN, to tell us what's going on, but what we don't need, particularly at a time of mass confusion following a major tragedy, is for them to lead us into ever deeper levels of uncertainty in their rush to be first.

We all want to know more, but let's make sure what we know, and what we are told, is right.

Shades of failure

By Carl

In the wake of the national focus on the Boston bombings, you may have missed the other act of terror that was committed this week:

WASHINGTON - Police have a suspect in mind as they investigate a letter mailed to Sen. Roger Wicker that tested positive for poisonous ricin, a Senate colleague said.

"The person that is a suspect writes a lot of letters to members," Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said Tuesday as she emerged from a classified briefing.

Authorities declined to comment on a suspect or any other aspect of the investigation being led by Capitol Police and the FBI after tests indicated that a letter mailed to the Mississippi Republican's Washington office contained the potentially deadly toxin. The letter was intercepted at a Senate mail facility in Prince George's County, Md., just outside Washington, said Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, a member of the Senate's Democratic leadership.

First, let’s note that no one was in danger from this attack – except for the union men and women who deliver your mail. Once again, union members are on the front lines. 

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Silent running

By Capt. Fogg

The weeping and wailing industry is almost as quick to react to certain events as the paramedics are, and this morning's paper has a local runner's group holding a silent run in the attempt to feel relevant or perhaps to express ire that anyone would interfere with one of America's sacred sports. Yes, I'm sounding cynical here, but it's not because I'm callous with regard to the loss of life and all the injuries, it's just that in recent decades, the public reaction to high profile death has been so orchestrated and so formulaic that it cheapens the moment and distracts us from seeing such things in context. I'm not interested in crying, I don't subscribe to self-pity and I don't need closure or healing. I'm interested in being able to keep the kind of things that have plagued us all at least since Guy Fawkes tried to blow up Parliament from happening, as much as is possible in a free country.

Judging from other events, we'll soon be seeing piles of Teddy Bears on Boston streets and other silent runnings slowly turning our anger and willingness to learn from this event into a declining series of maudlin and sentimental exhibitions of self-pity and the lachrymose quest for 'healing.' One might forget just how rare such occurrences are in our country. One will forget what must be done to keep things that way. Our record, at least since the Oklahoma City bombing and the events of 2001, to thwart bombing attempts has been pretty good and the mawkish mourning and stuffed animal social club hasn't played much of a part. 

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Shock absorption

By Mustang Bobby 

So once again we are plunged into it. Another news flash, another banner of "BREAKING NEWS" across the TV screens, another series of jumpy videos from the scene, another ceaseless round of eyewitness reports, rumors, speculation, and instant deep analysis of the psyche of America: who would do such a thing at such a time and place?

You would think that by now we would be used to it, but we never are. We can anticipate the reactions on a general scale, but there is always something jarring about the realization that once again one or more among us has done something deliberately horrible to other people. There will be vapid attempts by good people to explain the why, but it's never the real answer, and when we don't know who, we reach for the simple one: it must be this other group that hates us, or it must have been a loner with a tormented soul who could never explain why and didn't survive to give us an answer. We can never accept that it is someone among us, someone who stood behind us to buy a donut or passed on the street while we walked the dog, not ever noticing them because neither of us is particularly noticeable.

The realization can make us paranoid; we can't trust each other any more, we can't feel safe. So we dump our soda bottles at the airport, we wonder about the guy with the beard and the hat, we try to come up with some way to rationalize our fear and shake our heads and remember when it was okay to run down the airport concourse to meet a passenger or ride the bus and not feel queasy about the person muttering to himself as he reads a book written in a script we can't read. But it's only the weakest among us who have the strength to carry that hopelessness. Most of us have the will and the determination not to let that terror overwhelm us.

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How we feel about those we victimize

By Frank Moraes 

Last night, I tried to convey my feeling that we focus (largely because the media profit from it) on big tragic events while we ignore rapid and endless "mundane" tragedies of life in the United States. And I do feel that way. But I admit: it is a provincial view. But there is no one like Glenn Greenwald to break me out of my provincial haze.

In an article, "The Boston Bombing Produces Familiar and Revealing Reactions," he makes many observations. I recommend reading it yourself. But what I think is the most important observation is that people should note that however they feel about this attack on innocents in Boston, it is the same as the people in Pakistan feel about U.S. drone attacks on innocents there.

Unfortunately, I can almost hear what people would say in response to this, "But that's war! The United States isn't trying to kill innocent civilians." (I will leave the more vile counters like "They all hate us!" alone.) I find this argument anachronistic. Since at least Sherman's march to the sea, warfare has not been limited to conflicts between armies. Total war, where civilians are considered a critical aid to armies, is standard now. It is ridiculous to imagine our military leadership as focused on honor like some ossified old British general from the middle 19th century.

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The mouth of the Lord

By Capt. Fogg

The "reverend" Phelps is at it again, twittering that God Bombed Boston for the same reason God does most of the horrible things he does like letting millions of children die miserably and needlessly and live miserably and hopelessly all over the world -- because they aren't actively persecuting gay people. So busy is the God of Rage and so obsessed with regulating love and sex that he's never had the time to do anything else. You'll notice that he never blew up Sobibor or Auschwitz or wasted his time with chastising the murderers of millions of children in Africa and Asia and, yes, even Europe. In fact he must have blown the budget on his flood since he hasn't done shit that looks anything like divine retribution since -- except for the odd bombing or two -- and a lot of threats.

No, what God, or at least Deus ex Westboro, is about is -- you should pardon the term -- "fags." God just hates 'em, the way Indiana Jones hates snakes or the way I hate preachers. He can't really do much about it, though, whether he's in the form of the old man or his son who's also himself or that bird that crept in sometime in the 4th century when they left the window open, other than to use an improvised explosive device against people who can hardly be blamed for not persecuting anyone. Little kids, for instance.

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