I want to offer a brief clarification and an explanation.<\/p>\n
It should have been clear from my post that I regard the Boston Marathon<\/a> massacre as a despicable crime, so horrifying that I lack the imagination to comprehend the sociopathic mentality that planned and executed such a monstrous event.\u00a0 And beyond this, that I feel great empathy for the unspeakable human loss that brought such acute suffering on entirely innocent victims, their families and friends, and the wider community in Boston<\/a> and elsewhere.<\/p>\n Further, I had no intention whatsoever to connect any dots as to whether there was a causal linkage between what the U.S. or Israel<\/a> have done in the world and what happened in Boston. My only effort was to suggest that in addition to grieving and bringing the perpetrators to justice, this could also become an occasion for collective self-scrutiny as a nation and as a people. Should this be seen as such a provocative assertion as to provoke a wave of hate mail<\/a>? At a time when the U.S. Congress<\/a> rejected even mild legislation requiring more extensive background checks for gun purchasers, it should be a no brainer that something has gone badly wrong on the home front. And the fact that the Tsarnaev brothers assembled such an arsenal of weaponry might at least have raised a few additional eyebrows!<\/p>\n By way of explanation, because there was such a flood of comments on my post, I abandoned just this once, my recent blog policy of excluding those responses that seem hateful and insulting, and lack substance. My intention remains seeking a blog site that is hospitable only to discourse conducted in a spirit of civility. My departure in this context was that I felt there were significant substantive issues and strong emotions sometimes bound up with the invective, and that I should not try to pick and choose among the various comments to select those I deemed appropriate. It would be misleading, however tempting, to allow only those comments that supported my outlook, and even the most hostile disclosed one dimension of the national mood.<\/p>\n I realize, of course, that my post can and will be read in different ways, but what I have tried to clarify is the nature of my intentions when it was written and now after the array of responses.<\/p>\n _______________________<\/p>\n Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs. He is currently serving his fourth year of a six-year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian Human Rights.<\/em> Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies, and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. <\/i>His most recent book is <\/i>Achieving Human Rights (2009).<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n