Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!
Sunday, Fareed Zakaria presented a short clip by a German
filmmaker about life in Mosul, Iraq under ISIS, link here .
The journalist (Jurgen Todenhofer) says he was allowed to
get out alive because ISIL wanted to show a western journalist that it really
has a “state”.
The journalist said, “I have never seen people like this
before”. The young recruits, like
members of a cult, seem to be having the time of their lives.
The entire documentary (“Blindsided: How ISIS Shook the
World”) will be aired Monday May 4. Its airing
seems to have been postponed by the events in Baltimore.
Update: May 11
In another clip May 10, Todenhofer suggested that some Sunni businesses in Mosul say they are better off under ISIS than they had been under Iraq's Shiite-influenced government. Oddly, ISIS did provide services for the disabled.
In preparation for Zakaria's film tonight, take a look at this article, where he draws a parallel between ISIS and Stalinist-style communism, here.
Stephen Dinan has a significant piece in the Washington
Times, “Single moms get easier path to US asylum”, link here.
There is considerable debate as to what should be viewed as
a quasi-immutable characteristic that singles someone out for persecution or
violence in an overseas country. In some
Central American countries, according to the article, some single mothers fear
that their situation makes them targets.
On the other hand, conservatives feel that mere economic hardship,
social unrest or political hostility alone should not qualify someone for
asylum.
In the 1980s, as I recall, there was even talk that some
Cuban refugees would be sent back if they didn’t find sponsors. That hasn’t really been said publicly this
time around.
Conservative commentators also fear that terrorists could
compromise the asylum process and get into the country.
By the way, I do have a bone to pick with the Washington
Times site. It is overloaded with bloat
and popups, and the article doesn’t come up (at least in Google Chrome in
Windows) until you respond (at least “No”) to a survey.
One of the most shocking aspects of terrorism today is the
way extremists look at civilians as “fair game” and appear to view “ordinary civilians”
as morally culpable personally for what their government has done or what
others do.
I could say that this sounds related to political attitudes in
the past that supported the military draft (for men in the US, and for everyone
in some countries like Israel). It
speaks not of victims but of casualties.
It views life as essentially dangerous and requires everyone to share
the risk or be labeled with cowardice. This was a common style of thinking in
the 1950s.
It’s also simply historical fact over the millennia, that
civilian populations are attacked.
However, the acts associated with radical Islam and most recently ISIS
are indeed processed as shocking.
And with the Internet comes a new existential problem, the
idea of (associational) targeting, especially by unstable people prodded by the
Internet, as addressed in a story about Twitter today (main blog). In theory, anyone could be singled out (“persecuted”)
for professing simply a non-Islamic religion online, as could associates. This could raise psychological warfare in
western countries in a way that seems unprecedented, although varieties have
occurred in the past.
I looked up a few links on the psychology of extremism. A piecein Psychology Today seems to stress,
that with groups like Al Qaida, Boko Haran and ISIS, it really is about
religion. It seems incredible and
illogical to us, but some people really do believe that their creed requires them to kill
in its name. In the distant past, this
was more common. There were elements of
this in the Crusades, in tribal Arabia at the time of Muhammad, and in Old
Testament history as the “Jews” struggled to survive as a “chosen people”
scattered into separate tribes. The
group was everything. College students learn about this in History 101 and
answer exam questions on it, and then forget it.
I listed a few other sources on extremism, on Blogger by
John Sanidopoulos (“Mystagogy”), and a couple of psychology sites (“Intractability”
and Laird Wilcox). Generally, my
experience is that extremist criminal behavior is a continuum related to
inequality. The “privileged” are seen as
“having it coming to them” if they didn’t earn what they have. This was a common rhetoric from the radical
Left in the 60s and 70s. Some left wing
commentators like Noam Chomsky see a continuum between ordinary violent crime,
war, and terror. In my own DADT-3 book,
I argue that individualism and at least temporary inequality are linked and
essential to innovation, but on the other hand when the “privileged” don’t give
back, indignation and then instability result.
Disadvantaged young males (in the US, often black and Latino) see little
point in “playing by the rules” which are ignored anyway. Furthermore, an individualist society
requires certain cognitive skills which well-off teens learn from parents (how to be productive and
provide what other people will pay for) but those in less intact backgrounds
don’t get.
Still, this theory doesn’t explain why some well-off young
men become terrorists, or why some less advantaged first turn to Islam and find
some kind of peace with it and then later turn to violence. What really went on in the mind of Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev (as with “Jahar” tweetinghere The next-to-last tweet, after the attack, is
rather interesting and disturbing (as is April 8). And remember in his “Manifesto” inside the
boat, he saw himself as a cell in a group mind.
Picture: weapons case, and combat scene, from the Airborne and Special
Operations Museum near Fort Bragg, Fayetteville NC.
Anthony Faiola has a big article in the Washington Post
today about the migration crisis in
Europe, as illustrated by the hundreds of deaths at sea after an emigration
from Libya. The link for the story is
here. He calls it a “New Exodus”. As reported before, some call on the US and Canada to do more.
European countries probably don’t have the capacity to house
the refugees or deal with the security problems. No one is discussing the “radical hospitality”
issue, that this should be a moral responsibility of churches or even private
citizens.
Somini Sengupta has a front page story in the Saturday New
York Times, “Tides of refugees, but the West isn’t welcoming” in print, “U.N.
calls on western nations to shelter Syrian refugees”, link here. The Pope is also reported to have made
similar comments. The issue had been introduced here March 20, 2015.
The article reports that the U.S. would be concerned about
the possibility of terrorists posing as refugees. But the US may accept about
2000 this year, compared to a total of 700 so far. There are some Syrian communities scattered
around the country that might “want” to host them, as has been reported
before. But asking American private
citizens to take in or sponsor refugees would be unprecedented in recent times,
although this situation happened in 1980 with Cuban refugees.
A similar issue can exist with asylum from anti-gay
countries, including Russia now.
Update: May 2, 2015
Of course, the Tsarnaev case reminds one of an implicit danger in taking in asylees. That will be covered in more detail later.
Vox media has ananalysis by Max Fisher, “Israel’s Dark
Future: Democracy in the Jewish state is doomed”, suggesting that Israel’s maintenance
of settlements on the West Bank contradicts democracy within Israel and tends
to lead to more authoritarian, security-related measures within the country. There
is even the attitude that a large portion of the population is more concerned
about its religious identity and collective future as a “people” than with
individual freedom.
I have had the liberty of living in a culture that, in the
final analysis, values individualism and that leave religion to the personal
experience of the individual. I don’t
respond to collective calls of religious unity.
There is no authority for faith without the individualized
experience.
At the Cherry Blossom Festival near the Tidal Basin in
Washington DC, there was a “Japan America Friendship Mural” where people
(mostly kids) could make drawings to be sent to kids in Japan.
The entire Cherry Blossom celebration, based on a gift from
Japan in 1912. Subsequent history is
tragic, and often forgotten during the festival. We had no idea of what would
happen in WWII.
Then, once again Japan becomes an economic powerhouse and
trading partner (most of all in electronics) before is own economic decline. And it has an aging population with a low birthrate.
Danny Hakim of the New York Times now writes that in
Denmark, sex education is turning to the issue of encouraging more births, in
large part because of falling birth rates of people of European origin, link
here. Birth rates still sag below replacement
levels for non-immigrant populations despite increased benefits for families
like mandatory paid maternity and paternity leave. How would this instruction apply to gay
populations?
Wikipedia attribution link for Copenhagen picture by Thue,
p.d.
Haroon Mohgul has a piece in CNN, “How to prevent more
Tsarnaev’s”, link here.
Moghul discusses the book “Heretic: Why Islam Needs a
Reformation Now” by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, where the author argues that extremism is
caused by the religion itself. Mohgul says, she is wrong.
The New York Review of books has a related piece by Malie
Ruthven, “The Map ISIS Hates”, link here. The
article notes a map of the Middle East where the damage done to Islam was due
to European colonialism, but the map really notes a natural division between
Sunni and Shiite, which led to the establishment of separate states.
So the author of the first piece talks about the need to
educate the Muslim population about the abuses of its own leadership. But it is also true that the West is seen as
having exploited the natural resources of the area (as did the Soviet Union, of
course), and then as having promoted personal values that hide from people
their unwitting benefit from supposed exploitation. But of course, that sounds a bit like the old
secular complaints of Marxism.
A New York Times article Tuesday by Jeffrey Gettleman, “Somali
fighters learning to kill on a shoestring”, link hereaccompanied by maps of Kenya, is chilling enough. As Al-Shabab (unlike ISIS) has lost sources
of money, it has adjusted because its previous activity seemed to be directed
at other Muslims. Now the attention
seems to be, on one level, religious persecution (of Christians), but what
seems more apparent, activity motivated by resentment of class and privilege in
Kenya or other areas accessible from Somalia.
This sounds like a religious version of Marxism from the past, something
that would probably provoke comments from Noam Chomsky who sees this sort of
thing as “war”, not just terrorism or crime.
Local churches have sent missionaries or aid groups to Kenya
in the past, but, like with Nigeria and Uganda and other countries, this seems
much more dangerous today than it did a decade ago.
The Pew Research Center, with a report “The Future of World
Religions”, reports that Islam will be the fast growing religion in the World
in coming decades, according to an NBC News story here. Pew’s own link reports also that people with “no
religion” will drop as a share of the world’s population, here
The increase in Muslim population comports with the fact
that Muslims tend to have more children, and are more likely to send money home
when they emigrate. There is a big
cultural gap, with people in richer countries and cultures wanting
individualism, and the right to set their own goals, compared to people in
poorer cultures, who remain emotionally loyal to the long-term goals of the
group.
The combativeness of some parts of the Islamic world in
imposing its beliefs on others goes beyond ISIS and is demonstrated by the
horrific raid by Al-Shabaab at Garissa University n Kenya, as reported by Josh
Levs and Holly Yan, with video, here. Local churches have sent volunteers to Kenya before! Then two women were arrested in NYC for
an Al-Qaida-conceived plot involving devices inspired by the Boston Marathon
incident, possibly involving propane tanks; the women had communicated their
plot to undercover officers, WABC story here.
Picture: Draftees being inducted during the Vietnam War (Smithsonian). But I was inducted Feb. 8, 1968 at an AFEES in Richmond, VA.