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!
A couple of big news stories that can affect refugees and
asylum seekers today.
First, SCOTUS apparently let the Trump refugee ban stand for
now but slightly expanded family exceptions on the country-based travel ban.
Jason Dzubow wrote an article in the Asylumist noting that
Trump had placed judges from Atlanta, which has a very low asylum seeker
approval rate, in higher positions in the immigration system. “We’re all in
Atlanta now” he writes, here.
And Slate has a long article by Oscar Lopez, “For LGBTQ
refugees in the United States, visibility is still a two-edged sword”, link .
The article notes a few asylum seekers who were hosted
privately from homeless shelters, and also says that undocumented LGTBQ people
are not told they could try to apply for asylum when put into detention (in
practice, parole is very difficult).
Being “out” could be seen as challenging the immutability aspect of the “particular
social group” rule, an idea I don’t’ remember reading before. There is a lot to study here.
Today Amanda Taylor gave a sermon at the First Baptist
Church of the City of Washington DC centered on religious freedom.
The emphasis was on recognizing faith for what it is, and
always separating faith from political precepts.
She talked about freedom as requiring more than just
toleration, and pluralism as a much more inclusive concept than simple
diversity.
She also was critical of both versions of Trump’s travel
bans toward the end of the sermon, but recognized that the Supreme Court will
rule on them this fall.
Also today, on the TV blog, I mentioned Fareed Zakaria’s
covering of the idea that Putin wanted Trump to be elected in order to undo the
Magnitsky Act, which could threaten Putin’s hold on power. It would be a good question as to whether some
of the human rights abuses in question are related to the 2013 anti-gay
propaganda law. Putin has banned American couples from adopting Russian children in retaliation, although Putin is also concerned about a Russian population bust.
On CNN’s Don Lemon show tonight, former CIA director James Woolsey reiterated a statement he had made in March, that North Korea can launch an EMP attack against the US from an orbiting satellite at any time.
He had said this in March.
That would presume that DPRK can place a nuclear warhead on the satellite and detonate it when it passes over the US.
Woolsey says that DPRK has had this capability for four years, since about mid 2013. Ironically, that’s when I made my visit to Oak Ridge, TN.
Woolsey says that this threat makes the targeting of current or future ICBM’s a side show. He said Trump is uninformed on this matter.
The very latest scuttlebutt today is that North Korea’s claimed ICBM missile test probably was a two-stage ICBM. Some accounts claim that were the trajectory made less of an uppercut and more like a line drive, it could have reached parts of Alaska. It seems to have landed just barely within the DPRK’s claimed international waters.
The latest CNN story and analysis is here. The Washington Post has more recent analysis, and it's grim, here. Vox's Alex Ward writes that is is a test for Trump, and that China has little motivation to help destabilized the regime because it doesn't want a refugee crisis (ironic).
The Wall Street Journal has a gif warning about the possible range of North Korea’s missiles “launch pattern” here.
It is unclear how close North Korea is to putting an operable nuclear warhead on an ICBM and having it re-enter. But the most dire threat of all could be an EMP blast, now over South Korea or Japan, and later over western US / Alaska/ Canada. The projected range of DPRK’s missiles keeps increasing.
Update: July 5
Most news analysts believe that Un is insisted on becoming a nuclear power (comparable to Russia and China) to protect himself from having the same fate as Saddam Hussein and Qadaffi. But the US already is unwilling to let Iran become a nuclear state.
Fox calls North Korea "the Mob State" that, like a crime family, will do anything to the bloodline. But Un especially has shown a willingness to go beyond mere self preservation. Consider the unusual ugliness of the Warmbier death, which might have been a set-up (how did anyone get to the 5th Floor, anyway, in the first place?) The extreme Left has been capable of horrific personalized crimes in the past -- consider Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974. North Korea seems to be behind some of the recent malware attacks, and consider what happened to a private company, Sony Pictures, over a movie that portrayed Un unfavorably? (He expects to be worshiped by his people when he looks like the antithesis of binary cis manhood.) Could Un out of a temper tantrum, threaten to use nukes in the future over a public insult from an American company or even a private citizen online?
CNN has a video on why North Korea hates the US, even personally.
Today, at the First Baptist Church of the City of Washington DC, youth pastor Alyssa Aldape gave a sermon “Countercultural hospitality”.
The acoustics of the church made it a little hard to follow, but the sermon seemed to argue the need for openness among Americans to be of personal assistance to some immigrants, such as potential refugees and asylum seekers, beyond the observance of the law. This might have been applicable to the recent law proposed attacking sanctuary cities, and might have defended some people who, out of commitment of faith, are willing to house some undocumented people, especially in the border states, as has been in the news sometimes.
