Category: politics

The Bosnian Muslim community in St. Louis is doing fine

The Bosnian Muslim community in St. Louis is doing fine

It’s easy to depict the resettlement of Bosnians in St. Louis – predominantly Bosnian Muslims, called Bosniaks, but also Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs, all fleeing war – as a prototypical American success story. In less than two decades, refugees who arrived with proverbial pennies in their pockets have bought cars, then homes, seen their children graduate from American high schools, then colleges.

But with Syria is would be different? Why? We’ve let groups of people fleeing oppression before and the record is pretty good. They integrate. They do well.

Paul Ryan Throws Support Behind Mental Health Reform Bill

Paul Ryan Throws Support Behind Mental Health Reform Bill

Ryan called mental health issues the “common theme” you see in mass shootings, along with attackers who are “terrorist-inspired.”

And good for him for noticing and taking some action on it. Let’s see how the rest of his party acts.

The speaker also said he opposed using the No-Fly List as a measure for restricting gun purchases, saying many people are put on the list arbitrarily or by “mistake.”

Maybe the no-fly list can be fixed then? Do we really want people fresh from jihad training walking off the aircraft and stopping at the nearest gun shop on the way to the commit a terrorist attack?

Alex Jones Believes in Donald Trump’s ‘Epic, George Washington-Level’ Campaign

Alex Jones Believes in Donald Trump’s ‘Epic, George Washington-Level’ Campaign

But by far the best moment came when Jones tried to invite Trump into Jones’s shadowy world of “top generals, former Special Ops guys, former CIA, all top men” to explain how the country is being bored from within by “globalists who want a one-world government, using socialism at the grassroots.”

Alex Jones, unintentional comedy genius.

America Is Too Dumb for TV News

America Is Too Dumb for TV News

Until recently, the narrative of stories like this has been predictable. If a candidate said something nuts, or seemingly not true, an army of humorless journalists quickly dug up all the facts, and the candidate ultimately was either vindicated, apologized, or suffered terrible agonies. Al Gore for instance never really recovered from saying, “I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” True, he never said he invented the Internet, as is popularly believed, but what he did say was clumsy enough that the line followed him around like an STD for the rest of his (largely unsuccessful) political life. That dynamic has broken down this election season. Politicians are quickly learning that they can say just about anything and get away with it. Along with vindication, apology and suffering, there now exists a fourth way forward for the politician spewing whoppers: Blame the backlash on media bias and walk away a hero.

Predatory Islamic State Wrings Money From Those It Rules

Predatory Islamic State Wrings Money From Those It Rules

Across wide expanses of Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State, with the goal of building a credible government, has set up a predatory and violent bureaucracy that wrings every last American dollar, Iraqi dinar and Syrian pound it can from those who live under its control or pass through its territory.
Interviews with more than a dozen people living inside or recently escaped from the Islamic State-controlled territory, and Western and Middle Eastern officials who track the militants’ finances, describe the group as exacting tolls and traffic tickets; rent for government buildings; utility bills for water and electricity; taxes on income, crops and cattle; and fines for smoking or wearing the wrong clothes.

Extraction economy.

The Human Impulse to Live Beyond the Law

The Human Impulse to Live Beyond the Law

The problem in our politics, I think, and certainly the problem of the connection between violent rhetoric and violent action, which is real and growing, lies in the fact that the people who run campaigns—and, increasingly, the people on whose behalf those campaigns are run—construct them along a consumer model and as branding exercises aimed at faceless target audiences. For all the stories of real people that we hear from the stump, the people who organize and run our politics have grown so distant from the actual human beings they seek to represent that many of them have forgotten human nature entirely in their attempts to capitalize on those aspects of it that will close the deal for them at the polls. They have forgotten that humans are not by nature social, and that humans construct laws—and, therefore, governments—to keep both the lone wolf and the pack at bay. Once you’ve forgotten that, you can appeal to the worst instincts of both and walk away from the consequences.

Charles Pierce nails it.

Want to help the Islamic State recruit? Treat all Muslims as potential terrorists.

Want to help the Islamic State recruit? Treat all Muslims as potential terrorists.

The last time we fought a global battle of ideas, the cold war, we understood the idea of competing narratives and did everything we could to get the peoples living behind the iron curtain to identify with our values rather the values of their oppressors. We somehow lost sight of that in the war on terror.