Picto Diary - 30, 31 October 2015 - Forum

Above: I completed reading this book, 30 October 2015.

I purchased the book after browsing at Sam Weller Bookstore, Trolley Square, Salt Lake City, UT on Sunday, 25 October 2015.

Thumbing through the book I noted that there was considerable discussion on the family background of the Tsarnaev brothers... the ones deemed responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing, where three were killed and over 200 injured, on 15 April 2013.

The Tsarnaev brothers' mother was from Dagestan and the father was Chechen. It was only recently, mid 2014, that TIMDT had been on a Caucasus motorcycle journey that took us through the north Caucasus Russian Republics of Ingushita, Dagestan, Chechnya and North Ossetia. While motorcycle riding through those areas I realized how little prepared I was in understanding history, customs, religion of the area. I purchased the book in an attempt to fill in some of my then knowledge gaps.

I learned a lot reading this book... I learned, for one thing, that I had known of the level of low grade Islamic insurgency still going on in the Caucasus while we were there, I might not have wanted to go there in the first place in 2014. But, then, ignorance is bliss? The ride went fine... the local people we encountered were friendly. In rural Dagestan we rode on dirt, back country. I'm convinced that we were the first American's many of the locals had encountered. And, if any American tourists had been trough that area in the last 50 years, you could probably count their numbers on one hand.

Some takeaways from the book...

Muslim areas of Russia have not been fully assimilated into the Russian main stream.

Insurgency and warfare against the Russian state... Tsar... Communists....modern Russian Federation.... has been a pulsing constant for hundreds of years. Strife is recent. Grozny, Chechnya was leveled by the Russian military a couple of times during the 1990's. Currently there is a benign, Muslim, dictator in Chechnya very much cooperating with and under the thumb of the Russians. Notwithstanding, it is said that more Russian police have been killed in the Caucasus in the last ten years than American soldiers were lost in Afghanistan during the same period.

Forced evacuations of Chechens to central Asia (Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan) have dispersed Chechens. Many remain in central Asia.

Chechens have migrated or come as refugees or asylum seekers to the United States. To date, most have not fully assimilated. Most have regular contact with relatives in Chechnya and central Asia. Apple face time and Skype facilitate Chechen families maintaining a link to their "homeland." Most return to Russia periodically to get their Russian passport's renewed.

While in the United States, Chechen migrants, asylum seekers, refugees etc. generally form social groups among one another. Tsarnaev brothers friends in the US were mostly other Chechens and central Asians.

Conventional FBI wisdom says that some young Moslem men from certain areas - Chechnya for one - have a tendency to become radicalized. Chechnya is one of those locations where the incidence of radicalization is higher. The Tsarnaev brothers made regular trips back to Chechnya and central Asia during their 10 plus year stay in the United States.

The so-called warning issued on the Tsarnaev brothers by the Russian intelligence services is a head fake. The Russians issued such a warning on every Chechen young man in the US. Notwithstanding, the FBI conducts a once a year visit... as an abundance of caution... on all Caucasus, central Asian Muslim immigrants.

Harbored among many Chechens and Central Asians resident in the United States is the belief that the Tsarnaev brothers were set up.... that they were part of an FBI sting that went too far. According to the book's author, this suspicion is not as far fetched as it might seem... since 95% of the 400 or so terrorist convictions in the United States since 9/11 have resulted from an FBI sting.

Above: 12 oz ribeye steak. Ruth's Chris Steak House. Park City, UT. 31 October 2015.

Recently reading about a new study that says this isn't good for me, and recognizing that 50% of all knowledge at any given time is proven wrong, I decided to take a Halloween gamble.

I would like to thank those of the millenials, who are actually working, for making, via their social security deductions, this all possible. Considering they're likely to see nothing in return for their contributions they make a truly an eleemosynary sacrifice.

Addendum:


And what are you dressing up as for Halloween?

Frotz,
Park City, UT

Above: Japanese Maple chez Aunt Joyce, Ashland, OR. 30 October 2015.