Author Archives: Bill Humphrey

Bill Humphrey

About Bill Humphrey

Bill Humphrey is the primary host of WVUD's Arsenal For Democracy talk radio show and a local elected official.

November 11, 2015 – Arsenal For Democracy 150

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Posted by Bill on behalf of the team.

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Topics: Big Ideas for Reforming American and Global Governance — Health Care Reform and Economic Orthodoxy. People: Bill, Kelley, Nate, Greg. Produced: November 8th, 2015.

Episode 150 (56 min):
AFD 150

Discussion Points:

– What’s next in U.S. health reform?
– Are the orthodoxies of mid-century economics trapping us on 21st century problems?

Related Links

– Last week’s episode on state single-payer campaigns
– AFD, July 2014: Wall Street wants to make money off “urgent care”
– Compare Your Country Health Care Spending
– “Kaiser Report finds state budget savings in some Medicaid expansion states”
– Washington Post: “US once again has most expensive, least effective health care system in survey”
– Naked Capitalism: “Wait: Maybe Europeans are as Rich as Americans”

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And don’t forget to check out The Digitized Ramblings of an 8-Bit Animal, the video game blog of our announcer, Justin.

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Burkina Faso presidential campaign kicks off after transition

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Just over a year after a street uprising and military coup ousted the longtime regime of President Blaise Compaoré — and less than two months after a short-lived, violent coup attempt against the transitional government — Burkina Faso is heading to the polls for what it hopes will be its first free presidential election after decades of strongman and military rule. It has been a bumpy ride to get to this point.

Despite a ban on ruling party candidates, France24 reports that:

Seven of the 14 candidates played important roles in the fallen regime, without backing Compaore to the end.

 
Sort of inevitable when there is single-party/one-man rule for decades. Anyone who goes into public service ends up working for the regime at some point. And here they are:

Roch Marc Christian Kabore and Zephirin Diabre, considered the frontrunners, are both former government ministers.

Kabore worked with Compaore for 26 years, serving as prime minister and then speaker of the National Assembly. He also ran the CDP for more than a decade, but quit the party in disgrace 10 months before Compaore was ousted.

Diabre, an economist, long opted for an international career, but also served at home as minister of the economy and finance. He also joined the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) with support from Compaore.

 
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When is a solution to end a war not a solution for the peace?

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The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, aka Dayton Accords, were preliminarily signed on November 21, 1995 in Ohio. With that accord reaching its 20th anniversary — and Bosnia continuing to be wildly dysfunctional and notoriously stagnant, albeit not openly at war with itself — it’s time to reflect on how the solution reached to end the war did not do much beyond that.

“The Dayton Accords at 20: Why Bosnia’s Government Is So Dysfunctional” – The Atlantic

Dayton created a byzantine governance system that constitutionally entrenched, rather than resolved, the divisions that emerged from the war. Bosnia was divided into two entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska. Bosnia was further split into 10 cantons, and the contested city of Brčko was given special district status, while the state presidency rotates between the representatives of the three constituent peoples—Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs. With a population of 3.8 million people, Bosnia has three presidents, 13 prime ministers and as many governments, more than 180 ministers, and over 700 members of parliament. The outcome is an ungovernable mess. Two years after the 2013 census was completed, the results haven’t yet been announced, because Bosnia and Republika Srpska each carried out its own census, with different methodologies.
[…]
This doubling-up of everything can seem comic. But the system entrenched by Dayton has done serious damage to Bosnia’s development. “The political caste uses Dayton to stay in power,” explained Nermina Mujagić, a political-science professor at Sarajevo University. “Dayton is a convenient scapegoat to justify why nothing is being done to address the plunder of the state’s assets and pervasive corruption.”

 
And on the other hand, the dilemma remains: This is bad, but at least it stopped the horrific, genocidal fighting.

President Slobodan Milosevic of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, President Alija Izetbegovic of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and President Franjo Tudjman of the Republic of Croatia initial the Dayton Peace Accords at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Nov. 1-21, 1995. (Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force.)

President Slobodan Milosevic of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, President Alija Izetbegovic of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and President Franjo Tudjman of the Republic of Croatia initial the Dayton Peace Accords at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Nov. 21, 1995. (Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force.)

Justice for all, no matter the cost

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If any part of our governmental system should always be fully and generously funded, it is our judiciary, from bottom to top. Everyone accused of a crime, large or small, should have the right to access meaningful and prompt justice. That shouldn’t depend on their income or their geographic location.

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The dismantling of the country’s public defender system to save money and coerce speedy pleas has made a mockery of the phrase “justice system.” It’s similarly disturbing to me when I hear about places across our country (and even in Massachusetts) where states are moving to “consolidate” their court systems, not for the sake of improving the justice system but for the sake of cutting costs. I believe nobody should be denied true justice and a fair procedure simply because they lack the funds for bail or for a qualified attorney or because they live far away from courts.

I also believe nobody should be rushed and badgered into pleading out on something they didn’t do simply because the courts and public defenders are overloaded. If our justice system is overloaded, we need to expand it and properly fund it. Yes that means hiring more people and buying or building more facilities. But a legitimate and fair justice system, with justice for all, doesn’t necessarily come cheap. Our judiciary should be the last place in government we make cuts or try to under-fund.

If you were in a position of being charged with a crime you didn’t commit and you didn’t have the resources for expensive attorneys, you know you wouldn’t want to be railroaded through a cash-strapped court system. So let’s make sure that doesn’t happen to anyone else, either — by funding our courts properly and ensuring they have the capacity to deliver true justice.

Burundi appears to be sliding into full-blown meltdown

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2015 Burundian Constitutional Crisis

Until recently, a major African ally of the United States and a purported model for other African nations. Now, a mass exodus from the capital, daily body dumps of assassinated figures, and a fracturing military.

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“Burundians flee capital over fears of violence” – France24, November 6, 2015:

Thousands of residents have fled the Burundian capital of Bujumbura in recent days over fears of escalating violence as the United Nations warned there was a risk that the central African country could slip back into civil war.
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Meanwhile, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) also drew attention to dangerous “hardline rhetoric” in Burundi, drawing parallels with the hate-filled climate that led to the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

 
United Nations statement, via AllAfrica.com, November 7, 2015:

The statement said the Secretary-General is alarmed that in recent weeks, the discovery of the bodies of civilian victims, many apparently summarily executed, has become a regular occurrence in several neighbourhoods of Bujumbura, where just today, Welly Nzitonda, the son of prominent Burundian human rights defender Pierre-Claver Mbonimpa was found dead following his arrest by the police in the morning.

Further, Mr. Ban in the statement also condemned public statements that appear to be aimed at inciting violence or hatred towards different groups in Burundian society.

“Inflammatory rhetoric is reprehensible and dangerous; it will only serve to aggravate the situation in the country. [The Secretary-General] calls for accountability for those who have engaged in publicly inciting violence,” the statement said.

 

The ethnically mixed military from the 2005 peace accords, even in the face of a renegade coup attempt in May, had largely been a lone rock of stability in the face of mounting ethno-political tensions earlier this year. Less than a month ago, reports emerged that that too looks increasingly precarious…

“Burundi: Cracks Widen Within Burundi’s Army,” IRIN, October 12:

A recent post on a Burundi news blog by Thierry Vircoulon of the International Crisis Group (ICG) said the [integrated military] was “dangerously close to rupture.”

IRIN’s interviews with more than a dozen people, including leading Burundian civilians, analysts and members of the military, indicate that a faction of former Hutu rebels has embarked on a campaign of harassing, abducting, detaining, and in some cases killing, members of the army’s old guard, as well as others perceived to oppose President Pierre Nkurunziza, himself a former rebel leader.

 
This October assessment marks a stark contrast with International Crisis Group’s prior assessment that institutional divisions designed in by the Arusha Accords of 2005 “could ironically help the army stay together.”

One wonders if it could, after all, go the way of South Sudan’s “unified” military which has now splintered back into rival ethnic groups from the former rebel factions before independence.

The United States suspended military cooperation and its major training program in Burundi back in July. In August, the president openly announced his intention to expand “patriotic” teenage death squads.

Action works

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I’ve worked for and volunteered for a lot of great candidates who have come up short — so it’s pretty fantastic to have a nearly clean sweep for once, as occurred this week.

I’m so proud of the work we did in a short span to fight for Newton’s future by electing an incredible new cohort of thoughtful activists to our Charter Commission and by re-electing a number of courageous incumbents who have taken stands in favor of varied and expanded housing opportunities in our city as it grows with the booming Boston region.

This election also really helped cure the residual burnout I had been feeling from some past elections and campaigns I’ve been involved with.

I also came away with a newfound resolve to combat the forces of apathy and malaise because I saw my efforts — stuffing envelopes to friends and parents of friends, knocking on hundreds of doors, etc. — directly translating into a successful campaign. I was always happy to head out there for all these candidates and talk to voters because I felt like every conversation was helping to build a new generation of democratic leadership and to bring the city into the future.

Here’s what I ask those people in the apathetic and cynical camp: Are you going to sit around telling everyone how nothing ever changes so there’s no point? Or are you going to stand up and see if you get enough people together to help change some things?

You and thousands of people like you can sit at home, separately, complaining and telling everyone who wants to try that they should give up too. Or you can get out there and help build the growing movement to turn things around. I know which I’d rather be doing.

Trench warfare comes to eastern Syria

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Trench warfare largely fell out of favor when aerial bombing became more commonplace and it wasn’t so rare for one or both sides to possess aircraft with serious ground attack capabilities. (Paratroopers didn’t help matters either, if you were trying to defend a location via front-facing trenches.)

But in a conflict where neither side has its own air force, such as the war between Kurdish YPG fighters and ISIS in eastern Syria, extensive trench complexes still make sense for slowing offensives and for securing territory. The New York Times sent reporters to the Kurdish front lines and reported back on the scale and complexity of the earthworks there:

[Kurdish] fighters hold most of the more than 280-mile-long front line with the Islamic State. Parts of it have come to resemble an international border, with deep trenches and high berms running for miles, lined with bright lights to prevent jihadist infiltrators. The whole line is dotted with heavily sandbagged positions to protect against machine gun and mortar attacks by the jihadists.

 
The geo-ethnic divisions wracking Syria, Iraq, and Turkey today were largely drawn during World War I and the five or so years that followed it, so it’s interesting to see massive earthworks and trench networks like that war re-emerge a century later in the waging of this conflict.

Approximate front line of the southward push by Kurdish YPG forces against ISIS in eastern Syria, as of October 26, 2015. (Map via Wikimedia community.)

Approximate front line of the southward push by Kurdish YPG forces against ISIS in eastern Syria, as of October 26, 2015. (Map via Wikimedia community.)