Bill Humphrey, Author at Arsenal For Democracy

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About Bill Humphrey

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

CIA believes Iran will use new revenue at home, not abroad

By Bill Humphrey July 17, 2015 - 6:14 pm July 17, 2015 Arsenal Bolt

Arsenal Bolt: Quick updates on the news stories we’re following.

Haaretz (Israel): “CIA: Iran unlikely to significantly boost post-sanction funds on militant groups”

Iran will pump most of the revenue it receives from the lifting of international sanctions – expected to reach some $100 billion – into its limping economy and won’t significantly boost funding for militant groups in the Middle East, according to an intelligence assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency.
[…]
The CIA analysts concluded that even if Tehran increases its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthi rebels in Yemen and the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, the additional funding is unlikely to tip the balance of power in the world’s most volatile region.
[…]
The Obama administration is banking on Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and other moderates in Iran’s leadership investing most of the anticipated money into domestic infrastructure and other social investments, to quell growing public frustration over unemployment, the high inflation rate and a shortage of imported goods.

Fencing in Chinese nomads (to get the coal under them?)

By Bill Humphrey July 17, 2015 - 4:00 pm July 17, 2015 Arsenal Pulse

You have to read this New York Times article pretty closely to catch that China’s destruction of its Inner Mongolian nomad cultures is probably about getting to the coal under their grazing lands:

In Xilinhot, a coal-rich swath of Inner Mongolia, resettled nomads, many illiterate, say they were deceived into signing contracts they barely understood. Among them is Tsokhochir, 63, whose wife and three daughters were among the first 100 families to move into Xin Kang village, a collection of forlorn brick houses in the shadow of two power plants and a belching steel factory that blankets them in soot.
[…]
Not everyone is dissatisfied. Bater, 34, a sheep merchant raised on the grasslands, lives in one of the new high-rises that line downtown Xilinhot’s broad avenues. Every month or so he drives 380 miles to see customers in Beijing, on smooth highways that have replaced pitted roads. “It used to take a day to travel between my hometown and Xilinhot, and you might get stuck in a ditch,” he said. “Now it takes 40 minutes.” Talkative, college-educated and fluent in Mandarin, Bater criticized neighbors who he said want government subsidies but refuse to embrace the new economy, much of it centered on open-pit coal mines.

Here’s the cultural cost:

In what amounts to one of the most ambitious attempts made at social engineering, the Chinese government is in the final stages of a 15-year-old campaign to settle the millions of pastoralists who once roamed China’s vast borderlands. By year’s end, Beijing claims it will have moved the remaining 1.2 million herders into towns that provide access to schools, electricity and modern health care.
[…]
But the policies, based partly on the official view that grazing harms grasslands, are increasingly contentious. Ecologists in China and abroad say the scientific foundations of nomad resettlement are dubious. Anthropologists who have studied government-built relocation centers have documented chronic unemployment, alcoholism and the fraying of millenniums-old traditions.
[…]
Nicholas Bequelin, the director of the East Asia division of Amnesty International, said the struggle between farmers and pastoralists is not new, but that the Chinese government had taken it to a new level. “These relocation campaigns are almost Stalinist in their range and ambition, without any regard for what the people in these communities want,” he said. “In a matter of years, the government is wiping out entire indigenous cultures.”

Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China (Credit: Wikimedia)

Similar Topics from Arsenal For Democracy:

“The Battle for Xinjiang (and its energy riches)”

AP: “Hungary puts inmates to work on border fence”

By Bill Humphrey July 17, 2015 - 1:35 am July 17, 2015 Arsenal Bolt

Arsenal Bolt: Quick updates on the news stories we’re following.

Last month from AFD: “Border fence politics comes to the EU”

Yesterday, Associated Press: “Hungary puts inmates to work on border fence to bar migrants”

Using materials prepared by inmates in Hungarian prisons, 900 soldiers will build a fence along Hungary’s border with Serbia by December to stem the torrent of migrants, officials said Thursday
[…]
Prime Minister Viktor Orban says Hungary does not want any migrants from outside Europe. But over the past months, 80 percent of the refugees requesting asylum in Hungary have come from war-torn countries like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Most leave within days to richer EU countries like Germany before their asylum claims are settled.

The government’s anti-immigrant billboard campaign and a questionnaire sent to voters linking migration with terrorism have been criticized by the U.N.’s refugee agency, among others.

Orbanism Rising.

I wonder where the “Obamacare repeal” bills went this year?

By Bill Humphrey July 16, 2015 - 3:33 am July 16, 2015 Arsenal Pulse

Remember how Republicans held the House for four years without the holding the Senate and managed to vote more than 50 times in the House to repeal “Obamacare” only to have it die in the Senate?

Anybody else notice it’s now half a year into Republican control of both chambers of Congress and they have yet to send any Affordable Care Act repeal bill to the White House?

Flashback to my December 2013 forecast:

The one good thing about the crushing strength of the American private health insurance industry’s Washington lobby is that they will never allow through these idiotic Republican proposals to replace the Affordable Care Act. That lobby understands two key truths:
1. this law benefits their industry as currently written by providing lots of healthy new customers and,
2. the replacement proposals keep the most popular but most expensive parts in place, while stripping out the money-making purchase mandate that makes it financially feasible to keep the costly parts going.
[…]
Those firms benefiting from this law donate a lot of political money. If you’re a Republican in Congress right now, you don’t want to get into a political gunfight with the health insurance lobby, unless you’re a self-funding candidate.

Even the tea party wing is still dependent upon big business. They can’t afford to cross private health insurers at the moment.

Maybe they were all just waiting for the Supreme Court to strike it down for them? Too bad (for them) about that as well.

capitol-dome-large

If you said it, then you meant it, Oklahoma GOP chairman

By Bill Humphrey July 16, 2015 - 3:11 am July 16, 2015 Arsenal Pulse

The AP reports that the Oklahoma Republican Party chairman is in hot water over a Facebook post comparing SNAP (food stamps) recipients to wild animals that you shouldn’t feed:

The original message, posted Monday, said 46 million Americans participate in the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program, or SNAP, commonly referred to as food stamps. The post then said the National Park Service encourages people not to feed wild animals because they ‘‘will grow dependent on handouts and will not learn to take care of themselves.’’

As is usually the case with other like-minded posters in such situations, he thinks everyone just didn’t get it and it’s all a big misunderstanding:

Party chairman Randy Brogdon said on Facebook that the post was intended to illustrate the cycle of government dependency. He apologized ‘‘for any misconceptions that were created.’’

Worth noting:

About 604,000 people receive SNAP benefits in Oklahoma, mostly the elderly, disabled, and children.

That’s almost 7% of the Republican-dominated state’s entire population — which is a pretty comparable figure to a Democratic-dominated state like Massachusetts, but not a glowing testament to the dependency-ending benefits of conservative governance.

In predictable fashion, fellow Republicans objected more on the optics than the substance:

‘‘It is not a representation of the party as a whole and it makes the party look uncaring,’’ said state Senator Stephanie Bice, a Republican.

(My bolding.)

However he may have phrased it, that vehement opposition to and dismissive view of food stamps is the mainstream position of the Republican Party. Hard not to “look uncaring” when you are uncaring. Dressing it up rhetorically in a nicer outfit doesn’t fix the underlying problem.

In the immortal words of one Christopher Brian “Ludacris” Bridges in his 2008 commentary, “Politics As Usual”:

Talkin’ slick and apologizin’ for what?
If you said it, then you meant it.
How you want it: Head or gut?

Previously from Bill on Similar Topics:

“How the South Really Operates”
“The American South: Take the Money and Run”

United States Census Southern Region

July 15, 2015 – Arsenal For Democracy 134

By Bill Humphrey July 15, 2015 - 8:00 am July 15, 2015 Radio Show

Posted by Bill on behalf of the team.

Topics: Supreme Court rulings on marriage equality and Obamacare, order on Texas abortion clinics law; Puerto Rico and Greece debt crises. People: Bill, Kelley, and Nate. Produced: July 13th, 2015.

Discussion Points:

– U.S. Supreme Court: What are the implications of major rulings and orders on marriage equality, Obamacare, and reproductive freedom?
– Debt Crises: What’s next for Puerto Rico and Greece?

Episode 134 (47 min):
AFD 134

For pro-reform Egyptians, the terrorists have already won

By Bill Humphrey July 15, 2015 - 4:17 am July 15, 2015 Arsenal Pulse

Summary | Arab Spring: Massive undirected terror unleashed by foreign fundamentalists and diehard regimes cooled enthusiasm for protest.

An Issue Brief entitled “Egypt’s Next Phase: Sustainable Instability” by Michael Wahid Hanna for The Century Foundation (published on July 1, 2015, just ahead of the second anniversary of the military coup d’état) includes a section making the case that the catastrophic region-wide failure of the Arab Spring — especially its particularly violent self-immolation in Syria, Libya, and Yemen — has deterred Egyptians from seeking new rounds of reform against their reactionary government.

While Egypt’s security situation is deteriorating and its security establishment has proven unsuited to the task at hand, particularly with respect to dealing with the low-level insurgency in the Sinai peninsula, the rising tide of violence, terrorism, and conflict throughout the Arab world have had a profound effect on Egyptian society and have curbed the impulse for political change. In the current regional context, political change and efforts at reform are seen by most Egyptians to be risky endeavors with potentially disastrous unintended consequences.
[…]
This regionalized climate of instability has helped solidify support for the Sisi regime, albeit ambivalent support among certain segments of Egyptian society. The horrifying regional examples of state collapse and civil war have created widespread aversion and revulsion at the prospect of political violence and terrorism. While the proliferation of such violence might damage the credibility of the Sisi regime and its competence over time, it is unlikely to produce widespread public support for radical political change and potential upheaval amongst a cautious and fatigued society.

Status and outcomes of Arab Spring uprisings as of February 2015. Map by Ian Remsen for Wikimedia.

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