Arsenal For Democracy

June 22, 2014 – Arsenal For Democracy 89

By Bill Humphrey June 25, 2014 - 7:08 pm October 13, 2014 Radio Show

Topics: Washington NFL trademark, U.S. oil royalties for American Indians, Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan, and US/Iran in Iraq. People: Bill and Nate.

Discussion Points:

– Continued U.S. oppression of American Indians
– Will Iraqi Kurdistan declare independence with Turkey’s support?
– Should the US and Iran work together in Iraq?

Part 1 – Washington NFL trademark & American Indian policies:
Part 1 – Washington NFL – AFD 89
Part 2 – Turkey/Kurdistan:
Part 2 – Kurdistan – AFD 89
Part 3 – Iran in the Iraq Crisis:
Part 3 – Iraq – AFD 89

To get one file for the whole episode, we recommend using one of the subscribe links at the bottom of the post.

June 22, 2014 – Arsenal for Democracy 89

By Bill Humphrey June 25, 2014 - 5:00 am June 25, 2014 Podcasts

Topics: Washington NFL trademark, U.S. oil royalties for American Indians, Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan, and US/Iran in Iraq. People: Bill and Nate.

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In pyrrhic victory for America, old Miss racist defeats young Miss racist

By Bill Humphrey June 24, 2014 - 11:42 pm June 25, 2014 Arsenal Analysis

The New York Times front page is blaring that U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran has won his Mississippi Republican primary on the strength of Black votes. Remains to be seen how accurate that claim is, given that the piece doesn’t actually cite exit polling proving that Black voters did or did not make the difference in this 50%-49% race. (I’d guess it’s very unlikely, since the vast majority of the voters on both sides were probably white, and these kind of election night news stories almost consistently breathlessly exaggerate the role of “crossover” voting, based on “narratives” rather than data.)

But it does say a hell of a lot about his hyper right-wing tea party opponent — born the year Cochran entered Congress — that he referred to all Black Mississippi voters (regardless of party!!!) as “ultraliberal” and said Cochran shouldn’t be trying to appeal to Black voters. (This is among the least horrid things from a man whose supporters pulled dirty tricks like photographing Cochran’s wife in a nursing home.)

Meanwhile, it must have been pretty tough to make a convincing pitch for Black voters to rally to the incumbent. Sen. Cochran was an active executor of the so-called “Southern Strategy” during the 1968 Nixon Campaign, when the Republican establishment made an active decision to seek out the votes of angry, white Southern Democrats who were upset about the Civil Rights legislation passed by the Johnson Administration a few years early. This strategy precipitated the en masse defection of both elected officials and base voters from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in several waves from the 1960s to the 1990s, until the Deep South became a solidly Republican stronghold.

Unlike many of his southern peers in Congress (even today), Sen. Cochran did not switch parties while in office. He has been a very conservative Republican (if you include lush pork barrel earmarking for Mississippi under that heading) for his whole Congressional career. But although he was first elected to Congress as a Republican U.S. Representative in 1972 and served as the state head of Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign, Cochran had actually only been a Republican for a few years before that, after growing up as a Democrat. If you do the math, that means he switched parties about the time the Civil Rights Act passed. How charming.

So the seventy-six-year-old racist squeaked out a primary win over the 41-year-old racist challenger and will presumably go on to start a seventh term as the United States Senator for a state that still has a Confederate battle flag on its state flag.

Balloons-Falling-Colbert-Report

11 interesting facts from the history of Mosul, Iraq

By Bill Humphrey June 24, 2014 - 7:39 pm June 24, 2014 Arsenal Research

Mosul is back in the news after its capture by ISIS militias, which triggered the current crisis in Iraq. This isn’t the first time the northern city’s fall has been a tipping point for regional disruptions. Mosul and the area around it have very long and rich histories. Here are eleven facts about that:

1. Mosul is located on the west bank of the Tigris River across from the famous Biblical-era former city of Nineveh, the capital of the mighty Neo-Assyrian Empire until its collapse (7th century BCE). In the story from the Book of Jonah (and the Quran), the titular figure is swallowed by a great sea beast while trying to avoid going to Nineveh to preach to the people. The city is featured through much of the religious literature of the whole region, due to its early and ongoing political and economic importance in the Middle East. The area around Mosul is still called the Nineveh Province to this day.

2. Mosul is the center of Iraq’s Assyrian Christian community, a diverse set of old school (2nd century CE) Middle Eastern Christian sects in the Assyrian/Syriac/Chaldean ethnicity, who still speak and read Aramaic like back in the days of Jesus & Friends. Unfortunately, most of Iraq’s Assyrians have fled the city and country since 2003.

3. Mosul is the center and originator of the production of “Muslin” fabric, a thin type of cotton cloth used even to present day for theatrical productions but once the height of fashion in Europe (and later the United States) during parts of the 18th and 19th centuries.

4. Mosul was established to replace Nineveh as the major northern crossing point of the crucial Tigris River, when the older city fell to various forces. Mosul was captured from the First Persian Empire by Alexander the Great in the 4th Century BCE and then was transferred to the Greek-run “Seleucid Empire” (one of those empires that never gets much love in the textbooks) when the Alexandrian Empire was divided between Greek and Macedonian military officers. Later it fell to the Parthians (then the Sassanids) during the Roman-Persian wars over the Middle East and Asia Minor.

5. Mosul became the regional capital of what is now Iraq under the Umayyad Muslim dynasty even as it remained a major — even rising — Christian city. It also maintained a significant Jewish population well into and past the era of the Crusades.

6. Under the Abbasid Muslim dynasty, Mosul became a major economic hub on the Silk Road. From that point forward, Mosul continued to develop incredibly advanced techniques in the arts and fine goods production. Beyond the Muslin weaving, Mosul also became famous for its fine metalwork and painting styles.

7. After being the site of many power plays by competing Arab, Turkic, and Persian factions, the city was transferred without destruction to a grandson of Genghis Khan, under one of the Mongol sub-empires. Christians, including those in Mosul, came to play an important role in the Mongol courts in that part of the Mongol-ruled world. Mosul continued to be a highly contested junction point because of its strategic value and ultimately was sacked as a result, though it was rebuilt.

One of the Mongol sieges of Mosul in the 13th century CE.

U.S. may now strike Iraq because it feels like it

By Bill Humphrey June 23, 2014 - 8:55 pm September 22, 2016 Arsenal Analysis

Meanwhile the murderous government in Egypt just got new U.S. military helicopters.

I noticed an alarming top story just now on my Google News search:
Screen Shot 2014-06-23 at 8.26.08 PM

So I read on, to get more details:

President Obama is lining up ISIS targets in Iraq and may launch an attack on the militant Islamic militia that is threatening Baghdad even if he does not get an agreement with the Iraqi regime, Secretary of State John Kerry said today.

Speaking in Baghdad after meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other political leaders, Kerry said Obama is “each day” gaining more certainty of the targets he would strike if the United States decided on its own to take military action.

“He has reserved the right to himself, as he should, to make a decision at any point in time if he deems it necessary strategically,” Kerry said.

Obama has said he would not provide Iraq more military support unless it forms a government more accepting of religious minorities, but Kerry stressed that Obama wouldn’t hesitate to have the U.S. conduct its own military operations if necessary.

“The president has moved the assets into place and has been gaining each day the assurances he needs with respect to potential targeting,” Kerry said.

While it’s true that the United States since 9/11 has conducted airstrikes without permission in other countries before (e.g. Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, etc.), the justification has been that the targeted individuals or organizations were at least trying to attack the U.S. homeland, U.S. troops in the area, or U.S. sites like embassies and such. I might not agree with that policy, but at least I can follow the reasoning.

That’s not the case here, because ISIS isn’t attacking those points. Nor has the argument been made that such strikes would be a “humanitarian intervention” to stop massacres (as was argued in the Balkans in the 1990s). Which makes it an odd and troubling development.

The summary phrase of greatest importance to that point, in the above, was: “may launch an attack … even if he does not get an agreement with the Iraqi regime”

Thus, the newest version of the Bipartisan Post-9/11 US Rules for Whole World: The United States President reserves right to attack anyone, anywhere, for any reason even if U.S. is not attacked (and even if there are no attacks on its sites, its people, or its interests).

Because ISIS isn’t doing any of that so far, nor does it look like it will be imminently. ISIS is probably about 3 layers away from being a threat to the U.S. in any way, including sites/interests/regional troops. So why the heck would we attack without Iraq’s request?

True, ISIS is allegedly massacring opponents in Iraq, but we haven’t invaded Syria to stop the regime or “our” rebels or ISIS from doing that next door.

We’re not doing it to protect the Iraqi government. Because they didn’t (and largely still don’t) want our help, and we left, and this didn’t happen immediately after we left. And we’re not getting their permission.

What can possibly be gained from this action? Who benefits from this at all? Probably not the Iraqis. Certainly not the United States.
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Tom Tancredo is baaaaaaack, y’all

By Bill Humphrey June 23, 2014 - 5:58 pm June 24, 2014 Arsenal Analysis

The New York Times has published a comprehensive State-of-The-Race report on former 5-term Congressman and 2008 presidential also-ran Tom Tancredo’s latest explosive bid for office, this time as a Republican candidate for Governor of Colorado, ahead of the primary tomorrow. [Update: Tancredo finished second.]

Tancredo last campaigned as the American Constitution Party nominee for the same office four years ago. The ACP is notable mostly as an openly theocratic, right-wing party, with close ties to George Wallace’s segregationist movement.

So far, this latest race can (as is always true with him) best be summarized as Tommy T on the mic dropping racist hot 16s once a minute. But don’t call him racist because he’ll sue your “ass from here to Omaha” (an actual quote from him in the article). [Side note: Can public figures sue average people for making assertions about them?]

Let’s wind back to his amazingly insightful, I mean wildly racist, 2006 comment about one of our country’s fine metropolises of lesser Anglo-ness.

“Look at what has happened to Miami. It has become a Third World country. You just pick it up and take it and move it someplace. You would never know you’re in the United States of America. You would certainly say you’re in a Third World country…”

So as you can see, he’s not a racist. He just never says anything but racist stuff and has only racist policies.

Fifteen years after he built a national reputation as an inflammatory foe of illegal immigration, Tom Tancredo, 68, is still campaigning, without apology, as Tom Tancredo. […] He says President Obama should be impeached, but notes that “you can’t criticize him because he’s black and if you do, you’re a racist.”

As with the 2010 cycle, Republicans are split very hard in the state right now between “We need more conservative candidates” and “Our candidates are unelectable loons.”

And Tommy T is King of Loon Lake. As the oft-embattled and semi-immortal former state Republican Party chair Dick Wadhams said of Tancredo to the Times: “He has said so many inflammatory things — the list is unbelievable.”

But in a hilarious turn of events, an organization literally calling itself “Republicans Who Want to Win” has been running ads saying that primary voters shouldn’t choose Tancredo because he’s unelectable. Whom should the voters choose instead to be more electable?

The Colorado-based group is supporting Bob Beauprez, a former congressman who lost his 2006 bid for governor by double digits.

Womp-womp.

In the GOP primary polling earlier this year and late last year, Tancredo was the top candidate but Bob Beauprez was giving him a run for his money. So we’ll see how this turns out tomorrow night. I’m hoping for a Tancredo nominee. He’s got virtually no chance of beating the reasonably popular and inoffensive Democratic incumbent governor, but he could blow up the chances of a lot of other Republicans on the ballot, for Senate especially, as well as for Congress. (Or at least add to the problems, if the nearly as horrid Ken Buck also ends up on the ballot for the U.S. House after dropping his 2014 Senate bid and losing a 2010 Senate bid spectacularly.)

And if Tancredo doesn’t win the primary? Something something we the people.

Iran Supreme Leader not keen on working with US on ISIS

By Bill Humphrey June 22, 2014 - 7:34 pm June 22, 2014 Arsenal Pulse

I guess the top boss isn’t too interested in the proposal for Iran to cooperate with the United States on countering the ISIS (Sunni Arab extremist) invasion in Iraq. Mainly because Iran’s religious leadership apparently wants Iraq to remain a united, Shia-controlled, majoritarian-rule satellite of Shia Iran:

[…] as Washington’s patience for the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki diminishes, so do the prospects of coordinated efforts as Tehran sees Maliki as a reliable partner in Baghdad.

“The United States is dissatisfied with the result of elections in Iraq and they want to deprive the Iraqi people of their achievement of a democratic system, which they achieved without U.S. interference,” Khamenei said.
[…]
“The real fight is between those who want to bring back a U.S. presence and those who want Iraqi independence.”

As one reader asked, how soon until Iran’s most formidable Shia militant proxy, Hezbollah, shows up? They’ve already been battling groups like ISIS, quite successfully, in Syria for the past couple years.

From the U.S. perspective, this reluctance by Iran to cooperate on Iraq may be for the best, given that it’s not clear Iran’s interests are any more noble than anyone else’s. And it might clarify the confusion that is the American policy on the region. Or at least won’t make it worse.

June 22, 2014 – Arsenal For Democracy 89

Discussion Points:

Related links

Segment 1

Segment 2

Segment 3

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