Category Archives: Arsenal Pulse

Brief thoughts and mini-analyses on stories in the news.

Remembering an earlier refugees crisis

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In light of recent events in Europe, The New York Times tweeted out a public scan of two articles from late March 1939, about 5 months before World War II officially began in Europe. The (long and descriptive) headlines read:

REFUGEE TIDE RISES AS HITLER EXPANDS; Increasing Problem Presented to Other European States– Relief Groups Are Active MANY RECEIVED BY BRITAIN But Her Rules for Admittance Are Severe–Hundreds Enter Belgium Weekly in Secret

 
You can read the full articles easily online and read the opening right here:

Click to continue reading. (New York Times)

Click image to continue reading 1939 article. (New York Times)

The short version? For six years, by then, Europe had grappled with hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees secretly crossing their borders to escape Nazi Germany and its pre-war annexed territories. Many countries (such as Belgium) responded by turning people away or sending them back. Britain had very tight rules, usually requiring entrants to a have a job lined up or proof of plans to move on to a different country from there.

It’s worth remembering these stories and how bad they look in hindsight, as countries today consider turning people away — as they flee Syria, Afghanistan, and Eritrea — and suggest these refugees are dangerous outsiders or only migrants trying to take jobs from citizens.

Fortunately, as the article above also demonstrates, sometimes civil society actually does step up when the government balks. We saw that again this week in Iceland when 11,000 citizens volunteered to open their homes to refugees of the Syrian Civil War after the Icelandic government claimed there was only room for 50 people. But much more than that will be needed all across Europe.

There’s a zone for us, somewhere a green zone for us

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You know the old expression: When one country’s green zone closes…

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Friday ordered security forces to grant civilians access to Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone in an apparent bid to stem mounting discontent over poor services and abuse of power.

Protected by countless checkpoints and concrete barriers, the 10-square-kilometre (4-square-mile) area on the bank of the Tigris River has become a symbol of the disconnect between Iraq’s leadership and its people – as well as wreaking havoc on traffic in the city of 7 million.

It once housed the headquarters of the US occupation and before that one of Saddam Hussein’s republican palaces, and is now the seat of government and of several Western embassies.

“The Green Zone is seen by the rest of the population as a protected area for VIPs,” said Middle East expert David Rigoulet-Roze in an interview with FRANCE 24. “The airport being nearby, officials can also get from their office to their plane without having to go through sensitive neighbourhoods.”
[…]
[The policy changes by PM Abadi] are also likely to raise alarm bells among Western diplomats concerned about security threats to embassies located in the Green Zone.

 
…Western diplomats try to find a new one to open.

Western nations, like the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain are banking that a new government of unity would ask them for help to stabilise Libya.

A European diplomat told me they envisioned establishing a “safety zone” in the capital that would protect foreign diplomatic missions using a foreign force.

 
Pretty sure that’s how that saying goes.

Tunisia debates ex-regime corruption amnesty bill

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Flag-of-Tunisia

Claiming it is a recessionary necessity for bringing back domestic investment by Tunisian businessmen and government bureaucrats affiliated with the former regime, Tunisia’s leading party (which is itself relatively aligned with the old regime) is proposing a controversial law to accelerate and streamline the process for forgiving corruption-related crimes committed before the 2010 revolution:

The economic reconciliation bill proposed by the presidency, however, calls for “an amnesty … in favour of civil servants, public officials and the like, regarding acts related to financial corruption and embezzlement of public funds, as long as such acts did not seek to achieve personal gain”, according to an English translation of the bill provided to Al Jazeera by the ICTJ.

 
Oh, well, if the embezzlement of public funds was not meant “to achieve personal gain” then I guess it must be ok.

That’s about as plausible as a former deputy governor in China’s Shandong province recently claiming that “nearly all of the money he accepted [5.6 million yuan] had simply been set aside – and that he was in principle saving money for the country.”

The tax policy of Trumponomics

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A recent New York Times headline blared “Republicans Wary of Donald Trump’s Populist Tone on Taxes.”

On the one hand, this development is hilarious because he’s slamming a huge wedge into the Republican Party. On the other hand, oddly enough some (though not all!) of these tax proposals are pretty legit, at least in theory.

He has threatened to increase taxes on the compensation of hedge fund managers. And he has vowed to change laws that allow American companies to benefit from cheaper tax rates by using mergers to base their operations outside the United States.
[…]
“The one problem I have with the flat tax is that rich people are paying the same as people that are making very little money,” Mr. Trump said. “And I think there should be a graduation of some kind.”

 
Implementing his “ideas” is of course another matter, and he would undoubtedly do that wrong if he were actually to become president.

Previously on AFD on this topic:

– Op-Ed (for The Globalist) | Pfizer: Tax havens or bust!
– Treasury Dept acts to discourage tax avoidance mergers
– Are Trump’s bankruptcies worse than other business law manipulations?

Tax savings that cost more than social expenditures

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From a 2013 Baltimore Sun piece, “Cut tax breaks, not food stamps”, how U.S. executives can save more in taxes in a single dinner than poor families can receive in food stamp money in a month:

Imagine that the tab for dinner and drinks for 10 executives comes to $1,600. Current tax law allows companies to deduct half of the cost of business meals — in this case, $800. With a corporate tax rate of 35 percent, each dollar of deductions yields 35 cents of tax savings — so that $800 deduction saves $280 in taxes. This means one dinner for 10 people provides more public food assistance than the $279 an average household receives in food stamps for the whole month.

But somehow we can’t possibly afford such programs.

h/t Wonkblog: “The rich get government handouts just like the poor. Here are 10 of them.”

I suspect I’m going to have a lot more to say on this particular topic of tax savings that cost more than social program expenditures in future posts and episodes of the radio show. Particularly after I started reading through various Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) reports on tax subsidies to the wealthy, including their 2014 report “Redeploying $540 Billion in Federal Spending to Help All Americans Save, Invest, and Build Wealth” (PDF – updated link). Spoiler alert: Hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue is lost each year to Federal tax credit programs disproportionately (and needlessly) benefiting wealthy households.

Lebanon gov’t hastily builds concrete wall, then tears it down

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As previously explained, Beirut, Lebanon is in the midst of a series of protests against the dysfunctional national government for failing to arrange for trash collection in the capital. The government began panicking and backtracking after riot police violently assaulted protesters. But that didn’t mean they were actually planning to fix anything. They just didn’t want to have another crackdown.

This might be the weirdest possible solution:

The protests turned violent over the weekend, prompting the government to erect a concrete wall outside its main building to prevent protesters from reaching it.

Within hours, the wall was filled with anti-government graffiti.

“State of Shabiha,” one young man scrawled, an Arabic term for thugs. Another drawing showed a man’s body wrapped in a black cloth below a caption that read: “The shroud of the state.”

On Tuesday, authorities began removing the wall, just 24 hours after it was installed.

“They won’t fool us by removing the wall,” said Sarhan, the You Stink supporter. “Remove it or not, we don’t care. We want… an end to sectarianism. We want to build a state,” he said.

 
Popping a concrete wall into place — I assume they used pre-fab barriers rather than pouring it on-site — definitely sends a pretty specific message: “We are ‘fraidy-cats.” That’s in line with the rather pathetic, frantic pinwheeling of the Prime Minister after the crackdown.

“I was never in this for a position in government, I am one of you. I am with the people. Do not pit this conflict [as] one camp against the other. Target all the politicians.”

 
Delusional, tone-deaf speechifying to try to placate protesters is usually a pretty good sign of the impending fall of a government.

Also a nice touch, in building the wall, to give everyone at the protests a media-friendly canvas on which to paint their frustrations. Have Lebanon’s leaders never heard of all the political graffiti on the West Bank security barrier or the West Berlin wall?

Yemen: Saudis “liberate” Aden; Qaeda waltzes in immediately

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yemen-map

Saudi Arabia liberates and stabilizes Yemen like this:

“Dozens of al Qaeda militants were patrolling the streets with their weapons in total freedom in a number of areas in Tawahi [port district, Aden]. At the same time, others raised the al Qaeda black flag above government buildings,” a resident told Reuters.

He said the flag was also flying over the administrative building of the port, although a port official later said that the flag was flying at the gate of the port’s complex.
[…]
Yemen’s Deputy Interior Minister Brigadier General Ali Nasser Lakhsha played down the threat posed by the gunmen in the Aden neighborhoods.
[…]
Residents say policemen and government army units are now largely absent from Aden, where services have lapsed and the ruins from earlier battles have gone unrepaired.

“All these guns and gunmen everywhere is a thing that Aden has never seen before…Fear is spreading that it will eventually give way to chaos, and more wars in the future” said Yemeni analyst Abdulqader Ba Ras.

 
That was on Saturday, August 23rd. They withdrew on Sunday after first trying to seize a military base. They still control the populous southern port city of Mukalla (see map above).
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