Category Archives: Arsenal Pulse

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

Eritrea: East Africa’s Open-Air Prison Nation

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Eritrea — a country of 6.4 million people, located on East Africa’s Red Sea coastline — separated by referendum from Ethiopia in 1993 following a brutal three-decade civil war. Since then, it has remained firmly under the single-party rule of Isaias Afwerki, who led the main rebel group since 1978 and the country since 1991. His reign has become ever more brutal and the country ever more impoverished in the elapsed time since.

The report of a year-long United Nations inquiry into the country confirmed the worst fears of many observers and critics. Eritrea has become one gigantic prison and a virtual hell on earth:

Slavery-like practices are routine and torture is so widespread that the commission said it could only conclude that the government’s policy was to encourage its use.
[…]
Eritrea effectively enslaves people by a system known as “national service”, but which really involves “arbitrary detention, torture, sexual torture, forced labour, absence of leave”, the report said.

National service is supposed to last 18 months, but the commission spoke to one witness who had fled after 17 years. Witnesses reported people being executed for trying to avoid being drafted into service as recently as 2013, it said.

 
The conditions are so horrifying and unbearable that as many as 10% of all Eritreans have fled the country, despite the government enforcing a Shoot-to-Kill border control policy to try to prohibit any emigration whatsoever. Some 5,000 citizens are leaving each month. The government insisted the UN report was a “vile slander.”

If you’re wondering why so many people in recent years have faced the incredibly treacherous (and often fatal) Mediterranean journey to enter the European Union illegally, look no further than Eritrea to find your answer. It has been one of the single largest source countries for migrants arriving without documents into the EU by boat. The unspeakable conditions of Eritrean daily life and the sheer difficulty of escaping the country in the first place make the intense dangers of crossing the Mediterranean with human smugglers look like the easy part. It is, fortunately, also why Eritrean migrants have a better chance than most of receiving asylum status.

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Turkish riot dispersal industry takes a hit (really)

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The business section English-language Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News reports “Water cannon producer’s stock dips after Turkey’s ruling AKP loses majority.”

The largest supplier of police water cannons in Turkey has seen a steep fall in its stock prices, hours after the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its parliamentary majority.

Shares in Katmerciler Ekipman, the company that manufactures the riot control vehicles popularly known as TOMAs, decreased 10 percent early June 8.

The fall was worse than the average decline in Borsa Istanbul stock prices, which saw a fall as low as 8.15 percent in its opening following the June 7 general elections.

 
The reason? Turns out it will be probably harder to win government contracts to hose down protesters when they voted for the government’s likely coalition partners. It’s also hard when your company depended on a suspiciously close relationship with the ruling party very specifically:

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu had said the government “would buy 10 new TOMAs for each one destroyed” by ongoing street protests in the country.

The company, which is owned by a former AKP deputy, İsmail Katmerci, emerged as one of the biggest winners from the nationwide Gezi Park demonstrations in 2013.

 
The new big winner is likely to be less partisan alternatives for acquiring riot dispersal tools — like UK-based manufacturers for example. The AK Party may have lost its majority in Turkey and may be on the verge of joining a coalition, but the Conservatives in Britain just got out of a coalition and into a majority government. That means five more years of extremely enthusiastic government approvals of arms sales to governments engaged in suppressing popular demonstrations by their own people. With rigorous oversight, of course. Wink.

And regardless of who comes to power in Turkey’s next government, there will still be a purchases to be made: Turkish passion for authoritarian over-reactions to mild criticism is sadly likely to continue for a while longer.

Riot police in action during Gezi park protests in Istanbul, June 16, 2013. (Credit: Mstyslav Chernov via Wikimedia)

Riot police in action during Gezi park protests in Istanbul, June 16, 2013. (Credit: Mstyslav Chernov via Wikimedia)

Denmark’s Thorning-Schmidt: Preview of a Hillary 1st term?

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I think it’s likely that the first term (and first re-election campaign) of Denmark’s first female Prime Minister, Social Democrat leader Helle Thorning-Schmidt, probably gives us a forecast of what a hypothetical first term for President Hillary Clinton would look like and how she would likely position herself during her re-election effort. You can make of that what you will, but I think it would prove to be more than a passing comparison between the two.

Here are some excerpts from an Irish Times report on the closing weeks of the incredibly close campaign for the 2015 Danish parliamentary elections on June 18:

Her centrist – some would say [market] liberal – reform drive has won over Denmark’s business leaders. Now she hopes to win over reform-weary voters with a promise of €5 billion in additional social spending.
[…]
she launched a publicity campaign appearing to take a tougher line on immigration. Her party hopes this will peel away voters from the traditionally anti-immigration Danish People’s Party. Posters went up around Danish cities with a smiling prime minister and statements such as “If you come to Denmark you should Work”.

Thorning-Schmidt has been praised by some Danes for her straight-talking on a longtime taboo issue. Others are uncertain whether she is trying to beat or join the People’s Party on immigration. Some left-wing Danes see a danger of fanning intolerance towards foreigners, whether eastern Europeans or asylum seekers.
[…]
Social Democrat strategists are confident voters will reward their immigration policy they believe is tough without being heartless.

“What we have said on immigration is clear and common sense,” said Niels Fuglsang, a Social Democrat election strategist. “We have tightened requirements of how many immigrants we have, so our society can absorb and handle them. And we ask of immigrants here nothing more than we ask of Danes – that they work and contribute to our society.”
[…]
“Helle has stolen two shiny weapons from her rivals: economic reform from the Liberals, immigration from the People’s Party,” said Annette Juhlers, a news anchor and political adviser. “She’s more confident recently and I see a sparkle in her eye. She’s fighting tough and I think she’s realised that she likes it.”

 
The 2015 Danish parliamentary elections are on my 15 elections in 2015 to watch list from January. I highlighted the political mainstreaming of the People’s Party anti-immigrant ideology as a continuing problem likely to worsen in this election.

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Report out on Canada’s historical abuse of indigenous people

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ThinkProgress, “The Canadian Government Systematically Tortured And Abused Aboriginal Children For 100 Years”:

This process of “cultural genocide” was one major objective behind the Canadian government’s support of residential schools for Aboriginal children, according to a damning report released by the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Tuesday.

The children’s cultural identity was not the only thing that suffered at the schools — First Nation, Métis, and Inuit children were brutalized through physical abuse, sexual violence, derogatory language, meager food, and a deliberate attempt to rid them of their cultural identities. The commission found that at least 3,201 students died while at the schools, often because of abuse and neglect.

Families were often coerced by police into sending their children to these schools as part of a policy, intended, “not to educate them, but primarily to break their link to their culture and identity,” according to the commission’s findings. The schools functioned first under the purview of various churches, and then with the support of the government from 1883 until 1998.
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“Seven generations of children went through these schools and we have said that coming to terms with this past, in a way that allows for there to be a much more mutually respectable relationship is going to take, perhaps, generations as well,” Justice Murray Sinclair, who heads the commission, told NPR.

 
The program was not officially ended until 1998 (!), although it was wound down in most places in the early 1980s (hence the “100 years” figure above). Meanwhile, as recently as last fall, Canada’s Conservative-led government was upset that they might have to consult native peoples on policies under their existing treaty obligations to the federation’s indigenous communities and sovereign nations.

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New Hampshire starts to feel the Bern

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The Wall Street Journal — reporting from Keene, New Hampshire (population 23,409 as of the 2010 Census) — “Bernie Sanders Draws Crowds With Matter-of-Fact Message”:

About 800 people squeezed into a rec center on a sunny afternoon to get a glimpse of Mr. Sanders as he made his case that America needs him in the White House.

With all the metal folding chairs taken, people stood against the walls for a speech and question-and-answer session that lasted more than an hour altogether.
[…]
The Sanders campaign has the feel of an underfunded startup coping with unanticipated demand. Almost as an afterthought midway through his speech, Mr. Sanders mentioned that people should take a look at his campaign website. An aide later grabbed a microphone and gave the crowed more explicit instructions, asking them to text the campaign for regular updates on Mr. Sanders’s activities.
[…]
In his speech, he called for a “Medicare-for-all” health-care system, free tuition at public colleges and universities, and a breakup of the big financial institutions.

 
The comparison to a “startup coping with unanticipated demand” interests me in light of my suggestion yesterday that his campaign might gain substantial traction by mimicking the growth strategy of “[s]uccessful internet apps and platforms [that] generally seem to rise initially through favorable, viral word-of-mouth from early users” rather than the “expensive ad buys” of a conventional modern candidacy or an established corporate behemoth. This is merely the latest big crowd being reported in New Hampshire (or Iowa).

No, Mr. President. TPP is not “progressive”.

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“TPP will end up being the most progressive trade agreement in our history” – Pres. Obama

The Globalist rebuttal:

The progressive movement, which Teddy Roosevelt helped champion a century ago, broke up business monopolies. It also promoted fair market competition, reformed taxation and gave voters a direct say on many issues. Furthermore, the progressive movement added protections against abusive labor practices, defended natural resources and reformed the business-captured U.S. Senate.

In this day and age, a progressive would also be someone who will make sure that trade deals are fair and balanced – instead of basically handing the keys to the trade castle to the U.S. multinational corporations, as Mr. Obama has largely done with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Read More.

Is EU member democracy compatible with fiscal union?

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After four months of mounting tension between pro-austerity European Union officials and Greece’s anti-austerity Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, a breaking point appears to have arrived. The Prime Minister published an op-ed (see below) questioning whether the increasingly centralized fiscal / currency decision-making authority in the Union is compatible with continued democratic self-determination by each member country’s populations.

Asking that question so publicly (and in a hostile tone) is likely to solidify his growing pariah status within the European Union, but it is not altogether unreasonable. In fact, more than a few political theorists and economists have been raising the point since the start of the currency crisis in 2010. Maybe it’s simply not possible to have a strong monetary / fiscal / currency union without an equally strong political union. Such an arrangement either allows individual member countries’ voters and legislators to veto necessary standardization of union-wide policies, or it forces member countries to accept rules and decisions set by unelected and unrepresentative officials without popular consent.

In Greece’s case, the voters plainly rejected the policies that the Union and the IMF demanded the government deliver. Whether or not the policies are merited, if the people exercise their sovereign self-determination to reject the policies, the ostensibly pro-democracy European Union either needs to rethink its demands or rethink its overall sustainability as an economic union without political unity.

Here are excerpts from the Tsipras op-ed, as reported by the UK’s Express newspaper:

He envisioned a future where a “super” finance minister of the eurozone wielded unlimited power and the ability to reject budgets of sovereign states that are not aligned with its “extreme” ideals.
[…]
Writing in an article for a French newspaper this weekend, Mr Tsipras blasted creditors.

He said: “The lack of an agreement so far is not due to the supposed intransigent, uncompromising and incomprehensible Greek stance.

“It is due to the insistence of certain institutional actors on submitting absurd proposals and displaying a total indifference to the recent democratic choice of the Greek people.”

He added: “An initial thought would be that this insistence is due to the desire of some to not admit their mistakes and instead, to reaffirm their choices by ignoring their failures.

“I simply cannot believe that the future of Europe depends on the stubbornness or the insistence of some individuals.

“My conclusion, therefore, is that the issue of Greece does not only concern Greece; rather, it is the very epicentre of conflict between two diametrically opposing strategies concerning the future of European unification.”

Mr Tsipras said that the strategy of EU creditors who insist on austerity means “the complete abolition of democracy in Europe, the end of every pretext of democracy, and the beginning of disintegration and of an unacceptable division of United Europe.”

He added: “This means the beginning of the creation of a technocratic monstrosity that will lead to a Europe entirely alien to its founding principles.

“It appears that this new European power is being constructed, with Greece being the first victim. To some, this represents a golden opportunity to make an example out of Greece for other countries that might be thinking of not following this new line of discipline.”

He finished the article by adding: “If some, however, think or want to believe that this decision concerns only Greece, they are making a grave mistake.”

 
For more analysis on this tension between the European Union’s supranational democratic deficit and member-national self-determination see my March 2015 essay, “Drawbacks of Technocracy, Part 1: Europe’s Political Crisis”.

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