Category Archives: Arsenal Pulse

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

German MP asks if his country’s (and party’s) leader supports salafists

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Chair of the center-right CDU, is being praised for participating in a rally against Islamophobia today (following up on her New Year’s remarks on the same subject). In particular, one line she issued today is getting a lot of attention:

Merkel, who is often known to avoid controversial issues, has weighed in strongly, condemning PEGIDA’s leaders and stressing on Monday that “Islam is part of Germany” – a comment that was plastered on the front pages of leading newspapers.

Not everyone in her party is happy about that is happy about that:

But it drew criticism from a range of right-wing politicians, including members of Merkel’s CDU.

“What Islam does she mean? Does this include fundamental Islamist and Salafist currents?” said Wolfgang Bosbach, a veteran CDU lawmaker. “Germany has a Judeo-Christian, not an Islamic, cultural tradition.”

 
This is not the first time Mr. Bosbach, a member of the Bundestag (national parliament) since 1994, has made remarks ostracizing German Muslims. He is a high-ranking member of the governing CDU party, however, and accusing his party leader and chancellor of being supportive of “fundamentalist Islam and Salafist currents” (a strand of hardline thinking that has been behind the extremist attacks and anti-democratic activities within radical Sunni Islam over the past two decades) is a disgusting and shameful attack.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU), September 2010. Credit: European People's Party via Wikimedia

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU), September 2010. Credit: European People’s Party via Wikimedia

Should we aim bigger on higher education demands?

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Beyond free community college tuition for two years, as proposed by President Obama last week, should young people and students be demanding even more?

Political infeasibility aside, what about just making college tuition zero at all public colleges in the United States for four years? Implementation logistics might be difficult (who pays whom how much, when something is free to the end user?), but the projected Federal costs of such a policy are actually fairly reasonable:

If President Obama truly wants to transform the cost of higher education, however, he could make college free for all students without having to lay out more money to pay for it. That’s because the federal government could take the $69 billion it currently spends to subsidize the cost of college through grants, tax breaks, and work-study funds and instead cover tuition at all public colleges, which came to $62.6 billion in 2012, the most recent data. (The government spends another $197.4 billion on student loans.) That would give all students who want to get a college degree a free option to do so. It could also put pressure on private universities to compete with the free option by reducing their costs, which have risen 13 percent over the last five years.

Eliminating college tuition with the money spent on subsidies could also make the system more equal. Currently, the government’s tax-based aid mostly flows to wealthy families instead of low- and middle-income ones. And Pell Grants, which do go to low-income students, have been cut in recent years and cover a small percentage of the cost of college.

 
If a free tuition program were means-tested or something along those lines — to ensure affluent students were not being given free rides on taxpayer funds (though I’m sure that would prove very politically unpopular and might undermine support for giving it to anyone) — the cost would be even less.

arizona-state-west-fletcher-library

Did Sri Lanka’s defeated president leave willingly?

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Last Thursday, early presidential elections in Sri Lanka resulted in an upset against the autocratic war criminal President Mahinda Rajapaksa. After a campaign that had clearly (and unexpectedly) trended sharply in favor of the challenger, former Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena, despite the president vastly outspending the opposing campaign, the final result was estimated to be 51.3%-47.6% in favor of Sirisena.

By early Friday morning, President Rajapaksa had conceded defeat and appeared to be exiting unexpectedly quickly and without fuss.

“President Mahinda Rajapaksa has left Temple Trees a short while ago,” said the statement from Wijeyananada Herath, Mr. Rajapaksa’s media director “President Rajapaksa said he is leaving in order to respect the verdict of the people.”
[…]
Mr. Rajapaksa’s son Namal wrote on Twitter that his family had accepted the results. “Thank you to everyone who supported us through these years,” he said. “We respect the voice of the people and Sri Lanka’s great democracy.”

 
There was immediate local speculation, however, that Rajapaksa had likely been strongly urged by allied authorities to step down immediately, rather than trying to drag things out or stage a coup:

After counting began on Thursday night, [Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Center for Policy Alternatives in Colombo] said, the president must have quickly understood that he had lost the election, and been encouraged to concede by army and police officials.

“I think he saw the writing on the wall,” Mr. Saravanamuttu said. “He would have realized there was a swing. His representatives within the arms of the state would have told him, ‘Look, we are not going to buck the popular will.’”

 
The incoming president’s team is already vowing an investigation into whether President Rajapaksa attempted to reach out to the country’s security forces, as the election results began rolling in, to solicit their support in remaining in power by force: Read more

Chris Christie’s latest scandal involves EZ Passes

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Remember how Christie still believes he’s going to run for president and have a shot? New scandal discovered:

On Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey issued a subpoena to members of the state legislature seeking records related to Baroni’s testimony at a 2013 hearing on the Bridgegate scandal. At that hearing, Baroni disclosed that he possessed E-ZPass customer data showing the traffic histories of constituents of state lawmakers who were interrogating him. Experts tell IBTimes that the disclosure of E-ZPass records appears to have violated state law protecting the privacy of drivers and also raises serious questions about the degree to which government agencies can keep tabs on the comings and goings of citizens.

 
Do read the full thing. It’s another impressive insight into the constant abuses of power and intimidation that have been hallmarks of the full Christie administration.

chris-christie

The NYPD: America’s Secret Police

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Misconduct by the NYPD (with or without the apparently irrelevant backing of the law, based on their recent disrespect for their elected leader) extends from the individual level – stop-and-frisk encounters or the chokehold killing of Eric Garner – to the systemic and massive.

As a reminder: It took until April 2014 for the NYPD to shutter a terrifying surveillance program against Muslim communities, which was established after the 9/11 attacks.

That program not only sent undercover spies to Muslim neighborhoods in the city to track ordinary New Yorkers going about their daily lives, but it extended across the entire northeastern United States – well beyond the bounds of New York City.

The program was advised by the CIA (see previous link) but acted without the knowledge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In true Orwell fashion, it was named the “Demographics Unit.”

Such “secret police” behavior – down to the inscrutably euphemistic name – is like something out of Tsarist Russia.

Such programs — or indeed national security in general — are not supposed to be the role of a municipal police force. Activities by the NYPD in the past decade and a half suit the secret police forces of a 19th century reactionary monarch in Europe far more than a 21st century American liberal democracy.

Flag of the New York City Police Department

Flag of the New York City Police Department

2,000 “feared dead” in raids by Boko Haram in NE Nigeria

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Last weekend, I posted a story on Boko Haram’s rout of a multi-national force and capture of a Nigerian base in the country’s northeast:

Nigeria’s strategically significant military base at Baga, near the border of Chad, fell to Boko Haram in a clear rout for the multi-national force stationed there, who apparently put up no resistance.

 
Some residents, who escaped the fall of the town and fled across Lake Chad and the national border, had reported at the time that Boko Haram had set the town of Baga on fire and was killing people indiscriminately. (Baga was previously also the site of a massacre by government counter-insurgency forces in 2013.)

The reports filtering out since then, about what happened next, are even more grim:

Boko Haram razed at least 16 villages in northern Nigeria, leaving 2,000 people unaccounted for and feared dead since Monday, Nigerian officials said Thursday.

It’s possible some of the missing are in hiding or are outside the country and uncounted (about 2,500 refugees crossed the border this week), but things look bleak on that possibility:

Borno state lawmaker Ahmed Khalifa told NBC News that “towns are just gone” and that the the villages along Lake Chad are “covered in bodies.” The village attacks reportedly began after militants seized a key military base and chased residents out of the area. After clearing the villages, they returned to kill survivors and burn down town structures.

 
TIME magazine reports this alarming development:

Boko Haram […] controls an estimated 30-35,000 square kilometers, roughly the same amount of terrain as Syria and Iraq’s Islamic State.

 
It’s pretty telling about U.S. priorities, over-reactions, and under-reactions in different parts of the world that the response to ISIS last year was sharply different — which is to say, not even on the same scale of magnitude — from the response to Boko Haram, even as they now control the same land area by size.

Mass executions by ISIS in Syria and Iraq have so far reportedly topped out at 700 people in a two week killing spree (although the total figures across incidents over the past year are significantly higher). If the civilian body count estimates coming out of north Borno state in northeast Nigeria prove correct, Boko Haram will have already significantly exceeded the August 2014 massacres by ISIS.

Keep in mind, however, that public official/government reports on the insurgency in Nigeria have often proven greatly exaggerated or altogether false, and information coming out of the Baga area is likely to be very sketchy at best right now. At minimum, though, the intensity and frequency of Boko Haram’s attacks on military and civilian targets (especially near the border regions) appear to be picking up steam.

Added January 9 at 7:33 PM ET: — Report from Amnesty International via the AP:

Hundreds of bodies — too many to count — remain strewn in the bush in Nigeria from an Islamic extremist attack that Amnesty International suggested Friday is the “deadliest massacre” in the history of Boko Haram.
[…]
District head Baba Abba Hassan said most victims are children, women and elderly people who could not run fast enough when insurgents drove into Baga, firing rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles on town residents.

“The human carnage perpetrated by Boko Haram terrorists in Baga was enormous,” Muhammad Abba Gava, a spokesman for poorly armed civilians in a defense group that fights Boko Haram, told The Associated Press.

He said the civilian [self-defense] fighters gave up on trying to count all the bodies. “No one could attend to the corpses and even the seriously injured ones who may have died by now,” Gava said.

 

Also: The BBC reports that nearby Niger’s troops will no longer be participating in the multi-national force in Borno state due to the deteriorating security situation (which seems a bit counter-intuitive since they’re supposed to be helping with that exact problem):

Soldiers from Niger had been there [at Baga base] but were not present when it was attacked.

Niger Foreign Minister Mohamed Bazoum told the BBC Hausa service: “We have 50 soldiers there and decided to withdraw them after Boko Haram captured Malamfatori town in October and continued to operate in the area with impunity.

“As you know, Baga is under [the control of] Boko Haram terrorists and unless the town is recaptured from them, we will not send back our troops.

 

Still image (via AFP) from a Boko Haram video communiqué received October 31, 2014.

Still image (via AFP) from a Boko Haram video communiqué received October 31, 2014.

Other police mutinies in U.S. history: Mississippi

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As the NYPD turns its back on its elected government and unilaterally refuses to enforce the law, let’s look back at another mutinous, anti-democratic police force that refused to uphold the law — Mississippi’s secret police.

For nearly two decades following the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling against school segregation, a secret state-level agency called the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission conducted surveillance on “subversive individuals and organizations that advocate civil disobedience” – i.e. civil rights activists.

Their primary mission was to resist the implementation of Federal government orders and laws on desegregation in Mississippi. This included aiding county governments in preventing African-Americans from registering to vote. Worse, their surveillance efforts have also been linked to the infamous lynching murders of three civil rights workers in 1964.

You can learn more about this secret police force from the Mississippi Department of Archives.

Flag of the State of Mississippi

Flag of the State of Mississippi