Category Archives: Arsenal Pulse

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

Cameroon deepens involvement against Boko Haram

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Following a coordinated, massive assault by Nigerian-based Boko Haram militants on Cameroonian targets, the government of Cameroon for the first time ordered airstrikes and rocket strikes on the attacking fighters. BBC:

About 1,000 militants attacked five villages, including Amchide, and seized the nearby Achigachia military base, where they raised their black flag, army spokesman Lt Col Didier Badjeck told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme. He said President Paul Biya then personally ordered the air force to intervene, forcing the militants out.

 
The base was reportedly retaken and the attackers repulsed. According the Cameroonian military, one soldier was killed and 41 Boko Haram members were killed. It was not immediately clear what aircraft participated in the counterattack, given the very weak state of the country’s air force.

This marks a significant development in Cameroon’s involvement in the regional war against Boko Haram. Thus far the country has been primarily concerned with trying to secure the border with Nigeria to stop militants trying to cross over.

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Suddenly, Mitch McConnell admits ACA can’t be repealed yet

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Interesting that Mitch McConnell wasn’t acknowledging this reality any time in the past 4.5 years, when he was using “repeal” as a talking point to whip up the base and try to win more seats in Congress:

So, we’re certainly gonna keep our commitment to the American people to make every effort we can to repeal it. It is a statement to the obvious, however, that Obama — of Obamacare — is the President of the United States, so I don’t want people to have [unrealistic] expectations about what may actually become law with Obama — of Obamacare — in the White House. But we intend to keep our commitment to the American people.

 
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Egypt censors fret over accuracy of Ridley Scott’s “Exodus”

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There are many reasons one might consider banning “Exodus: Gods & Kings” from your country. Excessive use of mediocre CGI for hours on end, for example! Or blasé anti-Arab racism by Ridley Scott!

But then there’s the reason given by the Egyptian state cultural censors:

Egypt has banned a Hollywood film based on the Biblical book of Exodus because of what censors described as “historical inaccuracies”. The head of the censorship board said these included the film’s depiction of Jews as having built the Pyramids, and that an earthquake, not a miracle by Moses, caused the Red Sea to part.

 
Still, I suppose as questionable factual editing by government officials goes, it’s still no state media claiming the military cured AIDS. At least nobody gets hurt by not being able to go see a terrible Ridley Scott movie in cinemas.

The Pyramids at Giza. (Credit: Ricardo Liberato via Wikimedia)

Above: The Pyramids at Giza, which definitely weren’t built by the Hebrews, so good job at least on catching that, Egyptian censors. (Credit: Ricardo Liberato via Wikimedia)

The hip new screw-you to America’s poor: Subprime phones

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NPR has been investigating the scammy world of subprime lease-to-own smartphone contracts targeted at low-income markets. Here’s an excerpt:

NPR visited six MetroPCS locations that offer SmartPay and called a dozen more, and their representatives made the same 90-day pitch — even though many customers don’t qualify for it.

Atchley doesn’t have a lot of spare cash, and he wanted out. He couldn’t return the phone for a refund to MetroPCS because, he says, he had already talked on it for over an hour. And when he called a Better Finance, their rep didn’t help either, he says.
[…]
Atchley and 231 other SmartPay customers have filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau and five have filed with federal regulators, consistently saying they were misled.

 
Update at 3:44 PM ET: Dave Weigel has also just published a piece on a related topic: abusive subprime auto lenders and their political influence. There is a much more detailed report in yesterday’s New York Times Dealbook on the dangerous world of car title loans to low-income folks.

A review by The New York Times of more than three dozen loan agreements found that after factoring in various fees, the effective interest rates ranged from nearly 80 percent to over 500 percent. While some loans come with terms of 30 days, many borrowers, unable to pay the full loan and interest payments, say that they are forced to renew the loans at the end of each month, incurring a new round of fees.

Customers of TitleMax, for example, typically renewed their loans eight times, a former president of the company disclosed in a 2009 deposition.

[…] roughly one in every six title-loan borrowers will have the car repossessed, according to an analysis of 561 title loans by the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit in Durham, N.C.

 
As a side note, I’ve also just blocked 19 categories of credit & lending advertising on this site because I noticed predatory ads showing up next to this post unfortunately. Hopefully those go away quickly.

The value of outrage

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Noah Berlatsky published a piece in The Atlantic on the pernicious (and recurring) trend of policing strong emotions — primarily “outrage” — as “unserious” in favor of “respectability” and “civility.” He looks at some historical examples of amped-up political and cultural outrage from well before the internet age and muses on its role in moving democracy forward. Here’s just a tiny taste:

The Ferguson and Eric Garner protests have been heavily promoted, organized, and in some cases funded on social media. Setting online outrage against “real” organizing neatly sidesteps the knottier truth—which is that outrage and organizing, online and off, are intertwined. The challenge is not to separate out the outrage, but to figure out a way to harness it to meaningful causes.
[…]
Outrage will never create perfect justice, because nothing will create perfect justice. It has undoubtedly been and is still used for trivialities, and not infrequently for evil. But the difficult truth of democracy is that without the logic of outrage, it’s hard to strive for a better world.

 
It’s also a bit frustrating to watch people try to curb or dismiss outrage that comes from a very real place and life experience. What if there aren’t two sides to be heard? (Or at least not two legitimate sides.) What if it’s actually valid to have and express strong emotions? What if being calm, cool, and collected is actually the inappropriate response? The cool cucumbers don’t seem to consider those possibilities.

Which isn’t to say everyone should be outraged, or has reason to be outraged, or should be outraged all the time. But it is to say that it has its place and isn’t automatically unjustified. It also doesn’t make someone automatically less intelligent or less qualified to speak. The content of people’s complaints is probably far more important than the tone.

Reuters: NYPD targets even its own Black officers

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A Reuters investigation finds NYPD is even attacking its own Black officers when they’re out of uniform. Here’s just a small excerpt from their interviews with two dozen current and retired Black, male NYPD officers:

The officers said this included being pulled over for no reason, having their heads slammed against their cars, getting guns brandished in their faces, being thrown into prison vans and experiencing stop and frisks while shopping. The majority of the officers said they had been pulled over multiple times while driving. Five had had guns pulled on them.

 
Beyond anecdotes, Black officers are also more likely to be killed in friendly fire incidents:

John Jay professor Delores Jones-Brown cited a 2010 New York State Task Force report on police-on-police shootings – the first such inquiry of its kind – that found that in the previous 15 years, officers of color had suffered the highest fatalities in encounters with police officers who mistook them for criminals.

China will send its first armed peacekeepers to South Sudan

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Almost exactly a year after I published an op-ed calling on China to break tradition and contribute combat-ready peacekeeping infantry — something they’ve never done before — to the UN mission in South Sudan, they have announced they will be doing just that.

700 troops will be arriving in January and March — along with drones, armored vehicles, mortars, anti-tank weapons, light arms, and body armor. China’s military and government stressed that the troops will only be armed to protect themselves from attack. (Although this seems like it might be overkill, at least two UN peacekeepers were killed in December 2013 while trying to defend a UN military base and refugee haven from being overrun by two thousand rebel child soldiers, who began massacring civilians once inside the base.)

It is China’s first UN peacekeeping mission that doesn’t just involve sending medics, engineers, guards, and other non-combat troops (of which they have sent thousands to UN-monitored conflicts all over the world).

China is very likely the only country with relatively good ties to just about everyone in South Sudan’s crisis, due to its role as the primary buyer and developer of South Sudanese oil. Although they lean somewhat toward supporting the incumbent government, they also need the rebels to cooperate (to restore the oil production levels) and the rebels need China (to buy the oil from their areas and give them revenue). This gives China an unusual opportunity to be the force in the middle. But it is also a sign that China is stepping up its role and responsibilities in world affairs to a level proportionate with its size and power.

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