Category Archives: Arsenal Pulse

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

Carolina guvs, past and present, aim for McDonnell-level corruption

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They should ironically name Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina the “Ethics Coast” — like the Space Coast but for launching massive corruption into the highest levels of state government:

In the months after receiving his $171,071 payout of stock from Tree.com, [N.C. Gov. Pat] McCrory appointed the state’s banking director and a majority of the banking commissioners who regulate mortgage brokers.
[…]
That Jan. 30, the board voted to accelerate the vesting of McCrory’s 10,063 restricted shares of Tree.com stock, valued on that date at $171,071, even though thousands of the shares were not due to vest for another 16 months.

Without the board’s action, the shares would have expired, making them worthless. Tree.com founder and Chief Executive Officer Doug Lebda told the AP in an interview that the decision to accelerate the vesting of the shares for retiring board members is standard practice at the company.
McCrory’s total take of $185,509 from Tree.com in 2013 far exceeded the $139,590 salary he earned as governor that year.

 
(Which is why Pat McCrory is a compassionate governor with a true sense of the plight of the non-plutocrat and the poor. Ok, now back to Tree.com…)

[U.S. Rep. from South Carolina Mark] Sanford joined the Tree.com board in April 2012 after finishing his term as South Carolina governor in a cloud of ethics questions. He had been forced to pay $74,000 to settle 37 state ethics charges, including using taxpayer funds to pay for flights to Argentina to visit his mistress.
[…]
All told, Sanford cleared $239,159 in stock, director’s fees and special dividends in his 13 months with Tree.com, records show. Since then, Sanford has voted on financial regulations in Congress, where rank-and-file members are paid an annual salary of $174,000.

 
And I didn’t even bring up S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley, who has her own special brand of ethics too.

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Texas to Syria: The Jihadist Journey of a Used Pickup Truck

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Woops:

Texas plumber says he has no idea how his old company truck ended up in a jihadi photo from the front lines of the war in Syria produced by the militant group ISIS.

The New York Daily News reported that Mark Oberholtzer of Texas City traded the company car in at a dealership in 2013 and hadn’t thought of it since.

On Monday, however, the Ansar al-Deen Front, a Syrian militant group, posted a photo featuring the black Ford F-250 pickup with an anti-aircraft gun mounted on the truck bed and the logo of Oberholtzer’s Mark-1 Plumbing Company and contact information emblazoned on the doors.

 
Ansar al-Deen Front (aka “Supporters of the Religion” Front) is one of the newer Syrian militant coalitions, operating as an alliance of three “neutral” rebel fighters (mostly foreigners) only since July 2014. They are based in western Syria and claim not to be aligned with either ISIS or the various FSA and Nusra Front groups opposing ISIS. This isn’t terribly surprising since they are apparently mostly not Syrians — hailing from farther flung places such as Morocco and Chechnya — which probably reduces their stake in the internal divisions of the anti-Assad groups.

But back to the poor plumber in Texas. Apart from the death threats from stupid people who can’t figure out this was obviously unintended, I love this story for its globalized absurdity. It is the perfect distillation of all the dedicated but under-appreciated reporting for about 10 years by all the Iraq correspondents noticing pre-owned/stolen North American vehicles repeatedly showing up in bombing attacks and trying to figure out how they got there but not being able to trace them very far. Even FBI investigations didn’t make definitive progress. See this 2005 account:

The inquiry began after coalition troops raided a bomb-making factory in Fallujah last November and found a sport utility vehicle registered in Texas that was being prepared for a bombing mission.

Investigators said they are comparing several other cases where vehicles evidently stolen in the United States wound up in Syria or other Middle East countries and ultimately into the hands of Iraqi insurgent groups — including Al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Jordanian-born Abu Musab Al Zarqawi.

 
Of course, Al Qaeda in Iraq was subsequently renamed the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), bringing the whole thing full circle to today’s conflict.

And this new story also involves another of my favorite topics (dating to the Libyan Revolution in 2011): Militants Driving Fast With Stolen Anti-Aircraft Guns on Pickup Truck Beds That Should Not Be Used That Way.

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This can only possibly end amazingly well

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A further step in the never-ending deepening process of Egypt’s militarized state, country, and society:

Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi issued a decree on Monday to create a new police rank with arrest powers, the move will increase the number of law enforcement staff.

Spokesperson to the presidency, Alaa Youssef said in a statement that the decision aims at creating a new rank of ‘police aides’ who will be appointed and trained according to specific criteria.

The low ranking police positions will be limited to 19 to 23 year-olds who have completed preparatory school.

 
flag-of-egyptSounds a lot like it will be a nominally secular, Egyptian version of Iran’s Basij militias. No doubt they will be used to intimidate and terrorize the general population by endless harassment for petty infractions and alleged religious violations. In particular, expect heavy harassment of female citizens.

At minimum, it will create a whole new class of people loyal to and dependent upon the centrality of security forces in Egyptian political and economic life. And that kind of insurance policy for the military is exactly what the 2013 coup was meant to bring about.

Western Libya militias move on eastern oil export terminals

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According to the BBC, western Libyan Islamist militias this past weekend launched a surprise attack on the eastern / anti-Islamist controlled oil export terminals at Sidra and Ra’s Lanuf, two port cities just west of the approximate political dividing line between eastern and western Libya.

Map of the three pre-1963 Libyan provinces approximated over a map of present-day subdivisions. (Credit: Spesh531 - Wikimedia)

Map of the three pre-1963 Libyan provinces approximated over a map of present-day subdivisions. (Credit: Spesh531 – Wikimedia)

This is when things are going to get really real in Libya’s rising domestic conflict. Right now, as explained here previously, Libya’s oil export terminals at Sidra and other locations in the eastern end of the country are under control of the anti-Islamist “House of Representatives government” (HOR), based in Tobruk in the east, while the revenues from overseas oil sales are under the control of the pro-Islamist “General National Congress government” (GNC), based in in Tripoli.

But if the oil ports fall to the GNC, unifying control of both the exports and revenues under one side, what little cooperation remains between the two factions (by fiscal/economic necessity at the moment) will disintegrate. It will also put the HOR and its vaguely aligned anti-Islamist paramilitaries at serious risk of running out of funds for its payroll (and possibly trigger a very messy, major foreign intervention against the GNC).

Neither rival government currently has legal standing in Libya anymore, but the HOR faction has international recognition and was elected more recently.

The terrible CRomnibus

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The White House should be ashamed of itself for supporting the Continuing Resolution omnibus (“CRomnibus”) funding package the House of Representatives passed. This bill includes rollbacks to Dodd-Frank Financial Reform (written by Citigroup!) and campaign finance rules, it would allow cuts to current (not future!) retirees’ pension agreements, it cuts the EPA’s budget and SEC’s budget, and it will give sacred Apache land to a mining company … among a lot of other awful things. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan, was personally whipping House votes for this “funding bill,” and that alone should tell you everything you need to know.

Is all this really worth it to keep irresponsible Republicans from shutting down the government?

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I am donkey, hear me bray

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Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta may be off the hook at the International Criminal Court, but back home a lot of people still think he’s been pretty incompetent at handling rising terrorism spilling over from Somalia (in retaliation for Kenyan participation in counterterrorism campaigns there). The latest manifestation of discontent has come in the form of a mysterious donkey protest on Thursday:

A herd of [22] donkeys has been dumped in Nairobi’s central business district in an apparent political protest, it’s been reported.

Each of the animals was spray-painted with the word “tumechoka”, which is Swahili for “we’re fed up”, The Standard news website reports. A lorry was seen depositing the herd in the centre of the Kenyan capital, with the driver saying he’d been paid to drop them off. It’s thought the protest was against rising insecurity in the country, as the website notes the “tumechoka” slogan was used in a street protest against a brutal bus attack in northern Kenya in November. As the donkeys were unloaded from the lorry, one activist was heard shouting “we are tired of this leadership,” The Standard says. The scene attracted a large crowd, according to the BBC’s Robert Kiptoo in Nairobi. “Police had a hectic time trying to control the crowd, which had gathered in one of the streets to take a glimpse of the graffiti and take photographs,” he says. The animals are now being looked after by an animal welfare organisation. “We have taken the donkeys to our Moroto offices and arrested some people who are suspected to be involved in the evil act,” a police officer tells The Star newspaper.

 
Yes, how evil. So dastardly.

President Kenyatta recently fired a number of high-ranking interior and security officials, including some with so little background in the relevant portfolios that they almost make a commissioner of the Arabian Horse Association look qualified to manage a US federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

However, many saw it as too little too late, coming over a year after the horrific Westgate mall siege and the wildly incompetent response there.

US prepares to give sacred Native land to Australian mining firm

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Congress may be about to trade Federal public land in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest that includes a sacred Native American site to a subsidiary of the giant Australian mining company Rio Tinto for copper mining:

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell on Saturday criticized a last-minute addition to a major defense policy bill that would hand 2,400 acres of land in Arizona to an Australian mining corporation.
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But the land also includes sites sacred to the San Carlos Apache tribe, including Apache Leap, where warriors once leapt to their deaths rather than being killed or captured by U.S. troops moving west through the frontier.

The proposed land exchange had failed several times before, including once in 2013 when House Republicans scheduled a vote while Native American leaders were meeting with White House officials in Washington. Tribal activists pressured lawmakers into spiking the vote.

But it returned again this week, in the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act, a must-pass bill that sets the nation’s defense policy.

 
San_Carlos_Apache_sealThis is a yet another demonstration that Federal abuses of the Native American people are still ongoing (and Native interests and voices are still callously disregarded), rather than such treatment being some relic of a harsh but distant past. Interior Secretary Jewell called the provision “profoundly disappointing.”

Activists have launched an official WhiteHouse.gov Petition called Stop Apache Land Grab in an effort to get the provision removed.