Category Archives: Arsenal Pulse

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

During a civil war, “never remember my password,” dear browser

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Another twist in the Libya crisis (background report), reported by Reuters via the Oman Tribune:

A self-declared government set up by an armed group that seized the Libyan capital in August has taken over the websites of the state administration and the national oil company, adding to confusion over who is running the country.

With Libya’s official government and parliament now operating from towns hundreds of miles east of Tripoli, the armed group, from the western city of Misrata, that has seized ministry buildings in the capital now controls their websites.

The website of Prime Minister Abdullah Thinni – who now sits with his cabinet in the eastern city of Bayda – shows the picture of the man the Misrata rebels have declared as prime minister, Omar Al Hasi, and lists the names of his team.

The group, which calls itself the National Salvation government, has also taken over the website of the National Oil. Next to tender offers, the website features the picture of the self-declared government’s oil minister.

 
Sounds like they might have literally just walked in to abandoned government ministry buildings in Tripoli, turned on the computers, and started updating the websites.

And that’s why you sign out of accounts, clear browser caches, and don’t save your passwords anywhere, when you’re working on a government computer in the middle of a civil war!

flag-of-libya-wide

Into the Black: The Nearly Ill-Fated First Spacewalk

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The exclusive BBC interview and huge multimedia feature on the first human to walk in space is not to be missed:

[Alexey] Leonov, now 80, has given a rare interview to the BBC in which he talks about the series of emergencies that made the trek back to Earth worthy of any Hollywood movie.

Minutes after he stepped into space, Leonov realised his suit had inflated like a balloon, preventing him from getting back inside.

Later on, the cosmonauts narrowly avoided being obliterated in a huge fireball when oxygen levels soared inside the craft. And on the way back to Earth, the crew was exposed to enormous G-forces, landing hundreds of kilometres off target in a remote corner of Siberia populated by wolves and bears.

Afterwards, the Soviet authorities revealed nothing about the problems. For years, few people knew the truth.

 
It almost makes the movie “Gravity” look like a walk in the park, and it’s a true story.

Leonov on the first-ever extra-vehicular excursion in space. (Credit: Soviet space program via Wikipedia)

Leonov on the first-ever extra-vehicular excursion in space. (Credit: Soviet space program via Wikipedia)

Mitch McConnell tries to run for and against Obamacare

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Mitch McConnell is trying to convince Kentuckians that if “Obamacare” is fully repealed, the popular state-run Kynect insurance exchange would magically keep going and not suddenly become meaningless. If it wasn’t obvious that he was blatantly lying to win votes, one would wonder what he thought the website does, if not for serving up private insurance plans regulated and formulated by the very law he wants to repeal, the Affordable Care Act. Repealing the standards, of course, would then make a comparison of plans impossible.

Radio Archive: Sasha and I discuss how Kynect was set up and why it works so well. [Produced October 29, 2013; Running Time: 14:13]
AFD 62 – Part 1 – Kynect discussion

mcconnelling

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New York Times runs expose on Iraqi chemical weapons, US mishandling

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A huge new report from the New York Times examines how the U.S. military and government systematically mishandled and covered up pre-1991 chemical weapons found in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.

Thousands of chemical weapons were eventually found in Iraq after the invasion, only they were all from the stockpiles the West had provided before Saddam Hussein got on their bad guy list, so the Bush Administration suppressed the discoveries (and dangers to troops) to avoid embarrassment, since it wasn’t an active and rogue program after all, and they didn’t want to admit our troops were being harmed by US-designed/European-made chemical weapons.

The New York Times found 17 American service members and seven Iraqi police officers who were exposed to nerve or mustard agents after 2003. American officials said that the actual tally of exposed troops was slightly higher, but that the government’s official count was classified.”

 
Because the aging weapons actually supported the case that no new weapons had been produced after 1991, the information was concealed from ground troops who weren’t expecting to stumble on them, military doctors trying to treat the troops, Congress, and everyone else. Troops were regularly ordered to deny having found active sarin and mustard weapons, and medical staff were so unprepared to handle cases that they often tried to deny exposure had occurred. One sergeant even had to look up his symptoms online to confirm it had been mustard gas. That lack of attention has continued.

Prompted by the Times reporting, the Army acknowledged that it had not provided the medical care and long-term tracking required by its chemical exposure treatment guidelines. It said it would identify all troops and veterans who had been exposed and update and follow their cases.

 
The main area of remaining caches fell to ISIS earlier this year; though the weapons are generally unusable in intended form they have previously been repurposed successfully by insurgents in roadside bombs and booby traps.

Pallets of 155 mm artillery shells containing "HD" (distilled sulfur mustard agent) at Pueblo Depot Activity (PUDA) chemical weapons storage facility. (Credit: US Army via Wikipedia.) Similar shells, made in Europe before the first Gulf War, were found in Iraq by US forces.

Pallets of 155 mm artillery shells containing “HD” (distilled sulfur mustard agent) at Pueblo Depot Activity (PUDA) chemical weapons storage facility. (Credit: US Army via Wikipedia.) Similar shells, made in Europe before the first Gulf War, were found in Iraq by US forces.

With airstrikes, Turkey-PKK ceasefire apparently over

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I guess this is the payback promised on Sunday by President Erdogan. NYT:

Turkish fighter jets struck Kurdish insurgent positions in southeastern Turkey on Monday, shaking the country’s fragile peace process with the Kurds and demonstrating the complexities surrounding the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State, which Turkey is under heavy pressure to join.

Turkish news reports said the strikes had been aimed at fighters of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, known as the PKK, and were in retaliation for the shelling of a Turkish military base.

Such airstrikes were once common, as Turkey fought a Kurdish insurgency in a conflict that claimed almost 40,000 lives over nearly three decades. But hostilities essentially ceased two years ago when the peace process began, and both the Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah and an online statement from the PKK said the airstrikes on Monday were the first since then. The Turkish military also released a statement, but it did not mention airstrikes specifically, only an exchange of fire with “terrorists.”

 
Interesting that they didn’t respond with fighter jets to occasional shelling by ISIS from Syria in recent weeks.

This latest development will likely validate and cheer up the hardline Turkish nationalists in the elite who never supported the peace process — and will probably confirm the suspicions of the public majority that also opposed the attempts to negotiate peace in 2012 and 2013.

The PKK and Kurdish media reported no casualties so far, and the group called the airstrikes a violation of the ceasefire:

“After almost two years the occupying Turkish army conducted a military operation against our forces yesterday for the first time […] with these air strikes they violated the ceasefire.”

 

Map: Ethnically Kurdish zones of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran -- circa 1992. (Credit: CIA)

Map: Ethnically Kurdish zones of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran — circa 1992. (Credit: CIA)

Wendy Davis team attacks opponent’s wheelchair

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There have been a lot of things to criticize the campaign team of Texas Democratic governor nominee Wendy Davis for. It hasn’t been well run. But perhaps the most egregious so far was the recent decision to run an attack ad against her Republican opponent that focuses on his disability (wheelchair-bound partial paralysis from an accident).

Don’t get me wrong: Attorney General Greg Abbott is awful. And he is indeed probably justifiably labeled a hypocrite (see below). But calling politicians hypocrites isn’t that effective in general, because most people kind of assume it anyway, and this is bound to make her look far worse than it does him.

The ad argues that Abbott successfully sued for his 1984 injury, but later as a Texas Supreme Court justice and state attorney general opposed similar efforts from other people suing hospitals and corporations.

“Abbott argued a woman whose leg was amputated was not disabled because she had an artificial limb,” the narrator says. “He ruled against a rape victim who sued a corporation for failing to do a background check on a sexual predator. He sided with a hospital that failed to stop a dangerous surgeon who paralyzed patients.”

 
Here’s the the thing: Those actions are terrible, but emphasizing his own disability and criticizing him explicitly for being a heartless hypocrite wasn’t necessary to make that point. He’s been campaigning all year with ads talking about and featuring his disability. Given that many of Abbott’s own ads mentioned or showed his wheelchair, she could just have pointed out his shameful positions without also explicitly bringing up the wheelchair and suggesting he’s a hypocrite. People could figure that out on their own because they already know the other half, without it being brought up explicitly, and without empty wheelchair images.

Therefore, this seems like a really bad move, even if the criticisms raised are warranted. Instead of the focus being on how horrible his record is, the focus is on how nasty the Davis campaign’s TV ads are. Already, most of the past long weekend was taken up debating whether or not it was out of bounds, and she keeps defending it. I don’t really see the point.

California environment laws now include more Native input

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A law signed last week in California has finally amended existing environmental laws to establish a pathway for more direct and cohesive input from Native American communities when they are concerned that land-use approvals for development might negatively affect heritage and sacred sites. Crown City News:

“This is an important step toward aligning California’s environmental laws with the values that are often espoused about respecting tribal heritage and history, not only for this generation, but for future generations of all Californians,” said Tribal Chairman Mark Macarro of the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians. “We deeply appreciate Assemblymember Gatto for his leadership, and the legislature’s support.”
[…]
California is struggling to preserve the last remnants of its Native American past. Recently, thieves stole carvings from an unprotected sacred site on the Volcanic Tableland, north of Bishop, and developers have sought to place everything from dumps, to housing developments, to granite mines, near or on top of ancient sacred sites.

“If we don’t do something, future generations will wonder what happened to California’s pre-Columbian heritage,” said Gatto.
[…]
Currently, tribes are not treated as coherent sovereign entities under CEQA [California Environmental Quality Act], but instead as mere members of the public, even if wishing to express a unified opinion about a site which has been a unique part of the tribe’s heritage for thousands of years.

 
With this oversight finally rectified, it’s expected that other long-sought reforms to the California Environmental Quality Act will now be passable, because new measures to “streamline” the law won’t risk the unintended side effect of making it even easier to roll over Native concerns.