Category Archives: Arsenal Pulse

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

J.K. Rowling labels Scottish ultranationalists “Death Eaterish”

  By

I guess the gloves are off now in this year’s Scottish independence referendum:

ROWLING has been subjected to an extraordinary torrent of online abuse from Scottish independence supporters after she donated [UK 1m pounds UK or US $1.7m] to the “No” campaign.

The creator of Harry Potter found herself targeted by the cybernats — the Yes backers who thrive on insulting those with different views — immediately after declaring her support for the Better Together campaign.

The writer, who lives in Edinburgh, is the most prominent figure to donate to either campaign. Her donation is a major coup for the pro-union campaign, which feared being out-financed by the Yes camp.

Yes Scotland and Better Together are now limited to spending $2.6m before the referendum — but the figure does not cover staff costs.

Rowling has previously made major contributions to research on multiple sclerosis, which her mother suffered from, and said that she was concerned about the effect a “yes” vote would have on medical research and on the economy.
[…]
Rowling launched a pre-emptive strike against the cybernats. She said that, although intelligent and thoughtful people made up the majority on both sides of the debate, “I also know that there is a fringe of nationalists who like to demonise anyone who is not blindly and unquestionably pro-independence and I suspect, notwithstanding the fact that I’ve lived in Scotland for twenty-one years and plan to remain here for the rest of my life, that they might judge me ‘insufficiently Scottish’ to have a valid view.”

She was born in the West Country, brought up on the Welsh border, and has Scottish, English, French and Flemish ancestry, and says that her allegiance is to Scotland.

“However, when people try to make this debate about the purity of your lineage, things start getting a little Death Eaterish for my taste,” she said, in a reference to characters in the Harry Potter books.
[…]
“Scotland is subject to the same twenty-first century pressures as the rest of the world. It must compete in the same global markets, defend itself from the same threats and navigate what still feels like a fragile economic recovery. The more I listen to the Yes campaign, the more I worry about its minimisation and even denial of risks.”

The latter day United Arab Republic

  By

Formerly briefly united into one country, known as the “United Arab Republic,” Egypt and Syria still look pretty similar politically and economically decades after separation. In spirit, the UAR lives on.

But in one country winning the presidency with 97% of the vote is deemed tyranny by the West. In the other, the same figure is “important for democracy.”

“The Egyptian election is important for the process of the democratic transition and return to forming an elected government in Egypt,” a [UK] Foreign Office spokeswoman [said.]

What a joke.

Yeah, so why *isn’t* Charlotte Corday in the new Assassin’s Creed?

  By

Charlotte-Corday-Paul-Jacques-Aime-Baudry-1860Look, I’ve never played any Assassin’s Creed games, and I’m not the first to say this, but how stupid do you have to be to make a French Revolution assassins game with no female character and then act like it’s because there weren’t any female assassins?

I also realize the games aren’t intended to be “historically accurate” by any stretch but there’s taking creative liberties with history to tell a story and then there’s just straight-up erasing history outside the context of the story, solely to justify bad decisions. And that would include making an outrageous claim like that.

Jean-Paul Marat’s assassination in 1793 by Charlotte Corday was a major trigger for the start of the Reign of Terror. I know I’m more in the French Revolution history than most — I believe I had a little copy of David’s The Death of Marat over my desk for about eight years for some unintentionally creepy reason — but Corday is, like, French Revolution 101. It had to have come up during the research for the game.

Moreover, French women in general played a huge role in the Revolutionary period, while radical women also played key roles. This reality has been repeatedly depicted in just about every other fictional or semi-historical version of the time period. Charles Dickens, way back in the Victorian Age when everyone was really giving women the short end of the stick, put a very important female character in a leadership role in his version of Revolutionary France in A Tale of Two Cities. So there’s really no excuse. Stop being lazy, Ubisoft.

John Oliver explains the mess that is FIFA

  By

It’s World Cup time and that means another opportunity to talk about how disgusting the governing organization, FIFA, really is. We’ve got our own segment coming up on this week’s radio show, but in the meantime, here is John Oliver’s well-received segment on the topic.

For our previous coverage of the subject, see “2022: Slavery World Cup“

Vegas attack was domestic terrorism, tied to Bundy standoff

  By

flag-of-nevadaYesterday’s shooting in a Las Vegas shopping center was an act of domestic terrorism, and the perpetrators were radical anti-government right-wingers with ties to both Neo-Nazism and the nearby Bundy Ranch standoff against the Federal government on public lands in Nevada.

Residents who spoke about the Millers all mentioned the couple’s relationship with Bundy. Oak Tree resident Sue Hale said the two told her they were in Bunkerville during the standoff, which occurred in April after federal authorities began conducting a roundup of Bundy’s cattle. Bundy had defied the government by grazing the cattle on public land without a permit. “Yap, yap, yap. They were always running their mouths,” Hale said.
[…]
After killing the officers, the couple covered the bodies with a cloth displaying the Gadsen, or “Don’t Tread On Me” flag — a Revolutionary War-era symbol that has since been adopted by the tea party. Investigators also found swastikas at the suspects’ apartment.

 
Their social media posts before the attack indicate that they were so hardcore about the Bundy standoff that the Bundys made them leave for making them look bad. The Bundy family denied any connection.

Arsenal For Democracy Radio – Background Discussion on Bundy Ranch Standoff:
Part 1 – Move Your Cows, Bundy – AFD 81

It’s important to call these acts what they are, to end the false dichotomy of how other terrorist attacks (by non-whites, inside or outside the country) are labeled and handled. Ultimately, however, the best way to respond to terrorism is to treat it, without glory, as criminal activity. In the words of L. Paul Bremer in the Reagan State Department’s official policy on counterterrorism:

Another important measure we have developed in our overall strategy is applying the rule of law to terrorists. Terrorists are criminals. They commit criminal actions like murder, kidnapping, and arson, and countries have laws to punish criminals. So a major element of our strategy has been to delegitimize terrorists, to get society to see them for what they are — criminals — and to use democracy’s most potent tool, the rule of law, against them.

 
But until then, I don’t want a false double standard where some stuff is called terrorism and some stuff isn’t, depending on the attackers’ skin color or ideologies.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Another day, another mass shooting in America

  By

In the past two and a half weeks, including today’s, there have been 3 U.S. mass shooting events (using one definition of at least 4 dead). At least 14 events if you include those with lower death tolls but 3+ wounded.

Today’s shooting, in gun friendly Nevada, left two police officers and a random bystander dead, before one of the shooters killed the other and then herself. Despite having guns and attempting to use them, the police officers were unfortunately unable to stop the attack. (More guns won’t stop these events. In contrast, events from Columbine to Tucson to last week’s Seattle shooting more often end with someone tackling the shooter.)

In the first five months of this year, there were 12 mass shooting events with at least four deaths.

So, do we get to talk about guns being the problem yet? Or still no…?