A friend forwarded me this travelogue from a brief trip through Jeddah and Riyadh, the two key commercial cities of Saudi Arabia.

SUNDAY: My flight to Jeddah is delayed by 2 hours. I eventually takes off at 900pm. On arrival in Jeddah there’s a 3 hour queue at passport control. Two elderly fellow passengers pass out during the wait as the room is not air conditioned and you can’t sit down.

I eventually get through but can’t find my luggage as the belt signage has been updated for subsequent flights – I eventually find bag amongst boxes stacked in corner… after 40 minutes of searching.

Taxi meter ‘fails’ (or was turned off) after 5 minutes of journey to the hotel- driver says he will estimate and give ‘good price’!! Thanks!!

Check into hotel at 1:30 am with planned checkout at 7 am.

MONDAY: Work in the office, leave for Jeddah airport and arrive 3 hours before I’m due to fly to Riyadh. Try and check in and they say I have no reservation or booking under my name and that I should go and buy a ticket. I speak to five other members of airport staff (each of which involved queuing/waiting) before I find one that speaks adequate enough english, he appears to easily find my booking and prints off my boarding card without incident and tells me that I need to rush to make the flight. Before giving me my ticket he lectures me that I should arrive at least three hours before flight departure. I rush off without arguing. There is no time to check my bag (probably a good thing)

Just about make my flight.

My seat is taken and the air hostess simply tells me to find another seat. An Arab with an American accent then shouts across the plan—“Oi! White man! This seat is free!”

I sit next to him and he asks me if I felt odd being a white guy on a flight full of Arabs. He then (jokingly?) tells me ‘they’re not going to blow the plane up just to get me’ and that it would be a ‘poor western to arab death ratio!’ I pretend to be a sleep for the rest of the flight.

I fall asleep and wake up on from the impact of landing. Strange as no body told me to put my seat belt on or bring my seat forward….also the second we land ever passenger gets up and starts queuing for the door whilst the plane is still taxiing. The air hostesses appear to be helping. All very strange.

‘Coincidentally’ the taxi from the airport meter fails again but ‘luckily’ the driver again kindly says he will estimate and ‘give me good price’. Taxi has no AC.

Arrive at hotel and am told my reservation has been cancelled. Apparently I was suppose to confirm 24 hrs before arriving. Hotel is now full! Its 10:30 pm so I wander down the street to the next hotel. The third one I find is the first with availability. It’s a shithole. Coincidentally, it’s called “Al Shy’atal.”

TUESDAY: I wake up and order 2 large orange juices from room service. They deliver 2 small oranges.

I show the reception the office address and ask them is it close and can I walk. They have no idea and tell me to get a taxi.

I get in taxi he confidently tells me he know’s where to go…5 minutes later he pulls over and says its in there, pointing at an abandoned building. Unconvinced, I phone the office switch board and ask the receptionist to give the driver directions. He receives directions and drops me off successfully at the office. Which was 100 yards from my hotel.

Work all day in Riyadh office.

Leave for airport. Taxi meter breaks mid-route, but don’t worry, he gave me a good price!

Saudi Arabia is RUBBISH! Fact!

This movie trailer for Four Lions made me “explode” with laughter.

“You are gonna die in that gear, lads.”
“S’all for a good cause though…”

Innit, though?

Map reflects a compilation of states allowing gay service via the Palm Center.

Last month chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen made headlines with this:

“No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens,”

Shortly after, Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered a year long review of the possible outcome and effects of repealing former President Bill Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” initiative. Since then, in reading about and discussing the proposition to over turn “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” I have yet to find an objective, convincing argument against it. The one objection I found salient was expressed by both the Army and Air Force Chiefs of Staff whose wariness appears to be less about the concept and more about the timing. Army joint chief of staff, General George Casey:

“I do have serious concerns about the impact of repeal of the law on a force that’s fully engaged in two wars and has been at war for eight-and-a-half years,”

That’s certainly a reasonable concern and even after the assessment ordered by SecDef Gates winds up and conclusions are presented, I suspect it will still be a matter of concern no matter how positive (or negative, depending on one’s outlook) it’s findings. Nevertheless this is a criticism or worry aimed at the timing and not the principle of repeal. So I’ll ask a rather simple and a bit broad question and ask you ignore the context of timing and instead consider the principle of the prospective repeal for the sake of discussion:

If 25 countries spanning five continents can manage to allow gay service in their military’s why can’t or shouldn’t the United States?

Gaza Rocket Attack Into Israel Kills a Thai Worker

The foreign agricultural worker, Manee Singueanphon, 30, from Thailand, was the first fatality from Gaza rocket fire since the end of a three-week Israeli military offensive into Gaza in January 2009. Israel said the primary purpose of its military campaign was to halt years of rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel.

What a Thai migrant worker was doing in Israel won’t mean mean much to most readers of the New York Times. The same cannot be said for ComingAnarchy readers! Many of you may have read that headline and exclaimed, “Ahha! This is all because of the Blue Diamond Incident that Curzon explained a few months back!” At that time, I noted:

Saudi Arabia and Thailand may not have seemed like major players in the late 1980s, but hundreds of thousands of Thai workers were in Saudi Arabia at the time, and Riyadh had millions in investments in Thailand, both of which were abruptly halted. As it happens, Thailand went on to export most of its migrant workers in the Middle East to Israel.

Turkey is upset about the resolutions in the United States and Sweden regarding the alleged Armenian Genocide. Logical reaction from Turkey? Threaten to deport 100,000+ Armenians because it worked out so well the first time and all.

“There are currently 170,000 Armenians living in our country. Only 70,000 of them are Turkish citizens, but we are tolerating the remaining 100,000. If necessary, I may have to tell these 100,000 to go back to their country because they are not my citizens. I don’t have to keep them in my country.”

Turkey will always be haunted by the fact that Turks “settled” land that has been occupied for thousands of years by many other peoples with various religions. Worse still for the Turks, they are still around and the Turks are in complete denial about it. In some ways, their problem is similar to Israel where the very identity of their state is inseparable from ethnicity (and in some ways religion) and yet a big percentage of the population in territory under their control is not only foreign, but was there first. They haven’t made much progress thus far and its very uncertain as to when or if they ever will.

Got this from a friend who deals with North Korea. Not in English but perhaps readers can identify the origin and meaning of it. Nevertheless quite funny!

In one of the bloodiest protests I’ve ever heard about, anti-government “Red Shirt” protesters in Thailand donated blood for their protest to spill at the Thai government headquarters. Their protest was for a new election to be called. They collected enough blood to fill 1,000 standard soft drink bottles. This is definitely one of those things that belongs in the “finger-chopping whacky” category.

The Red Cross has denounced the protest as wasteful and unhygienic because diseases such as hepatitis and HIV can be spread if needles are reused.

A number of Buddhist monks, who are forbidden by law from taking part in political activities, were among the first to give blood.

With all the childish diplomacy going around between the US and Israel, which is seemingly all that’s employing many of the buffoonish commentators from both sides whose chatter and reading of the diplomatic tea leaves would put high school gossip to shame, one amusing statement out of the State Department caught my eye.

Israel remains a strategic ally of the United States, the US State Department reaffirmed Monday amid a dispute over Israeli plans to build settler homes in east Jerusalem

What does that even mean anyway?

How does an alliance with Israel help the United States achieve its strategic objectives today. I’m not talking about any ethnic, cultural or political ties we may share. Israel is just a country like any other and a country with serious baggage at that. Moreover, nowadays, everything seems to be “Strategic.” Everyone is a major or strategic ally and every problem (flavor of the month Yemen) is of strategic importance.

If Israel is really a strategic ally, then let’s first look at our National Security Strategy and its goals:

It is the policy of the United States to seek and support democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. In the world today, the fundamental character of regimes matters as much as the distribution of power among them. The goal of our statecraft is to help create a world of democratic, well-governed states that can meet the needs of their citizens and conduct themselves responsibly in the international system. This is the best way to provide enduring security for the American people.

So how are we to acheive these goals (for better or worse)?

1) Champion aspirations for human dignity;
2) Strengthen alliances to defeat global terrorism and work to prevent attacks against us and our friends;
3) Work with others to defuse regional conflicts;
4) Prevent our enemies from threatening us, our allies, and our friends with weapons of mass destruction (WMD);
5) Ignite a new era of global economic growth through free markets and free trade;
6) Expand the circle of development by opening societies and building the infrastructure of democracy;
7) Develop agendas for cooperative action with other main centers of global power;
8) Transform America’s national security institutions to meet the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century; and
9) Engage the opportunities and confront the challenges of globalization.

Does giving Israel over a billion dollars a year and pretending to be angry when they disobey us really get us closer to those goals? Moreover, we must decide whether our perception of achieving those goals is more important than the perception of others. Logically, given that the goals are international and involve making positive changes in other parts of the world, I would argue that the perception of others is more important, based solely on those stated goals (not whether I agree with them). So let’s check that list again. Does an alliance with Israel help us achieve these strategic goals?

1) Nope.
2) Yes and No.
3) No.
4) Partially?
5) Irrelevant.
6) Irrelevant.
7) No.
8) Irrelevant.
9) ? A vague goal in general.

Of course, I admit and agree there are other reasons for our relationship with Israel, and that policy is not made in such purely logical manner. However, I think it’s time for the US to realize that Israel is more of a liability to us rather than an asset, not to mention a large recipient of government welfare. If we want Israel to be a strategic ally, then we need to adopt policies that truly force them to help us achieve our goals instead of acquiescing to actions that harm US goals and interests.

For years I marveled at the emotional and dramatic absurdity of Korea’s foreign policy, particularly as it was directed towards the best political, military and economic friends of Korea, the US and Japan, and how this damaged Korea’s national interests. For years President Roh openly expressed his interest in making Korea a “balancer” in East Asia—about as stupid as public diplomacy can get, which worked to alienate him from his US allies, which won him no new friends. Then there was Korea’s outraged reaction to Japan’s assertion that, Japan had sovereignty to rocks in the middle of the Japan Sea that Korea occupied militarily in the 1950s. Had they ignored this, the status quo would have been quietly preserved, but the loud, international outrage broadcast by Korea has ultimately resulted in many people believing that this is actually a proper border dispute. Basically, foreign policy is supposed to be handled by adults with a cool head, and an undergraduate with a basic foundation in realism or diplomacy could have picked apart the multiple and sophomoric stupidities in the conduct of Korean foreign policy.

Which brings me to Australia and its reaction to Japan’s whaling. For decades, Japan has hunted whales in international waters for “scientific research”, following an unorthodox reading of the treaty banning whale hunting, and sold the meat from the whales in Japan. This serves to preserve a few isolated communities with fisherman who hunt whales, but the meat is so unpopular it has a hard time being sold. The public in Australia are morally outraged by the hunt, seeing whales as the gentle and noble giants of the sea, and are appalled by Japan permitting and sponsoring the whale hunt. Australia has abstractly threatened legal action for years, although a winning legal action (except by outside observers), or how it would successfully be brought to the International Court of Justice. Japan basically thinks this is just Australian domestic electoral politics and is basically ignoring these threats of litigation.

Lacking a clear legal strategy, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has instead reverted to threatening and snubbing Japan in public, and recently announced a decision to skip a nuclear nonproliferation summit to be held in the US. Australia and Japan co-chair the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament. The announcement also came just before Japan’s Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada made his first visit to Australia.

What can we make of Rudd’s grandstanding for cheap domestic political gain? Australia’s conservative opposition is bluntly honest. Deputy opposition leader and shadow foreign minister Julie Bishop said, after returning to Australia from a trip to Japan, the she detected “a sour note in the Australia-Japan relationship” caused by the threats and posturing by the Rudd government. East Asian specialist Malcolm Cook called it “Australia’s single silliest strategic decision.”

The risks to Australia? It sours a relationship with a longstanding trade partner and its newest military ally; it could be cut out of the proposed East Asia regional community; and it undermines Okada, probably the strongest and most influential proponent of Australia in the new government. A government can denounce Japan’s whaling and not frenzy itself with self-righteousness—just look at New Zealand, which has a relatively careful policy on opposing Japan’s whailing activities with the clear objective of killing the fewest whales, preferably none, and achieving that objective with utmost urgency. Indeed, this policy is most certainly “realist” and “realistic.” But you could get more “Korean” in your foreign policy with the drama of Rudd’s government on the topic. I can only look forward to watching its spectacular failure, especially as it should help him with short-term domestic victories and perpetuate his term in office.

Part 2 of my obsessive compulsory coverage of Robert D. Kaplan’s trip to Tokyo.

Yours truly with Robert Kaplan, Tokyo, 12 March 2010

After Robert D. Kaplan spoke at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, I approached him and he graciously invited me to attend the exclusive reception. His assistant whispered the location and time, and I went outside for a breather and to send off this misspelled missive (soon followed by this amelioration).

The reception started at 8PM, at a nearby Italian restaurant. I had to catch a bullet train back to Nagoya that night, so I could only spare an hour. Many of the invitees were already standing around inside the restaurant, drinking wine and talking with one another. I waited outside for Kaplan and his assistant who came a little late. Read the rest of this entry »