Iran’s Majlis has reportedly passed a law originally scrapped three years ago setting a standardized dress code for it’s citizens. Beyond requiring what’s being termed “standard Islamic garments,” Iran’s religious minorities will have to sport colored insignias sewn into their clothing identifying their faith.

Iran’s roughly 25,000 Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes, while Christians would wear red badges and Zoroastrians would be forced to wear blue cloth.

Remind you of anything? I’ve spoken of my irritation at lazily slinging the term Nazi about previously but I’d say this is fair game for such comparisons. With Iran balking at a previously “settled” nuclear fuel exchange deal, the addition of this sort of nonsense (to say nothing of the socially pejorative effect on other religious minorities) puts Iran on the short road to earning Israeli military reprisal.

On my previous trip to Dubai in September, I wrote about aspects of Dubai that recalled colonial India:

Notwithstanding the pen name used by this blogger to anonymize his internet presence, I have not personally experienced India during the era of British colonial rule… Migrants from India and Pakistan constitute as much as 75% of the entire population of the Dubai metropolitan area. And it is a fierce class distinction as well. Wealthy Arabs and Westerners dine at expensive restauarants, stay at 4 and 5 star hotels, and run the banking, financial, business, and legal superstructure. The worker bees who keep the city running are all from South Asia. The Uncle Tom-esque friendliness of these South Asian service industry workers in the face of borderline abusive rudeness by Arabs and Westerners is unnerving, even for this most superior person.

What do I mean by “Uncle Tom-esque friendliness”? Allow me to recall my arrival at the the airport. Walking through the exit at the ungodly hour of 5 a.m., I was greeted by a cheery South Asian man holding a placard with my name. I said hello and he immediately took the trolly with my luggage and led me towards the parking lot. I’m a social guy and curious about new environments and new people—I engaged in small talk and asked him his name and where he was from. His response: “Thank you sir! I am Muhammed from India.” I asked where in India. “Thank you! I am from northern India, near Kashmir.” I asked him how long he had been in Dubai. “A very long time now, 13 years. Haha!” I asked him how he liked it. “Thank you! It is a nice place, with lots of changes during my time here.” Most questions, although they required no appreciation, were regularly begun with an exclamation of thanks—and a very jolly thanks at that. As we approached the car, he had to take a detour with the luggage trolly to get up a ramp, so he bolted to the car, opened the door, and invited me to sit me down while he ran back to the trolly to put the luggage in the car. I didn’t sit and instead helped him carry the luggage because it makes me feel uncomfortable to relax while people are working around me. This in turn made him even more uncomfortable.

To make a comparative observation, this type of attiude is frequently seen by Indians but rarely by Pakistanis. Most Pakistanis who I encounter are much more reserved in how they interract with people, and are soft-spoken but generally very warm and friendly in nature. Reading pre-9/11 Robert D. Kaplan, I would surmise that he could attribute this difference to the fact that India was long under British civilian imperial rule, while Pakistan was never really held by more than the military rule of Britain. Pakistanis probably preserve more of their native cultural norms whereas many Indians may, through experience, feel this servantly position to be suitable.

According to a French negotiator, the usual “progress” (that occurs in all peace talks before they fail) is occurring in current talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabagh. Yet, far more interesting than the lack of actual information from that report and than the talks which are very likely to fail, are the statements coming from the Azerbaijani President.

But in remarks broadcast on Azeri TV on Saturday, Mr Aliyev said that if the Munich talks failed to reach agreement he would be “left with no other option”. “We have the full right to liberate our land by military means,” he said.

Granted, this statement is nothing new. Baku has been crying wolf for years after being thoroughly beaten and embarassed by the (Russian backed) Armenian forces in the 90s. Yet, Azerbaijan seems to be indicating that it sees the current Munich talks as the last ones. On the one hand, this could merely be a tactic to put pressure on Armenia and others to reach a settlement. On the other hand, Baku may be issuing a genuine warning. Given it’s long insistence on the right to use force, its constantly growing military budget, and its clout as a major energy producer, the idea that Baku may have finally had enough of talks and waiting approximately 15 years to get its territory back (from its perspective), is hardly far fetched.

Additionally, it’s not as if hostilities have ceased. Mine fields still abound (as this author saw while carefully walking around NK) and each side still fires on the other almost daily. Since the international community failed to insert peacekeepers or at least monitors along the cease fire line, it would take very little for full scale fighting to resume. Were that to happen, Baku may count on the world’s dire energy situation and the West’s current focus on non-Russian energy routes to come down on Baku’s side. Given Armenia’s pro-Russian foreign policy and its allowing Russian troops to be stationed on its soil, it would likely find few friends, save Moscow. Lord knows Moscow would surely like to intervene elsewhere in the Caucasus.

While it would be easy to continue with conjecture, it would be wise to follow the current Munich talks closely as well as signs coming from Baku, Yerevan and Moscow. Like so many other rounds in the past this may be nothing again, but when something does happen, it is bound to be big.

I was idly thinking about the growth of different systems of civil codes and related systems of law across the globe and came up with this rough graph of the development of modern private law.

Comments from fellow amateur legal historians most welcome.

Poised outside of the newly re-enforced capital of Sparta, the Theban general Epaminondas knew that beginning a siege against the city would only wear down his troops who had already campaigned deep into Spartan territory during the mid-winter of 370BC. His force was a collection of Arcadian peoples and included a large number of Helots — the Spartan underclass — among other “disaffected elements”. Epaminondas decided on a new tack. Rather than conquering the Spartans, he would contain them.

At Mount Ithome, the natural citadel of Messenia, he founded a city as the capital of a new Messenian state, established there all the insurgent elelments that had joined him, and used the booty he had gained during the invasion as an endowment for the new state. This was to be a check and counterpoise to Sparta in southern Greece. By its secure establisment she lost half her territory and more than half her serfs. Through Epiminondas’s foundation of Megalopolis, in Arcadia, as a further check, Sparta was hemmed in both politically and by a chain of fortresses, so that the economic roots of her military supremacy were severed.

Epaminondas’s strategy successfully dislocated the power base of Sparta after just a few months campaigning, and no victories in the field. After all, the object of war is not to destroy your opponent’s military force, but to “obtain a better state of peace — even if only from your own point of view.”

This gem of a story (from pp. 15) is a rarity in BH Liddell Hart’s Strategy, which is otherwise a tiresome slog of a read. Rather than a well argued, economically written thesis, Strategy is a wordy, meandering narrative of the author’s own journey to his theory. Liddell Hart re-tells history with hints and side comments about a hypothesis that is not revealed to the reader. The key term “strategy” itself is finally defined on page 321 (as “the art of distributing and applying military means to fulfill the ends of policy”)! The first three quarters of the book are not about understanding history, but a guided tour of how Liddell Hart came to his conclusions. Those conclusions are finally revealed in the last section of the book, which I would almost recommend skipping the rest to read.

This style of presentation, as well as several passages in the book, indicate the level of Liddell Hart’s egotism. Self promotion is almost a second thesis of the book, especially in the latter third. It is an insight into the man behind the controversy.
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The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

From an alleged email taken by a hacker who’d breached Britain’s climate research unit network and made off with a miriad of emailings and documents. A more extensive account of the less than flattering communications is here. I very much doubt that this is the death knell of the climate change machine but it’s certainly going to raise quite a few eyebrows. Bearing in mind that the above and other quotations are of limited context, it looks as though much of the scientific effort going into climate change is tainted by subjective motivation.

I’m no scientist but it seems to me that an analytical conclusion based on data that is either “inadequate” or that maintains a glaring, inexplicable aberration (that “lack of warming” bit) is questionable at best. This, in and of itself, doesn’t boot the current supposed scientific “consensus” out the door but it does, in my mind, lend some weight to the more thoughtful skeptics out there.

Pictured above is Japan’s Hyuga-class “helicopter destroyer” (different angle) alongside the USS George Washington (see opposite angle here). It is hard to see from this angle but there is a significant size difference. The George Washington is a Nimitz class carrier weighing in at 97,000 tons and capable of 85 aircraft. The Hyuga is just 13,950 tons and carries only 11 helicopters. Still, the Hyuga is the MSDF’s biggest ship to date.

The above is a pretty historic scene. The Hyuga is the first of its class and was commissioned earlier this year. As Scoop Deck notes: “it’s neat that the last time Japan and the U.S. both fielded aircraft carriers, they were at war”.

“Aircraft carrier”?

The Hyuga, like the earlier commissioned Osumi class LST, is a controversial ship. Both have carrier-like capabilities despite Japan’s 1988 declaration that it would never build aircraft carriers again. Thus, these ships are carefully designed to have little to no power projection capabilities. The Hyuga is described as a “destroyer” in Japanese (護衛艦) because of its role as an escort ship. This is in contrast to the central command and control role that US aircraft carriers play. Yet unlike traditional DDH the Hyuga has a longish flat-top, which makes it controversial. This means it can handle VSTOL aircraft such as Harriers and F-35s (which, by the way, Japan does not have). Here is a clip of it in action:

The Hyuga is for deploying helicopters in conducting amphibious operations, humanitarian missions and anti-submarine warfare. Rather than a revolutionary procurement in terms of Japan’s constitution, this is more of an evolution in terms of the kinds of operations Japan currently conducts (ie. sweeping sea lanes for the USN, disaster response in Southeast Asia, etc.). The Hyuga is a sign of Japanese innovation under military restriction. Simultaneously, it can be viewed as practice run for any carrier building program Japan may potentially decide to pursue in the future. Despite these controversies, the above picture is still pretty amazing.

H/T to Fred Z and Dan who shared this through Google Reader.

Last week I was back in the United States and spend time on both coasts, first to the east and then to the west. Shortly after flying into Los Angeles International Airport, I visited Malibu on a short drive up the coast, and enjoyed a milk shake on the end of a long pier that shoots out into the Pacific Ocean.

I was with family, and while we walked back from the pier to the shore, we looked up to see a truly palacial home on top of a nearby hill overlooking the beach. The house was beautiful and enormous, and we openly wondered who owned it—Hollywood movie star? Ambulance chasing lawyer? Successful investment banker?

We should have included son of corrupt dictator in that discussion, because less than a week after our visit, that very house and its owners appeared in the New York Times. Below is a photograph of the house, in the center, and the pier. An abridged version of the story appears below.

Taint of Corruption Is No Barrier to U.S. Visa

Several times a year, Teodoro Nguema Obiang arrives at the doorstep of the United States from his home in Equatorial Guinea, on his way to his $35 million estate in Malibu, Calif., his fleet of luxury cars, his speedboats and private jet. And he is always let into the country.

The nation’s doors are open to Mr. Obiang, the forest and agriculture minister of Equatorial Guinea and the son of its president, even though federal law enforcement officials believe that “most if not all” of his wealth comes from corruption related to the extensive oil and gas reserves discovered more than a decade and a half ago off the coast of his tiny West African country, according to internal Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents.

And they are open despite a federal law and a presidential proclamation that prohibit corrupt foreign officials and their families from receiving American visas. The measures require only credible evidence of corruption, not a conviction of it.

Former and current State Department officials said Equatorial Guinea’s close ties to the American oil industry were the reason for the lax enforcement of the law. Production of the country’s nearly 400,000 barrels of oil a day is dominated by American companies like ExxonMobil, Hess and Marathon.

“Of course it’s because of oil,” said John Bennett, the United States ambassador to Equatorial Guinea from 1991 to 1994. He noted that officials of Zimbabwe are barred from the United States.

“Both countries are severely repressive,” said Mr. Bennett, who is now a senior foreign affairs officer for the State Department in Baghdad. “But if Zimbabwe had Equatorial Guinea’s oil, Zimbabwean officials wouldn’t still be blocked from the U.S.”

“The fact that someone like Mr. Obiang continues to travel freely here suggests strongly that the State Department is not yet applying the law as vigorously as Congress intended,” Senator Patrick Leahy and author of the bill said. The law was partly inspired by the accusations of corruption surrounding Mr. Obiang’s family and the Equatorial Guinean government, Mr. Leahy’s staff said.

Dearest Readers,

You may have noticed that I have been posting less frequently for the past few weeks. This is primarily due to the fact that I have been busy preparing to relocate my established residence from the Far East to the southern coast of the Persian Gulf. This is an exciting new journey in my life, and in my career in the service of Her Majesty in governing our beloved Empire, in an exciting region that my learned colleague labeled the “Middle East.”

I will be a guest of the United Arab Emirates, which will serve as my base of operations, but the scope of my assignment will cover the entire region. At minimum I expect to travel to Oman, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. It is also possible that I may also travel to places such as Yemen, Egypt, Jordan, and Iran—and maybe even Iraq!

As Younghusband will continue at his post in Japan while Chirol and Munro-Ferguson remain in North America, my assignment in the Middle East means that the sun will never set on ComingAnarchy.com (which, of course, we’ve done before). I hope this means that we will be posting even more regularly, and I look forward to sending dispatches from the region in the coming months, once I have safely completed my move.

Robert D. Kaplan hopes that the actions of one radicalized Muslim in the US military does not result in a backlash against all Muslims in the US military:

The ultimate strategic goal of al-Qaeda is to turn our struggle with it into a “clash of civilizations.” If potential Muslim recruits to the U.S. military quietly decide not to enlist for fear of retribution or prejudice inside the barracks, that would be a victory for al-Qaeda.

Still, trust but verify:

That’s why, while we improve our security procedures behind the scenes, we should deal with the massacre at Fort Hood in as low key a manner as possible. More Maj. Hasans may lurk in the barracks and public squares. The way to find them out is not in a shrill witch hunt, but quietly, methodically, and legally, even as we open up our military to a wider spectrum of recruits.