Bombing of the Ritz-Carleton, Jakarta

Bombs have exploded in both the Ritz-Carlton and the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Last May I paid a visit to the bar at the Ritz-Carleton Jakarta. A few thoughts about the hotel and its vulnerabilities.

The Ritz hotel is part of an opulent new shopping complex in Jakarta called Pacific Place. Building of the complex began in 2005, and the mall had just opened when I visited the complex last year. Pacific Place is quite magnificent. Its store, restaurant, and entertainment offerings rival almost any shopping complex in Southeast Asia -- even Singapore offers nothing quite like it.

The Ritz was designed with security in mind. At least by design, the Ritz-Carleton Jakarta would have to count as among the most secure major hotels in any world capital. (I think about hotel security all the time because in September 2001 the hotel room where I was staying was destroyed by debris from the World Trade Center).

According to a CNN breaking news report, the Ritz hotel was bombed "from the inside." Meaning that it was not hit by a vehicle bomb, but by something planted inside the building. If this is confirmed, it would not surprise me.

The Ritz-Carleton -- and to a great extent the entire complex -- was very much isolated from the stream of Jakarta traffic. The complex looks like a skyscraper built on an urban island. What struck me about the entire complex was the extreme security measures. The control of traffic and people around the site -- unusual for Jakarta -- was most evident to any visitor.

The hotel was constructed with state of the art security measures in place. Vehicles were not allowed anywhere near the hotel building's main entrance without first passing through a tunnel-like security structure situated away from the complex.

Knowing how many Jakarta hotels have been bombed in recent years, I was comforted by other security measures at the Ritz. For example, on the ground level where taxis pick you up, there is only a reception desk. No bar or cafe. The bar is one or two floors above.

If you want to get from Pacific Place to the Ritz, you must walk through a windy passageway and then take an elevator. As far as I could tell, that was the main public pedestrian access to the hotel. If you arrive at the Ritz this way by foot, you are greeted outside a hotel entrance by a security post where you have to have your bag x-rayed.

Any hotel bombing is disturbing, but this one particularly so due to attention the hotel designers appear to have paid to security.

Update: CNN is now interviewing a Brit named Greg who heard the bombs go off at the Ritz. Greg, who says he lived in the Ritz for 12 months, echoes my point about hotel security.

"The Ritz has got to be the most secure hotel anywhere in Indonesia and I have no idea how they could have done it," Greg told Anderson Cooper.

Greg then listed the various security measures.

Greg says the first bomb went off in a nearby apartment area. A second bomb in the area apparently went off in the restaurant. I wonder if when they say "restaurant" they mean the bar that overlooks the front of the hotel -- which is very big.

Greg got some photos on his i-phone and Cooper says they will be posted at i-report. Coopers added that Greg "got a good deal on his photos." I should hope so. CNN, which apparently has no correspondents in Indonesia, ought to be paying for the photos.

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Will Obama have you cheering for Cheney?

Washington Post reports on a proposal concerning torture prosecutions that the office of the US Attorney General has leaked to the press:

. . . the sources said an inquiry would apply only to activities by interrogators, working in bad faith, that fell outside the "four corners" of the legal memos.

In other words, only supposedly "rogue" low-level CIA operatives would face prosecution for torture. And the criteria for prosecution would not be torture, but activities that fell outside of the legal memos written by Bush legal council John Yoo. By this criteria, 1) Under Obama, a precedent will have been set whereby a president's lawyer writes the law. Needless to say, that's no law at all; 2) Only low-level people would be prosecuted -- which of course, is wrong.

In fact, point #2 is so wrong that it makes Cheney right (relative to Obama, that is). Prosecuting only army or CIA officers (as was done in the case of Abu Ghraib) and letting high level people in the Bush Administration or Congress off the hook for having authorized torture is immoral. Cheney, for his part, is on record as having declared that he will go bat for anyone who faces prosecution for torture under his watch. Back in April I wrote:

I'll say this for Cheney: unlike the current occupant of the White House, the former VP has spoken with a sense of conviction on the topic of torture. Seizing the vacuum of national leadership on the issue, Cheney is on the offensive, promising to stand up for anyone who followed his orders. That's what a leader says. Thanks to Obama's "let's move on" blather regarding the most serious crimes, Cheney is actually staking out some moral ground for himself (call it "honor among thieves"). I can't think of anyone associated with the Obama Administration who has shown Cheney's tenacity on the other side of the debate. And I think that's appalling.

Of course, it remains to be seen if Cheney meant what he said.

But if only CIA officers are put on trial by the Obama Administration (John Yoo's memos having been declared law of the land), and Cheney shows up in court as a witness for the defense, who among us won't be cheering for Cheney?

Photo by Jotman, shows Dick Cheney leaving Congress after a Senate vote in July 2008. Hat-tip Greenwald.

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Fool's Gold by Gillian Tett

I just started reading Fool's Gold by Gillian Tett. Her new book traces the origin of the financial crisis to the growth of derivatives trading. Tett was a panelist in at the IPI World Congress in Helsinki. Here is a jot from my live-blogging of the panel discussion:

Gillian Tett, Assistant Editor of the Financial Times said she had noted the “inequality of resources in the business media in the past few years.”

“I felt I had a barrage of banks lined up with guns of public relations to try to dominate the public debate. Not just in terms of what was said. There were few of us in number. Laughably poorly paid. Many of us leaving business journalism to work for the banks. We are not owned by the banks, but we are dependent on advertising and exposed to the vagaries of the business cycle.”

“Fortunately, the past few years have shown the importance of independent media,” she added.

Tett made a number of other interesting comments as a member of the panel. I plan to update this post when I finish reading her book.

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You read it here first

The current issue of the Economist on West-Russia relations:

The sense of defeat and humiliation which the Kremlin attributes to the early 1990s surfaced several years after the Soviet collapse. In late 1991, far from feeling defeated, most Russians (at least 57% of whom had voted for Boris Yeltsin a few months earlier) saw themselves as victors. And nearly 80% of Russians were positive about America. But the briefly outlawed Communist Party and the KGB felt betrayed and humiliated. A decade and a half later, they have managed to project their feelings on to the whole country.

Sound familiar? It happens to be exactly the point JOTMAN.COM contributor Sanjuro had made in this post. Check out Sanjuro's other contributions.

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How Alan Johnston survived kidnapping

People endure extraordinary things. First thing: you worry might lose your mind. But you have more strength than you might imagine in a crisis. You shouldn't despair.

- Alan Johnston at the IPI World Congress in Helsinki

Jotman live-blogged the International Press Institute World Congress in Helsinki. One of the panel discussions concerned "How to interview terrorists and survive kidnapping." Three journalists talked about how they survived getting kidnapped by a terror group. They shared their advice for other journalists who might find themselves in similar circumstances.

One of those journalists was Alan Johnston (BBC bio, Wiki, Amazon) who is a correspondent for the BBC World Service. Here are Jotman's jots of Alan Johnston's responses to some questions:

Question: Hopefully it won't happen to anyone in this room. But do you have any advice for other journalists, should they get captured?

Alan Johnston: I had a radio. I heard Terry Waite interviewed. Terry Waite said to remember "mind and body are extraordinaire things and you will find more strength than you might have expected." Ingrid Betancourt endured a much longer time in captivity. So of course did Primo Levi. People endure extraordinary things. First thing: you worry might lose your mind. But you have more strength than you might imagine in a crisis. You shouldn't despair.

Question from an Indian journalist: Did captivity change your understanding about the group. Did you wonder if Stockholm Syndrome would impact you? Did it?

Alan Johnston: Having been there -- in Gaza -- for 3 years prior to capture, I absolutely condemned what was happening. I will say I was lucky I wasn't tortured. I am lucky I wasn't subjected to anything like Abu Ghraib. I will always be grateful for that. While I was in captivity, listening to the radio they gave me, I heard on the BBC a report about a British soldier (Cpl Donald Payne) who was found to have tortured an Iraqi receptionist (Baha Mousa). That sounded far worse than anything that was happening to me.

Nigerian asks question: Do you think your kidnappers did not know what they wanted?

Alan Johnston: Clearly they wanted prisoners released. But the mad politics of Gaza swung in my favor: Hamas won control of Gaza over Fata. So Hamas wasn't going to have a small jihad group operating on its turf. So they took over the situation. Events turned in my favor.

Jotman's entire live-blog of the panel discussion includes commentary by Peter Bergen who is a print and television journalist, author, and terrorism analyst for CNN; Giuliana Sgrena, a journalist with Il Manifesto; and moderator Hamid Mir who is executive editor of Geo TV, Islamabad.

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News media coverage of stimulus spending debate

How has the financial crisis been covered in the news media? In Helsinki I live-blogged a panel discussion concerning this very question. That panel included editors from the NY Times and the Financial Times.

Today, economist Paul Krugman weighs in on the debate. Krugman can see no good excuses for the way the media has covered the Obama attempt to mitigate the crisis:

But in a way, the implicit censorship on the stimulus debate is even stranger. During the initial discussion of the stimulus, the debate was framed almost entirely as a debate between Obama and those who said the stimulus was too big; the voices of those saying it was too small were largely frozen out. And they still are — if it weren’t for my position on the Times op-ed page, there would be hardly any major outlet for Keynesian concerns.

And here’s the thing: in this case, there isn’t any hidden evidence — you can’t argue that the CIA knows something the rest of us don’t. And the voices calling for stronger stimulus are, may I say, sorta kinda respectable — several Nobelists in the bunch, plus a large fraction of the prominent economists who predicted the housing crash before it happened.

But somehow, the pro-stimulus people are unpersons. Who makes these decisions?

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Will Burma's geography be its salvation?

Charles McDermid of the Asia Times recently interviewed historian Thant Myint-U who said:

Burma is a country of 60 million sandwiched between nearly two-and-a-half billion Chinese and Indians.

We talk about that in the West - the rise of China and India - think of what it will mean to the future of Burma. It will mean everything.

Will it be swallowed up? Or will it benefit from being between the two biggest and most dynamic countries in the world? If it can find a way for all its people to benefit, then Burma's future in the 21st century can still be a very bright one.

One concern some Burmese have is that Burma could get swallowed up by China. By some accounts, Chinese traders and settlers are rapidly changing the ethnic composition of the north of the country.

Of course, Chinese immigrants are also changing the look of Siberia and even parts of Africa.

Are these developments good or bad? Particularly in the case of Burma, it's tempting to say that everything will depend on the course of China's own political development. But we should remember that even the United States has not consistently supported democratic movements abroad.

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Only dead fish go with the flow

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin spoke those words in her recent resignation speech. Of all people, the former mayor of Wasilla ought to know a thing or two about dead fish.

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Obama Medvedev nuclear agreement

During the campaign, Obama made a commitment to pursue the elimination of nuclear weapons. Today, progress.

BBC reports that the "The 'joint understanding' signed in Moscow would see reductions of deployed nuclear warheads to below 1,700 each within seven years of a new treaty."

The numbers of weapons held by the old superpowers are getting low enough that far more substantial reductions ought to be within reach. At a certain point, pressure could then be brought to bear on other nuclear weapons states such as India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, and regimes that seek nukes.

The goal should be to stigmatize nuclear weapons. The way forward will be for the United States and Russia to make further reductions of their own arsenals.

Getting there won't be easy. In pursuing this goal, Obama will be up against large US corporations that have a vested interest in nuclear weapons design and production. In fact, nuclear missile manufacturers such as Northrop Grumman seek to influence long-term US foreign policy objectives. You have to read this stuff to believe it. Check out my post The world according to Northrop Grumman.

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Does Obama have an anti-nuclear agenda?

I blogged about the significance of the Lugar-Obama bill during the election campaign. A NY Times article points to some promising signals that the president is still serious about this issue.

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Sarah Palin's resignation mistake

Adam Nagourney of the NY Times, asking whether Sarah Palin's abrupt decision to quit will help or hurt her chances at winning the Republican Party nomination for 2012, observed:

By stepping down before finishing her term, she cannot claim to be even a one-term governor. Without a positive record of accomplishment as governor, Ms. Palin may find she has little to run on. . .

Staying on as Governor, Sarah Palin might have convinced more people that she had outgrown a string of questionable judgment calls. Out of office, that will be difficult. As things now stand, Ms. Palin's future opponent will have lots to run on.

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US-China relations strategy at crux of climate change policy debate

So the economics are right; it’s WTO-legal; and it would neutralize a major political argument against controlling greenhouse gases. Why, oh, why, would Obama say “Ni”?

- Paul Krugman

The debate concerns precisely the point where the world's number one policy issue intersects with the world's most important bilateral relationship: Climate change on one hand, and US-China relations on the other.

According to the NY Times Obama recently objected to a provision of the climate change bill inserted by the House that would "to impose a 'border adjustment' — or tariff — on certain goods from countries that do not act to limit their global warming emissions." Krugman defends this provision, writing, "truth is that there’s perfectly sound economics behind border adjustments related to cap-and-trade." Krugman suspect that the Obama Administration is "relying on some slogan" (i.e. "free trade good, tariffs bad") "rather than thinking through the underlying economics."

But surely there is another possibility. Perhaps the Obama Administration may have wanted to present America's new climate change legislation not as a club, but as a model for countries of the world to emulate.

Tariffs are a stick. Why start out with a stick in hand? I'm not sure Krugman appreciates how much other countries object to having the Americans tell them what they should do. After all, the US couldn't be bothered to ratify the Kyoto accord. The rest of the world might think: What's with the sudden high-handedness, such righteousness? Nobody likes to be forced to do something.

The NY Times described the specific proposal that Krugman believes would be acceptable even under present WTO criteria, but Obama objected to:

The House bill contains a provision, inserted in the middle of the night before the vote Friday, that requires the president, starting in 2020, to impose a “border adjustment” — or tariff — on certain goods from countries that do not act to limit their global warming emissions. The president can waive the tariffs only if he receives explicit permission from Congress.

It could be argued that a policy that does not kick in for ten years hardly amounts to carrying a "stick" into the negotiating room. And it may well be necessary to retain such a provision if the bill is to make it through the US Senate.

Yet, to the extent that this provision may set the "wrong tone" for international negotiations, Obama's position makes some sense to me.

On the other hand, if you read the NY Times article closely, you have to wonder about Obama's negotiating skills. He offers consolation to Democratic congressmen who voted against his own bill ("They’ve got to run every two years, and I completely understand that”). The article also notes that "Mr. Obama predicted that similar energy legislation would face a difficult slog through the Senate and require months of tough negotiations and additional compromises."

Before the real battle has even begun, Obama is offering consolation to his opponents and negotiating against his own side. And we've see it before. A new argument emerges: how can such weak negotiator be trusted to cut a fair deal with other countries? Indeed, Congress may come to feel it has no choice but to put a stick in Obama's hand!

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Mikhail Khodorkovsky: Russia needs independent courts

In June Jotman traveled to Helsinki to answer to the question: What kind of bear is Russia?

Our investigation here continues. Jotman contributor Sanjuro has translated a rare interview with the former president of the Russian oil conglomerate Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The interview was published in Gazeta in June 2009.

First, have a look at the following timeline. It provides some background concerning recent events in the life of the imprisoned Russian oligarch.

Khodorkovsky Timeline*

• 2004 - Khodorkovsky the wealthiest man in Russia.
• 2003 - Khodorkovsky funded several Russian parties, including Yabloko, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and even, allegedly, the pro-Kremlin United Russia.
• 2003 - October 25 - arrested at Novosibirsk airport by the Russian prosecutor general's office on charges of fraud. Shortly thereafter, on
  
• ----- - October 31 - Vladimir Putin took actions against Yukos because of tax charges, leading to a collapse in its share price.
• 2005 - On May 31 - found guilty of fraud and sentenced to nine years in prison. The sentence was later reduced to 8 years.
• 2006 - October - Forbes estimates net worth under $500 million.
  
• 2008 - August 22 - denied parole in Siberia, in part because Khodorkovsky "refused to attend jail sewing classes"

Here is Sanjuro's translation of the interview of June 26, 2009:

The Mikhail Khodorkovsky Interview

Former executive of the Russian oil company YUKOS Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who turns 46 today, answered selected questions posted by the Gazeta.Ru readers. In the interview he tells how he made his first money and why he optimized taxes, foretells the plight of the YUKOS minority shareholders and the future of Russia’s judicial system.

(Translator: The interview is preceded by a statement from Mr. Khodorkovsky’s lawyers, which we omitted in this translation)

Gazeta: What’s your opinion on the privatization in general, and privatization of YUKOS in particular?

Khodorkovsky: I don’t think privatization was done fairly in Russia, and wrote about it in the article “Crisis of Liberalism in Russia”.

Most of our compatriots were not ready to take advantage of the available opportunities, and the government did not solve this problem using one or another mechanism, as it was done in e.g. the Czech Republic.

By 1995, unlike most of my generation, I had a decent education (technical, economic, law), eight years of business experience and some cash that I had saved up by that time. So I had some objective advantages during the privatization, and I used them. Was it the right thing to do – acquire YUKOS? I was 32, an entrepreneur, and I saw an opportunity.

An opportunity of great rewards, against great risks. On one side of the scale there was everything we had earned in 10 years, plus obligations towards the banks, which would have to be honoured, plus the elections that could results in confiscation of everything, plus three billion dollars of YUKOS’ debts to the fiscal authorities, vendors, employees, plus the declining oil production. On the other side of the scale were a unique team, a giant enterprise that after restructuring could be worth much more.

I decided to take the risk and never regretted doing that. Those seven years at YUKOS were probably one of my main achievements in life. By 2003 YUKOS became possibly the best oil company in Russia.

Q. Was there something new created at YUKOS, apart from the Soviet legacy?

I came to a company with an annual oil production of 40 million tons and it was declining. If we didn’t do anything, by 2003 it would be some 20 million tons. But actually by 2003 oil production rose to 81 million tons, i.e. the company was renewed by three quarters.

Just for instance, we started commercial development of the Priobskoye deposit on the right bank of the Ob River, started developing deposits in Eastern Siberia, started rebuilding the oil potential of the Samara Oblast – there’s more that our team can be proud of.


It sounds funny, but in 2003 Vladimir Putin publicly recognized that success.

Q. How do you explain the high performance of YUKOS?

I can tell that all Russian (oil) companies had a good potential. We could realize that potential. Since 1987 my team was developing IT solutions and implementing them at various enterprises in the industry. We all had either economic-engineering or computer science training.

It turned out that, in technical terms, the Russian oil industry was lacking exactly that component: large scale implementation of technologies already known in the world, based on computerized models. Plus economic assessment of every technological step.

Our modeling center was the first one in Russia and, by the way, both German Gref and Alexey Kudrin visited on various occasions (Translator: Both are top Russian officials: Mr. Gref was then the Minister of Economic Development and now head of Sberbank, Russia’s largest financial institution, and Mr. Kudrin was and still is the Finance Minister).

Our R&D center too was the first dedicated oil research institution started in the post-Soviet era and aimed at implementation of new technologies.

It’s simple: the right team in the right place at the right time all produce the right result.

Q. Were the “barbaric” oil production methods used?

I’ll take the risk of saying that was an outwardly unprofessional statement. Professionals look at the actual oil recovery ratio and compare it to the estimates. During my time recovery ratios at YUKOS sites only increased. And that’s the main indicator of the operation’s quality. When Rosneft came to YUKOS sites, they, I suppose, had every reason to find faults with our performance, but somehow they didn’t. And that’s a fact, the rest is just propaganda.

Q. What’s “pit hole liquid” and what was is invented for?

Pit hole liquid is a nature’s invention. And oil production techniques are by the earlier generations of oil engineers. Nowadays in Russia and in other countries it is not really oil that is pumped out of the pits, but a mix of 30% oil (average) and 70% of water, gas, mineral salts and other “mud”.

This mix is technically referred to as “raw hydrocarbon material” or “pithole liquid”.

After refining process which involves giant installations and thousands of workers, this “raw material” becomes actual “oil” that meets certain standards and is then transported to customers.

Those who call themselves oilmen and claim that in Russia pure oil comes right from the pits are simply crooks.

Q. Did you use tax optimization schemes?

Yes. And again: yes! Like any executive I was seeking to minimize the tax burden strictly within the legal limits and with minimal risks for the company. Otherwise we would lose to our competitors. Average tax burden in the industry was about 30–35% of the revenue when the oil price was about $20 per barrel, and it was thoroughly watched over by the tax people. I personally reported to the ministerial commission that included the minister himself.

Rosneft, Sibneft (that later became Gasprom Oil) and others all operated in similar ways, with very close taxation rates, plus-minus 2%.

Q. Did you steal money?

No! Never. I could perfectly earn money and stealing was just strategically stupid.

The main source of income for an owner of a large company is the growing value of his shares. Stealing destroys value; in return it only gives some petty rewards and then serious problems.

Real owner does not steal. It does not make sense. That is why state ownership is a symbol of mismanagement, theft and corruption (in the USSR included, even in the Stalin’s era). Despite all the efforts to camouflage this fact, the human nature is hard to change.

Q. How did you make your first money?

I am not shy at all of my first earnings. Since 1987 my partners and I were trading computers that were brought into the USSR by others who went overseas on lengthy business trips. These people, returning from overseas, would bring the PCs, sell them to us, and we would install Russian software (our own development, by the way) and reconfigure them as demanded by customers. That was the first “big money”.

A computer could be worst 40 thousand rubles. We sold over 5 thousand pieces.

For the business travelers it was more profitable than going through the pains of importing cars (which was the normal practice before computers became common) or importing tape-recorders. Why didn’t the state import computers? Because of the lobby of our “coffin”-makers who by then had already fallen behind by decades.

Q. Is it true that the (YUKOS) shares that you owned were transferred to Rothschild?

Not true. No shares were transferred to Rothschild. After I was arrested, I lost the right to the controlling stake. It automatically went to my partners. It’s a standard protection procedure: when taken hostage, owners lose the right to manage their property.

Q. What can the minority shareholders of YUKOS hope for?

According to the law, should Platon Lebedev and I be found guilty of embezzling all the oil from YUKOS, then all the taxes, all the assets are to be returned to YUKOS and repaid to the shareholders.

That’s about $40 billion US, maybe more. But I doubt that anyone will return anything of these assets. V. Geraschenko has once put it extremely clear (Translator: in July 2006, speaking of Rosneft taking over YUKOS assets, Viktor Geraschenko, former head of the Russian Central Bank, said something like “Bastards stole everything!” Mr. Geraschenko however used somewhat stronger Russian expressions). At the same time, I am totally convinced in the integrity of the YUKOS managers and have no doubts that whatever revenue made from the sale of the overseas assets will be distributed among all the shareholders after the legal formalities are over.

Q. Do you believe the court and generally in the possibility of independent courts in Russia?

My fate is not decided at the court. Everyone knows that. If there was an independent court, my trial would end without even having started.

However, there will be independent courts in Russia! This is absolutely imperative – if we want to keep the country, create an innovative economy based on the entrepreneurial initiative, if we want to be trusted and respected in the world.

Trust alone is not enough. Every one of us, and first of all, the judges themselves must continually and persistently push to move the system on. Even if by one-millimeter increments. Even with some sacrifices. The reward is a clean conscience. And that’s worth the sacrifice.

Q. What do you regret about today?

We should have started not from the industries, but from democratic institutions: from people’s education, from achieving a broad social consensus on the ownership issues.

Yes, there were things I did not understand. People change over time. I realized that in 2000, at 37. There were quite a few mistakes. And I attempted to radically change my life.

I started the Open Russia foundation, the Federation of Internet Education. I tried to facilitate the development of the political system. Not much came out of it, but that’s alright. Could I have lived my 46 years better? I guess so. It’s not up to me to decide. But it’s up to me to go on living and to right wrongs. As long as God lets me to.

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*Timeline data source is Wikipedia.
See also the JOTMAN.COM live-blog of the Helsinki IPI World Congress discussion "What kind of bear is Russia?"

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Thailand: 8 foreign correspondents accused of lese majeste

The entire board of the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Thailand (FCCT) has been accused of lèse majesté ("injured majesty") -- the crime of causing injury to the majesty of the king. According to The Nation, a harsh critic of deposed Prime Minister Thaksin filed a complaint against the board Tuesday. The case? Apparently the club had approved the sale of a DVD that contained a controversial speech.*

Who is on the FCCT board?

The board, includes three British nationals including the BBC's Bangkok correspondent Jonathan Head, three American nationals, including two working for Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, an Australian national and a Thai news reader for Channel 3, Karuna Buakamsri.

Basically, saying or doing just about anything could get you charged with lèse majesté in Thailand. A young Thai man was charged with the crime because he didn't stand up in a movie theater. A British journalist faces lese majeste charges because of the position of a photograph on the BBC News website. An Australian writer spent months in jail for writing a paragraph in a novel that only a dozen people must have read. A renowned Thai scholar is now in self-imposed exile for having written a book critical of the rich. A Swiss drunkard got convicted of the crime for doodling on a poster. And the list goes on.**

At times the story reads like a Monty Python script.

But for the accused and their families, Thais, and foreigners in Thailand, the law is no joke. You just have to cross a well-connected Thai person the wrong way and he or she can go to a police station demand that charges be filed. Unfortunately, the maximum penalty for lèse majesté is fifteen years in a filthy Thai jail cell.

Crazy stuff like this happens somewhere else, doesn't it? As I blogged in June, Thailand shares several things in common with Iran.

____
* "the board's decision to sell DVD copies of Jakrapob Penkair's controversial speech at the club back in 2007 constituted an act of lèse majesté." As Bangkok Pundit notes "a lese majeste complaint has already been filed against Jakrapob for what he said that night."

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Top Pakistan journalist almost sent to Guantánamo

At the IPI World Congress in Helsinki I live-blogged a panel discussion that featured four journalists who had been taken prisoner by terrorist organizations (See "How to interview terrorists and survive kidnapping"). The panel* included Hamid Mir, the last journalist to have interviewed Bin Laden.

On a surface level, the panel discussion concerned two topics quite distinct from one another: 1) how to interview terrorists; 2) how to avoid and survive captivity. The panelists had all interviewed terrorists before, and each happened to have been captured by a terrorist group and held captive. But for most of the journalists on the panel (those from Western countries) the answer to both questions was not one and the same.

But Hamid Mir's perspective on the topics at hand was unique; for this journalist, the two questions were one. Mir's response to the questions points to an issue that -- even some eight years after the interview -- has never been more timely.

Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir told us about the last interview he had with Bin Laden. That was in Kabul in November, 2001.

"The third time I interviewed Bin Laden," Mir addressed the assembly of global news media editors and executives, "I was not sure I would ever get back to my office safely." Mir's advice for reporters who find themselves in a similar circumstance? "When you are confronting a big terrorist you must not become his tool" Mir said. He continued: "You have to ask tough questions. Encounter him! So if you are arrested, you can present your questions as evidence that you exposed him or proved him wrong."

Mir now believes his last interview with Bin Laden was a close call. Not only because Al-Qaeda might have killed him, but -- in retrospect -- because of how the United States would be conducting itself in the so-called War on Terror. In short, this leading Pakistani journalist suggested that interviewing Bin Laden very nearly got him thrown into Guantánamo Bay prison.

But was Mir's concern justified? Surely the US would never imprison a Pakistani journalist for doing his job?

If you think that's a stretch, consider the facts. A number of journalists from the Middle East have been imprisoned without trial by the government of the United States. They include:

• Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj - held in Guantanamo for six years without charges.
• AP photographer Bilal Hussein -- held in Iraq for almost two years without charges.
• Reuters freelance photographer Ibrahim Jassam -- remains a prisoner of the United States despite an Iraqi court ruling that found no grounds for his detainment.**

Under the circumstances, Mir makes it clear that not even "professional competence" would have been sufficient to save himself. One more ingredient allowed Mir to escape captivity by the Americans following the interview.

Luck. But for two strokes of good fortune, one of Pakistan's most courageous journalist might still be languishing his life away in Guantanamo or worse.*** That's what I learned after the panel discussion when I joined Hamid Mir for lunch in the dining hall of Center Finlandia.

"During your interview, did Bin Laden ever admit to carrying out the attacks of 9-11?" I asked Mir.

"I asked Bin Laden that question," Mir said.

Gesturing towards an imagined tape recorder on the white tablecloth, Mir pantomimed the terrorist leader's response. Mir leaned forward in his chair. Pounding a finger down into the table top -- as if to press the stop button on the invisible tape recorder -- he said "Yes!" Mir leaned back for a moment, and then, pounced forward again. After his finger hit the button on the imaginary tape recorder a second time -- as if to turn it back on -- he said "No!" Mir repeated this sequence of actions for me. When the tape recorder was set to "off" Bin Laden admitted to carrying out the attacks of 9/11; when it was "on" Bin Laden denied everything.

Although it was risky, Mir decided to challenged Bin Laden to stop playing games with the tape recorder and to go on the record "Why won't you go on the record?" Mir asked the most-wanted man of all time.

Mir said Bin Laden replied, "Do you think Bush would go on the record about anything?!"

Mir said: "In reply to that remark, I asked Bin Laden: 'So are you saying there is no difference between yourself and President Bush?'"

"Bin Laden didn't like to be compared to Bush!" Mir said with a laugh.

Mir would survive his 2001 interview with Bin Laden. But in hindsight of the past eight years, Mir's worries had just begun.

Because, as Mir explained to me, for long segments of the hours-long intense interview Bin Laden had kept Mir's tape recorder turned off. Apparently, most of Mir's more critical questions had not been recorded. The implication of this seemed to be that mainly chit-chat remained on the tape.

However, Al Qaeda was also recording the interview -- the whole thing -- on two video cameras. And that was a good thing for Hamid Mir.

Mir said, "It was luck that Osama had made those two tape copies of my interview. And it was luck that when the US military moved into Kabul they managed to retrieve those Al Qaeda tapes of my interview."

Mir is convinced that the discovery of the Al Qaeda tapes saved him. Mir said he had been told by the US ambassador to Islamabad of the day: "You are safe only because we have a record of your hard questions."

What is the lesson of Mir's story for journalists? Especially if you happen to be a courageous reporter from a so-called "failed state," the key to successfully interviewing a terrorist will be avoiding later imprisonment without trial by the United States.

Another question, of course, concerns the implications of Mir's story for the United States as a beacon of freedom. Recall that besides luck, Mir believes that one particular quality spared him from interment at Guantanamo. Mir's attributes own his self-preservation at the hands of the Amricans to "professionalism." That is, having asked Bin Laden tough questions.

If what saved Mir from years of captivity at Gitmo was a high level of professionalism, ironically it was a degree of professionalism that would prove far beyond the reach of most of Mir's American counterparts.

Because while intelligence agencies were questioning Mir about his interview with Bin Laden, in the United States journalists were asking only softball questions of Bush and Cheney. The rest is history. Before long, the United States would be torturing its prisoners and fighting a never-ending war in Iraq.****

_____
* The other panelists were Peter Bergen of CNN, Alan Johnston of the BBC, Giuliana Sgrena of Il Manifesto.
**Like most of the prisoners in Guantanamo, these journalists have Arabic names. I wonder if that's that's why, as Glenn Greenwald noted, their detainment has hardly been covered in the American news media.
*** Mir might have been subjected to what the NY Times and NPR insist on calling by the euphemism "enhanced interrogation techniques" for what Obama calls a "prolonged detention."
**** "You don't want to be mistaken for Bin Laden do you?" If only Americans journalist had asked that sort of question of Bush and Cheney before it was too late.
---> Check out "How to interview terrorists and survive kidnapping," Jotman's live-blog of this IPI World Congress panel.

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