If someone came up with an outlandish plot in which two Iranian agents, acting on behalf of government circles in Tehran, scheme with Mexican drug lords to blow up a Saudi ambassador on American soil, would a California screenwriter buy into it before a Virginia intelligence analyst, or would it be the other way around?

Place your bets.

[. . .]

Iranians are smart. If they weren’t smart, we wouldn’t have to worry about them building bombs. Do smart people come up with stupid plots? Not plausible. And look at the amateur pitch. Here’s a story that not only sounds like a B-movie, but is unveiled at a press conference that looks like a poster for a low-budget diversity flick: An African-American Attorney-General (Holder) flanked by a male Caucasian FBI Director (Robert S. Mueller) and a female Caucasian Assistant Attorney-General for National Security (Lisa Monaco) with a male Asian-American U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (Preet Bharara) hovering in the background. It’s early Hollywood multicultural chic. All that’s missing is the line “Coming to a theatre near you.”

This amuses the intelligence analyst. “The trouble with Hollywood-types,” he says, “is that they’ve manipulated reality for so long, they can’t even recognize it when they see it. Does your friend think Holder and Mueller and Monaco and Bharara are from Central Casting? Hello! They are who they are. Life has caught up with multicultural chic. It imitates art — or at least imitates Hollywood.”

My spook friend goes further. “Yes, it’s a stupid plot and that’s why it rings true to me,” he says. “Most true stories of international intrigue sound like B-movies.”

The granting of the right to vote to women in Saudi Arabia is a wonderful leap forward for democracy. Yet it has induced a weird concoction of cynicism and shoulder-shrugging indifference amongst the so-called sisterhood in the West, including in the upper echelons of human-rights groups who normally campaign for this kind of breakthrough. Amnesty International sniffily says “it is no great achievement to be one of the last countries in the world to grant women the vote”. Both Amnesty and the even more high-minded Human Rights Watch are serving up generous dollops of doom about this big shift in Saudi life, warning that having the vote is no “guarantee of rights” for Saudi women. Meanwhile, female members of the liberal commentariat pump out articles with headlines like “Why women in Saudi Arabia have a long way to go yet”.

Why are so many people so down on this development? Of course, the “democracy” which, from 2015, Saudi women will be allowed to take part in is far from perfect; like men, they will only get to vote in occasional municipal elections for advisers to the religious Shura Council. And yes, Saudi women’s lives will not magically transform overnight. In Britain in 1918, female suffrage was first only granted to women over the age of 30; it wasn’t until 1928 that women got the vote on equal terms with men. And it took many more years, decades in fact, for women to become full participants in society. Yet nobody, surely, would look back at the breakthroughs won by the Suffragettes in the 1910s and say, “Well, it was a big fat waste of time giving women the right to vote when many of them couldn’t aspire to anything more than housewifing drudgery”. Why do we say such things in relation to Saudi Arabia?

The reason the granting of the vote to Saudi women is a potentially brilliant development is because it implicitly recognises that these women are political beings, individuals with opinions and the right to express them (albeit in a limited fashion). Having recognised that fact, the Saudi authorities will now find it increasingly hard to justify and sustain the repression of women in other areas of social and political life. If Saudi rulers think they can grant women the right to vote and leave it at that — that there will be no further pressure for more reforms — then they must be even more insulated from reality and ignorant of history than we thought. History shows again and again that political concessions, even big ones, do not leave people satisfied, but rather fuel their aspirations for a better and freer life; they potentially make people angrier, in a good way, rather than happier.

Saudi Arabia is buying 244 Leopard 2A7+ tanks from Germany. Saudi Arabia is believed to have already ordered 44, and now has increased that order. It was only a year ago that German tank manufacturer KMW has revealed this, the latest version of its Leopard 2.

Two years ago, the German Army announced that it was going to upgrade 150 of its Leopard 2A6 tanks to the A7 standard. That would include more armor on the sides and rear (especially to protect against RPGs), more external cameras (so the crew inside could see anything in any direction, day or night), a remote control machine-gun station on top of the turret, better fire control and combat control computers and displays, more powerful auxiliary power unit and better air conditioning, and numerous other minor improvements. This would increase the weight of the tank to nearly 70 tons.

[. . .]

Saudi Arabia is concerned about Iran, which has a force of 1,500 much older tanks (most of them Russian T-72s and T-54/55s). Saudi Arabia has 1,300 tanks, most of them older American M-60s and French AMX-30s. But the Saudis also have 370 U.S. M-1s and 150 Russian T-90s. The 244 Leopards will increase the Saudi edge. The Saudis also have the money to buy spare parts for their modern tanks, and Western instructors to provide the best training. But the Iranians are better soldiers, so they might have an edge there.

Money, even foreign money (and particularly that Saudi money), has always been able to buy access to Western statesmen. But in the last decade or so, the proportions have subtly shifted. The democratic West has become relatively poorer, while a clutch of undemocratic “emerging” markets have become richer. To put it more bluntly, Western politicians, ex-politicians, and even aristocrats have become much, much poorer than the very, very rich businessmen emerging from the oil-and-gas states of Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. Twenty years ago, no retired British or German statesman would have looked outside his country for employment. Nowadays, Blair advises the governments of Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, among others; Gerhard Schröder, the former German chancellor, collects a paycheck from Gazprom, the Russian energy behemoth.

True, there is a legitimate argument for maintaining contacts with dictators: Blair helped persuade Col. Qaddafi to give up his nuclear weapons program in 2003, and in the last 10 days he has twice called the dictator and asked him to stop shooting his people. It hasn’t helped, of course, but it can’t hurt to try.

But there is no justification for taking dictators’ money or befriending their offspring, especially not while simultaneously playing politics with their parents. This is not just a British problem, either. Frank Wisner, the U.S. envoy sent by President Barack Obama to negotiate with Hosni Mubarak in the early days of the Egyptian revolution, also works for Patton Boggs, a law firm that has worked for the Egyptian government. The administration was reportedly angry when he unexpectedly opined that Mubarak “must stay” just a few days before Mubarak fled Cairo. But should anyone have been surprised? Meanwhile, Michelle Alliot-Marie, the French foreign minister, has just lost her job because she went on holiday in Tunisia during the revolution, hitched a few rides on a private plane belonging to a friend of the Tunisian president, and helped her father do a business deal there. When she got back, she tactfully suggested that the French help their friends in the Tunisian police put down the riots.

Despite spending over a billion dollars a year defending their government networks, Britain recently complained openly of hackers getting into the communications network of the Foreign Office. The government also warned of increasing attacks on British companies. The recent attacks government and corporations were all targeting specific people and data. While China was not mentioned in these official announcements, British officials have often discussed how investigations of recent hacking efforts tended to lead back to China. There is also a strong suspicion, backed up by hacker chatter, that governments are offering large bounties for information from foreign governments. Not information from China, but from everyone else.

China one of many nations taking advantage of the Internet to encourage, or even organize, patriotic Internet users to obtain hacking services. This enables the government to use (often informally) these thousands of hackers to attack targets (foreign or domestic.) These government organizations arrange training and mentoring to improve the skills of group members. Turkey has over 45,000 of hackers organized this way, Saudi Arabia has over 100,000, Iraq has over 40,000, Russia over 100,000 and China, over 400,000. While many of these Cyber Warriors are rank amateurs, even the least skilled can be given simple tasks. And out of their ranks will emerge more skilled hackers, who can do some real damage. These hacker militias have also led to the use of mercenary hacker groups, who will go looking for specific secrets, for a price. Chinese companies are apparently major users of such services, judging from the pattern of recent hacking activity, and the fact that Chinese firms don’t have to fear prosecution for using such methods.

It was China that really pioneered the militia activity. It all began in the late 1990s, when the Chinese Defense Ministry established the “NET Force.” This was initially a research organization, which was to measure China’s vulnerability to attacks via the Internet. Soon this led to examining the vulnerability of other countries, especially the United States, Japan and South Korea (all nations that were heavy Internet users). NET Force has continued to grow. NET Force was soon joined by an irregular civilian militia; the “Red Hackers Union” (RHU). These are nearly half a million patriotic Chinese programmers, Internet engineers and users who wished to assist the motherland, and put the hurt, via the Internet, on those who threaten or insult China. The RHU began spontaneously in 1999 (after the U.S. accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Serbia), but the government has assumed some control, without turning the voluntary organization into another bureaucracy. The literal name of the group is “Red Honkers Union,” with Honker meaning “guest” in Chinese. But these were all Internet nerds out to avenge insults to the motherland.

You have to wonder how many script kiddies ever thought they’d end up being government operatives.

So let me get this straight . . . Americans should not bow to Queen Elizabeth (who is head of state of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc.), but should bow to the Emperor of Japan, the King of Saudi Arabia, and the Mayor of Tampa? Is that the full list? How about deputy mayors?

In the last few weeks, tensions have been rising between Saudi Arabian border guards and Yemeni tribesmen who live along the border. The source of the tension is a fence that the Saudis are building. The problem is that neither country has agreed on exactly where the border is. Moreover, the tribesmen do not want a fence blocking their way, as the border has never been recognized by the tribes that live astride it. The big problem is that Saudi Arabia’s land borders are mostly sand. The dunes keep moving as the winds blow this way and that. Historically, the local warlords used the few obvious landmarks to establish a vague border. But now there is GPS, and most countries in Arabia are ready to establish precise borders. The problem is that each country has a different idea of where the real border, as precisely marked by GPS, is.

The negotiations proceed, but the tribesmen living astride the border are often not willing to negotiate. In that case, force must be used. But first, both nations involved have to agree to apply force. That is not a problem on the Yemen border, because those Yemeni tribesmen that have been shooting at the Saudi fence builders, are already at war with the Yemeni army. But throughout Arabia, there will be more disputes like this, probably for decades, until all the borders are agreed on.