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The Sentosa Bluesmen
Yesterday was my birthday and also the day the American President, Donald Trump, met with a Korean dictator on Sentosa Island, in the city-state of Singapore. Nobody really knows if all of that fuss and muss will eventually lead to anything positive, but if you’ve never been to Singapore I can recommend it. The food is good. There is no trash, anywhere, and the people I met were welcoming, pleasant, and engaging. I was there twice, mostly training with Singaporean Commandos at Hendon Camp, but alternatively playing soccer – a scratch collection of talentless jarheads against a much better local team — and in the evenings trying to throw back cans of Tiger Beer, which is some of the foulest formaldehyde brew imaginable.
I also had my palm read twice by a woman – on separate days – because I was checking her accuracy over time. She told me I would live a long and fruitful life both times, which was a relief as I sat in a bar listening to Australian Army nutcases shouting “Ozzy Ozzy Ozzy, Oi Oi Oi!” and acting as if they were preparing to go over the top at Gallipoli.
Singapore might be fun for the whole family, and markets itself that way, but it also features a notorious district near the quay where one can find the Orchard Towers – known more colloquially as the Four Floors of Whores — which is known to sailors, Marines, and many thousands of Australians as an excellent place to stretch your liberty dollar all the way to a happy ending.
The Orchard Towers have hosted many thousands of pivots toward Asia.
If, like me, you are also interested in the place historically, I recommend WW2 combat correspondent George Weller’s accounts of the Japanese invasion. Weller was one of the last folks out before the woefully underprepared British were battered about the head and neck and the survivors marched off into the jungle as slave labor. Weller was bombed and strafed at length and was quite fortunate to have survived at all.
Prior to that he had been with the crazy-brave pilots of the Army Air Force in Malaysia, and a ragtag collection of insanely tough Dutch aviators, most of whom did not survive the meatball onslaught. Weller made it out of Singapore in time to get bombed again during the Japanese raids over Darwin, Australia, and was ultimately the first reporter on the ground in Nagasaki, after the bombing – a feat he accomplished by sneaking away from his US minders, posing as an Army Colonel, and demanding cooperation from a bewildered Japanese officer whose city had been largely vaporized while he was eating breakfast.
George Weller, Hammering One Home
Weller’s eye-witness accounts of WW2, from raiding into Ethiopia with the Army of the Belgian Congo, to the fights in Malaysia and Japan, are gripping reads and historically priceless.
At any rate, this nation’s strategic turn toward Asia is as interesting as it is potentially volatile. The Chinese aren’t much interested in American promises, or anything other than total domination of their “sphere of influence”, and perhaps the world. By militarizing the Spratley Islands, which they claimed they weren’t doing, they also have the potential to completely strangle international shipping lanes, which is a first world problem of enormous magnitude because we are now, each of us, wholly owned subsidiaries of Amazon, Home Depot, and Wal-Mart .
Also, I’m not sure of the efficacy of meeting with a guy who purges aides – those little people who forget to bring their notebook to rocket launches, or who demonstrate insufficient enthusiasm for the Dear Leader’s jokes — by having them blown apart with anti-aircraft guns or fed to packs of wild dogs — but I’m certain the effort to have Kim cough up his nukes is worth at least a meet and greet.
Trump has been castigated in various outlets for “elevating” Kim’s stature with the spectacle of a summit, but it seems ludicrous to suggest that ignoring a nuclear power with demonstrable stability issues makes the problem go away. I’ll give Trump credit where it is due, and meeting with Kim is at least bold and ballsy in a way we haven’t seen much from American presidents in a while. If he fails, he fails, but at least he tried, and it would be nice to hear the daily chorus of Bolsheviks in the American media say something pleasant about the American backbone for once.
It occurs to me that the North Koreans are crazy in much the same way that every barricaded subject is crazy, and if police work can be of any help in international relations, perhaps they should take a page from the SWAT manual.
The first thing cops do with a serious and potentially lethal barricade is to call in the negotiators. And while they are talking to him – nobody uses a bullhorn anymore, by the way, think throw phones and robots — the rest of the team is quietly shrinking the space the subject has to operate in – taking away his ability to physically maneuver in space – which I suppose is the general point of economic sanctions.
The Orchard Towers, Spiritual Home of the Asian Pivot
But the critical portion of crisis negotiation is to compel the subject to believe that he has a way out of his problem. Incentivize him, motivate him, encourage him to feel as though his surrender is actually a victory. Give him an escape route where he will feel all of the pressure suddenly relieved long enough to be placed in bracelets without a fight. Good negotiators can do that. It seems reasonable to suggest, partisan hammering on all things American and GOP aside, that we have people capable of doing that sort of thing in Singapore.
I’ve read speculative reports that Trumpy has suggested throwing up a few McDonalds restaurants in North Korea, and as funny and ridiculous as that sounds, maybe the Golden Arches could serve as a kind of ping-pong diplomacy for the modern age. Because even the most ardent communist occasionally, deep down inside, craves a Big Mac and fries.
Let us hope so. Because the alternative, in some distant future, may not be as easy, or as delightful, as the well-heeled leaders of their tribes, who share a penchant for bombast, sitting down for a catered lunch to talk about peace and disarmament in an air-conditioned 5 Star Hotel. And George Weller’s interviews of American POWs held in Nagasaki, some of whom had originally been captured on Corregidor and weighed less than 100 pounds after years of continual beatings, slave labor, and starvation, and who witnessed the explosion of Fat Man high above the city on a bright, sunshiny day, are sufficiently terrifying as a reminder of the horrors of a nuclear war.
And besides, a fortune-teller read my palm on the quay in Singapore, and earnestly suggested that I have a long and fruitful life ahead. Twice.
Well done, partner.
Gracias amigo.
Lane Batot says
The more I see of modern foreign policies and relations, the more I desire to contact and join some uncontacted tribe down the Amazon way.…..
If they’ll have us. Although, on second thought, I’m really going to need generous latherings of deet to handle the bug issues. I’ve found jungles to be largely unpleasant, well-nigh miserable, and I’m 250 years too late to run off and try to get adopted by the Absaroka. Timing is everything.
Lane Batot says
It would definetely take some caaaaareful manuevring, and you’d need to be able to be VALUABLE to them in some way–even then, you might still end up looking like a pin-cushion! But a nice thing to fantasize about, if remote sections of your brain remain undomesticated. As for the insect pest thing, let me relate to you what I have found works splendidly for jungle rambles. I grew up in North Carolina, where the summertime is very like a tropical rainforest in many ways(where there is any decent stretch of forest left.…). The high Appalachians are not nearly as buggy, but the mid-state Piedmont, and the Coastal Plains and swamps are WORSE than ANYTHING I experienced in Africa!!! When I moved from the mountains(sigh.…) to the last decent forest in the midstate–the Uwharries– 16 years ago, I was flabbergasted at the sheer masses of chiggers and ticks that were eating me alive every time I went for even the shortest ramble. And the usual(for the Southeast) amounts of biting flies of various types, mosquitoes, and annoying clouds of gnats. SO BAD, SO MISERABLE, I was wondering if I’d have to give up my summer rambling–the chiggers especially were eating me raw! And I didn’t want to have to put carcinogenic chemicals all over my body EVERY DAY to keep them off(plus, that crap’s EXPENSIVE!). So I got to thinking–what-tha-hell did the local Indians used to use to keep from being eaten alive every summer? And the answer was there in almost every early explorer’s accounts–they smeared themselves with BEAR GREASE! So I needed some substitute for bear grease(which is no longer very readily available).….to be continued.…
Lane Batot says
.….and I thought perhaps any type of OIL would do–and I was RIGHT! Some are certainly better than others–the thicker ones(like peanut oil) are the best, but the thinner ones(like baby oil)spread easier and better(and are cheaper!), but purty much anything greasy or oily will work as repellent–AND, it is GOOD for your skin! As I bet bear grease was in the day.… I experimented a bit, and settled for a mixture of baby oil and peanut oil, and a tea made from Jewelweed(a common wet-ground plant growing here). Jewelweed is often used to dry up poison ivy(which luckily I am virtually immune to), and it also stops the burning of stinging nettles INSTANTLY–and quite conveniantly grows right next to stinging nettles very commonly! It is also good for ANY kind of itching–insect bites included. So I decided to incorporate it in my mixture–I just boil a bunch of it up in a big pot(leaves and stems) and add the resulting dark orange tea to my oil mixture–which you havta shake up constantly while applying(being an oil and water mixture,of course). Keeps EVERYTHING off–flying bugs still swarm, but won’t light or bite! Chiggers are stopped DEAD, and ticks so slowed down and ineffective they are easily felt and plucked off long before they can attach. Insects of all kinds breathe through tiny holes in their exoskeletons, so any oil they encounter clogs those pores up and asphyxiates them. It IS a messy process, especially so if you insist on wearing white-man clothes on top(and less effective absorbed by clothing), but in the stinking hot, humid summers here, in the woods, I rarely wear more than barely makes me legal(maybe)–shoes(also well greased up and often sprayed with rubbing alchohol–another great , CHEAPO repellent!), a ragged pair of shorts, a belt and knife, and my spear–plus the oil–constitutes my jungle fashion apparel! And I’ll be out scrumming in the bush all day, and come out with nary a bite–amazes people! Well, civilized people, that is, because native peoples no doubt have some sort of solution to this problem rarely learned or respected by the heavily clothed European invaders. I rather look at my oil mixture AS my clothing in the summer. But boy howdy, you BETTER be sure and grease up EVERY CREVICE, or you WILL regret it! Sometimes I get lazy and say, “oh, I’ll just go out for a short walk, stay on the wide trails, and won’t bushwhack anywhere” and skip greasing up. I regret it severely, every time! So try that out on yer next jungle excursion–savage nekkidness(with the right repellent) is not so backward as civilized folk think.….
And yet every video I see of native peoples in the Amazon shows them relentlessly swatting, slapping, and scratching at bugs. And in one interview of previously uncontacted peoples they gave the acquisition of clothing as a primary reason for coming out of the jungle. My own experience in triple-canopy jungles and tropical rainforests — mostly in Asia but also the south Pacific and Caribbean, supports the notion that while nekkidness and free-swinging junk has its moments of sheer and exuberant liberation, I prefer a layer of rip-stop and a gallon of DEET between the insect kingdom and my pecker. I can’t argue that its a long term win in the fight against carcinogens, only a personal preference against the vision of bot-fly larvae emerging from the family jewels. 🙂
Matthew says
Great article.
When I was a kid my dad went to Singapore on a business trip and brought me a t‑shirt that had the fines for various offenses on it. Pretty authoritarian. A good book set there is the Singapore Wink by Ross Thomas.
It would be weird if of all people Donald Trump (with an assist from Dennis Rodman) brought about disarmament. Weird enough that it might actually happen. That said I don’t have the confidence that say…Sean Hannity does in the proceedings. We have to make sure the North Koreans keep their end of the deal. Only time will tell.
Thanks Matthew. While it is unmistakably authoritarian and centralized, it manages to somehow not feel that way. And I think most of that is focused on abiding by the law and a very centralized authority in the economy. And it appears the folks there like it that way. And I couldn’t agree more…Trump and Rodman et al. have a real shot of doing something marvelous. And maybe they will.
Traven Torsvan says
“Those little people who forget to bring their notebook to rocket launches, or who demonstrate insufficient enthusiasm for the Dear Leader’s jokes — by having them blown apart with anti-aircraft guns or fed to packs of wild dogs”
North Korea’s guilty of many atrocities, but most defectors’ stories are blatant bullshit (see the widely story of the woman who was supposedly violently killed for being in a porno by Kim Jong Un who then showed up alive and healthy in public two days after the story broke)
Reminds me of the old stories of Saddam’s soldiers throwing babies out of incubators and building giant industrial shredders to throw dissidents in.
Apocryphal tales of horror generally abound in and around brutal dictatorships. Whether or not they are “mostly bullshit” is anyone’s guess. Certainly there is likely to be a propaganda element, but one might presume many of them are also founded in elements of, or perhaps even whole, truth.
deuce says
A fine post, Craig. Happy birthday!
Thanks Deuce. Much appreciated.
RLT says
Learned a lot with is one, and happy birthday! Never thought about this sort of diplomacy through the lens of entrenched negotiation, but it makes total sense. Out of curiosity, how often does negotiation result in a more-or-less nonviolent resolution? If you can even put a number to that sort of thing.
It would likely be impossible to put a number on nationwide because it is happening virtually every day somewhere in America and doesn’t show up in the UCR numbers–which are utterly unreliable anyway. My experience has been–and I’m just picking a number out of the sky here — that it probably works significantly better than half the time. It depends on so many factors–mindset of the barricaded person principal among them because any kind of substances on board can make a huge difference in the subject’s ability to reason clearly and see the wisdom in compliance. From the LE perspective it is somewhat formulaic: dirtbag in a house or a car or a tree or whatever, and won’t come out…okay, surround him, isolate him, talk to him, give him every reason and opportunity to resolve it peacefully…and then hope he makes a good decision. All of that changes instantly when he becomes an immediate threat to a life not his own…when the only option is an immediate dynamic intervention. The study of how barricaded subject calls have been resolved is quite interesting and worthy.
RLT says
Thanks for the in-depth answer. Not something I have much knowledge of, and pretty fascinating from a psychological standpoint. I figured there’s no hard-and-fast number, but that at least gives me a ballpark idea. Considering the wildly different challenges that have to be met simultaneously in order for it to work, “significatly better than half the time” is heartening to hear.
Annie M says
Happy Birthday Craig. Had I known this ahead of time I would have made you a yummy pot of elk stew.
Thanks Annie 🙂
TJ says
Greetings from Northern Idaho America and Happy Birthday my Friend.
Lane Batot says
I hate to SCARE you guys, but don’t you get it? All this “beloved leader” crap in North Korea? Trump WANTS THAT kind of “respect” too! He didn’t go to North Korea to try and defuse nuclear weapons. I’m sorry to havta reveal to you, Trump went to North Korea for LEADERSHIP ADVICE!!!!!