The Fishermen of Kalba

The wide-winged birds wheel above the encroaching net, above the desperately splashing surface of the broken water. The old Toyota Landcruiser engine guns, the rusty wheels digging into the soft, wet sand and the dark-skinned men in their lungis loop another length of net on the beach.

Another rope plait is laid out on the shining surface before the car moves forward again. The inexorable tightening of the noose contains the afternoon’s catch, patiently harvested by a small boat dragging the net around in a huge mile-long arc out from the beach. The Toyotas pull back up the beach, heaving their complicated lengths into the shoreline. Each drag ends with a twist of the wheel that will bring the cars closer together by a few feet before the next pull back, creating a single, routine and gigantic sweep of the sea, stepping together along the beach to close the net and harvest the life out of the shoreline.




They come, the fish, as their options run out. This way and that, they start to panic, to thresh for space, for air. The net tightens, the birds dive for sprats and the fishermen smoke and laugh together, padding along the wet sandy flats in their bare feet as they gather and loop netting. Their mood lightens as the catch gets closer, the sea erupts into a froth of flashing wet bodies and fins and they laugh, white-toothed grins in brown, wrinkled faces.

As the loop gets smaller, grey and white scaled bodies break the surface, lunging for something, anything but the press of thousands in the gathering encroachment. Among them are the sand sharks, chunky rays that look like kites in the peaceful waters where they swim and are elegant. But the land renders them ugly and ungainly – and a breath of air is an instant, inevitable death for them. Once they take a deep breath of open air their gills are ruined: they can’t be put back in the sea. They can only die.

The fisherman don’t want them: there’s no value for sand shark in the market, although they’re edible. They’re left on the margins of the sea, gasping and reaching for the final, desperate breaths that just confirm their deaths. Shortly, they stop struggling and become still. The fishermen take their catch to market, leaving the shimmering beach dotted with the bodies of the rays they didn’t mean to catch and can’t sell.

Fifteen years ago, we watched as each catch turned up hundreds of sand sharks, the whole wide expanse of flat, dark-sanded beach dotted with upturned white bellies and threshing tails. Now there are only eight or ten of them left as the cars and their nets speed off to Kalba to sell their catch; eight or ten dead bodies lying as a harsh reminder of the law of diminishing returns.

Nobody will care until someone will realise one day that it’s too late to care: when there are no more sand sharks dying on the beaches after they've pulling in the catch at Khor Kalba.



A thought for the weekend...

Pammy in Sammy Whammy

Today's 7Days carries the thoughts of former Baywatch Babe Pamela Anderson, who is apparently heartbroken at the captivity of Sammy the whale shark. Pictured wearing an ET t-shirt, oh sorry, no a PETA t-shirt, Pammy found Sammy's sorry story 'heartbreaking' when a friend 'told her' about it. A friend had also told her that Dubai zoo is a dump. She also 'hit out at the live importation of sheep from Australia and described it as a "hell" journey for many animals'.

Poor 7Days. They could have gone for the 'Pammy Backs Sammy' headline except it was rival Gulf News wot coined the Sammy the Shark name...

(Pammy is, according to 7Days, to lend her name to an eco-resort in Abu Dhabi and will return to the UAE later this year. Whoopee.)

Now don't get me wrong. I'm firmly of the belief that PR-disaster Sammy should be allowed to slip into the wild and out of the acquarium. The whole episode has been an awfulness from the get-go and IMHO should have been dealt with quickly, quietly and with dignity long before it ever attracted the attention of international animal rights groups.

But haven't we seen enough wild commentary from people acting on limited insight, knowledge, facts and experience recently?

From Germaine 'bus tour' Greer through the unfortunate Margaret Atwood who withdrew her support for the EAIFL based on initial (and one-sided) media reports to the savage shrieks of international opprobium heaped upon Dubai by the blogging, Twittering 'DIE DUBAI' brigade, particularly over the Peer affair, we've been getting quite a lot of this 'I've never been there but I've heard all about it' stuff.

BTW - the latest in a long line of uninformed guff and total tosh from international commentators that haven't even bothered to visit the UAE before slagging it off comes to us courtesy of '3,000 cars at Dubai airport' newspaper The Washington Post, which has come a long way from Deep Throat and all that. Take a look at this excellent example of the genre.

At least PETA activist Chrissie Hynde came here and said her piece...

Weird Fish

The mysterious fishy catch that has been puzzling fishermen in Ras Al Khaimah since Sunday has not only been identified as an Ocean Sunfish but has also been cited by today's Gulf News (640g) as probably one of the most dense materials known to man.

Today's GN report describes the fish as being the size of a dinner plate and yet weighing in at half a tonne. Adult males can reach weights of a whole metric tonne, apparently.

Deliciously, the online version of the story also maintains the fish to be the size of a dinner plate.

Let's see how long that lasts...

UPDATE

Goofed. As Nick points out in the comments, the article reads dinner plate SHAPED not SIZED and so that means I screwed up in a big way... It's just a stupid Sunfish and is not in fact one of the densest materials known to man, or a SNAFU by GN and so the egg has quite proverbially hit the fan and is now heading my way at a speed of knots.

Poste in haste, regret at leisure...

Etisalat Makes My Day

400 calls in search of a human later. Much listening to messages talking about 'our world class customer service' included...
"Hello."
"Hello."
"Hello."
"OK. Hello, our telephone is not working. We have checked and it is not disconnected, but you get 'not available' when you dial in and an engaged tone when you dial out. Our ADSL is down, too."
"You have fault?"
Repeat
"You can change the handset."
"This is a company. All our handsets are not working. And our Internet."
"Internet?"
"Yes, Internet. Look, this isn't a radio commercial. What's the problem?"
"You have fault!"
"OK. You fix fault then."
"Yes. In three days."
"This is a company. How do you expect us to work for three days no Internet, no telephone?"
"It is problem, yes. You pay Dhs150 per hour, engineer will come in two hours."
"What, so because you can't provide reliable connectivity to your customers to ITU standards, you're going to charge me Dhs150 an hour to pay your engineers to do basic fault reporting on a multiple line failure to our location?"
"What?"
"Yes. Please. We pay Dhs150 per hour. or Dhs 1,500. I don't care. Fix it now."
"OK. Engineer will come."
To be updated

...Update...
Pilot's log.
Stardate Dubai 10.30am

The engineer hasn't arrived. The problem apears to have fixed itself. We have Internet and telephone connectivity. Spock has gone down the shops for a packet of celebratory Caramel Digestives and Scottie is sobbing into his engineering manuals. I feel a strong spring urge and Lieutenant Uhuru's looking damn fit these days...

...Update 2.0...
I forgot to post this, but a strange man called the next day and was surprised to get through to us. That's right, he was the engineer.

Tennis Ping Pong

It's going to be an interesting week at the tennis. I'm not referring to the game itself, the thrill of which has always, like that of golf, eluded me, but to the shenanigans around the Dubai Duty Free Open Championships tournament.

For a start we're going to be seeing how you resolve the interesting question of why the Women's Tennis Association is fining the organisers because the host country denied a visa to an Israeli player in accordance with that host country's practice over the past 30 years.

The United Arab Emirates joined the Arab League's Arab Boycott of Israel, has no diplomatic relations with Israel and it was always been clear that not only would an Israeli citizen be denied a visa, but entrance could be complicated and even denied on possession of an Israeli stamp in your passport. So quite what made the WTA think this would be ‘sorted’ without some pretty special handling is anyone’s guess.

Then there’s the even more interesting question of this week’s Israeli, doubles player Ram, whose visa has been granted. That left the spokesperson for the organisers sounding perhaps a little wobbly in today's Gulf News (640g), which reports:

Tournament director Salah Tahlak denied that any errors of judgement had been made, as claimed by a section of the players and the media. Commenting on his statement on Tuesday that Peer's visa had been denied for security reasons, he said: "Whatever reason was given last week, we had our reasons. Maybe then it was still fresh what happened in Gaza and we made that very clear in the statement.

Maybe indeed.

Dubai Book Ban

Five years before I was born, a new law, the Obscene Publications Act, allowed publishers in my native United Kingdom, for the first time, to escape conviction for obscenity if they could prove a work they produced had literary merit.

Its first trial was in 1960, when Penguin books went to court over DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, a suit brought by the Crown. They won the case and a new era of freedom was ushered in, allowing people to explore ideas and concepts that had previously been impossible to air in public.

By 1971, the producers of the underground magazine Oz faced trial in a UK court for obscenity, again a suit brought against them by the State. After a lengthy and expensive trial, they too were acquitted (on appeal, in fact).

In the meantime, satirical magazine Private Eye was banned from sale at branches of WH Smith until the 1970s. In fact, the retailer also refused to stock the controversial 'Diana' issue as recently as 2004.

The Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks (Here's the Sex Pistols) was banned from the charts, BBC radio and many record stores across the UK. Their 1977 single 'God Save the Queen' was banned by the BBC. As was The Stranglers' Peaches.

Frankie Goes To Hollywood's overtly homosexual record Relax was banned from the charts, BBC Radio and many record stores in 1983.

In 1992, Radiohead agreed to edit the word fuck out of 'Creep' and thereby avoided a radio ban.

This list of records banned by the BBC for reasons of sexuality, politics and 'obscenity' details the lot, right up to 1997, when The Prodigy faced an effective 'no airtime' ban by BBC radio.

Throughout my lifetime I have seen censorship in my home country, from the demonstrations against Monty Python's Life of Brian (and the cutting of the film to meet the demands of the UK's censor), the censorship of television (Mary Whitehouse and all), of literature (see above) and of music (ditto).

I don't like censorship. I'm against it. I have pushed against it, as slowly and surely as I believe I can within limits of reason I choose to set myself. I believe strongly in freedom of speech and expression.

But the sound of the newly secular and liberated voices of the UK media howling like a pack of infuriated Macaques at the temerity of people living and working in another society and cultural environment in deciding whether a work is appropriate for that audience is really too much. Over the period in which the UAE has been a nation, the UK has only just managed to stop banning, suing, censoring and repressing literature and music. Is it SO hard to understand that other societies might not be quite as... umm... 'advanced'?

Media freedom in the UAE has moved ahead in my time here. It's by no means perfect, but it's a whole lot better than it was and much more liberal than in many other parts of the Middle East and Asia. Greater freedom of expression is allowed here than in many other parts of the Middle East and Asia. But there are limits. These are being constantly explored, tested and pushed. Probably not as much as they could or should be, but they are. It's a long, slow game to play precisely because this Muslim society holds different values and is keen to preserve those.

As is its right, no? People do still have the right to uphold different values, don't they?

I agree on the principle. No book should be banned. And I look forward to the day when we get there. But in the case of the celebrated 'Festival Book', I believe the author knew exactly what she was doing. I believe this is a cynical attempt to use this ban to create 'buzz' around an otherwise, I suspect, unremarkable book.

In the meantime, I do strongly believe that the newly libertarian UK could engage in a little less hubris and a little more introspection regarding its own, hard-fought and newly won freedoms.

A Strange Feeling

I'm currently in the grip of the strangest feeling. I'm actually feeling sorry for Dubai.

Lalaland is taking the most enormous pasting in the international media right now. The Israeli tennis player ban story and the British author book banned story are flying around and media are picking them up faster than discarded dollar bills. The 'conversation' on Twitter is universally negative and violently anti-Dubai, buoyed up with links to the New York Times piece that asserted 3,000 cars have been abandoned at the airport, Dubai's Wikipedia 'human rights' entry that details drug convictions at Dubai International Airport and stories on the tennis and book scandals.

The ban on Shahar Peer has led to an international outcry and the situation doesn't look as if it will get any better, with The Guardian reporting that a second Israeli player, Andy Ram may also be denied a visa - and that Dubai could lose the support of the WTA and the ATP as a consequence of the ban on Israeli players.

The banned British author story has also gained a lot of traction. Nobody has thought to question why a writer that had previously lived in Bahrain for five years would think that a book of that nature would go down well locally but the coverage has been another howl of anti-Dubai sentiment. And no matter how much you suspect it all of being an elaborately managed publicity stunt to get an unpublished book 'out there', the tone of coverage and sentiment is universally negative.

I do wonder how much of the outpouring of hate is about people giving someone else a kicking to help manage their own frustrations and fears in our straightened times. All of this comment, mostly based on little direct experience of the place and more direct experience of over-simplified and jazzed up media reports, does rather seem to position Dubai as the poster child for mindless excess and crassness.

But then Tinsel Town has hardly been tasteful or modest in its promotions, has it?

Don't Panic

I tried to do the lettering above in relaxing colours, but it didn't work. You'll just have to imagine them...

The National today reports that EIDA, the Emirates Identity Authority, has told us not to panic. Which is nice!

"Calm down, don't panic, your deadline isn't until the end of 2010," Darwish al Zarouni, the director general of EIDA told the newspaper.

Gulf News (600g) meanwhile is still carrying the clear message that 430,000 expat professionals haven't registered and there are only 13 days left for the deadline to expire.

I, who hold an appointment to get my card in September (the first available at the Rashidiya ID centre when I booked) am going to go with The National on this one.

The communications aspect alone of the ID card initiative has been a fascinating case study for me. Truly fascinating...

Blogs, Media Laws and Ethics

Loveday Morris in The National touched the issue of the UAE's new draft media law and its treatment of online entities and media today. Her piece (which referenced a certain, ahem, blog) put the question of how the new law caters for the Internet and its media and platforms to Ibrahim Al Abed, director general of the UAE's National Media Council. His response, quoted by The National, was that 'internet issues may be addressed in the “executive regulations” that will accompany the new law.'

This response is increasingly being used to address questions from media that attempt to define a more granular view of a very wide-ranging law. The law itself has been two years, as Gulf News (640g) is so fond of saying, 'on the anvil'. One is left wondering if the regulations have been part of that process or are a process yet to come.

In the meantime, I've been doing a little ferretting in response to the interesting questions I've been starting to encounter regarding the roles of media in today's online world. For instance, what's a journalist and what's a blogger? How should the two behave? Should bloggers be held to the same standards as journalists? And if not, to what standards should they be held, if any?

I found the document below useful and would welcome comments on it. It was referenced by Reporters Sans Frontiers and has been produced by CyberJournalist.net, where it has generated a significant volume of comment and contribution.

Could this be a framework for the Middle East? Something to guide legislators along the same lines as the UAE Journalists' Association guidelines?

This text and the comments on it (over 300, so make a cup of tea first) can be referenced here.

A BLOGGERS' CODE OF ETHICS

Be Honest and Fair
Bloggers should be honest and fair in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.
Bloggers should:
• Never plagiarize.
• Identify and link to sources whenever feasible. The public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources' reliability.
• Make certain that Weblog entries, quotations, headlines, photos and all other content do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context.
• Never distort the content of photos without disclosing what has been changed. Image enhancement is only acceptable for for technical clarity. Label montages and photo illustrations.
• Never publish information they know is inaccurate -- and if publishing questionable information, make it clear it's in doubt.
• Distinguish between advocacy, commentary and factual information. Even advocacy writing and commentary should not misrepresent fact or context.
• Distinguish factual information and commentary from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two.

Minimize Harm
Ethical bloggers treat sources and subjects as human beings deserving of respect.
Bloggers should:
• Show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by Weblog content. Use special sensitivity when dealing with children and inexperienced sources or subjects.
• Be sensitive when seeking or using interviews or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief.
• Recognize that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort. Pursuit of information is not a license for arrogance.
• Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone's privacy.
• Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.
Be cautious about identifying juvenile suspects, victims of sex crimes and criminal suspects before the formal filing of charges.

Be Accountable
Bloggers should:
• Admit mistakes and correct them promptly.
• Explain each Weblog's mission and invite dialogue with the public over its content and the bloggers' conduct.
• Disclose conflicts of interest, affiliations, activities and personal agendas.
• Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence content. When exceptions are made, disclose them fully to readers.
• Be wary of sources offering information for favors. When accepting such information, disclose the favors.
• Expose unethical practices of other bloggers.
• Abide by the same high standards to which they hold others.

(All of which covers blogs, but not Twitter or Facebook or YouTube or MySpace or or or...)

Last Post

The Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has, as many of you know, taken the decision to block the sand between the Western areas of Sharjah and Dubai. I have covered this pretty extensively and am aware I'm in danger of boring you. But indulge me one last time.

I suspect this is, finally, the last post about the snicket. The RTA has now taken to stationing a number of four wheel drives (I think three) along the border, calling down a JCB by radio to plug any new gap being driven in the extensive Hadrianesque earthwork and concrete block barrier that they have put up to divide the open sand stretch between the two Emirates. It's too much even for the little band of lunatics willing to negotiate the remaining, amazingly dangerous, crossing over a high dune.

I banged through a gap in the fortifications today, beeping merrily and waving at the frustrated-looking bunch from the RTA calling up their yellow monstrosity. I suspect for the last time.

It's nice they've got so much resource to devote to stopping a few intrepid 4WDs from making the crossing (which is, incidentally, impassable to 2WD traffic and actually requires a modicum of desert driving skill to negotiate) between the two Emirates.

The shortcut did not cause high levels of traffic on the roads Dubai-side, and at no time resulted in any jams or traffic congestion. It did not cause any serious traffic incidents to my knowledge or contribute to a rise in accidents or fatalities. It didn't promote speeding, bad behaviour or reckless driving.

No journalist has picked up the 'phone to the RTA and asked them why they have built a wall between the two Emirates. And so we will likely never know.

Over and out.

PS: anyone who wants the backstory can just use the search box and look for 'snicket'.

Snarky

The ability to be cynical, negative and rude is one of the strongest assets of a good public relations practitioner.

If you have someone inside the tent who’s able to take a look at what you’re up to and see the downside, to ask the hard questions that media and the public will ask, then you’ve got an opportunity to factor that likely feedback into your plans. You then have the opportunity to change the plan, if that is what is required, or to prepare a well-thought out and clear response to the question that presents your point of view clearly and cogently. That includes looking at the searching, negative questions you’d rather not have to face, let alone answer.

We call the collection of those responses a ‘rude Q&A’: it's a document that summarises the worst things you can expect to have thrown at you, that asks the difficult or dangerous questions and that proposes a response to those questions. It means that your team is better prepared – they have had the chance to consider the factors involved and they all have access to a formal, unified response to the most challenging of questions.

A rude Q&A can make the difference between taking and managing the most probing query in your stride or standing around looking like a slightly surprised goldfish while you try and think up some off-the-cuff response to that bolt from the blue. It also avoids the awful situation where more than one spokesperson is in that situation and they both give completely different responses in their panic. Both responses may be perfectly valid, but it still ends up looking like the proverbial left and right hand disconnect.

Putting together a rude Q&A means being realistic about the other point of view, looking at the issue with fresh eyes and challenging it. It means having a downer on your good work, being cynical and snarky about your virtues and focusing on what’s bad about you. It means having the impertinence to ask the most inappropriate and searching questions of yourself. But it’s important that you do - before someone outside the tent does it.

This piece originally appeared as one of the chucklesomely named 'A Moment with McNabb' columns in Campaign Middle East magazine.

Twits

This Thursday will see the global Twestival event taking place in Dubai. Over 175 countries all over the world are having simultaneous events to celebrate the fine art of Twittering. All you have to do is be a user of the micro-blogging social networking phenomenon and this year’s biggest new thing since Marmite rice crackers.

Why bother?

Well, I can see there’s a downside to getting stuck at the upper deck of Dubai’s Barasti Bar on a Thursday evening with upwards of a 140 early adopters, geeks, nerds, social networking gurus (they’ll be the ones in towels) and neologists. But there’s an upside, too.

Twitter’s damn useful. It started as a social application which aimed to give you a 140 character space to answer the question ‘What are you doing right now?’ But Twitter has evolved at a remarkable pace. The underlying technology hasn’t changed so much as they way people have used it. Rather like SMS, Twitter has taken on a life of its own.

The Dubai Twestival venue was itself sourced and booked using Twitter, which can move information at remarkable speeds. In fact, Le Meridien Mina Seyahi (@minaseyahi) became a sponsor of the event - again, through Twitter. And so did Virgin Megastores (@virginmegame)!

Crowd-sourcing (Anyone know where I can get tickets to the Dubai Twestival?), customer service (I hate HSBC! "Hi. This is HSBC. What’s the problem?" - OK, so that example's a pipe dream, but you get what I mean. Companies like Comcast are using it effectively), marketing ("Try this out, it’s cool") and sharing ideas, information, updates, tips and links you’ve come across are all just a sample of the many ways that people are finding Twitter is a useful and cool tool.

For what it’s worth, people, my Twitter feeds into my Facebook page and to the blog (the feed’s there, to the right hand side) and generates a very different set of responses from each of the platforms it goes to. By using TweetBurner, a natty little application that shortens URLs, I can Twurl any site I come across on the web, sharing that information with the people ‘following’ me on Twitter, my Facebook friends and even you, the rather wonderful readers of this daft wee blog.

You can respond to a ‘Tweet’ on Twitter, send and receive direct messages and ‘re-tweet’ stuff you like and want to pass on to your fellow Twitterers. By tweeting and re-tweeting, information can flow at remarkable speed and to remarkable numbers of people. Just take the recent Mumbai bombings or the Israeli incursion into Gaza, where debate and information were flowing at a blistering pace.

And then start adding in other applications for Twitter. Take a look at Blip.fm (again, there’s a ‘Blip widget’ to the right side of the blog if you scroll down), which lets you select music you like and create a playlist. Each track you pick gives you a chance to comment and that comment’s shared with anyone getting your tweets as well as people following you on Blip. It’s a great way of playing with music, sharing and discovering new stuff. There are a whole range of interesting/useful/crazy Twitter tools out there, too.

If you want to find out more, a great place to start is by registering for Twitter, which takes little more than going to www.twitter.com and clicking on ‘Join the conversation’. You could follow up by registering for Twestival here - if you want to do that, I suggest you extractez le digit, because it's nigh on full as I post this.

If you get to the Twestival and want to meet up, I'll be easy to find. I’ll be the one not wearing bottle-bottom glasses and a funny ‘arm hammering my head’ hat...

PS: And now, for your listening pleasure, that Catboy and Geordiebird interview. Don't blame me if you go ahead and click here!!!

Fear?

Following on from the recent Gulf News interview with Ibrahim Al Abed, the head of the National Media Council, Khaleej Times has now siezed its chance.

That interview is linked here. It contains a few gems. I particularly like:

KT: What should the journalist worry about in the new draft?
NMC DG: Nothing. I am serious. Nothing. But, I do not consider a journalist to be a journalist if he spreads out a rumour. I do not consider a journalist to be a journalist if he wants to attack the President in an insulting way. And, I do not think that a journalist can be a journalist if he doesn't take into consideration the general culture of the country.

KT: Do you think journalists here self-censor?

NMC DG: Yes. I do not know... We have nothing to do.

KT: There seems to be some kind of a fear. What is the fear?

NMC DG: I do not think there is a basis for this fear. For me, any journalist has his own code of ethics. He should have. This is some kind of self-censorship. I look at it from this way. If you look at the code of ethics that was issued by the journalists, by the editors of the newspapers, we have many restrictions within the code of ethics itself. This is exactly the self-censorship.

Advertisement

Gulf News (640g) is more than worth your Dhs3 today, recessionary pressures notwithstanding.

It will repay your investment not because it contains much newsy stuff printed on dead trees, and certainly not for its coverage of the UAE Journalists' Association conference, but because of the advertisement on page 36. This alone justifies the expenditure, this alone makes today's GN a collector's item.

I commend it to you most highly.

Update. For those readers unable or unwilling (Nick) to purchase Gulf News, I have now uploaded a scan. GN's subscription department will never forgive me... You'll have to click on it to read it, of course...

The End is Nigh

Friends.

It is with a sad heart that I address you tonight. As you well know, a small band of valiant warriors has fought an implacable enemy for many months now, an enemy with resources and power beyond our wildest dreams; resources that it is willing to throw against us in an effort to crush us out of existence. If they succeed, they will deny us the very liberty of the sands that has so long been ours to enjoy.

This unjust war has been fought with honour by our people. It is not a war we asked for, but it is a war we prosecuted with dignity and valour.

The media has studiously ignored our plight. Not one pen has been lifted in our defence or to question the motives of this enemy, invisible for so many months but now clear for all to see. They have been allowed to continue in their course, to extinguish our hopes and dreams, while the world's press stand by and shamefully pretend that nothing is happening.

They brought earth movers to shake our resolve, but we were faster, more nimble and smarter than they. They built walls to bar us from the land, tore a slash of concrete barrier across this desert country so that it was divided by an impenetrable, dark, grey wall.

But we crossed their lines time and time again, confounding their nameless purpose. We carried the torch of freedom and liberty and we prevailed.

Friends, we prevail no more. Tonight only one crossing was left open and only a pitiful handful of defenders remained. Lorries dropped lines of concrete blocks, earth movers have been toiling since the early morning to push high piles of sand against those blocks and to carve new, impassable barriers out of the very land. The very weight of the resources our enemy is prepared to expend against us bears us down so that the burden is one we can barely carry.

I fear it is nearly over. I fear I have to tell you that hope almost escapes us entirely.

But we shall fight, my fellow countrymen. We shall fight. To the absolute end, to the finish. To the last man and the last four wheel drive, we shall fight the brutal invaders of our happy shortcut.

The war of the snicket is not, will not, be over.

We shall fight to the bitter end.

The Media Police

Gulf News (880g) today contains more commentary on the new draft media law of the UAE. In response to a petition from over 100 UAE academics, lawyers, journalists, human rights activists and members of non-governmental organisations, the national media council's director general, Ebrahim Al Abed has asserted that the law is a good thing.

Interestingly, the piece (which is significantly cut in the online edition, for some reason. You'll just have to shell out Dhs3 for the full skinny) adds some new fact. The National Media Council will be charged with ascertaining whether a breach of the law has taken place and forwarding the case to the courts which, if I understand his words correctly, effectively makes the NMC The Media Police.

Do you think they'll get smart new uniforms with shiny peaked caps and mirror shades?

"The National Media Council will have the responsibiliy of determining whether a possible breach of the law has occured - but it will then be for the courts to determine whether the law has actually been broken and to decide upon the penalty, if any" Al Abed told GN.

Meanwhile, another worrying development comes from the UAE Journalists' Association, which is holding a two-day conference at Dubai's Al Bustan Rotana today and tomorrow according to GN. The conference will discuss many weighty matters related to journalism and ethics, including the role of online media. In fact, talking to Gulf News, the Association's head said that:

"...trends and challenges to the media will also be discussed, such as the role of citizen journalism and bloggers. He said it was difficult to accept bloggers as journalists because they did not fall under a framework of accountability and ethics that govern responsible reporting."

Which is all very well, if 'citizen journalists' (hate that phrase) and bloggers are involved in the discussion. I certainly didn't get an invite... anyone else out there get one?

And do you WANT to be seen as journalists? Either professionally or in the eyes of the law? I know that I, for one, sure as hell don't...

Darwin

For those of you unlucky enough not to be on the mailing list, the 2008 Darwin Awards are now out. I shall treat you to one of the runners up before letting you follow the link to the winner.

The Darwin Awards are given annually to someone whose death was so utterly pointless that it considered thoughtful of them to have removed themselves from the human gene pool. Sure, it's cruel humour. But then we kill animals for sport, don't we?

2008 Darwin Award Runner Up: A ONE TRACK MIND Confirmed.

July 2008, Italy | Gerhard, 68, was queued at a traffic light in his Porsche Cayenne sportscar. Before one reaches the light, there is a railroad crossing, and Gerhard had not let the queue progress forward far enough before he drove onto the tracks. As you might imagine, given Murphy's Law, a train was coming.

The safety bars came down, leaving the Porsche trapped on the rails. According to witnesses, it took the driver awhile to realize he was stuck. Finally he jumped from the car and started to run--straight toward the oncoming train, waving his arms in an attempt to save his sportscar!

The attempt was partly successful. The car received less damage than its owner, who landed 30 meters away. Attempts to revive him were unsuccessful.

The moral of the story? Momentum always wins.

The Darwin Awards website is here while this year's award winner is here.

Snicketeers!

25°15'57.86"N

55°29'0.01"E

Have a lovely weekend folks! I'm going home - the short way...

30 Days

"Hi. Thanks for coming in to see us."
"Well, I was coming anyway. My Shiny's going dull again."
"That was actually the reason we asked to see you."
"Oh, cool. You're going to respray it again like last time it went dull?"
"Umm, no, not in so many words. We want it back."
"What do you mean, you want it back? No. It's mine. I bought it from you in the first place."
"Yes, but we want it back. You have to leave now and we want the Shiny back."
"But I don't want to leave. I invested everything I have here when you sold me the Shiny."
"That's the rules. What can we do?"
"But you said the Shiny would be a dream for life. That it was my gateway to new possibilities. You said I could relax in an iconic oasis of calm and dare to believe in my prosperous future. You said that I could dream a dream of dreamy dreams!"
"That was before the credit crisis. Now we all have to face economic realities."
"You said the Shiny would be mine forever!"
"We didn't. It's here in the small print, under redundancy. See?"
"But you didn't tell me that."
"We did. It's your memory at fault, that's what it is. Unless you've got something in writing?"
"No, of course not. Nobody even thought about redundancy when you sold me the Shiny."
"Well, we don't like to lecture, but perhaps you'd be better off by planning for the future rather than wandering around with your head in the clouds dreaming."
"What am I going to do now?"
"To be honest, that's not really our problem. We only work within the law."
"What law?"
"Our law."
"You're making it up as you go along."
"Right. That's enough. You're having a negative impact on the economy now. Give it back and toddle off, there's a good chap."
"I'll go to the newspapers."
"Jolly good idea. That'll give you something to pack with. Don't forget to leave the car at the airport."

Snicket Watch - The Awful Truth

I had occasion to work from home this morning and so traversed the snicket at mid-day, relatively late for a meeting. But out of the corner of my eye, I caught the glint of a JCB's massive arm, raised above a section lower down the snicket before it plunged into the sand like a murderer's knife.

I hared over the soft, sandy hillocks to see, finally, who this gang of unprincipled bashi-bazouks were - the blockheads who are fighting with us all, and losing, as we try to make our daily way back and forth to work over a small sandy shortcut.

Who could it be? Who would be arrogant enough to think they could block an entire desert? Who would be daft enough to waste the enormous manpower and resources it takes to keep blocking the snicket for months on end? Who would be so implacable? Who would want to deny a few intrepid 4WD owners their little bit of relief from the hustle and jostle of the morning queues?

I stopped and asked them who they were. And they told me.

But you'll have to go to the comments for the terrible truth...

Relax

The Minister of Labour and chairman of the National Media Council, Saqr Ghobash, has written a piece in today's The National which seeks to clarify the aim and intent of the new media law.

In a piece titled 'Do not fear for press freedom', he says: "A rumour about collapsing property prices is insufficient information on which to base a story. A story based on a well-researched study by a leading bank or estate agent, however, is another matter entirely."

It's a sobering thought that this statement on how a journalist can 'stand up' a story could well be cited in a court of law in future as being definitive of the law's intent.

He notes that "Sadly, much of the comment (on the law) appears to have been misinformed or to be based upon a misunderstanding both of the current situation and of the contents of the proposed legislation." - Seabee deals quite neatly with our alarming propensity to wilfully misunderstand clear communication here.

The government is, apparently, to issue an appendix to the law over the next seven weeks that will clarify "vague provisions" according to the story in the print and digital, but not online, editions. The online (read 'most up to date') version of the story instead prefers to run instead with the comment from the UAE Journalists' Association, which is still not happy, it seems: “We asked for 40 things, not one or two.”

Worryingly, there's still no news on how the diverse and fast-moving world of online media will be treated under the new law - if, indeed, it is to be covered by the 'new' media law at all. And nobody appears to be asking the question of 'the concerned authorities', either.

Sign of the Times (Redux)

I can't even begin to match Seabee's world-straddling picture story scoop. But I did think that this was yet another sign of the times, albeit perhaps a little more creative. And it did make us grin when we got it in the office...

Delighted to extend the reach of the campaign!!!

Harsh

As another round of writers pass the authonomy 'top five' test, one of the books that passed out last month received an unusually harsh spanking from Harper Collins' editor.

Remember one of my points was 'respect'? That I was annoyed at HC's 'one way' communication and its faceless editors? Well, imagine how you'd feel having put your work in front of 4,000 people so that an anonymous jerk with the backing of a major corporation could write:

"...stands out from the crowd of Authonomy proposals; not necessarily through its content or writing, however, but through the high status its author is held in within the Authonomy community."

So it only got there through the writer's popularity? That starts the girl off well, doesn't it? And then we go on:

"I don’t honestly believe that Seeing Red is a great work of science fiction."

At least that's honest, if a tad brutal. But then you can't really get into the writing thing unless you're up for a bit of brutality. I mean, all editors are brutes, no?

"Seeing Red’s take on science fiction is naïve and simplistic..."

Oh hang on. Aren't we being a bit, well, unnecessary here?

"The world of SF...has moved far on from cheesy concepts expressed in this book"

Note the missing definite article. The editor can't spell 'found', either.

"...the settings are straight from central casting."

Our hero goes on to have a right old go. Get this - and do imagine this was your hard work, voted to the top by something like 500 people on the site who have said, essentially, that they would buy it if it were on sale:

"Of course, there is nothing wrong at all with referencing the styles of older pulp novels – they may be the equivalent of B-movies but at their best can have a tremendous joi de vivre and embrace some truly mind-boggling concepts. But I do not believe that the intention here was to deliberately pastiche that sort of science fiction to make a particular point or create a specific effect."

And this from a patronising, condescending goon that can't even spell 'Joie de vivre'!

But the real kick in the head comes last. Remember, this is supposedly from an editor at one of the world's largest and most powerful publishing houses, so carries unusual weight:

"I cannot see any science fiction imprint picking this one up for publication."

This is Patty's reaction to it. I don't think she's gone far enough, but there you go: Patty’s blog…

Snicket Watch 2

OK, it's a bad photo. But then my damn Nokia N73 has slowed to an unusable crawl when you try and do anything with the thing. It's EOL and going soon, BTW.

If you click on the image, you can just see the logo on the car. Yup, an RTA type trying to get through the snicket. I'm delighted to tell you that he failed - he drove past the spot to the left of the concrete barriers that was tonight's 'through' after another round of blocking today.

We're still beating 'em - UAE nationals, Brits, Indians, the lot of us. One tribe united against the unseen prats who are inefectually dumping massive piles of concrete and building up barriers across the sandy shortcuts.

A message. Lads, you can't block a desert.

We're still getting through! Yahoo!

(PS: If you're interested in the history of the snicket, just use the search bar on the blog header to look up 'snicket' - we've been winning The Battle of the Snicket for months now!)

Compassion

The Waterford Wedgewood factory in Kilbarry, Co. Waterford in Ireland, is to shut down.

Some 480 of the plant's workers were told they would lose their jobs by receiver Deloitte Ireland. According to the UK's Telegraph (as well as Sky News and others), the news was received by the workers in a text message.

Hang on. WTF?

Yup. The receiver sent a text. I wonder what it said? 'Could all those with jobs please take one step forward? Where are you going, mate?' or perhaps, 'For you, Paddy, ze work is over.' or maybe, 'Now lads, look here, dere's no point beatin' about de bush. Ye's laid off good an' proper and there's not a ting ye can do about it, like.'?

The workers have occupied the plant in protest and scuffles broke out yesterday with private security guards.

One commentator on the Sky News website put it quite nicely: "I'm disgusted and sickened to see how the workers were treated. It was such a sneaky and underhand way to treat people. The tv coverage of the security guards using such force bashing a worker's head through the toughened glass doors that the glass broke while another security guard tried to block the tv camera from showing it was sickening to watch."

The irony of smacking a redundant glass blower's head through a window is considerable.

I have been through a company receivership: many years ago, the first publishing company I ever worked for went bust. The memory of the scrubbed, shiny and self-satisfied face of the receiver poking out of his too-small collar as he smugly talked down to us all is still with me. I still have the cheque from the Royal Bank of Scotland for £0.69 in full settlement of my £800 outstanding expenses bill at the time of the closure.

But at least the bastard couldn't dismiss us all by text message. A new generation of bastards can, though. The very people that are behind the problem, that are clapping themselves on the back with $18.4 billion in bonuses as they ask for $700 billion to bail out the sector, are the people cutting off credit lines, winding up companies and clamping down on outstandings. Gulf News (700g) reports Obama's excellent reaction to the bonus news, BTW.

They have learned nothing from this and likely will learn nothing. Because the pain is being felt by other people.

I'd like to think that companies like Deloitte will be held accountable for their lack of respect and compassion. I suspect that I am being naive, but leave me to my naivete. Strangely, I take comfort from it.