British Expat Detained In Dubai (Well, Shacked Up In Sharjah, Really)

(Image Credit: Wikipedia)

The car was down at Al Futtaim, going through the process of leaching several thousand dirhams from my bank account, so I had a bit of time yesterday to take on a Quora question asking about the 'Dark Side' of Dubai. I occasionally give in to temptation these days and take a few minutes to correct the bias and willful ignorance you find in people's attitudes towards 'here'. I know, I know, it's bad for me and I shouldn't, but just one now and then couldn't harm. I can control it. I'll know when it gets out of hand, trust me.

Anyway, yesterday's post reminded me of the time I was nicked in Sharjah. It's not quite 'Brit Expat Jailed in Dubai', but it'll have to do.

It was back in the early '90s and it had been raining. A lot. So much so that mate Matt and myself went out for a Friday mooch around with our cameras and snapped the wildly unusual spectacle of cars sloshing through huge puddles anything up to a couple of feet deep. This was prior to the great Sharjah Drainage Project and we are really talking pretty impressive puddles or, as Dubai's RTA likes to call them on its traffic information screens, water ponds. I mean roundabouts where you can't see the round to about. (Charmingly, BTW, all roundabouts in Sharjah are called squares. Who knew?)

Out of the mosque behind us emerges a small fat man with big fat beard, wearing a Sharjah police uniform, who promptly nicks us for 'taking photo of lady'. I kid you not. Within twenty minutes we find ourselves down the cop shop facing charges of photographing ladies. It very quickly started to look very serious as our man, let's call him Abdulla, runs us in and proceeds to start arrangements to charge us. His colleagues clearly think Abdulla's taking things a bit far and there's quite a lot of joshing and good-natured beard pulling going on in Arabic. Meanwhile,  Matt and I are starting to realise this could go very, very pear shaped indeed and we are becoming sore nervous.

Now I have to explain something. In the old days, cameras used stuff called 'film'. This is a strip of coated plastic which is exposed to light by a thing called a shutter. Each time you take a photo, a square of plastic is exposed and then you wind it on so that a fresh square is ready to expose. When you've done this 36 times, you unload the canister of film from the camera and take it to a shop and pay money to develop it, which is a chemical process that makes prints of your photographs.

Seriously.

So eventually I break into the excited chatter and address myself to Abdulla's colleagues and say, basically, 'Look, he's gone too far. We were just taking photos of the puddles. But I can sort this easily. Take my film from my camera and develop it. If you find one lady, fine you can arrest us and charge us and throw away the key and everything. But if there is no lady in photos, Abdulla here pays for the cost of developing the film.'

This is generally considered to be a beezer scheme and therefore adopted by all present with a great deal of laughter except Abdulla, who fights a brave rearguard action in the face of logic but eventually - with incredibly bad grace - gives in to the prevailing sentiment. We have to sign a chit affirming that we will never again go to the Al Faya area of Sharjah and photograph the ladies. I was all for protesting this clear injustice but a very hard kick on the shin from Matt cured me of the temptation. We signed and fled.

I can't remember ever encountering a situation here that can't be managed with a little grace and humour - I have found wit and wisdom are greatly prized (mostly by observing others, clearly). And, generally, I have found the police are more interested in arbitration and settling things without filing cases. They have a healthy aversion to paperwork. And every time I see a 'Brit Arrested in Dubai for Playing Tiddlywinks' I look beyond the headline and 99% of the time, I get a 'hang on, it's not that simple. There's something missing from this here story' feeling.

Recently, they've got to the point where even the comments on the Daily Mail have started to question the 'man banged up for eating marshmallow' stories. And the comments on the Daily Mail, as eny fule no, are usually a litany of nail 'em up, a fair day's work for a fair day's pay etc etc. (The world's most popular news website, racking up over 250 million monthly views, the DM is actually considered to be too unreliable a source to be cited as a reference on Wikipedia - didja know that?)

The problem is not that these stories are all so easily taken in and amplified by media with vast bias and little or no 'journalism'. It's that they potentially cheapen and obfuscate real miscarriages of justice.

On Information Literacy In The Middle East

As we are exposed to the raw feeds of information in our interconnected world, we are increasingly forced to a much greater degree of editorial responsibility than was previously the case. We need to filter what it is we're seeing and hearing, what we're being told. As mainstream media outlets struggle to keep up with the need to beat 'real time', we see that not only do 'context and analysis' frequently suffer, but also the movement of information is also prone to network effects.

Worryingly, if a newspaper, say The Guardian as an example, publishes a story with a duff fact or premise and you manage to get that story corrected, it's too late. Because fifty other outlets have picked up The Guardian's story and happily repeated it. In the inexorable march to harvest clicks, the most dramatic and counter-intuitive stories are snapped up and media outlets are happy cannibals. Your chances of getting that genie back into the bottle are pretty much zilch.

We're not - despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary - stupid, us humans. We've quickly worked out that this network effect can be used to great benefit. If we're first out with something nice and dramatic sounding, by the time anyone gets around to saying, 'Wait, wat?' the world's already chowing down on our spurious claims. Think Trump.

Even Google is now experimenting with fact checking features, adding fact checking links to news search results.

Now we take all that stuff and we squeeze it into the oddly shaped bottle that is the Middle East, where media have long been cowed and access to unfettered opinion and anything else generally regarded as 'dangerous' for our social well-being and morality has been repressed. This has arguably resulted in societies which lack the practice in questioning and critical faculties to handle the sudden cornucopia which social media and the real time news cycle have unleashed.

We have already seen how the initial reaction to this bounty resulted in tectonic change in the region, I have argued before that Occupy Wall Street started in Lebanon. But if we look at where we are today and at the challenges of understanding and processing all of this information, we can not only see the problematic aspects, but also the opportunities this stuff represents.

It is those very opportunities which have driven veteran journalist, founder of AUB's journalism training program and all-round journalism trainer Magda Abu-Fadil, together with fellow editors Jordi Torrent & Alton Grizzle to produce Opportunities for Media and Information Literacy in the Middle East and North Africa, a report (actually the 2016 Yearbook from the International Clearinghouse on Children, Youth and Media) which highlights the need to teach information literacy in the region's schools. The report makes fascinating reading for anyone who cares about media, the flow of information within society and the need to enhance the critical faculties of a young generation brought into a world where the dizzying flow of fact and fallacy can sometimes threaten to sweep us away.

What I like about it is that the report doesn't sit on its hands and bemoan the parlous state of things, but makes concrete recommendations for positive social change which can be relatively simply and effectively implemented. The time, as the report notes, has never been so propitious...

Shaheen The Camel. A New Gulf News High.

Gulf News is breathlessly presenting the World Cup match winner choices of 'Shaheen', a camel apparently blessed with octopus-like powers of footbally prescience. Or as GN puts it, 'our resident hump-backed football genius."

Shaheen is placed next to two signs, each representing a team about to play. Just in case we forget this is about football, the speculative ungulate has a football tied around its neck. Shaheen then picks a team by attacking one of the two signs, which appears to have been festooned with a sock dipped in the camel equivalent of catnip. Camelnip?

This is the top local story on Gulf News' website today. It confirmed something I have long held dear as a belief. I'll let you guess quite what that is...

Groundhog Day

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's been one of those weeks. First we had the tremor from the Qeshm earthquake and then Google's Driverless Car.

The link?

Well, those few weird moments of seeming terrestrial liquefaction having been enjoyed, I then got to watch Gulf News tweeting that it was going to report on the thing I had just experienced as the rest of Twitter shared its rainbow reaction. As if I'm going to put my life on hold to wait for GN's report. The next day, almost 24 hours after I had watched friends and Twitter in general record their reactions to the event, I get to see news stories about the thing I had lived through the day before.

I had sort of moved on, actually. Including a wander around the internet to research a blog post in which I learned more about the incident and the factors behind it than the Gulf News story - that I hadn't been waiting for, funnily enough - eventually told me. Context and analysis? Don't make me laugh, cocky...

And then yesterday opened with news reports about Google's driverless car, a project most of the people I know had been aware of for some months. Things had moved on and Google had released pictures of its prototype 'level four' car - no steering wheel at all for you, matey. The news online had broken the day before, Google's release went out on the 27th May (Tuesday) and most online outlets led with the story yesterday first thing. So listening to the Business Breakfast on Dubai Eye Radio this morning, it was odd to hear some shouty Americans on Bloomberg being played out. A sort of strange, layered iterative experience - the presenters played a recording of Bloomberg playing a recording of an interview with Sergei Brin.

So I get to hear a recording of a recording of a person talking about the news I knew and saw the day before.

This sort of thing is happening so frequently now, I'm losing track of what day it is. I keep looking to the future only to find mainstream media dragging me back to the past.

Odd.

The Trouble With Labour

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The local partner of the New York Times, which reprints the newspaper for a small and discerning audience in the UAE, chose not to print one issue of the paper this week, Monday's, which carried a report on the labour conditions of the men who built the now completed New York University building in Abu Dhabi.

The article is of course available online for anyone who knows what an Internet is. It's linked here. Buzzfeed, playing Chinese whispers, makes a number of small but critical errors in its coverage of the incident, claiming this is "...the first time UAE authorities had tried to censor an NYT story."

Except it wasn't any 'authority'. The Khaleej Times reprints the NYT and the decision was clearly theirs. The NYT's own letter to subscribers makes it clear that Khaleej Times "deemed it too sensitive". Not the National Media Council, which would have been the censoring body if authority was to come into play.

The move, a muckle-headed one on KT's part if you don't mind me saying so, does the UAE a disservice. The story needed to be aired locally, the attempt to suppress it was clearly futile and did more damage to the country's reputation than letting the piece run would have caused.

I am increasingly frequently enraged by expats acting the censor. They err on the side of caution, fearful for their precious tax-free jobs and then they make fools of us all. We can't talk about that, best avoid this. The whispered, winked conversations are infuriating. It's the politics of the playground, my dad's bigger than yours. "I'm, let us say, close to those in authority and I don't mind telling you this wouldn't play well," says Sam Cheeseman as he stamps his mark on the commentary which actually doesn't 'cross' any 'line' as we know it.

The National Media Council has read, and passed for publication, two of my three serious Middle East based novels. I subsequently chose to take content out because I thought it unnecessarily offensive - my choice and decision entirely and not based on fear of my position here but purely on my judgement of the fine line between what is necessary to make a story 'play' and be realistic and what would annoy or cause offence to my readers. The 'C' word, for instance, I eventually chose not to use because I know women who find it highly offensive and the story lived on just dandy without it. The NMC left it in, I took it out.

The NMC has not asked me to change a word of my books. Not one word. Ever.

Olives - A Violent Romance contains pre-marital sex between Muslims and Christians, Muslims drinking alcohol and other stuff. Beirut - An Explosive Thriller goes way further. There's all sorts of stuff in there, from prostitution to heroin, booze and murder. The NMC didn't bat an eyelid.

Writer friends are sore amazed that books have to be read before being 'passed' as fit for publication, but the NMC is on a journey. When I first dropped wide-eyed onto the tarmac at Dubai International back in 1988, the Ministry Of Information ruled and its rule was indeed heavy-handed. The UAE gets very little credit for how very far it has come in such a relatively short time. Don't forget the UK was still banning and censoring things right up into the 1980s, from Lady Chatterley's Lover to Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Relax.

So you can stop wagging your finger in this direction, matey.

But the core fact in the NYT story and the spate of others like it that really has me wondering is this, undoubtedly set to be most unpopular, thought. If things are so very bad for labour in the UAE, then why - over fifty years after they started building this place - do the workers still come here?

I appreciate conditions are hard, harsh even. But has anyone done a comparative study of labour conditions in, say, Dhaka compared to here? I'm here because I'm better off than I would be at home. And so's everyone else. That's not a shallow argument or excuse. It's simple, plain fact. Ever since Safa Park was a makeshift shanty town for illegal immigrants (it later shifted to Mamzar), people have flocked to the UAE from the Subcontinent to work. Thousands of them have become millionaires in the UAE - having arrived with nothing.

Does that make it all any better or more admirable? 'Course not. But by living here as expats we condone the practice implicitly, perhaps even complicitly. Labour conditions in the UAE have clearly improved significantly over the years I have been here, but European sensibilities are still offended by the camps and reports of 12 hour workdays, let alone the deaths of men travelling from Umm Al Qawain to Jebel Ali to work.

Then there are the practices of agents and usurious visa salespeople, which have led to the popular phrase 'indentured labour' or, as the NYT weasels, 'resembles indentured servitude'. The gombeen men who prey on the workers are not Emirati, but from the workers' home countries. The, apparently infamous, kafala system applies to all expats in the UAE, it's simply sponsorship. That's what the word means, that's what the system is. Your employer provides your visa, contracts with you to employ you and is essentially in loco parentis, whether you're a labourer or a CEO.

Is it abused by companies? Yes. Widely? Yes. Is enough being done to stamp out the abuse of workers? No. Does suppressing media reporting of it help? No. Do constant skewed reports of labour conditions here by callow Western journalists applying selective sampling to make the story more dramatic and create more appealing headlines help the situation?

I'd argue not, actually. There's a lack of balance in the debate and by neglecting the efforts of the enlightened, you empower the entrenched.

UAE Petrol Retailers Are Breaking The Law It Seems

(Photo credit: 401(K) 2013)

A report in today's Gulf News quotes Omar Bu Shahab, CEO of the Commercial Compliance and Consumer Protection Division (CCCP) in the Department of Economic Development in Dubai as saying that charging 2% fees on credit and debit card transactions is a violation of consumer protection law.

While he was commenting on an attempt by a GEMS school to levy a 2% processing fee on credit and debit card transactions, his clarification also applies to Emarat and EPPCO/ENOC service stations, which charge the fee on credit card transactions for fuel. This surcharge appears to have been the resolution of a spat between the credit card companies and the fuel distributors dating back to 2007 - and the early days of this here very blog. The story from way back then is suitably linked 'ere. Basically, the retailers (not ADNOC, you'll note) have always charged extra for credit card purchases, in violation of the card issuers' agreements and when the card companies kicked off, the retailers just stopped taking credit cards. They've recently started again, but with a Dhs2 'service fee' on any transaction for fuel up to Dhs100. In short, 2%...

“Retailers who are charging extra fees on the credit card or debt card payments are violating the consumer protection law and will be subject to penalties,” Mr Bu Shahab told the newspaper that tells it like it is.*

So it'll be interesting to hear what the petrol companies say when the media come calling, won't it?

*Well, sometimes.

Manaa - Abu Dhabi Names And Shames

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Abu Dhabi Quality and Conformity Council has launched a new portal called 'Manaa' which lists the products it has recalled from the Abu Dhabi market because of safety concerns - over 15,000 items have been taken off the shelves in the last year.

The story ran on national news agency WAM and, therefore, in all the papers.

It's a remarkable move in its own quiet little way - it's unusual to see acceptance of a 'name and shame' strategy around here and this website certainly does that. Each nonconformant product is identified with a photograph and its brand name, product number and batch number. Categorised into product types, the archive of recalled products is searchable and a search through the database quickly reveals a number of surprises.

The first surprise is in the electrical appliances category. There's a huge dominance of Chinese products for a start, sort of what you'd expect, but there are also some major brands featured, including Moulinex and Kenwood. Added to that, a number of locally known brands are prominent, too, with multiple product recalls from Elekta, Geepas, Nikai and Aftron. Nearly every supermarket in the country will sell you Oshtraco socket strips and electrical accessories, and yet they've had recalls too. Who knew?

Some of the reasons for recalling products can seem a bit obtuse. The Aftron AFGSM1800 contact grill (sounds more like a mobile to me!) was withdrawn because "The temperature rise beyond the standard limit" and an Elekta fan withdrawn because "Fan blade is accessible with the test finger which may cut the users fingers when running." Another Elekta fan didn't make the grade because "The temperature rose beyond the standard limit of motor winding by resistance method the and ball pressure test of speed selector insulation did not comply."

I'm sure it didn't...

Perhaps amusingly, one of the recalled brands of socket strip was 'Terminator'.

But the real surprise comes when you dig into the archive beyond the electrical appliances and children's toys categories. Because beyond these, the cupboard is bare. Not a thing. All the other categories are empty, including vehicle tires,vehicle parts, containers and packaging, cigarette fuel, lighter, firework and chemicals and cosmetics. Presumably these have yet to be regulated.

The scheme, albeit young, is a good one and great news for consumers. The Council is a relatively new body with a huge job ahead of it - and, from the website, appears to be implementing a rounded standards, regulation and conformity system for product safety. For instance, it only announced its electrical appliances certification initiative in January this year. So we can presumably look forward to the database being further populated as that work continues.

The Council appears to have a remit to cover Abu Dhabi emirate only rather than being a Federal body - however a chat with Abdalla Muami on Twitter clarifies that ADQCC liaises with Federal bodies on non-conforming products, which would mean, presumably, that products Abu Dhabi finds unsafe are withdrawn from all markets.

However, now you can actually check for yourself before buying stuff thanks to the database!

Gay Oman Controversy Spirals Out Of Control

Omani weekly tabloid newspaper The Week appears to be in a great deal of hot water indeed. The paper ran a piece last week on what it was like being gay in Oman which looks to the untutored eye like a well written and balanced feature - if a surprisingly frank and open one. It has resulted in an amazing backlash that has led the paper to issue an unconditional apology on its home page as it faces censure at the highest level and the possibility of action from the country's legislature.

The Oman Journalist's Association has strongly condemned the piece according to Gulf News (which hit a new high today by reporting on a woman who threatened to blow herself up at Dubai's Public Prosecution and failed to mention there was no bomb in her 'bomb belt'*), while also calling for the Ministry of Information to act - and the chairman of the Omani Shura Council, Shaikh Khalid Bin Hilal Bin Naseer Al Maa’wali, has weighed in, promising action by the Council's media committee. In a tweet, as it happens. In fact, in a final confirmation that this is, indeed, a hot story (all today's journalist needs to confirm it's a biggie), the whole thing trended on Twitter.

It's not as if homosexuality in Oman hasn't been aired in public before - the (formerly) excellent Muscat Confidential blog ran a great interview on this very topic back in 2010. Muscat Confidential has in the past been blocked by Omani authorities, but no blocking followed the publication of this post.

But, of course, We Don't Talk About Elephants In This Room and there's clearly a huge difference between a blog post and a tabloid newspaper - and it's worth noting the outrage is clearly community driven, it's not a nanny state government acting against a brave little newspaper. The piece has clearly widely offended Omanis.

The Week's apology neatly paraphrases Father Jack Hackett, but 'the article' - so hot its nature can't even be mentioned in that apology, it seems - lives on. Omani blog Oman Coast has reproduced the piece on those who choose not to reproduce and it's linked here for your elucidation. As Oman Coast says, please read on only if you are a mature reader used to free speech who is not easily shocked or offended.

Meanwhile the messenger, it would appear, has been quite comprehensively shot...

* I suppose in the interest of fairness I should point out that Gulf News has now added the no bomb information to its story online, although not rewritten it in light of the new finding, so the first line still reads, "A mother wearing a belt of explosives who threatened to blow herself up in the Dubai Public Prosecution building has surrendered and has been arrested."

New Zealand Bacteria Scare. What New Zealand Bacteria Scare?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Whenever the role of journalism in the social age is questioned, you get the snap answer that breaking news on Twitter is all very well, but 'proper' journalism gives us context and analysis. It has long been my contention that this is one of those qualitative arguments that points to the inevitability of disintermediation.

This was certainly the first thing that went through what passes for my mind as I read in Gulf News over the weekend that 'New Zealand Products Safe To Consume'. This headline inevitably means there is an issue of some kind with New Zealand products, but in the name of 'context and analysis' we're certainly not going to be told what the issue is, just that it's not an issue.

If I read a headline in Gulf News 'Big Gnarly Sabre Toothed Banjax Not About To Eat You', for instance, I know not to turn around. I'd rather not have to confront my impending messy end.

The scare in question is actually quite old by today's standards, dating back to May of last year in fact, when a dirty pipe in one of Fonterra's plants contaminated a batch of whey protein concentrate used in 'Nutricia Karicare', an infant formula product, as well as other drinks including sports drinks, protein drinks and other beverages. 90% of New Zealand's dairy produce comes from Fonterra, a massive agro-business which accounts for something like 7% of New Zealand's GDP. Imagine the lobbying power!.

For some reason the contamination didn't come to light until March of this year, finally causing China to announce a ban of certain products in early August of New Zealand dairy products. The Chinese are, understandably, somewhat nervous about contaminated dairy products and import something like 80% of their infant formula from New Zealand. Recall products are known to have been shipped to China, Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia.

Fonterra's news release on the 'quality issue' makes interesting reading. Eight Fonterra customers had been affected by the 'issue' which 'surfaced' in March but didn't require any action other than 'intensive testing' over the subsequent months until finally, on Wednesday 31st July, a sample tested positive for Clostridium botulinum.

The recall affects some 38 tonnes of whey protein but would appear to have impacted over 2,000 metric tonnes of nutritional products that use the protein product - Fonterra has been pretty cagey about the identities of its customers - and presumably has been depending on the considerable clout it must have in New Zealand to minimise the coverage of a food contamination scare that begs questions about who knew what and when - and how thousands of tonnes of contaminated products can be put on the market but the identities of the companies producing those products be protected.

It all reads a little like the horse meat scare in Europe - one producer's product can contaminate thousands of tonnes of downstream products. There are other whiffs of sulphur around the story, too - scientists questioning how a 'dirty pipe' could have been involved, the timescale of the testing and recall, why expensive tests for Clostridium, not normally required for whey protein products, were being carried out and so on. Fonterra's head of milk products has subsequently resigned.

In any case, New Zealand Government laboratories have now confirmed that the samples tested were not actually contaminated with botulism causing clostridium botulinum but with the just as worrying-sounding but relatively benign Clostridium sporogenes. So that's all okay, then.

All of which has been brilliantly boiled down by Gulf News to a reassuring blue 'don't panic' - in fact there's no problem to the point you don't even need to know what the problem there isn't is.

The Emirati Indian Road Rage Assault Video

So Twitter was all a-twitter on Monday night with chat about a video posted to YouTube. The clip, taken from a car adjacent to the incident, clearly shows an Emirati man beating a cowering Indian man with his aghal (the black ropey headdress thing worn as part of the traditional Arabian costume) and punching him. The Emirati appears to be driving a Lexus Land Cruiser with a three-figure plate (a status symbol here), the Indian a stationery distribution company van.

By Tuesday, the YouTube video had been taken down but these things, once done, are hard to undo and it was soon back up thanks to LiveLeaks. Why would the video be taken down? Well, because it's illegal to photograph or film someone in the UAE without their permission - and this was certainly a case of a video taken without permission. The taker obviously gave in to wiser counsel, although his act in sharing the video was a brave one, presumably motivated by sheer indignation.

Dubai Police acted quickly after a large number of people brought the incident - and video - to their attention, particularly over Twitter. The Emirati - a government official as it turns out - is currently 'in custody' and faces a charge, according to 7Days, of minor assault. This carries a maximum jail term of one year and a maximum fine of Dhs10,000.

The Indian gentleman who took the video and posted it to YouTube was arrested after the official's son lodged a defamation case against him with police and is apparently 'being questioned' after his computer was seized by police on Tuesday and now potentially faces a charge of recording without permission and defaming a person, which carries a TWO year sentence and Dhs20,000 fine. Abusing someone's privacy and putting private material on the Internet can result in a six month jail term, the newspaper tells us.

Can we be quite clear. Defamation applies here in the UAE as a criminal case and includes publicly sharing evidence of a thing that would lead to punishment for the person so defamed - regardless of whether the alleged act took place or not. The UAE cyber-crime law makes this clear. You can, in fact, defame someone in the UAE with the truth.

Dubai Police have told press the man should have shared the video with them rather than post it up publicly, where hundreds of thousands have now seen the incident. The son told media the video had damaged the reputation of his father and family. You'd be forgiven for thinking that beating cowering men who know full well that if they raise a hand in defence they'll be for the high jump and likely end up being deported for it was what damaged anyone's reputation, but who am I to judge?

At one rather poignant moment in the video, the poor man appears to hand the dropped aghal back to the official who continues to beat him with it.

I thought there was a telling paragraph in Gulf News' story about the arrest today. Here, have a go at seeing where YOU would put the bold text emphasis in this paragraph quoted from that story:

"Major General Al Mazeina said the case will be transferred to the public prosecutor. He said the Emirati official has been arrested over beating up an Indian man in the middle of the road in clear view of other road users."

My mum said I should always tell the truth, but she never told me you should go to prison for telling it. 'spose it just goes to show what my mum knows...

The UAE Sedition Trial - 94 Accused, 25 Acquitted

(Photo credit: saraab™)

It's in all the papers today, Gulf News in particular devoting an extraordinary amount of extent to its coverage of the verdict against the 94 Emiratis accused of plotting the overthrow of the UAE's government through the activities of an Islamic front organisation accused of having links to the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Islah.

I had a finger waved at me the other day, accusing me of being 'craven' in not joining in the chorus of voices questioning the trial, the treatment of the prisoners and so on. I thought it was quite an extraordinary thing for someone to do - demand that I take a stance on an issue because they had a viewpoint. I didn't see them taking to a blog in their own name to denounce it all. But it's okay for them to expect me to.

Truth be told, I know absolutely nothing about the trial beyond what our papers have told us - and much of that coverage has been through the national newswire of the UAE, WAM. I assume it's all been filtered, because there's no 'alternative voice' out there. Not from the UAE's media and certainly not from international media. Investigative journalism has either failed, been utterly indifferent or decided there's little enough here to investigate. I know very little indeed about the detail of the case as, I suspect, do we all.

Knowing so little, I find it hard to have a polarised opinion. The trial was conducted by a court constituted by the rulers of this country, under the law of the country. You might not like the country or its law, but that's the facts. It's as valid as a verdict handed down in the UK, Ecuador, China, Singapore or France. Different countries have different forms of rule, judicial systems and standards of what I suppose we should call probity. Some are aggressively open (hello, Scandinavia!) and some are aggressively secretive and intrusive (hello, America!). All limit opposition to the incumbent system of governance to the constituted organs of governance. Really. Ask Ed Snowden. That's our world.

The verdict of the court has been reached. And that, as far as I'm concerned, is that. Please do remember to use your real name and email when you use the comments to call me craven...

Arab Media Forum Faces New Media Challenges. Shock Horror.

This is in no way a gratuitous plug for the 'book of the blog,' you understand.

This blog, as readers of Fake Plastic Souks - The Glory Years will know, started around The Arab Media Forum 2007. This was mere coincidence, not by any means a result of the forum which I have never attended and likely never will attend. In fact, as the first post attests, we were sitting at home eating Lebanese takeaway.

There seems to be even more intense debate at this year's forum (judging from the reports one sees on Twitter) about the 'role of new media' and all that. It's an interesting debate - some may argue taking place a little late in the day - particularly in this region, where reporting is so very dangerous and the conflicts so very real - and, as all conflicts necessarily are - polarised and messy. Making sense of these things is tough, dangerous and hard - journalism, true journalism, is a thankless and wearying job. But some people are just plagued with that need to delve down to uncover the truth and then get it out there into our hands so we can make more informed judgements about the world around us.

Shame there are all too few of these in the Middle East, but that's the breaks.

The Great Debate, of course, has moved on. It's no longer about whether digital media are relevant, but whether traditional media is relevant. You'd hardly have thought that from the Forum, which includes the session, "Digital Media: Authority Without Responsibility". Apart from a few 'digital heads' the debate at the Forum remains principally analogue and although there are nods to a process of transition, there is no sense that this transition could easily well take the form of disintermediation.

The Forum's first session was, in fact, "Conventional Media vs. New Media" - the program outlines the problem as this:

News industry is remarkably challenged by the emerging “new media” platforms. This synthetic prelim produced unprecedented dilemma for traditional journalism and undoubtedly added more complications.

Quite.

Of course, what the debate lacks is a sense of where humanity's eyeballs are going. Are people consuming as much local media as before? Does it carry as much weight with the public? Is the Arab News media seen as credible compared to online and first hand sources? Where are people going for news these days? Gulf News or the Daily Mail Online?

That research could have underpinned a viable and vibrant debate framed by the scale of the challenge facing print media and the practicses of print media journalism. Events in Syria and even the recent Beirut bombing which I posted about at length here, comparing Twitter to a Lorenzian water wheel, have shown that trying to adapt conventional 'big' media reporting to Twitter and YouTube can have disastrous effects - and have arguably eroded the weight we give to mainstream media. Never has there been more need for careful, considered journalism - and never have we seen so little of just that.

Instead, we have the same old ground being gone over - with a distinct under-representation of the 'new media' everyone is so upset about (although nice to see Maha from Google there). Although it's nice for everyone from the region's media to get together for a chat, I can't help but feel the actual eyeballs have, well, moved on...

UAE Local Produce Is "Toxic" - Gulf News

(Photo credit: Masako 川o'-')♪)

I'll admit it, I'm confused.

For years now, Gulf News has gone on about how wonderful and safe local produce is. So much assurance has been offered, the cynic might even be inclined to wonder where, given all this smoke, the fire is...

For instance this piece linked right here is pretty typical of the very many examples of the genre, "Locally produced vegetables guarantee against food risks like E. coli".

The deadly E. coli outbreak that rocked world food markets once again confirms the importance and urgency of turning to local vegetables and fruits for consumption, Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority (ADFCA), said in a statement.

Well, that's alright then. I've no need to worry. If I might be inclined to have the odd wobble, worrying for instance if the unrestricted use of pesticides in local farming might be harmful, or perhaps the impact of the oil and diesel leaking out from those filthy, weeping pumps they use to extract the water from those fast-depleting aquifers, I just need to keep reading GN for stuff like this to keep me on the straight and narrow. Yes, "Nothing beats fresh taste of local produce"

Row upon row of succulent dates greet the eye while a few steps away fresh potatoes, onions and lettuce varieties are displayed for sale. For the erstwhile customer, finding the freshest produce has become even easier at the Al Mina Fruit and Vegetable Market ever since Abu Dhabi Municipality began implementing a range of measures to promote local produce.

I will not presume to cavil at the misuse of the word 'erstwhile', unless the customer in question had, indeed, passed away or otherwise become a customer no more. Safe to say, the assurances regarding locally grown produce stretch back over the years, this one from 2001 for instance.

Whatever, we are assured that "E. coli poses no threat to consumers in the UAE" and we know we can trust our media to properly filter and investigate any empty statements or baseless claims, whether they come from business or government. That's what the media is for, right?

So it was slightly disconcerting to read in yesterday's edition of The Newspaper That Seeks Only Truth that local salad greens are 'toxic'. Their word, not mine. The piece, linked here for your convenience, quotes academics whose research over the past five years (in the face of all those assurances) found 100% of samples of locally grown girgir (that's rocket to you an' me) contaminated by E. coli and salmonella. The bacterial infection is embedded in leaves and cannot be washed out, according to Dr Dennis Russell of the American University of Sharjah.

Dr Russell on leaves. Love it.

The good doktor points to unsanitary farming practices such as using raw manure as fertiliser and the bacterial contamination of the water supply (43% of wells here were found to be contaminated GN tells us in another story).

Gulf News' advice is "Do not eat jareer and other vegetables grown or stored with it in stores". The produce continues to be sold by supermarkets here.

So is it toxic, or not? For what it's worth, I've always gone on the assumption that it is and tend to avoid it at every opportunity or wash it to death. Blame all that reassurance...

DysonGate - Are PRs and Journalists Tom And Jerry?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The DysonGate scandal threatens to drive a massive wedge in our local media community. Heads will roll. Words will be written. You heard it here first.

There's nowt so close as love and hate. Public relations people and journalists have a constant, bickering Tom and Jerry relationship that often gives me much gentle amusement. PR people annoy journalists by being incompetent, lazy and slavish to their unreasonable clients. Journalists annoy PR people by being lazy, incompetent and slavish to their unreasonable masters.

Rarely do both sit down and commiserate, although you'd have thought the above was grounds for considerable empathy. Veteran journalist Frank Kane of The National took a pop at hapless PRs sending him awful stories in his column yesterday. It's not unamusing. You could argue he was shooting fish in a barrel - the volume of dire press releases that goes out in the UAE every day is remarkable not only for its volume but its persistence. When you consider the vast majority of these announcements have no hope of achieving any coverage whatsoever, you do wonder why the relentless tide of mindless mush continues.

Kane picks a couple of examples from the bin, the Dyson airblade release being surely the result of an almost manic optimism "No, really, it WILL get coverage. National newspapers LOVE to hear about hand dryer installations. TRUST me on this one, Phil!" He could have gone on at much greater length and easily been a great deal unkinder. I do wonder if Dyson's agency will claim credit for the clip with the client... Or, indeed, tell them a local blogger's nicknamed it DysonGate.

"See? Major media AND blogs! I TOLD you we'd get traction on this one, Phil!"

In a previous life I used to edit a magazine called BBC GulfWide - it was a sort of wrapper of local features around the BBC Middle East listings and I quite enjoyed producing it. Every month I dedicated a double page spread to lampooning the efforts of the local PRs. I was younger, then, and more unkind. Reading back over some of these spots now does make me laugh. But the same releases were going out then, the same idiotic appeals to 'depute a photographer' from my 'esteemed publication' (a phrase Kane picked up on). The same ridiculous releases about something nobody in their right minds other than the people working in that company would care about mixed in with inappropriately targeted product releases. Why did agencies think the BBC listings magazine, a features only title, would cover news releases? Or that we were interested in hair care products?

And why, more to the point, do they still persist in sending out these awful releases today, almost two decades later. Have we really not moved on one iota?

That's a complicated question, actually. It's a mixture of agencies pandering to clients without giving them good advice, clients who believe agencies are there to do what they're told, not consult on the most effective course and media that actually will run this sort of tripe. Because if the standard of local PR can hit Dead Sea  level lows, the standard of journalism can match it metre for metre. I'd probably go for a dig in the ribs and bring the Mariana Trench into it.

I'm going to echo Kane's admirable example and not name names. But the newspaper - the national daily newspaper - that ran a story today about how traffic is slowing down around the new junction in Ajman is only one microscopic example from a rejoinder that could run for thousands of words. Kane, himself brought up in the days of pencil-licking notebook journalism, would recognise the classic 'six questions' structure in the first paragraph of the news piece:

Ajman: Cars approached the newly opened Al Hamidiya interchange with caution on Wednesday morning, slowing down to read the signboards, trying to figure out which way will take them to their desired destination, changing lanes carefully to get on their way.

Or perhaps not. That was the first para of a page lead story, by the way, not a News In Brief. When you add that to the copy/paste hacking, the plagiarism, the fawning to authority and toadying to influence and then throw in a good measure of lack of depth, research, investigative or searching journalism and sprinkle a masala of news wire copy, laziness and verbatim press release you start to comprehend the true worth of the media environment.

Am I tarring all journalists with that brush? Of course not, just as Kane is careful not to tar all PRs with his. But we both know that we're both right and there's too much of what we've both pointed out going on.

Sadly, the truth of the matter is journalists get the PRs they deserve. At least they've stopped complaining that PRs make them lazy, which used to be the case in days of yore...

Sharjah Water Disruption - A Lesson In Communication?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Many, many years ago I was on a business trip to Austria when some loon or another decided to dump a dhow-load of dead cows into the Gulf off Sharjah. The resulting flotsam got caught up in the intake of Sharjah's main desalination plant, causing a shutdown and an Emirate-wide water shortage.

I arrived back clutching a couple of bottles of nice German sekt to find our water tanks draining fast. Soon enough, we'd run dry. Three increasingly dirty days later I decided enough was enough and popped to our local 'cold store' where I bought several cases of Masafi. These filled the bath quite nicely, thank you, and we popped a bottle of cold sekt and enjoyed a little taste of the life everyone at home believes for some reason we live every day - we bathed in spring water and drank champagne.

I'd better get the bubbly in, because it's all apparently set to happen again. Khaleej Times broke the story three days ago (Gulf News ran it as a NIB today) - from next week (November 28th to be precise), Sharjah's main desalination plant at Al Layyah will undergo maintenance with six days of 'disruption' to the water supply. Interestingly, the GN story refers to a message  circulated to residents by SEWA (The Sharjah Electricity and Water Authority), which is news to me. It also refers to the 'Al Liya desalination plant', which is one of those problems we face with place names here - the Al Layyah plant, Sharjah's central power station and desalination plant, is located in the Al Layyah area, near Sharjah port. It's also the main centre for bottling Sharjah's Zulal branded water (although there's a new plant in Dhaid which bottles groundwater, thereby confusing anyone who wonders if Zulal is desalinated water or spring water. It's actually both, it would seem!).

Al Layyah is one of (as far as I can find out) four desalination plants in Sharjah - there are also plants in Khor Fakkan, Kalba and Hamriya. The GN piece refers to disruption in "Al Khan, Al Majaz, the Corniche, Khalid Lagoon and other areas", which is typically - and infuriatingly, obtuse. What are those 'other areas'? If last time is anything to go by, pretty much all of Sharjah. Why didn't the papers think to question the announcement and get better quality information into our hands? This type of question is the route to madness, of course. The answer is 'because'.

Of course, the best thing to do is go to SEWA's website which will have all the information concerned consumers will need, won't it? No, of course it won't. It'll have a piece on how SEWA has, apparently, briefed Credit Suisse on its future expansion plans. While I am pleased for both Credit Suisse and SEWA, it's not the information I'm after. The delightfully 1990s retro feel website contains absolutely no reference to the 'planned disruption' at all, in fact.

So all we know is there is to be  'planned disruption', that supply will not be cut off but that we are being urged to stockpile water while we can. Oh, and that "after the completion of the work, water supply would be better than before."

We are all mushrooms.

Update - I didn't think of this at the time of this post, but Sarah did. Of all the times in the year to pick for this 'scheduled disruption', they've picked National Day weekend, a holiday weekend when load on the system is going to go through the roof. Nice...

The Daily Mail Blows It. Big Time.

The UK's Press Gazette gleefully reproduced yesterday the screenshot of the year. The Daily Mail, the right wing conservative UK newspaper, ran the Amanda Knox verdict story on its website. Except it ran the wrong story. Knox was, of course, acquited.

The Press Gazette story is linked here. I do commend it as rather fun.

The Mail realised its awful mistake and took the story down after a couple of minutes but the internet she do not forgive lightly. The botched story became a news story in its own right, with even the Washington Post weighing in and enjoying the Mail's humiliation. As it happens, The Sun also blew it but nobody mainstream seems to have got a screen grab before the piece got taken down. These guys did, though.

So how could such an awful mistake happen? Well, as the Press Gazette piece points out, newspapers do prepare materials in advance - obituaries are written for celebrities while they're still in rude health, waiting for the day they peg it. And papers will also do 'yes' and 'no' pieces for highly anticipated events with only two possible outcomes, such as high profile trials. They're called 'set and hold' pieces. It's one of a number of journalistic practices that are not widely known and would cause some concern amongst a reading public used to depending on papers to tell the truth and deliver... are you ready for this... context and analysis.

Sure, but all the same, why were they in such a rush to push the button? Well, I rather suspect there's a new pressure on them, the pressure of social media. The first word the judge uttered was 'guilty' but that was to the charge of slander. The second word was actually the one the world was waiting for. The Mail and The Sun, under the pressure to show it they are still relevant as a news source online, both leaped into action too soon - the very thing that makes journalists get sniffy about Twitter.

We're being told all the time we can trust mainstream media. That's ever less the case as dubious practices come to light and as that media scrambles in an undignified rush to try and beat all of us eyewitnesses to the punch. They're better off not trying - but cleaning up their act and truly delivering added value to the voices of the people who are there at the time.

Did Piers Morgan 'Invent' Phone Hacking?

Image via WikipediaThere are growing mentions in media linking my old pal* Piers Morgan to the phone hacking imbroglio that has so excited the British media and parliament over the past two weeks - and which is now showing every sign of crossing the Atlantic in a tide of Murdoch-toxic sludge and washing up against the shores of the home of the brave and the land of the free.

I'm sort of sorry about that, because I'm quite the Piers fan. I admire the way he picked himself up after riding the crest of a wave as Murdoch's brightest, blue eyedest boy, leaving Murdoch behind him as he became editor of the Daily Mirror and then being dumped massively overnight following the Iraqi abuse story that saw him fall foul of the very authorities that had courted him so assiduously right up to the day of his fall from grace. I've worked with him professionally on a couple of occasions and, once we all accept this is all about Piers, he's quite fun to be around. He's very smart indeed, viscerally and intellectually understands the dynamics of fame and celebrity and is very much the larger than life character that manages to project itself into millions of American homes.

He must be getting his wagons into a circle right now. You see, Piers is on the record as referring to some of the techniques used to do phone hackery. The smoke has already started rising, this post at UK blog Guido Fawkes shedding some light on matters by documenting how the Mirror hacked Ulrika Jonsson's answering machine to scoop the Sven Goran Eriksson affair, while MPs have now started baying for Morgan's blood after references in his most readable memoir, The Insider and in his diaries have clearly put him in the frame. This diary entry, in particular, was called out by one MP:

"Apparently if you don’t change the standard security code that every phone comes with, then anyone can call your number and, if you don’t answer, tap in the standard four digit code to hear all your messages."

This, of course, makes things even more interesting - pulling a major American talk show host (which is, love him or hate him, what is keeping Piers in Rice Krispies these days) into the scandal is going to add plenty new fuel to the flames and keep the pressure building nicely on Murdoch - although Morgan's comments don't talk to his time on Murdoch's watch, he does bring a nice splash of star quality to the story and keep it building nicely.

This has turned into the biggest story since the Daily Telegraph exposed MPs expenses - probably bigger, as it now has much greater international appeal. It's a fantastic opportunity for anyone wronged by the media to get stuck in and we can expect to hear lots of calls for restraining and reining in the dangerously unfettered press, particularly from those who have a vested interest in ensuring the media are cowed and sycophantic.

The fascinating question is whether this will bring Murdoch down and I, for one, would be selling any NewsCorp shares granny left me. Quite what impact it has on the rest of the Fourth Estate is yet to be seen, but I'm not optimistic. Parliament reminded me in a queer way of Tahrir Square. Here, again, was a people casting off the yoke of their oppressors...

*The 'my old pal' is ironic. Piers wouldn't know me from a broom handle.

Update: Radio-tastic pal Robert 'Wes' Weston turned me onto this - eight minutes enjoyably spent! Piers gives MP Louise Mensch a jolly good roasting over the hackegations story here: Piers owns MP Video.

When Sorry Doesn't Wash: NewsCorp and BP compared.

What have News Corp and BP got in common?

The UK's newspapers all carried advertisements from media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation headed 'We are sorry' this week. Which is an interesting response to the whole phone hacking furore (phonegate, if you likes your clichés). Murdoch himself has given but one interview on the whole debacle, to the Wall Street Journal, which he happens to own.

He has not responded to any other media. He has not said one word himself, but has relied on this advertisement to do the job for him. This is nice, as it avoids him actually having to say the words. It's different, you know, actually saying you are sorry rather than getting an ad agency to write up some 'sorry' copy.

It's a lesson BP learned (or perhaps didn't) over deep sea oil spill screwupgate. They spent $50 million on a glib 'sorry' ad campaign that backlashed harder than a snapped high-tension cable. Although CEO Tony Hayward actually appears in the video, something that Murdoch has failed to do in addressing the increasingly serious tumult around his company's journalistic ethics, Hayward didn't actually say sorry. Really, truly, sorry. Using advertising tactics to put out reassuring images isn't saying sorry. Talking about how you're making it all better isn't sorry. Saying 'We really, really screwed up and we recognise that' in person - now that's saying sorry.

You can't apologise by proxy and expect to be taken seriously.

And that's the key to the Murdoch ads. How many people think he truly is sorry? And how many think he just bought space rather than get out there and express true, humble, real contrition? And if he's not sorry after all - what's going to change moving forwards?

The ENOC Case Study Continues

Image via WikipediaSorry, but I started following this story and I can't seem to tear my eyes away from the wreckage even as I try. Today's newspapers report Dubai based petroleum company ENOC's denial of yesterday's Gulf News story.

Yes, that's right. ENOC Group suddenly had something to say after something like a month of obdurate silence.

Top honours to The National once more, which carries a better researched and more rounded story, taking the opportunity to recap the whole episode and referring to ENOC, with perhaps a grim smile as it rewards weeks of treating the press as if they don't exist or matter, as a 'troubled company'. Khaleej Times couldn't bring itself to name its long-term rival and refers to 'reports in a section of the English media'. Gulf News itself wasn't for stepping down, running ENOC's denial but affirming its report that 'sources in the oil industry confirmed the possibility that other retailers have shown interest in assuming responsibility for those [ENOC's] operations'

Breaking its long silence has certainly brought ENOC to the fore again and will once again step up the pressure from media and the public for some form of clarity. Sadly, there hasn't been a lot of that around but ENOC's statement to the media yesterday does rather protest too much when it accuses Gulf News of baseless speculation.

Here are five rules of Public Relations that may help:

Rule One
News expands to fill a vacuum
This is a Great Truth of Public Relations. If you do not speak clearly and with purpose, you leave room for speculation. The media, like the people it represents, will speculate. Experts, pundits, the public will all speculate. Many will happily speculate for the media to use in its own speculative stories. If you decide to issue 'no comment' or, worse, not to pick up the phone, you have invited speculation round to yours for dinner and have no right to complain when your paintwork gets scratched and your carpet ruined.

Rule Two
Responding to speculation legitimises it
If you respond to one speculative report, you respond to all of them. Many major corporates have a policy of not responding to rumour or speculation, precisely because you really don't want to start affirming or denying purely speculative plays. It's actually a journalistic technique, to speculatively assert something to see if you get a 'bite'. By all means respond to legitimate public concern and hard facts presented to you. But don't fail to respond to those and reserve your powder just to waste it on speculation.

Rule Three
Don't pretend to play hardball
ENOC's statement asks for an apology from Gulf News. This was, in my professional opinion, a basic error (one of very many). Gulf News hasn't apologised and has stood by its story. So where are you going to go now, big shot? If you just let that go now, you just affirmed the story, which only ever discussed a possibility in its original form. Discussing a possibility is, of course, pure speculation. Better not to have gone there in the first place, IMHO...

Rule Four
Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth
Interestingly, ENOC's statement only comments on one aspect of Gulf News' story, the possibility that ADNOC will be given the running of ENOC stations in Sharjah and the northern emirates. It doesn't comment on part of the story that discussed ENOC requesting a lifting of the price cap or the strong rejection of proposed solutions by government officials. It only talks to one fact in the whole story, but has now established the principle that ENOC will comment to correct facts presented by media. It's not a rounded statement, where one was most certainly called for.

Rule Five
Have a communications strategy
Have an agreed strategy in place, don't just go knee-jerking all over the shop. The National today gleefully trots out the original statement made to media by ENOC, that the affected stations were subject to 'technical upgrades' and the subsequent lack of any evidence to that effect. Having made a statement that few, if any, believed and then followed that up by totally ignoring the media, the company has now arguably lost public trust. As one commentator in today's National story has it:

“I doubt they want to hang onto the whole network, otherwise they would have supplied them. We’ve gone beyond that point now. It’s all speculation of course, but Enoc may just be trying to get a better price for them.”

That's pretty cynical, no? But it's hard to see what the company's management of the media and public transparency aspects of this story has done to mitigate such cynicism from the public, pundits and media.

The Gay Girl Media Conundrum

The Gay Girl in Damascus affair has been a fascinating, if slightly irritating, sideshow to the appalling events in Syria as the country's people continue to struggle to push for change and reform in the face of brutal repression.

It's been extensively reported on elsewhere, but I am particularly interested in the reactions from 'traditional media' who appear to be taking an increasingly solid stance with reference to social media and the way it impacts/relates to the role of 'traditional' journalism. Gulf News wags its finger in an editorial today, "Beware of social media's dark side", in which it calls for 'this episode' to be 'a lesson for all of us'. Quite what the lesson is, GN doesn't make clear. I get the feeling that the writer really wanted to say 'don't trust social media because it can all be a pack of lies and that's why you need us, journalists, to filter this stuff for you' but couldn't really, because of course the biggest dupes of all have been the journalists who ran the story, parroted it and unquestioningly (especially in the Middle East's media, who should surely have known better) ran it from the newswires.

The story was broken, the blog conclusively proven to be a hoax, by online activist Ali Abunimah, who posted his reservations on his 'Electronic Intifada' blog (linked here), other bloggers (such as Liz Henry) were expressing doubts - and, to be fair, NPR's Andy Carvin, as well as the New York Times were onto the story and chasing down the increasingly ethereal 'Amina' - but most mainstream media (and, it should be noted, ALL Middle East media) were still just parroting the same stuff, derived from the blog itself, unthinkingly.

The fact is a number of people, connected online, contributed to reality checking and then publicly outing the fraud. They used their online experience, online resources and tools. They did not use the tools of 'traditional' journalism and arguably did not necessarily adhere to the standards of traditional journalism.

Commenter Charles on Liz Henry's BookManiac blog rather nails it, BTW: "One thing that struck me about the whole sordid affair was the narcissit, paternalist nature of it. Here is a white heterosexual man who, instead of supporting the efforts of real GLTB Middle-Easterners, decided instead to steal the spotlight from them and claim their voice. I guess he figured his little brown brothers and sisters just couldn’t do it themselves, so he appointed himself their spokesperson. That is rather disgusting."