The Great Emirates Laptop Ban

Abu Nidal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It is notable that the UK, in slavishly following the 'security advice' of close ally the USA, has not included the UAE and Qatar in its version of the great laptop ban. It takes no great stretch of the imagination or cognitive leap to infer that this ban has a commercial implication, working as it does directly to the detriment of the three global airlines operating a 'feeder flight' model out of the UAE and Qatar.

The biggest threat to the three is a loss of business class travellers, probably the only people who will lose out significantly. While it's great for parents to provide kids with tablets to keep them entertained (those of us without children clearly think this is just bad parenting, but that's quite another kettle of marmosets), Emirates' much-lauded ICE entertainment system offers films, music, games across literally thousands of channels. The big hit comes when you lose that precious work time.

The solution appears to me to be blindingly simple - and if EK moves fast enough, they could get in a massive media hit out of this one. Buy in 100 Chromebooks, 600 Lenovo Ultrabooks and 300 Macbook Airs. Load them with MS Office. Provide them on loan to business class passengers (they could be booked at time of flight booking or even online check-in) who can bring a USB memory stick (or, if they forget, be offered a complimentary little red Emirates one) to bring/save their work on. To be honest, most these days work with online resources anyway, so could log in using any machine. The machines would be cleaned (both hygenically and data-wise) after each use. The IT stuff could be handled by EK subsidiary Mercator, already (quietly) one of the world's great software and services players.

Catch the current news cycle and you've got the solution in seconds. It might not fit everyone's needs, but it'll comfort many - and I think catch the public imagination, too. In the face of a mean-spirited and dubious use of security as protectionism, EK could show it's the customer who comes first and they're willing  - as always - to go the extra mile.

The ban is, of course, quite loopy. For a start, UAE security and civil defence is way better than US security. Dubai and Abu Dhabi are major international hubs and trusted by tens of millions of passengers each year. Their security procedures and capabilities are best practice. And there's nothing to stop a terrorist flying a bomb from Paris or St Petersburg - the idea that only Arab airports could be the source of a threat is as risible as Trump's Muslim ban. Which targets, it should be noted, different nations to the laptop ban.

Not that I, for one, am in any rush to go to the US. I have stamps in my passport showing a lifetime's travel around the Middle East and no desire whatsoever to stand there having some jerk in a uniform shouting at me and asking to look at the contents of my laptop.

This whole thing about making us dance around airports in our socks and ditching Masafi bottles because they could be bombs (presumably the water bomb is these days considered a credible threat) has long rendered me sore amazed. The IRA's last bomb on the UK mainland weighed a metric tonne, was packed in a lorry and blew out the heart of Manchester, doing £1 billion of damage. The concerted and sustained terrorist campaign waged by the IRA against the might and weight of the UK's civil defence and military over thirty years compares rather oddly to the threat posed by a bunch of bloodthirsty yahoos in Toyota pickups. It's what prompted me to write A Decent Bomber in the first place - that odd juxtaposition of the threat from today's water-bomb terrorism to the constant destruction wreaked in the skies by the IRA, PLO, Abu Nidal, the Red Brigade et al.

We have never been so constrained by, or constantly reminded of, the threat of 'terrorism' as we are today. And the credible threats have never been so slight - particularly when set against the efficiency of modern security apparatus. You might argue that we're safe precisely because that apparatus has stopped us bringing water bottles or unscanned heels onto flights, but in travelling outside the UK I have noticed nobody else out there is really bothering that much. And it'll be interesting to see if the rest of the world believes in the credible threat of a weaponised Kindle being stored in the hold rather than being used to read on a flight...

The Problem With The Problem With Hijab

The sensitive little darlings, The Sun, subsequently deleted this tweet.

You may have seen The Sun's Kelvin MacKenzie protesting that UK Channel 4 TV's coverage of the Nice attack featured a young lady (Fatima Manji) wearing a hijab. I don't recommend you read it, but here it is in case you feel you have to.

As the Nice news broke, I was to be found shouting at the TV, infuriated by mainstream sources crowding each other in the rush to denounce terrorism, ISIS and Islamic terror in general. I was shouting because it seemed to me to be a lone wolf attack and I couldn't believe how fast ISIS came up, conflated with a senseless and barbaric killing with absolutely no reason whatsoever to suspect a link to 'Islamic' motivation of any sort. The Daily Mail led all the next day with ISIS Kills 84, a story that wasn't stood up on a single link to ISIS, a lone 'expert' trotted out to give any reason to draw a link or one - one - fact tying the perpetrator to ISIS or any other radical group.

It's only when ISIS itself claimed responsibility that anyone actually pulled themselves up and questioned the spurious and widespread claim of ISIS' involvement being made in our media.

And so now - belatedly - we start to explore whether this was, in fact, a lone wolf attack by a man who was clearly no practising Muslim. The idiocy of 'quickie radicalisation' was brought into play and, thankfully, quickly extinguished. He's emerging as a wife beating substance abuser with a range of issues that clearly bring his mental state into much starker linkages with relation to his motivations than Islam. But the damage has already been done.

And in the wake of the atrocity and the mischaracterisation of the killer's motives, we have the question of whether it is appropriate for a woman in hijab to cover such news. Because it was a Muslim attacker? Because he attacked in the name of Islam (which, it would appear, is highly unlikely to be his motivation) or because we don't want ladies in hijab on our TV screens?

MacKenzie makes the point: "Would the station have used an Orthodox Jew to cover the Israeli-Palestine conflict?" Which neatly plays into labelling Manji as somehow belonging to 'the other side' responsible for the carnage in this 'conflict' between two opposing forces.

The comments to Roy Greenslade's typically thoughtful piece on MacKenzie's Islamophobic rant show how fractured we have become in the West over the wearing of hijab. I have worked and socialised extensively with women who wear hijab for much of my adult life. As far as I can see, they do so out of choice (not a 'subtle social pressure'; I know many devout Muslim women who have chosen not to wear it and many who wear it as a conscious choice with no pressure to do so, who have previously not done so) and many would point out that, as women, if they chose to wear a Micky Mouse t-shirt, hijab or a yellow polka dot bikini that is their choice and they would very much prefer if men would stop telling them what to wear.

What constantly amazes me is to listen to Western Christians complaining about hijab. It's a Christian tradition, too, you know. Here. Do a Google Image Search for 'Virgin Mary'. Fill yer boots.

Shocking, isn't it? A woman in hijab covering your screen. The mother of the man you hold to be the Son of God, the core of your Trinity.

Quick. Fetch the religious police...

Reviewing A Decent Bomber

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Quick post, just to share that 'Talking of Books' radio show from last week...

The podcast is linked here.

They quite liked A Decent Bomber, which is nice. Because of Paris and events around it, they reached the perfectly understandable decision not to refer to terrorism or fundamentalism in the programme in an attempt to be sensitive to events taking place in Europe. This left them with the interesting task of reviewing a book about a former terrorist who used to make bombs for a terrorist organisation who is coerced into resuming his old trade by a bunch of Somali and Arab terrorists. Without using the 'T' word...

Have a listen, it's quite fun...

The UK Mainland's Biggest Bombs

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Róisín handed the joint to Orla, who shook her head. ‘No thanks. Not my thing.’ She waved her glass. ‘Are you a student too?’

‘Sure, I am.’

‘What you studying?’

‘Terrorists. You?’

Orla searched Róisín’s face, but it was without guile. ‘Animal husbandry. How do you mean, terrorists?’

‘Just that. Terror studies.’

‘You’re kidding me. That’s a course?’

Róisín laughed, shaking her head. ‘What’s so odd about it? You look like someone just slapped your arse.’

‘I suppose it seems strange that someone would want to… well, that. Oh, I don’t know. Don’t we see enough about them every day?’

‘This nation was founded on terrorism. If it wasn’t for Michael Collins, Dan Breen and the likes of them there’d be no Ireland. We’d still be a British colony.’

Now we're into dangerous territory. Writing A Decent Bomber, I was well aware that I was going to get caught up with a thriller sub-genre that has emerged over the past decade - evil terrorist (preferably Arab) nicks big explody thing and threatens the free and decent world until our square-jawed steely-eyed hero takes him down. That's no way what this book's about and I would hope most fervently it's a million leagues smarter than that. And, for me as well as most average readers, 'it's about terrorists' is a turnoff. As Orla says, who wants to talk about that?

And yet the idea of a retired terrorist who represents an era when terrorism was 'real' coming up against the bandits and insurgents who inhabit the failed states left in the wake of our attempts at imperialism drew me.

What on earth do I mean by 'real'?

I remember, growing up in the '70s and '80s, how life went on despite the IRA. There was even something of a 'spirit' about it - they're not going to grind us down, matey. But these days, for some reason, whenever some hopeless numb-nut puts a bomb in the heel of his shoe that doesn't quite go off, or finds a liquid explosive combination, we're all made dance around airports in our socks and wave our clear plastic bags in the air. We've never been safer, our governments tell us and yet we have never been so threatened they claim in the next breath.

We're so cowed, we've spent years helping mendacious duty free companies claim back our VAT because we're just, well, compliant in airports. It's for our own good, after all.

Terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s was international, multinational. We had the PLO, the Red Brigades, Baader Meinhof, ETA and lots, lots more. Airline hijackings - and bombings - in the 1960s, '70s and '80s took place all over the world. There were over 40 incidents of terrorism in the air in the 1970s alone. One of them, Abu Nidal bringing down a Gulf Air jet (GF 771 in case you were interested) in 1983 with the loss of all on board, took place in Jebel Ali. Rather close to home! At the same time, on the ground, the world was rocked by waves of terrorist violence.

The IRA's campaigns in Ireland and mainland Britain were relentless and sustained, prosecuted in the face of an overwhelming military and police presence and the focused resource of a fully functioning, technologically advanced first world power. Despite the full machinery of the British security services, the IRA detonated a number of bombs on the British mainland, including the two largest explosions since WWII, the infamous London Docklands bomb and the Manchester bomb.

The Docklands bomb killed two people and did an amazing amount of damage. It weighed over a ton. The Manchester bomb wounded over 200 people and blew out the heart of Manchester, causing over a million pounds' worth of damage. It, too, weighed over a ton. Both were timed bombs packed into vans. The bombers were never apprehended - certainly not in relation to the bombings.

And we're shuffling around in our socks when we fly because of heel bombs.

So I thought the meeting between 'new' terror and 'old' terror might be interesting. You can clearly (and really, really should, you know) find out what happens by clicking here.

Osama

It's odd, I'd scanned this a few weeks ago intending to do a post about the mildly egregious toilet papers produced by vendors to the US Military Albert's Gifts and here we are, the Americans literally having wiped him out. I've got the Saddam toilet paper too. It's safe to say you wouldn't really want to have your face on American toilet paper if the statistical side of things were looked at.

The most powerful nation of our race prints its enemies' faces on toilet paper and kills them. I'm not sure what that says about us all, really.

Terror Alert

Image by Paul Keller via Flickr

So our man, let’s call him Paddy, buys a replica AK47, one of those welded ones that trade in the UK across the counter, openly, for around £80 - the Lord alone knows why, but he does.

Paddy takes the gun to work to show his mates on the construction site (in London) that they're working on and colleague Moikey uses Paddy's mobile to take a snap of yer man goofing around with the gun. Fun had, the fake shooter's pushed under a desk somewhere in the site office and everyone forgets all about it.

Paddy, a strangely avid AC/DC fan, manages to lose his mobile down at the pub one night, about three weeks ago, but thinks no more about it as he's busy at work and has to somehow fit in a hectic schedule of AC/DC gigs. In fact, over the next three weeks he travels to Barcelona and Amsterdam to AC/DC concerts and then goes to New York travelling for work.

Unknown to Paddy, there’s trouble afoot. For Paddy's mobile has been handed in to the polis when it was found down at the pub and they've discovered a photo on it of the owner hefting the world's favourite terror/mafia/mad Afghani Taliban gun - the simple, efficacious and eminently reliable Automat Kalashnikova Model 47. And, to their delight, the owner is... IRISH!

Woken up at 5am yesterday morning by an Armed Response Unit storming his house, torches strapped on guns and all, Paddy was, perhaps a little understandably, bemused. But not as bemused as the (mostly Irish) lads at the site were when another bunch of flak-jacketed, gun-toting heavies pitched up at work today in squad of jam sandwiches demanding that the puzzled team ‘Show them the gun’.

Once everything had been made clear, the temperature dropping to something approaching normal and the orange boiler suits and cable ties put away, one of the coppers who had been ‘looking after’ Paddy during his short arrest did admit that Paddy had been a hell of an expensive guy to follow.

Because for the past three weeks Paddy, the happy AC/DC-mad building lad, has been followed around the UK and across Europe by an increasingly puzzled crack squad of Her Majesty's Finest, intent on uncovering the link to Mr. Big, the Real IRA, the rag-heads or whoever else was behind Paddy, the gun-toting heavy from Dublin, Fair City.

They must have been killing themselves tracking a pissed and cheering Paddy through the crowds at those AC/DC gigs in case he was making contact with the rest of his cell, let alone having to chase him on his inexplicable jaunts across Europe and the States. You can almost see Plod getting all excited as Paddy drives through the grey, damp morning on his way to the ferry, his death's-head cutoff with studded bits and faded denims packed safely in the boot and Highway to Hell booming in the car.

"He's on the move, Sarge! He's off ter Amsterbloodydam!"

The whole stupid incident has all been an incredible waste of time, effort and public money. And all this on the day that a German tourist in London was forced by police to delete the pictures on his camera in case they breached security. The tourist, a former professional news photographer, avers the snaps were not only all completely innocuous, many were of his young son.

We’ve all gone mad, people. Quite, quite mad

Clueless

It's been an interesting week in the old and new media: the UK FCO terror warning for the UAE has really shown the contrast between Internet and Heidelberg speeds. Yesterday, of course, the newspapers all missed the news: the news sites and radio were the only place you'd find information and the blogs the only place you could go for analysis, opinion and discussion. In fact, the blogs were up and running with the news and reactions to it from Monday night.

Incidentally, it's worth taking a minute to take a look at the whole advisory from the horse's mouth. Overall, it's probably the best, most realistic and balanced advisory you could want and certainly worth sharing with visitors before they travel.

Anyway, getting back to it, Gulf News today leads twice on terror: the irritating wraparound ad that now seems to be a regular feature of the soaraway GN gives the subs a chance to write an extra front page headline, so we have 'Case of crying wolf on terror' as the wraparound headline and then 'UK's terror warning a 'routine advice' as the real front cover headline.

I now owe Gulf News something like $25 if we take AP's new anti-blogging measures into account. Sorry, chaps: I ain't paying.

We can start to guess what angle GN's taking on the UK terror warning. It's on its own, too: KT has decided that it is above such petty things as terror warnings. So GN has, quite properly in my opinion, set out to pour cold water on any unnecessary panic or alarm. I do, however, find the reaction a little, well, overly positive. Terrorism is, after all, terrible for trade.

And so we have Dubai Police Chief, the charismatic and poetic Dahi Khalfan Tamim professing himself, according to GN, to be clueless: "We have no clue about what the British Embassy is talking about," the paper quotes him as saying on a local radio station. GN also quotes a well-dodgy sounding 'security expert', who apparently has information that the Brits couldn't substantiate a terror threat and so issued the warning to put pressure on UAE security forces to step up their own efforts. Hmmm.

There's a nice story inside with lots of Brits saying they think it's all tosh. There's nobody saying they're worried or concerned, which does rather puzzle me. Perhaps I'm just being silly in looking for some form of balance in what is clearly an effort to react responsibly to the situation.

GN's page 10 editorial says it all, really. I found the tone of the piece fascinating.

Personally, I'm not about to start introducing route diversity into my life. But I'd perhaps have liked to have seen a more reasoned, balanced reaction. It does carry so much more weight than this rather crude, relentless positivity.

Warned

I probably wasn't the only British expatriate puzzled by the news that the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office had raised its terror warning status for the UAE to 'High' today.

You see, the FCO is a little more, well, British than, say, the Americans, who'll issue an extreme travel warning for Belgium on news that someone in Kamchatka has been annoyed by an ingrown toenail. The Brits tend take the old fashioned 'Listen, chaps, there's an awful lot of shooting in Gaza so we suggest any British nationals there may like to wear a hat if venturing out' type of approach to travel warnings.

So when the dusty old crusties at the FCO say they're raising the level to 'high', we're either up a certain creek without a certain implement, or the UK has turned into a nation of milk-sops and scaredy-cats. Obviously, as a good old fashioned expat, one has to believe the latter.

But now comes the news, the evening of the day in which the warning broke, that the UK has frozen the assets of Bank Melli Iran - and is encouraging other European nations to follow suit. You have to wonder if the warning is linked to fears of reprisals - and the timing of the warning and the asset freezing move do tend to point to a high level of integration and forward planning.

But if the two are linked, it's the association I don't like. "We're going to freeze the assets of one of their banks so you can expect terror as a response - because their only response is and ever can be terror", is what they appear to be telling us. The conditioning inherent in the messaging is something that I confess myself uncomfortable with.

Why is it so important to demonise Iran in this way?

Answers on a postcard...