The Gulf You Put Between Us

"We rallied round a flag that wasn't there,' Margaret Atwood is quoted as saying by today's glorious technicolour Gulf News*.

She has my absolute respect for the way she has handled the situation regarding the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature book ban issue with total integrity - and with self-effacing charm. The fact that she was misled so effectively in the first place and reacted in the way she did is unfortunate, if understandable.

The fuss over Geraldine Bedell's book, created in a large part one suspects by a certain Geraldine Bedell, does rather smell like a slightly inept but certainly cynical publicity stunt. But now it's over. The book wasn't banned; the book likely isn't really that interesting anyway.

Those of you who followed my posts on Harper Collins' authonomy will be aware of my views on big publishers and cynical behaviour. I do allow it to be a possibility that large corporate publishing companies will dissemble shockingly.

But what I do believe to be a shame is that Dubai has learned a lesson. While people have been preaching about censorship, Dubai has learned a new form of censorship. It's more insidious than banning books - it's banning the freedom to speak your mind.

I do believe (sorry, Isobel) that Festival Director Isobel Aboulhoul's letter declining Bedell's book be launched at the festival was naive. But she was direct and did give her honest views. Now we've learned not be direct or give our honest views. We can use weasel words so that we're being 'politically correct' rather than open ourselves to criticism in future. In fact, Atwood herself said in the Guardian:

"This happens every day at every festival in the world. Publishers always want to launch or feature their authors, and all festivals pick and choose. Usually, however - being experienced - they don't give the real reasons for their rejections. They don't say "It's a stinker" or "The local Christians will barbecue us". They say: "Not suitable for our purposes." They know that if they tell the truth, they'll be up to their noses in the merde.

First-time festivalite Abulhoul had not yet been hardened in the fire. She was candid. She sent her actual reactions in an email: publisher asked, publisher didn't get, here's why. She thought the exchange was frank and also confidential. She thought all parties were acting in good faith. Silly her. "

And so, in the name of freedom of expression, a little bit of freedom is taken away. We have learned to mask our true feelings. We have learned The New Censorship. We have learned that you have to use doublespeak.

So much more important than censorship in a 'culture of fear', this new way of not saying what you believe because of the repercussions...

*I've got bored with weighing Gulf News which is now pretty steady at around 640g. Would you believe that silly habit made it to the front page of The Financial Times? Sheesh!

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...)