Webcam

A Webcam over Gaza.

You can go here and get a tiny little idea of what it must to be like to sit in your building and look out over a city that is slowly being blown back to the dark ages.

A normal looking city. Pretty Jordanian, really, no?

Full of ordinary people. Families. Decent people. Good people. Bad people. Smart people. Dumb people.

You know, people.

They've been living in blockade for 18 months. A blockade, effectively sanctions, that has been more tightly applied than those of Iran or, back in the day, Iraq. A blockade that has been so absolute, it has even included banning media and cutting off supplies of fuel to the only power station. Food is scarce and fuel to cook it on even scarcer. Now the water shortage is starting to bite deep.

So they can only sit by (because there is no work) and watch the black plumes of smoke rising over the buildings, watch the occasional streak of silver in the sky, the rumble and the little puff before the sound wave of the explosion hits. And then watch as the puff turns into black, roiling clouds of smoke that will rise up into the dirty air and smear across the skyline.

Now you can join them. Leave the camera on in a tab so that you can listen to the traffic noise, the honks of lorries and then the crump of high explosive and the sirens that follow it.

Now you, too, can be in Gaza.

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...

Iranians

I was bibbling on about speedbump communities developing in the UAE the other day. Another developer-free development that I have been delighted to witness in my time here has been that of the Iranian souks of the Arabian Gulf coastal ports. While Dubai had the long established Iranian community in Bastakia (named after Bastak in Iran and rebuilt in concrete rather than the more authentic Souk Al Arsah in Sharjah which was restored using traditional coral building materials), younger communities have built up in Sharjah, Ajman and Ras Al Khaimah, built around dhows from Iran docking and offloading their cargo of stuff to flog on the side: melamine plates, garish plastic kitchenware, aluminium pots and ‘mutton grab’ trays as well as knock-off brand soaps, cleaners (Dettox! Clorex! Persul!) and detergents.

Ajman’s packing-case Irani souk burned down a few years ago and was replaced with a covered souk by the government. It’s a wonderland of mad plastic and ceramic, local housewives hammering away verbally at moustachioed, swarthy vendors in vests - locked in the glorious traditional ritual of barter.

And in Ras Al Khaimah, you’ll find the Irani souk on the dockside, still made out of wooden offcuts: a long line of stalls selling the whole mad collection of things they make in Iran and China.

Today, the most developed of these port-side souks is the Iranian souk off Sharjah port, which has now become a row of established shops along the corniche road and even has its own distinctive blue mosaic-adorned Irani mosque. It’s here, just off the restored buildings of the old souk and arts area, that you’ll still find ‘poor’ stores selling charcoal, hashish, shishas and traditional brooms and matting, as well as stores selling dried herbs, medicines and traditional bukhours and perfumes: it’s a wonderful evening’s wander along the shopfronts.

Here, incidentally, as well as on Ajman's perimeter road where there are also still a couple of traditional 'poor' stores, you can buy hashish. But don't get too excited - hashish is Arabic for 'grass' and this stuff really is dried grass. And, as I'm wandering, you might (or might not) be interested to know that this is how we derive the English word assassin - it's from the Arabic 'hashishim', or dope-fiends. There's a story to that, but I think I've wandered enough for now...

The shops all have Iranian names and sell floor to ceiling kitchen goods, kitchen electricals, plastic stuff, cool-boxes, spices and pretty much anything else that can be retailed. The opposite side of the road is all bustle, too: the frenetic commerce of the dhow port is at play here – the boats that still ply the ports of the Gulf, Red Sea and East Africa as well as the routes across to India and carry anything from onions or coal to cars and white goods.

If this kind of thing tickles you, incidentally, you’ll love this: Len Chapman’s labour of love (I’ve plugged it before), www.dubaiasitusedtobe.com is a really amazing collection of pictures and anecdotes from the people that truly do remember ‘when that was all sand’... It’s a great place to spend an hour wandering around – particularly if you want to get a feel for quite how astonishing the transition from Dubai to Lalaland has been.

The dhow ports are probably the last surviving link between Len's UAE and ours. I bet they'll find a way to convert these last informal communities into nice, neat formal ones too, with RTA regulated shippers operating from air conditioned cabins and plastic dhows with electric motors to stop residents being woken. Dubai Dhow City. Can't wait.

Diplomat

It is often difficult to understand the thought processes behind the authors of the world’s greatest collection of letters since Samuel Johnson started a career in correspondence with a thank you note to his Gran for her Christmas gift of a jigsaw puzzle picturing a bear fight, 1111 Letters for Every Occasion. As I have said many times before, this most impressive volume comes to us by grace of the commercial acumen of New Light Publishers of Delhi.

As promised last week, today’s extract covers that most difficult of fields, diplomatic correspondence and we are all lucky that 1111 Letters’ author, the remarkable K. Malik, pursued a career in letters rather than diplomacy, otherwise his efforts to ensure the Pakistan issue was well managed would have doubtless have resulted in New Delhi being a radioactive hole by now.

Rather than omit advice that might be of help to those entrusted with preserving world peace and the brotherhood of man, I have reproduced the entire section.

A historical note here: it should be possible to date the original MSS of 1111 Letters from the reference below to the UAR, which was a union of Egypt and Syria under Nasser that lasted until 1961 – the name was subsequently kept by Nasser and was used until 1971, just after his death. The Shimla, or Simla, summit took place in 1972. The first Gulf War, between Iraq and Iran, broke out in 1980 – the Yom Kippur War of 1973 might be an explanation for the reference to ‘the Gulf war’. Alternatively, I might just be wasting my time because K. Malik is clearly in a different place to most of us and it is possible that this book comes to us from a parallel universe, in which case all these dates and references are subject to change.

Diplomatic Correspondence

Diplomatic correspondence between one country and another, one ambassador and another, is a rather tricky affair. All embarrassing commitments are made in vague words.

Egypt

Should we now presume that the UAR is going anti-Russian?

Reply to Above

It is best to presume nothing.

Pakistan

Will the President of Pakistan go against the spirit of Shimla Summit?

Reply to Above

Ask the President himself!

Israel

Has Israel attacked Egypt after the Gulf war?

Reply to Above

Israel has never attacked Egypt. It is Egypt which has always attacked Israel.

UAR

Is the UAR now anti-Russian?

Reply to Above

The UAR is not anti-anything.

USA

How long will USA bar Yugoslavia from the United Nations?

Reply to Above

I do not know.

Next week: Seeking Compensation...

Lachrymose

One does try not to be an 'it ain't like it used to be' bore, but the sad truth is that Dubai was a great deal more fun in the 1980s than it is now. Sorry, that's just the way it is.

I used to enjoy listening to the tales of older residents when we first got out here; people like Sue and Pete Ellis, Gill Hollis and Shirley Robinson and Dorothy 'Dotters' Miles used to liven things up no end with old stories and photos of the days before the days when the Sheikh Zayed Road was two lanes of unfenced blacktop to Abu Dhabi. The days when Gill drove a Range Rover from Coventry to Dubai overland (well, apart from a roof-warping dhow trip from Iran) , when Sean Connery and company used to drink at the Aladdin Hotel in Sharjah (now a roadside garden) and when Hatta was a real day's journey.

And so this website, posted up to the UAE Community Blog by Localexpat is a truly fantastic thing for me: a hint of the Dubai whose last days I arrived just in time to see, a fleeting glimpse of an altogether more adventurous and really rather quaint life at the genteel edge of the explored world.

Do have fun at Len Chapman's website. It's truly a wonderful place and a little slice of history that really does deserve its own place on t'Internet. I recommend a nice cup of tea or even a 'cold one' and a good hour just to fossick about there...

"Yaa Boo Sucks to You!" - Bush Gets Tough

According to reports from Voice of America, Iran's parliament has passed a resolution calling on the government to designate the United States Army and Central Intelligence Agency as "terrorist organizations."

This information comes to me courtesy of pal and deliciously manic pixie Sara Refai, who occasionally surfs the Internet looking for odd things, like a sort of collector of informational fag butts. I mean fag butts in the British rather than American sense, obviously.

The Iranian resolution, according to VoA, was approved Saturday by 215 lawmakers in Iran's 290-seat parliament, which is dominated by conservatives. The resolution says the U.S. Army and CIA should be considered terrorists because they provide support to Israel in its operations against Palestinian and Lebanese militants. The move is in retaliation for the the Bush administration branding the Iranians terrorists. The administration apparently said in August it is considering designating all or part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization.

So the US calls Iran terrorists and Iran calls the US terrorists and that's supposed to take us forwards. Am I the only person in the world, I wonder, who worries that the people with their hands on those nasty little red buttons appear to think they're still on the playground?

Mahmoud Ahmadinajad Rocks

I do wonder if I'm the only person who found Mahmoud Ahmadinajad's performance at Colombia University a compelling one. I do wonder if I'm the only person that thought his introduction and the official speech of welcome was insulting and immensely skewed. And I wonder if I'm the only person who finds the way that an American academic institution's officers treated a visiting head of state was appalling by any standard.

And yet Ahmadinajad put in an impressive performance. Sure, he was a bit too Godly for secular Western tastes at times. Sure, he wasn't going to take questions like 'Do you oppose a Jewish State of Israel?' head-on. But he did a damn good job, overall. He pointed out that his country couldn't equip civil airliners because of sanctions: that America, the UK, Germany and others had defaulted on contracts, had provided material assistance to Iraq in attacking Iran, had worked to destabilise his country's elected (for better or for worse) government. It wasn't a bad case to make and he made it pretty well.

What a shame he wasn't a lunatic demagogue with no sense at all of rhetoric or public speech. That would have made it so much easier to continue to mindlessley demonise him.

I do wonder what Georgie boy will do tomorrow against a man who is brighter and more charismatic than he is. I'm not saying Mahmoud isn't dangerous. But he's damn smart and, as he pointed out in his address, comes from a cultured and capable people.

Not bad. The jury's out, for sure... But you had to have watched the entire performance... How many of us got that chance?

And at the end, he waited for his host (he had already made the point that in his, the Middle Eastern, culture - and as an academic who had invited speakers to his university - you didn't insult a guest: it was a very pointed point in view of his embarrassing reception by the Colombia staff) to walk across the stage and shake his hand. Alone and suddenly small, he waited. And finally, long tens of seconds after the announcement that he had to leave and couldn't take more questions (and yet stood on the stage, not going anywhere), he got a brief, grudging touch of palms.

Mahmoud 1 America 0. Let's see what tomorrow brings.

Putin 1 Bush 0

(Picture: Reuters)

It's incredible to see how much of a statesman Vladimir Putin looks like when he's standing next to that terrible, simian little man. Even the body language, Putin's hand over Georgie's, dominating him, leaning into him as Bush's wooden elbow and slight backwards tilt tell that while he's concentrating on leering at the camera to show how much he's enjoying shaking hands with his great friend Pooty-Poot, he's actually desperately uncomfortable.

He manages to come across as fake, dumb and insincere - a communications management nightmare, all braggadocio and simplistic 'Hollywood President' swaggering tough talk. And yet you get the distinct impression that the alcoholic under-achiever is never far from the surface - the driving, nagging insistence of his self-doubt and insecurity making him grab at the wrong gesture, the wrong thing to say. It's the danger of the man.

Putin is dangerous himself, but it's a different dangerous. He's self-assured, relaxed, experienced and in control of himself. The worry is that one of these men leads the world's most powerful nation - and it's not the one that any decent alien would want to be taken to if it saw this picture. Putin's gambit of offering Azerbaijan as an alternative to Eastern Europe as a place to put a missile shield against Iran was, of course, brilliance. Azerbaijan makes sense. The question is whether George ever really intended to put up a shield against Iran.

He's known as 'Boosh' in the Arab World, like his father was before him. Except people didn't laugh at mention of his father's name.