secretdubai blocked (again)

It would appear Etisalat has blocked the secret dubai blog again.

Eyewitness Account of SZR Mayhem

Anyone traveling from AD to Dubai this morning will probably have been affected. Apparently there was a huge multi-car accident, including burning cars, on the SZR Dubai bound, near the AD/Dubai border (Ghantoot exit). I didn't see this one, but reports mentioned 30-60 cars involved. Can anyone confirm? That would have happened around 7:00 a.m.

I wasn't able to get near there due to the several accidents on the same highway some 40-50 kilometers behind the Ghantoot accident. Incredibly, this one involved another 50-60 cars although none burning. In my case I was making my way through the dense fog after 7 am, Dubai bound from Abu Dhabi. It was the densest I've ever seen and found myself in places unable to drive any more than 60 kph. Passing Shahama and after the exit to Al Rabha (near Zayed Military City) I hit the first tailback which eventually led me past 6-8 wrecked cars, some still blocking lanes, others already on side of the road. Immediately past this the tailback resumed which led me another 2 km down the highway only to find this time 50-60 wrecked cars littering both sides of the highway! Just past that the tailback resumed, this time (and after over an hour in wait) I eventually made my way another kilometer ahead past another 12-15 wrecked cars. This was 2-3 kilometers before the Taweela interchange. Once at the interchange all Dubai bound traffic was forced to exit and not allowed to take any road in the Dubai direction--not SZR or any of the service roads on either side of the highway.

On the radio one only hears details about the Ghantoot pile up. That would mean the 60-80 crashed cars I passed up near Al Rabha was still small fry compared to what must have happened at Ghantoot.

Just a click...

The Breast Cancer site is having trouble getting enough people to click on their site daily to meet their quota of donating at least one free mammogram a day to an underprivileged woman. It takes less than a minute to go to their site and click on 'donating a mammogram' for free (pink window in the middle).

This doesn't cost you a thing. Their corporate sponsors/advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate mammogram in exchange for advertising.

Here's the web site - please pass it along to people you know. Thanks.

http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/

Arabic declared as official language of the UAE

"Arabic has been confirmed as the official language of UAE federal authorities, the government announced on Sunday.

The move has been lauded by commentators who have campaigned to combat the growing use of English in government departments.

Ebtisam Al-Kitbi, professor of political science at UAE University told UAE daily Gulf News the decision would “enhance the presence of Arab speaking people in the labour market and restore the national identity”.

“To my knowledge, there is no nation that allows an invasion of foreign languages in government institutions the way we did in the UAE. The move will correct the imbalance,” she said.

“People [in other countries] use foreign languages, but you will never see them in the workplace other than their national languages. English is widely used in the government in the UAE and this is unacceptable,” she added."

more here

Saudi woman flouts driving ban on YouTube

A Saudi woman activist marked this year's International Women's Day by defying a ban on women driving in the ultra-conservative kingdom and posted a video of her act on YouTube.




"In September, more than 1,100 Saudi men and women signed a petition to King Abdullah urging him to lift the controversial ban on women driving in the oil-rich kingdom, which applies a strict form of Sharia (Islamic law).

The petition - a brainchild of Huwaidar and other activists - stressed that Islam does not put constraints on women such as the driving ban and points out that women already "drive in villages and remote rural areas."

A group of 47 women defied the ban on driving by roaming the streets of the capital Riyadh in 15 cars in November 1990. They were swiftly rounded up by police and penalised, while their male guardians were reprimanded.

The following year, a fatwa (religious edict) was issued by the then mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Baz, prohibiting women from driving cars. "
Source

Dubai sets up Cultural and Arts Authority

WAMPublished: March 08, 2008, 01:09

Dubai: His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, in his capacity as Ruler of Dubai, has issued a decree creating a Cultural and Art Authority in Dubai.

The Authority will be a public body affiliated to Dubai Executive Council.
The aim of the authority will be to enhance the international status of Dubai, which will participate in developing and forming the cultural and heritage scene of the 21st century in the region and around the globe.

Shaikh Mohammad also issued a decree appointing Shaikh Mayed Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum as chairman of the Authority's board of directors and Omar Mohammad Ahmad Bin Sulaiman as board member and managing director.

More Coverage

Arms dealer Viktor Bout nabbed

TIME:

The doughy, broad-shouldered 41-year-old Russian who Thai police paraded before the press on Friday in an orange golf shirt is a monstrous example of entrepreneurial business acumen gone over to the dark side. He is believed to have supplied arms to the warring factions in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, as well as the perpetrators of some of the worst violence in Africa's interminable civil wars. Experts believe he has shipped AK-47s to every corner of the world. He even appears to have used U.S. airbases in Iraq in 2004 as part of his arms trafficking. He had a shadowy financial network stretching from Europe to Africa to the Middle East.
...
Amid one of his first big shipments — sending crates of fresh-cut South African gladiolas into the United Arab Emirates — Bout realized it was wasteful flying into Africa with empty planes. According to Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes and the Man Who Makes War Possible, a book on Bout written by Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun last year, Bout began to fill his Africa-bound aircraft with stockpiles of Soviet weapons to sell to some of Africa's most notorious regimes and rebel groups.

The Asian Tribune on the UAE connection:

During the period 1998 -2001 the Taliban regime in Afghanistan operated a major weapons procurement operation based at the Ariana Airline office in Sharjah. Much of the military hardware that the Taliban acquired through the Sharjah network was supplied by the infamous Russian arms dealer Victor Bout also known as the Merchant of Death. Victor Bout and his business associate Sanjivan Ruprah have supplied weapons and training to several West African rebel groups and are accused of involvement in the illicit diamond trade[8]. Victor Bout operated an air cargo service at the Sharjah airport known as Air Cess, which together with Ariana Airlines co-handled most of the military deliveries between Sharjah and Afghanistan[9]. It is estimated that the Sharjah network operated 3 to 4 flights daily between Sharjah and Kandahar transporting weapons and supplies to the Taliban[10]. During this period 17km away in Dubai, the LTTE also operated a cargo company known as Otharad Cargo, headed by Daya the younger sibling of Nithi a Canadian based member of the LTTE’s KP Unit. It is suspected that Otharad Cargo acquired several consignments of military hardware as part of consolidated purchase arrangements with the Taliban’s Sharjah network. It was also the function of Otharad Cargo to service the operations of the LTTE shipping fleet in the Gulf region. Officials of an Asian security agency believe Kumaran Pathmanadan (KP) head of the LTTE procurement unit (KP unit) traveled from Bangkok through Karachi to Kabul on 19 May 2001 and had meetings with Taliban officials on matters relating to the Sharjah network.

The Globe and Mail has this trenchant passage:

To Mr. Bout, it was all just business.

"Look, killing isn't about weapons. It's about the people who use them," he told The New York Times Magazine in an August, 2004[3?], interview. Described as the man whose network was "The McDonald's of arms trafficking," he added that to him, "arms is no different than pharmaceuticals."

The reporter who interviewed Mr. Bout for that article said yesterday that he anticipates the arrest will backfire. "He has a lot to say that will be deeply damaging to the way the world operates," said Peter Landesman, who spent 10 days in Moscow with the suspect in 2004[3?].

He said Mr. Bout recently got in touch with him to discuss a possible tell-all book. The writer added that just about every Western government, including the United States, was complicit in Mr. Bout's deals at some point or another. "He's doing our dirty work for us," Mr. Landesman said. "Who do you think his customers are? Where do you think he got these weapons? That he just pulled them down off trees?"

Here's the NYT Magazine article from August 2003.

Panic in the Sandpit

Excerpt:
...The wasteland seems to begin almost immediately on leaving the boundaries of the modern metropolis of Abu Dhabi, its skyscrapers and luxury hotels giving way to a pancake-flat drabness of oil refineries, highways and five-winged power transformers marching across the landscape to bring life to a once lifeless land.

Just 40 years ago Abu Dhabi was nothing more than sand and Bedouin tents, until the visionary Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan began transforming his arid fishing village into a thriving Middle Eastern hub. He even tried to turn the land green by ordering the planting of 150 million trees.

Abu Dhabi is taking a more considered, arguably more cultured approach to the future than neighbouring Dubai. With impending civic projects from the likes of Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster, Frank Gehry and Jean Nouvel, this will be a city to watch in the next decade...

Whole article here

Looks like it's Abu Dhabi's turn for lyrical waxing, while Dubai, and the UAE as a whole, continue to get this kind of attention - at least in news sources out of the country.

I'm noticing more and more articles like this appearing - is it my imagination or are others seeing this too? I mean, they always used to be there, but there was a type of "balance" when articles like the Abu Dhabi one above would also appear about Dubai. Nowadays the Dubai articles seem to be a lot more serious and darker in subject matter.

Maybe it's an evolution process - a maturing city now needs to address the more ethical and social aspects of becoming an attractive entity - it can no longer hide behind the façade of world-record buildings and fantastic property developments.

What do you think?

Are more of these negative articles appearing because:
~ the UAE needs to grow up and really start to address these issues?
~ other countries are jealous of what's happening?
~ travel writers are no longer receiving free junkets to Dubai?
~ some other reason?

Do you think there's a correlation?

"Municipality says old vehicles should not be on roads" national newspaper link

"Rash overtaking main cause of accidents" national newspaper link

What d'ya think?

Keeping internet access safe from terror and danger

Gulf News has an interesting interview with an unnamed TRA spokesperson regarding the proxy; among the interesting information it has are the following paragraphs...

For starters the title of the article in Gulf News is in fact "Keeping internet access safe from terror and danger"

"Each of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Etisalat and du, are required by law to have a proxy programme where certain keywords are checked: sex, terrorism, dating, drugs, alcohol, pornography, and gambling, among others.

These keywords are mandatory by international laws in describing each and every single website."

Is anyone else aware of any international laws regarding keywords?

The final paragraph is quite interesting too...

"The big picture is to be developed and to be in the lead of this century. But knowledge and development doesn't mean ethic-free life or morale-free life. There are certain morals that the UAE government is obliged to protect."

Sin City (Dubai)

Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai

Marina Walk, Dubai

Just thought of sharing some new photos that I took recently...
Also check
http://blog.basilkhleif.com for more pics.

What a City!

For those not so familiar with Dubai, that's Safa Park in the foreground and the towering Burj Dubai. along with other towering edifices in the background.

British TV executive arrested at Dubai airport released

"Dubai: A British TV executive has been discharged of illegally bringing in and possessing 0.03 grams of hashish, Gulf News has learnt.

Dubai Public Prosecution dismissed the charges and released the suspect."

--more here

A (very) short interview with Sheikha Lubna

Todd Watson from Wall Street Market Research gets the shortest interview with Sheikha Lubna after her staff confuse him with editors from the Wall Street Journal.

Amusing story - read here.

Ah well - at least he got a hot towel and a fruit juice!

Rental Property - BOOM

Hello dear readers

What are your thoughts regarding the current rental situation for property- as opposed to advertised market rates in Dubai?

Apparently, there is a discrepancy between advertised rental rates and actual paid amounts for the same properties. Does this hold true, according to your experiences?

“Bubble burst” is always a term related to a thriving property market – do you readers expect such a phenomenon in the local market, or is this just speculation?