I really enjoy the multimedia presentations of different places around the world on many of the many US newspaper websites. Here is a very interesting one from the New York Times website. It’s a photo report on Peshawar Pakistan. Peshawar is a battleground between the Islamic extremist groups like the Taliban and the Pakistani government. Click the link below to get to the slideshow. The pic above is the first one in the show… a striking black and white shot.
President Bush visited Abu Dhabi two days ago and then Dubai yesterday. I think it was his first visit here ever. All of Dubai was basically shut down yesterday. They declared a Emirate-wide private and public holiday late on Sunday afternoon. Many roads were to be closed for the better part of the day.
A friend snapped these pictures out of his apartment window. It’s the President’s motorcade. Very interesting!
This road is never desolate like this!
Notice the police at the bottom right.
Police helicopter hovering overhead as the motorcade passed.
This is Sheikh Mohammad’s car. Notice the license plate number “1″. He usually drives this himself.
Motorcade Limos.
Not sure what’s in this car/truck. Looks “special” though.
Sallelite communications/tracking car?
Three identical Escalades… tight formation.
But someone’s peeking out…
Could that be President Bush?… I think it is.
Update: Now I’m not so sure… here is a pic of him that day from the local newspaper. What do you think? Tie matches but the coat might be too dark in the photo.
You may know that Pakistan has been put under Emergency Rule or Martial Law by P.M. Musharraf. The Pakistani population is Dubai is rather large and I have a number of Pakistani friends. One friend had returned to Pakistan to live with his family recently. Mansur is his name. His father is a leader in one of the opposition parties there and his Father’s been in hiding for a while now to avoid police interrogation and abuse.
Just this week students gathered at a Lahore University called LUMS to protest martial law. My friend’s sister and some co-workers were there for the rally and they were beaten by police trying to disperse the rally. My friend has written about it on his blog. You can read about it there.
And mostly I encourage you to pray for Pakistan. Pray for peace, justice, and for God’s purposes to be accomplished there even in this time of turmoil. I’d also appreciate prayers for the safety of my friends there.
President Putin visited last week and met with Sheikh Kalifa, President of the UAE.
I sure hope they had more fun than it looks like they’re having here. 
And notice how the late Sheikh Zayed is looking on from over Putin’s shoulder… approval? disapproval? We’ll never know will we.
Sometimes the captions tell you the most. It’s been increasingly apparent over the last year or so which son of Sheikh Mohammed, Ruler of Dubai, has been anointed the successor to his father. Shaikh Hamdan is the one it appears. Billboards with his face on them, well attended poetry readings, his own flashy website (you really should click on this just to hear the ‘heroic’ music!), and now subtle but significant things like the caption on this photo tell the story.
If you read the caption you’ll see that the naming starts with Hamdan on the right then shifts to the second from left (also a son of the ruler), then to the left-most (also a son of the ruler), and lastly to the second from right… the one guy who isn’t a son of the Sheikh. I’m not a journalism expert but it sure seems like an odd way of labeling a picture except if you wanted to make sure the most important one gets named first and then carefully name the rest in descending order of importance.
By the way… the guy who won the gold medal isn’t even pictured.
Extremely interesting article written just for the Gulf News recently. Husain Haqqani analyzes the source and destructiveness of conspiracy theories in the Muslim World. It’s short and a “must read”.
Here’s a quote near the beginning…
“The contemporary Muslim fascination for conspiracy theories limits the capacity for rational discussion of international affairs. For example, a recent poll indicates that only 3 per cent of Pakistanis believe that Al Qaida was responsible for the 9/11 attacks in the US, notwithstanding Osama Bin Laden and his deputies have taken credit for the attacks on more than one occasion.”
But does he go far enough in his analysis of the source? What do you think?
This Gulf News article came out over a month and a half ago but I clipped it and have been eager to comment on it. It’s an amazing article given the historical lack of freedom of the press and public criticism of the government here. Much progress has been made and perhaps this published interview is evidence despite his pessimism.
The professor, Dr. Jamal Al Suwaidi, is a Political Science teacher at UAE University in Al Ain and he got his PhD at the University of Wisconsin. Here are just a few of the excerpts from his interview.
On the first democratic elections of the Federal National Council in Abu Dhabi in December…
“…a setback… it showed a clear tendency toward tribalism. If the election process is to be expanded, it will become even more tribal and will take the UAE back at least 50 years”
On the recently formed Human Rights Society…
“It has done nothing since it’s creation last year. It is just a name, a banner.”
On the state of the media in the UAE…
“It suffers from self-censorship. Everybody talks about the freedom of expression but they never excercise it.”
On the education system in the UAE…
“Our education system is a failure… The Ministry of Education talks too much but does nothing.”
(ouch!)
On the percentage of expatriates in the UAE…
“foreigners now constitute almost 90% of the population” (this is in contrast to official government numbers which state that expats are 79%)
It’s a fascinating article and you should read all that he says. I’d love to talk to him over coffee one day!
For his quotes on radical Islam in the UAE click below.
On Islamism in the UAE…
“the (Muslim) Brotherhood has a following… but they have yet to interfere in state policies. (But) they surely have a local leadership in this country, carry public activities and have their own institutions.”
On Islamism and democracy…
“Religious currents like the (Muslim) Brotherhood carries a message that enjoys sympathy of the majority in the Arab world. But if they grabbed power they would send everybody to the gallows.”
On the Middle Eastern governmental dilemma…
“Today we are stuck between two extremes: authoritarian regimes on the one hand and the Islamist totalitarian opposition.”
