Seriously...

I'll probably come back to this at regular intervals, the blocking of Flickr here in the Sandlands.

I subscribe to a newsfeed which is entirely devoted to urbanism and the new thinking with regard to pre-fabricated housing. Nothing very controversial or provocative about that, you'd think. But their image gallery is a Flickr photostream. Of course sustainable design, ecological correctness and renewable energy could be deemed content being inconsistent with the religious, cultural, political and moral values of the United Arab Emirates.

Flickr has an extremely cautious policy regarding the photos which they are prepared to accept on their site; it is, after all, an American venture and political correctness demands a degree of conservativism and an avoidance of provocation.

There are, among the millions of photos on Flickr, those contributed by artists whose subject is the human body but nothing extreme, lewd or smutty passes their own filter.


PHOTOS BY MISS ANIELA

From the outset I have in this blog played 'cheerleader' for the photos created by Miss Aniela, a young person who in the course of less than a year has developed to become a seriously talented artist. She readily admits that Flickr, it's community of commentators and mentors, has been invaluable in her progress from hesitant beginnings to supreme confidence.

It is a matter of great good fortune that Natalie Dybisz has now launched her own blog (the 'Miss Aniela' link on the blogroll, not the 'Miss Aniela's Photos' tab; that's the one we're not allowed to see). Although the Gallery section is barred, since the links are to photos on Flickr, she posts the occasional photo in the blog itself. But, frankly, how frustrating.

I wonder how some of the Emiratis feel, the talented Elmasi or UAEKitten. I've recommended their Flickr photostreams to anyone interested as I am in evocative, narrative imagery. Fortunately they also have their own websites, accessible through the highlighted links above.

Now that GoogleVideo search also indexes videos hosted on YouTube I am hoping against hope that we're not going back to the bad old days of 2006 when, for a while, not only Flickr but also MySpace and YouTube were blocked.

I am, obviously, against censorship of any kind. However I do accept that a still conservative society may see fit to impose certain control in loco parentis, as it were, for the benefit of its citizens. There are sites out there I wouldn't want my daughter to stumble upon...

But isn't it all rather sad? Don't the censors remember being absolutely and irrevocably fascinated by anything which their parents said was 'unsuitable' or 'forbidden'? Do they not recall that the Prohibition of alcohol in the United States brought about an increase in consumption and the rise of an underworld which profited hugely from circumventing the imposed ban?