Freedom to create

No new entry from Sandlander for the best part of a week, a state of affairs which calls for explanation. I guess it must have been last Saturday that I got so depressed that my only recourse was an escape into infantilism by turning myself into an M&M. Wanna try? Here!

Anyway it brought something of a grin to my face. Although the camera hints at the reason I am down. Yes, I do go on and on about the fact that Flickr is inaccessible from the Sandlands. No, I haven't got over it.

But on Saturday I learned that worse is in store. Keefieboy wrote about it at length, the fact that the ISP censorship will now extend into what were intended to be the 'free zones', where media giants like CNN, Reuters lead the list of hundreds of tenants - all active in the 'information industry'.

The spokesman from the regulatory authority talks through his proverbial hat when trying to explain that the free zones were not previously proxied for technical reasons. Says Keefieboy:

"I can tell you that the reason these free zones were not previously proxied was neither technical nor jurisdictional. It was a deliberate decision by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum who, in his wisdom, realised that these entities would not be very attractive to potential international clients if their Internet access was censored. That reason is still valid today."

There is a serious danger that people across the world are going to begin bad mouthing the Emirates in general and Big D in particular. And it's not because they are jealous of Dubai's rise to prominence; they're increasingly cynical. From the Christian Science Monitor this:

Almost as fast as you could say, "outrageously bling-bling-tourism is our future," this little fishing port on a creek had been turned into a wonderland of artificial attractions. Soon they had a growth rate bigger than that of China, more tourists than India, and – people here like to quip – more than half of the world's building cranes. They also had growing labor abuse charges (Human Rights Watch reported nearly 900 construction deaths here in 2004), prostitution (the US State Department reports that Dubai's efforts to curtail sex trafficking fall short of "minimum standards"), and looming environmental disasters (man-made islands upset the entire ecology of the western Persian Gulf).

All so very, very sad.