A Different Drummer

In an effort to foster better community relations, the Abu Dhabi police got an awesome custom-made chopper motorbike, and will ride it around the emirate showing it off.

Police hope interest in the bright-red and chrome Falcon chopper, emblazoned with the Abu Dhabi Police logo and equipped with a siren, flashing lights and a baton holster, will help them build closer relationships with Emirati youth. Officials plan to take it on road shows around the emirate....

Lt Majid al Marzouqi of the Abu Dhabi Police said he hoped the chopper would help police bond with the public.

“We got more than 1,000 people at the launch, so it really worked,” he said. “This is just part of what Abu Dhabi Police are doing. We are very close to the community, and this is one way of getting even closer.” (The National)

It has a siren, flashing lights and a baton holster. It is an awesome custom chopper. We have video of it.

There is only one place in the world that can generate news stories with paragraphs like this:

Crucifying the headless body in a public place is a way to set an example, according to the kingdom's strict interpretation of Islam. Normally those convicted of rape, murder and drug trafficking in Saudi Arabia are just beheaded.

They beheaded AND crucified the guy.

Even though it's only a bus ride from Cairo, I never made it to Amman in the years I lived there. I guess when you make it as far along the Sinai coast as Basata, those extra couple of hundred kilometres just don't seem worth it...

Plus, I'm a Cairo supremacist, and had no time for secondary Non-Cairos...

Well, now I'm here. First reaction: like the Cairo suburbs, but with a Holy Land kinda feeling - rocky hills dotted with shrubs, and a nice consistent stone-y colour to everything. Seems a little boring, but it has only been 6 hours...

One nice touch: Jordan has a suggestions box:


I'm staying in the Jerusalem hotel, and its one of those delightfully old-timey relics you will find in cities all over the Arab world - straight out of the golden age, faded, completely out of date but with absolute dignity, staffed by men with moustaches and gold-rimmed glasses, who call it an "otel" in a French accent.

It's all dark wood and totally uncomfortable faux Louis XIV furnituture, old men in suits smoking in the lobby, room service menu printed 20 years ago...(Cairo people, think the Odeon, etc.) I love it.

How old-school is my hotel? This is the telephone fixed on the wall in my bathroom. Pure class:


I'm here because Jordan seems to be the place to be right now for technology startups in the Middle East, and will be writing about the whole scene, and the how and why of it, for The National. Will put up some links later, but for now, I need to explore. I've got no idea where I am and no idea where I am supposed to go, which is how it should be. Peace.

Sometimes - actually, all the time - I ask myself the same question:

And I was interviewed by three young Egyptian women who asked serious, educated questions, and I asked myself - I have to repeat this question - whether the Egyptians were not better educated than I had remembered, and that perhaps Mohamed Hussainein Heikal, with our old memories, had not got Egypt wrong. I drove back to Cairo with Mohamed (yes, the old Aswan Mohamed) and I asked him to point out to me the Pyramids. And there they emerged, on the right of the car, the Pyramids of Cheops, Chephren and Mycerinus, and there they were, brilliant against the sunshine, full of life and power and danger, and I stared at them in great awe and love and wondered why I ever got tired of Egypt.

Robert Fisk's World: When I look at the Pyramids, I wonder why I tire of Egypt

UAE blogger Tariq Kadri has some important information on the swine flu outbreak that everyone should be aware of.

I love this wonderful New Yorker article - the elevator as enabler of urban civilisation! The elevator as deep, sprawling reflection on social space!

When filmmakers want to shoot an elevator scene, they will spin the elevator around, like a lazy Susan, so that the character can disembark into a different set. This trick captures something about an elevator ride—the way that it can feel like teleportation. You go in here and come out there, and you hardly consider that you have just raced up or down a vertiginous, pitch-black shaft. When you’re waiting for a ride, you don’t think that what lurks behind the outer doors is emptiness. Every so often, a door opens when it shouldn’t and someone steps into the void. This is worth keeping in mind.

The whole article is very much worth a read.

I would shoot myself in the leg before voting Liberal. But what am I supposed to do here? First, you roll back the wonderful liberalism of my South Australian homeland. Then, you line up Australia with Saudi Arabia and North Korea by filtering the internet.

Now, you want to tax the money I earn while living in another country. You're dead to me.

For a classic example of the progressive impulse to see all money as the natural property of the government unless otherwise "given" to the people, read that crazy press release on the Australian treasury website.

"Many foreign countries are lower tax jurisdictions which means some Australians who earn income overseas are paying much less tax than if they earned income solely in Australia."

True. We also consume no government services, are eligible for no benefits, and cost the Australian government pretty much nothing. But I guess that isn't really the point.

A brilliant quote from Jeffrey Goldberg's excellent story in The Atlantic this month:
I think a lot of people are in the stock market who probably shouldn't be.

Behold, the top link on YouTube when searching for "Tom Gara".

It is my uncle Tom, whose existence and naming creates the following interesting facts:

- Despite being approximately the largest man in the world, I am known among this side of the family as "Little Tom," a relic of my childhood days as the smallest Tom Gara in the family.

- If you google for my name, you get a combination of various blogs, newspaper/ magazine articles etc written by me - but mixed in is a whole bunch of references to the impressive body of knowledge / scholarship of by Tom Gara from Adelaide, South Australia, who knows about as much about the history of Aboriginal Australians as anybody. This, to the novice who is googling me for background info / recruitment purposes, makes it look like I have a far better education than I actually do.

Anyhow, here is the man known by some as "Big Tom," talking about the interactions between famous Australian explorers Burke and Wills and the indigenous people of the Australian outback, and the general relationship between the early explorers and the Aboriginals.