In Dubai, enroute to Kabul

when i first visited dubai, i decided immediately that it was one of the creepiest places i had ever been... now, on my umpteenth pass-through, there's nothing to change that opinion... the service folk - hotel desk clerks, taxi drivers, restaurant help, indeed virtually ALL the menial labor - are drawn from india, bangladesh, pakistan, sri lanka, indonesia and the philippines, among others... they're uniformly delightful people, unfailingly polite and good-humored, but i'm well aware they're living lives of indentured servitude, two year contracts, surrendered passports, poverty wages, 12-14 hour days and regular 7-day weeks... meanwhile, the emiratis - the natives - hold down all the positions of officialdom, customs and immigration, government, etc. and do little more than strut around, playing with their smartphones - and themselves - living lives of utterly pampered luxury...

i predict that, in the annals of history, dubai will be seen as a premier example of the total dedication of our current age to the belief that the only things that matter are money, power and lots of stuff, and that obscene amounts of all three are the only goals worth striving for... our ancestors, if there are any that survive the coming reckoning, will regard dubai and all that it represents with righteous horror that the human race could veer so dramatically off the track...

in just a few hours, i'll be landing in kabul where abject poverty is seemingly limitless and the corruption of the wealthy elites is so over the top as to be incomprehensible... at least dubai has paved streets and the majority of the population has a roof over its head...

sigh...

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Something very interesting out of the UAE

the guys sitting on top of that much money don't just suddenly have their gliders go down in a lake and disappear... there's a really rotten smell coming from this story and i ain't buyin' a word of it...

The United Arab Emirates state news agency says the head of Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund — the world's largest — is missing after his glider crashed in Morocco.

The official Emirates News Agency said that Ahmed bin Zayed Al Nahyan's glider went down in a lake in Morocco on Friday. The pilot of the aircraft was rescued in good condition, but authorities continued the search for Al Nahyan.

Al Nahyan is the managing director of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. He is also the younger brother of Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the leader of the United Arab Emirates.

if abu dhabi, dubai and the uae hadn't recently taken such a giant financial drubbing, a story like this would still raise significant doubts but, given recent developments, the odor is overpowering...

and you gotta believe ahmed's disappearance has some connection to the drama that's being played out between dubai and abu dhabi...

Dubai said on Thursday it would recapitalize Dubai World DBWLD.UL and repay property unit Nakheel's bonds in full, with $9.5 billion of aid in a debt offer that would promise creditors all their money back in up to eight years.

The Dubai government said $5.7 billion in funds from a previous loan made by Abu Dhabi would provide the lion's share of the funding, and that Dubai would add around $4 billion of its own resources.

Analysts had expected Abu Dhabi to step in with more cash.

[...]

Abu Dhabi gave Dubai $10 billion late last year in a two-part bailout made up of $5 billion from Abu Dhabi-linked banks in November and another $5 billion from the government.

[...]

British historian Christopher Davidson said Dubai's indebtedness to Abu Dhabi may dent its political clout in the UAE. The constitution divides power between the two emirates equally, with decisions on substantive issues requiring the support of both. The smaller emirates have less sway.

[...]

"One concern is that is nobody knows the full extent of the debt of Dubai," Davidson said. "Abu Dhabi can't sign a blank cheque, it doesn't have unlimited resources itself. It can't underwrite Dubai completely."

these people don't play nice and a great deal goes on that's shrouded in family secrecy... there have been a lot of enemies made, most of whom were either bought off or summarily disposed of...

i posted on this back in april of last year...

A video tape smuggled out of the United Arab Emirates shows a member of the country's royal family mercilessly torturing a man with whips, electric cattle prods and wooden planks with protruding nails.

A man in a UAE police uniform is seen on the tape tying the victim's arms and legs, and later holding him down as the Sheikh pours salt on the man's wounds and then drives over him with his Mercedes SUV.

In a statement to ABC News, the UAE Ministry of the Interior said it had reviewed the tape and acknowledged the involvement of Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan, brother of the country's crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed.

"The incidents depicted in the video tapes were not part of a pattern of behavior," the Interior Ministry's statement declared.

but hey...! it's all in the family, right...?

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Do you suppose Mossad might actually be called to account...? [UPDATE]

[UPDATE and BUMPED]

i had a feeling this story would grow legs...

West turns diplomatic screw – but Israel refuses to crack

'We know nothing', say ambassadors called for talks over how assassins who killed Hamas leader were holding foreign passports

Dubai yesterday explicitly accused Mossad of assassinating Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh on its soil, as David Miliband declared the use of British passports in the plot "an outrage" and demanded "full co-operation" from Israel in finding out what had happened.

The Foreign Secretary's comments came after an apparently fruitless meeting in London between the Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor and Sir Peter Ricketts, the permanent secretary who heads Britain's diplomatic service, which lasted just 14 minutes with no sign of any intelligence being shared. As the Israeli envoy left Whitehall, he said: "I was unable to add any information. I could not shed new light on the said matters".

There was a similar outcome in Dublin where the Israeli ambassador, Zion Evrony, had an hour's meeting with a senior Irish diplomat over how three Eire passports were used in the assassination. "I told him I know nothing about the event," Mr Evrony said afterwards.

oh, please... don't tell me israel knows nothing... what a bunch o'crap...

-------------------------

hey... dubai and the uae are no shining lights where shady police state tactics are concerned, but let's face it, israel is long overdue for some public accounting about its policy of wholesale assassinations... this is going to get a lot more interesting before it's over...

Dubai police directly accused Israel's Mossad spy agency of orchestrating the hit squad slaying of a Hamas commander as the number of suspects rose Thursday to 18.

Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim was quoted as saying he was "99 percent, if not 100 percent" certain that Mossad was behind last month's slaying of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a luxury hotel room in Dubai.

The comments — which appeared on a newspaper Web Site — came as international pressure mounted for Israel to answer questions about possible links to the Jan. 19 killing.

The investigation also widened to the United States. Emirates authorities said the alleged killers used fraudulent passports to open credit cards accounts through U.S.-based banks, an official said.

"Our investigations reveal that Mossad is involved in the murder of al-Mabhouh," Tamim was quoted as saying by The National newspaper, which is owned by the government of Abu Dhabi.

He told another local paper, Dubai-based Gulf News, that: "All elements strongly indicate the involvement of the Mossad."

actually, i'm glad to see this... israel has operated with almost complete impunity for a long, long time... way TOO long, in fact...

p.s. interestingly enough, the hotel where the guy was popped, the al bustan rotana in dubai, was the hotel where i stayed for a night last year...

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Dubai ushers in the New Year with massive fireworks display (using more money they don't have)

from itn courtesy of juan cole...

The new decade makes it's entrance in the Middle East - the United Arab Emirates welcomes it with fireworks over the Burj Al Arab building.

once you're accustomed to obscene, over-the-top, insanely ostentatious displays, it's hard to give 'em up...

HAPPY NEW YEAR...!!

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Abu Dhabi caves on its gambling-addicted neighbor, Dubai

in twelve-step language, this is called enabling... abu dhabi is enabling dubai, its whited sepulchre neighbor and fellow emirate, to continue to pursue the same raw, naked greed that got it into trouble in the first place, exactly the same strategy followed by the u.s. and europe in bailing out its too-big-to-fail banksters...

Oil-rich Abu Dhabi on Monday provided $10 billion to help pay off some of the debts of an ailing property company owned by the government of neighboring Dubai, at least temporarily averting a crisis over the finances of the high-flying desert sheikhdom.

and dubai may not be the only sovereign state facing difficulties...

Dubai "could well be the tip of the iceberg in terms of over-leveraged nations," analysts at India's HDFC Bank wrote in a report, as indicated by recent fears about a possible Greek default.

[...]

"We are in completely uncharted territory" that could redefine the relationship between Western investors and the government-backed companies often set up to develop projects here and in other emerging markets, said Chavan Bhogaita, head of credit research at the National Bank of Abu Dhabi.

[...]

These are nations where the distinctions between government, ruling family and government-owned entities are often difficult to discern, where clan ties can help acquire virtually open-ended credit, and where bankruptcy and finance laws are not well tested.

In Dubai's case, "one could in fact argue that the state is its corporations," Woertz wrote.

meanwhile back in dubai...

Housing prices have fallen nearly 50 percent so far this year, putting Dubai below Estonia for the biggest decline, according to a recent report by the London-based Knight Frank real estate group.

you might be tempted to think that this would be a wake-up call for dubai just as i was tempted to think that the on-going financial collapse in the u.s. would be a wake-up call for us... sadly, the small store of wisdom i've gained over the years tells me otherwise... when you're hopelessly addicted to power and money, it's really hard to give it up... there's no nicotine patches for those two drugs...

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Dubai finally admits a bit of the truth

i love how the 2d paragraph starts - "the fallout came swiftly"... 'scuse me, but what a pile of bullshit... it may have SEEMED swift but only for those who haven't been paying attention...

hardly a secret, dubai's bailout request to abu dhabi (see below) made dubai the butt of jokes as the whimpering plea of a compulsive gambler... there were rumblings last january when i posted about those jumping ship (here) and have devoted a number of other posts (here) to my impressions of that supremely soulless place that harbors the all-too-common delusion that money can buy not just anything, but EVERYTHING...

perhaps the biggest reason the dubai debt crisis took the world by surprise is the intense repression of news exercised by obscenely bloated, super rich sheiks that call the shots in the uae... the fact that it's hitting the news at all suggests to me that the problem is massively more serious than they're letting on...

Just a year after the global downturn derailed Dubai's explosive growth, the city is now so swamped in debt that it's asking for a six-month reprieve on paying its bills — causing a drop on world markets Thursday and raising questions about Dubai's reputation as a magnet for international investment.

The fallout came swiftly and was felt globally after Wednesday statement that Dubai's main development engine, Dubai World, would ask creditors for a "standstill" on paying back its $60 billion debt until at least May. The company's real estate arm, Nakheel — whose projects include the palm-shaped island in the Gulf — shoulders the bulk of money due to banks, investment houses and outside development contractors.

In total, the state-backed networks nicknamed Dubai Inc. are $80 billion in the red and the emirate needed a bailout earlier this year from its oil-rich neighbor Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

boo-freakin'-hoo...

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The BIG fear - when food is unavailable at any price

so, if you've got money - lots of it - whaddaya gonna do...? why, buy up farm land from poor people and impoverished countries, folks so desperate for money they're practically willing to give it away, and lock it up for yourself... lovely, eh...?

A variety of factors — some transitory, like the spike in food prices, and others intractable, like global population growth and water scarcity — have created a market for farmland, as rich but resource-deprived nations in the Middle East, Asia and elsewhere seek to outsource their food production to places where fields are cheap and abundant.

[...]

Foreign investors — some of them representing governments, some of them private interests — are promising to construct infrastructure, bring new technologies, create jobs and boost the productivity of underused land so that it not only feeds overseas markets but also feeds more Africans. (More than a third of the continent’s population is malnourished.) They’ve found that impoverished governments are often only too welcoming, offering land at giveaway prices. A few transactions have received significant publicity, like Kenya’s deal to lease nearly 100,000 acres to the Qatari government in return for financing a new port, or South Korea’s agreement to develop almost 400 square miles in Tanzania. But many other land deals, of near-unprecedented size, have been sealed with little fanfare.

Investors who are taking part in the land rush say they are confronting a primal fear, a situation in which food is unavailable at any price.

it's simple... when you've got more money than god, you just buy the means of production...

“When some governments stop exporting rice or wheat, it becomes a real, serious problem for people that don’t have full self-sufficiency,” said Al Arabi Mohammed Hamdi, an economic adviser to the Arab Authority for Agricultural Investment and Development. Sitting in his office in Dubai, overlooking the cargo-laden wooden boats moored along the city’s creek, Hamdi told me his view, that the only way to assure food security is to control the means of production.

[...]

“There is no problem about money,” Hamdi said. “It’s about where and how.”

the problem with the super-rich elites, particularly those from the gulf states and saudi arabia, is that they honestly believe that money is the answer to everything... unfortunately, so far, they're proving they're right... meanwhile, the rest of us are left to suck hind tit...

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Traveling can be a bitch

it's now 8 a.m. saturday and i'm in heathrow airport, london, where i arrived about an hour and a half ago... i fly out to dubai where i land at midnight and transfer to the 03:30 kabul flight... by the time i land in kabul at 07:00 sunday morning, i will be burnt toast...

i haven't slept well for the past few nights anyway and i didn't get much more than a couple of hours of restful sleep on the flight from d.c. to london... i doubt i will get much on the flight from here to dubai either... needless to say, i will crash once i hit kabul... they may see me in the office briefly tomorrow afternoon... then again, they might not...

i'm a pretty resilient traveler and generally manage long flights and multiple time zones well, but there's no question that it takes a toll...

p.s. let me add a very positive note... yesterday in d.c., i asked the taxi driver taking me to dulles airport where he was from... i know the world is full of serendipitous coincidences so i was only mildly surprised when he told me he was from afghanistan... i told him i was on my way there for the 5th time and we had a wonderful, wonderful conversation for the 45 minutes it took to get to the airport from georgetown... we compared perspectives, shared details of our work and our families, and mutually deplored the despicable extremism we're witnessing in both his country and mine... it's those kind of encounters that brighten a day and make life just a little bit more worthwhile...

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Swine flu hysteria, up close and personal

it's one thing to be in kabul or dubai and read about the absolute paranoiac idiocy accompanying the latest distraction for the masses, but it's another thing to see the hysteria up close and personal...

i spent monday and tuesday nights in dubai prior to flying back here to argentina... in the dubai airport yesterday, i didn't see one person wearing a mask... when i got to the sao paulo airport last night to connect with the flight to buenos aires, i saw a few folks wearing them, notable because i hadn't seen any one wearing them up to that point... the woman sitting across the aisle from me on the flight was wearing one but, lord almighty, the entire airport staff at the buenos aires airport were wearing them... even the taxi driver who took me home was wearing one... when i asked him about it, he mumbled something about being advised to do it on the news, but then, after a few minutes, probably feeling self-conscious, he took it off...

honest to pete... our controllers won't be satisfied until everyone on the planet are turned into quivering rabbits...

p.s. there are a lot of folks who wear masks or scarves over their faces in kabul (not counting the women) but it ain't about the flu... it's protection against the health-destroying pollution...

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In Dubai

i'm currently sitting in my hotel room in dubai, looking out over deira creek... it's a relatively pretty and sane part of town, dhows plying up and down, and no view of the totally over-the-top excess of some of the other parts of the city...

unfortunately, i can't be here anymore without thinking of the ugliness behind the scenes... ugliness like this...

Sadistic torture over thinking you've been cheated

nice guys around here, dontcha think...?

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The nightmare that is Dubai

i've now passed through dubai almost a dozen times over the past year and probably spent half that many nights in dubai hotels... in no way do i claim that makes me an expert on dubai... at best, i'm a casual, but still a reasonably intelligent and perceptive observer... however, i've found that the article that is very briefly excerpted below to be an accurate reflection of my own assessment...

i strongly recommend reading the whole thing here...

[Dubai] is a city built from nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and ecocide, suppression and slavery. Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing -- at last -- into history.

my own snarky description of dubai has always been "las vegas without a sense of humor," and then i heard jon stewart's description: "dubai is the bastard child of las vegas and saudi arabia"... i think jon and i are on the same wavelength...

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On the road (again) plus a few Dubai insights...

i flew from kabul here to dubai yesterday... the flight departure from kabul was delayed and the aircraft we were to have departed on was finally switched after we stood on the ramp in a cold wind waiting to board for nearly an hour, freezing our respective tushies off... when we arrived in dubai, the temp was just over 90 with a sandstorm in progress...

i should add that, flying over afghanistan's central mountains, i was stunned by the amount of snow... those mountains are extremely rugged and barren, but the current snow levels are so high that all the harsh edges are now soft and rounded and the entire landscape looks like a big, soft, fluffy, slightly rumpled, startlingly white bed comforter, not unlike the one i'm looking at right now on my hotel room bed...

i should also point out that "sandstorm" doesn't necessarily mean blowing sand, although that's what's behind it... it also means fine, sandy, brown dust kicked up by wind blowing sand somewhere else that blows over huge regions, reduces visibility, and is generally quite unpleasant to look at... dubai is vulnerable to such from two different directions, iran and saudi arabia, depending on which way the wind is blowing...

yesterday afternoon, a colleague of mine and i visited with an egyptian general manager who is here running four processing plants for a local investor and he filled us in on the current economic situation in dubai and the gulf states in general... nothing disastrous yet but people are starting to stretch out the time it takes them to pay their bills... we asked him if he was worried about people starting to not pay at all and, in response, were treated to a detailed run-down on how the government protects business people... in short, if someone doesn't pay within a reasonable period, you can call the cops who show up asap, give the guy one month to fork over and, if he doesn't, it's off to jail, no passing go, no collecting $200... he also said that a number of privately-financed construction projects are on hold and that government-financed projects are moving ahead but more slowly... then he dispensed another another fascinating bit of insight...

the rule of law here is strictly enforced and apparently no one is above it... a high-level government official, someone very close to their majesties, got caught in a shady deal in lebanon... he's now cooling his heels in prison for fifteen years... what i found particularly interesting is that the government also seized all of his assets and put them in a trust out of which they are insuring his family is completely taken care of, housing, food, education, everything and what the assets don't cover, the government makes up the difference... yeah, things are done a bit differently here... the good news is that no one operates with impunity, completely unlike afghanistan and even my own home country (whose name i will not mention here)...

today, i fly on to amman and then to aqaba tomorrow morning to work through the middle of the month before returning to kabul where i will remain until the end of april... as much as afghanistan has come to occupy a spot in my heart, it's still a hard place to be and i'm glad to have a short respite before the six-week stint to come...

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Heading back to Afghanistan

yeah, yeah, yeah... if i'm not a candidate for the dreaded fatal disease of "terminal jet lag," i probably will be soon... i'm writing this in buenos aires prior to heading off to the airport for the long, long trek back to kabul... i go to sao paulo, change for a non-stop to dubai (it's a 14-hour flight), spend friday night there, and fly on to kabul on saturday afternoon where i will see this lovely sign welcoming me to the country, a scene that i so desperately wish was their reality... ah, well... stay tuned...

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Dubai ain't immune to the global financial meltdown

from daijiworld via juan cole...

Local police have found at least 3,000 automobiles -- sedans, SUVs, regulars -- abandoned outside Dubai International Airport in the last four months. Police say most of the vehicles had keys in the ignition, a clear sign they were left behind by owners in a hurry to take flight.

The global economic crisis has brought Dubai's economic progress, mirrored by its soaring towers and luxurious resorts, to a stuttering halt. Several people have been laid off in the past months after the realty boom started unraveling.

On the night of December 31, 2008 alone more than 80 vehicles were found at the airport. "Sixty cars were seized on the first day of this year," director general of Airport Security, Mohammed Bin Thani, told DNA over the phone. On the same day, deputy director of traffic, colonel Saif Mohair Al Mazroui, said they seized 22 cars abandoned at a prohibited area in the airport.

Faced with a cash crunch and a bleak future ahead, there were no goodbyes for the migrants -- overwhelmingly South Asians, mostly Indians - just a quiet abandoning of the family car at the airport and other places.

While 2,500 vehicles have been found dumped in the past four months outside Terminal III, which caters to all global airlines, Terminal II, which is only used by Emirates Airlines, had 160 cars during the same period.

i've been through dubai several times... wherever i am, i always make it a point to talk to taxi drivers... i like to hear their thoughts on things because they usually have their fingers on the pulse of what's going on locally... every single taxi driver i've spoken with in dubai has been either from india or pakistan, most having been recruited by the government, most there without their families, most there trying to earn some money to send home, and most not caring much for dubai, the locals or how they're treated... they come on two-year, renewable contracts with a one-month paid home leave at the end of the first year... some had already renewed, some were thinking about it, and some said "no way"... it's interesting to know that, now that dubai has at long last fallen on hard times, many are simply saying "to hell with it"... can't say as i blame them...


Dubai from the east bank of Deira Creek
29 November 2008

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Saturday photoblogging: my new Afghan rugs

i hauled one large afghan rug and one smaller one in my luggage from kabul to dubai and from there to northern nevada... then, i packed them up again and dragged them to buenos aires... if i do say so myself, they both look FANTASTIC on the dark wood floor here, just as i hoped they would...

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Door-to-door in 48 hours

well, not quite... from the time i woke up at the project compound in kabul at 5 a.m. on friday, finished packing, and headed to the airport, until i walked in the door here at my son's in northern nevada this afternoon, bags in hand, comes to about 47 hours... but, add in time to do enough unpacking to uncover the top of the bed so i can crash later, shoveling four months of mail into two stacks (read later and toss), eating dinner, and displaying some of my treasures for the family, i am now at the 50-hour mark, the first time i feel like i've actually stopped moving since friday morning... here's hoping i don't wake up at some ungodly hour due to the 11 1/2 hour time difference... thank goodness i managed to sleep a fair bit of the 14-hour flight from dubai to new york...

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Lo-o-o-ong trip comin' up [UPDATE: Progress Report]

friday 9 a.m.

flight
kabul - dubai, 2 1/2 hrs

friday, noon - saturday, 2 a.m.

layover
dubai airport, 14 hrs

saturday, 2 a.m.

flight
dubai - new york, 13 1/2 hrs

saturday, 9 a.m.

flight
new york - northern nevada, 8 hrs

saturday, 4 p.m.

dead on my butt

[UPDATE: Progress Report]

ok... i'm in dubai international airport where i arrived a few hours ago and am now riding along on their free wifi... it's 1:15 p.m. on friday here, and my flight to the u.s. doesn't leave until 2 a.m. saturday morning... < twiddles thumbs, looks around, watches muslim mom in black burka chase her toddler across the concourse for the umpteenth time > ah, well... i knew it was going to be a LONG, LONG day...

as a sidenote, lemme tell ya what it's like flying out of the kabul airport (which i did for the first time this morning)...

short version: it sucks...

long version: first thing off the bat, before you even get to the parking lot, you have to stop at this dusty little shack on this dusty little detour, where you and everybody else line up outside, waiting to have some afghan soldiers open up your bags and do a physical inspection in front of the big x-ray scanner that's sitting there unused because there's no electricity to run it... from there, you load everything back in the car, drive to the parking lot, park, walk across the lot to a waiting hall where, for some reason, everybody's waiting even though you don't have to... once you figure out you don't have to wait and get back on your way, you find that it's still almost a three block walk across more parking lot to the terminal proper...

at the front door of the terminal, they do ANOTHER physical bag inspection, and, then, GLORY HALLELUJAH, you get to go INSIDE the terminal, where you're met by an x-ray inspection for bags and an x-ray passenger walk through... well, gosh and golly, sports fans, you're NOW ready to CHECK IN for your flight... after they give you your boarding pass and pick your pocket for an excess baggage fee at check-in, there's - you guessed it - ANOTHER x-ray bag inspection and x-ray passenger walk-through... then, by gosh, you get to go upstairs to passport control where you get your exit visa... whew...! after all that, you're FINALLY in the boarding lounge...

the good news in all this...? the flight left on time... son-of-a-gun... btw, did i mention the four pat-downs...?

p.s. on the drive to the airport, i got to witness one of those once-in-a-lifetime, only-in-a-place-like-afghanistan scenes... we were exiting a traffic circle, trying to get around a truck that was barely moving... we were just to the right rear of the truck and, from the passenger seat, i could see that the truck's passenger side door was open... as we pulled around it to the right, we could see an afghan policemen standing on the truck's running board, scuffling with someone sitting in the passenger seat... my afghan driver rolled his eyes and ruefully explained to me that the cop was, quite literally, shaking down the two men in the truck for money... the passenger was trying to push the cop off the truck but the policeman was holding on tight... it looked like they were engaging in the kind of slap fight kids get into... it would have been funny if it hadn't been so pathetic...

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In Kabul

Departure screen
Dubai International Airport
Wednesday, March 26
(arrow indicates my flight)


Welcome sign
Kabul International Airport
Kabul, Afghanistan

it's 3 p.m. wednesday here in kabul, about 3:30 a.m. u.s. pdt, 6:30 a.m. u.s. edt, and 7:30 a.m. in argentina... i've been here for a few hours going through a security briefing which is the first crack out of the box for all the newbies... i'm dead on my butt since i only had 4 hrs. to sleep last night and didn't sleep but an hour and a half of it... the kam air flight from dubai was a 737-800, packed to the rafters, mostly with contractors like me... sat next to two guys, one of whom works for dyncorp (kind of a blackwater-type outfit) and the other for a computer tech contractor, and we had a pleasant chat...

driving around kabul (in an up-armored toyota landcruiser), i can see it's desperately poor, very crowded, exceptionally dirty, and parts are still devastated from the soviet and taliban regimes not to mention the shellacking it took under the "coalition" forces...

i have some pics of the terrain flying in (we flew in over part of iran) and the kabul airport (which includes an azerbaijan airlines, russian vintage, 727-type aircraft... (i've seen 'em before in belgrade... if it wasn't for the tail assembly, you'd mistake 'em for a 727...) i'll be posting some later...

anywayz, i'm safe and sound but won't be good for much of anything until i've had a good night's sleep... besides, i see you've all been in good hands with brother tim...

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A headline like this could only come from a place that has more money than it can even count

if you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it...

Dubai Ruler Orders Creation
Of New Low-Cost Airline

The ruler of Dubai has ordered the creation of a new low-cost airline to serve the growing number of passengers traveling through the Gulf trade and tourism hub, the official WAM news agency said on Tuesday.

"Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum has ordered... the establishment of a new airline company in Dubai to meet the need to service passengers to and from the United Arab Emirates whose number is increasing year on year," it said.

Dubai, one of seven emirates comprising the United Arab Emirates, already has the largest Arab airline, Emirates, and the nearby emirate of Sharjah is home to Air Arabia, the Middle East's biggest low-cost carrier.

UAE capital Abu Dhabi is home to Etihad Airways, and RAK Airways, based in the northern emirate of Ras al-Khaimah, also flies to several destinations. WAM said the new airline would established immediately.

Dubai Airport, the busiest airport in the Middle East, saw international passenger traffic grow 19.31 percent last year. It handled 34.34 million passengers.

Dubai is building a new airport on the other side of town that it expects will be the biggest in the world.

god said, "let there be light," and there was light...

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Oil, money and obscenity

OPEC Says Members Won't Pump More Oil
As Crude Price Sets Record, Cartel's Intent Is Questioned

Though OPEC's production decision was widely expected, Naimi's comments and the wording of the group's communique added to concern that OPEC is more worried about pumping too much oil for weakening economies than it is about the possible harm that high oil prices might do to those economies.

In its statement after the meeting in Vienna, OPEC pointed to "the economic slowdown in the U.S.A., which, together with the deepening credit crisis in financial markets, is increasing the downside risks for world economic growth and, consequently, demand for crude oil."

yeah, they're worried about declining revenue... gosh, i would be too if it meant i'd have to forego goodies like this...


Make and Model: Bugatti Veyron
Owner: Sheikh Mohammad's Son, Sheikh Rashid Bin Mohammed Al Maktoum
Cost: $GBP5M/$USD10M
Location, Dubai, UAE
Engine: V16 engine, 1000bhp, 10 radiators
Top speed: 407km/hr

taking obscenity to undreamed-of heights...

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