One of the things that in my opinion is done well in Dubai is the roadside landscaping.
I took these photographs over the last three or four weeks and some of the gold and red flowers are now being replaced, which they usually do with red, white and blue petunias.
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If anyone deserves a medal this man does:
He’s the splendidly named Captain Chesley B Sullenburger 111.
The man who safely landed an Airbus with 155 people on board in New York’s Hudson River.
What I think is an astonishing photograph shows just what he did:
Reuters photo
All 155 people walking out of the aircraft into waiting rescue boats.
Mind boggling.
But more than that, he’s described by a friend as one of the last American gentlemen.
I can believe that because he demonstrated old-fashioned values, values which are so important in a civilised society but which are much derided these days.
Ability, professionalism, responsibility, concern for others.
Not only did he safely bring the plane down, he made sure the passengers and his crew evacuated safely - then he twice walked the length of the aircraft to make sure that everyone was safely out. Only then did he leave the aircraft.
I thought such values were all-but dead but Capt. Sullenberger restores my faith that maybe we haven’t totally lost them.
Anybody want a role model? Forget entertainers and footballers and ‘celebrities’, this is the kind of role model we need to get society back on track.
I don’t know what awards he’ll receive but whatever they are they aren’t enough.
But then there’s the other side of awards.
Just a few days ago the worst-ever American president presented his country’s highest civilian honour, The Presidential Medal of Freedom, to two of his cronies.
Photos: Ron Edmonds/AP and Reuters
Tony Blair, ex-UK Prime Minister and John Howard, ex-Australian Prime Minister.
Both almost equally awful as leaders of their countries as Bush has been. Three men who demonstrate values which are the opposite of Capt. Sullenberger’s.
The White House spokesman said: “The president is honoring these leaders for their work to improve the lives of their citizens and for their efforts to promote democracy, human rights and peace abroad”
Oh really?
They supported Bush’s catastrophic adventures in what was childishly named the Coalition of the Willing, causing untold damage to the world and to their own countries’ reputations and standing.
BLiar, all spin and no substance, an unwarranted belief in his own importance and influence, the lies about Saddam and nuclear weapons, incompetence at home and abroad. Eventually, in spite of winning elections and thus keeping them in their lucrative jobs, his own MPs got sick of him and threw him out.
The world knows less about him so let me tell you about John Winston Howard.
Like Bush, Howard pursued extreme right wing policies and seriously damaged the reputation of a great country. Even more than Bush and BLiar, he was exposed many, many times lying to both parliament and the people. His strategy was wedge politics, dividing people as much as possible making it easier for him to retain power.
He put selfish personal ambition and the drive to hang on to power above all else. Above his party, his country, the people.
Like Bush he appointed a whole bunch of incompetent and extremist people to his government, several of them even more vindictive than himself. Australians will remember ministers such as Vanstone, Downer, Ruddock, Reith.
Often asked questions which would have been embarrasing to answer Howard’s stock response was ‘I find that question offensive’ and he’d stalk off.
We had his mistreatment and vilification of asylum seekers, his so called ‘Pacific Solution’ sending them to spend years in prison camps in small island nations we paid to take them.
We had the deliberate lies and doctored ‘evidence’ of ‘children overboard’ when Howard condemned the “sickening behaviour” by asylum seekers of throwing children overboard into the ocean. In fact they were fleeing a sinking ship, parents trying to save their children first as confirmed by the Australian navy’s HMAS Adelaide. It was just before an election so he used the lies in his campaign, based on ‘not the kind of people we want here’ and ‘we decide who comes to this country’.
We had black-clad goons wearing balaclavas accompanied by very large dogs attacking striking wharfies on the docks, something Australians never thought we’d see.
We had the mistreatment of individuals through Howard’s misuse of his draconian terrorism laws, such as Doctor Haneef, which I posted about earlier, here, demonstrating the spite and malice of his government.
He made lying by public figures acceptable, he made it acceptable to take no responsibility, he made it acceptable to blame others, he led the charge in our plummeting standards of decency and honesty, he made it acceptable to claim credit for things which in reality were other people’s doing.
He encouraged a climate of selfishness, paranoia, of bigotry and racism.
He took the country to war against the wishes of the majority, he subjugated Australian policy to that of the administration in America.
He frittered away our money on vote-buying handouts while the country’s infrastructure fell apart.
And his main claim to success, the booming economy and low interest rates, was almost entirely due to his predecessors and world events and nothing to do with Howard or his Treasurer Costello.
The boom began two years before he won power, started by IR changes the previous government put in place not by Howard’s policies. It continued with the demand from China and India for Australia’s raw materials - nothing to do with Howard but he claimed credit for the booming mining sector.
The boom continued because his government used the same disastrous strategy as most of the world, with the government living beyond its means, in effect running up credit card bills with no thought for tomorrow, by keeping interest rates artificially and unsustainably low, by encouraging the population to keep spending beyond their means. Huge trade deficits were built up, budget surpluses were frittered away buying votes by giving billions in handouts to voters before elections instead of the money being invested in the country’s future.
Eventually the electorate realised what an appalling leader we had and his party was decimated in a general election. The final ignominy was that Howard lost his own seat in that election.
Three leaders without whom the world would have been a much better place, thankfully now gone but the damage they’ve done will be with us for a long, long time.
If only we’d had leaders for the last decade with Capt. Sullenberger’s attributes.
Reports on the same day about storms in Dubai and Sydney demonstrate the difference results they can create.
In Dubai we had thunder and lightning, around Sydney they also had thunder and lighning.
With our storms we have temperature around 21C. In Sydney’s west they have over 43C.
In Dubai they came with heavy rain and flooded roads. Around Sydney it caused bushfires which are causing a lot of damage.
Photos Jessica Drake and Kim Roper. Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald report is here.
Surprise, surprise! The long awaited and eagerly anticipated rental index has been released to serious criticism.
Gulf News reports that it has no residential prices or criteria mentioned and reports an analyst as saying that it “…is incomplete, flimsy and likely to cause even more confusion in the marketplace as the index is almost incomprehensible.”
Another industry insider says it seems to be just the beginning, “almost a pre-index.”
The report goes on: “While this must be the first attempt at an index, the lack of solid data is going to cause further mayhem in a sector already riddled with confusion.”
It seems to be consistent with the normal procedure - ill-prepared ‘information’ issued before it’s complete causing more confusion than clarification.
So as usual we can expect weeks of further ‘clarifications’, each probably contradicting the last one, backtracking, U-turns. Meantime the rental free-for-all will continue, endangering Dubai’s commercial future.
Gulf News’ website doesn’t have their story but Zawya reproduces it here.
Driving from Dubai Marina into Media City this morning was a clear run, although Sheikh Zayed Road towards Jebel Ali was a car park.
I was actually surprised at how little traffic there was on the other roads and Knowledge Village car park was all-but empty.
Then I realised why - after last night’s huge storms you were all trapped somewhere else on flooded roads.
A rare moment of honesty in the world of politics.
The New York Times reports a speech made by Israeli PM Ehud Olmert :
In an unusually public rebuke, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel said Monday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been forced to abstain from a United Nations resolution on Gaza that she helped draft, after Mr. Olmert placed a phone call to President Bush.
“I said, ‘Get me President Bush on the phone,’ ” Mr. Olmert said in a speech in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, according to The Associated Press. “They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care: ‘I need to talk to him now,’ ” Mr. Olmert continued. “He got off the podium and spoke to me.”
The only surprise is that the bragging about Israel’s control over American policy in the region, obviously designed to gain votes in the upcoming election, publicly acknowledged what has long been known but officially denied.
The spin doctors must be in a panic on this one - the Israeli PM telling the US President to get off the podium to speak to him now, which he does.
The report is here.
War is peace. Freedom is Slavery.
George Orwell. Nineteen Eighty-Four
There’s a parallel universe out there and an awful lot of people live in it.
I’ve just been watching BBC news and in a report from Gaza they said that 100 humanitarian aid trucks were being allowed into Gaza by Israel.
Lise Doucet interviewed an Israeli army spokesman who told her that it was unprecedented for a country which was being attacked to allow aid to be sent to its attacker.
I swear that’s what he said.
George W Bush was at it too, in his final press conference.
He became angry with reporters who raised some of the main criticisms of his presidency, especially when questioned about the damage he’s done to America’s reputation.
“I disagree with this assessment that, you know, that people view America in a dim light. I strongly disagree with the assessment that our moral standing has been damaged.”
He also said that those who say the federal response to Hurricane Katrina was slow are wrong. Obviously in his parallel universe the response was good.
He summarised his presidency as ‘good and strong.’
I agree with the comment the street cleaner made as I walked past him earlier this morning.
Fifteen celcius it was then.
And for me it’s also too much gray, too much cloud.
Two consecutive days of cloudy, gray, wet weather is too much. I need the warm sunshine and blue sky back.
Medical staff in Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital are working to cope with dwindling supplies and a steady stream of wounded patients as Israel presses on with its offensive against Palestinian militant groups.
BBC producer, Rushdi Abu Alouf, visited the hospital and spoke to Norwegian doctor, Mads Gilbert. more http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7812547.stm
