Don't cry for me Wikipedia

News this week of another major disruption to the Middle East's Internet capacity. 

This one might look like just an accident, but I'm still not sure. How often do ships drag their anchors over cables in other parts of the world? I'm not going to check, so lets just say never. See, never!

Even if this one was an accident, the last disruption back in Feb was as fishy as the lunch menu at Uncle Hiroki's House of Sushi. 

Three cables in three days were 'damaged by ship anchors' effectively cutting off the internet for most of the region. If you had a sprinkler system installed in your front yard and three different pipes were damaged in a few days you'd probably think that someone was doing it on purpose wouldn't you? I would, and so would my dad who loves his front yard grass so much that that analogy would probably make him uncomfortable. But back to the international conspiracy to strategically disrupt the internet... well, I reckon it's an international conspiracy to strategically disrupt the internet. 

Current theories are: 

• It's the CIA and/or Mossad testing out the robustness of the Middle East link (possibly using robotic mini-subs, possibly with lasers attached) in preparation for an attack on Iran. They will shut down phone and internet communications so that we can't hear the screams of the innocent children as the bombs rain down on their kindergartens and the blood spills over into... Ahem, you get the idea. 

• It's the CIA planting advanced wiretapping equipment into the lines somewhere and they needed to cut them in order to install the gear. Robotic mini-sub may have been used here too. This is either part of the US's Echelon worldwide surveillance program or it is being run in parallel to it in the hope that Obama won't be told of it and the republican's (who have controlled network surveillance since '64) will can catch him getting a blow-job and they can get the US back into an old white-man's hands again. 

• It's Al Qaeda testing out their capacity for literal Internet terrorism as a precursor to instigating their much pursued Islamic fundamentalist overthrow of the government of Egypt and others in the region. They need to cut the cut the internet so that bloggers can't report what is going on and the local people will only have their 500 satellite channels to bring them news and confusion will reign. There is no evidence of mini-subs, but rumours indicated Suicide Divers may have been used (sorry). 
  

None of these are confirmed, but if they were, we would all have something to worry about. 

So what is my point here? Basically that last night the speed of my internet was slightly reduced because of either ships or international conspiracies and it is not acceptable. I am one of literally hundreds of people who have no television and rely solely on the internet for AV news and entertainment. I could barely stream the BBC World News last night, let alone download Battlestar Galactica while watching redtube porn. 

What ever the reason for this disruption I just want it to go away. I guess I should really hope for the second theory to be correct, because at least they would want it reconnected as soon as possible. An extended air campaign in Iran or the overthrow of the UAE government by violent Islamic extremists would probably mean an outage of months or possibly years. 

It goes to show that the real victim of unrest are not the ones you see on the news, but rather the unseen ones trying in vain to watch the news... over the internet. 

Drop a Coxy - Save the Planet

This week the Rudd Government released details of their strategy to reduce Australia's CO2 emissions by introducing a carbon trading scheme.

At first I thought Australia was going all out and announcing a 5% CO2 reduction from 1990 levels, but then I checked the scale and it's just from the 2000 levels, and doesn't include all emitters. Which is really a reduction of... fuck, these figures are hard to find. It is actually really hard to find the data for CO2 emissions for anything more than a few years, and even harder to find multiple sources to verify it. Although I'm sure the government is using rock solid data and not doing what I've been doing and searching Google.

But let's talk about this 5%. It's actually quite surprising that Rudd would have been so forthright announcing this benchmark scale when his figure was so low on it. I mean, if he had said "We are reducing our emissions by 24%... from projected 2020 levels" then it would have sounded much better.

Listening to the vox-pop on PM the other day it was clear that no-one actually knew or cared about the scale, they were just angry about the number. "Five percent is almost nothing", "Why even bother?", "Why not just do nothing?"

Well, for a start our carbon emissions are still increasing right? So doing nothing would actually be "reducing our emissions by -23%" or whatever on the scale Rudd has chosen. Lets not forget that the much loved Kyoto Protocol was not actually calling for a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, but rather a reduction in the increase of carbon dioxide emissions. Baby steps.

Is it enough? Who knows. Probably not because, while both sides are not happy, the greens are much more not happy than the Chamber of Commerce are. That's your basic yardstick for judging controversial decisions. With this one, I think Rudd could have gone a little bit further, but ten percent was probably too much of a stretch and he probably likes nice neat numbers like 5.

But what is this 5% anyway? Is everyone using this scale? Does it take into account population growth? Why did we choose 2000?

I think it's confusing and I say we need a new unit to simplify thing. Luckily I just happen to have invented one and because I invented it I think I will call it the Coxy. The Coxy rating is a number between 0 and infinity that shows how well a country is doing in the battle to save the planet. It also averages out the scores a bit so you can't just go all out one year to get in the record books then ease off the gas. It is a simple formula that looks like this:

It's the average CO2 output from 20XX (whichever year you are measuring) minus 5 years until 20XX, divided by the average CO2 output from 1990 until 1995, then we plus and add stuff to get a number between 0 and a billion. 100 means you have done nothing, 0 means you no longer emit any CO2, 200 means you have doubled your output. But then we subtract the % that your country makes of the World's population and add the % of the World's CO2 your country produces. So you lose Coxys for having a big population and small CO2 output (good), gain Coxys for having a small population and large CO2 output (bad) and get no change for emitting an amount proportional to your population. Everyone wants have a Coxy rating of under 100.

So instead of Kevin Rudd getting up and saying we want a 5% reduction from 2000 levels by 2020 excluding blah blah blah, he can just say we want a Coxy2020 of 96 or something. Everyone will still complain because 96 is too close to 100 and they know 100 is doing nothing (after a worldwide Coxy education campaign) but at least we will all be on the same page. Any moronic talk-back caller will easily be able to compare Australia's CO2 reduction performance with the rest of the world. Simple

Who's with me, and better yet, who's got a good slogan?

The Ambassador

I've got nothing topical to write about this week so I thought I'd just write a story about life here as an expat in the UAE. 

When I came here I had a few concerns about how much my liberal Aussie lifestyle would have to be modified for my new life in the Islamic Sheikdom of the UAE. I did as much research as I could about the laws and the customs and basically what would get me in trouble. Most of my research was the result of Googling "Arrested UAE OR Dubai OR Abu Dhabi" and seeing what people had been nicked for. 

It was usually drink driving (jail then deportation), bouncing a cheque (jail then deportation) or drug importation (four years jail then deportation). So I thought I was pretty safe if I didn't do those things, but still I tried to be careful. After all, it is technically illegal to drink alcohol without a license, or share an apartment with a women who is not your wife or have bum sex (I have only broken one of those laws so far). 

After living here for a while though I've learnt that a lot of these rules are just there to appease the Muslim neighbours and give the cops something to make sure they get you with should you do anything serious or stupid enough to get attention. For example, everyone has been talking about that British couple that got arrested for having sex on a beach in Dubai. Absolutely stupid obviously, but if you look at it closely they actually got away with murder. 

Firstly they were caught by a policeman having sex (or close to it) on a public beach in broad daylight in an Islamic country... and he gave them a warning. They then got back on it because they were fucking idiots and were then confronted again, got in an altication with the cop, who most likely just wanted them to fuck off back to a hotel room and not cause him any trouble, and they were arrested. 

Now they were up on the radar. They got charged with public indecency, sex outside of marriage, consuming alcohol and probably a few others. In the end though, after being out on bail for a few months, they got 3 months jail, they then appealed that (by this time the sole charge was consuming alcohol) and got off with a 1000 Dirham fine ($400 Aussie) and deportation. What's a trip back to the UK from Dubai worth nowadays? Hell of a lot more than $400 Aussie dollar. So basically they got off, for being caught shitfaced drunk having sex on a beach in the daytime in Islamic Dubai. I started to think that things here were not as strict as the government websites had led me to believe. 

I've got to say though that the reason these people got off was because they are Western expats. If they had been Indian they would have gotten four years each and scimitar up the arse. The western (and by definition rich) expat gets afforded privileges that I have found extend further than priority check-in at the airport. I've previously mentioned the hierarchy that exists here, but the get-almost-out-of-jail-free status definitely ends with the Western expat. Everyone else is prison fodder. 

Which leads me to my personal story. The other night an Aussie mate and I were out at one of the seedier Dubai nightspots enjoying a surprisingly good cover band and some predictably shite beer. We noticed a very drunken yank staggering around the pub seemingly trying to knock into everyone he could. In Oz he would have been out on his arse by this point but the bouncers were staying in their respective corners and not making a move on him. This tweaked my interest, specifically how much it would take to get this guy thrown out of the place. My Aussie mate, who I shall call Peter, was also interested and we started watching the bloke. 

He next moved onto the dancefloor and started swaying and jumping around like a fuckwit. Still no move from the boys in black. He then moved up towards the band and started yelling alternating compliments and insults at them from a distance of a few feet. Still nothing. He seemed to get bored of the band and decided to do handstands on the dance floor, trying to bend his skyward feet over his head and rest them on the handrail. To his credit, the man must have been a gymnast because to he pulled the maneuver off while clearly being drunker than an Irishman on Christmas morning. Finally the bouncer moved in. Surely this man is about to be turfed we thought. 

But no, the bouncer came over and politely asked him to restrict his dancing to non-inverted poses and was on his way, although I did notice he didn't stray too far. Drunkard seemed to appreciate the bouncers leniency and ran up to him, arms astreched, giving him a huge bear hug and trying to lift him off the ground. Surely we though, this is it, this guy is out. But no, the bouncer seemed to thank him for the gesture and stood back. Clearly this man was as interested in pushing the boundaries as we were in watching him do it because the next move he made was to grab the bouncer by the head with both hands and plant a huge kiss on his lips. This would get you easily hospitalized at most Aussie nightspots but again the bouncer did nothing but smile and leave the man to dance. 

We both realised that it would probably take stabbing a barmaid to get these bouncers to take any sort of action so we turned our attention to the man of the hour. I had previously labeled him as a yank due to his dress. Sandals, shorts, muscle top and backwards baseball cap, but Peter suggested that he might not be a yank, in fact he might be an Aussie. A 100 Dirham bet was struck as only bar sessions can produce and then Peter was off to make the identification. 

Catching the drunkard mid stagger he placed an arm around him to steady his gait and said "How's it going?", to which the 'yank' replied "G'day mate". He was a bogan from the Goldie. 

I still call Australia home.