Spend a day in Dubai yesterday and that place is positively insane. will post in more detail later, but in the meanwhile some initial observations.

About the first thing i noticed – even before leaving the transit area of the airport – was that the local authorities do not have much love for this blog. in fact they have so little love for it that they censor it:

No clue what i have done to piss-off the sheiks, but my guess would be that they also assume some kind of connection between me and 9/11 (see here for a more detailed explanation of their censorship policies).

Now if that is the case then i would not let me into their country (which they did) and if i were them i would reconsider censoring the Internet in the transit zone of an international airport, which is even more pointless that censoring the Internet in general.

Of course they Sheiks themselves like their Internet uncensored, so the wireless network of the Emirates First Class Lounge (which leaks outside the lounge) does not block any pages.

Spend most of the rest running through construction sites taking pictures and talking to a fair amount of construction workers (more on that later). next to the incredible construction boom that makes europe look extremely 20th century the most striking feature is how well maintained public services are:

One would assume that given all the individual wealth that is enjoyed by the Emiraties there would be no incentive to maintain a fairly decent public transport system (which like all other road transport becomes completely useless during rush hour), well regulated taxis or well maintained public parks on prime beach front locations, but all of these do exist and seem to be fairly accessible to a wide range of the population.

So it is 5 years since the start of the war on liquids terror today. the amount of attention given by the media to the events 5 years ago is quite sickening (spiegel online has a 5 years ago at this time …. ‘… mohammed atta woke up‘ / ‘…the first plane crashed in the first tower’ / ‘…the 2nd tower fell down’ feature on their site, that gives me the impression that they would like something like this to happen again as it conveniently makes everybody into a sucker for news and that is good for their advertising revenue).

Maybe the most complete summary of the whole situation was made by ‘sddd’ in the comments section of my blog post about my 9/11 lamp:

the person in that plane can suck my dick.

Mondays New York Times ran an extensive article about the details released about the british ‘terror’ scam of early August. The article based on statements from five senior British officials pretty much confirms what other sources had admitted immediately after the scare: the whole fuzz was apparently about a couple of kids who did not even know how to blow up planes at all. Here are some of my favorite quotes from the article:

But British officials said the suspects still had a lot of work to do. Two of the suspects did not have passports, but had applied for expedited approval. One official said the people suspected of leading the plot were still recruiting and radicalizing would-be bombers. […]

In fact, two and a half weeks since the inquiry became public, British investigators have still not determined whether there was a target date for the attacks or how many planes were to be involved. They say the estimate of 10 planes was speculative and exaggerated.[…]

Despite the charges, officials said they were still unsure of one critical question: whether any of the suspects was technically capable of assembling and detonating liquid explosives while airborne.

A chemist involved in that part of the inquiry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was sworn to confidentiality, said HMTD, which can be prepared by combining hydrogen peroxide with other chemicals, “in theory is dangerous,” but whether the suspects “had the brights to pull it off remains to be seen.” […]

“In retrospect” said Michael A. Sheehan, the former deputy commissioner of counterterrorism in the New York Police Department, “there may have been too much hyperventilating going on.”

Hyperventilating indeed! now we only need someone to explain how not allowing you to bring lots of stuff on board of a plane, confiscating old ladies moisturizing cream, making you wait in tents on rain-swept airport parking lots, sticking sub-machine guns in your face and generally behaving like arrogant cunts is going to prevent kids who have no clue about blowing up planes from blowing up planes…

So i am back at London heathrow, waiting for my connecting flight to Amsterdam. To get from my arrival gate to the departure hall i had to clear a third(!!) security check since arriving at the airport in Delhi. (the first one being the standard delhi airport one and the second a special one by BA just before boarding the plane because they are obviously not trusting the Indian authorities). Now they must be selling explosives and machine guns on board of planes these days otherwise searching everyone after leaving a plane is a rather silly exercise…

Anyway, this time they apparently found something in my carry-on baggage so a young screener started removing items one-by-one from my bag. As she had told me that i probably had something liquid in my bag (and i was sure i had not) i was starting to take the piss out of her commenting every item she removed with a description of it and the addition that it was solid/not-liquid. however the last thing she pulled from my bag was a half empty 20ml tube of sunscreen which either had not been considered to be liquid before or they had not seen the pervious two times. This made me look rather stupid in any case.

After finishing my search her shift had ended and she left which is why we ended up next to each other on a escalator a little bit further in the terminal building. I told her that my behavior hadn’t been meant personal. surprisingly she thanked me and immediately started to complain about her job which she said she ‘hated’ because she had to take away stuff from people that was clearly not dangerous, like taking away perfume from old ladies and such. she then went on to say:

i dont want to curse, but me and my colleagues we behave like bitches

Apparently she was only on the job for four days (which means that either she picked a bad time to start or that they are hiring lots of new staff at Heathrow to cope with the mess they have created for themselves (and do not do very intensive security screenings of their new screeners) and absolutely hated it because most of the stuff she had to do made no sense whatsoever.

I for my part will try to avoid both British airports as well as British Airways in the future. Kind of hope that both BA and the BAA go bankrupt because nobody will want to use their services anymore. If i was them i would really start pressuring the government to stop acting silly and focus their energy on useful things.

Thats right. It looks like those ‘terrorists’ who were arrested last week in london were not even close to blowing up anything, let alone boarding an international flight. According to the NBC a senior British official knowledgeable about the [hair-gel bombers] has suggested that

… an attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports [… and that …] some suspects were known to the security services even before the London subway bombings last year.

Sounds like a false alarm, which neatly coincides with my first reaction to last thursdays ‘news’. In fact about everybody i spoke to did not believe that this was a real threat and most people (especially in Lebanon) where outraged about this plump attempt to direct attention away from the real killing happening in Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere.

I do not know what is worse: That a bunch of white, arrogant, paranoid males (a.k.a world leaders) can reveal fake terrorist plots at their convenience to distract the rest of the world from inconvenient realities. Or that corporate media has lowered their investigative standards so much that they reprint everything that is told them (whatever happened to the good old press conference where the police shows the tools of the foiled terrorist on a table with number boards next to them?) or that a bunch of people will have to spend considerable time in jail because the contemplated the possibility of blowing something up (how often have i done that in the past?)? Or that the already insane and completely arbitrary airport security checks seem to have gotten even more insane (only passports, wallets and tickets on board of UK flights? they better have a library on board then or stock up their bar…).

I hope that this whole thing will actually lead to a trail that will embarrass the shit out of the british ‘security’ apparatus…

update [17 aug 2006]: Here is another article by Craig Murray which seems to confirm the NBC story.

…to crash an airplane into your workspace or your piano teachers place? Now you can. thanks to goggles a google maps based flight-sim game:

Looks like the bombay train bombers specifically targeted first class passengers. Not that this really makes a difference, but it reminded me of this screen-saver i came across a while back:

My cuent tip to ancoue/san ancisco tuned into quite a compute nightmae. about two hous in the light om amstedam to ancoue i spilled ed wine oe my laptop (it was in the seat-pouch in ont o me and the wine went in quite elegantly ia the usb/iewie/netwok pots on the side o the laptop that was sticking out o the pouch. een i a m not stupid enough to wok on my laptop and dink wine at the same time while sitting in a cowded aiplane) so anyway the compute was dead i did not hae access to my pesentation (the whole eason o the tip) and the compute stayed dead een aet a 90 minute blow dye teatment once i had aied in ancoue. in act the compute stayed dead o 2 entie days and only stated poweing up on iday moning in san ancisco which caused me much happyness untill i typed the last lette o my passwod and discoeeed that the R key was not woking. niethe wee the 4, the F and the V, and no wee the USB pots so that i could not just plug in some USB keyboad. so what do you do in such a situation? apat om getting eally eally despeate?

you bette emembe that you hae a sepeate account o playing wold o wacat on you laptop which otunately has a passwod that does not inole any o the missing lettes. so again much happyness about haing a wokable compute in ont o you, but that still kept me away om my email account o my othe iles. so the next step was to go to the account peeences and change the passwod o the main account. this inoles typing the passwod o that account, but now that you ae inside the OS you can cut and paste missing lettes, ight? so cut an R, open the authentication dialogue box, type in the passwod minus the last lette and hit apple-V to paste but nothing happens, as you guessed it the V is among the keys that do not wok. no poblem though, why not use the menu ba instead? tuns out that access to the menu ba is disabled when a authentication dialogue box is open. the sult much unhapiness, bodeing on desperation :-/

now one o the ine things o OS X is that it is build on UNIX and the een bette thing is that you can alos change you acount passwods by using the temainal, swithcing to the desied use and execute the ‘passwd’ command. and the best thing? in the teminal you can use menu command including ‘cut’ and ‘paste’. so the passwod is changed, much happiness ensues and the day is saed. actually almost saed is moe pecise since (a) typing on a keyboad without 4, R, F and V is somewhat annoying, (b) in the meanwhile the compute got wam and stats to stink like glühwein and (c) the the passwd command does not aect the maste passwod o the keychain so i am still locked out o all my mail accounts and such things. last this is easyly esoled by deleting the deault keychain (much passwod typing joy ensues…) and the othe two issues i hae chosen to ignoe o the moment (hence the somwhat ucked up spelling in this post)

… and thus you have to fly around french airspace when you are going from Amsterdam to Lisbon and back. Takes about an hour and twenty minutes more than the direct route, but creates a somewhat beautiful route display on the in-flight entertainment system:

Also reminds me of a picture i took like three years ago in the train station in Strasbourg. you simply gotta love the french (seriously! for lots of reasons!)

I almost missed my flight today. First air france offered me €150 and Hotel costs if i would consider flying the next day as the flight was overbooked. Given that it was sunny 30C in BsAs and snowy -2C in Berlin i immediately accepted their proposal. i was given a voucher for €150 and asked to wait for half an hour in case they would have place on the plane. unfortunately they had, but they told me to keep the €150 as a reward for my flexibility (my first ever experience of this capitalist mantra for more flexibility (of the workforce) producing tangible results!

Ironically AF’s computer system seems to be much less flexible than me: in Paris it took them about 40 minutes to turn the voucher into cash as the procedures involved where too complicated for all 8 employees present). The whole procedure (the one in BsAs not the one in Paris) had taken so much time that i had about 40 minutes left to get to the gate (through immigration and security check). Normally this is not a problem unless one is confronted with invisible argentinean technicians causing a 30 minute queue in front of the immigration control booths:

The whole sign makes me wonder of Indian technicians or German engineers would be able to upgrade their systems in a way that ensures faster throughput during the operation. I highly doubt this, as – at least in my case – the procedure was really efficient: take the passport, scan it, enter the date of departure in the computer system, stamp the passport in about 15 seconds. Can’t really see how they want to optimize this procedure. Given that the old implementation of the migration control system was supplied by the US it might take out that one particular second required to send the data to the CIA….