April Thoughts

Some thought-provoking news today with regards to Dubai and the Gulf region in general. First is the New York Times article claiming Israeli objections to the US sale of advanced weaponry to the Gulf states, most notably Saudi Arabia and the UAE. This objection comes in the wake of the IDEX-2007 expo in Abu Dhabi last month which generated significant buzz around an arms build-up in the Gulf as an eventual replacement for US protection, a deterrent against Iran, or both.
Gulf News reports the release of the Berlin-based Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index which ranks the UAE #1 among the Arab states in fighting corruption and achieving government transparency. The article does not place the UAE's score relative to the rest of the non-Arab countries polled so it is hard to see how the UAE stacks up in the grand scheme of things.
Lastly, interesting discussion around the economic and social development in the UAE. At a gathering honoring the winners of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award, Sheikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan pointed to the low number of books ematating from the Arab world as compared to the Americas and Caribbean. In unrelated news, the Dubai Economic Council announced plans to conduct surveys on development in the emirate as part of the recently announced Dubai Strategic Plan. My personal opinion is that culture production is manifest through a variety of sources, not only books. I would point to the UAE blogosphere, the scale and success of various UAE development projects and the large amount of international press about the country as evidence of how at least in the UAE, culture production in a broader sense is alive and well.