Lisa Reinisch

Cycling in the desert and a city guide to Ramallah - a UAE magazine that does its own thing

I just discovered Brownbook, a three-year old magazine based in Dubai, which was recommended to me by a friend. He told me it reminds him of Monocle, and its neat but playful manner certainly suggests that the team behind it has taken a thorough look at some of the more off-beat up-market titles in the West (i-D, Frame, Mark and Mono.Kultur maybe?) and come up with a MENA spin on them.

Editor-in-chief Rashid Bin Shabib says: “Our focus is to look at Middle Eastern agendas and Middle Eastern culture and find out what is important in the region. (…) Everything exported from the Middle East is always about conflicts or mega-projects. It’s never about skiing in Tehran or surfing in Yemen or a new movement in the Sahara region.”

Content-wise and visually it’s a joy - especially when held up against some of the other mags that originate here in the UAE. The editorial line is decidedly apolitical, but the Agenda section is full of edge-skimming stories about contemporary life across the Middle East, written by a roster of international correspondents. This is social reportage of the Monocle-variety, but with a lower degree of elitism.

Plus they produce Podcasts, most of which are excellent.

With so many international titles out there, it’s not easy to set a new benchmark. But Brownbook appears to be making the cut. As more local writers, designers and artists get (back) into regional media, Brownbook could well accomplish the fine-tuning of its regional style. If it can sustain its current editorial and production values, it may even plant the seed for a more authentic, witty and aestethical cosmopolitanism in the region’s media.

The magazine is distributed internationally and is available in UAE, KUWAIT, QATAR, SAUDI ARABIA, BAHRAIN, BELGIUM, THAILAND, AUSTRALIA, CANADA, FRANCE and LEBANON. Selected retail outlets:

EGYPT
-The Townhouse Gallery
-Diwan Bookstore
PARIS
-Colette (Rue Saint Honore, Paris)
MILAN, ITALY
-10 Corso Como
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
-FAMOUS APE (17 rue de la rôtisserie)
COPENHAGEN, DENMARK
-ParisTexas
BARCELONA, SPAIN
-The Rent Shop
AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS
-Athenaeum Nieuwscentrum
JAPAN
-BALS Store, Tokyo
INDIA
-Bombay Electric (10 Reay House, Mumbai)
SINGAPORE
-Anthropology (Raffles City Shopping Center)

Inequality is a good thing because… Goldman Sachs says so.

After all, inequality ultimately leads to prosperity and opportunity for all - at least according to Brian Griffiths at Goldman Sachs. Speaking at a panel discussion on the subject “What is the place of morality in the marketplace?”, he also said that bankers should donate chunks of their re-inflated earnings to charity to make up for any perceived callousness.

So there you have it, that’s why Goldman Sachs has allocated an amount that is “just shy of the all-time high $16.9 billion allocated in the first three quarters of 2007″ for bonus payments this year. Out of charity.

All this at an event held at one of London’s oldest cathedrals on 20 October 2009, which was also attended by Financial Services Authority chairman Adair Turner, who called for a global tax on financial transactions to “redistribute bank profits to the world’s poor and to causes like fighting climate change”.

Wish I could have been there. Sounds like this debate, organised by the St Paul’s Institute got stuck right into the murky depths of the financial world’s moral quagmire. At least, that is what this Bloomberg report suggests.

The way the Bloomberg story is written has something incendiary about it, almost as if the agency reporter relished the chance to play off these two opposing schools of financial faith and really get the crowd going.

When faith meets finance, expect fireworks - in this case they take the form of deluge of criticism and, hopefully, a renewed interest in the question of if and how to reform the international financial system.

Day three in the UAE

Until recently, the UAE were not on my relocation wish list. But, coming from Austria, I have always had a thing for odd little countries and the more I found out about this specific odd little country, the more curious I got. Abu Dhabi, more than the other Emirates, offers an intriguing mixture of local culture, cosmopolitanism, location and, erm, remuneration. The UAE are, in a way, the Middle East light, offering the prospect of an easy-going, lucrative kind of adventure, and a good base from which to explore a region I know only through expat friends and the media.

Now, after three days here in Abu Dhabi, a mild culture shock is beginning to give way to a comfortable sort of moodiness that depends on three factors: the availability of taxis, the sight of exhausted construction workers and the current state of various, rather Kafkaesque bureaucratic processes.

But all misgivings pale into irrelevance in the face of the city’s electrifying atmosphere. Years later than its neighbour Dubai, Abu Dhabi has brought forward a gold-rush of its own, stemming from a comparatively prudent economic diversification scheme driven by the Emirate’s rulers. Opportunity and misery lurk at every corner, but Abu Dhabi’s boom is more orderly, grounded and stable than the one that has just come to a brusque end in Dubai.

People from all over the world now come here to make the best of it; from Bangladeshi garbage-sifters and Phillipino nannies to Japanese engineers and British lawyers; everybody wants a piece of the ‘Diamond in the Desert’, as Jo Tatchell refers to Abu Dhabi in her brand new book about the city.

In deciding to come here, I have joined the ‘immigrant mercenaries’ Christopher Davidson likes to speak of. The world’s richtest city entices legions of expatriates, blue- and white-collar alike, with its tax-free earnings, healthy job market and stable, if undemocratic, government. London’s the-end-is-nigh ambiance feels pleasantly distant, as does Vienna’s bated breath.

The crisis may not have reached Abu Dhabi, but its fugitives have. And so have I.

Charter flight back to Kabul

Great article on The Samosa about France and Britain planning to share a chartered plane to transport Afghan refugees/illegal immigrants (take your pick) back to their home countries. French officials say that the plan will only go ahead “if it is certain that the people will be safe when arriving in Kabul”. Given the continuing violence in and around Kabul, it is questionable whether such certainty can be sincerely established anytime soon.

A good opportunity to check out The Samosa, a brand new site. It’s shaping up to be a good source of leftfield news and features about international relations and their focus on identity issues is unusual.