Essam Sharaf, the interim Prime Minister, has been a big disappointment.
Initially, a lot of hope was on him to make things better.
But as time passed, it turns out that he is too soft, and the military rulers do not allow him to have the authority to do things that are pro-revolution.
Speculation is that a second wave of the revolution will happen, aimed at the military junta (SCAF = Supreme Council of the Armed Forces).
In the Middle East, dictatorships made sure that no one can emerge as a competitor to the incumbent tyrant, and that has gutted two generations worth of politicians. Either they become servile to the tyrant, or they are eliminated (physically, politically, socially, or otherwise...)
Also, remember that this is a transitional government still. He has not been elected by a public ballot. That will take around 8 months to happen.
Outside of the USA, there are lots of engineers, doctors, university professors,...etc. who make it to be top political post.
It will take time to built a political cadre again in these countries, and many will be professionals, not only managers or lawyers.
I am typing this from a Kubuntu 10.04 laptop that is my only desktop, and it has been very stable.
My wife uses it too, as well as my daughter.
No problems.
We had lots of problems with the non-LTS versions that had KDE 4.x in them, when it first came out. Terrible experience, to the extent that I wanted to got Xubuntu. But the LTS came out decent and we stayed on that.
I meant Balkanization as a geo-political term meaning fragmenting an area.
That the Balkans is more advanced in mobile phones proves my point: the USA with all its might are not up to smaller countries because there are no common standards, and companies are allowed to monopolize frequencies AND control the handsets as well.
I wrote a comment a few days ago here about the intentional balkanization in the USA and Canada, where a network owns "spectrum" and handsets work only on that network frequencies.
She works in clothing/fashion, designing garments for kids and the like.
She noticed after the surgery that violets are different. I asked my optometrist, and she said that the cloudiness in the removed lens is yellowish, and the brain compensates for it, and therefore she is seeing a different color/hue after the surgery.
She did not tell me she had Steve Austin powers so far...
There is no spectrum shortage. Europe and Asia have no spectrum shortage, despite being more densely populated (generally), and all having the same handsets work on all networks. The decisions to buy a handset and the decision which network to subscribe to are totally separate. You buy the handset outright. No subsidy. No strings attached.
The urge to have balkanized networks is driven purely by networks wanting to fragment the market and put obstacles to their customers leaving for some other network.
I wrote about this re: Canada, and it applies to the USA as well. The only two markets that tie customers this way, and people accept it.
Realistically, especially in North America, roaming is not an option. It is just way too expensive.
When I travel on short trips (e.g. to USA, $2.00 per minute), I just eat up the difference and use voice sparingly, and never use data. When it is for more than a week, I remove the Rogers SIM and get a local SIM. Things are way cheaper that way and you never worry about roaming charges, voice or data.
This is what I am recommending the OP does, but others have said that roaming charges can be cheaper if he calls his provider and changes the plan temporarily. That is less than $35 + $7 X ??.
The options are not pretty, Canada having some of the most monopolistic mobile carriers in the G20.
Having said that, you should consider the following:
- CDMA is out, since I don't think it would work with another carrier. CDMA works only with Bell and Telus. So Rogers, Fido and the rest are out.
- Is the area you are in within mobile range of certain carriers? It may not be. So check with locals there. There used to be a map of all Canada with all the cell towers and all carriers somewhere. I forgot the URL though. Google may help.
- Is your iPad locked to a certain carrier or not? If it is locked, you need to unlock it before a SIM from a different provider
- Rogers Pay As You Go gives you 7 day access for $7, and 125MB. You will need a SIM, which is I think, $35, then you need to put some money in the account, say $25 or so.Since 125MB will not be enough, you will need several of these $7. The way it works is that you set the APN in your phone/device to Rogers', and then try to browse. A text message will be sent to you with a URL. You click that, and it will give you a choice of $2 for 1 day and 10MB, or $7 for a week, and 125MB. You click on the link, the money is deducted from your balance, and you are done. Check here for more info: Rogers Pay As You Go.
By the way, Rogers is my regular users, and Pay As You Go is my regular plan. I am using Rogers Pay As You Go this week in a not so remote place. That $7 has lasted me from Friday to Monday, but I have not uploaded photos on it. There is WiFi walking distance from here, and I use that for photo uploads.
We Egyptians just had our revolution and ending the state of the emergency was a key demand. It has not been met yet, but we know where Tahrir Square is, and will go there if it is not ended by election time.
Will you Americans do the same for the Patriot Act (and many other civil rights detours since 2001?)
That is the what Mubarak (Egypt), Ben Ali (Tunisia), and other despots have been feeding the west for decades. "Hey! You want me to go! Are you ready to deal with wide-eyed fanatic Islamists taking over? I am better for you, so shut up on this reform stuff."
Hogwash!
Look at Turkey. The same drivel was spouted for years, and the army toppled Islamic leaning legitimate governments, such as the Erbakan government in the 1990s. The successor government, Erdogan's, has been in power since 2002 or so, and has been very moderate, well respected and focus on what is important. They did not put forward religious laws, they did not make Turkey a religious state. They did not force women to cover their head, nor did they do anything else that the fear mongers said.
Now, look at what is happened in Tunisia. It was a real grassroots uprising against a dictator, his system, corruption,...etc. The people on the street were from every affiliation. No single party or group is taking the lead or can claim this victory is their alone.
The situation in Egypt is the same. People from every walk of life are out on the street. Go and look how they are dressed. Some wear designer clothings, have iPhones and Blackberries. Some wear traditional garb (flowing robes). A few have beards, most do not. This again is a no-affiliation grassroots movement. The government is again trying to accuse the Muslim Brotherhood of being behind it, despite the MB announcing that they will not participate ahead of January 25! Now they are rounding the MB leadership off and putting them in prison before the "Friday of Anger" tomorrow. I say: good riddance, because if the revolt succeeds without them, a) they can't take credit, and b) the West and other fear mongers cannot make it like it is a Muslim Brotherhood only victory!
I like this uprising since it has a chance of success, and the people on the street are not carrying or chanting things for this party, or against that group. They are all focused on ousting the regime. They are protesting against rising prices, police brutality, monopoly on power.
It worked in Tunisia, and should work in Egypt.
The USA, and others have to take the side of the people, for once. Joe Biden was on TV and said that Mubarak should not be referred to as a dictator! This will hurt US interests in the long run. Obama supported the people of Tunisia in one of his speeches, and should do the same for Egypt. Or at least ask Biden to shut his hole for some time.
For the USA or the West it is a shame to support someone in power for 29 years, when it is called a republic and he is called a president, all the time when lecturing on "freedom" and "democracy".
I will give you the vote part. We do have voting in Egypt, but the elections are predetermined, with a combination of ballot stuffing, intimidation and exclusion.
Decent life is what we are after. So on that I agree too.
Now regarding women and education, you are wrong. Orders of magnitudes wrong. My mother, who is in her late 70s now got a higher degree back in the 50s. Two of my maternal aunts got masters degrees and then PhDs (one from the USA, the other from Japan). Two of my aunts from my paternal sides got bachelors degrees and worked too. My wife is a computer engineer.
Rather than moderating, I'd rather write what I know.
There is a lot of misinformation here, and mainstream media coverage in the USA seems not up to par. Europe's coverage is much better, and Canada somewhere in between. The church bombing on New Year's Eve got more coverage than this history in the making period.
First, I am Egyptian, born and raised there, but living outside of Egypt for the last 2 decades. I was personally affected by the regime there for decades, but that is a story for a future blog post. I have family there, and was in Egypt for all of December 2010.
The whole region is run by military dictators, after the post-World War II upheaval. The colonial rule by European powers, or local monarchies, were ousted in military coupe d'etats. Many of the dictators were idealistic at first, and took a socialist or communist slant initially, only to become totalitarian despots, fascists, or something else other than socialist. Now the trend is to make it a dynastic rule, with Syria the first to have a nominal republic convert into a dynastic one. Tunisia's ex-despot had a son in law (Sakher El-Materi, only 30 years old) who was into politics big time and poised to take over the reigns of the country. In Algiers, the president is set to install his brother to succeed him. In Libya, a son seems earmarked for that. In Egypt it is also a son as well. I think Yemen.
Look at the statistics and cringe in horror at how long these despots are in power:
- Libya: Qaddafi - 41 years. - Yemen: Saleh - 32 years. - Egypt: Mubarak - 29 years. - Tunisia: Ben Ali - 23 years.
Let us ignore the monarchies in the region for a bit, since they are not a republic and can nominally remain in power for that long.
Mubarak has been in power FOR MORE THAN ANY EGYPTIAN RULER IN MODERN HISTORY. That is since 1847 or so, NO ONE has ruled as long as Mubarak did.
All of them have had a sham parliament amend the nominal constitution to make it possible for them to run for more than the maximum of 2 or 3 terms, and then make it a lifetime thing as well.
All of them have parliaments that consist exclusively of those from the ruling party which gets 90% or more of seats via intimidation and exclusion of the opposition.
Now, the Operation Egypt thing is relatively new. I saw it today in the morning only. So it remains to be seen if they are helpful or not.
What I can say is that on Jan 25, the Egyptian Presidency web site was showing "under development and construction". I was checking it for a page for the list of modern rulers of Egypt and their time in power. Today, the web site seems to be under a DoS attack.
However, the stars of the show are first Kolena Khaled Saeed (We are all Khaled Saeed). It is a Facebook group that is named after a 20-something youth tortured and killed by the police last year. Police brutality is one of the top demands of those who are protesting. Last I checked, they had 413,000 "likes".
The second star is the Rassd News Network. This is a grassroots citizen news organization that is very mature, professional and objective. They verify sources and rate items as either "unconfirmed" or "confirmed". They have both Arabic and English updates from various sources, including eyewitnesses from action. You can "Like" them in Facebook, ignore the Arabic messages, and read the English ones to see updates.
The path to where we are today with protests was a long one.
The parliamentary and presidential elections in 2005 and 2006 show a lot of courage from a very small number of people. They were mainly middle class or intellectuals. The rest of the public did not catch on. Those who opposed the president got the heavy hand of the regime on them. For example, Saad El Din Ibrahim (an academic, and a bit eccentric) got imprisoned on false charges, Ayman Nour (another opposition figure) was impriso
A university professor who is the ex-advisor for the Canadian Prime Minister also advocated the assassination of Julian Assange. He later "regretted" the remark.
They are crucial for many commercial crops to produce anything substantial, by pollination.
There was a program on TV recently (PBS Nova, or The Nature of Things on CBC), and the numbers are staggering. Those who practice apiculture have been transporting hives near flowering trees and being paid by orchard owners so they get a proper crop. If they don't get the bees to do it, the crop yields fall by orders of magnitude.
And that is the commercial part. The natural part can be equally important for wild plants, and all the other creatures in the ecosystem that depend on their seeds and fruits.
How about a Drupal site that can do 2.8 million page views per day? And actually the figures have been higher since with a peak of 3.4 million per day, and 92 million per month. And all that is on a single medium box.
And for the rest of the drivel in that link, how about sites like The White House using it?
As I commented previously, this is all about catching terrorists, and nothing to do with censorship. Seems a lot of people did not like that comment. Now that even corporate VPNs are included, what can the conclusion be?
Saudi Arabia has its share of terror incidents. For example, the Riyadh Compound bombing, and many more incidents, and more. Just a year ago, the Saudi official and member of the royal family was injured in a terror attack. The terrorist had the bomb in his rectum, and activated it via a mobile phone. Source here.
Dubai being an international hub of trade and commerce, is always facing threats of criminals and spies operating on its soil. Examples are the murder of Suzanne Tamim, plotted by an Egyptian millionaire, and assassination of Mahmound Al Mabhouh conducted by Israel.
I under no illusion that India, Saudi Arabia, UAE and whomever else, will snoop on Blackberry and whatever else they can get their hands on, be it for legitimate reasons, or for keeping an eye on their own citizens.
The bad part is how it is reported differently in the media (censorship vs. terrorism) for the same act (asking for backdoors to a certain technology). That is where the spin is...
Slashdot Mirror
Essam Sharaf, the interim Prime Minister, has been a big disappointment.
Initially, a lot of hope was on him to make things better.
But as time passed, it turns out that he is too soft, and the military rulers do not allow him to have the authority to do things that are pro-revolution.
Speculation is that a second wave of the revolution will happen, aimed at the military junta (SCAF = Supreme Council of the Armed Forces).
In the Middle East, dictatorships made sure that no one can emerge as a competitor to the incumbent tyrant, and that has gutted two generations worth of politicians. Either they become servile to the tyrant, or they are eliminated (physically, politically, socially, or otherwise ...)
Also, remember that this is a transitional government still. He has not been elected by a public ballot. That will take around 8 months to happen.
Outside of the USA, there are lots of engineers, doctors, university professors, ...etc. who make it to be top political post.
It will take time to built a political cadre again in these countries, and many will be professionals, not only managers or lawyers.
Totally disagree.
I am typing this from a Kubuntu 10.04 laptop that is my only desktop, and it has been very stable.
My wife uses it too, as well as my daughter.
No problems.
We had lots of problems with the non-LTS versions that had KDE 4.x in them, when it first came out. Terrible experience, to the extent that I wanted to got Xubuntu. But the LTS came out decent and we stayed on that.
Do you hate Unity? Then use Kubuntu and be done with it. Works well.
Also, stay with the latest LTS (10.04 at present), and you don't have to upgrade for 3 years. Less headache.
Yes, very likely.
A famous football player there was killed in a car accident.
His father made a plea for people not to use smart phones or Blackberry devices while driving.
I meant Balkanization as a geo-political term meaning fragmenting an area.
That the Balkans is more advanced in mobile phones proves my point: the USA with all its might are not up to smaller countries because there are no common standards, and companies are allowed to monopolize frequencies AND control the handsets as well.
I wrote a comment a few days ago here about the intentional balkanization in the USA and Canada, where a network owns "spectrum" and handsets work only on that network frequencies.
Many decades before him, Averroes, a Muslim polymath born in Cordoba, Spain (d. 1198) was pondering the same questions.
In fact, Aquinas was one of many influenced by Averroes.
Averroes, wrote a treatise: Fasl Al Maqal, translated as "On the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy", about faith vs. reason.
You can find the English and Arabic text here.
My mom had cataract surgery a while ago.
She works in clothing/fashion, designing garments for kids and the like.
She noticed after the surgery that violets are different. I asked my optometrist, and she said that the cloudiness in the removed lens is yellowish, and the brain compensates for it, and therefore she is seeing a different color/hue after the surgery.
She did not tell me she had Steve Austin powers so far ...
There is no spectrum shortage. Europe and Asia have no spectrum shortage, despite being more densely populated (generally), and all having the same handsets work on all networks. The decisions to buy a handset and the decision which network to subscribe to are totally separate. You buy the handset outright. No subsidy. No strings attached.
The urge to have balkanized networks is driven purely by networks wanting to fragment the market and put obstacles to their customers leaving for some other network.
I wrote about this re: Canada, and it applies to the USA as well. The only two markets that tie customers this way, and people accept it.
Read Mobile phone carriers lobby for more balkanization by asking for more "spectrum" and More balkanization and monopoly in Canada's mobile phone market.
This should be stopped!
There is no guarantee.
But there is hope for change to the better, where there has been none at all for 42 years.
-- An Egyptian ...
This link says it is $7.50 even ...
But, last time someone I know lost his phone, he bought an unlocked phone but had to pay $35 to get a new SIM.
Maybe that $35 included something extra, like preserving the number he had, or $25 of air time?
Realistically, especially in North America, roaming is not an option. It is just way too expensive.
When I travel on short trips (e.g. to USA, $2.00 per minute), I just eat up the difference and use voice sparingly, and never use data. When it is for more than a week, I remove the Rogers SIM and get a local SIM. Things are way cheaper that way and you never worry about roaming charges, voice or data.
This is what I am recommending the OP does, but others have said that roaming charges can be cheaper if he calls his provider and changes the plan temporarily. That is less than $35 + $7 X ??.
The options are not pretty, Canada having some of the most monopolistic mobile carriers in the G20.
Having said that, you should consider the following:
- CDMA is out, since I don't think it would work with another carrier. CDMA works only with Bell and Telus. So Rogers, Fido and the rest are out.
- Is the area you are in within mobile range of certain carriers? It may not be. So check with locals there. There used to be a map of all Canada with all the cell towers and all carriers somewhere. I forgot the URL though. Google may help.
- Is your iPad locked to a certain carrier or not? If it is locked, you need to unlock it before a SIM from a different provider
- Rogers Pay As You Go gives you 7 day access for $7, and 125MB. You will need a SIM, which is I think, $35, then you need to put some money in the account, say $25 or so.Since 125MB will not be enough, you will need several of these $7. The way it works is that you set the APN in your phone/device to Rogers', and then try to browse. A text message will be sent to you with a URL. You click that, and it will give you a choice of $2 for 1 day and 10MB, or $7 for a week, and 125MB. You click on the link, the money is deducted from your balance, and you are done. Check here for more info: Rogers Pay As You Go.
I have an article on my site for using Android Smartphones with Rogers Pay As You Go. The APN info may help with your iOS setup.
By the way, Rogers is my regular users, and Pay As You Go is my regular plan. I am using Rogers Pay As You Go this week in a not so remote place. That $7 has lasted me from Friday to Monday, but I have not uploaded photos on it. There is WiFi walking distance from here, and I use that for photo uploads.
We Egyptians just had our revolution and ending the state of the emergency was a key demand. It has not been met yet, but we know where Tahrir Square is, and will go there if it is not ended by election time.
Will you Americans do the same for the Patriot Act (and many other civil rights detours since 2001?)
Across the sea, in Alexandria, Egypt, we have that kind of weather regularly in summer. It is very hot, the air is still, and the sea is dead calm.
Never ever did we associate it with an earthquake, neither in as a superstition, nor for real.
That is the what Mubarak (Egypt), Ben Ali (Tunisia), and other despots have been feeding the west for decades. "Hey! You want me to go! Are you ready to deal with wide-eyed fanatic Islamists taking over? I am better for you, so shut up on this reform stuff."
Hogwash!
Look at Turkey. The same drivel was spouted for years, and the army toppled Islamic leaning legitimate governments, such as the Erbakan government in the 1990s. The successor government, Erdogan's, has been in power since 2002 or so, and has been very moderate, well respected and focus on what is important. They did not put forward religious laws, they did not make Turkey a religious state. They did not force women to cover their head, nor did they do anything else that the fear mongers said.
Now, look at what is happened in Tunisia. It was a real grassroots uprising against a dictator, his system, corruption, ...etc. The people on the street were from every affiliation. No single party or group is taking the lead or can claim this victory is their alone.
The situation in Egypt is the same. People from every walk of life are out on the street. Go and look how they are dressed. Some wear designer clothings, have iPhones and Blackberries. Some wear traditional garb (flowing robes). A few have beards, most do not. This again is a no-affiliation grassroots movement. The government is again trying to accuse the Muslim Brotherhood of being behind it, despite the MB announcing that they will not participate ahead of January 25! Now they are rounding the MB leadership off and putting them in prison before the "Friday of Anger" tomorrow. I say: good riddance, because if the revolt succeeds without them, a) they can't take credit, and b) the West and other fear mongers cannot make it like it is a Muslim Brotherhood only victory!
I like this uprising since it has a chance of success, and the people on the street are not carrying or chanting things for this party, or against that group. They are all focused on ousting the regime. They are protesting against rising prices, police brutality, monopoly on power.
It worked in Tunisia, and should work in Egypt.
The USA, and others have to take the side of the people, for once. Joe Biden was on TV and said that Mubarak should not be referred to as a dictator! This will hurt US interests in the long run. Obama supported the people of Tunisia in one of his speeches, and should do the same for Egypt. Or at least ask Biden to shut his hole for some time.
For the USA or the West it is a shame to support someone in power for 29 years, when it is called a republic and he is called a president, all the time when lecturing on "freedom" and "democracy".
Read this View from an Egyptian for more informaiton. I wrote it earlier today.
Here is what I wrote earlier today Views from an Egyptian.
Mod it up if you think it is informative.
I will give you the vote part. We do have voting in Egypt, but the elections are predetermined, with a combination of ballot stuffing, intimidation and exclusion.
Decent life is what we are after. So on that I agree too.
Now regarding women and education, you are wrong. Orders of magnitudes wrong. My mother, who is in her late 70s now got a higher degree back in the 50s. Two of my maternal aunts got masters degrees and then PhDs (one from the USA, the other from Japan). Two of my aunts from my paternal sides got bachelors degrees and worked too. My wife is a computer engineer.
Should I go on?
Rather than moderating, I'd rather write what I know.
There is a lot of misinformation here, and mainstream media coverage in the USA seems not up to par. Europe's coverage is much better, and Canada somewhere in between. The church bombing on New Year's Eve got more coverage than this history in the making period.
First, I am Egyptian, born and raised there, but living outside of Egypt for the last 2 decades. I was personally affected by the regime there for decades, but that is a story for a future blog post. I have family there, and was in Egypt for all of December 2010.
The whole region is run by military dictators, after the post-World War II upheaval. The colonial rule by European powers, or local monarchies, were ousted in military coupe d'etats. Many of the dictators were idealistic at first, and took a socialist or communist slant initially, only to become totalitarian despots, fascists, or something else other than socialist. Now the trend is to make it a dynastic rule, with Syria the first to have a nominal republic convert into a dynastic one. Tunisia's ex-despot had a son in law (Sakher El-Materi, only 30 years old) who was into politics big time and poised to take over the reigns of the country. In Algiers, the president is set to install his brother to succeed him. In Libya, a son seems earmarked for that. In Egypt it is also a son as well. I think Yemen.
Look at the statistics and cringe in horror at how long these despots are in power:
- Libya: Qaddafi - 41 years.
- Yemen: Saleh - 32 years.
- Egypt: Mubarak - 29 years.
- Tunisia: Ben Ali - 23 years.
Let us ignore the monarchies in the region for a bit, since they are not a republic and can nominally remain in power for that long.
Mubarak has been in power FOR MORE THAN ANY EGYPTIAN RULER IN MODERN HISTORY. That is since 1847 or so, NO ONE has ruled as long as Mubarak did.
All of them have had a sham parliament amend the nominal constitution to make it possible for them to run for more than the maximum of 2 or 3 terms, and then make it a lifetime thing as well.
All of them have parliaments that consist exclusively of those from the ruling party which gets 90% or more of seats via intimidation and exclusion of the opposition.
Now, the Operation Egypt thing is relatively new. I saw it today in the morning only. So it remains to be seen if they are helpful or not.
What I can say is that on Jan 25, the Egyptian Presidency web site was showing "under development and construction". I was checking it for a page for the list of modern rulers of Egypt and their time in power. Today, the web site seems to be under a DoS attack.
However, the stars of the show are first Kolena Khaled Saeed (We are all Khaled Saeed). It is a Facebook group that is named after a 20-something youth tortured and killed by the police last year. Police brutality is one of the top demands of those who are protesting. Last I checked, they had 413,000 "likes".
The second star is the Rassd News Network. This is a grassroots citizen news organization that is very mature, professional and objective. They verify sources and rate items as either "unconfirmed" or "confirmed". They have both Arabic and English updates from various sources, including eyewitnesses from action. You can "Like" them in Facebook, ignore the Arabic messages, and read the English ones to see updates.
The path to where we are today with protests was a long one.
The parliamentary and presidential elections in 2005 and 2006 show a lot of courage from a very small number of people. They were mainly middle class or intellectuals. The rest of the public did not catch on. Those who opposed the president got the heavy hand of the regime on them. For example, Saad El Din Ibrahim (an academic, and a bit eccentric) got imprisoned on false charges, Ayman Nour (another opposition figure) was impriso
A university professor who is the ex-advisor for the Canadian Prime Minister also advocated the assassination of Julian Assange. He later "regretted" the remark.
Do not think of bees as just for honey.
They are crucial for many commercial crops to produce anything substantial, by pollination.
There was a program on TV recently (PBS Nova, or The Nature of Things on CBC), and the numbers are staggering. Those who practice apiculture have been transporting hives near flowering trees and being paid by orchard owners so they get a proper crop. If they don't get the bees to do it, the crop yields fall by orders of magnitude.
And that is the commercial part. The natural part can be equally important for wild plants, and all the other creatures in the ecosystem that depend on their seeds and fruits.
How about a Drupal site that can do 2.8 million page views per day? And actually the figures have been higher since with a peak of 3.4 million per day, and 92 million per month. And all that is on a single medium box.
And for the rest of the drivel in that link, how about sites like The White House using it?
As I commented previously, this is all about catching terrorists, and nothing to do with censorship. Seems a lot of people did not like that comment. Now that even corporate VPNs are included, what can the conclusion be?
Check the facts please ...
Saudi Arabia has its share of terror incidents. For example, the Riyadh Compound bombing, and many more incidents, and more. Just a year ago, the Saudi official and member of the royal family was injured in a terror attack. The terrorist had the bomb in his rectum, and activated it via a mobile phone. Source here.
Dubai being an international hub of trade and commerce, is always facing threats of criminals and spies operating on its soil. Examples are the murder of Suzanne Tamim, plotted by an Egyptian millionaire, and assassination of Mahmound Al Mabhouh conducted by Israel.
I under no illusion that India, Saudi Arabia, UAE and whomever else, will snoop on Blackberry and whatever else they can get their hands on, be it for legitimate reasons, or for keeping an eye on their own citizens.
The bad part is how it is reported differently in the media (censorship vs. terrorism) for the same act (asking for backdoors to a certain technology). That is where the spin is ...