March 30, 2008
Pondicherry’s French Connection

By MATT GROSS
AS colonies go, Pondicherry was not exactly a success story. Almost immediately after the French set up this lovely nugget on the Bay of Bengal in 1674, it was captured by the Dutch, retaken by its founders, then sacked and destroyed by the British. And though the French kept rebuilding it, Pondicherry never became more than a stopover on the way to Indochina. Even after Pondy, as it is nicknamed, rejoined India — late, in 1956 — it languished, out of step with the rest of the nation. In other words, for most of its history, Pondicherry was a backwater, in decline.

No more. Today, Puducherry, as it is officially known but rarely called, is capitalizing on a glammed-up version of that history, and emerging as an artsy, design-savvy destination with a quasi-Gallic approach to eating, drinking, shopping and relaxing. It’s like India seen through a French lens, or maybe vice versa.

On the southeastern coast, about 150 miles south of Chennai, Pondicherry is, for an Indian city, tiny. Just about a million people live there, mostly in the types of charmless, three- and four-story concrete buildings erected all over the poorer parts of Asia. But near the Bay of Bengal, the cityscape changes drastically. Soon you see tile roofs and wooden shutters, balconies and colonnades, wide brick streets and pastel Catholic churches — the neighborhood once known as the Ville Blanche, or White Town, where the colonists lived.

Here, under a very un-Indian blanket of tranquillity, Pondy is exploding. In less than a decade, the local branch of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage has contributed to the restoration of dozens of historic structures, from private homes to former governors’ residences (a description apparently applied to half the buildings in Pondicherry).

The crumbling ochre walls of the 18th-century Education Department, for example, were once covered in a sheen of gray mold; when I arrived in the rue Romain Rolland last spring, the building was smart and tidy, with pink-peach plaster trimmed in white. It had reopened as the 16-room Hôtel de l’Orient in 2000, and my room there had a four-poster bed, an antique dark-wood wardrobe and framed prints of blue-skinned gods on the sponge-washed walls. The air-conditioning was blasting, and when I turned it off, I heard something I’d never heard before in India: nothing. No traffic or honking horns, no vendors’ cries, no heavy machinery whirring from within a neighbor’s home.

Peace pervaded the neighborhood. In a neatly subdivided park, office workers on lunch break napped in the shade, and along the waterfront boulevard, couples and families — mostly Indians, the women in stunning yellow, orange and teal saris, along with a smattering of French tourists — ambled past the too-rocky-to-swim beach, the stately Hôtel de Ville and a statue of Gandhi.

In the garden of the 33-room Promenade, Pondicherry’s second-newest boutique hotel, situated (surprise!) right on the promenade, well-heeled patrons — mostly Western, with a smattering of Indians — drank cocktails and dangled their feet in a small pool. It was a Tuesday in March, but it felt like a summer Friday.

North of the park sat the equally tranquil Pondicherry Museum, an old mansion full of relics from the past, both recent and distant. For 20 minutes, I was the only visitor, wandering alone among the carriages and cannonballs, ornate dining room sets and bronze statues of goddesses, until I found a display of 2,000-year-old Roman amphorae from the nearby archaeological dig at Arikamedu.

Farther north lay the Aurodhan Gallery, perhaps the city’s finest collection of contemporary Indian art. After browsing three floors of brilliant Ganesh portraits and somber neo-Expressionist scenes of old men drinking and playing checkers, I asked the gallery owner’s wife, Shernaz Verma, what to do next. She suggested I visit the French Institute and Auroville — a utopian community founded by the Sri Aurobindo Society, whose followers were, for many years, Pondy’s main tourists — but warned I shouldn’t expect a vacation crammed with activities.

In Pondicherry, she said, “there’s not much to see, but a lot to feel.”

So, for the next five days, I tried to soak up as much Pondicherry feeling as possible. I played flâneur, strolling among the striking architecture and observing my fellow visitors. The French, it seemed, had a penchant for local dress, donning saris and kurtas as if they’d worn them all their lives. They were also, contrary to what I’d read, the only people to be heard speaking French — Tamil and English dominated les rues. Morocco, this was not.

Likewise, Pondicherry’s restaurants represented an odd mixture of cuisines. I’d heard the city was home to a unique school of cooking in which French and Indian techniques and ingredients intermingled, but if such a restaurant actually exists, I couldn’t find it. Instead, so-called “creole” places such as Madame Shanthe’s simply offered French and Indian dishes side by side, and it was up to me to, say, dunk a crust of baguette in my coconut prawn curry.

Mélanges or not, Pondicherry’s restaurants were a treat to explore, from the Mediterranean-style salads at Satsanga, an open-air restaurant popular with homesick French tourists, to the buttery sweets at Sri Krishna. All demonstrated an attention to color and design. Even humble Surguru, where the superlative vegetarian thalis cost just 45 rupees, or slightly more than $1, had a wood-beamed vaulted ceiling, tabletops covered with shellacked newspapers and a contingent of chic French expatriate wives at lunchtime.

Every afternoon, I’d find myself at Coffee.com, a cybercafe run by the Anwar family where backpackers and expatriates would congregate for Wi-Fi, espresso and DVD screenings. There I befriended a pair of young American women who offered a solution to my what-to-do-next conundrum: Go shopping.

“This is, like, the Anthropologie of India!” said Anne Kohl, a visiting Texan, referring to the American chain that sells shabby-chic clothing and Victorian-bohemian antiques.

“There’s nothing to do but spend money,” added Ellen Miller, a Seattleite who’d spent the past year teaching at one of Pondicherry’s elementary schools.

And so I spent money. At the department store Casablanca, I found progressive Indian fashions from local designers, and bought for my wife, Jean, an embroidered tunic and a crinkly yellow-and-white scarf. At Nirvana, I bought baby T-shirts featuring Rajdhani, the beturbaned cartoon spokesman for an old brand of Indian coffee, and at the local branch of Fab India, a chain that sells craft clothing from all over the subcontinent, I sifted through hundreds of brightly patterned shirts and scarves and skirts and sandals. The wooden duck figurines at the many antiques shops intrigued me, and had I known I would soon move to a larger apartment, I might very well have had a 19th-century teak dining table or carved sleeping platform shipped back home.

Finally, I browsed the shelves of Hidesign. Relatively unknown outside India, this Pondicherry-based maker of leather goods is slowly starting to expand overseas (thanks in part to an investment by LVMH), and its slick, soft briefcases and handbags can now be found as far away as Dubai, Hong Kong and Norway.

Instead of buying a bag (the quality is great, the style a little too sophisticated for me), I sampled the slick, soft brown-leather banquettes at Risque, in the Promenade hotel — which, by no small coincidence, is one of two developed by Hidesign. (The other is Le Dupleix, formerly an 18th-century mayor’s mansion.) Risque is a classic boutique hotel destination bar: D.J. playing loud dance music for a mix of stylish international types — the scion of an industrialist from Kerala, a rotund, mustached French artist, a San Francisco banker and his wife.

Risque was, perhaps, a little pretentious (especially given the bartenders’ mixological failings; a martini was, criminally, served warm), so everyone would generally move on to Le Space, a rooftop bar with mismatched chairs and strings of fairy lights, where it didn’t seem to matter that the owners never had enough tonic water or that mosquitoes nipped at my ankles. Here the Kingfisher beers were cold, and disparate populations mixed: backpackers, spiritual seekers, wealthy French and, a relative rarity, Indians.

More than anywhere I’ve ever visited, the invisible wall between locals and tourists in Pondicherry was a challenge to breach. In part, this was a legacy of colonialism — or at least, that’s what I understood from my research at the French Institute, in whose modern, air-conditioned library I would sometimes escape the midday heat. Gazing out a window at the remains of the city’s 18th-century defense walls, I read about how the French, unlike the British, rarely tried to change Indian society or the caste system, and explicitly cut the city up — block by block, house by house — according to ethnicity. That few Pondicherry natives now spoke French in public, or adopted Escoffier as their own personal kitchen god, or approached foreign tourists as equals, seemed natural, particularly since, as Saroja Sundararajan wrote in “Pondicherry: A Profile,” the colony’s native population was once “one of the most exploited in the world.”

If I were an academic obsessed with post-colonial theory, I could read Pondicherry’s current superficial Frenchifying as subtle revenge upon the colonizers. What better way to redress the wrongdoings of centuries past than by adopting a French facade in order to extract money from nostalgic Gauls? Hanuman, the trickster monkey god, would be proud.

Except that Pondicherry was just too beautiful and relaxing for it all to be a sham. I would walk down these pristine lanes that smelled of old French novels and come upon a night market where vendors sold roast ears of corn or spicy baskets of chickpeas, or I would wander the Tamil quarter and spot a forest-green Vespa under the tiled awning of an old wooden house, and all those old distinctions — Indian/French, native/foreign, authentic/simulated — would lose their meaning. Pondicherry was simply Pondicherry, and becoming more so every day.

A TAPESTRY INSTEAD OF A BLEND

HOW TO GET THERE

Flights from Newark to Chennai — the closest airport — start at around $1,100. Ask your hotel to arrange a taxi for the three-hour trip to Pondicherry.

WHERE TO STAY

Hôtel de l’Orient (17 rue Romain Rolland; 91-413-2343-067; www.neemranahotels.com). Doubles from 3,000 rupees ($72.46 at 41.4 rupees to the dollar).

The Promenade (23 Goubert Avenue; 91-413-2227-750) and Le Dupleix (5 rue de la Caserne; 91-413-2226-999) can each be booked through www.sarovarhotels.com. Doubles from 5,000 rupees at the Promenade and 4,500 at Le Dupleix.

The Calve Heritage Hotel (36 Vysial Street; 91-413-2223-738) is a rarity — a Tamil-style bank transformed into a chic hotel, with wood-beam ceilings, stained-glass windows and flat-screen TVs. Doubles from 3,050 rupees. The restaurant isn’t creole, as it claims to be, but it’s nonetheless some of the best South Indian cuisine in town.

WHERE TO EAT & DRINK

Coffee.com (236 Mission Street; 91-413-2339-137 or -079; www.coffeedotcom.net).

Le Space (2 rue Labourdonnais).

Madame Shanthe’s Café and Restaurant (10 rue Bussy).

Rendezvous (30 rue Suffren; 91-413-2339-132; www.rendezvous-pondy.com).

Satsanga (30 rue Labourdonnais; 91-413-2225-867).

Sri Krishna Sweets (86 Mission Street).

Surguru (99 Mission Street; 91-413-4308-082).

WHAT TO DO

The Alliance Française (58 rue Suffren; 91-413-2338-146; www.afindia.org/pondichery) runs weekly screenings of English, French and Indian movies, and its library is a nice place to hang out and flip through old policiers and copies of Paris Match.

Aurodhan Gallery (33 rue François Martin; 91-413-2222-795; www.aurodhan.com).

The French Institute (11 rue St.-Louis; 91-413-2334-168; www.ifpindia.org).

The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (14 rue Aurobindo; 91-413-2225-991; www.intachpondicherry.org) runs walking tours of the old neighborhoods.

Pondicherry Museum (49 rue St.-Louis).

Auroville, just over the border in Tamil Nadu state, was founded by a society devoted to the guru Sri Aurobindo in the 1960s and is now home to more than 1,700 people from more than 40 countries. At the center of this “ideal township” is the Matrimandir, a dimpled golden globe where the late guru’s followers meditate. Auroville also has the closest beaches to Pondicherry.

WHERE TO SHOP

Casablanca (165 Mission Street; 91-413-2226-495).

Nirvana (53 rue Suffren; 91-413-4209-610).

Fab India (59 rue Suffren; 91-413-2226-010; www.fabindia.com).

Renaissance Antiques (2 rue François Martin; 91-413-2228-833; www.pondyrenaissance.com).

MATT GROSS writes the Frugal Traveler column for the Travel section.

Ocnus.Net
ANALYSES
Myth of the New Cold War
By Stephen Kotkin, Russia Profile 4/08
Mar 27, 2008 - 11:06:40 AM

What is it about Russia that drives the Anglo-American world mad? Soviet communism collapses, the empire is relinquished. Then come the wild hopes and failures of the 1990s including the 1993 half-coup and the tank assault on Russia's legislature, the results-adjusted referendum on a new constitution (still in force), the dubious privatisations, the war in Chechnya and the financial default in 1998. But after all that, in December 1999 Boris Yeltsin apologises, steps down early and names his prime minister and former secret police chief Vladimir Putin as acting president. To widespread consternation, Yeltsin predicts that the obscure spy is the man to "unite around himself those who will revive Great Russia." Incredibly, this is exactly what transpires.



And this is a grand disappointment, even a frightening prospect? The elevation of Putin a secret deal promoted by Yeltsin's personal and political family, motivated less by patriotism than self-preservation will go down as one of the most enduring aspects of Yeltsin's shaky legacy. Now, Putin, just like his benefactor, has selected his successor, Russia's new president Dmitri Medvedev. Sure, Putin has no plans to retire to a hospital-dacha, where Yeltsin had spent much of his presidency. Still, in his crafty way Putin has abided by the constitutional limit of two presidential terms. In May, Medvedev will acquire the immense powers of the Russian presidency (a gift of Yeltsin) in circumstances whereby the Russian state is no longer incoherent (a gift of Putin). And this is grounds for near universal dismissal in the west?

Two clashing myths have opened a gulf of misunderstanding towards Russia. First is the myth in the west that the chaos and impoverishment under Yeltsin amounted to a rough democracy, which Putin went on to destroy. When something comes undone that easily, it was probably never what it was cracked up to be. Still, the myth of Russia's overturned democracy unites cold war nostalgists, who miss the enemy, with a new generation of Russia-watchers, many of whom participated earnestly in the illusory 1990s democracy-building project in Russia and are now disillusioned (and tenured).

Second is the myth, on the Russian side, that the KGB was the one Soviet-era institution that was uncorrupted, patriotic and able to restore order. This credits Putin's stooge entourage for the economic liberalisation that was actually pushed through by the non-KGB personnel around him.

Each of these myths deeply rankles the other side. When a big majority of Russians accept or even applaud Putin's concentration of power, Anglo-American observers suspect not just ignorance but a love of authoritarianism. (Unfortunately, Russians have never been offered genuine democracy and the rule of law alongside soaring living standards.) When foreign-based commentators and academics celebrate Yeltsin's Russia, which was worth a paltry $200bn and suffered international humiliation, while denouncing Putin's Russia, which has a GDP of $1.3 trillion and has regained global stature, most Russians detect not just incomprehension but ill-will.

Let's take a deep breath. To recognise that Putin inherited a dysfunctional situation derived from rampant insider theft and regional misrule is not to condone his KGB-style rule, which has often been nasty and sometimes self-defeating. Even though many Russian officials are conscientious and competent, the state remains too corrupt, as in most places around the world. At the top, privileged functionaries have grabbed (and are still grabbing) prime business holdings. At all levels, officialdom now seeks its rewards by mimicking the Kremlin's repression and manipulation. But Russia is also increasingly prosperous, with a new consumer-driven market economy and a burgeoning middle-class society full of pride. This combination of a relatively closed, unstable political system and a relatively open, stable society may seem incompatible­but there it is.

What happens when a large, important country turns out to have a dynamic, open market economy integrated into the global system, yet a political system that is undemocratic and not democratising? A lot of head-scratching by experts. It may be comforting in the corridors of punditry and social science to write about how economic growth without the rule of law is doomed to fail (China?) or how economic growth eventually brings political liberalisation. But many countries, not just Russia, have more or less manipulated elections while lacking the rule of law, and yet still have dynamic market economies. In Russia private property is not guaranteed and property ownership is widespread.

A conceptual adjustment to Russia's seemingly impossible reality is now under way, but the process is painful and slow. "When I worked in Moscow in 1994 and 1995 for the National Democratic Institute, an American NGO, I could not have imagined the present situation," confessed Sarah Mendelson, a senior fellow in Russian affairs at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, in the American Scholar recently. "We thought we were on the frontier of a democratic revolution. We weren't. We were witnessing a market revolution." This basic understanding, so long in coming, is not yet widespread. For the most part, pathetic cries about how "the west," whatever that is, has (again) "lost" Russia, and how the west must somehow "resist" Putin, persist....

The unsolved murders of Russian journalists and the arrests of political activists make many observers want at a minimum to chalk up Putin's boom to dumb luck floating on highly priced reservoirs of oil and gas left by nature hundreds of millions of years ago and to predict a come-uppance. Maybe Russia is set for a fall. In terms of quotidian state functions, Russia is badly governed, which makes it vulnerable in a crisis. In a global world where everything is connected, if China's boom loses air, Russia too will feel the enormous downdraught. And Wall Street's financial engineering may yet annihilate everyone, good and bad alike. Whatever the future holds, it is clear that the world has not seen such large authoritarian market economies like Russia's or China's since, well, Nazi Germany and its ally Japan. But today's authoritarian Russia and China are not militarily aggressive. And Edward Lucas notwithstanding, these countries are also not likely to be defeated in war and occupied so that the likes of Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss can have another go at the democracy crusade so well chronicled by David Foglesong.

The power of the Kremlin can seem all-encompassing. Across the 20th century, the average time in office for leaders in the democratic US has been about six years. In autocratic Russia, it has been around ten. Remove Stalin's long despotism, and the figure falls to eight. Still, authoritarian successions are always difficult from a regime's point of view. (Perhaps the most remarkable fact about China is not its market transformation but its two smooth, albeit opaque, political transitions after Deng Xiaoping stepped down, first to Jiang Zemin and then to Hu Jintao.) One of the many weak points of authoritarianism is that it makes bad options appear attractive like hoping, as many do, that Putin remains Russia's real ruler. But whatever the fate of the latest succession, the Kremlin's China-like strategy will likely continue: suppressing many of the politically liberalising aspects of globalisation while pursuing its economic aspects to the ends of the earth.

Just like the Chinese and the Arab autocracies, the Russians are coming and for real this time. When Russian capital, already highly visible in Europe and Britain, comes with ever greater force to Wall Street and to Main Street America, will Americans understand the value of Russia having a substantial stake in US success? Will Americans appreciate that having Russian-owned assets on American soil that could be seized provides a huge source of leverage over the Kremlin that is today lacking? As for the EU, it may be crucial for north Africa and the Levant, but it is far less so for Russia (or China). The EU seems likely to be bedevilled for some time over the status of Turkey, while Russia, just like China, continues to pursue bilateral relations with individual European countries. Russia's trade with EU countries is huge three times its trade with the former Soviet republics and Germany is easily Russia's biggest single partner (in 2007 their bilateral trade hit $52.8bn). Still, right now no place matters more to Russia than London as a commercial hub of globalisation. London's importance is one reason Russia has tried with episodes like the British Council harassment to send forceful diplomatic messages over anything related to its sovereignty, just as China does, without undermining real interests.

We should not, however, exaggerate Russia's global power. In future the US, the EU and China will each account for no less than one fifth of global GDP. Even if Russia does become the world's fifth largest economy, it would still constitute no more than 3 or so per cent of global GDP. The Kremlin will use its seat on the UN security council and presence at the G8 to defend its interests globally, while also seeking good relations with China in various forums. But Russia is not an EU country, not a US ally and not a China ally. It is perceived as a possible partner, but also as a potential enemy, by all three. Above all, if Russian companies, whether state-owned or private, are not able to go toe-to-toe with the best companies in the world, you can forget the whole game. "Even with the economic situation in our favour at the moment, we are still only making fragmentary attempts to modernise our economy," Putin said in a speech this year on Russia's long-term development strategy to 2020. "This inevitably increases our dependence on imported goods and technology, and reinforces our role as a commodities base for the world economy." He added that "the Russian economy's biggest problem today is that it is extremely ineffective. Labour productivity in Russia remains very low. We have the same labour costs as in the most developed countries, but the return is several times lower. This situation is all the more dangerous when global competition is increasing."

In short, President Medvedev and, if so named, Prime Minister Putin have their work cut out



Source: Ocnus.net 2008

March 31, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Baton Passes to Asia

By ROGER COHEN
HONG KONG

It’s the end of the era of the white man.

I know your head is spinning. The world can feel like one of those split-screen TVs with images of a suicide bombing in Baghdad flashing, and the latest awful market news coursing along the bottom, and an ad for some stool-loosening wonder drug squeezed into a corner.

The jumble makes no sense. It just goes on, like the mindless clacking of an ice-dispenser.

On the globalized treadmill, you drop your eyes again from the screen (now showing ads for gourmet canine cuisine) to the New Yorker or Asahi Shimbun. And another bomb goes off.

There’s a lot of noise and not much signal. Everywhere there is flux and the reaction to it: the quest, sometimes violent, for national or religious identity. These alternate faces of globalization — fluidity and tribalism — define our frontier-dissolving world.

But in all the movement back and forth, basic things shift. The world exists in what Paul Saffo, a forecaster at Stanford University, calls “punctuated equilibrium.” Every now and again, an ice cap the size of Rhode Island breaks off.

The breaking sound right now is that of the end of the era of the white man.

I’d been thinking about this at Dubai airport in the middle of the night, as the latest news came in from the United States of the bloody end to the mother of all spending binges. I was watching the newly affluent from other parts of the world — Asians and Arabs principally — spend their way through the early-morning hours.

The West’s moment, I thought, is passing. Money and might are increasingly elsewhere. America’s little dose of socialism from Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson might stave off the worst but cannot halt the trend.

Then I arrived in Hong Kong. The talk was all about how U.S. economic woes could impact Chinese growth. Might it tumble to 8 from over 11 percent? And what of India, powering along with growth of a mere 8 percent or so?

The West should have such troubles! Even revised downward, these growth rates are at levels Europe and the United States can only dream of.

Decoupling — another Hong Kong buzzword — is not possible in an interlinked world: export-led Asian economies are vulnerable in some measure to U.S. troubles. But that measure dwindles as the Chinese, Indian and Vietnamese domestic markets explode.

Asian statistics can be numbing. With one third of humanity, the numbers get big. There are now 450 million cell phones in China.

But take another — the likelihood that some 300 million people will move from rural to urban India in the next 20 years — and you get a sense of the shifts underway. By 2030, India will probably overtake Japan as the world’s third-largest economy behind the United States and China.

But in the end, transformation is not about numbers. It’s about the mind. Come to Asia and fear drains away. It’s replaced by confidence and a burning desire to succeed. Asian business leaders are rock stars. The culture of education and achievement is fierce. China is bent on beating the U.S.A.

What you feel in Asia, said Claude Smadja, a prominent global strategist, is “a burst of energy, of new dreams, and the end of the era of Western domination and the white man.”

Hong Kong purrs. Its efficiency and high-speed airport train make New York seem third-world. All the talk of Shanghai rising and Hong Kong falling was wrong: they’re both booming. Mainland Chinese tourists come here in droves to play and spend.

I went to see Frederick Ma, Hong Kong’s secretary for commerce. He’s suave in that effortless Hong Kong way, the shrewdness wrapped in a soothing patter of bonhomie. How is it that this is the only place on earth where people think of what you want before you’ve thought of it yourself?

He eased seamlessly from talk of mind-boggling infrastructure plans involving bridges and high-speed trains to a gentle lament for America.

“I am very worried about the U.S. economy right now,” he said. “When I was visiting last November, I asked a banker friend what’s going on, and she told me that a Wall Street problem was soon going to be a Main Street problem.”

Yep, it’s a Main Street problem all right when people lose their homes and realize overnight they’re illiquid and have 1930s visions as Bear Stearns goes “Poof!” in the night.

Everything passes. In the 17th century, China and India accounted for more than half the world’s economic output. After a modest interlude, the pendulum is swinging back to them at a speed the West has not grasped.

It’s the end of the era of the white man; and, before it even began in earnest, of the white woman, too.

Blog: www.iht.com/passages

By ALI JAAFAR

Wilders

Right-wing Dutch politico Geert Wilders has finally found a home for his controversial anti-Islam short "Fitna" after video-sharing site LiveLeak allowed the 15-minute film to be posted online.
"Fitna," whose title is an Arabic word that can be translated as "strife" or "discord" and is usually used in a religious context, has been the subject of heated debate and protests ever since Wilders announced his plans to release it earlier this year.

Dutch TV broadcasters refused to air the film following vocal criticism from the Dutch government, forcing Wilders to take the online route.

The Net, initially at least, proved as restrictive -- U.S.-based website host Network Solutions shut down Wilders' site pending a probe into whether it contravened its acceptable use policy.

LiveLeak's decision to post the film, which features graphic images of terror attacks in New York, London and Madrid and also reproduces the notorious Danish cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed with a bomb on his head, means viewers around the world will now be able to see what the fuss was all about.

"LiveLeak.com has a strict stance on remaining unbiased and allowing freedom of speech as so far as the law and our rules allow," read a statement on LiveLeak's homepage. "There was no legal reason to refuse Geert Wilders the right to post his film 'Fitna,' and it is not our place to censor people based on an emotive response. We in no way endorse Geert Wilders, his views, nor the views expressed within 'Fitna.' "

In February, attempts by Pakistani authorities to block users there from accessing the short's trailer on YouTube led to a temporary and unintentional worldwide block on the site.

MGM pacts on Abu Dhabi deal
Lion leaps on $1 bil project
By ALI JAAFAR
MGM has inked a massive deal with Abu Dhabi-based real estate developer Sorouh and Jordanian animation shingle Rubicon to create an entertainment destination using MGM and Rubicon franchises.
Deal is the latest in a string of pacts between Hollywood studios and business interests in the United Arab Emirates.

The multifaceted strategic alliance, which could be worth up to $1 billion once all the projects are completed, will include retail, leisure and entertainment facilities.

Execs are also looking into creating a dedicated film and TV production fund, as well as exploring the possibility of building an animation studio in oil-rich Abu Dhabi.

Deal will likely take three to five years to complete, although the first CG concepts for the project are likely to be unveiled before the end of the year.

"We're creating something never before seen in the industry," MGM exec veep Travis Rutherford told Daily Variety. "It will be a unique environment."More than one option
(Co) Daily Variety
Filmography, Year, Role
(Co) Daily Variety

MGM properties such as "The Pink Panther," "Rocky" and "Stargate" are likely to figure prominently in the development -- which all involved were keen to stress will not be a theme park -- as well as animated characters such as Ben and Izzy from the Rubicon stable.

Deal follows a strategic partnership inked last June between MGM and Rubicon, the first part of which was a co-financing and co-production joint venture on 26-episode animated skein "Pink Panther & Pals."

Latest pact will see execs from MGM, Sorouh and Rubicon develop a range of dedicated creative content and entertainment platforms based on existing and new franchises.

"We'll be working together to develop unique content for the region," said Rubicon chief exec Randa Ayoubi. "We will be bringing together East and West to get the best out of both worlds. We have so many stories to tell the rest of the world and actually make money out of it."

Rubicon has gained a reputation as one of the Middle East's foremost animated shingles with a concerted effort to produce positive, educational entertainment to auds in the West and the Arab world using local stories and traditions. "Ben & Izzy" is a 3-D CG skein about an American boy and an Arab one who travel through time on an archaeological expedition.

Deal involving MGM comes after other Hollywood heavyweights began a push into Mideast regions that offer opportunities for mediatitans.

In January, DreamWorks Animation announced a billion-dollar strategic alliance with Dubai-based real estate company Tatweer to develop a range of tourism and leisure projects. Universal, Paramount, Nickelodeon and Marvel have all planted their flags in the UAE in the past 12 months.

In October, Warner Bros. inked its own multibillion-dollar, multimedia deal with Abu Dhabi-based company Al-Dar. In addition to the now-customary real estate aspects, it also included a $500 million production fund and a $500 million vidgame fund as well as coin for Arab-language features.

Abu Dhabi officials have been ramping up their cultural activities in recent months, inking mega-bucks deals to open local branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums. Lensing is also set to begin on Robert Rodriguez's "Shorts," the first project greenlit through the Warners Bros. fund.

MGM plans to open a Shanghai-set MGM Studio World destination in spring 2010 to coincide with the World's Fair Expo in the Chinese city.