UPDATED: I Hope You Plan On Thanking Shahar.

So Dubai is granting Andy Ram a visa to play in next week's tourney.  To which I say...

You Fuckers.

You want to take a stand?  You want to stand on principle?  Then frickin' do it!  This just goes to show how ridiculously underhanded, manipulative, and weak the tourney directors by extension the UAE governement are.  They screwed over Shahar because they knew the WTA wouldn't/couldn't do anything about it given the timeframe of the announcement.  And now that they're seeing the true repurcussions of their actions and find that the ATP is getting real pressure to pull the tournament, they acquiesce. 

Just...whatever.  I'm so tired of this.  To quote Professor White from Bonnie Ford's article:

"If you're going to do business with a country, don't kid yourself about who you're dealing with."

Even more apropos, to quote ABBA: "Money money money, always sunny, in a rich man's world."

UPDATED: Doug Robson is reporting that actually, no decision has been made on Andy's visa, and that the ATP has given the UAE until Friday afternoon to make a decision.