A Productive Nation

They say we’re a non-productive nation!!!
Move it kids!

Mysterious graffiti artwork by Banksy

Click on the pictures for full size artwork

(Source: Banksy)

Holy guerilla graffiti in the Holy Land

Anonymous graffiti artist Banksy in the holy land

Artist writes your custom massege on the West Bank wall in Palestine

*This post is inspired by Peoples Geography.

SHOCKING VIDEO: ANONYMOUS SAUDI GIRL RAPED BY 5 BENGALIS

The Saudi masses were recently struck by a video clip that spread across mobile phones of an anonymous Saudi girl, kidnapped and raped by 5 Bengali men, the video shows four Bengalis tightly holding an adult girl despite her resistance and heart breaking screams. The video -shot by one of the wolves, never shown- appears to have been shot in a rural area, inside a room where the rapists placed a blanket in preparation for their horrifying crime. Al Riyadh newspaper was the first to address the crime in public media:

The official police spokesman in the Eastern region Yousif AlQahtani stated that they have not received any report of the rape case from anyone regarding the blue tooth shared video.

While the rape victim remains anonymous, no one knows if she is still being held captive, killed, or released and preferred to keep quiet to avoid social degradation or even to save her own life. The crime came to public knowledge shortly after the infamous Qatif girl rape case, when a Saudi girl was raped by her ex boyfriend and was sentenced to 200 lashes and a few months in prison then released by an order from King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia after world shaking anger imposed social and political pressure.

Kuwait has just recently celebrated deporting the last Bengali back to his country, the majority of the Bengali foreign workforce in Gulf countries has been known to be prison graduates whom their country rids itself of. Saudi Arabia employs about 2 million Bengalis as cheap labor for a massive number of jobs while the Saudi unemployment rate is unofficially reported to have reached 35%, the case is therefore expected to raise voices of demands to deport all Bengali cheap labor outside Saudi.

Saudi: AIDS chef & restaurant back to work!

Two days ago, I came across the following news article..

A Bengali infected with with AIDS arrested working in a Saudi restaurant:
The Riyadh police task force arrested an alien working in a restaurant who was infected with AIDS, and who also didn’t seem to care about it. The arrest was made after receiving information about a Bengali who was tested positive with AIDS during the process of issuing him a medical card, but he continued to work in Riyadh with no regard at all to his medical condition. Information supplied that he entered Saudi with a ‘personal driver’ visa requested by a Saudi woman, and was found working in a Saudi authentic and fast food restaurant. The Riyadh police unit handed over the Bengali to “proper authorities” to be punished according to the law and then sent back to his country. Further more, the restaurant was closed and investigations were opened to find out how he was allowed/managed to work there.

- Various sources.

I also found this article in my email, just a few hours ago:

AIDS infected Bengali released, back to work in restaurant:

“Sabaq received information that the Bengali arrested for illegally working in a Saudi restaurant while tested positive for AIDS was released and he is now back to the restaurant serving authentic Saudi food. The “proper authorities” provided the excuse that “his case is not a felony and does not require detaining him or sending him back to his country”. The Bengali managed to work in a restaurant without a medical card, which is one of the primary documents required to work…”

Amazing country, isn’t it?

Noam Chomsky on US Policy Towards Iran

“Suppose it was true that Iran is helping insurgents in Iraq. I mean, wasn’t the United States helping insurgents when the Russians invaded Afghanistan? Did we think there was anything wrong with that? I mean, Iraq’s a country that was invaded and is under military occupation. You can’t have a serious discussion about whether someone else is interfering in it. The basic assumption underlying the discussion is that we own the world. So if we invade and occupy another country, then it’s a criminal act for anyone to interfere with it. What about the nuclear weapons? I mean, are there countries with nuclear weapons in the region? Israel has a couple of hundred nuclear weapons. The United States gives more support to it than any other country in the world.

The real reasons for the attack on Iran, the sanctions, and so on go back into history. I mean, we like to forget the history; Iranians don’t. In 1953, the United States and Britain overthrew the parliamentary government and installed a brutal dictator, the Shah, who ruled until 1979. And during his rule, incidentally, the United States was strongly supporting the same programs they’re objecting to today. In 1979, the population overthrew the dictator, and since then the United States has been essentially torturing Iran. First it tried a military coup. Then it supported Saddam Hussein during Iraq’s invasion of Iran, which killed hundreds of thousands of people. Then, after that was over, the United States started imposing harsh sanctions on Iran. And now it’s escalating that. The point is: Iran is out of control. You know, it’s supposed to be a U.S.-client state, as it was under the Shah, and it’s refusing to play that role.”
- Noam Chomsky

‘World Against War’ International Peace Conference, December 2007

Special thanks to AhlulBait Islamic Mission..

Click the link to watch all 6 videos

A hostile president

By Gideon Levy
Source: Haaretz

Gideon Levy’s ZSpace Page

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George Bush is coming to Israel this week. He will take pleasure in his visit. One can assume that there are few prime ministers with a giant photo of themselves with the U.S. president hanging on the wall in their home, as our Ehud Olmert boasted last week that he does, to his exalted guest, the comic Eli Yatzpan. There are also few other countries where the lame duck from Washington would not be greeted with mass demonstrations; instead, Israel is making great efforts to welcome him graciously. The man who has wreaked such ruin upon the world, upon his country, and upon us is such a welcome guest only in Israel.

A man is coming to Israel this week who has left a trail of killing, destruction and global hatred. Never has the U.S. been so despised as during Bush’s seven years in office, which abruptly brought his county back to the not-so-merry days of Vietnam.

He led the U.S., and the free world in its wake, into two brutal and completely futile wars of conquest, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. He sowed mass killing in these two wretched countries under the false pretext of a battle against global terror.

But the world after these two wars is not a better world or a safer one. And these two wounded countries feel no gratitude toward the superpower that ostensibly came to emancipate them from their regimes of terror.

There was no connection between the attack on the Twin Towers and Iraq. Saudi Arabia, where most of the terrorists came from, could have been a more appropriate target but it remained an ally of the U.S. despite its despotic regime. The war in Iraq, the rationale for which — the presence of weapons of mass destruction — was revealed to be false, was an atrocious, futile war that is far from being over, even if its daily toll of killing has declined from 100 to 50.

In Western Europe, in South America, in Asia, in all parts of the Arab and Muslim world and in parts of Africa, the sole global superpower has come to be viewed as a hostile, arrogant and ostracized entity. This is not good for America and it is not good for the world.

Closer to home, it is worth remembering the damage Bush has caused to the Middle East. His seven years in power have been wasted years, barren and dangerous. Never has there been a president who gave Israel such an automatic carte blanche and even encouraged it to take violent action, to deepen and entrench the occupation.

This is not friendship with Israel. This is not concern for its future. A president who did not even try to pressure Israel to end the occupation is a president who is hostile to it, indifferent to its future and fate.

A president who endorsed every abomination — from the expansion of settlements to the failure to honor commitments and signed agreements, including those with U.S. such as the passages agreement and the freeze on settlement construction — is not a president who seeks the best for Israel or aspires to peace.

What happened to the days when Israel hesitated before planting another trailer home in the territories or before every liquidation operation out of fear for America’s reaction? What happened to the days when there was a president in Washington who sowed trepidation in Jerusalem before each human rights violation or war crime?

This is all we got from Bush: a more entrenched and brutal occupation with the open, or tacit, encouragement of the U.S.; a green light for another superfluous war in Lebanon; a Hamas government in Gaza, which the U.S., and consequently the rest of the world, is boycotting — a measure that has only led to the starvation of Gaza, while failing to weaken Hamas; and U.S. authorization for “the settlement blocs.”

The Middle East has only moved further away from peace during Bush’s tenure.

His belated and feeble attempts to change this fact have not produced anything. Until a determined president is inaugurated in Washington who will engage in a serious effort to bring an end to the occupation, no peace will prevail here. Bush could have done this, but he abused his office.

This is the man who is coming to us this week. History will yet judge him for his actions and his failures. The world feels enmity toward him and even the U.S. is already sick and tired of him. Only here is he accorded honor and glory.

Let me tell you about internet censorship in Saudi Arabia (1/?)

As an Arab, I am blessed to be using the internet in America with almost no censorship over internet websites. When I visited Saudi Arabia two years ago, the only way I could access the internet in my apartment was through slow dial-up connections which can subscribed to for a monthly fee or you may go the alternative way of buying an internet card from internet cafes and local convenience stores. It was a very unpleasant time indeed, I could not stand the time it took to load a page and many of the websites I usually access were blocked for no reason at all (some open source news websites -i.e shoutwire- , music websites, magazines, etc..). On the other hand, suspicious and terrorism supporting websites and forums seemed to be available for public access with no problem at all.

Let me tell you briefly about the nasty history of the internet in Saudi Arabia,

• Before 1994:

The internet in Saudi Arabia was first preceded small local networks which subscribers had to pay a relatively very high price for, these networks were very limited in content and focused on local email, news, prayer times and probably phone numbers of local shiekhs (for fatwas and questions), local undertakers for emergency, and overnight pharmacies in certain places. In fact, the internet itself was not yet known to the public at that time.

• After 1994:

“Internet was first introduced to Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 1994 when state academic, medical, and research institutions got access to it. Internet was officially made available in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1997 by a ministerial decision…” – internet.gov.sa

The first time I have ever heard about the internet is when it was first introduced to high ranking Aramco employees, engineers, and researchers only in their offices. The internet provided inside Aramco had absolutely no filtering or content censorship, the employees were simply verbally warned about accessing non-work related websites. For as long as I can remember, many employees who were privileged for internet access used to stay in their offices until very late at night surfing through the internet. Of course, some were brave enough to punch in search key words such as (sex, playboy, how to make wine , etc..). A couple of years after, the uncensored internet was made available for the same employees at home with the labe of ~for business purposes only~ while of course the families of those employees caught the addiction of browsing and reading whatever they could display on their computer screens.

For the Saudi public, the internet was first introduced by STC starting in the Saudi capitol ‘Riyadh’ -which is where new service is introduced-.. Not very soon after, internet was then introduced to the residents of the Eastern and Western regions. At that time, the internet was slowly spreading among the middle and upper middle classes who already owned computers and had the knowledge and money to use such technologies. Contrary to Aramco’s internet service for employees, STC only offered censored internet through KACST which was very intimidating to users nation-wide. The website blocking mechanism was first done manually, KACST employees had to block every website which does not appeal to them with no specified criteria at all.

To be continued…

“The Master of Saudi Bloggers”.. Arrested!

Fouad Alfarhan is the name of the Saudi blogger who was arrested for blogging about Saudi political detainees, placing support banners linking to the activists’ web blogs, and criticizing Saudi figures.. He is considered to be among the first bloggers to exercise freedom of speech on the internet revealing his identity in Saudi Arabia, a country which claims to follow the great religion of Islam -which completely respects freedom of speech- yet arrests everyone who talks, writes, or even thinks about politics or demanding human rights. What is interesting in Alfarhan’s case is that he made a post prior to his arrest in which he says that he was informed of his arrest which was orderd by “a high ranking official”..

The current maintainers of the blog have published an English version of that post:

This a letter sent by Fouad a few days before his arrest to his friends:I was told that there is an official order from a high-ranking official in the Ministry of the Interior to investigate me. They will pick me up anytime in the next 2 weeks.The issue that caused all of this is because I wrote about the political prisoners here in Saudi Arabia and they think I’m running a online campaign promoting their issue. All what I did is wrote some pieces and put side banners and asked other bloggers to do the same. he asked me to comply with him and sign an apology. I’m not sure if I’m ready to do that. An apology for what? Apologizing because I said the government is liar when they accused those guys to be supporting terrorism?To expect the worst which is to be jailed for 3 days till we write good feedback about you and let u gothere may be no jial and only apologizing letter. But, if it’s more than three days, it should be out. I don’t want to be forgotten in jail.” Alfarhan.org

The case has taken the world by storm since the arrest was made public through his blog.. News agencies, bloggers, and high US and Saudi officials were in contact through the American embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Further more, Arab and international TV stations have given Alfarhan’s case good coverage and promoted discussion and helped build support for Alfarhan while he is being jailed with no official charges. Alfarhan’s friends -who are currently operating the blog and asking for his release- have displayed clips of Arabic and Englis news reports and interviews:
Visit Alfarhan’s blog for all tv coverage links

Aside from the intense and media coverage and the intimidated public opinion, Alfarhan’s friends and supporters have started an online petition demanding his release which can be viewed and signed here. More over, around 650 ~current number~ sympathizers and supporters of Alfarhan have gathered in a facebook group named “Free Fouad” discussing his case and demanding his release.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My first lines

Frankly, this is not the only blog I have started..
I now can only remember about 6 blogs which I have created in the past and left to rot in the blogosphere, hopefully someone will clean up after me and I pray to the lord (Allah, in my case) to forgive me for the mess I have created. The reason I created numerous blogs is because I have always felt the need to express my myself and share my thoughts with the world. Well, whatever I wrote in past blogs was not well presented as I wanted. I simply did not know what to blog about, there were hundreds and hundreds of topics and discussion fields I can engage in, but my true desire was to present a blog that is new, unique, and serves a purpose.

This afternoon, I sat on on the furry, white ikea couch in my living room after cleaning up my apartment.. It kind of comforted me and gave me the warmth I needed after washing the kitchen counters and having the windows open for ventilation. I started thinking that maybe I actually cared a little too much in the past about how to present my blog, maybe if I think about myself, deep inside, and write about everything I will then be satisfied with my personal wall on the internet.

Ah! Creating a blog for myself!
I leaned back, took a deap breath, reached for my lighter, lit up a cigarette, and sipped on my ice green tea (what a combination).. I thought about starting a blog dedicated to the dream which every Arab and every human being on our planet dreams of.. I dedicate this blog to my dream of a new age of enlightenment in the Middle East and an everlastinng peace all over the world.

Arabilluminist