Several things depressed me today...

The first…I discovered that yet another family I know abuse their employees…both the lady of the house and the man seem to find sport in criminally exploiting and beating up the people who work for them…which is pretty horrific…and when I say abuse I mean violence to an extreme…and what is the result? The employees (victims) are deported or fired and the abusers don’t even get a slap on the wrist…What went wrong with us here that people find it acceptable to abuse others and not feel even the slightest bit of remorse? It doesn’t help that this culture rewards you for being Kuwaiti no matter what you do…”hey I just beat a woman up to the point where she had a miscarriage”-Bravo, you get to exchange her for a newer human punching bag…don’t we get outraged unless the victim has a certain passport? Why can’t we differentiate between employing people and owning them?? Who is here to defend the rights of the abused? Does anyone know?... because I don't. Who can they turn to? Who can put a stop to the abuse and to the attitude that it is acceptable?

The second depressing thing was a conversation with a Jordanian man who was born and raised here. Not only that but his aged parents even graduated from high schools here all those decades ago…He works here, and works hard, he knows no other home and identifies with no other country…he loves this place because it is home to him, even with all its scars…problem is, as I am sure you have guessed, that they are not allowed to join the exclusive Kuwaiti club. After decades of life and work and loyalty they are still not good enough to be citizens. Most countries would be proud to have hard working, decent, intelligent and loyal people contribute to their advancement as a nation. It would be a badge of honour to say “this good person here, this is a Kuwaiti”. But no, we just milk people dry till they are of no material use to us and then we tell them to giddy-up on back to the places we continue to insist they belong; except that they were born here, they made their friends and lives and loves here and they have nowhere else to belong to.

I had a good moment when my colleague looked up from the morning paper and said “this is the most beautiful thing I have seen in a while” and she held up the blank daily columns in the Qabas and Siyassah…The columnists left them blank in solidarity with Ahmad Al-Baghdadi and in protest against the attack on free speech and expression …of course the depressing bit is that thy had to get to this point at all…Hope a lot of people turn up at the graduates society 6:30pm today..

Charity Event

Tomorrow, Tuesday...

At Zahra Center there will be a whole day (regular opening hours) event to raise money for the Ghassan Kanafani Cultural Foundation.

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The Stated objectives of the foundation are:

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Establishing and running kindergartens for young children age 3-6 years and habilitation centers for children with disabilities in Palestinian refugee camps and other deprived areas.

Establishing and running libraries and art centers for children age 6-16 years.

Integrating activities between disabled children and other children.

Conducting teacher training programs in Early Childhood Development and Education (ECDE) and special education.

Promoting cultural and social activities

Publishing Ghassan Kanafani's literary works.

Taken from palcordinationforum.org

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Ghassan Kanafani was the famous writer of such short stories as Men In The Sun, a haunting tale about Palestinian refugees being smuggled in empty water tankers into Kuwait, in the unbearable heat. It's a very moving story and you can almost feel and see what it happening as you read it.

He spent time as a teacher in Kuwait which is where he wrote many of his stories. He was killed when his car exploded in 1972, his young niece Lamise was killed too. His widow, Anni Kanafani, who runs the GKCF will be at the charity event tomorrow...

If you want to help children in need, make your way there sometime in the day..

In keeping with the broad topic of unethical writing habits that were highlighted this past week in relation to a particular plagiarist we all know...I just saw a preview for a movie that is being screened on Showtime called Shattered Glass...

I am happy to watch it just to see one of my favourite actors Peter Sarsgaard (Boys Don't Cry, Garden State, Kinsey)...but it's also an interesting true tale about an associate editor of The New Republic, Stephen Glass ,who was fired for journalistic fraud..

Glass was making a 6 figure salary in his twenties, he was associate editor and yet 27 of the stories he wrote for TNR were made up...

He was actually quite creative, he faked web-sites, mailboxes and even bought extra mobile phones to create the illusion that the references he 'faked' were real...He was eventually caught and fired..and the film covers all that..

It was an article he had written about hacking that was uncovered as a fake by Adam Penenberg at Forbes.

He wrote a book about his exploits, The Fabulist

For a bunch of his articles go here

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• Half a Glass: The incomplete contrition of serial liar Stephen Glass.By Jack Shafer (Slate)
• To Our Readersby The Editors (The New republic explains)
• Hacker heaven, editors' hell :The New Republic's bogus article reveals a chasm of cluelessness. (Salon)
• Shattered Glass at The New Republic: How fabricating author Stephen Glass was brought down.By Lori Robertson (Am. Journalism review)
  

Screening times on The Movie Channel (TMC):
Monday April 25th 22:00
Saturday May 7th 18:00

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For a more recent story about fraud, check out the Jason Blair/New York Times fiasco:
The Jayson Blair Project: How did he bamboozle the New York Times?
By Jack Shafer

National Assembly/Majlis al-Ummah/Parliament

Dissolved next week?

Yes or No

First things first, Some Blogger related Headlines

Are bloggers journalists? San Francisco Says Yes

which is related to the following headline

A Chill in the Air

"city ordinance likely to choke local bloggers' right to write freely about politics"

The term 'chill' is used in the law to refer to describe a limitation on free speech and expression, due to the fear of persecution. (we know a lot about 'chilling effect' here)

Blogger Hits the Wall

A revealing article about a blogger at the white house press briefing.

The future of blogging

"8 million online diaries as of March 21, up from 100,000 just two years ago. A new blog is created every 7.4 seconds. That adds up to 12,000 new blogs a day, 275,000 posts a day and 10,800 updates an hour. "

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Something interesting has hit the internet-A progressive media site that has video and audio content that you can browse and also add to..it's called commonbits.org I just watched an anti-landmine commercial that CNN and others have refused to show...

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Several high profile deaths this week...the Pope, Prince Ranier of Monaco and Saul Bellow...

The one I'm interested in is the last one...

Philip Roth said: "The backbone of 20th-century American literature has been provided by two novelists - William Faulkner and Saul Bellow" Guardian

He won the Nobel Prize for Humboldt's Gift .

Here are his obituaries from The Guardian and The New York Times.

Some older articles about him (including his contemporaries Norman Mailer, Philip Roth and others):

Twilight of the Old Goats from Salon

Bellow's Gift from NYRB

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Japanese Trains now have a women only section, because there was a big problem during morning rush hour with women getting fondled...guys, really?

As if the pictures weren't bad enough, there is footage of the seal hunt...so you can judge for yourselves how 'humane' the clubbing is...

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For those of us who enjoy P2P, File-sharing...getting audio and video from sources like Morpheus, Kazaa, Limewire, Grokster and so on...the MGM v. Grokster case now at the Supreme court should be interesting to follow.

The result of the case could change the way you get music and video and the way that amateur and non-industry artists get their music 'out there'...

The lower court (2003) and the ninth circuit court of appeals (2004) both decided that the makers of Morpheus and Grokster could not be held liable for the illegal ways that their product could be used.

This result did not please big-business players from the music industry. They have taken the case all the way to the Supreme court.

What the big guys want to do is reverse the decision on Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios 1984.

The Sony case, also known as the Betamax case, was a decision that none of us can imagine having gone another way. If the 1984 Betamax case had turned out differently it would have been illegal to make video tape recorders and we would never have been able to spend our lives taping shows from tv, making music mixes, and doing a host of other things we take for granted.

In 1984 Universal sued Sony for creating the Betamax recorder. Universal said that since the recorder could be used to infringe upon copyright, then Sony should be held responsible.

The Supreme court thought otherwise.

Their decision pointed out that since the recorder had fair-use applications then the possibility that it could be used illegaly was not a strong enough reason to outlaw it or to hold Sony responsible.

Fair use includes personal use and the ability to 'time- shift' which means that you tape something for personal use so that you can watch it at a more convenient time.

Illegal use includes making copies and selling them or making copies that would infringe upon the sales and the income generation of the artists and copyright owners, meaning that it could replace the sale of the original.

Now if they happen to reverse the Betamax case and the Supreme court rules that P2P technology is illegal, then we can expect an end to the type of file-sharing we have been enjoying for the past few years. But it won't be long before talented techies find a loophole (like the post-Napster family of file-swappers) and create a legal alternative. It would also mean that Asia and other parts of the world would take the lead in thise type of technology soon, since the US would be a no go zone.

Background:

Napster

Bloggers following the Grokster trial and blogging live from the Supreme court.

Electronic Frontier Foundation all the documents relating to the case.