Saturday, September 24, 2005

Today..Saturday the 24th..There is a March on Washington. You can catch it at 6:30pm Kwt time/11:30am EST US time on C-SPAN
Also I'm sure Amy Goodman will have something for you and Air America too..so check in with them if you are interested.
The BBC will probably have something on the London March which is scheduled today as well.
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And the hits just keep coming in New Orleans and Texas..
No Exit: Disaster evacuation plans throughout the US assume that people own a car. Too bad for the 23 million Americans who don't
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Kuwait's own Sulayman Al-Bassam had an article printed in the Guardian a few days ago
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A Daily Star article about the shameful conditions that are the daily lives of expat workers in the Gulf, on whose backs the skyscrapers rise and the country profits..
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9 comments:

Shemsi said...

Hi

I live in far-north TX (practically on the Oklahoma border). For the past few days we've been getting news reports about how we're going to get damaging storms from Rita (even though we're about 400 miles from the coast). Also, starting Thursday, we got tons of evacuees from South TX. The news people told us to buy extra food, get a battery-operated radio, check our flashlights, etc. My in-laws live in Houston; they tried leaving on Thursday, but the traffic was too bad. So, basically everyone was in freak-out mode. Well, now it's The Big Day, and . . . well, there's nothing going on. It's a little windy, and it might rain later (20% chance). Alhamdullah for the good weather, but still. . . The weather-professionals should be more responsible and not try to overcompensate for the crap that happened in New Orleans. All they did is create panic and wreak some unnecessary havoc. I would say "at least now we know the weaknesses in our emergency management plans" but people have short memories and as soon as everybody goes back home, nobody is going to remember this (until next year. . )

Changing the subject, I really liked the article about Shakespeare. Shakespeare seems easily adaptable. I like watching movies based on Shakespeare (10 things I hate about you, etc). It would be nice to see Shakespeare adapted to arab situations.

kwtia said...

HI Sara! I think maybe that it's better safe than sorry..during the Tsunami they didn't want to cause panic and didn't give a warning, and they certainly didn't do enough in New O., but I know it must be frustrating for you to worry so much and then for it to be a false alarm, but if it makes you feel any better maybe that's better than actually having the storm hit...I'm glad you guys are safe..

you can go to Sulayman's site if you want to read "Al-Hamlet Summit"..it's pretty good.

http://www.zaoum.com/texts/ALHtext.html

kwtia said...

sorry didn't mean to leave out the 'h' in your name...I don't know where it went..

Shemsi said...

Hi again

H, no H, no biggy :)

I know what you mean about it being better to be safe than sorry. . but the way the news was going on about it, you would have thought that the whole state of TX was going to be under water by Sunday. I'm just mad about all those people being killed on the highway during the evacuation. I'm also mad about how poorly managed the whole thing was. We really were lucky this time; if it actually was a serious hurricane. . . Ok, I don't really want to think about it.

Oh, I didn't leave a comment earlier, but I am glad that Veronica Mars got the Buffy award. Do you get the show in Kuwait? A lot of people here don't watch the show because of the cinematography (it's really grainy) but the story lines are phenomenal!

kwtia said...

Yeah preparation in the richest most boastful country in the world seems to be very shameful..
unfortunatley for the tax-payers..
Y'know i had never even heard of Veronica Mars...but would love to see it..we don't get it here, i don't think.

Entrepreneur said...

I love the political nature of your blog, keep it up... :)

from a fellow blog junky

kwtia said...

Hi Entrepreneur, welcome to this blog! Thanks for a kind words :)

Ben Rivard said...

In response to the Daily Star article about the shameful conditions of expat workers in the Gulf.
It is a shame to see multimillion dollar companies building their fortune on the blood and sweat of poor workers who often earn less than 4$/day IF THEY GET PAID AT ALL. The Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor is supposed to defend the rights of these workers through its labor court. However, the employers are enjoying preferential treatments because of their influence and the result is too often the same. Practically enslaved workers who are simply asking that the terms of their contract be respected are being punished and the employers are getting away with their abusive and illegal behavior.

kwtia said...

Hi Ben, and we thought slavery was outlawed, right?