I'm wondering if we'll ever see blue skies again...losing faith..

Ok maybe just start off with some news...just to get the engine working again:

I woke up to the BBC talking about the third world debt relief deal...which on the face of it is a great thing...but no one makes concessions without expecting something seriously self serving in return...I hope that the shadow of debt is not lifted only to be replaced with an even darker one...
For a background on the debt crisis see globalissues.org...an interesting quote from there is:

"the developing countries' debt is partly the result of the unjust transfer to them of the debts of the colonizing States! A sum of US$ 59 billion external in public debt was imposed on the newly independent States in 1960"

Here is an opinion piece about the news, from The Guardian, by Ken Wiwa (the son of the Nigerian writer/activist Ken Saro-Wiwa who was executed for protecting the Ogoni people from Shell Oil and the Dictatorship)

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On a related note...Bob Geldof et al..Are putting together concerts (ala Live Aid of the 80's) Called Live 8...concerts will take place on Saturday 2 July 2005 in London, Rome, Paris, Berlin and Philadelphia...[click on the cities to see who is playing there]

They were very appropriately criticised for not including African musicians in the concerts and for not staging any concerts in an African city...Read the critical article by Andy Kershaw which also includes some of his recommendations of Musicians from African nations---today's Independent reports that Bob Geldof is now trying to enlist African acts for Edinburgh...too little too late?... or better late than never?

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On the Book front...I highly recommend Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

It will take you just a couple of days to read and you will find yourself laughing out loud at some scenes and crying at others...get out and get this especially those of you who like comics and history and just a good read.

Other graphic novels to look at are anything by Joe Sacco from Malta, who is a journalist/graphic novelist who invites you to dive into the places he has visited, including Palestine and Sarajevo, with his words and drawings and a cynical eye..

I should order Maus, because hey, it's the king of the genre...

It's been a while...I took off last minute...didn't take my pc with me...and am not staying in places where i have access to the net...or to a pc...not often anyway..strange..I have not been reading blogs for weeks now..and have no idea what's going on..I have never been so cut off from news and views..And the tv in this last big super duper power on the planet I am visiting is sooo brain numbing...I thought I would conduct an experiment and just cut myself off the internet..and try to rely only on the daily news...and cnn..and whichever paper I could get my hands on..and let me tell you..I might as well be living on a different planet than any other country..all I know about news is what Michael Jackson's trial is up to, what runaway bride went galloping off this week and really not much else in between the haze of commercials..the endless commercials. Saddest of all though is the way that news-casters here use language and gestures and loud slow talking that makes you feel as though they were talking to babies or to viewers who have the brain capacity of babies...It's weird like I am watching an opera or a kindergarten play..Why underestimate your viewers so severely?
But that is what is going on in between lovely travels, good friends, beautiful lush greenery, lots of rain and chilly weather in spring, and museums and bookstores and anonymity...beautiful stuff...I hope everyone is well..I'm going to blog hop now for a little bit...not much time...

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.

----

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

==============

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

=============

• 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.

Planet Earth stands on the cusp of disaster and people should no longer take it for granted that their children and grandchildren will survive in the environmentally degraded world of the 21st century. This is not the doom-laden talk of green activists but the considered opinion of 1,300 leading scientists from 95 countries who will today publish a detailed assessment of the state of the world at the start of the new millennium.

The Independent

Lovely news for a thursday morning...as the birds chirp and oh..wait yup they're still chirping, just couldn't hear them over the car starting up in the driveway...Seems like it won't be long till a Silent Spring

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An Egyptian stabbed a Hungarian man and woman, slightly wounding them, after the couple kissed while pausing for a photograph near a mosque at Cairo's popular tourist bazaar, police said Tuesday. Canoe News

So wow, where does it stop really...will it be open season on bare headed women...on people who look at each other a little too long...public hangings for married couples who hold hands in public??

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Johnnie Cochran has passed away...for those who only know him as O.J. Simpson's lawyer here's a little more about him on Democracy Now

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Earthquake

Another earthquake has hit the region that caused the December Tsunami...This earthquake is 8.7 while the last one was 9.5...both way above average..there is an alert out for people to expect a possible Tsunami...However, because this quake hit a deeper location than the last one, there is a lesser chance of that happening, hopefully---Today's quake happened just off the Sumatran coast in Indonesia...
---
Aid to the victims of the last Tsunami are still short $4Billion which world governments had promised and not yet paid...Four times more women died in the last Tsunami than men, mostly because they were waiting for fishermen at the shore and were working in shops, or at home---300,000 human beings lost their lives the in the December tsunami---Child trafficking has become a huge problem due to many children being orphaned after the last Tsunami.
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For more go to the report at the US Geological Survey site---BBC---Reuters---The Guardian
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The alert is out in Indonesia, Thailand, South India including Kerala and all the nearby countries..
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Agencies helping Tsunami Victims: Doctors Without Borders---Oxfam---IRC---Ricky Martin Foundation---Save The Children---Habitat for Humanity---SOS Childrens Villages...

Beirut Burning

The articles coming from some US sources would love to have the positive events in Beirut -calls for independence, solidarity of the people etc..(if any such things really exist) - be a result of their invasion of Iraq. At least that way something could be salvaged of what many see as a very costly mistake...This way they can say it was so that democracy could flourish across the Middle East that their young men and women died while killing other men and women...
Is that what's really happening? Is this the domino effect of democracy and free markets? Or are history and life and politics a little more complicated than just the idea of nations acting like copycats and having one big single reason for taking the steps that they take..
And then, events are not all that beautiful after all...Ya Beirut...Car bombs, Lebanese and Syrians trading angry words, hatred on the airwaves, people cancelling trips to Beirut, restaurants telling their staff they will call them if they need them and closing down, like other businesses, sectarianism rearing its ugly head...what will we look back on a month or a year down the line..which path will our brothers and sisters in Lebanon and our brothers and sisters in Syria have taken?

For now these are the headlines...
Beirut Car Bomb, Third This Month, Kills Two, Injures Eight Bloomberg
UN report sparks mixed reactions among citizens Daily Star

Memories of war, fear and friendship in my home city, where time has stood still The Independent

Murder of Mr Lebanon continues to poison political air The Independent

What the Lebanese fear most is not Syria's army but a power vacuum The Independent

It is not democracy that's on the march in the Middle East The Guardian

The road to Damascus Le Monde Diplomatique

Weapons of mass deception revisited AL-Ahram

‘The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing.’ E. Burke

Hotel Rwanda is one of those films that we need to take a look at as soon as we can...

"Hotel Rwanda is an act of memory against forgetting, a reminder to the world -- from presidents and policy makers to ordinary people in front of their TVs--that it turned away as 800,000 people were butchered, in plain sight, in 100 days. (There's a quiet but telling moment in the film where an American photojournalist, on viewing film footage of a massacre, sadly observes, " "people will see it, say 'Oh, that's awful,' and go back to their dinners." And so it proved.) And it's a summons to act now -- to give meaning to the words "Never again." " From Mother Jones magazine

If you want to learn more about what happened in Rwanda

• Read the book We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch (available in Kwt Bookshop)
• Take a look at PBS's extremely informative site about the Rwandan genocide: The Triumph of Evil
• Romeo Dallaire was the UN official who defied orders and decided to stay in Rwanda to help stop the violence..he has written Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda about witnessing the genocide.
• Visit the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
• Read THE RWANDA CRISIS by Gerard Prunier
• Watch "Forsaken Cries." Available from Amnesty USA, http://www.amnestyusa.org/. A documentary examining the genocide in Rwanda.

Never Again?

Right NOW: More than 1.6 million people – 80 percent of northern Uganda’s entire population – have been displaced and now live in squalid conditions.---16 million Congolese are going hungry, more than two million have been displaced by the war and in some parts of the country, two out of five children are dying in infancy. ---In Somalia: two million people displaced or killed since civil war erupted in 1990 and close to five million people estimated to be without access to clean water or health care

Heart of the Congo Is a documentary about the humanitarian efforts there...2.5 million people have died in the DR Congo in the past 3 YEARS-that's 2283 human beings A DAY! All while we are lucky enough to eat, relax, watch tv, shop, laugh with our families and enjoy our lives...

• Let's not forget that we are good at forgetting, so let's keep remembering and keep looking for ways to help and places to help..
• Ask: why do millions die in the Congo and yet no humanitarian Intervention takes place ? Why have hundreds of thousands been slaughtered and almost two million made refugees in Darfur while no one seriously intervenes to stop it? Why does the world not shine a light on this type of genocide/terrorism/murder? Why is the humanitarian crisis in these places not on our screens as often as places where it's in the interest of the big countries to intervene? These are invisible conflicts, suffering that is kept from the rest of the world, let's not ignore these people please.
• Amnesty and Oxfam have a campaign to Control Arms
• Support Women for Women International: They work in the Congo, Rwanda, Iraq and other conflict zones.(thank god Oprah finally did an episode about the DR Congo)
• Support Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam and Amnesty.
• DO NOT buy conflict diamonds. Learn how to avoid buying diamonds that came at the cost of people's lives.
• Learn more about conflicts in Africa.

Interview with Boutros Boutros Ghali:
TIME: What problems do we cause?
Boutros-Ghali: We say we have 16 members in the Security Council: the 15 members plus cnn. Long-term work doesn't interest you because the span of attention of the public is limited. Out of 20 peacekeeping operations, you are interested in one or two. Two years ago, it was Mogadishu. Now it is Sarajevo. Tomorrow it will be Haiti. And because of the limelight on one or two, I am not able to obtain the soldiers or the money or the attention for the 17 other operations. Nobody was taking care of what was going on in Rwanda. It was one of my personal greatest failures.

"Kuwait's minister of Islamic affairs said Monday his ministry would shortly issue a new fatwa, entrusting the emir to rule on a controversy over whether to give women political rights. "The fatwa panel met recently and discussed the viewpoint of Islam on women's political rights ... It concluded that the issue is a bone of contention and that the ruler should have the final say on it," Abdullah al-Maatuk told reporters in Parliament.
He said the fatwa would
be signed and released
next Saturday.
The new fatwa would replace one issued in 1985 which clearly stated that Islam forbids women from voting and contesting parliamentary elections."

Daily Star

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"since 1995 at least fourteen countries--including Mexico, Rwanda, Indonesia, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina--have set aside at least 30 percent of government seats for women...

Beijing Betrayed, a report just out from the Women's Environment and Development Organization, lambastes governments around the world for failing to live up to their commitments: "Many women in all regions are actually worse off than they were ten years ago." The Nation

We are one of those governments and we got a nice telling off in the report...

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"On International Women's Day, Rita Henley Jensen reflects on her recent trip to Saudi Arabia, where feisty, educated women are challenging the nation's system of strict gender apartheid."

Read about it here.. and guys, if even Saudi beats us then shame on us is the greatest understatment ever spoken.

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In these weeks where lectures and talks and activism have been the main course for many of us that hope for development, change, freedom, peace, equality, justice and all the other things that our battered souls are reaching for...I couldn't help but wonder why I haven't heard an inspiring, energetic speaker in Kuwait, address a crowd with the passion and dedication that can transform them into dreamers and revolutionaries and into an unstoppable force that can make things happen..ok maybe I am asking for too much and more than that, I hope that maybe I just haven't been to the right places...instead of the same tired faces, saying the same tired words to the same yawning handful of supporters that bothered to turn up at a lecture, I have been craving people with a knack for speaking with overpowering love for the cause, with humour and presicion and explosiveness and with an awe for the sacredness of a community of people asking for justice.
Has anyone out there been to such a speech, heard anyone inject life and love into a crowd? If so where and when is this person/are these people going to speak again? I say speakers, because there is nothing more wonderful than that electrifying buzz that goes through a crowd when someone has hit exactly the right chords to make them light up and feel alive. You can get it with reading, but that is usually a solitary practice...when a bunch of people all experience that moment of wonder together, it's pretty beautiful. I feel like we need that kind of fuel, so that it's not just disparate groups trying to keep themselves motivated. Just like we need the dedicated workers and writers and planners and organisers (some of which we have, but maybe not as much as the opposition does) we need the catalysts, the people who light the fire under the whole lovely experiment and get it going.
If anyone out there knows people like that, please point me in the right direction, because I want some inspiration.

In between the first burst of clapping and the second...before we got ungraciously escorted outta there... 

The freedom train rolling into the Majlis 

All ages, all walks of life...same message- Political Rights NOW! 

Exactly 

Singing the freedom song..can't get it out of my head now. 

The young democrats waving and shaming the parliament (Democratic Circle) 

Our chorus leader and other activists 

Our sisters in black...always there to support women's rights..good for them. 

I woke up on this 'morning after', and was waiting for that feeling where you can actually get out of bed and start the day...I need to snooze a lot you see...and so, in between all the different alarm clocks going off at different times, I was going through all the events of yesterday...cheery young activists, determined senior citizen activists, blue all over the place..idiotically rude MP's and then shock that people would applaud, like that is the worst thing that happened in that room..I know, I know, they had a rule book, or at least a rule paper that they had to follow..sure..we're ok with that cause we are peaceful folk...we know what's right and we will keep asking for it, even if we stumble along the way...because yesterday was about the beautiful singing..the nice day and the fact that there were ladybugs all over the place..you know that they're a good luck sign..especially if one landed on any of you lucky people...I wish there were more people out there yesterday, even though I thought the number was great, I just know so many people that should have been out there but weren't...and I know it would have been good for their souls, to be brothers and sisters and friends and comrades on a sunny day out in front of the building that looked out onto a family of people demanding to be heard...and being so sweet about it too...That's what went through my head on this morning after..
so as i slowly crawled out of my half awake state i saw a purple piece of paper sticking out of a cardboard box that I have been avoiding for ages...and the purple paper suddenly caught my eye after over a year of being there, ignored...here's what was on that paper..it made me laugh a little..and I figured it wanted to be looked at today, of all days..

Because woman's work is never done and is underpaid or unpaid or boring or repetitious and we're the first to get fired and what we look like is more important than what we do and if we get raped it's our fault and if we get beaten we must have provoked it and if we raise our voices we're nagging bitches and if we enjoy sex we're nymphos and if we don't we're frigid and if we love women it's because we can't get a "real" man and if we ask our doctor too many questions we're neurotic and/or pushy and if we expect childcare we're selfish and if we stand up for our rights we're aggressive and "unfeminine" and if we don't we're typical weak females and if we want to get married we're out to trap a man and if we don't we're unnatural and because we still can't get an adequate safe contraceptive but men can walk on the moon and if we can't cope or don't want a pregnancy we're made to feel guilty about abortion and for lots and lots of other reasons we are part of the women's liberation movement.

Happy Inernational Women's Day!

One woman, as a single drop of water, may appear ineffectual, but beware the powerful physics of cohesion. The rising evolutionary wave, whose time has come, is unstoppable.
A 21st Century Feminine-ismKeynote Address to be Given at the "Gather the Women" Celebration on March 8th, 2005
by Victoria Covell

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Who's writing about yesterday?: The Feminist Majority Foundation--Ms. Magazine---Calcutta Telegraph--Morocco Times--Swissinfo--Reuters--NYNewsday--CNN--Guardian

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Today, MARCH 8 2005, is International Women's Day...

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Yesterday, March 7th, was also the "fortieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday - the historic voting rights march in Selma, Alabama...On March 7, 1965, Alabama State Troopers and Dallas County Sheriff's deputies used billy clubs, tears gas and cattle prods to stop some 600 black marchers from reaching Montgomery in a bid for voting rights." Democracy Now

السلطان يهدد بالنزول إلى الشارع

اذا سمحت الجهات المعنية بحشد ناشطات سياسيات امام مجلس الامة اثناء انعقاد جلسة الغد, فانهم »سيملأون شارع الخليج, غدا

ايضا بالشعب الكويتي الرافض لقانون المرأة

....

الحكومة بدت ديكتاتورية في ادارتها لموضوع حقوق المرأة, اذ حاولت فرض توجه بعينه على المجتمع وباتت وكأنها تدار من قوى خارجية تحرك البلد كما تريد

In the same paper

الحكومة انتهت من اعداد دراسة حول حقوق المرأة كشفت عن ان 70 في المئة من المواطنين يؤيدون هذه الحقوق, فيما يعارضها اقل من 30 في المئة, مشيرا الى ان هذه الدراسة ستوزع على النواب قريبا

Both from Today's

السياسة

Summary of the above in English: Members of political Islamist groups threaten to get people opposed to women's rights out onto the street if permission is given to supporters of women's rights to go assemble in front of the parliament building. They also suggest that the government is forcing women's rights on a public that doesn't want it.

In the same paper, a government study reveals that 70% of the public support women's rights and less than 30% oppose it.

Even Meryl Streep is now criticising us for our country's discrimination against women...and when it comes from the Queen of the screen..isn't it time to start listening?

Of course even more importantly she was making the comments as a board member of the group Equality Now and on the occassion of the launch of a new UN report on discrimination.


You can get Equality Now shirts---You can join the Equality Now global campaign---Take a look at their list of discriminatory laws worldwide---Take a look at the Beijing Declaration appraisal page, this is the declaration in which countries promised to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women by 2005.

On Monday there will be a Solidarity gathering at 8am in front of the Parliament Building, on the beach to support women's rights. The instructions are to wear blue. My additions are to tell everyone from your grandparents to your neighbours to come and be together peacefully in support of a country that should act like it deserves to be part of the world community.

Want to catch up on your women's rights education?

Books:
Speaking in God's Name: Islamic Law Authority and Women by Khaled Abou El-Fadl : Legal Expert in Islamic jurisprudence, writes beautifully.

The Second Sex By Simone de Beauvoir: It's a classic, and a book that is part of western feminist history. It asked important questions that are still relevant for some societies like ours.

Women in Kuwait : The Politics of Gender Haya Al-Mughni

Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in Contemporary Iran Ziba Mir-Hosseini

Arab Women: Between Defiance and Restraint. Editor Suha Sabbagh.

Legal:

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
The Kuwaiti Constitution

Four infants aged between several months and two years old have been accused of looting! Their bail was $50, how's that for a court that will believe anything---Here's and article about the way bloggers blew the lid off the Gannon scandal

The violence in Iraq is causing a lot of psychological damage, a moving article describes the sad state of mental health and of those who are supposed to treat it..

Learning, the easy way:
Here are some links to sites that make learning fun and easy--Sparknotes summarises topics like astronomy and biology and maths along with philosophy and literature if you want to look up something or brush up on something you forgot---The Teaching company provides audio lectures by professors on a wide range of subjects, which can make your commute a learning experience---want to learn Japanese Kanji script, here's a game you play that teaches you---want to learn about famous authors check out these highlights of their life and work at the Guardian

Our Islamic Jurisprudence insitutions here do in fact have exceptions to the rule...a graduate from their classes can end up being a progressive, creative, intelligent thinker...but maybe that has less to do with studying here than it has to do with further studies at Yale, Princeton and U.Penn...I am talking about Khaled Abou El Fadl...Law professor at UCLA...He was at one point on the path to becoming a militant...fortunately his father and a religious scholar/Imam saved him, and we are the luckier for it.

He has written several terrific books...One called Conference of the Books which is a poetic inspiring journal written over the span of a few years...the chapters are short and beautiful to read and he covers topics such as Islamic history, marriage, prejudice, extremism, love and just about anything you can think of...and he does all this with an open heart and a sense of the complexity and wonder that comes with this life we all live.
Another one is Speaking in God's Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women...The title pretty much says it all..and again it is well written and you can't help but be impressed with how obvious it is in his writing that he is kind and fair in the way he approaches anything and anyone.

-------------------------------

"Besides influencing the theological discourse, Abou el Fadl is also considered one of the world's leading Muslim feminists; he rejects all puritanical requirements such as the wearing of veils by women."The Wahabis' claims about women reflect their preferences and are not based on classical sources. There are no textual sources that say that the government can force women to wear a veil," says Abou el Fadl. For example, the Wahabis expect women to obey their husbands blindly. "For me, that is idolatry; it makes demi-gods of men," says Abou el Fadl."
....
Not only are all his works banned in Saudi Arabia, the professor of Islamic law has for years been receiving death threats from Wahabi activists.
....
Be that as it may, it does not stop him criticising Wahabism: "Wahabism is despotism. There is never any mention of love; music, art, everything human, beautiful, and delicate is banned. Wahabism is a harsh theology; as hard, Arabic, and hostile as the desert itself."
Taken from Qantara

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Khaled Abou El Fadl's UCLA Faculty web site.

Further Reading on progressive Islam:
Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism Edited by Omid Safi
Liberal Islam Ed. by Charles Kurzman
Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam: Essential Writings of Abdolkarim Soroush
Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective Amina Wadud
Women in the Qur'An, Traditions, and Interpretation Barbara Stowasser

Articles:
Islam's new voices see faith with critical eye Scholars, activists favor democracy, gender equality


Online:
Qantara

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Quote from Conference of the Books:
It is Jum'a and the Imam rambles on and on. The topic is as unclear as the grammar. A boundless web of familiar terms and phrases are woven, but they all dissipate the second they leave the Khatib's mouth. The endless rhetoric stupefies the intellect and puts one in a trance-like state. The numbed brain yearns for signs of life but like a drug, rhetoric is addictive. It induces a state of intellectual paralysis that is as ugly and comfortable as death. Once one is accustomed to this state of dullness, any vibrant or critical thought is bound to cause a profound state of disturbance.Weeks ago, a young man gave a simple but beautiful Khutba. Someone in town had issued a fatwa that it is more important to memorize and learn to recite the Quran than it is to understand it. The young man wondered, how is it possible to search the Divine Will and to obey God if one does not understand God's speech? The most surprising aspect, and a rare quality in the culture of sermons, was that he spoke meticulous English and Arabic.And now you find yourself in this town again. You ask about the young man and you are told that "There are issues, brother." What issues? you inquire. "He does not fulfill the qualifications, brother; his appearance is not Islamic." How so? you ask. "He does not wear a beard, he tucks his shirt in, and, in addition, he is not married."
... The imam giving the khutba blows his nose and you awaken for a moment. You notice his watch and you wonder if that is part of a proper Islamic appearance? Absurdity begets absurdity and you find yourself wondering: how about buttons on a shirt or socks on feet? How about eyeglasses, underwear, zippers, velcro, tennis shoes, sneakers, jeans, pantyhose, brassieres, ties, raincoats, gloves or earmuffs? Which of these, if any, are consistent with a proper Islamic appearance? How do we generate a systematic way of distinguishing between an untucked shirt and other items? Well, at least in the case of the brassiere, Shaykh Bin Baz issued a fatwa saying a woman may not wear it if the purpose is to commit fraud. Fraud is never a good thing. But what if a man wears a shirt larger than his size to conceal the fact that he is overweight? Yet the illal (legal operative causes) of fraud are very different than those that pertain to an Islamic appearance. The analysis must be consistent, systematic and coherent. I suddenly remembered that a month ago an imam in the same mosque led Jum'a with his shirt tucked in. But he was married. Perhaps married imams may tuck their shirts in and unmarried imams may not. Perhaps the distinction is that ...I felt the intellectual rigor mortis that follows insanity setting in; I felt the Conference distant and fading away. I was dying before reaching the end of the bridge. Blissfully, the call to prayer started, and a breath of life seeped in again.They got their married imam with his beard and untucked shirt. They got their imam with the numbing rhetoric and incomprehensible broken English. But what they perpetuated is intellectual death. (taken from the site Scholar Of The House)

OK a couple of things in the papers were just too much today and surprise surprise they both have to do with Ahmed Baqer...Firstly he and his son apparently stopped a group of 12 Shia youths in Qadsiya, on their way to a 7sainiya on 3ashura...His son took pictures of the boys and they forced the woman who accompanied them as a guardian in her car to go down to the police station and sign a forced 'pledge of good conduct'...Apparently it is against the law in Baqer's head to go as a group to your 7sainiya on a holy day...

Then in Al-Seyassa he says that the we don't have a large number of terrorists in Kuwait (or even extremists), in fact the amount of people arrested for Homosexuality in Kuwait is bigger than those arrested for terrorism

وأشار »مازحاً« الى أن عدد الذين قبض عليهم كما نشر قبل أيام من »الجنس الثالث« هم أكثر عدداً من المتهمين بقضايا الارهاب والخلايا المتطرفة

Ok firstly, what the hell does one group of people have to do with the other?...I'm sure there must be more people arrested for signing false checks ...but they have as little to do with the terrorist issue as people with a different sexual preference than Baqer approves of...secondly the fact that our security forces are violating people's human rights by arresting people for being gay (not for hurting, killing,or burning people, or for corruption) does not somehow make it ok that there are less terrorists than gay people in jail...maybe if they were going after people who are planting hatred and prejudice and narrow mindedness in our community they would be better at stopping terrorists than if they were wasting their time arresting people for being different than the heterocentrist patriarchal hate-filled buffoons we have as religious/legal authorities...

news

More Scandals:
New abuse/torture/rape and photo ops in yet another scandal for the US forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq..
One prisoner reports: "After they tied me up in the chair, then they dislocate my both arms. He asked to admit before I kill you then he beat again and again," the prisoner says in his statement. "He asked me: Are you going to report me? You have no evidence. Then he hit me very hard on my nose, and then he stepped on my nose until he broken and I started bleeding."
Another prisoner: ""They forcibly rammed a stick up my rectum," he reports. "It was excruciatingly painful ... Only when the pain became overwhelming did I think I would ever scream. But I could not stop screaming when this happened." Quoted from the Guardian

Background to Torture Scandals:
"This month, British readers get the chance to study in full the catalogue of leaked memos and government investigations which track the evolution of the White House's torture policy from 9/11 to Afghanistan, Guantánamo and Iraq, with the publication here of Torture and Truth by the US journalist Mark Danner, and The Torture Papers, edited by two US lawyers, Karen Greenberg and Joshua Dratel"

Abu Ghraib: The Hidden Story NYRB
The files that detail the new abuse scandals are with the ACLU...

------------------------------

Tsunami Update:

• Austrian and German victims are suing The US early warning system , Thai Authorities and a French Hotel chain saying : ""We have evidence they did not warn us, even though they knew a quarter of an hour later about the strength and location of the quake, and although there is supposed to be a tsunami warning" from 6.5 on the Richter scale"

• The Tsunami seems to have uncovered an ancient city in India, dating to the 7th Century.

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News Mix:

Richard Perle had a shoe thrown at him by a member of the audience in a debate between Perle and Howard Dean--A new study says that antidepressants like Prozac make people twice as likely to kill themselves---Iran continues to jail its bloggers---Hunter S. Thompson has been found dead in his home...Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela says tha the US plans to assassinate him---

Updates on Beirut blast

يا ستَّ الدنيا يا بيروتْ

...

من ذبحَ الفرحَ النائمَ في عينيكِ الخضرواينْ؟
من شطبَ وجهكِ بالسّكّين
وألقى ماءَ النارِ على شفتيكِ الرائعتينْ؟

...

ماذا نتكلّمُ يا بيروتْ
وفي عينيكِ خلاصةُ حزنِ البشريّهْ
وعلى نهديكِ المحترقين

Nizar Qabbani wrote these words for a different moment in Beirut's life, but these words seem appropriate today...for a new reason..

Mid-day

Rafik Hariri's mororcade was bombed on the next to the st George hotel...between 6-9 dead...including Hariri, although some reports first suggested he was alive in hospital...here are some updates...The news is on all the channels..

"The front of the famous St George Hotel was devastated in the blast, with several balconies blown off. Along the Mediterranean corniche, at least 20 cars were in flames or destroyed, and the fronts of several other buildings were heavily damaged, including a British bank and the landmark Phoenicia Hotel". Scotsman

"The explosion near Beirut's Saint George Hotel set half a dozen cars ablaze and severely damaged several buildings.
The blast caused a large crater in the street, which was thickly carpeted with debris. The facades of neighboring buildings were reduced to rubble.
The explosion was heard outside Beirut and it shattered windows in buildings hundreds of meters away" Reuters

"Witnesses report nine people killed in the blast, and more than 10 injured."BBC

6pm:
over 20 cars were set on fire and 100 people were injured according to the Herald Tribune---the explosive material found seems to be high grade and advanced, according to the tv channels now--- Hariri's supporters are out in the streets and protesting in front of the American hospital ---Saida (Hariri's home town) is also witness to protests and tire burning and barricades..

7:26pm
Spokesman for a group claiming responsibility for the blast has just been screened on Al-Jazeera--they call themselves 'Jama3at al nusra waljihad fi bilad ilSham' and they claim that Hariri's connections to Saudia Arabia were reason for the attack and that this is the first of many such attacks to come. ---Their attack was in response to the Saudi Security forces attacks on militants apparently---commentators are doubtful that an unknown group could have carried out such a large and delicate operation on their own..

The Day After

The streets are empty, shops closed for the three day strike after the murder of at least 14 people along with Hariri...a huge crater marks the spot where murderous hands set a bomb that they can somehow find space in their minds to justify...I hope I never know how they can do that...posters of Hariri are on every shop window, hanging from every balcony, plastered on every car...most people pass through the streets in black, others are sitting in groups too stunned to talk, or else weeping and saying that the 'father of all the poor is dead'...these are the scenes on our televisions here in Kuwait...and all over the Arab world...his sons are receiving thousands of mourners...his son saying that 'there is no grief here, Rafik Al-Hariri is with us..I don't want to see any crying in this house'...crowds of people come out in spontaneous rallies shouting their support for Hariri and his son Baha' ilDeen who it seems they hope will take his place...grown men and women are shown weeping as they speak about how 'the hope of the nation' has died..how he had helped people in need, how he had rebuilt Beirut...the people who died with him had children and families and lives greater than the aims of criminals who use death as a tool in their selfish political games... Candles filled the empty streets in the silence of last night..and white flowers were taken by hundreds of young people to be laid at the spot of the assassination...many flowers were given to the guards at the site who wouldn't let anyone near the crater..

Wednesday 16th, The Funeral

The streets are full, just full of people following the body of former PM Hariri's funeral procession---lebanese flags in the hundreds are carried by the people---many in tears---hundreds of thousands of people---Huge posters of him are carried above the crowds---the Church officials have asked that all the church bells in the city are to ring at the same time today in his memory. That is something that is rarely done..let alone for a Sunni Muslim---a man who was human, both good, active and controversial, imperfect as is everyone... has now been catapulted to semi-sainthood in death...may he and those who died with him rest in peace .

About Hariri:
The Hariri Foundation
Profile on Al-Jazeera
BBC Obituary
Solidere

Quotes:
RIME ALLAF, MIDDLE EAST ANALYST AT LONDON'S ROYAL INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS:
"This is the work of an intelligence service, not a small group. Whoever did it aimed at creating chaos in Lebanon and pointing the finger at Syria. I can't believe anyone in Syria could be naive enough to think that this would help them." Reuters

Background info:
Chronology of assassinations in Lebanon---Documentaries and films about lebanon at Arab Film Distribution---Books: Pity the Nation, Beirut Blues, Beirut City Center Recovery: The Foch-Allenby and Etoile Conservation Area, Transit Beirut, Hizbullah: The Story from Within ...

Goodwill work in Lebanon:

SOS Children's Villages---Handicap International---Children's Cancer Center Lebanon---Save the Children...

The holiday is coming to an end...can't wait for the next one coming right up...it can't be healthy to be so spoiled in February...March is suddenly like a Monday morning (I use the western version of the first day of the week because here it's Saturday for half the people, Sunday for another bunch and no day at all for people who don't even bother to show up for work, so the Monday is easier..) Maybe it's because I have reached the point of disillusionment with my job that I worry about being given so much time off from it...waking up for the 40 minute commute is beginning to really get painful...During the honeymoon phase, I loved the commute, I even prepared all the books on tape I could find around the house...Traumatized a lot of folks who got into the car and turned it on only to have the speakers blare out the scene where Raskalnikov murders everyone in a very annoying reading of Crime and Punishment...But yeah in the first days of a new job..where you are loving your co-workers (still love them to bits, very lucky) and loving the challenges and the fresh flavor of work, everything is fun...at this point however, when the bureaucratic forces of the corrupt system have sunk their claws in so deep that even your own optimism, your 'let's just do our best anyway, let's show 'em' attitude has become another dusty relic you left somewhere you don't even remember...It seems that the system is there to make sure that things do not go forward..and the desires of those on top will be carried out without any input from those, like us, who have actually been hired to steer and direct the movement of the now landlocked ship of fools we seem to have joined...I am smarting from the bitterness yes..I guess I am annoyed that they have even managed to suck the last drops of hope I had in somehow finding a place that wasn't entirely corrupt...I would have been happy with just 90% corrupt, at least we could have had wiggle room and something good might have come of it..
well that's my good morning to the last day of the looong weekend.

The Progressive has an article by the professor, historian and social activist Howard Zinn. Here's a little of what he has to say...which I just thought I would put down here because it seems to deal with the same issues that are confronting people here these days...As we ask ourselves why the militants are the way they are and how we can change their kind of thinking..and as we deal with the bigger question of how to change a society like ours and a world that have mixed up the labels of freedom and justice and right and real with everything that isn't any of those things...

"What does it take to bring a turnaround in social consciousness[....] We desperately want an answer, because we know that the future of the human race depends on a radical change in social consciousness.
It seems to me that we need not engage in some fancy psychological experiment to learn the answer, but rather to look at ourselves and to talk to our friends. We then see, though it is unsettling, that we were not born critical of existing society. There was a moment in our lives (or a month, or a year) when certain facts appeared before us, startled us, and then caused us to question beliefs that were strongly fixed in our consciousness--embedded there by years of family prejudices, orthodox schooling, imbibing of newspapers, radio, and television.
This would seem to lead to a simple conclusion: that we all have an enormous responsibility to bring to the attention of others information they do not have, which has the potential of causing them to rethink long-held ideas. It is so simple a thought that it is easily overlooked as we search, desperate in the face of war and apparently immovable power in ruthless hands, for some magical formula, some secret strategy to bring peace and justice to the land and to the world." Changing Minds, One at a Time

Each type of person has a moment like this i suppose...there was a moment when someone who wants to grow a mile long beard, wear a mini length dishdasha and accessorize with a kalashnikov decided that would be what he was about...but anyway..the point of this quote is that those whose consciousness turned them towards peace, fairness, social justice and compassion, should probably search for that inspiration that transformed them and start spreading it in the beautiful ways that they can...and with the same tirelessness exhibited by those who want to close people's minds, who want fear and fighting and stupidity to be what the world is all about ...

News

As expected, the states that pledged all that money to help the poor victims of the Tsunami disaster have ...(can you guess?) ...yup, have failed to pay up to two thirds of the promised amounts...Its been over a month...aid groups and suffering people are waiting to be helped..Oxfam says that the pledges that the public made (that is the real people of the planet) were immediately fulfilled...and the states/governments/countries (the ones who hold all the real people's tax money, oil money, whatever money) are not paying up...some even played with their books...did a little Enron accounting 101... so that they would sound like they were going to give more than they actually intended to give..PR accounting methods..read more in The Guardian, MSNBC, Scotsman..

So since it's us who end up keeping our promises...if members of the public are still loking for places they can donate money, or volunteer or just get an update look at Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, Oxfam, and don't forget to spread the word, complain, make a fuss to get your countries to pay up!

ETA has bombed Madrid, injuring 15

Kuwait News
Kuwaiti newspapers are being threatened with closure if they print any details about the investigations into militants---Questions about the effect of long-term clashes with militants on the economy are being raised---Amer Khlaif al-Enezi has allegedly died of a heart attack in police custody, what will this mean?---

News Bag of oddities:
Channel 4, UK is planning a show called 'The Guantanamo Guidebook' , which will be a reality show based on the torture instructions and reports that have come out of Guantanamo...it will take 7 men and see what the effect of mild torture would be on them--- Female soldiers mud wrestled in their undies, with the guys cheering them on..in an Iraqi prison camp...what will they get up to next?---

In the Press:
A moving article from Thursday's Al-Qabas by Ahmad Essa "Terrorism in Kuwait...We are all Responsible"...he includes a saddening comparison between both the shaheed Hamab Al-Ayoubi and the militant Sami Al-Mutairi..both of whom he knew...In the same edition is an interview with the lawyer Hamad Al-Essa titled "The Government is Reaping what it has Sown"

Weird last pages in the Rai Al'3am yasterday and today, about a girl who was prostituted by her father for starters and then went onto complicated life in prisons and brothels and is now saying she has 'repented' and wants someone to mary her to 'yastir 3alayha'..

The Guardian has an interactive guide that takes you through the Iraqi elections...simplifies the process for anyone who is curious.

Fish lovers, here is a list of the best and worst fish to eat based on ecological standards---

• 5,000 people went out into the street in Morocco to support (yes you read that correctly, support) an article saying the Tsunami was 'divine retribution'...because remember guys, God must think that poor villagers and children are evil; just because we can't accept natural disasters and the human error of not warning people.
• In the UAE, a worker who had not been paid for 5 months killed himself. He had borrowed thousands to be able to get to work in the Emirites. 350 co-workers protested their wages not being paid by the same company (why dont the press name the company?? it should be shamed) Story must sound very familiar to many people here.
• A Swedish police officer robbed a bank, only to come back and lead the investigation of it...the investigation included raiding a home and arresting two people for the crime...then he went and suspiciously bought a new car with the money he stole...at which point do you think he should have stopped and said "wait this is going too far"...?

And Head for the Hills:

"Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey believe that the rise in sea levels around the world caused by the melting may have been under-estimated."(BBC)

"Temperatures around the world could rise by as much as 11C, according to one of the largest climate prediction projects ever run"(BBC)

"a massive Antarctic ice sheet previously assumed to be stable may be starting to disintegrate, a conference on climate change heard yesterday. Its collapse would raise sea levels around the earth by more than 16 feet."(Independent)

"LOWLAND areas of Britain, including London, will need to build new sea defences or they will be swamped in the not-too-distant future by sea levels 15ft higher than they are today, according to new research." (Times)

So what can we do?

Earthaction has some suggestions, so does the WWF..it's not that hard really.

CO2 is the main gas responsible for climate change.: so we need to help save the Rainforest and forests in general. We can do that here, here and here (Sting fans alert) and if you're really lazy here too with just a click---We need to decide to drive more efficient cars, or find an alternative---be energy efficient, now that's super easy---minimise or eliminate consumption of polluting things that we throw away..

The BBC has a few tips:

1. Don't waste electricity

2. Turn the lights off when you leave a room
3. Buy products with less packagingLess packaging means less waste.
4. Don't run the tap when you brush your teeth

5. Have a shower instead of a bath Showering can use two to three times less water than having a bath.
6. Don't leave TVs and hi-fis on stand-by Leaving things on stand-by uses large amounts of energy unnecessarily.
7. Stop getting junk mail...tell the bank that u do online banking only.
8. Wherever possible walk, cycle or use public transport
9. Don't drive a 4X4 Driving a small petrol car instead of a 4X4 could make the same environmental saving as a whole family recycling bottles for 400 years!
10. Recycle. Recycling just one plastic bottle would save enough energy to light a 100 watt bulb for up to six hours. (BBC)

Militant group puts out a statement of war...

"A website statement posted Tuesday in the name of a previously unknown militant group promised to carry on its fight against the Kuwaiti government and the United States despite the arrest of a Kuwaiti Islamic militant during fierce clashes with Kuwaiti police....

..."Don't think even the thought that we are finished following the arrest of Sheik Amer Khlaif al-Enezi, God grant him freedom. We have only began," the group said, addressing Kuwaiti state security. "God willing, the raids will include you. You will regret it, you pigs of Al Sabah (ruling family in Kuwait), you servants of the Americans."

The statement appealed to Kuwaitis to stay away from places where "infidel soldiers" congregate. Kuwait is a close ally of the United States and has been battling Islamic extremists who oppose the presence of American troops in the country.

"God knows we didn't come to fight you or terrorize you, but to fight the infidel soldiers who are occupying your land," the statement said..."(canadaeast)

---------

So, they are waging a war..is it a last gasp, or is it the first bellowing battle howl...we have yet to see I guess..

All the while, we will continue to be shown bloody corpses captioned with things like "dogs of hell" or 'rot in hell" ..and will it ever end?... one side being just as convinced as the other of the angels that flutter about it..

And we will continue to wonder if the sound on the street outside is something to fear, or whether we should worry about being in shopping centers and restaurants, getting on with our lives..or whether we should just be worried about how savage we will get the more things happen...

They have nothing against us? They didn't come to fight us?? Too bad we happen to live where they want to wage their little (un)holy war, where they end up as mangled martyrs for their other converts to salivate over...imagining they were covered in stars and blessings like figures of made up fairytales.

How sadly and unimpressively human they looked in the bloodied sweat suits and their 2kd Addidas rip offs, with their eyes half open as though still looking for something. Of course those who follow them will think there is something peaceful and serene in those dead stares and their enemies will continue to rage and spit as though those bodies had belonged only to labels like 'evil' and 'dog' and 'terrorist', and will we get anywhere?

What they do is criminal, what they think is twisted, their war is futile and misguided...they have had wrongs and lies and distortions piled so heavy on their fragile limited brains that they see nothing else...and perhaps what we think from our perches on the internet or in our homes is also not quite exact...because after all, when has there ever been one side explaining anything to the other? Will we ever get to that?

So good luck civilians, hope we manage to keep our humanity and keep asking questions. Maybe that way those we disagree with will learn to ask them too and not be so easy to tie by the nose and lead to slaughter...

Sunday's Events:
"THE family of a Bahraini student killed when he was caught in the crossfire as police battled terrorists in Kuwait told last night of their agonising grief. Bahrain University student Mahmood Abdulaziz Abdulla, 20, from East Riffa, will be buried this morning in Hoora cemetery...
...It is understood he was caught in the crossfire as he was looking out of the window when police cornered the militants"
Which is probably why you probably shouldn't corner militants by shooting at a residential apartment complex from the floor, and you don't evacuate innocent people before you do it.

Monday's:

"A passer-by was also killed in the incident. The shootout will forever be etched on the mind of M. M. Abdul Qadir who lives on the same street as the militants, for his lucky escape. He was returning from a diwaniya and has just got in front of his house when the shooting started....

...At the same time 2 shots hit the window of a room on the ground floor of House No. 14 where a maid was sleeping. Two other shots hit the house. The startled maid ran upstairs and woke up her sponsor Y. Mansour, who immediately called 777 and told them about the shooting and the sound from a car accident. He was told an operation was underway in the area and it will soon be over. Mansour said he went back to bed(!), woke up later and saw the Camarro with a bullet hole in the windscreen and a damaged Mitsubishi car parked in front of his house."


The degree to which the news is unimportant is expressed by how many news articles just copy the same headline and content off each other, they don't bother to get info themselves. Or they just don't have enough info to work with..
The headline on over 20 news copies around the world is:
Kuwaiti Police Arrest Reputed Terror Boss