Correction
Stating that the incident never happened because it was not reported to them does not mean it did not happen. An eight year old girl does not make up a rape; she doesn’t have the vocabulary, she doesn’t have the experience to create a lie like that.
“No one brought it to our notice” does not mean it didn’t happen.
Indian School denies girl raped by the school bus driver
KUWAIT CITY : An official at an Indian School in Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh on Monday rubbished claims that a girl student from the school was raped last week by the school bus driver.
Reliable sources had earlier told the Arab Times that an eight-year-old student from the school was raped by the school bus driver, who reportedly charmed the girl with sweet talk and took her to his apartment in Jleeb Al-Shyoukh where he raped her.
The girl, who hails from Kerala, reported the incident to her parents after they quizzed her as to why she was late in getting home from school.
Reacting to the reports the school official added: “I can confirm that no such incident happened in our school as no one brought it to our notice.”
The official further added: “We always encourage parents of students to use the school transportation. However, we cannot coerce them into using our transportation. We would have taken immediate action if any such incident was reported to us. The safety of our students is our foremost concern.”
“It is possible that the parents of the victim may not have reported the incident to the school authorities as the student may have been using a private transportation,” the source said.
The source added that the outraged father of the victim reportedly beat up the accused black and blue before turning him over to the police and that the family is in a state of shock trying to come to grips with the incident.
According to the source, a case has been registered at the Jleeb Al-Shyoukh police station and investigations are in progress.
In another incident, a school boy of an Indian school in Abbassiya reportedly impregnated a fellow student and that the two were involved in a long courtship, according to a source. No further details could immediately be obtained.
By Francis A. Clifford Cardozo
Arab Times Staff
Expats Run More Red Lights
This is from today’s Kuwait Times.
KUWAIT: The Interior Ministry defended a new policy of deporting expatriates who run red lights by arguing that “the highest percentage of traffic violations are committed by expats, adding that this constitutes a hazard on the lives of motorists,” reported Al-Jarida.
The ministry in a statement said it had the legal right according to the Foreigners Residency law to deport expats for such offenses. And added that the ministry used this right as it is its administrative right according to the law. (sic)
I am blown away that they can say this with a straight face.
No Fone No Fine?
From today’s Arab Times, a dilemma for police enforcing the new no-mobile-phone-use-while-driving-law:
Mobile-user leaves cops baffled; Porn decoder seller nabbed
KUWAITI CITY : Police are reportedly confused because they don’t know what to do with an Egyptian motorist, reports Al-Watan Arabic daily.
The man was talking on a cell phone while driving and when he discovered police were chasing him, he threw out the cell phone from the car window.
When police stopped him they failed to find the cell phone. The daily added the man might have realized that he would be fined KD 50 while his phone cost KD 15 and the sim card KD 5 so he decided to get rid of the phone.
Coen and No Country for Old Men
AdventureMan and I watched No Country for Old Men last night, and oh! it held us on the edge of our chairs. At the end, we ran for the phone to call our son and ask “Whoa! What happened??”
In short, we loved the movie (and I can hardly wait to read the book, although Cormac McCarthy goes a lot darker than I care to go). The Coen brothers also go darker than I care to go, but we find ourselves drawn to their movies because there is so much thought put into them, so many references to other genres, other films, and because the characters are so true to life. We first met them in Fargo, a movie we pull out and watch again from year to year – that’s a rare movie. We love the characters, even the bad guys are so human.
It’s the same in No Country for Old Men. Set in the desolation of West Texas, there are whole minutes when you listen to the wind whistling in the desert as the hero hikes down to a drug-exchange-gone-bad.
There is a good guy, a sherif played by craggy-faced Tommy Lee Jones, and an ordinary guy who finds a whole lot of money, and we really want him to get away with it, and then there is a really really bad guy, who is also smart, and . . . well, something inside of him is just bent. He’s not right. The Coen’s have a way of making him both appalling and just a guy doing his job very well. It’s not personal, but we wish he wouldn’t enjoy inflicting harm so much.
What I love about the Coen films is that they can capture the essence of a character so sparely, with just a few words, a few lines. There is a trailer park manager who refuses to give the very very bad guy an address. You hold your breath; she could get blown away, she doesn’t know it. She holds firm. In another scene, an older woman tells a Mexican man who has just helped her “You don’t see too many Mexicans in suits.” So so so politically incorrect, and so ordinarily normal, the plain-spokeness of the elderly. The Coen’s capture the West Texas-ness which permeates the film.
This movie is worth watching again.
Warden Message and More
Fresh in the mailbox from the Embassy comes this warning:
Embassy of the United States of America
Kuwait City, Kuwait
May 4, 2008
MEMORANDUM
To: All American Wardens
From: Consular Section
Subject: Warden Notice 2008 – 9
Please circulate the following message without additions or omissions
immediately to all American citizens within your area of responsibility.
Begin text.
The Minister of Interior, Sheikh Jaber Khaled Al-Sabah, has issued a Ministerial
decree that prohibits drivers in Kuwait from using a cellular phone while
driving a vehicle. This decree (number 76/81) is intended to keep drivers in
Kuwait focused on driving and not talking on a cellular phone. This decree is
consistent with what is going on in our own country in many states that are
enacting laws prohibiting cellular phone use while driving.
This decree goes into effect on May 1, 2008. As a practical matter, drivers
should not be talking on cellular phones while driving at any time. They should
find a safe place to pull over and stop their vehicles before talking on the
cellular phone. Keep in mind this new decree is an amendment to a previous law
already in effect that includes eating or drinking while driving a vehicle an
offense in Kuwait.
You should expect some increased vigilance on the roads by police in the coming
weeks to enforce this decree. Our information from MOI is the fine for use of a
cellular phone while driving will be 15KD.
Comments: There is already a law in effect that bans eating and drinking while driving??? Who knew?
Waaaaaayyyyy back in February, a chart started circulating, said to be a fraud, that pretty accurately defined the new laws in effect 1 May. Looking at it now, I am betting it is a list of new laws that went into effect in JORDAN, and Kuwait used it as a template for changes in Kuwait. I know new traffic laws – very similar – went into effect in Syria on May 1st.
I can’t help wondering how all this came about, but most of all, for your protection and mine, I am thankful for these new laws and the commitment on the part of the government to enforce these laws equally, across the board. The statement we keep hearing is “no one is above the law.” Wooo Hooo, Kuwait!
The only funny thing is – the chart I have seen most often in Kuwait says the fine is KD 50 for driving while on a cell phone. This message says KD 15. The announcement in the paper said KD 5. If anyone out there has been charged for taking on a cell phone while driving, will you let us know what the real fine is?
Is the ban being enforced equally against all drivers? The Kuwait Times says 200 people were charged on the first day of enforcement.
Army Audits: Official Sites, Not Blogs, Breach Security
This report came out in August of 2007, on WIRED so it is not new news.
What it IS, is something for those who are considering monitoring blogs in Kuwait, to think about.
It isn’t bloggers complaining about roads, or complaining about a do-nothing-but-hold-a-grill-party Parliament, or about laws not being enforced. If bloggers are blogging and comlaining, people are grumbling. Bloggers might be considered a weather-vane, but bloggers are not creating the weather, if you catch my drift.
The US Army was blaming bloggers – until a study showed that it was their own OFFICIAL websites that gave away important information.
I used to ask AdventureMan about things and he would snap “Where did you hear that? It’s classified!” and I would tell him I read it in the New York Times – or in the Stars and Stripes.
We bloggers aren’t your problem. We bloggers are mostly geeks and nerds who love our computers, love thinking about things, and we are not out there rabble raising . . . we are sharing ideas. We don’t all agree. We are not your problem.
For years, members of the military brass have been warning that soldiers’ blogs could pose a security threat by leaking sensitive wartime information. But a series of online audits, conducted by the Army, suggests that official Defense Department websites post far more potentially-harmful than blogs do.
The audits, performed by the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell between January 2006 and January 2007, found at least 1,813 violations of operational security policy on 878 official military websites. In contrast, the 10-man, Manassas, Virginia, unit discovered 28 breaches, at most, on 594 individual blogs during the same period.
The results were obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, after the digital rights group filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act.
“It’s clear that official Army websites are the real security problem, not blogs,” said EFF staff attorney Marcia Hofmann. “Bloggers, on the whole, have been very careful and conscientious. It’s a pretty major disparity.” The findings stand in stark contrast to Army statements about the risks that blogs pose.
Rolls Royce and Lamborghini Dumped
From today’s Arab Times:
Rolls Royce and a Lamborghini dumped in a desert
Kuwait : Police found two luxurious cars — a Rolls Royce and a Lamborghini — worth KD 200,000 dumped in a desert area, reports Al-Anba daily. Reportedly, the cars were stolen from a rental office about 20 days ago. Personnel from the Criminal Evidences Department lifted fingerprints to identify the culprits.
Does anyone else find this funny? I mean funny, hahahaha, not funny strange, or weird. I mean it IS weird, it is so weird, but it makes me laugh.
In a little village in Washington State, there was a huge snowstorm a few years ago, and the roofs in the yacht club collapsed from the weight of the snow, collapsed on all those big fine yachts, and the citizens of the little village gathered and laughed. Boat moorage in their own little village had gotten so expensive, they couldn’t afford it, so these were all other people’s boats. And they just laughed.
200,000 KD worth of car in two cars. Just dumped in the desert. Seems kinda wasteful, doesn’t it?
Kuwait Elections: Vote Buying
Front page of the online Arab Times:
They’re buying votes … Do something
KUWAIT CITY : The Ministry of Interior should immediately take the necessary action to curb the widespread vote-buying in some constituencies and prevent incompetent candidates from entering the Parliament, former MPs and 2008 parliamentary election candidates told the Arab Times.
One of the smartest bloggers out there, Touche´, wrote a comment on an earlier election blog entry, and it was SO good, so memorable (this man should be writing and editing for one of the daily English papers and teaching Political Science) on vote buying and how it is implemented that I am going to reprint his comments here to illustrate how the vote buying in Kuwait is accomplished.
Let me indulge you with our rotten political trends.
This is a funny ironic melancholic TRUE story, I have a colleague at work who is “Mutawa” (fresh your old post) who belongs to “Salaf a.k.a. The Islamic Heritage Rejuvenating Society (this is my best translation) and who is has the last name of one of the tribes. Now on the last elections back on 2006 I asked him to whom did you vote, thinking that he must have voted for that group’s candidates, and the shocking news is that he said the week before elections I swore an oath with all the area followers to vote for the Islamic candidates and I quote him “When I went there to vote and tried to vote for the sworn names, the pen would go directly to those candidates who belong to my tribe, I couldn’t do it, so I voted for one of the Islamic candidates and the other vote went to our tribe’s guy”. Now I told him that you’ve sworn on the Quran!! How cold you do that? The answer was simple, “I just couldn’t, it’s in my blood, it’s something beyond your comprehension”
As for your question about votes purchasing, it starts as follows (sorry but I had to put them into steps for clarity purposes:
1. The buyer’s representative (BR) scouts the area for the right voters who are willing to sell their votes for money.
2. BR approaches the voter and persuade him/her and both agree on the price of each vote (female votes are being negotiated with the woman’s brother, father or husband)
3. Once the deal is closed, the voter has to submit his/her national ID to the BR to insure that voter hasn’t closed another deal with another candidate and the documents are held with the BR until elections day (on extreme cases, a trust worthy voter won’t submit the documents and his word is taken as it is considered stronger than oak)
4. All BRs know each other as they are basically residents of the same area and they exchange a list of those voters who sold their votes an cross examine them for duplications to prevent any frauds.
5. Now the interesting tactics, on election day, a candidate may choose not to give the national ID to the voter if the he feels that he has secured his win and thus eliminating any chances of any frauds by voter to shift his votes to opponents.
6. If the candidate needs the vote, the corresponding BR calls up the voter and walks him to the election classroom signaling another same candidate’s BR who sits in that classroom to observe the integrity of the processes, now that guy knows that the voter isn’t a supporter and has been paid based on the signal thus he keeps a hawk eye on him trying to see how many ticks were placed on the voting form and does the tick fits the area on the form where candidate’s name is printed (it’s merely an approximate observation).
P.S.
a. The timing of the purchased votes isn’t random and are chosen specifically by the candidate’s campaign and usually the purchased voted are being herded as sheep in groups either at the early morning or an hour before the closing time.
b. The paid amount is %50 before voting and the remaining %50 when the inside BR sms the voter’s delivery BR that the vote has been verified based on his observation and thus the full payment is due.
c. The vote’s price depends on the nature of the vote itself (solo/dual for the old election ways). Solos are the highest paid and the ones which BRs aim for.
d. Buying votes isn’t to insure number of votes, the key element of the whole process is to target those votes which are considered as opponents insured votes, by keeping those national ID (voting ID for this election) the candidate uses a term called “Votes Burning” where he holds back those IDs and never giving them to voters until election boxes are sealed to eliminate opponents’ insured votes.
Blogger Chirp reports being offered KD 4000 (that’s about $16,000) for her vote. Imagine the temptation! Chirp has character and integrity, and turned it down, but imagine how tempting that might be to a young person who wants education, or a new car, or to pay off debts, or who has a wedding coming up. That’s a LOT of money for just one vote; imagine the deep pockets who can afford to buy that many votes?
Parking Problem
From the Arab Times:
Kuwaiti brothers critically hurt in gang attack over parking row
KUWAIT CITY : Eight persons broke into a Kuwaiti family’s house in Salmiya and attacked three brothers with knives, machetes, sticks and similar weapons just because the brothers did not allow a female student of a nearby institute to park her car opposite their house.
The brothers were critically wounded and had to be admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of Mubarak Al-Kabeer Hospital.
Securitymen, who rushed to the scene after receiving a call from their mother, managed to arrest one of the attackers but the rest of them bolted from the scene.
A case was registered.
By Mizyed Al-Saeedi
Special to the Arab Times
People here can get pretty riled up over parking. One time, my husband and I were attending a social event, and we parked on – well, it looked like a public street to us, and public streets, unless they have numbered, private parking, you are allowed to park on public streets because you are the public. That’s what we thought anyway.
When we came out, we had cars literally blocking us, forward and rear, from getting out. My husband approached the owner of the house in front of whom we were parked, who was around the corner in his diwaniyya (on the public sidewalk) and when my husband said he was sorry, the man said he could put his “assif” (sorry) in his pocket!
Not one to give up easily, AdventureMan schmoozed for a while. The man said he would have his driver take me home, and AM asked him if he would put HIS wife in a car with a strange driver. That got an appreciative grin. Long story short, finally he allowed us to leave. He had some legitimate gripes – the facility where we had attended the performance has people who block his parking access to his house all the time.
My husband visited him again the next day with a parcel of dates to express his appreciation for the guy having let us go, and visited the facility and helped arrange to insure that people would not park in front of this guy’s house again. He and the man became – well, not friends, but cordial acquaintances.
I’ve always been glad AM handled it in a gentlemanly fashion. Imagine, breaking in and stabbing people over a parking spot!
Recent Comments
intlxpatr on British Soldier Kidnapped, Esc… John on British Soldier Kidnapped, Esc… intlxpatr on British Soldier Kidnapped, Esc… John Smith on British Soldier Kidnapped, Esc… tigerbutterya0c5ff1d… on “Who Would Do Such a… Wikipedia Donate Button
Amazina
Early Voting in Florida
Here There and Everywhere 