Signs of the Times in Doha, Qatar
There are a whole series of these signs, carefully placed at eye-level at most stoplights. Here are two; it takes me a while to get in the right position at the right time and to have my camera ready, but I am learning to always have my camera ready:
May God richly bless my husband for his patience; I am always calling out “Can you pull over so I can get a picture of that sign?” In Arabic, this one says “Bunshury al Rodoa”
I speak some Arabic, not a lot, like I can’t discuss politics with you, or anything complex, but I know shapes and colors and directions, and it all comes in handy. I took this sign because my favorite color is purple, and it is a very hard name to remember, when you are looking for something specific that is purple. 🙂
And see if you can guess why this is my very favorite photo of all 😉
The Appeal by John Grisham
One of the things I like about John Grisham is that he really likes the underdog. In his books, the person often the least likely to prevail does so, usually because he has a smart attorney, one who is paying attention and taking good care of the client. Warning – this book review contains a spoiler, so don’t go any further if you don’t want to know too much about the plot and resolution.
The Appeal is the exception. No one wins, not even the apparent winner, who sails off in the end with his empty, unsatisfying life. He schemes, he exploits, he lies, he buys elections, and he makes a fortune – and he isn’t satisfied. He is married to a woman who sounds more like a greyhound, all skin and bones and self-absorption.
The subject matter is a case where a chemical company has dumped toxic wastes into the ground in Mississippi, it has penetrated into the groundwater, and polluted the entire water system of a small fictional town. Two lawyers, married to one another, sacrifice everything and face bankruptcy to win a case for their client who has lost both husband and son to cancer caused by the toxic chemicals dumped. They win.
There is an appeal.
What this book is about isn’t just about groundwater contamination, or even about buying elections in Mississippi – it is an indictment of every state that elects judges. The core of the novel is about how big money, big corporations, pick candidates and fund them, legally and illegally, and insure that they win. They pack the courts with judges who are opposed to large settlements.
God bless John Grisham. With all his great legal thrillers, he has made a bundle and can take risks like writing a book like The Appeal, which should be an eye opener, and should be read by every caring citizen.
Judges should not be elected. When the judiciary are elected, they have to think about their next election, with every legal decision. It taints objectivity. It corrupts objectivity. It eliminates objectivity. Without an objective judiciary – why bother? They will always rule on the side whose interests are the most powerful and profitable.
Here are a couple quotes that tell you where the novel is going. My Kuwaiti friends are going to love this – I have taken so many shots at Kuwait corruption – so here it is, my friends, exposure of the institutionalized corruption in my country:
Barry laughed and crossed his legs. “We do campaigns. Have a look.” He picked up a remote and pushed the button, and a large white screen dropped from the ceiling and covered most of the wall, then the entire nation appeared. Most of the states were in green, the rest were in a soft yellow. “Thirty-one states are in the green. The yellow ones have the good sense to appoint their courts. We make our living in the green ones.”
“Judicial elections.”
“Yes. That’s all we do, and we do it very quietly. When our clients need help, we target a supreme court justice who is not particularly friendly, and we take him, or her, out of the picture.”
“Just like that.”
“Just like that.”
“Who are your clients?”
“I can’t give you the names, but they’re all on your side of the street. Big companies in energy, insurance, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, timber, all types of manufacturers, plus doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, banks. We raise tons of money and hire the people on the ground to run aggressive campaigns.”
* * * * * * * *
The Senator did not know who owned the jet, not had he ever met Mr. Trudeau, which in most cultures would seem odd since Rudd had taken so much money from the man. But in Washington, money arrives through a myriad of strange and nebulous conduits. Often those taking it have only a vague idea of where it’s coming from; often they have no clue. In most democracies, the transference of so much cash would be considered outright corruption, but in Washington the corruption has been legalized. Senator Rudd didn’t know and didn’t care that he was owned by other people. He had over $11 million in the bank, money he could eventually keep if not forced to waste it on some frivolous campaign. In return for such an investment, Rudd had a perfect voting record on all matters dealing with pharmaceuticals, chemicals, oil, energy, insurance, banks and on and on.
I like almost every book I read by John Grisham. He is a man with a conscience, and he is trying to raise our awareness of corruptive factors before our system goes entirely under. I couldn’t put this book down, and I can hardly wait to read the next one.
Serious About Traffic Regulation in Doha, Qatar
We were all at dinner, having a wonderful time when the traffic issue came up.
“There’s so much traffic now!” they were all saying.
To me, traffic in Doha is pretty tame. It’s been six years since we were here for the first time, and Doha was still “sleepy little Doha.” We took photos of the changing skyline almost monthly from the spit where the Bandar restaurants used to be (one day they just disappeared!) and gasped at how fast Doha was changing.
There are a lot of changes. Traffic on the ring roads has been greatly streamlined, although it seems they continue to engineer D ring, over and over again. I just hope one day they will get it right and it will be open, all the way from the road to the north to the airport.
There are traffic lights at the roundabouts, and the traffic flows so smoothly I am astounded. There is still a lot of traffic around the seven to nine at night shopping/dining/visiting time, but the traffic lights have regulated the formerly death-defying roundabouts.
“Go! Go!” I told AdventureMan as the light started flashing green, and he just looked at me as if I had grown a second head.
“Flashing green means STOP!” he informed me.
“Flashing YELLOW means stop,” I informed him right back.
“Not in Qatar,” he said with the tone of voice that says ‘don’t argue this point with me.’
At dinner I learned he was absolutely right. If you enter a traffic circle on a flashing green and the light changes, the cameras – they are everywhere – will take your photo. They will take your photo and you will have a fine, a whopper of a fine, QR6,0000. That translates to around $1,700 in US Dollars. Gasp. And – here’s the cruncher – it is ENFORCED.
There was a time when I lived in Qatar before when the huge SUV behind me pushed me into the roundabout when I wasn’t moving fast enough for him. You still see the cowboys drive up on the sidewalks to cut across an empty field, but there are fewer and fewer of those empty fields left in Qatar. There is none of the speeding and weaving along the ring roads we used to see – there are cameras EVERYWHERE. People get fines for waiting at the airport doors, instead of parking. People get significant fines for going even 10 km over the speed limit. Points are assessed for moving violations, and they add up fast.
I’m going to have to improve my driving skills. I developed some aggressive habits, driving in Kuwait, and I am going to have to tone it down to survive the cameras in Qatar.
I am very interested to see how rapidly behavior can change when penalties are enforced. I am truly (and happily) shocked an how effective it can be. I await with great interest the year-end statistics, to see how the accident rate has been brought down – I bet we all get a very good surprise.
Selling My Car
I have a darling little car, I bought it in Doha six years ago. Aye, there’s the rub. While the company agreed to ship the car for us, Qatar won’t accept a car older than 5 years old. My sweet car has less than 40K km on it, has been lovingly maintained, and I totally love it – I was outraged at Qatar. But being outraged at a bureaucracy is a loser’s game, it isn’t going to change, the rules aren’t going to be excepted for me. So I had to sell the car.
I looked up the blue book price, and I knew my car was better than that, but these are hard times for selling a used car. I just put it out word-of-mouth, and within a week, I had my buyer.
She came. She sat in the car. She said “I will take it.”
I said “but you haven’t even driven it!”
She said “I can look at you, and look at this car, and I know it is a good car.”
We talked about a price. We agreed to a price a little higher than the blue book price, a little lower than I wanted. We were both happy.
She paid me in cash.
When we went to transfer title – this is Kuwait – the administrative section was closed! It wasn’t supposed to be closed! The area was full of Kuwaitis, Jordanians, people like us, wanting to transfer title. Fortunately, the woman knew another administration place nearby, so we went there, and after the normal finagling, the title transferred and all was completed.
We really wanted this woman to have the car. It has so many good years left on it, and this is a good woman.
AdventureMan laughs at how quietly all the decisions were made, all the negotiations done. The day after we sold the car, we got an SMS from the buyer saying how happy she was, and asking God to bless us richly. We feel already blessed, having sold the car to a fine woman.
Investment in Africa
This was in the morning’s e-mail. Unlike the e-mails I post inviting me to get lots and lots of free money, this one seems to have some interesting information. Here is one excerpt from their opening page, The Conversation Behind Closed Doors:
To make itself more attractive for US investment, Africa should:
Invest in education , health and infrastructure
Ensure the rule of law and a business-friendly climate for all investing companies
Show it is serious about attracting foreign investment
Market itself as aggressively as other regions of the world
Demonstrate opportunity cost of not investing
I would have to say there is nothing I disagree with there. I have not explored the whole site, but it looks legitimate, and interesting, if you, like me, are interested in Africa, and future solutions.
Hi
I’m reaching out to you because I thought you and the readers of here there and Everywhere would be fascinated by what my firm has recently uncovered about the attitudes toward corporate investment in Africa among leading U.S. corporations — according to senior officers of 30 American Fortune 100 corporations we interviewed. Why has Africa not attracted more interest from the U.S. business community? We have collected all of the answers and case studies into a news release introducing a study that launched yesterday commissioned by the US Chamber of Commerce:
http://www.usafricainvestment.com
We’re very excited about the revelations in this paper and would love it if you could let your readers know about what we’ve uncovered through a post or a tweet. If you are able to post please let me know so that I can share it with the team. If you have any questions or would like to speak to the partners who wrote this paper, let me know and I will set it up.
Thank you so much,
Fabiane
—
Fabiane Dal-Ri
fabiane@usafricainvestment.com
Eliot Pattison: Prayer of the Dragon
As you can see, I am into some serious reading. Not heavy reading, but books like carrots – I am the donkey, plodding way, packing my boxes, sorting, weeding, throwing out – it is time consuming, and it is pitiless work. I need the promise of a great excape at the end of my day to keep me going.
Prayer of the Dragon was a GREAT carrot. I like all of Eliot Pattison’s Inspector Shan Tao Yun series, set in Tibet. In his very first book, we meet Shan as he is still in the Tibetan prison camp, imprisoned for exposing corrupt officials in China. He learns a huge appreciation, in prison, for a different way of thinking, and his treasured companions become the Bhuddist monks with whom he is imprisoned. If you want to read this series, you can read any book as a stand-alone, but it helps to read them in order, starting with The Skull Mantra. The Chinese eventually free Shan; they find him useful – as long as he is not exposing corruption in the Chinese bureaucracy. He is free on parole; he lives with the sword over his head. At any time, if he crosses an important person, he can be sent back to the merciless gulag.
In The Prayer of the Dragon Inspector Shan finds himself involved in a series of murders on the mountainside, in a small mining village. The village headman has a great scam going, skimming the miners take, charging passage on the mountain trails, and keeping his village hidden from the Chinese bureaucracy.
Here is what I learned that surprised me. There appears to be a connection between the American Navaho nation and the native Tibetans. They share some body-prototype similarities, and they share many symbols and earliest legends. An first-nation Navaho and his niece are exploring similarities, and commonalities, when two members of their party are murdered while sleeping. The Navaho is charged, by the headman, with the death, because he survived although he is covered in blood. It doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t have to. The headman needs a scapegoat, and he chooses the Navaho.
It is a fascinating read. Here is an excerpt from a conversation Inspector Shan has with the local director of Public Security:
“I know your type so well, Shan, ” Bing said. “God, how well I know you. I was responsible for ten barracks of prisoners, like you – pathetic, morose creatures with no vision, only bitterness about the past. They would sit in reeducation classes and copy out slogans from the little red books like robots, praising the Chairman, reading aloud apologies printed in other books, using someone else’s words. Never a one among them with the balls to stand up and say Fuck the Chairman, screw the Party secretaries, and screw the limo drivers who brought them to town.”
“I tried at first,” Shan replied in a weary voice. “They sent me to a special hospital for the criminally insane.”
“Unfortunately,” Bing said soberly, “you are the sanest person I have ever met.”
AdventureMan knows I love these books. “Do you want to go to Tibet?” he asks me, and I say “No, if I went I would want to hang around with Inspector Shan and his gang of monks, not do tourist things allowed by the Chinese.” These are great reads, Pattison is doing a great job of bringing the plight of the Tibetans to the conscience of his readers, depicting, in graphic, horrorific detail how the Chinese are systematically crushing and obliterating every shred of Tibetan culture, while claiming they are not. I think one of the very worst things they have done is taking over the Tibetan monastery system and corrupting it into something it was never meant to be, a cruel, ugly deformity.
I can hardly wait for the next book to come out. I am on the waiting list for The Lord of Death, yet another book about Chinese bureaucratic corruption and the adventures Inspector Shan has in Tibet confronting and evading all its manifestations.
Old Fashioned Piracy Goes High Tech
Thanks to blogger BitJockey, and news service Reuters for this update on the Somali pirates:
MADRID (Reuters) – Somali pirates are planning attacks on shipping using detailed information telephoned through by contacts in London, according to an intelligence report cited by Spanish radio on Monday.
The pirates have built up a network of informants in London with access to sensitive data from shipping companies about vessels, routes and cargoes, according to a European military intelligence report that Cadena Ser radio said it had seen.
The pirates receive their information by satellite phone and use sophisticated equipment to locate their targets, Cadena Ser said.
The intelligence report also said that the pirates seem to avoid attacks on ships of some nationalities, including British ships.
It listed several attacks in which the pirates had surprised crew with detailed information of their prey, including the nationalities of those on board.
Cadena Ser did not provide any more details about where the report originated, identifying it only as “European.”
Western nations have sent warships to try to stop the pirates, who have made millions of dollars from ransoming ships and their crews in strategic shipping lanes off the Horn of Africa that connect Europe to Asia.
They are currently holding about 20 vessels with nearly 300 hostages, according to monitoring groups.
Efforts to fight the pirates have been hindered by the gaps in international maritime law, which have sometimes left it unclear who, if anyone, can put them on trial.
Spanish authorities have disagreed among themselves over what to do with 14 Somalis caught last week by a Spanish warship. A judge tried to bring some of them to Spain while the government argued they should be sent to a court in Kenya.
(Reporting by Jason Webb; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Spit for Brains
From today’s Kuwait Times:
Idiot Apprehended
A drug-user was caught thanks to his own stupidity after pulling over to gawp at a traffic accident scene on the Salmi Highway. Police at the scene were suspicious of his demeanor and asked to see his ID card. on producing it, police found a piece of hashish stuck to the back. He has been referred to the relevant authorities.
I am just quoting this. I don’t make this stuff up.
But did you notice – the Kuwait Times has made a major improvement; the police suspected the idiot’s demeanor. They used to say the police “suspected” the idiot, but did not say what drew their suspicions – this is a major breakthrough. Also, red handed was only used once, and it was used very cleverly:
Prostitutes, Punters arrested
Four Asian prostitutes and three of their customers were arrested ‘red handed’ when a vice squad team raided a brothel in Hawally. The officers acted after receiving a tip-off from an informer about the goings-on in the flat. The three customers confessed to paying KD10 each for the women’s services. All have been referred to the relevant authorities.
First, wooo hoo, Kuwait Times, for the ‘goings-on’ – the crime news has seriously taken a jump in the grammatical direction. 🙂 Second – 10KD??? It occurs to me that these women could be earning a lot more doing manicures and pedicures, and have a much less dangerous life at the same time.
Prison Security Inspectors Attacked by Somali Women
I don’t know why this makes me laugh, but it does. Like if you are visiting a prison, don’t you just take it for granted that your bags, your person may be inspected? Why would you object – unless you are trying to smuggle something in to the person you are visiting? And can’t you figure out that if you ATTACK a security person, you are likely to get arrested? I don’t know why, I guess that life throws you curves and this is a situation that jumped from zero to 100 on the intensity scale in a very short time. You have to wonder – well, I have to wonder – what the participants were thinking?
Staff Writer
Al Watan
Kuwait: Security authorities in the Central Prison arrested two Somali women after they assaulted four female Kuwaiti inspectors and refused to submit to search while they were passing through Gate B in the prison.
The incident started when one of the female inspectors asked the two Somali women to submit to search procedures. However, the two women refused and attacked the inspector. Although the other female inspectors tried to save their colleague, they were also assaulted by the two Somali women. The prison authorities interfered and arrested the two women. The injured inspectors were taken to hospital to receive medical services, in addition to issuing a medical report that described their injuries.
William Dalrymple: The Age of Kali
Having read and loved In Xanadu: A Quest by William Dalrymple, and having received recommendations by friends who say they read ALL of William Dalrymple, I started on this second book, The Age of Kali. I didn’t like it, not one bit. I am proud to say I read it all the way to the end, because often if I don’t like a book, I will say to myself “I don’t need this!” and toss it, but I didn’t, I stuck with it. I am proud because it isn’t easy to stick with a book you don’t like, and I didn’t like this book.
In Xanadu, Dalrymple was wryly funny, hilariously funny, and most of the humor was directed at himself. In The Age of Kali, there is nothing funny.
The Age of Kali is a series of interviews and adventures in India and Pakistan. The author did these interviews and took notes (some are published in slightly different forms as magazine articles) over a period of ten years and then strung them all together to form this book. There is little or no linkage from one to the other. They are grouped geographically.
Here is what I like and admire – this man achieves the most amazing interviews, many times just by asking the right person at the right time. He insinuates himself, asks easy questions, and then sticks in a hard question. He doesn’t seem to flinch from putting himself in danger, and he doesn’t stand on respect when asking his questions. I admire that he went difficult places, interviewed difficult people, and wrote the interviews up without fawning over the celebrity status of his interviewee.
What I don’t like is that he doesn’t seem to like anybody very much. There are no funny anecdotes. By the end of the first interview, I began to get an impression that he doesn’t like India very much (and I believe that is NOT true, as he lives part-time in Delhi) and that India is not a place I want to visit. He interviews corrupt politicians, descendants of the moghuls, Benazir Bhutto – and her mother, Imran Khan (the cricket player) and many others. In each and every interview, he maintains a distance that tells us he doesn’t like these characters very much.
Here are some quotes from early in the book:
These days Bihar was much more famous for its violence, corruption and endemic caste-warfare. Indeed, things were now so bad that the criminals and the politicians of the state were said to be virtually interchangeable: no fewer than thirty-three of Bihar’s State Assembly MLAs had criminal records, and a figure like Dular Chand Yadav, who had a hundred cases of dacoity and fifty murder cases pending against him, could also be addressed as the Honorable Member for Barth.
As he interviews Bihar politician Laloo Prasad Yadav:
I asked Laloo about his childhood. He proved only too willing to talk about it. He lolled back against the side of the plane, his legs stretched over two seats.
‘My father was a small farmer,’ he began, scratching his balls with the unembarrassed thoroughness of a true yokel.
OK, that was funny. I had to read it aloud to AdventureMan. One of the things that still unnerves me living here is that the men are always touching themselves – something so totally forbidden in my culture as to be simply unthinkable.
In his section about Pakistan:
These people – the Pathans – have never been conquered, at least not since the time of Alexander the Great. They have seen off centuries of invaders – Persians, Arabs, Turks, Moghuls, Sikhs, British, Russians – and they retain the mixture of arrogance and suspicion that this history has produced in their character. History has also left them with a curious political status. Although most Pathans are technically within Pakistan, the writ of Pakistan law does not carry in to the heartland of their territories.
These segregated areas are in effect private tribal states, out of the control of the Pakistan government. They are an inheritance from the days of the Raj: the British were quite happy to let the Pathans act as a buffer zone on the edge of the Empire, and they did not try to extend their authority in to the hills. Where the British led, the modern Pakistani authorities have followed. Beyond the checkpoints on the edge of the Peshawar, tribal law – based on the institutions of the tribal council and the blood feud – rules unchallenged and unchanged since its origins long before the birth of Christ.
When I read this, I think of recent headlines about the problems Pakistan is having maintaining order, fighting the status of “failed-nation”, and the chaotic administration of tribal “justice.” The old ways have endured – but as we learned in Three Cups of Tea, there are villages where villagers are eager to have modern schools, eager to educate their daughters, and they, too, are victims of the fanatics who burn the schools and throw acid on women attending school.
The author is told, time and time again by Indian citizens, that India has entered The Age of Kali, “the lowest possible throw, an epoch of strife, corruption, darkness and disintegration.” The book reflects the darkness, corruption and disintegration the author found. I only wish there were some moments of relief, of lightness, hope or humor to encourage the reader on his/her way, but the documentation of this lowest throw was relentless.
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