Panhandle Politicians
One of the things I liked best about living in Kuwait was the lively press. When the press has freedom – and freedom is always relative – people have to be more careful about what they do. Here, on a daily basis, the Pensacola News Journal has a crime section where they run crime news AND they list the daily felony arrests – who, what and where. I love it that they name names.
When I opened the paper this week, I thought I was back in Kuwait. There is a race for an open seat in the House of Representatives, and one candidate has just been arrested for trafficking drugs. Another candidate and his wife were videotaped sneaking out and stealing their opponent’s campaign signs. LLLOOOLLL. This is hilarious:
People think there are such huge differences between our countries. . . and yet we breed the same politicians, the religious fundamentalists, the ‘get-rich-quicks-by-lining-my-pockets’ kind of guys, the developers . . . it’s almost as if when you run for office, there has to be something wrong with you. It’s a sad day for democracy when these are our candidates. What a difference technology is making – it can help keep us honest.
The Devil’s Queen by Jeanne Kalogridis
“I need an ESCAPE!” I shouted to AdventureMan, at the end of my rope. So many things going on in my life that are out of my control, I just don’t want to deal with it any more, and I just want to run away and hide. “I’m going out to buy a BOOK!”
I found just the book, The Devil’s Queen by Jeanne Kalogridis.
I don’t know much about the late 1500’s in Europe, do you? At first, reading about this rich, spoiled little girl growing up in Florence, I felt a little impatient with her. All around her people are starving, and she hasn’t a clue. The plague strikes, and people are dying, but she survives. She starves, she suffers cold and fleas and is tossed by fate like a little cork on the water – all before she is 12 years old. Catherine de Medici learns early in life that she has no control over the forces of history and society swirling around her, over who she will love and who she will marry, even over whether she lives or dies. Surviving an attack on her family compound, held prisoner – alone – in nunneries until she is 12 years old – this girl’s life makes mine look peaceable!
I’m feeling better already.
Kalogridis is no Phillipa Gregory, but she has done her research, and draws us in. By the time Pope Clement betrothes Catherine to Henri of France, we are totally hooked. Thirteen years old, and off to live in a strange country as the bride of a man she has never met. She studies French as quickly as possible, but then again – this is a very bright young woman, who has been trained – by life and by education – to survive.
One of the paragraphs made me laugh out loud – as Catherine enters France, she is aware that her very fashionable Italian clothing is very unfashionable in France. She also notes that all the French women are painfully thin, thin to the point of gauntness, and are whispering behind their hands at her more normal size.
Lack of thinness is the least of her problems. She marries Henri, who is also 14, scared, and not in love with her, and they are expected to consummate their marriage under the eye of the King. Oh aargh! Catherine is on a steep learning curve, mastering French culture, diplomacy, the art of war, court politics and fighting the threat of repudiation the only way she can – with utter humility.
What I like the most about this book is that I feel like I was there with her. She is very human, and also very royal. People who are royal have different ideas than the rest of us, and are entitled in ways we can never imagine. They have obligations we can’t imagine. She makes choices I would never make, and yet the author convinced me that given her circumstances, she does the best she can with the resources at hand.
I also like it that Catherine of Medici was a brilliant and educated woman who held her own in a world where the balance was definitely in favor of being a man, and women were greatly at a disadvantage. While she made some horrifying choices, she had her reasons. This is not a book for the faint hearted; it is very earthy and it feels like an accurate portrayal of the times.
As I read these books, I think, too, how little we appreciate how free women are these days, and how recent that freedom is. Being able to choose our own mates – this is very recent. Being able to inherit and to manage our own money – this is very recent. As I talk with my friends who live in the Arabian Gulf, where marriages can still be based on family alliances, maintaining wealth and power, and where divorce can still equal personal disaster, it no longer seems so alien to me – we have this in our own history. We used to marry by contract, and our husbands had full use of our wealth. We used to be judged by whether we could bear children, how many, how many were sons, and how well we managed our households. We used to die in childbirth, and many of our children didn’t survive their infancy.
If you are looking for a good escape, this is a book that will take you there. It will make your own troubles look small in comparison. This book will keep you engrossed, horrified, and entertained, and, in the end, you might learn something, as I did.
You can find The Devil’s Queen at Amazon.com for a mere $10.40 plus shipping, and yes, I own stock in Amazon.com. LOL, we invest in that which we believe to lasting and important, and books play a large role in our lives. 🙂
Woe to You!
We had a priest in Germany, a priest we dearly loved. He told us about how growing up, he would go to church with his Mom and after the sermon, she would say “I hope all those sinners were listening this morning!” AdventureMan and I sometimes say that after church, knowing full well that ‘those sinners’ is us.
It’s hard to read the scriptures for this morning, because Jesus is talking to religious people, and telling us that often the better we think we are, the farther we have to go.
Lord, clean us from the inside!
Matthew 23:13-26
13 ‘But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them.* 15Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell* as yourselves.
16 ‘Woe to you, blind guides, who say, “Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.” 17You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred? 18And you say, “Whoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.” 19How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; 21and whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it; 22and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it.
23 ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practised without neglecting the others. 24You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!
25 ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup,* so that the outside also may become clean.
Checking Out Pensacola Beach
After our water aerobics class this morning, AdventureMan and I drove out to the beautiful sugar-white sandy beaches of Pensacola to check the damage. The clean up crews have been busy, and the beaches look gorgeous. People are sunning, swimming, and sharing the beaches with the clean up crews.
A big huge electronic sign announces that the road to the beach will be closed all day tomorrow. How can you close a major road? Is this Kuwait, or Qatar, where the will of the Amir says “Make it so!” and it is so? Oh. Wait. President Obama is coming, so the road will be his and his alone to go out to the beaches and see what we saw today.
The huge, gigantic glob of oil has only sent tendrils, so far, to the pristine white beaches, but doom impends as storms and winds blow the thick oily sludge toward the shores. God willing, President Obama will find a way to encourage British Petroleum to work with a little more conviction and energy to find a long term solution to this unthinkable TWO MONTHS and hundreds of thousands of gallons spewing into the Gulf.
Emir Pardons Saudis for Failed Coup Attempt in Qatar
Has there ever been any other mention of the failed coup attempt? Is the the one that was purported to have taken place late last summer?
Emir pardons Saudi prisoners
The Peninsula
Doha: In response to a desire by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia, the Emir H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani has issued an Emiri decision pardoning a number of Saudi nationals sentenced for their involvement in the failed coup attempt to destabilise security and stability in Qatar.
Those released left the country yesterday accompanying the Saudi Deputy Commander of the National Guard for Executive Affairs, Prince Mit’ib bin Abdulaziz, an official source at the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The Saudi king later expressed his profound appreciation of the Emir’s decision. The king praised the strong relations of kinship and good neighbourliness that bind the people of the two countries.
First Woman Judge in Qatar
I am delighted to hear that Qatar has appointed its first female judge. I have to points of contention with this article. First – while I want women to have the same opportunity to be judges as men, I do not believe that because they are women, they can solve family rows better. I believe some female judges may be better than some male judges, but I don’t believe women will be better with family issues just because they are women. Women have agendas, too.
Second, one female judge does not fill a void. It sets a precedent. It breaks new ground. It IS a great and wonderful thing for Qatar.
It does not fill a void. Take all the judge positions in Qatar, and divide them by the percentage of females in Qatar – say like 50%. The void for female judges is equal to 50% of the positions. The void is not yet filled. Filling that void has just begun.
A woman judge can solve family rows better, say female lawyers
Web posted at: 3/13/2010 6:15:3
Source ::: THE PENINSULA
DOHA: Family courts in Qatar which hear marital disputes and claims for the custody of children from divorced or separated couples were in bad need of women judges, so with the appointment of Sheikha Maha Mansour Al Thani as an assistant judge, the dream has come true, say prominent women lawyers.
Being party to marital disputes or disputes involving the custody of children, women can be better understood by judges from their ilk.
So with Sheikha Maha having been appointed as judicial assistant, the void has been filled, said lawyer Neda Al Sulaiti.
She, however, clarified that she did not mean that women should be appointed judges only in certain courts.
“Women are capable, so they can be judges in all types of courts. It is another thing, though, that family courts here were particularly in bad need of female judges,” she told a local Arabic daily.
According to her, Sheikha Maha’s appointment to this elevated judicial position is a tribute to the rising clout of Qatari women. “They carry out in an excellent way whatever responsibility is assigned to them,” said the lawyer.
Qatari women are highly qualified and talented. They are in the ministry and the Central Municipal Council (CMC). So it was high time they were represented in the judiciary as well.
When women can be good lawyers why they cannot be good judges, she argues.
Qatar Initiates Solar Energy Plan
Woooo HOOOO, Qatar, for not depending on a non-renewable energy source, but continuing to develop strategies for survival into the future. And Qatar definitely has an abundance of solar power. But then again – so does Kuwait.
Qatar to tap solar power in a big way
Web posted at: 3/2/2010 6:29:33
Source ::: THE PENINSULA/ BY SATISH KANADY
DOHA: Qatar is all set to tap its abundance of solar power. Two leading international agencies yesterday announced their decision to partner with two Qatari entities to produce the green energy in the country.
SolarWorld AG, one of the world’s largest solar companies, will partner with Qatar Solar Technology (QST), in which Qatar Foundation (QF) has a major stake. Separately, the Institute of Technical Thermodynamics, German Aerospace Centre (DLR), will partner with the country’s ambitious Qatar National Food Security Programme (QNFSP).
Qatar Solar Technology marks the entry of QF into the solar energy sector. QF will have a 70 percent stake in QST, with SolarWorld holding 29 percent and Qatar Development Bank the remaining one percent.
The initial investment in QST is valued at over $500m, QF said.
Through the joint venture, solar grade polysilicon, the essential ingredient of solar panels, would be produced in the first phase.
QST will develop a new plant in Ras Laffan Industrial City, in the northeast of Qatar, which will be one of the first operational polysilicon plants in the region. The plant will produce well over 3,500 tonnes per annum of the material and will be designed with future expansion in mind, which will enable it to significantly increase production capacity.
You can read the rest of the article, including contributions by Texas A&M, by clicking HERE
From Kuwait MOI
One reader was asking about where to go online to pay his Kuwait traffic violations. While looking it up (Google “Kuwait Government Traffic Violations Website”) I found this essay on Equality Before the Law in Kuwait:
Lt. Gen. Al-Rejaib: His Highness the Amir stresses on applying the law on everyone
The Interior Undersecretary Lt. Gen. Ahmad Abdullatif Al-Rejaib affirmed on embedding the principle of reward and punish with applying it, where is no place in the Interior Ministry for slackers or neglegants or lacker individuals.
He stressed importance on respecting the authority of the security man after it had been affected for some reasons, affirming on the need of restoring mutual respect between the security man and citizens as well as residents.
Lt. Gen. Al-Rejaib cleared out thoughout his meeting which was featured with honesty and transparency on Wednesday morning 3/2/2010 attended by the Interior Assistant Undersecretary for General Security Affairs, Maj. Gen. KHalil Al-Shamali, leaders and officers of the General Security sector, that the supreme directives of His Highness the Amir, the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, is to apply law on everyone and no one is above it no matter how high this person is.
Lt. Gen. Al-Rejaib urged the leaders and officers of the General Security sector to follow up on all the works that are assigned to them as well as the tasks entrusted on them with honesty and transparency so justice prevails among everyone and for homeland residents to live in comfort, secure and safety. He demanded to honor the hardworker as soon as he accomplished any such achievements so it would be a motivation and an incentive for others to do work accurately.
At the beginning of the meeting in where it was took place at First Lt. Gen. Yousef Al-Khurafi Hall, Lt. Gen. Al-Rejaib welcomed his brothers and sons leaders and officers of the General Security sector, and conveyed to them the greetings of H.E. the Interior Minister Staff Lt. Gen. (ret.) Sheikh Jaber Al-Khaled Al-Sabah and his good wishes for them for success and to exert to give more efforts.
This meeting comes for the sake of discussing many of the issues concerning about security direcotorates and police stations, emphysizing the importance of police station as it is the first point for citizen and resident to turn to and the first security venue known by the Kuwaiti society, he added.
He affirmed that police station was a safeguard for every citizen and resident and a source of fear for any such violators or outlaws; pointed out that the Ministry of Interior has restored the authority of police stations two years ago.
There are bright sides represented by outstanding distinguished efforts done by area leaders, police stations chiefs as well as their officers but in the other hand, there are few who don’t perform their duty in full, and this is not allowed for any case, he added.
Lt. Gen. Al-Rejaib warned on the sluggard individuals who will receive a proper punishment, whereas the sincere and hard work individuals will receive the most appreciable rewards. He stressed importance to reject any such favoritism or mediation or a compliment, and such matters should be dealt with strictness and be terminated.
The Lt. Gen. called on good work organization in police stations, mentioning that the Ministry of Interior is putting all possible support and resources from officers, constables and police patrols, and to such reasons police stations officers should be present in their posting duties.
The leaders of the General Security sector, on top of them Maj. Gen. Khalil Al-Shamali have to be in presence in their places day and night; therefore, it is not exceptable at all that high leaders are in presence at their posts and no police stations officers existed at their assigned locations, he pointed out.
He stressed out that evaluating leaders and officers work stemmed from their performing their duties on combating crime and running after outlaws and out system, and there are not such other way around.
Lt. Gen. Al-Rejaib requested leaders and officers of the General Security sector to work as always do and promised for the sake of Kuwait and its people who deserved to be given all such exerted efforts.
He called on police stations chiefs and their officers to identify the area nature where they work at in terms of its demographic structure, its foremost economical activities and its existent educational and banking facilities, affirming that such information are essential to be awared about by the police station officers.
The security work is an honorable task and an obligatory on us to hold responsibilities, working as a one team and any such achievements accomplished are due to fruitful cooperation and continuous coordination, and self-denial is a trait we should characterized by for the sake of homeland security, he noted out.
The Interior Undersecretary Lt. Gen. Ahmad Abdullatif Al-Rejaib concluded by expressing his hope that the leaders and officers of the General Security sector to be as always as they promised us of being discipline, committed with high duty performance; pointed out that this meeting is a beginning of a series of upcoming meetings with different security sectors.
In Pensacola, people ask me if I wasn’t scared living in Kuwait and Qatar. Safe? I feel safer in Qatar and Kuwait than in Pensacola! And that is what I tell them!
Hey Ayatollah! Leave Those Kids Alone!
Every now and then I make a new friend. I can see in their eyes – life! love! willingness to engage and take risks! people who don’t necessarily see things the way the majority does.
One of these friends, my Kuwaiti friend, is a treasure. She has the most amazing mind, and sends me the most amazing things.
You might look at me and think I am too old for Pink Floyd, but you would be wrong. Pink Floyd makes my blood run faster. They did when I was younger, they did when my own son discovered Pink Floyd, and then, watching this video my friend sent – WOW. There goes the adrenelin!
OK, YouTube won’t let me insert it in this post. Go to the original post, play the video. . . very creative, very moving:
http://www.blurredvisionmusic.com/
Don’t you love young people? They love justice, and they hate injustice. They hate unnecessary constrictions. They hate people telling them how to think. All that energy, all that passion, all that vision!
Most of my friends – like AdventureMan, like my Kuwaiti friend – are still 25 on the inside. 🙂
Most of my friends will get this video – and love it! 🙂
Qattari Cat Goes Wild
It was like the ninth circle in Hell. We had been told this was the best clinic in town, so when we thought the Qatteri Cat was having a problem, we made an appointment, and braved the Doha drive-time traffic to get there, only to discover that there were like 25 people milling around the waiting room, most holding animals loose in their arms, and a feeling of desperation in the air.
The customer service was shocking. I watched one man, big guy, football-player type, sway and his knees nearly buckle as the curt woman behind the desk said in her loud voice “Oh! Your cat didn’t make it! Your’s was the little grey cat, right?” He was devastated. I was horrified that the news could be delivered so callously, and so loudly.
Many of the people without appointments had kittens bought at the Souq al Waqif. You know I love the Souk al Waqif, but if you buy an animal there, you are buying an animal who already has strikes against it, and people who breed them just for sale, with no regard for ethical treatment of another living creature. You are buying trouble, and big veterinarian bills. It’s gotten so bad for me, I can’t even walk through the bird/animal area anymore. I can’t bear to see the way the animals are treated.
We got to see the vet over an hour later. He was nice, very professional, very knowledgeable, and I cannot imagine what it is like having to run a veterinary service under these hellish conditions.
One of his handlers walked in, looked at me coldly and said “Is this your cat?” I said yes, and she continued on “this is the worst cat I have ever handled. He is EVIL! He is VICIOUS! He is the cat from hell. Is he like this at home?”
Imagine saying something like that to a customer!
I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. The Qatteri Cat had a rough beginning in life. I met his first owners, and the women in the family didn’t like him. When he came to live with us, he loved – and trusted – AdventureMan from the beginning, but it took me a long while to win his trust. He was skinny and always watching my feet and hands; he would flinch if I moved too quickly. He had been mistreated.
He has bitten me twice, in his seven years living with us, both times when other cats were around and he was scared. When he is scared, or when he is in pain, all his natural instincts kick in. I give him a short time-out in a confined environment (the bathroom!), and everything is fine. He’s a cat. No, he is not vicious at home. He is a SWEET cat!
He has never misbehaved at a vet clinic, never. At the clinic in Kuwait, he couldn’t wait to get out of the cage; the female Italian vet told him what a handsome big boy he was and he was putty in her hands. I have to admit it, I felt a twinge of jealousy. He had eyes only for her!
The Qattari Cat is a cat who wants to co-operate. It doesn’t matter how good the vet is, if the staff is unprofessional, discourteous to the point of rudeness, and ignorant about handling animals, we won’t go back. We won’t risk him being handled cruelly. I cannot imagine why they keep this woman on their staff.
But I couldn’t resist taking a flash photo of QC to illustrate this post, with demonic, gleaming eyes, LLOOOLLLL!
Recent Comments
ExpatAlien on What Country am I Living … intlxpatr on Yellowstone: Old Faithful to C… Michelle on Yellowstone: Old Faithful to C… Cathy on No Grown-Ups in Charge intlxpatr on Waiting for Snow Wikipedia Donate Button
Amazina
Early Voting in Florida
Here There and Everywhere 