Saudi Men Arrested for Flirting
This is in today’s BBC News.
Saudi men arrested for ‘flirting’
Relations between the sexes outside marriage is against the law
Prosecutors in Saudi Arabia have begun investigating 57 young men who were arrested on Thursday for flirting with girls at shopping centres in Mecca.
The men are accused of wearing indecent clothes, playing loud music and dancing in order to attract the attention of girls, the Saudi Gazette reported.
They were arrested following a request of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
The mutaween enforce Saudi Arabia’s conservative brand of Islam, Wahhabism.
Earlier in the month, the authorities enforced a ban on the sale of red roses and other symbols used in many countries to mark Valentine’s Day.
The ban is partly because of the connection with a “pagan Christian holiday”, and also because the festival itself is seen as encouraging relations between the sexes outside marriage, punishable by law in the kingdom.
You can read the whole article HERE.
I wonder . . . is this what is going to happen in Kuwait? So like they segregate the university. . . then they segregate all the schools, EVEN THE PRIVATE SCHOOLS, so there is no choice. . . then they start patrolling the malls?
I lived in Saudi Arabia, and I remember the mutawaaeen were NOT police, but sometimes they took on the prerogatives of the police. So I have to wonder, like who made the arrest in the malls? Was it the police? Was it the mutawa hitting the boys with their little sticks? Did they call the boys parents? I have SO many questions!
Is This News?
Today in the Arab Times I see this announcement:
Ministry monitoring Internet networks to block porn sites
KUWAIT : The Ministry of Communications is monitoring Internet networks to block porn websites and clamp down illegal Internet telephony, Al Seyassah daily quoted the Director of Telephones Monitoring Department at the Ministry of Communications Eng Nasser Al Khandari as saying. The department is also monitoring various areas for such illegal telephone service providers.
Is this news? One time, I was looking for tablecloths, and the site was blocked for inappropriate content. It seems to me that the Ministry of Communication has an ongoing battle, trying to block content providers. As for illegal telephony . . . it appears they are cracking down mostly on large scale telephone service providers, not on the individual VOIP phones. VOIP users complain from time to time about “listeners” and about echos, but I think this is more a result of poor connections than any local actions. Am I wrong?
Which ministry is it that will be/is monitoring bloggers?
Wheezing
I could feel the weather change as I woke in bed last night with a slight wheeze – and sure enough, this morning when I looked out, there was this thick haze. I don’t know if this is a sandstorm . . . the particles are so fine. Maybe it is a dust storm.
The weather is significantly warmer this week, even though the weather forecast for all of February is unseasonably cold. Yesterday it got up to about 70°F/50°C, and it was delightful. Just warm enough for a lot of people to go picnicking.
I had a yen for Chinese food, and while we normally go to Tang Chow, which I love, this time we headed for Gulf Royal, at the City Center. I knew just how to get there; we took 30 to 5th ring and then headed toward City Center, but I made a mistake and told AdventureMan to exit at Amman Street, and then we got all messed up. Ah well, it was Friday and the streets were still quiet.
AdventureMan said “I know how to get there” so we got out on Gulf Road intending to turn right off the old Bida’a circle – only to find it was totally blocked. We wound our way through Rumaithia until we could find a way to get across 5th ring – quite an adventure.
At the Gulf Royal, we discovered they have a whole section of “cabinets,” the private little dining rooms. We had been there several times before and I never knew they were there! I just didn’t want to be around people who were smoking, and so they showed us to the back, with all the families. I love quiet, private little dining rooms! This is something we only see in the Gulf, something we will miss back in Seattle.
The food was good, City Centre was packed.
How Security Police Say “Sorry”
This is from today’s Kuwait Times. I know you are all dancing for joy that journalist and blogger Bashar Al-Sayegh is free, and we as a blogging community can all celebrate his release.
His arrest was a mistake.
It says so in the article. Pay attention! You have to read carefully, because security police speak a language all their own.
This is how they say “I’m sorry. It was a mistake.”
Responding to calls to dismantle the state security department, Rujaib stressed that the department was very vital for any state. “It forms the eye that never sleeps in protecting the nation’s security, in political, social and economic fields,” he explained, pointing out that it existed all over the world.
Asked whether Sayegh’s arrest was meant to convey a message against the freedom of the press, Rujaib stressed that press freedom was fully observed, yet reminded that journalists could be arrested for other reasons. “Meanwhile, police officers could be arrested for any reason as well,” he added, underlining that no violations took place during Sayegh’s arrest. On whether he believed that the issue had been politically motivated by some MPs, Rujaib said, “I am a security official and a politician should answer this question.
Do you think he is implying that there might have been another reason? Does it sound like deflecting blame? I think he is saying “We screwed up. We’re sorry.”
Credit Card MixUp
They must have thought we were stark raving out of our minds. In the middle of a crowded dinner-time restaurant, the three of us are out of control. Normally bordering on dignified, we are whooping with laughter, tears are streaming down our faces and we are laughing out loud, totally out of control.
The waitress brought the bill for my Mom, who was treating, but when she brought it back for my Mom’s signature, my Mom said “this isn’t my credit card!” She looked at it closely . . . it was my sister’s credit card.
“How did I give her your credit card?” she asked my sister, who looked baffled.
“I can’t imagine!” she responded. Mom had made it clear that this evening was HER treat, and we hadn’t even reached for our wallets this time.
This was our third dinner together in ten days. We have switched off paying, and we figure that the switch must have happened either a week ago, or five days ago. But . . . and this is the truly horrifying part – both have been charging on the switched cards! As the total implications dawned on us, we were horrified – and our reaction was this hysterical laughter as they tried to figure out what they had charged on each other’s card.
The horror is this – neither of them had noticed they were not using their own card. And no one, at any store, noticed that the signature on the charge slip DID NOT MATCH the name on the charge card. My mother charged several times, my sister charged a few things, but no one ever questioned the fact they were using someone else’s card.
This is horrifying. it is only hysterically funny because it was my mother and sister, and they had to work out who owes what to whom – and the total lack of privacy as two grown women have to tell each other what they have charged. That is laughable. But we are still totally appalled that it could happen, and that it was never caught nor challenged. Amazing.
Comment Section Closed, Wooo Hoooo
I have had some problems with one particular spammer targeting one particular entry on my blog. Really nasty stuff, it offends me. I clear it out almost as quickly as they send it, but it is ANNOYING.
WordPress is so cool. I went into edit, and turned off “allow comments.” It allowed all the original comments, but has a cheery message now:
“Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time”
*Dancing at a stinging blow against spammers*
Holy Cow! It’s Hard to Explain.
As I was leaving the Apple Market, I saw this display:
which totally cracked me up.
EnviroGirl told me there are all kinds of displays for all kinds of life events – birthdays, new babies, anniversaries, promotions, graduations – if you can think it up, this company will put it out there. Tombstones for a 40th birthday, storks for babies, and this one – Holy Cow! for a birthday.
I don’t know how I would like to get to work and find one of these displays outside on my birthday – I prefer to celebrate quietly, without a lot of fanfare. But every time I see these, I have to grin, so I guess it isn’t all that bad.
What also gives me a grin, however, is how very American this tradition is. I cannot imagine it at all in Kuwait. I can’t imagine it in Germany. Somehow, I just don’t think it would be so funny in any other country, except maybe South Africa, or Australia . . . countries where people don’t take themselves too seriously, and the loss of dignity would not be too severe. It’s just a joke, something a good friend might do.
What do you think? Do you think it is too undignified? Does it invade privacy? Do you think it is funny?
Family Beach
Every now and then, I get a good giggle. Usually it is a European family, and it only happens once . . . they go to our local beach. They are in normal beach attire – swimsuits. And they head for the “Family Beach.”
They haven’t been here long enough to know that “Family” is a little different here, it means mostly women in abayas and scarves, or some form of head covering.Even for those not in abayas, it means body parts are modestly covered, at the very least, with a Tshirt. You will see women swimming in abayas and scarves, floating in inner tubes, fully covered.
There is usually a wide circle of empty space around the European family; people regarding them with fascinated horror. I rarely see them come back. I am hoping they find other beaches, maybe more private.
Kuwait Couple and Police
This is a very strange report from the Daily Star. There was a similar report in the Thursday Kuwait Times, which claims there were two couples. Is there a police blotter where newspapers get their information, or do they use inside sources? The stories in each newspaper have different details, and sometimes the details vary significantly.
Culprits Freed, Cop Detained
In a very strange incident, the head investigator at Mubarak Al-Kabeer Police Station has ordered the detention of a first sergeant and released two persons who humiliated the policeman, reports Al-Anba daily.
A police source said the first sergeant arrested a 22 year old man and a 41 year old woman who were inside a car parked in the Abul Hasaniya at 2:00 in the morning, and asked them to hand over their identification documents but they refused to heed the policeman’s request.
The threatened to harm the first sergeant and dismiss him from service, but later handed over their IDs to another policeman who rushed to the area after receiving a call from the first sergeant.
The two persons were released and the policeman was detained but Director of the Security Directorate in Mubarak Al-Kabeer Brigadier Mostafa Khan and his assistant Brigadier Ibrahim Al-Tarrah ordered the immediate release of the first sergeant and referred the case to another investigator.
My comment: I cannot begin to figure out what happened in this story. It could be a hundred different things. The woman could be in the car with her son, escaping from an abusive husband. Or they could be unrelated and naked. There are endless possibilities in between those extremes. We don’t know.
The sergeant could be doing his duty and unjustly punished by superiors using wasta, or he could have exceeded his authority and been let to skate. We don’t know.
Stories like this in the papers mystify me. It all depends on the “police source” and his particular bias.
Google Street View Peeping?
I found this article on AOL, but it is from the New York Times originally.
Google Zooms In Too Close for Some
By MIGUEL HELFT, The New York Times
The New York Times
OAKLAND, Calif. (June 2) – For Mary Kalin-Casey, it was never about her cat.
Google said it takes privacy seriously and considered the implications of its service before it was introduced. “Street View only features imagery taken on public property,” it said.
Ms. Kalin-Casey, who manages an apartment building here with her husband, John Casey, was a bit shaken when she tried a new feature in Google’s map service called Street View. She typed in her address and the screen showed a street-level view of her building. As she zoomed in, she could see Monty, her cat, sitting on a perch in the living room window of her second-floor apartment.
“The issue that I have ultimately is about where you draw the line between taking public photos and zooming in on people’s lives,” Ms. Kalin-Casey said in an interview Thursday on the front steps of the building. “The next step might be seeing books on my shelf. If the government was doing this, people would be outraged.”
Her husband quickly added, “It’s like peeping.”
Ms. Kalin-Casey first shared her concerns about the service in an e-mail message to the blog Boing Boing on Wednesday. Since then, the Web has been buzzing about the privacy implications of Street View — with varying degrees of seriousness. Several sites have been asking users to submit interesting images captured by the Google service, which offers panoramic views of miles of streets around San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Miami and Denver.
On a Wired magazine blog, for instance, readers can vote on the “Best Urban Images” that others find in Street View. On Thursday afternoon, a picture of two young women sunbathing in their bikinis on the Stanford campus in Palo Alto, Calif., ranked near the top. Another showed a man scaling the front gate of an apartment building in San Francisco. The caption read, “Is he breaking in or has he just locked himself out?”
Google said in a statement that it takes privacy seriously and considered the privacy implications of its service before it was introduced on Tuesday. “Street View only features imagery taken on public property,” the company said. “This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street.”
You can read the rest of the article on AOL MOney News by clicking here.
My comment: I am a huge fan of transparency, so you might think this new ability wouldn’t bother me. But the transparency I favor is transparency of business and government transactions, not people taking in my behavior in my own house! I am also a huge fan of personal privacy, and while a street view that just shows my cat in the window wouldn’t be alarming, it tells me that photos shot at night, which would show the interior of my residence, are also possible, and that thought troubles me very much.
Our homes are our castles! If my husband wants to walk around in his underwear (or less 😉 ) and I want to wear my nightgown all day when I am working on a special project, honestly, it is not YOUR business, nor anyone else on the internet! Do you want photos published, taken of you unaware in your own house? This capability is terrifying!
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