Kuwait’s History – for Children
Thank you, Little Diamond, for your sharp eye spotting this story:
Children”s books about Kuwait”s history translated into English
Al Watan staff
KUWAIT: A new and rare series of stories about Kuwait”s history and
the nature of life in Kuwait in the past can now be found on sale in
Kuwait. The books, written by Dr. Yaqoob Yousef Al-Ghunaim and
translated into English by Dr. Shaban Afifi Abdulaziz, have been
printed by the Center for Study and Research in Kuwait and contain
illustration by artist Suhiala Hussein Al-Jundi.
The stories in the books are written in a simple manner that interests
children and that allows them to learn more about the history of
Kuwait and how Kuwaitis lived in the past. In the stories AlÜGhunaim
discusses traditional Kuwaiti society and the importance of fishing
and the rearing of animals.
The first story entitled Kuwait”s Wall is about a group of children
who ask Abu Abdullah questions about Kuwait”s wall and the reasons
behind its construction.
In the second story, AlÜGhunaim relates in a dramatic style the
stories of old Kuwaiti ships and underlines how society was based on
conservative religious values.
Al-Ghunaim also discusses life in the desert and how people were fond
of hunting gazelles and other wild animals which were commonly found
in the country.
A story about Burqan oil field was also added to the series to show
how the discovery of oil changed the Kuwaiti community.
http://www.alwatan.com.kw/Default.aspx?MgDid=652853&pageId=473
Ministry Conducts Demographics Study
This is from today’s Kuwait Times. I LOVE demographics. I love tagging factors, loading them all into a data base and seeing where the stats fall. You learn so much.
The Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor is studying effective means to rectify the country’s demographic imbalance. The ministry has reportedly reached the conclusion that the blend of different nationalities in Kuwait has proved detrimental to its societal fabric. One Arab nation’s expatriate population in the country has exceeded 300,000, sources say, which puts the states economic and political stability at great risk. Sources said that the matter is complicated and needs all the ministries’ undivided support.
Expatriates, it is felt, bring with them their own modern culture and customs which are alien to the local citizens, most of whom follow archaic customs deeply rooted in tribal practices. Expatriates are also accused of taking the law into their own hands without approaching the concerned authorities whenever they are confronted with a problem. It has also been observed that expatriates belonging to a certain nationality inhabit certain areas in droves, leaving security officials at a loss to change the situation.
As a move towards controlling the situation, the ministry is to form a permanent committee comprising officials from different ministries to scrutinize all the expatriates who arrive at Kuwait.
It will issue a fitness certificate to eligible expatriates on the lines of medical fitness test. Employers will then be able to decide whether to appoint those workers or repatriate them. The ministry also plans to come down heavily on expats who obtain jobs using illegal residence permits.
Hmmm. Rectifying the population imbalance might require giving up expatriate labor. What laborers do you want to give up? The largest number are probably doing low-skill level work – cleaning houses, cleaning the streets . . .Or do you want to give up those who are managing your stores, taking your orders in all the restaurants, cooking, taking care of the office chores?
I can guess which expatriates are bringing in alien modern customs and practices, but unless you are going to give up television, cable, the internet and travel . . . that train has probably left the station.
So which nationality has over 300,000 expats in Kuwait? And which nationalities “inhabit certain areas in droves?”
Who takes the law into their own hands?
Why Women Should Vote
“Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.”
When I got this in the mail this morning, I had to smile. The woman who sent it to me is now in her 90’s. She was a mentor to me as a young woman, and she was a pistol. She taught me, over and over again, that women can do anything they put their mind to doing – that nothing can hold us back except ourselves. She’s a pistol. I want to be like her when I grow up. 🙂
It is always a shock to me to know that women in the United States have only had the right to vote for less than a hundred years. We take it for granted. We shouldn’t. We should make our vote a mighty force.
WHY EVERY WOMAN SHOULD VOTE
This is the story of our Grandmothers, and Great-grandmothers, as they
lived only 90 years ago. It was not until 1920 that women were granted
the right to go to the polls and vote.
Thus unfolded the ‘Night of Terror’ on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at
the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson
to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow
Wilson’s White House for the right to vote. The women were innocent and
defenseless. And by the end of the night they were barely alive. Forty
prison guards wielding clubs and their warden’s blessing went on a
rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of ‘obstructing sidewalk
traffic.’
They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head
and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They
hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed
and knocked her out cold. Her cell mate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was
dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the
guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching,
twisting and kicking the women.
For weeks, the women’s only water came from an open pail. Their
food–all of it colorless slop–was infested with worms. When one of the
leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a
chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until
she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was
smuggled out to the press.
So, refresh my memory. Some women won’t vote this year because–why,
exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote
doesn’t matter? It’s raining?
Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO’s new movie
‘Iron Jawed Angels.’ It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women
waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my
say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.
All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the
actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote.
Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege.
Sometimes it was inconvenient.
My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women’s history, saw the HBO
movie , too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked
angry. She was–with herself. ‘One thought kept coming back to me as I
watched that movie,’ she said. ‘What would those women think of the way
I use–or don’t use–my right to vote? All of us take it for granted
now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.’ The
right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her ‘all over again.’
HBO released the movie on video and DVD. I wish all history, social
studies and government teachers would include the movie in their
curriculum. I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women
gather. I realize this isn’t our usual idea of socializing, but we are
not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock
therapy is in order.
It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a
psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be
permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor
refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn’t make her
crazy. The doctor admonished the men: ‘Courage in women is often
mistaken for insanity.’
Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know.
We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard
for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic,
republican or independent party – remember to vote.
History is being made.
Weight Loss: Fat Burning Beads
I could not believe my eyes. Would you buy these beads? You can read the entire story at BBC Health News.
‘Fat-burning’ bead marketing ends
A company that said its “fat-burning” beads triggered “automatic weight loss” has agreed to stop marketing in the UK.
One claim suggested that Accu-Slim Beads worked “faster than total starvation” by placing one bead behind each ear.
The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) sought assurances from Global DM Licensing, based in Hong Kong, that it would stop mailings being sent to UK consumers.
The OFT says thousands fall victim to claims about weight loss products.
Misleading claims
The company, using the name The AccuSlim Centre, claimed the beads were “fat burning acupuncture without needles, diets, exercise or effort”.
It claimed that users could eat as much as they liked but still lose 30lbs in 30 days, as the bead stimulated acupressure points that led to automatic weight loss.
The company claimed guaranteed results and charged £65 for a package of up to 120 beads.
OOps – I just noticed that they only have to stop marketing these beads in the UK. So if someone approaches you on the streets of Kuwait offering to sell you fat-burning beads (wouldn’t you feel like punching someone who thought you needed fat burning beads?) DON’T BUY THEM! THEY DON’T WORK!
More Three Cups of Tea
The timing couldn’t be better. Thank you, Phantom Man, for sending a link to this New York Times article on Three Cups of Tea, from the July 13th New York Times.
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: July 13, 2008
Since 9/11, Westerners have tried two approaches to fight terrorism in Pakistan, President Bush’s and Greg Mortenson’s.
Greg Mortenson with Sitara “Star” schoolchildren. Photo: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Mr. Bush has focused on military force and provided more than $10 billion — an extraordinary sum in the foreign-aid world — to the highly unpopular government of President Pervez Musharraf. This approach has failed: the backlash has radicalized Pakistan’s tribal areas so that they now nurture terrorists in ways that they never did before 9/11.
Mr. Mortenson, a frumpy, genial man from Montana, takes a diametrically opposite approach, and he has spent less than one-ten-thousandth as much as the Bush administration. He builds schools in isolated parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, working closely with Muslim clerics and even praying with them at times.
The only thing that Mr. Mortenson blows up are boulders that fall onto remote roads and block access to his schools.
Mr. Mortenson has become a legend in the region, his picture sometimes dangling like a talisman from rearview mirrors, and his work has struck a chord in America as well. His superb book about his schools, “Three Cups of Tea,” came out in 2006 and initially wasn’t reviewed by most major newspapers. Yet propelled by word of mouth, the book became a publishing sensation: it has spent the last 74 weeks on the paperback best-seller list, regularly in the No. 1 spot.
Now Mr. Mortenson is fending off several dozen film offers. “My concern is that a movie might endanger the well-being of our students,” he explains.
Mr. Mortenson found his calling in 1993 after he failed in an attempt to climb K2, a Himalayan peak, and stumbled weakly into a poor Muslim village. The peasants nursed him back to health, and he promised to repay them by building the village a school.
Scrounging the money was a nightmare — his 580 fund-raising letters to prominent people generated one check, from Tom Brokaw — and Mr. Mortenson ended up selling his beloved climbing equipment and car. But when the school was built, he kept going. Now his aid group, the Central Asia Institute, has 74 schools in operation. His focus is educating girls.
To get a school, villagers must provide the land and the labor to assure a local “buy-in,” and so far the Taliban have not bothered his schools. One anti-American mob rampaged through Baharak, Afghanistan, attacking aid groups — but stopped at the school that local people had just built with Mr. Mortenson. “This is our school,” the mob leaders decided, and they left it intact.
You can read the entire article in the New York Times by clicking on the blue type.
Obama Magazine Cover Controversy
This is the New Yorker magazine cover that is causing so much controversy in the USA – it shows a newly elected Obama showing up to work in the oval office (US President’s office) in Islamic dress and trading congratulatory fists with his terrorist dressed wife. Obama and his election campaign group find it distinctly unfunny.
Three Cups of Tea
My best-friend-from-college and I were chatting the other day and I asked her “what are you reading?” because we have always exchanged book recommendations back and forth.
“I’m reading a biography of Teddy Roosevelt,” she started, and I groaned, because most of the time biographies don’t interest me that much. “And I am reading Three Cups of Tea . . . “ and I interrupted her (rudely) to exclaim “so am I!”
Three Cups of Tea is a must-read in the US. It was actually published in 2006, and has sold more and more books every month, and has been on the New York Times best seller list almost since it was published.
The book begins with a failure. A mountaineer, attempting a climb on K2 runs into problems, including evacuating two severely injured fellow climbers from the mountain. Exhausted, and devastated by his failure to capture the summit, he gets lost on his way back to the base camp, and ends up in a village where the people are very kind to him. He is treated as an honored guest, he regains his strength, and on his last day in the village, learns the children have no school. He rashly promises to come back and build a school for them.
One of the great redeeming features in this book is Greg Mortenson’s endless humility. He has a co-author, to whom he gave a long list of people he could talk with, including all his enemies and people who thought he was crazy. He’s that kind of guy. He talks about his life’s personal failures and his toughest moments, and he moves on.
He doesn’t take credit for the dogged persistence with which he keeps his promise, in spite of daunting obstacles. He doesn’t take any credit for the good will he builds.
Several years ago, I read another book which has changed my life, The Purpose Driven Life (which, by the way, the hardcover is $9.99 and the paperback is $10.19, go figure) in which the basic premise of the book is that we are each created uniquely, individually, by a loving creator, for a purpose. As I read Three Cups of Tea, I thought this man is greatly blessed; he discovered his purpose and nothing kept him from fulfilling it!
The book deserves every single one of it’s Amazon Five Star ratings.
I had a hard time putting the book down. Even though my life is full of other demands, once I had the chance, I spent an entire afternoon finishing this great book.
Greg Mortenson isn’t discouraged that his first school takes three years, and first he has to build a bridge. His second, third and fourth schools take just . . . three months! He has a gift for inspiring others, and people give what they can. The villagers give their time and their efforts, and western supporters donate funds.
By the end of the book, 24 school have been built, in the very poorest mountain villages in Pakistan, where money from the government for education doesn’t trickle at all, until near the end of the book. He doesn’t build the schools himself – he meets with the villagers, they donate a plot. He buys the materials, and together, they all build a school. These villagers are hungry for their children to become educated, to have a chance for a better life. Mortenson learns to focus on the girls.
He learns that as the boys become educated, they leave the villages for the city, but as the girls become educated, they come back, and like yeast, they raise the standard of living for the entire village, providing health care services and information, providing education for the newest crop of children, learning new skills, bringing them back and sharing them.
One of Mortenson’s gifts is that he isn’t interested in changing these mountain people into westerners. He likes them, and he learns from them, just the way they are. He dresses like them, he prays with them, he learns their language, and he has no western agenda for the curriculum in these schools. He also helps the government schools – building an additional room here for an overflowing school, paying a teacher’s salary there – his goal is to educate children. That’s it. No political agenda. The people of the villages love him for it, and give him their full support.
You cannot undertake a project like this without a lot of help. Mortenson had some extraordinary experiences, experiences that to me look like the grace of God, that drew together teams of people to help build and supply his schools.
“I looked at a sign in front of the school and saw that it had been donated by Jean Hoerni, my cousin Jennifer’s husband,” Bergman says. “Jennifer told me Jean had been trying to build a school somewhere in the Himalaya, but to land in that exact spot in a range that stretches thousands of miles felt like more than coincidence. I’m not a religious person,” Bergman says, “but I felt I’d been brought there for a reason and I couldn’t stop crying.”
A few months later, at Hoerni’s memorial service, Bergman introduced herself to Mortenson. “I was there!” she said, wrapping the startled man she’d just met in a bruising hug. “I saw the school!”
“You’re the blonde in the helicopter,” Mortenson said, shaking his head in amazement. “I heard a foreign woman had been in the village, but I didn’t believe it.”
“There’s a message here. This is meant to be,” Julia Bergman said. “I want to help. Is there anything I can do?”
“Well, I want to collect books and create a library for the Korphe School,” Mortenson said.
Bergman felt the same sense of predestination she’d encountered that day at the school. “I’m a librarian,” she said.
After struggling for many years, seeking donors who would help to build a school, Mortenson now has a foundation eagerly supported by many Americans, and especially the mountaineers, who continue to build schools. At the end of the book, the foundation is moving into the poorest sectors in Afghanistan, and building schools there. They have children’s programs in many of the schools in the United States, where children donate pennies to help pay for books for the schools, and for the teacher’s monthly salaries, where salaries are not reaching the teachers. You can donate to the school building fund, teacher’s salaries and books using your credit card, online, at the website Three Cups of Tea. You can order this book there, too, as well as music CD/s and learn more about the work being done.
France Rejects Veiled Muslim Wife
From BBC News: Europe
France rejects veiled Muslim wife
A French court has denied citizenship to a Muslim woman from Morocco, ruling that her practice of “radical” Islam is not compatible with French values.
The 32-year-old woman, known as Faiza M, has lived in France since 2000 with her husband – a French national – and their three French-born children.
Social services reports said the burqa-wearing Faiza M lived in “total submission to her male relatives”.
Faiza M said she has never challenged the fundamental values of France.
Her initial application for French citizenship was rejected in 2005 on the grounds of “insufficient assimilation” into France.
She appealed, and late last month the Conseil d’Etat, France’s highest administrative body which also acts as a high court, upheld the decision to deny her citizenship.
Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Presidency
Hilarious video from The Onion.
Georgia Man Kills Daughter for Honor
This is a sad story. When police arrested him, you get the impression he was really sad he did it, and caught up in something he regretted.
Georgia Man Charged in ‘Honor Killing’
CNN
Posted: 2008-07-08 22:21:56
Filed Under: Crime News, Nation News
ATLANTA (July 8) – A Pakistani man is charged with killing his 25-year-old daughter in Georgia because she wanted out of an arranged marriage, police said.
Chaudhry Rashid, 54, of Jonesboro, an Atlanta suburb, appeared in court Tuesday afternoon to face murder charges in the death of Sandeela Kanwal, according to court records.
He was arrested early Sunday, after his wife called police at about 2 a.m. She reported that she had been awakened by screaming but couldn’t understand the language, a Clayton County police report said. She said she was afraid and left the house to call police.
Officers found Kanwal dead in an upstairs bedroom of the home, according to the police report.
Rashid’s wife told authorities Kanwal recently had been married in Pakistan — an arranged marriage, she said. The young woman’s husband was living in Chicago, Illinois, police said, but Kanwal remained at her father’s home and worked at a metro Atlanta Wal-Mart for a brief time.
You can read the rest of the story on AOL News by clicking here.
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