Amer Al Hilal on Kuwait’s Ban on DSLR Cameras
Woooooo Hooooo Amer Al-Hilal, a man I am proud to call my friend. It takes such great courage to speak out when something is going terribly wrong, and Amer knows how to do it articulately, rationally, and as the gentleman he is.
From his article in the Arab Times:
Camera ban regressive idea
‘Don’t stifle home-grown talent’
For a country that possesses a Constitution which safeguards civil liberties and freedom of speech, Kuwait sporadically sure likes toying with those liberties such as tentatively banning the Blackberry service, shutting down You Tube, impeding public gatherings and marches, banning and censoring books, literature, films and magazines which are available elsewhere in the Gulf.
This week according to media reports, and highlighted extensively in local Weblogs and Twitter, a palpable growing outcry is directed at the tentative plans by The Ministry of Information, Ministry of Social Affairs and Ministry of Finance to outlaw public photography and relegate it to journalism purposes only. This has allegedly resulted in the ban of Digital Single Lens Reflex Cameras (DSLRs) in public places. If this charade is true, then it bodes ill for this country, another regressive move into the annals of ignorance.
During the 1980s video cameras and photographic equipment were also shunned by the authorities. I remember visiting Failaka in 1985 and being confronted by a military officer who demanded I hand in my bulky video camera until I left the island. These types of infringements in the name of security were insignificant — we still had an attempt on HH the Amir, explosions at Foreign Embassies in Kuwait and an actual invasion.
Why does this country always attempt to stifle home-grown talent? Banning cameras in public places is demoralizing to all the passionate, talented young Kuwait men and women who have excelled in this field and love their hobby, not to mention visitors who attempt to document their travels here. Moreover, banning DSLR cameras is irrational and counterproductive if you think about it; in this day and age of iPhones, Blackberries, 5 MP plus camera phones, Google Earth and the like, anyone can take photograph of anything, quietly, without fanfare, which makes the potential DSLR ban even more preposterous.
I have just returned from a trip to Dubai where I witnessed dozens of tourists proudly using their cameras to document Burg Khalifa and the other picturesque locations. No one stopped them, impeded them or asked them what they were doing and you know why, because they respect people’s rights and are intent on making their country more appealing. UAE is able to manage security matters confidently because they have proper security and ID processes in place: eye scanners at airports and entry points, proper electronic government, high fines for breaking the law, a brilliant CCTV system in place in every street corner (not the shoddy black and white choppy, streaming-like quality of the limited equipment we have here) — they truly invest in their infrastructure, maintain it and upgrade it.
If Kuwait is serious about its security then it should invest in the same caliber of CCTV and not the bargain basement tenders that usually go towards ineffective systems (i.e. Highway signs with the useless ‘no mobile’ plasma screen) belonging to members of the matching ministry who want a ‘piece of the action’. The sad reality is the government sector here would rather ban something than actually strive to improve it through sheer hard work and effective processes. It’s just easier to ban; a question of laziness and neglect.
Needless to say, Kuwait seems unfazed when foreign jets infiltrate our airspace and take aerial shots of our oil refineries and military installations, or when agents and their local conspirators are found to possess blueprints and photographs of said installations, but no, lets go after the ‘little guy’, the amateur photographer or tourist on the street taking pictures. It’s a hypocritical, spineless action by the authorities.
Moreover, I suspect the issue is not just relegated to security, a myriad of reasons could have led to the support of this ban, fundamentalists who felt cameras and pictures are a ‘Tool of the Devil,’ government officials and ministries disgraced at seeing shots of Kuwait’s dilapidated infrastructure, environment and mismanagement on weblogs, internet forums and magazines. You cannot conceal the squalid side of Kuwait; it is there for everyone to see.
Furthermore, this law against public photography will not be enforced, just as seatbelt, no mobile while driving, no litter, no smoking areas, and other ‘laws’ cannot be enforced in this Land of Confusion.
Amer Al-Hilal is webmaster of http://www.hilaliya.com and can be reached at amer@hilaliya.com.
Vote. Vote For Your Candidate, But Vote Because You Can
When it comes to elections and elected officials, I am cynical. To me, it’s almost as if, when a person wants to get elected, just wanting to be elected is an indication that they are unfit for office. Elected office attracts narcissists, men and women hooked on power, people with a void in their hearts which only the acclamation of the crowd can fill . . . and a few good candidates.
If you are a woman and if you know anything about how hard it was for women to get the vote, please, vote. (If you don’t know anything about our fight to vote, click here.) Please be sure to read the comments, too, as the article was written the first year the Kuwaiti women were allowed to vote, and I was writing in Kuwait.
Before you go out to vote, here is some wisdom from the book of Psalms (from today’s readings in The Lectionary) It’s all about power, the illusion of power, and where power actually rests. It will give you hope and courage. Then – go vote. 🙂
Psalm 62
To the leader: according to Jeduthun. A Psalm of David.
1 For God alone my soul waits in silence;
from him comes my salvation.
2 He alone is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall never be shaken.
3 How long will you assail a person,
will you batter your victim, all of you,
as you would a leaning wall, a tottering fence?
4 Their only plan is to bring down a person of prominence.
They take pleasure in falsehood;
they bless with their mouths,
but inwardly they curse.
Selah
5 For God alone my soul waits in silence,
for my hope is from him.
6 He alone is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall not be shaken.
7 On God rests my deliverance and my honour;
my mighty rock, my refuge is in God.
8 Trust in him at all times, O people;
pour out your heart before him;
God is a refuge for us.
Selah
9 Those of low estate are but a breath,
those of high estate are a delusion;
in the balances they go up;
they are together lighter than a breath.
10 Put no confidence in extortion,
and set no vain hopes on robbery;
if riches increase, do not set your heart on them.
11 Once God has spoken;
twice have I heard this:
that power belongs to God,
12 and steadfast love belongs to you, O Lord.
For you repay to all
according to their work.
Just Say No – to Gossip
From today’s Lectionary readings:
Sirach 19:4-17
4 One who trusts others too quickly has a shallow mind,
and one who sins does wrong to himself.
5 One who rejoices in wickedness* will be condemned,*
6 but one who hates gossip has less evil.
7 Never repeat a conversation,
and you will lose nothing at all.
8 With friend or foe do not report it,
and unless it would be a sin for you, do not reveal it;
9 for someone may have heard you and watched you,
and in time will hate you.
10 Have you heard something? Let it die with you.
Be brave, it will not make you burst!
11 Having heard something, the fool suffers birth-pangs
like a woman in labour with a child.
12 Like an arrow stuck in a person’s thigh,
so is gossip inside a fool.
13 Question a friend; perhaps he did not do it;
or if he did, so that he may not do it again.
14 Question a neighbour; perhaps he did not say it;
or if he said it, so that he may not repeat it.
15 Question a friend, for often it is slander;
so do not believe everything you hear.
16 A person may make a slip without intending it.
Who has not sinned with his tongue?
17 Question your neighbour before you threaten him;
and let the law of the Most High take its course.
When Bureaucracies Function Well
This week AdventureMan and I explored something new in our lives – Early Voting. We had heard about it from our friends. It’s not like absentee voting, where you are mailed a ballot and you mail it back in after you have filled in your votes. With early voting, you can actually go to a voting place and vote.
We went after lunch, and we didn’t know where it was, but once we got near, we started seeing signs. Great signage.
When we entered the door, there was a lady there to tell us where to go – and more signs, too.
When we got to the right floor, there were signs with arrows and “Vote Here” on them.
When we got to the voting office, there were lots of people to help us get our ballot. When I messed up my first ballot (I hadn’t read an amendment carefully), they quickly did all the necessary paperwork and got me voting again. The second time, the machine accepted my ballot. 🙂
All in all, a fabulous experience. And – they gave me a sticker! We were so impressed with the careful attention to detail that had gone into getting us to the right place and getting our vote accomplished.
Later in the week, I had a mammogram. Being new, I am not in the system, so I have to go through admitting procedures every time I go to a new doctor or a new institution. At the West Florida Hospital, as soon as I got to the right room, I could see a sign telling me where to wait my turn. The receptionist was welcoming AND efficient. There were a lot of people waiting, and one by one we were taken in to have our paperwork done. No need for a pen; you sign on a machine, like you do for credit card purchases in many stores. Then you sit in a small hallway until someone calls your name and you become a human train as a guide leads you to your stop. That part was half hilarious and half annoying. If I knew where it was, I might have gotten there faster on my own, but . . . I didn’t know where it was. As far as systems go – it worked. It kept people orderly. It got a lot of people in and out efficiently, and fairly. No one can break into the lines, claiming to be more important. I am guessing if there is a patient whose malady is serious enough to take precedence, they have procedures they can follow separate from the normal intake procedures.
I have to stop and admire when bureaucracies function as intended, to help us more efficiently accomplish our business. It is when they become a stomping ground for nepotism and inefficiency that they earn my ire.
When I arrived in Qatar, my bank had a Women’s branch which was convenient for me and I loved going there. I was often the only customer, and the women taking care of me were always charming, helpful and friendly. When the same bank broke into another section and became an Islamic bank, instead of a normal bank working with Islamic customs, I was no longer able to use the women’s bank, but I’ve always remembered their personal customer service.
On the other hand, banking in Qatar could be totally tortuous, if you had to use the normal bank where Mr. Important would walk right in front of you as if you didn’t exist, or certainly, as if you were far less important than he was. In Kuwait, at my bank branch, you took a number, and it appeared to me that most of the time the number system was honored, unless it was a personal friend, LOL. Personal friends, or friends of the family, or a friend of a friend of the family always get to go first.
I suspect there are similar exceptions in Pensacola, but less transparent. Mr. Important has his own banker he can go to without waiting, probably in a private office, and it is invisible to the rest of us. Ms. Important, on the other hand, probably has to wait in the waiting room with the rest of us for her mammogram.
Reading for Saturday, October 16 from Sirach
I love it when our daily Lectionary heads into Sirach, one of the books Episcopalians and Catholics use (and maybe the Orthodox churches, I am not so sure) but which are not included in the Protestant bibles; I find the texts often illuminate or expand my understanding of other readings.
Sirach 3:17-31
17 My child, perform your tasks with humility;*
then you will be loved by those whom God accepts.
18 The greater you are, the more you must humble yourself;
so you will find favour in the sight of the Lord.*
20 For great is the might of the Lord;
but by the humble he is glorified.
21 Neither seek what is too difficult for you,
nor investigate what is beyond your power.
22 Reflect upon what you have been commanded,
for what is hidden is not your concern.
23 Do not meddle in matters that are beyond you,
for more than you can understand has been shown to you.
24 For their conceit has led many astray,
and wrong opinion has impaired their judgement.
25 Without eyes there is no light;
without knowledge there is no wisdom.*
26 A stubborn mind will fare badly at the end,
and whoever loves danger will perish in it.
27 A stubborn mind will be burdened by troubles,
and the sinner adds sin to sins.
28 When calamity befalls the proud, there is no healing,
for an evil plant has taken root in him.
29 The mind of the intelligent appreciates proverbs,
and an attentive ear is the desire of the wise.
30 As water extinguishes a blazing fire,
so almsgiving atones for sin.
31 Those who repay favours give thought to the future;
when they fall they will find support.
A Thankful Heart
Happy Thanksgiving to all our Canadian friends, who celebrate their Thanksgiving today. I wish each of you a thankful heart and a day full of blessings.
Yesterday at Christs Church, The Rev. Neal Goldsborough talked to us about thankful hearts, and how a thankful heart precedes faith. So I wish you all, all my readers, thankful hearts.
(photo from the archives of The Ames Historical Society)
New Territory: Pensacola Medicine
It’s payback time. Since AdventureMan and I retired, we have been trying to catch up with all the things we have left undone as we lived overseas. One of those things is catching up on medical work, you know, the preventive stuff.
One of the things I avoided in Qatar and Kuwait were any kind of procedures where something alien entered your body. There are good hospitals, and there are good doctors, but you have to know someone who can recommend them, and they they have to accept you as patients. My strategy was simply to stay well. I had a constant concern, about the cleanliness of the hospitals, about the conscientiousness of the people sterilizing medical equipment, about patient care, about credentials of those putting in IV’s – little things like that.
When I came to Pensacola, LOL, I had the same concerns. We have this illusion that everything is better in the USA, but we are only as good as our rules, and the enforcement of the rules, and when budgets are being cut, code enforcement can suffer. Who is checking on the cleanliness of the facility, etc. can be an issue here, too.
We ran into a couple of breaks. We have friends here, and we also have good advisory people. While our advisory people are not allowed to give specific recommendations, we had a long and lively chat with one and we asked, at the end, “if your Mom or Dad needed a good overall internist, who would you send them to?” and she paused and gave us a name.
The name was also on our short list of doctors we had looked up online. There are all kinds of places that comment on doctors, and this doctor has all A’s.
My visit with the doctor got me started on a lot of other appointments. The first visit, however, had a very funny moment. We were talking, generally, I thought, about weight, and he said “what do you think would be a good weight for you at this age” and I thought and said a number and HE WROTE IT DOWN. “Oh no!” I said. “Are you writing it down?”
“Yes.” he responded. “I agree, I think that is a good goal for you.”
GOAL??? I talk a lot about exercise and trying to lose weight, but now I am expected to meet a goal??? Oh, aaaarrrggghh. Me and my big mouth, why did I pick that number???
My Pensacola medical experience grew this week as I had a dreaded colonoscopy, something older people have to do as part of preventive maintenance. I totally hate colonoscopy preparation, and I also know that the same problems that happen in Qatar and Kuwait can happen here in Pensacola, so I was anxious the day of the procedure.
As I was pushed into the operating room by a young guy, I asked “who are you?” and he said he was the doctor. I interviewed him, asking about his certification, etc. and his record. He could see I was anxious.
Finally, I asked, in desperation, “are you Christian?” and he said “yes,” and then added “Would you like us to pray together before we start?” I was shocked. I paused, trying to deal with this new information – you are allowed to pray in the operating room?
“Yes,” I said, “please.”
They put hands on me and prayed for guidance during the procedure, and safety and a positive outcome. That is the last I remember, I felt so secure, and then I woke up and it was over. The outcome was positive.
There is no such thing as not allowing prayer in the schools or public places. People can pray wherever they want. The only thing forbidden is prayers where everyone is forced to pray together, the same words, words that may not express the same faith. We don’t all share the same beliefs, we don’t all pray in the same vocabularies. But we are free to pray, no one can stop the prayers of the heart.
What Mormons Do Right
Today, after church, AdventureMan took me to my very favorite place in Pensacola, Tudo’s (Vietnamese) and as we were waiting for our food, and our take out order (the Happy Baby has a bad cold so we are also taking lunch to his Mom and Dad) I notice the guys in the next booth are speaking in a foreign language, and because I don’t speak it, I can only guess, it was perhaps Maylay.
I think they had to be Mormons. They were in their twenties, and very clean cut. Two were probably foreign students, and two were in white shirts with ties, and dark pants, what I think of as Mormon-boys-on-their-mission dress, and it carries over into post-mission life. We saw them often, two by two, in Germany and in France, sometimes singing, sometimes going door to door, sometimes passing out pamphlets. They always spoke the language of the country they were in, maybe not so well at the beginning, but at the end of their two year mission, they spoke it pretty well.
From time to time, at the next table, they were all four speaking the same language, and it was not English.
So lets say, from a strategic point of view, that our goal is to spread the ‘good news’ (which, oh by the way, it is.) Doesn’t it just make sense that you make an effort to speak the language of your target nationality?
You would be amazed at how few of the other denominations who send ministers and evangelists overseas, how very few of them have much training in the language of the people they will be serving, or ministering to, or trying to share the good news with. You would not be amazed that when you are trying to communicate, especially big ideas, it really helps to be able to communicate. It also shows respect for another country and another culture, and humility to learn other languages and other ways. I can imagine that much of their success comes from an ability to build a personal relationship, and that is more likely to happen if you speak their language.
I am not Mormon, as you know, and I admire much of what they do right – I admire their neighborliness, their obligation to reach out and help where help is needed, and their stewardship of resources, built right into practicing the religion. I especially admire their ability to teach languages to the young missionaries they send out, and their vast library of genealogical resources.
Lying Prompts Need for Cleansing!
Lying makes you want to wash your mouth out, LOL! Who thinks up these studies?? I found this on AOL News:
Parents who punished their fibbing children by washing their mouths out with soap may have been onto something.
Researchers at the University of Michigan found that people who lie have the urge to wash their “dirty” mouths afterwards, apparently in an effort to wipe themselves clean of their bad behavior.
“Not only do people want to clean after a dirty deed, they want to clean the specific body part involved,” study author Norbert Schwarz, a psychologist at the university’s Institute for Social Research, said in a statement.
Schwarz and co-author Spike W.S. Lee asked 87 students to pretend they were lawyers who were competing with an imaginary coworker, “Chris,” for a promotion. They were told to picture finding an important document Chris had misplaced. If they gave it back to him, it would help his career and harm theirs.
Participants were instructed to send Chris an e-mail or leave him a voicemail message in which they either told him the truth — that they’d discovered the lost report — or lied to him, saying they couldn’t find the missing paper.
The subjects then had to rate how much they wanted certain products, including mouthwash and hand sanitizer, and what they were willing to pay for them. They were told the items were the focus of a market research survey.
The students who had lied on the phone felt a stronger desire for mouthwash and were willing to pay more for it than those who hadn’t told the truth over e-mail, the authors said. But those who lied over e-mail had a greater wish for hand sanitizer and were willing to pay more for it than those who’d fibbed on the phone, according to the research.
Those who had been truthful had less of an urge to buy either product.
In other words, the scientists concluded, verbal lies compelled the liars to want to buy mouthwash; lying with their hands by typing an untruthful e-mail made them more drawn to hand sanitizer.
“The references to ‘dirty hands’ or ‘dirty mouths’ in everyday language suggest that people think about abstract issues of moral purity in terms of more concrete experiences with physical purity,” Lee, a Michigan doctoral candidate in psychology, said in a statement.
University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist Dr. Christos Ballas told AOL Health that the compulsion to buy hand sanitizer may have been for another reason entirely.
“The preference for hand sanitizer may well be related to the fact that they were typing on someone else’s computer keyboard,” he joked.
He said the scientists should have examined whether the the cleaning products had any impact on the liars’ future behavior.
“An even better study to conduct would be whether the availability of mouthwash/sanitizer reduces ‘guilt’ feelings, or makes it more likely they’ll lie the next time,” Ballas said.
In the end, he believes the findings, which appear in the October issue of Psychological Science, tell us more about the relationship between language and our subconscious than they do about the desire to wash ourselves clean of our sins.
“We interpret this as ‘lies make you feel dirty.’ And so the resultant mouthwash makes sense,” said Ballas. “But this is a purely semantic relationship. What if lies made you feel … small? Would you reach for platform shoes? Thus, the real insight here wouldn’t be that lies make us feel dirty, but that our unconscious is entirely dependent on our language.”
Show Me the Money
Two themes came together, early this Sunday morning in Pensacola, first, as Father Harry spoke to us at Christ Church this morning on stewardship, and giving generously, and then later, as I was reading my Sunday Pensacola News Journal, an article on our elected officials, and their finances, their net worth and where their money is coming from.
Father Harry spoke about the rich man, at whose gate Lazarus begs, covered with sores, and then, at death, how the rich man asks God to send Lazarus to wet his lips, as he burns in the eternal hellfires, and Lazarus sits with God. He also asks God to send Lazarus to warn his rich family members that their choices, their lack of generosity, will have consequences, but God says (I paraphrase here) that Moses already told them, and earlier prophets, and that if the rich didn’t listen to them, they are not going to listen to Lazarus.
To me, it seems a given, that if you are blessed with plenty, then you have an obligation to help those who struggle. It isn’t necessarily money, it can be food, it can be time, it can be expertise, or – in my case – it can even be fabric. 🙂 We learn it in pre-school and kindergarten, don’t we? Share what you have, and everyone gets along.
It totally boggles my mind that many of our good friends, government and military people, have excellent health care under a highly socialized system – that’s what the military health care system is all about, we all have access to the same treatment. Many of the people who have access to medical treatment become rabid about supporting health care for those who don’t. Part of it seems to be “I earned it, and those lazy bums expect it for nothing.”
Most of my life, I’ve worked with ‘those lazy bums’ and have grown to have a lot of understanding and compassion for the circumstances that can make an entire family bone poor. Sometimes, it is poor choices – but how do people learn to make better choices without help? How do people aspire to more when they think that the ‘more’ is inaccessible to them?
The face of our nation changed after World War II when many more Americans gained access to higher education as a veteran’s benefit; prior to the GI Bill, higher education was only available to those comfortable people who could afford it.
Also in today’s Pensacola News Journal is an article about Study: Educating Women Saves Millions of Children which is an Associated Press Story about a study published this month in Lancet. “Educated women tend to use health services more and often make better choices on hygiene, nutrition and parenting,” the study (funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) concludes.
And last, in the Pensacola News Journal, is an article that makes my heart sing, that makes me proud to live in a democracy, the article about how much our elected officials are worth, and where there money is coming from. I love it that we hold our leaders accountable, and that their wealth is (theoretically) transparent to us.
I’m a great advocate of wealth. I admire people who create wealth, who invest, who work hard for their money. The best of these people, and I mentioned Bill and Melinda Gates (above) for a reason, give back generously. Many people don’t start out rich, they start from little or nothing and build slowly slowly until they have reached a comfortable level. Sometimes, even in hard times, if you have built a strong foundation, that money just keeps multiplying, especially if it is invested with some diversity.
“It’s called the law of the harvest,” my Mormon friends told me when we were discussing how what you give comes back to you multiplied. It was so graphic, I’ve never forgotten it. There is nothing wrong with money. Money is just another tool, like a computer, or a hammer. It’s what you do with your money (tool) that makes the difference. Money is kind of like a seed, you plant and you harvest, but it is also like fertilizer – you spread it around, and amazing things happen.
Having money is a blessing, and giving it away is even more of a blessing. When you give, good things come back to you, multiplied. It’s the Law of the Harvest.
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