Archive | May, 2003

The ressurection of Art

new statue replaces Saddam'sAs if it was ever dead? It might by necessity hide for a while but never dies, even in the most hostile environments you will find art flourishing. Look at Iraq: intermittent electricity, untreated water, medical services on the blink, people without jobs, without steady income, but with all of these predicaments we have a group of artists erecting a new statue in place of that despot’s. This statue symbolizes two great civilizations: the Sumarians and Islam.

Although art is no where near the top of the list Iraqis have on their minds, it is vitally important as it maintains the people’s pride, preserve their real heritage, and gives them a glimmer of hope that no American tank or presence can.

In all conflicts the “puppet” art is the first to be replaced like breaths of much needed fresh air, maybe that will remind people in the next few difficult months and years that life will go on and become much better than what was left behind. So in a way, Art is the first stage of reconciliation for a broken country and society, the first flower of spring.

We don’t have enough artistic impressions in our countries, we tend to wait for catastrophic events to happen and then real artists shine and bring their thoughts to the fore. Those puppet art creators invariably fade away like their creations with loss of face and respect. You can immediately recognize that kind of art and artists. They – like their work – look very temporary and insignificant. Art that endures even catastrophes is invariably that creation that speaks directly to the soul.

I am one of the fortunate ones who can appreciate art, my dad being one of the founding fathers of art in this area of the world. True he didn’t follow the stampede of others in the ’70s and ’80s to buy land and build buildings, he was more concerned with building generations and preserving history. He continues to be an inspiration even now after 9 years of losing his sight completely, he overcomes his disability and continues to produce thought inspiring etchings, using only his fingers for feel, and his soul for vision.

The “Najin” (survivors) group of artists in Iraq have all my respect. They should be encouraged, nurtured and protected, for they are the real keepers of the scrolls of Iraqi dignity and history.

Bye bye Concorde… it has been good to know you

Air France is set to ground the Concorde next week with British Airways following suit in October.

Since it began commercial operation with its maiden flight to Bahrain, I have unfortunately never flown on the Silver Bird. I have however walked around and touched it on the ramp at Bahrain Airport some years ago while I was still an Avionix engineer with Gulf Air. That was a good feeling only surpassed by actually flying in that tube.

That chance will probably never come again, and with no one that I know of developing a replacement, it’s such a shame that this feat of engineering now passing on to museums.

Richard Branson is bidding to take over the British Airways fleet. This guy has my utmost respect, but with all that I cannot see Virgin – even if they are successful in getting the Concorde from the clutches of BA – ever making money out of it. Let’s face it, it’s old, costs too much to run and service and the environmental people are up in arms about its noise polution.

While it was still flying to and over Bahrain, everyone on the island knew that it has arrived or left because of the noise that it makes – music to me, just plain loud noise to others.

I heard a story a long time ago when the Concorde stopped coming to Bahrain that the reason given was that a Saudi beduin complained to the governmer that his pregnant goats lost their kids because of the sonic boom, so the governer just banned Concorde overflying Saudi! Kids would believe anything!

Thank you Concorde and I hope that even in museums you will continue to inspire engineers for a long time to come.

Linux gains in Munich, Microsoft loses

Although Microsoft’s offer for desktop operating systems and applications to the city of Munich in Germany is reportedly 3 million Euros less than that offered by IBM and Suse, Munich still chose Linux over Microsoft to switch some 13,000 computers.

Now this is forward thinking and bravery, and maybe just as the article linked above says that this is like the falling of the Berlin wall as far as Microsoft is concerned. Bully to them!

Open source has several advantages over “black boxes’ provided by the like of Microsoft and Apple among others. The fallacy that “there’s no one to support you with open source solutions” just doesn’t work any more as apparently up to 15% of computer deliveries in Europe now are Linux-based, hence there is local wealth of knowledge that users can leverage, and with giants like IBM in the deal, they’re in good hands.

IBM in our area of the world is also trying mightily to convince governments and private enterprises to make the switch. I think the only thing that’s holding them back is uncertainty and Arabisation. Another factor could well be some corrupt officials.

I’ve said before that our governments have to invest time, effort and money into getting Linux and its main open source applications to work well with the Arabic language. It is doable, but requires some champion to push that message through to our governments. We have already seen one of the main government and highest profile sites in Bahrain running open source solutions receiving millions of hits a month, especially during the elections. The server here is Red Hat Linux and the CMS is PostNuke which has been fully Arabised. I would shudder to think of how much it would have cost them if they depended on Microsoft products!

We’re doing our little part in the hope that Linux will prevail, we have an effort going now to Arabise Xaraya, if nothing but to demonstrate that it can be done, at the same time potentially benefiting more than 250 million people.

I’m using Linux and open source solutions in my office on a daily basis. If the staff are unfamiliar with Linux, that’s fine, I just get them to ditch Microsoft in favour of OpenOffice and use MySQL where I migrated most of our databases.

Small businesses in Bahrain can immensely benefit from open source, at once they will become ‘legal’ by ditching pirated software they habitually use, and help future generations by getting them away from stifling closed and expensive products.

The new Al-Qaeda

fron the NYTimes

Arab International Ministry, the Indianapolis group that led the crash course on Islam here, claims to have trained 4,500 American Christians to proselytize Muslims in the last six years, many of those since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The oratorical tone of these authors and lecturers varies, but they share the basic presumption that the world’s two largest religions are headed for a confrontation, with Christianity representing what is good, true and peaceful, and Islam what is evil, false and violent.

The criticism is coming predominantly from evangelicals, who belong to many independent churches and Christian denominations, including the Southern Baptist Convention.

Evangelicals have always believed that all other religions are wrong, but what is notable now is the vituperation.

here we go again… so how different are these people from Al-Qaeda or Wahabies again?