Saudi women in an extremely surprising development get elected to the board of directors of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce.

Congratulations Lama Al Suleiman and Nashwa Taher, I wonder when people in so called liberated Bahrain will start voting for women to hold office here? Unfortunately they didn’t fair very well in the recent Chamber of Commerce elections here.

Two Saudi businesswomen swept to an unprecedented victory in elections to the board of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Wednesday in the first polls in which women stood as candidates in the conservative Muslim kingdom.

“I’m happy, but I’m still under shock,” Lama Al Suleiman, one of the two winners, said, summing up the feelings of many election activists and watchers who had expected one woman at best to be voted into office.

“It’s a big leap for Saudi women, an answer to what people want,” said Suleiman, a 39-year-old mother-of-four.
Middle East Times
Hat tip: Emirates Economist

The government is being so amateurish lately that it boggles the mind how they actually continue to believe that the only way to rule is by sweeping problems under carpets, rather than courageously coming out and facing them head on. Isn’t this attitude the very thing that started the “troubles” of the ’90s?

We have a “situation” here that threatens to turn the country once again upside down internally, and losing it whatever is left of its tattered reputation internationally.

Why didn’t the Interior Ministry IMMEDIATELY hold a press conference after hearing of these dangerous allegations and propose a full and independent investigation into the matter is beyond belief. This only suggests that the ministry just doesn’t give a damn about it’s reputation in the first place, and that it feels no justification for doing so as it is above suspicion and above the law.

A person was allegedly sexually violated and attacked supposedly by five plain-clothed members of the police in a brazen attempt to dissuade him and his colleagues from demonstrating in front of the Royal Court and not a word of apology or promise of investigation yet, all we get in the popular press is the same platitudes. Should we be surprised that main-street is in uproar?

Up your game guys, please. This is getting very frustrating and tiring.

update 3 Dec ’05: You have to take your hat off to Shaikh Rashid bin Abdulla Al-Khalifa, he organised a press conference last night and laid the full details out in the open and beseached community leaders and parents to help in quelling the rioting while confirming the full rights to democratic ltools like demonstrations and freedoms of speech.

The riots we have witnessed have ceased since last night, when the clerics finally came out and told people to not cause any more troubles.

We shouldn’t really cry over Friday sermons delivered by a right honourable member of parliament, religious leader and imam Shaikh Jassim Al-Saidi when he ends his sermons with:

اللهم إلعن اليهود و النصارى و الرافضه و أرني فيهم يوماً أسود

Oh Allah curse the Jews, Christians and the Shi’a and show me in them a black day.
Al-Wasat

The sad thing is that with the current polarisation of the Bahraini society, I would not be surprised if more Wahabi gentlemen are carried on shoulders and delivered to exalted seats in the 2006 parliament for them to continue to spread their hate.

That said, the government does have a responsibility in facing people like The Right Honourable Shaikh Jassim Al-Saidi who spread hate, sedition and sectarian discord. It is people like him through their spread of hate who would be the first to disassociate themselves from acts of terror that they themselves have incited and supported.

I suggest that the government take this issue very seriously, and as he has a case of “propagating hate” against him with the Public Prosecutor, the government should take this opportunity to show the people of Bahrain and the world that we shall not stand idle while these people spread their poison.

Or shall we first wait for people’s bodies to be blown to bits by the likes of The Right Honourable Shaikh Jassim Al-Saidi and only then decide that we really don’t stand for this sort of thing, as our friends the Jordanians have done in only coming out en mass against terrorism when they themselves suffered from its fate by one of their own, one who was constantly praised when he was blowing innocents in Iraq?

The very least I would like to see is a picket of his mosque and home, peacefully showing his exalted highness that we fully and unequivocally reject him and his thoughts.

Bahrain doesn’t allow gun ownership and possession unless specifically authorised by the Interior Minister himself. So the only ones who do carry guns about their person are mostly members of the police and members of the military police (who I suspect are allowed to take their guns with them at the end of their duty?) Therefore, gun crime in Bahrain is extremely rare.

But for an incident last night which was reported in the GDN this morning stating that some yahoo with a friend decided to shoot someone who “wronged” his sister in a row about a bloody mobile phone! Fortunately the bozo missed.

Are there any laws for owning guns in Bahrain then? How is that implemented? Are the police not required to hand in their firearms at the end of their shift? More importantly, what are the police doing about this trend? So far all attacks (as far as I know) were non-fatal, but it’s only a matter of time before they turn really bad.

The Unstoppabulls Karting tem is all set for the Red Bull 25 hours Endurance Karting Race that is scheduled to be hosted at the Seef Track from Thursday 1st December to Friday 2nd December. Under the patronage of HH Shaikh Khalifa bin Hamed bin Isa Al Khalifa, organized by Dubai based Sports Star and sanctioned by the Bahrain Motor Federation, this will be the first major Karting event since December 2004 and should be a crowd puller.

The all Bahraini Unstoppabulls Karting Team will be captained by Mohammed Al Baharna with racers Fahad Al Musalam, Talal Al Ghaith, Yasser Al Saffar, Abbas Al Sarhan and Ali Ateya.

The Unstoppabulls Racing Team was formed in 2000 by HH Shaikh Khalifa and Fahad Al Musalam. Today the team members are champions not only in Karting but having diversified have proved over and over again the ability of Bahraini racers in a variety of motor racing principles; once given the support and opportunity for their talent to be nurtured.

Currently the Unstoppabulls are supported by Karting 4 ME, Behbehani Motors, Kanoo Motor Sport (BIC) and technology partners Compuex.

For more information or to participate please contact Ahmed Shehi, Sports Stars Telephone +971-4-283 1066, Mobile; +971-50-475 5535 Fax +971-4-283 1181

Unstoppabulls racer Shaikh Salman bin Rashid Al Khalifa who is the current Formula BMW Asia Champion has confirmed his participation in the Formula BMW Race of Champions due to be hosted on 3rd December in Paris. Shaikh Salman was sponsored by Unstoppabulls Racing Team, owned by HH Shaikh Khalifa bin Hamed bin Isa Al Khalifa and drove with Korean E-Rain team in the Formula BMW 2005 Championship.

Four Formula BMW driver will have the opportunity to perform alongside the world’s top racing drivers at the Race of Champions, Shaikh Salman bin Rashid Al Khalifa (Bahrain), Nicolas Huelkenberg (America), Dean Smith (Great Britain) and Robert Wickens (Canadian). All four will make an appearance in the support programme of that event which is held for the 18th time this year.

click image for more about this present and actual threat to the Hawar Islands’ environment

Hawar Islands, the group of islands to the south of us that this country has gone to war for, both morally and physically as well as through the International Court of Justice which we have eventually won, is about to be declared for nought.

A group of money-men are about to rape the islands destroying its natural status and the king’s declared vision and goal to keep it serene for future generations of Bahrainis to enjoy and for the world to be kept as a natural reserve.

A “master plan” has been hatched that will throw all of these mundane and honourable thoughts to the four winds. It is much more important to build yet another resort without any regard for the environment. An airport will be built that will be situated right in the path of hundreds of thousands of migrating birds, with all safety consideration for passengers and birds disregarded.

That is not to mention the untold damage that will bring to one of the last remaining bastions of dugong populations in the world, as well as a natural place for the migrating Osprey eagles to breed, coming from as far away as Scotland for the privilege.

Hawar was not saved for us just to be raped. Gulf Finance House, the megalith behind such projects as the Bahrain Financial Harbour should remove its hands completely from Hawar Islands, the same goes for any other “developer” who will systematically destroy what is left of our environment for handfuls of cash.

Hands OFF Hawar, GFH and its henchmen are not welcome there. Leave at least Hawar as a reserve for our children

Please visit Threat to Dugong blog and Hawar Islands for more information.

Under the patronage of HH Shaikh Khalifa bin Hamed bin Isa Al Khalifa – the Red Bull 25hour Endurance Karting Race will be hosted at the Seef Track in the Kingdom of Bahrain from 1st to 2nd December. The event has been organized by Sports Stars and sanctioned by the Bahrain Motor Federation.

With the unfaltering support and commitment by HH Shaikh Khalifa bin Hamed bin Isa Al Khalifa, motor racing has gained a huge amount of awareness to a level where champions have been produced from the Kingdom of Bahrain.

To graduate into a world of high-tech motor racing and become successful it is important to gain the racing skills required and the best school for this is Karting. The history of any form of Motor Sport clearly shows that most of the best drivers learned their skills in Karting before graduating into their chosen field of racing. Racing in a kart with your body some twenty millimeters off the track is a mind blowing sensation of adrenalin rush and high speed and with the added comradeship found amongst fellow drivers it is truly a sport to participate in at any level.

For more information or to participate contact:

Ahmed Shehi,
Sports Stars
Telephone +971-4-283 1066,
Mobile; +971-50-475 5535
Fax +971-4-283 1181 or
e-mail bahrain25hrs@sportstars.ae

We’ll be meeting at Cappucino Cafe in Saar Starbucks in Zinj on Thursday (Dec 1st) at 8pm. You’re more than welcome to join us if you’re around. Let us know whether you’re coming please so we at least know approximate numbers.

FALSE ALARM!

Thanks to all those who reported. The site is fine and it appears a problem crept into my ADSL router at home, reset to factory defaults and reconfigured. I can access it fine now, although why originally I couldn’t connect to it normally but can through a proxy is mystery I would like to understand.

We now have a plausible explanation. Thanks e.

Ok, stand down troops. It’s AOK so far
– mahmood (just back from a fantastic GT Race!)

Can you guys let me know whether you can access Mahmood’s Den (this site) ok from Bahrain? I cannot access my own site directly, I have to go through a proxy to do so. Although I did contact Batelco and they swear that it is NOT blocked and it loads with them, however they say it is very slow. It is blazingly fast through the proxy though.

The tech support in the States of the host say there is no problem accessing it from there. The problem with me is that I cannot access my server hosted sites through http nor ssh.

Weird.

Anyway I’m off to the GT Championships now and will check again tonight.

Don’t panic (yet). Maybe there is a plausible explanation for this behaviour.

Oh by the way, Akhbar Al-Khaleej reports this morning that there are many more sites are going to be blocked (other than the 40 blocked over the past couple of days) citing “abusive posts about the government or its leaders” as an excuse for doing so.

Have a look at the brilliant post at Silverooo, now THAT is the epitome of hypocrisy!

Can anyone guess what Bahrain’s press freedom index is going to be for 2006? No?

Well let’s look at the trend, so we can realistically predict the future:

2002 = 67
2003 = 117
2004 = 167
2005 = 123

Let’s also consider other factors that might assist us in this prediction; emoodz broke the story on Wednesday that a number of websites appeared to be blocked, this was later confirmed by Batelco, the only ISP on the island and referred us to the Ministry of Information. Of course, no one had any information at the Ministry of Information!

This morning, the GDN had an article that the block was far more widespread than we thought, the GDN reports FORTY sites blocked without even bothering to tell the webmasters why they were blocked in the first place. And typical of a Ministry of Information official, he blatantly told the reporter that he could only look into this issue when he “gets back to work on Saturday!” What cheek. I thought that people in that kind of powerful position at one of the (supposedly) most important ministries would immediately jump on the situation and get it fixed there and then, but no. The world has to stop until his excellency goes back to work after the weekend, clears his in-tray and then maybe, just maybe look into this “annoyance.” Let’s forget the fact that Bahrain’s reputation internationally will have once again been dragged in the mud.. let’s not screw up our weekend, which is much more important.

So what are the contents of some of these sites? They’re run of the mill village sites discussing their affairs and yes some do go into political debates which sometimes turn unsavory, but so what? Democracy isn’t peachy nor is it clean, and people have the right to say what they feel, it’s better than lobbing rocks at police cars isn’t it?

And why resort once again to such draconian methods as blocking sites? I suspect that the next step is to drag those 40 webmasters in front of the public prosecutor and throw them in prison for a few days so that they would behave themselves, right?

I’m just fed up of this rubbish, this continuous attempt at shutting people up, this continuous incitement to violence by the very government organ that is supposed to be used to spread the good democratic concepts and “inform” people of their rights and duties in a democratic society.

I suggest that we find out who the actual person who authorised this latest fiasco and publish his name in bold letters as the real enemy of the people. He is not alone in this for sure, but he certainly will have contributed to the reduction of our rank once again to something beyond 170 for the next report.

FORTY websites were allegedly shut down this week by the Information Ministry without warning or prior notice, Bahraini webmasters claimed yesterday. They include a number of popular Bahraini websites regularly visited by surfers for political developments in the kingdom.

They include www.montadayat.org, which was closed permanently on Monday after being closed on Friday and reopened 24 hours later.

It was among 40 other small websites closed on the same day without any official notice from the ministry, said a montadayat spokesman, who did not wish to be named.
Read more…

Unstoppabulls Racer Talal Al Ghaith finished third in Pres-Race 1 after qualifying fourth in the Mini Cooper race hosted at the Bahrain International Circuit as a support race for the GT. The top three racers were, veteran racer Ali Kobaisi 1st, Salah Saluddin 2nd, and third was the youngest racer on the field, Unstoppabulls Talal Al Ghaith.

Salah Saluddin was given a 5 second penalty for jump starting the race and awarded second place.

Unstoppabulls Racing Team owned by HH Shaikh Khalifa bin Hamed bin Isa Al Khalifa will participate in the second round of the Mini-Cooper race hosted at the Bahrain International Circuit on Thursday 24th and Friday 25th November.

The least experienced driver in the Mini-Cooper series, Bulls racer Talal hopes to bring home the same impressive results as he managed in the last round. Student Talal Al Ghaith was invited to join the Unstoppabulls Karting team in 2004 and now as well as the Mini Cooper he represents the Bulls in the Formula BMW Series.

Intellectuals last night called for a united stand against religious extremists who are trying to restrict personal freedoms in Bahrain. Professionals, business people, activists and journalists at Almuntada (The Forum) said that something must be done to stop fundamentalists from taking the country backwards.