Archive | April, 2007

Bloggers’ gathering moved to the 12th

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The 27th Bloggers’ Gathering has been moved to the 12th, by popular demand. Now make sure that you do attend!

We still need a volunteer to talk about the blogs discovered since the last meeting. We need to decide on what the theme of the discussion should be, and it would be good if we can start thinking of what the next meeting should be about too while we’re at it.

Do you guys want to talk techniques? How to embed a picture or a video to your blog etc? That is, do you want the theme to be technical, a “how to” or “serious” stuff like ethics and bloggers’ society?

Con man – Bahraini style

I had to laugh at this:

يصطدم بالخليجيين السكارى ويهددهم بالأمن للحصول على المال

تمكن رجال الأمن من القبض على متهم يقوم ليلاً بالاصطدام البسيط بسيارات الزوار الخليجيين الذين يكونون في حال سكر، موضحاً لهم أنهم في حال سكر بيّن، وأنهم هم المخطئون، طالباً منهم تعويضه مبلغا من المال وإلا فإنه سيتجه لتبليغ رجال المرور للقبض عليهم في حال سكر بين.

وبدورهم علم رجال الأمن بالخدعة التي يتبعها ذلك الشاب في استيلائه على أموال الغير نتيجة خلقه لوقائع غير صحيحة، فتابعوا تحركاته وتمكنوا من القبض عليه وهو متلبس في إحدى الحالات. وتمت إحالة المتهم إلى النيابة العامة التي حققت معه، ووجهت له تهم: أنه أبلغ كذباً السلطة الإدارية بنية الإساءة ضد مواطن خليجي بأمر يستوجب عقوبته جنائياً، إضافة إلى أنه رمى المواطن الخليجي بإحدى طرق العلانية بما يخدش شرفه واعتباره من دون أن يتضمن ذلك واقعة معينة. وشرع في الاستيلاء على المبالغ النقدية المملوكة للمجني عليه، بأن افتعل واقعة مزورة في صورة واقعة صحيحة، اذ اختلق واقعة تصادم معه بسيارته وأوهمه بحدوث أضرار له جراء ذلك التصادم، وذلك خلافاً للحقيقة. وبعرض المتهم على المحكمة الصغرى الجنائية الرابعة أمرت الأخيرة بإدانته، وحبسه 6 أشهرٍ وتغريمه مبلغ 50 ديناراً.

Al-Wasat :: 2 April, 2007

The report above says that a Bahraini con man has been imprisoned for 6 months for targeting drunk Gulf Nationals. The guy apparently waits for them to come out of a hotel or disco and then drives into their cars, gets out and threatens the mugs that he will go to the police and as they are under the influence, the police will throw them in prison or heavily fine them unless they pay him off!

The police got wind of him and caught him red handed. He got six months and BD50 fine. I would have hoped that the police would have investigated his financial records and levy double the amount he extorted from his victims in addition of the six months he should spend contemplating his deeds.

We have con men around, I am sure, but this guy is a bit over the top.

The beginning

Well, it had to happen one day, now I have to work for a living.

In the spirit of engendering tolerance, and to expose the many good things that the Bahrain Finance House has done, in not only bringing running water to the depths of Africa, building mosques in Germany and Sao Paulo and of course the various schools it has funded throughout the Third World; they have approached me to run their many philanthropic efforts with particular emphasis on spreading the idea and ideals of tolerism by utilising Mahmood’s Den to the full.

Some of you might have questioned the various technical issues we have had over the last week. These, I can now declare, were caused by BFH’s technical staff, Rackspace and myself diligently working at stabilising the Den as we believe that due to the project I have been employed to do will substantially increase the load on the site; therefore, we have bought another server from Rackspace and have now completely and successfully migrated the Den to a load balancing arrangement to ensure reliable and expeditious delivery of content to readers.

Although I cannot divulge the financial arrangements, I can tell you that the ownership of the domain mahmood.tv is in the process of being transferred to a foundation which will be the umbrella organisation for these new efforts. In doing so, I am very happy with the financial arrangements and can tell you that although money was never a motivation – doing good of course supersedes these mundane considerations – I am now financially secure.

Needless to say, this would never have happened had it not been for your help, my friends. Without your visits, readership, comments, criticism and genuine love that I felt, this would never have happened.

What can you expect from Mahmood’s Den going forward?

The same, but much richer!

Plans have been put in place to employ full-time staff (one technical to take care of the server, development and theme creation and two sales and marketing) while we intend to hire many freelancers operating in the same areas BFH concentrates on, these freelancers will file reports on activities in their areas as well as news stories and analysis. Of particular interest is the exposition of corruption in those countries and how that impacts our delivery of sustenance and education in those territories.

There should be a press release from BFH later on today which I shall repost here of course.

Thank you once again for your support and your friendship.