Mahmood's Den

I had tremendous fun going all over Muharraq island looking for the mid-Ramadhan celebrations we call “Girga’oun” (the G as in golf, in both cases). I arrived early, actually before Iftar time by a few minutes and set up at the souq, to take the initial shots as it was far too early for anything to happen there. I soon left and went to the nooks and crannies of the island: from the old parts of Busaiteen through to Arad and Hidd and back again between all areas.

I finally saw some children going door-to-door in Busaiteen, which proved the best area for this occasion as it had plenty of kids really into it and you can see it in their faces, enthusiastic and happy.

I was thrilled to be invited (actually, I invited myself!) into people’s homes to shoot a couple of short scenes from within.

I hope you enjoy this piece of true Bahraini culture.

I am really starting to enjoy doing these things and I think I will do more in the future to cover various aspects of our culture and traditions which I hope will gain your approval. I must apologise for the technical errors you might notice in this clip (in the enthusiasm of shooting, I forgot to check if the mic shows in the frame! Silly me.) Now I know better and this is a very nice learning experience. It’s a new camera and all.

and I didn’t see it! I missed the middle of the race unfortunately so I’m just looking at the various reports of the fantastic Japanese F1 race in Fuji and I fully expected that it would be red-flagged with the downpour they have suffered as well as the fog. Visibility, on TV anyway, seems to have been zero at some parts of the circuit.

Whiting didn’t stop the race; however, and the thing that really saddened me is Vettel rear-ending Webber who was running a fantastic second and almost assured of a podium finish for the hard working Aussie. I could understand Mark’s frustration when interviewed after the crash when he said “They [kids] have not got enough experience – they do a good job and then they fuck it all up.”

Which brings me to another point, the ever solid Al-Jazeera is pulling Jazeera +1 and +2 (+2 broadcast the race with English commentary today!) and the ticker was saying that if anyone wants to watch their channels from midnight tonight they have to purchase a new card from them! What the hell? Can’t they make their minds on what they want to do and keep it that way? I’m not sure how long they have the franchise, but I would rather it returns to ART who did a much better job that these crap artists. I’m wondering if the Chinese race will be available for viewing on Showtime henceforth. If anyone has any idea what’s going on and which channel we can watch the remainder of the season, please let me know.

Anyway, Hami took the race, he’s 12 points ahead of The Fluke who needs a miracle to catch up to him.

What I’m praying for now is for Ice Man to surpass the simple gap of 5 points to relegate the fluke to the history books!

Are you the kind of person who grimaces every time you read a hacked up “txt”-like messages? Are you the kind of person who would rather listen to nails being dragged across chalk-boards and suffer the consequences than hack English and Aranglish words when sending mobile text messages or through Internet chat windows? Are you the kind of person who automatically label those who habitually use “ppl” to supposedly mean “people” and “w/” to mean “with” and rather shout out “LOL” than actually laugh as simple lazy individuals who should be put out of their misery out of compassion for future generations?

I must admit I am. I feel guilty if I shorten a word to miss its vowels, so rather than doing that, I actually dig into the vocabulary store to find a shorter synonym!

I know. Call me anal, but I don’t really care. Maybe it’s just my age, but it takes me an age (with a face that looks like it has just had a bad experience with a very bitter lemon) to read that “form” of communicable language – if you can call it that – and even longer to comprehend what the heck the person is talking about. It is even worse when it’s an adult who uses language in that abrogated form.

Consider this comment entered earlier today for instance. The system rightly (in my opinion) regarded it as spam and into the big bucket it went. Through my regular rifling through that bucket, I realised that it is legitimate and as such – and to the music of nails on chalk-boards – resuscitated it unmolested.

dis is so damn perfect…….da whole idea is awesum…..dis competition proves dt beauty is nt wearn biknis n standin naked infrnt ov da world…..beauty is 2 covr urself n luk hw elegant n beautiful dey luk lyk dis….keep it up!!!n u all miss arab contestant u all r superb…..

Sickening.

Bee, originally uploaded by malyousif.

Hope you enjoy this one my friends. The season is changing and it is simply gorgeous outside this morning. I’m off again to do some damage to the garden!

Hi guys, I hope you’re having wonderful Friday/Weekend.

I thought I would do another slideshow for you this Friday with stills rather than video (partly because I missed my Canon ) this time once again accompanies by Emma Shapplin which I hope you will enjoy.

When the crown prince announced that we must eradicate corruption in our country, he couldn’t have timed it better.

I don’t know whether the thing that prompted both him and the prime minister to reiterate their intention to correct this situation is due to them receiving advance copies of the 2007 CPI Report or they were genuinely alarmed at the depth of corruption uncovered which gave rise to accelerating corruption cases brought against various companies in which the government has a stake in, but I am happy enough to give them the benefit of the doubt in that they did notice the money being bled from public funds and made the required political decision to staunch that flow.

Political decision alone is of course not going to resolve this down-ward spiral. What would help is primarily reforming of the judicial system and separate it completely from the executive – practically as well as constitutionally – and remove influence peddling and interference to subvert the course of justice. That is in general as far as corruption cases are concerned, but specifically competent courts and arbitration panels should also be enacted under the same criteria to adjudicate business cases expeditiously. Business cases have been known to go on for years if not decades. This of course gives comfort to corrupt individuals and practices. Who of us don’t remember the various corruption cases through the past few years?

The most important factor in winning against corruption of course is the presence of social justice and good governance, both of which are somewhat rather lacking, and this latest CPI report is symptomatic of this condition and should act as a clear warning that intrinsic changes must be enacted to bring the country back to a correct and sustainable path in which every Bahraini takes ownership in Bahrain’s future.

This is an alarming situation we are living in. It gave rise to the dangerous down-ward spiral we have entered with corruption; Bahrain – one might say – has become “حارة كل من إيدو إلو” (taking the law into one’s own hands / acting with impunity) – in the great words of Duraid Lahham.

How do we rise above this then?

Establish social justice and good governance. No one, no one, should be above the law. A simple formula that requires quite a lot of sacrifices from the leadership much more than it would from the common man. It means loosening the control strings and believing in Bahrainis. It means learning to genuinely trust each other. It means the eradication of sectarianism in every form it takes. It means the equal distribution of wealth. It means recognising flaws and genuinely fixing them.

Glossing over these issues and just using that tired adage that “we are one family” just won’t cut it any more. Action on the ground is needed, otherwise I can guarantee that the 2008 ranking will be even worse. Even staying still is not an option any more, others will continue to overhaul us as some already have.

How about starting with an honest and complete change of the cabinet rather than just reshuffling it? It is plainly obvious that real new capable persons be either appointed or elected into all of those positions with complete disregard to tribalism and sectarianism should be sought. Positions which should be answerable to parliament to ensure that should financial or administrative corruption be discovered, it is effectively and severely dealt with.

We have good men and women throughout our society who could shoulder these burdens, why not give them a chance to do so?

Once again, reports like this should not be discouraging. They are providing us with mirrors through which we can plainly see ourselves. What we do with that image is completely up to us.

hehe!

Members of Khobar’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice were the victims of an attack by two Saudi females, Asharq Al-Awsat can reveal.

According to the head of the commission in Khobar, two girls pepper sprayed members of the commission after they had tried to offer them advice.

Head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in the Eastern province Dr. Mohamed bin Marshood al-Marshood, told Asharq Al Awsat that two of the Commission’s employees were verbally insulted and attacked by two inappropriately-dressed females, in the old market in Prince Bandar street, an area usually crowded with shoppers during the month of Ramadan.

According to Dr. Al-Marshood, the two commission members approached the girls in order to “politely” advise and guide them regarding their inappropriate clothing.

Consequently, the two girls started verbally abusing the commission members, which then lead to one of the girls pepper-spraying them in the face as the other girl filmed the incident on her mobile phone, while continuing to hurl insults at them.

The Eastern Province’s head of the commission also revealed that with the help of the police his two employees were able to control the situation.

The two females were then escorted to the police station where they apologized for the attack, were cautioned and then released.
Asharq Alawsat

This is outrageous! This is dispicable!

How can they run a story like this and not provide the video footage? It is extremely important! How else are we to witness for ourselves incontrovertibly if the religious policemen actually do have feelings!

Now don’t go reading into this that this is a “revolution” and “things are changing in Arabia” even with that petition handed over to King Abdulla signed by a thousand people requesting that he allows women to drive.

Who cares about them driving? Just hand them more pepper-sprays and let’s video tape the result!

Thanks once again to our Bahraini expatriate (who has been hobnobbing with the stars and be speaking on the same platform as politicians like Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama, moderating sessions at an influential blogging conference, asked to take the place of an important and inspirational personality as Shirin Ebadi and be a panellist alongside Nicholas Kristof in a completely new and long awaited guise of optimism, a no longer Silly Bahraini Girl has uncovered a rather inspirational and inspiring movement to effect world peace and strengthen global tolerance, understanding and compassion between peoples through the mediums of film and the internet:

That movement, is Pangea Day.

Thanks Amira.

Get involved.

Good news this morning from a southerly direction that we hope that our newly appointed minister of Information as well as our parliamentarians will immediately emulate:

UAE rules journalists not to be jailed over work

9 hours ago

DUBAI (AFP) — The prime minister of the United Arab Emirates decreed on Tuesday that journalists should not be jailed over their work, two days after two were jailed for libel, the state WAM news agency reported.

Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashed al-Maktoum “has issued instructions … not to imprison journalists for reasons related to their work,” said the head of the National Media Council, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan.

Sheikh Mohammad stated that “other measures can be taken to penalise a journalist who has committed a particular violation,” added Sheikh Abdullah, who is also foreign minister.

Abdullah said the prime minister also called for speeding up the enactment of a new press law in line with amendments introduced by the National Media Council.

The amendments drop imprisonment as a penalty for press offences.

Sheikh Mohammad is also ruler of the booming emirate of Dubai, a member of the UAE that hosts scores of regional and international news organisations operating out of Internet and media free zones.

His move came two days after two Dubai-based journalists — an Indian and an Egyptian working for the English-language daily Khaleej Times — were sentenced to two months for libel, according to local press reports.

They have since been released on bail and are appealing.

Two UAE nationals were also recently sentenced to jail for defamation on an Internet site in the emirate of Ras al-Khaimah, another UAE member, and are appealing the rulings. The website has been closed.

Abdullah Omran, lawyer of one of the two, hailed Sheikh Mohammad’s decision and said he hoped it would apply to Internet sites.

“We welcome this positive move, which proves that our wise leadership is responsive to the aspirations of its people. We hope it will extend to electronic sites, and that violators will be penalised by measures other than imprisonment since they are electronic journalists,” Omran told AFP.

Omran is the lawyer for Mohammad Rashed al-Shehhi, owner of the website who has been jailed for a total of 17 months in two defamation cases involving local officials.

Fellow Emirati Khaled al-Asli was sentenced earlier in September to five months in jail on charges of writing an article on the site that slandered a local official.

Asli, who has denied writing the article posted under a pen name, has been released on bail while Shehhi is behind bars.
AFP/Yahoo

Could anyone who lives in or indeed anyone who knows about the traditional festivity of Girga’oun in the Kingdom of Muharraq please let me know where should one go to best capture the mood and festivities of this special occasion?

I would very much like to travel to the Kingdom and shoot some of the goings on, particularly kids going door to door getting sweets and the Fraisa and anything else that happens during that night.

Ta very much.

Two new faces replace old and bedraggled ones after being “harassed” by an Islamist-led parliament. In other countries this kind of “harassment” would probably be classified as nothing more than a gentle tickle, but hey, some good things are happening and we should be positive.

I don’t know much about Al-Hamar, other than being the brother of the previous Minister of Information and majority stakeholder in Al-Ayam newspaper as well as being the special media consultant to his majesty the king. Mr. Faisal Al-Hamar has been in the Ministry of Health for 32 years, most recently he was tasked with the deanship of the College of Health Sciences so he had some managerial history under his belt, whether he will be able to tame the beast and turn it into even a scowling and bad-tempered tom-cat remains to be seen, an outcome that a lot of Bahrainis would be rather satisfied with. Such is the reputation of the Ministry of Health which he has taken over which doesn’t need resuscitation but major invasive surgery to get it to a station at which Bahrainis would not tend to kiss their loved ones goodbye and hand them a shovel before entering its hallowed halls.

Jehad Bukamal takes over the Ministry of Information. Now that could be a breath of fresh air. Let me tell you why, Bukamal is first and foremost a businessman, a member of the Chamber of Commerce and an ex-member of parliament. He is also a moderate, so maybe – it is my fervent hope in any case – that he will drag that ministry from the dark ages and bring it to the real world, and maybe he will break the Islamist’s hold on that throbbing organ and let it release its creative juices which has been suppressed for ages, most certainly since it’s departed MP sat on it.

Maybe now – I hope once again – we will see less of the useless pre-packaged religious programs (especially those presented and chaired over by sitting members of parliament! Talk about conflict of interest!) and change them with community-centric ones and maybe we will actually get some entertainment out of that very important edifice. Who knows.

Oh, maybe we will even get to hear the myriad of beautiful different accents from all over Bahrain and see their faces, and not get presented with just one “type” for a joke or be presented exclusively in degrading situations.

Maybe we will finally get rid of that stupid and inappropriate slogan of “The Arab Family TV” and replace it with a much more appropriate “Bahraini Family Fun Channel”!

Maybe also now hotels will collectively exhale!

Maybe now the tourism department will actually change into a real tourism-encouraging catalyst rather than continue to be nothing more than thinly covered Religious Police with a political drive.

One continues to hope.

One also hopes that this rather limited reactionary change in cabinet is an aperitif and not the entrée. There is at least one more who has sold Bahrain and Bahrainis that still needs to be removed, to save what is left of our face.

Like everyone else in Bahrain, I was thrilled to read our Crown Prince’s unequivocal statement that corruption will no longer be condoned and that even if a minister was implicated in corruption, he or she will get their just desert.

I also remembered that our parliament has discussed this issue and the committee tasked with formulating that new law has rendered its decision¹ to approve a parliamentary discussion of this law. I hope that with the Crown Prince’s push, that law will see the light during the forthcoming new term.

This re-enforced political will is wonderful to behold especially in view of the accelerating corruption cases brought against various managers in government-owned companies like ALBA, Gulf Air and most recently ASRY. I hope at the very least these people being brought to justice will at least get those corrupt officials to sit up and feel a bit embarrassed and take their thieving hands out of the cookie jar for a while at least. One would hope that this new political will will also force them to refill those jars from whatever that had stuck to their nimble fingers.

Unfortunately however, these kind of promises have been heard before but never sufficiently followed up; or at least if they have been followed up no conviction was been meted out to the corrupt. On the contrary, in some cases, people implicated in corrupt activities were actually promoted, as we have most recently witnessed in someone who was implicated in the infamous Bandargate fiasco.

Cases like the Housing Bank, GOSI and others are still fresh in people’s minds. So calls like these – with all due respect – need to really be followed up and convictions of the corrupt be levied in order for this political will to have some legitimacy and for it to regain its credibility.

Let me remind you that corruption is not only monetary, but other forms do exist as well which must be taken care of. In Bahrain for instance, the financial corruption might not exceed other forms of corruption like nepotism, patronage, influence peddling, avoiding the law, etc. However, corruption is no longer just restricted to these traditional arenas, it is more completely defined as:

Corruption obtains when an official transfers a benefit to an individual who may or may not be entitled to the benefit, in exchange for an illegal payment (the bribe). By taking the bribe, the official breaks a legally binding promise he gave to his ‘principal’ (usually the state administration or a private company) to allocate the benefit to those entitled to it. Corruption is neither a property of a social system or an institution, nor a trait of an individual’s character, but rather an illegal exchange. Nowadays scholars have abandoned the classic view of corruption as the degradation of an individual’s ethical sense, or lack of moral integrity. If corruption is a type of exchange it can, at least in principle, be the subject of empirical, cross-country examination. For data, scholars turn mainly to three sources, the German-based NGO Transparency International; the World Bank, and, to a lesser extent, Freedom House. These agencies all produce large cross-national surveys and ranking of countries, although the data come with a variety of biases. Naturally, illegality makes it hard to measure corruption.

Which brings me to the last few years’ CPI rating for Bahrain which has degraded appreciably. One only hopes that with the affirmation and bluntness of the Crown Prince this time, that things will really get moving in the right direction. Finally.

If I may suggest a few small thing to aid in inculcating the culture of anti-corruption: create a provision in law to protect whistle-blowers, cancel that heinous Press and Publications Law 47/2002 to allow news reports to out corruption and its benefactors and let’s see some sentences handed down against high-profile corrupt public employees and appropriate their misbegotten wealth. I am sure that should these things be enacted, our CPI rating will most certainly rise. Much more importantly of course, Bahrain’s credibility both national and international will be much enhanced, and people’s lives here will be bettered.

Now what’s the Anti Corruption Hotline number again?

[1] pdf document in Arabic

Thoughts on belonging and patriotism and their relationship with a person’s locale.

Though I recognise that there are other aspects to consider – which you are more than welcome to discuss here – and are just as valid, my thinking is that a person cannot get that feeling of “belonging” unless he has an appreciation for his environs and its history.

This was supposed to have been uploaded yesterday, as is traditional with my Friday Video, but unfortunately Batelco prevented me of doing so due to their unreasonable “broadband” limitations.

Yep, we’re having another gathering just before Hassan leaves for Japan. It is going to be at Motorox Café on the Budaiya Road at 8pm onwards.

Hope to see you there.

There is a new and exciting magazine in town and although still in its second issue, judging from the content so far, it is in a class on its own. It has been tackling subjects in its first two issues not pursued by others more established publications. It has a very fresh and young design and is backed up by a young and dynamic team.

This magazine is called FACT, which stands for Fashion, Art, Culture and Technology. It covers all of that, but the things that I really like about it is the investigative and comparative reports it carries as well as a comprehensive listing of happenings and a unique “brand finder” at the back.

I make an appearance in it too! I’ve been invited to write a monthly column and I am glad to say that I have been given a (relatively!) free hand in . I decided to make it exclusive of the content I write on this blog to make that contribution unique.

Their site is still under construction but I hope that when they do get it up and running, they will make all their articles available online. I am sure that us bloggers would love to link to some of the content covered in FACT.

Well done Omar, Arran and crew for the breath of fresh air!