Archive | February, 2008

Shopping!

Shopping!

Shopping!, originally uploaded by malyousif.

I decided to get another computer, because (get this!) I wanted to give my daughter my older MacBook. So what to do other than going to the Apple store in The Fashion Mall next to our hotel and getting:

1. Apple MacBook 2.4GHz, 2GB, 250GB, 13″
2. 1TB Time Capsule
3. 500GB Time Capsule
4. Apple TV
5. Firewire cable
6. Replacement battery for the old laptop.

I came back to the room, hooked the new laptop up to power and within 2 minutes connected the two laptops together with the firewire cable and clicked the “continue” button to copy the data from the old to the new and off I went to a meeting.

I came back later in the day and everything was copied, down to the cookies of the browser. I shut down the other computer, restarted the new one and logged in and just started working, with all the applications and their settings loaded, there wasn’t a single moment that was wasted!

I’m looking forward to connecting the Time Capsules; one for the office (the 1TB) and the other for home where movies and music and other good stuff will be on it ready to be shared to the Apple TV to enjoy the digital media on our TV.

This is a leap year day to remember!

Me happy!

Bahrain on the front page

There is nothing better than having a warm breakfast on a very cold day. Couple that with reading a good newspaper and find that your country is mentioned in a good light on the front page, and one would have an excellent start to the day:

Alcoa Faces Allegation By Bahrain of Bribery
By Glenn R. Simpson

A company controlled by the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain accused Alcoa Corp. of a 15-year conspiracy involving overcharging, fraud and bribery.

WSJ - ALBA corruption caseA suit in federal court in Pittsburgh by Aluminum Bahrain BSC alleged that Alcoa steered payments for an aluminum precursor ingredient to a group of tiny companies abroad, in order to pay kickbacks to a Bahraini “senior government official.” The Bahraini firm, known as Alba, alleged that Alcoa had overcharged it for the precursor material, alumina.

Bank records and invoices show that more than $2 billion in Alba’s payments for alumina passed from Bahrain to tiny companies in Singapore, Switzerland and the Isle of Guernsey. The suit alleged that some of the money found is way back to officials involved in granting the contracts.

“Defendants…furthered their fraud through bribes paid to one or more official of the Government of Bahrain,” said the suit, which didn’t name the officials and didn’t cite any direct evidence of such payments.
The Wall Street Journal – 28 Feb, ’08 subscription required for full article

Fantastic, not because something is seriously about to unravel here, and hopefully several culpable morons would be indicted (holding breath) but the real good story is that it seems Mumtalakat has opted to file the suit in a US court against a US company. Why is that significant I hear you ask? Well, because the defendant in the US court will ask for full disclosure of documents to sustain and support the fraud allegation, something I believed that Bahrain and its government is not ready to do, but this – hopefully – will prove my error. Washing dirty laundry in public sends a clear message that the cause of that dirty laundry will no longer be tolerated. Transparency has a chance of infusing all levels of the system.

It is high time that this squandering of resources, corruption and nepotism is ended and funds judiciously used to better the lives of regular Bahrainis.

Carry on like this for a little longer and get some results in actually impeaching and throwing corrupt officials in jail for the rest of their natural, and I would be the first in line to elect Talal Al-Zain as Speaker, Mohammed bin Essa as Prime Minister and their boss as God!

Damn, missed it!

Whenever I’m away, the first thing I do when I wake up is check the news back home. It continuously brings me back to our own version of surreal reality.

Yesterday’s news hit the mark quite squarely, thank you very much; our illustrious parliament dropped the second impeachment proceedings [translate] against a sitting minister. Of course, as expected, the “opposition” within parliament preached fire and brimstone and demonstrated their objection by occupying the parliament’s chamber while it was in recess. That is, they had a nice “sit in”.

That will teach ‘em.

Contrast that with a mingling session we were invited to last night on Capitol Hill. I had a chat with several staffers who work on several committee in the House, a few of those in the Oversight Committee. My questions to them on how they go along their business must have appeared quite childish, I suppose, because of the look on some of their faces: “Your chairman can subpoena anyone he likes and no one can interfere? No way!” and “So who’s watching the watchers in your case then” and more of that sort of stream. Well, the answers were quite mundane to them. In the first instance it’s a resounding yes, while in the second was “the Press of course.”

Going back to our own situation, the metrics are a little different. The answers to the same question, should I ever have the misfortune in mingling with our own parallels, would most probably have been “only when we think that the king would allow it” to the first, while the second would resoundingly be “the government, of course!” Silly me.

Well, I shan’t lose sleep over this latest episode. It’s just not worth it as they will never change. They are peons put in place to continue the charade of pseudo-democracy in order to score points with the outside world. “Of course we have an elected parliament!” and those from the outside naively believe the good stuff and give us the requisite pat on the back and we continue to blunder toward an uncertain future.

Discussion panel at the Woodrow Wilson Centre for International Scholars

Woodrow Wilson Centre for International Scholars

Woodrow Wilson Centre for International Scholars, originally uploaded by malyousif.

Had an excellent panel discussion at the Woodrow Wilson Centre for International Scholars and met with Dr. Haleh Esfandari (who was imprisoned for 8 months in Iran recently – 4 of which were in house arrest in Tehran) who chaired the session with Dr. Dr. Cheryl Benard of the RAND Corporation. With me on the panel were Najdat Anzour, the Syrian filmmaker; Honey Al-Sayed, presenter of the popular “Good morning Syria” show on Al-Madina FM; Ziad Mosehni of Tolo TV in Afghanistan; Senad Pecanin the founder and editor of Dani Magazine in Bosnia and Riad Kahwaji of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis based in the UAE.

It was a lively discussion where every one of us briefly talking about our experiences and then fielded questions from the attendants. I concentrated on the ‘Just Bahraini’ campaign, its history and my future plans for it as well as general discussion of personal and press freedoms in the Middle East.