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!

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.

A 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!

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.

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.

In keeping with the Den’s traditions, I have the honour in announcing the Scapegoat of the Moment who will have the unbridled responsibility of carrying ALL of the world’s ills on her shoulder; moreover, she will have to wear a beaming smile while doing so. Frowning and grumbling she is absolutely not allowed.

This she will do while I freeze my butt off in Washington DC and New York until my return to the homeland on March 7th.

Therefore, without further ado, I hereby announce that the Mahmood’s Den Scapegoat of the Moment to be:

bint Battuta!

So if you wake up with a huge wart on your forehead, it’s bint Battuta’s fault; if you get food poisoning, it’s her doing; if Obama folds to Hillary, it’s absolutely bint Battuta’s doing. If it starts snowing in Bahrain at 40 degrees C, you know who is to blame; if you crash your car, you can bet that she had something to do with it.

You get the picture, I think.

My friends, go ahead and lay the blame at her feet without an atom of guilt, so let it rip and unwind, courtesy of the famed female traveller!

I want to thank everyone for their very valuable suggestions as to what car I should get Amna. In the end, we decided to settle for the Nissan Altima which was between the two budgets set, and offers very good value for money and safety aspects.

She has had it for a day and a bit now and is very happy with it. She even named it Julian!

The happiest person on Earth (other than Amna) is really Frances, who suddenly realised that she actually has 3 – 4 hours a day extra for not having to drive/collect them from school!

Orchids!, originally uploaded by malyousif.

Frances and I are just back from the Garden Show, and these babies are her present to me for my birthday tomorrow. I don’t care very much for the birthday as taking care of these over the next few months… I’ve got plans!!

Have a wonderful Friday my friends…

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has published the Human Rights report it is going to submit to the Universal Periodic Review panel at the United Nations in April 2008. The Arabic report is available here while the English, once it is published, is going to be available here.

I’ve had a brief look at the report and am impressed in the fact that it provides some recommendations on what the government should do in the future. The question is not that, anyone can table recommendations, the question is does the report have teeth? Will the government – the very one who published it – take heed of the recommendations and enact them?

I must admit that I’m not very encouraged when I see a recommendation like that given regarding the Freedom of Speech in which it says that “there are some journalists who are against imprisoning journalists for their opinions while there are others who condone and encourage it“. It goes on to say “they will look into the situation”.

There are other sections such as those on discrimination and anti-torture; which, although recognised that these things happen in Bahrain – barely, there are no real solid recommendations like proposing changes to questionable laws or proposing new legislation to correct a situation.

Is this report just a stop-gap measure until – once again – the spot-light points elsewhere and then recede once again into our own little hole?

Well, the absence of concrete steps to enact changes leads me to believe that it might be. The lottery was drawn, our name came up, and this is the response. But don’t get me wrong, I recognise that at least they pinpointed areas which must be looked into, maybe next year we will get some concrete steps enacted.

If there is a real will, both societal and political, to fix our situation, I am sure just like those magical days of 2001, changes could be done overnight. We all know what needs to be done, and in the preceding 7 years we have heard and read a plethora of ways to get there.

I’ve just received an email from the Garden Club informing me that my garden won the first place in the New Garden category! This is fantastic news and a fantastic start to the day!

Yipppeeeee…

Update 080221@1420L: I’ve just had a chance to look at the GDN and it’s published there (though they didn’t put my full name, I just appear as Mahmood Nasser, which is good enough for me!)

I’ve won the Best-kept new garden – under 4 years old which is the Central Municipility Cup.

I cringe whenever I hear or read those words. Why? Because they are always used as a pretext to restrict an intrinsic freedom or used as a justification for trouncing all over a basic human right.

It is as if “Traditions” are sacrosanct, enshrined and set in gold. They – we are led to believe – are the very essence of perfection.

This is not so of course, just like any other society on Earth, we do have traditions which are shameful, ones that we should diligently work at eradicating. But if we are faced with this oft-used mantra of “protection of our traditional values”, we might as well forget about the rest of the world and be content in our own little cocoon. Our isolation, in this case, is completely voluntary and well deserved.

We all know of course that protection of traditions or values are farthest from their minds. What they want to protect – not to put too fine a point on it – are their well exposed derrières!

Witness the latest “protection” visited upon us by the two old stalwarts of human rights and personal freedoms and democracy: Saudi Arabia and Egypt. They have successfully towed 21 other countries – this valuable rock amongst them – to put their thumb-prints on a document restricting broadcasting – sorry, sorry, it’s not restriction, but really at attempt at

organization and putting rules and restrictions to increase the investment opportunities in these channels and ascending by the presented informational message.

Ah yes, of course. The minister of disinformation of Egypt continues:

Al-Fiqi said that there is a state of randomization in the satellite channels which don’t differentiate from the random housing in some countries. The examples of such randomization are many, such as transforming the channel possession without rules and its deviation from the registered form, besides the programs of jugglery and nakedness and so on.

Other than suddenly and categorically understanding what actually ails our own beloved BNA, I have no idea what they guy is going on about. Click the link and have some comic relief, maybe you’ll make head or tails of that erudite piece of journalism. Oh, and his wit and effervescent personality, of course.

The document being non-binding is moot of cousre. Yet, only Lebanon specifically opposed it, while Qatar is “studying” it. The others, well, they follow the piper.

Remembering all of these organisational efforts which we have signed into, you can imagine the tears of mirth pouring down my face while reading Al-Waqt this morning. You see, our illustrious Shura Council are discussing legislation for the establishment of private radio and television stations! [translate]

Now, with “organising” measures which

allows authorities to withdraw permits from satellite channels deemed to have offended Arab leaders or national or religious symbols.

Who in their right mind is going to establish anything in these countries, let alone enter into the highly unpredictable and treacherous world of visual and aural media?

Ah well, let me just be on record in thanking Ebrahim Bashmi & Co. in the Shura Council on their valiant efforts over the last 6 years in trying to codify modern and fair press and media laws which will elevate and protect the basic and most important human right, the freedom of expression, and humbly tell them to not bother. The high blood pressure they and other honest persons endure, is really just not worth it. Leave it to the Internet to give them real heart-burn!

What they want; really, is nothing more than the traditional noddy dog backed by the various excellent musical themes of Monty Python on their screens.

Let them have it, and a wise company would take its money elsewhere.

Och, the Ministry of Interior shouldn’t bother with opposing a paragraph in a law banning its use of chemical weapons to disperse rioters, it should just nuke the bastards and be done with it!

Look, I understand that although some need it, not everyone can afford to buy Viagra, but lust is an untameable beast and some people will go to any length for the mere promise of their own personal nirvana. Sometimes that quest can prove painful, embarrassing, stupid and more often than not all of those facets combine in the little brains (yes both of them) of unfortunate bastards.

Like this one:

Yes, what you are seeing in the picture above, my friends, is a nail inserted into the urethra. It had been lodged there for three days and the chap was suffering abominably, but, he wouldn’t get it seen to for a plethora of reasons, each more banal than the next. The explanations he proffered to the treating doctor was even worse! As a way of explanation, the guy “had no idea” how a nail got up his penis! “he claimed [it] was inserted there without his knowledge by a gang of Bahrainis who attacked and robbed him“!

Okay, I have no problem whatsoever with what people do to get their rocks off, as long as they don’t hurt others in the process, but offering such an asinine excuse as “not knowing” and what’s even worse, suggesting that “a gang of Bahrainis who attacked and robbed him” is a bit much. Has that now become a ready excuse? Yes I know that some Bahrainis prey on foreigners, but I think this is not an everyday occurrence. At least I hope not.

Never mind, I’ll put this down to the guy being so staggeringly embarrassed by his own private “experiment” that this dipstick just can get his brains rapped around reality.

Poor guy, I guess his Valentines’ is completely ruined. At least because of the valiant efforts of the doctors he will now live to – hopefully – enjoy forthcoming ones!

Happy Valentines’ boys and girls, and for goodness’ sake don’t do anything this stupid!

I’m not sure what those “guest workers” are complaining about. Really. They just hear a rumour by the Indian Ambassador that his country is planning a minimum wage for their citizens working in the Gulf for BD100 ($265) a month, and they automatically think that they should be included in that new criteria. Not only that, they mistakenly assume that as they are working on multi-billion Dollar projects, they think that their contractors – their benefactors – whom they wrongfully accuse of enslaving them and who make no qualms of reiterating that status in their provision of comfy accommodation complete with amenities, could actually afford to raise their wages! I think they just conveniently forget that they have already agreed to their BD57 dinars ($150) a month they legally – and I stress – legally signed in India or wherever they were recruited from. And come on, they don’t know much business, do they? Budgets have long been set and any variation would actually kill the poor downtrodden contractors!

Blah. Those people are never satisfied. I mean, just look at how well they are treated! They are even given wholesome and well prepared chicken for lunch!

Don’t these people realise that some Arabs in our beloved Arab World still cannot afford the luxury of meat for their daily diet? I’ve heard that some even run after the zoo animals’ feed carts crying “feed us meat, feed us meat, we want meat” and fight even lions for the privilege. Roman gladiators would be impressed, I tell you.

Regardless, I join Mr. Sameer Nass, the chairman of the Construction Committee at the Chamber of Commerce who rightly says: “This will not do“. I agree with him, all of those rabble rousers should be sent home, carted off in a ship and dumped at the closest port of call in their countries of origin. That will teach them. Way above their station, they are. They should know that we could easily import labour from other and more deserving places in the world whom we will undoubtedly shower with our largess. Isn’t some Gulf countries already negotiating with Vietnam and parts of Africa for labour? Africa should be easy really, we’ve had hundreds of years of experience in that continent, but Vietnam I’m not too sure of. Other than them soundly defeating the Americans, I don’t know much about them, but that should make them a bit more of a “security risk,” I should think, but seeing as how our intelligence community actually assisted the Thais where our boys “provide accurate information on the continuing insurgency in the three Thai southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat“, we do do our homework and that security risk shouldn’t be an issue, considering how far our intelligence tentacles reach!

Contingency planning, which shows our complete preparedness for any eventuality, does not stop at finding alternate sources for manual labourers, of course, witness the 3,000 Thai nurses being trained in Bangkok and who will be deployed here soon. I’m not sure what they will be trained in; however, but whatever it is, I hope they also provided tested prophylactics as some of those Thais have been found blasé about their use; hence, suffer the indignity of being sent home with our material thanks in them. We should welcome them regardless of course, especially as it seems that our ungrateful local nurses seem to want to tread the same route as those unwelcome guest workers.

The current climate is in marked contrast to that in 2005, when King Abdullah came to the throne promising change.

Having pinned their hopes on him, reformists now feel he has failed to deliver.

Saudi blogger Fouad al-Farhan has been detained since December for speaking out on behalf of the jailed reformists.
BBC – Whatever happened to Saudi reform?