...Or Does It Explode?

2007: Civil Rights Year In Review

It's become a tradition here to run a year-end wrap-up on the highs and lows of the past 12 months. Suddenly it's once again December 31. Can this blog really be three years old? Can so little progress have been made during those three years? Does anyone care anymore?

But enough with the navel-gazing questions... on to the awards!

BIGGEST OUTRAGE: Sudan Genocide
Once again, there is no competition. Pathetic that the biggest news out of the country this year was not genocide, but a teddy bear.

FORGOTTEN OUTRAGE: Sudan Genocide
See above. Last year's winner, the subjugation of Western Sahara, runs a close second. Most Americans have at least heard of Sudan.

MOST MUNDANE OUTRAGE: Banning Women from Iranian Soccer Games
The view is not so good from behind the fence.

DICTATOR OF THE YEAR: King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia
The guy is sitting atop a powder keg, and the best reform he can demonstrate is pardoning a gang-rape victim. Lordy!

TURNING POINT: Kareem Amer's One-Year Anniversary in Jail
This is supposed to be a hopeful category. But when a country can throw a random kid in jail for years simply for speaking his mind on a website - and do it despite massive international outrage - then bloggers across the region have got to be scared.

MOST DARING MOMENT: Mansoor Osanloo Returning to Tehran
You're the head of the illegal Tehran Bus Drivers Union and you've already been sent to the slammer a few times already. You are invited on a speaking tour of Europe where you blast the Iranian regime for repressing free labor movements. Would you even consider going home after your speaking tour? The man had an iron-clad asylum case, but he willfully returned to the lion's den. Will this modern-day Daniel survive the ordeal?

MOST INFLUENTIAL AMERICAN ACTIVIST: None
Sad to say, but no one did much of anything noteworthy. A wasted year?

OUTSTANDING REPORTING ON CIVIL RIGHTS: Ahmed Benchemsi
Tel Quel magazine keeps taking on unthinkable taboos and busting them wide open. It's a model for the rest of the region. Can't wait until they launch a Saudi edition.

BEST LOCAL BLOGGING: Big Pharaoh
Okay, so he was AWOL most of the year. But he provided this photo, which makes up for all the radio silence.

MOMENT OF LEVITY: Iran Hearts Jews
The Iranian state media apparently uses Google to search for photos to go with news stories. The results are riotous.

2008 Risky Prediction: A "Jasmine Revolution" in Syria
We were WAY off the last two years, but maybe predicting it a third time will actually make it come true.

PHOTOS OF THE YEAR: Take the Blue Pill, Dammit!

Happy new year!

Pot Calls the Kettle Black: Qaddafi Strikes Again

A little golden nugget on the Libyan strongman (at 37-plus years he's the like Energizer Bunny of Middle Eastern dictators) and his recent escapades in Paris:

During a visit this month to Paris, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, a one-time international pariah, thumbed his nose at his French hosts, accusing them of violating women's rights and treating African immigrants poorly.

Halfway through Qaddafi's stay, French President Nicolas Sarkozy explained why he put up with his guest's provocative antics: business. ``I am really engaged in the battle for contracts,'' he said.

The battle for contracts evidently trumps the struggle for the most basic of human rights and dignities, which have not existed in the port and desert cities of Libya for nearly four decades under the Q-man. At this point, Qaddafi has become the region's crazy old grandfather who gets to blabber on with the most outlandish statements while everyone nods politely and waits for their handout. It's almost funny... as long as you're not one of Qaddafi's subjected subjects.

Kuwaiti Royal Pwned over Windy NYT Blog Post

For some reason, the New York Times has invited Kuwaiti royal and Villa Mode fashion retailer Majed El-Sabah to blog this week in the "prestigious" For the Moment fashion blog. Thanks to some sharp folks leaving comments and Maj's airy blogposts, hilarity has ensued.

First, dig the opening bio gusher the New York Times offers on Maj: "Sheikh Majed Al-Sabah, this week’s guest blogger on The Moment, is fashion royalty. Not only is Majed, as he is better known, a member of Kuwaiti royal family (his father is the first cousin of the emir of Kuwait; his mother is the emir’s sister)..."

Commenter  "How Applachian" asks: "So, is that a fancy way of saying his parents are first cousins?"

Anyway, a few days ago, Fashion Royalist Maj decided to step out of the air-conditioned luxury mall and get in touch with his Bedouin roots, with a delightfully orientalist post on "The Sands of Time". While it's mostly a hackneyed paean to the lure of the desert and the lingering influence of Bedu culture, one line gets Maj in trouble:

"The majority of us who live in the Gulf region are descendants of these tribes — in fact, there’s hardly a family whose roots are not Bedouin."

Commenter Patricia Odean picks up on that line and won't let it pass:

...According to Britannica.com, “Nearly two-thirds of the population [of Kuwait] are expatriate workers, formerly from other Arab states but now largely from South and Southeast Asia. These nonnationals do not enjoy citizenship rights, economic or political, which are reserved for Kuwaiti citizens—defined as those able to prove Kuwaiti ancestry prior to 1920.” While the experiences he describes are no doubt genuine, the experience of the Indian maids would probably give a truer picture of what the majority of people living in the region experience.

It would seem to be a good thing if more Gulf royalty were forced to confront the masses by blogging with open comments. In the meantime, we wait for the New York Times to invite an Indian maid working in Kuwait to blog next month at For the Moment.

Friday Foto: Nothing But the Sfax

Saudi Suicide Rates: Where the Women Are

A new report from King Saud University looks at suicide rates in the magic kingdom and discovers a massive gender disparity - wonder why?

In her study, which concentrated on failed suicide attempts in 2006, the researcher found out that 96 percent of the cases involved women. She told Reuters that in the hospital where she works, they receive around 11 cases every month of women who have failed in their suicide attempts...

The report highlights many factors that can lead women to consider killing themselves, one of them being forced marriages...

In this kind of environment, suicide can appear to some as a solution.Disregarding a woman’s free will and her right to choose her life can simply lead her to desperation. The researcher told Reuters that many Saudi girls do not have channels of communication with their parents, and that they seldom find sympathy for their emotional and social distress.

All that, plus the law of the country reduces you to the physical property of your male relatives.

Another Egyptian Building Collapse

The trend continues, as buildings buckle and residents get crushed.

Rescuers in Egypt are still looking for survivors in the rubble of a block of flats that collapsed in Alexandria on Monday, killing at least 20.

Only three people have been pulled out alive from a building said to house about 30 in the suburb of Loran.

Collapses happen frequently in Egypt's overcrowded urban centres, where many buildings are constructed with poor materials and regulations are flouted...

In 2005, at least 16 people died when a building collapsed in another residential area in the Mediterranean city - Egypt's second largest.

That block, which had had three extra floors added illegally, collapsed onto the wall of a neighbouring school as mothers were waiting to pick up their children.

A metaphor for Egypt?

Christmas Bonfire in the Desert outside Riyadh

Here's a shout-out to everyone celebrating Christmas in Saudi. Just remember to keep it on the low-down.

Saleh Cuts Back on the Qat

Yemen's strongman has announced he's going easy on the hard stuff due to medical concerns:

Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh has decided to gradually reduce his consumption of the narcotic qat leaf after having medical tests in Germany, according to local press reports on Friday.

The Al-Thawra and Al-Motamar dailies said Saleh would also stop attending the maqil, or circle of friends devoted to chewing qat, in favour of "meeting the people and personalities from the political and cultural worlds to hear their opinions on questions of national interest."

Saleh returned to Yemen on December 15 from Germany where he underwent medical tests.

In 1999 he launched a campaign to stop civil servants, military and police from chewing the evergreen leaf, that goes by the Latin name of "catha edulis," while on duty.

But that scheme, and another one during Yemen's Marxist rule which attempted to curtail chewing to the weekend, have been largely unsuccessful.

Qat contains cathin and cathinone, two chemical substances similar in effect to amphetamines, raising blood pressure and body temperature, as well as releasing adrenalin.

Let it not be said that Mr. Saleh is incapable of reform.

Coalition Presses Wall Street to Press Sudan

Trying to leverage financial clout to pressure good ol' genocidal Omar:

A coalition of leading human rights organizations and socially responsible investment companies have jointly announced the filing of shareholder resolutions with six major banks and financial firms with the goal of engaging Wall Street to push Sudan to end the violence in Darfur and accept full deployment of U.N. peacekeepers...

Ninety percent of Sudan's export income is derived from oil, with Khartoum funneling the majority of this revenue into military expenditures. Sudan lacks the capital and expertise to efficiently extract its own oil, and relies almost entirely on foreign companies to operate this lucrative industry, which provided the government with over $4 billion in export revenue last year...

The coalition has filed shareholder resolutions with six firms so far: Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, T. Rowe Price, Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase.

In total, the coalition is calling on more than 40 top firms with holdings in these Sudan-linked companies to use their influence as major investors to pressure the Sudanese government to stop obstructing the deployment of the 26,000-member U.N. peacekeeping force.

Let's see if this makes an impact.

A Time When Saudi Men and Women Could Socialize

From an extended comparison/contrast of the UAE and Saudi Arabia comes an interesting nugget:

...If anything, Saudi Arabia is going backwards. Older residents recall that the kingdom was more tolerant and progressive prior to the 1980s. The turning point was the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Islamic radicals. A 50-something Saudi journalist we met recalled that when he was growing up men and women could actually go to social events together. That's inconceivable today.