January 2010 Archives

Check out the video above (taken in 2008 by RTL); It features a European Parliament member whose monthly salary is 14,000 Euros (KD 5,580) sign in for work then dash out with their luggage.

Even moralistic Green Party MEP Hiltrud Breyer, one of the founding members of its party signs in, dashes, out banging her head on the elevator entrance. Maybe she was going to save a beached whale somewhere or harass a super tanker with an inflatable dinghy.

I always thought not coming to work, or signing in and dashing out was a Kuwaiti tradition perfected by Kuwaiti Government employees. Whenever you venture to a Kuwait Government establishment, you rarely see any Kuwaitis, only the Indian tea boy, the Bangladeshi cleaning boy, and the Egyptian clerk.

It seems even Europeans are not immune to laziness and cheating on the job.

(Still from Al-Arabiya)

Kuwait has one of the highest accident rates in the world, and it is only getting worse.

The recent tragic accident on a Doha, Kuwait highway resulting in the death of five individuals with fourteen injured (the victims included onlookers and racers on the popular highway strip) only goes to show that being on the road has turned into a hazard for all citizens.

When is this country - an affluent country - going to build a racetrack a la Bahrain or Abu Dhabi so kids can go race and save themselves and us further tragedies. It is time for Kuwait to build a track, whether its government or private funded is irrelevant; young men will never change, they speed, they show off, they do stupid car tricks - at least at the race track they can race, blow of steam and improve their driving and be monitored.

From what I have been relayed, Basil Salem Al-Sabah tried for years to push for a race track but was shunned - this was followed by offers from private citizens willing to invest in a race track but the government refused them land and permission.

This is a serious safety issue and the government needs to move on this as ASAP.

On Christmas Day, I had my brother send me some medications from the United States through Fed-Ex. When the package was late, I attributed it to the holiday rush. When 'late' turned into 'very late' and the website clearly showed the package was in Kuwait, we started calling them on a daily basis and every time we would got the same answer: "Customs took them for inspection and when they give us a specimen number we will call you."

A "specimen number"! Sounded like a Sci-Fi movie line. I had been receiving my medications from the U.S. for ten years through Fed-Ex and never had this happen to me before except for that one time during the war on Saddam a few years back.

January 11th - There is still no "specimen number." I lost hope so I reordered them through my doctor there.

January 14th - Called them again and finally at 7.30 p.m. I got my number - almost screamed out 'Bingo!' even though I never played the game. Bear in mind that I was the one who called ('customer care' being such a cliché') and it was a Thursday so nothing could be done until Sunday morning.

I was told to go to the Ministry of Health, the 'Drug Inspection Department' near Sabah Hospital where I can collect my "specimen".

January 17th - Finally we hit Sunday. Woke up early, no breakfast, rushed out to avoid traffic and after a few wrong turns I was there at 8.20 a.m. It was a Department all right, more like a low ceiling three room apartment. It was a "chabra" literally like the ones they put temporarily for engineers at a building site. As I entered the door I couldn't help but notice the pieces of glued grey thin carpet on the corridor floor. To my left was a closed door with a 'Parcels' sign on it. Next to it was a window counter with a man wearing a lab coat.

"Where can I get my Fed-Ex parcel?" He pointed to the door next to him.

"But it's locked," I said. He came out and said "Wait shwaya, he'll be back" referring to the man 'in charge of parcels'.

"Can't you call him?" I asked.

"No mobile."

I waited, and waited, shifting from one foot to the other trying to hold on to my favorite but extremely heavy bag resisting the urge to place it on such an ugly, filthy floor.

My legs seemed fast asleep even though I didn't get more than 4 hours of sleep that night. I had to sit. No sign of any chair around, so I decided to explore. There were three or four rooms to the right and one more to the left. I peeked through one and saw a woman working behind a desk in a minute room with two chairs placed in a straight line near the door. I asked her if I could sit and she welcomed me in. The chair was of the old black leathery dusty variety, with a folded table attached; the kind used for students. Why would they place such a chair there is beyond me. The room, like all the others, had rubber floorings of something like a tile design. (A bit of mix and match decor with the dinghy carpeted hall I guess!).

As I glanced around, my eyes widened in astonishment; I saw their method of file storage: a large Fed-Ex box. a used, old torn half-cut Fed-Ex box. Even the logo tape was struggling to hold on to the sides of the box. That was only one of many of the collections of carton boxes used for storage on the floor.

Then I heard a woman complaining to a man, also wearing a lab coat, that she has no "specimen number" only her Fed-Ex paper and I knew it was my queue. I followed her and the man who finally opened the sacred 'Parcels' room. I couldn't believe it. It was so minute that if you were claustrophobic you would have suffocated with the three of us in there. To the left was a glass cabinet where all the small parcels were and on the floor were all the bigger boxes. The man was very helpful trying to match the woman's name to any of the numbers he had in his big lined notebook (or as we call it "kashkool"). Don't even think the word computer is going to show up here - we are talking 1965 stuff here, folks.

He looked at his ledger, shaking his head in dismay.

Numbers 1 to 19 all had names and their parcels had arrived.

Numbers 20 to 30 had no names and no parcels (i.e. blank pages).

Numbers 30 to 40 contained names and parcels.

As the woman talked to the Fed-Ex office pleading for a "specimen number" so she could take her post-surgery meds, the man found my name one number below my given one.

The parcel was stacked with others in the stuffy glass cabinet. Thank God it was not August otherwise I would have needed meds to recover from my expired meds! Just when I thought I was done, he looked at me with a sympathetic smile, "Sorry can't give you without a prescription".

I was shocked.

"Well I don't have it with me now! I do have it somewhere at home" then I stopped myself before blurting out "I think". So he motioned me to follow him. We walked until the door at the end of the corridor leading to a considerably large room. There was a woman behind a desk inside that spacious room where scented candles were lit. She was so into her pink laptop that she did not even lift her eyes to look at me as she answered my "salam". Eye contact was wishful thinking. So I decided not to even bother explaining anything to her.

The man explained the problem, assuring her I had the prescription paper at home as he placed the form near her laptop. She took one glance (at the paper of course), nodded, and gave her approval.

I was so relieved my parcel hunt was over but even more relieved to leave that place. It was yet another reminder of our reality when we are supposed to be one of the richest countries in the world and still have decrepit systems and processes in place, not to mention surroundings.

I'll write again when my next "specimen" arrives and Fed-Ex kindly inform me where to pick it up (Door to Door 2010 style). That is if they ever let my meds through after today.

The Sith Republic - behind the scenes - forwarding a despotic agenda; utilizing demagoguery, charm, diplomacy, offering power and riches, as a bait to corrupt, divide, conquer and maintain control.

The Rebel Alliance, broken, outnumbered, fighting for freedom, justice and order.

Sound familiar?

Govt Attempts To Censor Blogs 'Unacceptable'

By Ahmad Saeid, Staff Writer

Reprinted from 'Kuwait Times' (4th January, 2010)

KUWAIT : A number of Kuwaiti bloggers said that government's attempt to impose censorship on blogs is unacceptable and unrealistic. The comments were made amidst expectations of the government's plan to amend the 'audio-visual Law' after a TV show on the Al-Soor channel caused a wave of outrage amongst Kuwaiti tribes. "It was only a matter of time before these restrictions were imposed on bloggers," said Amer Hilal Al-Mutairi, a Kuwaiti blogger. He added that the government has been waiting for the right excuse to strengthen its grip on the blogging community.

The minister of information is using the instability caused by the programs aired on those two TV channels, and the whole issue of national unity, as means to impose restrictions on bloggers," said Al-Mutairi.

While he agreed that there is a group of MPs who support freedom of expression Al-Mutairi noted that some Parliamentarians have double standards about this issue. "I think that, unfortunately, a large group of MPs support the media when it speaks favorably of them and discard the media when it criticizes them," he said.

Muhammad Al-Yousifi, another Kuwaiti blogger, said that the government has been wanting to place restrictions on bloggers for some time now. "They have been wanting to do this since the scandal of changing the electoral districts in 2006," he said. "They only got the chance to do it now with this Parliament which is mostly 'governmental.' Especially since a number of bloggers are now attacking MPs.

Al-Yousifi said that the law is "more laughable than it is scary" both because of the motive to monitor blogs, and the process of monitoring blogs itself. "How do they want to conduct this censorship? They can't do it, they physically can't do this," he said.

Abdul Aziz Al-Ateeqi, Kuwaiti blogger and a co-founder of the biggest blogging aggregation website in the Middle East, 'KuwaitBlogs.com,' said that it will be very difficult for the government to censor or block blogs because most of the servers that contain these blogs are outside Kuwait . They don't fall under the jurisdiction of Kuwaiti law. "Even if they are willing to block them, people can still access them via proxies. Governments cannot stop that and cannot identify those who access them," he said.

Al-Ateeqi also pointed out that there is a huge misunderstanding about what blogs are among Kuwaiti people in general. "Blogs are a micro prototype of Kuwaiti society. They are like diwaniyas. People speak what they think in them and if someone is [upset] by a Member of Parliament he will write his feelings in his blog. These views and feelings are varying and they are about different subjects. Political blogs are less than 15 percent of the whole blogosphere of Kuwait .

The issue of freedom of expression has been dwelled on for the past few years in Kuwait . The Amir of Kuwait, HH Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, has repeatedly urged local media to adopt more responsible measures of tackling delicate subjects such as national unity.

Minister of Information, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Sabah, is still under fire from the National Assembly (NA) after a number of MPs demanded the closure of the Al-Soor channel. They accused the Minister of allowing the channel to broadcast without proper permission. A number of MPs announced they will file an interpellation motion against the Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Sabah if he does not fire the Minister.

Last October however, some of those same MPs held a number of demonstrations where they claimed the government was not doing enough to protect the freedom of expression. The demonstrations occurred after the publisher of an online newspaper, Zaed Al-Zaed, was attacked by an anonymous man. Kuwait occupies the 60th position on the Press Freedom Index issued by media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders. It is also the highest ranking Arab country on that index.