Today’s Links

Another Saudi news website. You know what’s my problem with this website? No ‘About’ page. Who are you? What are you trying to do? Why are you doing this anyway?

It’s International Women’s Day. The picture in Saudi Arabia is, of course, bleak. Here’s Fawzia al-Bakr speaking about the women’s driving demonstration in Riyadh twenty years ago:

AP says that security forces has confiscated books of Abdullah al-Hamed, a well-known reformer, from stalls at Riyadh Book Fair. MOCI, unsurprisingly, denied that they know anything about it.
Speaking of security and censorship, rumor has it that starting this Tuesday BBM service will be disabled in Saudi Arabia. CITC has asked RIM to let them monitor the network but it seems unlikely that the Canadian company would allow it.

Shoura Council finally decided to open its doors to citizens. Shoura said it is ready now to hear the voices of concerned citizens through its Human Rights and Petitions Committee. The King is scheduled to deliver the annual royal speech launching the second year of the the Council’s fifth term Sunday. Unlike Saudi Gazette, I don’t think it would be anything like the State of the Union address.
In other news, the King has received the Jeddah Investigation report. I’m eager to hear the news of some heads rolling. I’m also curious to read the report but I doubt it will be made public.
Okay, so Fox News published a story on Saudi bloggers, but as SUSRIS blog correctly notes, the story has some holes. No surprise here, I guess.
I disagree with almost everything published in Lojainiat, but blocking the website is simply something that I’m not okay with. CITC should stop acting as policemen on our brains.
Typical case of Saudi flirting using text messages. A pretty lame attempt if you ask me. But hey, I never been into this kind of thing so maybe you don’t want to take my word for it.

Saudi novelist Abdo Khal has won the International Prize for Arab Fiction, aka the Arabic Booker, for his novel ‘Tarmi Besharar’ or ‘Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles.’ The novel was withdrawn from Riyadh Book Fair yesterday by the censorship committee, but half an hour later was returned to the publisher. An official from MOCI said the book was withdrawn “for inspection.”
King Abdulaziz University (KAU) students launched an online campaign against a number of university’s regulations, including a ban on electronic equipment that have cameras and wearing pants or on abayas on the women’s part of the campus. Way to go. I wonder what the kids at KSU think about this…

Riyadh Book Fair was opened yesterday. I’m not planning to go this year, but today I got one more reason not to go: Prince Naif issued a decision banning men and women from mixing at the book fair, as well as banning books deemed incompatible with religion and values. The news was carried by Lojainiat, a conservative website.

This is awful: after Michael reposted the abaya pictures, he received death threats via his BlackBerry. The phone calls did not shake him, but later he later received an email with a link to an extremist website that had his images. He had to take the pictures down, again. That’s a real shame, but I can’t blame him. I recently received some hate mail as well after my post on al-Barrak’s fatwa.
As I said before, Maureen Dowd was here. I don’t know what to say about her column. Today I don’t feel particularly optimistic. Hell, I don’t feel optimistic at all, actually. It seems that Dowd met only the fancy people. Also, what’s up with this: “He has encouraged housing developments with architecture that allows families, and boys and girls within families, to communicate more freely.”?

Saudi Jeans