Last week, the New York Times asked me if I would be interested in writing for the newspaper about the Obama visit. Of course I was. Today, NYT publishes my article as part of seven views from the Middle East about what Obama should say in his much anticipated speech in Cairo tomorrow. Check it out. Here’s a picture of the voting paper that I mention in the last paragraph:
CITC is at it again, this time blocking Susie’s Big Adventure, a blog by an American woman married to a Saudi and based in Jeddah. I did not bother to seek a comment from CITC on why they blocked the blog because they never offered any reason for their arbitrary blocking decisions in the past. Is it because of this post about censorship? The post was so popular and got linked by the likes of The Insider, Idolator, and Perez Hilton (which is also blocked here).
You can help by going to this page and filling the Unblock Request form. As for Susie, if the blockage continues, she probably should contact NSHR to look into her case.
UPDATE 31/05/09: The blog has been unblocked. You can access the blog from Saudi Arabia again now.
A news website published a sketchy story about Saudi female journalists — and all hell has broken loose, according to Tareq al-Homayed. Hedayah Al-Darwesh, chief editor of the website, strongly denied publishing the story, but it seems to me that they simply took it down after 13 female journalists lodged complaints to the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Culture and Information, the Human Rights Commission and the Saudi Journalists Association.
The incident gave Turki al-Sudairi and other old timers a great chance to attack online media. As head of SJA, he called MOCI and CITC to “regulating the issuing of website and online newspaper licenses.” Whatever that means. But hey, what do you know? Minister Abdul-Aziz Khoja said last week that the government intends to enact legislation for websites to require official licenses to be granted by a special agency under the purview of MOCI. Yeah, good luck with that.
I hate to be the first one to break the news to al-Homayed, al-Sudairi, Khoja, and the rest of the dead tree folks, but if we have learned anything from being online for the past ten years is that you just can’t control regulate the internet. I share the hope of John Burgess that the Minister floated this idea in response to the pressure resulted by this ridiculous incident. But even if he was serious about it, the truth is that we will have yet another one of those unenforceable laws that needlessly complicate the lives of everyone here.
I mean, seriously, can MOCI with all its bureaucracy handle this? Moreover, let’s assume that they can actually handle this, don’t they have more pressing issues to care about like fixing the failing state TV channels, open licensing for radio stations, and end censorship on books to name a few?
Saudi Arabia is one of the worst places on earth to be a blogger. Or a woman. Or a lawyer. Or a human rights activist. Or just someone looking for a job.
Sometimes, it is not even a good place to be a Saudi.
Related:
The title comes from a well known national song here. It can be translated as: this country is like no other.
It’s spring break over here and we have a 7-day vacation. I’m using the break to spend time with my family. We are going to Qatar for a couple of days. Blogging will resume next week.
Apologies for the hiatus. I was planning to write a long wrap-up post about the G20 Summit, but the week after my London trip was hectic and it’s too late now. Instead, I will link to some of what my fellow bloggers wrote.
The only thing that I want to add here is regarding the Saudi contribution to the IMF. I attended the press conference of British PM Gordon Brown where BBC Arabic asked him about this and he totally ignored the question. Later on the same day, I had a chance to ask the same question to Michael Froman, deputy assistant to Obama and deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs. He said Saudi Arabia did not publicly announce how much they plan to contribute to the IMF.
Read more from G20Voice bloggers:
Overall, attending the G20 Summit in London was a great experience, and the G20Voice bloggers were awesome. The best part was probably attending the Obama press conference. We had to stand in line for 90 minutes to get in, but it was worth it. Here’s my favourite moment from the event:
Saudi Jeans 
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