Al-Watan newspaper have been on a roll with their cartoons recently.
Man: black is the king of colors, and a sign of modesty.
Woman: ok, so why don’t you and your son wear the king of colors?
Saleswoman? Noooo
Housemaid? Disgrace
Nurse? Shame
Misyar wife? Done
Riyadh Police have arrested more than 800 men over the course of the past month, a spokesman told al-Hayat daily yesterday. They were arrested, he said, because they violated the ministry of interior’s instructions regarding clothes and appearance. The ministry have instructed the police force to follow and arrest men who do not conform to the conventional dress code. The main target of those arrests are young men who wear low waist jeans and afro hairstyle aka kadash.
Something to be proud of, huh?
Public demonstrations are banned in Saudi Arabia. We don’t have codified laws, so you will not find any official text that explicitly says it, but everybody knows it. What do we do when we want to protest publicly? We go to the internet and start a campaign online. Back in 2006 I wrote, ”Online campaigning is appealing to many people because most of the time it doesn’t take much resources.” Most of the time it takes little more than starting a freely hosted blog, design a few banners, maybe add a mailing list, and viola! you have a campaign.
This year alone, we have seen a plethora of campaigns that goes from the useful to the useless, and everything in between. We had the Khalooha… series, which covered topics like greed of car dealerships, women’s rights, and marriage expenses among other things. Most recently we had two confusing, similar but apparently opposing campaigns on the issue of male guardianship. But what I want to talk about today is a campaign called SaudiFlager (sic).
SaudiFlager’s goal is to clean up YouTube of videos offending to Saudi Arabia by flagging them. In addition to the unfortunate misspelled name, I believe this campaign has two main problems. First, what is an offending video? What are the criteria for such thing? I mean, what is offending to you can be quite harmless to me, right? So who gets to decide which videos are offending? Second, YouTube is already heavily censored by CITC. Do we need another layer of censorship?
I’m all for free speech, so don’t get me wrong. If you feel strongly offended by a video on the website, go ahead and flag it. Knock yourself out, I’m not going to stop you. Actually, I can’t stop you. But I think that organizing a campaign for such purpose is a just a waste of time and effort. What is worse, it is enforcing yet another form of censorship and that is the last thing we need. CITC is already doing a great job at it that I find myself occasionally amazed by how dedicated they are to this job.
This dedication is shown clearly in their latest blocking spree, which included Twitter profiles like those of @Mashi97 and @abualkhair. Blocking @Mashi97 was particularly strange because it came after he tweeted about having fried eggs for breakfast, which made him think that maybe someone at CITC does not like eggs. Also, what CITC don’t seem to realize is that blocking profile pages on Twitter does not prevent the users from updating. Go figure.
Which brings me back to online campaigns: should we start one to unblock these guys? I think we should, but currently I’m busy with another campaign of mine: Saudi Unflagger. Who is in?
Add this to their list of achievements: interrupting a nasheed concert for kids in Dahran Mall. Just look at how the policeman stole the mike from the performer’s hand. Impressive.
UPDATE: For those who asked about context, here is a story from yesterday’s al-Watan. The Commission spokesman said they interrupted the concert because the families area was very crowded. The concert was later continued. Does that change how you feel about the incident?
Sabq talks about an email that has been circulating over the past few days. I have been trying to get a copy of this email with no luck so far. The email allegedly contains a list of what some conservatives consider achievements they have gained in the last six months. According to Sabq, the list includes:
There is no question that the conservatives have been enjoying a powerful push lately, and they are trying to take full advantage of this period by flexing their muscles as much as they can and in every direction. But seriously guys, this is pathetic. What’s next? Celebrating that you managed to cut the afro of three young men in Tahlia?
Ouch! Painful but true. (thx Thumar)
This YouTube video has been making the rounds online lately. The video allegedly shows a group of SABB employees dancing to a song in what looks like a party held by the bank. The short clip has caused an uproar on some blogs and forums, between those decrying the deterioration of morals and those who deemed it insensitive to thousands of people who lost their money in the stock market crash.
Reasonable people may ask: so the bank was having a party, what’s the big deal? Frankly, it is not a big deal, except for one problem that my friend Abdul-Majeed eloquently put here: a party like this shows that we have two different sets of rules in this country, one for the poor and commoners, and one for the rich and powerful. “It is only the poor and commoners who get watched, monitored and prosecuted by the Hay’a, while the others have their own places that the Hay’a don’t dare to even get near them,” he said.
Let me be clear, I have nothing against such parties. I am not social by any stretch of the imagination, but I enjoy a good party, and as we can see in the video apparently the guys were having loads of fun. Good for them, but the question is: why they can shake their bums freely in a fancy hotel like it’s 1999, but those who want to enjoy a concert of acoustic rock get raided by the Hay’a?
It is this kind of hypocrisy and double standards that I can’t stand.
Saudi Jeans 
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