Category News

Watch this

Okay, so here are three videos that have been making the rounds on the local interwebs lately:

This is a commercial for the Saudi teleco giant Mobily. As with most of their ads, it is of high production quality. But that’s not what make it interesting. What makes it interesting is the fact that it stars Prince Abdullah bin Meteb, the grandson of King Abdullah. This is the first time a prince appears in a commercial, and some people think such thing signifies a change in the way members of the Saudi royal family conduct themselves. I don’t know. I mean, can’t this be just a sports sponsorship deal? Prince Abdullah is a professional rider who could use a sponsor for such an expensive career, and Mobily is a for-profit company who wants to improve their image and make more money. I, for one, did not raise an eyebrow when I saw the tv ad.

In this video, a man who allegedly belongs to the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, is seen ambushing a jalsa which is basically a small gathering where people entertain themselves with music and dancing. The bearded man snatches the oud from the singer’s lap with a swift move, and then smashed it to the ground in a scene more commonly associated with rock concerts. So much for calling to the way of thy Lord with wisdom and beautiful preaching, and argue with them in ways that are best and most gracious.

The Cube is a popular British game show. For some reason, the Saudi state TV thought it was a good idea to bring it to their screen. The Saudi version is the same as the British one, except that our version has a nutty host who keeps on screaming. This video was put together by fellow blogger Raed al-Saeed, who previously produced Schism and Why Gaza children don’t deserve to be killed. I wonder if what he did is legal under the new e-media law proposed by MOCI :P

KSA Goes Nuclear and Renewable

The state news agency says:

The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud issued today a royal order establishing “King Abdullah City for Nuclear and Renewable Energy” in accordance with its law. Former minister of commerce and Harvard-trained physicist Hashim Yamani will head the new organization.

I always believed that Saudi Arabia, as the world’s top oil exporter, should invest part of the wealth generated by its vast but finite natural resources to deal with the reality of living in the post-oil era. This is a step in the right direction.

More child marriages, Saudi nurses quit, SG fluff

  • Why my heart hurts and my stomach is turned, too.

    In Riyadh Newspaper today there was a report on a 65 year old man who suffers from Hepatitis B applying for a marriage health certificate to marry an eleven year old girl. The staff at the hospital were shocked not only by the shamelessness of the man but also of the eagerness of the girl’s parents to finish up the paperwork so they can go ahead with the wedding. So they are knowingly subjecting their daughter to not only a pedophile but also a disease.

    Some of the hospital staff apparently strongly disagree with the procedure and want to prevent the marriage but they have no power to. Marriage licenses are granted to hepatitis sufferers only after the healthy partner is aware and agrees but how can you expect adult consent and awareness from an 11 year old?!

    Sickening.

  • Half of Saudi women who enter the nursing profession quit their jobs because a) they don’t understand what it takes to be a nurse, and b) the social stigma and lack of family support. I have a cousin who wanted to become a nurse but her parent didn’t let her because of this reason.
  • Some people accuse me of being too negative, that I focus too much on everything that is wrong with this country and never write about the good things here. But the truth is, you don’t really need me to do that. Why do need to do that when Saudi Gazette runs stuff like this?

Saudi Liberal Forum to Shut Down

The Saudi Liberal Network, one of the biggest local forums, have announced today that the website will be shut down due “extraordinary circumstances and expensive costs.” In a short message posted on their homepage, the owners apologized for the sudden closure.

Earlier today I spoke to one of the forum moderators, who told me the decision to close the website was very difficult. “The owners have come under a huge pressure. They had no choice but to shut it down,” he said. The moderator did not reveal who was behind the pressure, but he said it was from “high above.”

However, this sudden closure could be temporary as we have seen in the past when the forum was closed for 8 months during the year 2008 and then reopened again. The website has also gone under many cyber attacks over the past five years. Such attacks have been a well-known feature of the war between liberal and conservative forums in the country.

My source tells me that the owners are currently looking into passing the ownership to a new group of people who can continue to carry the torch. But until a further announcement, the future of the Saudi Liberal Network remains unknown.

MOE hiring process, al-Nujaimi mingling saga

  • The Ministry of Education (MOE) is hiring. Out of the 34,000 people who applied for teaching jobs, only 21,000 managed to score more than 50% in the Qiyas test aka the Saudi SAT. Today, those 21,000 candidates were interviewed by MOE in order to “inspect their ideological tendencies.” What MOE means by the words between quote marks is actually this: make sure those teachers-to-be are not extremists who will spread their poison in schools and produce future terrorists. Sounds like a good idea, right? Not really. I mean, can’t those extremists conceal their extremism for a brief interview just to get the job? Can’t they pretend to be tree-hugging, peace-loving, dialogue-embracing, upstanding citizens for the duration of a short encounter with their potential employers?
  • Shiekh Mohammed al-Nujaimi, who once described segregation as one of the fundamentals on which the Saudi state was built and then took a U-turn after al-Shethri fiasco, was recently rumored to be mingling big time with unrelated women during a conference in Kuwait. Interestingly (or maybe not) al-Nujaimi has praised the infamous al-Barrak’s fatwa in which he called for opponents of the kingdom’s strict segregation of men and women to be put to death if they refuse to abandon their ideas. After pictures and videos of his mingling made their way to the web, he first denied what the pictures and videos suggested, and said some of them were photoshopped, which is something the organizers of the event considered so insulting that they threatened to sue him.


    Today, al-Nujaimi finally admitted that he mingled, but he said he did it for all the right reasons: to prevent vice and help those misguided women find the righteous path. This should go well with those women, I guess.

Noura al-Faiz cut out, Op-Ed writers do interviews

  • So Prince Faisal bin Abdullah, the minister of education, had a meeting with teachers. Present at the meeting were senior officials at the ministry, including Noura al-Faiz. At the end of the meeting, photos were taken. Few days later, the PR department at the ministry published special print materials to mark the occasion. However, there was something wrong with the the cover photo: Noura al-Faiz has been cut out! Prince Faisal said he was unhappy that this happened.
  • Ashraf al-Fagih thinks it is so strange that an op-ed writer like him would do an interview. The writer in question is his fellow columnist in al-Watan daily Mahmoud Sabbagh, who prepared the questions for an interview with an STC executive that was published two weeks ago. I agree with most of what Ashraf says. Most Saudi journalists are unprofessional and lack basic skills. However, I don’t think that opinion writers are exempt from doing journalistic tasks like conducting research and doing interviews. Actually, I believe this must be at the heart of their writing.

Earth Hour in KSA, Musk Lake renamed

  • Saudi Arabia will observe Earth Hour tomorrow for the first time, but Khalaf al-Harbi says he won’t be joining everybody else for this event. Why? Because the Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) has already forced him to observe it more than three times this week in three different districts in Riyadh and at different times of the day and night. Can you blame him?
  • The government is apparently unhappy about the sarcastic name Jeddawis have given to the Musk Lake. The Ministry of Culture and Information (MOCI) has sent a directive to local newspapers and magazines asking them to stop using the infamous name and use the long and boring “Water Sanitation Lake in Jeddah” instead. I understand what the government is trying to do, but I don’t think they can force the people and the media to use the new name. Of course the government are free to, and should, use it in their communications, but for the rest of us I think the Musk Lake name is here to stay, at least for a few more years.
  • What the beautifying committee of Khafji needs is a better translator: