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?
It’s official now. The municipal elections will be put off for two years, but instead of saying we are delaying the elections the government came out today saying they will extend the mandate of municipal councils by two years. Classic. They said they want to give time to “expand the participation of citizens in the management of local affairs” and to draft new regulations for the councils toward this goal.
Let me repeat what I said back in October of last year, that’s a lame excuse. The unannounced reason could be simply that the government does not want to deal with the issue of women’s participation in the election as voters and candidates. Considering how negligible these councils have been since they have been elected four years ago, I don’t think most people here would be alarmed by the delay.
So much for our infant democratic experience…
For the past few weeks, Dawood al-Shirian and his colleagues in al-Hayat have been waging a ferocious war against the embassies of France, Germany, and Italy for what they describe as unfair treatment Saudi citizens have to endure when they apply for visas to enter these countries. Other newspapers joined the campaign, with calls to boycott, especially against France. Meanwhile, the British embassy has been enjoying much praise in the local media for the speed and efficiency of their visa process, which is outsourced to a private firm, and the Americans seem happy that for once they are not the target of criticism.
The government recently weighed in, accusing the European embassies of discrimination. Saudi applicants are forced to submit more documentation and wait much longer than citizens of neighboring countries for Europe’s Schengen visa, the foreign ministry said.
After weeks of giving every kind of lame excuse for the unreasonable delays to secure a visa to his country, the French ambassador came out to admit that the delays are related to the 9/11 terror attacks and to the 2003-2005 Al-Qaeda bombings and murders in the country. He also accused the Saudi media of being unprofessional, which simply won him even more enemies in the local press.
I have to say that I find this matter very annoying. I have had my own bad experience with another European country last year, when I applied for a visa to Hungary. After a long, complicated process, they denied me a visa without offering any reason. However, I have always said that Saudis should not complain about how hard it is to get a visa to any country as long as it is still extremely hard to get a visa to come here. The foreign ministry is not making a good point when they compare Saudis to citizens from other Gulf countries; these countries offer visas to EU citizens on arrival at the airport. It is all about reciprocity.
In a lecture he gave earlier this week at KSU, Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bin Abdullah Aal Al-Sheikh, the Grand Mufti and Chairman of the Board of Senior Ulema, warned Saudi girls of those who want to deviate women from the right Islamic path:
They want her to go unveiled, moving about and traveling on her own, getting involved in relationships with whoever she wants, and calling whoever she wants to start up friendships with whoever she wants.
Who are they? They are the liberal forces. Damn them.
In their annual TIME 100 issue, Time magazine named Norah al-Faiz, the new Saudi deputy minister of education, as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. I have nothing against al-Faiz, but I think that the magazine is overestimating her influence. The woman has been in office for less than 3 months. Her most talked about decision was a directive she sent to schools warning the students of the perils of reality TV shows. I’m not trying to pick on her, but I think it is way too early to try to assess her performance or influence.
Now the selection of al-Faiz by Time might be questionable, but how the Saudi media handled the news is just laughable. They reacted orgasmically, saying she came ahead of Obama and his wife! Does it really take a genius to realize that the list published on the website is not ordered according to influence? Probably not, but it is exactly this kind of idiocy that makes me despise Saudi media.
Again, I want to repeat that I have nothing against al-Faiz, but I believe that a critical analysis for the performance of her department could be much more useful than celebrating a fake victory.
Saudi Jeans 
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