Anton La Guardia has visited Saudi Arabia earlier this year as the Diplomatic Editor of The Daily Telegraph of London, and he posted his remarks on the trip.

Click Away! After less than ten months, the government has finally lifted the ban on photography in public areas. Permission is still needed to photograph private property, including royal palaces.

Today, I found Wapher, an Arabic Digg clone. They are still in beta, and it is not clear who is behind the website, but the design and available features make it promising. Few months ago a friend of mine told me that he was thinking of starting something like this, but that did not happen. We were discussing the chances of a service like this to make it big, and some of the issues we talked about were the number of users in the Arab World, and the lack of Arabic content on the web. I think if Wapher could attract enough users from all around the Arab World, and not just one region, then I can say they are off to a good start. Another factor that should make a difference is the rise of blogging in this part of the world, because bloggers will create the content needed in this case, and they can also point to content from other websites that might be overlooked; such thing was not available a few years ago. For more info on the Wapher, check out their blog.

As the Arabs See the Jews by King Abdullah bin Al-Hussein.

Boy Dressed in Holdiay Finery – 1940 Hofuf
This photo, taken by Nestor Sander, was found at Aramco ExPats.

Anders Strindberg: “As pundits and policymakers scramble to explain events in Lebanon, their conclusions are virtually unanimous: Hizbullah created this crisis. Israel is defending itself. The underlying problem is Arab extremism. Sadly, this is pure analytical nonsense.”

Dave Winer: “Even a Jew like myself sees how wrong the Israeli position is.”