Something odd is going on in the Grand Mosque in Makkah these days… And I don’t want to talk about it. Just read this, and tell me what do you think of these people?

For my surprise, four ministers have submitted requests to the Royal Court for mobile phones with cameras to be permitted in the Kingdom. Finally, some people here discovered what most of us knew long time ago. I knew this was coming. I just wanted to know what kind of excuses the government would use. Did they need all that time to understand that “technical achievements” crap? *sigh*

Anyway, after all, they understood. There’s something they could not understand until now, and they don’t seem to do anytime soon. Women are renewing their call for driving rights, and the government doesn’t seem to get it. Let’s wait and see how long they will need this time.

Meanwhile in Mecca, where millions of Muslims are spending the last days of Ramadan, a pickpocket stole a pilgrim’s mobile phone handset leaving its chip behind! Maybe he did not want to add insult to injury.

You don’t have to be a reformist to be put in jail. Just try to defend one and they’ll put you in jail, too. According to Arab News, Abdul-Rahman Al-Lahem, the lawyer of some reform activists, was arrested on Saturday after sending a letter to Crown Prince Abdullah complaining that the defendants were not getting a fair trail.

Now, the lawyer will need another lawyer to get him out. Frankly, I don’t think any lawyer would be interested in that job! Defending a lawyer of a reformist? This is even a more serious crime!

Remember that Mac-over thing?

To celebrate the release of Mozilla Firefox 1.0 today, I’ve decided to give my desktop a new look. I know the IE icon is annoying, but the facts that there are some websites that work only in IE, and that I need it for Google Desktop Search, give me no choice but leaving it out there. The truth is, Firefox is million times better than MS Internet Explorer. Get Firefox now!

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I think Chan’ad has made a good point about the long URLs of the blogs hosted on Blog*Spot. So, just like him, I registered the domain saudijeans.tk. Well, I tried to register the shorter domain saudi.tk, but it was already taken. And regarding Chan’ad, it’s not just annoying to tell someone his URL; I find it really hard to remember it!

I don’t have the same problem that Chan’ad is facing, because I don’t need to tell anyone the URL of my blog. I don’t dare to give it to my classmates at the college because it’s not so pro-Saudi, and I don’t know many people around me who read in English. Anyway, just in case YOU needed to tell someone about my blog, you can use the short form saudijeans.tk.

Twenty-one prominent Saudi religious scholars have signed an open statement to the Iraqi people legitimizing their resistance and forbidding any cooperation or dealings with the occupying American forces. In other words, these guys say resistance in Iraq is jihad.

I was going to comment on that, but I found this column by Ahmed Al-Rubiy, in which he almost speaks for me. Mr. Al-Rubiy says this statement is an open invitation to push people to kill themselves.

He thinks that some of those who signed the statement are healthy and rich enough to go to Fallujah and help the Iraqi people in their useless fight against the Americans, instead of just sitting and telling people to go and kill themselves.

WAR MORE YEARS