I was telling a friend of mine about the candidate in the parliamentary elections recently held in Kuwait who was caught trying to bribe a voter, when my friend asked me: “Why are you so interested in Kuwaiti elections? Why do you even care?” I did not know what to say. I knew the answers to his questions, but I did not seem to be able to bring them out.

I was impressed by Kuwaitis, especially the youth: how smart, active, and politically savvy they are. I was also impressed by the way they used blogs to express their views, organize their movement, rally for change and reform, and protest against corruption. I was so impressed I wanted to be a part of what was going on there, and that’s probably why I was so interested in Kuwait’s elections.

I was not the only one. Other fewllow bloggers have expressed similar views. Abdullah Al Dammak, a newcomer to the local blogosphere, says he envied Kuwaitis, but was amazed by, and admired what they did. “Our youth are completely ignorant of politics,” he wrote. “Even the young leaders are politically ignorant, especially university students, and more particularly the Islamists.”

Abdullah asks many questions, good ones actually, and one of them is what are the reasons behind such political illiteracy? I think there are many reasons; including, but not limited to, education, the way parents raise their children, and some government policies. There are more details to be added here, and probably there are other reasons, but that’s another post.

However, not everyone have the same enthusiasm to be involved in politics. Ahmad Al Swailem, a reporter for the daily Al Riyadh, says that, over the years, he has gotten bored with politics and has become sick of it. Then the internet has come, and he was happy because it provided him with a wide range of content, unlike what is available in newspapers and TV, where politics is the dominant topic. “But unfortunately, politics has started to dominate the internet, too, in the past two years,” he said, including blogs.

“Funny, humorous blogs that are informative and entertaining in the same time has started to diminish in the past six months,” Al Swailem added, comparing this to the rise of political blogs.

But I’m afraid I have to disagree, especially when we talk about the Saudi blogosphere, where we still lack real political blogs. I occasionally blog on politics here, I don’t consider Saudi Jeans a political blog. I write about too many things of interest to me, but I’m almost sure that none of my readers come here to read political analysis. What I mean by political blog are those which are mainly focused on politics. Sahat Al Safah and Manalaa.net are two good examples.

The future looks blurry and uncertain for Saudi political blogs: Are we going to witness a rise of Saudi political blogs, how many of them there will be, how are they going to be introduced, what can they offer, and what role can they play in a country where public participation in the process of making decision is very limited if nonexistent? These are all questions that need to be answered. We maybe able to put some expectations, but such expectaions may also prove to be useless as blogging as a medium do not evolve and proliferate under some known set of rules. Only time will tell.

CNN: Saudi Arabia has promised a comprehensive review of all of its educational textbooks and to remove all language promoting intolerance.

My Jeddawi cousin Hamad in the farm prior to dinner.

Almost two weeks ago I wrote about Printaholics, which, according to their blog, would be launched in August this year. They seem to be targeting the market of UAE only, which could be a good thing for the startup and their customers too.

What I forgot to mention in that post is: there is a similar startup in Egypt that I found earlier this year. It is called Sortak, and it looks promising too. One of the interesting features they offer is a special level of privacy for hijabi women; an idea the guys at Printaholics might consider as it could prove popular in the more conservative soceity of the Gulf.

I am wondering what these two startups can learn from each other. They are providing (almost) the same service and apparently have the same business model, and because they are targeting two different local markets, I guess there is no fear of competition here. I am also wondering if there are any Saudi VCs (do they exist?) willing to invest in a similar idea.

(on a side note: what do you think of this a la TechCruch post? Should I do more of these? ;-)

From my personal experience, I can tell you that after using a DSL connection for some time, using a standard dial-up connection becomes unbearable. I usually use a monthly pre-paid subscription, and tend to change the ISP from time to time depending on the performance and speed of connection during the past month.

So after my last subscription with AwalNet ended, my brother suggested that we should change the ISP. I thought AwalNet was ok, but he said a change might be good. I did not mind, because to me there wasn’t this huge difference between ISP’s in the Kingdom. The whole internet infrastructure in the country is crappy after all.

I know that a 128 kbps speed is not exactly what true computer geek would hope for, but considering my bankruptcy, and that I’m not a geek, I think it is good enough for my usual internet usage. Plus, BitTorrent and other P2P tools have made even the slowest DSL connections more valuable.

We got a one-month subscription from Sahara. After about ten days of normal usage, interrupted by several hours of disconnection every 2 or 3 days, we were completely disconnected. My brother called the Sahara help line, and after a long waiting he finally spoke to a customer service person. “You are no longer connected because you have exceeded your download limit,” he told my brother, who was totally surprised with what he heard. “You have a 6 GB download limit and you have reached that limit, so your subscription is no longer working,” he added.

My brother told him there was nothing on the pre-paid card about a download limit. “That is correct: this piece of information is only available on our website,” the customer service guy said. My brother, shocked with this kind of policy, did not comment and simply hang up.

I don’t get it: so I have to go to their website to find out about their terms and conditions? But wait, to do that, I need to be connected to the internet, and that’s why I purchased the pre-paid subscription card in the first place, right? What if I read their terms and conditions and did not agree on them? Would they accept to take back their subscription and give me a refund for the service I purchased? I don’t think so.

Based on my experiences with other Saudi companies, and with this kind of policies by Sahara, I don’t think they would do that. Anyways, I got a new subscription from another ISP, with no download limit crap of any kind; otherwise I won’t be able to write this post ;-) and I guess I won’t be dealing with them anymore as that proved to be a total waste of money and time. Conclusion: Sahara DSL service is highly unrecommended, and if you had no other choice you better stick to your not-so-good ol’ dial-up connection.

This photo is from a recent visit to Dammam with my family. Two of my cousins, Mohammed and Zinab, and my brother Hadi, appear in the picture smiling, but a few seconds later Hadi was screaming like a maniac asking us to tell the operator to stop this thing because he was getting scared. The thing is, he is a big show off, so it was very funny watching him almost crying up there :-)

After more than 100 hours of blockage, this blog was finally back on Monday. I’m writing this now because I was out of town for the last couple of days. I had a brief visit to Dammam with my family that taught me some really valuable lessons, but more on that later. I want to thank everyone who supported me. Many thanks to OCSAB, especially Herbaz, for taking the time and effort to work on unblocking the blog. On a related note, Naif Abu-Said has published an article (Arabic) in Al Riyadh newspaper on ISU and their method of censorship. Our regular blogging will continue in the coming few hours, stay tuned.