Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Q8 NEWS ROUNDUP
Authentic news briefs from the Arab Times (“the first English language daily in free Kuwait”):
Panel reviews art books
An art text books review committee, formed by the Education and Higher Education Minister, has started examining the reports of a governmental agency and the educational research and curriculum sector of the ministry, reports Al-Watan quoting the Ministry’s Assistant Undersecretary for Educational Research and Curriculum and the Committee Chairman Dr Mohammed Al-Musaileem.2 ‘drunkards’ detained
Ahmadi police have arrested two drunkards—a Croatian and an Austrian—for attempting to break into a hotel in Mangaf. The drunkards have been referred to the authorities.Lovers detained in Jahra
Police have arrested a bedoun youth and an expatriate girl for having sex inside a car adjacent to a bakery in Jahra.2 citizens catch vulture
Two Kuwaiti men, identified only as Rumaih and Nayef Al-Dousari, have caught a vulture after it was seen circling above and attempting to swoop down on an unidentified child while playing outside his tent in a desert, reports Al-Rai Al-Aam Daily.Drunkards humiliate police
Police have arrested two Kuwaiti youths for allegedly humiliating police on duty. It has been reported two youths who were under the influence of alcohol were seen harassing female shoppers at an unidentified shopping mall and picked up a quarrel with the security guard of the mall when the latter intervened.The security guard called police. During a melee the suspects allegedly tore the uniform of one of the police officers.
And my favourite:
Airport searched for lost bag
Police are looking for a Kuwaiti man who allegedly sent a fax to concerned authorities at the Kuwait International Airport last Wednesday saying he had lost a bag containing an atom bomb and a device to enrich uranium, reports Al-Rai Al-Aam Daily.Police searched the area and found no lost bag.
In other regional news, reader J.C. sends belated Kuwaiti travel advice:
If you make it down to the Mubarakiya Souk, walk up the Street of the Keffiyeh Hawkers, past the Lane of the Fish Mongers, take a diagonal left through the dirt lot, and having arrived at the Alley of the Bag Makers, look for Hassan’s shop on the right at the dogleg. If you find yourself in the Street of the Boom Box Wallahs, you have gone too far. Hassan and Kanti Lal are great guys who became the prime bag makers for the embedded press in the runup to March 03. They will make you a big padded duffle bag cheap to put all your Arab trinkets in for the return home. Tell them the Sahafi Ameriki who gave Kanti Lal a bottle of rotgut made by local Australians says hello, and also says they must triple stitch for you just like they did the bags that went on the tanks to Iraq. If they show no signs of recognition, then ask them if they have heard of the secret weapon the Americans were testing out in the desert, the Chapatti Gun, which was going to immobilize the entire Iraqi army under a blanket of greasy dough.
Also, I highly recommend long lunch and sheesha at al Bustan on Gulf Road.
From Ken Grover:
It is indeed possible to drive from Bahrain to Kuwait. It would have taken you about 5 hours to get there. First obstacle is the causeway to Saudi. You need a visa to get into the kingdom and if you are driving a rental car you need to be carrying written permission to take the car across the border. It took me about a week to get the right letter to get a rental car into Bahrain in the opposite direction. I don’t even want to think about trying to get one into Kuwait from Saudi. The drive up to Kuwait is okay. I drove it numerous times going to Khafji. The last 150km is two lanes, undivided. Makes life fun to negotiate lane usage with a car approaching you at 300kph, in your lane, blinking his lights at you because you are in his lane, you stupid person you. If you ever stop in Khafji, stay in the Khafji Beach Hotel. This is the hotel that got shot with an anti-tank missile by Saudi troops during Gulf War Phase I. Shot went straight through the lobby and restaurant and out over the beach. Nice pictures of the damage in the lobby. After Khafji is the border with Kuwait and then an hour to Kuwait City. The only thing funnier than someone thinking of driving from Bahrain to Kuwait was the time a Kuwaiti suggested I drive from Bahrain to Qatar (“It will only take you an hour”) in order to catch a flight to Kuwait. Man, that’s really a drive I never want to make.
And from Sophie Masson:
A tip from someone who’s been in the area—though in the UAE, where my brother lives—wine can sometimes be had at Chinese restaurants if you ask, discreetly, for ‘red or white tea’. They even bring it to you in a dinky teapot!
Now she tells me ...
IN THIS WEEK’S BULLETIN
The 125 moments that defined Australia. And the 38 moments that didn’t.
JOKE BELLOWS
“Who does Condoleezza scare?” asks Bob Ellis. “Not Putin. Not Sharon. Not Musharraf. Not Mubarak. Not Koizumi. Not Kim Jong-il. Not Castro. Not Chavez. Not Kofi Annan.”
It’d be pretty easy to scare Kofi; just yell “They’ve found the documents! The documents you signed!” and old Kofi would be headed for the nearest window. Bob continues:
When America used its power and bombed, bunker-busted and killed 150,000 Iraqis and pulled down a statue, but still couldn’t guarantee a safe street, a day’s electricity or a justly administered prison, it showed itself so impotent as to be a kind of big, bellowing, murderous joke.
Bob hasn’t killed anyone, and his paternity case a few years ago ruled out impotence, but “big, bellowing joke” still serves as a reasonable self-description.
And though it isn’t headlines yet, this impotence is the new reality. Bush’s popularity is the lowest it has been. The John Bolton appointment and the looming oil-price depression on top of his record half-trillion-dollar deficit will show him to be the most economically incompetent US leader since Hoover.
There is no place except here to make Hoover?
The fact is that Condoleezza’s tenure has coincided with, or caused, the end for a while of American power.
You see if I am right.
Bob rarely is. How’s that Kerry landslide coming along, pal?
PARODY ATTEMPTED
Monday, May 02, 2005
Q8 NOTES
* The bomb squad were surly and abrupt as they checked the hall in advance of Sunday night’s Newsweek celebrations (the magazine’s Arabic edition is five years old). But they became instantly docile once seven or eight spectacular Lebanese Islamodels turned up.
* A popular light commercial van sold here is the Jumpy. I think it’s made by Citroen.
* Some road signs are made wider than usual simply to fit the road’s name. The King Abdulaziz Bin Abdulraman al Saud Expressway, for example.
* Most-heard sound throughout Kuwait City: Nokia’s default ringtone.
* A photograph of those Lebanese models appeared in yesterday’s Arabic-language daily Al Watan. The caption was puzzlingly brief.
* When Saddam Hussein’s forces invaded in 1990, a division of them headed for a revolving restaurant downtown and trashed it up bad. Photographs of this atrocity are still displayed there.
* A fellow user of the hotel’s computer centre just snapped at a cleaner whose vacuuming had distracted him: “There is no place except here to make Hoover?”
* Old-fashioned ring-pull cans are still in use throughout the Gulf.
* The oldtimer who runs a shop nearby is not inclined to accept tips. “Wait! Wait!” he yelled, the first time I tried to leave without all my change. “You have money!” This has happened twice since. He is furious with me.
* Remember this, for one day it may save your life: after nightfall, Shia mosques are illuminated with green light.
* Or maybe those are the Sunni mosques.
* Filet mignon at the Tavern Grill (ground floor at the Marriott) is the finest you’ve ever tasted. Prepared by an Indian-assisted German chef, served by an Egyptian.
* “The Receptionists”. That was the caption for those Lebanese models, after I’d asked someone to translate.
ADVENTURE COMMENCED
Place your bets on the future of Pajamas Media! I’m part of this new blog deal, which PajamaCzar Roger L. Simon explains here; you are all, bloggers and investors alike, invited to join our multiconvergent synerglobal infotacular hegemon. We’re the Hegemon That Cares!
The Moderate Voice has some thoughts, and here’s an update from Roger:
150 blogs now having signed up for Pajamas Media (not to mention untold milblogs) and literally hundreds more making inquiries, including blogs from Siberia and Shanghai! And they come in all shapes, sizes and subject matter - we even have a speleology blog!
No matter how it is computed, our assembled monthly unique visitors are now well into the millions.
This’ll be fun.
AUSSIE KIDNAPPED
The kidnapping of Australian Douglas Wood in Iraq is front-page news in Monday’s Arab Times, the first English-language daily established in Kuwait (nearly 30 years ago). A weathered sign on one of the streets near my hotel shows Australian, British, US, and Kuwaiti flags with the words: “Allies Forever”; there is great concern among Kuwaitis for Wood, as Australians seem particularly welcome here.
Bernard Slattery sends word that Wood went to the same school as me, in Geelong. A profile of the 63-year-old depicts him as friendly and upbeat; the sort of man who’d be useful rebuilding a nation driven low by decades of tyranny.
Meanwhile, Currency Lad notes Opposition SWAT womble Kevin Rudd’s latest bid for a couple of column inches.
Sunday, May 01, 2005
SHEIK GAMBIT ATTEMPTED
Ended up last night driving along Gulf Street (a three-lane highway) in a Cadillac SUV with Sheik Nasser at the wheel. He didn’t pay much attention to speed limits, but I kind of get the feeling Sheik Nasser doesn’t face too many legal constraints; whenever we’d be stopped for a bomb inspection (entering hotels and such; guy checks beneath the car with a mirror on a stick) the Sheik would simply say:
“I am Sheik Nasser. These people are my guests.”
And we’d be waved through. I think the Sheik also plays in the 14-team Kuwaiti football competition, thereby multiplying his Sheik powers by a factor of sports-celebritydom. Back at the hotel, I tried a Sheik-style ruse myself:
“Hello, room service? Tim here. I would like a bottle of wine, please.”
“Wine? There is no wine, sir. No wine in the entire country.”
“Did I mention I was Sheik Tim? And that I wanted vodka instead of wine?”
“Goodnight sir.”
It’s one rule here for wealthy Kuwaiti athletes and another rule for degenerate Western infidels, obviously. Heading out now for the Arab Street, where I will talk to two or maybe three people, discard those opinions that don’t agree with mine, and write a powerful column based on any quotes that remain.