Defense Team Of Jailed Saudi Activist Plans Hunger Strike

The wife of jailed Saudi Arabian activist Matrook Al-Faleh sent CNN producer Mohammed Jamjoom this note from her husband's defense team.

Jamila Al-Faleh says the lawyers for Al-Faleh, whom human rights organizations say was jailed for criticizing prison conditions in his country, will go on a hunger strike to protest their client's detention conditions.

The Saudi Interior Ministry has not yet responded to CNN's request for comment. Below is a note from Al-Faleh's defense team:

"The Saudi Justice system and legal procedures (e.g., Criminal Procedure and Arrest and Detention Laws) have failed to render just judgments to jailed Saudi human-right activists who have been arrested with no official indictments, and incarcerated indefinitely in solitary confinement with no right to an attorney or access to habeas corpus.

After exerting all means to get fair treatments to the constitutional movement’s detainees, the defense teams decided to observe a 48-hour hunger strike. The proposed strike will take place on Thursday and Friday, 6-7 November 2008, in protest against flagrant human rights violations for all detainees in Saudi prisons who have been deprived of their basic rights as guaranteed by [the Saudi] Criminal Procedure Law and Arrest and Detention Law."

(original source CNN)

Saudi Hunger Strike - Your Thoughts

Some brave Saudis are going on a hunger strike and they want you to join them.

These are no ordinary Saudis; they're the intellectuals of the ultraconservative kingdom. The human rights activists, the bloggers, and professional journalists and lawyers.

They have established a group on the social networking site FaceBook to raise awareness and recruit supporters. Their call is adding new members by the day and there is no telling yet how the Saudi government will respond.

The "movement" is lead by Saudis themselves after lawyers for 11 men detained by the government called for a 48-hour hunger strike in support of their clients. They attorneys claim that their clients have been detained with no clear charges and without the possibility of a trial anytime soon. .

What does the Saudi government say about all this? Nothing. We have been reporting this story for five months, and all attempts to confirm the detention of some of these men, the charges they face and an update on their status were met with silence.

So, in light of this latest development --- the call for a hunger strike --- we made another call to the Saudi Interior Ministry. They said what they've said before. "Call back in 30 minutes." When we called back at the agreed time, the answer was a resounding "No Comment."

Who are these eleven men? The list includes a former Judge and four former university professors.. All eleven are described as "human rights activists." The earliest detentions date back to February 2007.

The most recent person taken into custody is Professor Matrook H. Al-Faleh, political science professor at King Saud University in Riyadh, detained by security forces in May 19, 2008. His wife told CNN that she saw him last Saturday and that he "currently" is not on a hunger strike. She refused to comment further and asked us to speak to the lawyers instead.

In the FaceBook posting, the announcement of the hunger strike is coupled with a plea for "all activists and citizens who have conscious" to show "sympathy and solidarity" by joining in.

The FaceBook page indicates the group believes that their move is "daring" and "bold" in the defense of human rights.

Do you think this hunger strike will make a difference?

(original source CNN)

Lawyer To File Case Against Ministry Over Failure To Ban YouTube

Kuwait: A leading Kuwaiti lawyer Mubarak Al-Tasha has said that he intends to file a case against the Ministry of Information for not blocking the website Youtube or at least blocking infamous clips that are considered as insulting to Islam and Prophet Mohammed (PBUH). The lawyer said that since the ministry failed to carry out its promises, a law suit will be filed against it in order to ensure that this is legally binding, and added that the Kuwaiti Constitution protects freedom of expression, press and publication however freedoms should not in any way insult Islam.
He added that the State needs to uphold the Constitution and respect it since law 70/2002 issued by the Information Ministry states that internet providers should not promote or encourage pornographic, indecent and anti-Islamic material. A few months ago, local newspapers reported that the ministry ordered local internet service providers to block the website over clips that could offend Muslims.
"Since the website displays the Quran in the form of songs sung with the oud... and displays disrespectful pictures of the Prophet Mohammed... Please proceed with immediate effect in blocking the website www.youtube.com," read a copy of a memo obtained by Reuters.
However, following the circulation of this memo, the ministry went back on its decision and the site was subsequently not banned.
(Original Source: Al Watan Newspaper - 24 November 2008)

Female Ministers' Appointment Unconstitutional

Kuwait: Parliament's Committee for Legislative and Legal Affairs, during its meeting on Sunday, signed off on a report stating that the appointment of female Cabinet ministers Nouriya Al-Subaih and Mouhdi Al-Humoud is unconstitutional. The decision is said to stem from the fact that both women do not conform to the Islamic dress code because they refuse to cover their hair.
The committee's convener, Ali Al-Hajeri, announced that the report has been unanimously endorsed by the committee's members and that it is backed up by Article 82 of the Constitution and Article 1 of the Elections Law that stipulates that women should adhere to the Islamic dress code.
(source: Al Watan Newspaper - Sunday 23/11/08)

Historical Background:
Kuwait's ruler Sheikh Jabir al-Ahmad al-Sabah issued a decree giving women full political rights in 1999. In a speech to the public, Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah said: "I congratulate the women of Kuwait for having achieved their political rights."
The change in the law, which was agreed at the end of a 10-hour session, had previously been blocked by a majority of tribal and Islamist members of parliament. Many of these had argued that Islamic law prohibited women from positions of leadership. The amendment requires women voters and candidates to abide by Islamic law. Correspondents say this is an attempt by the ruling family to reassure Islamists. But it could also place restrictions on women campaigners.

RITUEL ÉROTIQUE AU JAPON

Quelque part au Japon, un homme, Haruki Yukimura, et une femme, Nana-Chan, s'adonnent au bondage. Une curiosité contemplative pour la nuit.

Une jeune femme traverse un jardin japonais, puis entre dans une maison traditionnelle en se déchaussant avec lenteur. Elle vient rendre visite à un « maître », un homme âgé d'une soixantaine d'années qui l'accueille avec solennité et respect. A peine le rituel du salut accompli, il va inlassablement nouer des cordes autour de son corps composant des figures de plus en plus complexes. La jeune femme est d'abord habillée, puis seins nus, puis totalement dénudée.
En expert, le maître fait et défait ses liens, élaborés avec une sophistication extrême, l'obligeant à prendre des poses improbables.
La scène se passe dans un silence vibrant sans qu'aucun mot ni son ne soit échangé, le maître contemplant après chaque composition son oeuvre. Quelques secondes de temps suspendu plus tard, il la libère laissant cordes et corps abandonnés sur le tatami. Avant de reprendre une nouvelle composition...

Les liens du cinéma avec l'univers du fantasme, le voyeurisme et l'érotisme sont bien connus. Du désir au plaisir (des protagonistes), de la pulsion scopique à la gêne (des spectateurs), le film de Xavier Brillat, en joue, nous mettant dans une situation inconfortable. Quelque part au Japon, un homme, Haruki Yukimura et une femme, Nana-Chan, s'adonnent au bondage. Mais la lenteur des gestes, la douceur des voix, le parti pris d'enchaîner les scènes par des fondus au noir, la présence ténue de bruissements de la nature, tout nous invite à sortir de l'évidence voyeuriste. D'une situation qui ne pourrait être qu'érotique, le film nous amène peu à peu vers la performance, la cérémonie ritualisée : le corps de la femme, corps attaché, corps soumis, corps contraint, lieu d'inscription du nouage patient et méticuleux de l'homme, nous offre une succession de poses, sinon d'étapes. Pour qui ? Pour elle, pour lui, pour nous ?

La juste distance adoptée par Xavier Brillat pour filmer les scènes confère au documentaire un statut singulier, comme si nous assistions à un rituel érotique secret.
Une curiosité contemplative pour la nuit.

Le film a été sélectionné pour une présentation en avant-première au Festival du Documentaire de Marseille 2007.
Un film de Xavier Brillat

Digital Communities

Forming communities is what humans do. We join communities to find one another, to belong. We join communities to express ourselves, whether religiously politically or any other way. The drive to form communities is as old as civilization, in fact it is why we have civilizations in the first place.
But communities today work very differently. Everything is all sped up - over night is not fast enough anymore. In the past, we've always seen the big eats the small, in the new knowledge-based economy the fast eats the slow. Speed is the new BIG! But speed isn't the only change. Digital technology has amplified the ability for a single individual to reach out to its swarm. In social networking communities, the voice of one quickly becomes the voice of hundred and one or 1 million and one. There are no geographic borders, no boundaries and no limits. These communities are on facebook and myspace. They're in your e-mail address book, they're the 1200 volunteers who edit wikipedia, they're the assortment of people who created linux, they're the 9 million who play second life.. They're the free form digital communities that arise, interact and disperse and they are the blogs that are alive and responsive as a school of fish.
Technology has made it possible for human communities to behave like swarms of their own. We are more in touch and more in tune to our peers than ever before. Lets capitalize on our networks and push these communities to move towards positive change through engagement and co-creativity.

(Reference: Chuck Brymer's The Nature of Marketing)

The Beirut Manifesto

Celebrate an absurd juxtaposition,
Glorify this informal language that is so easy and fast to learn and understand and how the absence of its limitations greets you in a chaotic manner.

Celebrate this roaring sound of the machines and the babbling of the people as we walk down the streets.

Celebrate while listening to the overlapping sounds of the mosques and the churches, the machines and the people, the sea and the mountains.
(One could perhaps never encounter war damage if they avoided most of the city. But it exists, and it adds a certain intensity to it. Perhaps only an intensity, which the individual brings. But the other intensities that the dichotomy between the two religions in the city, and the legendary hot-blooded middle eastern methods of resolving differences make Beirut memorable. Beirut’s true intrigue lies in its ambience as a tired postwar ghost town desperately trying to regain footing.)

Celebrate the informality, enthusiasm and magnificence of everything we see around us as we are taking a walk, where new compliments old, and high values low.

Celebrate this charming mix between East and West. Walk and contemplate the traces of where cultures interact and discuss their opinion.

Admire how smoothly this multi-cultural and yet identical city opens the floor to many discussions.
Walk, think and talk organically through a non-linear path, a movement that reflects in the daily activity of this city.

Celebrate a place where you feel that you are imprisoned yet free, lost but happy, mistreated but enjoying it.

Celebrate a whole that contains parts of ruined buildings as well as new ones, modern and classic, machines and people, Muslims and Christians, black and white, foreign and native, aristocrats and proletarians.

Honor old operating systems integrated with new ones.
Celebrate a city where everything is quite large and at an extreme edge.

A superheated atmosphere, watch how its molecules behave when everything is turned up.
A city of hope even with the never-ending destruction.
A multicultural homogeneity.
A cultural maturity and adulthood that is a result of several years of civil war.
An incompatibility of absolute place and form.
A reality of transforming history into an explosion of neutral colors and an overlaying of opinions.
Appreciation in a state of distortion.
A love for danger, adventure, risk and the habit of fearlessness.

Celebrate DENSITY.

Celebrate an immense Pompeii still whitening with sepulchers.

Enjoy pure spontaneity and subjectivity, complexity and contradiction, overwhelming contrast, constant recognizable change, mixture of colors, sounds and smell.

CELEBRATE BEIRUT!

The Wait

I am waiting for a rebirth of wonder. I am waiting for
someone to really discover me and live together the
fairytale. I am waiting for lovers and weepers to lie
down together again in a new sexual rebirth. I am
waiting for the war to stop and make the world safe
from anarchy.
I am waiting for the second coming. And I am waiting
for them to prove that God is really a woman. I am
waiting for my number to be called and I am waiting
for the meek to rebel. I am waiting for forests and
animals to reclaim the earth as theirs and I am
anxiously waiting for the secret of eternal life to be
discovered by some Lebanese bimbo.

I am waiting to set sail for happiness and I am
waiting for Alice in Wonderland to reincarnate in me
her total dream of innocence. I am certainly waiting
for the garlic bread to be served at the last supper
with a strange new appetizer. I am waiting for the
dead to rise and the living to engage in a public orgy
in worship of Bacchus.

I am waiting for the day of truth that will make all
things clear and I am waiting for retribution for what
I did to my mother. I am waiting to write my great
obituary. I am waiting for the last long ecstasy and
I am awaiting perpetually and forever a renaissance of
wonder.

I am waiting.

We Die

We die and we are rich with lovers and loved ones,
tastes we’ve experienced, fragrances we’ve sweated and
bodies we’ve entered.
We die and we are rich with multiple ecstasies, sexual
obsessions, unrealized dreams and city roundabouts.
We die and we are rich with erotic fantasies, human
parasites, whispered lies and garlic bread.
We die.
We die mutated freaks unrecognized by our own eyes.
She died and history is lost.
She died a Divine Freak.

MUSEUMS OR NOT!

The online dictionary defined museums as “places of study, buildings where objects of historical, scientific or artistic interest are kept, preserved and exhibited”. To The Museums Association, a museum is “an institution which collects documents, preserves, exhibits and interprets material evidence and associated information for the public benefit”.

Since 1998, this definition has changed. Museums now enable the public to explore collections for inspiration, learning and enjoyment. They are institutions that collect, safeguard and make accessible artefacts and specimens, which they hold in trust for society. Mike Wallace (1996) categorised museums into four distinct types, namely National Museums that hold collection of national importance, Armed Service Museums, Independence Museums and Local Authority Museums. According to Wallace, the importance of museums lies in their role as a nation’s memory bank.

Personally, what matters most about museums is that they are one source of living history. But I guess the question here is not 'museums or not' but rather who defines what is of value and worth preserving?

I certainly get your point Fady... culture can never be restricted to museums but also can't be ignored.

WAIL "LEBANON'S NATIONAL ANTHEM"

My generation sits on its
beat ass and tokes on grass
A group of overgrown corpses
bumbling around town
between orgies and street deals
casinos and jail cells
sticking their mojo pins
watching their arms swell

Forlorn, foresworn
to a country so small
a country so squashed
that it has become
the bedouin's brothel
the Disneyland of the East
As the girls stumble
from one bar to the next
down Monot street

Replace the -t with a -p
and you get a den of
crackhead bourgeoisie
sucking on Osso Bucco
with bleached teeth
and bleached money
"Here we party
like there's no tomorrow"
Repeated like a mantra

So the kids dance on coffins
With their sleek hair
and their silken skin
until the men in the military
attire bust in

Pills scatter across the floor
the manic paranoia soars
there's no escape now
(not even the gaping ceiling)

Somewhere on a balcony
A maid stares out to the sea
Expires, pulls up the rug and
retires
to her one foot room
with a mattress and a picture
of Jesus
to keep her company

As the workers drip with sweat
and the housewives shop
to forget
A boy stands on a windowsill
and screams:
"My eyes are my worst enemy"

Somewhere in a sleepy Mercedes
A hand surreptitiously slips
into another
as the driver rants on about
how his religion outdoes
all the others
and smiles, toothlessly

Pearls of sweat roll off
the side of his head
as the clandestine sunshine
peaks through the glass
and shines on your pretty face
Babe

Now we no longer burn
our garbage on the streets
now the pavement shines brightly
and the lights illuminate
the city

And somewhere in all of this
I found myself
in a smoke-filled dive
where thhick white threads
were rising and writhing
from the ashtrays

People numbing their wounds
with alcohol
their gazes bouncing
like tennis balls
off the walls

Somehow I found myself with
no place to call home
I stood behind my paintings
that was the closest i ever got
to home

I stood there
fighting the chatter
for silence
trying to speak to you directly
to bear myself to you unveiled
from a whisper to a wail