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Kuwait: Election Drama, Filthy Clinics and Domestic Abuse

Amer Al-Hilal · 20:51, May 8th, 2009 · Middle East & North Africa

lingua → fr · es

Salutations from Kuwait! Amer Al-Hilal here with another round-up from the Kuwaiti blogosphere, ranging from posts concerning after shocks of Swine Flu, to embarrassing official printing gaffes, to the humanitarian plight of the domestic workers and much more.

We start off with the popular blog 4th Ring Road which mocks the religious ‘Kuwait Awqaf Public Foundation' for neglecting their English copy before publicly printing thousands of documents with the embarrassing gaffe: ‘Kuwait Awqaf Pubic Foundation.'

pubic-blunder-2

Since its election time, various bloggers such as Jelly Belly Nonsense visit candidate headquarters to soak in the political rhetoric. However, her visit to candidate Dr. Abdulla Al-Turaiji's tent left her offended at what transpired. In a post entitled ‘Jelly Belly and the Elections‘ she states:

Last night I went to Dr. Abdullah Al-Turiji with my cousin and it was her first experience as well… everything was going well until this guy who is apparently a presenter in Scope TV [whose name is] Anwar Malallah showed up… anyways they brought up the issue of the citizenship/aljenseya… he started talking about Kuwaiti men marrying non-Kuwaitis and stealing the men from Kuwaiti women and how these “foreigners” are taking their rights by being Kuwaitis themselves and how their children may turn out different because of this marriage! At this point I looked at my cousin and we were both VERY ANGRY… if you don't know this already my mom was Bahraini and I said was because she has the Kuwaiti citizenship now and she had it for the past 30 years and my cousin mom is American but she chose to keep her American citizenship and never got the Kuwaiti but that's not the issue here the issue was how this asshole was basically attacking our moms!!

248am's Mark (who just returned from a trip to Amsterdam) was subjected to a Swine Flu checkup on arrival at Kuwait Airport ('Back From The Clinic‘) and was told to validate his health papers with a local clinic the following day:

I passed by the Salmiya clinic in the morning to get the H1N1 flu paper I got from the airport signed. It was my first time there and I have to say the place is disgusting. Can’t believe that’s actually a medical center, it looks more like a big kitchen or bathroom. I even found a big dead bug on a dirty and stained floor, gross! Anyway went to the proper department where this woman with a really large book took down my name and travel information. She asked me if I was sick, I told her no so she told me to come back on Sunday and that was it.

buginhospital - mark blog

Moving on to human rights issues, conscientious blogger q8sws in a moving post called ‘Numbers‘ highlights the plight of domestic workers in Kuwait:

I've talked with people who work with abused domestic helpers in their embassies and I was able to get a rough estimate on the numbers we are dealing with: 80 maids at the Ethiopian embassy (embassy already full and now turning away runaways);400 maids at the Indonesian Embassy, 100 - 300 maids at the Philippines Embassy (it fluctuates pretty often), 300 at the Sri Lankan embassy.
I also know that Indian embassy officials dragged out a crying and pleading Indian woman from the embassy in plain sight of everyone, who was claiming abuse, and telling her that was not the place for her to go. These numbers are obviously not accurate down to the last person - they are rough estimates. And I can tell you that these ladies are not all happy and healthy. Having personally been to the Philippines embassy myself, I was devastated to see women lined up from corner to corner in a basement room, taking up every available space.

A human being is not a number. Every single person deserves to be treated as a special, unique individual. But even when dealing with numbers, please remember that these are only runaways that make it to the embassy. There are more like these in the hospitals, in their employer's homes, in the jails and deportation centre, hiding out illegally somewhere in Kuwait, forced into prostitution and of course - in the morgue.

Lastly, moving on to technology A Puddle Of Red alludes to Endgadget's article's concerning Cablevision offering 101 Mps speed in NY and parts of the East Coast for only $99 a month stating that in Kuwait “you can't even get 256K for that price“.

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Central & Eastern Europe: Swine Flu (aka “California 0409”)

Veronica Khokhlova · 15:49, May 8th, 2009 · Americas , Eastern & Central Europe

lingua → pl

Below are some of the Central and Eastern Europe bloggers' reactions to news reports on swine flu and measures taken by some of the governments to keep the disease from spreading to their countries.

Blogging Balkanistan and other Eccentricities turns to history and posts an excerpt from an eyewitness account of the Thessaloniki plague epidemic of 1724, written by Pylyp Orlyk, a Cossack hetman, and highlighted in Mark Mazover's non-fiction book, Salonica, City of Ghosts. The blogger ends the post with this note:

[…] As for the current pandemic several Balkan countries have imposed a ban on pork imports from the US or Mexico, while reviewing their emergency response.

And here's one exchange from the comments section:

Daniel:

Guys, cancel your Mexico vacations, and insted of ordering pork – try eating a roasted goat. It’s awesome.

bloggingbalkanistan:

What does goat taste like?

Croatian Crescent writes this about the coverage of Croatia's one suspected swine flu case:

A 22 year old girl who returned from Chicago to Osijek, in the far East of Croatia, was suspected of having swine flu. In a special press conference, Health minister Darko Milinović told the girl was being kept in isolation and monitored. Večernji list put a picture of the girl online, with a bar over her eyes as if she is some kind of criminal.

A day later we know that the girl is not infected with swine flu. Actually, she doesn't even have “normal” flu. She recovered from swine flu in a day, but I wonder how much time she needs to recover from the stigma. […]

Sleeping With Pengovsky writes this about the fear of swine flu - and xenophobia:

[…] However, the rise of Fascism today is connected to one other phenomenon. The Culture of Fear.

Did you notice that all of the sudden economic crisis is no longer top issue? Turn to any news channel and you’ll see a 24/7 live reporting on swine flu. The fact that so far it killed less people than your average flu does every year is not important. What is important is what it could do. The fact that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction was not important. What was important was that it could have had them. It is also very important that certain corporations make a lot of money in such cases. […]

Ari Rusilla of BalkanPerspective/Blogactiv.eu writes about the possible effect of the swine flu media hype on the June 2009 European Parliament election:

[…] Swine flu has been in headlines nearly two weeks. The media hype is not in any scale to the real thread, it can be good entertainment like circus in ancient Rome and a tool to put the common people’s focus on trivialities. For example if European Parliament elections have attracted quite a few people so far there is now good change that the whole election will be passed unnoticed due the swine flu panic. […]

Ukraine Today writes that the Ukrainian president should stay away from focusing on the domestic politics aspect of the swine flu emergency:

[…] The epidemic crisis was not helped by a President seeking to place all blame and responsibility on his political enemies whilst hand balling any responsibility, which is what Viktor Yuschenko had done. Maybe Yushchenko would be better off placing his energy in getting Ukrainian authorities to start cleaning up the Country as a visit to Ukraine is at times like visiting a garbage dump (literally). […]

The Czech Daily Word writes about travel to the Czech Republic and “a sad paradox” that the swine flu emergency has created:

[…] During the times of unilateral USA-Czech visa regime many politicians, tourists and journalists (including myself) used to mention the fact that the system had been humiliating (”we have to, they don’t“).

And now every American who arrives in the Czech Republic is screened. “Luckily” we do not have regular Mexico-Prague flights, so passengers traveling from Mexico have to change flights in Madrid where some precautions have been in place as well… […]

Both The Czech Daily Word and Czechmatediary write about the warning issued by the Czech health minister; here's a quote from a Czechmatediary's post:

[…] For now the Czechs have enough of the anti-viral medicine for about 2.2 million people which is sufficient for about 20% of the Czech population. The Minister of Health, Daniela Filipova, warned citizens not to buy out all of the protective masks as well as the Tamiflu medicine which, if overused, can cause a resistance of the virus to the other otherwise helpful antiviral agents. […]

Lituanica writes about something of a swine flu-related pharmaceutical emergency in Lithuania:

As the Lietuvos Rytas daily writes stocks of anti-viral drugs costing more than 100 litas (EUR 29) have been swept out of Vilnius pharmacies, although the medication is only sold on prescription. Pharmaceutical companies believe this is due to the threat of swine influenza pandemic. […]

Streetwise Professor writes about the Russian authorities' decision to send “all passengers arriving in Russia from the United States or Mexico” through “contact-free heat sensor” to test their temperatures:

[…] Whew. Glad there’s a “contact free” test. When I read the first paragraph, I had a vision of a Russian Nurse Ratched standing at the end of the jetway in Sheremetyevo with a thermometer, and NOT one of those nice little electronic oral ones, if you know what I mean.

Uhm, I mean a temperature may be a necessary condition for swine flu, but it’s hardly a sufficient condition. My 15 year old had a fever last week. Pretty sure it wasn’t the swine flu. Talk about a test tailor-made for false positives. In other words, a complete waste of resources with virtually no prospect of any benefit. Unless the whole idea is to discourage foreign tourists, and to deter Russians from traveling abroad. […]

Streetwise Professor also writes about import restrictions on “uncooked pork from Mexico, California, Texas and Kansas” imposed by the Russian authorities:

[…] Russia has routinely used health justifications to ban imports of agricultural products that compete with domestic producers. This just seems another transparently opportunistic attempt to exploit health fears to engage in protectionism. […]

In the comments section to this post, some of the readers compare Russia's response to the measures taken in other countries.

Leopolis writes that “Russia's WTO accession my be first casualty” of swine flu:

[…] Over the past year, Russia has failed to ‘relist' 34 US pork processing, production and storage facilities - effectively rendering around half of all US pork production ineligible for export to Russia. On April 8, the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) called on the Obama administration to decelerate Russia’s WTO accession until it began to “play by the rules and stop its blatant actions to restrict US pork.”

Until this week, Russia has not been able to identify any health or sanitary reasons for blocking US meat imports - the requirement for justifying the block as per its 2006 bilateral WTO obligations. The ineptly named swine flu now presents a reason for Russia to approve US meat facilities on a plant-by-plant basis - actions inconsistent with the WTO’s Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Agreement requiring WTO signatories to recognize equally standards in other countries. […]

Sean's Russia Blog reports on the alleged discovery of the first two swine flu cases in Russia - both in passengers who arrived from New York City - and writes about other geopolitical dimensions of the emergency:

[…] Interestingly, in Russia doctors call the virus, which has damned the good name of the pig the world over, “California 0409.” That should make pigs feel better, but what of the sensitivities of us Californians?

[…]

Mexico as epicenter has of course inspired our American xenophobes into a fury of anti-immigrant hate. Fox News has predictably led the anti-immigrant charge with accusations that illness is part of some kind of viral conspiracy against America. It is only a matter of time they follow the Israelis in adopting “Mexican flu.” […]

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Talking to Jamaican writer and blogger Marlon James

Nicholas Laughlin · 15:27 · Americas

lingua → nl · es · it · fr · zht · zhs

Jamaican writer Marlon James

Marlon James was born in Jamaica in 1970. His first novel, John Crow's Devil (2005), was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His second novel, The Book of Night Women — described by one reviewer as “both beautifully written and devastating” — was published in February 2009. James now lives in the United States, where he is a professor of literature and creative writing at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.

James is also a blogger. Since May 2006 he has posted occasional ruminations on books, music, movies, politics, and society at Marlon James, Among Other Things. The New York-based litblogger Maud Newton recently interviewed Marlon about his new book. Soon after, I also did an email interview with him, focusing this time on his blogging activity. Here is an edited version of our conversation.

Nicholas Laughlin: In a recent blog post you criticised “elitist” anti-Internet writers who scorn blogs. Do you actually run into a lot of those? These days it seems like everybody's blogging, and even mainstream publications like the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, etc. have blogs, podcasts, and twitter feeds. Where and wherefore is the vein of resistance to online media?

Marlon James: Anti-Internet scorn? Where to find it? In the literati itself. Some of it is good-natured ribbing, but a lot of it is a basic belief that the Internet simply cannot be the meeting space for solid intellectual thought and engagement. This has led to feuds before — I'm thinking of the stupid hissy fit that writers at N+1 magazine stirred up over blogs like The Elegant Variation a few years ago.

I'm the biggest believer in the permanence and the importance of the book, but literature existed before it and it will exist after it. We tend to think that because the Internet is an inevitability, everybody is online and nobody has any issues with it, but people still look at the Internet as the bogeyman waiting to happen. It's where old pedophiles lure out young girls or boys. It's destroying reading. It has made up a quick-fix culture (and here I thought it was quick fixes that caused that). That said, the Internet has degraded common knowledge to a matter of opinion, or at least whatever has just been posted on Wikipedia. All these concerns may be true, but this was once said about the novel, radio, and TV.

This doesn't mean everybody should start blogging. One thing that afflicts this online confession culture is that many of us have very little to say, but are dead set on saying it. But so many of us have things that need to be said, and the Internet is the only place where those voices can be heard.

NL: Do you feel your blog has widened the audience for your fiction?

MJ: I’m not really sure. My friend Don Lee is convinced that my blog persona is a completely different person. A creative writing teacher told me once that my literary persona is a far better writer. At one point there were people who knew me as a blogger, and nothing else. I started blogging because there were so many things to get off my chest that fiction could not convey. In particular, stuff about how we live today. Maybe I was also too lazy to find a job with a magazine. I have very little desire to confess anything, nor do I come alive only when there is an audience. I'm not even sure that people read what I write. In some ways my blog is a clearing-house for my thoughts. In other ways, it's a dress rehearsal for what I really want to write.

NL: How is writing for your blog different to, say, writing a short essay for a print publication? Do you have a different approach, intent, voice when you write for online publication? Does the medium matter? Is there material you would not write about were it not for your blog?

MJ: My blog posts are very much searches, me writing towards finding what I really want to say. For some reason that feels more natural in a blog format, the act of getting my s**t together. In print, my post about “The Bigots On My Bookshelf” would seem unformed and slightly inconclusive, but online it seems like what it is, my going through a process. I had no idea at the beginning of that article how it would have ended.

I might be wrong, but I've always felt that with print I should at least know what I'm supposed to write before I write it. Or at least have a driving idea. I’m also more likely to write a blog post purely out of rage, with no concern for rationality — exposing a raw nerve, you could say. None of my writing is that far removed from how I speak, but blog posts are probably the closest. This may come as a shock to some who think I walk around burdened by heavy thoughts, when all I’m thinking of is how to get the new Buffy comic. Speaking of Buffy, I also use blogs to riff on pretty much everything BUT literature. There’s more to life than books, after all. Not much more, but still….

NL: Which might be another way of asking: do you think of your blog as a literary work?

MJ: No. A searching exercise, yes. A playground for thoughts to grow, certainly. My amateur attempts at journalism, probably. Storage for essays, more often than not. But I’m probably alone in thinking that art is better cooked than raw, and my blogs tend to be raw.

NL: Have you ever thought of using the blog medium or form to write a fictional work?

MJ: Now we enter into where I am a Luddite. A good story is a good story regardless of medium, but I wonder sometimes who does this? Blog fiction is loaded with as many pitfalls as self-published fiction. Certainly there is good work out there, but there is also, as far as I have seen, bad work held together by the hubris of the author, or put another way, work that probably would not be published.

Blogs, like self-published work, do reveal more often that they should how essential good editors are. Genius can come from everywhere, but it’s hard to find it when a huge percentage of this stuff is just writers defecating online. I’m sure those are fighting words. But it’s sort of like the beauty queen stereotype. Sure it’s dismissive and offensive to assume that all beauty queens are stupid. But why do I keep meeting only the stupid ones?

NL: Which literary blogs do you read regularly? Do you follow the very small Caribbean literary blogosphere, or feel that it's a community you belong to?

MJ: This aspect of the blogosphere I’m interested in very much. The building of community. Binyavanga Wainaina spoke about this at a 2007 PEN conference, and I’ve referred to it before; him saying that it was the Internet that built the community of contemporary African writers. A group base, that not only spoke truth to power but was also too physically scattered, too elusive yet palpable and too easily accessible for the powers that be to stop it.

Caribbean authors are so scattered and apart for all sorts of reasons, coming together once a year for the Calabash Literary Festival [in Jamaica]. I don’t know if we’ll ever get our Paris, but we could come together online. I’m not sure what that means exactly, but I do believe that writers need community, for moral support if nothing else. I never felt more alone than when I was writing my first book. That said, I read Guyana Gyal, Long Bench, Geoffrey Philp’s blog, Active Voice, and a whole bunch of other blogs that I can’t remember. Or I just go to Global Voices and they point me to where I need to go.

NL: Which Caribbean writers would you like to see blogging?

MJ: V.S. Naipaul clearly has s**t he needs to deal with. Maybe if he got more stuff out online he would save us from him dropping it all over his work. I’m just saying.

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Myanmar: Rogue Wind Blasted through Mandalay City

tan · 01:28 · East Asia

lingua → fr · nl · mg · bn · pt

MgHla wrote that on May 6, 2009, a rogue wind blasted through Mandalay, the third capital city of Myanmar.

Photo from the blog of MgHla

He wrote:

“After I attended a seminar, I came back to the office around 4pm. On the way, I saw that there was a whirlwind of wind, and there were a lot of dust. Not soon after I had reached the office, around 4:30pm, the wind became stronger, and it also started to rain. Probably because the wind was too strong, the rain was not coming down from above, but going side-ways. It was very noisy also. Thankfully, it only lasted about 30 minutes. If it had gone on for about 3 or 4 hours, it would have been like being in Nargis cyclone. When I came back from work, I saw the billboard on the corner of 80th St. & 35th St. on the ground. I heard that the backside of a car was also crushed under the billboard, but when I passed near there, the car was not there anymore. A signboard advertising engine oil became wrinkled at the corners. Small billboards on 35th St. railroad overpass also either fell or broke. It is time for the Municipal to check the integrity of the billboards. They should scrutinize the permits being handed out to erect billboards over our heads….”

The quote mentioned in the post is a translation done by the author. The original quote is written in Burmese language.

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