Sugar Cubes

Manama: Women’s rights activist Ghada Jamsheer on Thursday hailed a court decision to jail a wife-beater as “a right step to end an endemic plight”.

“I applaud the decision because it will certainly help to put an end to the widespread phenomenon of battering women,” Jamsheer told Gulf News.

“What is needed is that more people become involved in the drive to minimise and eliminate domestic violence,” she said.

Jamsheer was commenting on a three-month sentence handed by a local judge against a Gulf national who broke the arm of his Bahraini wife and mother of their seven children for refusing to have intercourse with him.

According to press sources, the court case papers said the wife reported her husband to the public prosecutor after he abused her physically and broke her arm.

The wife said that her husband became infuriated after she told him that she could not have proper physical contact with him because she was menstruating.

But the husband refused to be put off by the wife’s claims and insisted that marital relation was a right granted by God and he wished to exercise his right.

The argument between the spouses developed into a fight and the husband started beating his wife until he broke her arm.

The husband, who does not live in Bahrain but makes regular visits there, told the judge that he had a divine right to beat his wife whenever she disobeyed him.

The unimpressed judge said that the man would have to pay 300 Bahraini dinars (Dh2,926) if he wanted to avoid jail.

[Source]

Thumbs up! we need more people like this judge.

I wonder when are some men going to understand that beating their wives is not a right given by Islam. The beating mentioned in Qura’an was interpreted in more than one way by scholars, however, the fact that the Prophet (PBUH) had never layed a hand on any of his wives nor had any of his companions defame the claims for an Islamic right of men to beat their wives to begin with. In the worst scenarios, beating was described by hitting with a Siwak, smart people will know that what is meant is the emotional effect because I do not think a sane man will actually carry a Siwak and hit his wife once or twice, it sounds like a joke. A wise man will deliver the message of being disatisfied or annoyed in so many ways, beating is definitely not one of them, if anything at all, abusing your spouse whether emotionally or physically is inhumane.

-There’s something I wanna tell you but not now

-Tell me now

-6ab are you in a good mood first?

-Just tell me (I wasn’t in a good mood)

-Father bought me a SIM card

-[I said something rude then went on and on about how wrong was what they all did]

-[She of course started giving lame excuses of why she needs a mobile phone]

-Look, your know you’re wrong ok? I don’t wanna hear anything, lets just hurry up they’re waiting for us.

My little sister is only 14 year-old, my father has already got her a SIM card and will buy her a mobile phone soon.

*Sigh*

Bethlehem walled off by Israel this Christmas

BETHLEHEM, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Pilgrims travelling the ancient route from Jerusalem to Bethlehem this Christmas will find themselves hitting a dead end — a towering concrete wall and metal gate under the lock and key of the Israeli army.

The dusty road to the town of Jesus’s birth has been the gateway to Bethlehem since biblical times and would have been the likely path taken by Mary and Joseph. But today it leads to what the mayor of Bethlehem calls “the world’s largest prison”.

At the entrance is a brand new military crossing where for the first time this Christmas pilgrims and local Christians will pass through X-ray machines (more on X-ray machines) before emerging into Bethlehem from behind eight-metre (26-feet) high concrete walls.

“If Mary and Joseph were here today, they would go through the checkpoint just like everybody else,” said Sister Erica, a nun, at the crossing.

Bethlehem is marking its first Christmas since being walled off from adjacent Jerusalem by an internationally condemned barrier Israel erected with the avowed aim of preventing Palestinian suicide bombers from infiltrating its cities. [More…]

Today’s Joseph and Mary would face 15 checkpoints

THE road from Nazareth to Bethlehem begins by dropping down from a ridge south of Galilee into the Jezreel Valley, looking out across Jordan and Samaria.

….But first you slam into a checkpoint. The first, that is, of 15 Israeli military roadblocks and mobile checkpoints that now control passage along the roads south from Nazareth.

It is a huge yellow gate at Jalame, close to the old, invisible, green line that separated Israel and the West Bank before Ariel Sharon’s “separation” strategy gave birth to the million-pound-a-mile razor wire and concrete barrier that Israel has built around — and deep into — the West Bank. The gate at Jalame — the northern edge of this “security fence” (Israeli ) or “apartheid wall” (Palestinian) is flanked by a watchtower and razor wire. But it swings open unusually quickly upon the production of foreign passports and press cards and the car slips through.

Inside Bethlehem, goodwill is hard to find. Since the outbreak of the intifada in September 2000 Christmas celebrations have been dismal, Dr Victor Batarseh, the town’s mayor, says, pointing to a dwindling Christian population and the rising wall. “Now Bethlehem has become a big prison for its citizens. We are remembered one day a year. On Christmas Eve all the world speaks of Bethlehem but they give nothing to us. Nothing.” [Read full article]

Bethlehem mayor lacks Christmas celebration funds

Bethlehem Mayor Victor Batarseh on Thursday accused the Palestinian Authority of failing to provide financial assistance to his city as it prepares to celebrate Christmas.

In an urgent letter to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, Batraseh called for solving Bethlehem’s financial crisis as soon as possible. He pointed out that the new municipality has not received any funds from the PA since the last elections in May.

He also complained about Israeli security measures around the city, which, he added, are threatening to spoil the atmosphere in Bethlehem on the eve of Christmas. [More…]

Christmas behind Israel’s wall

Every year on the morning of Dec. 25, the Latin Patriarch and a host of Church dignitaries head southward from Jerusalem via an ancient road to Bethlehem. But this year, the procession will pass through a metal gate topped with rolls of barbed wire, normally closed but opened briefly so as not to impede the tradition. [More…]

I Have Come to Bring You Peace

I have come to bring you peace.
Not the peace of the season, for it is too fleeting,
Not the peace of the carol, for it is nostalgic,
Not the peace of the greeting card, for it is too slick,
Not the peace of the crib, for it is too wistful.

Rather, I have come to bring you peace,
Peace of the ordinary, the daily, the homely,
Peace for the worker, the driver, the student,
Peace in the office, the kitchen, the farm.

Without peace, my coming is unfulfilled.
Without peace, my birth is forgettable.
Without peace, Christmas is a contradiction.
I have come to bring you peace.*

*From the Advent Prayer

Happy holidays for all, wish you peace, health and contentment and may you live to see a better Christmas in the city of Jesus.

It is a place that is breaking the mould in the field of children’s education. Manzil, in Sharjah, caters to children with special needs even while encouraging normally growing children to study along with them. While Manzil hopes to achieve greater integration, others question this endeavour.

You may have come across many instances where a child with special needs is placed in a mainstream school where he is tutored along with other normally growing children as an experiment in integration. [Read more…]

We should defend ourselves when attacked, even animals do. We should always seek the truth and hold on tight to our morals. Right is relative and so is wrong, but evil is always wrong.

Zionism is wrong, racism is wrong, looking at things from one angle only is wrong, and definitely is listening to a story from one side only.

We cry over loved ones like all humans do, we take non-violent actions everyday, we will not be silenced until justic prevail.

Regularly, we hear the same complaint and critique come from many would-be friends of the Palestinian people that, if only the Palestinians would embrace non-violence and abandon armed struggle, their demands would be met. But is that necessarily so? [Read article]

When it comes to the Palestine-Israel conflict I see only the injustice done to Palestinians by Israelis. I dare anyone to show me how is it possible for the occupied to be unjust with the occupier unless you think we should as well leave the remaining scattered spots of land we live on for the chosen people who were promised the land?

According to Judaism (Talmud - Sanhedrin 58b), any person can achieve a place in the World to Come by faithfully observing the seven basic laws of humanity. These seven laws are named the “Laws of Noah,” since all humans are descended from Noah:

1) Do not murder.
2) Do not steal.
3) Do not worship false gods.
4) Do not be sexually immoral.
5) Do not eat the limb of an animal before it is killed.
6) Do not curse God.
7) Set up courts and bring offenders to justice.

Do we not know what is right and what is wrong or we’re just bleeding ignorance in the name of peace? are we not sugar-coating things and living in denial when we refuse to see things in the eyes of the sufferers? you can always tell me how you saw Israelis with your naked eye evacuating Gaza, and I will believe you, but when you turn a blind eye on the air raids, the supersonic booms, the assassinations, the human sheilds and the Wall (and gates and electronic gates and x-ray and checkpoints and…) are you advocating peace or are you one sorry excuse of a humanbeing?. Do we realize that the peace we claim we want is nothing but a false sense of safety that can be easily achieved by building walls and hiding behind forts? (Whoops, forgive my bad constant memory, they’ve alraedy done that, never mind) Do we not realize that peace is not selfish? have we not learned our lesson yet? in Palestine, only Israelis are safe, even worse, only pro-zionism and passive Israelis are safe, other than that nobody’s blood is reserved. Solution? we become all passive Israelis who should not talk of the bad things happening but rather of seeing IOF evacuating Gaza, talk about Rafah Crossing and the absence of the Israeli physical presence but not the surveillance and their preserved right of not allowing whoever they deem a suspect, even though the UN is taking care of everything. OK ok I’m sorry! I shouldn’t talk politics, politics is bad, we want peace, we love peace, leave us alone!

We are intolerant of murderers, theives, racists, war criminals, oil drinkers and blood suckers. We are Palestinians, Jews, Chrisitians and Muslims dream of living in one country called Palestine. We condemn the acts of those who seek division in the name of security, those who bring down houses when they come and bring them down again when they leave. We hate those who kick people out of their houses to replace them, those who survived the holocaust and sought their own peace through war and their own justice by being unjust to others.

Time has changed, we are aware of that. We no longer justify targetting Israelis living in Tel Aviv, even though, they do not own the land nor do they pay for rental by the way. BUT we believe every settler who steals the house of a Palestinian in the occupied territories, making him homeless overnight, probably killing one of his family after bringing down his house on the living bodies of its inhibitants, deserves what he gets.

We want peace, we want co-existence too but we want just a little bit of dignity is that too much to ask for? co-existence means to recognize the existence of the other first, are we seeking that or are we seeking safety at any cost even if that means living in our own country as second or third citizens because of our race, and being discriminated against by the foreign government that rules us?

We are mercifull and full of hope, what else do you want more than donating our dead son’s organs to the occupiers who needed them?

What is that we are asked to leave behind, yesterday, today or tomorrow?

Today, I resisted crying after reading Haitham’s post, struggled harder after reading his comments in disbelief. I also resisted cursing every man alive, for men are the reason we all suffer, they are born important because they are males. And what one of them is capable to do -if decided to - always amazes me, not because it is so great and hard to achieve but because no matter how small or trivial it might seem, the World takes him dead serious, which makes me sometimes wish they’ve done nothing at all and stuck to talking politics inside their homes.

And finally, I’d like to thank Blogsome for giving me the opportunity to talk without interruption and most importantly for free…

Update: thecutter took the time to explain why the Israeli narrative is not equal to the Palestinian one. Her post is definitely worth reading!

The minimum age for buying tobacco is to be raised from 16 to 18 in an effort to cut the number of teenage smokers, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

The measure to place cigarettes on the same legal footing as alcohol will affect hundreds of thousands of smokers: up to 60 per cent of 16-year-olds are estimated to have tried cigarettes.

[Read more]

3o2bal 3enna

*SOCIALISM:*
You have 2 cows and you give one to your neighbor.

*COMMUNISM:*
You have 2 cows; the Government takes both and gives you some milk.

*FASCISM:*
You have 2 cows; the Government takes both and sells you some milk.

*NAZISM:*
You have 2 cows. The Government takes both and shoots you.

*BUREAUCRATISM:
You have 2 cows; the Government takes both, shoots one, milks the other and throws the milk away…

*TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM:*
You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

*AN AMERICAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. Later, you hire a consultant to analyze why the cow dropped dead.

*A FRENCH CORPORATION:*
You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows.

*A JAPANESE CORPORATION: *
You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create a clever cow cartoon image called Cowkimon and market them World-Wide.

*A GERMAN CORPORATION:*
You have two cows. You reengineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

*AN ITALIAN CORPORATION:*
You have two cows, but you don’t know where they are. You break for lunch.

*A RUSSIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 2 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

*A SWISS CORPORATION:
You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you. You charge others for storing them.

*A CHINESE CORPORATION:*
You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the numbers.

*AN INDIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows. You worship them.

*A BRITISH CORPORATION:
You have two cows. Both are mad.

*AN EGYPTIAN CORPORATION:*
You have two cows. Both are voting for Mubarak!

*A PALESTINIAN CORPORATION:*
You have two cows. You would:

1. Hire a 10 floors building,
2. Buy 50 new 4-wheels,
3. Employ: A new Minister every 3 months, 20 General Directors, 15 Directors grade-C, 10 Secretaries grade-C, & 5 emplyees to milk them.
4. Stay in a 5-stars hotel to observe and plan for the future of those cows and emlpyees.
5. Invite yourself & your employees to a “workshop” in a 5-stars hotel to taste the milk.
6. Give some milk to your relatives,
7. Give some milk to people in your political party,
8. Sell some milk to poor people,
9. & finally, you keep the big proportion of milk for yourself & open a new business for yourself & your sons!!

That was a forward I received. I didn’t get the palestinian corporation part though.

In response to the barbaric terrorist explosions that targeted innocent lives in our beloved Amman, an initiative of Jordanian citizens (Risalitna) has been launched to demonstrate loyalty to Jordan, resistance to terrorism and solidarity with the families of the victims.

Risalitna counters terrorists’ message of unjustifiable killing and destruction by a Jordanian message of peace, tolerance and coexistence. Risalitna also affirms unity of all Jordanians.

Sixty innocent people were killed. Tens more lay in hospitals with injuries ranging from difficult to life-threatening. Wives have been widowed, men have been left with young children to raise without loving mothers, and youths lost their families and the source of their livelihood and future education. Death and destruction have left a profound impact on hundreds of Jordanians from all walks of life, many with real and immediate needs of financial support. Their future is either misery or, through support of generous Jordanians, one of hope to re-emerge and lead lives with hope, respect and dignity.

Consequently, Risalitna is spearheading a fundraising campaign under the theme: from the people, to the people. This campaign seeks to raise financial support to the individuals and families most impacted by this 9/11 tragedy. Organized in cooperation with both Christian and Muslim associations, Risalitna will provide support to the neediest families through the YMCA and YMWA.

From the people, to the people is a unique partnership between Jordanian citizens. The Jordanian Joint Chiefs of Staff, media, private sector and NGOs granted this citizens’ initiative immense and prompt support. Such a partnership underscores the message that “each one of us is Jordan.”

The victims of the 9/11 terror and their victimized families need your support. You can demonstrate your support in a variety of ways including calling the telephone number (09000-9000) from a landline or any mobile telephone from Jordan. You can also purchase a Risalitna poster or car sticker from stores throughout Jordan. The families will most benefit from direct cash contributions into a dedicated bank account number (53950) at Union Bank/Jabal Amman. All funds collected will be distributed directly by the YMCA and YMWA based on strict criteria of need.

Demonstrate your good citizenship and patriotism and contribute to the victims. Your efforts will help the needy and beat the terrorists.

Please pass on the news to family and friends in Jordan.

Related tags: Jordan, explosions

Based on an online discussion supported by a poll, the new promising (or not so promising) generation of Arab women see marriage as a) the responsibility of the man not the woman, women are basically the object not the subject in this relatoinship and hence the potential groom’s family background, his bank account and his personal history are critical b) should only take them forwards in the social ledder (whatever that might mean) and this should be guaranteed beforehand c) marriage should be synonym with butterflies flying up to the pinky horizons which can be seen during journeys to Paris and shopping in Milano and can be happily substituted by total isolation from the in-laws. Anything less than that is misery, failure and idealism d) Its OK to marry someone from a higher social class because he will pull her up with him but its not true vice versa

It was surprising seeing that education made from some of greedy, superfacial and arrogant people! It is sad that many supposedly open-minded educated young ladies think of marriage as an unevitable event rather than a long journey with a friend that we love…
I don’t know since when our financial status decides on our friends, associates and partners?
Last time I checked, its our ability to love and care that earned us loyal loving and caring friends not their financial position neither ours.

Women are not followers of anyone, no one should be a follower in fact.Wives and mothers have always had the greatest influence on their families, and its not fair for men to provide a LIFE for women in exchange for emotional and sexual stability (even though they can’t be guaranteed this much!), as well as insulting to women’s intellect, value and giving nature. What happened to sharing individual dreams and facing life together?

See the poll and read more on this, if interested, here.

A photography exhibition on the Millennium Development Goals by Panos Pictures, in association with ActionAid, Concern Worldwide, Interact Worldwide, Panos Institute, Plan International, VSO and WaterAid

Adrian Evans, director of Panos Pictures
Wednesday September 7, 2005

We know what happens in the world’s poorest countries every year, every day and every minute: every year 11 million children die from curable diseases; every day 800 million people go hungry; every minute six people die from Aids.

But this is all happening far away, not to the people next door. It isn’t that we don’t care: if our neighbours were dying of hunger, we would do something about it. What can we do?

In 2000, leaders from the 189 countries in the UN promised to deliver eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015. These goals - to end extreme poverty and hunger, reverse the spread of HIV/Aids and malaria, and to give all children an education - are ambitious. But they are simple and achievable.

Let us keep poverty and development at the top of the political agenda so that rich countries will fulfil their promise to increase aid, cancel debt and make trade fair. We must keep them to their promise.

That is why Panos Pictures has invited its award-winning, internationally recognised and highly committed photographers to bring the Millennium Development Goals to life.

Each photographer, sponsored by a leading development agency, has produced a set of poignant photographs from the developing world, along with a personal testimony about what the experience meant to him or her.

Only world leaders can deliver aid, cancel debt and make trade fair. But it is ordinary citizens who have brought them to the negotiating table, by standing up and demanding justice.

We want to show that where you happen to be born can determine how long you will live, and whether you will have a home and a job or spend your whole life searching for water and food.

Extreme poverty deprives people of everything we take for granted: their health, an education, their hopes and dreams.

As part of this exhibition, and in the spirit of the eighth and final Millennium Development Goal, we invite everyone to do one thing. Every act of witness, every individual pledge each of us makes, will create a ripple that will form an unstoppable tide.

Together we can change the world.

Beckoning for our hands

The Photographs

Click on image to view photos section with summary for each one

Goal 1: To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

Goal 2: To give all children a primary school education

Goal 3: To promote gender equality and empower women

Goal 4: To reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five

Goal 5: To improve maternal health

Goal 6: To combat HIV/Aids, malaria and other diseases

Goal 7: To ensure environmental sustainability

Goal 8: To develop a global partnership

This is where you come in

Shall I sum it up for you?

-Sponsor an orphan

-Speak about the suffering of others

-Play this game

-Join a campaign, at least get the Make Poverty History ribbon

-Keep planet earth clean, do not litter and have mercy on your environment

- Think of a different pledge of your choice and write it down

Tags: VSO, Millennium, UN