There was a day when we worried about the “Arab masses” – the millions of “ordinary” Arabs on the streets of Cairo, Kuwait, Amman, Beirut – and their reaction to the constant bloodbaths in the Middle East. Could Anwar Sadat restrain the anger of his people? And now – after three decades of Hosni Mubarak – can Mubarak (or “La Vache Qui Rit”, as he is still called in Cairo) restrain the anger of his people? The answer, of course, is that Egyptians and Kuwaitis and Jordanians will be allowed to shout in the streets of their capitals – but then they will be shut down, with the help of the tens of thousands of secret policemen and government militiamen who serve the princes and kings and elderly rulers of the Arab world.

Egyptians demand that Mubarak open the Rafah crossing-point into Gaza, break off diplomatic relations with Israel, even send weapons to Hamas. And there is a kind of perverse beauty in listening to the response of the Egyptian government: why not complain about the three gates which the Israelis refuse to open? And anyway, the Rafah crossing-point is politically controlled by the four powers that produced the “road map” for peace, including Britain and the US. Why blame Mubarak?

To admit that Egypt can’t even open its sovereign border without permission from Washington tells you all you need to know about the powerlessness of the satraps that run the Middle East for us.

Open the Rafah gate – or break off relations with Israel – and Egypt’s economic foundations crumble. Any Arab leader who took that kind of step will find that the West’s economic and military support is withdrawn. Without subventions, Egypt is bankrupt. Of course, it works both ways. Individual Arab leaders are no longer going to make emotional gestures for anyone. When Sadat flew to Jerusalem – “I am tired of the dwarves,” he said of his fellow Arab leaders – he paid the price with his own blood at the Cairo reviewing-stand where one of his own soldiers called him a “Pharaoh” before shooting him dead.

The true disgrace of Egypt, however, is not in its response to the slaughter in Gaza. It is the corruption that has become embedded in an Egyptian society where the idea of service – health, education, genuine security for ordinary people – has simply ceased to exist. It’s a land where the first duty of the police is to protect the regime, where protesters are beaten up by the security police, where young women objecting to Mubarak’s endless regime – likely to be passed on caliph-like to his son Gamal, whatever we may be told – are sexually molested by plain-clothes agents, where prisoners in the Tora-Tora complex are forced to rape each other by their guards.

There has developed in Egypt a kind of religious facade in which the meaning of Islam has become effaced by its physical representation. Egyptian civil “servants” and government officials are often scrupulous in their religious observances – yet they tolerate and connive in rigged elections, violations of the law and prison torture. A young American doctor described to me recently how in a Cairo hospital busy doctors merely blocked doors with plastic chairs to prevent access to patients. In November, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry al-Youm reported how doctors abandoned their patients to attend prayers during Ramadan.

And amid all this, Egyptians have to live amid daily slaughter by their own shabby infrastructure. Alaa al-Aswani wrote eloquently in the Cairo paper Al-Dastour that the regime’s “martyrs” outnumber all the dead of Egypt’s wars against Israel – victims of railway accidents, ferry sinkings, the collapse of city buildings, sickness, cancers and pesticide poisonings – all victims, as Aswani says, “of the corruption and abuse of power”.

Opening the Rafah border-crossing for wounded Palestinians – the Palestinian medical staff being pushed back into their Gaza prison once the bloodied survivors of air raids have been dumped on Egyptian territory – is not going to change the midden in which Egyptians themselves live.

Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah secretary general in Lebanon, felt able to call on Egyptians to “rise in their millions” to open the border with Gaza, but they will not do so. Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the feeble Egyptian Foreign Minister, could only taunt the Hizbollah leaders by accusing them of trying to provoke “an anarchy similar to the one they created in their own country.”

But he is well-protected. So is President Mubarak.

Egypt’s malaise is in many ways as dark as that of the Palestinians. Its impotence in the face of Gaza’s suffering is a symbol of its own political sickness.

‘Living apart together’ seems to be the new marriage mantra for many couples in Dubai. The arrangement of living separately during the week and catching up on weekends, many say, is working well for their marriage.
While it is a painful compulsion dictated by financial reasons for some, for many others, compressing their married life into weekends is part of striking the right balance between professional ambition and personal commitment. European couple, Eugene and Tony, who preferred not to give their second names, said it was a joint decision to remain a ‘weekend couple’. Eugene works for a legal firm in Dubai while Tony is in the airline industry based in Abu Dhabi. When Eugene got a job offer from Dubai, the couple decided they could live separately for five days a week. And at the weekends, Tony drives down to Dubai.

“I was keen to take up the offer from the firm in Dubai. Both of us decided that for the time being we would compromise on the ‘coming back to the same house’ comfort,” said Eugene, 31. She said although it was stressful at first they are now fine with the arrangement and happy that they make the most of their time together”
Reflecting similar sentiments, Tony, 28, said separation had actually brought him closer to his partner and every Thursday he looked forward to being with Eugene. Filipino couple Faith and Johnson live apart because Johnson could not find a job in Dubai.
“He was in Korea and my three-year-old son was in the Philippines with our parents. After he quit his job and came down to Dubai, he could not find a job. So we had no option but to take up the offer he got which was based in the UAE-Oman border,” said Faith, who works as an estimation engineer.
Faith lives in shared accommodation in Dubai, and Johnson comes down on weekends. “I won’t complain because now I can at least see him during the weekends,” said Faith, who is pregnant with her second child. She is of the opinion that separation enhances their time together.
“We still feel like newly-weds. We are always on the phone or texting each other. I think, as they say, distance is only bringing us closer.”
For M.S. Kurian and his wife Elizabeth, the decision to live separately was mutual as both did not want to give up their professional comforts.

Adjusted

The couple have been married for the last 30 years and lived in Dubai but Kurian moved to Abu Dhabi in 2003 when he was promoted.
“It was a tough decision because we were so used to living under the same roof for over 25 years. Frankly, it took me almost a year to come to terms with the fact he would be away all week. Now I have adjusted,” said Elizabeth, a mother-of-three, now aged 25, 23 and 17.
Kurian, 58, says, they have decided to continue the arrangement for as long as they are in the UAE. “Both of us have reached a stage where we understand each other very well, and even if not physically together, we know we are always there for each other. However, the seasoned couple would not advise the weekend arrangement for young couples. “I do not think young couples should be doing this. They need to spend a lot of time together during the early years of marriage to build a strong foundation for their relationship. And that comes only by living under one roof,” said Elizabeth, 49.

Source: The Gulf News

13 December 2008

ABU DHABI — Early signals from the market in the current festival season indicate that the global recessionary fears have ‘not yet affected’ the retail sector in UAE as a whole and Abu Dhabi in particular, according to the major retailers.

Talking to the Khaleej Times here the officials of the Abu Dhabi Cooperative Society (ADCS), the Lulu Hypermarkets and KM Trading said they have so far seen no sign of decline in sales or reduction in enthusiasm in any of their retail outlets here, in spite of the widespread reports of the credit crunch from most of the countries.

The retail outlets in the region launch aggressive sales offers for couple of weeks towards the end of November every year to coincide with the festivals like Eid, Christmas, Arabic New Year and English New Year. But this year when they launched the sales offers last week they too were apprehensive whether the global slowdown will dampen their turnover.

“But we are quite happy to say that the feed backs from the outlets in the last couple of days have dispelled those apprehensions. As of now there is no real slowdown in our sales. Today for example we have registered 46 per cent growth in sales. On an average we have been registering 24 per cent growth after we launched this year’s sales offers. We have put about 600 items on our promotional sales category this time. And there are good movements for all of them,” says the Marketing Manager of Abu Dhabi Cooperative Society, Bejoy Thomas.

The ADCS which is into 30 years’ of operation accounts for 40 per cent of the market share in the retail sector in Abu Dhabi.

“The response has been encouraging not only grocery and other items, ?but even in the luxury items like branded perfumes, electronics and textiles. We had opened an electronics shop in the ADCS outlet at Muroor Road last week. The response was tremendous there from the day one onwards,” he said.

“We hope to achieve 15 to 20 per cent growth increase in our sales during this festival season, compared to our turnover in the normal days. This is what we used to achieve during this season every year. We’re not feeling adversely affected by the global recessionary sentiments. The people here do not appear to have put a brake on their spending habits because of the reports of the current financial crisis. This is true not only in Abu Dhabi but across UAE,” says a spokesman for the Lulu Hypermarket chains.

Echoing similar views a spokesman for the KM Trading said, people’s psychology appear to be that they wait for the sales season to arrive to make their major purchases so that they will be able to get goods at cheaper rates than usual prices. “People cannot stop buying. They would have deferred their purchases from last month to this month, to take advantage of the sales season. People are flowing to our shops with the same enthusiasm as was visible last year.”

Buoyed by the favourable customer response the retailers also dismissed the suggestion to introduce additional offers to woo customers this year in view of the global recession.

However, most of them conceded a better assessment of the market situation will be possible only around December 14 after gauging the customer behaviour during the ensuing holidays.

Ellen Ratner

I just returned from a week in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Dubai is a microcosm of the world with 85 percent of the population coming from more than 100 countries. The local newspapers were full of two topics – the world economy and President-elect Obama, with some stories covering both subjects at one time.

The locals, known as Emiratis, have a great deal of confidence that the region will be able to ride out this economic shamal (strong wind from the north that bring blinding sand storms). Dubai, unlike Abu Dhabi, has no significant oil revenue to speak of. Instead, Sheik Mohammed al Maktoum is turning Dubai into a tourist destination for the emerging tourist droves from India, Russia and possibly China. At the World Economic Forum held in Dubai there was one shining star remaining in the galaxy of emerging markets – India. Russia isn’t exactly hurting either. The hotels and real estate offices in Dubai are full of Russians on holiday or snapping up villas and flats while carrying gym bags full of cash.

If you think about it, it makes perfect sense to make a vacation, banking and commerce center in the middle of the world, which is exactly where Dubai is located. Our very own Halliburton moved its headquarters to Dubai, for example. Barclays bank has a huge office in Dubai, and that is the springboard to the emerging markets south and east of Dubai.

Despite the mind-boggling rate of development, (I counted 30 new high-rise apartments going up in a six-mile radius of where I was staying), some expatriates worry that Dubai will suffer a credit crunch as well, and that will leave those high rises empty. After I interviewed a number of people, the one common theme I observed is that they think President-elect Obama is going to “fix everything.” Emiratis, Australians, Indians, Pilipino, Brits, South Africans … all see the future of their country tied to the future of the U.S. And they believe that Obama will go into deeper debt to fix the U.S. economy and, therefore, the world economy. They don’t seem to be bothered by the debt that the U.S. takes on and its long-term implications for the dollar, which is of course inextricably linked with the UAE dirham.

Despite interesting conversations about the world economy, the thing most people wanted to discuss was Obama’s win. I heard story after story about how people watched returns on Wednesday morning and cheered each other at work and celebrated. I think this was due to a few reasons. First, they think there needs to be a dramatic change in the way America works in the world – that we need to steer clear of shot, fire, aim and that Obama will be less likely to shoot from the hip than the Bush administration. Second, the win illustrated to the world that the American dream is still alive, and the American people are not asleep at the switch. The rest of the world looks to America as the standard bearer for unencumbered opportunity – that someone can be born with no means, with the hurdles that Obama has overcome and rise to be the most powerful man in the world.

I left Dubai a proud American. Our system may have its flaws, but it works, and the rest of the world sees that it as well. It has given people hope and made people around the world smile. That as they say in the Middle East “is a good thing.”

I don’t know how I should deal and write about The Syrian Media. The best description for it that it is A dysfunction Media. I always look at the national media for any country by looking to the Daily Newspapers published in any country and by its effect an people’s daily life and by a lot of parameters which can measure the quality and the need of people to this media.

In Syria we have only 4 newspapers. Three of them are a copy of each others and they are a public newspapers published by a governmental associations and they are expressing the government’s point of views and its look toward the international and local events. The only private newspaper –political newspaper – is owned by those who are closed to the inner circle of the government and express the views and interests of the business men who own it .

In Syria there are tens of weekly and monthly newspapers. None of them have an effect on the public opinion. You can describe them as a “low standard magazines and newspapers”. There is a real poverty in its design and low editorial standards. It is just a kind of a family media and it is far away from the organizational media.

Syria has increased the prices of fuel at the mid of this year. Syriansare depending on Diesel in heating during the Cold winter season.

Syrian Government has decide to subsidize diesel prices by distributing Diesel tickets to sale diesel lower than its prices for people who have these tickets for maximum amount 1000 L .

I have decided recently to get these tickets and borrow it to charities as many Syrian are doing .usually such these tickets are distributed in municipalities. What I heard from the employee responsible about this issue that they have shifted to the the cultural centers!!!

I have already written about the Islam and how some of Islamic scholars who have kidnapped the Islamic views and adopt it to be suitable for its religious views. What I saw from the comments was something shocked me.

Some of the comments thought that my article was against Islam and they have commented according to that thought. One of the comments from my friend from New Zealand has tried to clarify that the Muslim community in New Zealand is one of the kindest communities in the country.

I have extracted from her comment a kind blame against me. I think that she has understood that I am attacking The Islam. I wish that I was wrong. I am in Fact a real Muslim. I practice some of Islamic religious prays and fasting.

The Idea which I have talked it was about the extremist which people outside the Islamic world thought that that was the Islam.
Unfortunately, most of those scholars are erupting from one place, Saudi Arabia. I don’t want to repeat what I have said last time. What I want to say here is just one Idea: Islam in its nature is a secular and modern Ideology.

Secularism here is not that the extreme one which fights the religions and tries to expel “the God “outside our life. The secularism Which I am talking about can be called according to Egyptian thinker “Abdul Wahab Al-Mesiri “ the partial Secularism which ensure the religious freedom and give the believe in God a s space on our life .

The believe in God and the religious freedom is a way for the social security. This is the view of Islam. Those who don’t believe in God have also the freedom to practice what they really believe in. It is something according to what we think and want to be. You can’t consider Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states as the model of Islam.

Islam is far more complex and also simple than you expect. The real Islamic model through the history were in the Great Syria, Iraq , Egypt and Andalusia.

Islam in its origin is a kind of a secular religion. As I explain above, Secularism means the freedom. Just take a look to the minorities in these states from all religions. You can’t see such these minorities even in US and Europe which claim that they have the freedom of practice. How you can explain these numbers of minorities (ethnic and religious)?

Another One of the most important things in Islam you can’t find it in any other religion. In contrast to all you may know about Islam, there is no rule for the Scholars in the relation between the believer and God. In Islam, there is nothing known as a religion scholars (Sheikhs).

There is no intermediate between the believer and his God. Mediation is something has been created by the modern Scholars who want to control every thing. In Islam, the infant is born as a civil national person. No baptism and no interfering from the scholar in his born. It is something completely civil and secular.