Perhaps not miraculously, demand for foodstuffs rises during the month of Ramadan which begins on or about August 11, this year. Days of fasting are followed by evenings of, if not exactly feasting, then something close to it. When demand rises, so do prices; we learn this in ECON 101 classes. This year, supplies of many foodstuffs is lower because of political turmoil in Egypt, Syria, and Yemen, all big food exporters to the Kingdom.
The shortages are being further complicated by an increase in shipping and materials costs, if not directly on the food items, then on the many things required in the production chain. Thus, prices are going higher yet. And the Saudi public, reports Arab News, is not amused. While subsidies on many foods have been dropped or lowered, Saudi food prices are generally low. Increases are noted—and felt—immediately.
The country is already looking at an inflation rate of around 4.7%. On top of this, the prices of some foods have doubled or even tripled. Custom and cost are colliding. While many are calling for price controls or investigations into possible price-gouging, people are simply going to have to deal with their riyals buying less.
Unholy price rise before holy month
bites consumers hard
SARAH ABDULLAH | ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: Consumers claim they are noticing a price increase of at least 20 to 30 percent on staple items such as poultry and meat, cheese and canned food as the holy month of Ramadan approaches.
“I noticed that the price hikes first began about two weeks ago when I went to the wholesale store to purchase some chicken and found the price had been increased from SR35 to SR58,” Sawsan Al-Gahtani, a Saudi mother of five, told Arab News.
Al-Gahtani said she has been shopping for Ramadan for the past month and keeping most items in the freezer as a way to beat the price hikes, but despite her efforts she said she has already been forced to pay inflated prices. “I asked the cashiers and store managers why the prices have suddenly increased, and was told the rises in prices are from global manufacturers who have raised their export prices,” Al-Gahtani said. She added that she did not believe what she was told because the same price rises were apparently occurring every year. Other staple items witnessing price increases are vegetables including onions, tomatoes and parsley.
The price of tomatoes, SR8 to SR10 per container a month ago, has increased to between SR15 and SR20. Prices of red and white onion bags have increased from SR10 each to between SR12 and SR15.
However local vendors deny they are to blame for the price hikes. “Tomatoes are imported from Syria and onions from Egypt and Yemen, which have all been experiencing political unrest, lowering supply and in turn causing price increases,” Faisal Al-Hajaibi, a vendor at the vegetable market in Jeddah, told Arab News.
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The paper also reports that one of the country’s largest dairies, Almarai, is rolling back its most recent price increase. While it still argues that the rise was warranted, it is lowering prices in a bid to lower public dismay:
While Saudi Arabia has not made many public statements about the situation in Syria, Chinese new agency Xinhua report, it is making its displeasure felt in other ways. Saudi satellite TV channels, all with connections to the Saudi government, are boycotting Syrian soap operas! Syrian musalsalat or series, have overtaken Egyptian ones in both number and quality—and Egypt is having its own political problems in even making the series.
Unrest across Syria casts shadow on soap operas
Hummam Sheikh AliDAMASCUS, July 9 (Xinhua) — It appears that Syria’s once- flourishing soap opera industry is losing its glory and sliding into a recession after Arab television networks and satellite channels declined to buy Syrian soaps in retaliation for Syrian actors’ positions towards the country’s current political crisis.
Since the eruption of protests in Syria in mid March, Syrian actors and actresses have shown conflicting attitudes towards the events, with some of them supporting the protests while others openly backing the Syrian government and attacking the protests as aiming to undermine the country.
Syrian actors complain that they have been boycotted by Arab TV satellite channels owned by wealthy Saudis and Qataris, whose governments are now maintaining cool relations with Syria. The reason, they said, is their overt backing of the Syrian government and the reforms announced by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Abdul-Rahaman Abu al-Qassem, a prominent Syrian actor, confirmed to Xinhua that the Syrian drama industry has been ” greatly influenced by what is happening in Syria,” noting that most producers depend on the Gulf funds in this respect.
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Syrian soap operas are also a topic at the Economist newspaper. It reports on the rise in popularity of the Syrian dialect of Arabic. Not only is the dialect used in the soaps, but it is increasingly being preferred in dubbing foreign TV shows from Turkey and Europe. The article notes that there are regional differences at play, though. Many TV shows, primarily out of India and Pakistan, are being dubbed in Gulf dialect for Gulf audiences. The article notes that Iran, as a means of extending its political reach, is promoting the use of Syrian dubbing as Syria is its sole ally in the Arab world. So, the boycott of Syrian soaps may be hitting two birds with one stone.
EVERY Arabic-speaking country has its own lively dialect, each one a world away from the classical Arabic of the Koran and the modern, sterile-sounding version used by pan-Arab channels such as Al-Jazeera. Some have much in common; the Levantine tongues of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine, for example. Those of Morocco and the rest of the Maghreb are gobbledygook to many Arabs. Fast-paced Egyptian, with its abundance of jokes and puns, is the cockney of the Arab world.
Egypt has long dominated the Arab film industry and with it, the world of dubbing. But thanks to the increasing popularity of Syrian musalsalaat, or soap operas, filmed on location rather than in studios, the Syrian vernacular with its soft lilting tones is on the up. It is used in everything from “Bab al-Hara”, a saga about a Damascene neighbourhood under the French mandate to programmes dealing with Islamic extremism and adultery. Even Turkish soap operas such as Gümüs—Nour in Arabic—have been been dubbed into Syrian. The Syrians have been faster on their feet commercially when it comes to dubbing, and have offered cheaper rates than the Egyptians, where much television output is still in the hands of lumbering state broadcasters. Many also think that Syrian Arabic is closer in sound to classical Arabic, so more appropriate to a pan-Arab audience.
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The Wicked Stepmother makes a frequent appearance in fairy tales from around the world. According to this Arab News article, she is not constrained to appear in fantasy only. Instead, she’s seen as a very real threat to children in contemporary Saudi Arabia. The Wicked Stepfather also makes an appearance…
Children bear the brunt when stepmothers step in
ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: Violence against children is on the rise in the Kingdom. The local media has given prominent coverage to a spate of such incidents following the death of the Taif boy Ahmad last week. The four-year-old boy was allegedly murdered by his stepmother.
The story of Ahmad is the latest in a series of similar tragic incidents of child abuse that has rocked Saudi society over the past few years. In most of these cases, parents or stepparents were involved.The first such incident was reported by the local media in 2008. A number of schoolteachers found evidence of physical abuse on the face of a six-year-old girl student called Rahaf. There were also burn marks on her body.
One day, the girl collapsed in the classroom from fatigue. She told her teachers that she had been physically and mentally tortured at the hands of her stepmother, who served as a school director.
The stepmother used to beat her and lock her up in a room, she said. The woman prevented the housemaid from serving the girl any food and that caused her to collapse.
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Of course, the potential wickedness of stepparents is not restricted to Saudi Arabia. If it were, it would not have become such a global trope. But the Saudis are now realizing how serious an issue it can be. With its assortments of marriages and its acceptance of polygamy, the Kingdom may be producing a disproportionate number of occasions where malice can flourish.
Arab News editorializes on the impending birth of South Sudan as a new nation. It laments the lost opportunities to have kept Sudan unified and correctly lists the missteps that led to its separation. The editorial also notes that this division of a state worries many African countries whose borders—as that of Sudan—were drawn up during the colonial period. They are not immune to separatist movements, nor is what remains of the new Sudan.
Most importantly, the editorial points out that force is not the way to prevent dissolution. There are political means to maintain unity, but there seems to be a serious lack of leadership able to use those means. Corruption and self-serving still dominate much of African politics (not to mention Arab politics). Corruption will always interfere with what should be done rather than what will be done.
The hope must be that North and South Sudan will now live together in peace and prosper
South Sudan becomes an independent sovereign state today, and for the overwhelming majority of its people it is a day of great celebration. But for the rest of Sudan, and for the Arab world, it is a sad day. Sudan is reduced as a result — physically, culturally, economically and politically — and so is the Arab world. The new country will not be part of it. Arabic, widely spoken in the south, will no longer have any status; the only official language will be English. Arabs, moreover, may find themselves discriminated against despite the declarations otherwise by the new states’ authorities. So too may Islam, the faith of the majority in the old Sudan.
It did not need to come to this. A united Sudan could have survived. The blame lies wholly with successive governments in Khartoum, starting with President Numeiry in 1983 when he annulled the south’s autonomy and declared all Sudan an Islamic state, right the way through to the present president, Omar Bashir. If they had stuck to the 1972 agreement which ended the first civil war, by which the African and today largely Christian south was given autonomy, there would have been no second civil war, no divorce. The 1983 decision and all that flowed from it — coercion, repression, oppression‚ and which resulted in as many as two million southerners being killed or dying from famine and disease as a result of the conflict turned an autonomy movement into a secessionist one.
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The paper also reports that the government of Sudan, in Khartoum, is the first to offer South Sudan diplomatic recognition:
The Saudi Grand Mufti offers a bit of school-marmish advice to educators in this article from Saudi Gazette. Abdul Aziz Aal Al-Sheikh, perhaps inadvertently, also throws up a paradox that puts him at odds with the Ministry of Education. Schools need to be inspected, that’s a given. Girls schools are inspected by female inspectors, also a given. Female inspectors need to get to the schools they are to inspect, naturally. But that involves having females being in vehicles driven by the Ministry’s male drivers who are likely unrelated to the women. This presents a moral hazard which should be avoided, says the Grand Mufti. Short of teleportation, then, just how are female inspectors expected to get to their inspection sites?
Well, one solution might be to have them drive themselves there. I’m not sure that was the Grand Mufti’s intent, but it seems to be the only moral solution short of hiring male family members to drive the inspectors wherever they need to go. Perhaps there are unemployed Saudi males who would be eager to earn salaries driving their kin around, though I rather doubt it.
Female educators must not travel to remote areas
with ministry’s driversTAIF – Saudi female education inspectors of the General Administration of Education here have been warned about the impropriety of being driven by the administration’s drivers to remote areas when they inspect schools.
Sheikh Abdul Aziz Aal Al-Sheikh, the Kingdom’s Grand Mufti, in a closed TV circuit meeting with the female staff, said that such trips with drivers who are not related to women inspectors are dangerous and require an urgent solution, Arabic daily Al-Watan reported.
Aal Al-Sheikh raised with the education inspectors several issues which they face in carrying out their duties such as using the Internet and the administration’s stationery for their personal purposes. He said nothing in religion restricts the utilization of such things, but they should be used reasonably.
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I had to take an unscheduled break and travel for some family business earlier this week. I’m back now and should be posting regularly.
A heads-up, though… later this month, I’ll be taking off a week for my annual fishing trip. No blogging, no Internet. In other words, a complete break!
Debtors Prison seems an archaic institution: putting one in jail because he has failed to pay his debts seems something out of Dickens novels. But, in fact, it is still an active practice in some countries. (Several US States still allow arrests for debts; many only for the non-payment of child-support, generally in for form of jailing for contempt of court orders.) For the most part, though, debtors prisons are an echo of the past. Most of Europe, for example, has banned the practice of jailing debtors and consequently the prison.
The idea is that the threat of prison would encourage one to find ways to pay the debt. That potentially works if the miscreant actually has the wherewithal to pay immediately or through scheduled payments. If one truly does not have the funds, though, putting him in prison isn’t going to magically make the money appear.
The Saudi government, according to this Saudi Gazette article, is going to get tough on debtors and that worries those seeking to ameliorate prison conditions. Some 63,000 Saudis could find themselves in jail unless something is done.
Bad debts: 63,000 may face prison in two years
JEDDAH: Abdullah Bin Mahfoudh, Chairman of the Prisoner Care Committee in the Jeddah Region, has said that some 63,000 Saudis could face prison over the next two years for failing to pay back debts.
Bin Mahfoudh told Al-Hayat Arabic daily that Saudi individuals have racked up some SR3 billion in owed monies.
“None of them are able to pay the debts back, according to information from SIMAH,” he said, in reference to the Saudi Credit Bureau, a body providing consumer and commercial credit information services in the Kingdom and operating under the supervision of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA).
Bin Mahfoudh said that his committee has asked the Shoura Council to study the issue “in view of the threat it poses”.
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Christian Science Monitor reports on a new US anti-terrorism strategy to deal with the threats of groups like Al-Qaeda. Top US anti-terrorism advisor John Brennan, notes that cooperation between the US and Saudi Arabia has been excellent and he hopes that this relationship can serve as a model for US-Pakistan relations.
US unveils new counterterrorism strategy: three key parts
Howard LaFranchiWashington: The White House unveiled a new counterterrorism strategy Wednesday that homes in on what it says is a declining but still dangerous Al Qaeda – and that for the first time makes a priority of the threat posed by adherents of Al Qaeda’s extremist ideology inside the US.
“This is the first counterterrorism strategy that focuses on the ability of Al Qaeda and its networks to inspire people in the United States to attack us from within,” said John Brennan, President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, in a speech Wednesday in Washington.
The new counterterrorism strategy replaces one from 2006 and calls for pursuing with what Mr. Brennan called “laser focus” the approach that the Obama administration has already been taking. This approach, which the administration says has decimated Al Qaeda’s power, reach, and appeal, includes the following components:
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Here’s a weird little story out of Saudi Arabia. A rumor was started, somewhere, by someone, that Pakistani expat workers could receive free money by petitioning the local governor’s offices throughout the Kingdom. The rumor seems to have started in Madinah, but has now spread to all parts of the country. Tens of thousands of Pakistanis are queuing up at post offices to send telegrams (as specified by the rumor). Even when told by Post Office employees that there’s no truth to the rumor, they insist on sending them so as to not miss out on free money. The result is that the post offices are pulling in millions of riyals in telegram fees. And no one is getting free money.
Even with the Pakistani Embassy and consulates trying to quash the rumor, it won’t die. Instead, its range is now spreading to other parts of the country.
Usually, alerts that there’s free money available come as parts of scams, attempts to separate fools from their money. Here, though, no one seems to be profiting and the post office is unlikely to have been the source. Just one of those things, I guess…
Pakistanis throng post office, rumors won’t go away
SALIH AL-ALYANI & MUHAMMAD KADOUMIDAMMAM/JIZAN: Despite persistent efforts from the authorities to quash them, rumors that regional Emirs’ offices are giving money to Pakistanis and which previously led to thousands thronging post offices in Madina and Jeddah have now spread to Dammam and Jizan.
Late last week the rumor took the form of a document of unknown origin, rather than the previous hearsay, circulating among the Pakistani community itself and asking to be filled in and sent to the address attached. In response, thousands of Pakistanis appeared at post offices in Dammam, forming queues stretching outside the offices and round the block.
The Post Office itself reiterated what it said after similar occurrences in late May and June in Madina and Jeddah, stating that it is under obligation to fulfill any customer’s legal request.
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