Regretfully, my web hosting service has been hit by a combination of denial-of-service attacks and server hardware problems. Thus, it was impossible to access Crossroads Arabia for a good portion of today—for me, too! Then there was access, but with error messages popping up on the page.

Most of the functionality is now returned, but there are still a few internal adjustments being made. I do appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvenience.

I’ll be traveling this weekend, so posting will be lighter than normal. Back to my regular routine on Tuesday.

Due to a death in the family, I’ll not be posting for the next few days.

For those who follow the Gregorian calendar, I’d like to wish you all a Happy New Year!

The Islamic New Year, 1 Muharram, 1429, comes in ten days, so I’ll repeat my regards then!

I’d like to wish the readers of Crossroads Arabia who celebrate this holiday a very Merry Christmas.

Blogging will be on the light side today, but I’ll be putting up pieces as time permits.

Several things have changed in the structure of this blog and some readers/commenters have had questions. This post will spell out my commenting policy and offer a few tips for those who wish for better formatting of their remarks.

I have a generally open policy toward comments. I don’t censor opinions, but will instantly delete comments that are nothing but hateful or filled with vulgarities. I can handle the language, but protective filters cannot. I do not wish to have access to Crossroads Arabia blocked because of someone else’s potty-mouth. Content-free Saudi-bashing and the cheap Islamophobic attacks will be deleted. Support your point with reasoned argument and I won’t delete.

If you have not entered a comment before, your first comment will be held for moderation. This is to prevent spam. Once you’ve had a comment published, your comments will appear as soon as you post them. If you are commenting from an ISP in Russia, China, or the Ukraine, you will have to contact me through the ‘Contact’ form in order to be allowed to comment. This is due to tens of thousands of spam attempts from domains in those countries. While I welcome comments from residents of those places, I have no easy way to pick out the 0.1% of real comments from the junk. I’m sorry that that’s the state of things, but others have inflicted the problems and I know no better way to avoid them.

I will delete spam from the comments, whether they’re for pornography, pharmaceuticals, ‘terrific bank deals’, to save my soul, or augment my male/female body parts. I feel no obligation to help anyone’s commercial endeavors unless they help pay for the costs of maintaining this blog. Buy an ad if you want to be promoted on Crossroads Arabia.

If you have criticism of the way I run the blog or—especially—if I’ve made a factual error, let me know. You can set me right in a comment or through the ‘Contact’ form on the tabs at the top of the page. I make every effort to be factually correct. My opinions may not be, but I’m open to discussion.

Formatting of comments at Crossroads Arabia is simply HTML.

If you wish to put a word in bold, surround the text as follows:

<strong>text</strong>

If you wish to put a word in italics, surround the text as follows:

<em>text</em>

Block-quoting indents text and puts it in a lighter typeface:

<blockquote>indented text</blockquote>

If you wish to insert a link to a URL, please use standard HTML for setting up a link:

<a href="http://example.com">example</a>

Linking in this manner does several things. First, it allows you to name your link however you like. Second, it provides a link in a form that doesn’t run across the whole page or, worse, become interrupted by a line-break which prevents others from just clicking on it to get where you’d like them to go.

UPDATE: If you would like to register at Crossroads Arabia, you’ll need to use a name that at least looks like a real name. Random strings of letters suggest you’re a spammer. I don’t like spammers. I’ll delete things that look like spam.

It’s almost as if Saudi Arabia has disappeared from the media maps! After searching through the online media of five continents, there’s just not much of anything Saudi happening. The country is gearing up for the Hajj, which starts in five days’ time and there’s some media coverage of that, particularly Saudi media’s reporting on all the steps being taken to insure a safe pilgrimage. But that’s about it.

If I’m missing something, I’d appreciate a pointer!

I’d like to wish all my readers a Happy Thanksgiving, even those who aren’t actually celebrating it…

I’ve a lot to be thankful for this year. I hope you all do as well.

My telephone interview with Molouk Ba-Isa of Arab News is published at that paper. The interview gives clear idea of what this blog is about and why I bother with it. Of course I’ll recommend you read the whole thing!

WYSIWYG: Plenty to Criticize, Plenty to Like
Molouk Y. Ba-Isa, Arab News

Crossroads Arabia (www.xrdarabia.org) is a weblog owned and written by John Burgess. The blog’s stated purpose “is to comment, knowledgeably about Saudi Arabia, from an American perspective.”
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For some reason, the Internet disappeared in Saudi Arabia today. When I first tried to get online at around 0700 local time, nothing but DNS errors were popping up. Around 1800 today, some sites started to become available—like this blog—but others are still lost—like my Yahoo! e-mail account.

I’ll be asking around to see if I can find out what happened and report. That’s a little hard at present, though, as I can’t get any e-mail out!

I’d like to wish my Muslim readers عید مبارک, at the end of this month of Ramadan.

I’d like to wish a رمضان، كريم، to all my Muslim readers and a Happy ראש השנה to my Jewish readers.

Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, begins today in Saudi Arabia and the majority of other Muslim states.

Globally, today is also the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah.