Category: News

Over the weekend the US Embassy in Kuwait posted a message by President Joe Biden in support of Pride Month and as you can imagine, that didn’t go well.

As of this post, there are over 21,000 comments under that Instagram post with the majority of people being really upset about it. The story was picked up by the international press and is now making its way around the Internet.

I was curious about whether the US Embassy in other Arab countries also posted a similar message supporting Pride Month, and if they did, what kind of reaction people had to it. Below are two lists, one relating to Instagram posts and another relating to Twitter:

US Embassies Pride Post on Instagram
US Embassy in Bahrain – Yes (633 Likes – 4.8K Comments)
US Embassy in Egypt – No
US Embassy in Jordan – No
US Embassy in Kuwait – Yes (2,930 Likes – 21.8K Comments)
US Embassy in KSA – No
US Embassy in Lebanon – No
US Embassy in Qatar – No
US Embassy in the UAE – Yes (609 Likes – 1K Comments)

US Embassies Pride Post on Twitter
US Embassy in Bahrain – Yes and Banner (18 Likes – 73 Comments)
US Embassy in Egypt – No
US Embassy in Jordan – No
US Embassy in Kuwait – Yes (1,009 Likes – 2.3K Comments)
US Embassy in KSA – Yes (560 Likes – 1K Comments)
US Embassy in Lebanon – Yes Retweet (39 Likes – 99 Comments)
US Embassy in Qatar – No
US Embassy in the UAE – Yes (41 Likes – 156 Comments)

A few interesting things. Firstly this wasn’t a universal message posted on all the embassies’ social media accounts. The US Embassy in Bahrain went a step further and replaced its Twitter banner with a Pride Month one. Finally, one thing is pretty apparent from the lists above, Kuwait’s social media response completely shattered the other Arab countries when it came to comments and likes. I’m now curious to see what’s going to happen next if the US Embassy doesn’t remove the post, are we going to boycott US products? Doubt it.

I’m guessing everyone felt this morning’s earthquake since, unlike the previous ones that have hit Kuwait before, this one was fairly strong.

An earthquake of magnitude 5 struck Kuwait, the ministry of information tweeted on Saturday.

The ministry said “the Kuwait National Seismic Network recorded an earthquake measuring 5 … southwest of al-Ahmadi, and it occurred at exactly 04:28:02 a.m. Kuwait time (0128 GMT), at a depth of 5 km (3 miles)”.

The Kuwait’s Fire Force also said that there was no damage as a result of the earthquake. Source

According to some sources online, the earthquake measured a magnitude of 4.4 but according to the Kuwait Institute of Scientific Research (KISR) it was actually a 5.

For those of you who swore off Shop&Ship and moved to MyUS or vice-versa due to bad experiences, I got some bad news for you:

Dubai-based logistics company Aramex has signed an agreement to fully acquire cross border e-commerce platform MyUS in a $265 million deal.

The US-based company provides package forwarding solutions to customers who shop from retailers based in the US, UK and China, according to a statement. Source

One positive thing that might come out of this acquisition is if Shop&Ship ends up with a Florida-based mailbox similar to MyUS. Right now you save around 7% just by shipping to a MyUS mailbox since you don’t have to pay sales tax when shipping to a Florida address.

If you’re on the highway right now you might be noticing a large plume of black smoke in the distance. Turns out tent city which is located next to Friday Market in Al Rai caught fire.

@kuwaitnews has some more footage here and @alqabas are also posting updates.

Back in February, a Kuwaiti lawyer filed a lawsuit against the MOC demanding the blocking of Netflix due to the Arabic movie Perfect Strangers. The lawyer believes the movie goes against local religious and moral values and so wants Netflix banned in Kuwait. Well, the first day of the hearing is today.

I highly doubt Netflix will get banned but you never know here. Good luck Kuwait!

Yesterday the non-profit media organization NPR posted an audio and written newstory on the Bidoon hunger strike that recently took place in Kuwait. If you’ve always wanted a better understanding of the situation with Bidoons, it’s worth a listen and at just 5-minutes long it won’t take too much of your time. Link

Photo by Dave Tavani

The photo above of Souk Mubarakiya was taken by the photographer Mohammed Alomran and shows the amount of devastation that was caused by the fire on Thursday. A reader whose dad owns two stores that got burnt down told me on Thursday some workers were saying the fire started because of a welder who was working near flammable fragrances and this was later confirmed by the authorities.

There is even a video going around which you can watch above shows where the fire originally started. Sadly it looks like the huge fire might have been prevented if people had tried to extinguish it before it grew. Stores in the market had already suffered a considerable amount of financial damage due to the pandemic, this was going to be the first Ramadan where things were back to normal, and then this happened. Sucks.

Around 3:15 PM I was heading back to the office from Shuwaikh when I spotted a fire in the distance. As I got closer I realized it was in Souk Mubarakiya, so I parked my car behind the old Central Bank of Kuwait building and walked over to where the fire was. The scene was pretty unreal when I got there since it was mostly business as usual. Like you can see the HUGE smoke rising in the background a couple of alleyways down, but everyone was pretty casual going about their day like it wasn’t a big deal.

Once I got to the alley closer to the fire, things were completely different. The fire was pretty loud with lots of pops and bangs, and there was the sound of glass breaking everywhere. You can also feel the heat of the flames from where I was standing which was at the main entrance to the alleyway that has Shamam and the fish market on the right, the bukhour, and the fragrance market on the left. The left side was on fire at that point but the fire was creeping towards the Shamam side via the roof.

View from Shamam

The firefighters were still not on this side of the market and there was a huge amount of onlookers as well as regular folks who were trying to put the fire out themselves with water hoses and extinguishers. Lots of food shops had moved their gas cylinders into an open square along with wooden benches and seating that I guess were from one of the tea shops.

By the time I left around 6:30 PM, the police had shut down the area and had forced people out of the market. I don’t know why it took them so long to close the market, it might be because they were initially understaffed, but by 6:30 there were hundreds of police and firefighters on the scene and I even saw firetrucks from the National Guard arriving.

I was sharing everything live on my Instagram account so if you want to see the videos and photos I took, I’ve created a temporary highlight on @mark248am

Looks like a fire broke out early this morning at the new Kuwait Airport terminal that’s currently under construction. Going by the videos and photos on Snapchat the fire looked pretty big.

The photo below was taken from the adjacent highway which helps show the scale of the fire. Hopefully nobody was injured.

Washington Post published a not-so-nice article today about Kuwait that has been making its way around the web. The article, in summary, talks about how Kuwait is a significant polluter, has poor plans in eliminating emissions, and how nobody really cares, yada yada yada. One thing that did catch my attention though was in this paragraph:

An hour drive outside the dingy suburbs of Jahra, wind turbines and solar panels rise from clouds of sand — the fruit of Kuwait’s energy transition ambitions. source

What turbines?? I was pretty surprised I hadn’t heard of it before or seen any pictures. A quick search on Google Maps for “Shagaya Energy Park“, the name of the project, quickly pops up with imagery showing the turbines as well as the solar panels.

It’s on highway 70 which I’ve taken multiple times but I’ve only ever been as far as the Salmi scrapyard. The energy park is a short distance after which is why I never came across it. It might be worth checking out since it seems you can just drive up to the turbines if you go off-road. Here is the location on Google Maps

According to @Almajlliss, the baladiya will start fining people who plant greenery in front of their homes (on government property) 1,000 KD. Yup, if you want to make your neighborhood greener, expect to pay a hefty fine doing so.

I don’t know why stuff like this still shocks me and I really really don’t get this hatred towards trees here.

Kuwait is in the news again but for the first time in a long time, it’s actually for good news. Yesterday the constitutional court overturned a law that criminalized “imitation of the opposite sex” which was used to prosecute transgender people.

Back in 2007, the National Assembly voted to amend Article 198 of the law to criminalize “indecent” gestures in public and imitation of the opposite sex. Other than the fact the law was deeply discriminatory, it was also overly vague and should never have been accepted into law in the first place according to Amnesty International.

With the way things have been going recently, I’m personally surprised the law was overturned so I guess there is hope.

Update: Commenting has been closed

Kuwaiti lawyer Abdulaziz Saud Al-Subaie filed a lawsuit against the Ministries of Information and Communications, and the Communications and Information Technology Regulatory Authority, demanding the blocking of the “Netflix” platform in his country, against the background of its production of the Arabic movie “Friends and Dearest.”

The lawyer submitted his claim for “religious and moral” motives to the High Court, to block the platform that recently showed the film, which sparked widespread controversy, and its organizers were harshly criticized for its “bold” content. Source

From all the content on Netflix (and the Internet), the stupid movie Perfect Strangers was the one to trigger the lawsuit???

Thanks to climate change, temperatures in Kuwait could become too hot for people and wildlife in decades. How is this rich nation facing an uncomfortable future?

If you want to start your morning with a gloomy article on Kuwait then you’re not going to find a more depressing one than this today. Bloomberg published an article on Kuwait and how we’re basically all doomed here with increasing temperatures and no plan to cut greenhouse gases. The article talks about all our issues from bus stops to the political deadlock so if you’re looking for gloom, here is the link.

Note: If the Bloomberg link doesn’t work for you, the same article is on Yahoo.

Forbes Middle East posted about Yarmouk Park few days ago. Yarmouk Park is recognized as being the first environmentally friendly park based on recycled materials and waste. If you haven’t been to the park before you can check out some more photos of is @forbesmiddleeast