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Name
Jabir al-Ahmad al-Jabir al-Sabah
Amir Sheikh Jabir al-Ahmad Al Sabah
Amir Jaber al-Ahmad al-Jabir Al Sabah

Personal Information
Born – 1929.
Marital Status – Married, up to four wives, large number of children.
Education – Home taught (Local private schools and palace tutors).

Personal History
Emir of Kuwait, Jabir al-Ahmad succeeded his cousin, Sheikh Sabah al-Salim al-Sabah, as Emir of Kuwait in December 1977, having been prime minister (1965-78) and Heir Apparent from 1966.The rule of Jabir has been full of dramatic events. There have been many internal battles over democratization of the society and freedom of the press. The economy has seen much instability, there have been demonstrations and assassination attempts on Jabir’s life. But most dramatic was the invasion by Iraq in 1990, where Jaber was driven out of the country for a period of 7 months.

Political Activity
Jabir al-Ahmad is the current Emir of Kuwait. He became Chief of Public Security in the al-Ahmadi oilfields in 1949. In the late 1950s he dealt with the oil companies in various capacities, and in 1959 became head of the Department of Finance, which in 1962, after Kuwaiti independence, became the Ministry of Finance. In 1963-65 he also was a Deputy Prime Minister, while remaining Minister of Finance and Industry. In 1977, after the death of his cousin, he became the Emir of Kuwait. In 1979, following the Islamic revolution in Iran, and demonstrations among the Shiias of Kuwait, Jabir put more restrictions on freedom of the press in Kuwait. He has been a decisive leader, having allowed the National Assembly to reform in 1981 and dissolving it in 1986 as disagreements arose over its right to question the ability of ministers. During the invasion by Iraq, he fled to Saudi Arabia, where he established a government in exile, returning home in March 1991 after Iraq’s withdrawal. During his exile he gained the support of Kuwait’s opposition leaders in return for his agreement to restore the National Assembly. He did this in 1992, and in 1999 he gave women the right to vote.

Additional Information
Jabir al-Ahmad has survived an assassination attempt in 1985.

[source]

I woke up today morning not wanting to get out of bed. It was nice and cold and I was really cozy. I forced myself to get up and wash up. While brushing my teeth Nat came and told me that the Emir of Kuwait had died. I quickly got online and checked CNN but didn’t find anything. I Checked Arab Times and they also hadn’t published anything. Finally I checked Safat and found that Jelly Belly had posted about his death.

A few minutes later articles started popping up on news.google.com and finally CNN.com. I wasn’t able to find out how he died but all the articles mention that he was very sick and old so I am guessing he died a natural death. He was 79. The government offices will be closed three days beginning today. I am currently at work but they will be sending us home soon.

I have known the Emir all my life and it is sad to see him go.

May he rest in peace.

Faisal sent me a link to this video showing a young child getting beaten and abused by his maid here in Kuwait. According to the person who originally posted the video this is the story:

“Recently a family in Abbasiya employed a female servant at their house to look after their kid. After a couple of days the kid turned gloomy and was always tired. With some doubts, the family put a hidden cam in their sitting room when they left to work. When they returned, they saw the video and they were shocked to see how the servant mistreating the kid.”

To view the video [click here]

Here are a few tips by Knick on how to prevent incidents like this:

1. Get a telephone recorder which is avaliable in Hawally for KD 8-12 which records all incoming and outgoing conversations. A normal cassette is used to record.
2. Keep rooms that are not required by the maid locked.
3. Almost every houshold has a PC attach a webcam and place it in such a place that it monitors the entire room.
4. Dowload windows media encoder and install it to start monitering your house daily. (8 Hrs movie approx is 300 mb)
5. Spend quality time with your children, buy them small gifts every day in return for a report on what happenned during the day at home.
6. Love your kids, show them that you do and let them understand that you are always there to love and protect them.
7. In most of these cases the children are silenced by the maids who threaten them to tell the parents that he/she did this or that and they will be punished. Parents tend to go with the maids who are a different personality in their presence and punish the children. Children loose faith and confidence in the parents. Do not let this happen.
8. Children who undergo such traumatic experiences in their childhood tent to grow up with more complicated personalities, lack confidence and are effected mentally.

Over the vacation I watched the movie Jarhead. Its based on a best-selling book written by a marine on his experiences in Saudi Arabia pre-Desert Storm and later his Desert Storm experience fighting in Kuwait. The movie starts of with a famous “Full Metal Jacket” scene but thats as far as the similarities go. The movie isn’t action packed since its based on truth. You see the movie follows a scout/sniper platoon based in the desert outside Kuwait. Desert Storm was mostly fought from the sky and Sea with very little ground work. Since this movie follows foot soldiers they didn’t have a lot to do, unlike the ground soldiers now in Iraq. It takes on a really interesting perspective showing you the emotional side of the war from the side liners view.

Even though the whole movie takes place in the empty desert it was still entertaining to watch even though there was no war action. There was always something going on in the movie. Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire originally vied for the lead role in the film and thank god they went with Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko) instead. Jake looks like a marine and looks like he can kick ass unlike both Leonardo and Tobey. I actually didn’t recognize Jake until after the movie was over, he looked really different then when he played the messed up kid in Donnie Darko. Overall I give this movie a 3.5 out of 5. It was the best movie I watched over the vacation, the other movie I watched was Oliver Twist and that pretty much sucked.

This is what I call a photography studio. This picture only shows half the place, there is still a similar sized area to the right of this picture. The studio is on the 4th floor of an old warehouse in an industrial area. There is a large lift that fits cars, thats how that benz is up on the 4th floor. Its actually higher then the 4th floor since the first floor is like 4 stories high and then the rest of the floors are as high as this studio. S

Why don’t we have studios like this in Kuwait? How hard is it to find a large warehouse and turn it into a studio?

I went to Alghanim Electronics tonight to pay for an installment. There was a queue of around 10 people and I came and stood with them in line. Two minutes pass by when suddenly an Egyptian guy in his 30’s comes and stands in front of me. At first I thought he was with the guy in front of me but then I realized he didn’t stand next to the guy, he stood behind him. So I tapped the guy on the shoulder and asked him what he was doing. He told me he had forgotten something in the car and that he just went down to get it and came back up. I told him well when I came he wasn’t there and that he should just stand behind me in line. He refused, so we started arguing over it. I mean it wasn’t anything major, it was just over a place in line and we were both standing at the end of it. We started lightly shoving each other and yelling out insults when a guy a few places in front of us in line told me I could stand in front of him. I told him thanks but its not about the position in line anymore. This fuckhead came in out of nowhere and cut in line in front of me. If he had explained to me nicely before coming into line that he was there before me I would have let him cut in in front of me since its only 1 space but instead the guy decided to arrogantly come in as if I was invisible.

Alghanim employees although abundant didn’t seem to care about this little scuffle going on in the line, its as if they were bored and this was their entertainment. I couldn’t for one back out of this fight since I had been placed in a corner. If I stopped scuffling with the guy what would I do next? Just quietly get in line behind this fuckhead as if nothing happened? That wasn’t gonna happen.

Suddenly the Egyptian guy gave me a semi strong shove with one hand, I took that as a sign of aggression and decided to go ahead and let him have it. By then my leg had already started shaking from all the adrenalin rush and I was just waiting for him to get just a bit more aggressive so I could make my move. I grabbed the guy with my two hands on his shirt and I forcefully shoved him 2 meters back onto a fridge. I then picked him up again while he was stumbling and pushed him back hard onto the fridge again. I then grabbed him and started punching his face. Suddenly I felt someone pull me back and the other guys in the queue started to break up the fight. One guy from the queue yelled at an Alghanim employee for not stopping the fight from the beginning, the Alghanim employee told him its not part of his job.

Anyway Nat was with me and she told me we should get out of the place and that the guy wasn’t worth it and so we left. I spent the rest of the walk back home wishing I had punched the fucker in the nose to make him bleed.

I just came back from dinner. It was great, I went to a place called Roadster with 6 hot chicks (including Nat) and I was the only guy. Really cool.

Tomorrow we are coming back to Kuwait. I can’t wait since Kuwait is more my home then Lebanon is. At the moment I feel like a tourist here living out of my suitcase… which is actually true so I can’t wait to get back to my own home and my own car.

I didn’t take as many pictures as I was hoping to. Nat bought 6 DV tapes before we left and we managed to use only 10 minutes from the first tape. I took only a handful of pictures with my digital camera while I managed to finished 2 rolls of medium format film using my Holga. For some reason taking pictures and video wasn’t on our to do list.

This I believe is my last post from Lebanon, hopefully the next one will be from Kuwait.

Note to self: Chivas Regal will not give me a hangover.

I drank more than half a bottle yesterday night and I woke up early today morning without a headace. First time that ever happens.

Today is my last day at work before I go on my ten day vacation. Its tradition for me that on the last day at work I start locking up my stuff on the computer. I spend a lot of time on my mac at work and so accumulate a lot of items like bookmarks, files, typefaces etc.. that I don’t want to share with people at the office. The way I lock up my stuff is I create a new account which the computer will log into automatically on boot and then I set the permissions on the folders I don’t want anyone else viewing to “No Access” except for myself. Its not a full proof plan since its easy to reset the password on the Mac but its good enough for my needs. To be safe I also delete all my key chains and clear everything in Firefox.

I am staying late at work today trying to finish up a campaign thats due to be presented tomorrow. I hate staying late when I am not prepared for it but today I came in and I had my mind set on staying late and its really cool. No one is in the office so I have the window behind me open and my music blasting out loud. I am really taking my time and enjoying what I am working on because I no longer trying to finish up before the end of the day, I now have the whole night to work on this. No one is here to interrupt me, no one is here to tell me to lower my music and no one is fighting. Its so peaceful.

Google Earth is now available for OS X but only as a Beta. It was placed on MacUpdate earlier but they removed the download link. You can still get it from here though [12.53MB]

Just got a phone call from Sarita. Some of you might know her from the Aramex Shop n Ship service. She left them a while back and now works at a new place called IEC Trading who offer a similar service to Aramex except with some more advantages. I only got a few details off her but will be getting more soon. Here is what I got:

– Setting up a US mailbox costs the same, KD10
– Packages are shipped to Kuwait via FedEx and DHL
– No customs on any of your packages
– Shipping prices are the same
– On heavy packages they can give you a discount

So far everything sounds great and I will definitely be creating an account with them since Aramex have become really slow. My last package spent 7 days in UAE in transit! Once I get more details I will post them here.

Coca Cola replaced its old tagline “Real” with a new slogan “Welcome to the Coke side of life”. I still choose Pepsi. [Link]

Today there was an article in Arab Times related to what I posted the other day on the fact that I heard expats will be limited to staying in Kuwait for only 6 years. I am glad the majority of people think this is a stupid idea. Here is the link to the Arab Times article or click on more to read it here.

Only video game fans will get this comic strip. I love Killer Instinct by the way.. even though I was never able to perform the 80+ combo moves. My dream would be to buy a Killer Instinc arcade machine and shove it in my living room. Only place in Kuwait I know of that still has the Killer Instinct arcade is Showbiz on the seaside. [Link]