Well, This is A First!

A woman [care to guess the nationality?] is going to be given 300 lashes AND will spend two years behind bars for cheating men out of the opportunity to have their way with her. She had quite the little scam going, as she would pose as an unmarried woman, then would agree "with the men to have [a] 'Misyar' marriage and would escape after receiving [the] dowry." [Misyar marriage: couples live separately but get together to do the wild thing.] Apparently it is the "scam" part that got her in trouble. Because "Misyar" marriages are perfectly acceptable. The woman - little information about her is provided - is "married to an aged Saudi" and enlisted the assistance of a "female matchmaker and a 30-year-old man." For some reason the 30-year-old man that played a part in this has been sentenced to a year in prison and 150 lashes but the female matchmaker is not receiving any punishment. However, it was the woman's "aged husband" that filed a complaint at the police against his wife [some marriage that must have been!] that she was having "relationships with unrelated men." Had this situation have been reversed there would be abolutely nothing wrong with it, but when it is the woman who is trying to get a little something that her "aged husband" probably couldn't provide without the help of a little blue pill, then it is an entirely different matter. Truly a situation where what is good for the goose is not good for the gander.

113 drug smugglers, of which 57 of them are Saudis, have been caught "attempting to smuggle huge quantities of Captagon pills, hashish and heroin into the country." Just in time for the upcoming holiday month, fellas? "Totally seized... in several parts of the country were 3,044,926 [are you sure about that number?] Captagon tablets, over three tons of hashish and 10.6 kg of heroin." How many pounds are in a ton? 2000? That is over 6000 pounds of hashish! The economics of supply and demand. Hard at work. Now, how are all of those people going to be punished? Same punishment for all of them? Or is the punishment all going to depend on who you are and who you know? For a country with such stringent drug laws, it doesn't sound like those laws are working very well any more. "In six other failed attempts by smugglers... 939,118 Captagon tablets were seized... Additionally 657.748 kg of hashish, 765,063 Captagon tablets and 6.59 kg of heroin were seized. Saudi Customs seized 1,340,045 Captagon tablets and 4.567 kg of heroin - including 3.749 kg found in the shoes of an expatriate arriving at Jeddah airport and 818 grams recovered from the stomach of another." Of course, the one drug bust that took place at a remote airport involving some dozen or more Saudis trying to board a plane was never reported in the papers - so let's include them in that tally for all the hashish that is being distributed. From what I understand it was quite a bit... Oh, and by the way, that seems to be an awful lot of Captagon being smuggled in. Perhaps that is why there are so many skinny [very, very skinny!] men here?

Psst. The talking campaign and the "initiatives to educate" drivers are NOT working! The ongoing problem - which will continue and will no doubt get worse - of PCRC is not going to be resolved with such futile efforts. The ONLY way you are going to solve this is to finally quit talking about it and start acting! "According to the latest data (2007) from the World Health Organization (WHO), Saudi Arabia ranks among the most dangerous countries in the world in terms of traffic fatalities with 29 out of every 100,000 people dying on the Kingdom's roads." Why is that? Because instead of issuing tickets and hefty fines to all of the men who drive like maniacs authorities continue "preparing campaigns and initiatives to educate and warn drivers of the dangers of speeding and disregarding traffic laws." Is this "statistic" not glaring enough to show that there is a problem: "...aside from the positive efforts and good intentions of the campaigns and initiatives [which have done relatively little, don't 'cha think?], estimates have shown that passengers and drivers of the country's estimated 9.1 million vehicles were involved in 485,931 accidents that injured 36,486 people and killed 6,458." Population control / road carnage. A manager at one of the Red Crescent branches said that "drivers were not getting the message." D'oh! And they are not going to get the message until you do something more than campaign and educate through initiatives. Authorities are going to attack the situation again. How? Well, more talk of course. Issuing tickets, levying hefty fines and throwing men in jail [and by men, I mean besides the ex-pat drivers - we all know that if they so much as let a tire touch a line on the side of the road they are arrested, thrown in jail and then deported] would surely improve the situation. I've been saying this for years. The problem of PCRC would be solved almost overnight. Never mind, though. You just go on talking about it. Let us know how that works out.