Nothing Good Can Come of This

Front page of today's Arab News: "Saudis allowed to buy firearms openly." Umm-hmmm. Can you say accident [or not] just waiting to happen? I cannot imagine that anything good is going to come of this. And, foresee the murder rate sky-rocketing. Let me be wrong. It isn't like weapons are not available, here. Any male over the age of twelve has one: massive metal and steel missiles with four rubber discs... A vehicle. Yep. Color me skeptical on this, but now, instead of just using your vehicle to maim and injure others, guns are going to be thrown into the equation. Brilliant. Just bloody brilliant.

In other news...

A Saudi student has been expelled from school in the U.S. for cheating. The woman, who is not named, "plagiarized an entire page from a textbook." She was sent to the States "on a scholarship by the Saudi Higher Education Ministry," but it appears as though she is headed back to finish her studies in the Sandbox. Or something. Big screw-up. She was working on her Masters degree. Geez. You'd think someone in a Masters degree program would be just a little bit smarter than that. Guess not. "The ministry has warned all Saudi students sent abroad... to abide by the laws and regulations of their respective countries to avoid embarassing Saudi cultural attaches."

Am I the only one who finds it interesting that we only hear about girl's schools catching on fire? Last year six or seven fires broke out - one a week - in girl's schools [you can read about them in my archives]. Schools just opened here, a couple of weeks ago, and here we go again. How is it that the boy's schools are fire-proof?

Lastly, this really deserves its own post. I've been following Rizana's case for sometime now - the poor girl's dilemma still isn't resolved. Rizana is the young Sri Lankan woman who came here in 2005 to be a maid and ended up being "instant nanny" to a family with ten children. Suffice it to say that Rizana was barely just a child herself when the parents decided to go out and leave her alone with their brood. The baby she was feeding choked and died. The parents of the child want nothing less than to see Rizana's head on a platter in retaliation. They do not see that they should bear some responsibility for what ended up being a tragic ACCIDENT! Not to mention that her passport or paperwork was forged to show that she was older than she really was - and Rizana did not do that herself. An unscrupulous recruiter did that for her - quite likely without her knowledge. That she confessed to something and signed it even though she did not understand the language it was written in was a big mistake on her part, but again, she was young - very young - and probably scared to death. If there is a resolution on the matter, finally, and if it is reported, I will post on it, for sure. Good luck Rizana Nafeek! Please know that there are people out there who are keeping you in their prayers and hoping that this nightmare of all nightmare's will soon be over for you.