Entries from January 2008 ↓

Timothy Noah remembers Benazir Bhutto in Slate:

I called her Pinky. She called me Pooh Bear. As Aspen Institute seminars droned on, we’d scribble anagrams of the participants’ names. “Had ingrain id,” I jotted during one particularly tedious lunch while Indira Gandhi extemporized about textile exports. “Rid hairy piranha disdaining,” Pinky replied in a flash, incorporating Mrs. Gandhi’s middle name, “Priyadarshini.” Had the press attaché seen, it could have been war.

We met freshman week at the Hayes-Bick in Harvard Square. Or perhaps during Michaelmas term at All Souls. No, it was a reception for the Shah at Harold Pratt House. I know we were thick as thieves at Davos, because I was her date to Sir Richard Branson’s river blindness buffet.

Of course, it’s satire.  He’s poking fun — quite rightly — at the cacophony of chattering Oxford and Harvard-educated ‘elites’ who have lined up to bask in the reflected ‘glory’ of this woman many people see as some kind of matryr.

(With apologies to Peter Galbraith, Roger Cohen, Robert Novak, David Ignatius, Arnaud deBorchgrave, Arianna Huffington, Harry Shearer, Molly Moore, and Mark Steyn.)

Continue reading →

The excellent Read/Write Web have published a guide to websites that allow people to support various charities and causes. It is interesting to see the extent to which Web 2.0 technologies are being used for charitable purposes. For example, there are now donation aggregation services, such as this one, that allow people and groups to donate to a large number of charities at once (a form of “distributed giving”). Then there are sites, such as Kiva, that work to offer microfinance loans to entrepreneurs in the developing world.

As is well known, charity plays a pivotal role in the faith of every Muslim — being, as it is, zakat, one of the five pillars of our faith — so it is surprising to see that there hasn’t been a similar innovation in terms of how we give charity. In Australia, for example, most Muslims would donate via an organisation such as Human Appeal International which then funds projects abroad, such as orphan sponsorship or well building.

However, I wonder if some of these models couldn’t also be extended or adapted to provide Muslims with an innovative service as well. For example, a number of the sites identified by Read/Write Web focus on ‘direct charity’ in which people post details of the project they wish to find and then others donate to it, using the site as an intermediary. DonorsChoose is an example of that, with the site allowing teachers at public schools in the United States to post their needs, such as funding for trips or materials, and others can choose to donate.

Continue reading →

Techcrunch has a scathing report on the Australian government’s new plan to filter the internet in this country:

The Australian Government has announced that they will be joining China as one of the few countries globally that broadly censor the internet.

…

As recently as the week prior to the election, Labor Party candidates were telling those concerned about the proposed law that the censorship wouldn’t be compulsory, and that the “clean feed” would be opt-in, not opt-out. Today’s announcement by Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy states that the censorship regime will be mandatory, although people will be able to opt-out of it. The problem of course then becomes if you opt-out questions will be asked as to why you want out, which in itself may lead to Government monitoring.

There are a myriad of other reasons to oppose this. Not least of all is that forcing internet service providers to install this sort of filtering is going to increase the already high cost of broadband in this country. Furthermore, the government is already reported to be saying that the filter will extend beyond just pornography to include a broad class of website it considers “violent”. This definition will likely include ‘extremist websites’ or websites perceived by the state to be advocating violence or terrorism. However, once the technology is in place, the government will be able to exercise considerable control over what sorts of ideas and content Australians can access.

Gulf Talent, an internet recruitment service for GCC countries, have published an interesting report [pdf] into employment and compensation trends in the region for 2007. It’s interesting to see that Oman has recorded the largest increase in average salaries, and both Qatar and UAE are experiencing inflation rates of over 12%.

As a result, despite rising salaries, many expatriates have seen a fall in their net disposable incomes. Some are reporting that they are unable to make any savings on their salaries, even though higher saving potential has traditionally neen a chief reason for working in the Gulf.

The UAE had the highest reported proportion of non-savers at 41%. While Qatar and the UAE have both suffered high inflation rates, the ratio of nonsavers is substantially higher in the UAE, possibly due to greater abundance of consumer spending opportunities in retail and entertainment. More worryingly, 9% of UAE-based expats reported that their salaries did not even cover their living costs, forcing them to borrow or live off their existing savings.