The Chit Chat Thread (Part 3)

[loody]

LOL

[the ro0ok]

Originally Posted by Kutsuit

Depends on your definition of being developed.

If it's only about skyscrapers and fancy buildings, Dubai comes first, followed by Doha. If it's about the amount of things you could do and the amount of facilities available, Doha and Dubai are neck and neck recently, especially after Doha opened several museums and cultural areas. Then again, Dubai probably still has the upper-hand. If it's about shopping malls and hotels, it's definitely Dubai. Apartments? Dubai. Organization? Dubai > Doha > Kuwait City.

Academically speaking, Doha beats all other cities in the region.

In terms of healthcare, I say it's Kuwait City, although that's rapidly changing as healthcare in Dubai is eventually going to overtake us, but I'll reserve the first spot for Doha in the long-term.

In terms of infrastructure, nothing beats Dubai, although Kuwait City's infrastructure lasted for decades, but is beginning to deteriorate due to lack of care. We're still ahead of Doha, though, only because Doha is fairly new to this. They're still building their main roads and all, but I expect them to overtake us and Dubai in the next ten years, just like in healthcare.

Politically, Kuwait City is more advanced than both Dubai and Doha put together.

Overall, we're way behind.

I think Doha is the city of the future, after all the academic, cultural and sporting plans they have laid out. Dubai is reserved mostly for tourism and business, while the city lacks the universities or museums that Doha has or will have. Then again, Abu Dhabi will become the city that competes with Doha in culture, healthcare and education, in the future. In any case, Kuwait City is nowhere near as developed as Dubai, and will probably be overtaken by Doha, if not already.

thanks, I really appreciate how much did u write for me

would you please list for me top 5 cities in middle east " in living + health care, education, safety , income
after making reasrch here are the cities that after counting the points in each category
1- Doha
2- Abu Dhabi
3- Dubai
4- Ryidha + Kuwait
5- Manama
am I right ?

thank you

[KWT]

[Zoola]

lol wat da hell is that?^

[KWT]

..

Kuwait's Emir on Monday took the unprecedented step of activating article 106 of the constitution, giving him the right to suspend the National Assembly for one month. It marked the first time in Kuwait's 50-year parliamentary history that the assembly has been suspended in this way, although it was twice dissolved unconstitutionally (in 1976 and in 1986), and has been dissolved constitutionally four times since 2006 alone. Two days later, the Constitutional Court issued an even more momentously abrupt decision as they ruled that the February 2012 election was void and ordered the return of the previous assembly. The ruling by Kuwait's highest court is final and cannot be challenged, and followed a challenge to the constitutionality of December's decree that called for new elections following the dissolution of the previous assembly on December 6 2011.

Both actions took politicians and the public completely by surprise. They herald the beginning of Kuwait's deepest political crisis since the post-liberation restoration of parliamentary life in 1992. Leading opposition MP Musallam al-Barrak, who had gained the highest number of votes in Kuwaiti electoral history in the February election, immediately described the court ruling as "a coup against the constitution." While unexpected, these moves did not occur in a vacuum. Rather, they represent the culmination of a period of escalating instability as two broader trends in oppositional politics intersected with deep divisions within Kuwaiti society.

The February 2, 2012 election had produced an opposition landslide, as predominantly Islamist and tribal candidates won 34 out of the 50 parliamentary seats. Their gains came largely to the detriment of Kuwait's well-established liberal and merchant elites (as well as the four female MPs who all lost their seats). The results reflected the sharp bifurcation in Kuwaiti society, in part between a traditional political class dominated by hadhar (settled) urban elites tracing their lineage back to the pre-oil era, and newer arrivals largely from tribal backgrounds (badu) as a result of the large-scale naturalization projects of the 1960s and 1970s. Although far from monolithic in social or political objectives, debates and clashes over the direction of policy often took on cultural and class-based overtones and became as much a struggle for the future orientation of Kuwait as a contest for political power.

In addition to this volatile mix, an intergenerational shift has added to the reconfiguration of Kuwait's political culture. Since 2006, new youth movements have appeared on the scene. Initially mobilizing around demands to change Kuwait's electoral districting, they became known as the "Orange Movement" in a reference to Ukraine's color revolution in 2004-5. In a precursor to the methods of political organization that so powerfully reshaped the parameters of protest in North Africa in 2011, they used text messaging, internet blogging, and online social networks to coordinate and plan their activities and articulate their demands for reform.

The emergence of these new social groups tested Kuwait's creaking parliamentary machinery to its limit. In particular, they exposed the weaknesses in the balance of power between an elected parliament and an appointed cabinet. Uneasy at the best of times, it has become almost unworkable over the past decade. Beginning with the separation of the posts of Crown Prince and Prime Minister in 2003, the bar of oppositional politics has steadily risen, encompassing such milestones as the first interpellation of a sitting Prime Minister in 2009, and culminating in the mass popular demonstrations that eventually ousted Sheikh Nasser Mohammed Al-Sabah last November. Although the separation of powers in 2003 was motivated largely by the Crown Prince's debilitating illness, it nevertheless signalled that the Prime Minister was fair game for political opposition and public criticism.

The result has been political paralysis and a succession of stalled development projects. Constant friction and an inability to work together hampered the five-year premiership of Nasser Mohammed. Three elections failed to produce decisive results, and seven different cabinets rose and fell with depressing regularity. Meanwhile, a series of major projects, such as the planned construction of a fourth oil refinery and a $17 billion joint venture between the Petrochemical Industries Company and Dow Chemical, were cancelled after parliamentary threats to scrutinize and reopen the agreements. With neighbouring Qatar and the UAE powering ahead with regional mega projects and Saudi Arabia massively expanding its own petrochemical and value-added industrial sectors, Kuwait became a laggard in a region it had once led in development.

This decade-long trajectory of opposition converged in 2011 with a second set of protests inspired by (but not derivative of) the momentous changes taking place across the region. Initially small-scale, anti-government protests started in June and called for the resignation of the Prime Minister. They escalated exponentially in September following the uncovering of a political corruption scandal involving the transfer of funds and payment of bribes to up to 16 MPs. Furthermore, a wave of strikes involving oil sector and customs workers and employees at Kuwait Airways added to the perception that the government was floundering and losing its grip. So, too, did the resignation of the capable Foreign Minister, Sheikh Mohammed Sabah Al-Sabah, in October, in protest over allegations that overseas money transfers to MPs were made through Kuwaiti embassies without his knowledge.

Popular and political tensions peaked in mid-November after the Constitutional Court blocked a parliamentary attempt to question the Prime Minister over the corruption scandal. Around 100 protesters stormed and briefly occupied the National Assembly building on a night of high drama on November 16, and attendance at rallies calling for the resignation of the Prime Minister swelled to tens of thousands. Despite the Emir's vows not to bow to street pressure, a final, mass demonstration on November 28 drew more than 50,000 people and culminated in the replacement of the Prime Minister and the dissolution of parliament a week later.

However dramatic these events were, even to seasoned observers of Kuwait's rumbustious politics, they failed to address the root causes of Kuwait's flawed political structure. The new Prime Minister, Sheikh Jabir Mubarak Al-Sabah, was previously the deputy Prime Minister, and while he was more popular than his predecessor, the fundamental fault-lines running through Kuwaiti politics remained unchanged. These were on full display both during the turbulent election campaign -- which featured an attack on a television station and the burning down of one particularly divisive candidate's campaign tent -- and in its aftermath, as all sides digested the opposition landslide. It took nearly two weeks of tense negotiations to form a government, with the opposition Majority Bloc demanding nine cabinet positions (out of 16) and then rejecting the government's offer of three posts. That would in itself have been a milestone in Kuwaiti politics, but the opposition refused to join the cabinet, setting the stage for the fireworks that followed.

In the four short months of its existence, Kuwaiti parliamentarians filed eight interpellations against government ministers, two of whom resigned -- Finance Minister Mustafa al-Shamali on May 23 after a marathon grilling session, and Minister of Social Affairs and Labour Ahmed Abdullatif al-Rujeib on June 12, ahead of a scheduled interpellation. In addition, firebrand opposition MP Mohammed al-Juwaihel had filed a motion to question the Minister of Interior, Sheikh Ahmed Homoud Al-Sabah, on Tuesday, but that was overtaken by the Emir's decree suspending the assembly.

The parliament also became known for a series of measures proposed by tribal and Islamist MPs that appeared to threaten Kuwait's record of being the most tolerant and politically progressive society in the Gulf. After an early attempt to amend the constitution to make sharia the rather than a source of legislation failed, conservative lawmakers called for the introduction of "morality police" to monitor the behavior of women in public spaces, overwhelmingly approved a legal amendment stipulating the death penalty for blasphemy (subsequently rejected by the government), and generally reinforced the atmosphere of growing conservatism that saw one man (Hamad al-Naqi) sentenced to ten years imprisonment for a tweet deemed insulting to Islam and to the rulers of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. At the weekend, another MP called for putting on trial "screeching crows" who criticized Saudi Arabia's recently-deceased Crown Prince Nayef on Twitter.

So where does Kuwait go from here? Aside from the troubling indications of spiralling social and political tensions, there is a danger that the opposition will respond to the voiding of the election by urging its supporters to once again take to the streets. Individual (now-ex) MPs threatened to do precisely this even before the brazenly provocative judgement of the Constitutional Court deprived them of their parliamentary success. Having witnessed how the mobilization of tens of thousands of supporters effectively forced the Emir's hand last November, an emboldened opposition may well attempt to repeat the trick this time around.

In terms of due process, the ruling by the Constitutional Court cannot by itself dissolve the parliament. This the Emir must do, by reconvening the previous assembly elected in May 2009 in order to dissolve it (correctly) and announce fresh elections, presumably sometime after the end of Ramadan in August. There is already feverish speculation about the ways that the opposition could try to obstruct or derail the process, and the road ahead undoubtedly has many twists and turns. Yet if one thing is clear from Kuwait's dramatic last three days, it is that the convergence of longstanding tensions (and distrust) between the executive and legislative branches of government have brought the country to the brink of political meltdown.

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen is a research fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science

[KWT]

Meanwhile in Hasawi....

Underground ‘flesh market’ booming in ‘staid’ Kuwait – Prostitutes, pimps change style amid police crackdown

Holding a shopping bag, an umbrella and a mobile phone, Jayanti (who claimed to be from North India) could be mistaken as a working class lady who was just coming out of a shopping mall. But after a chat with a Kuwait Times reporter who posed as an undercover ‘customer’, Jayanti revealed her true identity – a sex worker. “How much will you pay me,” she asked with a smile. After negotiating, she agreed to take KD 15 for two hours. When asked why she was carrying a shopping bag filled with food items, she said “if you walk alone on the street empty handed, the cops (police) will suspect you, but if you carry a shopping bag, they will think you went shopping.”

A few minutes later, Kuwait Times spotted another woman in her mid-thirties roaming around near Apollo Hospital in Salmiya, who turned out to be a prostitute too. “Why are you following me,” she queried at first. After a while, she entered one of the baqalas in the area – pretending to be buying some things, but when she noticed that we were not cops after our interactions with her, she started bargaining on the price. “How long do you want it and how much will you give?” she asked. At the end, we agreed to meet the following day for KD 20.

HOME DELIVERY, PROSTITUTION ZONE
Prostitutes and pimps in Kuwait are getting smarter and adopting new strategies to avoid detection, as authorities clamp down on their illegal activities. From Ahmadi to Farwaniya governorate, the sex business seems to be flourishing with the stakeholders devising different ways to navigate through their underground sex trade routes. Recently, police in Hawally arrested two men accused of running a prostitution service and using cafes to lure their customers. The suspects, an Arab man and an Indian, admitted during investigations that they helped set up customers with Asian prostitutes for KD 10 a night. Also in Farwaniya, police raided 10 vice dens and arrested 16 suspects and 45 young pleasure seekers, according to another report.

In Hasawi, a Kuwait Times reporter who acted as an undercover customer was led to a brothel by a pimp who offered to set him up with a prostitute for KD 5, but eventually settled for KD 3 (per round). It seems Kuwait governorates have been divided into prostitution zones. Whereas Ahmadi governorate is controlled mostly by Filipinos, Hawally governorate is dominated by Ethiopians while the Farwaniya governorate and part of Salmiya are controlled by South Asians (Indians, Sri Lankans and Bangladeshis). “We control this area. We don’t have Ethiopians here. If you want Ethiopians, go to Hawally,” one Bangladeshi pimp boasted when a Kuwait Times reporter (undercover) sought an Ethiopian prostitute. “I can connect you to the Arabs including Kuwaitis who are into this business but you have to pay me KD 8 to get their contacts. They collect big money and you have to be very careful while dealing with them,” the Hasawi pimp advised. He gave the contact of another pimp (known as Big Mama) in charge of Salmiya area, and introduced us to her.

When contacted, Big Mama asked us what age limit we want and how much we were willing to pay. “I have between 25-30 and 30-36 year-old ladies,” she said. “If you want, I can bring them to your house. You don’t need to come and pick my girls, I will tell my special taxi to bring them to you,” she added. After first, she wanted to make sure we were neither Arabs nor South Asians. When asked why she doesn’t deal with Arabs and South Asians, she said “they don’t like to pay and if you demand your money, they will threaten to call the police. Also, some of them are working for the police. Police pay them to catch us (prostitutes),” she added as she narrated their ordeals and ugly encounters with bad clients, police and the health hazards in the prostitution business. Even against all odds, money is still changing hands. Most of our sources requested anonymity for reasons of safety and protection.

CHINESE STYLE
In one of the shopping malls in Salmiya, three Chinese ladies were sighted giving out their numbers to selected lucky guys. “How are you! Good man! Call me ok,” one of the ladies said as she clandestinely handed a piece of paper to the undercover reporter. “They always come here in the evening to look for jobs and customers. They come in groups,” one of the shop attendants told Kuwait Times. When asked what kind of job, he said “prostitution of course”. We eventually made the call to bargain. But when asked why they are selective, the Chinese prostitute echoed the same reason given by Big Mama. “Although they (Arabs) are our main customers, they can put you in trouble. They normally don’t like to pay,” she said.

RISKS AND DEADLY BUSINESS
According to most of the prostitutes Kuwait Times interviewed, prostitutes make above KD 160 as monthly income. The risks involved in this illicit business include violence, arrest, slavery, jail term, deportation and infections among others. In Hasawi, we (the Kuwait Times undercover reporter and a Bangladeshi pimp working for us) were attacked while covering this story by some pimps who accused us of being police agents. Our guide told us that the owner of the brothel in the area is enslaving girls and will do anything to protect his business.

“These prostitutes don’t have resident visas and do not undergo medical tests. This could be very dangerous when they are infected with any sexually transmitted diseases. They will just pass it to their clients who will then pass it over to their wives and kids as the chain reaction continues. Also, the prostitutes can as well be infected by their customers,” Dr Andrew O, a pediatrician at Sabah Hospital warned.

By Chidi Emmanuel, Staff Writer

[ChaoticTranquility]

I know this has been covered time and time again, but seeing as it's the only channel to vent one's frustration, where else can one go?

Where is the government in Kuwait? Why doesn't some form of supreme authority step in and draw lines when everyone can see that this country is clearly diving out of control? Words fail me, I just don't understand - how can so much go so wrong so quickly?

- PARLIAMENT: this disastrous sideshow is a cancer that nobody is recognizing. We clearly have issues stalling our national development, infrastructure and future planning because those bearded idiots are too busy squabbling about deporting women wearing bikinis, putting blasphemy laws into action and "helping our Muslim brothers in Syria and Myanmar." I'm all for humanitarianism and support, but really? Bikinis will be the death of this nation? WE HAVE REAL PROBLEMS. DEAL WITH THEM.

- DEVELOPMENT: Economic Plan 2030: stalled indefinitely. What happened to Madinat Al Hareer? The Failaka Redevelopment? KIA Terminal 2? The Metro? These are key projects that we need today before tomorrow.
Madinat Al Hareer: Kuwait City is too expensive to live in and getting too packed to properly function given its lack of proper planning, so where do we go? Push out and south towards and past Fahaheel?
Failaka: a long-term cultural and tourism project that could easily net us millions of tourist and local dollars, yet is dead.
Terminal 2: our airport is a crumbling wreck. It's already operating over its capacity of seven million passengers per annum, it's old, bits of ceiling are falling off outside and the "renovations" that are currently being done on it are tacky and low-end. Hello, Terminal 2?
Metro: 2020? Have planning authorities noticed the traffic during weekday mornings? Our demented national psyche of "ew, Indians" and inability to maintain public transportation is destroying us. Why can Dubai have clean, modern buses but ours look like rolling death traps? Get the metro done, ASAP.

- INFRASTRUCTURE: potholed highways, dead plants, weedy sand lots, hospitals that wouldn't look out of place in Silent Hill, ghetto schools... Heck, the First Ring Road has been under construction for six+ years and isn't even done yet.

- KUWAIT AIRWAYS: three to five planes are finally getting grounded this week, but after what? The multiple-engine failure that nearly brought down a Jeddah-bound flight? The cracked windshield on a flight out of Dhaka? An engine surge that nearly caused a flight from Cairo to crash? The fleet is ancient, maintenance isn't properly enforced and the joke that is privatization has been going on for the better part of a decade. What's taking so long?

- LAW: who enforces the law? We Kuwaitis are almost anarchic, and those of us who do follow the law look like fools. Police chill by the side of the roads texting away on their phones while people roll by in the emergency lane next to them to bypass morning traffic, buses turn left from the farthest right lane sans indicator, the majority of people staffing our police stations and government agencies operate on the rule of "kaifi" ["I do what I want"] - lazy, inefficient and self-entitled.

- MONEY: government spending of late has been nothing short of reckless. Our recent salary increases have simply been met with an increase of commodity price shortly thereafter, and what for? We don't work that hard or that much. Hell, some of us don't work at all, yet all we get is more money. People protesting? Here's a thousand KD, now go spend it all in Dubai or buy iPads in New York. Billions of dollars are burning through the country's treasury and bringing it closer to the edge of oblivion with no semblance of a back-up plan. The IMF report of Kuwait exhausting its oil savings by 2017 should be a major wake-up call.

Everything happening is not something that should be. Doesn't the authority realize that they're damning this country by not interjecting and putting things in check? The people we've elected were and are idiots who are incapable of doing anything right, yet we blew the chance we got this year to make a difference by bringing Hayef & Friends back in our own rendition of George W. Bush, 2004. How'd that work out for ya, Kuwait?

GOVERNMENT: DO SOMETHING. We're one of the richest countries in the world, yet look, feel and operate far from it. I know I'm not the only citizen and person to feel this way, but... what can we do?

CT

[I Know]

[I Know]

Construction planned in western regions: official



KUWAIT CITY, Aug 4, (Agencies): Municipal authorities have signed the project of development of the western region, said Saad Al-Muhailbi, the director of structural planning of Kuwait Municipality.
Al-Muhailbi told KUNA on Saturday that the 13-month five-phase venture includes data gathering and analysis, planning studies, alternatives to structural planning, detail planning and final reports of the project.
The venture is being executed in the fifth region, located on the western territories of the country. The 2,396-sq-km area stretches along Al-Salmi road.
Moreover, it is aimed at specifying usage of plots, securing public utilities and planning for future construction.


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