Eid Mubarek

Libya's Museum of Conflict

For the first time in many years, Libya will have a purpose built museum in the shape of an ultra-modern Bedouin tent, and this museum will be similar to the War museum in London and it will be called Libya’s Museum of Conflict, it will cover present and past conflicts and wars that Libya was part of since can man remember, the design of the building is ready and the opening day was set to be sometimes in year 2011.
Specialised museums are in a short supply in Libya and this new museum would be a great welcome, and hopefully more and more would be built, this would increase the knowledge and awareness of Libyan history among its people and any visitor.

To read more about this click on this link

Royal Mail Postal Scam

I received this email at work and would like anyone who lives in UK in particular to take notice, so take care.

‘’ The Trading Standards Office are making people aware of the following scam:

A card is posted through your door from a company called PDS (Parcel
Delivery Service) suggesting that they were unable to deliver a parcel and
that you need to contact them on *906 6611911 (a premium rate number). DO NOT call this number, as this is a mail scam originating from Belize. If
you call the number and you start to hear a recorded message you will
already have been billed £15 for the phone call. If you do receive a card
with these details, then please contact Royal Mail Fraud on 02072396655 or ICSTIS (the premium rate service regulator) http://www.icstis.org.uk or your local trading standards office. ‘’

How could we hold on to our heritage and history?

Yesterday I read a piece of news from a Libyan website which was disturbing; it was about the missing of Islamic artefacts which got stolen in a day light from the Islamic Museum in Sidi Khalifa Street, Tripoli. These antiquities are gone and they would end up somewhere outside Libya and land into hands of the highest bidder, and these kind of customised robberies are very common worldwide but in Libya it started to show its ugly side recently with the slack of the securities round the border or the lack of it that resulted into the growing numbers of the organised crimes which deals with any priceless historic items be it Islamic, Roman, or Phoenician, you name it, and not to mention the involvement of some dishonest border officers in assisting these criminals in doing their crimes with great ease.

My recent summer visit to Libya gave me the chance to see some of the treasures that we have and we always take it for granted, and in one of my visits to The National Museum in Tripoli and while I was admiring what’s inside it, I noticed how slack the security is inside the Museum, the only effort that was made was to ask anyone with a bag to hand it over to an attendant and she would give you a key for the locker so you could retrieve it back before you leave the building, but while I was walking round and enjoy our ancient and modern history, I found that the majority of these invaluable pieces of antiquities are all exposed to the public for them to touch by hands or even hug if need to be, like someone who did just that in my own presence so he could take a picture with it, there are no boundaries round it to give it any kind of protection like ropes or even encased a glass box, this caused some of these statues and artefacts to get dirty and even might cause them to fall over and get damaged but what worse is to be taken away without the knowledge of anyone especially in a quiet afternoon,and then smuggled out and sold abroad!
Where are the security staffs I hear you say? The only member of staffs that I encountered in that building , were sitting on comfy worn out leather seats facing each other and having a big chat about nothing and getting paid for it! And if any member of the public dared to ask any query they just point them at the direction to nowhere or just give them a puzzling answer and then they continue back to their chit chatting affair.

I didn’t see any closed circuit TV that monitors the place and some articles are scattered round on the floor and next to it some bottles with chemicals in a complete mess. This happening not just in that Museum, even in our magnificent Roman Ruins, where you could actually walk over a priceless mosaic tiles and damage them with your own hard shoes without you realizing it , these tiles should be fenced to prevent anyone from damaging them or even stealing them.

The artefacts Authority in Libya not doing a good job, in protecting our history and heritage from vandalism or from the forty thieves ( in this case hundreds of thieves ) who are mushrooming every day, anyone in authority who could do something about these crimes should act now before it’s too late, a nation with no past would have no future.

Eid Mubarek

Egypt donkey jailed for theft

I was reading the newspaper while riding my train to work this morning when I spotted this piece of news from Egypt, I leave you to read it, I found it quite funny.

An Egyptian donkey has been jailed for stealing corn on the cob from a field belonging to an agricultural research institute in the Nile Delta, local media reported on Thursday.
The ass and its owner were apprehended at a police checkpoint that had been set up after the institute's director complained that someone was stealing his crops, the state-owned Al-Ahram daily said.
The unnamed ungulate was found in possession of the institute's corn and a local judge sentenced him to 24 hours in prison. The man who had his ass thrown in jail got off with a fine of 50 Egyptian pounds (nine dollars, six Euros).Source: AFP

Free Moroccan Blogger Mohammed Erraji

Moroccan authorities arrested blogger Mohammed Raji on Friday morning in his home in Agadir, said Arabic electronic news site Hespress. Investigators reportedly asked him for his email account password, which he gave to them.
An article that appeared on Hespress, in which Raji criticized the King's policy of free gifts to citizens, is said to be the cause of his arrest. Raji claimed in his article that the king, with his random acts of charity, encourages Moroccans to be "beggers" and "sycophants" instead of hard workers…

source: http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=30771925854