Bahrain: Poetry Slammed! · Global Voices
This week Bahraini bloggers express their concerns about the country's electronic identity cards. With the school year about to begin, education is a hot topic. Be careful what you write when you send a job application – you might unwittingly become one of the new superheroes, The Employables! We finish with some strong opinions regarding the literary scene in Bahrain.
Too smart, or not so smart?
The Smart Card (an electronic identity card) is being phased in in Bahrain, but a number of bloggers have expressed their reservations about the scheme. <PERSON> thinks the project is doomed for failure:
So we started this Smart Card concept and we're full blast trying to get everyone to carry one. FOR WHAT?! No one has a reader yet, and the card is useless to anyone NOT carrying one; there's no address or anything on the front, and even the driving license part of it is not acknowledged by the traffic police. WTF?! Second of all, the process to actually get it is SO GODDAMN ANNOYING, AND the people working there are total IDIOTS! No, i'm not exaggerating; TOTAL FRICKIN’ IDIOTS! And finally, can we really trust THESE PEOPLE with our data?! Keeping it private and safe? We are seriously screwed guys. And shouldn't we be thinking of fixing the other parts of the country still left in the dark ages before trying to advance? Go into the Ministry of Health and you'll see people still writing things down on pieces of paper. WHERE IS THE BLOODY TECHNOLOGY?! I wouldn't mind a 1985 IBM system at least, but NO! They don't even have that! WORK ON FIXING YOUR BLOODY PROBLEMS BEFORE TRYING TO ADVANCE; you can't run before you crawl, and shit, we're still on the verge of crawling. 235
This is going to end up as such a HUGE disaster, I can feel it!
<PERSON> is worried about the use of the Smart Card for political purposes, to further sectarian aims:
How is all of this going to affect us in Bahrain is anyone’s guess. My private guess is that it is going to be detrimental to our freedom – at best. Not because the card itself is a bad idea, not at all, things are moving in that direction the world over anyway. Its failure in Bahrain is the almost complete absence of its supporters simply because of the people who have been assigned to oversee it, and the clandestine organisation that is pushing it.
No project can succeed if it lacks the basic necessity of trust. This one, for all the potential good that it can otherwise bring, is destined to doom. Bahrainis simply lack the necessary trust to make it successful. Oh they will go and get that card issued, to be sure, because as we have seen with the CPR card that preceded it, no earthly transaction could be completed in this country without it.
What’s left to do but tell those who care to simply “brace brace brace” as this thing will come crashing down, or at least will never reach its full potential.
Unless of course full transparency is adopted and those who have hijacked this project for nefarious deeds are removed.
Education matters
With the new school year soon to start, education is on people's minds. <PERSON> wants change:
We have smart people in Bahrain; most of them just go brain-dead under our current system, we need our people to be challenged, strengthened, given the tools to promote and advance. We need that to get rid of the corruption, the unemployment, the shortages, the ignorance…
Please… Fix our educational system…
<PERSON> is happy to be a teacher:
Teaching is one of the hardest jobs on Earth, we’ve all at some point in our lives have seen a teacher reaching the brink of insanity (or turning insane) in his/her quest to restore order in the class and feed you with information that you will either forget and never use in your whole life or the kind of stuff that will stick with you like a لزقة جونسون (a <PERSON> and <PERSON>’s band aid) for the rest of your life.
[…]
I’m a teacher trainer by day and a computer teacher at various institutes by afternoon and night, although I might add that I have had no studies in education other than a single ’train the trainers’ course I took earlier this year.
Working in these areas, the majority of the people you come across are there because they want to learn, the teachers fill in the appropriate forms and get them signed and switch around their timetables just to get to the training, whilst in institutes, putting it bluntly, they pay for it! 244