Starbucks in Saudi

ANDFARAWAY uses recent changes to the starbucks logo as an opportunity to imagine what it might look like if the giant coffee company were based in Saudi Arabia?

There’s no accounting for taste right? HOUSE OF CURIOSITY suggests that maybe there is? How come, according to her, “’taste in Spain in nicer than in Amman?’”

She says this applies to clothing and jewelry but, in particular, furniture.

Using a photograph to critique some of the styles in Amman, she argues although there are no shortage of furniture shops most of them are awful… and the few good ones are very expensive. Perplexed, house of curiosity seems to discover what’s going on when shopping for an engagement ring, reaching the conclusion that:

“Shop owners claim that they import or manufacture things based on the local taste, but I think it is the opposite; people buy what is available and affordable, and in our case, shop owners impose their own taste on everyone else.”

A musician in Tunisia gets arrested in his home by plain clothes police for a video entitled “President your people are dying.”

The blogger writes that Tunisia is not truly peaceful but ‘stifled’, and is democratic or ‘European’ only on the surface – Ben Ali’s regime is compared to a monkey wearing a Versace suit.

She writes that Tunisians are becoming aware of the corruption, intimidation and oppression in the country… and asks whether they are to become the ‘mouse that roared?’

A year of pictures from the popular citizen media blog “THE MIRROR.”

BEIRUTSPRING notices the graffiti of the ‘sexually frustrated’ in Beirut.

January 6th was Armenian Christmas… but what if Santa doesn’t have any presents left?