It was really funny this morning to watch NBC 4 going nuts .. I mean, sure this makes it more watchable, but give me a break. The world is going green.. but I'm not sure how green things can get. Today on TV they were talking about "green sex toys". well.. when I heard that I thought they will start talking about cucumbers and carrots .. but they actually were talking about commercial sex toys made of ceramic and recyclable glass - I'm not sure if we want that to be recycled though.

I wasn't very surprised to see this going on TV, since Americans have shows like "sex & the city" and a New York "sex museum" .. so it's in the air .. but I'm not sure about the green part. Let's throw Al-Gor a party celebrating Nobel prize for his "role" in making the world "greener". I'm sure the US could help the world get greener by ratifying the Kyoto agreement that President Bush says about it:

This is a challenge that requires a 100% effort; ours, and the rest of the world's. The world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases is the People's Republic of China. Yet, China was entirely exempted from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol. India and Germany are among the top emitters. Yet, India was also exempt from Kyoto … America's unwillingness to embrace a flawed treaty should not be read by our friends and allies as any abdication of responsibility. To the contrary, my administration is committed to a leadership role on the issue of climate change … Our approach must be consistent with the long-term goal of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere."

I am sure that Mr. President knows who is the number 1 emitter. We should all thank Mr. Bush for his "effort" and "leadership" in committing to make the world greener - maybe by using phosphor bombs - with their green flashing - on Afghanistan, Iraq, and wherever he goes next.

Green: signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol, Yellow: signed and hoping to ratify the agreement, Red: signed but not ratifying.

Nevertheless, green is a trend here because people are committed to the greener world. This doesn't at all conflict with their love of SUVs and sports cars, since cars or industries that provide the quality of life are not the issue here. It is about the type of paper you use, the cups provided in the coffee shops, and most importantly, sex toys.
Let's use the term self-hypocrites with my beloved Americans. They have a very genuine want to make and do better, but it might get harder when it is about being better. It makes oneself feel so good wiping the butt with a recyclable toilet paper - they don't use water here - because one knows this good for the environment, but how about buying a small car that will consume less energy ? This makes me always wonder why the hydrogen and battery cars are not picking up as a trend if cars are the number 1 polluting machine in the world ? or is it the corporates benefits and network that has more interest driven by profit from gasoline based cars ?

don't get me wrong, but it takes more than regular courage to go in the opposite direction, where responsibility measures up to the level of privilege and power. Investing almost 4.2% of the GDP is worth it if your emittions are affecting 6.5 billion human beings alive.

What attracted me to buy the Fourtine magazine this month was their cover page little title "Khartoum Boom" .. This reminded me of Hashim .. and all our conversations about the virgin land of Sudan that we have ever studied it as the "food basket of the Arab countries" .. it also reminded me of my older brother's weird projects that included a farm in Sudan .. he just loves this idea and thinks of Sudan as the best place to do it .. eh .. why not .. Fourtune magazine agrees ..

Google Earth surprised me with the highlight it has on the area of Darfur as a crisis area .. though I couldn't find Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya, Kossovo, Oganda, or any related legacy crisis areas on the map .. well .. this markets the common public image the American's have about old tribal fightings that was bloated through Robert Murdouch's owned big media across US and UK .. if you are naive enough to ask why would they do that .. I would answer by telling you that in 10 years .. the production of oil in Sudan might move from 0.5 million barrels to 3 millions a day - as per the report .. good answer ?


well .. "Sudan ranked the 1st on this year's "failed states" list compiled by the Carninigie Endowment for International Peace in Washington" .. interesting enough .. this ridiculously failing state is scoring 9% economical growth last year .. Foreign investment rose to around $5 billion .. it is the oil that drives the trend .. but not Chevron nor Royal Dutch Shell .. It's Chinese Nile Petroleum Company ..

here is a good lesson .. Sanctions enforced on Sudan are hurting west more than Khartoum .. hurting companies' chances to make use of the great chance .. China is getting the most of these sanctions and flooding Khartoum with investments .. workers .. Why not .. if it was the biggest customer of their oil .. When Hu Jintao - the Chinese President - visited Sudan .. he was treated in Sudanese traditional generosity because of the respected role played in Sudan ..

The question is about Arab Entrepreneurs that should not miss such a chance in Sudan .. They would be welcomed for sure to play a part of building and constructing Sudan's real image as the "treasure basket" of the Arab world .. I think my Sudanese friends would have a say in that ..

Today I was at the airport police section following up with a case that involves me against my boss as a part of a labor dispute we hadn't settled yet ..

this is not the point ..

I was reading at the walls ..
criminal cases in 2004 : 348 ..
criminal cases in 2005 : 345 ..
criminal cases in 2006 : 606 ..

by the way .. my case number was 500+ (no need to tell the exact number) .. and we are still in mid 2007 .. we should expect more or less around 1000 cases for 2007.. which is showing a doubling trend across the time of the buildings boom ( eh .. not babies boom like US's 1945 ) ..

what was more interesting than these numbers was my file waiting almost 25 days in the hands of incompetent and weakly educated police personnel .. there is a brain and 20 members in the records section .. this is an example that you'd find in all the departments of the police around Dubai ..

sad .. right ?

This is only one part of the story .. everything else seems to be connected to threads of dangers .. after we all heard about the high risk mortgages problem in US and the black Thursday stock markets lived the past days ( Arab stock markets were off for a weekend except Egypt .. luckily ) .. The market keeps bloating the balloon created by people riding the bull ..

UAE market lost most of its value .. Emaar's share reached lowest since 2 years .. 10 Dhs a share .. this is the leading stock ..

so .. is the crisis covering only this part ?

inflation exceeded 10% ..
property prices doubled and even tripled in some places ..
education expenses are a nightmare ..
salaries are not moving up ..
people are less well off by 5% a year (inflation - raises) ..

but dude .. Burj Dubai is almost done ..
eh .. I think who are interested in this building getting done are the workers that are getting paid in the range of 150-200$ a month .. these people don't have any type of education that would guarantee them a basic understanding of their rights .. while some white skinned Brits are paid a 100 times more salary for signing the project.

what was more interesting .. is the move of the headquarter of Haliberton to Dubai .. they are contracting with some training companies to train them to exploit people as being a daily practice by companies .. almost 250,000 companies are assigned only 80 labor officers and investigators to check on labor status ..

so .. the turn is going to hit the properties market for sure .. no matter how much was learned from past countries experiences .. what we feel is being done does not exceed giving a daily dose of Panadole to silence the pain instead of visiting the doctor to deal with it .. this worsens it .. and creates a foggy reality that will not continue ..


There is nothing wrong with sitting down and drafting ways to live away from the tall buildings shades to adapt UAE's place and give it its specific context .. dealing with specifics is not going to happen through hiring overseas committees to do so .. creating job knowledge and adequate personnel development will take time and effort .. but it pays off in terms of vision and future of a country's well being ..


so .. my lady .. sneakers aren't too bad .. though they might not give you the shape you are looking for ..

Azmi Bishara has a lion share of the daily media we watch these days.. He comes from my beloved Nazareth - (EL Nasrah) city. and leads the Balad party he established.
Dr. Azmi resigned in the 22th of April after serving for 10 years in Knesset. leaving the charges against him unattended. He was charged to help Israel enemies in 2006 Lebanon war.

Away from the usual media chewing.. Azmi was a clear advocate of communism and Marxism and so on.. as well as a Christian-Arab voice of democracy. A fighter against the proclaimed American-Israeli democratic masks that are proven with time to be as we say.. good words for bad intentions..


To make it short.. where do we stand from Azmi ? is he our hero that fights for real democracy ? is he a new Jazeera tool - as well as Mohammed Haikal - to mix real life with communists/Nasserists dreams ? are we actually trying to fight through these people the overwhelming trend of western-style democracy ? are his wise and well said words actually listened to ?


I remember one time he was on TV discussing the GCC fear from Iran's possession of nuclear technology.. "GCC should be afraid of neighboring a real country like Iran. When we look at Iran, we see a country with a system and a vision.. when we look to the rest of the region, we see no countries - including the country-for-army Israel. In the GCC, the private and public ownership mixed up to make a mess. The country is a single person vision, and the army is a show for his power." .. well .. how far do we understand his advocacy for a new us through these words ?

This is his talk about the last colonial question..

I am posting this note as continuity of the last topic Content Consumerism - Arabs forgot to book a seat ? ..

I wanted in this note to underline the problem of abusing the internet in most developed countries, which creates a worse problem there because of the very limited access to the internet, as per numbers posted everywhere over the web. Very low penetration rates and out of this we have a very low development-oriented use..

so.. is it a use or an abuse ?

I tried my trends.google.com friend to give me a hint about the statistical usage of their search engine based on different search key words.. and the results were very shocking..

I tried comparing the following keywords..
book,
education,
sport,
news,
sex

5 keywords is the limit.. and here are the results:

World usage comparison of keywords - a more sex oriented world

The world is going towards looking for more and more sex over the internet, though the news trend is picking up where media companies turned the whole world into their story and story-tellers..

when we take a zoom in a country with one of the highest internet penetration rate, like US.. here are the results:

US usage comparison of keywords - news are as hot as sex for US searchers

Which gives us a hope that the most sexually-broadcasted country is up to something else..

wait.. we are not done .. the most shocking graph is still to come.. I picked Egypt as the biggest representative of Arab population.. want to see the graph ?

here it is..

Egypt usage comparison of keywords - if you don't have a porno site, no one in Egypt knows you. what about being a porn star ?

Very sadly and considerably broken, I have to leave the graphs and Google trends to tell you the rest of the story..

Different news media did a good deal of advertising for the new web era that brought up the web 2.0 concepts to the surface. All so-called content web / social web / I don't know what else it was called..

One of my smart professors, Imran Zulkernan, was surprised that these (silly - as per him) concepts of writing blogs or wiki's and so on are gaining significant attention. Why should we care ? - he asked..

well.. I was the TIME magazine's person of the year.. hahaha .. very funny abujayyab .. well, it is true that it is not a great thing to be in the TIME's person of the year list given that George W. Bush was there twice.. but we all share this disgrace of being the creators of a new era .. we are all to be the person of the year.. social content audience..

the controllers of the new technology .. me, you, him, her, .. all proverbs should have been the person of the year.. but is everyone included ?



A very sad fact pops-up about Arabs contribution to this new form of information.. given the sad facts reported in the Arab Development report by the UN ..

330 translated books/year to and from Arabic = 1/5 the ones to and from Greek
1000 years' translated books from and to Arabic = 1 year of translated books from and to Spanish !

Well .. i think we are doing as bad in the internet content era .. other Than Baba Ali's videos, we are all blamed for this lack of being there .. of participating as a part of the information cloud..

and by the way .. Baba Ali's content is not in Arabic ..yet it's related to a major part of them ..

how many times have you entered an Arabic Forum and got what you wanted? how many times have you entered an Arabic public chatting room and had a pleasant experience? how many times you have found a usefull Arabic open source community ?

We are ready to spend 25 hours a day reading books online, looking at others blogs, watching Baba Ali's videos, downloading torrents, and and and .. how much out of that have we contributed ? shouldn't we wake up ?

I think it is the time for everyone to act like the person of the year at least .. you should do better than G.W.Zeft .. I mean Bush..

Hey buddies..

sometimes.. especially after a really special moment.. we start thinking.. how many of these moments have we had ?

in a way.. if life was about either making memories or remembering them.. when was the last time..

- you had a real good conversation that you felt like being another person after it.. you felt like God gave you a special moment of realization.. and you felt like picking the phone and calling that person thank him/her for the good time !

- you read a good book.. you felt like writing a book to talk about that book .. you know what.. you felt like sending an email to the author telling him what you think.. maybe felt like gifting a close friend that book with your notes on it to share the thoughts and feelings you had !

- you've been in a situation where things sound so no-way-ish .. and a that moment hero leaves a trace in your heart with what one does.. they make you wonder.. why your words never put together your feelings towards them !

-you've had an inspiring teacher/professor .. that their words meant a lot to you.. their inspiration took you miles further.. their presence drove your imagination to new horizons.. where you felt like that you need to start quoting feelings instead of words to pay them what they meant to you..

-you finished what you were doing for a very long time in a perfectionist's sense.. you gifted your masterpiece to yourself before gifting it to anyone else .. you had your work done as you'd be proud of it.. where standards and rules shy away from judging your originality and innovativeness..

I will fall short of describing other moments that you have had for sure.. but sharing them will be a good light of hope to thoughts and feelings of everyone :)

To the man that passed away with his body.. and lived forever in our souls..

We owe you..
we owe your silence the million words that are said..
we owe your modesty the wisdom it carries forward to everyone..
we owe your teachings the passions it plants in us..
we owe your being.. living.. existence.. the appreciation of life meanings..

I took a single course with Dr. Soliman.. it was enough to carry my passion ahead.. to learn.. explore.. understand.. what the world from my little angle is about.. he never let me down in giving me the reason to learn more.. read more.. know more..

Ashleigh told me he he added the faith factor into her equations .. I'm sure there are a lot of people carrying faith planted by Dr. Soliman..

I just posted these words to give the tribute to a great man that passed our stage to another.. leaving us his virtue to carry forward..