In her video accepting the visionary award of YouTube (November 2008), Queen Rania spoofed David Letterman with 10 reasons of why she launched her channel against stereotypes on YouTube, 9 of those reasons are funny ones and one of the 9 is: “Because I was tired of people thinking Jordan was just a basketball player…”.

Three weeks in USA, I always make my way down to the lobby from the 18th floor. In that long journey everyday I meet new people, being in a hotel will tell them that I’m at least from another state if not from another country; that what makes the question: “Where are you from?” something that I used to hear all day long.

Honestly, very few people who knew Jordan; a lot of them used to ask “Where is Jordan?” or “is it next to Israel?” but it was very shocking when someone asked me “What’s Jordan?”, that question made me answer in a very ironic way “Jordan is a basketball player”. Suddenly that man jumped and told me “oh sorry sorry… Jordan! Do you still speak Russian?” I was like “but we never spoke Russian, Jordan is in the Arab world… it’s not Georgia”. Couple of minutes the elevator stopped at the lobby and that man was explaining how much he’s sorry for not recognizing my country because it’s still very early and he’s unable to concentrate.

It didn’t take me too long to understand the reason behind their ignorance. It’s definitely not our media because we have a King and a Queen who are doing a great job in promoting Jordan, also our location in the middle of the conflicts should make us very popular. But what if those people grab the newspaper everyday in the morning to read some weird news? I couldn’t find anything that mentions the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship in the daily newspaper in front of my room door and that was fine for me, but the fact that the main headline on the first page in the “US Today” newspaper was “Sandra Bullock’s new adopted son” drove me crazy, at that moment I though that the peace has spread all over the world, the conflict in Palestine has been resolved, Iraqi war is over and Haiti has been already rebuilt.

That’s insane! why would a country like USA that’s causing problems all over the world hide a lot of information about the people in the other side of the globe?

I shared this image on twitter asking people if there is a way to describe it, I was literally shocked after seeing it:

What's in his mind?

I only have one single question, what were his thoughts at that moment?! Would that kid be of any threat??!!

Few months ago, it was my biggest mistake when I visited the website insidejo.com and wrote a review about it. Because it’s forbidden for me to give my opinion about something if it doesn’t meet the expectations of the service provider.

Now “insideJo – Jordan Maps” is online with the same concept of Google maps, but basically for Jordan. But I will ignore the whole website at this point because I don’t need to say any word that might make the employees of a company try to compare their website design with this blog design (I think the design of this blog looks better until now though).

Shame on you, who ever you were, to be an Arab Jordanian who launched such a project with a map that shows Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon… etc. without the name of Palestine!!! I don’t know what is the reason behind not writing Palestine. But whatever it was, it shows that because of such people we are loosing our mother country.

Enjoy your new website without the honor of seeing Palestine name on it. And I can’t wish you luck at all because you have done a huge mistake that will affect you directly. And I will take the initiative to make you feel the importance of the country that you have ignored.

I have taken a decision almost 3 weeks ago not to mention this in my blog, as I considered that the prayers would be the best way so GOD will help our people in Gaza. But on the other hand I have never expected that the number would grow to reach 4 figures! BBC News, which I consider the least biased news agency, last night had the headline ‘More than 1,000 killed in Gaza‘.

I’m too busy to sit on the front of the TV watching news all the time, so my best source to keep myself updated was the Internet, which has much more information. Numbers of HUMANS killed are growing, Israel won’t stop the attack, Hamas will attack the Israelis to the end… etc. In front of this I have my own opinion that I don’t like to share with anyone especially at this stage as it won’t make a difference now or later. Keeping it all aside, what is driving me and everyone all over the world crazy is an irony that’s happening out of Gaza’s boundaries.

Starting with Jordan, it’s so normal to find the security and the army protecting the Israeli embassy in Amman (mainly the ambassador) while they are not even willing to think about protecting our brothers and sisters in Gaza who are being killed in THOUSANDS, and you know what, the Jordanian Army will hit and maybe shoot anyone, from the Jordanian themselves, who tries to get closer to that embassy.

Egypt, literally I would like to say no comment because it will take me forever to complain. But to make it short and direct to the point; screw you Egyptian Government.

Gulf countries, and what countries and leaders are those! Those people who control the world with what they have of oil, they are still taking USA and Israel into consideration before going further to discuss any serious action to help Gaza. Qatar invited the Arab leaders to a summit tomorrow, Egypt and KSA refused to go as it’s not pre-planned. And that was expected from two countries that planned the current Israeli campaign on Gaza. They like everything to be planned!

It’s horrible when we conclude that we don’t give ourselves the value while we are waiting the world to respect us! Wake up people, we are underestimating ourselves, we are not even considered as HUMANS!

Yesterday YouTube hosted its first ever live streaming event. It was a cool show, and one of the parts was when they awarded Queen Rania the first ever YouTube Visionary Award because of her dedication to breaking down stereotypes.

Accepting the first ever YouTube Visionary Award via taped message, Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah spoofed the famous Top 10 format from US comedian David Letterman to explain why she launched this channel.

Ron Dermer, one of the advisors of Netanyahu’s campaign has another opinion about the common quotes “We don’t imitate… we inovate”. As it’s very obviuos that Benjamin Netanyahu (the Israeli candidate for the prime minister) has cloned Obama’s website.

Taking a look on both homepages (use the Russian version for Netanyahu’s one to see it from left to right direction), you will figure out that both are really very close:

Dermer said: “We’re all in the same business, so we took a close look at a guy who has been the most successful and tried to learn from him. And while we will not use the word ‘change’ in the same way in our campaign, we believe Netanyahu is the real candidate of change for Israel.” he added, “Imitation is the greatest form of flattery”

On a different note about the web role in the politics, I think that the president-elect of the USA has used the internet to do a huge marketing for his campaign. Barak Obama’s team was every where and still there on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and MySpace. The online campaign also built a consensual database of 3 million mobile numbers by promising that in return, supporters would get campaign news before the media.

The web has helped to inspire and empower a generation that has rejected political apathy. Obama’s team used technology to make issues personal and relevant by giving people ownership of the campaign. It wasn’t a complicated strategy, the campaign accounted for half of all online political advertising this year at $8,000,000. A fact that won’t have escaped Google’s chief executive Eric Schmidt, who is reportedly on the shortlist for a chief technical role in Obama’s administration.

Venue: Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv
Date: the 24th of June
Staring: Nicola Sarkozy, Ehud Olmert, Shimon Peres.

On the 24th of June in the year 2008, the French President “Nicola Sarkozy” and his wife were saying goodbye to Ehud Olmert and Shimon Peres at Ben Gurion airport. Suddenly an Israeli policeman shot himself while standing guard during the ceremony the airport.

After the shot that killed Ranen rang out, bodyguards rushed Sarkozy and first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy to their plane, while security officials whisked Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Shimon Peres into their cars.

Once it became evident there was no security risk, Olmert and Peres boarded the plane to bid farewell to Sarkozy, who had spent three days in Israel and the occupied West Bank. According to AFP.

What I don’t understand after what happened in Israel that I haven’t seen any of the Arabic TV channels broadcasting the video that can be found anywhere on the internet. Are they stupid enough to think that we will never see the video on YouTube? I can’t find any reason behind not showing the people this video!

Any way, for those who are interested in seeing what happened; this video is a good one to watch:

As I was planning, this morning I was very proud to introduce our new blog LOUD SIGHS, which will definitely be an extraordinary platform for you guys to express yourselves and to discuss all the issues that matter to you the most.

Loudsighs.com is another trial from my side to change I have done this website and video within one week, I wanted them to be some sort of different replies on the video of Queen Rania that has been published on her page on YouTube (but UNFORTUNATELY IT HASN’T BEEN ACCEPTED FROM THE MODERATOR OF QUEEN RANIA’S CHANNEL AS A REPLY), though I hope that this initiative will work as expected.

The Arab summit was scheduled to start on Saturday the 29th of March but I didn’t know it until I saw that it has started already on the TV. It was not a normal Saturday as I woke up very late and decided not to go to my office, so I took the remote control of the satellite and started surf the channels.

I was not interested at all to watch the playback of every year’s speech of each Arabic leader during the opening session of the summit, but I knew when I saw the Libyan president, Al-Qathafi, that there might be something interesting from his side as usual. I kept checking the news channels to see Al-Qathafi’s turn to speak and finally it happened.

That president is very funny, he is the only one who came to the summit without a pre-written speech with some idealities, he started to speak about the relations between the Arab countries and how bad are they for the time being, then he talked about his suggestion to start and African-Arabic union, and definitely he wouldn’t miss the Palestinian issue. Until he started to talk about the Iraq it was a normal speech with some ironical phrases. Well, Sadam Hussein’s execution was the start of his comedy; Al-Qathafi was talking to all of the leaders at the conference hall when he warned them that “they might face the same fate” of Sadam Hussein (America’s Old Friend), as he has been executed in front of their and our eyes.

Don’t you think that Al-Qathafi had a point of view?! With all of the irony that Al-Qathafi usually uses in his speeches, but I believe that he is the only Arab leader who talks about facts not idealities. And the only one who emprises to mention the USA in the way he does. That is why he is always described as an “idiot”.

A walk to support Nasrallah

It was my first day in the president-less country; Lebanon! Everyone speaks about the bad political status of the country (taxi drivers, family, friends… etc). With all of those circumstances; Lebanon is still my favorite country globally! A lot of fun in each step! It’s the joy just to go in a drive and take a look on the new-old city of Beirut.

After my first amazing round in the city I went back to my place, sat on my chair and started to take a look on the TV. A speech of the leader of Hezb Allah (Hasan Nasrallah) was scheduled to be aired at that time. Al Manar TV announced that it’s the speech time. Hasan Nasrallah appeared on the T.V; and here we started the ACTION!! Hezb Allah guys wanted to greet their leader with some sound effects during the speech! But what sound effects they were; the war has begun outside, that what I thought for the first while, definitely I was mistaken. The BULLETS and the BOMBS outside were only to show love to that “great” leader! It was an extreme shock, everybody is complaining because of the bad political circumstances and each one of the politicians has his own army.

Lebanon; that amazing country is being buried by its leaders. Yes; this is what is going on exactly; those politicians is doing brain wash sessions for the citizens with each speech on the TV!

The next day; no electricity (as usual), I was semi sleeping in the dark, I heard people shouting outside on the street! I went out to the balcony to see what’s going on; and there was my next shock! More than a hundred of guys were fighting outside. I tried to ask what is going on there, they told me it something that is very normal. The followers of each political leader started a normal conversation and then it turned into a semi fight then everyone called the rest of the followers and started a semi war outside!

I had nothing to do more than going back to my bed waiting for the next effect of the politicians’ “BAD INFLUENCE”.