Things We Will Never See in Jordan

Keep the Bad Parliament

In 2007 Jordanians elected a Jordanian Parliament. It was a relatively clean election. Two years later, the performance of the Parliament was undoubtfully shameful, reflective of the massive corruption, inefficiency, backwardness and hypocrisy that has hit our country for quite some time. This bad performance was not surprising.

Yesterday HM King Abdullah ordered the Parliament to be dissolved. I would assume that he, like most Jordanians, were disappointed by the performance of the Parliament.

I am disappointed by the Parliament but I'm more disappointed, like always, with the people who elected the Parliament, i.e. the majority of the Jordanian population.

How do you expect a clean Parliament to emerge if those who voted for them would take any opportunity to get an extra penny or two if they were not to be caught? How about the hypocrisy of being religious when it comes to a generous beard but a godless thief when it comes to stealing the government's money to fly to "conferences" and "meetings" outside Jordan? Don't you see that kind of hypocrisy in most people when you look around you?

Why do we expect Parliament members to attend all the sessions when the average Jordanian wouldn't mind missing work as long as it won't affect his salary? Why would you expect an MP to sacrifice something for his country if most people wouldn't? Why do complain of MPs fighting in the Parliament when we Jordanians feel like breaking each others' bones at schools, universities, grocery stores and traffic lights?

Do you think that we, Jordanians, really care about our country? How much do wealthy Jordanians donate to charity? How is the SOS doing? How much donations do our universities get every year from its alumni? How many non-profit hospitals and colleges are there in Jordan?

Don't we wait for any opportunity to allow us to look down on our own people? More money, education, a nicer car, any kind of skill, some foreign language, a wealthy spouse, just anything to make us feel grandiose, feel important and better than anyone else? For anyone who has driven outside the territory of Western Amman, don't you feel that Jordan is becoming more than once country glued together by a fake thread that at one point may not stand the test of time?

If it's true to say that people deserve the government they get, it would be more correct to say that people deserve the Parliament they elect. If it sucks it's because we suck. Every dysfunction that exists in the Parliament exists in our community, in our homes and schools and colleges . I want the dysfunctional Parliament to stay there, longer than ever, with its scandals on display on TV, newspapers and whatever 7th grade students write in Ammon news.

If a new Parliament is to be elected, it has to be an absolute disaster for me to believe it is representative of the people. Anything less than a catastrophic performance will make suspect that the elections were a fraud.

Egypt-Algeria: An Honor Crime

Today in the Egypt-Algeria match I am hoping for a huge fight to erupt, and for both teams to be kicked out of the qualifications allowing Zambia in 3rd place to make it to the World Cup.

The only 2 matches I was eager to watch last week were Tunisia-Mozambique where Tunisia unfortunately lost 0-1 allowing Nigeria to qualify instead. Bahrain also lost 0-1 to New Zealand and was relegated. For the first time since 1978, Arabs will represented by only one team in the World Cup finals, but that doesn't seem to be that important anymore.

Overall I'm disappointed that the Egyptian and Algerian honor is now about a football game. Things used to be very different a few decades ago.

Anyway, I'll be watching, in hope that Al-Akhdar Balloumi will jump onto the field and start pulling eyes out and for angry fans to finish the job of burying Algerians by throwing whatever rocks they had left from last week on their heads. Go Zambia! Make Africa proud again!

Nidal Malik Hasan

Yesterday afternoon I heard of the incident where a man opened fire at a military base. First I thought it was just another soldier suffering from PTSD, a very common disorder among many US soldiers who've been to Iraq. Then the name showed up. It was an Arab one. Worse, he was an Arab doctor. Another one. Same story.

I don't have any problem with the press crucifying this guy, totally ripping him off and showing him as the most evil man in the world. But I still have a problem with how America is responding to an incident like the one that occurred yesterday and that we all know will happen in the future.

There is an assumption that he was driven to kill soldiers by his religion, which may turn out to be true. However that assumption was based on the fact that he distributed copies of Quran to his neighbors before the incident. That assumption was reinforced by the knowledge of him screaming "Allaho Akbar"-God is Great while he was shooting.

It's very clear that Hasan was planning in advance on what he was doing. He knew he was dying. It's very normal for a practising Muslim to plan on doing something that serves his religion before their death, regardless of the reason they're dying. If a cancer patient is about to die it's normal for him to donate money for an Islamic school or to build a mosque and distributing Qurans on people is another act of virtue.

The other part -the Allaho Akbar one- is another reason that makes me extremely disgusted with the bias and retardation the American media continues to practise. Nobody seems to get that Allaho Akbar is just a expression that Arabs and Muslims say when they get excited over anything. It's a Muslim version of Jeez, or a PG-rated WTF. When Jameel Al Batouti, the co-pilot of EgyptAir flight 990, was screaming religious phrases seconds before his jumbo jet crashed into the ocean, everyone freaked out thinking he brought the plane down, as if someone should be singing Kumbaya or reciting the constitution when they're dying.

There are a few crazy people like Hasan, but there are thousands of not-as-crazy people who can hold themselves from a shooting rampage. They are in the army right now and they are exposed to emotional traumas that no physician can treat and no medication can control. Nobody gives a shit about them. They are so much hated overseas for many reasons, and their country forgets them once they're back for many other reasons. They won't a turn a gun against strangers but they might turn it at themselves or loved ones one day. They become very angry or very quiet, very shy or very disinhibited- abnormal to say the least. War completely destroys their brain, and nobody told them about it in those shiny commercials about how awesome it is to go and fight the bad guys in Iraq.

Mental disorder results from something, usually. It's the a loss from any war that chases a country for decades after its end, and I don't think America gets it. I'm sure that Nidal Malik Hasan, the psychiatrist, would have agreed with me on that one.

MikrO-bloGGinG.... Da3 3anka Lawmi Fa Inna Allawma Ighra2oo... Daweni Billati Kanat Heya Al Da2oooo, Da2oo.. Daal

* I was surfing the web and accidentally got into Hayfa Wahbi's website. Only 10 seconds after I opened it my eyes got herpes and my keyboard contracted syphilis.

* I was recently in Washington D.C. and visited a museum there where I saw the surgical tools that American surgeons used during the civil war in 1865. Those tools were in that museum temporarily. Their next destination was going to be the operation room in Prince Hamza Hospital in Irbid.

* I understand how terrible H1N1 can be, but if you smoke 3 packs of cigarettes and enjoy a ginormous seder of mansaf everyday don't worry much about H1N1. Something else will get you faster.

* Real Madrid has to call it quits. I'm not from Madrid and I don't like that team but I already feel offended by everything they have done since Hugo Sanchez realized he was too fat to do his acrobatic somersault after each goal. And Madridians don't worry when Real Madrid is gone, there is a more respectable team from Madrid that is already representing you better than Real Madrid, its name is Alcorcon.

* I will open a grocery store in Amman and call it "tomorrow we're having a snow storm min asel qotbi" ... that's called good business.

* Thank God for Joe Lieberman and Bernie Madoff, just for giving me the opportunity to cuss some Jews without being labelled anti-Semite.

* A few Jewish rabbis were arrested last month in New York in connection with money laundry and selling human organs to be used in transplantation. Those are the kinds of crimes that improve your reputation as smart asses. Arabs need to learn a little bit from that. Money laundry... that's some smart shit. Release Majd Al-Shamayleh now.

* Governments should never interfere with women's reproductive rights. However if you already had 3 kids and they're clearly going to become as trashy as you are, the government has the right to come to your room at the middle of the night and rip your belly open without anaesthesia and blow away your uterus with the ovaries in order to save the world. I would vote for such law.

* Seven Jordanians died of H1N1 so far. Ten times that number died while watching our football team lose to UAE 3-1. We need to set our priorities straight. Before vaccinating the nation send our football players to jail.

* Jordanian newspapers need to shut down their websites. Period.

* I didn't ask to be Jordanian. I just got lucky.................. ok now let's stop bullshitting each other and tell me how can I get a Canadaian passport.

* Alec Baldwin will co-host of the Oscars next year. Barack Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize. Today the Vatican announced that the next Pope will be Sinead O'Connor.

* Hillary Clinton is starting to take Israel's side during the ongoing negotations between Palestinians and Israelis. Someone should remind her that it wasn't us who sent Lweisnky to her husband's desk (- to go under his desk, to be more accurate)

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(The picture above is of Jordanian politician Mona Abu Bakr. The FDA approved the picture for use in most blogs, but warned against side effects that include nausea, diarrhea, rectal prolapse, hand-foot-mouth disease, erectile dysfunction, losing your house and job and attention deficit disorder. Use with caution. )