Egypt Deserved to Win 4-0

I was hoping for Algeria to win, but Egypt deserved it

The worst excuse ever is that Algeria had 3 players sent off with a red card.

If you know basic football, you would know that having a player sent off is just another mistake that you deserve to lose a game for, exactly like a wrong pass or missing a penalty.

Egypt played better and did not do the mistakes of having players sent off, so they deserved the victory, 4-0.

Good luck Sunday.
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And for the record here: Algeria will KICK ASS in the World Cup, seriously, they will kick ass.

Fifty Things I Love About South Dakota

I love Jordan but other bloggers have said it all. So here are my top #50 reasons why I love South Dakota.

1- Only 3 months after you move to South Dakota people will refer to you as the Jordanian because you're the only one living there.

2- You will start understanding what it means to be "endangered species"

3- They sell great beef testicles.

4- There's a lot of Mexican food even though there are no Mexicans.

5- The airport has one terminal, and you can arrive there just half-an-hour before your flight.

6- You'll recognize at least 3 people on the 20-seat plane.

7- Just like Jordan, everyone here has a relative in California.

8- When it's minus 20 degrees all streets are open, everyone goes to work and school and nobody complains about anything.

9- You're one of those very few people who has a passport.

10- Work is always within a 10-minute drive.

11- Everything is always within a 10-minute drive.

12- If you're 14 you can get a driver's licence.

13- All chicks are originally Scandinavian heritage. Enough said.

14- The smell of of horse shit in the street brings back memories from your grandfather's farm in Dibbeen.

15- If your car is stuck in the snow, random strangers will stop by and help you out instead of stopping by to rob your car (like they do in Arizona).

16- In the middle of a snow storm people still drive with their 1960s cars.

17- South Dakota is a diverse state. We have some Asians and also a black couple: Richard and Mary. Nice couple.

18- If anyone in the world is stalking you, you can totally hide in south Dakota and they'll never know how to reach you.

19- A traffic jam means there's a high-school baseball game somewhere.

20- If you're taking a leak at the airport bathroom and your luggage behind you falls on the floor, a nice person behind you will lift it up and hold it for you until you're done pissing.

21- No roaches. They're all dead from the cold weather by October.

22- No matter how cold it gets, it makes you feel better knowing there are people who are more screwed than you are. Thank God for giving us North Dakota.

23- In the snow, to keep the car heated, people keep their cars turned on and leave them to go shopping at the mall. (again, cars don't get stolen)

24- Old people are taken care of by their kids and grandkids.

25- A mother may need 10 seconds to remember the date of birth of one of her kids because she has ten of them.

26- All women over the age of 60 have milked at least 1000 cows in their lives.

27- If you drive on the freeway for longer than one hour you will certainly hit an animal and rip his body into 10 pieces.

28 - Kum and Go is the name of a big grocery store chain.

29- When a plane is in the sky everyone looks up.

30- You can tell the animal by smelling its feces.

31- Scotland, Arlington, Buffalo and Corsica are only two-hours away.

32- The car salesman works part-time as a nurse and on weekends as a bar tender.

33- You can insult anyone's mother or wife but never ever say anything bad about country music.

34- People pray in church for God to protect their cattle.

35- The whole state shares one area code: 605.

36- People wear snow boots (Bostar) to weddings.

37- It could be minus 10 degrees outside but sunny all day long

38- Even though everyone hates the French here, the capital's name is Pierre.

39- And I can tell exactly if you're a South Dakotan by the way you pronounce Pierre. ( and I'm not gonna tell you.)

40- Pierre, a very small city, has two time zones. Over there people can save an hour each day just by driving 4 miles to work.

41- Being a Middle Eastern in South Dakota is exotic. You're one-of-a-kind. People have never seen one like you before. Even if they think you're a terrorist they'll love and you protect you because you're so rare and special.

42- I've been living here 6 months and have already heard this a 100 times every time i travel, "You are the first person I meet who is from South Dakota"

43- The only reference people know from South Dakota is the movie Fargo. (and mind you: Fargo is in North Dakota, and the movie was actually shot in Minnesota).

44- You will have days where every woman you see is pregnant.

45- Everyone here has eaten at least one animal that they could not clearly identify what it was; they just shot it and had to cook it before dark.

46- People believe everything the doctor says even if it has nothing to do with medicine. (In case you visit me here, pretend that Gandhi was born in Jordan).

47- The Valentine gift is a brand new snow shovel.

48- The four seasons are only two, they're called winter and July.

49- When someone tells you, "you've got plenty of pop in your sac" that's not a compliment. They're just saying you have a lot Coke in your grocery bag.

50- Half the town is your family. The other half is your in-laws.

Haitiyyat

Help those who don't know you, who won't recognize you, who don't look like you, and who

may not even thank you, for that is the true giving.

Help Haiti.




As for today, at least 100,000 dead, and more dying.

UnCensored

If you think internet censorship did not exist in Jordan before "this law" was made, you don't know Jordan well.

If you think by cancelling this law nobody will be watching what's circulating on Jordanian blogs and websites anymore, you don't know Jordan well.

And if you think that Jordanians officials abide by laws, you don't know Jordan well enough.

Agree with mala2e6 here.

Cheers to all my readers WITHOUT EXCEPTION

The Right Stuff

I took a quick look at the 10 am appointment in my travel clinic. An empty chart except for one note by my assistant, "Going to Haiti, needs necessary vaccines and medications, booked his appointment urgently, Ok'ed by you"

The man arrived 30 minutes before his appointment. He filled the travel form. Clearly, my first question was, "Why are you going there ?

"We adopted a kid from Haiti, and after the earthquake we haven't heard anything about her. I will go there to look for her."

"For how long are you staying?"

"Not sure, at least 3 weeks, probably longer. It's OK to give me lots of medications, if I have extra I'll give them to people there"

And so I did. The man was my age, but he looked twice as old despite having no medical problems. It was evident that he had a very rough week. I told him about all the risks of going there. I gave him the printed travel warnings emailed to me from different agencies and he told me he understood all the risks. He wasn't referring to the girl as a poor girl who needed help. He was referring to her as his own daughter who went missing after a tragic earthquake.

People in Jordan are largely against adoption. Not only that, it's also illegal. Most Jordanians who are against adoption are people who never adopted (and obviously will never adopt), who don't have any family member who adopted children, never even met anyone who adopted anyone else and never knew and will never get to know any adopted person.

Yes, adoption is not for everyone. There are a lot of things that can go wrong along the way. Not all couples should be allowed to adopt. In fact, the majority of couples are not capable of adopting, let alone have their own children. But for the right couple, and there's a lot of them, adoption is a great gift both for them and for the poor kids who probably have no future other than engaging in civil wars and succumbing to disease and ignorance. A lot of these kids live in Jordan and other Arab countries, and they are not happy and will never be happy.

If you don't feel it's good for you, try at least to change the foreseen future of these kids and there are a lot of ways to do so, and please, don't stand as an obstacle to people who can adopt and save the life of another child. It's more precious that you can imagine.

كلوروفيل

اليوم عيد الشجرة
كل عام وانتم بخير
وبهذه المناسبة نعيد ونكرر أهدافنا المنشودة

نحو أردن أخضر عام ألفين

Injustice Served

You might have seen the clip of the brother of the UAE's president, Sheikh Issa Bin Zayid torturing a helpless tied Afghani worker for 40 minutes, nonstop.

Bassam and Ghassan Nabulsi, two Palestinians living in the US, smuggled the tape inside the US and ABC news showed it last year.

Here's a short clip of it:



Today, an Emirati court cleared Issa from any abuse charges.

Not only that, they charged they sentenced the Nabulsis for "drugging" the Issa and taping him torturing the man.

I have to add that the Afghani man was also raped after all the beating. He was tied, beaten up and raped.

I consider you a civilized person if you appreciate human rights, treat people as equals, stop the corruption, and give a chance for your people to have a better life. It doesn't come with building towers, artificial islands and bringing under-privileged women from Eastern Europe to work as sex slaves in your fancy brothels. As long as you treat Indians, Bengalis, Pakistanis, and anyone who works under you like a slave, you're still a douche bag.

Awareness for Testicular Cancer

Men of the World: Post the Color of your Kalsoon

Unfortunately, it looks like a lot of people, especially women, are desperate for anything that can cure or decrease the risk of breast cancer, and this is completely understandable. Prevention and early detection is the key. Self-breast exams are free and harmless and any woman can do it, that's why they're highly encouraged although their benefit is minimal at best. Mammograms often miss breast cancer, and recent guidelines suggest that they might be useless for the majority of women 50 years or younger.

Just like most cancers, a lot of factors have been linked to breast cancer are the unhealthy daily habits people do: smoking, eating fatty meals, lack of exercise, too much alcohol....etc. Not an easy thing to adjust.

The other big factor: genes. Can't change that.

I don't think the recent facebook statuses game raised any awareness or increased our knowledge about anything, but in case it did, I hope we'd start another campaign about not sharing too much information on facebook especially when you have 500 friends on facebook half of whom you'd barely say hi to if you see in real life.

And what's up with women being allowed to share whatever they want on facebook while men are called perverts and jerks if they do. Once my friends on facebook completely ripped me off for saying, "Just saw a 60-minute video of Maradona's best goals, I don't think my nipples have ever as hard before".

Equality people, equality.

(for the millions of women and the 2 guys who asked, no that's not me in the picture, sorry to make you sweat for nothing)

Some Clips About Our Triple Agent

Here's an interview (or attempts of having an interview) with his father and brother in Amman by the CNN correspondent:



Nisreen Shamayleh reporting for al-Jazeera...


Fox News

Terrorism in Saint Louis, Missouri

In a manufacturing company in St Louis, a terrorist armed with three different weapons randomly shot hundreds of bullets at innocent people killing three and injuring five.

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And now we got a confirmation that his name is: Timothy G. Hendron.

So to edit: A man opened fire at people at a manufacturing company in St. Louis killing three people and injuring five.

I am a Drug Addict who Molests Children and Beats the Homeless and Works as a Male Prostitute at Night

Again, this is much better than being known a Jordanian doctor these days.

Underestimating What's Underneath the Underwear

Since 9/11, America never hesitated to lose its collective shit after any threat to its security. The bomb that exploded inside the underwear of a Nigerian young man during his international flight last week was a reminder that America does not get it yet it.

Right after the most recent incident, a new regulation popped up that passengers on international flights won't be allowed to use the restroom during the last hour of the flight, because a terrorist would love to enjoy his flight with a bomb stuck to his butt for 12 hours and would only decided to push the button on during the last hour.

The Nigerian dude's father notified authorities that his son was becoming an extremist. The US authorities knew about it, and they still gave him a visa and did not add him to the no-fly list. Mind you: Nelson Mandela was placed on the no-fly list (by mistake), but this guy was not placed on it, by mistake I'd like to believe. Every single year, hundreds of physicians from different countries (especially Pakistan) are denied visas to enter the US even though they were accepted into residency program all over the US. However this Nigerian guy was welcomed in.

A few months ago, hell broke loose in the US when it was announced that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the "mastermind" behind 9/11, was going to be trialed on US soil and given the rights any human being deserves: a lawyer and the chance to defend himself. Republicans and some Democrats declared their lack of trust in their judiciary system when they claimed KSM should not be given the rights given to many other terrorists in the past in the US (Omar Abdul Rahman, Mosawi, Timothy McVay...etc)

The US would have been better off without Guantanamo. All these prisoners would have had the rights they deserved, and with the US judiciary system most guilty prisoners would have been found guilty and been thrown in jail or executed. You might get concerned if 2 or 3 slipped through the cracks and were real terrorists who were let go, but you have to understand that a lot of those were actually released from Guantanamo under Bush only to return to join Al Qaeda.
Besides all that, Americans maybe wouldn't have felt too bad that their government is torturing prisoners and dissing its own constitution and some of the things they believe in.

One scary piece of information: you can manufacture a bomb yourself by following simple instructions on the Internet. You can slip through security because metal detectors do not detect a lot of kinds of explosives. I will be flying tomorrow on new year's eve and I know for sure that I cannot get any bottle of shampoo, deodorant, hair gel or razor in my carry-on luggage. I may be able to use the bathroom but that may scare the hell out of everyone on board, and I have to take off my shoes and God know what else at security, but I know one thing for sure: I will not be feeling safer for one reason: terrorist are always one step ahead. The only thing that kept America passengers safe last week was a couple a vigilant passengers staying awake because of that crying baby that exists on each plane. It wasn't the CIA, it wasn't the FBI, and it wasn't even the dude's father who begged authorities to stop his son from doing something stupid. It was a lot of good luck. So good luck to you and wish me luck!

Prince Philip: Jerk

Every family, office, class, association has it loud mouth disaster that can't learn to think for 3 seconds before uttering something stupid or offensive.
The United Kingdom got one of those, his name is Prince Philip.

The latest incident occurred while honoring a blind British soldier injured during a bombing attack. The queen asked the soldier if he had any of his vision left. Prince Philip, next to her, answered, "Not a lot, judging by the tie he's wearing"

Other gaffes:
- While accepting a gift from a Kenyan woman, he asked her, "You are a woman, aren't you?"

- He was visiting a school and a 13-year old boy told him he wanted to become an astronaut. Philip answered him, "Well, you'll never fly in it, you're too fat to be an astronaut."

- Being with a British student, the student told Philip that he had just returned from Papua New Guinea, to which Philip responded, "You managed not to get eaten then?"

Very funny, but a jerk. We love those.

Photo of the Moment: This is Not an Airline Incident

Just a clarification: I'm not the Black Iris. I'm just stealing his titles.

Story of the picture: In the country/territory of Gibraltar (Jabal Tarek), the airport's only runway intersects with the main street in the country, so every time a plane is taking off or landing traffic on the street has to be stopped.


This photo says it all.

If this was Jordan the cars won't stop but may try to drive around the plane instead.

Facebook Gone Wrong...

Horrible/funny real statuses and replies from real people on facebook.
People, watch out!
(You have to click on the box to read it more clearly)

My 20-second encounter with Sarah Palin

I love Sarah Palin. After all, she is the reason Barack Obama was elected for president. She visited South Dakota, where I currently live, to get connected to her supporters, sign her new book and make an extra buck.
I decided to go for the book-signing because there wasn't anything more fun to do in Sioux Falls for a single guy on a Sunday night (or morning, afternoon...etc) -I have to mention that I had already gone to church that day-.

I also have to mention that I'm a whore for meeting celebrities. My only trip for the gym in Tucson was when Hillary Clinton went there for a speech during her campaign for the democratic seat, even though I was hoping she'd fail. I stood speechless when I saw Jack Nicholson right in front of me in a building in Philadelphia. Even when I pulled out my camera to take a perfect picture of him I could only manage to shoot a photo of some random ass. I also hope his new movie will fail. So it didn't come as a surprise when I found myself going to see Palin today.

I stood in a perfectly organized line of happy people. I don't know how will people meeting St Peter at the Pearly Gates will look like but they won't be as happy as the people I saw today. Standing in line started to become boring, I looked at the (happy) lady in front of me in line,
"So the only book Sarah can sign is her book, right?"
"Yes, don't give her another book to sign" she laughed
" I thought about giving her Obama's book to sign.. ha... haha"
She looked back at me as if I just called her a filthy whore.

I proceeded to see Palin. I started getting a little anxious, "what if she got me deported?" was the only thought in my head. They passed her the book, she signed it and gave it to me,
"What your name?"
"Fares"
"Fares, thank you for coming"
Thinking how everything she had done so far was helping Democrats win elections I told her, "thank you for the great work, keep it going"
"thank you very much", she said, and before I added anything else the security guy next to her looked at me and in his eyes I saw him saying, "move the f--k up or I'm gonna cut you into 400 pieces"

I moved up and bought the book for 18 dollars. Knowing that Donald Trump charges you one million dollars to spend one hour with him, I thought 18 dollars to spend 20 seconds with Sarah Palin was a good bargain. Besides the brief chat I got hold of something that will get a few bids on ebay in 2012 "An unopened, unread personally signed book by presidential candidate Sarah Palin".

Very Late, Very Well-Deserved: Best of the Best

Ballon D'Or for Lionel Messi

Seriously, Switzerland, Seriously, WTF??

Can anyone, even the most islamophobe on earth, explain to me how does a minaret threaten his security?

57% of the Swiss population proved yesterday to be very bigoted, hateful, racist and discriminatory, let alone stupid and dumb.


Even if they believed there were Islamic groups inside Switzerland planning on a terrorist attack, how will prohibiting minaret construction affect their plan? Would they go, "Oh we cannot have more minarets, our plans are screwed?"


The only message that 57% of Switzerland was saying was a fuck you to Muslims, nothing but fuck you. And when you send this message to part of your society many of them citizens of your own country, you cannot come later and blame them for failure of integration into this racist society and ask them to respect the values that are clearly exclusive to people from certain ethnicities and religions.


The people behind this vote were the same people who came up with this cartoon:

It translates into, "for more security" !!!

Got my point?

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.