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.

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. )

Happy 2010

I always like to be the first to do something

Plane Stupid

News broke last week that a Royal Jordanian flight from Athens to Amman was captained by a female Jordanian pilot, co-pilot and an entire female crew.

It's very pleasing to see Jordanian women doing so.

What's a little irritating is that we had to break a piece of news about it as if this was some kind of a new experiment we're doing. It looks like passengers were told that the entire crew were women only after they landed in Amman. One wonders if the intent was to prevent panic in the sky from people used to seeing women locked in a kitchen washing dishes and cooking maglobah?

It looks like the reaction of the passengers was something similar to, "Despite having people from the retarded backward stupid half-brained gender fly the plane, things went OK"

Meanwhile in the US, two male pilots engaged themselves in a long debate in the sky that they missed the airport by 150 miles before they noticed that and headed back to the airport. If those pilots were women, hell would break loose and people would start demanding stripping all female pilots from their flying licence.

Here's the clip

How a Jordanian Company Deceived the World

In 1976, A Jordanian company named Jerash International (JI) started manufacturing a local medication for diabetes named Vaxifine. It used the same formula used to make a similar European drug but made a very minor change: Instead of the normal sodium chloride used in the European drug they used a "fresh" substance extracted from sardines named MOTS (Monogammo-Oxadizone-Tellurtinase-Sulfatase).

The Jordanian Pharmaceutical Association refused to approve the use of this drug in local markets due to the presence of MOTS. In several studies conducted in the 1960s MOTS turned out to be present in large concentrations in the bone marrow of monkeyes that were dying from a unusual wasting disease. The drug never saw the light in Jordanian markets and was about to
be completely abandoned.

However, the CEO of Jerash International was former prime minister Bahjat Al-Talhouni. He refused to let 300,000 doses of the drug be trashed. No American or European country accepted the drug because of its MOTS content. However, through his connections, Talhouni was able to push the drug to be used in several African countries. By 1977 it was on pharmacy shelves in Botswana, Togo, Benin and the Central African Republic. By 1978, Nigeria and Mali approved the drug.

In 1979, a new virus hit the African continent. The only thing common among all the victims of this virus was them receiving at least a one-week supply of Vaxifine. Studies conducted at the University of Leeds and later Harvard University proved that Vaxifine caused a mutation in the human body that allows this virus to penetrate inside body tissues and cause irreversible damage.
In 1982, Jerash International stopped producing the drug. In 1983 it went bankrupt and shut down.

More than 450 studies have been published linking the exposure of MOTS, the same chemical Jerash International was using in Vaxifine, to the development of AIDS. However very few were able to make the link to Vaxifine and are just blaming the initial spread of HIV on sexual exposure by African citizens to monkeyes. Drug companies are not interested in funding any studies to how the virus started because that will not help them sell more drugs. A drug that acts as an antagonist to MOTS was developed in New Zealand but nobody is willing to use because it can terminate all the prophets the drug companies make from selling HIV drugs.
---------------------------------------------------

As most of you can tell, the whole story is fabricated. Jerash international and MOTS and Vaxifine do not exist. Bahjat Talhouni existed but he was never a part of something like this. I apologize for to his family for using his name like this. I just made up the story now. The coffee shop I'm sitting in is closing in 10 minutes otherwise I would have made up a more believable story. My point is all these stories about how H1N1 was made up in a certain lab and how vaccinations destroy people are all made up, with one medical study after another proving how safe and effective they are. But it only takes a worthless pig to make up something and put it on youtube for a bunch of uneducated people to believe it and avoid a life-saving vaccine that can usually protect them and protect them and their communities, and worse spread those lies among their family and friends. Yes pharmaceutical companies are godless money-worshipers, but they make up good things.

oh, the picture, just some candy for the eye.

H1N1 Influenza... Are You Scared?

Good news and bad news. Bad news first, it looks like H1N1 influenza is going to be worse than the regular seasonal influenza that kills 11 thousand people every year. Good news? it's not that much worse, at least for now.

Jordan recorded its first fatality in a 26-year old. The US is recording an unusually higher rates of death among influenza patients, higher than the annual average for this time of year. However, a fact remains that the vast majority of people infected with the virus will do just fine without any medical intervention.

Pandemics like this one are concerning, not only because they kill people but also because the virus behind them is new. We don't know much about it. Nobody knows whether or not the virus will gain more strength over the next 2 months or will get weaker and stop killing people. We don't know if the vaccine will be 100% protective for everyone who receives it. We don't know if children to pregnant women afflicted with the infection will suffer any long term lung damage. However, we know enough about the virus to try to tell that some people, as expected, are freaking out for wrong reasons.

Is the H1N1 Vaccine Safe?
Yes. For as much as we know, the vaccine is very safe. It would have been better if we were able to study it for a few years before it gets released, but there isn't anything there to suggest that it will cause any damage to body organ. The risk of not vaccinating can be very high.
People with weakened immune systems due to chemotherapy or other causes should not receive the nasal form. They can get the injection.

Does the Influenza Vaccine cause influenza?
No, it doesn't. If someone got the vaccine and 3 days later got the flu, it's a coincidence. If you saw a new Pepsi commercial and 3 days later you got the flu, don't blame Pepsi for it. It's the flu season, people get the flu.

Who Will suffer the most from the H1N1 Influenza?
A lot of people who died had other medical illnesses like cancer or severe lung disease. Pregnant ladies are definitely at a much higher risk of acquiring a severe infection. But a third group seems to be at risk: young healthy people in their 20s. Their immune system produces a very vigorous response to the infection that can damage their lungs and even kill them.

Patients might suffer a little bit from the virus itself but as they recover a bacterial pneumonia follows and that can rapidly fatal. A lot of the victims of the 1918 pandemic died that way.

I really really don't want to get the flu, what should I do?
1- Wash your hands continuously. You rub your nose everyday more than you can imagine. The influenza virus can live on your hand for hours.

2- Avoid people who have influenza. They are contagious for up to one weak after the onset of symtpoms.

If someone in the room is sneezing or coughing, leave the room. I just did so. A selfish girl in the cafe was sneezing and rubbing her red nose so I just gave her Ja7ra Karakiyyeh and left the cafe to sit outside. BE SHAMELESS, and if you have the flu yourself, stay inside your f-ing home until you stop sneezing or wear a mask if you really had to leave the house.

3- If someone in your family gets the flu, isolate him/her as much as possible. Don't share the same room, towels or utensils. If someone else in the family has a weakened immune system (from cancer, medications...etc) consider letting them take Tamiflu one tablet daily for 10 days to prevent getting the infection. If a pregnant lady is exposed to someone with influenza for a long duration she has to take Tamiflu. It's nine times more likely that she will suffer a severe disease than non-pregnant women.

And, take the vaccine, both the influenza and the H1N1 vaccine. They're approved for those 6 months to 65 years of age.

Feel free to ask questions.

We'll See You in South Africa

Breaking the silence to announce that we made it to the World Cup. I know that teams like North Korea and Paraguay qualified months before we did, but I was so happy yesterday for the victory against Uruguay. Tough times like these make teams better.

In my opinion Argentina now deserved a rank of around 50 in the world, but this very team will win the World Cup under the leadership of the one and only giant, the king of football, the legend of talent, the emperor of excellence Mr. Diego Armando Maradona

Enjoy....

OUTBURSTS

It's been a wee full of outbursts and unacceptable public behaviors.
Here's a little preview:

1- The biggest one was a Republican Congressman from South Carolina named Joe Wilson (a.k.a douchebag) yelling at Oabam "you lie" during his speach. Nancy Pelosi, the lady sitting behind Obama, looked pretty upset and she looked like a school teacher who wanted to know who the hell was screaming so she'd bring him and kick his butt in front of everyone. Actually that's what she's trying to do today.



2- Serena Williams was playing in the semi-finals of the US open. She was doubled faulted by the line referee. She got really upset and started yelling at her, " "I swear to God I'm f-ing going to take this f-ing ball and shove it down your motherf-ing throat, you hear that? I swear to God."

The line referee complained to the main referee who gave that point to the opponent (Clistjers). That was the match point for Clistjers so she won the game and Serena was knocked out.


3- A 20-year old singer , Taylor Swift, won an award at the MTV award ceremony. While accepting the award Kanye West, uninvited, went on the stage and suggested that Beyonce deserved that award. Obama himself actually commented off-the-record on him next day with one word that described Kanye well: jackass.



and of course, you start getting jokes next day. Serena Williams is picking up that Congressman as her doubles partner. Kanye telling Patrick Swayze, "Listen I'm gonna let you die but Michael JAckson's death was the best this year".

And here's a nice mix of outbursts!

Gangs of Amman

Congratulations. We have our own gangs now. They're locally made and they serve local customers, now at Jabal Al-Natheef. Al-Jazeera is reporting (check here, in Arabic) on them.

You may think you know what a gang is, but think again. It's not just a bunch of outlaws who steal and maybe kill.

A gang OCCUPIES a neighborhood. It claims it as its own territory. Every store in that neighborhood has to pay a certain amount of money every month to the gang otherwise the store will be destroyed or worse, the owner can get seriously hurt. Nobody messes up with that gang. As the gang gets stronger, it will prohibit whoever they want from opening business there. Then it will disallow other people from walking there at night if they didn't want them to. Remember, it's their own territory.

Other outlaws living nearby will get jealous, and they will form their own gang, and start to take money from local stores. Those gangs get bigger. And because they want more territory, they will start looking at other neighborhoods aiming for expanding that territory. They may clash with other gangs and it can get bloody.

What does a gang need to form? Weapons, which are readily available in Jordan. They also need low-life people, and there's plenty of them. Poverty and unemployment definitely nourishes such environment.

Who can stop gangs? Policemen. But they're not doing anything here, for different possible reasons. First, the problem is widespread (yet), and as long as people are not taking the streets they won't do anything about it. Secondly, it's limited to pour areas, and most people who really have the authority to fight those gangs do not live there or even know anyone who lives there. Another possibility, is that those gangs are heavily-armed, dangerous ones, and the police is hoping for them to dissolve one way or another by... I don't know..... better education and opening a new mosque in the neighborhood?

Yes, Amman is becoming a big city, a scary one too.

Video of the Month

My worst snow-throwing experience was throwing a ginormous snow ball at a taxi driver while he was driving. He got so upset that he drove his car onto the pavement and tried to run us over.

Do you have a bad snow-throwing experience?

Finally, We're in the Semi-Finals

And the top three will go to the World Cup
(damn it, whenever I google Jordan and basketball I get images os some tall black guy)

Jordanian Women Who Don't Work

More and more Jordanian households are starting to depend on the working woman's income. Clearly, Jordanian women are smarter and get much better grades than men. However there remains a big chunk of Jordanian women who do not work.

I like to classify them into certain groups.

1- The Born-To-Get-Married

Those women have no skills. They finished high school but they shouldn't have. Some of them got a college or a university degree afterwards and they shouldn't have, but they really have no skills. They have tried hard sometimes to learn something but they couldn't manage to be useful and no sane work place would hire them. They are the women who studied business but know nothing about business, studied English but can't speak it ....etc. They are everywhere. These women don't work and they shouldn't. They were born to find a good husband and be a great cook and raise children. Strangely enough most of these women end up marrying a loser, their kids go to jail and their cooking is awful.

2- The Marriage-Abused

Those women were working at one point and having a good time but they married a rich husband. He kind of forced them to stay home because the vast majority of Jordanians- men and women alike- believe a woman should not work unless she and her husband needed money. The man is usually kind enough to tell her she needs to stay home as a condition for marriage. Most women agree.

3- The Work-Abused

This a silent group but I believe it's a big one. It includes women who really work their ass off day and night and do very well at their job, but they're not appreciated. They're underpaid, made fun of, talked about in the office for whatever reason, and even sexually harassed. They try working at other places but they face the same difficulty everywhere until they realize they live in a society that looks down on women. When they try to speak up, they're 45 and single and pissed and people think they're pissed just because they're single. In Jordan they become angry and depressed. In the US they become lesbians.

4- Mothers

These women worked because they loved to work, mostly, or they just needed the money, or they just wanted to go somewhere to meet a guy, or they just wanted to work so people won't call them losers, or because their parents needed the money or because normally once you finish college you have to work. Once they got married and had kids, they voluntarily decided to stay home and raise their kids. Many of them have a part a time job, or join a Jordanian woman society, one of those societies that keep Dunes club from getting bankrupt.

5- The Scum of the Earth.

This group is getting bigger. It includes women who got married, usually very recently, who decide to stay home for no obvious reason and do nothing. They have a degree, they have a supportive husband, they even have a maid, and they own a car, and they have worked before and are very healthy, but they decided to not work. I feel ashamed when I remember that I belong to the same animal kingdom that includes those wastes of skin. These women are the reason we have drought, volcanoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural disaster like Jad Chouari.

Work Embarrassment

I was at the mall. I stopped by Macy's and bought myself a nice shirt and a couple of great good old fashioned kalaseen. When buying a kalsoon I don't just sneak it in the bag, I open the packet and take out the kalsoon and raise it up in the air to see the reflection of the light from its shining cloth while nauseated people stare at me in utter disgust. I got the shirt and kalaseen and went home.


Next day at the clinic I saw Pam, our physician assistant.

"So Doctor, you were at Macy's yesterday?" She asked
" Yes!" I said
"I work there"
"Really?"
"Yes, I work as part time there."
"Great"
"I saw you bought yourself a nice shirt?"
"Yes.... I actually.... did.... buy a nice..... shirt"

That was followed by 10 seconds of silence.

"Ok doc, Mrs. Andrews is your first patient today, I'll check her in the room"

Dhaaaaa

An actual quote from CNN's website:

" A Pennsylvania man who walked into a gym aerobics class and opened fire, killing three women and wounding nine before turning the gun on himself, "had a lot of hatred in him," police said Wednesday. "