A Visit to Washington D.C. and Some Pictures

I visited D.C. for a medical conference 2 weeks ago and stayed there for an additional couple of days to visit the museums there. Regardless of what interests you in life, you'll find a lot of things to do and places to visit there. It's totally worth staying there the longest you can.

One of the places I enjoyed visiting the most was the Newseum, which opened 6 months ago. It's a museum that takes you through all the major world events in the past century , even before that, and how the media covered those events.

Plenty of images, tapes and invaluable collections.

Here are some photos that you may find interesting:

This is a poem hand-written by Saddam Hussein.

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Remember Daniel Pearl, the American journalist who was kidnapped and beheaded in Pakistan a few years back? This is his passport and laptop.

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The front page of the San Francisco Chronicle, a day after the foundation of the United Nations-------------------------------------

Part of the antenna over one of the World Trade Center towers, behind which were dozens of front pages from different newspapers following that day.

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At the White House people can demonstrate, you'll almost always find some demonstration there.

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In the first gulf war in 1991, the coalition troops struck a weapon factory in Iraq. Peter Arnett from CNN later revealed that it was actually a milk factory for children and showed this packet of milk from the factory to prove that. Self-explanatory.

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The grave of John F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline at the Arlington Cemetery.

The Bi-Monthly Video: Mussolini's Hanging Body

This is a news bulletin from 1945, following the execution of Benito Mussolini. He was executed, then his and his mistress' body were hung in the streets of Rome for everyone to come and kick or spit on it. You could tell he was not a very popular guy.

This clip is a bit graphic. I would label it PG-7, if your kid is younger than 7 don't let him see it. If he's 8 or older it's great to watch.



This comes as another addition to my bi-monthly youtube clips which I consider very important and have less than 500k views on youtube.


(N.B. To see the actual execution, click here

El Diego

This is great. Diego Armando Maradona was appointed the new coach for the national team of the 2010 World Champions, Argentina.

On paper, Maradona is the worst kind of coach that any country can have. Despite being the best player in any sport that ever existed on any planet, his life afterwards had nothing remarkable in the world of football. His coaching experience was a disaster. He absolutely has no qualification to become a coach for any national team and I'm absolutely ecstatic that he has become the coach of my favorite team.

Why? Because he's Diego Maradona.

That's good enough.

Sick America, Very Sick America

Right now, I have a patient dying from an infection that is eating away her back bone very slowly. It's an infection that could have completely cured, but her insurance company did not approve the expensive antibiotic that she needed.

A doctor ordered that excellent antibiotic a few months back, but the insurance company automatically switched that antibiotic to a much cheaper drug with much less efficacy. They knew it wasn't going to work as well, but it was cheaper. Theoretically it works for this infection (and maybe that gave them the guts to do what they've done) but clinically we know it does a very poor job. Most physicians would have seen that coming.

There are many medical conditions that used to be deemed incurable in the past that are more easily managed these days because some of the new drugs we have. I sometimes prescribe these drugs to my patients only for them to be rejected by their insurance companies. I have to get on the phone for a long time and sign different forms in order to convince the accountant of the insurance company that my patient needs that drug.

Did you get that?

The physician has to convince a non-medical person what the best treatment for that patient is.

Many of these applications are rejected, and some people get sicker and die because of that. I saw it a lot and will continue to see it. All doctors, nurses and pharmacists in America see it and feel it every single day and it has become very frustrating.

It gets much worse. Most hospitals now have hospitalists. Hospitalists are physicians who work for medical groups. These medical groups are only after business. They hire a big number of hospitalists, sometimes hundreds of them, to make contracts with different hospitals in town to send their physicians there. They wouldn't send their hospitalists to any hospital unless a large profit was guaranteed. Fair enough. But how do they make money?

They keep a very high turnover of patients, so they tell the hospitalists to admit and discharge the largest number of patients everyday to and out of the hospital. They don't give a shit about their patients' health. If a patient stays longer than 48 hours in the hospital they start bugging the physician about it. It gets worse. They can form some "grading" system to see which physician generated the most money for the group. They hope to indirectly force the physician to start adopting policies in his/her work that can generate the most money instead of practising sound medicine that will help his patients. These hospitlists are now practising medicine that is in the best interest of their group instead of the best interest of their patients.

Drug companies have a lot of money. In one year (I think it was 2004) they spent 5.5 billion dollars in meals and gifts (pens, books...etc) to health care workers. No company would spend that amount of money if they didn't know it was going to affect the prescriptions physicians will write for, and physicians (me included) always welcome these drug representatives. Everyone likes free stuff, and they don't ask us for anything in return. They probably saved me a 100 bucks of pens, and hundreds to a few thousand dollars in books, and registration for conferences. I'm sitting now in my office and on the table there is a FAMVIR stapler, Mycamine pens, a book by Wyeth, and I'm wiping my Pfeizer stethoscope with the Noxafil tissues and looking at those little wireless Avelox mouses on the bench.

All the people I'm talking about are those with decent health insurance plans who have to fight with their companies whenever they get sick. There is another group of people, a very large group. That includes Americans who do not have a health insurance, and the 6 million or so who lost their health insurance under the current administration. Many of those people are hard-working people. They are either self-employed like my friend who works 7 days a week from early morning to late night, sometimes driving 4 hours a day to his place of work. There are others who work for companies that does not provide them with health insurance. If you want to purchase health insurance on your own in the US, you have to pay close to a 500 dollars a month. I have a friend who had cancer (is cured now) who will have to pay 6000 dollars a month if he wanted to purchase his own health insurance, so he's now stuck in a job that he hates so much just because they provide him with a less expensive insurance.

Take this.... the number one reason for bankruptcy in the US is medical bills. This is the country that has contributed to medicine more than any other country in the 20th century and it can

not treat many of its own sick people. This is America, stacks of money and stacks of sick people.

I Have Genital Herpes

....not really, but that would be less painful than watching Leonardo Di Caprio speak Arabic.

The movie "Body of Lies" isn't bad at all, here are some things I noticed in the movie that a director like Ridley Scott should have consulted someone about (with very little spoilers):

1- I was glad to know that the main character's name in the movie was "Faris". It was very disappointing to see the spelling was Ferris. I know Americans screw my name on daily basis but to take this to Hollywood was not expected.

2- It's very rare for an Iranian nurse to work in a Jordanian governmental hospital. And the uniform she was wearing is something I've never seen in Jordan, at least since the days of Al Manahel.

3- It's not socially wrong for women to shake hands with men in Jordan. Even the women who don't shake hands with men don't consider it outrageously shameful for other women to do so.

4- With all due respect to our Jordanian Intelligence, I don't they can refuse to communicate with the CIA or offer protection to any of their agents if he was being chased away and beaten up in the middle of the desert.

5- The Arabic in the movie, oh the Arabic. This is not the first Arabic movie Hollywood produces and they haven't learned yet that the Arabic being used in the movie is not really Arabic. Other than "Eben el Kalb" I didn't understand any Arabic in the movie.

6- I know the movie isn't supposed to serve as a tourism ad for Jordan, but Jordan looked really like one big ugly place in it. And that wasn't even Jordan. It was Morocco, some ugly place in Morocco.

7- How on earth did Jordanian policemen cross borders to Syria? I'm expecting a political crisis between Jordan and Syria for the next 400 years just because this movie suggested we did.

Ok I'll cut Scott some slack, he's not supposed to know these very details, although he's supposed to hire someone who knows them. And that Arabic of Di Caprio, man ..... it's torture.

Anyway, thanks guys for reading- shoookarran ala al keraaa'a
Good-bye: Ahhassalaham ooooo halaykooooom

The Scary Arabs

If you haven't heard it well, if you were dumb enough to not understand what this conversation was about, the woman is saying she didn't trust Obama saying he was an Arab. She threw "Arab" as an insult as if it was equivalent to criminal or pedophile.

OK, there are racists in American, some low-life idiots who haven't read a book since they've graduated from third grade, we'll always see them around, reminding us that the drawbacks of democracy is having those human-looking creatures with single-digit IQs the right to vote as everyone else.

But the response from the Senator who has a decent chance of becoming the next president was despicable. "He's not an Arab. Obama is a decent family man"

To any American who doesn't trust Arabs, stop sending your kids to US universities because these elitist institutions are filled with well-educated Arab professors. Stop bragging about going to the moon because NASA has plenty of Arab scientists and if you get sick think twice before stopping at any emergency room because there are many many Arab doctors in almost every hospital in the United States. Well maybe not all hospitals, just the good ones. They should stop watching press conferences by the US presidents because Helen Thomas, one of the most famous journalists in US history and an Arab, may jump in with an embarrassing question. They should listening to the America top 40 because it was founded by an Arab.

The list goes on with many Arabs who have served the US not asking what their country could do for them but what they could do for their country (first said by an Arab, not JFK). All what they wanted back is some appreciation, some acknowledgment that they're just as equal as everyone else. And when someone throws racist remarks against them on national TV they would have expected s Senator who claims to be patriotic to defend the very basics of being an American but instead he continues to bash Arabs, placing himself before his country. I'm hoping for McCain to fall (and maybe break a hip) on November 4th and for Americans to realize that Arabs will always be around in the US, and if they didn't like that they should go back to their original countries.

On the US Elections

** Both McCain and Obama proved to be hypocrites when it came to choosing their vice presidents. Obama claimed to not have been corrupted by staying too long in Washington but ended up picking one who was. McCain kept scaring people by how inexperienced Obama was only to pick someone without experience (or common sense, knowledge...etc) to be his running mate.

** There is a bunch of Americans who claim to be still undecided who they want to vote for. Every election this group of attention-seeking morons with subnormal IQs emerge claiming to be still thinking who should they vote for. This long campaign has been going on for more than one year. There's nothing the two candidates will say, I guarantee you, in the next 30 days that they haven't already said a million times before. Those idiots who are still thinking should stay home on election day and watch re-runs of some reality show.

** Many women in America still think like an oppressed minority. Sarah Palin, despite being on the total opposite to Hillary Clinton on every issue, still attracted some votes from Hillary supporters only for being a woman.

** Sarah Palin is the female version of George Bush.

** It's sad to see the absence of a third party in these elections. In almost all democratic countries, smaller parties get to participate in elections actively and they gain seat in Parliaments depending on how many votes they get. In the US these votes are trash, they're completely wasted.
In 1992 Ross Perot had 19 million votes, and in 1996 had 8 million, all gone.
In 2000, Ralph Nader had 2.8 million votes, people voting for the Green Party, yet nobody from that party gained seats in the Parliament.
Then there's that electoral vote system, which seems unfair to me. It's what allowed George Bush to become president even though he won less votes than Al Gore in 2000.
** Again, Republicans want Americans to vote out of fear. In 2004 it was fear of Bin Ladin, now they want them to be afraid of the black man whose middle name is Hussein.

** Among these elections, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the rapidly falling economy, Fox News is now reporting about a Santa Claus in an elementary school telling 3rd grade students that Santa Claus does not really exist. They also brought 2 people who argued extensively whether or not that was appropriate. At the moment Americans start really thinking of the issues, Fox News emerges to remind them that they should remain stupid and continue discussing stupid issues.

Finally, youtube has not been McCain-Palin's best friend. Here are some clips that I find very interesting to watch:

First, here are some of Sarah Palin's comments during an interview. This woman is dumb.



Another embarrassing tape, when McCain in a speech asks "Who is the real Barack Obama?" and some in the crowd scream "terrorist". Not cool.


And here's Sarah Palin trying to connect to voters who were born in the 12th century but having asking her pastor to protect her from witchcraft.

What I Heard in the Vice Presidential Debate

Palin, "Israel is our best friend in the Middle East, and we have to open our embassy in Jerusalem"

Biden, "Everyone should know, there is no better friend for Israel than Joe Biden"

Palin, "Well I'm glad Joe that we agree on something"

....... and they disagreed on everything else.

America's economy is falling apart. Arab countries have an incredibly large amount of money. I'm not an economist but I have the right to believe Arabs could have really affected the outcome of these elections in a way that the above debate would have never occurred.

The Shock About the Culture Shock

New immigrants to the US face what's known to many as the culture shock. This has been the case for so long. These days the shock is not too strong as it used to be, especially in our very small world where most immigrants know what America is like before even stepping in the US Embassy to obtain a visa.

The only true culture shock I faced when I first traveled to the US was how kind and humble Americans were especially when I expected hem to be very arrogant.... I wonder what gave me that first impression?? .... and polite. Very polite, much more than us Jordanians. That was shocking to me. Otherwise, I wasn't too shocked from anything else I saw or experienced.
It's a different story as I travel inside the US.

In California, and I saw a vehicle "Running on Vegetable Oil" .... vegetable oil! And then a gas station for "compressed natural gas" whatever that is. I was in South Dakota and went to their Walmart and was really shocked to see no Latinos or African Americans there . I was shocked when I traveled to Chicago and had people completely ignore me when I'd ask them about directions, as if I was transparent. I had to block someone's way to the train so she'd stop to tell me where the hell Wabash street was (and boy was she frightened to death when I did that)...and the toll roads, where you have to pay little cash to continue driving on what's supposed to be the good highway. How about Kentucky, where I couldn't really understand the English half the people were speaking while none of them could understand the English I was speaking.

Also the fact that Americans are not one thing was a bit shocking. In some places in the country all people dress alike, think alike, have the same habits day and night. Their houses, schools, children, farms, cars and the names written in their voting booths are all the same. However in other places you'll find a trans-sexual well-moustached person with gigantic breasts covered with tattoos from head to toe, a Rabi, an old prostitute and a middle-age conservative mother sitting next to each other in the train. They may even work in the same place.

The shock about the culture shock is that once you think you've been through the classical culture shock, you're faced with many other ones as travel inside this big country and learn more about it, which makes you often think of it as several smaller countries with so many smaller nations who miraculously not only managed to live together but have taken pride in this diversity and used it effectively to bring their country together instead of ripping it apart.

Pictures I took: A little here and a little there

Here are some pictures that I stole from my facebook account,

This one I took in Monterey, California. In this little town with outstanding weather you can find old ugly small houses for 2 million dollars.

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This is Chicago, by Lake Michigan, it's really something. Never got sick of coming here.

However if you think of renting a car in Chicago, always consider this:

Of course some "Chicagans" will jumpt to say this is unfair: you can easily find places to park your car for 20 bucks.

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This is Tucson, which often surprises me as not being so ugly:

Finally, if you don't know what to get me from my birthday, go to what's labelled as "the biggest gift shop in the world" in Las Vegas and bring me this for 18 bucks. I really wanted this but thought to myself, "why pay for things you can get for free?"

Results of the 9/11 survery

I am about to delete the results of the Poll that has been on my blog since 9/11 because voting was over, but I liked to post the results just for history.

The question was: Who was behind 9/11 ?
46 readers replied, at least 2/3rds were readers from Jordan.

14/46 (30%) said it was Al Qaeda alone
8/46 (17%) said it was the US plus al Qaeda
10 (21%) said it was the US government
Nine (19%) said it was Israel
and 5 (10%) did not know.

Briefly, only 30% believe it was an act solely done by Al Qaeda, and more than half believe Al Qaeda has NOTHING to do it with it.

While I explained before that there are many questions marks about the response of the US government to these attacks, it is very hard to believe that those 19 men on the planes had nothing to do with it.

That's what we are great in doing. Denial. We're good in not admitting a problem. 9/11 has become a boring topic even for many Americans, but the lessons we should have learned from it will never get old. The fact that these attacks resulted in a very unjust war against an Arab country is not an excuse to not think properly and get blinded by the fact that at least, for one day, for one hour, a very small bunch of us acted irrationally.

Ok, enough with 9/11, enough with the past, let's get back to the future.

The Bi-Monthly Videos: 1967 and King Hussein

Here's a short and sad clip of late King Hussein right after the 1967 defeat.

This is part of Hareega's bi-monthly clips with less than 500k views on youtube that I believe are definitely worth-watching

The Mother of All Poems

To honor my readers I decided to share this beautiful poem reflective of my pure talent with them. Before you forward it to all of your friends and family do not forget to mention the reference. All Rights reserved to me.

Hareega (aka Al Akhtal Al-Kabeer)
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It's always the same old story,
dying without glory
And it's the end now my friends
of my beautiful life
good-bye my wife
I hated you with all my heart
you tore me apart
If there's one Satan up there
he's got a partner downstairs
Evil comes in pairs
At the Gates of Heaven I will be asked
Why I picked the spoiled brat
to be my wife, forgive me Lord
for I've chosen a biaatch
to mother my kids, but let it be
for all what I see
are angels smiling down at me
My life I adored
My wife I abhorred
Now I'm laying on my bed
with agony and dread
for my destiny I'm waiting
my thoughts are hibernating
inside my warm memory of broken dreams
shining through the vacuum with broken beams
...
Oooops... wait a second or two
I smelled something, like a rotten onion or a dirty shoe
I just farted my friends, a fart or two
and I feel better, wo-hooo
my colon was stimulated
I'm elated
for all the time I debated
if I was departing this empty world
I was just constipated
and now I'm born again
I'm born again
again
again

(Little Note: the above poem is not based on a true story. I don't have a wife or kids, and I'm not constipated. But I wanted to share this with you to inspire the coming generations and provide a material for literature students in universities around the globe)

The Jordanian Connection

I got a call late last night.

It was a friend

"Man, how do you spell kharshooqa?"
"What?"
"Kharshooqa, how do you spell that?"
"I don't know, what's a kharshooqa?"
"Not sure, but it was the song you were playing in your car"
"I see.....I think it was Shakhooqa"
"Ok I'll try this on yotube"
10 seconds later
"I still can't find the song"
"Try Shurkhooqa"
"Still can't find it"
"Type it in Arabic"
"Can't find it, who's the singer?"
"Not sure, I remember she had a Jordanian last name"
"Is she Jordanian?"
"No she didn't sound like it, but she had a Jordanian name"
"Ok where do I go from here?", he asked anxiously
"Try any Jordanian last name and put the word song after it"
"Ok"
"Try Tarawneh"
"Nothing"
"Ok Try Shamayleh"
"Nothing"
"Shawamleh"
"Nothing"
"Awamleh"
"Nothing"
"Majali"
"Nothing
"Zo3bi, they have Zo3bi in Lebanon"
"Nothing"
"Masri"
"Eh, ba3dain ma3ak"
"Just try Masri"
"Nothing. Nothing. Nada. Sbhu asawi?"
"Try Masarweh"
"Nothing, can you just listen to the song and tell me?"
"I'm at the hospital, can't do it"
"So what should I do?"
"Let me think"
.......
"OK search lebanese song, or sexy lebanese, or lebanese singer, or arabic song or arabic sexy something like that"
"Can't find anything, meshan alla, meshan alla, I need to find this song. I have to"
"Horani, Horani, Horani, I remembered, Dominique Horani"
"Whooooha"
"Whooooooooooooooooha"

"Try it"
"Yes that's it. You're the man"
"Ok now, do you realize it's midnight?"
"I know, I'm sorry, but I couldn't sleep without getting it out of my head"
"I totally understand"
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Here's the song Khashooka by Dominique Hourani, by the way she has a master's degree in business administration.

Nothing Can Bring US Together Like Brothers Like....

The Lehman
Brothers

Just hoping my ad will bring them out of bankrupcy.

This is Why You Should Stop Complaining About Royal Jordanian

I used to think that Royal Jordanian and Royal Wings were the only two Jordan-based airlines.
Apparently there are 5 other airlines based in Queen Alia Airport.
Let's talk about them:

1- Air Rum: They have 5 planes that travel to different countries in Africa and the Middle East.
They are blacklisted and banned from flying over the European Union because they operate below the essential safety levels.
Their website, however, mentions that they fly to Italy. I'm really hoping that the people updating their website aren't the same as those doing maintenance on their jets.

To tell how crazy this airline is, a pilot in 2005 faked an emergency landing in a Peruvian city just to allow the Gambian passengers on that flight to watch a football game Gambia was playing in Peru that night. Click here for details.

2- Teebah Airlines: A charter airlines owned by Iraqis, operating from Amman since 2004. Bought old planes from Delta Airlines. Another airline banned from flying over European Union soil because of sub-standard safety level. Its fleet consists of five jets.

3- Air Universal: This one is not banned anywhere, but somehow it ran out of air crafts!

Warning: the music on their website is ugly.

4- Jordan Aviation : this one seems to be better organized. It has service to different gulf countries, and it's not blacklisted !

5- Raya Jet: a private jet charter, looks fancy from inside.

6- Royal Wings: has one airbus that flies as far as Belgrade.

7- And of course, our lovely Royal Jordanian.

What's really bothering me is that the two blacklisted airlines are Sierra Leonan airlines. For some reason, the folks in Sierra Leone were welcomed to have their airlines based in Queen Alia airport in Amman, under Arab names like Teebah and Rum. That explains why they have flights to African countries where very few Jordanians are interested in flying to, like Niger and Benin.

(Addendum: Adoosh mentioned an 6th airlines, Royal Falcon which has unscheduled flights depending on demand. Currently they only fly to Baku, Azerbaijan)

Another Failed Attempt

Despite having a few people begging me not to write poetry, but some current events can really trigger you to hallucinate. :)
The day is twenty four hours
long, do I belong
to this world of rhymes but no song?
Many people, many lives
little value but so many strive
to survive
in this harsh atmosphere
and today they will blow the sphere
in Switzerland or France
can we advance?
when, inside, we're so empty
of sorrow we've got plenty
Are you sad, are you mad
Please Please.... elaborate
on why are you angry the world will evaporate
it was never born to be
it was never born for me
to see a happy day
but today it's going away
and today, I will be born
I will be born...

The 9/11s

I wish it never happened. It could and should have been prevented.

You may ask, how come I'm still remembering this event even though most Americans (82% on today's CNN poll) are not doing anything significant to mark it?

I don't believe in conspiracy theories. I do believe that it was those 19 low-life men that flew those planes into the towers and into the Pentagon, and doubt that the US government had an active role in bombing the towers or shooting the planes. I am buying all of this.

I'm just not buying anything from 9/12 afterwards.

I can't buy how the CIA could not have prevented this attack, or why wasn't anyone fired from the administration for not preventing them. Why wasn't anyone from the government held responsible in a country where it's "rumored" that every adult is responsible for his or her own mistakes?

How come all the warnings before the attacks were ignored, and different key figures in the government gave contradictory testimonies without being forced to say the truth?

How does the US expect the world to take it as an example for democracy when the very democracy brought criminals like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice into office, and the same democracy failed miserably to make them pay for the lies that wasted the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and shattered the whole country of Iraq.

There are several reasons for me to wish 9/11 never happened. It's the 3000 victims, and those who were murdered in retaliation. None of them should have died, and those responsible for their deaths were not held accountable and will never be held accountable in a country that claims to be the leader of the democratic world. They just proved that all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets, and that the first victim when war comes is truth.

Here are some sad clips and radio messages from that day, some include recordings from the hijackers and a flying attendant on the plane, and from a victim on the tower:

Paris Hilton Sex Arab Britney Nude Saddam Jew Photo Video Shakira Hot Free Hareega Bush Iran Man Men Girl Teen Obama Sexxx XXX Nokia TV Bin Ladin Sale

Sorry, but I just wanted to get more hits on my blog

Thanks for understanding

The Administration

Sort of Illegal!

In 2004, a company named Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) was operating in Jordan when it accepted 12 Nepalese men to work as kitchen staffs in Jordan. Once the men arrived to Jordan their passports were seized and they were forced to travel to work in Iraq. On their way there, they were kidnapped and killed and the videos of their murders were posted on the internet.

This is according to a lawsuit filed by the victims' relatives against KBR and their Jordanian subcontractors Daoud and Partner.

You can check the story in details on AFP and CNN and Reuters's websites.

I won't be surprised if it turned to be true.
Why not, when the victims involved were from Nepal, the citizens of which we consider sub-human just like those of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India.
Or when you know that they were poor, not hoping to return to their country without some savings to support them and their families, pushing them into accepting risks that did cost them their lives.

How does our government allow such companies to operate in Jordan? Does the hunger for profit blind us into tricking (actually forcing) poor naive men into doing jobs they didn't want to do.

And when you know that KBR is a subsidiary of the Dick Cheney-owned Halliburton, that makes it a little less surprising.

What's interesting, is that Daoud and Partners announced the cease of operations in Iraq in 2004 after two Jordanians workers in Iraq were kidnapped. It did so only after relatives of one driver threatened to chop off the head of the firm director!!

To the poor Nepalese I'm saying: start forming your own tribe in Jordan, that may be the only way you can protect your workers in Jordan.