Blog Action Day 2009 – Climate Change

Care to act?

Today is Blog Action Day, this year’s theme is Climate Change which many of you know is happening rapidly. Sea levels are rising at an increasing pace, and we’re losing glaciers and polar ice caps. Global action on the subject is a long way from being satisfactory or effective. The US demands China to lower their CO2 emissions because China is the worst offender when it comes to emissions. On the other hand, China demands that the US lower emissions since the US has the largest carbon print per capita. The blame game goes on and in the end  – which is coming a lot sooner than we projected – all of us are losing.

For Fuckin’ Fuck’s Sake! Cut it Out!

Karim Arbaji has just been sentenced to three years in prison for defending human rights in Syria. Meanwhile, the Syrian blogosphere is bustling with posts advocating admirable and worthy campaigns. There’s the astounding campaign against masturbation, the noble Blogging Week for Moral Decay, and the enlightening campaign for Blogging Against Fossilized Thinking.

The background of this story is this post by Abu Fares, a response ridiculing the infamous call for a campaign against masturbation. The commentators on that post eventually came up with their own ideas for  random blogging campaigns. In essence to further mock that blogger, and the perceived religious bloggers he’s associated with.

I have to say that upon reading about the anti-masturbation campaign I cracked up. Also, I posted about it on Global Voices, sans-sarcasm. Some people were amused by the idea and tweeted the link of the article and a friend of mine wrote to me saying that the campaigner is likely to have a crowd supporting his campaign that you could fit in a phone booth. So, many people find – me included – that idea outrageous, But does that warrant the ridicule of the blogger? Does that make it ok to put aside all the great words and thoughts I’ve seen many Syrian bloggers write on each of their blogs to combine forces to fight this supposed “common enemy” called religiousness?

Newsweek Article Suggests Appointing Bush as U.S. Mideast Envoy

Image via Wikipedia

Gregory Levey suggested in the Newsweek today that President Obama should appoint George W. Bush as his Mideast envoy to gain the trust of Israelis in order achieve the American “wish list” with the Israeli Government. The “full-court press” wishes are the following:

They want Israel to stop expanding settlements; to stop building Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem; and for hawks in the government to chill out while the U.S. is negotiating with Iran.

So Mr. Levey suggests that the U.S. needs to acquire Israeli trust in order to stop the illegal settlements, illegal Judaization of Jerusalem, and to have Israeli permission to have talks with Iran. The absurdity of his suggestion is only matched by a fact he mentions to justify his outrageous suggestion:

In the history of U.S.-Israel relations, probably no president has earned adoration and unequivocal trust from Israel like Bush.

It strikes me that the U.S. President that was considered by the rest of the world as the worst (and most stupid) U.S president in history was the most popular among the Israelis. His achievements were: dragging the U.S. into two pointless wars and promoting anti-American sentiment in the world like never before, and right before his second term was over he practically destroyed the American economy to the extent they had to borrow astronomical sums of money from CHINA to keep the economy going. Of course he was rewarded by a flood of jokes on his expense by late night comedy shows and a sewage plant that was honorably named after him.

Yet of course:, Levey continues with another gem:

During the Bush years, Israelis were consistently among the few foreign populations that gave the American president high approval marks—often in far greater proportion than Americans themselves.

It appears, according to Levey, that the measure of a good American president is how much the Israelis love him, regardless of the catastrophes he brings onto the very people who elected him. After all, voters are dismissible once the elections are won. A better alternative would be that Bush becomes the  honorary Israeli president since he has unprecedented approval rates there and they’re practically fawning over him, although I’m sure the trend would be reversed if this were really to happen . This alternative suggestion, though absurd, is a much superior solution to the Middle East problems than Mr. Levey’s well-thought-well-written plan.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Letter from Europe: Telling Israel No: Obama’s Bold Move (nytimes.com)
• Obama lifts US image around world (dailykos.com)
• Obama to Bibi Today: Stop Building In East Jerusalem (tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com)

Life’s Residue

Image by Leonard John Matthews via Flickr

Sometimes I wish I don’t have such a capacity for details. My brain cells are always engaged in computing the unsaid words,unannounced actions, hidden motives. I have repeatedly knew certain people’s future actions and reactions, even way before they even knew or decided on a course of action. Sometimes, even when they vehemently denied the possibility of such things happening, ridiculing me for assuming that they even could or would do such a thing.

It’s as if my mind is always looking at the “dark side of the moon.” My unfathomable mental tendency to reading between the lines if I may say so often renders me oblivious to the lines themselves. I unconsciously put great effort into understanding the silence that I miss what is being said. That is partly due to my belief that we as individuals are prone to misrepresenting what we think, want or do. It’s not uncommon for a person to have someone that they think knows them better than they know their selves. It’s simply because a proactive external observer (such as myself) to isolate the noise, the minute details that cloud the persons own senses and judgment.

I more often than not wake up with a headache and a recollection of conversations, readings, even internet surfing that my brains cells were simulating and calculating instances of real life in my sleep. I try to rest but my brain firmly rejects my offerings.

Growing up people often viewed me as “shy” and “unsociable” because of my prolonged silences around people, be it a crowd or a single person. I thought of myself as a listener not a talker. This lead to me knowing people around me more than they knew me, but personally I thought of it as being more to my advantage.

I often find myself anxious or upset over situations that I only dreamt up. Regardless of how many times I my doubts were in place, my thoughts accurate; Regardless how many times I correctly managed to rebuild fragments of overheard conversations, I live in constant doubt. Life is not always pleasant when you take everything with a grain of salt. life is a totally different monster for a skeptic. I miss peace of mind, or do I?

My mind lives off the residue of life.

Blogging for a Cause: Global Voices Advocacy

As a part of Zemanta’s “Blogging for a Cause” month, I would like to pay homage to Global Voices Advocacy, a non-profit organization and sister project of Global Voices Online. Global Voices Advocacy, or “Advox” as it is affectionately called, seeks to advocate on behalf of the rights of bloggers and journalists. It is often the first major source to break stories (such as LinkedIn’s recent block of Syrian users or the arrest of Iranian-Canadian blogger Hossein Derakhshan) due to the fact that it has a number of on-the-ground resources in various countries around the world. Advox is very effective at what it does on a relatively small budget, and is definitely a cause worth supporting.

This blog post is part of Zemanta’s “Blogging For a Cause” campaign to raise awareness and funds for worthy causes that bloggers care about.

When the Chinese Come to Town

Lock down all your traditional handicrafts workshops!

Visitors to Damascus can no longer visit the shisha/hookah/arkileh workshops, they’re off limits to tourists now. but why? one might ask. The story goes as such: one day Chinese tourists go visit one of those workshops with cameras and camcorders, regular tourist gear. Nothing scary there, yet!

The next thing the craftsmen know, and to their own dismay, is that China is flooding world markets with the same product at a cheaper price effectively taking a huge chunk of their market share. The only thing the poor guys could do do is ban all people from visiting their workshops in the hopes of preventing a future infiltrator from copying their trade secrets James Bond style.

After this unfortunate incident it is advised that craftsmen go after any camera-wielding-tourists with a stick. Unless, of course they make canes for a living. This is necessary to help the competitiveness  the national industry sector, well except for the tourism industry I guess.

Where will they strike next?