These are ten useful tips for effective activisim no matter what the issue is; Health, peace, environment, anti-poverty…etc.
1. Know What You Want
2. Know Who To Ask
3. Know What You’re Talking About
4. Be Polite, Personal, Thoughtful, and Rational
5. Pick a Method of Communication that Works for You and Your Message
6. Know When to Ask
7. Don’t Underestimate the Value of Staff
8. Follow Up
9. Understand the Limitations of the System
10. Have fun!
[Details: SpeakOut]
An Arabic language “Discovery” channel will be launched soon according to Kuwait’s information minister, Anas Al-Rasheed, who announced the news in London this week while attending a conference about “Extremism and Terrorism”.
The objective of the channel, according to the minister, is to increase the Arabic public’s awareness and interest in science and culture in an effort to naturalize media outlets that support or incite extremism.
The announcement came during a panel discussion on the third day of the conference, which debated incitement in the “media” with regard to terrorism.
I agree that media play a big role in shaping the thoughts of the people and in making them more open to, or against, the ideas of extremism and terrorism.
Anyway I don’t see how Discovery Channel will solve the problem.
Ok it’s got all these cool programs that will raise scientific and cultural awareness for the people who will watch it, as well as do some minor brainwashing, but then they switch to a channel that is pushing destructive ideas at them and we’re back at zero.
I think this is a good idea for its own reasons, and maybe as an option to pull people away a bit from other channels, but it’s no big breakthrough solution.
The solution lies in a lot of different places that have to be touched upon simultaneously.
[Source: Asharq Alawsat]
[Via: Saudi Jeans]
Last night we watched Madagascar, a DreamWorks SKG animation, voiced by Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith and Cedric the Entertainer.
The movie is about a gang of four spoiled zoo animals that find themselves on an adventure in the wild of Madagascar.
I’ve seen the trailer a number of times and have been really looking forward to watching it.
And it turned out really cool, even though I thought it would be just a bit funnier, but I really enjoyed it.
I loved the psychotic penguins, they totally rock and are so funny! They have to be spinned off in a movie of their own.
I think this is one of DreamWorksSKG’s best animations yet. Something I like in their animations are the pop culture references, whether it’s in Shrek, Shark Tale or Madagascar.
I give this movie a rating of: 7/10.
1. Read or listen to something that motivates you every single day.
2. Keep a journal of your daily progress and carry it with you wherever you go.
3. Make goals and re-write them every day.
4. Keep track of every person you meet.
5. Begin investing a portion of your income today.
6. Begin looking for opportunities to build passive income (money that you don
US President George Bush planned to bomb Arab broadcaster Aljazeera, British newspaper, the Daily Mirror reports, citing a Downing Street memo marked “Top Secret”.
The five-page transcript of the pair’s talks during Blair’s 16 April 2004 visit to Washington allegedly shows Bush wanted to attack the satellite channel’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar and that Blair talked him out of it.
The attack would have led to a massacre of innocents on the territory of a key US and Western ally and enraged the Middle East, maybe even leading to bloody retaliation.
So this is what Bush plans for his strongest and closest allies!
And this is how the leader of the “free” world believes in “Freedom of press, media and expression”?!
Should be very reassuring…
[Sources: Daily Mirror, Al Jazeera]
According to a Pew Internet & American Life Project research, using a search engine is now the No. 2 activity for Web users.
The project also found that those likely to spend more time on search engines tend to be in their 30s and well-off.
Email remains the top internet activity for web users, and news is now the third most popular Web activity.
If I were to list my top 5 web activities, I guess they’d be:
1. News
2. Search
3. Email
4. Blogs
5. Chat
I almost get all my news off the net, find it easier to search for things on the net than bother to remember them, still have to use email although I’m starting to hate it, love blogging and reading blogs, and well it’s always nice to have the occasional chat with friends.
Last night I watched Stealth, an action, adventure thriller, as they call it, featuring Jessica Biel, Jamie Foxx and Josh Lucas.
The movie turned out better than I expected. The trailer actually doesn’t do it justice.
I really liked the flight scenes, they were very well shot, and the fighter jets looked awesome in action. The explosions looked cool too.
The characters were pretty well developed for an action movie, which is good for a change.
Other than that, the story isn’t something that extraordinary, revolving around three pilots and a renegade AI driven fighter jet.
The movie was directed by Rob Cohen, the guy behind ‘XXX’ and ‘The Fast and the Furious’. I personally think this is his best movie so far.
My rating for this movie would be: 6/10.
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) ranked 20 countries on 15 indicators of political and civil liberty.
The EIU scored each country on a 10-point scale, awarding one point for the least political freedom and 10 for the most.
The indicators used to score freedom in each country are: Election of head of government, Election of parliament, Fairness of electoral laws, Right to organise political parties, Power of elected representatives, Presence of an opposition, Transparency, Minority participation, Level of corruption, Freedom of assembly, Independence of the judiciary, Press freedom, Religious freedom, Rule of law, and Property rights.
The results came out as follows:
|
1. Israel 8.20 2. Lebanon 6.55 3. Morocco 5.20 4. Iraq 5.05 5. Palestine 5.05 6. Kuwait 4.90 7. Tunisia 4.60 8. Jordan 4.45 9. Qatar 4.45 10. Egypt 4.30 |
11. Sudan 4.30 12. Yemen 4.30 13. Algeria 4.15 14. Oman 4.00 15. Bahrain 3.85 16. Iran 3.85 17. UAE 3.70 18. Saudi Arabia 2.80 19. Syria 2.80 20. Libya 2.05 |
[Source: BBC]
Last night we had the 8th Tunisian blogger meetup at Biwa in Les Berges du Lac, and as usual it was a lot of fun.
What made this meetup even more special is that we had some international guests with us, which was really great and such a pleasure for us all.
Our international guests were: Rebecca MacKinnon, Jeff Ooi from Malaysia, Mite Nishio from the Dominican Republic and Isam Bayazidi from Jordan.
The other blogs represented in this meetup were: Adib, Mouse Hunter, Infinity, Evil Drako, Blogeuse, Jaz in the city, Tom, AquaCool and Subzero Blue.
We also had some non-bloggers with us who we’re working on pushing into blogging 😉
I would like to send a special and big thanks, in behalf of myself and all the bloggers, to my new good friend from the Dominican Republic Mite Nishio for the very nice gifts he brought with him to the meetup.
The meetup started at 8PM and went on until 1AM. We had a nice dinner together and talked about so many things; from blogging and stories surrounding blogging, to ideas for Arab blog-related projects, to Merengue and music from the Dominican republic, to the Tunisian and Arab blogosphere, to places to visit in Tunisia, to capital punishment, to so so much more.
As usual it’s always great to meet bloggers offline and to connect with them on a personal level and just enjoy some quality time together, forget about blogs a bit, have a good laugh, discuss different issues…etc.
I personally extremely enjoy these meetups which are getting better one by one.
Last night, we also talked about the next blogger meetup that will be held next month, and that will be a really cool one. We’ll be posting the details about it soon.
