Year: 2008

Queen Rania, A Vlogger On YouTube Against Stereotypes

Queen Rania - YouTubeQueen Rania of Jordan, has launched a YouTube channel in an attempt to reach out to the west and break down Western stereotypes about the Arab world.

Queen Rania, an outspoken advocate of women’s rights and education reform in the Arab world, aims to start a conversation with people in the West through this YouTube channel to try and break down negative stereotypes about Arabs and Muslims that have become especially widespread over the past years.

The conversation will go until August 12, which is International Youth Day.

The introductory video, that has been watched over 80,000 times since being uploaded last Sunday, can be viewed here.

“In a world where it’s so easy to connect to one another, we still remain very much disconnected. There’s a whole world of wonder out there that we cannot appreciate with stereotypes,” she says. “I want people to know the real Arab world – to see it unedited, unscripted and unfiltered – to see the personal side of my region – to know the places and faces and rituals and culture that shape the part of the world I call home.”

I think it’s a great and brave initiative from Queen Rania, who deserves nothing but the utmost respect for her efforts, and all the time and energy she has invested in some very important issues for Jordan and the Arab world.

[More: AquaCool, The Black Iris, ReadWriteWeb]

April 1st: The Annual Day Without Google

AltSearchEngines posted yesterday asking people to try, for one day, one of the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines; it can be one search engine, they can be several, the idea is just to give them a try, a chance, and see what life would be like without Google Search.

Day without Google

I think it should be a very interesting experiment to stay off from Google Search for a day, and try out other alternative search engines instead. It should show us what other options we have out there, how advanced and reliable they are, and how dependent we are on Google.

Personally, I’m going to try and use Clusty mainly today, and maybe some other engines if I need to search even more, but will be keeping away from Google Search.

Saudi Woman Killed For Chatting On Facebook

This is just unbelievable…

A young Saudi Arabian woman was murdered by her father for chatting on the social network site Facebook, it has emerged.

The unnamed woman from Riyadh was beaten and shot after she was discovered in the middle of an online conversation with a man, the al-Arabiya website reported.

[…]

Saudi preacher Ali al-Maliki has emerged as the leading critic of Facebook, claiming the network is corrupting the youth of the nation.

“Facebook is a door to lust and young women and men are spending more on their mobile phones and the Internet than they are spending on food,” he said.

[Source: Telegraph]

All things put aside; I mean the father couldn’t just ask her to disconnect, sit down and talk to her about his concerns, why he disapproves of her talking to men online, and threaten to cancel their internet service if she didn’t show any cooperation.
He just had to beat her and then shoot her because of it; for nothing.

This is totally unacceptable; people like this should be prosecuted and thrown into jail for the rest of their lives, both for the crime they committed, as well as their unforgivable stupidity.

I can understand if some people have certain concerns about a certain service or another, but there are more civilized ways to deal with their concerns, both personally and as a community.

Islam Surpasses Roman Catholicism As World’s Largest Religion

The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano announced yesterday that Islam has surpassed Roman Catholicism as the world’s largest religion.

Catholics accounted for 17.4 percent of the world population, a stable percentage, while Muslims were at 19.2 percent.

Monsignor Vittorio Formenti attributed the change to Muslim families having more children, while Catholics have tended towards fewer offspring.

When considering all Christians and not just Catholics, Christians make up 33 percent of the world population.

[Source: Yahoo! News]
[Via: Truemors]

Not Reading And The Destruction Of Culture

I just came across this quote by Gandhi, which rang so very true…

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

— Mohandas Gandhi

Now, I’m not going to go on a rant on how some group of people conspired against the Arab world to get them to not read books and thereby destroy our culture; I’m not really in the conspiracy theory mood right now.

But what is more important is how true the direct relation between not reading and the destruction of a culture really is; and how it is one of the main reasons behind the decline of Arab culture.

It is an obvious fact that we Arabs don’t read like we used to: apart from a very few who read a healthy amount of books yearly, the majority rest barely go through one book a year, if not none at all.

There are book fairs all around the Arab world, and they’re always full of people, but by just taking a closer look at what books are being bought, you can know who is actually a good reader, and who is buying books to decorate their bookshelves or just as general references.

But what makes books and reading them so important?
I’ve found another quote that says it all so beautifully…

From every book invisible threads reach out to other books; and as the mind comes to use and control those threads the whole panorama of the world’s life, past and present, becomes constantly more varied and interesting, while at the same time the mind’s own powers of reflection and judgment are exercised and strengthened.

— Helen E. Haines

It is through books that we come to a better understanding of life; the past, present and future; and ourselves. It is also through books that our minds are opened, inspired and pushed to think, evaluate and innovate.
Books simply unlock our brains to their full potential; the more we read the more areas and doors we unlock, the more we take away, the more we have a clearer view of all that is around us, and the more we can be a factor in changing it.

By reading, we take the big step from being passive consumers to active thinkers, paving the way for us to become proactive creators, therefore pushing our culture and civilization a couple of steps forward.

Our local governments invest so much to get children into schools and reduce the illiteracy rates all over the Arab world, and in some countries these efforts have been very successful; but it’s not enough for people to be able to read and write, the aim should be to get them to actually do those things: read and write.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.

— Mark Twain

Buy A Tree For The Rainforest And Watch It Grow

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has launched a new program called NEWtrees, through which you get to buy a tree for only $5.50, which is then planted in a rainforest in Sebangau National Forest in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia and you are given the possibility to watch it grow on Google Earth (they send you a Google Earth KML file with the coordinates of your tree).

As Google Earth is updated with higher resolution satellite and aerial images, you should be able to keep an eye on your tree as it grows.
To see already planted trees and buy one of your own, you can check out: mybabytree.org.

NEWtrees is a joint initiative by WWF Indonesia, Nokia and Equinox Publishing.

I personally think this is a great way of encouraging people to actively support replanting projects for forests in Indonesia and across the world; hopefully more such projects will be launched to cover more areas and forests.

You can find a number of other good causes where Google Earth is coming in very handy here: Google Earth Outreach

[Via: Marketing Pilgrim, Google Earth Blog]

The World In The Eyes Of The Media

news heatmap

Above is a heat map of the world according to the attention each country gets in the New York Times’ coverage.

This is one of several heat maps developed in a project to indicate the regions that some of the major western media outlets, and the blogosphere, give more attention to.

These maps allow you to grasp several media trends at a glance. First, traditional newspapers are highly selective in their coverage of world news. Looking at the three British dailies, editors favour countries that are bigger and more populous, but also closer to home and better developed. They also give more room to the countries of origin of British immigrants, especially if they are white (look at the size of Australia and New-Zealand). Hardly surprising, but still disheartening, especially when you consider that the only brand that does not advocate objectivity, The Economist, covers the world more equally.

Second, we see that web-only outlets do not offer such a different view of the world. That makes sense, considering the narrowing of the news agenda on the web that was described in the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s latest report. Their lack of resources forces them to contract their scope. Smaller issues are better covered by the blogosphere, which seems unbeatable at providing niche news.  

 

[Source: Observatoire des Medias]

[Via: The Black Iris, Boing Boing]

Life: Priorities, Perspective & Balance

Many of us talk about our priorities in life, how we’ve given them some thought, how we’ve figured them all out, and how we know we should act according to those priorities.

But in the end of the day, many many of us don’t do anything about it, we know what our priorities should be, we know what we care about most in life, but when it comes to our everyday acts in life, they simply don’t reflect those priorities at all.

Sometimes it takes something very powerful, a shock, to just open our eyes, bring everything into perspective, and show us that the way we’re leading our lives is just not the way they should be led, that our time and effort isn’t divided fairly and according to the priorities we have in our minds.

Today, I went through such a shock, it was definitely one of the worst and scariest moments of my life. Fortunately, things worked out fine in the end, but what’s for sure is that it left my eyes wide open; re-evaluating my life, my priorities, my spent time, my invested efforts and showed me that I needed to reach a better balance in my life.

What do I do or what does anyone do next? I really don’t know.
But I’ll certainly be trying to push myself to do whatever is necessary to get my priorities straight and everything else well aligned to them and as balanced as they can ever be.

Send A Message On Israel’s Illegal Wall

 

A really interesting idea using the illegal Israeli barrier wall to support local Palestinian businesses…

As Israel continues its illegal land grab of Palestinian territory, by caging in the West Bank, the controversial barrier wall has become more than just oppressive concrete slabs to some; it’s become an easel for various artists. Two Palestinians have come together to put a new spin on rendering the wall into an art form, by starting an organization called send.a.message, whereby you can pay them (online) to spray paint whatever message you want on the wall. It’s only $45 and it goes towards supporting micro-projects for all the Palestinian businesses hurt by the wall, mostly in Ramallah where their first partner-projects are.[Via: The Black Iris]
sendamessage

[More: Optimum, Haaretz]