Jun 23


Bullshit, Damn, What, Unbelievable.. these where some of the first things came to people’s mind commenting on my Facebook status that Eslam Samhan, a Jordanian poet and a journalist, was sentenced with one year in prison and 10,000 JOD (almost same in EUR) fine. He was convicted the day before yesterday with what described as “insulting religions” for using phrases of the Quran in his poetry book “As light as the shadow” (برشاقة الظل). The news as it came from the AP:

The court said Sunday that Islam Samhan published his work without approval from the Jordanian government. Jordanian law bans publication of books that could be seen as harmful to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.

This is not the first case of human rights violation of this sort that happened in Amman in the past year, last Ramadan, many tourism and leisure outlets were closed on various accusations, and couple of months ago, a friend of mine and a school principal, Ahmad Al Jaafrah, was fired from a public school for objecting of using religious themes in the schools morning exercises!

I worked with Eslam before on Voices for Gaza fund raising concert, and he’s a very well mannered good man, and you know what, forget it, even if he’s an asshole and a lousy poet, he have the right of free speech, this is a secular state, and everybody should understand that, this is not Saudi Arabia neither Taliban’s Afghanistan, if this is not understood by some, then we should make it so.

It’s plain and simple, this is YOUR RIGHT you’re defending on, this is not just about Eslam, or Ahmad, or Madian, or or or.. this is about YOUR RIGHT, the right that you have as a human being, even before Jordan signed the UN human rights declaration, it is you nature-given right, your right to be free, that no one should take it away from you.

 

Action

  • If you’re in Jordan

Join us tomorrow to organize a campaign against this sentence before the appeal

Where: Daret Al Fonon – Lwebdeh

When: Wednesday, 6:30 PM

  • Outside Jordan

If you know media or organization welling to help on this issue, let me know at:

gyonis [at] gmail [dot] com

Mar 22

So I was searching for this old cartoon I used to watch when I was a kid called “Barbapapa”, it was one of the best cartoons I watched growing up, but all the result were in German, so I searched for Barbapapa Arabic, and all the result I got was about Haiafaa Wahbe (kid you not!) and Elissa and music videos with boobs splashing around and billy dancers and girls with a lot of makeup…. Arabs should die, really, all they think about is sex, they’re nearly as animals.

Ok, I like sex as much as the next guy (ok (again), maybe not as much as I used to 10-15 years ago!), but seriously, even animals have a mating seasons! you can’t go searching for a childhood nostalgia to find Mrs. Haifaa Wahbe’s boobs in your face (and I don’t think they are even real!), at least give me the freaking choice, every time you open the freaking TV you find someone’s boobs or ass all over the screen, I mean for god’s sake people!!

I know it’s not only the Arabs, but here, it’s so much of a hypocrisy! I mean cops used to knock on my window asking for IDs for kissing a girl in the car, so when you find such a sexual mania in a such conservative society, it really makes me sick (I actually threw up after writing this last line..)

 

Apr 24

Question: “If you could live forever, would you and why?”
Answer: “I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever”

-Heather Whitestone, Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss USA contest

“Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can’t help but cry. I mean I’d love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff.”

-Mariah Carey

“Smoking kills. If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life”

- Brooke Shields, during an interview to become spokesperson for federal anti-smoking campaign

“I’ve never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body”

-Winston Bennett, University of Kentucky basketball forward

“Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country”

-Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, DC

“That lowdown scoundrel deserves to be kicked to death by a jackass, and I’m just the one to do it”

-A congressional candidate in Texas

“Half this game is ninety percent mental.”

-Philadelphia Phillies manager, Danny Ozark

“It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.”

-Al Gore, Vice President

“I love California . I practically grew up in Phoenix ”

- Dan Quayle

“We’ve got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need ?”

-Lee Iacocca

“The word “genius” isn’t applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.”

-Joe Theisman, NFL football quarterback & sports analyst

“We don’t necessarily discriminate. We simply exclude certain types of people.”

- Colonel Gerald Wellman, ROTC Instructor

“Your food stamps will be stopped effective March 1992 because we received notice that you passed away. May God bless you. You may reapply if there is a change in your circumstances.”

-Department of Social Services, Greenville, South Carolina

“Traditionally, most of Australia’s imports come from overseas.”

-Keppel Enderbery

“If somebody has a bad heart, they can plug this jack in at night as they go to bed and it will monitor their heart throughout the night. And the next morning, when they wake up dead, there’ll be a record.”

-Mark S. Fowler, FCC Chairman