All hail the tides of change; reflections on the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt

I have been hoping for a revolution in the middle east for ages. I have always wished to live and see it and I am thankful that I at least have lived to see it begin. It takes but a small spark to ignite the flames of revolution, but producing such a spark requires an effort of herculean proportion. But when that flame is lit it shall burn strong and it shall devour all who stand in its path. The flame of revolution is both refreshing, for change is needed, and it is terrifying, for all the wrongs that it may produce and all the years it will take to clean up after it.

Yet we should not diminish our resolve, we must remain committed to this revolt in spite of the unpredictability of events and the warnings of history past. Our world is in dire need of change, politicians must take head and comprehend that business as usual is now a thing of the past and that we the people have had enough of the lies of freedom, democracy and equity. Every government in the world is guilty of such sedition. Every government in the world partakes in the oppression of their people in one form or another… even the USA and other so called democratic countries...… the fact that some methods are less evident or less oppressive than others does not diminish the gravity of their product… the oppression of all people around the world for the pursuit, by the elite few, of wealth and to satiate their hunger for power. Such is the result of leaders neglecting the people they have sworn to serve . 

Yes.. These events are wonderful to behold as they unfold, bringing change to a world that has for too long lain in darkness. If the conditions are right… these event will trigger a cascade that sweep through out the Arab world and spill over to the Persian world and beyond. The events, horrible as they are, are a blessing in disguise. Will Syria be next? What of Saudi Arabia, even Lebanon, though not ruled by a dictator Lebanon has several mini dictators, war criminals. Will It also sweep through Palestine and will the Palestinians rise up against the corruption in the west bank and the oppression in the Gaza strip? Will the Israeli people rise up and say that they too had had enough and push their government towards moderation and peace? Will the Iranian opposition feel emboldened and will they too rise up against tyranny and topple the balance of things? Will it even sweep through other countries of different continents? Will it even reach the US? Probably not in this form but the tide is finally turning… even if it will be decades before the real change triggered by these events manifests it self to all…. There is no doubt in my mind that these events will produce a new set of problems and issues but with every step of our evolution we encounter these obstacles which we eventually over come in one form or another… we need not be afraid of this change even when it will yield unwanted results from any perspective. This change is inevitable and it must be allowed to take its course.

The Tunisians have shown their will and resolved to do away with tyranny and succeeded. The Egyptians have done the same and have impressed many by their spontaneous organization; many of them, seeing that the absence of policing force had opened up room for criminals and thieves, have banded together like brothers and sisters to patrol the streets and assist, not take over, the police with their real duty; protecting the people and keeping the streets safe. Truly, the protestors are not as Mubarak and his state controlled media would like to depict them; thugs, criminals… the protesters have proven them selves, so far, to be of honorable, Nobel and intelligent, so listen not to the falls news streaming out from Mubarak's mouth piece. Not only that but apparently his own goons are setting out to loot and destroy in order to fill their own corrupt immoral pockets and to discredit the protesters as much as possible.

So far, some of the best reporting I have seen is from the one and only Robert Fisk. 64 years old and his passion for real on the ground journalism not yet faded with age. He is on the streets of Cairo reporting from the perspective of the protesters instead of siting comfortably behind a desk at some hotel pretending to understand what is going on and reporting the news without its soul. Journalists should take notes, for this is man, Fisk, is a giant among journalists and worthy of the respect of all human beings.

For a good impassioned reading see following

How much longer can Mubarak cling on?

Egypt: Death throes of a dictatorship

A people defies its dictator, and a nation's future is in the balance

Egypt's day of reckoning

My personal hope and prediction is that Mubarak will be forced out of office and Egypt in the next few days.

The smell of revolution is always welcome, however, my greatest wish, and this is an issue that I vehemently hope for, is that these revolutions be carried out in as peaceful a means as possible. A revolution need not be bloody nor violent, albeit it being, by definition, an 'uprising'. I just hope that the people rising up have learned from histories greatest revolutionaries and mimic their methods; Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Ang Sang Suki, Tenzin Gyatso, Nelson Mandela, All truly great and peaceful revolutionaries who brought about the tides of change by the will of the people.

My second wish is that whatever shape that the replacement governments come in that; 1. they do not exchange one set of an authoritarian régime for another in the form of Islamic totalitarianism (and I say this being -technically so to speak- Muslim myself -at least on paper-), such as those in Iran and Saudi Arabia, nor produce another power hungry dictator, to reflect that of Syria and Libya, nor that they become so divided that they give room for many feudal lords as is the case in Lebanon. Whatever system comes next to replace the older one, I hope it is a truly democratic and truly secular system that serves ALL the people regardless of their color, religion, creed, or sex.

All hail the tides of change.

The Continuing Degradation of Human Rights in Israel

As I was navigating the Haaretz news site for news on the Mideast peace process, I came across an article stating that the Knesset had voted on Wednesday to inevitably silence the voice of human rights activists that are making public the unadulterated and imperfect image of the Israel state and it's consistent violations of human rights.

"to establish a parliamentary panel of inquiry to investigate left-wing Israeli organizations that allegedly participate in delegitimization campaigns against Israel Defense Forces soldiers"

Another article from the same site quotes the response of "leftists" groups to this bit of news by calling it a "witch hunt" and i would have to agree with that assessment. The ultra-nationalist elements of the Israeli government have become increasingly frustrated with the fact that more and more foreign nations and nationals are beginning to change their high-held opinion of Israel as the bastion of democracy surrounded by nations and people that want to see it, the state of Israel, "driven in to the sea". granted that this is the kind of talk that does come out of the Arab world, one should bare in mind the differences of expressing emotions between different cultures and languages, hearing this "drive them in to the sea" phrase is more of an expression of outrage than an actual threat of really accomplishing such an unproductive and ludicrous feat. but that is worth another blog in itself. to get back on point with this post, this proposed "inquiry" is in itself a violation of the human rights of every Israeli citizen, Arab and Jew alike. it is a violation because it is aimed to silence the voice of decent, the same voice that is painstakingly trying to let the world be aware of the un-photoshoped, and un-embellished, reality of the situation in the region. These "leftists", as they are referred to, are more or less being accused, or so it is implied, of nothing short of collaborating with external enemy forces; which can be anyone starting from the Palestinians all the way to the UN and various international human-rights groups and organisation.

furthermore, it has been reveled that Ben-Gurion Airport internet services actually block "dangerous" political websites including:

Breaking the Silence

Machsom Watch

Peace Now

Taayush

in addition to a couple of extreme right websites (but only the ones at the fringe)

this news from Israel is frightening. it is frightening because of the area is a powder keg and the Israeli ultra nationalists are starting to make their own fuse that will eventually inadvertently ignite the region. all because of some misguided sense of bigoted exceptionalism that is slowly beginning to look and feel like Aryan supremacy, apartheid, WASPs, you name it.

take for example the story of the immigrant children who where born in Israel but do not have Israeli citizenship. they are the children of labourers mostly, from Asia, who have come to work in Israel as replacement for cheep Palestinian workers (who are now being kept behind a fence in the Palestinian territories). some of these migrant workers had children or they brought their children with them. apparently there where maneuvers to deport hundreds of children from Israel because they are "illegal". never mind that their parents came legally to find work. The running joke is if the Messiah finally decides to show up, he will bedeported.

back to the main point of this post. if israel wants long lasting peace with its neighbors, one of the first things Israel needs to do is learn to accept the facts of its humanitarian mistakes. that objective can not be achieved if the state is suppressing the voice and opinion and even factual reportsof Israeli human rights activists and stop trying to coerce other nations in to turning a blind eye and even blindly defending the Israeli state that is now running amok with ultra-nationalists who have no interest in peace if a setellment does not give them a more than unbalanced advantage over everyone who is "not of them".

slowly but surly, the celebrated democracy of the state of Israel is loosing its luster and become more and more uncannily slightly familiar when compared to oppressive regimes of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Burma, China, North Korea etc... and then people ask why some of us activists keep saying that as far as the nuclear issue is concerned Israel should be treated in the same manner as Iran. both have extremist elements leading and setting policies. the world can not sit idly back while one extremist is punished and the other is encouraged... it is mistakes like that which produced the likes of Bin Laden, Saddam Husein, Pinochet and many more.

Good luck to all human-rights activists in Israel. I hope that the actions of the Israel government will not diminish your resolve to raise the issues that need to be raised and to campaign for peace and liberty for all inhabitants of that region. and i hope that you will all remember that the path to peace may not be easy, but it is one that needs to be taken. we follow in the footsteps of those who walked this path before us, we will carry the torch and never let its light die even in the face of the strongest hurricane, we shall continue to stand.

Information Overload and the Need for Organisation

The internet is one of humanities greatest achievements. it has liberated communication across the world in the from of email, chat, IM, social networking, streaming video and audio and more. the internet has become an important tool for every day folks as well as for governments and huge corporations and organisation. We can no longer envisage life without internet (though some of us would like to hit the kill switch at some point). the internet is one of the modern worlds most versatile and all encompassing inventions.

one of the good, or bad (the jury is still out), aspects of the internet is that it affords us to create a virtual extension of the various personae that we usually keep locked up deep in the back of our minds. personae that we are too shy to share in the real world, or personae that are deemed unacceptable in the real world (at least those of us who are sensible in the real world). the internet provides the grounds of creating personae that are detached from our real world realities and emotional and social obstacle. The internet is truly a wonderful thing (at least for most of us it is).

the internet has grown phenomenally over the years. growth is good as it provides improvements and enhances what is already there. but like a human being coming in to young adulthood in all the fanfare of the chaos of emotions and raging hormones, the aging of the internet presents similar growing pain problems. for one thing, think of the tremendous amount of information that we have to keep up with because of it. Any one person currently using the internet is bombarded with a gargantuan amount of information from news sites, to social sites and a plethora of other sources. that is a bad thing but I believe that one day the clutter will be easier to wade through (or it could go the opposite way and we get the equivalent of land fills.. a virtual one) 

then there are the many sites and many places where you can subscribe to, sign up to, join, become a member of, and so on. an ordinary internet user would have an email account (or accounts), a news site accounts, multiple store accounts, Facebook account, twitter account, linked in account, and accounts at various sites that we may or may not still be frequenting (forums, blogs, game sites, school accounts, etc).

It is good, in my opinion that we have the freedom to have all these accounts, but honestly.... the process of keeping up with all these accounts is cumbersome at best. we have to remember every username, every password, individual settings for privacy that keep getting updated for each account, preferences, the list is endless... it is difficult trying to keep up with all of these accounts and subscriptions. if we change our email address, or if we drop an address that we no longer use, we have to change it at every one of those sites individually. we also end up leaving a large foot print for all the sites that we signed up for once and never visited again.

lets say i have an account at zookies.com that i have not used in ages. i don't remember the password and the email i used to create the account is no longer valid. what am i supposed to do? create a new account and allow my footprint to grow even more in an uncontrolled fashion? i think not.

our online life is spreed out across the endless horizons of the internet we need a method of centrally controlling all of it. sure there are initiatives like OnpenID and MSN Passport (does that still exist?) and other sites that allow you to log in to sister sites without creating a new account, or you can log in using your Facebook credentials... but non of it is a set standard that works across the board. what I, a dyslexic adult, need is a central place to control ALL of my accounts and ALL settings of my accounts from one single interface. even if we deiced to use different handles, emails and information for each of these accounts. and we should be given the option to make some of our accounts untraceable to our main personality, or at least allow them to exist independently of other accounts and personal online persons but still be able to manage them centrally. that would be nice and it would go a long way to helping us reduce the strain caused by information overload and allow us to organize our internet life more efficiently.

Looking For The Perfect Job

On my 33rd birthday I sat down and attempted to assess the successes and failures of my life. Reflecting on old pictures, I realize that I have many accomplishments and that I have achieved some of my main dreams. Reaching Canada and becoming a productive citizen was one of those dreams that i have achieved. I immigrated to Canada, found a job and stabilized my life. The job I have is not perfect but it pays the bills and I got good benefits. But I am miserable at this job. My expertise and tenants have a very minuscule place and I don’t have any likely prospects of moving up because it is not technically my line of work. I don’t like being bogged down like that, I am the adventurous type, I need change, I need to see and explore and feel that I am making a significant contribution to the world. I am not doing that at the job that i am at right now. So other than it being a good job that pays the bills, this job has nothing much to offer me. I need to find a new job.

But what will this job be? i am a filmmaker, but i do not like the commercial aspect of what I consider to be my most potent form of self expression, I don’t have any wishes entangling myself with Hollywood or working for some big network for purely commercial reasons. I am a post production technical consultant and have extensive knowledge with using computers for whatever means. I can also fix, build and maintain computer systems and I can integrate them into the working environment... but I don’t want to work with machines all the time, i need human contact. I am good at photography, being a filmmaker, and i am good at audio related work and videography. I am also a creative idea generator, but i am tiered of coming up with ideas that only serve the commercial aspect of anything that I work on.

In the past i have worked as a volunteer in various fields that included environmental NGOs, I was the director of the Environment Press unit of the Environment Information Center of Beirut. I am one of the many original founders of the environmental movement in Lebanon during the 1990's, they used to call me the wonder kid. i have worked with orphanages of perfectly sound children and with orphanages of disabled children. i represented Lebanon at the Global Youth Forum, a UNEP organized event that took place in 1997 and was held in South Korea. I volunteer with UNDP and several EU projects in Lebanon. I was also selected to give an environmental awareness program to summer camp students. i have also participated in cleanup operations and assistance to the poor drives.

When I was working with NGOs I always felt at home. I wanted to be a part of the not for profit world ever since I got involved with it. Circumstances have driven me away from that world, the main circumstance being that of me running out of financial resources and the need to make a life for myself as a professional. i find that it is sad that we must all forget our dreams so that we could just make a selfish life of living with a job that we do not like. I remember being happiest when I was doing not for profit work and helping others. i enjoy helping others. i am good at helping others. i would have loved to become a social worker but that is not really a field i would have chosen to study when i was still in Lebanon because it would have put me on the receiving end of charity rather than on the giving end.

So I am thinking for myself. i no longer need to prove myself, i have done that time and time again. All I want now is to make not for profit work my main job. I now want to drift away from the commercial world and delve back into the not for profit work. But how do i do that now? I cannot work as a volunteer without pay. i have too many responsibilities and obligations to live up to. So I decided to sit down and write down what the dream job would be for me.

The job has to be one that has a profound cause, like preventing child abuse or ending poverty around the world. I don’t like being stuck in the office all the time, I am a hands on person, I like experiencing things first hand an did love working in the field. I would like to travel from one mission to the other and visit remote places and places in need of positive action all around the world. I do not like being tied down to one place as I believe myself to be a citizen of the world. I would love to go from one country to the other and make films about the lives of those we seek to help. i want to make interesting documentaries with the help of the communities and individuals that we help. I want to write theatrical plays and help communities make these plays come to life. i want to take out my camera and take photos of peoples life. but also need an income of $60k a year with yearly adjustments to compensate for the rising cost of living. i also need comprehensive medical, and dental insurance just to make me feel secure. And I require a minimum of 4 weeks of paid vacation a year. i do not need more money, i just need enough money to save up for when I retire and to be able to live not luxuriously, but modestly comfortable before I retire. I am willing to start at a much lesser salary if a promise is made that it will be raised once i have proven myself, i am willing to work for a reduced salary for a period of one year. But every time I start thinking about the silliness of being paid or profiting from a not for profit job. it feels strange but i just want to give my life to philanthropic work and nothing else.

The problem is that I am having a real hard time finding out how to get started to actually reach this new dream.

If anyone has any answers or is willing to give me some tips and hints please do not hesitate to let me know.

For now I will just sit back and continue excelling at the current boring job that I have.

My Dyslexia

most of my friends ask me "why are you so negative?" to which i usually reply "i am not negative, i am an optimist who is being shredded apart" the same group say to me "you are too idealistic" as though it where an insult. my reply usually is "yes i am an idealist... it does not mean my idealism can not be real" those few words describe what i would probably require a 10,000 page book just to introduce the topic properly. 

yet for me these few words say everything that i need to say with these few words my mind can Immediately access images, sensations, sounds, smells, touch, thoughts that scream through from the infinite past to the infinite future.. it becomes the universe..

yet i know that these few words are meaningless.... without the support necessary .... this form of support can take on any shape or form... words.. images.. movement anything..

i wish that the rest of my faculties would operate fast enough for me to actually be able to one day be able to express it.... that has to be the most frustrating aspect of my dyslexia.

i am tiered... i am exhausted... but i will not give up.