Thought this Abu Mahjoob caricature was pretty uplifting for the (political) season! So Eid Mubarak to you all and I hope you have a great holiday. Stay safe, do something fun, enjoy your family time, and go some place warm!

Oh, and if you were wondering what to get me for Eid (as I know you all are), feel free to go over to the Brass Crescent Awards and vote for The Black Iris in the Middle East category. Make sure to check the confirmation email after you vote! There’s only one day left and every vote counts, so thanks in advance!

AP Photo - A Jordanian driver removes the Parliament plates of the car of one of the Jordanian lawmakers at the Jordanian Parliament offices in Amman, Jordan, Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009.
Continue reading ‘Photo Of The Day: Our Newly Unemployed Members Of Parliament’

It’s the political news of the week, perhaps even the year here in Jordan, and it has come as a surprise to most. HM King Abdullah’s decision to dissolve the Lower House of Parliament and call for early elections is a move that few anticipated. At least in any realistic context. Criticism of the Parliament in the press has indeed increased in recent months, specifically since its last session. But that’s nothing new. Parliament has always been treated like the straw man of the Jordanian state and so much of the criticism that is intended for higher powers will filter through it, much like the cabinet.

Nevertheless, while no one is dancing in the streets, it may go without saying that the overwhelming majority are in favor of the move. News site Ammon has over 400 comments testifying to that.

So what’s behind the move?

The easy answer is incompetency. And Occam’s Razor may play a role here, but then again, if there’s one thing Jordanian politics demonstrates is that the easiest answer is never the right one. And if there’s two things Jordanian politics demonstrates, it’s that incompetency has never been a problem for the government.

Columnist Sameeh Al-Maitah says the changes are indeed a gift but are representative of larger changes that need to be made in order to restore the public’s confidence in their government and its institutions - in other words, it may only be the beginning of changes, with another government being possibly appointed as well. This sentiment has been echoed by Suleiman alKhalidi in a Reuters piece, who also mentions the election law and the disenfranchisement of Jordanians of Palestinian origin in the context of the arduous “alternative homeland” issue.

Meanwhile, columnist Jamil Nimri seems to feel that the parliament was removed from being at loggerheads with the government, but asks the right question of whether the next elections will be based on the new or old election law; the former of which proved to be disadvantageous to Islamists and opposition members in general. That said, arguments suggesting this move was done in order for the government to begin passing temporary laws without the Parliament’s approval are valid. Yes, a second decree was in fact issued calling for early elections to happen within four months (technically earlier), however, a lot can happen in four months when it comes to temporary laws. It was done before to the tune of over 200 laws being passed in the long absence of Parliament. Over 200 laws were passed between 2001 and 2003 alone.

This latest move to dissolve the parliament may indeed find its roots in the legislative body’s inability to get along with the government, which, if you think about it, is sort of their job. In the Jordan Times today:

The 15th Lower House was elected on November 20, 2007 and approved some 132 laws in four sessions - two ordinary and two extraordinary sessions. In the first ordinary session, deputies approved 52 laws, and 42 in the second. In their first extraordinary session they approved 23 laws.

However, in the last extraordinary session, lawmakers approved only 13 laws out of 29 listed on their agenda, which included laws of interest to the public.

The extraordinary session was adjourned while deputies were still discussing the income tax draft law, having only finished 11 articles of the 70-article law.

The government also withdrew the energy draft law and the income tax draft law to amend them in accordance with developments in these two sectors. After the session was adjourned, the government withdrew two laws and issued them as temporary laws, including the social security and higher education laws. [source]

If this is in fact the case it would be somewhat ironic. The state did move heaven and Earth during the last two elections (municipal and parliamentary) to make sure the Islamist opposition, which tends to be based in Palestinian-dominated cities, would be curtailed. From an unfavorable election law to voter fraud and gerrymandering, what were considered mere allegations at the time were proven with ample enough evidence that included videos of voter fraud being heavily circulated. Nevertheless, the strategy was successful as the Islamic Action Front ended up with very little representation in the Lower House, a new reality that helped launch the party in to a series of internal clashes over the span of the past two years. And yet, despite all this, the government still ended up with a “pro-government” parliament that wasn’t all too friendly.

Karma.

That being said, we are at a “what’s next?” phase, and while much is still unknown, such as whether or not elections will be taking place in the next four months (the constitution allows the King to delay them) - the right question to ask is that posed by Nimri: which election law are we going with? What path are we choosing? Because unless a fair and just law is introduced, one that allows for actual representation, we will always produce the same results.

To quote Albert Einstein: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

UPDATE #1: sources say that the second shuffle in Nader Dahabi’s cabinet will be happening after the Eid holiday. This would be the second shuffle in the same year. The government will also be issuing two temporary laws, one related to setting the parliamentary elections for some time in the middle of next year, and the other related to the income tax law, the latter of which was an unresolved issue with the last parliament.

UPDATE #2: seems the King is very serious about elections, having sent a letter to the Prime Minister charging him with taking all the necessary steps to prepare for upcoming elections, including, a revision of the Election Law. In the letter, the King says he would like to see the elections as a “model of transparency, fairness and integrity - a highlight on our path towards reform and modernization…” [source in Arabic]

UPDATE #3: A poll taken within 12 hours or so of the decision to dissolve the Parliament, shows that 85% of Jordanians approve of the King’s decision. I’m not one to put much faith in polls taken immediately after events as they tend to produce soft numbers, but it’s nevertheless indicative and interesting. This one polled 200 respondents that included, opinion-makers, politicians, party activists, media players, academics, tribe members, and civil society members - in an attempt to gauge public opinion overall.

The poll also revealed that 78% of respondents believe the reason for the decision to be due to incompetency of the MPs. Interestingly enough, 90% strongly support early elections, 69% strongly support a new election law, and 88% strongly support establishing an independent body to administer the elections.

UPDATE #4: Abdel Hadi Al-Majali tells Ammon that he will not be running in the next elections, thus relinquishing his seat as the Speaker of the Lower House, which he has maintained an iron-grip on for over a decade (circa 1998). This is very interesting and surprising news to me. Majali’s absence, whether “requested” or done so begrudgingly, is definitely one of the most important signals being sent through the local political arena that could signify real changes ahead.

That said, I’m forced to wonder if Majali’s absence will weaken the National Bloc thus helping to empower the Islamic Action Front. And with that in mind, will his move be factored in to any near future discussions regarding a new election law?

A few months back I wrote a post about Royal and Official motorcades in Jordan, which I felt put the average Jordanian driver at risk. I have to admit that since writing the post, these motorcades have toned down their approach. About a month back, a motorcade swerved in sharply from a side street and on to the fourth circle. For the first time, I noticed that they stuck to the right side of the road, didn’t travel at unnecessary speeds and didn’t use the bullhorn for shouting purposes. Instead, a rear tinted window casually rolled down and a guard waved his slow-down sign politely, using his other hand to bring his fingers together at the tip to form the standard pear shape, which when floated up and down, means shway shway in Jordan - take it easy. This was back in August, about a month after I wrote my post, and I admittedly have not seen many motorcades since.

However, I noticed these three tweets from fellow Jordanian blogger and Tweeter, Ali Dahmash:

#We even taught the British in Jordan how to fear to speak up on the radio, bravo!

#BeatFM spends entire call defending the Royal Guards as if they r God soldiers & he is a British Citizen! The woman had more courage #Jo

#Jordanian woman calls BeatFM complaining about the way Royal Guards drive in Jordan almost causing her a serious accident, I add my voice

I found them pretty interesting. Radio has actually been the most common medium used by average citizens to complain about these motorcades, and I’ve heard such complaints on several occasions since 2005. I’m not sure if things are improving, and maybe my last experience was a fluke more than a policy shift in protocol as I initially perceived it to be.

That aside, my biggest qualm these days are not the motorcades but the French Embassy (I believe), which is just off Zahran Street. The thing about Zahran street, specifically the section of it that is between the fourth and third circles, is that it is a tight corridor with two lanes going in each direction. As soon as a car in either lane decides to stop and turn in to a side street (which should be prohibited) traffic comes to a stop.

On most days, it should take a driver about 3 minutes to cover Zahran, from the fourth to the third, or vice versa. In cases of traffic, it’s usually extended to 8-10 minutes.

Now on days when there is a diplomatic party or event of some sort at the French Embassy, traffic comes to a stop. Again, this is one of those streets where there’s gridlock. And I’d understand if this was a matter of cars slowing down to turn in to the embassy, but what ends up happening is, important guests take their sweet time saying hello and goodbye, while everyone waits for them to get in their cars and move traffic. Even worse, guests will end up parking on Zahran! It’s a main street and there are two lanes. Parking is strictly prohibited all along the corridor, and rightly so. As soon as one person decides to park, they’ve automatically closed down an entire lane of traffic. So it’s not unusual in these events to see cars parked right underneath the no-parking signs. Naturally, the police won’t do a thing to stop it. These are, after all, important people.

This is perhaps what disturbs me about both motorcades and the Zahran case, it’s not just about the traffic or safety, it’s about exclusion. It’s that the average person is commanded to sit and stay still while more important people have red carpets rolled out for them. We either have to slow down and pull over to the side of the road or wait 20 minutes in traffic as the wealthy and influential hop slowly in to their vehicles.

This, I think, is what bugs me most.

The inequalities in our society seeping in to the most basic of things: traffic.

I haven’t published a feel-good post in a while and it feels like it’s due. It’s been a hectic week, which I’m sure is true for at least 90% of those of you who are reading this. So that being said, here’s an end-of-the-week pick-me-upper. Or at least, my attempt at one.

Lately, I’ve been fascinated with stop-motion videos. I think there’s something innocently nostalgic about this kind of film making that it reminds me of the third grade, when someone teaches you how to draw a stick man on the edge of a pad of paper, and then a bunch of other stick men on all the other pages, before flipping through them to make him walk. But I especially like the use of photos to create stop motion films. Here’s the two that I’ve found incredibly inspiring simply because they are alternative way to telling a story. Photographs are documented memories, and there’s something inspiring, if not poetic, about seeing thousands of photos memories rendered in stop-motion, where they are all pieces coming together - single frames that are continuous and hang on a timeline. Much like life.

First up is the PEN story created by Olympus cameras. 60,000 pictures, 9,000 developed prints and over 1,800 pictures shot again with no post production. [via 7iber]

Then there’s the “Breathe Me” video by Sia, which in itself is a haunting song, but a video made up of some 2,000 Polaroids makes it even more interesting.

You can see other stop-motion videos here.

This Thursday’s Feel Good post is brought to you by Sunny 105.1 Feel Good music.

Nah, I’m just kidding.

(but it is a great radio station).

Reading an interesting article in TIME today, I found myself thinking in broader terms when I came upon this excerpt:

In his 2008 book, Inside Egypt, John R. Bradley observes, “Egyptians are the most patriotic people in the Arab world.” But, he adds, “I have never come across a local who does not despise his president to one degree or another.” The police state that has kept Hosni Mubarak in power for three decades does not tolerate much expression of political opposition, and that may help explain why many Egyptians get more openly riled up for a soccer match than they do for a national election. Soccer provides an outlet for emotion, both positive and negative, that so many Egyptians so desperately crave, says Maher Gamel, manager of one of Cairo’s most popular restaurants, al-Omda.

“The Egyptian people feel a lot of pressure every day. Life is difficult here. It is hard to find money, to make a living, and this is a hard thing to escape from,” says Gamel, who packed 700 customers into every available inch of his restaurant on game night. “So football is a way to find joy, to escape from these pressures.” [source]

No doubt, this line of thinking has probably crossed many minds for those of us living in the Arab World, to the extent that I wonder how true it is. Is freedom of speech and expression so limited in our part of the world that football games are the only real outlets for our passionate voices? Or can we simply reduce these to acts of hooliganism that are prevalent in football all over the world? Maybe it’s a mix of both.

More interestingly, we should also ask whether we internally politicize football. Jordan’s Wahdat and Faisali teams have long become the standardized symbols of “Palestinian” and “Jordanian” football clubs, when in reality, the teams’ players for both clubs are mixed. A great deal of chaos ensues after these two teams meet and to a large extent, it seems to be tolerated by the state, which makes me wonder whether the powers-that-be also consider football games as both inherently politicized and thus “appropriate” outlets for the average folk to vent out their anger and frustrations. To say nothing of the fact that they tend to offer perfect distractions from everyday problems plaguing our region, as Emad Hajjaj depicted in a recent caricature:

Whatever the reason may be, as I’m positive that there exist several layers to the dynamics that make up Arabian football, the truth of the matter is, it is growing increasingly difficult to differentiate between protests and football aftermath frenzies. Say what you will, but the truth of the matter is, a look at some of the recent images that emerged during the Algeria-Egypt game are filled with all the trappings of a perfect political protest:

Reuters - Algerian fans demonstrate after a newspaper published photographs of what the newspaper claimed were Algerian football fans wounded during a World Cup qualifier between Egypt and Algeria in Cairo, in Algiers November 16, 2009.
Continue reading ‘Politicizing Football In The Arab World’

This is an unusual “me” post, which, in the lifespan of this little blog, there have been few of (fortunately). But I thought I owed it to my readers (all 10 of you) to have some sort of where-have-I-been explanation. Besides, I feel like rambling. To start with, yes, as you can see from the little pink badge on the sidebar to your right, the Black Iris has been nominated yet again for a Brass Crescent award in the best Middle East category, along with fellow Jordanian blogger Southern Muslimah. The nomination is a nice honor after nearly five years of blogging about Jordan and this region, and the outcome will depend completely on your votes. So if you’ve got some time and willingness, please head over to the site and cast a vote my way. I would be forever grateful.

On 7iber:
These last few weeks my attention has turned toward 7iber, our little citizen media site. As some of you know, we’ve relaunched with a new design and a whole lot of content submitted by citizens. Over the past two and a half years, 7iber has been an interesting project or “experiment” and now it’s aiming to become part of a whole other league. So this is the month that the floodgates have opened and most of our team, which includes Lina, Shaden, Ramsey and Mariam, are drowning in work that goes beyond developing content. We’ve got about 1 million ideas we’d love to do under the 7iber name and we’re hoping to start implementing many of those ideas in the coming weeks. But at the end of the day they, and 7iber, will all depend on the support of the online community, which includes those of you reading these words right now. At the core of 7iber and all that it does, be it online or offline, is the desire to see the Jordanian community be at the forefront of production and not just consumption of content.

We want to create that environment where people are encouraged by an idea and want to see it carried out. Where they come together to create something and not just sit around and consume it. We’ve grown accustomed to hearing “nah, people in Jordan won’t go for it, they just like to consume”, and I don’t believe that to be true. All it takes is a small group of people to grow and nurture a larger circle of willing people, and you’ve got yourself a community that can create and produce, rather than consume and destroy. Citizen media is definitely not easy in a country like Jordan, but the belief that it can and should exist is what has kept an idea like 7iber going for over two and a half years. So as we move along in to the new year with new and exciting plans, I’m hoping more people will join us in growing that circle so that 7iber moves beyond just five people trying their best to run the show, but rather a community of people leading it.

On Blogging:
Suffice to say, I’ve been trying my best to keep up-to-date with everything that’s actually going on in the country. As usual, things have been up and down. There’s always something interesting to write about and usually I’m discouraged from doing so just because of time. These issues really require me to sit down and write an articulate thought, and I have found myself with neither the time nor energy to give some of these issues the attention they deserve. Twittering has swooped in these past months to fill that void, becoming a place for my first-thing-that-comes-to-mind reactions. But I do have a list and if you have anything interesting for me to write about that’s not on my list, feel free to leave me a note here and I’ll put it on there. Better yet, you write about it, and send it to 7iber! In any case, I promise to buckle down soon and focus on writing.

On Life:
So we covered blogging and 7iber, and of course the lack of time issue, that leaves us with, well, nothing really. There’s always the weather. I’m honestly glad that winter is fast-approaching and more than content to see it rain as often as it has. It’s interesting to watch people in Amman shift gears and in to winter-mode so quickly. No one ever seems comfortable in the jacket or coat they’re wearing, as if it were a premature and temporary second-skin. Everyone forgets to drive as soon as the streets are lined with water, checkout counters at all the supermarkets grow a little bit longer, the streets a little more emptier at night.

Also, as the New Year approaches I’ve already decided on my first resolution. Simply put, by next Eid, I should have a stellar answer to the frequent and mandatory pre-Eid question everyone poses to each other: “What are you doing for Eid”. Yes, next year is the year my answer will change from “nothing” to “Oh, a trip around the world in 4 days”. Or something like that. You’ll see.

Until then, keep reading.

The Golden Rule: do unto others as others would do unto you. finding and acting out of compassion. Something to live by in this day and age, when even religion has been hijacked. Scholar Karen Armstrong started a pretty interesting project after giving a talk at TED, dubbed the Charter of Compassion. The site for the charter is cutting-edge use of social media where you can not only review the charter, but see the transparent process in which it was put together. It wasn’t dictated to the masses by select religious clerics, it emerged as part of an online discussion where thousands of people all over the world submitted their commentaries. It recognized that religion is an inclusive force thus requiring a global conversation to help create something that is lasting and universal in the same breath. Making it more interesting is not only the use of social media to spread a charter of such universal appeal and importance, but using social media to allow people to document and share acts of compassion.