In the past few weeks, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably noticed the significant increase in criticism of the Rifai government. It is a government that has been around for nine months, and has probably garnered more criticism than any government I have ever seen. It is, however, an election year, and thus every little issue is on the upward path towards politicization.

August was a month that saw two major decisions impacting the cyber sphere in unique and different ways. First, the decision of the government to cut off access to a great number of websites for its employees. The government’s reasoning claims the Internet can be a time-waster for public sector employees. According to a study that was conducted (a government study) public employees browsed 70 million websites during working hours, with only 13,000 of those sites being relevant to their jobs. Each lost hour of Internet browsing cost the government, thus the tax payer, about JD70 million a year.

The only people who really cared about this decision were not proponents of free speech (and there are few of them residing in Jordan) but the online newspapers who felt this was targeting them. These newspapers have been at odds with the government for the past two years, and every move the government has sought to make has only served to aggravate the situation and even increase the number of these online papers they so readily fear are beyond their borders of control. Then again, these newspapers also need some growing up to. Had they really been the target of any significant political ploy they would have simply been shut down, jailed or been banned in Jordan. History has proven that much when it comes to the manner in which Jordanian governments deal with the media sector. Moreover, as players in the political opposition arena of this country, one would think they would be concerned about increasing the performance of government employees that they so often complain about - they failed miserably at countering the government’s arguments, which, be they genuine or not, do make perfect sense. And this is to say nothing of the fact that the list of websites banned includes Petra news, which is the government’s own news agency as well as the government’s Al Rai newspaper, the most widely read daily.

Then comes the new cyber crimes law.

In the past few weeks I’ve been asked for my opinion on the law and I have to admit it took me some time to form one. Having no legal background, I am not keen on jumping to conclusions without being presented the facts first and carefully examining the arguments put forth by both proponents and opponents of the law. In this case, I was invited, along with a significant number of bloggers and online notables to attend one of several meetings with the minister of ICT, Marwan Jumah, who along with a legal aid, presented the law and, to his credit, tackled whatever questions, issues or concerns we had to offer. At the time, no one knew anything about the law so it was quite difficult to effectively argue the points, this is to say nothing of the absent legal background. However, to their credit, the concerns of those presented were taken in to consideration and proper amendments were even made to the memorandum accompanying the actual law before it was presented to the cabinet.

That said. Here’s what I generally think:

I have always stood opposed to the passage of any temporary law that is not under the specific definition of a state of emergency, which the constitution allows for. I generally deem to be these laws to be unconstitutional, to say nothing of the fact that they are shoved down the throats of a quietly consenting population in the absence of any oversight from a representative body of the people - be it in the form of a parliament or a legal association. In the 270 something days that the parliament has been dissolved, the Rifai government has passed 34 temporary laws. That’s an average of about 3 to 4 new laws every single month. Are we to believe these were all absolutely necessary? That none of them could wait for the next parliament, which HM King Abdullah had already ordered in the very letter of appointment of the Prime Minister? Moreover, have we not learned from past infringements on the democratic process? For context, between the 1930’s till 1999 when HM King Hussein passed away, about 60 temporary laws were issued during that span of 70 some years. Whereas, between 1999 and 2005, over 200 temporary laws were imposed in the span of just 6 years, and between 2001 and 2003, specifically, 230 of those laws came about. Some of those laws sought to encourage economic development, like the investment promotion law for example, while others sought to infringe and limit our constitutional rights, such as the press and publication law amendments, etc.

This new cyber crime law is aimed at tackling specific issues related to online crimes, such as hacking, identity theft, financial transaction crimes, etc. And that’s all perfectly fine. The ICT ministry made the argument that this law was “urgent” enough to pass as a temporary law because of the number of cyber related crimes that are being presented before the judiciary every month. However, I am inclined to believe that given the fact that the Internet has been around for over 15 years in Jordan, it is unlikely that the government has just now noticed that crimes concerning its citizens are taking place online and there is a need for various protections. So it is quite difficult to believe that argument.

Yet, the real concern here is that in the mix of this law are several articles that tackle the issue of speech, and this is what has most online persons riled up. To quote the Committee to Protect Journalists:

In all, the law provides authorities with sweeping powers to restrict the flow of information and limit public debate. Article 8 penalizes “sending or posting data or information via the Internet or any information system that involves defamation or contempt or slander,” without defining what constitutes those crimes. Article 12 penalizes obtaining “data or information not available to the public, concerning national security or foreign relations of the kingdom, public safety or the national economy” from a website without a permit. Article 13 allows for law enforcement officers to search the offices of websites and access their computers without prior approval from public prosecutors. [source

My take on these specific articles is quite straightforward: the government shouldn’t be in the business of regulating speech. It shouldn’t be in the business of defining it, and it certainly shouldn’t be in the business of ill-defining it. The above articles can be spun in various ways by the government, but, at the end of the day, that’s exactly what they do: regulate speech. The ministry of ICT has also emphasized the inclusion of the word “intent” as a safeguard for the citizen. In other words, the prosecutor must prove intent to successfully prosecute. Again, I am not a legal authority, but I would assume that intent is a broad term that, despite it’s legal definitions, is broad enough to be abused by the very system that created it. Given the precedence of infringements on free speech in Jordan, one can safely assume that intent will be used more as a subjective legal tool to prosecute and convict, rather than protect the defendant.

At the same time, I am inclined to believe that the government is not folly enough to create laws that deter much needed high-level investments in our ICT sector. In a post Maktoob era, eyes are turning to Jordan as a place filled with ICT potential; creating such controversial laws will not improve chances of investment, but rather ruin them. This argument was articulated several times by various industry players back in January when the Cessation Court passed that controversial ruling that extended the ridiculous press publication law to apply to the online world.

And giving the authorities the free reign to storm offices of websites without any legal provisions or approval? Are we suddenly living under martial law?

The government would be wise to revise the law and remove the aforementioned articles. Whether it is their intention to infringe on speech or not is not the issue. This is a law that is likely to set the tone for the local new media for the next decade. It will likely outlast any threats the governments perceives today, and be applied in unending capacity - generating a controversy, every single time. The mere approval of the law made international headlines and will likely place Jordan firmly on the Internet Enemies list for the first time - putting out that beacon of hope we once took pride in throughout a region of highly regulated and censored Internet.

I am generally sick and tired of these middle-ground approaches when it comes to speech in the Kingdom, or lack there of. Laws are constructed to firmly place the citizen in either a constant state of fear through uncertainties, or in a bubble of complacency. These laws, especially the temporary ones, are designed to create an entangled web of legal restrictions that one can only conclude serve no other purpose than to be used against the citizen. The more laws that come out of this nature, the more arenas of speech they seek to cover, the more our constitutional rights are eroded, to say nothing of our human rights as set forth in the universal declaration of human rights, which Jordan is a signatory of.

It is disheartening to see that a country King Abdullah once declared to be the next haven for IT development, a country where the “sky’s the limit” when it comes to speech, has now set the stage for an environment where those very ideals and ambitions are dismantled in exchange for - what? Silencing the masses? Keeping them subservient? In an era where information is unstoppable? In favor of a heightened state of security, where determinations are made according to fear-mongering policies?

The equation may have been much simpler 10 or 20 years ago, when limiting free speech contributed to maintaining some political stability. But in this day and age I think the state has yet to recognize that these variables now sit in opposition to one another, and the limitations placed on media in the information age will undoubtedly create long term instability. The sooner this is recognized, the sooner we’ll be better off.

UPDATE: The government has just amended the law based on directives from King Abdullah - specifically some of the aforementioned articles.

As part of the new amendments, the government deleted Article 8, which stipulated that “anyone who intentionally sends or disseminates data or information via the Internet or any information system that involves defamation, contempt or slander of any person shall be fined an amount not less than (100) one hundred Jordanian dinars and not exceeding (2,000) two thousand Jordanian dinars”.

Juma said this step was taken due to the fact that Article 15 of the same law addresses this issue, adding that the new version of the law includes an amendment to Article 12B, deleting the paragraph that said “ةsuch data and information or spread ideas affecting national security or foreign relations of the Kingdom, as well as public safety or the national economyة,” as the aim of the legislation is to effectively prosecute cyber crimes.

Moreover, Articles 13A and 13B were also amended to give more clarification that law enforcement employees are required to obtain permission from the competent public prosecutor before accessing any place suspected of having been used to commit any of the crimes stipulated in this law. [source]

Amending laws after mass criticism (especially the kind that receives global attention) is rare. However, when it does happen I find myself equally conflicted. Does on applaud the government for stepping up and righting a wrong? Or do we continue to wonder why those wrongs were institutionalized in the first place, and what would have happened had no one spoken up? In other words, do these kind of moves indicate a paradigm shift in thinking, which, at the end of the day, is what we’re really in need of?

The cynic in me thinks not.

It’s been a while since I’ve published a Thursday Feel Good Post, and with so many negative vibes these days, perhaps it’s timely. Driving in Jordan is usually not the best topic for anyone looking for positivity. Few driving experiences in Jordan, and specifically Amman, are positive, especially if you’ve experienced rush hour during Ramadan these past few days. But like many of the harsh and frustrating realities that exist in Jordan, these experiences are often sources of humor - in retrospect.

I loved watching this video, and I think I was crying with laughter by the end of it. Just like it’s arabic title suggest, this guy is a true Jordanian:

I actually found this video on Facebook via our very own Amin Matalqa, who, back in the day, did an equally hilarious short on parking in Jordan called (all together now) - Suffi Suffi! Probably my favorite moment is when she turns around to find them in her car looking for a lighter. But, the whole dialog of how each new male approaching the car introduces himself and there’s that brief pause - is a very, very Jordanian scene.

It’s also worth watching Liffi Liffi by Matalqa as well, about a girl trying to find an address and a similar experience ensues.

Watching Suffi Suffi and Liffi Liffi again after all these years reminded of a video I posted up on YouTube in 2006 (actually it was a few months after YouTube went online). The clip was from a sketch by Jordanian comedic actor Musa Hijazeen playing the role of his famous character, Sum3a. I completely forgot about publishing the skit but apparently it’s received well over half a million views and, more interestingly, around 438 comments. Somewhere in there is a long debate about women’s rights and domestic abuse, which, upon looking at it again, is kind of visible.

So an Israeli soldier posts photos of herself hanging out with Palestinian prisoners, up on Facebook. Wait, why am I overcome with an overwhelming sense of deja vu? Eden Abergil, posted them on her Facebook account under an album titled “The Army… the most beautiful time of my life :)”

I mean, come on. Doesn’t the Israel have better uses for Facebook to deal with?

Here’s what she had to say about the erupting controversy: “I still don’t understand what’s wrong…the pictures were taken in good will, there was no statement in them.” [source]

That has to be the quote of the year.

She went on to say:

“There’s no violence or intention to humiliate anyone in the pictures. I just had my picture taken with them in the background. I did it out of excitement, to remember the experience. It wasn’t a political statement or any kind of statement. It was about remembering my experiences in the army and that’s it.”

So when you’re an excited Israeli soldier (who’s not trigger happy at the moment and happens to have a digital camera around) you first instinct is to take pictures next to blindfolded and bound prisoners as a way to “remember the experience”? Seriously?

Many were shocked at the images while some found them amusing. “You’re super sexy here,” one of her friends wrote. Eden responded, “Yeah I know, ha ha, what a day that was, see how he completes my picture, I wonder if he’s on Facebook! I have to tag him in the photo! Ha ha.” [source]

What is perhaps even more interesting about this controversy is that the international media is deeming it a controversy at all. In the context of this conflict, and with all the well documented barbaric acts of the Israeli occupational force, why is a girl taking a picture next to bound prisoners all that important? I’m essentially re-framing the very idiotic question Abergil posted in her own defense, but merely contextually. A simple Google search will yield unending results of Israeli acts on Palestinian lives, images that are simply haunting. And yet, this is what gets the media machine talking? It would definitely be interesting to analyze simply why this is so appealing to mass media? Is it the Facebook element? The digital, viral element? Is it a “caught red-handed” moment?

I mean, sure, this doesn’t look good. But seriously, I think Israel has been caught doing much worse things in the past.

Remember the time they illegally bordered those boats and shot a few activists?

Or the time they bombed that city back to the stone age using illegal weapons and killing mostly civilians?

Or the time they tried to cut a tree down?

Or…

For myself, Ramadan has always been one of those months that reminds me of the fact that there people who are worse off. Charity has always been an interesting concept and one that I’ve been involved in since I can long remember. In the past three years since I’ve come back to Jordan, perhaps some of the fondest memories I have was filling pickup trucks with food and clothes, and delivering them to some needy people in the refugee camps. And perhaps the pinnacle of these memories was the 7iber drive during Gaza, which managed to collect over 60 tons of food and clothes in 48 hours - and soon after the campaign met its goals, 7iber helped mobilize hundreds of people for three weeks to help with the Aramex campaign. The night we received those donations was simply an unforgettable moment in my life as I had, until then, never seen so many people coming together organically for a single purpose.

Since then, charity has always been on my mind, but getting a chance to interact with and engage people on the ground more frequently, I discovered what I should have known all along: charity, while providing a temporary fix for the short run, also creates lasting damage in the long run. That damage goes by the name of “dependence”, and the rising culture of it, especially in developing nations like Jordan.

In the past year or so, I read all I could about the subject. From Charle’s Murray’s thesis on “The Underclass” and welfare systems, to Willie Cheng’s book “Doing Good Well”. In the latter, Cheng states: “charities should seek extinction rather than growth.” Now that’s a powerful message, and one that most charities probably do not aim to abide by from an institutional point of view. Their goals are always to grow, bigger and more powerful - all they need is a marketplace, and developing nations offer just that.

And therein lies our problem. When a group of people whose core issues, including education, unemployment and standards of living, are not resolved, then charity moves from being a temporary fix to being a long term solution. Even if a person’s or an organization’s intentions are not so, this is an inevitable and destructive outcome, because like anything else, someone who is dependent on something will always find a means to attain more of it, and an entity that will provide it for them. And in the charity world, it is a bottomless pit. One organization will always replace another, and one giving hand will always have another waiting right behind it. There is arguably an abundance of charitable organizations in a country like Jordan, while the number of citizens who are worse off is growing - this alone signifies that there is something seriously wrong with the equation.

The rising culture of dependence has meant that many are simply relying on others to provide for them, and will constantly find new ways to maintain those links. Last year, I spent several weeks visiting and talking to charitable organizations run by the Muslim Brotherhood, who are arguably the most widespread operators of charity in the country, and specifically Amman. The stories they told about people who tried to “cheat” the system were not isolated; they were the norm, they were the majority. Some of these stories included women who registered to receive donations from several organizations, and would travel to each one everyday. Or women who hid various appliances around the house when a surveyor from one of the charities was due for a visit. Or other stories involving the misuses of national ID cards to obtain charity. And so on and so forth.

One can either interpret this as an act of desperation in tough times (and times have always been tough here) or, a byproduct of this very culture. One that has opened too many doors, and too many opportunities for abuse. And the abuse does not need to be intentional; in most cases it is a natural outcome of the culture that engulfs the people that exist within its environment. There are whole generations that are being brought up in this very environment today. It has become a part of their daily fabric.
Continue reading ‘The Charity Problem: Creating A Culture Of Dependence’

Jon Stewart and the Daily Show, simply put, have a wicked way of putting certain issues in context while still maintaining a sense of humor. For anyone following US news these past few weeks, you’ve probably noticed the growing summer controversy over plans to build a mosque at ground zero in New York. It has taken talking heads, articles, news clips and just about anything American media has to offer (even the absurd variety), straight in to the depths of what is perhaps the silliest issue one can imagine. This is to say nothing of the fact that it has only served to highlight the extent to which many Americans are xenophobic when it comes to Muslims, with perhaps little understanding of the religion, its followers, or, at the very least, the difference between the overwhelming majority of Muslims and the twisted ideologies of extremist groups like Al-Queda.

From one Muslim’s point of view, if a nation is for freedom of religion, then it’s for freedom of religion. Being selective as to which religions can practice and evolve freely is hypocritical. As for the actual building of the Cordoba Center (as it is not a mosque), if the idea is to send some sort of symbolic message, then that message needs to be clearly articulated, declared and framed within the context of the initiative - rather than being left open to interpretation. If there is no symbolism and the goal is to just piss people off, this may not be worth the fight at all.

What do you think?

To all the readers of the Black Iris, a Ramadan Mubarak inshallah, and may your prayers and fasting be accepted!

If you’re in the giving mood, as well you should be, please take some time to head on over to Islamic Relief and help out those in need, especially our brothers and sisters in Pakistan, where flooding has resulted in over 1,600 deaths and 14 million people affected.

Ramadan Kareem.

Near my home exists a giant traffic circle. Actually, the street is home to three traffic circles that are no more than 200-300 meters apart from one another. It is, perhaps, a symbolic representation of Amman itself, which is known to be littered with these circles. What’s interesting about this particular circle is that every time I pass it, which is several times a day, I’ve noticed cars have started to slow down as they’re turning the circle. Why? Because the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) has discovered a great way to reduce speeding on its traffic circles by putting up visual obstacles; billboards. It’s like driving during a city-wide blackout or during a massive thunderstorm - suddenly, everyone’s a bit more careful with their driving for fear of colliding with another vehicle.

The Jordan Festival, which has been going on for the past month or so, has put up giant billboards on various sections of traffic circles across the city, causing cars, who are unable to see other cars that are driving within the inner parts of the circle, to slow down, and for the latter to take it easy for fear that a car entering the circle won’t see them. And, in the meantime, from an advertising point of view, everyone slows down just enough to get a real good look at the poster, the specific event, the time and location, and maybe even jot down the information if they have a free hand. In other words, it’s a win-win situation for everyone.

But size matters in this case, and it’s interesting to see the small vertical-sized posters that often hang on the side of the street lights that line the middle of major roads. The writing is often so small on those posters that you really have to slow down your car and squint your eyes to read all the information. Again, a win-win situation; a message is delivered and cars are forced to slow down in order for that to happen.

Also, some of those vertical ones are so low that they often times hit the driver’s side of the car. I’ve seen this happen first hand, and for those that haven’t it’s quite a sight, and you can sometimes see the aftermath of such collisions happy accidents in the form of twisted up, bent, beaten and broken billboards that lay hanging from the street light. But again, it does slow down those speeding cars.
Continue reading ‘How Amman Uses Visual Distractions To Slow Down Traffic’

I read “If I Were Another”, a collection of beautiful poems by Darwish some time ago. The collection was released in 2009, and having purchased it in Beirut back in December, I thought today, the day that Darwish left us some two short years ago, was a symbolic day to retrieve it from my bookshelf and review it. Well, not really review it. I hate reviewing poetry books. My love for the art doesn’t allow me to do so subconsciously. And I have to much respect for someone like Darwish to dare slap that label on it. So call this more of an attempt to share a piece of his work.

To begin with, I’ve always found Darwish’s poetry in the original Arabic to be musical, but even in their English form they seem to resonate a certain honesty in his storytelling that made him such a rich writer. Fady Joudah, who translated “If I Were Another”, writes an interesting observation in the book’s introduction describing the work. Joudah writes:

“A consumate poet at the acne of innermost experience, simulteansously personal and universal, between the death of language and physical death, Darwish created something uniquely his: the treatise of a private speech become collective.”

I absolutely love that last sentiment: a treatise of a private speech become collective. That’s exactly what made Darwish’s poem speak so loudly to so many people, whether they were inherently part of the struggle from which he was born, or simply bystanders window-shopping on the avenues of an ongoing history. Darwish’s poems were like private conversations that one might whisper to oneself in a reminiscent state, but he gave these very conversations a collective voice.

“If I Were Another” brings together some of Darwish’s most interesting works from the past two decades, including the memorable Mural. Each poem is an epic unto its own, and the book illuminates short pieces like “A Music Sentence” simultaneously with the detailed prose of pieces like “The Tragedy of Narcissus”, all in one breath. Who am I? - the recurrent question in many of Darwish’s later poems is scattered throughout: “Who am I after the strangers night? / I used to walk to the self along with others, and here I am losing the self and others”.

But it is perhaps the lengthy Mural, written after his first encounter with death, that perhaps resonates the loudest on a day like today. A sad tale of self-exploration, Darwish tries to find some reconciliation in the journey to self: