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Min Ayna Laka Hatha? The Arabic proverb that best translates to: from where did you acquire this wealth? This of course implies at worst a sense of corruption and at best a susceptible source of wealth.
Full financial disclosure has proven to be a public policy measure that increases accountability in the public sector. The financial […]

BEIRUT (AFP) - Lebanese may have lost homes, loved ones and livelihoods, but one thing they haven’t lost in the aftermath of the war is their legendary sense of humor.
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Jokes helped them survive Israel’s devastating military onslaught and are now making the post-war healing process a lot easier. Anecdotes are to be found everywhere — […]

The times they are a changin’….to an earlier point in time…
AMMAN â?? The government on Monday said it renewed last week Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mishaalâ??s passport upon his request.
â??Mr Mishaal holds a Jordanian passport… he submitted a request to renew his passport and it was approved,â? Government Spokesperson Nasser Judeh told a weekly press […]

Conan hosting was probably the only good thing about the Emmys this year. The new and controversial voting system that spit out strange nominations and snubbed the big hitters like LOST just screwed things up. What made it disappointing for me wasn’t so much the show but rather the fact that the West Wing won […]

Abdallah Amhaz (L) and his bride Mona stand in the rubble of a destroyed building before their wedding, organized by Hizbollah, in a district that was damaged during the conflict between Israel and Lebanon’s Hizbollah in Beirut’s southern suburbs, August 27,2006. REUTERS/Jamal Saidi (LEBANON)

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A few weeks ago there was a big deal made over a Reuters photographer that was fired because of a few fake photos. Suddenly bloggers with a lot of free time on their hands started doing their own professional photoshop investigations, much to my amusement. Well Reuters has just paid for it in Gaza. The […]

Hezbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has said he would not have ordered the capture of two Israeli soldiers if he had known it would lead to such a war.

“Had we known that the kidnapping of the soldiers would have led to this, we would definitely not have done it,” he said in an interview on […]

I never know what to call them sometimes. I don’t agree with the term suicide bomber at all but then again the word martyr calls on religion and that is something left to God in my opinion. Moreover I don’t believe someone blowing themselves up on a public bus can be considered a martyr and […]

I thought I would post the two parts of the documentary “Jenin Jenin” that documents the aftermath of the Jenin Massacre. It’s strange, with these types of films they are either entirely loved or entirely hated. But it’s based entirely on testimonials that are entirely emotional. Filmed in the Jenin refugee camp Palestinian filmmaker Muhammad […]

Some interesting (and entertaining) things happened this week in Jordanian politics…
First, the IAF just ended their temporary boycott of Monday’s Lower House session in protest for the appeals court upholding the ruling on the jailing of their members who praised Zarqawi. The boycott ended in good timing as the anti-terrorism bill is being debated in […]

Article of Interest: Hugh Naylor has an interesting article (blog entry) in the Washington Post that’s worth a read. Although obviously opinionated and generalized it does beg the question we’ve been asking for quite awhile: Is Jordan prospering or suffering from the rise in regional conflict? Everyone has their own take on this but there […]

I just finished watching Eugene Jarecki’s “Why We Fight” that won the 2005 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. It is probably one of, if not the best documentaries on the Iraq war that I have seen to date. The 98 minute documentary however is a bit broader as it looks at American […]

This is more or less another one of my rants that is based purely on frustrations incurred over the long run and exploding recently. This post is not intended for a theological debate but is rather merely a medium through which I may vent out. Forgive the linguistic mess.
I really don’t know which Islamic extremists […]

In a rare case for the music world an artist names his album the one thing that actually comes to define what it’s all about: a continuation. This is what John Mayer does on this simply superb album with the uncomplicated cover: pushes the fold of his musical ability well past the pop radio-friendly sound […]

I’m digging the new John Mayer video for “Waiting on the World to Change”. The ending is pretty clever in an artsy way…

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