A black stripe is seen on an advertising panel in Amman, on Saturday June 27, 2009, promoting the upcoming concert that Michael Jackson was supposed to have performed in London. Associated Press
- Also, check out this funeral posting in Swefieh. Here as well.

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While the Internet and mainstream media has turned its attention to Iran in the past few weeks, it’s almost difficult to see the country in non-political terms. In the name of comedy, The Daily Show sent Jason Jones to Iran to do a series entitled “Behind The Veil”. So far, it’s been a hilarious window […]

Health Minister Nayef Al Fayez visits Swine-Flu infected patients and fulfills his ceremonial duties of shaking hands with sick people. I wonder if he’s wishing right about now that he had a different job.
Any other caption suggestions are welcomed.
[source]

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“I am proud because I was not prosecuted for corruption, or for spying, but for saying a word of truth.” - Khalid Mahadin on being cleared of charges of slandering the Lower House of Parliament.
While it’s good to hear that Mahadin is cleared of these idiotic charges levied against him by an even more idiotic […]

Former Minister of Public Works, Sahel al-Majali, has been the on-again, off-again center of a brewing scandal regarding the royal initiative: decent housing for decent living. Today, columnist Jamil Nimri opened the Pandora’s box on the whole issue with some rather interesting findings.
Briefly, the initiative was set to build 100,000 homes for poor Jordanians, offering […]

“If Bush and Blair can spin the truth about WMDs to justify bombing innocent people, then why can’t I spin Dalia’s story to save women from being murdered on a daily basis?” - Norma Khouri on fabricating her novel “Forbidden Love” about honor crimes in Jordan.
This quote comes by way of a review of the […]

Yesterday, Khaled Mahadin’s trial began. For those who don’t know, Mahadin is being sued by Parliament for slander by way of an article posted on Khaberni.com, a Jordanian news site. A few protesters gathered outside Parliament yesterday morning as Mahadin was pleading not guilty. I hope he’ll win this case.

Meanwhile, in other media news, cartoonist […]

Arabian Business just published it’s annual Most Influential Arabs list for 2009 and it’s pretty good popcorn reading. Like last year, only three Jordanians made the list, including Fadi Ghandour (who went up 52 spots to be ranked 27th), Samer Majali (38th) and Emad Hajjaj (who dropped 40 spots to be ranked 83rd). While Fadi […]

A year ago, I used my powers of sarcasm to criticize Amman for not joining the rest of a lengthy list of world cities that turned off their lights for an hour to mark “Earth Hour” - an initiative to push the issue of global warming in to psyche of people and government everywhere. I […]

Academy Award winning documentary filmmaker, Errol Morris has a very interesting piece in the New York Times this week where he looks at the images that really capture the “Bush Years”. Some are widely known and popularized, others not so much. Some are funny some are just sad. From him standing on the rubble of […]

Sixty percent of Americans in the nationwide survey said they were sympathetic toward the Israelis, compared with 17 percent who supported the Palestinians, CNN reported today on its Web site. A recent European poll showed that 23 percent of French people said the Palestinian Hamas group was primarily responsible for the war while 18 percent […]

Electronic Intifada has a sample of the leaflets being dropped on Gaza encouraging its residents to snitch on any “terrorists”. They even called up the hotline to play a bit of a prank. The recording is actually worth listening to, and if you don’t understand the broken-Arabic you can read the transcript in English also […]

The eye-catching swimming pool in Mumbai, India, has been built to raise awareness about the threat of sea level rises as a result of global warming. It was constructed by attaching a giant aerial photograph of the New York City skyline to the floor of the pool. The idea was conceived by advertising agency Ogilvy […]

According to a recent poll conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org, 41% of Jordanians believe that the US “opposes democracy in Muslim nations”, making it the highest of 21 nations polled. Moreover, 40% of Jordanians believe that the US does favor democracy in Muslim nations, as long as they are cooperative with the US. Only 6% believe that […]

In the middle of the news conference with Mr Maliki, a reporter stood up and shouted “this is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog,” before hurtling his shoes at Mr Bush, narrowly missing him. [source]
Here’s the kicker, if by Western standards, Palestinian kids throwing rocks are terrorists, then what about Iraqi journalists who […]

How fast can someone put a book together on President-elect Obama? Well, on the day after Obama won the election, The Guardian created a Flickr group to find a creative way of capturing the victory. The group, which now has over 1,600 members, quickly became a collaborative effort to send various messages to Obama and […]