June 2007

Islam-Secularism…

Morality-Immorality…

Oppression-Freedom…

Winter-Summer…

Ninja-BayWatch…

Unattractive-HOT…

???

Me loves. Some background.

(hat tip: Good Neighbours and Beirut Spring)

The much anticipated Michael Moore movie Sicko is out. There isn’t much mention or praise of it in the rightosphere as there is in the leftosphere. I’ve only watched the preview and I can already predict that it will be a very interesting movie. I guess it’s going to reinforce the horrible stories told to me by my American friends about America’s healthcare system. Four healthcare industry lobbyists for each Congressman? Damn!

If given a choice, this is the primary reason I’d prefer to move to Canada rather than America. Check out Umar Lee’s post on the issue.

From another perspective, it’s amazing how much room for freedom of expression exists in America. This movie (which is certainly going to piss off a lot of people) is proof of it.

There is another important thing which shouldn’t be missed… how the movie highlights the top-notch or ehm “top-notch” healthcare given to detainees at Guantanamo and compares it to that of American citizens. It contradicts all the media reports about the harsh mistreatment of the alleged terrorists locked up there. So who’s lying? Michael Moore or the media? Or both?

Yaaaaaaaaaay! I just discovered his return today. I have to say that I’m pretty damn happy to see him back blogging again. BP you were dearly missed! For those of you who don’t know, reading Big Pharaoh’s blog was the main reason I started blogging. He also gave me my first link and was very supportive from the start.

I found this quiz at the Atheist Jew’s blog and spent a few minutes answering it. The following are my results:

1. Theoretical Ideal Candidate (100%)
2. Mitt Romney (60%)
3. Tommy Thompson (54%)
4. John McCain (50%)
5. Al Gore (48%)
6. Ron Paul (47%)
7. Tom Tancredo (47%)
8. Christopher Dodd (47%)
9. Mike Huckabee (47%)
10. Sam Brownback (47%)
11. Jim Gilmore (45%)
12. Wesley Clark (45%)
13. Barack Obama (45%)
14. John Edwards (45%)
15. Chuck Hagel (43%)
16. Duncan Hunter (43%)
17. Dennis Kucinich (41%)
18. Michael Bloomberg (41%)
19. Fred Thompson (40%)
20. Hillary Clinton (39%)
21. Joseph Biden (39%)
22. Bill Richardson (37%)
23. Rudolph Giuliani (37%)
24. Alan Augustson (36%)
25. Newt Gingrich (33%)
26. Kent McManigal (32%)
27. Mike Gravel (22%)
28. Elaine Brown (21%)

Interesting huh? I’ve never liked the idea of putting myself in a Right or Left box. It’s too confining. Center-Left to Center-Right is my opinion spectrum. But hey maybe I really am a right-leaning centrist after all (if there is such a thing). As for Romney, from what little I read about him, it seems like he’s a spineless chameleon who changes his stances every 2 seconds. At least McCain came in at 4.

Here, why don’t you give the quiz a try!

Victimhood, Personal-Success Literature, & the Social Construction of Reality

My intention with this series of posts isn’t to answer questions or provide solutions. I’m simply pondering and thinking aloud in the hope of getting you to think along.

Growing up, I’ve had too many mostly seemingly unrelated interests and lacked a focus on one particular topic. More recently however there has been a convergence occurring in my mind, a convergence which I’m very excited about.

I sincerely believe that one of the biggest things holding us Muslims, Africans and Arabs back from moving forward is the collective state of mind we’re entrenched in and suffering from. Victimhood. But this is only a symptom of a deeper underlying problem, and that is a collective paranoia based on the premise that we’re under siege. It’s this deep paranoia that is crippling us and consuming our energy. Many, if not most of us are so obsessed and focused on outside threats or “threats” to such an extent, that it makes us lose the focus desperately needed to solve our internal issues.

How did that become our reality? How do we deal with it? These simple questions awakened me to the immense complexities we face if we are ever to truly progress.

I’m a huge fan of personal-success literature. In fact I like it so much that if I were the minister of education of any country, I’d make it part of the education syllabus. I’m dead serious. My most favorite author of all time is none other than Napoleon Hill. Anthony Robbins has also written some pretty good books. Moreover, he once said “the only thing that’s keeping you from getting what you want is the story you keep telling yourself”.

The story we keep telling ourselves is a negative one infested with victimhood. How do we change that? I believe a large part of “the answer” lies within personal-success literature and studies related to the sociology of knowledge. One particular topic that has recently captured my attention is social constructionism, originally born out of the book “The Social Construction of Reality”.

The Social Construction of Reality is a classic book in the sociology of knowledge written by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann and published in 1966.

The work introduced the term social construction into the social sciences. The central concept of The Social Construction of Reality is that persons and groups interacting together in a social system form, over time, concepts or mental representations of each other’s actions, and that these concepts eventually become habituated into reciprocal roles played by the actors in relation to each other. When these roles are made available to other members of society to enter into and play out, the reciprocal interactions are said to be institutionalised. In the process of this institutionalisation, meaning is embedded in society. Knowledge and people’s conception (and belief) of what reality is becomes embedded in the institutional fabric of society. Social reality is therefore said to be socially constructed.

The vast majority of people have the intellectual capacity to learn, do and become what they want. However the majority of those same people unfortunately don’t have the emotional capacity to step up to the challenges. IQ is great, but EQ is more important. A reality infested with victimhood only escalates the problem further.

There is a significant overlap between personal-success literature and what has been written about social constructionism. Also as a blogger or a person who reads sociopolitical blogs regularly, you’d realize that the internet and blogging are playing an increasing role in the social construction of reality for people around the world with access to cyberspace. Furthermore the effectiveness of the construction and or deconstruction of social reality is determined by various aspects including two things which I already have deep interests in, marketing and knowledge management.

Dominating the market place of ideas will only occur through better marketing, and that requires a thorough understanding of the audience we’re communicating our ideas to, which again brings us back to what the social reality of that audience is in the first place. What constitutes knowledge and what doesn’t to a particular society? In the West there is a higher emphasis on empiricism rather than revelation. In the Muslim world, the emphasis is instead generally on revelation. How can the proliferation of communication technologies and the internet be harnessed to spread empowering ideas that can bring about a positive mentality shift? If that happens, will it deal a sufficient and major blow to the victimhood mentality we generally suffer from? Those are just some of the questions that will be keeping me busy for the coming months (maybe even years).

I have a lot to read, consume, digest and learn. It’s fun. These are extraordinary times we live in. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be able to live and see the beginnings of the Sudan I envision, a Sudan with the best of Sudan, the UAE, America, Malaysia, Turkey, Europe and South Africa.

Information is like a drug and so I read to get my high.

Indeed, if this happens not so far away from Khartoum, imagine what happens in Darfur! Many Sudanese people are extremely furious over this. As for me, my blood is boiling right now.

On June 13, 2007 we received disturbing news from Kajbar area in Northern Sudan informing that the security forces have used excessive force to disperse a peaceful demonstration by Nubians protesting the construction of a dam at Third Cataract by Kajbar village. The security forces used tear gas and life ammunitions killing at least 6 people and wounding many others. The date palm trees in the area along the Nile were set on fire when peaceful demonstrators used them as protective shields from sporadic shooting. The security forces started shooting on the crowd from the surrounding mountains when the demonstrators came across a narrow passage on their way to an open area few kilometers south of the site of the proposed dam

Wonderful. More related info here. Videos here.

I could quote a few sentences and even provide an excerpt but I think I would be committing a great injustice. I don’t know about you but this has got to be one of the best damn speeches I’ve read in a while. Bill Gates, RESPECT man! Keep preaching!

I discovered this on Ayman’s blog. It’s a Sudanese song by the late Sudanese singer Ahmed Al-Mustafa singing with Sabah, the queen of Lebanese music. I found it too damn funny! Ayman is right, the dance choreography is plain silly. And check out Al-Mustafa’s face too, then compare it to his hand. That’s some heavy make up.

On another note, initially when I first watched it, I was slightly shocked by the fact that a Sudanese singer would be willing to appear in a video like that with scantly dressed women in it but then I remembered that just like Egypt, we Sudanese were generally way more secular back in those days than we are now.

Let me summarize and keep it as short as possible. It’s obvious the United States and Israel want to suffocate and isolate Hamas militarily, economically and diplomatically within the Gaza. At the same time, they want to support Abbas and the emergency government.

The Palestinians have gone for months without needed aid. Any Muslim who fasts during Ramadan knows that the water tastes way better during iftar time. Hence the arriving aid will feel wonderful to the Palestinians in the West Bank. As for those in the Gaza strip, they’ll simply continue suffering.

I predict, we’ll have a large number of Palestinians moving out of the Gaza strip to Egypt and/or to the “not so suffocated” West Bank. Who will remain in Gaza? Hamas. The IDF will then move in and the party will begin. But of course, we can expect Hamas to try and prevent Palestinians from leaving. Human shields will come in very handy.

The only sympathy I have is for innocent Palestinians who simply want a life of peace in which they can safely raise their children, send them to school and watch them grow up in a safe environment. They’re victims of their own leaders, corrupted Fatah on one hand, and on the other, Iranian-backed Hamas, who were democractically elected out of desperation and unfortunately ended up practicing a policy based on confrontation rather than cooperation.

Meanwhile, most Arabs and Muslims passionately blame Israel and America for their “divide and control” games. Fair enough. However let us not forget that we should also take responsibility for falling prey to those games in the first place. And here we are, Secularist Fatah and fundi Islamist Hamas. Pick your side… or not. Ah, so much for my dream.

Black Kush posted some really wonderful pictures of wildlife returning to South Sudan after 2 decades of bloody civil war. Path2Hope also has some pretty pictures of Tanzania. Makes me wana go there!

I totally agree with Black Kush. This report which lists Sudan as the number one failed state in the world is garbage:

I find the recently published Failed States Index 2007 utterly unbelievable and rubbish. It is one of these publications that doesn’t hold water. I have a lot of grievances with my country, but I don’t consider it a failed state. For this am sure.

The Index puts Sudan at the top of the list, followed by Iraq and Somalia. Every sane man on the planet knows that there is no government in Somalia for the last ten years. Actually there was no STATE! And how will you describe the carnage raging in Iraq, with a hopelessly impotent American-backed government? It is in a state of civil war, a government that doesn’t have control over its territories, etc.

…You can call Sudan what you want, but not failed: ask Somalis and Iraqis what they think first!

We certainly have a lot of problems and issues to fix, tons of them but check this. With civil war raging, billions of dollars in debt and even sanctions, we still managed to grow our economy by a damn 10%! A failed state certainly can’t achieve that level of economic growth.

Hilarious cartoon!:

(hat tip: Wholeheartedly-Sudaniya)

My computer screen got screwed but now it’s working again. Sorry for the lack of updates. There’s a lot that I want to blog about and hopefully during this weekend, I’ll manage to publish many posts. Please bear with me.