Zamalek Vs. Ahly, Shit Happens!

As you all know, luck plays a big role in football games. Today El-Ahly beated El-Zamalek 2-1, however El-Zamalek played much much better.

Anyway, congratulations to the lucky Ahly fans.

Tags: Egypt, Football, Soccer, Zamalek, Ahly, Gr33n Data

Black and White

Are we racists!? Do you really think, we, Arabs, are racists!?

Ok, the whole story started when I wrote a post about the American actress Halle Berry, and that I can't see how people consider her pretty.

May be the American media have their own reasons to call her pretty. May be they are trying to deliver a message that they are not against colored people, especially with their long history of racism.

By the way, you may think I am racist, and that I don't see her pretty because of her color. But you know, Beyonce Knowles for example, she is colored too, but I see her really hot.

I then had a debate with an American - friend - blogger called Naomi, who believes that Halle is really pretty. By the way, Naomi is of African American origins.

Later on, one of my *favorite* blog readers, Amr El Abyad, whose name literally means Amr the White, decided to comment, but for some reason I don't know, he left his comment at Naomi's blog and asked me to read is there. May be he is afraid that I may delete his comment or something, however I never deleted a non-spam comment before. Any way, here you are his comment.

[I] am an Egyptian who was browsing tarek's blogger. Then i read your comments about the Halle post in which you found Tarek's denying that he is racist strange!! I wonder why.
I just would like to inform you that the Egyptians's ethnicity is artabic, you might as well call it middle-eastern in case you hate the Arabs.
I have ti tell you that the Egyptians and arabs are the most racist people in the world. the black people are openly called slaves, th lighter races are pigs.......FJapanese, chinese.....etc are dumb by genes.

Naomi was really wise, and wrote the following reply to Amr's comment.

As I see it, we all have the same "mom" and "dad": Adam and Eve.

Now, let me ask you, do you really think we are racists!? As you all know, Islam is against racism, we are ordered to respect everyone. And prophet Muhammad's - peace be upon Him - famous saying, "The only thing that differentiate between Arabs and non-Arabs is their deeds".

Update, 1/1/2007
I cannot deny that some Arabs are racists. But what I wanted to say here is that not all of them are racists, also our religion as Muslims - I think Christians as well - is against racism.
In fact what made me add this update now is the Arabic media reaction after Saddam's execution. As you know, most of the victims of Saddam's era were Kurds (non-Arabs), and Shia (non-Sunnis). And I think that's why Sunni-Arabs were really sad for the execution of Saddam. It seems that they wanted to nullify what I wrote above by their racist attitude.
Anyway, I still cannot accept Amr El-Abyad's generalization. And hope that the racist ones will remain a minority here.

P.S. See Naomi's separate post about the same issue here.

Tags: Racism, Arabs, Gr33n Data

Happy Eid

Happy Eid El Adha to all of you, and wish you all the best.

By the way, Engy, AKA Donzella, has told me that the post I wrote last November under the name "Happy Eid", it was Eid El Fetr then, is number 6 out of 1,770,000 results when you search for the words "Happy" and "Eid" in Google.

It seems that the Iraqi government has decided to execute Saddam Hussein tonight, after one hour from now or so, on Eid Al Adha's Eve. You may call it the Iraqi government's present - Eideyah - to the Iraqi people. I know that it is sad news for some Arabs here, those who I prefer to call them "Saddam Widows". If you watch channels such as Al-Arabiya , and Al-Jazeera. And if you read those Arabist newspapers such as Al-Quds Al-Araby you will know exactly what I am talking about. They are trying to find excuses, and reasons why Saddam is not supposed to be executed. They accuse his trial , and call it a biased one. They are even saying silly stuff, such as, he is not supposed to be executed in a holiday! They also war the Iraqis that Saddam's execution my lead to more violence in Iraq. I really can't get their point. These people curse every single Arabic leader every single day, they wish to see them all hanged up. So why the hell do they hate to see one of the worst Arabic leaders being punished for his deeds!?

Tonight I went to the cinema to see the movie, Al-Raheena, it's an Egyptian "Action" movie. You know, there is a famous expression used here in Egypt, which is "Kessa Walla Manazer?", it literally means "Script or Scenes?". I think this movie is a scene one. It's director, Sandra Nashaat, is really talanted. I like her shots so much. And for sure the presence of the Lebanese actress Nour there makes you feel happy beacuse God gave you eyes to see with. But on the other hand, the script sucks, as well as the acting there.

Tomorrow there will be a very important football match here in the Egyptian league. It's El-Zamalk vs. El-Ahly, the Egyptian most famous derby. Best wishes for El-Zamalek, my favorite football team.

Update, Injis has a nice review for Al-Raheena movie on her blog. You can read it here.

Tags: Eid, Arabia, Islam, Iraq, Google, Gr33n Data

Against The Censorship of Tunisian Blogs

Tags: Tunisia, Blogs, Gr33n Data

The Digital Photography Effect

It seems that phone-cameras and video sharing sites such as YouTube, are the main drivers of events this year. Even Time magazine has mentioned this in their latest issue.

Here in Egypt, the police brutality is a matter of fact. We are somehow used to it, and policemen were never punished for it. Lately people have been exchanging a video taken by mobile phone, showing a police officer sexually harassing an Egyptian driver by putting a big wooden stick in his ass. The police officer was punished by moving him to firefighting department. I know this is not the suitable punishment for such deed, but this is the best we can have here. Also the Human Rights Watch is asking for a trial for the police officer. By the way this is not the only case of police brutality that has been shooted, you may find other videos here, here, and here.

In USA, photos showing Katie Rees, The former Miss Nevada, exposing her breast, and her thong underwear and kissing other young women at a party in Tampa, were enough to dethrone her, and the title was given to the first Runner-Up, Helen Salas, instead.

Tags: Blogs, Flickr, YouTube, Egypt, USA, Nevada, Miss Nevada, Photos, Police, Brutality, Katie Rees, Gr33n Data

No for Xmas Greetings

My Salafy friend sent me an Email a couple of days ago warning me not to celebrate the Christmas, nor even send greetings to those who are going to celebrate it. And if I do so, I'll be "Kafer", and will be sent right to hell.

Those Salafy people have real problems with dealing with others. They cannot accept that people are just different. They also have a severe problem with religion, for them religion is really shallow, and many simple deeds are enough to stamp you as a non believer and "Kafer".

Update, 25/12/2006:
Merry Christmas to you all.

Tags: Religion, Xmas, Christmasmas, Gr33n Data

In a Copyrighted World

Our story takes place in the near future.
The laws related to copyrights have been massively changed.
The giant firms and international tycoons are yet trying to change these law more and more.

Scene #1.
Alice was walking in her flat, when she suddenly saw big rat running there. She used to hate rats, but this time the hated them more, especially when she dropped a glass of water from her hand. After a short while, she heard knocking on her door, she was sure that the police will come to her, but never expected them to arrive that quickly. According to the law, the law of gravity is now copyrighted, and if you drop anything or even if you fall down, you have to pay Newton Sons Ltd. some fees for using the law of gravity that they own. But, since she didn't inform the policy before dropping the glass, she was supposed to pay the fees and be put to jail for one week as well.

Scene #2.
It was Bob's first day to school, on his way, he decided to sing one of his favorite songs, "Humpty Dumpty". Poor Bob, all at a sudden he found himself surrounded by the CSG (Copyrights Security Guards) troops. The mighty guards took the 4 years old kid with them, and he will be locked in a special room, till they set him a trial.

Scene #3.
Eve owns a supermarket. She has to wake up early today on order to remove all the banners and signs with the word "Apple" on them, because according to law, people have to name that fruit anything else but "Apple", because it's a trademark that belongs to Apple Computer Inc. Even the singer, "Fiona Apple" has to change her name according to the same law.

Scene #4.
Tarek is checking the rope around his neck, as he decided to suicide. According to law he is not supposed to download music via peer to peer file sharing programs, he is not supposed to watch movies with his friends, and he cannot tell a joke he listened to this morning because it's, damn, copyrighted.

Tags: Copyrights, Humor, Society, Gr33n Data

Share Your Feeds

Do you use Google Reader? O.k, if you do use it, than I guess, you also sort your feeds into folders, right? Don't you think that any of those folders worth being shared with others?

Come on, it's really simple.
Go to "Settings".
Then to "Tags" tab.
Now, click on the icon beside the word "private", beside the folder you want to share.
Did it turn to "public" now?
Click on the "view public page", and copy the URL and share it with us here, or even on your own blog

Here you are a link of my "Egyptian Blogs that I read" feed:
You can simply add it to your own Google Reader

And always remember...
"Behind the need to communicate is the need to share".

Tags: Google Reader, RSS, Gr33n Data

Dolls Harassment

Gr33nData Studios Presents
The Worst Movie Ever
"Dolls Harassment"

Tags: Phun, Dolls Harassment, Dolls, Harassment, Fight, Movie, Gr33n Data

Time magazine's "Person of the Year"

You were named Time magazine "Person of the Year" on Saturday. No, "You" is not a Chinese person, Hong Shong You, or Ding Dong You, it is just you, as well as me for sure ;)

The magazine said naming a collectivity rather than an individual reflected the way the internet was shifting the balance of power within the media through blogs, videos and social networks. Time mentioned websites such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and Wikipedia, which allow users to interact with the web by uploading and publishing their own posts, comments, videos, pictures and links.

You beat out candidates including Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, China's President Hu Jintao, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il

"It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes," Time magazine's Lev Grossman writes.

Time has been naming its person of the year since 1927 and the tradition has become the source of speculation every year, as well as controversy over unpopular choices such as Adolf Hitler in 1938 and Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.

The aim is to pick "the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or for ill, and embodied what was important about the year, for better or for worse."

Sources:
BBC News, Technology
Reuters

Tags: Media, Time, Magazine, You, Gr33n Data

Gorgeous By The Media

You sure know that American actress called Halle Berry. Every time her name is mentioned in the media, it is preceded by stuff such as "the gorgeous actress", "the pretty", etc. Come on, is there anybody who really think that she is pretty. For me she is not even average. She is the American version of Sherine Ah-Ya-Leel, ughhhh!!

Sometimes, the media are fond of clichés, and they keep on repeating phrases and words without even thinking. May be the American media have their own reasons to call her pretty. May be they are trying to deliver a message that they are not against colored people, especially with their long history of racism. But what about our local newspapers!? Does the copy-and-paste culture have anything to do with this!? Are they just translating the articles and news they get, phrase by phrase, and word by word, without even thinking!?

By the way, you may think I am racist, and that I don't see her pretty because of her color. But you know, Beyonce Knowles for example, she is colored too, but I see her really hot.

Tags: Halle Berry, Beyonce, Racism, Media, Gr33n Data

Three F's

I caught a flu two days ago, headache kills me, I don't feel like blogging now. You know the three F's, "Fuck the Fucken Flu".

I am now connected to the internet through our neighbors wireless modem. Yeah, I know, I am a thief, but you know, it helps me to relax in bed while surfing the Internet, instead of being forced to sit on my desk.
You know the NTRA is fighting those who share their ADSL connection with neighbors. They are doing some advertisements warning people, that their telephone lines may be subject to disconnection if they do so. Ok, they may track those who use wired network, however it is really hard to do so, but what about wireless networks, how can they prove it!?

PS.1, I want to add another 3 F's, "Fuck the Fucken Flies", I really can't see any reason for such annoying insects to exist :)

PS.2, If you have your own 3 F's, please feel free to add them here.

Tags: WiFi, Flu, Gr33n Data

Flickr Upgraded its Upload Limit

On Flickr blog, it's been announced that pro as well as free accounts' upload limit has been changed.

"At the same time, we've upped the limit for free account members as well, from 20MB per month up to 100MB (yep, five times more)!", Flickr's Blog.

Seems that the competition with Zooomr, Picasa Web, and ... may be ... ikbis is behind such move ;)

Tags: Flickr, Photography, Gr33n Data

Let the Cows Fart

If your car runs out of gas, wait for cows to fart.
Visit Fonzation for more information.

Tags: Fonzation, Cows, Cars, Environment, Gr33n Data

Morphing

I have been tagged by Arima

I stole this link from Izzi, who stole it on her turn from Mischa and had a heck of a lot of fun.
From, Arima, Ha Ana Za!

My photo morphed as an East-Asian person


Me as an African.


Baby Tarek


Manga


El Greco


Amedeo Clemente Modigliani

Let's tag, Blueue, Zeinobia, JPierre, Layal, and Sou.

Tags: CGI, Graphics, Computers, Phun, Gr33n Data

A Late "Thank You".

Ahmad Humeid, a Jordanian Blogger, and one of the founder of itoot, made to following comment on my, so called, Anti itoot campaign :)

Let me first say that it a mistake on our part not to respond to people who submit. Sincere apologies for that to anyone out there who has submitted his/her blog and not received a reply.
Let me also say that the the "I am not on toot" button is cool. Thanks for the extra exposure for toot :)
We had many discussions with bloggers over the past months about our criteria. Some of these discussions were quite heated and all kinds of accusations were thrown at us. (Jordan-bias, circle of friends, political direction, etc etc).
We know we cannot make everyone happy. But we probably need to make our criteria/lackthereof clearer on the site itself.
We basically seek to include blogs that add the diversity of our selection. Diversity from the perspective of: opinions, topics, seriousness/sillines, male-female, gepographic.
And let me remind you that what makes blogs os great for many is that you can read about people brushing their teeth sometimes, which is something you will not get in your daily newspaper.
We seek blogs who have been around for a while, that have a loyal audience and good or promising amount of traffic.
There is no "scientific" way to choose what goes on toot, and I am sure our biases as a team sometimes affect our selection.
What we are NOT is a general arab blog aggregator or a technorati replacement.
We recently removed some inactive blogs from toot.
I don't think anyone would dispute that toot aggregates some of the most respected blogs in the Arab world.
Lastly, we are a really small team and we have been very busy with our second product, ikbis.com which is the first Arabic video/photo sharing site.
So frogive us if we have no perfected everything. We hope to become more responsive and that we'll be able to add more blogs to toot soon.
Thanks for the feedback.

Thanks Ahmad for your feedback, however the anti-itoot campaign will not be stopped :-P

Tags: itoot, Blogging, Gr33n Data

Sitcom, Being Muslim Over There

A new Canadian comedy series called "Little Mosque on the Prairie", is being aired. It tries to explore the funny side of being a Muslim and adapting to life in post 9/11 North America.

[A] young man of evidently Pakistani or Indian origin is standing in an airport line, gesticulating emphatically as he says into his cellphone, "If Dad thinks that’s suicide, so be it", adding after a pause, "This is Allah’s plan for me."
As might be expected, a cop materializes almost instantly and drags the man off, telling him that his appointment in paradise will have to wait, even though the suicide he is referring to is of the career kind; he’s giving up the law to pursue a more spiritual occupation.
The scene unrolls early in the pilot of a new Canadian comedy series called "Little Mosque on the Prairie".
Source: The New York Times.

In fact, I didn't see a single episode of this series, however I think it's healthy to have something like this in the western media, that may replace the Terrorist Moslems stereotype, especially that the writer is a Canadian Muslim of Pakistani origin.

Tags: Media, Canada, Islam, Gr33n Data

Google is our Customer

Guess what, Google is our customer now. They bought a firewall from us in order to secure their office here in Egypt.

Tags: Google, Personal, Gr33n Data

Fuck the Seat Belt

Today noon I was on my way to a meeting in 6th of October City, where I saw a very strange scene. It was a police-crane with a micro-bus attached to it. The crane driver was swinging in the road as shown above. It seems that he was doing it intentionally in order to cause some damage in the micro-bus or so. First of all, it is not his right to damage the micro-bus. And the most important thing, can you imagine the risk of doing something like this on a highway!
The funny thing is that the police charge people for not fastening their seat-belts, or using their mobile phones while driving. Come on, the risk is nothing compared to what their crane was doing!
Fuck the seat belt, and fuck those idiots.

Tags: Egypt, Society, Police, Corruption, Safety, Gr33n Data

Global Orgasm

The mission of the Global Orgasm is to effect change in the energy field of the Earth through input of the largest possible surge of human energy.
The intent is that the participants concentrate any thoughts during and after orgasm on peace. The combination of high- energy orgasmic energy combined with mindful intention may have a much greater effect than previous mass meditations and prayers.
The goal is to add so much concentrated and high-energy positive input into the energy field of the Earth that it will reduce the current dangerous levels of aggression and violence throughout the world.
Link: http://www.globalorgasm.org/

Actually, I didn't get their point, if they really have any. But since I have nothing in mind to blog now, I think my gentle readers deserve to see some weired news here every now and then :)

Tags: Peace, World, Orgasm, Global Orgasm, Solstice, Gr33n Data

Not Me!

Mazen Mason Panzram, a 22 years old male living in UAE. Do you know him!? I don't think so. Guess what I don't know him as well. But it seems that we have something in common. As you can see in his yahoo profile, his homepage *is* my own blog!
What the hell is his point, huh!?

Tags: Personal, Yahoo, Gr33n Data

Ten Years Chatting

I think most of us started dealing with the Internet in the late nineties, and chatting was one of the main activities people used to do online. You sure remember those old days when we used to remember our ICQ UIN, and we used to share it with our friends, you were also able to search for people by age, sex, and location. Some of you tried stuff such as mIRC and PalTalk which I never liked. Later on, we started to move to MSN, Yahoo Messenger, Skype and Google Talk. It's been ten years since we started to chat with others online, ten years, may be more, and may be less, yet it's a long period. But during those ten years how many real friends did we make out of those keyboard-pals!?

For me, out of those people I knew online, the number of...
Good friends = 0
Just friends = 0
People I go out with rarely = 0
Even enemies = 0

I don't know about you, but it came out that chatting is a good way to communicate with your existing friends, especially those who are traveling, but it sucks when it comes to making new friends.

Tags: Personal, Social, Relations, Life, Internet, Gr33n Data

Riad ُُُEl-Solh Square

Hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered yesterday near Mr Siniora's office in Riad Solh Square, in Beirut, calling for the Lebanese government to step down. The tension between Hezbollah et. al. and the current government started a while ago, when Hezbollah's allies asked for a greater role in the government, followed by the resignation of Hezbollah, and Amal ministers, then came the assassination of Pierre Gemayel, who belongs to March the 14th movement, that is forming the majority of the current government, whose death and funeral were used by the government which played the role of the victim and got more sympathy in order to prevent Hezbollah protesters from getting down to the streets asking in order to force the government to resign. The government succeeded in delaying Hozbollah's allies peaceful protests, but it seems that such move was irreversible, and yesterday was the day.

Actually, I have some questions in mind that I want to share with you here. Is it Hezbollah's right to make such move? Come on, this government was elected by the Lebanese majority, and forcing it to resign, by a group of protesters, is really against democracy. I'll try to put myself in Hezbollah's shoes and figure out what is in their minds. Before the last Lebanese-Israeli conflict, Hezbollah used to rely on their military power, they never had a political majority in any government, though the Shiits are a demographic majority in Lebanon. The Lebanese Shiits never knew how to play the political game as well. The Lebanese constitution didn't give them enough power compared to their numbers, but they also failed to become a non-silent majority. If you have a look at the Lebanese media, you'll find most of the writers, journalists, and even actors and singers are Maronites or Sunnis. Even the Lebanese blogosphere is not far away from this. The birth of Hezbollah in the eighties was the only right move they did in their lifetime, however Hezbollah continued to count on its military power, and never cared about having a political power beside it. Then came the Lebanese-Israeli conflict, and the UN 1701 resolution, backed by the current Lebanese government and many other Arab and western governments, that limited Hezbollah's military power. So, they woke up and realized that they have to get themselves involved in the political game that they missed for ages. And for me this is why they decided to have allies such as Al Tayyar of General Oun, AmaL Movement, and Suleiman Franjieh, and this is why they asked for greater share in the government and finally they were forced to get down to the streets and used the silent majority they have as well their allies supporters in order to form a custom government where they can have greater role in.

On the other hand, the Siniora's governemt failed in dealing with the Lebanese-Israeli conflict, and this failure leads to an unjust resolution such as that one the UN made after the war. The government also failed in re-building what was destroyed during the war. In fact they failed in dealing with the war itself as well as the post-war situation. So the question is, isn't it the people's right to ask a government to resign after such failures? But, I think such call of resignation is supposed to be made in the parliament and not in the streets, right? I know, we are not used to this here in our region, and governments last either they fail or succeed. It's just our presidents/kings who have the right to force governments to either resign or stay. Anyway, may be it's me who is not used to democracy, so I'd like to know the opinion of those readers who live in democratic countries. Is it the protesters right or not to get down to the street calling for their government resignation when it fails?

One final note, sure you have noticed how some Arab leaders dealt with the current situation in Lebanon, and leaders of countries such as Saudia and Egypt backed the current Lebanese government against the protesters. First of all, it's an internal Lebanese affair, so they do not have the right to interfere with it. But also, I think that most of the Arab government are staying in their positions against their peoples will, so they are sure not happy to see something like this in a neighbor country, as it may happen to have similar protests some day in their own countries.

Tags: Lebanon, Middle East, Hezbollah, Shiits, Sunnis, Maronites, Protests, Politics, Gr33n Data

Green Data Blog Survey

Rami Sedhom, Iknaton2, has suggested a while ago on Bloggers-Eg, that we create surveys to know how our blogs visitors see them, and what are their opinions about them. Some of the group members suggested to keep those surveys only for Bloggers-Eg members, however I think it's better to publish it here for others to leave their two cents.

Please try to take this survey, and looking forward to seeing your comments.
Click here to start the survey

Thank you in advance

Tags: Blog, Personal, Gr33n Data