My journey through thoughts, uplifting sometimes, dragging sometimes, but always with one constant, presence.
As a fan of “The Godfather” and Mario Puzo, I was ecstatic when I saw this piece of manual intelligence. It is good!
It is made up of the whole script of the movie, I would have posted it if it wasn’t very taxing to my blog and if it wasn’t illegal. but here is a link.
enjoy!
I am really getting to understand why the New York Times called him “arguably the most important,” he really has that thing about him, he keeps up with current events and knows how to link past, present and future, when you read what he writes, especially when it is a collection of speeches and talks, which are by definition easy to understand and entertaining if you are interested in the topic, I would dare say that I don’t agree with everything he says, but then again I would have to have a second look before I claim something.
I bought this book, it does not seize to amaze me, I know many of the facts in the book but when he analyzes them, I literally stop and think, and I hope he reads this some day, till then, I would like to annoy any fans of his by saying this, I met him in York University, Canada and I actually conversed with him.
I will however write here anything that I want to disagree with this great mind, also, I now want a dozen more of his books.
I would like to congratulate Columbia University, they did a remarkable feat and won a great battle, they did not surrender their fate to people who call “foul” or “antisemitism” on every corner. Columbia University established an Edward Said Chair in Middle East Studies, it was 2002 and it was great. Forcing the pro-Israeli media to take note, campus watch said:
“Columbia is already known for the lack of balance in Middle East studies. The list of donors to the Edward Said chair only confirms the problem.
Particularly worrisome is the presence of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) among the donors.”
They didn’t explain why a country and a university where so abhorrently labeled and attacked. Edward said was a great scholar and his books reached great fame and acclaim, nothing in his written (or spoken) history, can be scholarly refuted, he has actually rejuvenated how middle-east study should occur. His work “Orientalism” is considered the landmark study in this field.
It is ridiculous at this day and age that so many websites are attacking donors to study programs, and attacking universities for respecting the wishes of non-disclosure by patrons of academia.
Columbia didn’t at first disclose the names of donors but later did:
Yusef Abu Khadra
Abdel Muhsen Al-Qattan
Ramzi A. Dalloul
Richard and Barbara Debs
Richard B. Fisher
Gordon Gray, Jr.
Daoud Hanania
Rita E. Hauser
Walid H. Kattan
Said T. Khory Munib R. Masri
Morgan Capital & Energy
Olayan Charitable Trust
Hasib Sabbagh
Kamal A. Shair
Abdul Shakashir
Abdul Majeed Shoman
Jean Stein
United Arab Emirates
After the list was disclosed “The list of donors to the Edward Said chair only confirms the problem.” campus watch and other pro-Israeli groups said. From what I know, most of the people above are business people and philanthropists. Nothing is wrong if they want to sponsor certain areas of study.
The UAE was attacked but Dick Chenney didn’t seem to mind visiting them yesterday, also the compairision is not valid but this donation and Harvard’s, this was done by the government, not by the late ruler Sheikh Zayed, which is quite different.
I have been contemplating learning a third language, I always fantasized about it, I choose French for more reasons than one, French is almost the third most spoken language in Jordan, it is the official language in 41 countries and French as a foreign language is the second most frequently taught language in the world, after English. It is the native tongue of over 87 million people and has an additional 68 million non-native speakers.
It made sense, but also it is a matter of convenience because many people I know speak it at a level or another therefore I can find someone to go to. This is not to mention that money books I would love to read are in fact written in the French language and are not translated.
France is a center of culture and many Arabic politicians, thinkers, authors and artists reside there, they have published in French what won’t be easily accessible in other languages. Also to learn more about the European progressive and socialist movements you have to start somewhere and france is as good a place as any.
It is a fun language as I realized the last time I was in France in 2003, I chatted with a female taxi-driver with what little words I could muster, I could understand she has family Montreal and I could explain what I wanted to see and where I wanted to go. I realized that it won’t be an enormous feat to go from bilingual to multilingual.
I already bought a book about the topic and I am learning some phrases to try and use soon, we will see how that goes.
On Jimmy Carter regarding his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid:
A vocal segment of the Jewish establishment has responded to the book as if we Jews speak with one monolithic voice which equates criticism of Israel’s policies with anti-Semitism. We believe this knee-jerk reaction to criticism of Israeli government policies not only stifles debate, but inflames fear in the Jewish community and increases tolerance for militarism.
I bought the book, I think it is fair and I am being honest and unbiased, but I like what Tikkun said, I hope it doesn’t go unnoticed.
The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest for the Middle East is the book I have been reading of late. If there is one book to explain the Middle East in an unbiased and precise manner, its this book, I have failed to find a unamusing page and will probably be referencing it many times.
Robert Fisk, the author has no need to be introduced to any serious reader of the Middle East coverage. For the less serious, here, here and here are good sources.
This youtube movie is a good watch for a lecture he did in Canada for those who wish not to read but to listen:
Yes, i do believe that we “the west” have a very heavy burden of responsibility towards the tragedy that has moved across the middle east ever since…
“..by the time I reached the end of the book, …. I was amazed at the restraint which the Muslim world have shown towards us in the west”
and talking of September 11th he said:
if you get a crime .. in any Canadian city the first thing the RCMP do is look for a motive, but when we try to look for a motive, in this international crime against humanity in Washington, Pennsylvania and New York, we were not allowed to look for a motive, wasn’t this strange
also watch this.
A must read and a must watch, and for those who like to read in Arabic, an Arabic edition is coming up.
Since the title is in capitals I am presuming you will all know I am talking about the Michael Moore book, or rather all his filmography and his literary works. Although he has a way of making everything he writes or shows seem as irrefutable facts, I will admit to the many doubts i have. Still, I am yet to see a few people with legitimate claim or lawsuit against the guy.
You watch and you think, there must be something with this, but then you watch and you think, well, would all those rich stupid men let him say it if it wasn’t true. Well, I don’t know, but someday he will provoke someone and their jury pool and will find himself paying fines and stuff.
Till then, he better get loaded real quick so he can settle.
Good Luck
I’ve been really busy with all the reading I’ve been doing, I was trying to get hold of the Gutenberg DVD, and I downloaded 700 megs of it but it turns out that you can only burn it to DVDs and I only have a CD-RW. I settled for the CD which has around 600 books. A lot of reading material, but all of it is outdated.
Project Gutenberg relies primarily on books for which the copyright has worn off; that includes most of the major arts and fiction. It does not by any mean include those newly published books which have something to say. Much of the 17,000 books they carry at the moment are books that are read-worthy because it is the common people who donate the book, their effort and most of all their time to such causes.
Give it a visit: http://www.gutenberg.org
Friends, old ones, just keep coming back to me all the time. I like it; I enjoy hearing how everyone progresses differently. Especially intellectually, Jawad, one of my closest friends back in high school, turned out to be more penetrable than I would have imagined. Mais, probably the only person I asked to read this blog, is intellectually superior, although takes actions of pre-historical man as a measure of human nature, I don’t know if I agree but I like her method of reaching conclusions.
That got me thinking about myself, at the risk of sounding self-centered I wondered how much I evolved, see I always had mature ideas but none that I was able to envisage on my own. I had Haitham, my brother, to tell me what’s right and what’s true, yet I always knew there was something about his knowledge that seemed to good to be true.
His main sources were, after a long period of examination, they were media outlets. While I wouldn’t go as far as deem all of them false or counterfeit, I would still say they always tend to have a bias. Who doesn’t? Well, it’s the degree of bias that troubles me, media is by definition looking to attract the receiver, they want to make profit.
If this wasn’t for free courtesy of our big bros at wordpress, then I would definitely be doing the same thing. I wrote for publications who asked me to ease down the tempo a bit, I did because they need the advertisers just as much as I needed the cash. That is not a lot, I could have lived without that money, but still I did take it to improve.
Now that I can speak my mind, this world isn’t a great place, some parts are but in the general sense it isn’t. If a 20 year-old female wrote me saying that American are the best educated in the world, that she thinks they have the highest incomes, and that they are the most respected in the world judging by the migration stats, then sorry, but truth is a bit farther away at least.
There a four kind of men (actually people):
In that order I think it’s fair to say I moved up from number 4 to anywhere in the region of 3 and 2. I don’t what I know but I know I should look for it. I got rid of the notion that books have answers, they merely have hints, and it’s all in your head.
Still, I live life to the fullest, and all of you should do the same. I tried everything at least once and I’m still around to talk about it.
