We hold on to what we like in ourselves as kids... that's the only way we can survive the adults we've become.

No Faith

A faith unquestioned is no faith at all...

First they came...

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)

Such a great poem, I came across it recently and it reminds me why I have to, at the very least, speak out...

The Ultimate New Year’s Resolution

I’m going to quit smoking and start taking care of my health. I’ll be easy on the fast food, and eat more salad and fruit. I’ll stop lying and be more honest. I’ll stop cussing and be more eloquent. I’ll try and exercise more, I’ll go to the gym three times a week, I’ll try and work out no matter how busy I get. I won’t let work stress me out and I’ll always make sure to have some more me time. If I travel too much I’ll try to cut down, if I travel too little, I’ll arrange for more trips to see the world. If I work too much I’ll try to cut down and focus on the things that count, if I work too little I’ll stop being a lazy bum and work hard.

I’ll try and put goals before me that I can achieve, I’ll work hard towards all goals I aim to achieve. I’ll get closer to God and pray more often, I’ll stop believing in myth and dogma and be true to myself and be more open about my atheism. I’ll be slow to anger and lose my temper because I lose so much, I’ll learn how to express my anger rather than keeping it bottled up because I end up losing a lot when I keep everything in. I’ll tell people I love that I love them more often, I’ll stop being mushy and telling people that I love them so much.

I’ll spend more time on making music and take it seriously. I’ll finish a book and publish it. I’ll read more and become more informed. I’ll read about human rights and politics and start to care about global problems. I’ll give more to charity. I’ll be the loving son or daughter or husband or wife that people expect me to be. I’ll buy that SLR camera I wanted to buy for so long because I love photography. I’ll cut down on cola and soft drinks. I’ll stop doing the wild things I always do and settle down. I’ve been afraid to live for so long and I’ll start trying out new things that I’ve never tried before.

I’ll find a partner that I feel happy with, I’ll end the abusive relationship that I’m in, I’ll try and work things out with my partner because I’ve screwed up big time recently. I’ll watch all the good movies I’ve been meaning to watch, I’ll listen to all the good music I’ve been meaning to listen to. I’ll be better off. I’ll try my best at whatever I attempt. I will stop having a negative attitude and will start loving myself. I’ll quit wearing those pink colored shades that make everything seem so fantastic.

I’ll write more and talk less. I’ll think before I act. I’ll talk more when I feel misunderstood. I’ll find a way to communicate to others. I’ll make my life better. I’ll talk less on the phone, I’ll print less paper, litter less, walk more and use the car less. I’ll start to care about the things worth caring for, and fighting the fights worth fighting.

I’ll learn to play an instrument. I’ll learn a new language. I’ll visit an exotic place. I’ll finally learn to swim. I’ll be more patient with things I want, I’ll be less hesitant more assertive. I’ll make myself happy, I’ll make others happy. I’ll be more tolerant, I’ll nag less. I’ll help others some more. I’ll learn to like people more, I’ll stop being a push over. I'll stop all my annoying habits and try and look for fabulous traits. I’ll try and talk some more to people, I’ll try to experience something new. I’ll try new foods and cuisines. I’ll try new drinks. I’ll quit drinking. I’ll try magic mushrooms, I’ll quit hash, drugs and chemicals. I’ll put away all my meaningless fears, I won’t fall into depression. I won’t lose hope and I’ll be more courageous. I’ll love more, hate less. I’ll forgive more. I’ll learn more things. I’ll stop and smell the roses. I’ll be a good friend.

In short I’ll get rid of all the shit, start doing all the good.

I’m so glad the new year’s here so that I get a chance to make this resolution. I couldn’t have done it on any other day!

Relationships Not a Destination

Why start a relationship if it’s going to end we often ask. If people aren’t right for each other, why even bother. To tell you the truth we have a point. What use is going down a dead end path, where the end is near and you can see it from a distance. Why take an unknown road that leads to the same point. Why be with someone you can’t be with forever.

The reason is because there is no forever. Nothing lasts anyway and every relationship is temporary. What makes 10 years more permanent than 2 years is because we choose to label it so. For some, 10 years is temporary and 25 is permanent. But the point is that it all ends sooner or later. It’s understandable that people want things to end later rather than sooner but the point that people miss out is that it’s not about the end.

Relationship ends make no sense, it’s all the in between that makes all the difference, yet the way people analyze it is as if the journey doesn’t affect you, as if the quality of the relationship has nothing to add to you and nothing to give you. They skip forward in time and see its demise and judge a relationship based on that, but by the end of a doomed relationship you can actually come out a better person, bettered by the person you were with or by the experience. The real question isn’t how long this relationship will last, but how much it would give me while it does.

To shift the paradigm, is it better to be in a bad relationship that would last or in a good one that won’t? Ideally one would hope for a good one that lasts. For sure a bad relationship is not worth anything no matter how permanent it is. The good relationship needs to be assessed. Will it give me more than it’ll take? Would the journey through it give me something, give me joy.. as permanent as the volatile things in life?

Being with someone is very dynamic, it changes everything about yourself and about the other someone, you get entangled and you take a piece of that someone with you as you go along and they take a piece of you. The worst relationship is when you lose parts of yourself without gaining anything of worth. Good people are hard to find, those who share a good part of themselves with you, but should you try and grab a part of them even if it can’t last? If people give you a lot you can always win, and the reasons things don’t work out could very well be external reasons beyond your control. Why give up on something good if you can’t have it for longer? The entirety of life isn’t long anyway.

A relationship doesn’t exist for the sake of the relationship but for yours. What I mean is that the purpose of the relationship isn’t where it’s going to take the relationship itself, but where it takes you. You may see the end from a distance, but you can’t know the route you’ll take to reach it and much more, you can’t foretell the person you’ll be when you reach it.

Avatar

When I first watched the ‘Avatar’ trailer I thought the movie would be a complete disaster and that I wouldn’t enjoy it one bit for a variety of reasons. For starters, the name Avatar sounds like some geeky internet word that can’t be taken seriously. The blue cartoon like creatures didn’t help either and only served to remind me that the last time James Cameron made a movie was in ’97 with Titanic. Sure it was the most successful movie ever made from a box office point of view but I didn’t care very much for it. Visions of a movie stuck in the nineties with old concepts flashed through my head, not to mention a cliché plot. The trailer told me all I needed to know about the story. A sort of teched-up version of Dances with Wolves meets Pocahontas.

Having watched Avatar in 3D, everything changed. Perhaps it was because this is my first time to watch something in 3D and have nothing to compare it with but I truly doubt that. The verdict is that Avatar is a movie that’s worth watching in 3D. (In 2D it wasn’t as impressive, which I simulated by watching with one eye closed through the 3D glasses) The first hour was an introduction to a colorful brightly lit new world in three dimensions and Cameron took his time drawing out the details of the new world with meticulous precision and fantastical imagery. The reason why it was very enjoyable and entertaining extends to more than the beautifully crafted scenery. James Cameron did a fine job transporting us to the planet Pandora surpassing so many of his predecessors that have attempted to take us to their own worlds. The creatures lived up to their name of having been created masterfully on the screen. It was as if we were looking into a glass box where everything was happening live before us, into a luminous exotic forest that was out of this world.

That’s not to say that the movie’s story line was profound or original. In a way it did mimic Dances with Wolves and Pocahontas in that the modern humans intermingled with an alien culture and one of us fell in love with one of them, but not in a cheap manner. The characters were taken seriously and Cameron took the trouble to write up their scenes from scratch rather than rely on ripped recycled scenes from previous movies (ala 2012). The movie itself is not a mindless action flick of action and sci-fi clichés and that’s was what won me over. The themes were not of the American patriotism and supremacy for a change; on the contrary they were quite the opposite which is rare to find in American blockbusters. It had some socio-political themes entwined with green and nature.

The aliens were not alien in their values and their ideas, they had a deep connection with their forest and every living thing around them. Their tribes worked in harmony, the women and men equally vital to their community with deep respect for the greater force of nature that binds them all. In a way the Navis of Avatar resembled the native Americans whom the Americans slaughtered, whose lands were stolen in order to serve the great and sinister ideal of capitalism. The Americans resembled, well, hmm, Americans and even in a futuristic movie on other planets they haven’t changed their locust-like nature of devouring everything in their way. The businessmen causing wars and milking us dry won’t stop.

In this movie it’s like the true alien to the humans is humanity. We’ve become so alienated from our roots that we don’t recognize them when we see them. We destroy everything in our way for insignificant profit and we've distanced ourselves from what truly matters. We’ve severed our connections with our surroundings, our nature, our climate, our environment and what’s more with one another. As a story, even with all the repetition in the ideas presented, everything is as pertinent as ever. The natives or Navis are referred to as hostiles and the American are still using the phrase ‘fight terror with terror’ even though they’re the aggressors.

The sky people (humans) moved back to their dying planet; something along these lines was said. We have killed our planet, but worst of all we’ve let our greedy politicians and businessmen do it, but unlike the movie we don’t have the power to tell them they can’t have everything they want, we have to watch our own planet being depleted for ink on paper they call money and for luxurious polluting vehicles and machinery.

The mandatory action sequences were there, but beneath their usual shallowness, I was filled with an underlying sorrow to see that beautiful scenery that Cameron had built being destroyed by heinous gun fire and explosives. It’s sad to see something beautiful destroyed, and Cameron created something very beautiful.

Those I’ve been with hadn’t experienced 3D in the manner presented to us in the film and according to many reports, Cameron revolutionized 3D. Cameron aimed to bring people back to attending movies in the cinemas. In my view, he succeeded.

Miracles and Realism

"...in my experience miracles never bother a realist. It is not miracles that incline a realist towards faith. The true realist, if he is not a believer, will invariably find within himself the strength and the ability not to believe in miracles either, and if a miracle stands before him as an incontrovertible fact, he will sooner disbelieve his senses than admit that fact. And even if he does admit it, it will be as a fact of nature, but one that until now has been obscure to him. In the realist it is not faith that is born of miracles, but miracles of faith. Once the realist believes, his realism inexorably compels him to admit miracles too. The Apostle Thomas declared that he would not believe until he saw, and when he saw, said: 'My Lord and my God.' Was it the miracle that made him believe? The likeliest explanation is that it was not, and that he came to believe for the sole reason that he wanted to believe and, perhaps, in the inmost corners of his being already fully believed, even when he said: 'Except I shall see...I will not believe.'"

~ The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Has it been that long?

I saw a young kid listening to Metallica's Load album. It seems ancient now, but he seems to be a fan of the classics. I realized how much of a classics it is. Even Nirvana now is a distant past, and is as old to the new generation as was Pink Floyd or Zepplin to me back at the time of Nirvana.

Has it really been that long?

Weary to my Bones

The starting lines of Paul Simon's American Tune never fail to move me. I think constantly of my friends when I hear the lines: "I don't know a soul who's not been battered, I don't have a friend who feels at ease."

Yet with all this sharing, there might be something redeeming...

Many's the time I've been mistaken

And many times confused

Yes, and I've often felt forsaken

And certainly misused

Oh, but I'm all right, I'm all right

I'm just weary to my bones

Still, you don't expect to be

Bright and bon vivant

So far away from home, so far away from home

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered

I don't have a friend who feels at ease

I don't know a dream that's not been shattered

or driven to its knees

but it's all right, it's all right

for we lived so well so long

Still, when I think of the

road we're traveling on

I wonder what's gone wrong

I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong

And I dreamed I was dying

I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly

And looking back down at me

Smiled reassuringly..

From Paul Simon - American Tune

First Editions can be Dangerous

Serbia made it to the world cup. In celebration of their victory the Serbian president Boris Tadic celebrated by opening a bottle of champagne and proposing a toast. Apparently it is illegal to consume alcohol in sports venues and so the president was fined.

When I heard the news, it made me really sad to think that even in such an event the president could be accountable for his actions when breaking the law. Needless to say, it's sad because of our current situation.

In contrast, our government has done something quite ridiculous, this same piece of news was published in Al Ahram newspaper's first edition (see below).

In the second edition, this piece of news was removed (see below)

Is there someone in charge of looking at all these first editions and removing any threat to the presidency and the government? Why would they remove such a piece of news? It's already known that our president is above the law. What does the removal of this piece of news say about our own government? I think it just means they're afraid and that it must not be ingrained in the minds of Egyptians that the law applies to the president. It's almost funny that there's someone with enough power to influence a newspaper going through silly pieces of news to identify threats to national security.

The act of removing news items and images in the second print is a common practice, which means that all newspapers are closely monitored and that there is great interference in what is published. Instead of all that energy to monitor the news, why doesn't the government do the multitude of jobs where there is obvious dereliction?

The bottom line is to watch out for first editions and enjoyEgyptian lunacy...

Survival Skills

It's odd how humans are taught skills that are necessary for the prosper of business instead of survival nowadays. You're being trained as a machine, not just to survive but to make money for someone else. Are we being taught the right things in school?

Waiting for Govot

It's time for a balanced view. There are just too many extreme reactions to Algeria's attacks on Egyptians in Sudan. While it's infuriating, the proper reaction isn't to 'hate' the Algerian people for a variety of reasons. First, hate is a very personal emotion and it can't be applied to Algerians as a whole, secondly, it's not helpful at all or can be quantified and most of all, hate is not an action at all, if you hate the Algerians in your heart then you've become nothing but a bitter imbecile who has just waited for an excuse to use that dark emotion having not been able to apply it where it matters.

And no, we don’t want Alaa Mubarak to be president, one phone call cannot erase all that’s gone wrong, that’s an extreme we have to avoid at all costs. We also can’t kick all the Algerians out like we did with foreigners and Jews at the time of Nasser and look what it cost us, we’d be fools to repeat the same mistakes twice. Not that I mind the action much in my fury, but we cannot set such a dangerous precedent and the fury will soon die down and I already know Algerian individuals who have nothing to do with this.

The reaction must be balanced, because Algerians have hurt more of their countrymen celebrating in Algeria than they have to Egyptians in Sudan. What would we do if they'd killed some Egyptians? (Which I'm sure they would have had they lost) What if it were Algerian fans that had done this to Egyptians rather than cowardly criminals? There are many extremes that would warrant an extreme reaction but this is not one of them.

There are mixed opinions about the facts and the evidences. Many people with little understanding of Egyptians and Algerians have thought that we were quick to exonerate Egypt from any mishaps despite its guilt. I and many friends would be the first to condemn Egypt if it made sense from a logical point of view. We condemn Egypt for being incompetent in providing protection to its citizens. Our ambassadors in either Algeria or Sudan are practically useless as an extension to the government that sent them. But we know that our supporters aren't creative enough to make this up nor are they violent enough to truly wish someone dead. And we know that the Algerians have the worst history of violence and lies. All evidences must be examined with care with all the lies around.

On the one hand people are exaggerating about what happened, on the other some don’t believe anything that happened, but not just because it’s an exaggeration means that it’s not a big thing of its own. But even if some people don’t think it’s worth our efforts we'll always have no value if we don't stand up for our rights, and we really have been squandering those for much too long. What happened in Sudan remains unacceptable.

I think that people's emotional and illogical reactions of hate are due to the implicit realization that our government will do nothing. We have become a weak country; weak in its people, with a weak government that's only strong enough to suppress its own. It’s a government strong enough to oppress its people but too weak to stand up for itself. People hate Algeria because they hate their country and with the impossibility of expressing this against their government they have reflected it on the Algerian people. People are mad, but not at Algeria although they may think they are, they're mad at themselves and at their government. They feel betrayed by the symbol they thought would give them victory, strength and pride. They gave their energy, which is not a small feat by any means, to a flag that hurt them in every way; a flag that lost, got them beaten, got them defeated and got them humiliated. They're mad that the government doesn't care. They didn't care when they sent in the Egyptians without adequate protection and they don't care to give value to the Egyptian life and they won't care for any future failures they or their people encounter. The only thing they care about is staying in power and they are a species that fight one another for that power.

Wouldn’t it be great if the government took the proper action? It would really make a difference, but the government has been so inactive for so long that I doubt it can take a creative action even if it wanted to. People are waiting for the government, but in effect it’s like waiting for Godot.

In any case, this is great news for Israel. And no, I'm not a conspiracy theorist at all and don't have to drag Israel into everything. Today we realize that not one Arab country likes us and that we're so apart in reality. We've done everything to provoke them and anger them and they didn't do much to win our favor either. Each disruption with an Arab country pushes us closer into Israel's bosom, for with them comes economic support. Israel actually wants Egypt to be powerful unlike what the conspiracy theorists say, because it would mean that its only ally in the Middle East would be a strong ally.

I'm not inviting people to hate Israelis, for some are people without a choice of where they were born. I'm not inviting hate at all in any case, I'm inviting resentment. I'm inciting everyone to resent the things that should be resented. I'm hoping for a balanced opinion amidst those moderate few. Let not the anger blind you lest you end up where you don't want to be.

Algerian attack on one of the egyptian fans buses

A video that corroborates eye witness accounts..

yet the international news have turned a blind eye and provided unprofessional and biased reporting..

Unison

If you want people to unite and sing the same tune, find a common enemy. If the real enemy is too strong to fight, find another. If you were the enemy, fight with the people.

Well done gov..