Isam Bayazidi’s Blog

A comment that I heard the most in the first hours of the event, is that “It couldn’t be a Jordanian who did this”, I even heard it from officials. Well I disagree … I think it could have been Jordanians. The sick brain-washed people are among us, and had been bombing themselves in Iraq for the last 2 years. So, I think that the mentalities that could justify bombing people in a market, a wedding, or police stations in Iraq, could justify bombing hotels in Amman.

We can’t, and shouldn’t, act as if it is an “External” attack, because we call know that the radical mentalities that justify killing innocent people was home-grown in Jordan before it moved else where, and now it is backfiring on us. So, fixing the situation won’t be through more strict border checks, and hotel door security, but I think that it should be as strong and radical as those movements. The nests that grow those people, and brainwash them is here, and this is where we should look, and target.

This post was greatly moved by Jameed’s latest post

Jordan, News & Politics

I’ve never been in one, and I hope that I won’t have to be in one again. In front of the Radisson SAS and Hyatt people gathered for candle litting. It was emotional, stronger than shouts and words.

Full Night Protest Gallery

Jordan, News & Politics

We all felt that we should do something, but nothing much could be done after the attack. I got a message from Roba about a protest at 1pm, starting from the third circle (few meters away from Al-Hyatt Hotel) passing in front of Radisson Sas, and ending at Dakhleyeh Circle. And so I headed there with 3anan.
I met Ammar, Roba, Lina and many other friends. It had some emotional moments. Check the pictures from the protest that I took.

30 seconds of the protest (Video) (3MB)
Click for the full gallery

As well check Roba’s pictures of the demonstrations

Jordan, News & Politics

I just read in Al-Jazeera, and called a friend who confirmed.. it seems that there was a strong explosion in Amman near the Radisson SAS and Hyatt. I am a little nervous, don’t know what to say or think. Allah Yostor

UPDATE1: 5 were killed, many wounded (Source Yahoo News).

UPDATE2: Explosion happened in 8:50pm, in Radisson-Sas, wedding hall. Special forces were deployed in the area 15-20 minutes after it. Evacuation is in place now for the near-by Hyatt.

UPDATE3: There was 3 explosions in Amman at Radisson SAS, Al Hyatt, and Days Inn. Jordan Television reported 20 killed.

UPDATE4: Petra News Agency (The official state news Agency) reported that the explosions could be caused by by suicide bombers. (Source Petra News

UPDATE5: Jordan announces tomorrow off for all public and private sector. One of the dead is the Manager of Cairo Amman Bank.

UPDATE6: Latest count: 57 dead, 150+ wounded

Live Update will be blogged here and in Global voices

Jordan, News & Politics

Now as I expected earlier this year, many companies started introducing blogs as part of their service offering, as well I heard of many companies and efforts that is having blogs, and blog-related services part of their start up plans.

Shortly after Fastlink started their blog service for fastlink subscribers (which I am not one of), Al Bawaba Blog service started in beta as well. Read more…

Internet & Technology, Jordan

A very interesting post by Khalaf pointed out that the National Agenda Committee will post the Agenda document online for feedback, now that’s a first, and something that I would salute. It basically means that the committee (government) thinks that the internet is a good medium to collect feedback about the document. Now I am not sure that I will read the full document, or post my feedback on it, but I am really happy for such move. I wonder who’s really behind it, and the reasons for it.

Internet & Technology, Jordan, News & Politics

I was not really surprised when I read today’s Alghad headline about the the diesel produced by the Jordan Petroleum Refinery (which is having a monopoly of petroleum fuel until 2008) against the Jordanian standards for diesel. The Jordanian standards says that a 1KG of diesel should have no more than 350 milligram of Sulfur, while Jordanian diesel have 10,000-11,000 milligrams (no wonder diesel vehicles in Jordan are known to have extremely black smoke). I kind never had doubts that the Jordanian standards are the problems, problem is always in implementing those standards. Now the funny/sad part is that they are given until 2008 to fix that error, while the refinery officials said that they are unable to comply with the standards because of the high costs of having extra filters.

Recently, diesel had a price hike of around 25%.. only if a small part of that is given to the refinery to have those filters and allow us to have some cleaner air. I guess that our lungs does not have a high priority.

Jordan, News & Politics

As I didn’t find my dream car yet, I am still using taxis in the morning to get to work. One of the programs that I find most of the taxi drivers enjoying in the morning hours is the “Al Bath Al-Mobasher” (Direct Broadcast). It is a show that allows the public to call in, and report any complains or observations they have, and the people on the show tries to contact those complained at, or related, to get a reply, or directly give the complain to, all on the air. I remember this radio show as long as I remember the Arabic Service of Radio Jordan, as I remember my late grandmother listening to it every morning, until the 10am news, which they tell the names of new deaths in the kingdom after.

I’ve heard a number of unbelievable stories in this show, although I occasionally listen to it. Stories about corruption, bureaucracy, power abuse, and bad fortune and luck. Today, on the way to work, I was listening to a very similar program on Radio Fann presented by Mohammed Al-Wakeel (of Jordan Television). Now it seems that the need for people to complain was so overwhelming that having a similar show in a commercial FM station became feasible.

Jordan

I was reading about Google’s Latest Blog Search., and I am in love with it :) just because of the fact that when I search for “Jordan” it gives Jordan Planet as the First in the “Related Blogs” not some Michael Jordan or other female star fan site. As well when I searched for “Amman” one of the first results was Ahmad’s Post about GPSing Amman. Now this is a search that can give real relative results.

What’s cooler is that it provides a feed (RSS/ATOM) for the search results, making it possible to track posts about certains terms of interst to you. Although this is not the first blog searching service around, as there us Technorati, Feedster but both fail my exam of searching for “Jordan” as none of the results are related to any blogger in Jordan. So I guess that Google are doing a better job although they came late into blog searching game.

Internet & Technology, Jordan

Yesterday I got a Google Alert about a report presented to the World Bank by 13 nations, including Jordan. The news said that officials from those 13 nations met in February in Silicon Valley to discuss technology standards and economic development, and come up with the 33 pages report.

2 things strike me in this piece of news:
First, The piece of news which was in New York Times (and republished in Herald Tribune and Media Channel) said that

government officials from China, India, Thailand, Denmark, Jordan, Brazil and elsewhere gathered to discuss technology standards and economic development.

For some reason, Jordan was mentioned with countries like China and India, and was not dropped in the “Elsewhere” category. I am not sure if this really have any significance.

Second, is that those Jordanian officials seems to be detached from the on-ground IT infrastructure of the Jordanian Government and Education. The government has a strategic partnership with Microsoft, which is obviously one of the major forces against Open Standards and Technologies. Students in the schools and universities of Jordan are being taught to use Microsoft Products (Windows, Office, Visual Basic, etc..) as part of their curriculum. Teachers are required to take a Microsoft-Centric ICDL exam in order to get promoted, and more than 13 ministries are connected to a centralized Microsoft Exchange Server for email and groupware.. all this tells me that there is something wrong in the picture. Is it that we want to be everywhere in the same time ? ahead with Microsoft adoption, and ahead with Open technology standards embracement ? well this doesn’t work I am afraid.

Jordan didn’t have an Official stand for or against Open Source and Open Technology Standards, and it was thanks to “foreign power” that Jordan had it’s Open Source Workshops in 2002 and 2005 organized by INTAJ. As I was attendant in both events, it seemed to me that Open Source and Open Standards is being used for bargaining by the government and it’s agencies, rather than a real understanding of the benefits of it. This could be clear by having a look in the daily computer/IT related bids announcements in the newspaper, where it is specifically required to use certain closed source applications or systems, although there are alternative open source ones which could have a great advantage when it comes to security and cost (hint. Apache vs. IIS)

Although it aches me to see how things are going when it comes to IT in Jordan, I have high hopes that eyes will open soon to the benefits of Open Source and Open Standards embracement in a developing country like Jordan.

Internet & Technology, Jordan, OSS & Linux

I woke up today to the news about bombing in Aqaba, some news channels say it is 1 explosion, other say 3, some say it was targeted at an American ship in the port, while I heard some say that it was near the city, I heard that at least one Jordanian was killed from the bombing… I don’t know what to say.. why can’t we just live peacefully.. what is it that they want to prove ? why Aqaba ? why Jordan ?

What would hurt me the most is that we will find out that it was Jordanians who did it.. what a shame..

Update:: It had been confirmed that one of the rockets hit the yard of Princess Haya Hospital, which is near the entrance of Aqaba city. While the other hit a warehouse in the port used to store Rice and Sugar. Jordanian soldier Ahmad Saleh died, while another soldier is now in hospital

Jordan, News & Politics

The last week had been a very special and busy week for me. Lots of things happened, and I don’t know where to start. In fact I do :) Well to list the events quickly: I met Mohamed Sameer for the first time while I knew him through Arabeyes for more than 3 years, there was an Open Source Seminar in Amman, and I got to be in the discussion panel for it thanks to Ahmed Humeid, I met Ethan Zuckerman again in the Seminar, Tawjihi results for my sis, and she did fine, and last but not least, we had a Global Voices/Jordan Planet gathering last night.

Now what’s really cool, is that those events are very much covered in blog posts by others all over the place. So to know what kind of week I had, all you have to do is to read blog posts for OTHERS.

Mohammed Sameer was in Amman to be part of the Open Source Seminar organized by Intaj. I met him and it was really nice. Day 1 and Day 2 of the OSS Seminar was below expectations, but yet it was great to meet some new interesting people, and meet others again.

Wednesday was the Tawjihi night, stress, cheers and celebration, fireworks and more fireworks.. it was one great night.

As for yesterday, Jordan Bloggers had a meetup with Global Voices through Ethan. It was great meeting some of the bloggers for the first time, namingly Haitham and the ONE (Iyas). Many pictures were taken for the event, check them out at Jad’s, Ahmed’s, and Roba’s.

Now I managed to tell about my last week through post blogs from others.. is this scary ? or isn’t it ?

Internet & Technology, Jordan

It was around midnight, a couple of days ago, when I was having coffee with my friends at Cups & Kilos. While thinking about how good the coffee is, and enjoying it, an old lady was hit by a very speedy car in front of us, while she was crossing the street in front of the Radisson SAS. I won’t detail more about what happened, as I don’t want to recall it, but basically, the old lady was smashed, and probably dead. Two of my friends who think they have a strong heart and stomach crossed the street, to check if they can be of any help, as for me, and another friend, we preferred to stay away. Obviously, we spent the rest of the evening talking about about cars, accidents, and hits.

Recent statistics show that a person dies every 11 hours in Jordan from Car accidents, another one says that 80% of the people hit by a car are either children or old people. Now if this is not scary I don’t know what is. We blame everyone for the bad driving experiences in the streets of Jordan but ourselves. What’s worse, is that we need a tragedy to hit near us to learn from it. That is if we ever learned.

I am not sure I will drive in the same way I did before after what I saw. I hope that I will never forget it, because I shouldn’t. As for you, please drive safely.

About Me, Jordan

This morning when I read Ammar’s Six Minutes and watched the video he referred to, I was in shock and shame , although I had some laugh. Basically the piece, for those who do not understand Arabic, is about interviewing random people from Jordan, who are mostly university/collage students and asking them general knowledge questions. “Who is Berlusconi?” gave answers such as “A Romance Actor” and “where is Bulgaria?” resulted to “a planet in the solar system”. What could be considered a basic knowledge such as “What are the major 2 parties in USA”, “Who wrote War and Peace” and “Name 3 novel writers from Jordan” was a complete failure. A question that 100% of the interviewees answered properly is “Who Sings Ah o Nos?” where no one failed to remember Nancy Ajram. At the end, the director shares with us a painful fact. An Arabic student reads in average 6 minutes a year outside curriculum books. Ouch.. Read more…

Jordan, News & Politics

I was listening to BBC Arabic news this morning on the way to work, a report about the anti-corruption committee that was created upon a request by King Abdullah to address the issue of corruption more seriously.

Now I know that corruption is on many levels, and I am not going to talk about it on the higher level because I don’t know much about that.. but what I know, and I see, and practice (ya shoot me) is corruption on the individual level.

To start with, there is a special type of corruption, that is Wasta (English: a mean, mechanism, medium), and sometimes we even give it a nickname Vitamin Wow ( as it gives power and so). Wasta for those who are unfamiliar with the term is about having someone in a power position do something (legal or illegal) for you (a favor) that couldn’t be done without a wasta. The funny thing is that we don’t usually hide our acts when we use Wasta, but we brag about it, and offer providing the same wasta to people around us to help them out. Read more…

Jordan, News & Politics