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Tuesday, September 11, 2012

The Jordanian Way of Life



Living expenses are growing by 15-25% per year and salaries are not catching up as fast, Taxes, Gas prices, Food, Smokes, Electricity, Rents, Customs duties, Transportation, Clothing, Groceries, College payments, College supplies, Night life, Phone bills, Internet bills, The upkeep on the a 20 year old car and even DATES now cost a humongous amount of money! Jordan is one of the few places on earth where the citizen calls the policeman "سيدي" (master, lord, your highness) and now the government is going to censor the internet from any content that doesn't match their criteria, I have three active blogs and I have to close them down because i'm not a member at the Jordan Press Association and this blog might be considered as a news site.

It was just four years ago that HM King Abdullah II commented on The Black Iris, the well known Jordanian blog. You can see His Majesty’s comment here; In that comment the King said: “We are a country of freedom, tolerance, diversity and openness, and everyone has the right to express their thoughts – no matter what they are” That was in 2008.

Today, our Parliament passed a law that will basically make the Black Iris an illegal site.... As far as I know, the Black Iris’s blogger, Naseem Tarawnah, is not a member of the press syndicate. His site, which the government might deem as a “news site” is not registered and licensed by the government.

The new law basically gives the government the right to block Nassem’s site.
We all know that some Jordanian new sites are unprofessional and have cause many people harm. But the answer is not to put a law in place that attempts to kill our freedom of expression and kill our emerging internet content industry.

So, it all comes to 
"الحمد لله على نعمة الأمن و الأمان" 
Really ???? Is this it?! all of our safety comes from having the biggest borders with Israel! YES! what did you think ? they like us for our charming charisma??? oil??! our economy?! do we make anything anymore???? Phosphate?? It's already here, we only package it and ship it far away, it's a very very sad scene over here !

I'm not seeing any of the taxes that I pay come back to me nor to the community in any form! We don't have medical insecure, we don't have proper streets, and certainly it's not going to education nor to social services....

I can’t recognize this country anymore.

How did we get from the King’s comment in 2008 to here? I have no idea.



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