Dear America, I Saw You Naked!

Confessions of an ex-TSA Agent.

This article is phenomenal – the work of a former TSA (Transportation Security Administration ) agent from Chicago O’Hare airport. The guy who scans your bags and operates the machines.

I was fascinated at his dismissal of Full Body Scanners (which I once defended), at his accusation that ‘random checks” were not just selective but political (random checks for Algerians but not Saudi Arabians), at his dare to say that most TSA agents hate their jobs, and at the lengths he goes to say agents violate the privacy of women. He has a blog, too (a WordPress!), called Taking Sense Away.  He is also writing a novel.  Check it all out.

Flooding in Saudi Arabia: Russia Today

Check out these Facebook comments to Russia Today’s article on the flooding that went on in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It’s interesting how you can get the perspectives of people via social media. Russia Today is very international, but it’s basically a well-known Russian news company that primarily does English, Spanish, Arabic, and Russian. Primarily English. They currently go by “RT” (Russia Today was their former name that they’ve distanced themselves from), but I’ll use it anyway.In my humble opinion, they are slightly Russian-biased as is CNN being American biased. But internally for Russian media, they are fairly centrist.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151996254199411.1073741879.326683984410&type=1

Here are some of the highlights of people’s responses. Notice the random references to Syria, United States, Israel, God, terrorism, women, and…Selena Gomez. I might do this again sometime:

I fear religious leaders will blame women who claimed their rights. God was angry. lol

Maybe this will wash away the rats they harbour, fund n send to Syria

Uhm geoengineering, they pumped water into the stratosphere, those home made clouds will hit more countrys… murica..

the answer for supporting terrorists…

This rain is a message to the hypocrisy in Arabia Saudi to straight out and do the right things and stop lying on others to the maximum that they start to believe their own lies. I asked G-d to punish Arabia Saudi and Qatar as well for the blood they caused to be shed in Syria. Arabia Saudi is the biggest Syrian enemy and soon you will be punished by us, the Syrian people

amen sister! let those wahhabi pigs wash away into a pile of shit where they belong. the absolute scum of the earth, those salafi wahhabi. TFEH!

MAY ALLAH DESTROY RIYADH
( centre of illuminati)

the main thing that characterize those who hate islam is their hypocrisy, they never look at the mirror, they ignore the horrors done by their countries/ citizens and start blaming islam for a minor thing. I’m sure islam and all muslims support peace & women’s right to drive…etc but those haters will blame all muslims for what 0.000001% of muslims are doing

£5.00 says they’ll blame it on women drivers, just like they do for earthquakes

Maybe God is sending a message that he is fed up of homophobia, inequality against women, wealth, greed etc….

America and Israel are behind this H.A.A.R.P I knew they were going to turn against Saudi Arabia HAHAHAHAHA wake up people America can control the weather

Why does Selena Gomez hate Saudi’s?

Note: this is H.A.A.R.P: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program

Al Jazeera in America

In light of Al Jazeera’s recent debut in the United States, I figured I’d talk about my thoughts on this brilliant news network.I learned about this news network a number of years ago, but I didn’t start using it seriously until I found their app on the Android Market. I have since stopped using their app (if you need a news app, I highly recommend Huff Post), but I’ll be watching them on TV as much as possible now. I recommend you all read Al Jazeera’s saga as a news network on Wikipedia. They are a provocative news network that is unafraid to say what it needs to of who it wants to. But they are also “unbiased, fact-based, [with] in-depth news.” Their record proves it.

Al Jazeera was born in 1996 straight out of Qatari government funds. I will grant that the network is biased in favor of Qatar, but then again, what news network isn’t biased somehow? The network argues it is not, of course, but with the chairman of the news network being apart of the royal family, I won’t believe. Its original Arabic motto was “the opinion and the other opinion.” It immediately drew criticism – from boycotting to official government censorship – when it put Israelis speaking Hebrew on live TV in the Arab world. This was never done before, and the network had officially made its mark on the history of journalism.

Just two years after beginning, Al Jazeera filmed Operation Desert Fox when no one else would. Just a year later, it became the most popular Arab news network in the region, without Saudi funding. That’s a pretty big accomplishment. in 2001, it received footage from Osama Bin Laden, and it aired the footage. People use this as grounds to criticize Al Jazeera, but imagine if the world never knew who committed the 9/11 attacks ? CNN and many other Western news outlets showed the footage too…after it received it from Al Jazeera. When war broke out in Afghanistan, they already had a station up and running in Kabul that dared to film what would go on during the war.

But of course the United States couldn’t stand that. Their station in Kabul was bombed (luckily know one was hurt), and according to the then managing director Mohammed Jassim al-Ali, “This office has been known by everybody, the American airplanes know the location of the office, they know we are broadcasting from there.” But perhaps I am speculating too much. Then again, the United States also fired on their office in Baghdad, killing one of their journalists and injuring a cameraman. The Qatari government provided the United States a map of Baghdad with the location of their office, but I guess they “forgot”. After all, the United States has a habit of killing brave journalists.

But true journalism prevailed. The network has continued to film war footage – whether it is the United States or the Taliban doing the bombing. The network has continued to film war footage in Syria, showing the public what is really going on, graphic content and all. The world deserves to know.

The network has been amid controversy since their founding, as every good news outlet ought too. Former United States Secretary of State Colin Powell wanted it shut down, current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it’s quite unbiased. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is “delighted” it’s come to the West.

They’ve aired Jews and Bin Laden, Tony Blair and the Taliban. They’ve been censored in Palestine for being pro-Israeli, and sanctioned in Israel for favoring Hamas. China threw them out of Beijing, and Saudi Arabia made their own media to fight back. Iraq bans them every once in a while, and Spain threw one of their journalists in jail for seven years.

What are their motives, therir views, true opinions? Who knows. But they are provocative, insightful, and they certainly make me think. And that’s what media ought to be. They are the fifth most influential global brand in the world, and their story has only just begun.

Aladdin

You would think that one of the world’s most respectable film companies, Walt Disney, so widely known that the American public entrusts the childhood of their children too, wouldn’t make movies full of racist trash. Not so, apparently

To start off, do Jasmine and Aladdin look Arab at all to you? They appear Caucasian – with brown skin. They have American accents, American (should I say it?) values. And what kind of Arab name is Jasmine, anyway? Meanwhile the bad guys, Jafar, for one, has an Arab name, Arab dress, and Arab looks. Exaggerated Arab looks to be certain, for the purpose of making him look more ugly. Just like the rest of the bad guys. Good guys look American. Bad guys look Arab. Americans are beautiful. Arabs are ugly.

But it gets worse. The original release of the movie had a song lyric: “Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face/It’s barbaric, but, hey, it’s home” It was in reference to the Middle East, where in certain areas such as Saudi Arabia they have amputations as a form of criminal justice, something we’ll talk about later . Amidst controversy of getting politics involved in a children’s movie, they dubbed that over in the DVD release to “Where it’s flat and immense and the heat is intense/It’s barbaric, but, hey, it’s home”.

To add on to the calling the Middle East barbaric and to depicting Arabs as evil,  why is it that every women in the movie has to be wearing as scanty clothing as possible? The women in the movie are practically sex objects. And the scene where Aladdin steals some bread and hides in a room with a bunch of women? People have speculated that was a brothel. Whatever it was, the fact that we can even speculate that in a children’s movie is disgusting. Jasmine wears the same stuff the women in the brothel were wearing too, which doesn’t help much.

One last thing for this rant: how great are the “morals” of it, anyway? Now this movie might be an extreme case, but the simple insistence of Disney to tell children to disobey their parents and do what they want is ludicrous. To make that a sort of moral maxim in the minds of Disney’s audience is all for an agenda – to get children hooked on Disney products, Disney ideals, Disney television. To think that most good parents would want the television to tell their children to not obey their parents is flat out stupid. We have a serious problem in this world where those ideals are treated as universal on children’s television shows. Certainly, challenging the ideals of our parents can be good, but to ingrain the thought into the minds of children that they are more correct then their parents is utterly insane. Mere children cannot reason as we can. When they heard “Don’t obey your parents,” they don’t.