This thought visited me again most recently when I travelled to attend a conference and unpacked my favorite navy blue suit out of my suitcase, the one I usually put on when I am about to meet a bunch of very serious people.

Mankind, I said to myself as I examined the state of my official uniform, was able to squeeze billions of documents and complex data inside a tiny microchip, retrieve them at will, save them back and then retrieve them again in mint condition. All inside a piece of silicon the size of a finger nail. Mind-boggling stuff, almost like magic, we all agree.

However, we have not yet figured out a way to place a business suit inside the common suitcase and retrieve it at our destination without creasing the hell out of it. If that task is physically impossible, why can’t the federation of world manufacturers of travel bags come together and decide to rename the famous suitcase to something else, like underwearcase or sockscase, since it has been forensically proven that the worst item you can fold into a suitcase is an actual bloody suit?

You try to fix the problem.

Some hotels often leave you an ironing kit inside your room, assuming that you have just arrived in a luxury hotel and would want to start performing a tedious manual task, one you have not even considered attempting when you were a broke student, let alone the guest of a five star hospitality institution. This makes me wonder even more.

Mankind was able to invent machines whereby you insert a thin disc into an automatically sliding compartment and a crystal clear moving picture comes out on the screen. We perfected machines where you throw in a small sack of plastic, press a button, and a nice cup of espresso comes out of the other end, with a choice range from Bourbon Amarelo to Decaffeinato Intenso. Yet, we still cannot fix the creased shirts dilemma; we cannot invent a machine in which to throw all those garments with the nasty wrinkles and receive them crisp and silky at the other end.

Blindfolded, I’ll put my money on the inventor who starts drawing the designs for the next big thing: The Decreasinator, the portable device that is certain to outsell the entire world’s output of DVD players, suitcases and coffee machines, combined.

Such is the folly of scientific achievement in our world today, which is only a reflection of the inherent deficiencies in the evolution of our brains. We can send a rover light years away to reach and photograph planet Mars, but we still cannot reach out to each other to resolve our differences back on Earth. We can discover DNA and map the human genome, yet we are unable to find a cure for the common cold. We can peek at other galaxies with giant telescopes and google-earth our houses and backyards, but we still cannot locate Osama bin Laden’s hideout in the mountains of Terroristan.

We can remove a human heart and replace it with an artificial or even an animal equivalent, yet we cannot get rid of simple bad breath. We can afford to spend trillions on building enough bombs to turn Earth into dust in seconds, yet we cannot allocate a small fraction of our nations’ wealth to fund research to cure cancer.

We can invent technologies that enable us to talk to each other across continents at the press of a speed dial, yet we miserably fail to communicate with each other face to face to avoid waging genocidal wars against each other. We can build gravity-defying flying machines that serve Dom Perignon while crossing the Atlantic or send a man to the moon and bring him back, yet we cannot achieve peace between Arabs and Jews that would send a Palestinian child walking to school without the risk of getting killed.

Indeed, we can espouse many stubborn beliefs linking us to a benevolent, omnipotent Creator of this life, yet we are unable to recognize that the single most act this Creator would abhor is the unnecessary taking of this same life in His very name.

It is obvious that we have got our priorities mixed up somewhere along the way. For example, I could never understand how so many people can get overly obsessed with the prospect of certain species becoming endangered, all along oblivious to the impending extinction of our own kind in a man-made nuclear holocaust. Why are we so worried that killer sharks, for instance, are dwindling in numbers?

What possible inconvenience can such an eventuality add to our already complicated daily lives, apart from many divers and surfers feeling safer while frolicking in the oceans? What great loss to humanity has the extinction of dinosaurs brought about anyway, except to make Steven Spielberg much richer than he already had been?

I bet you if these giant lizards were running around today causing mayhem to lives and properties, we would make them extinct yet again, because all the arguments about protecting the eco-balance of mother nature would go down the green drains they came from when you or your child are being chased down the street by a hungry Tyrannosaurus Rex. You and I would kill the bastard without hesitation, even if it was the very last one walking the Earth, and so would all conservationist freaks, although they wouldn’t like to admit it.

The same goes for snakes and alligators. I, for one, am not going to lose sleep if none of these nasty reptiles are left to spread their venom and terror, and will be very happy if my wallet or shoes were made of raccoon skin instead. My children are not going to mind either, and are going to be equally happy poking fun at elephants or chimpanzees when they go to a zoo, because neither of them has yet complained that they cannot go Apatosaurus back-riding on the weekend.

Don’t get me wrong here, but I’ve had it with the fantasy world of the scaremongering green industry. Their alarmist tactics have gone too far, and their conviction in their trade has turned into zealotry, seldom relying on solid scientific grounds. For example, I’ve always had a hunch that Al Gore’s dabbling in documentaries had more to do with his apocalyptic mood after conceding the election to a monkey than him sincerely fearing the extinction of all monkeys.

I’ve always felt that his “Inconvenient Truth” was never really about truth as much as it was about the re-invention of Al Gore as the savior of this planet. I was right. Last November, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the best experts on global warming that money cannot buy and the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize along with Al Gore for their work on the subject, finally published their findings.

Contrary to the green lobby’s assertion that a 20-foot wall of water would drown low lying cities in the near future, the IPCC predicted that oceans would rise by no more than one foot over the next century, as they have also risen by one foot during the last 150 years, a natural phenomenon that we have hardly noticed when it did happen. Here is a conclusive quote from their report: “Catastrophic scenarios about the beginning of an ice age… are mere speculations, and no climate model has produced such an outcome. In fact, the processes leading to an ice age are sufficiently well understood and completely different from those discussed here, that we can confidently exclude this scenario.”

There is a lot more evidence out there to prove that Al Gore’s hysterical claims are not only unfounded exaggerations, but at points mere fabrications. I am not saying that we therefore should continue desecrating our environment and continue burning those fossil fuels as if there is no tomorrow. On the contrary, there is nothing I find more detestable than the black diesel fumes coming out of all those trucks and buses on the streets of Amman.There is nothing I despise more than a family not cleaning up every single piece of litter after a picnic in the Dead Sea.

But for Al Gore to make a movie telling us to start building Noah’s Arc because of carbon emissions, while ignoring the real catastrophe of his country’s intentional littering of Iraq with thousands of tons of depleted uranium – a substance so poisonous that its cancerous qualities have a staggering half-life of 4.5 billion years, a substance that has already caused a cancer epidemic for those Iraqis who were fortunate to survive the unprovoked war against their country – this I find to be the most immoral course of distraction from the real environmental evil facing our planet, and is in my opinion the lowest depth of unashamed hypocrisy.

My son will hate me for saying this, but to hell with all the sharks. Let us first worry about the well-being and survival of human beings. Once we’ve achieved that – and we are very far from doing so at the current rate – then, and only then, we can perhaps start dedicating resources towards saving the great white killers, and all those other man-eating beasts out there that we like to stare at as long as they are securely chained in captivity.

Take care, and if you ride – or scuba dive – do it safely.

This article was originally published in Jordan’s Living Well magazine

Being a lawyer, I’ve always pictured the ultimate courtroom drama to be destined to take place on judgment day. In fact, any day that shares its title with the name earthly courts give to their final verdicts pretty much deserves this legal honor.

Amongst the colorful array of evidence that would be presented by the prosecution to demonstrate mankind’s obsessive tendency to misbehave over the ages, my personal guess is that “exhibit A” is going to be the medium Al Gore (who would be biting his toenails with regret) claimed he invented. Yes, my friends, the people behind the internet are going to be the star prosecution witnesses in this mother of all trials before we get the barbecue that we truly deserve.

Before you jump to conclusions, I can tell you that my prediction has nothing to do with the fact that over 95% of the entire content of the internet is dedicated to the graphic display of the sin of fornication, although this would be sufficient reason to discredit this medium in any courtroom. To condemn us just for that would be too petty, I think.

I am talking here about a totally different sin altogether, one that has also been abbreviated into another four letter dirty word: SPAM.

Ok, maybe you’re right and I cannot claim to have a clue about how judgment day would look like, if I can even assume with such confidence that one would ever take place. But I do have my reasons for this theory.

I don’t know about you, but I feel there is something profoundly demoralizing about beginning your every day by visiting your e-mail inbox only to find it overloaded with two types of relentless and unsolicited messages. The first ones are the hundreds of different invitations to freely share other people’s money because someone out there thinks you can be gullible enough to believe that a huge figure needs to go into your bank account and make you filthy rich out of the blue.

The other kind consists of messages extolling the virtues of the happiness that a few added inches can bring into a man’s life, by offering to sell us products that demolish the comforting myth with which men console themselves about size not mattering (it seems the jury is still out on whether it does, since, like on many other issues where they enjoy keeping us guessing, women don’t seem to make up their minds and give a unanimous ruling to put this matter to rest).

Some people just delete these spam messages and never think twice about them. But I find both types of these daily solicitations to be particularly revealing of the folly of civilization in the 21st century. For here you have a remarkable tool, which represents the pinnacle of human genius and which could be utilized to engender boundless benefits for the people of this world, being exploited instead in the most debased manner: either to manipulate people’s need for money by luring them into financial destruction, or to manipulate every guy’s fantasy of going as deep as no man has gone before.

It is true that only total idiots respond to such emails and that such certified fools deserve what they get. But this doesn’t change the fact that the internet has allowed these crooks to enter my and your private daily lives whether we let them in or not. Maybe I’m not using the proper repellent filter or software, but I personally feel that the sheer volume of such messages and the persistence of those who send them is a constant reminder to all of us – which I don’t particularly need with my morning coffee – that no matter how far civilization can reach, the same old dirty rotten scoundrels are destined to accompany us hand-in-hand on this journey wherever we go.

This reminder eats away at the core of our sense of progress as a species as it belittles everything else we have achieved and can achieve. For example, for each odd email you receive about a heroic stand of a human rights activist, or about a closer step towards curing cancer, there are forty emails offering you to inherit the money of an African dictator, or asking whether your partner would savor a little more width and length. So then, is that what we’re are all about after all: just money and procreation? Surely, there must be more to life than loads of unearned cash and a huge appendage to go with it, wouldn’t you have thought?

On another note, I personally feel sorry for all those other genuine thieves and money launderers who do sincerely want to entrust you with the fruits of their labor but now find that their messages get lost in between all the fake ones. How frustrated must you be if you’re really working with a trust fund in the Bahamas and did actually stumble upon a dormant account that you need to secretly funnel and share with an email user you have diligently researched and chosen to help you out with your heist?

What must you do to convince your potential partner that you are not one of those daily thousands of pretenders and imposters, and that you are truly a family member of imprisoned Russian oligarchs seeking the discreet movement of funds outside Russia, or that you are in fact the confidant banker of a diamond-mining family who perished in a plane crash leaving behind unattended tens of millions in a secret account? Life must be difficult if your name is really Abdul Falafel Precious Stone from the Republic of Moon Islands and after discovering you have terminal testicular cancer you decided to donate all your family’s wealth from decades of banana farming to your dear brother in Islam whom you have chosen to administer the plundering of your fortune on charitable causes.

I feel your pain, Abdul. With all these cry-wolves in abundance, truly unique opportunities to make a nice buck have gone down the drains, all because of dishonest spammers who have ruined it for everyone.

But seriously, you’ll be surprised to find out the type of people that do fall for these email offers of instant riches. A former colleague of mine in Geneva, a former vice-president of a major company, fell for the scam and even attempted suicide in the aftermath, despite my numerous warnings to him to laugh at these jokes and then delete them, and his assurances that he wouldn’t reply to them. I guess this is the price we pay for living during the zenith of capitalism, right at the centre of the greediest period in human existence, when more people are given incentives to dream of easy money than in any other time in history, and with no end in sight to the vast market of luxurious lifestyle previously only affordable to Kings and Agha Khans.

With its burgeoning mass consumerism – facilitated also by the internet – this is by far the most materialistic century of all, and this is an undisputable fact. Al Pacino acted out an unforgettable scene in The Devil’s Advocate as he revealed himself as the Devil impersonate to Keanu Reeve’s character when he rightly claimed the twentieth century as having been his own. Indeed, Satan rules supreme today.

Everyone’s out to milk you dry, conveniently leaving any semblance of scruples at home, and they are coming up with the most sophisticated techniques to do so by evolving with the times and accommodating with technology, no matter how many lives are destroyed in the process. I guess a lot of the blame also has to rest with Hollywood who has consistently glamorized outlaws in thousands of movies, from Bonnie and Clyde all the way to the latest Ocean’s 13, great films in which bandits and robbers are always made out to be either misunderstood souls or the coolest people on earth.

The honest and likable thief is indeed a character that got so much more than it deserves from the producers and directors of Tinseltown, so I might as well add these culprits to the list of the accused on the day when we’re all going to Hell. Objection, yells the defense. Overruled. We find the defendants guilty on all counts. This court is adjourned.

Take care, and if you ride, do it safely.

Fine, I exaggerate. However, sometimes I wonder if she is more emotionally committed to the latest installment of “Grand Theft Auto” than to me. Of course, I was the one who irritated her with my obsessive devotion to “Final Fantasy.”

Revenge is sweet.

I would like to see some type of statistical study on the kind of damage that video games can do to a marriage. Forget setting up romantic dinners or remembering her second cousin’s wife’s birthday: the real challenge to many committed couples today is making sure you don’t kill each other while arguing about whether or not “Assassin’s Creed” lived up to its hype (I say yes, she says no).

It chokes me, but I have to admit that my wife is a better gamer. To be perfectly honest, she even has a better relationship with my parents than I, their son, do (“why can’t you be more like Dina*, son?” – a question I hear almost as often as the “when are you going to give us grandchildren?” inquiry). Maybe, she is better at living.

Does my wife have to make a mockery of my high scores? My knowledge of elaborate cheats? My commitment to the art of gaming?

The answer, I am discovering, is affirmative.

I have no one to blame. I created this situation. Once, I made a horrible blunder. I became competitive with her. I forgot that in relationships, excessive competition is not healthy. Before we were married she knew that I was the better cook. The sight of a kitchen makes her confused, while I navigate everything from the stove to the juice-maker easily. This didn’t trouble her.

It didn’t trouble her that I could touch the tip of my nose with my tongue and she, by contrast, could not. She could be humble about such life-and-death matters.

I had lost my humility, however. Perhaps now it is time to find it again.

Men are jealous of women who excel in a “boy’s” field, and gaming is still dominated by the boys. There is nothing manly or natural about the jealousy. It’s simple stupidity. Even as one’s friends point out that one’s wife is more fun to play “Halo” with when we visit them (we have steered clear of buying an Xbox, if only because we don’t want to die, covered in mold, while attempting to play every good game the world offers), one must remain committed to the idea that she has the right to the praise she receives.

Let her continue the Playstation affair.

I’ll console (pun intended) myself with my secret shrimp recipe.

What? I have to be good at something.

*- Name changed to protect the innocent.

A few days ago, walls were punched in frustration and hair was being pulled out all across the Middle East. The Internet had simply failed. Sites were either not loading at all, or else loading at the approximate speed of the dreadful dial-up era. Entire businesses were said to have stopped functioning.

I don’t know about you, but I felt as though I had been transported back into a primitive Dark Age. I opened the curtains half-expecting to see a street full of carts pulled along by donkeys.

Things are better now; for me and my ISP, at the very least. I am no longer pulling out my hair. But my fingers are still twitching from the initial shock. Any momentary lapse in my browser’s functions has me wanting to crawl under my desk, whimpering in horror at the thought that “ohnoohnoohno, it is about to start again.”

So, what happened? Apparently an underwater cable was cut somewhere in the Mediterranean, affecting a number of Arab countries, not to mention India. The initial news inspired me to picture a battle between rival armies of giant squid, with a hapless cable as innocent bystander.

Letting one’s imagination run wild is certainly one way to spend the time, particularly if one has been cut off from both Facebook and Google.

I have heard many a speech on how Internet infrastructure is The Best Infrastructure Ever. After this week’s events, I am no longer so sure.

Yet, what truly frightened me about the Great Internet Outage of 2008 was how empty and bereft my life appeared to me the minute the dreadful error messages began showing up. I felt cut off from the universe. Alone like Will Smith in “I Am Legend.” It didn’t matter that all around me were thousands of living, breathing human beings. Technology had taken me to that place where human interaction had been compressed to fit a browser screen. It lured me there, and then it abandoned me.

Looking back on it, I certainly could have spent the Outage in a better and more productive manner. Instead of banging my head on my desk, I could have taken a walk. Or a nap. I could have read a poem. Or even written one.

I could have discovered myself to be good at writing poems. I could have used the moment to launch down a path of becoming the second Shakespeare. After all, we do not know much about Shakespeare. Perhaps he became a great writer by accident: a broken-down carriage, some unexpected downtime, a sudden flash of self-discovery…

Instead, after I was done banging my head, I sat and complained to everyone I knew about what an awful time I was having. It was somewhat of a bonding ritual, even if it was a deeply unsatisfying one.

I couldn’t insert little frowning icons in conversations, and was actually forced to arrange and re-arrange my facial features. Finally, my forehead cramped up.

I then entertained myself by cleaning out my fridge, expecting it to conk out any minute now as well. Or else just conk me over the head with the freezer door.

After all, once technology starts down the path of mischief, you never know where it might all end up.

I recently got asked a bunch of questions by someone from a past life currently writing a book that includes a chapter on creativity, cinema, Palestinian and Arab independent production among other topics. After a few emails back and forth, the writer popped the question: “Do you mind if I include you in the chapter on Palestinian (as opposed to Jordanian) cinema?” I replied that that would not be true nor accurate to me personally and professionally and proceeded to dissect my life in an email back:

“I know that you’d like my answer to be the ideal story, but to tell you the truth, it’s not.

On identity – I am Jordanian. I never felt Palestinian nor can I relate to that part of me beyond the wider family meaning. It’s not how I grew up and the lifestyle I led allowed me to look way beyond borders of origin and just be a citizen of the world who happened to be from Jordan and from a family of Palestinian origin from Nablus. I did not grow up in a home that was Palestinian at all and did not receive that kind of awareness from my Jordanian-born father and Lebanese mother as we lived in 7 different countries around the world and I attended 8 schools during 12 years, speaking four languages and learning about the religions of the world through social studies and not ‘religion’ class.

My father was a politician and I hated politics – and still do. It’s not a strategic, conscious choice about being this or that, it’s who I am and what I am as a result of my life. And that may not be good news for your angle on Palestinian identity issue/unity/origins/rights, but it is my reality and works for me, end of story.

On film, you mention that I’m probably attracted to being Jordanian and not Palestinian from my professional perspective due to the pioneering position/entrepreneurial/being first – in truth, I could care less about all that. I’m so much more concerned about continuity and raising the bar and delivering outputs and maintaining perpetual movement. Being the first is nice for about two seconds, but it’s nothing and deserves no glory if it doesn’t become part of an industry that grows forward – and for me, that is the creative industry that happens to be in Jordan and will hopefully have a vast horizon.

Why film you ask? I’ve always loved the movies. I enjoyed my school video club, home movies, and over time I wanted to make films that entertain in a way that reflect things in my life or the life I can relate to. Most of my entertainment was American and some European and I couldn’t relate to some of it although I was always entertained by it and would seek it out. On the other hand, I’ve been bombarded with crappy Arab productions that are insulting and far from entertaining on one end (with a handful of exceptions of course), and on the other end there’s a barrage of ‘preaching’/cause related films/docs most of which I find repel more than they engage; or they are simply ‘good to know’ and didn’t push me to any kind of activism. So all I’ve had was foreign audiovisual which was extremely entertaining but did feel borrowed at times.

In 1990 I interned at a Jordanian production house. Back then they were successfully producing series for TV (and still are), most of which I could not identify with. I had no means to produce independently, so I started making TV commercials at that company. I liked the idea of creating little stories for products, I also made some corp docs to train myself and for the money (which paid very well). I started getting interesting assignments just because I spoke English, could present and pitch and develop creative concepts – stories. A couple years later I got offered a great job both in scope of work and salary at a regional ad agency which I took and worked with full-time for 4 years, making TVCs and creating stories for commercial clients, one of whom wanted to put a real-estate newsletter online in 95, and so I did that with Khaldoon Tabaza (founder of Arabia Online, which does not exist anymore, and is current chairman of Riyada Ventures) and got a taste for this little Arab digital city he was creating with a wonderful small group that was years ahead of the community around them as they built Arabia Online.

That year we were hacking test accounts to connect to the web, or dialing long distance to the UK or Israel, using a free ISP account to connect to the web. The agency client paid JD5,000 to put online 12 newsletter issues which for a few months in Jordan he could only access thru that expensive convoluted long distance way before the ISPs launched in Jordan. I was immediately hooked on the online world and tried to get the agency to embrace it, but it was too early and they shrugged it off. I got restless, and left, and dabbled with Arabia. At first the thrill of building the portal was great and I soon realized the ‘cool’ content that could be created freely, away from censorship and the hassle of the industry status quo and how it was reaching a wider audience, anywhere. At Arabia I often struggled to find or help create new original content and after we built the monster I started realizing that it won’t happen by force as people are not used to ‘creating’ and it just had to evolve gradually.

While in Dubai I felt the time was right to start making content, I considered staying in Dubai and producing, and did the rounds with some production companies, but they were mostly doing TVCs and programming for pre-sold television and I didn’t see myself there again at all. I’ve been a huge fan of mobile – in 97 I was roaming on my very expensive Fastlink line on the first Nokia Communicator/the brick, checking my Arabia mail and looking at the few portal pages on a small B&W screen – paying hundreds of dinars monthly to do that. And no, there were no sites formatted for mobile or small screens then.

So consuming media on my mobile and laptop in small format is innate and attractive to me. I figured it would be easier to start something from scratch in Jordan. So I came back and was actually looking into making snackable media for small screens, because I believed people would want to consume entertainment and information quickly and on the go. In 2003 I spent an entire dinner talking with an investment banker friend about making entertainment for small screens, and he mocked it all night saying there could not be a business model as people would never be willing to consume media that way.

At that same time I was also developing two production projects with friends, one was a docudrama about an ancient lost land, and the other was a sitcom script I started writing in English about a bunch of Arab friends living and working in Arab cities – the genesis of which was my life really. While in development, the intent was to pitch the doc to European funds. But at the same time the Film Commission in Jordan had just been announced and I knew some of the board and the exec commissioner, so I went to them to pitch my doc project hoping they had some money or resources to tap into. They had just started to build a team and were about to start exploring what to do, so after my presentation they asked me what I needed to take the project forward, I told them and they said they wished they had the means to do all that but don’t at that point.

A couple days later Samer Mouasher ( Commissioner at the Royal Film Commission, entrepreneur in ecotourism & film production) asked me to help put together a set up that would do just that so we could jump-start parts of the industry. It was a good opportunity for me to get to know the local market, and what better way to do something right than to structure it out of need. I told them I really wanted to produce and that the RFC job would be a temp thing I would help with thinking I could do it over a few months and then go out and produce. Well, nothing in this part of the world gets done that fast, so I stayed with the RFC 2+ years and developed some amazing capacity building programs that included multimedia literacy as well as the specialized filmmaking ones.

Then I was finally very ready to produce, and when I left, I walked out into a beautiful space that had various resources I could bring together. Finally I was ready and found a community around me that had kicked in. But the real tipping point was the access to the digital filmmaking tools that were becoming mainstream, allowing us to sidestep celluloid film, labs, specialized skills, etc – all of which did not exist in Jordan, and never had to. We could do digital production which made things easier, cheaper, braver, faster – allowing us to experiment and explore and do it our way – whatever that was going to be.

It’s been a totally organic progression, and now, with multiplatform distribution, I love the producing space at this point in time because it’s possible for me to pull into it everything I’ve always loved and all I’ve learned through my rich experiences.

You [the letter-writer] mention Elia Suleiman’s views on “Palestinian identity: the one which was born in the 70s based on human values, freedom and justice for all.”

Surely human values, freedom and justice for all belongs to Homo sapiens in general, not just Palestinians. It’s nice to say all that, and I get this view, but I don’t see how that differs from what any other nationality wants or aspires for. It’s the basic requirement and rights human beings seek anywhere, is it not?

The Palestinian/Israeli conflict is extremely unjust and outrageous and most of the time I find the events surreal. Maybe shame on me for moving on with my life, but in that same breath I say shame on the world that continues to enjoy its spectator status on this issue! But I also remember growing up thinking the same about the Native Americans when I learned about them in social studies while sitting in a multicultural class which included Israelis, and I thought the same of slavery in America, about South Africa, and the Maoris, and the Dalai Lama, and the Indian caste system, and, and, and…

I will not apologize for not fitting into the Palestinian mold while holding a name like Toukan, rooted in Nablus. I am proudly the product of the life, learning and cultural awareness that nourished me over the years as I lived around the world, and I cannot turn back time and don’t wish to either. When asked about my nationality, identity, where I’m from, the answer is Jordanian, without hesitation. I am fully aware that my roots/larger family is originally Palestinian, but to me that’s a detail of lineage that I don’t identify with in my present.

I was recently Facebooked by a young Toukan – a total stranger who messaged me because of our last names. When I asked him about himself, he said he was a twenty-something Lebanese.

You may find this tragic, but it’s a reality I embrace.”

More About Nadine Toukan: With an insatiable appetite for adventure, living in Tripoli, New Delhi, Beirut, Belgrade, Tehran, Rome, Muscat, Dubai, Washington and Amman while playing everywhere else was never about the air miles. It’s always been about the stories. Over the years, I’ve produced stories for advertising working with Horizon, FCB, for online communities working with Arabia Online, and for multiplatform with aspiring Arab filmmakers through my work setting up the Capacity Building Division at Jordan’s Royal Film Commission.

Today, as an independent producer based in Jordan and passionate about the convergence of artistic hearts, tools,storytelling and the power of collaboration, I’m working with filmmakers in the region to bring new entertaining stories from the middle of the east to interested audiences anywhere. Why? Because I believe that good, well made stories that entertain have and always will change our world. And because I believe that the industry of filmmaking and other arts enables us to engage in a wider progressive global dialog, transforming our attitudes and economies….and because I like the quality of my life when I’m creating with beautiful people.

Its main purpose is interaction. For the very first time, we have a media outlet that we can rely on and lead. It is an exceptional source for alternative news and information. This is why bloggers are also commonly referred to as “citizen journalists,” who not only comment on existing media reports but also play a very big role in creating them.
The ultimate question remains, why blog? Some would (and frequently do) say that blogging is narcissistic, and a waste of time. Some have even gone as far as to say that blogging has “killed” real journalism. But in this new age of information technology, not only are blogs used to inform, but to help us network with other like-minded individuals from across the globe.

In the Arab world, political activism through blogging is becoming more common, and is actually influencing a lot of the mainstream media outlets, pressuring them to cover human rights violations and previously unreported types of crimes. As the director of the Free Kareem Coalition, I learned valuable lessons about cyber campaigning through blogging and its massive influence on global news agencies. It made me realize that we average citizens have more power than what we are given credit for.

As powerful, useful, and effective as cyber campaigning is, this is hardly the only thing the Arab blogopshere is being used for. The possibilities are endless. Blogging can be used for cross-cultural understanding and dialogue, and there are more and more pan-Arab group blogs emerging.

Personally, I share a group blog with other young writers from Mauritania, Tunisia, and Morocco; something which helps me understand their cultures better. Had it not been for blogging, I would be embarrassingly ignorant about them and their societies, even though these are fellow Arabs I am talking about. Where I live, in the Gulf, we do not have a lot of other ways to connect and have constructive discourse with Arabs from North Africa. Blogging has finally helped us break that barrier. It has also allowed us to join forces and fight human rights abuses together, which strengthens our campaigns and helps them gain more worldwide attention.

Blogging has also made us aware of local communities and issues that we previously were ignorant of. For example, if I want to know more about Kurdish communities in the Arab world, I can find and read Kurdish blogs for their perspectives on such topics as minority rights. Before the advent of blogging, I had no idea how many Jewish, Baha’i, and Christian communities we had. I had no idea how many migrant rights abuses we had. I had no idea how big the threat of forced prostitution (or as we call it in the blogosphere, “sexual terrorism”) was in our countries. But we are gaining awareness, and we are leading powerful campaigns because of it. We owe most of this information to fellow bloggers within the Arab world who keep us aware and empowered.

Thanks to the internet, I am able to connect with other Arab youth from different Arab countries, which introduces me to their cultures, values, and societal issues. Moreover, through networking with a diverse group of fellow Arab bloggers, we are helping each other gain and maintain our freedoms by fighting for basic human rights. It’s a valuable experience. And we’re going to protect this space, our space, against any form of censorship, because we earned and deserve this source of power.

Commuters panic, wondering if they are exposed to a radioactive or biological agent. An emergency radio broadcast describes a detour to get everyone off the highway quickly. Some commuters have weather radios stashed in the back seat that automatically turn on and broadcast the same message. Those at home watching television see the alert crawl across the bottom of the screen; those still in the office receive an email or pop-up window. Cell phones and pagers ring with automated voice mail and text messages. People are advised to stay indoors until the nature of the dust cloud is known, to check into a hospital if they feel ill, and to call a hotline with any information about the collapse.

When the incident is better understood, the mayor sends a message from the central emergency shelter with more detailed instructions. It is sent directly to government weather radio and to commercial stations that will pass on the message to other stations. If warranted, the president may, for the first time ever, invoke the Emergency Alert System to make a statement that every broadcaster in the country will be required to carry.

The fictional scenario just described showcases a public warning system that may become operational in the near future. In many situations, a successful public warning could save lives.

“Today, if we needed to warn people that a dirty nuclear device had just been detonated on the Mall, and that they should avoid downtown Washington,” said Peter Ward, founding chairman of the Partnership for Public Warning, speaking in front of a Congressional subcommittee on Sept. 22, 2004, “we could only reach directly perhaps 30 percent of those who need to know using all means of warning currently implemented. And the time delay could be many minutes when every second counts.”

A Short History of Public Warning:
President Truman established the program called the Control of Electromagnetic Radiation, or “Conelrad,” in 1951 to protect the public from nuclear attack. Conelrad required all radio and television stations to shut down in the event of a Soviet attack so enemy planes could not use their activity as landmarks. Radios sold between 1953 and 1963 had triangles called “Civil Defense marks” on the two AM frequencies designated for warnings following attack.

Conelrad was renamed the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) in the 1950s and the Emergency Alert System (EAS) in 1994. EAS is operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), now part of the Department of Homeland Security. It relies on an information chain to reach commercial stations, providing information to 34 first-tier stations that cover 90 percent of the country and pass the message to second-tier stations.

The National Weather Radio, produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was launched in 1975 as the only U.S. government-owned and -operated radio. It delivers messages directly into private homes without relying on a commercial information chain.

Greg Romano, director of National Weather Service Public Affairs, said an EAS alert begins with the message “We are activating the Emergency Alert System” and a tone. The warning is aired over the radio or crawls across the bottom of the television screen. If it is a weather alert—the vast majority of uses of the EAS—the text is written by the local forecast office.

Broadcasters are required to interrupt their programming in the event of an EAS presidential message. However, as Glenn Collins wrote for the New York Times on Dec. 21, 2001, “No president has ever used the current system or its technical predecessors in the last 50 years, despite the Soviet missile crisis, a presidential assassination, the Oklahoma City bombing, major earthquakes and three recent high alert terrorist warnings.”

It is optional for broadcasters to send state and local warnings, and optional for states even to have coordinators of a warning program. There is no federal coordinator of public warning.

The Department of Homeland Security recently introduced two pilot programs to improve public warning: a partnership with National Weather Radio as of June 17, 2004 and another with the Association of Public Television Stations as of Oct. 21, 2004.

The Weather Radio Pilot Program:

The National Weather Service has broadcasted weather emergencies since the 1970s on weather radios, devices made specifically for that purpose, which turn on automatically when there is a message. Other civil emergency messages, including Amber Alerts for missing children, are sent to local forecast offices by telephone or fax, where the forecaster on duty authenticates and disseminates them.

The Department of Homeland Security wants to streamline information at the state level to avoid duplicating work for NWS and to deliver a consistent message to the public. On June 17, 2004, the departments agreed to begin to develop policies to give Homeland Security direct access to weather radio (sometimes called “All-Hazards radio”) as an augmentation of EAS. The reform, if successful, should achieve the goal by late 2005 with the capability to broadcast presidential addresses and messages in English or Spanish.

A National Weather Service Instruction document dated Sept. 8, 2004 establishes seven criteria for issuing a non-weather-related warning. Among them, the warning must originate from the government, assist with an immediate public safety need, and there must be no other way to spread the information fast enough. Or, as Jim Gabbert, the coordinator of California ‘s Emergency Alert System, was quoted in Wired in August 2004 on the subject of public alerts, “They’re not for news stories, they’re not to tell people to be calm. They’re to tell people to do something.”

From Washington , the Department of Homeland Security will alert NWS state offices of perceived local threats. It will be the responsibility of the senior NWS weather forecaster on duty to approve the government request for a public warning if he or she determines an immediate threat to his or her county. Nuclear attack warnings fall under a separate agreement between FEMA and NOAA.

An official at FEMA, speaking on condition of anonymity, said others at FEMA perceive that the lack of consistent procedures has crippled the NWS All-Hazards system. Even if an individual owned a weather radio, he said, he or she was unlikely to receive a warning during an emergency “unless your county had an arrangement with the NOAA weather radio regional office where you lived, and if a tanker truck turned over spewing ammonia all over the place, and the emergency alert manager for your county picked up the phone–and this is the only way he or she could have done it–and called the NOAA weather radio alert office and tell them we’ve got a tanker truck turned over…that could take several minutes. Calling them up, giving them the message, and they have to convert it to some text message that would go over the NOAA radio system.”

The June 17 agreement requires that the text of the message come from an official at the local emergency operations center or from Homeland Security.

About 13 percent of U.S. homes have weather radios. Retailing for about $40, they are concentrated in the Midwest and Florida where people face tornadoes and hurricanes. Yet “terrorism is more likely to be directed at the Northeast Corridor or California,” noted Kenneth Allen, executive director of the Partnership for Public Warning, suggesting that reforms to weather radio may not impact people in the locations where terrorism warnings are most needed.

The Digital Television Pilot Program:

FEMA and the non-profit Association of Public Television Stations (APTS) began a six-month pilot program on Oct. 21, 2004 in the Washington , D.C. region called the Digital Emergency Alert System, which uses local digital television broadcasters and at least two cell phone companies. Television, unlike radio, provides information to both hearing- and sight-impaired people.

John Lawson, APTS president and CEO, said, in an APTS version of the press release announcing the launch of the program, that digital television is “not a silver bullet for public warning, but it brings unique capabilities to the task. It avoids communication bottlenecks such as the ones we experienced here and in New York on 9/11. The pilot will explore how to interface this data with phone, cellular, cable, and other networks to reach the largest possible number of citizens in an emergency.”

Lawson said in November that the pilot program will be considered successful if data sent from FEMA, passing through a television network in Arlington , Va. , can be received by these various devices. One of the first goals was to establish bandwidth and technologically secure links between FEMA and the television stations.

“Everything we’re sending out is internet protocol, all ones and zeros,” Lawson said. This enables a variety of devices to receive data and the encryption of data on a need-to-know basis. For example, a message could be tailored to hospitals. Lawson said APTS is interested in the technology, not the content, of the warnings.

Few people today receive digital television data. Lawson expects a digital television warning system to be primarily of use to institutions such as schools and first responders that can afford several hundred dollars for digital conversion.

APTS is trying to recruit more cell phone companies into the project. Lawson said, “FEMA’s goal is to reach a lot of different reception devices in an emergency. If you’re not in front of a television or computer when the president wants to give you a message, they want to at least reach your cell phone.”

The trade journal Broadcasting and Cable said the FCC announced in August it would consult with Homeland Security to improve the system, possibly sending messages to computers, PDAs and cell phones. Because disasters can interfere with cell phone reception and internet access, the FCC is investigating the possibility of automatically turning on TVs and radios.

Towards New Policies:

When assuming the government should inform the public of terrorist strikes, it is important to remember that it recently happened the other way around: the public informed the government. As the Report of the 9/11 Commission put it, “Most federal agencies learned about the crash in New York from CNN.”
The Partnership for Public Warning has concluded that the US does not have an effective warning system because, although it has the technology, it lacks policies and protocols.

“Nothing else has been done. I don’t think they put any procedures in place for actually doing that [using weather radio for Homeland Security alerts].” Executive director Kenneth Allen said in November 2004, referring to NOAA’s press conference with Homeland Security in June.

He had the same criticism of the APTS digital television project. “We’ve all said all along that the technology exists. What they’re not addressing in setting the policies, standards, and procedures.”

Allen said public warning requires specialized knowledge that only local officials have, and that “local officials have to have the authority when to warn people and what to tell them to do. You can’t just say, ‘evacuate the city.’ You’ve got to tell them which roads to take. Warning is a local issue and a local responsibility.” He specifically mentioned the need to loop in the “first responders,” namely fire, police, and emergency medical personnel, who are “the first to arrive at an event and the last to leave.”

“There is a tendency among the people in DHS [Homeland Security] to think they’re the only ones who have the information and to want to centralize things,” he added.

Allen does not feel the federal government is genuinely concerned about a public warning system. “The president did address the nation [on Sept. 11] but he just went on regular TV,” he said. While that may have satisfied the president’s personal responsibility to make a statement, it “didn’t help the state and local officials who had to communicate with the public.”

Lawson, who works in Washington for APTS, understands that a warning system would merely mitigate catastrophe. “The emergency responders are fascinated with how to evacuate Washington—and you can’t do it,” he emphasized, “but you might want to send information about routes that need to be blocked so that they can be prepared for the rush of people trying to leave.”

One of the challenges in developing public warning in the US will be centralizing responsibility for a service that has been and will continue to be used at the local level. People must also be convinced to invest in new technologies, from weather radios to digital television receivers, when a sense of security is finally returning years after the last terrorist attack on New York and Washington .

Allen is optimistic about the impact that a good system can have on the public in time of crisis. He said, “We know from the research and the history that if you provide timely and accurate information, people will make the right decisions.”