adbusters does Israel, let me know what u think.
https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/86/israeli-brand.html

job hunting tips for the canadian consultant: your qualifications are only assessed by how often you use these words:
- engaged/engaging (usually to get "buy-in")
- stakeholder
- consolidate
- solution (and derivatives there of, e.g. solutionise, solutioning..)
- expectations (managing or exceeding)
- business need
- transformation
- delivery (of things that don't actually physically move.. like "training delivery", "solution delivery"..think meta-physical)

if you're not a consultant but have to work with one, this check list could also be used as a drinking game.

how fucked up is this photo?

in the director's message in the annual report of a feminist NGO in gaza:

"We will continue to struggle for our collective right to live in dignity and with selfdetermination. We are not passive recipients of charity. The international community sends humanitarian assistance as an ethical and moral responsibility for their role in perpetuating the Israeli-led atrocities against the Palestinian nation. It is the trade-off for not having the political will to exert their political and economic influence to hold Israel accountable for every violation of international law that Israel has committed since its establishment."
http://www.wclac.org/english/reports/report2008e.pdf

right on.

Feeling the hate in Tel Aviv

obama is a muslimi and he doesn't love jewish

a bunch of american israelis in jerusalem hating on obama, one of them even says "white power".
oh and my favourite
some woman: "obama sucks. he's definately a muslim. we don't even know where he was born we didn't see a birth certificate. he's a terrorist for sure. and i'm a political scienstist so i know my shit..."
interviwer: "who's benjanmin natanyahu?"
woman: "who? i dunno. is he the prime minister? i dunno. who's benjamin yahoo?"



they're pretty cocky for a peoples who think everyone wants them "driven into the sea".

I was reading an article from the Middle East Report and saw this advertisement:



I don't know what to say.

This tank model is the latest among other efforts by Israel to "rebrand" itself from its negative associations with war crimes to a place of high culture, beaches and hot women. In Canada, we have had the pleasure to experience this campaign in a few other ways including....
- Our liquor store now sells Israeli wine from the Israeli Occupied territories. yay.
- Our museum now displaying the Dead Sea Scrolls which israel stole when it took East Jerusalem in 67. yay.

Thank you Canada, for your continued role in colonialism and destruction.

Canada's Minister of multiculturalism wishes you a happy Empire Day!.
Well, it used to be called "Empire Day" till around 1958 they renamed it to "commonwealth day". i much prefer the old name. It told it how it really is.
oh, for more context, this is the same minister who wants to cut off all funding to the Canadian Arab Federation for their 'anti-israeli sentiment.'
My favourite part below is in bold:

OTTAWA, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - March 9, 2009) - The Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, today made the following statement in recognition of Commonwealth Day. "On this day, Canada proudly displays the Royal Union Flag, also known as the "Union Jack," as a symbol of our membership in the Commonwealth and our allegiance to the Queen. From sunrise to sunset, the Royal Union Flag is flown alongside the national flag at airports, military bases and other federal buildings and establishments across Canada. "Commonwealth Day provides an opportunity for almost one billion people throughout the world to reflect on their common heritage and to appreciate the contributions that the Empire made to freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law around the world. "The Union Jack is a proud reminder that Canadians achieved independence fighting for the Empire and not against it. "Pluralism binds our diverse peoples together. And this pluralism has flourished here in Canada under the Union Jack and the Maple Leaf. "As Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, I am delighted to join with Canadians and people around the world in celebrating Commonwealth Day."

Thank you Empire!!!
For your contributions to freedom.

remember Schindler of Schindler's list ? Spielberg left this part out...

http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/nafas/articles/2003/emily_jacir/photos/01_jacir

I thought I'd repost this again, as its appropriate as ever.

The Secret Life of Saeed is written by Emile Habiby in 1974. It's a classic example of the Palestinian dark dry humour and the sense of irony prevalent in palestinian fiction. It's a story about Saeed who becomes a collaborator for the Mossad. He is able to tell his story because he was taken by aliens into their spaceship so he is in a safe place now. Saeed is somewhat of a "wise fool", which is characteristic in traditional arabic folk stories like those of Juha. And so the writer places this guy in the middle of Israeli politics and brings to show just how absurd the situation is. The first half of the book is kind of funny in that sense, however, the story does take some tragic turns at different points.

Saeed is from the Pessoptimist family.. he's a pessimistic optimist, he finds optimism in the strangest of things. And so he describes a very upside down view of the world around him. In the beginning as he is introducing himself he says he is quite a remarkable individual, you must have heard of him before. He has been in all the news papers:

"Didn't you read of the hundreds imprisoned by Haife police when that melon exploded in Hanatir Square, now Paris square? Afterwards every Arab they found in Lower Haifa, pedestrian or on wheels, they put in jail. The papers published the names of everyone notable who was caught, but merely gave general reference to the rest. The rest -- yes, that's me! The papers haven't ignored me. How can you claim not to have heard of me? I truley am remarkable for no paper with wide coverage, having sources, resources, advertisments, celebrity writers, and a reputation, can ignore me. Those like me are everyqhere -- towns, villages, bars, everywhere. I am "the rest". I am remarkable indeed!"

The book has a very ironic undertone throughout. As Saeed is speaking to a Mossad who is transporting him to jail because Saeed put up a flag of surrender over his house which the mossad interpreted as a "banner of revolt against the state", Saeed realises that in prison he will be treated by the guards as any other prisoner, regardless whether he has done something criminal or not.

"Were you ever imprisoned before?" "Oh no, God forbid sir, that anyone should have beaten you to this favour! I have merely noticed according to your account of prison rules of etiquette and behaviour that your prisons treat inmates with great humanitarianism and compassion -- just as you treat us on the outside. And we behave the same, too. But how do you punish Arabs who are criminals, sir?"

overall a really great book that i've been recommending when anybody ever asks me for a book they should read.

anyone else in Toronto answered the question "What would you do with 100,000$" after the seeing this stupid Nestle advertisement everyday on your commute for the past few months?

I rented "The Kite Runner" DVD last night on my way home. I was right, initially, to not want to watch it. But I was too curious to know what it's all about cause everybody else is reading the book or watching the film. Don't get me wrong, it's a good film. It's just so overrated that I was expecting too much.

I was trying to explain to Viv just last week why I try to avoid anything Middle Eastern that makes it to the mainstream. It's not that I think those books or films or etc are bad or wrong or that I have anything against them, it's just that most of them are all the same. It's like, if you've seen one film about alien invasion, you've seen 80% of all films about alien invasion. Well, the Kite-Runner is indeed your typical mainstream film about the Middle East. It includes all the usual ingredients: crazy Muslims, bearded men, barnyard animals in dirt streets, homosexual rape (always homosexuality portrayed only in the depraved antagonists), and oppressed exotic brown women whose characters lack depth.

Though I don't think it deserves as much hype as it got.. it's still a good movie, especially if you feel like watching something sad. It's just not the best film ever - that's all. The guy at the Blockbuster told me it's a good movie so don't just take my word for it. He also added there's an important lesson to be learnt from it. For me, it just re-enforced my stance against popular mainstream "foreign" films. But other lessons include the importance of standing up for what's right no matter the price.

Well, that's the obvious lesson. But I wonder if there's also a hidden post9/11 message given that the author chose to write his story to take place before the US/NATO invasion and end the story at the time of the horrible taliban rule so our lingering thoughts leaving hte film is how fucked up the Taliban is.

I feel like I'm getting dumber by the day. But I'm still smart enough to know that I was always this dumb :) I thought maybe it would be a good excercise to write about some of the stuff I've been reading these days.

Something really intense that I read just recently is a short story by Ghassan Kanafani. I had to stop and take breaks in between the 30 paged story cause i really mean it when I say it's intense. The story takes place in 1967. A couple is visitting Haifa for the first time since they were expelled 20 years ago. When they return they find the city looks pretty much the same as they remember it, old driving habits automatically come back, even the way the husband used to park the car outside his house. They arrive at their house and knock on the door to be greeted by an old Israeli Jewish woman.

We follow the couple through their experience returning for the first time in 20 years. They feel that the city hasn't changed. Their houses still like they were when they left, the same furniture, even the decor is still where it was 20 years ago. The story is narrated alongside some flashbacks to what happened in 1948, from the perspective of the husband, the wife, and the Jewish woman who has been living in their house.

I think all the characters in the story are portrayed as victims of the same system, in a sense, while still maintaining their agency in all the wrongs that happened. The couple is blamed for not staying in Haifa or returning sooner, or rather, because they did not die trying. The woman is blamed for her actions too. She understood very well, from her experience as a Holocaust victim, what the Israeli's was doing and what she was complacent in and yet she did what she did because it was all just too tempting to resist. And there is an Israeli soldier in all this who is blamed for..well.. being a proud Israeli soldier... which is just wrong as it is.

I think different people read the same story but take away different things from it. The main theme that I took from it is that we are all human. That we are products of a system and how we act depends on the situation we are placed in yet that is no excuse. Another thing I found remarkable about this piece of writing, I think, is this is one of the few stories (including films, documentary or whatever) I've gone through which successfully humanises the main characters, rather than feeling like the author is just putting words in the character's mouth from the author's own narrative.

Returning to Haifa is written in 1969 by Ghassan Kanafani, a Palestinian writer who was assassinated by the Mossad in 1972. I was able to find his complete works compiled into a single (heavy) book when I was at my favourite bookstore in Amman (this store basically a wooden box/shack on the corner beside an alleyway with most of the books laid out by the pavement/sidewalk). But I find some collections in English translation on Amazon.

Chapter 1:



Leave "first come first served" ethics to line ups at Mcdonalds and Walmart cashiers. If you're going to be a rat in the rat race.. at least be a winner rat. This chapter will provide some practical tips to put you ahead of the curb. Just because the municipal transit commission refuses to offer first class carriages to you like every other passenger carrier service out there, that doesn't mean you have to suffer as the rest of the masses.


And fuck yes I have MS Paint back!!! I tried so many other graphics editors, no one does it like MS Paint 95.

Chapter 2:



Take advantage of the diversity of Toronto's population.