Last few weeks + RATM

Once again, thanks everyone for your kind words and warnings below!

So much has happened since my last post and I have been wanting to write something every few days but then get too busy/lazy to post. A quick recap of what I missed and my thoughts -

1. Parliament stuff … istijwabats (jam3 istijwab) galore! I really wanted to write something about that earlier, but to be totally honest I got extremely discouraged after reading most other blogs. There is a very weird one sided herd mentality attitude which makes you think about how connected all the blogs are.

To summarize, I am against 95% of what i read. Nothing is black or white, everything is one shade of gray or another. This “you are either with us or against us” mentality is ridiculous. Everyone seems to be forgetting the big picture and using a microscope to find one decision or idea or vote that doesn’t suit then to go on a full blooded attack on that person ignoring the ‘big picture’. Anyway I can write a full post on that but I really don’t feel like it. If you got my point, great, if you don’t, great!

2. Copenhagen – FAIL. Such high hopes, no output. Never did we need to find a solution on emissions cuts than we do now, but the only result from the meeting was that we saw a big gap widening between industrialized and developing nations in terms of understanding.

3. Abo Zaid – Nothing new here. The guy doesn’t think exactly like us! We disagree with him! Boooo!! Lets keep our small perfect society with its small perfect thoughts intact, kick him out! Silly, and most probably backfired giving him and his opinions sooo much more attention that if he actually attended the nadwa. I never heard of him before, now I know more about him. Good to see that happen. Thanks Big Brother :)

4. Abu Dhabi saves Dubai – My friend went to Dubai this past weekend and said that the place was full of pictures of the UAE ruler holding Dubai ruler’s hands. awwwwwww … how sweet :) Now let’s all say it together : “Who’s Yo Daddy?”

5. RATM – This is actually what got me to finally write a post! Despite all the important stuff, I was only tempted to write when this somewhat significant thing happened. For the past four years, the X-factor (UK version of American Idol) has always had the No. 1 song in the Christmas charts in the UK. They would easily win it and it somewhat became too predictable. Whoever was the next manufactured star would top the charts automatically. So, a few weeks ago, a small group of people started a facebook group called “Rage Against the Machine for Christmas No.1″. The song is called “Killing In The Name Of” and is probably the most Un-Christmasy song ever. It’s a protest song which is 17 years old from 1992.  A perfect song to fight off the pop culture manufactured X-Factor songs. It was actually competing against a Miley Cyrus song from a contestant on the show.

Anyway, the battle went on for a while on facebook and twitter and other social media and slowly got attention of mainstream media and the group has almost 1 million members. At the end of the day, “Killing in the Name of” actually won the Christmas race with 500,000 purchases compared to 450,000 for X-Factor!!

Once again the power of social media is shown at full force, and the story has many more positives other than the obvious “power to the people” anti-corporate media spin. Alot of the money made from the purchase of the song will go to a charity for British children hospitals, and to top it all off, RATM promised that if they won the race, they would perform a free concert in London in 2010 to celebrate in what they call “the victory party to end all victory parties”!

Power to the people!

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4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. that was 5 posts in 1 !

  2. people and the ego all the way :)

    anyways I was thinking of no.5 for It is clear that media now are working on a democratic base, for it’s working on a fragmented schedule on different scales, it feels like it imitates people’s differences and really working smart on the scale of perception from twitter short notes to newspapers and elaborate reviews and programs. I like that!

    thanks :)

  3. 1. I want to add a phrase by using yours: “…to go on a full blooded attack on the people seeing the ‘big picture’!”

    Thank you! :)

    4. LOOOOOL Who’s your daddy? Hahahahahaha!!!!

  4. Dear Q,
    Tetrabba eb 3izzik enshalah bil awwal.

    Parliament stuff, I started to miss sa7at al safat, You’d have to admit that the media didnt handle it as it should be, You’d have to see what Ali al rashid, rula dashti, whom I thought will have a good move, they totally disappointed me, Mentakhbeen majlis 7okomi ba7t, Yesterday’s al saqer article in Al Jarida was amazing and totally said what I thought about and believed in, If he was still an MP this wouldnt be happening to il tayyar el wa6ani.

    Copenhagen, President Obama was suppose to come to Denmark with a Congress bill with climate change control and sign the Kyoto convention, but he couldn’t he actually got bashed hardly in the last couple of days, specially with the Health care bill elle raddaw eb kalamhom the republicans, HE IS IN A MESS!, and Can you believe it ? el kuwait in the UN Assembly in september was the co-chairman of the climate change committee? and in Copenhagen was one of the major contributors ?

    about the social media, You’d have to love what the huffington post is doing, its the new power, it actually made a huge revolution specially after Gen. Mccrystal report and what happened after that.

    and btw you should post more often. :P

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