7iber.com Presents:

Rough Draft: a citizen media workshop
Learn what it takes to be a citizen journalist
Save the Date 2nd Aug.

Location: Wild Jordan

Register today!

Written By Mariam A. Adas and Ramsey Tesdell

AMMAN - What does one do when your neighborhood, the place you live and play in, fills up with trash? For one thing, you don’t wait for the municipality to do something. For a handful of youngsters in Ashrafiyya, the best way to clean up their neighborhood was to do it themselves.

On a dead-end street in a neighborhood of Ashrafiyya in South Amman, trash covered the ground.  The street was filled with leftover construction materials and various people dumping the trash from their home in the street. The situation only mildly improved when the municipality placed a dumpster roughly a year ago.

Two of the main forces behind the efforts are Yeasin and Muhammed, both 16. “There is only one street sweeper that comes through, and he doesn’t do that good of a job. We decided that we needed to help.”

Not only do the kids think that cleaning up their neighborhood was a good things to do, but it also helped them realize that most of the trash was coming from their own homes. This realization led to the group placing their trash in the dumpster instead of on the ground.

Farah, 9, said that now, after helping clean up her neighborhood, she doesn’t throw her trash on the street, but takes a few extra steps and tosses in the dumpster.

“Before this work,” Farah told 7iber.com, “I threw my garbage on the ground, but now, I don’t.”

Yeasin added, “We cleaned up because we wanted to have a clean and safe place to play. It only made sense that we cleaned up ourselves.”

The project has impacted the kids on different levels; they help keep their neighborhood clean and have developed a sense of investment in their community. When deciding to clean up, they took the street back as their own.

The mothers of the kids are very supportive of their children’s efforts. Previously, before the street had a dumpster, the mothers would send their kids to take out the trash, and there wasn’t a dumpster. Where else would the trash go but on the street?

Nadia’a Mirdia, the woman supporting the kids says she has offered only a little help, but most of the initiative came from the kids themselves.

“If people came to work on a house, they would leave the debris on the side of the street,” Yeasin told 7iber.com. “Once, a family ate fish for dinner and threw the remains on the street and it attracted cats of all Amman. After this project, we won’t let things like that happen again.”

I finally mustered up the courage to log in to the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) website and check out what traffic tickets have been burdened up on this meager Jordanian wage-earner. Ever since the GAM announced that the average citizen (with broadband Internet access) can check out their fines online, courage has become a big factor.

Why? Because today, there are three ways of getting fined in Jordan. The first is the international standard of a traffic policeman stopping you and issuing a paper fine, which you can pay on the spot and save the hassle of having to use your lunch break to deal with unnecessary bureaucracy. The second is having one of the many speeding cameras scattered around Amman take a lovely picture of you. And the third, and perhaps worst, is a traffic policeman seeing you commit a violation, writing the ticket, and then submitting it without your knowledge.

Generally speaking, only in the first case are you, as a citizen, fully aware that you have, indeed, committed a violation and that you are, indeed, being fined for it. In the second case, your violation is standardized and you can’t argue it; unless of course there’s a flaw in the electronics. And as for the third, well, the human factor is so scary that I won’t even go there.

The problem we’re facing here is that the citizen is not in the loop.

To find out about your violations, you have to go to the GAM website (the Arabic mind you, as the English one doesn’t have the same features) and then create an account, and then check out your ticketing stats. What you get is a series of violations that tell you vaguely what you did and when you did it, and of course, the subtotal you need to pay.

Looking at my account I was left wondering if I was even in the country at the time these violations were committed and thinking to myself where I could’ve possibly committed them. Of course, having allegedly committed them weeks and weeks ago, there is no way to argue them. I don’t even remember what I had for dinner three nights ago, do you?

The uninformed Jordanian citizen remains uninformed.

The way the information is presented has changed; the medium of delivery has changed, but the process remains the same.

I have, as many of you probably have, argued my way out of tickets before. When I feel that I, as a citizen, have been the subject of an injustice, no matter how small it is, I have the right to defend myself. And many times when I feel that such an injustice has taken place I will fight it, and more often than not, I will win the bigger argument. Other times, I will admit my mistake and gladly take the fine.

The way the GAM has set things up, you can no longer put up a fight. You must succumb to the whims of a traffic officer who might have seen you change lanes without signaling and scribbled down your license plate number as fast as he could, as you sped on by.

Can they at least mail the photographic evidence to you, as is done in various other civilized nations where such a system exists?

What do you think?

Reading Al-Ghad’s newspaper article on homosexuality in Jordan, I was shocked by how old and outdated the views of the medical officials in Jordan about homosexuality are. In this article I am trying to point out medical and scientific mistakes made by the official in that article.

The first paragraph translates as follows:

“The Ministry of Health has documented yesterday 20 cases of homosexuality in Jordan”.

The article goes on to describe at length how homosexuality is a “learned behavior”, that it is a “disease”, that it can be “cured” and that such a cure would “benefit the society”.

As a medical practitioner, I will go through the most recent medical views about homosexuality.

Q. Is homosexuality a learned behavior or a choice?

A. Medically, sexual orientation is not a choice made by the individual nor is it a result of childhood events or a specific upbringing. A homosexual person puts as much free will and choice into being gay as a heterosexual puts in being heterosexual.

Q. Is homosexuality a disease?

A. Medically it is not considered a disease. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV, the most widely acknowledged and respected source and catalog of psychiatric medical illnesses, homosexuality is not a disorder. Calling a homosexual person mentally ill is a medical and professional error. This opinion is also shared by the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the National Association of Social Workers, and the American Medical Association and eventually the American Psychoanalytic Association.

Q. The Al-Ghad article stated that the Ministry of Health official estimates the number of homosexuals in Jordan to be 150 people. Is that medically possible?

A. Scientifically this is impossible. A review of medical studies done over the years, published in 1993 by Diamond and Colleagues found that 5-6% of males and 2-3% of females considered themselves gay, lesbian and bisexual. The Ministry of Health official did not explain how he arrived at such a figure. In other words, the Ministry of Health’s figure is statistically a joke.

Q. Can homosexuality be cured? The Ministry of Health official claims it can be cured but is difficult.

A. Over the years, various methods, from counseling to “aversion” therapy have been used. One of the most common modalities was electric shock therapy. Today, this period in psychiatric history is looked at in a very regretful way, as one of the atrocities committed against humans in the name of science and medicine. Since homosexuality is no longer considered a disease, no studies are being done on treating it. The old treatments have repeatedly proved themselves violating the basic humane aspect of medicine as well as a medical failure. No sources can be found on medical studies proving them effective. Furthermore, these methods are now limited to some rigid religious institutes mainly in the US, that preach sexual orientation change.

Q. What can a medical professional do to help a homosexual person? What is the role of modern medicine?

A. The role of modern medical practice is to resolve any anxiety and low self esteem problems that may accompany the feelings homosexual people might be facing. Homosexual people often find themselves without any social support from friends and family, and this puts considerable mental and social pressure on them as individuals.

It is very disturbing for a medical health professional in Jordan to read such comments from someone in the Ministry of Health being said in a major newspaper for what an unsuspecting audience might consider a medical fact. It is unprofessional and very damaging to individuals and society on the long term. Throughout history, social lack of understanding and religious opinions affected science negatively. In a field that is primarily aimed at helping individuals physically and emotionally, the discrimination still present among its professionals must be quite difficult for homosexual people seeking help to handle. I do not think it is the Ministry of Health’s duty to be “documenting” homosexual cases and forgetting its role in providing nonjudgmental medical help and psychiatric counseling aimed towards helping people accept who they are and deal with society’s pressure as citizens of our country with rights. I feel very strongly about this because the Jordanian healthcare system has a very strong reputation regionally, and our doctors are constantly achieving a lot internationally and locally, this article hits the core of medical professionalism.

Sources:

Smith G, Bartlett A, King M. Treatments of homosexuality in Britain since the 1950s—an oral history: the experience of professionals. BMJ 2004;328: 429-0.

Avid S Reitman, MD, Department of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine, Instructor in Pediatrics, Children’s National Medical Center, emedicine – Sexuality and Sexual Orientation,
http://www.emedicine.com/ped/TOPIC2773.HTM

It was one year ago, on Jordan’s Independence Day, that we officially launched 7iber dot Com. Many a time in the past year, we stopped to look at what it is we were trying to do and how well ideas were translated into actions and results. That’s an ongoing process. But given the way we humans like to give certain significance to “breaking points” on a timeline, this one-year anniversary is a good chance to share some questions and reflections.

What is 7iber?

We often tell people that it’s an experiment with “citizen journalism”. We say we want to offer an alternative source of local news and insights, building on the power and authenticity of blogs, and combining that with journalism standards that ensure credibility, quality, and consistency.

While that can sound heavy on buzz words, the idea was quite simple. We felt the local mainstream media was missing out on a lot of interesting news and ideas. The only English-language mainstream media outlet with some online presence was the Jordan Times. Some blogs were attracting a lot of readers who were genuinely curious and eager to find a different voice on local issues. The number of blogs was increasing exponentially and it was getting increasingly difficult to keep up and filter out the good stuff. There are some basic standards of proper journalism practice that bloggers are often too oblivious to.

Before launching 7iber, we spent months brainstorming and putting together a proposal in order to get some funding. A lot of energy went into trying to write what potential funding bodies want to hear and to explain what we wanted 7iber to be. But then someone said to us “you should just do it”.

So we did.

We’re a small team of three people, Ramsey, Naseem, and myself. Each one of us is in one way or another involved in journalism as well as blogging. The past year has not been a bright one for media in Jordan; the ATV fiasco, the Audio Visual Commission taking Radio Al-Balad to court, the government refusing to license a community radio in Zarqa, the Press and Publication Department trying to extend its jurisdiction to cover online media, and five journalists sentenced to jail. It’s been grim to say the least.

As a journalist, I often find that access to information (or lack thereof) is one of the main hurdles that prevent me from doing my work. Yet too much regulation, lack of transparency, and red lines are not the only challenges the media faces.

There’s a lot of self-censorship. There’s a lack of investigative journalism. There’s a disconnect between the audience and the available media.

This is where we wanted 7iber to come in; to engage the audience – the citizen – in writing the news, in commenting on the news, and in bringing out stories that do not find their way to the mainstream media.

We want to create a dialogue in which anyone and everyone can partake. 7iber is not meant to be about three people or four people or 20 people running some show. It’s about creating a community of citizen journalists.

We’ve found some enthusiastic support over the past year. I must admit I love it when someone gives me a lead to a potential story or interview with 7iber on their mind rather than the magazine I work for. We’ve also had some wonderful contributors regularly sending us articles and photos covering topics they’re directly exposed to, and doing it on a purely volunteer basis.

Ideally, we want to be able to get more writers involved, and we want to be able to do more in depth features and investigations. As Naseem pointed out earlier, that requires time and money, with time often being the more determining factor.

Blogging in the region has been attracting a lot of attention from researchers and reporters. We’re often asked what we think of the impact of blogging, how much it’s pushing the envelope, and what kind of censorship it faces. A while back, I used to believe that low internet penetration is one of the main factors limiting the impact of online media in Jordan. Now I’m not so sure that’s the case, because even if the number of people who have home subscriptions is very small, more access is becoming available at universities, schools, and community centers. It’s not access that’s the problem. It’s knowing what you can do with this access. Over the past three years, the number of blogs has increased exponentially, but has the quality improved significantly? Have we pushed the envelope further? Have we tested the limits of what we can do with this extremely powerful medium?

More questions to ponder as we start a new year of 7iber. It’s an evolving journey of ideas. What we want to do is a lot more than what we’ve done so far.

We would really appreciate it if you take a few minutes of your time and answer this short survey to help us in this process of evaluation and planning ahead.

Click here to answer the survey.

Happy Independence Day Jordan!

The Jordan Times is reporting that Fawwaz Khreisha of the Department of Antiquities, Samer Majali of Royal Jordanian and others have called into question the latest Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report (TTCR ) publish by the World Economic Forum (WEF); a document that asserts Jordan’s global rank among 130 countries dropped seven places from 46 to 53 last year.

After reading the specifics of the report myself, I tend to agree with the fromer - the WEF/TTCR metrics do not measure-up. Beginning with and citing section 2.1 of the document “Country/Economy Profile for Jordan,” on page 216, the 14 pillars indicate competitive advantage and the competitive disadvantage.

While I won’t go into detail on all the indicators, I will mention a few that are marked as disadvantageous that cause me to want more information on how they came to be considered as such:

4th Pillar - Health and Hygiene
While Jordan may not be Germany in terms of fastidiousness, measures that count directly towards travel interests, such as growing numbers of visitors whom seek Jordan as a destination for medical tourism should be included, or perhaps a physician to population ratio.

8th Pillar - Tourism infrastructure
Considering how much of the Jordanian GDP is comprised of and depends on tourism, I’d think this pillar needs more data points than merely ATMs accepting visa cards and presence of rental car companies. For example, where are the counts for trained tour guides, inbound travel packages, and/or expenditures and efforts to promote tourism through full-time agencies such as the Jordan Tourism Board North America?

9.04 - Broadband Internet Subscribers, rank 69 out of 130
Is anyone on the WEF/TTCR board panel aware of the fact that Jordan is currently in the process of re-paving the King’s Highway, virtually, by leveraging dark fiber available via the miles and miles of guidelines connecting the power towers that primarily support Jordan’s electrical infrastructure?

A deployment plan proven in preliminary field tests through Amman’s University Broadband Network and the School Broadband Network, it makes me wonder if the “subscribers” measure isn’t being given too much weigh over “adopters” of broadband? There’s a big difference between the two, and one I think the WEF/TTFR report overlooks.

9.05 - Mobile telephone subscriptions
MENAFN.com reports that “The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector has become the third largest contributor to the Kingdom’s economy, generating 10 per cent of the GDP and attracting JD150 million in investments annually.”

This is no surprise to anyone who keeps abreast of Arabic news outlets as they continually report how fiercely competitive the mobile sector in Jordan has become. A point that again calls into question WEF/TTCR’s sole choice of subscriptions over adopters as truly reflective of any country’s progressive deployment of emerging technologies.

3th Pillar - Natural Resources
While the quality of the natural environment ranks high, Jordan takes a big hit for “total known species,” a measure which compels me to ask: how does one accurately compare apples to oranges? Meaning, how does one compare the total species headcount in an arid region versus that of a rain forest? Is there a relative scale?

Similarly, is it just a matter of the Hashemite Kingdom sitting down and pushing out a piece of paperwork to declare the desert areas as nationally protected? Does the WEF give consideration to what such beauricratic bungling would have on indigenous Bedouins?

4th Pillar - Cultural Resources
I would assert that “Sports stadiums” without a balance of other factors is … as I stated earlier, a bit “Eurocentric.” Does one really get on a plan and visit Jordan to see football match? I mean, soccer is a great sport, but I’m too busy enjoying the Biblical and historic landmarks, but I guess that doesn’t count in terms of the WEF/TTC report as they did not include such cultural resources as a measure to offset stadiums.

Finally, and I don’t even know where to begin with the following metric — so I’ll just close my arguments with it as it is a perfect example of how off-the-mark I believe the WEF/TTCR’s standards are :

14.01 - Number of World Heritage cultural sites rank: 54/130
A simple count of World Heritage Cultural sites seems to emphasis that specific indicator, while Jordan has hundreds of sites that may not be official World heritage sites, but still offer abundant options for guests.

I understand Jordan is not without its problems - what nation isn’t? However, when it comes to the viability of sustainable tourism, I’m thinking that maybe the WEF/TTCR’s metrics don’t quite measure up to what they should be for most other locations not part of the EU.

The metrics used to compile this report are troubling at best and deceptive at worst. Jordan, while not a world leading tourist destination, is a growing market for tourism of many sorts. But applying metrics that boost the rank of European nations is unfair to all those working in the Jordanian tourism industry.

I got to attend a workspace on New Business Ventures in the Middle East, most of which focused on social entrepreneurship-based organizations such as INJAZ (Junior Achievement) and others who dealt with fields that include desertification, energy-savers, fair trade, etc. Soraya Salti, another Jordanian who is really making a difference in the community, was there with a student of the INJAZ program who won this year’s entrepreneur program under INJAZ, from Egypt. I took a video and I’ll be uploading it as soon as I can. The workspace is perhaps the most dynamic and interactive of all the sessions and it involves everyone getting involved essentially. After breaking up in to groups and experiencing the various business models presented, we mixed up the groups and were given a task to create a new business venture that made use of all the models, to create a new good or service. Some of the ideas that came about for example were “Green Hotels” that focused on eco-friendly hotels/tourism, and a “Sand 2 Food” program that focused on investing in new desert-based techniques to sell franchise kits for local farmers.

A few members of our group, including myself, are preparing now for a BBC debate. We will be panelists alongside some interesting personalities such as Ehud Barak, Jamal Mubarak, Salem Fayyad and Tony Blair. Joining us will be Israeli students so we’re looking forward to a very interesting debate.

Back later!

“We must stand with the people of Lebanon in their struggle to build a sovereign and independent democracy. This means opposing Hezbollah terrorists, funded by Iran, who recently revealed their true intentions by taking up arms against the Lebanese people. It is now clearer than ever that Hezbollah militias are the enemy of a free Lebanon — and all nations, especially neighbors in the region, have an interest to help the Lebanese people prevail. (Applause.) ”

….And every peaceful nation in the region has an interest in opposing Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. To allow the world’s leading sponsor of terror to gain the world’s deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. (Applause.)”

No one applauded. Suffice to say, the swipes at Hizballah, Iran and Syria throughout the speech were not of interest to anyone in the room. The basis of the speech was really on political reform in the Arab world, as pointed out by international press. However the way it was delivered and the content was essentially saying: do things our way, and we’ll have your back.

The first plenary session that followed the speeches focused on sustainable development and a hyperlinked world. Khalid Abdulla-Janahi was one participant who was a bit refreshing in what he had to say, in a blunt and direct way. He took the opportunity to call Bush’s promise of a Palestinian state by the year’s end as what it is: fantasy, and he also plugged a relative’s name that Bush mentioned in his speech as well: Huda Janahi, who I never heard of, but is worth googling.

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, was also on the panel, discussing the more hyperlinked aspect of sustainable development, and he was a pretty interesting guy.

Next, we attended what was the highlight of the day: a 25 minute Q&A session with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. We had prepared a pretty interesting question before hand and with only three of us attending this particular session, we decided to all ask the same question to increase our chances of actually getting picked in such a tight jammed session. The question was actually very specific and was related to Israeli hypocrisy in claiming to be pro-peace while continuing the occupation, however we listed the number of colonies, settlements, military bases, and checkpoints by exact figures to empower the question. Livni is very good at sidestepping questions, and she was generally pressed by the audience to answer many difficult questions. Her answers were incredibly dehumanizing to Palestinians, if not Arabs in general. She whitewashed any role Israeli occupation plays in the suffering of Palestinians and focused mainly on “little kids who wear bombs and kill our little kids”. It was also horrible to see her sidestep any questions related to establishing a Palestinian state in accordance with Bush’s “vision”, in a manner that emphasized her general disbelief in the reality of such a vision (as the Chief Negotiator for Israel) as well as her constant place of the responsibility for anything, on the Palestinians.

And not all Palestinians though. Livni made it clear that there are now two Palestines: the West Bank, as lead by Abu Mazen who Israel wants to negotiate with, and Gaza, which is lead by a terrorist organization Israel will never talk to. It is reflective of growing Israeli language concerning these two territories, further driving a wedge between them: a wedge they geographically created and a wedge Palestinians politically expanded.