Yesterday I was invited to the Royal Court for a meeting with King Abdullah II but that was not linked to the government reshuffle! The meeting was a "lunch meeting" that the King asked for with representatives of the Jordanian governorates with the presence of some journalists and writers-hence my invitation- for discussing potential economic and developmental projects. The meeting comes in a... [read more]

One of the main phenomena that I always encounter in the Arab political community is the plethora of the "strategic experts" and acadmic researchers in the west, especially in the USA who are convinced that Jordan is engaged in a historical conspiracy against the Palestinians and their aspirations for an independent state. Some of these experts can easily throw out an argument that Jordan is accused... [read more]

Gone unnoticed in most national and Arab media, for obvious reasons was the "Press Freedom Index 2006" published annually by the "Reporter Sans Frontiers". Jordan and all countries in the Arab world have slipped down the ranking system this year, mainly due to the "Cartoon Controversey" earlier this year, as the organization claims. In the index published by RSF Jordan obtained an embarrasing... [read more]

We are feeling the peculiar situation in Amman. Ordinary Jordanians are finding it a tough task to manage their savings to the point where they can be able to buy a property or an apartment for the family. The real estate boom is Jordan has benefited a few and caused a major concern of economic security for the majority of Jordanians. Here is a report published by the Oxform Business Group on the... [read more]

I have never hidden my negative attitude towards Al Jazeera's Arabic satellite channel, and my aspirations and hopes for the success of the new Al Jazeera International are based on the assumption that the English satellite will not adopt the manipulative methodology of its Arabic mother and turn out to be a more credible source of information. Al Jazeera's Arabic channel based its popularity in... [read more]

We all witness with a lot of concern the profound changes that happen to Amman in terms of high urbanization, congestion and other problems associated with big cities. One of the best Jordanian opinions about this issue are expressed by Dr Mohammad Al-Asad former lecturere at the University of Jordan and the founder and manager of teh highly successful Center for the Study of the Built Environment,... [read more]

Human Rights Watch has came strongly to lead a "free speech" crusade in favor of the poor, impoverished, underpreviliaged and discriminated -against Jordanian citizen Adnan Abu Odeh. In a press release that acted as a propaganda for Abu Odeh rather than a decent analysis of the restrictions on press freedoms and freedom of expression in Jordan Human Rights Watch took the role of a defence laywer... [read more]

Yesterday marked the first anniversary of the horrific terrorist acts that rocked Amman and its traditional tranquility, leaving behind 60 martyrs and changing a wide array of our feelings, laws, convictions and daily practices.   The three crimes committed by suicide bombers from Al Qaeda have changed a lot of the previous state of consciosness about terrorism and how to recognize it and face... [read more]

The world's mot prominent organization specialized in monitoring and evaluating states of corruption at the global level is Transparency International (TI) which has just released its Corruption Perception Index (CPI) for 2006, where Jordan was ranked 40th in the world and described by the index categories as in "worsening state".   The 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) points to a strong... [read more]

As an environmentalist I have never thought that I will be rooting for any practice that will include uprooting of trees, but I find myself in complete support of Amman Municipality's efforts to uproot the olive trees from the sidewalks in Amman and transfer them to the airport road. Olive trees have been such a nuisance for pedestrians in Amman for a long time now, and according to statistics... [read more]

During the five decades ranging from the 50s to the 90 the masses of Jordanian students and their institutional representatives and political parties tried relentlessly to establish the long-awaited dream of having a unified Students' Union in Jordan but ended up in the 90s with the scattered student councils that were further stripped of power with the appointment rather than election of 50% of its... [read more]

The New 7 Wonders website has posted a temporary list of the rankings of the 21 candidates for the new 7 wonders of the world as of October 31st. This system of publishing current rankings  will be released and shown here after each section of the New7 Wonders World Tour. The next rankings will be released after the visit to the Taj Mahal on Dec. 5, 2006. The current released ranking, to be shown... [read more]

My favourite international newspaper, the Independent has published a summarized "travel guide" to Jordan a few days ago by its travel and tourism editor Adrian Mourby. This is the full text of the article.   Jordan: The Shifting Sands Of Time The land around Jordan holds many surprises - not least, says Adrian Mourby, the constantly changing landscape of the Dead Sea 'Jordan River... [read more]

Nature, the World's leading scientific magazine has published a very interesting profile in its latest issue about Science and Islam. The essays and opinions in this profile provide  alot of challenges and issues to discuss in the Muslim World, where science has always been at the lower levels of priority. You can take a look at all the contents of the profile here http://www.nature.com/news/specials/islamandscience/index... [read more]

This is an excellent review of the latest public opinion poll on Corruption in Jordan published by the Center for Strategic Studies in the University of Jordan. The review was published in the Jordan Times. If anyone is interested in having the full electronic version of the survey in Arabic please drop me an e-mail   By Alia Shukri Hamzeh  AMMAN — A new opinion poll released Wednesday reveals... [read more]

The World Bank has released its annual Global Development Report 2007 which focused on the theme of Youth and the next generations. The report states that the world youth population has peaked and is posing a great challenge to the socio-economic development in developing countries. With 1.3 billion young people now living in the developing world-the largest-ever youth group in history-the report... [read more]

Starting from Nov 1st 2006 I have changed my blog domain to a new special domain which is www.jordanwatch.net The new domain is also hosted by Jeeran who have provided great technical and hosting support for this blog and the excellent team of Jeeran has always been there for any backstopping and I certaily remain a Jeeran citizen. By this change, the blog will now have more space and hopefully... [read more]