Things That Matter...

The SCO (an organisation which is established to provide peace and security in Central Asia, Russia and China) could only observe how Kyrgyz and Uzbek people were killing each other in southern Kyrgyzstan. What is a point of the SCO then?

Tonight I had a dream ... I was back to school. We were given a task to write an essay about anything we want. I always had a problem to come up with the ideas for my assignments or articles or news stories in real life, and used to ask Alex to brainstorm with me. But not this time... There was no Alex in this dream :) The topic came up to my mind just two hours before handing in the actual assignment. I wrote about wars! To my amazement I still could remember the idea of my essay in the morning. That's the reason why I decided to write about it now. Here it is... Civil war in Afghanistan which is taking place from 1978 brought 2,000,000 casualties; Gulf War 1990-1991 - 20, 000 to 35,000 losses; Iraq war in 2003 – about 1,300,000 casualties; ongoing Civil war in Chad; 2006 Lebanon war with its 1,300 dead; 2006-2009 war in Somalia with about 8,000 dead; invasion into Gaza 2008-2009 with its 1,400 casualties...And many, many others....... The horror of war affects young and old, it k...

Determined man is not able to love. Determined man always lives purposefully. He can make money, career, but he can’t love, because love has no purpose. It is not an object of consumption. We can’t save it, we can’t buy it, and we can’t use it to enhance our ego. Love has neither purpose nor meaning; it exists by itself. The calculating, always logical, reasoning in terms of goals person can’t love, because he or she is always in the future, but never here and now. Love is always here, there is no future. That's why love is so close to meditation and death. They are all matter only in the present. However, some people are just scared of love. It makes them depressed, they scared to lose their mind, and they scared to lose their freedom or maybe they just scared of changes. At the end of the day what is love? We can assure ourselves that we love someone unconditionally, eternally, but it would not be true. Nothing is unconditional; nothing lasts forever. Strange … as older I become ...

Some of the linguists argue that Arabic world will never achieve scientific progress and progressive thinking due to the logical structure of their mother tongue. Language has played a significant role in the rise and fall of civilizations. Since language is the portrait of human thoughts, it reflects the quality of thought generated in a society. The selection of language tools used to express thought reflects the priorities of a person or for that matter a nation. The way language is acquired can make a significant difference in the development of nation. The quality and quantity of language is a barometer of the intellectual health of the people. Executive Director of the New Century Education, Rayed Afzal wrote once that that the growth of a society depends on two types of language skills. The BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) concern with human feelings, social and religious arguments and entertainment. The CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency) is the langua...

Another documentary I was waiting for a week and finally watched in Mosaic Rooms... The director of the movie, Simon El Habre, made a film about Semaan - the only one inhabitant in the small village of Ain al-Halazoun in the Lebanese mountains. The place was completely destroyed and abandoned by its inhabitants during the civil war in Lebanon between 1975 and 1990. People left the village but they didn’t forget it. Nowadays they regularly come to the land they were born and grew up, to cultivate their plot of soil and visit the remains of their houses. The old villagers do remember pre-war times but when it comes to the war itself they prefer not to talk about it and it seems they barely being able to recall the events. The movie provokes different feelings… Absolute sorrow about the consequences of the war, wiping out an entire village, separating families…Lebanese people still remaining vulnerable to a new civil war. It also shows the importance of the memories, family unity and h...

Power of yes! - is a drama explaining the financial crisis in a simple way, it causes, its growth, its consequences and its...originators. I saw the performance recently at the Royal National Theatre. I loved the story, and I loved the fact its tackles such an actual national issue as an economic downturn. It is truly said that the drama raises “questions to which we all want to know the answers.” This is not just a play, its educative tool about what happened in the world economy from 1979 to 2009, when the banks went bust, capitalism was replaced by a socialism that bailed out the rich alone. The originators of the crisis cry out loud they are not blameworthy. Powerful financial figures move from the one influential position to another. Yesterday’s bank owner is today’s LSE director and tomorrow’s politician. Nobody’s fault, nobody’s responsibility, nobody is punished. The play writer in the drama, learning from bankers and journalists, calls attention to the government and regulat...

Israeli press follows up yesterday’s Obama-Netanyahu meeting with the headline “Obama humiliates Netanyahu”. One Israeli newspaper called the meeting "a hazing in stages", poisoned by such mistrust that the Israeli delegation eventually left rather than risk being eavesdropped on a White House phone line. Another said that the Prime Minister had received "the treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea". Al-Jazeera says no concrete announcements were made and Netanyahu “twice pushed back his departure as the Israelis scrambled to assemble a package of goodwill gestures to bring the peace process back on track.” Russian NTV , referring to Israeli newspapers only, reported: “Obama requested from Netanyahu a written promise of concession on the construction “freeze” in East Jerusalem. Not having received this paper Obama has left a trunk-call room with the words: “I am still here, let me know when you have something new”. British media outlets say ...