Protest!

I headed to a protest yesterday with some people from the office. T, A, and I got into T's car, took a blank placard and started driving to the demonstration against Israeli aggression in front of the UN building. T and A were brainstorming on the way for slogans, none of which were really electrifying. Suggestions ranged from "Wake up, Sharon," to "Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, what's next?" to "Save the Dead Sea!"

In the end we got there too late and the demonstration was over. But I was surprised that A and T wanted to go at all - being that they are in Friends of the Earth and have regular contact with Israelis. The way they put it, they have no problem with -- and in fact they like -- Israeli people. It's just the government they can't stand.

While cruising the Middle East blogosphere, I found one with an extraordinary commentary on the action in Lebanon. Since people in Lebanon and in Israel tend to be well-off, computer literate and good at English, there has been an Internet exchange between them. That is, an Israeli typing away in his bomb shelter can reach a Beiruti who's listening to warplanes overhead. Check it out.

On Tuesday I visited the University of Jordan, which is in Amman. The campus is nice, there are a lot of green spaces where people pass out or just chat on the grass.


The new IT building had a nice Mediterranean feel to it:

And the library, which just got a new computer search system, was filled with rows of Arabic titles I didn't comprehend:

There are also Israeli flags spraypainted on some of the staircases - so people can step on the Zionists. The guy showing me around explained the logic to me with a sense of pride. To me it seemed funny that people hate Israel, so they put their flag around campus?



I have a lively exchange going on right now about houseflies at the southern end of the Dead Sea. These flies reproduce prodigously on the Jordanian side of the border, and then they fly at breakneck speed to the Israeli farms and hotels. But since it doesn't really affect them, Jordanian farmers aren't that interested in making it stop. So somehow we are supposed to make the farmers in Jordan till their chicken manure fertilizer deep into the soil. I think money will be involved.

Last night I found some expats and went to the Dove bar, tucked under the Best Western Amman. We paid 3JD each to go to an underground, cigarette-smoke-filled sausage fest with terrible music. Do you know what it's like to be one of two women dancing in a strangely blue room while a bunch of deadbeat men puff away on cigarettes?

The expat scene here is a lot of UN people, along with some former Fulbrighters and Peace Corps volunteers. Besides that, most everyone else is working for an NGO. Some of them have cars, including the guy who drove me and some others to the Dove while blasting Backstreet Boys through the streets of the city at 1 AM.