So today is Blog Action Day, and the topic chosen for this year is what’s everyone on the world talking about now, which is Climate Change.

Since the Seventies of the last century, we have learned by full scientific proof that our actions are harming the planet and that was through discovering the ongoing decay of the Ozone layer caused by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used in several industries,  and knowing about all the catastrophic effects on the well being of all living creatures on the planet from the lethal radiations escaping into the atmosphere through the ‘hole’.We also have come to know that greenhouse gases (primarily carbon dioxide) are intoxicating the Earth and increasing its temperature constantly – the Global Warming as it was dubbed later or as it’s most recently called ‘Climate Change’.

So why is it only now that everyone speaks about it? There has been 2 Earth Summits in 1992 and 2002 to discuss this issue, but there was never this global awareness except in the past 3 or 4 years. I guess it’s because there has been studies that showed that the rate with which we pollute our environment will cause melting the ice in the Poles and submerging enormous amounts of lands, this is bound to happen in 10 to 20 years.

That’s why worldwide efforts are required to halt the progression of this process. We are obliged to decrease the amount of carbon dioxide we produce or we will sink in the Ocean real soon.

See this pie chart for the various activities that produce CO2.

I’ve  always believed in the importance of personal attitudes and how collectively it affects the environment. While I still believe in that, looking into this chart and its more recent versions, I have learned that changes at the level of legislation is required to reverse this pattern since waste coming from things like Industrial waste, Agricultural processes or fuel retrieval are entirely out of a regular citizen’s control. That’s why each and everyone should (besides leading an eco-friendly lifestyle) think of the possible way to let your government know you want to amend its actions to save the planet, and if in the next voting chose the candidate that has an agenda that cares for the planet.

There’s a list of proposed action suggested on the Blog Action Day website.

I know that it’s mere coincidence, but still found it a meaningful one…

I was skimming through the newsfeed for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, when I found an article entitled “It’s a sorry plight to be a citizen in many Arab states” and right next to that article was another with the title “Obama begins pressuring Arab leaders on deal with Israel” . While these are 2 separate subjects, but going through the first article, you are left with the impression that the Arab World suffers extensive underdevelopment, and the ‘leaders’ of these countries are to be blamed for the situation. In such times – Lo! And behold! – the leader of the super-power has come to the rescue. Obama begins pressuring Arab leaders on deal with Israel…what now?! Is ‘deal with Israel’ a code word for doing what’s good for their peoples or leave? Well, who know…diplomacy is such a complicated language!!

The farce only completes by reading into the 2 headlines…

The article about the plight, that comments on a report made by the UN on the Development in the Arab World, opens with the fact that “It’s not easy living in an Arab state. Egyptians stay away from government hospitals“…Can’t agree more.

In an awkward use of the passive form this sentence goes ” The report notes that during the past seven years some 78,000 homes were demolished or damaged in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.” No insight about a possible source for the demolition.

For the 3rd time the article asserts: “the illiteracy rate among women in some countries exceeds 50 percent“. Very relevant that it ushered a paragraph in the famous Obama speech in Cairo University.

The unavoudable conclusion: “However, the overall picture is bleak and sometimes scary.” Again, can’t agree more.

Now let’s dive into the 2nd headline..

Q: So why is the US president pressuring ‘us’? A: “An intensified and more public focus on this idea appears to be one of the byproducts of President Barack Obama’s July 13 pledge to American Jewish communal representatives to address perceptions that he is pressuring only Israel.”You get to wonder sometimes, where is our share of these pledges?

And as a reminder of the Arab generosity that gets more sickening by the time, an Arab diplomat comments: “In return for a symbolic compromise on the settlements, some Arab states will be willing to pay with some symbolic gestures.“Come on! What freaking compromise do you expect? There’s no such word in the Hebrew lexicon.

Talk big leader to me please! “According to experts and diplomats, tensions between Washington and Riyadh were building even prior to Obama’s meeting with Jewish leaders, as a result of a June 3 meeting between Obama and King Abdullah in the Saudi capital. The meeting ended with a clear disagreement over the issue of Israel.” Of course the omnipotent King of the paradise slash kingdom. Forget about illiterate women now, and try to get over the fact that women are not allowed to drive a car there. Just focus on Israel.

And under the title New Sadat this comes: “In a July 16 op-ed published in The Washington Post, Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, the Bahraini crown prince, called on Arab countries to reach out and communicate with Israel. “Essentially, we have not done a good enough job demonstrating to Israelis how our initiative can form part of a peace between equals in a troubled land holy to three great faiths,” Khalifa wrote. I’m no big fan of Sadat, but for crying out loud, how on Earth can this ‘crown prince’ ever be compared to Sadat or Bahrain be compared to Egypt. That’s more funny than outraging.

I might have been reading too much into the coincidence of proximity of these 2 articles, and that they shed a light on the hypocrisy of Politicians who care only about power and money, and who would choose to harass a country or be friends with not on how democratic they are, but on how much complicity they show. Yes I might have been. But we have a saying in Arabic that رب صدفة خير من ألف معاد – a coincidence can many times be better than a 1000 fixed appointments!

I won’t be exaggerating to say that RSS feed is the single most useful tool I’ve found on the internet after emails.

It must have caught your attention before, that little orange square you see on many web pages.  It means that this publish updates frequently and that you can subscribe to follow these updates through automatically generated feed called RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication). You typically find this feature available on blogs and news websites, but there are a host of other stuff you can choose to follow.

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Using RSS feeds proves extremely uselful when there are numerous sites that you want to follow and it’s big consumption of time to go to each single site everytime you log onto the net. Instead, this tool aggregates all the new posts generated on all the pages you want to go to in one place.

There is a staggering list of ‘aggregators’ to help you with this. They fall into 3 categories. The most simple is using the web browser to compile all the feeds you want to subscribe to. All the new browsers have the ability to read web feeds (be it Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc.).  There are programs that you install on your desktop to read these feeds, which is almost the same as using your web browser.

The thirds set of aggregators are websites. Personally, I prefer this set because it doesn’t tie you to a certain computer. This means that you can access your list of web feeds from any place that has internet. My favourite is Google Reader (simply because Google has a very attractive package of tools). There, you insert the url of the website you want to follow its updates, and if it has RSS feed feature activiated Google Reader will detect it. You can arrange different feeds under specific folders.

screenshot from my Google Reader

The RSS feed system has enabled me to maximally benefit from the time I spend online. There are various ways to determine how you want to benefit from the tool. Besides following news sites and blogs all in one place, I follow the twitter updates of some of the users. It’s also possible to subscribe to a search term on twitter. For instance, I follow the search term “ylvp” which is programme I attended last year. This way I can follow whatever tweet that has the term.

Some sites publish a huge number of posts everyday(like the Huffington Post), and sometimes not all of the updates are of concern . For instance, I don’t care to follow all the articles from the Independent Newspaper -  I only want to follow the articles written by Robert  Fisk, and it’s possible to do so. Also possible it is to follow a specific blog post for the replies/comments on the page. If you are familiar with the notion of Social Bookmarking, you can find use in following the new bookmarks saved by some users or follow the new bookmarks filed under certain tags.

There are many different ways you can use web feeds, and I’m not sure if the examples I mentioned are useful. However, I’m sure it’s a valuable tool but it’s each one job to determine how to get the benefit.

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screenshot from my Google Reader