Life Is a Struggle

I told you.. this is art

My mind flashed back to the early moon
When I was just a sperm cell in the fallopian tube
In the mist of a state of triple darkness
Going through a struggle so I could exist
Avoiding everything that came within my path
As I watch other sperm cells get ripped in half
One out of a million completes the job
And for the other sperm cells the womb is a grave yard
Though my travels I had to pass through
Alot of battles and violent hassles
Cause inside the womb I was a foreign object
I'm like a new nigga walking through the project
Trouble, everywhere I turn
Damn its a struggle just being a sperm
cell, so I attempt to prevail
I guess the womb is the first stage of hell
Now here I am in the danger zone
My head and my tail, my 23 chromosomes
But then again yo it can't be that bad cause my dad
He could have used a body bag
And if so then my tomb would have been the trash can inside my moms bedroom
But they was fucking, they was true to this
And here a go on a mission to the uterus
A million mother fuckers tried to race ahead
But I was the one that fertilized the egg
Then I thought then I was safe
Because I reached home base
But oh no my job wasn't done
In fact my troubles had only begun life as a struggle
Life is the struggle
Life is the struggle

by Tha RZA from his album Birth of a Prince

Sudanese Westside Gangstaz

The news about egyptian soldiers shooting sudanese refugees while trying to cross the borders to Israel really pissed me off.
cuz during the last year hundereds of egyptians arrived to work in Khartoum, they took over small jobs like construction and resturants services..
those workers are not put in ghettoes, they are treted well, in simple words, they are having a good life. I don't remember seeing any sad egyptian motherfucka here in Khartoum, matter fact their stupid loud laughter on buses makes me sick when I remember the misrable lifes of Southern Sudanese construction workers who go drink cheap liqueur after they finish their shift burning their souls, I see egyptians finish their shifts and go have some cappuccino in Ozone or Afra mall.

well, they do have some trouples..
"Sudan Government apologizes for police assault on Egyptian workers" was a headline months ago, which is some funny shit cuz the same police that apologizes to the egyptians is the same one that been and still practice brutality on sudanese citizens, we never heared them apologize for us. but thats a diffrent story.

what about sudanese people in egypt?

I read this testimony from an egyptian blogger who is "Disgraced to be Egyptian" a while ago, talking bout the sudanese refugees situation in Cairo, and it's really shocking.

Refugees lined up and started warming up too but saying ‘allah akbar’, ‘la ilaha ella allah’ and ‘hasbona allah wa neama al wakil’ meaning there is no god but allah and only him we delegate to handle our injustice. The Christians chanted Halleluiah. And this set identity for the war players. The few civilian audience started cheering for the Egyptian army against the dirty / black / Christian parasites. Yes, there was no humanity in the scene.

egyptian civilians were cheering for the armed forces as they were beating the refugees is nothing new, egyptians are racist briks, anyone familiar with egyptian cinema would notice that, specially their "golden era", which is nothing but buillshit. and till this day, sudanese
people and nubians are a great sketch in egyptian comedy movies.
But sudanese immigrants in Cairo streets suffer something more than getting shot to death at the borders, or kicked by egyptian police force, or facing stupid egyptians racism.
they are also killing each other
yub, blieve it or not, sudanese immigrants started forming their own gangs in the streets of Cairo.

doesn't this remind you of something? it does ring a bell here, yub.. USA

you know how the US "suffer" from latin american gangs violance on its soil for many years. MS 13 (AKA Mara Salvatrucha) is the most known one, and its basically formed by a group of Salvadorian immigrants escaping the civil war in El Salvador in the 80s and youngsters who got sick of living "poor in a country that despise them".

Al-Jazeera People and Power article worth reading

Inspired by American hip-hop culture, these gangs provide identity and security to their members. Gangsters wear baggy clothes, have their own gang signs, carry knives and have turf wars. Gang life revolves around making music, fighting and holding parties.

anyone watched Blood Diamond? you saw them soldiers from RUF bumping Tupac's music right? what does revolution got to do with gangsta rap? can't answer that question better than Immortal Technique man, read his article Gangsta Rap is Hip Hop. these "Lost Boys" are violent, we can't argue that. thought they didn't receive them isreli Uzi's yet, but knives are they main tool for now.

Maliah Bekam, 24, came to Egypt to escape the civil war in southern Sudan, but he died in a pool of his own blood in a Cairo street.

man, somebody must do something about this before they get real guns, or the CIA decide to sell them crack.

Though these gangstas are on some fake copy/past shit (throwing westside signs and writing american cities names on their body is some fake ignorant shit), it's easy to understand their anger. and I think it's a good thing, cuz only anger motivate you to make a change. but they should stop directing anger on each other and use it in their struggle against all odds.

but why is that happenin? why we don't have egyptian gangstaz here in Khartoum? is it because they're not black? they came here and took our jobs and they having a good time, but my people go to egypt and be treated like shit and die for nothing.
I hope they realize that they are the roses 2Pac is talking about in his poem

Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?
Provin nature's laws wrong

it learned to walk without havin feet
Funny it seems but, by keepin its dreams
it, learned to breathe fresh air
Long live the rose that grew from the concrete
when no one else even cared
No one else even cared..
The rose that grew from concrete

The Joy and The Hurt

Sorry yall, I'm through my final exams these days, so I won't be blogging for a while..
I almost finished a long article about Sahih Bukhari, I'll post it here soon and on MidEastYouth. all later.
so yeah, till then, listen to a great poet from America. Killah Priest, The B.I.B.L.E.

Wikipedia, Free?

Finally, I watched it. Zeitgeist, The Movie, The Spirit of Age. and It was something else for real. I wouldn't hesitate to give it 9 out of 10. that 1 is cut for reasons I will discuss in my review on the movie in the next entry.

But before that, I'd like to talk about an important issue, something that matters for me as it matters for any other blogger around the world, Internet Censorship, taking Wikipedia as an example.

Is what we know today as "user-generated content websites" or "web 2.0" (blogs, youtube, wikis, flickr, etc) really something "from the people and to the people"? I'm asking that question which popped in my mind right after I discovered how "Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia" is not "free" at all.
Just before yesterday, I had this strong faith in Wikipedia, ever since I found this website while looking for informations about Solid Snake (from Metal Gear Solid Video Game) and I was so happy to find a huge amount of information about the game history and its developing, along long time ago, it became my destination whenever I feel like learning about something new and see what other people got to say about it. everytime I watch a movie I look for its article on Wikipedia, enjoy reading the trivia, the Production background, criticism, etc. Whenever I read or hear about someone who interests me, I hurl to Wikipedia to read more about his life, find his quotes in Wikiquotes, I never buy a book unless I cheak what Wikipedia's review on it, Underground artists who don't have mainstream media's attention got biographies in Wikipedia, history, science, arts, and many many more topics that Wikipedia makes it easier to learn about, and of course cheaper.In simple words, for the last five years, Wikipedia was more than just a website to me. I even used to test it from time to time by searching for stuff that I used to think there's no way I find information about them where I live, I was so surprised that my search for pre-islamic arab gods actually gave me great results, with articles about Al-Lat and Al-Uza (Pagan arab gods) which are topics I was only taught to hate them, other attempt was to find out how the NES Gun work, (NES or Famicom, is a game station before the Playstation era).

And I'm sure many of you share with me this respect to this great source of information and how it represents the journalism of masses from around the world.

But not all that glitters is gold, lol that sounded funny..

As usual, after watching Zeitgeist, I went to cheak Wikipedia for it, I found nothing, and I'm sure yall found it strange that there's no article for such a "controversial" -as some would call it- peice of work. it just didn't make sense to me. so I had to ask google, I typed the words Zeitgeist The Movie Wikipedia and clicked search. and what I found was this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Zeitgeist_the_Movie

turned out that there was an article, but it was deleted by Wikipedia editors. and that page is the debate over the deletion of it. according to the editors, the article was deleted because it's about a:

"... Self-published internet movie with no assertion of notability whatsoever, no reliable sources, no mainstream media attention, etc. If reliable sources demonstrating reliability and verifiability surface later, feel free to bring this to DRV."

I was like, HUH?

I don't know much about Wikipedia rules, in fact, it was the first time I know Wikipedia has a criteria for "Notability" of films [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(films)].

Ok, I can understand that they donh't wanna see articles about movies on YouTube by stupid fat kids fighting to get of the couch or whatever, but it's the notability condition that made me choke. a movie entry must be mentioned in the "mainstream media" before it is deemed notable!!! WTF? mainstream media? the reason why we are having these internet movies, those self broadcasting websites, those "free" encyclopedias is to escabe the bullshit of mainstream media, but now you wanna tell me I can't write an article about something unless the mainstream media talk about it first? fuck you.
and wait a second.. notability? the goddamn movie is being discussed all over the web, on blogs, forums and in chat rooms, it's getting millions of hits on Google Videos. and since it's an Internet Film we are talking about here, I think these factors are stronger evidence on notability than mentioning it in some fact-twisting corporate media outlets.

There's no comparison between this movie and the stupid nonsense on youtube and google video that Wikipedia need notability to host articles about them, this is a 2 hours long movie that is completely professional (though the sounds are not, too much bass man), it discusses the issues in an informative way, it don't need “full length reviews by two or more nationally known critics” to gain honesty, fuck that, that's the diffrence between Internet and corporate media, people are the critics. they will watch it, and go watch more movies or read more books about the issues and come back to correct the mistakes or to add new information (its those with empty-minds, they are the ones who need critics, but they're too busy arguing who should win American Idol). it just happened to be broadcasted through Youtube and Google along with millions of other materials that may not meet Wikipedia's criteria. and that's definitly not a reason to throw such a great job away and call it nonsesne, it's what you're doing is nonsense, mainstream media attention huh?

It's as simple as that, When Wikipedia clearly states that blogs, forums, downloaders don't matter, and are not "a satisfactory evidence of notability", it also clearly states that it's not a reliable source itself. and its a shame to be called "free" or "open" or whatever.

After Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace -and he's a known media monopolizer-, it became a fear of many that one day, the internet won't be diffrent from TV, and we all know revolution won't be televised.