What goes around comes around… stop the Iraq war

Advertising Agency: Big Ant International, New York, USA
Creative Director: Alfred Sewon Park
Copywriters: William Tran, Francisco Hui
Art Directors: Jeseok Yi, Frank Anselmo

Dean Obeidallah: is Obama America’s first Muslim President?

Interesting article Award Winning Arab-American Comedian Dean Obeidallah in response to an article by Frank Gaffney about whether Obama is part of the Muslim Brotherhood or not!

Parts of the article that I really liked!
The term “Muslim” was becoming a slur that I feared would end up becoming like the “N” word. In time, non-Muslims wouldn’t be able to call us Muslims, instead you would have to call us a politically correct term like: “Pork free-Americans.”

Look, George W. Bush was a “super” Christian and he sucked as President. Was it because he was a Christian? Of course not. Would Bush have been a better President if he had converted to Islam? Or if he had become Jewish? Or even started praying to “The Jonas Brothers?” Honestly, It couldn’t have been worse.

While I know that President Obama is a Christian, I hope that one day- just to taunt the right wing haters – he goes on TV and says: “Guess what, you’re right – I’m a Muslim: Salama Alaykum, bitches!” (Of course this won’t happen, but I’d be cheering!)

Read the full article by Dean Obeidallah on The Huffington Post

8 Media & Marketing figures on the Arabian Business Expat Power List

The Arabian Business has published its Expat Power List 2009, which includes 50 of the most influential expatriates in the Gulf.

Industries:
The top 50 expats came from 14 different industries, the number one industry was Banking & Finance with 10 figures, followed by Media & Marketing with 8, Transportation with 7, Real Estate 4, and Technology also 4, I was more from Real Estate, weird!

Energy came 6th with 3 figures, followed by Retail with 3, Construction & Industry 2, Financial Markets 2, Sport 2, Travel & Hospitality 2, and finally Culture & Society, Education, and Healthcare with one figure each.

Nationalities:
Brits dominated the list with 17 figures, at the second spot came the USA with 8 figures, at the third place came the Aussies with 6, India also contributed with 6 figures to the list.

The list continues with Ireland and France with 3 figures each, following is Germany with 2, and finally Switzerland, Pakistan, Canada, Brazil, and Belgium with one spot each.

Countries:
Majority of the list resides the United Arab Emirates, out of the top fifty, 33 expats live in the UAE, 7 in Bahrain, 5 in Qatar, 2 in Saudi Arabia, i in USA this person is VP at Google and our region is part of his area, 1 in Oman and 1 also in Kuwait.

So, the media and marketing gurus on the Arabian Business Expat Power List are:
2# Tony Burman: Managing Director of Al Jazeera Television, Canadian and lives in Qatar.
10# Martin Newland: Editor of The National newspaper, British and lives in the UAE.
13# Marc Antoine d’Halluin: President and CEO of Showtime Arabia, French and lives in the UAE.
18# Tim Riordan: Group TV Director of MBC Group, British and lives in the UAE.
25# Sunil John: CEO of Asda’a Burson-Marsteller Public Relations, Indian and lives in the UAE.
29# Ashish Joshi: Gulf Bureau Chief at Sky News, British and lives in the UAE.
41# Avishesha Bhojani: Chief Executive of Bates PanGulf, Indian and lives in the UAE.
49# Elias Ashkar: Saatchi & Saatchi CEO, American and lives in the UAE.

The top media and marketing figure lives in Qatar, the rest in the UAE, Al-Jazeera effect? Anyway, I would put Nelson Mattos the Google VP among the media and marketing figures, Google functions as a media rather than just a technology.

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10 Worst Countries to be a Blogger!

In a new report issued by Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Burma is the worst country to be a blogger, Maung Thura as sent to prison for 59 years for posting a video after the Cyclone Nargis last year, ha? Is that a crime that deserves 59 years in prison?

4 Arab countries were among the top 10 worst countries to be a blogger, Syria, Saudi, Tunisia and Egypt, the good thing is that we’re talking about single cases, one in each country, except Tunisia is more of a warning for writers in general, no cases were reported there.

So if we are talking about one case in each country, then let’s hope it won’t happen again. Here is the list:

1. Burma
Blogger Maung Thura, popularly known as Zarganar, is serving a 59-year prison term for disseminating video footage after Cyclone Nargis in 2008.

2. Iran
Blogger Omidreza Mirsayafi, jailed for insulting the country’s religious leaders, died in Evin Prison in March under circumstances that have not been fully explained.

3. Syria
Waed al-Mhana, an advocate for endangered archaeological sites, is on trial for a posting that criticized the demolition of a market in Old Damascus.

4. Cuba
The government now jails 21 writers who were on the leading edge of online journalism in the early part of the decade. These writers, all but one of whom was jailed in 2003, phoned or faxed their material to overseas Web sites for posting.

5. Saudi Arabia
Blogger Fouad Ahmed al-Farhan was jailed without charge for several months in 2007 and 2008 for promoting reform and the release of political prisoners.

6. Vietnam
In October 2008, the Ministry of Information and Communication created a new agency tasked with monitoring the Internet.

7. Tunisia
In a March address, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali warned writers against examining government “mistakes and violations,” saying it was “an activity that is unbecoming of our society and is not an expression of freedom or democracy.”

8. China
In 2008, the National Office for Cleaning Up Pornography and Fighting Illegal Publications announced that it had removed more than 200 million “harmful” online items during the prior year.

9. Turkmenistan
Turkmentelecom, the state Internet service provider, routinely blocks access to dissident and opposition sites, while it monitors e-mail accounts registered with Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail.

10. Egypt
Blogger Abdel Karim Suleiman, known online as Karim Amer, is serving a four-year prison term on charges of insulting Islam and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

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UAE remains Arabia’s largest job market, followed by Saudi & Qatar

Despite the recession and the number of layoffs that stormed the country, the United Arab Emirates remains the largest job market in the region, according to a report by Emirates Business 24|7, 50% of the listed jobs in the first quarter of 2009 on 4 main job websites were in the UAE.

The report covers bayt.com, monstergulf.com, careerjunctionme.com and gulftalent.com

49% UAE with 3,754 jobs
26% Saudi Arabia with 2,007 jobs
13% Qatar with 997 jobs
7% Kuwait with 527 jobs
3% Bahrain with 206 jobs
2% Oman with 184 jobs

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Advertising spend in UAE drops down in Q1 2009

According to the Pan Arab Research Center (PARC), ad spend in the UAE, the largest domestic advertising market in the Arab world, has dropped by 14% during the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same period last year.

Real Estate advertising dropped by 60%, while expenditure on financial services advertising fell by 46% during Q1 of this year. According to The National newspaper, property advertisers disappeared from the list of the top 12 newspaper advertising spenders, after occupying at least half of it last year.

The explains the tornado that shacked several publishing houses in Dubai, but what about Outdoor? Real Estate catered large proportion of outdoor advertising in the UAE, I’m pretty sure they were hit really bad.

English newspapers witnessed a 23% drop in advertising spends, while ad spends on Arabic newspapers went down by 26%, and 4% in magazines.

Both Egypt and Bahrain witnessed a drop in ad spends by 10% and 9% respectively, while Lebanon and Qatar enjoyed a growth of 42%, the pan-Arab advertising spending also grew-up by 28%.