I have always believed that the Jordanian regime — here meaning the king, and the king alone — is genuine in its hopes for reform, and is capable of achieving a slow but solid transformation to a reformed democratic state. My thoughts on this haven’t changed.

But I am beginning to have concerns that all of that might be futile and altogether irrelevant, given the current conditions on the ground.

This must be a joke, but it might not be. A few hours ago, Ammon News published this article on their front page:
http://www.ammonnews.net/article.aspx?articleno=120314

It claims that a British model, Katie Price Jordan, is suing Jordan, the country, for a billion dollars, for using her name, even though she is more notable. Funny story. But also false. The article initially appeared in satirical online article “the spoof” in 2009 (http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s3i60018), and then appeared in the Pan Arabian Inquirer under the “SATIRE” section on May 11 2012 (http://www.panarabiaenquirer.com/wordpress/katie-price-to-sue-hashemite-kingdom-of-jordan/). There is no instance of the story anywhere else that I could find.

In Jordan, hard facts are not commonly used, unfortunately. As I described at an earlier post, Jordan has a big social problem of bigotry and over-confidence is politics. Many statements are given about the deteriorating status of living, which is true and sad in many cases, but are often expanded and generalized to say that nothing good has come out of the establishment. This is not true. Jordan has real problems: We have political problems, from the external climate of the Middle East, to internal marginalization. We have social problems, and problems in education, and problems in corruption, and a poor economic situation, etc. But things are getting better, and to say that the establishment has not done anything would be an injustice.

This is not to say that all is well: we are a long way to go, and we should obviously demand more from the establishment. We should also demand less marginalization, and to be included in the process. But to fool ourselves and say that we are living in a system where the Establishment is trying to keep is weak and poor would be an unjust, unfounded, and disheartening act.

I have not written anything in this blog in a long time. I have tried to start writing many times, but I never could finish. I have been, for the past few months, increasingly frustrated with the stiuation in Jordan; while the government is doing some right moves, politically, I became largely frustrated with the wave of bigotry that has swept our society off its feet. Bigotry in politics is almost deeply enthralled in the hearts and minds of many Jordanians, across classes, political views, roles, and perspectives.

Pro-Government protesters are bigoted against Pro-Reform protesters, considering them unthankful, unpatriotic “scum”.