Greetings from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

But first, back to the Holy Land. Israel was demands a lot to wrap your head around. All the history, all the religion, all the modern issues, all the convincing arguments that are always overlooking something. I fell like I got deep rather quick and pulled a lot out from the giant conundrum. Email is cheap here in Jordan, but I feel if I really want to get through it all, I'll have to leave it all mysteriously enough at that. I am, however, powerfully ready with many of the ancient and present facts that make up the whole equation and have held my own in some very engaging tete-a-tetes with both Arabs and Jews about the who, what, when's, and whys.

Now, Jordan on the other hand is a lot more straightforward and I have to say I am finding it a positive surprise considering they partially sided with Saddam in 1991 and the men wear kallifehs(they red/white or black/white scarf preferred by the Palestinian stone thrower that doesn't want to be caught on tape), so they must all be terrorists. The American media is again doing us a great disservice. Jordanians are a lot more like us than different.

Amman, (better known as Philadelphia to all you centurians out there) though not so interesting, is a clean, modernizing (albeit hot as the devil's oven) city. The people are friendly, educated, aware and highly engaging. Touts are not to be heard, and even shop owners are not pushy. The highlight here is 2nd century roman theater well repaired that's right in the heart of downtown. There is a sight called Jereash to the north of Amman with amazing still standing roman temples and the like, but I've not got time for that.

Jordan, I believe is on the verge of very positive growth. The young King Abdullah, who just ascended the throne after his father (the beloved King Hussein) is very progressive for the leader of a muslim state and very concerned about it's welfare. Both their pictures are everywhere and there seems to be a very paternal king/subjects relationship His wife is a regular (though wealthy) woman of Palestinian descent wears business suits and talks to reporters about women's issues, children's issues, issues about he poor and many other touchy subjects. Abdullah has just taken 500 books off the censor list (mostly muslim critical works) and says it is just the start. This is all in line with his modernization and freedom to information policy. His attitude is that with the internet anything is available, so we need to make it all available to the general public. They are working to make the government more transparent, are making great steps to strengthen international ties, detaching themselves from the radical Palestinians and opening up tot he west. And I know the concept of a Constitutional Monarchy sounds like the days of the Magna Carta, it seems to be working here as it was meant to be. I figure in ten years Jordan will soci-economically have pulled ahead of the Egypt, Syria, Iran pack, though without oil, it'll never be a saudi or UAE.

I'm ready to bet ten Jordanian Dinars whenever anyone is ready.

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