BIRD IN A HOLLYWOOD TREE – PART III
As I write from Hollywood in this moment in time, a plane flies overhead.
I am reminded of a song in the Maori language of the Tuwharetoa and Ngati Maniapoto Maori tribes of Aotearoa New Zealand. It’s about a bird singing. Here’s the lyrics in Te Reo Rangatira, the language of Chiefs.
Ko te putake o tenei karanga kia koe E tuku aroha kia koe e taku whaiaipo e Kia ora nei koe kiki pio kiki pio pio pio pio Ano ra ko te kete tui.
You said you wouldn’t take the blame if I said goodbye. When I told you all my reasons then you started to cry
Chorus: I’d like to be like a bird whistling in the tree. All I’d like to be is like a bird singing in the trees.
You said you would always love me and would always be true.
Though you tried to make it happen I didn’t know what to do.
There’s a dark and empty space which lies so deep inside.
Presses down upon my spirit and I started to cry.
____
Thanks Tuwharetoa and Ngati Maniapoto for the shared culture and strength. “Kia Kaha. Stay Strong.” Kia mau koe ki to mana whenua, mana moana, mana tangata, Mana Wairua a Te Atua o Nga Taangata tika tonu a Aotearoa me ona hoa tika, mo ake tonu.
For the children and great grandchildren of these tribes in the central North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, I wept today.
~Posted by Horiwood.Com, Hollywood California USA. 3.31.11~
EGYPT CRISIS – WAEL GHONIM ‘VS’ HOSNI MUBARAK – A CASE OF SWITCHING BILLIONAIRE SPOKESMEN
Story boarding Democracy – “If democracy in an internet age is preferred in a Mid-East nation. How do you show it ‘unfolding’ … in pictures?”–Horiwood on Egypt.
In the left corner we have Hosni Mubarak, a man with billions in his personal bank account he’s amassed while he has had a career in politics as Egypt’s leader for 30 years. Hosni has approximately a billion dollars for every year he’s been President. That’s not a bad job.
In the right corner we have Wael Ghonim, 30, a spokesperson in the Mid-East for American billionaires, Bill and Melinda Gates. We like the last two names. We do not like Hosni’s name as we’ve been reading it in the press. Wael has had a career being paid to talk about Google’s virtues in the Mid-East. He sells google into the Mid-East. Bill and Melinda pay Wael to do that for them.
Talk of freedom through information sharing (accessible under any topic via Google and the internet) is Wael’s no.1 sales rhetoric as Google’s mid-east salesman in charge of marketing. It gets better. More billionaires are involved in Wael’s story. Wael also Facebook‘s progress reports to his friends. Meaning, he’s also an advertisement for Mark Zuckerberg and Co. Zuckerberg a member of Gates and Warren Buffet‘s newly formed Giving Pledge Trust.
In a way, Wael works for people who all sit at the same table. He works for some of the world’s Top 200 richest people in the world. He’s their new face as a Mid-East hero, leading an online tech revolution carrying the wings of ‘democracy.’ Democracy defined as information Google deems and ranks as being list-worthy under any topic on its search engines first two pages (stats show that 80% of people using a search engine, rarely scroll pass page 1 or 2 when searching Google). Therefore what Google lists ‘organically’ in the first 20 search results has a lot of power as ‘truth’ in the information sharing game – a symbol of ‘democracy’ in a modern digital, computer and mobile telephony driven age. Gates and Zuckerberg are two key players in this billionaire’s game of the Top 200 richest people in the world.
Ironically Hosni is in this numbered club too. They kind of all know each other. Billionaires leading and influencing the world in different ways. This month, Hosni is ‘the bad boy’ of the billionaire’s classroom. Not everyone can be ‘good’ as that would be a very boring club. Is Hosni playing the villain Joker to Gates’ Robin (Wael). I live in Hollywood. We still like Heath Ledger who plaid the Joker in the very successful film, The Dark Knight. And Heath is dead. Hosni will survive this revolution. Egypt will be aligned more with the US. They are being trained to go to the US for information sources to be fed knowledge, with Hosni acting as the villain guide of Arab nations introducing a Mid-East friendly youthful face as a hero, like Wael Ghonim.
These are the background factors to this story as reported by The Associated Press. It reads as follows: “CAIRO — A young leader of Egypt’s anti-government protesters, newly released from detention, joined a massive crowd in Cairo’s Tahrir Square for the first time Tuesday and was greeted with cheers, whistling and thunderous applause when he declared: “We will not abandon our demand and that is the departure of the regime.”
Many in the crowd said they were inspired by Wael Ghonim, the 30-year-old Google Inc. marketing manager who was a key organizer of the online campaign that sparked the first protest on Jan. 25 to demand the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. Straight from his release from 12 days of detention, Ghonim gave an emotionally charged television interview Monday night where he sobbed over those who have been killed in two weeks of clashes.
He arrived in the square when it was packed shoulder-to-shoulder, a crowd comparable in size to the biggest demonstration so far that drew a quarter-million people. He spoke softly and briefly to the huge crowd from a stage and began by offering his condolences to the families of those killed.
“I’m not a hero but those who were martyred are the heroes,” he said, breaking into a chant of “Mubarak leave, leave.” When he finished, the crowd erupted in cheering, whistling and deafening applause.
Ghonim has emerged as a rallying point for protesters, who reject a group of traditional Egyptian opposition groups that have met with the government amid the most sweeping concessions the regime has made in its three decades in power.
Read more from AP here & Zedo Max.
One things for sure Wael Ghonim has an interesting job. Taking a lead from his beaming smile, Wael looks like he’s enjoying his job with an increased profile to date. Appearing in front of 250,000 Egyptian people assembled in one place publicly (demonstrations are popular these days. Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert‘s American led rallies reflect this tradition too. Heck in New Zealand we’ll roll out for beaches and hobbits in public demonstration form, we’re not adverse to a rally) and being beamed out to the world during this time of political unrest in Egypt, is certainly much better for Wael in doing his job – than visiting this office in Cairo. It’s nice to see Wael get a bit of a hand up, from the powers that be, to do his job.
Know what I’m sayin? That office looks awful to go to work at. :)
[Music by James Taylor and Shower The People]
~Photographs courtesy of the Associated Press and friends. Posted by Horiwood.Com, Hollywood California USA. 2.8.11~
WALL STREET JOURNAL GOES FOR A GOOGLE’S “HEAD OF MIDDLE EAST MARKETING” AS EGYPT’S REVOLUTIONARY HERO SCANDAL – WITH FRONT PAGE SUPER BOWL NEWS
What lies beneath a veil of Mid-East political activism? Google! as an agent of world domination, that’s what!
Have you heard of Wael Ghonim yet?
He’s America’s main man in ‘shaping Egypt’s culture of revoloution’ – using the internet’s lure to the Mid-East as the bait. The Wall Street Journal celebrated the Green Bay Packers Super Bowl football win over the Pittsburgh Steelers, with a Google-Egypt scandal as their front page news today.
Perhaps because AOL has merged with the Huffington Post, the WSJ deemed this Google story to be front page news worthy. The story goes a little like this – Google Executive Emerges as Key Figure in Revolt: “More than a week after his mysterious disappearance in Egypt, Google executive and political activist Wael Ghonim will be released from government detention on Monday, according to his family and a prominent businessman.
“During his disappearance, Mr. Ghonim, a father of two who is in his 30s, emerged as a central symbol of the antigovernment protests, cast as the face of a movement and hero in the cause of democracy. Protest organizers in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square adopted him as a symbolic leader. Suspecting his arrest—but having no proof—they declared in speeches that they wouldn’t leave the square until he was freed. Marchers carried homemade signs emblazoned with his name. At the same time, some local media suggested the political activities of Mr. Ghonim, who is Google’s head of marketing for the Middle East and North Africa, make him a traitor to his nation. 
