"Presents" from HH Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan to Emiratis on UAE 40th anniversary

      On the eve of the 40th National Day, President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan yesterday issued a set of historic resolutions aimed at raising the living standards of Emiratis.

     The salaries of Emirati federal government employees will be increased from January 2012, according to one of the decrees. The resolutions also allow the children of Emirati women married to non-nationals to apply for citizenship when they turn 18.

    I think that this is the right decision of UAE government because it will help to increase the percentage of UAE citizens in UAE, especially that the percentage of UAE citizens in UAE is less than 20%. In addition, this decision shows that the UAE government doesn't want to discriminate women in UAE, due to the fact that they want to give Emirati women the same rights as Emirati men have. 

May be one day UE government will start giving the citizenship for people who born in UAE and to invest in development of UAE. There is a small probability of that but hopefully one day UAE government will come up with such a new rule. 

      In his capacity as the Ruler of Abu Dhabi, Shaikh Khalifa also announced the allocation of 2,500 plots of land in Abu Dhabi to Emiratis. Additionally a decree was issued establishing a fund with a capital of Dh10 billion to handle the personal loans of citizens with limited sources of income. Employees in the rank of under-secretary and assistant under-secretary will get a special raise of 35%of basic salary.According to the resolutions, while judicial authorities will receive a 100% raise in basic salary, Ministry of Health employees will receive a 100% raise in their work nature compensation. There will be a 100% raise for government teachers.

    

      This type of "presents" from His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan was made in order to demonstrate UAE citizens that UAE government appreciate the loyalty of the citizens as well as the citizens. It leo shows to foreigners that UAE government does everything just to see their happy and to increase the standards of UAE citizens.

The world most expensive car accident should alert UAE government

        The most expensive car accident happened on December 5, 2011 on the Chūgoku Expressway in Shimonoseki, south-west Japan. Thirteen sports cars, including eight Ferraris, three Mercedes and a Lamborghini Diablo, were involved in a crash. Ten people were taken to hospital with minor injuries following the crash on Sunday morning, which also included a Nissan GT-R Skyline and a Toyota Prius. 
       The majority of the drivers involved are reported to be foreign car enthusiasts, with several of the supercars now written off to be used as scrap metal - an estimated £2million's worth.

       As some sources claim a Ferrari driver hit a central barrier after losing control of the car while trying to overtake another vehicle in wet conditions. The road was closed for nearly 6 hours in order to clean the road from the cars.

       This accident should alert us because on the roads of UAE we see a lot of people who like to race on their sport cars. It is clear that people who own luxury and expensive cars don't care about the radars and fines, because they have "an unlimited" amount of money. However, these type of people don't understand that in the car accident not only the car will be damaged but also it may take a number of innocent lives that were driving to their work, to pick up their children, or just to go to the cafe or mall to spend their free time. Why should people who don't care about their lives and money should take away lives of an innocent people?

        In my opinion, this car accident should be a perfect example for UAE government what may happen in UAE and that means that UAE government should start thinking of making the driving rules more strict than they are now.

Misleading cover page of "The Economist"

The New York Times blog, Media Decoder, made a fuss about a recent front cover of The Economist. The June 19th issue features an altered image of Barack Obama. The original image, which features a man and a woman standing alongside Mr Obama, was shot by Reuters photographer Larry Downing.

Why is such photo editing ‘taboo’? Presumably because it defies the concept underlying photojournalism, that of the (near) truthful depiction of a real event through an eyewitness account. It should be a reliable testimonial. Altering a photograph using Photoshop, or via ‘creative’ cropping, is considered unethical in photojournalism. That is tampering with ‘evidence’.

The unaltered image, shot on May 28 by a Reuters photographer, Larry Downing, shows Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard and Charlotte Randolph, a local parish president, standing alongside the president. But in the image that appeared on The Economist’s cover, Admiral Allen and Ms. Randolph had been scrubbed out, replaced by the blue water of the Gulf of Mexico.

It was the ideal metaphor for a politically troubled president.This picture makes readers think in the way that the president is very concerned about BP problem and that he came to the beach just to think of the possible solution for this problem.

Often editors use their techniques to mislead us. Unfortunately we can see that in almost all media, such as magazines, advertisements, newspapers, etc.

Homework #3: Charming ad of SKY vodka

        Nowadays, alcohol addiction became a huge problem among adolescence as well as among adults. the consumption of alcohol grows with every day and what helps it to grow is media. Media manipulates many of us and the don't mind if this can harm us; as long as they make big money they don''t care how many people will pass away. Advertisers use different techniques to mislead us and persuade us to buy the product. I will discuss the advertisement of SKYY vodka.

          When you first see this ad you notice happy, rich, beautiful couple who drinks SKY vodka, someone may think that SKYY vodka is magical and it makes you happy if you drink it. However, this ad uses different types of techniques of persuasion to mislead us, such as card-stacking, beautiful people and simple solutions. I will explain each of this term and then prove how they are using it in this ad.
         Let's start with card-stacking. Card-stacking provides a false context, telling only part of the story, to give a misleading impression. By looking at this happy couple you may think that SKYY vodka is the reason for their wealth and happiness; however, sometimes we need to think more critically. This ad provides us only one part of the story; however, we don't what happened after this moment. think of that in this way, they are having fun and they are happy while they drink this alcoholic beverage but do you know what happened after it? May be they got drunk or they were not even a couple or they robbed someone, no one can know that but the advertisers. They try to show us what will happen if we drink SKYY vodka, however we don't know the consequences of it.
        Another persuasion technique is beautiful people. Beautiful people technique includes using good-looking models in ads to suggest we’ll look like the models if we buy the product. Don't you think that advertisers of SKYY vodka meant that? This advertisement encourages us to buy this product by showing us the beautiful models who drink this beverage and they persuade us that if we buy it as well we will be as beautiful as they are. They use both sexes in the ad, female and male, so that means that their targets are both females and males. By looking at  this ad women may think that may be after this ad she will become as beautiful as this model and she will get such a handsome men, the same about men.
        Finally, advertisers use the persuasion techniques that is called simple solution. Simple solution is about avoiding complexities, unless you’re talking to intellectuals. Attach many problems to one simple solution. This ad claims that by drinking SKYY vodka we can solve all our problems and become as happy, rich and beautiful as this couple. However we should not forget about the post-effects of all alcohol beverages. We may stay happy for limited about of time but after some time we may pass out and get in to the hospital and this is the most positive ending. Many people get aggressive after drinking alcohol and they may hurt others.
      In conclusion, unfortunately many people don't understand the reasons of these type of advertisements and may be soon people will know about different persuasion techniques of the ads and they will stop buying the products that harm them and others as well. In addition,this research will prove my words because this research analyses all ads of SKYY vodka.

Cartoons: Entrainment for children or hidden messages

In this post I'm going to talk about subliminal messages in the cartoons. Recently, I found out that almost everything that surrounds us contains some hidden messages. Brand's logos, movies, advertisements, etc. all of these contains hidden messages, we also call it subliminal messages. But just a few weeks ago my friend told me about subliminal messages in the cartoons and I decided to make some research; by the end of the day I was shocked to figure out that when I watch cartoons I don't notice such obvious things. 

The word subliminal literally means "below the liminal", or beneath perception. That's slightly misleading, because for subliminal messages to work, they must be perceived at some level, and so a better definition might be “below the threshold of consciousness”. Subliminal messaging therefore refers to the act of sending messages directly to the subconscious mind.


Most of the Disney's cartoons consist of the subliminal messages and in almost all of Disney's cartoons or movies we can find a word "SEX" which is hidden somewhere in between the scenes. Now i wonder if this is the word that all children should know when they watch "entertaining" cartoons? Or may be this word helps children to understand the main point of the cartoon? Of course, Disney claimed that it was not created on purpose and they didn't want to insult someone. They removed the scenes where audience has noticed these messages but by removing one scene which contained the subliminal message they were adding another one where no one could notice it.

But let's forget about word "SEX", what about the images or scenes that are not appropriate for children in the cartoons. I found a lot of scenes in Disney cartoons that were kind of funny and at the same time insulting. My favorite Disney cartoon was The Little Mermaid. Now when I saw the scene, where the priest seems to be a little too happy to be at Eric's and Ursula's wedding and gets an erection, I realized that this wasn't the movie that I used to enjoy watching over and over again. In addition, have you ever seen the 1st cover of The Little Mermaid? I guess you did, but you've never noticed an interesting part of kingdom and I hope that cover was drawn by a disgruntled artist.

If you think that Walt Disney is the only studio that promotes subliminal messages, then you are wrong. Let's take as an example Nickelodeon. Oh, I loved it when I was a kid; however, now when I realize what I was watching, I understand that I should not show this cartoons to my young sister. I guess many of us love Spongebob Squarepants, now let's take a look at what does Patrick, Spongebob's friend, do at one of the scenes that I can perfectly remember in one of the episodes.

Unfortunately, these examples that I demonstrated are just a few among other million that exist. My advice is to pay attention on what your younger siblings, children and nieces/nephews watch, because this type of messages affect their mind and this may lead to a undesirable circumstances.

Product placement in the movies

First of all we need to know what does it mean the term product placement. Product placement is an adveritising techniques used by companies to subtly promote their products through a non-traditional advertising technique, usually through apperances in film, television, or other media. The media company and a product manufacturer should come to an agreement and of course a product manufacturer should pay for a product placement so that the media company will be interested in this deal. 


Every time when I watch movies I notice something that most of my friends don't. In almost every movie we can see different types of brands that can be noticed, if you watch a movie carefully. You think that it is the part of the movie and it means nothing; however, the professional advertisers with the colleboration of the media company involve these brands so that it would not be very obvious in the movie, but at the same time it can be noticed by audience.

Recently, one of the most famous technological firms, Apple, won 2010 award for the Overall Product Placement. You can see Apple in almost all the top movies of US, and in my point of view it is quite impossible not to notice that.

One of the worst product placement was in Wall Street: Money never sleeps, from a blatant Heineken plug to a surfeit of Dunkin' Donuts cups, each overt placement was outdone in the film's final moments, when Stone inserts a match-cut from an IWC watch face o a birthday cake

In conclusion, as we all know media has huge influence on us, and movies are part of media; so by placing the advertisements in movies the audience may think "I should buy the same product as this famous actor in this movie, because if a celebrity uses this product so it is really good". Most of the time the product placement works because we as an audience get influenced by it.

From Baku (Azerbaijan) to Sharjah (UAE)

Baku (Azerbaijan)

I've been living in Baku (Azerbaijan) for 16 years; however, my dad is Palestinian and my mom is Osetin, Russian and Azerbaijani. We don't have a lot of traditions in our family, may be that is why till now I don't know where I belong. Azerbaijan is where east meets west. People in Azerbaijan are open-minded but at the same time they know the value of family, religion, and traditions. I used to have a lot of friends there, basically I was enjoying my life there because I've always had people who would be able to support me at any time. When I came to Sharjah I had a cultural shock. People in Sharjah are different from people in Baku; more traditions, more prohibitions, more people who LOVE to stereotype. The first 1.5 yr for me was the most difficult time during my entire life. However, after my 3d semester at AUS I got used to this culture, because I learned some traditions of Gulf countries. Now, I really like UAE and I enjoy my time here. I think it is a really good experience for me and it will help me in my future.


THE BEST MEMORY (Baku)