Jordanian Naseem Tarawneh talks about the Five Friends campaign led by Hollywood celebrities to encourage young people in the U.S to vote in the elections. He writes:

I’m still loving the whole cultural element that has emerged from this election. The “Five Friends” campaign is a pretty interesting usage of Hollywood star power to encourage Americans to vote. It’s kind of ironic that in a democratic country you need the likes of Will Smith and Tom Cruise to give you a reason to vote, while a whole lot of people in the world are still waiting for the day they get to cast their vote in an actual free election (Jordan included). In any case, I thought the video was pretty cool, putting aside how effective celebrity endorsements and activism is or isn’t. What I thought was especially noteworthy, from a techie point of view, is the usage of YouTube and Google Maps in the US elections. Just a few years ago, who would’ve thunk it?

Here are two of the videos from the campaign:

The blogger continues on the subject here.

Orientalista, an American living in Syria, brings up a conversation she had with a man working at the post office in Damascus, when she went to cast her absentee ballot:

The ballot has to be in by the election, so the regular mail was out (usually takes three weeks). I paid 1000 lira for it to be in American in four days. The guy at the post office asked if it was for the election.
“Did you pick McCain or Obama?”
“Obama, of course!”

He smiled and then asked, “He's the black one right?”
“Yes.”
“But aren't you worried he might do things against the whites?”
“No.” I laughed. Like do what? “His policy is better than McCain's. He might work for better relations with Syria.”
“But you are white. You don't know what some one will do once they get power…”
“He will be better than Bush and that's what's important.”

I mean, what do you say to that?

More from Orientalista, here.

Jordanian Moi had a dream he was voting. He writes:

Last night in my dream, I went to the polls, very excited, casted my ballot and went home proud of myself. Then, to my surprise, I received an email when I got home “confirming” my vote for, none other than, a third party candidate! Apparently, I had voted for Bob Barr! I panicked, couldn’t believe that I mistakenly voted for Bob Barr– maybe I was confused between Barack and Bob?! I ran back to the polling place, and begged the elections officer to let me “correct” my vote. And the nice guy let me. Phew, that was a close one!

A couple weeks before that, my nightmare was worse. It was November 5th, and I had fallen asleep the night before while watching the election returns, not yet knowing who had won. Shock and awe. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t fathom. I heard Palin’s voice on TV, and I heard cheering. I saw McCain on the screen, smiling gleefully with the blonde gushing next to him.

And Ammar, from Jordan, talks about the “Obamaization of History” :

This is the point of view of a non American observer of American politics, and there sure is alot to see these days, but what makes this election special; both for Americans and non Americans is the possibilities it promises, those remain promises and are not in any way certainties, but with a man with so many complications; his father was a Muslim Kenyan , his mother was a white christian American, he has a Muslim middle name but he himself is a christian, he was accused of having attending a Madrasa or a Muslim religious school when he lived with his mother and step-father in Indonesia, despite the fact that the term Madrasa in the religious aspect of the word has a mental reference to the extremist schools in Afghanistan, and not the mainstream modern Islamic societies, and as a result, his patriotism was, and is questioned like no one's patriotism was ever questioned before, and still, he's the strongest contender to the presidency.

I hope Obama wins, for the sake of Ambition, and all that it stands for, The Ambition of people all around the world, and certainly my own, although I have nothing to do with US politics, but the election of Obama would have a domino effect, or a butterfly effect for the sake of a softer portrayal, I hope he wins, not because I think he's the awaited Messiah as the cynics on the opposite side of the fence describe his campaign, or because I think he'll achieve what the previous 20 presidents failed..or overlooked, but because he represents Ambition, the triumph of hard work, and the overcoming of all the odds.

On a bustling street in downtown Amman, Farah Al Sayyad, 24, stares at a magazine showing American democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama walking up a flight of stairs while gazing at the sky.

“For me it’s not about if he will be good or great,” she says. “It’s about not doing something negative to us, like waging another war in the region.”

Suddenly her friend Eman Buraile, 23, turns around. “Wake up, Farah!” she interrupts. “I don’t really know who Obama is, but they are all the same.”

The Democratic candidate shocked many Arabs in a speech to AIPAC, a pro-Israeli lobby, in which he promised his full support to Israel. Obama also called Jerusalem the “undivided capital” of Israel. He later clarified his comments, saying it was up to both Palestinians and Israelis to negotiate any final settlement.

Others are simply not paying attention. They are concerned with the notion that meat and chicken prices have risen 30 percent in less than a year, this in a country where 14 percent of its citizens already live under the poverty line, according to official estimates.

“Poor people in the Middle East don’t care about Obama’s character, all they are concerned about is someone saving them from their misery,” says Ahmad Al Hindawi, one of the founders of We Are All Jordan Youth Commission, an initiative launched by HM King Abdullah two years ago to enhance young people’s role in socio-economic and political plans. “I don’t blame them for tuning out on the details of American elections because they are busy struggling to put food on the table.”

Naseem Tarawneh stayed up late on October 7th to watch the second presidential debate, as it was live at 4:00am Jordan local time. He had this to say about it :

Already behind in the polls, I think McCain put up a pretty good fight and kept Obama constantly on the defensive. He did nothing short of pour lighter fluid on him, yet, Obama kept his cool, which is also telling. When he wasn’t wasting most of his allotted time defending himself, Obama was able to get his solutions across more clearly than McCain who spent most of the time pointing to his record in an attempt to demonstrate the contrast of the two candidates (a strategy that isn’t so bad with the undecided votes up for grab one month out). However, if the last debates demonstrated anything, I’m not so sure political aggression is the best way to score points with either the undecideds or the general electorate sitting at home.

Most interesting question of the night: how would each candidate react to Iran attacking Israel? Would they wait for a UN resolution? More dancing around the answer but I think the beneath the rhetoric and campaign poetry there was a “no” to that last question. For me, it conjured up the ancient old wondering of whether the average American voter has actually thought about why Israel is so important in the first place?

More on Nassem's opinion here.

And Fares (Hareega), directs his criticism towards the undecided voters in the US:

There is a bunch of Americans who claim to be still undecided who they want to vote for. Every election this group of attention-seeking morons with subnormal IQs emerge claiming to be still thinking who should they vote for. This long campaign has been going on for more than one year. There's nothing the two candidates will say, I guarantee you, in the next 30 days that they haven't already said a million times before. Those idiots who are still thinking should stay home on election day and watch re-runs of some reality show.

More on Fares' opinion here.