tagged w/ Tunisia
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After years of repression, Aicha Dhaouadi is serving parliament for the Islamist party.
In 1991, her husband Mohammed Hedi Kefi won asylum in France as a political refugee, but she wasn't so lucky. "I was taken hostage for seven years before being able to join my spouse in France," she said in an interview earlier this year.After years of repression, Aicha Dhaouadi is serving parliament for the Islamist... more
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Tunisian bloggers succeeded in getting permission to form the first anti-censorship party in Africa and the Arab world. ----- The Tunisian interior ministry just legalised Africa's first anti-censorship political party. The Tunisian Pirate Party, approved on March 13th, is a branch of the worldwide cyber-activist movement. The party consists mainly of bloggers, many of whom were active during the Tunisian revolution and were imprisoned under the former regime. Their goal is to protect the right of more than two million Tunisian internet users to access information without restrictions, according to the party statute. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/free-stuff/43057-tunisian-pirate-party-gets-legal-approvalTunisian bloggers succeeded in getting permission to form the first anti-censorship... more
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worrg
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added this
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2 months ago
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After decades of producing sharply worded critiques of the former regime, Om Zied isn't quieting down in the new Tunisia, or even dulling her verbal blade.
"Cavemen" is the word she used on the radio a couple of months ago to describe the ultra-conservative Salafists at the University of Manouba, in a suburb of Tunis. Salafists were pressuring administrators to permit women to wear the niqab, a full face veil, to classes.
During the same radio interview the self-avowed secularist argued that few Islamists had ever tried to defend the rights of veiled women under the regime of the ousted president, Ben Ali.
She used a pen name for protection, but her identity was never really shielded from the government, which targeted her with continual intimidation and harassment.
Om Zied is how she continues to be known here, although the need to fear official reprisal is gone and she can use her real name now: Neziha Rajba.
Today she stands out as visionary who always somehow believed that Jan. 13, 2011, would someday come.
http://www.womensenews.org/story/the-world/120228/tunisias-om-zied-stays-sharp-power-shiftsAfter decades of producing sharply worded critiques of the former regime, Om Zied... more
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So here's what happened. I wrote this song as a new labor anthem in 2008 and issued it on an album in 2009. But, as much as it was for them, I meant it to be about more than just the current organizational structures for working people. The One Big Union idea, since it was the mantra of the IWW, has for a long time been about the permanent popular offset to entrenched institutional power so often run by bad people with sociopathic motives, aka corporations and faux "public interest" organizations bankrolled by wealthy despots to proselytize the notion that their despotism is a good thing.
Those people, those institutions, have successfully winnowed the numbers of the organized. The Randroids are ascendent in America, telling us that ALL collectivity is heretical communism. But thing about that is, our collectivity is not something up for debate, as viciously as they choose to argue it, as much money as the Kochs, Chambers of Commerce, ALECs and corrupt Supreme Court justices can dump into the message. "Government is collectivity, common sense is heresy, the GI Bill is a communism, rich people paying an extra .02 percent in taxes is theft and violence. You are you and only you, you exist in a vacuum, fuck everyone else."
Except antisocial behavior simply flies in the face of society. We are all a system, which is part of other systems. One Big Union is what cures us of their predations, and what shouts down their sociopathic marketing. It is what gives us a sense of community when financial machinations and shameless propaganda insist we are alone and that we should shut up and pull ourselves up by our own damn bootstraps.
In Wisconsin, in Egypt and Tunisia, in Occupy Wall Street and its affiliate actions around the U.S. and the world, I saw people pulling each other up by each OTHER's damn bootstraps. Look what happened. I saw this song realized anew. Brave people claimed it and made it more vital. I owed them something.
I have never worked in visual media but it dawned on me I really had no choice. I taught myself iMovie and I made this. I hope it is worthy of the amazing things people have done this year in the name of forwarding civil society everywhere.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwjiP6X3u1kSo here's what happened. I wrote this song as a new labor anthem in 2008 and... more
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- One year ago today (December 17th), Mohamed Bouazizi, a man who had a simple produce stand in Tunisia, set himself on fire to protest his government’s repression. His singular sacrifice ignited a revolution that toppled Tunisia’s dictator and launched revolts in regimes across the Middle East.- One year ago today (December 17th), Mohamed Bouazizi, a man who had a simple produce... more
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Latest news (as of 1900 GMT) regarding the military crackdown on protesters in Tahrir Square, Cairo.Latest news (as of 1900 GMT) regarding the military crackdown on protesters in Tahrir... more
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Clinton said that the Obama administration would work with the ascendant Islamist parties in Tunisia and Egypt if they played by the rules of the political gameClinton said that the Obama administration would work with the ascendant Islamist... more
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The September 11 attacks have been revealed as a last gasp of a fading, cult-like twentieth-century vision, not as the wave of the future. They were the equivalent of the frenetic dashing to and fro of a chicken already beheaded. Al-Qaeda’s core assumptions have been refuted by subsequent events and above all in 2011 by the Arab Spring.
AQ adopted a form of pan-Islamism, a dream of making Islam a basis for a national idea, so that an Islamic superpower could be created, in which Egypt and Saudi Arabia would be provinces. This superpower would be a dictatorship, and would come into being through the actions of pan-Islamic guerrillas in each country who would violently overthrow the national government. The point of attacking the United States was only that it was seen to stand behind the governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and so forth, making them impossible to overthrow.
The entire ideology was never more than a crackpot vision, entirely unrealistic and all the more violent for that. (A corollary is that one reason the US was not attacked again on that scale is that 9/11 was bait, and George W. Bush took the bait.)
Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush, however, saw the attacks as “an opportunity.” They were an opportunity to assert American dominance of the oil fields of the Middle East, and therefore, they reasoned, of the energy future of the entire world, ensuring the predominance of the American superpower throughout the twenty-first century.
Second, it has been demonstrated that the leading edge in political change in the Arab world is relatively secular youth who support labor unions and dignity for working people– i.e. that the most effective revolutionaries are a kind of Arab New Left, not small cells of fundamentalist terrorists.
Ironically, American politicians attempted to pull the wool over our eyes by saying that al-Qaeda hated us for our values. But it turns out that the Arabs are now the peoples sacrificing most for a rule of law, accountability, transparency, and parliamentary governance. One wonders, indeed, if they do not now value those things more than most Americans.
The real cost of the wars of aggression was a decline in the standing of the US abroad, a gutting of the UN Charter and international legal norms, and a de facto repeal civil liberties at home. The American people, however, are resilient and strong. The American system of government is flexible. If we are supine and abject, our children will not be. Already, federal government intrusion into our lives is being questioned on the right and the left alike. With hard work and a bit of luck, perhaps over the course of a generation, we can get our Bill of Rights back. And if government officials drag their feet too much in returning our inalienable rights to us, the Egyptian and Tunisian youth have already shown the way forward.
http://tinyurl.com/43ttzk4The September 11 attacks have been revealed as a last gasp of a fading, cult-like... more
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LOrion
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added this
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9 months ago
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Tunisia’s border with Libya has been a major lifeline, keeping residents in Ben Guerdane economically afloat - so when the vital trade route is blocked by the municipality or by protestors, tempers flare.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=56843Tunisia’s border with Libya has been a major lifeline, keeping residents in Ben... more
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Tahrir Square Riot is it the start of a Massive War between Islamists and Muslim Secularists?Tahrir Square Riot is it the start of a Massive War between Islamists and Muslim... more
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Anonymous’s rapid rise from the depths of geekdom to becoming a catalyst and nerve centre for real-life revolutionaries is one that has taken even some of its own members by surprise. The loosely-knit hive brings anonymous techies, hackers and, increasingly, activists together under a single appellation, united in their non-violent but often illegal collective action. With high-profile campaigns, centred on “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) attacks that knock target websites offline, it has been transformed from a fringe group of law-breaking pranksters that emerged in 2006 into an international movement that draws new recruits by their thousands. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/free-stuff/42983-anonymous-and-the-arab-uprisingsAnonymous’s rapid rise from the depths of geekdom to becoming a catalyst and... more
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worrg
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added this
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11 months ago
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The toppled president of Tunisia, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, has denied the accusation that he fled the country, saying he was “tricked” into leaving. Ben Ali’s Lebanese attorney said on Tuesday that the former leader boarded a plane to Saudi Arabia after he was advised by his security chief of an assassination plot against him.
Read more:
http://www.politicalfailblog.com/2011/06/ousted-tunisian-leader-says-he-was.htmlThe toppled president of Tunisia, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, has denied the accusation... more
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US President Barack Obama is set to announce billions in aid funding for the Middle East. Meanwhile Americans are facing massive government cuts to social programs and continue to face price hikes, foreclosures and high unemployment.
In support of Egypt, Tunisia and other Arab Spring uprisings Obama is set to grant billions of dollars in aid and support to assist Arab democracies.
http://www.politicalfailblog.com/2011/05/obama-sends-billions-abroad-cuts.htmlUS President Barack Obama is set to announce billions in aid funding for the Middle... more
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