Apocalypse day, or how diplomacies vanished when the dictaorships gone

What happened yesterday was something terrible for the two sides or more, it’s relevant how much the hate against USA was smoothly spread and turned into actions after the Arab springs wake-up and it’s no surprise how much do salafists points out USA as the enemy number one and not just because a low budget movie but as much as the politics behind all what’s happened in the middle-east especially Palestine and Iraq, in other words the cowboy is hatred since ages but those who did break into the US embassy yesterday never offered the chance to express those hidden feelings for long decades under the political turmoil and the editorship that shuts every voice even before it can utter anything that’s not allowed.

The attack on the US embassy is wrong, wrong enough to harm the Tunisian reputation, the image of Isalm worldwide and even spoil a revolution that still walking with small steps into what should be new democracy under heavy construction, 4 dead Tunisian citizen, a hundred of injuries, tens of cars smashed, but who’s responsible for all this (and probably for what’s happening)?

The clue about US diplomacy is that the shape of the Arab world has changed but not the way Americans foreign politics can handle it, in the past it was quite enough to talk in the phone with “leader” (still happening with the remaining Arab dictatorships) to calm down the game or simply resolve an international crisis but that time of easy control has gone with those leaders thrown away in an anger movement and now the voice of the people has taken the lead and is making things happen sometimes for the good sometimes for the worst, yesterday demonstration was for the worst and even one of most apocalyptic nightmares never seen.

The US diplomacy who, seems to be helping the new government to rail down the democracy path, has no other choice than to hear the people who revolutions, the same heroes that the media prized are still angry against America and it’s worst when the even did lost the left wing that has been helping for decades and switched suddenly to the right Islamic forces that were granted both the love of the people and the voters, religion was a sweet and comfortable way to many but it turns out that things will take another direction.

To conclude, the whole thing couldn’t avoided, our government was very kind with the salafists in many occasion where they were already a threat and kept them  roam free as untouchables for two main reasons: precious voters and to avoid more, and that’s how they felt free to do what they did so easily under the eyes of what should be the best police in the world, another myth fades away…

Photo credits: Jadal.tn


Posted in Arabic, Born in Tunisia | Leave a comment

10 Lessons learned from my salafists friends (foes for life)

Lesson number one: You can fight salafists with art, they’ll burn down your paintings and destroy your plastics artworks and then call your moron and faggot.
Lesson number two: Salafists are not not only the guys with beard, a qamiz and some branded nike snickers they are also those who can’t afford the style and the ones who thinks that those are hipsters working for the lord.
Lesson three: Arguing with Salafists about things they were told is a waste of time you’ll end up hitting your head into the wall, they won’t listen to the reason unless you’re a leader or something.
Lesson four: Tunisian government cares more about salafists than about other citizens, the reason? they know people in Kabul :)
Lesson five: Salafisme is not a gender nor a life-style is a pulp fiction that lives everywhere in the exception of malls and night clubs.
Lesson six: Salafists live in the past and they want to dwell there for ever everything that surpasses the speed of a horse is a diabolic invention to tear down.
Lesson seven: Where ever you are, it’s a always a holy land worth protecting so step aside while they’ll clean earth from the Lucifer’s trash.
Lesson seven: technology is devilish but we use it so often to make life less devilish
Lesson nine: If you’re not part of the club you’re an enemy.
Lesson 10: Society is something they can’t imagine through walls, a tent and some goats would be futuristic like being in the year 5000.


Posted in Arabic, Born in Tunisia, Hardware Slavery, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The syndrome of the Tunisian baseball bat

It should be a year and half since the January 14 revolution cane across and changed the whole country altering a whole nation but that’s not what i’m attending to talk about, in fact one of the most deep changes of the Tunisian society is the Tunisian baseball, a term I did invent myself that doesn’t men a baseball bat rather a tool for self-defense it can be a stick a kitchen knife or even hard piece of wood all this started after the eviction of the dictator and spread out of the militia who was troubling the daily life and even worst when criminals, under the lack of police presence, started a campaign of theft and hi-jacking.

If you look inside an average Tunisian car or house you’ll certainly come across such “baseball” in the truck or behind the door, I myself keep such a thing in both my car and my house until now, it’s true that things did settle down and you can go anywhere at anytime and feel safe but the syndrome is till here it has been amplified lately with the threat of the angry salafists who may represents somehow a public danger, so keep safe and keep you baseball bat near your reach :)


Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Martyrs day again …

From Martyrs Day

I have spent most of my day downtown where a protest was planned in order to break the Prohibition to protest in the avenue Habib Bourguiba declared by the ministry of interior (without a voted law) and celebrate the martyrs day (April 9, 1938) when i first arrived at around 10am I found my friends gathered at cafe El Hana as previously agreed a minute later the mob stationed at Mohammed Ali square already hit the avenue from the northern side and then other crowds joined in until it became a large protest heading to the south of the street to reach the ministry of interior few minutes later a tear gas shell was fired and the police came from nowhere with sticks beating-up everybody around this I fled and hide into a building for few minutes before moving back to the open to find out that crowd spread out through the other streets as Rome, Paris and Jean-jeaures streets where a chase and chase back was happening between the police and the protesters.

 

The brutality of the police edged to the former regime style when everybody was beat violently, teargas was fired tens of times and the chase and rock throwing from both sides last for more than 4 hours resulting in the injury of tens of people several other were arrested some has been released, the tricky thing today was that the militia of Ennahda (Islamic party who won most of the constitution elections and the ministries by 25%) was there helping the police to track and hit the protesters.

Even-though the ministry of interior did warn about anybody trying to trespass the avenue habib Bourguiba, we were there as free citizen because there are no rules in the world that can stop a nation from using its right to protest and this is just the beginning as the rage of the police did simply charge our batteries for more and more… keep tuned and listen to my testimonial on RTCi radio.


Posted in Born in Tunisia, No whiskey in the Jar, Tunis | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

#trollingObama : When Tunisian boredom floods US president’s page

Although the floods that turns Tunis into Venice, Tunisians web surfers did find a way to entertain them selves while stuck at their homes : all along last Sunday thousands of Tunisian were comments into Obama Facebook page using the same funny quotes they used to use with the former dictator Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali aka #Zaba by simply mixing Tunisian and US names and locations like Micheal Bouazzi set fire on himself in NY or Degage Obama and so on, the operation called #trollingObama got a wide success among Tunisian facebook with comments in Arabic and french and did even spread in other pages like Sarkozy, netanyahou or even Aljazeera TV.


Posted in Born in Tunisia, No whiskey in the Jar | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Post-elections thoughts

No one can deny the success of the popular first free democratic elections in the history of the country with a 90% of registered voters the ballot boxes were flooded with voters who came to express their political choices was the difference in their ages and ideologies that which explains the slowness of the count.
Many are reports of minor and serious overshoot, there are already 29 cases to the court which has to  process all the cases in a rainy weekend, others blame a party to have used false promises or faith to attract more voters, but that’s part and parcel of the political parties are pro-American conservative Catholics and make meetings and propaganda in churches in what is called the largest democracy in the world these political currents abolish abortion and are against a war without thank you atheists, homosexuals and liberals that the plaintiff is managing through associations and actions to take against weight-and it works perfectly with those from the eve of the 20th century.

Some are even gone as far as dealing with those cons Ennadha votes (the Renaissance: Islamic right party) and Al Aridha or other parties who do stupidly forgot that democracy is the choice of the majority and perceptions others are certainly different, the great blow has been the Democrats made them forget sometimes because of their ultimate fighting is to involve everyone regardless of their ideologies.

And finally I press to repeat that if one govern a party you do not like it’s quite normal, Texas Americans do not consider Obama their president and Turkey is a large majority who does not like Erdoğan but it does the other parties and civil society must act again with confidence because, as mentioned Azyz Amami: “the struggle continues.”


Posted in Born in Tunisia | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

TunisiaLive presentation by Zizoo

Zied Mhirsi doctor and long time blogger as Zizou From Djerba(http://www.zizoufromdjerba.com/) is introducing his media project called Tunisia Live (http://www.tunisia-live.net/) which aims to provide local news in English through articles, audio and video podcats and also a web radio to the small community of expats an the large worldwide Anglophilic audience leading this small bit important slice of the local media.


Posted in Blogging Hell, Born in Tunisia | Tagged | Leave a comment

Open live-blogging workshop

As previously announced on Facebopok and Twitter, I intend to organize a workshop next week for a live blogging session to invite people to register for the elections, the initiative will be part of a series of workshops to succeed until ‘elections supervised by bloggers and open to everybody willing to join the race.

The concept is as simple as a meetup at a coffee shop where everyone will armed with a laptop and / or a smart-phone in small groups coached by bloggers to write articles on new created blogs for a common cause which is currently the elections and give others the opportunity to start their own blogs.

For those interested this will take place next Tuesday (probably Barista Coffee or Alhmabra – Berges du Lac) starting 7pm, your suggestions and your help will be greatly appreciated.


Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Why Tunisia is back to be estranged by the western media?

January 14 revolution

Credits: Abdelkarim Benabdallah

January 14, the Tunisia revolution took a focal point a flow of hundreds of journalists and photojournalists that i never dreamed to meet or see all at the same spot in my life seized the streets and run with the crowds sharing both emotion and teargas hundreds of newspapers articles, TV coverage and radios (many thanks to the outstanding work of all the journalists who have been in ground zero or ion their overseas studios) was the main headline of all western media that did spread the revolution to people who didn’t even knew that such country ever existed.

The media coverage before and after the January 14 was really helpful to promote the burst of anger that did kick away one of the most corrupted and bloody dictators of this era and at the same give a hand to Tunisia through free advertising that did lead to several business opportunities and suddenly (beside the European press and especially the French media) all the interest moved away to the Libyan and Syrian revolution leaving the Tunisian case half-finished with increasing need to work out the image of a new born democracy, few newspapers or radios did mentions Tunisia and when they did it was so brief that it was lined-up with miscellaneous news.

The reason behind this lack of interest that we have used to (beside the exception of the riots of the revolution) is that the western media is a cuisine that makes it daily buffet using various spices of of them is violence, blood and crying mothers which didn’t -hopefully- last much in Tunisia with an excellent recovery of the safety and the economy slow by effective few months after the revolution the others spices are quite know:

- Natural resources (Libyan oil).

- Close borders with Israel (Syria).

- Hatred level to America (both Syria and Libya leaders did speak out about their hate to the free world while Ben Ali never did).

And so Tunisia, the country leading the Arabic spring is now in the bottom of the list and usually mentioned as pioneer of this phenomena but never did get the right slice of the cake but this won’t affect much our nation to raise and prosper it’s just a reminder and my blessed followers that we have to count on our self (as we did in the though times of the anger riots of the revolution) and that we will continue so and that we have somehow to reach this audience that does affect our future in many ways and finally: god bless Tunisia.


Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The current and upcoming real-estate crisis

The ravages of the Libya war in are hardly limited to the territory of the neighboring country, it has suffered collateral damage as a hundred thousands of refugees and other manage a shelter, the bombing and friendly fire on borders but all that remains in the humanitarian field in time of war might have been seen and suffer worst disasters.

The effects of the war combined with an economy slowdown as a very serious inflation of real estate: in the city as Nasr and the palmeries (see photos above) the real estate stock market has seen a dramatic increase in a few months ago today the average apartment rent has Aouina was a of 400-600 TND for a 2 room appartement today ‘ Today if you find one it will be around 500-800 TND even all his apartments are suddenly transformed into high stading furnished apartments with monthly rental is between 1200 to 3000 DT!

Madness in prices pushes people out of their homes and to rent in areas that are less expensive to take advantage of the situation and the height is that you find a single empty apartment for rent! (Some exceptions)

The poor refugees who escaped the war between revolutionary and pro-Qaddafi had to pay a high price for a luxury stay they believe in cost and in terms of welfare (which is also the case even before the time of the war ), our dear neighbors are in Tunisia it can not find a Tripoli or Benghazi which has developed recreational tourism on one side and am on the other medical.

The conflict does Libyan soon be resolved within a few months resulting precipitate and the final return of refugees in masses, leaving behind thousands of empty flats and as you know very well it’s going to cause a new crisis with real estate no one pays attention to the lack of control and clear legislation that is organizing this fragile area and affects the Tunisian first before anyone else.


Posted in Born in Tunisia, Tunis, Uncategorized, Who Knows ? | Leave a comment