Emel Mathlouthi at Nuits d'Afrique

In January and February of 2011, fernhill and I followed the Tunisian uprising and posted about the events.

This young woman came to my attention, via a #Sidibouzid tweet that drew attention to footage posted of her singing at one of many huge protests in Tunisia.

Last evening I attended her concert in Montréal. She is a gifted musician, a dedicated activist, and an emerging artist who reaches her audience in many inspired and uplifting ways.

First: her voice. None of the online videos do justice to the range, strength and power of this petite woman's live performance.

She talked to us between her songs, sharing the stories behind their creation and recognizing the contribution of poets and other writers who gave her bits of text to set to music.

Her signature song is "Kelmti Horra" - "Ma parole est libre":

Je suis une étoile dans l'obscurité,

Je suis une épine dans la gorge de l'oppresseur,

Je suis un vent par le feu attisé,

Je suis l'âme de ceux qui n'oublient pas,

Je suis la voix de ceux qui ne meurent pas.

Mathlouthi set the words of Amin El Ghozzi to her music; she first sang this song of revolution in 2007 in Paris, foreshadowing Mohamed Bouazizi's act of self-immolation that would set off the Arab Spring.

In addition to her own compositions, she sang "White Rabbit" from Jefferson Airplane in a manner that honoured Grace Slick, then enlisted our voices in support of a very joyous version of Cohen's "Allelujah". That was an inspired convergence of Abrahamic traditions that nurtured optimism.

I am not moving.

From The Galloping Beaver.

Watch it.

NOThing done about freezing Ben Ali clan assets.

The former dictator lies comatose in a hospital in Saudi Arabia, abandoned by family members who are no doubt scurrying about, secreting whatever's available of the MASSIVE fortune Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his thugs stole from the Tunisian people.

On Monday and Tuesday, BQ MP Jean Dorion tried in vain to secure from Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon a clear and straight answer about the assets held in Canada by the Ben Ali cabal. For two days running, Cannon supplied Con-voluted baffle-gab in response to pointed questions from Dorion.



Then the Minister of Justice Rob Nicholson took up the empty rhetoric refrain: "Our government is prepared to assist the Government of Tunisia in any manner while respecting our laws. We will continue to work with representatives of Tunisia on this file. Obviously, we all have a stake in ensuring that justice is done for the people of Tunisia."

Yesterday BQ leader Gilles Duceppe met the Tunisian ambassador - who says he has NOT received any communication whatsoever from Cannon or Nicholson.

At the end of January, Tunisian officials asked Canada to freeze assets held by the former President Ben Ali and his family, including illegal transfers of funds abroad. Ben Ali's family owns a house in Westmount valued at over $ 2 million.

[...] in an interview with The Associated Press the Ambassador of Tunisia in Ottawa Mouldi Sakri said the minister, Lawrence Cannon, has yet to respond to the request of Tunisia [...]

Belhassen Trabelsi, brother-in-law of the deposed president, fled to Canada following the uprising in Tunisia. He has permanent resident status, but the immigration department has taken steps to withdraw his status.

Cannon has invoked Canadian laws on privacy to justify his silence on this issue while Mr. Sakri has received no communication from Canadian officials.

"The Ben Ali must be frozen before they are squandered. The Ministry of Justice in Tunisia presented two requests to the Canadian government," he said.

[...] Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe, who met yesterday with the Ambassador of Tunisia in his office on Parliament Hill, said the Harper government cannot shirk its responsibilities. [...]

"The ambassador hoped for a speedy response to his requests and at the very least a temporary freeze of assets, pending a final decision. Ben Ali family members are experts in fiscal evasion. Now they've been given plenty of time to move money to off-shore havens [...]" said Duceppe.

If the HarperCons had acted efficiently and competently, they would have bragged about it. Their evasive tactics in Question Period means neither Cannon nor Nicholson have done anything except procrastinate and put off Tunisian officials.

As fern hill said yesterday, Stevie and his bullies respect the power of money. In addition, they appear to feel ideologically synchronized with oligarchies that undermine the democratic process.

Cannon and his Teensy Tunisian Obfuscations

This has been quite the week for Con-generated Convolution in the House of Commons, and it's not over yet.


On Monday, BQ MP Jean Dorion presented a clear query regarding the assets held by the Ben Ali family in Canada, here:

Mr Speaker, it took less than 24 hours for Switzerland to freeze Mubarak's assets. Europe and Switzerland also dealt quickly with the assets of Tunisian dictator Ben Ali and his entourage. Members of the Ben Ali family have been in Canada for weeks now and we still do not know whether Canada has frozen their assets.

Is anyone in this government able to tell us whether or not Canada has frozen the assets of members of the Ben Ali entourage?

The Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon uttered the standard HarperCon ring-around-the-rosy reply:

Mr Speaker there is a condition that needs to be met, as I have told my colleague many times: the request has to come from the Tunisian government. For example, in the case of Egypt, the request was made to the various countries my colleague mentioned. However, before we can take action, this request has to come from the Tunisian government. We have worked and continue to work closely with government authorities. My colleague, the Minister of Justice, is weighing all the options, and we will pursue this matter with the same intention I have already identified.

Those sentences contain subjects and verbs and yet offer no concrete information in response to a straight question. This is the Minister who puffed himself up 18 months ago and huffed that he would have some strong words for Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. And last year, he lectured survivors of the Haïtian earthquake about transparence and accountability.

Yes or no. Were the Ben Ali family assets frozen? On Tuesday, this was the exchange in the House. MP Dorion tried again:

Mr. Speaker, here we have another example of misinformation from this government. The Minister of Foreign Affairs led the House to believe that he had not received any requests from the Tunisian authorities for Canada to freeze the assets of former dictator Ben Ali or members of his family. That is not true. How can the minister deny the many requests made to the Canadian government urging it to take the necessary steps to freeze the assets of Ben Ali?

Cannon said:

Mr. Speaker, I have always answered my colleague's question clearly. The Tunisian authorities have taken steps. We have encouraged the Tunisian authorities to take steps to allow us to work with them on developing options to freeze the assets of those who are not welcome in Canada.

Dorion:

Mr. Speaker, how could the minister, yesterday, still maintain his story that he did not receive any request, when a press release from the Tunisian embassy, dated January 26, confirmed that: “the Embassy has taken the necessary steps with the Canadian authorities...to freeze and protect assets...that might be held by ousted President Ben Ali, his wife, and members of their families”? What more is the minister waiting for to freeze the assets of the Ben Ali family?

Cannon:

Mr. Speaker, if my hon. colleague reviews yesterday's transcript, he will see that he began his question by talking about Egypt. With regard to Egypt, I told him that we still had not received such a request. However, I continued by specifying once again that we are fully prepared to work with the Tunisian authorities on freezing the assets of those who are not welcome in Canada.

So you have it. Cannon was confused because Dorion mentioned Egypt. The fact is, Mubarak has no family in Canada, and it is the Tunisian embassy that issued a formal request, not Egypt. Cannon is doing what all the other PMO-coached Ministers do: leading the opposition up the garden path.

On Wednesday, the Tunisian ambassador issued a statement:

Canada must be on the side of the Tunisian people and not on the side of criminals, "said Ambassador Mouldi Sakri, in an interview with The Associated Press.

He claims not to have received a formal response from Ottawa despite a request from the end of January of the freezing of assets to countries of the former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his family, including accused of illegal transfers of funds abroad. [...]

"Our hope is that the Canadian government to take urgent measures to safeguard the property until justice is done," pleaded Mr. Sakr.

And if the former Tunisian president and members of his family are not found guilty, their property will be returned, he explains.

Two other requests were made to the Canadian government formally by the Ministry of Justice in Tunisia," he said. One is an international arrest warrant against Belhassen Trabelsi - the brother of former president - now on Canadian soil.

Despite claims that date back more than three weeks, Cannon - when pressed for action - simply answers questions from MPs in the House of Commons that the Canadian government is "evaluating options" with Tunisia.

HarperCon ministers are so well trained in the tactics of NOT giving direct answers. They fill the air with volumes of truthy gabble-fab. They don't appear to answer their mail, either.

Tunisie - je chante pour toi. (update)

This is not on YouTube so I can't post it here, but check out this young woman lifting her voice in song for Tunisia.

Notice how unaware she is to the media who creep in to record her spontaneous expression of joy, of hope; she turns and is startled by their proximity. That almost stops her but then those around her offer encouragement: "Vas-y!"

A beautiful moment.

PS: In this tweet the singer is identified as Emel Mathlouti, a Tunisian activist and singer.

Update: More about Emel Mathlouti including this, where her version of Baez' song commemorating Sacco and Vanzetti is played over violent, raw and rough footage of recent protests in Tunisia.

Sarah Palin: the queen of venal mediocrity

According to this, even Newt Gingrich is directing criticism toward Sarah Palin.

[...]Palin needs to "be more careful and think through what she's saying and how she's saying it. There's no question that she has become more controversial," Gingrich said. [...]

The weeks after the November election were notable for an apparent increase in the number of conservative commentators who were suddenly willing to deliver some version of the same basic message: We like Sarah Palin, but we're not so sure nominating her for president is a good idea.

Now, all these months later, there is polling evidence to suggest that the GOP base is embracing this same view. (For what it's worth, a new USA Today/Gallup poll finds that Palin's unfavorable rating has spiked to an all-time high of 53 percent in the wake of Tucson, although it's not immediately clear what the breakdown among Republicans is.) In this climate, it's safer for Gingrich to join the pile-on when Palin attracts negative press attention [...]

It's unusual for established Republicons to criticize Palin; they know they'll be the target of venomous attacks from her sycophants, even though sane and reasoned objections about her suitability for holding public office are more numerous these days.

Palin's ignorance and inarticulacy are so constantly on display that she can't just be simulating them to strengthen her popular appeal. They are also attributes in which she takes pride. As Jacob Weisberg writes in the introduction to his new anthology, Palinisms: The Accidental Wit and Wisdom of Sarah Palin: "Palin's exuberant incoherence testifies to an unusually wide gulf between confidence and ability. She is proud of what she doesn't know and contemptuous of those 'experts' and 'elitists' who are too knowledgeable to be trusted."

From here. And also: check out the photo of Leila Ben Ali - doesn't she look like $arah's younger muslim sister?

Wikileaks, Schmwikileaks

A couple of good smackdowns of the 'Assange of Arabia' meme: here and here.

Nonetheless, it is true that the Innertoobz played a part in the Tunisian revolution/revolt/uprising/whatever.

Because the Internet plays a part in everyfuckingthing in this century.

This bit, though, is extremely cool.

After weeks of public protests on- and offline the Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali resigned and escaped the country last Friday. Today, the head of the transitional government, Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi, announced his new cabinet members which include a familiar name. Slim Amamou, the Pirate Party member and freedom of speech activist who was arrested just a few days ago, is now the new Minister of Youth and Sports.

Slim's Twitter feed and blog.

That's some outta da box thinking, innit?

I remain hopeful.

'A Difficult Happiness'

The Grauniad has landed in Tunis and Angelique Chrisafis reports on the state of affairs.

It's bad. Shooting, looting, snipers on top of buildings that held Ben Ali's torturers in basements. The army seems to be on the side of the people though.

And there are further horrible revelations.

Meanwhile, the full horror of repression over four weeks of demonstrations is beginning to emerge. Human rights groups estimate at least 150-200 deaths since 17 December. In random roundups in poor, rural areas youths were shot in the head and dumped far from home so bodies could not be identified. Police also raped women in their houses in poor neighbourhoods in and around Kesserine in the rural interior.

Sihem Bensedrine, head of the National Council for Civil Liberties, said: "These were random, a sort of reprisal against the people. In poor areas, women who had nothing to do with anything, were raped in front of their families. Guns held back the men; the women were raped in front of them." A handful of cases were reported in Kesserine and Thala last Monday. Rape was often used as a torture technique under the regime; opposition women report they were raped in the basement of the interior ministry, as were men, too.

But where there's courage and good will, there's hope.

On national state radio, a tool of regime power until days ago, DJs spoke freely for the first time, but had to regret that the joy of a dictator's departure had been tempered by a fear of the militia attacks.

"Ours is a difficult happiness," sighed one music show presenter, before putting on another 1960s resistance song.

Reporting from #Tunisia

Like all obsessed people I suppose, I can't understand why everyone isn't rivetted by events in Tunisia.

I'm no kinda expert in any element of this story, but I have learned a great deal and propose to share some tidbits with DJ! readers.

This website, Al-Bab, is a great place to start.

Al-Bab aims to introduce non-Arabs to the Arabs and their culture. Western explorers of the 18th and 19th centuries portrayed the Arab world as a strange, exotic and sometimes terrifying place. Al-Bab seeks to portray the Arab world neither as an object of fear nor as a cultural curiosity - fascinating though it may be.

At the moment, blogger Brian Whitaker (at link above) is reporting on unrest in Libya and suggests a 'Tunisia test' for distinguishing major and minor protests.

The #Tunisia hashtag has been running about half and half Arabic and non-Arabic. Lots of commenters are speculating on where else such protests may break out. Libya, Jordan, Egypt are frequently mentioned.

Probably the 'coolest' queen on earth, Queen Rania of Jordan, tweeted thusly yesterday:

Closely watching developments in #Tunisia and praying for stability and calm for its people.

Which drew this much retweeted comment:

@QueenRania I honesty think u should start palace-hunting in Jeddah, coz u and your husband r next. #sidibouzid #Tunisia #Jordan

There are two female journalists I'm now following: Mona Eltahawy and Dima Khatib, both funny and smart. (Dima Khatib writes in about five languages.)

It was Mona Eltahawy yesterday who, in assessing Ghaddafi's whacky appeal to Tunisians (live-tweeted here), said something like: 'To give him his due, Ghaddafi is the only Arab leader nutty enough to even go there.'

Less so today, but popping up occasionally is the spat between people saying this is a 'Twitter revolution' (I was guilty of that yesterday; in my defense, I am only slightly newer to North African politics than I am to Twitter) and others who say that is Western-style BS and totally disrespectful of the real revolutionaries.

Here's the case for 'Twitter' revolution and here's the spectacular smackdown.

More succinctly, our friend Mattt Bastard put it like this:

I don't understand how the people of Tunisia overthrew their government without me signing an e-petition or changing my Twitter avatar.

That's it for now. I gotta get back to Tunisia. And, I guess, wash my hair, put some clothes on. . . .

ADDED: Reuters report. I don't think this sounds like 'street theatre'.

The search for a blogging topic.

The 2010 banning of polyurethane suits in swimming competition? All you need to know, here.

Tunisia? My virtual roomie is working that corner, but here's an update.

Gabriella Giffords' medical condition? I'd be willing to bet that even in her current condition, the US congresswoman would score winning points in a political debate with Sarah Palin.

Though the rehab process Giffords faces is daunting, her possibilities for learning anew the knowledge and the skills lost when the Glock bullet damaged brain tissue are excellent.

Palin's cerebrum, however, is an entirely different kettle of ... ah, barracuda. While there's no evidence of physiological impairments, it appears the only thing that $arah has learned recently is a range of new techniques for separating the suckers who support her from their cash.

More on Tunisia

Tunisia's revolution, if that's what it will turn out to be, is still moving too fast.

But, man, I'm learning a lot. So are many people, it seems. I just retweeted this:

@greeneyedlilo Jayelle

Read tons about #Tunisia this am. Asked myself, "How did I not know about this?" Turned on cable news. That answered it.

For now, some links:

Somebody has made a searchable tweet aggregator.

A long, fascinating article from al Jazeera on how the government tried and failed to wage cyberwar on activists.

Ben Wedeman, a reporter for CNN, is there and tweeting now from his hotel room. Curfew is effect.

That's it for the moment. I've gotta go back to #tunisia.

And besides, it's snowing here.

Tunisia's Twitter Revolution

This story is moving far too fast -- and I'm far too uninformed -- to write about it.

Today, in culmination of a month of protests, Tunisia's dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, fled the country in fear of the people. Here's some background.

I've been rivetted all afternoon watching Twitter feeds and hashtags. Tunisia has, of course, no free press, so the people took to cyberworld -- Facebook at first, now Twitter -- to report on what's been happening.

This revolution was indeed Tweeted.

And there is a Wikileaks connection:

What's the WikiLeaks connection? Foreign Policy's Christopher Alexander explains:

Shortly before the December protests began, WikiLeaks released internal US State Department communications in which the American ambassador described Ben Ali as aging, out of touch, and surrounded by corruption. Given Ben Ali's reputation as a stalwart US ally, it mattered greatly to many Tunisians—particularly to politically engaged Tunisians who are plugged into social media—that American officials are saying the same things about Ben Ali that they themselves say about him. These revelations contributed to an environment that was ripe for a wave of protest that gathered broad support.

Hackers affiliated with Anonymous, a vaguely defined, loosely organized group that has defended WikiLeaks, hit Tunisian websites in early January.

Follow these hashtags: Tunisia, sidibouzid (the town where it all began), and BenAli.

Or just follow this guy's Twitter feed.

Lotta uncertainty ahead no doubt, but the elation is palpable.