Nur al-Cubicle

A blog on the current crises in the Middle East and news accounts unpublished by the US press. Daily timeline of events in Iraq as collected from stories and dispatches in the French and Italian media: Le Monde (Paris), Il Corriere della Sera (Milan), La Repubblica (Rome), L'Orient-Le Jour (Beirut) and occasionally from El Mundo (Madrid).

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Terror in Tunis, of a Different Kind

Representatives of 175 nations and international organizations are meeting to in Tunis today through Friday as part of the World Summit on the Information Society. Ten thousands of attendees are expected. But China, Brazil, Russia, Cuba, Iran, and Syria will challenge the United States’ sole management of the 'net through ICANN. For once, the USA is doing the right thing in preventing the Balkanization of the Internet where a number of countries, some authoritarian, wish to exercise greater political control over internet presence and to break up the global network into small national systems. (However, no slack is cut for ICANN for its authoritarian behavior and political maneuverings in having blocked all Libyan domains for five days in a fit of pique last year at this time).

But let’s turn to Tunisia, the host of the conference and the darling of Washington. Behind the mask is a police state which tolerates no criticism, violates human rights and muzzles the press. Tunisian President-for-Life Zin El- Abidin Ben Ali has turned his country into a police barracks. He isn’t such a good host, either. French reporter Christophe Boltanski, special correspondent for the newspaper Libération, was beaten up by unknown persons after he reported on a brutally dispersed demonstration in support of hunger striking dissidents.

2 Comments:

Blogger littlebitofsonshine said...

Nur bless you for your writings you say things in a simple direct way and i injoy all your writing and love how much i learn from your words Bless you allways nd my your dreams come true you are a good hard working human and so smart also in how you project your thoughts to page

6:52 AM  
Blogger Hannibal said...

Nur you are free to say what you like to say about Tunisia, this is your blog and I respect your views though I totally disagree for the simple reason that you need to go to Tunisia and witness yourself the large strides of reform that Tunisia has done over the years and in this respect it is by no contest a leader in the arab and moslem world especially when it comes to women's emacipation since 1956 something all arab and moslem countries lack or they are doing it now under pressure from western countries. I thought that you will at least say something about Tunisia's record in this field but you know democracy is not an instant coffee it is a continuous process. Since your profile doesn't provide any indication on your origin though I guess that you are an Iraki citizen living outside of Irak, I can't discuss this further. By the way your blog is excellent and if you check my blog it is on the head of the list of my favourite blogroll section.

1:18 PM  

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