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News from Tunisia

What happens when you call early elections

I am the first to admit that I know very little about neighboring Tunisia, aside from Bettino Craxi’s Hammamet exile and some happenstance encounters with Tunisian street kids in Bologna. Despite the recent death of a RAI reporter, the only North African that the Italian press will give column inches to is Ruby. But that’s the Italian angle. Fortunately, I have a friend living in Tunis who wants to get his angle out. Here is his open letter to the press.

The full story of what is happening in Tunisia is being portrayed as a story of Islamic radicals trying to overthrow a US ally. Although there is mention of the government having fired on the public, it completely understates what is happening here.

This is a secular revolution against a secular dictator who has ruled with an iron fist, denying his people freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, while enriching his own family through graft and corruption. Each day, there have been large protests downtown. By the time you wake up in the morning and read this, today’s protest will probably already have been dispersed by riot police with rifles and tear gas, assisted by snipers on neighboring buildings. Close friends of mine have heard gunfire outside their homes, and others with contacts in hospital emergency rooms have been tracking victims who are brought there after being shot by the police or the army.

In my own neighborhood, the soldiers patrolling the streets have already fixed bayonets onto their rifles. I am staying home, barricaded inside my house with loads of food and water. During the daytime it is possible to go out onto the street, but today there is a general strike nationwide, so everything is closed. Besides, all the grocery stores closed early yesterday due to the curfew, and partly because they were running out of food to sell anyway. There was a huge line outside the bakery that remained open yesterday in the afternoon, as I, like others, waited to buy baguette to be ready for the coming days when stores may or may not be open.

Many of my friends have been firsthand witnesses to the violence. Although barely covered in the US media, Tunisians are telling the story through YouTube and Facebook videos that show dead bodies, protesters in the streets and a gunshot victim being videotaped as surgery is conducted on him. This is happening in the neighborhoods where we live.

As I write this, I am viewing scenes from outside the interior ministry taken by my friends on their iPhones and posted to Facebook… the crowds seem ready to “storm the Bastille” as a thin line of interior ministry policy block the entrance. The army seems to have abandoned the government to its fate.

Any assistance in getting this story out to the media in a more complete and detailed form would be greatly appreciated.

The Sacred, the Profane and the Nothing-Based Economy

A friend recently sent me one of those scarcely credible “grosser than gross” stories that both defy and defile the imagination, and that seem to be all the more popular amid the anonymity of the internet. Yet this one was far from anonymous. and written in a style that is, by the author’s own admission, angry, recklessly confessional and contemptuous. Interesting… but who is the person behind the persona?

Maureen Tkacik is taking the pulse of journalism, or what used to pass for it, more astutely than most so-called “real journalists” — or ones with a fancy beat instead of ex-Jezebel and Gawker ranters, although her street cred includes the WSJ as well. Her understanding of media and of the world as driven by artificial, drummed-up demand that journalists are increasingly complicit in creating is incisive.

In a very different way, her take on journalism’s complicity in creating self-perpetuating systems is similar to Glenn Greenwald’s continuing indignation with journalists who serve and protect the very government they might be actually reporting on. But that’s a thought for another post.

Whatever you do, make sure you at least read the first 7/8ths or so of “Look at Me” in the Columbia Journalism Review — by way of taking an unflinching look at the state of journalism today, it makes a bigger point about the “virulent new self-obsessed model for journalistic success” that has taken hold of not only the profession, but of wide swaths of Western culture as well. I say “Western” so I can include American Idol along with Big Brother and Uomini e donne.

She’s also thorough in her take-downs of various not-quite-sacred cows such as Malcolm Gladwell and the Wharton School.

Side note: as a reluctant two-time Washingtonian, I was glad to read some history of Wonkette. After two years of often-clandestine blogging from the Balkans, I was shocked to come home on furlough in 2004 and read about how political blogging along the lines of Ana Marie Cox’s, was the “next big thing” in no less than the New York Times. But Tkacik has some words about that, as well as how history repeated itself in 2007 with Emily Gould.

Give the CJR piece your full attention; it’s well worth your time and worth the dread it may instill in you. If it’s a different kind of dread you seek, then once you’ve checked out Maureen, you can check out Moe.

Post-Holiday Post

Happy Epiphany everyone. I’m just in from an utterly exhausting holiday trip to Rovigo, Louisville and Washington DC, and after yesterday’s 24-hour trip home, I’m too spent to do much other than post this ridiculous 1951 Warner Brothers cartoon featuring Charlie the Dog.

Ah, crude stereotypes of Italians and Ed Butz-like linguistic appropriations! Still, I knew that WB’s typing had to extend beyond Pepé Le Pew and Speedy Gonzalez. Someone obviously had a deeper understanding of italianità, because there’s an obvious homage to the pre-WW1 greats of the Scala in the cartoon — the sign up in the restaurant (“Melba Tetrazzini Gadski Martinelli”).

Otherwise: see the Social Network, if you’re one of the few people that hasn’t already. I fully believe it took large liberties with the Truth in all senses (is Harvard still so good-old-boyish; do programmers really spend so little time coding and so much time partying — these have been thoroughly debunked elsewhere), but it’s good storytelling, and I think must hit on some basic kernel of truth in that Zuckerberg is a brilliant, slightly amoral geek with powerful driving ambitions — much like the world’s last true uber-geek, Bill Gates. (This ascendancy is broadly hinted at in the film — and those who incredibly don’t know who Gates is are those who miss out, although I sincerely doubt that there was one person at Harvard in 2003 who didn’t actually know of Bill Gates.)

Totally unrelated: why does Hemingway, who dealt with the problem of bilingual conversations rather elegantly in A Farewell to Arms, stumble so hard in For Whom the Bell Tolls by using ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ for tu? It seems so basic. I’m not the only one who noticed, of course.

More after I’ve caught up on sleep.

More Zungu Zungu, less Bunga Bunga

This site isn’t meant to break news. But there’s been a near-perfect storm of events — so much excellent newsworthy material on Italy, the Balkans and international relations in general, and not nearly enough time to bang out a coherent thought with me being swamped with both typical and atypical end-of-year responsibilities. Some points: Berlusconi’s survival may well lead Italy into a speculative attack on the order of 1976’s run on the lira, the WSJ has a better handle on Lega Nord than the NYT, Thaci might actually be extremely bad for Kosovo, and Wikileaks will change a lot of things. More germane to my task, blogs like Aaron Bady’s show how good analysis can get one noticed.

With an eye towards the skies, I leave you with this video from the brilliant Taiwanese animators NMA. Merry merry. (Although with what’s going on in London and Paris, it seems that the weather is far greater cause for concern than security.)

Thanksgiving Day post

You may be thinking of Ben Franklin as you dig into your turkey. Recall — as a graffito artist in my neighborhood apparently has — that the founding father also noted, as many a revolutionary did, that “they that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” And so witnessing the colossal flop of the anti-TSA “no-fly day” (and noticing also TSA at least playing nice for the press), I leave you with this somewhat revolutionary message from dance musician M.I.A. (Is it over the top? You might think so. More than anything else it reminded me of the Dr. Seuss story the Sneetches.)

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

Italian Neighbors

It’s been a long time since I’ve stayed up late to finish a book. But Tim Parks, with his impeccable rural Veneto credentials, has long fascinated me, and I finally got hold of his Italian Neighbors. To his credit, I could not put it down, although I was at times unsure what to make of his detachment — whether it boded well or poorly. Given that he’s still here, and now in Milan, I must assume the former. Doubtlessly the Veneto has changed even more in the quarter century between when he was writing and when I was living in Rovigo — his descriptions of rural rituals from a bygone era reminded me much more of my experiences in rural Macedonia than in Rovigo. But his descriptions of the sundry habits of the proper Veneto bourgeoisie, from obsessive cleanliness to worry about health, from state employment and its attendant security to the enterprising, and presumably-tax cheating small businessman, were spot-on. What mystified me, however, was what often seemed like a confusion over habits and attitudes that, although deeply different than those in the Anglo-Saxon world, I would have thought obvious, such as the pious Catholicism of the Veneto region or the great premium placed on eating well over the holidays. These are great differences, but I found myself keenly prepped for them — possible due to the amount of Italo-Americans and the habits they’ve imported? But that doesn’t seem right; London had its fair share of immigration, too, although one can reflect that perhaps a melting pot culture was less lauded there. Also, too, I think I would have appreciated perhaps a bit more comparison of Britain to Italy. Parks touches on it but I find that comparison of America to Italy informs a large percentage of my daily thoughts — and usually ends up in balance. One must reflect, is anyone truly 100% content with their own culture when they come to live in another? Parks criticizes the Italians for the self-assuredness of their own culture, but doesn’t he do just the seem with regard to Britain’s?

These quibbles don’t take away from the general enjoyment of another Anglo-Saxon displaced to the Veneto, though. And, politically, there are the early rumblings of Lega Nord mentioned in a chapter on elections — and the few lines make for a trenchant and still-accurate profile of your likely LN voter in Veneto. Personally, it’s refreshing to read about someone actually trying to hack out a living in the belpaese, and experiencing the pain of cancelled private lessons and mind-numbing boring translation material. And stylistically, I enjoyed his use of the second person as well — because, if you live in the Veneto, you will indubitably experience most things just as he has. I’m eager to explore the rest of Parks’ Italian oeuvre. Maybe I’ll run into him when I start a new course near IULM next week. One can hope, anyway.

Camorra boss Iovine arrested

Right on the heels of Saviano’s public row with Maroni comes the arrest of one of the Camorra’s (many) top men who’s been on the lam for 14 years: Antonio Iovine. Maroni jibed back at Saviano through the press, “this is the real antimafia, nothing else bothers me.” And here’s Saviano:

“I’ve waited for this day for fourteen years. The arrest of Antonio Iovine, is a key step in the fight against organized crime. Iovine is a businessman, who handles hundreds of millions of euros. Now, I hope we can do more to clean house. As shown by the DIA report today, we must attack the heart of the criminal economy, Lombardy, where the gangs do business and affect economic, social and political interests.”

Full story at Corriere. Video here.

Amid the applause of the police, at 0.22 you can hear “acciritelo!” — “kill him!”

Saviano

Roberto Saviano’s remarkable talk on Vieni Via con Me (which is really making the news this week) got over 5 million viewers last night. There’s a reason: it’s provocative and damned good, featuring the reenactment of an ‘ndragheta initiation rite and accusations of Lega Nord involvement with organized crime that’s sent Interior Minister and Lega Nord old hand Roberto Maroni into a tizzy. He also takes on the massive building enterprises in Milan, especially around my old ‘hood of P.ta Garibaldi. Of course, all-Italian, but I’ll look for or provide a translation in coming days.

Like certain other Italians, Saviano is both fearless and a survivor. He lived with a police escort after he named names at Casal di Principe in 2006, and there’s strong evidence that the Casalesi clan planned to kill him in 2008, after which he left the country. So here’s to hoping that one of the few brave voices in Italian public life is in an undisclosed location.

Organ Harvesting in Kosovo

It’s such a common urban legend that it’s almost the stuff of jokes. But organ theft is, apparently, alive and well, and right here in what’s loosely called “Europe.”

Carla del Ponte caused a minor stir a couple of years ago when she alleged that the Kosovar Liberartion Army had been secretly harvesting organs from captured Serb war prisoners. Her allegation was ultimately found to be lacking in hard proof, but, as with many things in the Balkans, anything is — sadly — possible. Now, according to the New York Times, seven people have been charged in a similar illegal rings. It wasn’t Serbs POWs that were operated on, but the impoverished lured from Istanbul, Moscow, Moldova and Kazakhstan. A prominent surgeon and a senior health ministry official were involved. More disturbing is the possibility that the ring goes much further than just Kosovo. The article points to substantial complicity of Israel and South Africa, and indeed Israel may be the nexus of the case. The disturbing implication is just how very far from an idea of “Europe” Kosovo still is, almost three years after its declaration of independence. This blog would never argue for a return to Serb rule for Kosovo, but the fact that it’s institutions are somewhat lacking is pretty easy to see, and this is made worse by its “Kosovo farà da sè” attitude. Although Kosovo is less ill-conceived as a statelet than nearby Bosnia, it is clearly barely ready to do much of anything alone, and EULEX’s mission will be long and hard there. But unlike neighboring Macedonia, which seems to be healing, Kosovo itself seems in dire need of some essential transplants.

Knab S’tel!

I’m not entirely sure what to say about this at the Banco di Sardegna near Corso Sempione, but I walk by it every night and it seems like the most peculiar deterrence to me: positioned inside the entryway to the bank, behind the barred gate that’s pulled down every night. Just inside is a video monitor. On it, more or less continuously (also during the day), an image of one or two security guards watching a video screen plays.

What they’re watching is you as you approach the bank, and this is shown to you. If you stick your hand through the bars (as I did to take a picture), an automated voice warns you (as if you didn’t already know) that the bank is under surveillance. I half expected the guards to come chasing me out of the bank and onto the street, as might happen in Belgrade or Washington, but no. I fully expected to see myself on the screen, much like when Laura Palmer opens her bedroom door in Fire Walk with Me and sees herself entering a painting on her wall.

Images for your bemusement/befuddlement.