Weekly Political Review: Recent Terror Attacks in Tunisia ‘Shatter’ Illusions of Stability

Since the beginning of the month, the hunt for al-Qaida-linked militants in Mount Chaambi, a region near the Algerian border, has instilled widespread anxiety and fear among the population. At least 17 soldiers and police have been seriously injured while searching for militants during the past few days. And back in December an encounter with the group costed the life of a young national guardsman.

Five NGO’s are denouncing the serious Fauna and Flora breaches in the Tunisian Sahara

In a complaining letter, dating of April 16th 2013, (see below), addressed to the General Director of forests for the regional office for agricultural development in Kebili. Five local NGO’s in Douz-one of them is “Tunisie Ecologie”, lead by Abdel Majid Dabbar-denounce the the serious fauna and flora breaches in the Tunisian Sahara and that by several illegal practices, including poaching of protected species by a definite group coming from Gulf countries.

Response from Standard & Poor’s to an article criticizing our methods

I am writing to set the record straight about an article you recently published about Standard & Poor’s sovereign ratings methodology, and particularly its application to Tunisia, entitled “Standard & Poor’s cuts Tunisia’s rating: limited methodology or bad intentions?”. The article contains numerous factual errors and repeats false allegations against us, several of which I list below.

Weekly Political Review: Protesters Celebrate Martyrs’ Day as the IMF steps to ‘rescue’ Tunisia’s Economy

Tunisia’s Finance Minister Elyes Fakhfakh said last week the government expects to sign a $1.8 billion loan deal with the International Monetary Fund by May. An IMF team arrived in Tunisia for talks on April 8 before another meeting in Washington later this month, Fakhfakh said in an interview at Bloomberg’s Middle East headquarters in Dubai.

“Conservatism for Specific Purposes”, “Revolutionary Fallacy” or What You Will

In our Tunisian post-revolution context, it has become quite the trend to display signs –or symptoms- of being “revolutionary”. The word has grown into an umbrella epithet for those who are “fashionable”, “educated” and “sophisticated”. It has become synonymous with “taste”, “culture”, and the elusive notion of Leftism that has developed in a generally politically-illiterate country; the all-at-once neoliberal-communist-socialist-nationalist-anarchist ideologically elusive Leftism.

The Imrali Promise and the New Middle East Plan

From all appearances, nothing short of the cornerstone for a regional Middle East civil war was laid on Imrali, a Turkish island in the southern region of the Sea of Marmara. Those who do not understand how to read history always fall behind. And those who are not acquainted with Abdullah Ocalan, the Kurdish leader and the message he sent out to his people on March 21, are not in a position to comprehend the depth and the enormity of the threat directed toward the Arab world and Middle East in general that this communication represents.