Category: Tunisia

Tunis postponed the two-day Arab summit due to start Monday 29th saying some countries rejected its proposals for democratic reforms. The foreign minister said his country regarded those issues as “non-negotiable.”

Tunisia’s decision has been hailed by its intellectuals as “the right move,” saying it was aimed to force other countries to seriously consider popular calls for democratic reforms.

It is time the Arab League took radical steps to get the Arabs out of their “miserable situations” by introducing genuine reforms, said academician Mohammed bin Omar.

“The reforms should include political plurality, promotion of women’s rights and encouraging scientific research,” he said at a forum held a day after Tunisia postponed the summit.

“The Tunisian decision came at the right time,” Omar said, adding that it would help “shake the current status quo,” and “launch serious debate over the necessity of urgent reforms” in the Arab public opinion.

“Someone should have had the courage to do that a long time ago,” said Mustpha Madani, another university professor.

“But unfortunately the Arabs disappointed us. They seem to like things the way they are,” he added, saying time will “prove Tunisia was right.”

It is now for the Arab “masses” to hold their leaders accountable for rejecting the Tunisian proposals, he said.

Poet Abdul Salam Lasaileh said he was “not surprised” by the summit suspension. “If the last 50 years have taught us anything, it is that the Arabs will never agree on anything,” he added bitterly.

“Honestly, I will not lose any sleep over it. I was certain that one day the Arabs would expose their real selves to the world – a divided and spineless nation,” he added.

Tunis “succeeded twice,” said literature critic Sahbi bin Mansour. The first time when it succeeded in hosting the 22 delegations in the run up to the aborted summit, he added.

“And the second time when it put on the table a real plan that would take us all into the 21st century on equal footing with other nations of the world,” he said.

When the Arab leaders have “something worthwhile” to do, “they are welcome in Tunis anytime”, said Mansour.

“Let’s be frank,” said poet Jelaidi Ouieni, “I am glad the government didn’t want to be part of the usual charade that is called the Arab summit.”

[Source: Gulf News]

Tunisia has delayed the Arab Summit that was due to start tomorrow morning in the capital Tunis.

The reasons of the delay are the big differences between Arab countries on the issues of reform, both for the Arab League as well as the Arab countries themselves, and the issue of peace in the Middle East.

Egypt is now trying to organize a summit in Cairo after 10 days, but Tunisia is holding on to its right to host the summit.

I totally agree with the Tunisian decision. This summit is about change; it

Today is Independence Day in Tunisia, and to mark it Michael Greenwood from Living on the Planet wrote an article about Tunisian blogs.

The blogs mentioned were AquaCool (My wife’s blog), Mouse Hunter #1, and Subzero Blue (This blog), woohoo 😉

Here’s what’s said about this blog:

… Subzero Blue. A great blog from the icecube tray graphic down!

This guy has blogging down pat. He updates regularly, covers a range of topics from music to technology (and looks like 1000+ entries) and provides plenty of credits and links to other people.

Also check out Subzero Blue’s awesome photo gallery.

Wow 🙂

NASR TV, the first-ever private TV channel in Tunisia, will start broadcasting soon. In fact, I hear it should start broadcasting as soon as early summer this year.

The new TV station is going to be a general interest channel focusing mostly on entertainment programs and targeting a young audience according to Mr. Nasra, the channel’s Founder.
The channel will broadcast digitally on the Hotbird satellite around the clock, seven days a week.

Arabic will be the main language of the station, yet the use of foreign languages is considered for certain programs, such as tourism documentaries.

As a general interest channel, “Nasr TV” intends to provide viewers with a variety of programs: culture, entertainment, movies and series, game and children’s shows, women programs, sports, etc?

A total investment of 20 million dinars ($17 million) were injected to build state-of-the-art studio sets, located in La Soukra, a Tunis suburb.

Nasr TV’s business plan mainly depends on advertisement earnings/inflows, both local and foreign.

Part of the staff has been hired, and the rest (total of 150 employees) are being selected. Mr. Nasra made it a top priority to hire professionals from the Tunisian market, which I think is a great initiative.

So, after hearing a little bit from here and a little bit from there, today I just read it on R

So, today was the big day, and the Tunisia vs. Morroco match started at 3PM with millions of people’s hopes and dreams on the line.

Thousand of people a the stadium, thousands of others at different places watching the match on giant screens scattered around Tunisia and the rest pinned to their TV sets at home.

The match started, and everyone’s hearts started beating at abnormal rates, wishful but afraid of what’s to come.

It was obvious from the beginning that it was going to be a hard match, with both sides trying to take control of the game, but quickly Tunisia took over and pressed more and in the 5th minute the first goal came for Tunisia.
With a goal under their belts, the Tunisian team started playing with more confidence and ease, pressing even more and venturing even further into Morroco’s sacred 18m space, only to waste chance after chance.

Morroco shocked by the goal did everything they could to come back into the match and a mistake by the Tunisian defence gave them a gap to score their first goal.

The rest of the first part of the match was counter attack after counter attack with no resulting goals, and you could sense the stress on both sides.

After half time, the teams came back, and Tunisia pressed again to score their second goal after only 6 minutes.
Morroco pushed as hard as they could to come back into the match after this one, but the Tunisian defence and goalie just denied them that till the very end of the match, giving Tunisia a beautiful and precious win 🙂

Hoooorrrraaaaaayyyy…
Tunisia won the African Cup of Nations for the very first time in it’s history of football and they truly deserve it.
They played very well as a whole team and got better match after match both technically and physically.
I hope the Tunisian team goes on to bigger and better things, why not even the World Cup soon.

As for yesterday’s match between Nigeria and Mali, Nigeria won (2-1) and came in at third place.

Yesterday were the semi finals of the African Cup of Nations, with 2 big matches between Tunisia and Nigeria, and with Morroco against Mali.

Tunisia’s match was at 4PM, during working hours, but there was no way we could miss a match like that. so we turned the TV on and got an antenna and we were ready to go.

Tunisia turned into a ghost country during the period of the match, with almost no one on the streets, and everyone was glued to their TV set.

The match was one of the most stressful matches I’ve ever seen. Tunisia played well and controlled the match but missed a lot of chances. And then came the false Nigerian penalty, and we went one under.
Happily, Tunisia got a penalty later on, scored and tied.
The rest of the match and the extra time went on (1-1), and it was time for the shootouts, and God was that scary.
The Tunisian goalie who had made a number of mistakes during the match managed to fix that by catching one of Nigeria’s shots, and the Tunisian shooters were successful at driving each ball in.
And so, after over 130 minutes of stress, Tunisia won and passed to the final on Saturday.

Hooooorrrraaaaaayyyyy 🙂

Anyway, in Sousse, a couple of driving hours away, Morroco and Mali started playing, in a match that turned out to be a big surprise, for me at least. I was expecting Mali to win easily over Morroco, but no that didn’t happen, in fact Morroco won (4-0) in what was mostly a one-sided match.

So, the final on saturday will be Tunisia vs. Morroco.
A winnable match for Tunisia if they focus, play as well as they played against Senegal and Nigeria, and if they put in the hard work needed to score.
Morroco has a tough team and even tougher goalie, so the Tunisian team should really work hard on this one.
I wish them all the luck and i really hope we win the cup 🙂

Nigeria and Mali will be playing on Friday for Third and Fourth place.

So, the quarter finals stage of the African Cup of Nations hosted in Tunisia is over, and there are only 4 teams left now.

On Saturday, Mali played against Guinea and won as expected (2-1), moving on to the semi finals. Mali’s team is one of the best teams in this competition, and has a lot of chances for winning the cup.

Also on Saturday, Tunisia played against Senegal in what was a good and scary match to watch.
Attack after attack, counter-attack after counter-attack, and a lot of lost chances from both sides end up with a beautiful goal from Tunisia through the head of Jawhar El Mnari giving Tunisia a precious victory (1-0) passing it to the semi finals.

Sunday witnessed another two matches between Nigeria and Cameroon and then between Algeria and Morroco.
Nigeria won over Cameroon (2-1) and Morroco defeated Algeria (3-1).

It’s a shame though that the Morroco vs. Algeria match, which was a good game, was ruined by Algerian hooligans who went mad and let loose in the stadium and outside of it.
Nowhere near English hooligans, but really bad anyways.

So, this next Wednesday, the semi finals will be taking place and Tunisia will be playing against Nigeria, and Morroco against Mali. Both very interesting and hard matches.

My expectations ?
I expect Mali will win over Morroco and I wish that Tunisia defeats Nigeria.
Nigeria is a strong team, but not as strong as it was before, and if the Tunisian team put their minds and feet to it, they can win.
So, it’s up to the Eagles of Carthage (as they’re being called) to carry through the Tunisian hopes and dreams.