Bouazizi has become a Tunisian protest 'symbol'

SIDI BOUZID, TUNISIA // The day started normally for Mohamed Bouazizi, 26, an impoverished vegetable-seller in this rural Tunisian town: shower, prayer and his pushcart. By midday he had doused himself in petrol outside the regional governor's office and set himself alight.

"He was my soul, my life, my heart," said his mother, Mannoubia Bouazizi. "Now he's a symbol."

Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation on December 17 after authorities confiscated his produce triggered a wave of protests over unemployment that is still shaking Tunisia, the worst unrest facing the president, Zine el Abidine Ben Ali since he took power in 1987.

Yesterday Mr Ben Ali fired the interior minister, Rafik Belhaj Kacem, and ordered the release of people arrested so far during protests, save those proven guilty. An evening a curfew was imposed in Tunis, the capital, as soldiers were deployed there and in other areas that have seen clashes between protesters and police.

Tunisia has a growing economy and living standards often on par with western Europe, but has failed to curb 14 per cent official unemployment that is believed to approach double that number among young people.

Jobs are also most scarce in rural towns such as Sidi Bouzid, a strip of low houses and a handful of government offices along a high road in the country's agricultural heartland.

The region lacks key industrial infrastructure, while corrupt officials have long siphoned off state funding meant for development, said Rachid Fetini, a leading businessman in Sidi Bouzid and president of the orientation council at the Centre d'Affaire, a state agency supporting local entrepreneurs.

"For example, milk produced here must be sterilised in Tunis; a local milk factory would double our production," Mr Fetini said. "As for corruption, it's been particularly bad in Sidi Bouzid."

Regional officials could not be reached for comment. Yesterday the prime minister, Mohamed Ghannouchi, said the government would investigate claims of official corruption.

Mohamed Bouazizi grew up in a white stuccoed house down a dirt road near the edge of Sidi Bouzid, one of seven siblings. From the age of 10, he worked selling vegetables in the street to help support his family.

"Mohamed hoped most to buy his own van," said his sister, Samia Bouazizi, 19. "But he wanted it for work, not for himself. Even his private dream was to help his family."

The family was drinking tea at home on Tuesday.

Sidi Bouzid has been under heightened security since the day last month when authorities confiscated Mohamed Bouazizi's vegetables, slapping his face in the process, according to the lawyer, Lotfi Tlili, who is representing the Bouazizi family.

Authorities have said that Mohamed Bouazizi lacked a required permit. However, no permit is needed to sell from a cart, said Hamdi Lazhar, the head of Sidi Bouzid's state office for employment and independent work. Siblings Salem and Samia Bouazizi accused authorities of trying to extort cash from their brother.

After the run-in, Mohamed Bouazizi apparently snapped: he quickly acquired petrol, drenched himself in it, and set himself alight in the town's main street before shocked observers.

"An ambulance took him away, and people starting gathering," said Mr Tlili, who was at the scene. "By the afternoon it was a demonstration, and the police intervened with clubs and tear gas."

Mohamed Bouazizi was later transferred to a hospital in Tunis, where he died last week from his burns. His family has filed a complaint against the Sidi Bouzid municipality for the alleged assault on him by authorities, Mr Tlili said.

Meanwhile, protests have rippled across Tunisia, captivating a generation that is following news of unrest via online networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook.

While few openly blame Mr Ben Ali for Tunisia's woes, the internet has buzzed with anonymous support for the Tunisian rapper, Hamada Ben-Amor, briefly arrested this month after releasing a song seen as an affront to the president.

Authorities say that 23 people have been killed so far as protesters have clashed with police, whom they say have only used force in self-defence or to protect lives and public property. Union officials quoted by wire services have put the death toll as high as 46.

The National

Read more

25 Questions To Ask Anyone Who Is Delusional Enough To Believe That This Economic Recovery Is Real

If you listen to the mainstream media long enough, you just might be tempted to believe that the United States has emerged from the recession and is now in the middle of a full-fledged economic recovery. In fact, according to Obama administration officials, the great American economic machine has roared back to life, stronger and more vibrant than ever before. But is that really the case? Of course not. You would have to be delusional to believe that. What did happen was that all of the stimulus packages and government spending and new debt that Obama and the U.S. Congress pumped into the economy bought us a little bit of time. But they have also made our long-term economic problems far worse. The reality is that the U.S. cannot keep supporting an economy on an ocean of red ink forever. At some point the charade is going to come crashing down.

And GDP is not a really good measure of the economic health of a nation. For example, if you would have looked at the growth of GDP in the Weimar republic in the early 1930s, you may have been tempted to think that the German economy was really thriving. German citizens were spending increasingly massive amounts of money. But of course that money was becoming increasingly worthless at the same time as hyperinflation spiralled out of control.

Well, today the purchasing power of our dollar is rapidly eroding as the price of food and other necessities continues to increase. So just because Americans are spending a little bit more money than before really doesn't mean much of anything. As you will see below, there are a whole bunch of other signs that the U.S. economy is in very, very serious trouble.

Any "recovery" that the U.S. economy is experiencing is illusory and will be quite temporary. The entire financial system of the United States is falling apart, and the powers that be can try to patch it up and prop it up for a while, but in the end this thing is going to come crashing down.

But as obvious as that may seem to most of us, there are still quite a few people out there that are absolutely convinced that the U.S. economy will fully recover and will soon be stronger than ever.

So the following are 25 questions to ask anyone who is delusional enough to believe that this economic recovery is real....

#1) In what universe is an economy with 39.68 million Americans on food stamps considered to be a healthy, recovering economy? In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts that enrollment in the food stamp program will exceed 43 million Americans in 2011. Is a rapidly increasing number of Americans on food stamps a good sign or a bad sign for the economy?

#2) According to RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings were reported on 367,056 properties in the month of March. This was an increase of almost 19 percent from February, and it was the highest monthly total since RealtyTrac began issuing its report back in January 2005. So can you please explain again how the U.S. real estate market is getting better?

#3) The Mortgage Bankers Association just announced that more than 10 percent of U.S. homeowners with a mortgage had missed at least one payment in the January-March period. That was a record high and up from 9.1 percent a year ago. Do you think that is an indication that the U.S. housing market is recovering?

#4) How can the U.S. real estate market be considered healthy when, for the first time in modern history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together?

#5) With the U.S. Congress planning to quadruple oil taxes, what do you think that is going to do to the price of gasoline in the United States and how do you think that will affect the U.S. economy?

#6) Do you think that it is a good sign that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of the state of California, says that "terrible cuts" are urgently needed in order to avoid a complete financial disaster in his state?

#7) But it just isn't California that is in trouble. Dozens of U.S. states are in such bad financial shape that they are getting ready for their biggest budget cuts in decades. What do you think all of those budget cuts will do to the economy?

#8) In March, the U.S. trade deficit widened to its highest level since December 2008. Month after month after month we buy much more from the rest of the world than they buy from us. Wealth is draining out of the United States at an unprecedented rate. So is the fact that the gigantic U.S. trade deficit is actually getting bigger a good sign or a bad sign for the U.S. economy?

#9) Considering the fact that the U.S. government is projected to have a 1.6 trillion dollar deficit in 2010, and considering the fact that if you went out and spent one dollar every single second it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollars, how can anyone in their right mind claim that the U.S. economy is getting healthier when we are getting into so much debt?

#10) The U.S. Treasury Department recently announced that the U.S. government suffered a wider-than-expected budget deficit of 82.69 billion dollars in April. So is the fact that the red ink of the U.S. government is actually worse than projected a good sign or a bad sign?

#11) According to one new report, the U.S. national debt will reach 100 percent of GDP by the year 2015. So is that a sign of economic recovery or of economic disaster?

#12) Monstrous amounts of oil continue to gush freely into the Gulf of Mexico, and analysts are already projecting that the seafood and tourism industries along the Gulf coast will be devastated for decades by this unprecedented environmental disaster. In light of those facts, how in the world can anyone project that the U.S. economy will soon be stronger than ever?

#13) The FDIC's list of problem banks recently hit a 17-year high. Do you think that an increasing number of small banks failing is a good sign or a bad sign for the U.S. economy?

#14) The FDIC is backing 8,000 banks that have a total of $13 trillion in assets with a deposit insurance fund that is basically flat broke. So what do you think will happen if a significant number of small banks do start failing?

#15) Existing home sales in the United States jumped 7.6 percent in April. That is the good news. The bad news is that this increase only happened because the deadline to take advantage of the temporary home buyer tax credit (government bribe) was looming. So now that there is no more tax credit for home buyers, what will that do to home sales?

#16) Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recently told the U.S. government that they are going to need even more bailout money. So what does it say about the U.S. economy when the two "pillars" of the U.S. mortgage industry are government-backed financial black holes that the U.S. government has to relentlessly pour money into?

#17) 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement. Tens of millions of Americans find themselves just one lawsuit, one really bad traffic accident or one very serious illness away from financial ruin. With so many Americans living on the edge, how can you say that the economy is healthy?

#18) The mayor of Detroit says that the real unemployment rate in his city is somewhere around 50 percent. So can the U.S. really be experiencing an economic recovery when so many are still unemployed in one of America's biggest cities?

#19) Gallup's measure of underemployment hit 20.0% on March 15th. That was up from 19.7% two weeks earlier and 19.5% at the start of the year. Do you think that is a good trend or a bad trend?

#20) One new poll shows that 76 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy is still in a recession. So are the vast majority of Americans just stupid or could we still actually be in a recession?

#21) The bottom 40 percent of those living in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth. So is Barack Obama's mantra that "what is good for Wall Street is good for Main Street" actually true?

#22) Richard Russell, the famous author of the Dow Theory Letters, says that Americans should sell anything they can sell in order to get liquid because of the economic trouble that is coming. Do you think that Richard Russell is delusional or could he possibly have a point?

#23) Defaults on apartment building mortgages held by U.S. banks climbed to a record 4.6 percent in the first quarter of 2010. In fact, that was almost twice the level of a year earlier. Does that look like a good trend to you?

#24) In March, the price of fresh and dried vegetables in the United States soared 49.3% - the most in 16 years. Is it a sign of a healthy economy when food prices are increasing so dramatically?

#25) 1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 - a 32 percent increase over 2008. Not only that, more Americans filed for bankruptcy in March 2010 than during any month since U.S. bankruptcy law was tightened in October 2005. So shouldn't we at least wait until the number of Americans filing for bankruptcy is not setting new all-time records before we even dare whisper the words "economic recovery"?

Source

Read more