Tunisia, Rent

The Tunisian intifada has succeeded in collapsing the dictatorship," Rached Ghannouchi, leader of the banned Ennahdha, said by telephone from London.

"Now is it for the political parties to try to replace a dictator's regime with a democratic one. I'm preparing myself. I'm preparing my return," the 69-year-old activist declared.
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Moncef Marzouki, head of the outlawed party, Congress for the Republic, announced his return to Tunisia on Tuesday and his intention to run in the presidential elections..
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allvoices
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Kamel Jendoubi, chairman of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network and co-founder of the Committee for the Respect of Freedoms and Human Rights in Tunisia..
"I'm going back to the land of my birth, which I miss greatly. I'm heading back in these extraordinary circumstances to live this dream," he said.
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When Abdelwahab Meddeb wrote his Phantasia, over a hundred and fifty years had passed since Delacroix first painted his Fantasia, and it had been thirty years since Tunisia's independence. By 1986, when Meddeb was writing, many of the Maghrebian horsemen of Delacroix's painting had, in the eyes of the former colonizer, begun to dismount and to exchange their picturesque garb for the more menacing one of Islamic "fundamentalists." Meddeb is thus in a position to be keenly aware of both earlier and more recent imaginative legacies
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A pilot who refused to fly Ben Ali's family out of Tunisia, interviewed on live television, explained that they were "war criminals."
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Tunisia's protesters have lasted for so long precisely because, aided by social media, they have organized with no discernible hierarchy or leadership.
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MeanWhile: in Algeria
Mohamed Ben Madani, editor of The Maghreb Review, said the situation was "out of control" and that the protests could continue for weeks.
aljazeera
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If Egypt goes (Hosni is aged 82) the border with Gaza might open.
Maybe not since USG gives a heap of $ to Egypt, and you'd hafta be pretty darn radical to turn that down, along with the conditional obediance to Tel Aviv


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Rent
"Center for a Stateless Society" c4ss.org deleted this comment in a discussion on rent:
maybe it was too concrete, for their fevered anarchist theoreticians...
Comments that did stand were from ultra-libertarians
Don’t trust the state to “protect” you. Ever.
who appear to be pro-corporate, anti regulation, Govt causes crashes etc etc
not likely to bring yr rent down.

my house in the tropics 60m^2 2story rendered hollow block was built by hand. I mean the rebar was cut with hacksaw blades, not even hacksaws, Later I bought a cheap angle grinder to cut tiles when we did the floors.

No plans, a few shopping lists on scraps of paper. cost about $6K. Vernacular architecture. If I was rich I'd have put in sealed glazing & A/C. As it is we get by with fans. Septic tank lasts for years since we wash, not wipe (incidence of worms in higher in NZ).
Not structural timber (doorframes, plywood room dividers) 2 or 3 adults and 4- 6 kids. One luxury: An $15 exhaust fan in the kitchen.