Ed Bland’s “The Cry Of Jazz” Also To Be Preserved In National U.S. Film Registry; Watch It Now!

By Tambay, on December 29th, 2010

Thanks to reader Jake for alerting me to this. A film I completely overlooked (and really shouldn’t have) that was also one of the 25 films to be inducted for preservation in the 2010 National Film Registry of the Library of Congress (yesterday I announced that Spike Lee’s Malcolm X was on the short list).

The experimental film is titled The Cry Of Jazz – a fascinating 34-minute critical analysis of Jazz music, directed by Ed Bland (an African American) – his only film. He went on to a career as a composer, arranger, and producer for the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, and on films like A Raisin In The Sun, Ganja And Hess, and The Cool World.

Shot on 16mm black-and-white, on no budget, with a volunteer cast and crew, the film is essentially a thesis on the structural correlation between black life in America and jazz music. Indeed, Bland wrote a book on the matter, titled, The Fruits of the Death of Jazz, and the characters in the film serve as mouthpieces for his declarations, which must have been startling at the time the film was made, in 1959.

In watching the film, I immediately thought of another film that would have been just as alarming in its day – John Cassavetes’ Shadows (also made in 1959 by the way). Both films at the forefront of the then American cinema avant-garde; although Bland’s film doesn’t seem to have enjoyed the same kind of repertory status as Cassavetes’ seminal work.

At the center of The Cry Of Jazz is a debate between black intellectuals and white jazz fans in some unknown living space, on the history of jazz as the story of the “fantastic ingenuity of the Negro in America.”

Music is provided by Sun Ra and his Arkestra, who are seen and heard performing in their prime.

The film is available for sale on Amazon.com for about $15. But I found the entire piece on YouTube, which I embedded below, split into 4 parts, so watch it now:

 

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

by Todd Brown, January 10, 2011 2:07 PM

Question: If you're going to put lightsabers into your film, do you need to get permission from George Lucas? Or are those things public domain?

Director Ross Ching would know, as would stars Harry Shum Jr (Glee) and Stephen "tWitch" Boss (So You Think You Can Dance) because they're using them in Ching's appropriately timed 3 Minutes.

Shum and Boss are both looking rather good in this and Ching is clearly a director able to make the most of his resources. I'm very curious to see what he does with the concept next.

Check the complete short below.

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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS - CT2011 CONTENT INCUBATOR

 

Call for Submissions

 

 

 CaribbeanTales 2011 Content Incubator[™]

March 14 - 20, 2011 at the new Island Inn, Barbados.

CaribbeanTales  is delighted to announce this exciting opportunity for filmmakers:
 
What it is:

8-10 projects in development will be selected for inclusion in our 5-day intensive Content Incubator aimed at developing market-driven content. We are looking for projects that are both distinctive, and commercially viable. Our focus for 2011 is on the exploration of popular indigenous stories and characters that will attract large audiences and funders, and contribute to a sustainable regional industry.

 

US Director Julie Dash leads a Directing Masterclass  at CT2010

What we are looking for: 

Projects selected will be feature films or long running TV series, both narrative and documentary. 

What is in it for you:

Successful writer/director/producer teams will have the opportunity to:

- participate in our 5-day intensive Content Incubator conducted by international specialists and filmmakers.
- compete for our Best Pitch award.
- be elligible to participate in our 2011 Co-Production and Distribution Lab through which CTWD will work with producers to finance and distribute their projects.

How to Apply:

Submissions MUST include the following information:

Name of project; writer/director/producer/production company; length of film, format, country of production, logline, synopsis,  filmmaker Bio, Target audience, financing plan; 10 script pages, and (if available) trailer.

Please send all submissions to CaribbeanTales@gmail.com.

For more information contact:
Frances-Anne Solomon - francesannesolomon@caribbeantales-worldwide.com, or
Mary Wells - marywells@caribbeantales-worldwide.com

DEADLINE January 31st 2011.

*****************************

Founded in Barbados in May 2010, CaribbeanTalesTales Worldwide Distribution is a full service distribution company aimed at creating money-making opportunities for producers of Caribbean-themed content. The company holds marketing events through CaribbeanTales Festivals and Events, and provides co-production services to producers. In September 2010, CaribbeanTales Worldwide Distribution hosted the first CaribbeanTales Market Incubator [™] for a contingent of 40 filmmakers and industry stakeholders during the Toronto International Film Festival. (view Trailer here)

CTWD was founded by filmmaker and producer Frances-Anne Solomon, and its principals are creative industries specialist Dr Keith Nurse (Chair), economist and businessman Dr. Terrence Farrell, producer and media personality Lisa Wickham, and filmmaker Mary Wells. CTWD is a member of the Barbados Business Enterprise Corporation. 

 

Fiction Contest

The Leapfrog 2011 Fiction Contest will open on January 15, 2011.

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The contest is for Adult Fiction. Any novella- or novel-length work of fiction, including short-story collections, not previously published* is eligible. The minimum length is 22,000 words; there is no maximum length.

* Previously self-published books that have no more than 200 copies in circulation will be considered "unpublished" and may be submitted. Short stories that have been published in literary journals may be included in collections.

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1. Email fictioncontest@leapfropress.com. The subject line should read "Contest entry: manuscript title." (use actual manuscript title). Please use the full title, or as much as possible. In the body of the message, include your full name, address, email address, and the book's title. Please do not include any biographical information.

Attach your entire manuscript as a single text, Word, or PDF document. Use the title of the manuscript as the file name. Please do not call your file "mybook.doc" or "leapfrog.doc" or "manuscript1.doc" etc., as it will be indistinguishable from the 10s of other submissions so titled.

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Manuscript format: we are not picky. Just make it readable. It is important that no personal information be included in the attached file: Please do not put your name or address in the page headers or on a title page. Use only the book's title as identification.

2. Entry fee: the entry fee is $30. This can be paid through PayPal, or by check to:

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You will receive an email acknowledgment when your manuscript is received. Please allow two or three days for the acknowledgment.

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Judges include Leapfrog Press editors and author Marge Piercy.

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Marge Piercy is the author of 39 books, including 14 novels, many volumes of poetry, a memoir, and several works of nonfiction. Awards include, among many others, the Patterson Award for Literary Achievement, the Patterson Poetry Prize, an American Library Association Notable Book Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (UK).

Awards

First Prize: publication contract offer from Leapfrog Press, with an advance payment, plus the finalist awards (see below).

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We encourage winners of all contests to inform us of any publicity/contracts/reviews of their entries. We will be happy to post that information on our Web site.

Word Riot first opened up shop in March 2002 and has become one of the best known and most reputable online journals on the interwebs.

We like edgy. We like experimental. We like publishing the best up-and-coming writers and poets so we can say we knew 'em when.

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Writers with prose of any kind previously published in the magazine can submit new prose (flash fiction, short stories, or creative nonfiction). The word limit is 6,000. You may submit one piece of new prose for each piece of prose published on the site.

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The winner will receive half the money generated by the contest (minus processing fees for Submishmash and PayPal). The winning writer will also be published in the anthology and receive a copy of the publication and a stake in the royalties.

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Book review: correcting mistaken notions on Arabs in America
Shira Tevah, The Electronic Intifada, 28 December 2010 

 

Many Americans think anti-Arab sentiment in the United States began after 11 September 2001. Others think Arabs are recent immigrants to America. Some think the Arab community has kept to itself, not participating in struggles like the civil rights and labor movements. Alia Malek's A Country Called Amreeka is a welcome corrective to these mistaken notions.

Malek tells the stories of Arabs in America of all ages, national origins and religions -- from Randa, the avid Republican supporter of George W. Bush, to Rabih, the man struggling to deal with his sexuality and Arab identity during the time of the Oklahoma City bombing, to Omar, the young college student sharing the "Gaza Towel Rack" and "West Closet" with a Jewish roommate.

Malek intersperses these biographical vignettes, which span from the 1940s through 2003, with descriptions of the major historical events taking place in the US and the Arab world at the time. Gathered from personal interviews with subjects and their families, newspaper articles, academic books and journals and a variety of other sources, Malek tells stories potent with humor, poignancy, mysticism and charm. Rather than narrating with a historian's voice, she brings her subject to life with dialogue, thoughts and intuitions, foods, smells and songs on the radio. Though its content is substantive, the book is a page-turner that reads like the best fiction.

A Country Called Amreeka can be read as a study of Arab immigration to the US from the 1800s until the present. Malek carefully traces the fluctuations in American public opinion toward Arabs, beginning with the 95,000 who immigrated between 1880 and 1924 during the "Great Migration." Most of them Christian, many worked as street peddlers and were seen as "un-American," as were all non-Europeans. The rising anti-immigrant sentiment led Congress to pass restrictive immigration laws in the 1910s and 1920s.

Ed Salem, one member of this early immigrant community, was a first-generation, working-class Lebanese American. Malek writes that his "people had been in Birmingham [Alabama] just about as long as anyone else's" (7). Salem became a University of Alabama football star and eventually opened a drive-in burger restaurant in 1950.

Over the next two decades, more than 10,000 Arabic-speaking immigrants arrived in the US. But the presence of large numbers of Arabs did not guarantee their acceptance. After the US's open support for Israel in the October 1973 War, the Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) declared an oil embargo which caused a huge increase in oil prices across the US and Europe. In response, President Richard Nixon asked Americans to turn down the thermostat, form car pools and reduce driving speeds. Arab Americans became the convenient target for blame, the object of a variety of epithets, and in Hollywood the rich Arab oil sheikh became a favorite stereotype. Another convenient stereotype was the Arab as terrorist, which began to emerge after factions of the Palestine Liberation Organization engaged in high-profile airline hijackings in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Malek explores how Arab Americans continued to be an easy scapegoat from the 1970s through the present, and were blamed for the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, several attacks on US embassies around the world, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and both World Trade Center attacks. They faced threats in the street and at the grocery store, and had their political endorsements rejected and donations returned. They were beaten up and women had their head scarves ripped off. Mosques and community centers were threatened and attacked. Former President Bill Clinton authorized the use of secret evidence to deport noncitizens, specifically targeting those of Middle Eastern descent. Polls from 2001 showed a majority of Americans supported profiling of Arabs in airports. Malek describes how 18-year-old Sawsan Nabulsi was questioned for two hours by the Secret Service at her Laketown, Michigan high school after another student accused her of plotting to kill President George W. Bush.

Meanwhile, Arab Americans took part in struggles around the country for gay rights, workers' rights and civil rights. They were active participants in America's economic, political and social life. They sold affordable goods, healed people's children, cleaned clothes and homes, opened doors and answered phones. They protected their country in police forces and the military, even fighting opposite their brothers in wars in the Middle East. Malek shows the courage it took Arab Americans just to stay present, active and empathetic.

Some families and communities turned inwards, helping each other cope with the hatred directed at them on a daily basis. Some held their suffering, responding to the vitriol with silence. Others took active stances, organizing on campuses and in mosques, writing editorials and protesting US foreign policy. When they could learn nothing about their home countries from the American media, they gathered in coffee shops and told their own news. They embraced their histories and their identities.

Malek's gift for storytelling and subtle refusal to preach to her readers helps distinguish this book. She doesn't discuss "the Arab experience in America" in broad terms or employ political rhetoric on the role of the US government in creating and encouraging anti-Arab sentiment and Islamophobia. Instead, she presents facts and personal narratives, leaving the reader to perform their own analysis and form their own conclusions. The apolitical structure of the book makes it ideal for inclusion in any US history curriculum.

Broad in scope, A Country Called Amreeka contextualizes Arab American lives in US Middle East policy. Malek gives the reader a more thorough understanding of the deep-rooted connections between racism and US support for Israel than do most books on Palestine. Rather than focusing only on a single issue, she explores the relationships between multiple forces -- national and international, government and individual -- for a uniquely holistic approach to history. Her simple, yet imaginative and poetic storytelling is suited to any audience and has great potential to impact and overturn general perceptions on Arab-Americans.

Shira Tevah is a member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN). She studied public policy and Near Eastern languages and civilizations at the University of Chicago.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Motivating Power Of Desire

By Jewel Amethyst

 

My oldest started taking violin lessons last year. Before she put a foot in the classroom she was bubbling with excitement. She enthusiastically informed everyone she met, that she was signed up for violin lessons.

It took about two lessons for her to lose interest. She didn't like the violin. It was a chore to get her to practice. I had to physically lift her out of the bed and put her in the shower for her to get to her Saturday class on time, and half the times we were late. She would prefer to clean her room, vacuum the carpet, read a book, and clean the toilets, than to practice the violin.

This semester, after much pleading (ok, not that much), I decided not to waste my hard earned money signing her up for another semester of violin.

Then she tells me, “Mommy, since I won’t be doing violin anymore, can you sign me up for piano?”

Quite naturally my response was a resounding, “Hell no!”

Why would I waste my money on piano lessons when she would just tire of it after two lessons? She did that with ballet and tap, she did it with soccer. She had no stick-to-itiveness. So as a concession to her, I bought her a Casio keyboard for Christmas.

She loved it. She got on it and started picking out tunes by ear, figuring them out on her own by trial and error. Since Christmas, there hasn’t been a day when she didn’t practice or try to learn some new song on the piano.

This morning she came to me all excited. She had figured out how to play “Gloria in Excelsis Deo”.

I listened as she plucked out the tune. Then she looked up at my smiling appreciative face and asked, “So Mommy can I have piano lessons now?”

I contemplated her request for a while, then I said no. You see, I realized that my daughter was very much like me. If I desired it, I was motivated to accomplish it. But the moment it became mandatory, it lost all appeal.

As a kid, I loved to see my sister and her friend crochet. I wanted to learn it, but being left-handed made it difficult for them teach me. I asked one of my teachers who had mastered the craft. She too found it difficult to teach a left-hander. Finally while a teenager I took up an instruction book and taught myself to crochet. It was gratifying. I crocheted one doily and that was it. I was no longer interested. The motivator was the desire to teach myself what others failed to teach me.

When I started writing, it was because I loved it. I wanted to share my stories with the world, so I set about publishing them. And I was so motivated, that I couldn’t wait to sit down at my computer and write. But a few months ago, I decided to take the advice of many of my fellow novelnauts and approach my writing as a job. I set myself lofty goals of writing a certain amount each night. If I didn’t make my quota, I felt anxious, even a little down. My writing was becoming exactly like…a job. It was a chore that I had to do and it lost its appeal. I found myself succumbing to every distraction and finally a month went by when I didn’t type a word.

Over the holidays I decided to forget all my quotas, all my expectations and write like I did before being published. Well whaddya know, I advanced more on my WIP that I did for the better part of the year. That’s the power of desire. It is the ultimate motivator.

What is your ultimate motivator?

 

Posted by Jewel Amethyst at 12:01 AM

 

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Aftershocks: Welcome to Haiti's Reconstruction Hell

— Photographs by Jonathan Torgovnik/Getty Reportage

Dispatches from the tent cities, where rape gangs and disaster profiteers roam.

— By Mac McClelland

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75 Comments | Post Comment

January/February 2011 Issue

Editor's Note: Please be sure to check out our whole Haiti package, including information about what aid works, why much aid that's been promised  has gone AWOL, and five great grassroots NGOs.

When Alina happened upon a group of men—too many to count—raping a girl in the squalid Port-au-Prince camp where she and other quake victims lived, she couldn't just stand there. Maybe it was because she has three daughters of her own; maybe it was some altruistic instinct. And the 58-year-old was successful, in a way, in that when she tried to intervene, the men decided to rape her instead, hitting her ribs with a gun, threatening to shoot her, firing shots in the air to keep other people from getting ideas of making trouble as they kept her on the ground and forced themselves inside her until she felt something tear, as they saw that she was bleeding and decided to go on, and on, and on. When it was over, Alina lay on the ground hemorrhaging and aching, alone. The men were gone, but no one dared to help her for fear of being killed.

"We had this rape problem before the earthquake," Yolande Bazelais tells me. She is the president of FAVILEK (the Creole acronym stands for Women Victims Get Up Stand Up), an organization founded by women who were raped (PDF) during the 1991 coup that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. We're sitting under a blue tarp in the driveway of another NGO's office, because FAVILEK doesn't have one, with four of the other founders and my translator, Marc. He works with FAVILEK sometimes, running rape-related errands, taking victims like Alina to the hospital or the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), an international lawyers' group, for legal support. "Now," Bazelais says, "we have double problems."

It's a terrifying statement, considering that a survey taken before the earthquake estimated that there were more than 50 rapes a day just in Port-au-Prince, based on just the reported rapes—and more than half of the victims were minors. That's how it's been for as long as anyone can remember, with the perpetrators ranging from neighbors to street thugs to, as the FAVILEK founders can attest, police and paramilitaries who use rape as a tool of intimidation and terror.

But nearly a year after the 7.0 earthquake that shook some 280,000 buildings to the ground and killed or maimed nearly twice that many people, FAVILEK's insufficient resources are stretched thinner than ever. The organization says that displacement camps are hornet's nests of sexual violence.

"Every day it is like this: fighting, a lot of violence, murder, a lot of rape," they say, shaking their heads. "A lot of rape."

The French military policemen hanging around my hotel say the same thing. They are soldiers of MINUSTAH, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, and their faces darken when they talk about the camps. "Every day it is like this: fighting, a lot of violence, murder, a lot of rape," they say, shaking their heads. "A lot of rape." A 43-page report by the IJDH says so, too, with a pile of testimonials like Alina's. And there's Marc, whose phone is always ringing, who's "like an ambulance" because "people are always calling me to say someone got raped"—like the woman calling about her teenage daughter today. Marc, who waves at somebody on the street as we drive around Port-au-Prince and yells, "I used to work with that guy!" then explains that the guy quit immediately because he really didn't want to hear about five-year-olds being raped. FAVILEK gets three or four calls a week about new cases, and that's just from the dozen camps the organization attempts to cover. There are 1,300 camps in all.

The quake's immediate aftermath.It's the first thing you see when you step out of Toussaint L'Ouverture International Airport: just across the street, a sea of tarps held together with sticks and strings, white plastic and blue plastic and gray plastic side by side by side under the glaring sun. Maybe there are some clothes drying in the very narrow paths between shelters. Probably there are people bathing in the open. The bigger settlements sport walls of portable toilets. Within Port-au-Prince, every spare patch of land from the airport to anywhere is covered in tent settlements. More than a million people live like that, no lights, no security. The tent cities are hot, hungry, and packed, and tension is the only thing in town being built.

The main market in one of the 1,300 tent cities that pock Port-au-Prince.The FAVILEK founders say they need two agents in each of the 1,300 camps instead of a dozen total. And even if they had the agents, and could pay them, which they can't, they'd still need the resources to help the victims. The other day, a woman was raped and choked nearly to death. She called to say she was in hiding, but FAVILEK couldn't help her—it doesn't have any funds to pay for moving her someplace safe. Nor could it cover the cost of, say, anxiety medication for Alina, who says, "I have heart palpitations and sometimes I begin to shake uncontrollably." We sit outside in metal folding chairs, the FAVILEK founders swatting mosquitoes off my bare ankles as they tell me how it's a struggle even to take care of their own: Last night yet another agent's tent was ripped down by pro-rape thugs.

Not that these women, now in their forties and fifties, survivors all, are easily intimidated. One of them had her legs smashed in addition to being raped. One was shot. She gets frustrated at some point while I'm asking questions and says, "We meet with white people, and white people, and white people." She starts raising her voice, and two of the other four put their hands out to calm her, literally holding her back, but smiling knowingly. White people make promises but nothing ever ever happens, she says. She is tired. She is exhausted. At least they could have given us an office. And if you, white girl, think you're actually going to make yourself useful, I'll give you my goddamn email address...

A female doctor turns to me and demands: Do I understand this rape victim's situation? That this isn't one of those tragedies, like when an innocent girl is raped?

They have gotten some whistles donated, at least, one of the other women says; they're effective sometimes. I don't bother asking if the cops are trying to help prevent rape, because all of 18 rape cases were brought before a judge in Port-au-Prince in 2009. Earlier today, Marc and I went to pick up an activist from camp because an "escapee"—a prisoner who was released from his cell during the quake—threatened to shoot her and some of her coworkers for standing up for rape victims, and when she went to file a complaint with the police, the officer said, "He should've killed you all." Earlier today, Marc and I drove past a man in a blue button-down shirt who was identified by a victim as a rapist, and Marc tore around the block and jumped out to go collect the license-plate number of the shiny SUV the man was getting into, but then Marc said he didn't know what he was going to do with it, because a guy who drives a car like that is probably friends with cops.

Earlier today, a female doctor turned to me during a consult with a rape victim and demanded: Do I understand the situation? Do I understand that this is what happens to girls like this one, who have children but are not married? That this isn't one of those tragedies, like when an innocent girl is raped?

But what about the government or the UN? I ask the FAVILEK founders. What about the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission led by the country's prime minister and Bill Clinton? Do they have any kind of plan for protecting the women in the camps?

Marc's translating services are rendered moot when five heads shake instant hard "no"s.

Next Page: Inside Sean Penn's camp: "I'm black, and Haitian, and I wouldn't go where you're going right now, in the dark."

Page 1 of 5Next

Mac McClelland is Mother Jones' human rights reporter, writer of The Rights Stuff, and the author of For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question: A Story From Burma's Never-Ending War. Read more of her stories and follow her on Twitter. Get Mac McClelland's RSS feed.

Tunisia:

“Please tell the world

Kasserine is dying!”

Posted 9 January 2011

Written byAmira Al Hussaini

Countries	Tunisia
Topics	Breaking News, Freedom of Speech, Cyber-Activism, Human Rights, Protest, Politics
Languages	Arabic, English

This post also available in:

Français	· Tunisie : "Il faut dire au monde que Kasserine est en train de mourir !"
Español	· Túnez: "¡Por favor, díganle al mundo que Kasserine está muriendo!"
Malagasy	· Tonizia: "Azafady mba ambarao an'izao tontolo izao fa miala aina i Kasserine!"

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Tunisian netizens are working around the clock to show the rest of the world the ongoing carnage in their country. What started as a protest against unemployment when a 26-year-old Tunisian man set himself on fire in Sidi Bouzid last month has ignited the country, sparking a wave of protests across it.

Despite the fact that protesters on the ground are facing a heavy-handed response from the authorities, and cyber-activists are facing the same dilemma, photographs, testimonies and videos showing the daily mayhem are appearing online.

Today's news says that at least 20 people have been killed in both the city of Tala, 200km southwest of the capital Tunis, and in the Kasserine region - and the Twitterosphere is on fire.

Earlier today, I got the following appeal on the mico-blogging site.

@JustAmira @globalvoices please tell to the world that kasserine is dying!

A quick search of the #sidibouzid hashtag weaved a story of horror - and an out pour of solidarity from decent citizens from around the world.

Tunisia-based SBZ_news tweets:

According to a source inside Talah, the police prevent the evacuation of injured citizens #SidiBouzid

and asks:

الى سيادة المفتي: شنوّا حكم قتل طفل-13 ربيعا- برصاصة في الرأس على يد الشرطة؟ #SidiBouzid

To the Mufti (top religious judge), what is the ruling on policemen who kill a child - aged 13 - with a direct shot in the head?

He also links to a video, uploaded on Facebook, which shows how the police have used live ammunition against protesters:

Bullets, used by the Tunisian police in Kassrin http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=170356223007700 #SidiBouzid

Nawaat too posts a video on YouTube showing how police have been engaging with the protesters using live ammunition:

Dead Tunisian boy in Tala. Image from Nawaat

On Twitter, Nawaat drives home the indiscriminate killings on the streets by showing us the image of a dead boy, on the streets of Tala:

Dead boy in the streets of Tunisia. (thala) 09.01.10 http://post.ly/1SQF7 #sidibouzid

And even the dead don't seem to be immune. Nawaat adds:

اخبار مؤكدة 100% عن اطلاق رصاص حي على موكب جنازة لاربعة شهداء سقطوا البارحة في تالة و تفرقت الجنازة تركت النعوش لوحدم في الشارع #sidibouzid

100% accurate news on the firing of live ammunition on the funeral procession of four martyrs killed in Tala last night. The funeral procession was dispersed and the coffins were left abandoned on the street

fra-ise adds:

On Tunisian TV citizens and journalists express anger for the loss of doc and buildings. In #Tunisia only life is cheap. /@zizoo #sidibouzid

But for Tunisian Youssef 3al-7it, hope is on the horizon:

ما عادش تقولوا تونس تحتضر راهو موش إحتضار أما صرخة آلام ولادة الرجال #sidibouzid

You can no longer say that Tunisia is dying. This is not how death looks like. It is the cry of pain of a mother who gives birth to men.

Tunisia's clashes against its own people have brought an out pour of reactions from people from around the world.

Reacting to today's events, Saudi Essam Al Zamil tweets:

الجزيرة: عشرون قتيلا اليوم في مظاهرات تونس (يبدو أن الحكومة التونسية الجبانة بدأت باستخدام القتل لارهاب الشعب) #SidiBouzid

According to Al Jazeera, 20 people killed in Tunisia's protests today. It seems that the cowardly Tunisian government has started to resort to murder in order to terrorise its people.

Dima Khatib continues:

النظام في تونس وقع أمس شهادة بداية النهاية لنفسه. دماء ضحايا القمع في القصرين وتالة فرضت نفسها على وسائل الإعلام. انتهى الصمت #SidiBouzid

The Tunisian regime yesterday signed the beginning of its end. The blood of the innocent victims of Kasserine and Tala have imposed themselves on mainstream media. The silence is over.

And she adds:

يبدو أن وسائل الإعلام العالمية لا تحلو لها الأخبار إلا عندما تأتي ملطخة بدماء الأبرياء. خرجت من صمتها حول انتفاضة تونس بالإجبار #SidiBouzid

It seems that the international media does not like news unless it comes splattered with the blood of innocents. It has now been forced to break its silence on the Tunisian uprising

From more videos from citizens in Tunisia on what is happening on the ground, tune into Nawaat's YouTube channel here or check out tunisians on vimeo here.

On Facebook, a page named Liberate Tunisia has been created, with regular updates of developments on the ground as well as images of the victims. Mr President, the Tunisian People are Setting Themselves on Fire is another group on Facebook, dedicated to documenting the struggle of Tunisian people.

Written by Amira Al Hussaini
Posted 9 January 2011 ·  Print version

Tunisia arrests bloggers and rapper

Dissidents were arrested or "disappeared" in crackdowns against what is being described as a national uprising. Last Modified: 07 Jan 2011 20:37 GMT Email Article Print Article Share Article Send Feedback

Journalists and activists face violence and arrest in the uprising that began on December 17 [AFP] Tunisian authorities have rounded up bloggers, activists and a rap singer in a string of arrests that come in the midst of what is being described as a nationwide uprising. Two web activists, Slim Amamou and Azyz Amamy, have not been heard from since Thursday, sources in Tunisia told Al Jazeera. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said that it had been alerted that at least six bloggers and activists had been arrested or had disappeared in locations across Tunisia, and that there were probably others who had been targeted. Al Jazeera spoke with Amamy on Wednesday evening, local time, after his email and Facebook accounts werehijacked in an alleged government-led "phishing" campaign. His last tweet was published on Thursday morning, as was Amamou's. Amamy's phone was disconnected on Friday night when Al Jazeera tried to reach him. Hamadi Kaloutcha was arrested at 6am local time by police dressed in civilian clothing. His laptop and hard drive were also taken, according to RSF. The police officers told his wife that they had "a few questions to ask him" and that it would take a few hours. Another cyberdissident, Sleh Edine Kchouk, linked to the Tunisian General Students’ Union (UGET) was taken in for questioning in the town Bizerte and had his computer confiscated. As of Friday evening, he had not been released, sources confirmed. The arrests come in the context of a "cyberwar" between the Tunisian authorities and web activists, who have been struggling to break through the country’s extensive censorship wall. International web activists from Anonymous have launched "distributed denial of service" (DDoS) attacks on government-linked websites during the past week. 'Muffling discontent' Local journalists are facing violence and arrest as they try to cover the "unprecedented" protests that began on December 17. "We are asking for the release of all those who are in jail for just telling the story of what is going on in their country," Jean-Francois Julliard, the head of RSF, said.  "And we are asking above all for journalists to have access to what is going on in the country at the moment." Julliard said it was unacceptable that the Tunisian authorities have refused to allow a correspondent from the newspaper Le Monde into the country. "We are worried, worried because we feel that there is a toughening of the situation," Julliard said. "President [Zine El Abidine] Ben Ali … only wants to muffle this discontent as soon as possible, he wants his country to go back to this image of a tourist paradise, the beaches, security, peace and so on, so I think he's ready to do anything." The Committee to Protect Journalists said it was "disturbed" by the Tunisian government's attempts to censor coverage of the protests, citing violence against journalists, newspapers being pulled from shelves and the blocking of websites. "We are also alarmed by the shrill government-orchestrated campaign against Al Jazeera," the CPJ said in an open letter to Ben Ali.   "We call on your government to present its views on the air, as it has been invited to do by media outlets on countless occasions, instead of attacking news organisations for simply performing their duties." Rap singer arrested Tunisian police have arrested a rap singer who made a song critical of government policies as protests against President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali's rule continue to shake the North African nation, his brother said on Friday.     Video That Led To The General's Arrest     Hamada Ben-Amor, a 22-year-old rapper, was taken from his home in the Mediterranean Sea coast city of Sfax late on Thursday, his brother Hamdi Ben-Amor said. "Some 30 plainclothes policemen came to our house to arrest Hamada and took him away without ever telling us where to. When we asked why they were arresting him, they said 'he knows why'," he said. Ben-Amor is known to fans as "The General". Last week he released a song on the internet titled 'President, your people are dying' that talks about the problems of the youth and unemployment. The song came out as students, professionals and youths mounted a series of protests over a shortage of jobs and restrictions on public freedoms. The protests have grown into the most widespread and violent flare-up of dissent of Ben Ali's 23-year rule. Tunisian officials had no immediate comment on any of the arrests.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies