With news of the dramatic unrest and overthrow of the regime of Ben Ali in Tunisia relegated to back pages, short-shrift and afterthoughts in mainstream U.S. media, it has taken center stage in most other media outlets throughout the rest of the world. Probably because it has become something of a catalyst for other movements to begin taking shape, most notably in the Arab world. Similar protests are now taking place in Algeria and Yemen, and there have been a wave of self-immolation protests taking place in Cairo, Alexandria, Algiers Riyadh, Samitah (Saudi Arabia), Nouakchott (Mauritania) and several other places, similar to the self-immolation protest of Muhammad Bouzizi in Tunisia, which sparked the protests which led to the current overthrow.
The situation is far from stable, in fact it is becoming more volatile with each hour with latest reports of the Tunisian Police joining the protesters. As various observers are saying - this is only the beginning.
And yet somehow we're not hearing anything about it.
So with that in mind - I have put together running news reports from the BBC World Service and their comprehensive twice daily Newshour program from January 13-18th. And even though the news is moving very fast, and is changing by the hour, at least it's a start. I will put up more over the coming days. I would urge you to go over to the BBC site and check out their additional reports as well as Tweets from Tunis.
These reports run around three hours and I have broken them up between two players. The first player (top one) covers January 13-15 and the second player (just below), covers January 16-18. Probably best to download these and listen at your leisure - it's crammed with information and reports.
And also:
For our French speaking friends, I have included a two hour recap of news, interviews and actualities from RFI in Paris from January 17th. Tunisia, as you will remember, was a French colony until the early 1960's and there are still some very strong ties between Paris and Tunis (not to mention French is the second most common language in Tunisia).
This special program runs two hours and covers the period of 6:00 am - 8:00 am (GMT) on the morning of the 17th. Like the BBC broadcast, it is broken up between two players - the one above (under the second photo) covers 6-7 am and the one below covers 7-8 am. Fascinating and highly informative material that, even if you don't speak French fluently, will give you some idea of these momentous events taking place that our MSM don't seem to want to be bothered about.
More as this unfolds.
