Tunisia

I wined yesterday that something was going on in Tunisia and CNN sent me a cryptic email spouting that the Prime Minister was assuming control of the country. Well, now I know more or less what is going on. I stumbled across researched this video and the accompanying news article. Highly informative.

As dusk fell on this gracious, tree-lined capital, Tunis was a city under siege — but the man who had ruled Tunisia with an iron fist for 23 years was gone, driven out by a popular revolt that may rock the entire region. I had landed in Tunis just moment before President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled the country, shutting down the airport and prompting declaration of a state of emergency. I saw a city empty except for the hundreds of riot police occupying the streets. The main boulevard, Habib Bourghiba Avenue, was shut, with soldiers peeking from the gun turrets of tanks, their rifles pointed outwards. The choking smell of tear gas hung over the evacuated streets, where hundreds of shoes lay scattered on the sidewalk having been abandoned by people fleeing a police assault just an hour earlier. Bits of brick broken from large flower pots lining the streets were everywhere, having been hurled by protestors. Young plain-clothes security police outside the Ministry of the Interior building — the power center of Ben Ali's regime — prowled the streets, wielding makeshift batons made of table legs and wooden stakes. See TIME's photoessay "Protesters in Tunisia Bring Down the Government.")
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As dusk fell on this gracious, tree-lined capital, Tunis was a city under siege — but the man who had ruled Tunisia with an iron fist for 23 years was gone, driven out by a popular revolt that may rock the entire region. I had landed in Tunis just moment before President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled the country, shutting down the airport and prompting declaration of a state of emergency. I saw a city empty except for the hundreds of riot police occupying the streets. The main boulevard, Habib Bourghiba Avenue, was shut, with soldiers peeking from the gun turrets of tanks, their rifles pointed outwards. The choking smell of tear gas hung over the evacuated streets, where hundreds of shoes lay scattered on the sidewalk having been abandoned by people fleeing a police assault just an hour earlier. Bits of brick broken from large flower pots lining the streets were everywhere, having been hurled by protestors. Young plain-clothes security police outside the Ministry of the Interior building — the power center of Ben Ali's regime — prowled the streets, wielding makeshift batons made of table legs and wooden stakes. See TIME's photoessay "Protesters in Tunisia Bring Down the Government.")

Liveleak This was coppied from Time