Fast-moving change today in Tunisia (not that you’d know it from watching American cable TV news—if you’re in the US, keep your eye on Twitter, blogs, and more worldly online news organizations instead).
• New York Times: “President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia has left the country amid growing chaos in the streets, French diplomats say, and the prime minister went on state television Friday night to say he is in charge.”
• Here is a YouTube playlist of eyewitness videos from the protests in Tunisia.
• The Awl points to this helpful primer on Tunisia in Mother Jones Magazine.
• Al Jazeera is all over it. Jillian York’s opinion piece at Al Jazeera is worth reading: “Tunisia’s taste of internet freedom.”
• Here is one Arab affairs live-blog of the events, in English, at al-bab.com.
• Here’s a report at Al-Arabiya.
• This Wikileaks-leaked State Department cable became a catalyst in the social upheaval.
• Here’s a Foreign Policy Magazine piece that puts forth an argument that Wikileaks and social media played important roles.
• Responding more or less to those who might describe it as “a Wikileaks revolution,” Ethan Zuckerman tweeted earlier, “Think it would be a mistake to give too much credit to Wikileaks […] this has much more to do with unemployment, poverty, and inequality.”
• Evgeny Morozov echoes this sentiment in his Foreign Policy opinion piece: “First thoughts on Tunisia and the role of the Internet“