19/02/2011

Available for over a year

The roots of the rage that has rocked the tiny kingdom of Bahrain. How an "age of recklessness" ruined Ireland. The ancient North-South division that still splits hearts and minds in Italy. And one of the big questions confronting southern Sudan as it prepares for independence -- "what to do about the cows".... All across the Arab world the revolutionary storm continues to play itself out. And its force is now being felt by the king of Bahrain. In the streets beyond his palace gates there have been tear gas and gunfire....and demonstrators are mourning their dead. Before this explosion of violence, my colleague Bill Law spent time in Bahrain. He watched its tensions mount, and he's well placed to explain sudden upsurge of anger that has so badly shaken the island ... And the demonstrators on that roundabout in Manama....and the angry crowds all over the Middle East....have drawn huge inspiration from what they saw unfold in Cairo. The people of Egypt showed that it was possible to bring down even the most tenacious of rulers. But the euphoria on the Nile is subsiding now. And Paul Adams has been watching the country begin to come to terms with the challenges and opportunities thrown up by the revolution.... Ireland is in the run-up to what looks like being a momentous election. From Galway Bay to Dublin Bay....from Cork to Donegal....the nation's troubles are being aired -- and there are many. Ireland has been engulfed by economic disaster. The great boom that raised it out of centuries of poverty suddenly collapsed. The impact was shattering, and Europe and the International Monetary Fund had to come to the rescue. But so vast are Ireland's debts that many years of pain and austerity lie ahead... Fergal Keane has been reflecting on what led his country down the road to ruin.... The bones of the Roman Empire are scattered all over Italy. And when you wander around places like the Colosseum, and the ruins of Pompeii it's easy to feel that the land is steeped in a magnificent, ancient past. And indeed it is....but actually, the Italian state, the Republic that we know today is quite a recent idea -- only a-hundred-and-fifty years old. And as the nation marks the anniversary of its coming together, Robin Lustig has been assessing the mood of modern Italy. Africa's largest country...Sudan...is splitting in two. The South has voted to break-away....it'll become independent in the summer. And so now what amounts to a divorce on a grand scale is being negotiated. This is the complicated process of untangling the new country from the old. It's about agreeing the rules of a completely new relationship. And Martin Plaut says that as tricky as any of the issues on the table is what to do about the great herds of cattle....