In the land where the wind goes by many names a storm has begun. How hard and for how long it will blow is still to be seen, but the intensity of the hurricane and its fatal potentiality is being made visible, if barely, through blurred cell phone video and frantic cries for help to we on the outside. In Europe, the wind that raises the dust of the Sahara and Araby deserts is called Scirocco, but in Libya, where the fight is today most desperate, it's called the Ghibli. Across North Africa and throughout the Middle East, the long suffering citizens of dictatorships and authoritarian monarchies are standing in defiance, willing so far to brave impossible odds and the prospect of death at the hand of their tyrants for a better life for themselves now, and the chance of an egalitarian society in the future. For now, they are buoyed by the winds of change that have seen the heads of the military regimes in Tunisia and Egypt roll, but can the momentum of the tempest be ridden to real reform?

Jon Elmer is a Canadian photo-journalist living in, and reporting from Occupied Palestine. Jon is this program's most often appearing guest and the first we go to for news in the region. Jon Elmer in the first half.

And; regime change is lately high on the agenda in British Columbia too, where leaders of both of the alternating two-party dictatorship that rules the province were recently lobbed. The currently governing B.C. Liberals elected their new number one, choosing Christy Clark over the weekend; while the opposition New Democrats are yet to name their chief contender for the province's premiership. It all promises for a 2011 election, but what will really change?

Ingmar Lee is a long-time B.C. environmental defender, whose various campaigns have highlighted the industrial-scale destruction of the province's forests and waterways, the extirpation of native species dependent on those forests and rivers, the role transnational corporations have played in designing the environmental policies of both parties in the province, and the prospects of the British Columbia wilderness becoming a super highway for Asia-bound Tar Sands bitumen. Ingmar Lee and the chance of change for the better for B.C.'s wild legacy in the second half.

And; Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with waht is current on and beyond the city's streets. But first, Jon Elmer and gauging which way the wind is blowing in the Middle East and the broader Arab world.