We’ve had revolution in Tunisia, Egypt’s Mubarak is teetering; in Yemen, Jordan and Syria suddenly protests have appeared. In Ireland young techno-savvy professionals are agitating for a “Second Republic”; in France the youth from banlieues battled police on the streets to defend the retirement rights of 60-year olds; in Greece striking and rioting have become a national pastime. And in Britain we’ve had riots and student occupations that changed the political mood. What’s going on? What’s the wider social dynamic?

Spain isn’t on the point of revolution, any more than Ireland, or even Greece. But a situation in which the young feel excluded by existing political structures is not a sustainable one. Looking around Europe, it is hard to find countries in which you couldn’t see the similarities. To claim that we in the West should congratulate ourselves on an Arab Spring which looks to us as its example is just to misunderstand its nature and our response.

The protesters in the Arab squares are demonstrating against autocracy and corruption. The demonstrators in Spain are saying the same about their democratic structures.

“Generations believed we could do nothing,” she said, “and now, in a matter of weeks, we know that we can.” It is a new model for the Middle East, not only because the young people are taking the lead, but because their elders have started to listen and follow. “The youth, we were afraid of, but we have come to see the youth are moving the region,” said Mustafa Rawashdeh, a former headmaster at a school in Karak, Jordan, who was fired after trying to form a teachers’ union. “Young people saw the winds of change and drove us.” And then Colonel Qaddafi’s forces opened fire, followed by King Hamad’s crackdown. The young activists’ idealism has been challenged by the bitter reality of repression, leaving them dispirited but resolute.

Rageh Omaar of AlJazeera examines how the death of a street vendor led to a wave of uprisings across Arab world.

The leaderless Middle East uprisings can inspire freedom movements as Latin America did before

Mielenkiintoista taustatietoa Pohjois-Afrikan tilanteesta

Dr. Sherif Omar, a young man in a bloodstained white coat (“Look at me, I look like a butcher”), who had been at a mobile first-aid station all night, moving back and forth according to the shifting front line, described pro-Mubarak supporters throwing Molotov cocktails from the roofs of buildings and from the highway overpass opposite the square. “They were fewer, but they had the elevated positions,” he said. He described how the anti-Mubarak demonstrators had beat them back with a hail of stones, only to have the Mubarak people—“those mercenaries; we treated some and found crisp hundred-pound notes and police I.D.s in their pockets”—return with machine guns: “All the deaths were bullet wounds.”

Banks, junctions and important buildings previously guarded by the police and state security were left abandoned on Saturday and civilians have quickly stepped in to fill the void.

“The community is working together to stop this and protect ourselves.”