What, How, Why - The social changes around the world

What: Arab Spring
How: a TED talk by Clay Shirkey in 2009 and Derek Sivers in 2010, The Matrix film also heralds the SYSTEM FAILURE as the end scene and is in many ways a parallel to the upheavals.
Why:

• Authoritarian states
• Demographic structural factors
• Government corruption
• Human rights violations
• Inflation
• Kleptocracy
• Sectarianism
• Unemployment
• Pan-Arabism

Why:

• Democracy
• Free and fair elections
• Human rights
• Regime change

One little note is that 60000 may be dead by now and that Obama might get a second Nobel for changing the US policy of supporting stability(read: dictators) to supporting democratic efforts in 2010.(The paradox being that this change cost lives. Who knows maybe it was the minimal possible, but in my heart there is doubt.)
As it happens this blog did earlier raise that pungent issue, of supporting dictators and evil regimes.