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Two weeks ago today, Hosni Mubarak resigned as Egypt's president. I wrote then: "The message being echoed right across the Arab world is simply this: No matter how long a leader has been in power, no matter how pervasive his security apparatus, no matter how terrifying his dungeons, if enough people take to the streets, he can be toppled."

That's certainly what a lot of people in Libya believed. But as I write these words, mid-afternoon on Friday, it seems that forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi are determined to prove them wrong.

Here's a taste of some of the messages I've been reading on Twitter over just the past few minutes (I should make it clear that I have no way of corroborating them, or vouching for their accuracy, but Twitter has now become a major source of information from Libya while foreign journalists are prevented from accessing areas under the control of the government).

"ohhhhh my god 2 pepole where hoted (holed?) in the head god help us."
"progaddafi preventing protesters to reach the green square, they are everywhere."
"progaddafi are shooting the protesters on the spot in many areas in tripoli: fashloum, soug aljoumaa."
"there is a massacre happening right now in soug aljoumaa NOW."
"bomb guys i heard bomb alot of gun shot please help."
"a friend died now, his father answered me crying. i'm trying to control myself."

By the time you read this, the picture may be clearer. We may also know more about what's been happening today in Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. Even in Saudi Arabia, there seem to be the first stirrings of what may, or may not, build into another protest movement.

It's still far too early to assess what this unprecedented wave of popular revolts in the Arab world will mean in the long term. (We'll make a first attempt in a special 60-minute edition of The World Tonight to be broadcast on 11 March.) But for now the question that intrigues me is this: if a prerequisite of revolution is the absence of fear, when did that fear vanish - and, just as importantly, why?

Well, how about this for an explanation: observing the courage of others encourages others to have more courage. A crowd in one city today leads to more crowds in more cities tomorrow. In other words, if the disaffected, unemployed young in one Arab country see what their counterparts elsewhere can achieve, they're more likely to be able to shrug off their own fears.

From Tunisia to Egypt. From Egypt to Yemen, and Bahrain, Algeria - and Libya. And surely it's undeniable that the overcoming of all that fear has been helped immeasurably by social network sites like Facebook and Twitter.

A protester with a mobile phone can send out words, pictures and videos in real time. TV news bulletins, radio news programmes, newspapers and bloggers all pick them up, sift them, retransmit them.

Of course, there were popular uprisings, revolts and revolutions long before the first Tweeter ever tweeted. In 1989, it was in part the power of TV pictures that blew the flames of anti-Communism across central and eastern Europe. But in 2011, the TV pictures are as likely to have come from a protester's mobile phone as through the lens of a professional camera operator.

A word of caution, however: what follows a popular uprising isn't always better than what went before. Decades of political repression can't be transmogrified overnight into a model of liberal democracy. If that is true in Tunisia or Egypt, it is a hundred times more true in Libya. Yes, in Latin America, and east Asia, they successfully made the transition from dictatorship to democracy. In Somalia, on the other hand ... well, I don't need to spell it out.

Just a quick word about Twitter: as you'll have gathered, I've signed up. If you're there too, do come and find me.

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Even if you speak not a word of Italian, there are now two words that you should probably learn.

The first is "vergogna" - it means shame, and I'll explain why it matters in a moment.

The second is "bunga bunga", which wasn't a word until a few weeks ago, and which means, well, no one is sure yet exactly what it means.

It might mean having sex - as in what the Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is alleged to have done with a variety of young women at private parties in his villa outside Milan - or it might mean sex games, as in pole dancing, striptease, prancing around with no clothes on, as in what young women are alleged to have done ... (see above).

It comes as no surprise that sex and politics make a potent mix. (Remember Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky?) But the trial of the Italian prime minister which is due to start in April promises to be every bit as lurid as the Clinton-Lewinsky saga in the mid-1990s.

I'm in Italy this week, and many Italians use that word "vergogna" to describe their feelings about the Berlusconi bunga bunga scandal. Mr Berlusconi uses the same word to describe what he insists is a politically-motivated criminal investigation by left-wing prosecutors who are determined to bring him down.

So here's what you need to know to make sense of the forthcoming trial. The case for the prosecution is based on intercepted telephone conversations and mobile phone records involving several friends and associates of the prime minister in which they apparently confirm that he was involved in numerous sexual encounters with young women, at least some of whom he paid. (Note, however, that paying to have sex with a prostitute is not a crime in Italy. Note also that the prime minister denies that he has ever paid for sex.)

Prosecutors say that one of these women, a nightclub dancer called Karima el Mahroug (stagename Ruby Rubacuore, or Ruby the Heartstealer), originally from Morocco, was only 17 at the time of their sexual encounters. (The age of consent in Italy is 14, except in the case of prostitutes, for whom it is 18. Note, however, that Mr Berlusconi's lawyers are challenging her exact age, and that both he and she deny that they had sex. She does say that he paid her 7,000 euros because she was in financial difficulties.)

Prosecutors also say that when police arrested Karima el Mahroug on an unrelated theft charge, the prime minister personally telephoned them to seek her release, on the grounds that she was either a niece or a grand-daughter of the then Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak.

(Why the confusion over the exact relationship that he claimed for her? Because the Italian word "nipote" can mean either niece/nephew or grand-daughter/grandson. Sorry, but nothing about this saga is simple.)

Mr Berlusconi agrees that he made the call, but argues that he genuinely believed that she was a relative of President Mubarak's, and was anxious to prevent a diplomatic incident. Prosecutors say the call was an abuse of office, and have charged him accordingly.

So where does all this leave the prime minister, and where does it leave Italy? On the political front, it seems now almost certain that within the coming weeks, Mr Berlusconi will decide to ask President Giorgio Napolitano to dissolve parliament and call early elections. And if he does, it is quite possible that he will win, because despite everything, he retains substantial support among voters.

If that surprises you, consider this: according to a psychologist I interviewed this week, Italians like being ruled by a "tribal chief", someone with wealth and virility, who looks strong and determined. To his supporters, that just about sums up Silvio Berlusconi.

In the meantime, you'll be hearing both sides repeatedly using that word "vergogna" - shame.

I'll be on air from Italy tonight, and again tomorrow and Friday. And you'll be delighted to know that you can now download The World Tonight as a podcast, so that if you miss it in the evening, you can catch up on your way to work the following morning.

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I don't claim to be psychic, but when I went home after last night's programme, it was clear that today would bring plenty of fresh drama in Cairo. I didn't dream it would be as dramatic as it turned out to be.

We will learn more over the coming days about exactly what happened behind the scenes in Cairo over the past 48 hours - but it's already possible to look at the available evidence and draw some tentative conclusions.

Question 1: Was it a victory for a popular revolution, or a military coup d'etat? Answer: almost certainly, a bit of both.

Question 2: Is Egypt now set on a path towards genuine democracy and free and fair elections? Answer: it's far too soon to say, but personally, I wouldn't bet on it.

Question 3: Will today's events have an impact elsewhere in the Arab world? Answer: categorically yes, a massive impact. Tunisia could perhaps be written off as a small and relatively insignificant country. But Egypt? The most populous nation in the Arab world? The acknowledged Arab super-power?

So what might have happened yesterday and today? I have no inside knowledge, but here's my best guess. Yesterday, when the army high command issued their "Communique No. 1", they thought they had secured Mubarak's agreement to resign and hand over power to them.

That's why they told the hundreds of thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square: "All your demands will be met."

But Vice-President Omar Suleiman, perhaps with the support of the presidential guard and other elements of the security apparatus, faced the military chiefs down. There were even rumours that Mubarak had already recorded a resignation announcement but that the vice-president ordered that it should not be broadcast.

Instead, in what everyone seems to agree was a disastrous miscalculation, Mubarak went on TV and said he was not resigning after all but would hand over powers to - guess who? - vice-president Suleiman.

In other words, what happened yesterday was in effect an attempted coup d'etat by the military - and it failed.

Today, on the other hand, it seems to have succeeded. Mubarak has gone, and now the military are in charge. Where that leaves the vice-president isn't clear. Not best pleased, is my guess.

But do today's events mark, in the words of the Nobel peace prize winner and leading opposition figure Mohammed el Baradei: "the liberation of the Egyptian people"?

Is military rule compatible with liberation? It depends, doesn't it, on what happens next.

For now, though, the message being echoed right across the Arab world is simply this: No matter how long a leader has been in power, no matter how pervasive his security apparatus, no matter how terrifying his dungeons, if enough people take to the streets, he can be toppled.

The coming weeks will give us some idea of whether there are likely to be more Tunisias, more Egypts. They will also begin to clarify whether the Egyptian people really are about to be given a genuine opportunity to choose how, and by whom, they wish to be ruled.

I know that the parallels with Europe in 1989 can be overdone and that they are far from exact. But I have a strong suspicion that the over-riding emotion in Cairo tonight is very similar to what people felt in Berlin, Prague, Bucharest and the other capitals of eastern and central Europe as the Moscow-backed Communist regimes crumbled one after another.

Live for the moment. Celebrate the achievement. We'll worry about the future tomorrow. There may be trouble ahead; some of the protesters may even live to regret what happened today. But I don't think many of them are bothering with that now.

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Question: what links the Wizard of Oz, the 9/11 attacks, and events this week in Egypt?

Bear with me; I haven't gone mad. But I have been trying to make sense of the unprecedented scenes on the streets of Cairo - and I think I may be seeing the beginnings of an intelligible picture.

First, the Wizard of Oz. If you've seen the film - of course, you've seen the film - you'll remember the scene near the end when Dorothy and her companions finally get to see the fearsome Wizard. He's just an ordinary little fella, with a much-amplified voice. Not so scary - or powerful - after all.

As for 9/11, to many millions of people around the world, especially those in countries whose governments were in thrall to, or beholden to, the mighty superpower that is (was?) the United States, what the attacks demonstrated was that Uncle Sam was unexpectedly vulnerable. What's more, he was smitten by a group of Arabs.

Then came Afghanistan, and Iraq. Again, Uncle Sam - or, if you prefer, the Wizard of Oz - was revealed to be a great deal less mighty than he seemed.

Remember 1989, the year when the Soviet empire in Eastern and central Europe collapsed domino-like, in country after country? Once the power of Moscow was seen to be crumbling, suddenly fear gave way to courage, and the rest is history.

Which brings us to Egypt, via Tunisia. I'm not suggesting that the uprisings against long-established pro-Western governments were due solely to a perception that their Washington backers were no longer as powerful as they once were - but it is more than possible that this could be an important factor.

A government that owes its strength at least in part to the fact that it is backed by the Wizard of Oz is not as invulnerable as it may once have seemed - which may be why in Tunis and Cairo it's been the people out on the streets who look as if they have the upper hand.

As I noted on this blog just three weeks ago, Arab leaders have a habit of sticking around. I cited Muammar Gaddafi in Libya (41 years in power); President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen (33 years); and yes, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt (30 years). Now, under pressure from the streets, Saleh and Mubarak have both pledged to stand down at the next election, and of course President Ben Ali of Tunisia is now ex-President Ben Ali and is settling into exile in Saudi Arabia.

So is democracy on the march through the Arab world? After Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, east Asia, all of which have embraced various forms of democracy over the past 30 years, is it now, at last, the Arabs' turn?

It's still too soon to tell. I'm keeping a close eye on the Egyptian army and the newly-appointed vice-president Omar Suleiman, formerly the country's hugely powerful head of intelligence, long regarded as the US's point man in Cairo - and chillingly described by one US this week as "a charitable man, friendly ... he tortures only people that he doesn't know."

I'm also intrigued by the reaction from Turkey, a country that knows full well what it's like having an army playing a major political role behind the scenes. This was the message from the Turkish prime minister, , to President Mubarak this week: "I say that you must listen, and we must listen, to the people's outcry, to their extremely humanitarian demands. Meet the people's desire for change with no hesitation. I am saying this clearly: You must be the first to take a step for Egypt's peace, security, and stability ... Take steps that will satisfy the people."

So could a post-Mubarak Egypt become an Arab Turkey - mildly Islamist, but broadly pluralist? Or will strongman autocrat Mubarak make way for strongman autocrat Suleiman?

I think I know which of the alternatives the US and Israel would prefer - but how about those thousands of people out on the streets? After all, the 1989 revolutions in Europe didn't lead overnight to a new generation of non-Communist leaders - so it may be a while before a clearer picture of Egypt's future begins to emerge.

For now, the demands from the streets are clear enough: Mubarak must go, his regime must fall, the corrupt must be punished and jobs must be found for the unemployed. But there are still plenty of people whose physical and financial security depend on the regime's survival: you don't run an autocracy for 30 years without building up a pretty impressive client base. Besides, many people fear the uncertainty, confusion and potential dangers that could follow a precipitate presidential resignation.

So don't assume that a massive change is on the way. Just because the Wizard of Oz says there must be change, doesn't mean that change will follow. After all, when Dorothy's dog Toto pulled back that curtain revealing the wizard's powerlessness, we saw him pulling at all sorts of levers to no great effect.

Yes, the people of Cairo are still out on the streets, but it's not over yet.

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