I've been offline for a few days so this is a little out of date, but still important.

I have a student who is in Budapest, Hungary, where she is witnessing the growing pains of democracy. Here is an excerpt from her email to me:

You can NOT imagine what I have seen today. Everything started out fine, but to make a long story short we ran into a parade that then turned into a mob that stormed parliament. We thought we were far enough away and then we got caught between rioters and peaceful demonstrators...THOUSANDS! We were watching everything at Deak Ter and Ezerbet Ter which is right near parliament and then these people started taking tanks and driving them at the police. We had seen the tear gas before and yes it burned a little but then it all went to hell. Tear gas bombs rained down EVERYWHERE...rubber bullets...the whole deal. Literally a tear gas thing got set off 5 feet away and we couldn't do anything but try to push through the masses of people all ages. I could not believe what I was seeing. Though I really could not see. It was absolutely terrifying. The police just suddenly snapped and it didn't matter if you were old, young or anything...they just let loose. After that we went to an official celebration where I got to see the Prime Minister...as well as all the people that hated him. We thought that would be the end, but the main clashes between the protesters/demonstrators/rioters happens to be where we live. Right now as I write this there is still tear gas in our flat coming from the outside.