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Commented on Egypt
An alternative to the current government will need an organization to take matters into its hands. Who in Egypt has a organization ready? Only the Muslim Brotherhood. That is not to say they will inevitably take over - the Army...
Comment Threads
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Charlie Stross commented on
Egypt
Yes, well -- it depends from whose perspective one is evaluating the change in government, doesn't it? I'd like to note at this point that representative democracies with mixed-mode economies very seldom go to war. In the short term, the presence of such governments in the middle east -- legitimized by popular support -- is going to be a real threat to Israel's claim of moral high ground in the region. But in the long term, it may prove to be a vital prerequisite for a permanent solution to the Arab/Israeli dispute....
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brucecohenpdx commented on
Egypt
And people from ex-Warsaw Pact countries like the Czech Republic who have some experience in building democracies in formerly autocratic societies have volunteered to act as consultants for the process in Egypt....
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bellinghman commented on
Egypt
Ooo, it looks like the spammer took a bit of a previous comment (#11 in this case), then followed it with some Markov chain generated extra verbiage. I was recently wondering how soon that would happen. (Or perhaps how soon it would happen again - no, no, I'm sure that ARCHAEOPTERYX is genuine.)...
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bellinghman commented on
Egypt
In Opera, I just mouse-hover over it, and the link appears in my status bar. But yes, same idea. The comment content is the kicker though - if it's comprehensible, apposite to the existing content and original within the thread, then it can link where it likes. xkcd (as so often) made the only comment required....
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Charlie Stross commented on
Egypt
David, I suspect you over-estimate the power of individuals to affect institutions. Put it another way: if Bashar al-Assad stood up and announced that he thought real democracy and human rights were a good idea, how long would it take before a bunch of Baath party ministers arranged a convenient accident for him? Or, at best, a bloodless palace coup, for the unforgivable crime of rocking the boat and jeopardizing the combined set of all their personal fiefdoms. There's also a flip side, as the Stanford Prison Experiment demonstrated: if you parachute somebody into a role, and surround them with...
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