[Old Teufel Hunden]

"Funny, I think we watched either a new, and much worse dictatorship being born, or a military junta being created."

If you are referring to Egypt, we can hope for the best. In fact, the military there is pro western. They train in the U.S. and I know that Marines have trained with them in the past during ops in the Med.

Most people don't realize, but the seeds of revolution in Russia were sown in 1815, not 1917. When the Russian military helped to guard and transition the French state after Napolean. It is there they learned of Freedoms, Liberty and liberal enlightened thinking. However, during the whole of the 19th century, these movements were repressed brutally by the Tsars while the rest of the ruling families of Europe (except the Hapsburgs) were giving concessions to Democracy and personal liberty. During the mid 19th century Alexander II tried to implement reforms and was putting Russia on the road to constitutional monarchy. He was killed by a bomber in 1881. At the time, he was working on having a democratically elected Duma put into place. It was to be implemented in a couple days, however his successor (Alexander III) tore those plans up and brutally cracked down on the people.

I guess my whole point is that when you have a nascent Democratic movement, history has shown that the longer you repress it, the more chance you have of another dictator seizing power. I'm concerned about what's going to happen in Egypt. I think the demonstraters in the square and the military want some form of democratically elected, secular liberal government. However, I do fear for the illiterate and poor. What do they want? We shall see...

[Little Ray]

I have nothing but good wishes for the people of Egypt.
But I can’t think of many revolutions that have gone well since the American Revolution and we had awfully good material with which to work. I don’t think we could pull something like that off today.
Maybe the Romanian Revolution? That’s about it.