F.H. welcome back... how about giving us your "insider-extreme" take on the situation? You are probably the best qualified among us to do that.

Do you think Steven is right? (I do) Will the military allow a democratically elected regime which is not of "it's" preferred flavor?

Pericles.. not sure what you have for brekky..but I'd discontinue it.. having a bad effect on your thinking.

I was not presenting Becks view as "The Answer" I was in fact showing what I consider to be a deficiency.

I suppose for one who evaluates the likes of Beck via the Soros funded MediaMatters and other left wing blogs... your myopic view is comprehensible.

But "Hollywood Liberals"... hmmm why not read such things from the horses mouth itself?

"How Jewish is hollywood?" by Joel Stein. Let me guess.. "he was writing tongue in cheek?"

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-stein19-2008dec19,0,4676183.column

Fellow_Human

Here's a prediction.

No matter what happens in Egypt in the next few days or weeks, a decade hence most Egyptians will be even poorer and more desperate than they are now and they still won't have a democracy worthy of the name.

Care to take any bets?

I won't bet against that. I think you are on a sure winner.

David

Talking about Democracy, could anyone please tell if there actually is an actual democratic country ? I'd dearly love to know.

individual

It’s a matter of degree. In Australia, for example:

In theory:

--The government cannot just lock you up. They need to persuade a jury that you are guilty of some crime beyond all reasonable doubt.

--You can get rid of the government with ballots rather than bullets.

--You can start a new political party.

--Within certain very wide limits you can say what you like – there is a high degree of freedom of speech.

Is Australia a perfect democracy? No. In fact there’s probably no such thing.

Does the government always respect the rights of Australians? Usually, but not always.

Do you have the right of redress in court? Usually but it can be expensive.

Only someone who is determined not to connect the dots would profess to see no difference between, say, Australia and Egypt.

You can point to areas in which the government went against the wishes of the people – eg participating in the invasion of Iraq. But it was an ELECTED government and if the people had objected strongly enough they could have tossed the government out within a very short period. We have a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. We elect people – often unfortunately party hacks – to take decisions.

So, in answer to you question, there are some countries that are highly democratic, some that are less so and some that are despotic. It's a matter of degree.

There is another point that needs to be made about democracies. They have a relatively free media. So we know in great detail about the pathologies that afflict, say, the USA, India or South Africa.

However if you were to rely on the North Korean or Saudi media you would imagine that these were near perfect societies. And during Mubarak’s time in office, had you relied on the Egyptian media, you may have thought he was a much-loved leader.

People who pooh pooh democracy conveniently forget this. The reason we don’t know how bad Syrian society is, is because the media can’t tell us.

We know the faults of Australia because the ABC or The Age tell us.

Imagine a state controlled Libyan TV staton being as critical of Gadaffi as the ABC was of John Howard