So who's protesting this weekend

[Ryoki]

I think the multitude of political threads, the hope expressed by people here that Ron Paul will fix things etc. pretty much says you* still want to believe the situation can be resolved politically. So, you don't really think the system is beyond repair.

If you did, you'd have moved out of the country by now, or you'd be involved in some kind of resistance movement.

* i mean the Americans that are politically concious on this forum like yourself, Rook, Nightshade, hell maybe even soapy :P

[menkent]

turkey narf

just be careful comparing Turkey to any of the Arab states... totally different culture (and economy and history and...). the example of Ataturk would probably be worth looking at, if any of the CIA wonks currently trying to reinvent nation building were readers. likewise, even the cold war would be worth looking at, in the sense that efforts to militarily contain a political ideology proved largely futile (unless you're a republican, in which case you still think it totally worked). glasnost won the cold war, not star wars.