Morning all, apologies for my apparent disappearance, but events in the offline professional world* have recently taken priority over delivering you reports of idiocy from Parliament; funny pictures from elsewhere on the Internet; or my usual flippant commentary of events to which I have no part of.
With that said, I have some Sunday flippancy for you all about the rather odd, and seemingly domino effect occurring across the North African coast at the moment. I doubt many have posited this thought, but depending on how events turn we could be about to witness an almighty ruck.
You see, it occurs to me that there is talk about Egypt that suggest the Muslim Brotherhood may be making a push for some sort power, or least hoping to step in and fill a power vacuum should it appear when and if Mubarak does the proverbial "runner" because he's worried he's going to be taken out Ceauşescu-style.
The thing about the Muslim Brotherhood is, of course, that they're as equally oppressive as that which has come before, and they're rather partial to the idea of Islamism rather than Islam - you know, the whole global caliphate type thing, a bit of Sharia law chucked in for good measure, and the total subjugation of man before other men, sorry, I mean Allah.
The big problem though is that sandwiched between them and Jordan (where they also have a presence) should they take power is this little sliver of a country called Israel where they following the same God, albeit with a different name, and errr, shall we say, don't get on with their possible new neighbouring powers all that well.
They are, of course, severely outnumbered, but have a trick up their sleeve because they have big bombs that can kill many many people, and they're not afraid to take pre-emptive action against states that potentially threaten their existence. You may not like that but it is a reality.
So where does that leave the situation? Well, if the Muslim Brotherhood succeed in tapping into the civil unrest, we could be about to witness what I believe is known in technical and diplomatic circle as a "shitstorm". Now obviously this isn't a very cheery thought but it's worth noting.
The optimist would no doubt be hoping for the sweeping democratic change, the birth of new states with moderate and sane checks and balances on power, and rather large group hug with all neighbours and then some sort of hippy-style free love movement. This would be nice, wouldn't it?
But then their is the pessimistic cynical reaction, sometimes called realism, that says what will actually happen is that one dictatorship will be replaced by another dictatorship albeit under the guise of spreading freedom and liberty just to calm everyone down, and then everything goes back to how it is.
Who knows what will happen though, but if I were a betting man I would have my money on the shitstorm.
* Those events will be ongoing for some time, but I'm not going to let them stop me posting stuff when I can.
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