Looking back at my earlier blog posts - not too terrible

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When I started this blog I tried to cover all of Africa and didn't keep up very well. On January 18, following Tunisia's president stepping down in response to protests, I wrote that "some rulers in the area, like Mubarak and Qaddafi, might want to worry." Both of them ended up stepping down in response to protests or civil war, Mubarak a few weeks later, Qaddafi several months later.

In March 2011, I wrote that " I'm fairly optimistic that the military will eventually allow for democratic elections, but they will continue to be a power behind the scenes, perhaps as they traditionally have been in Turkey. They might even arrange to have their role in the political system formalized in a new more democratic constitution." The parliamentary elections were held later that year and presidential elections in 2012. The military took power in a coup in 2013, and in the new constitutions, the military's power is formalized:

"The 2014 Egyptian constitution gives SCAF the right to choose the defense minister for the next two presidential terms – a total of eight years. This was widely seen as a kind of icing on the cake in regard to the 2013 constitution, which already stipulated that the minister of defense would not be civilian but had to be chosen from among the ranks of military officers."

I'm sure I made some bad predictions too but I'll just enjoy the picked cherries for now.

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