Like a sci-fi monster, the blocks of the old regime break and dissolve only to rise again in a new configuration.
Therefore, the big question in Iran today is: Can the green revolution led by Mir Hussein Moussavi, and backed by masses of street protestors, do to the Islamic regime what Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian people did to the shah's regime — break its spell so all its barrels and bullets become meaningless?
Rather than trying to have several large changes underway at once, such as trying to lose weight, quit smoking, and increase your exercise regime, break the changes down into smaller lots and focus on one single resolution at a time.
French efforts to negotiate a compromise with Ho's regime broke down in December 1946, and a bloody eight-year war followed.
Monks waved the red "fighting peacock" flag, the emblem of the students who led the 1988 protests.That night the regime broke its silence at last.
We worked with them for two months and then the regime broke in again and so we all fled the town.
"All Egyptian people believe that their country is a great country with very deep roots in history, but the Mubarak regime broke our dignity in the Arab world and in the whole world," said Mohamed Serag, a professor at Cairo University.
Under pressure from the United States, the regime broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, but this deed was not favoured by many military officers, and Ramírez was removed by a coup.
Last month a host of stars, including Beyoncé and Nelly Furtado, were forced hastily to announce that they had given away proceeds from gigs they had performed for the family of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, when protests against his regime broke out.
Although largely officially ignored by the UN and OAU, this state based on the former British Somaliland Protectorate had initially joined Somalia, but in 1990, at the climax of the collapse of dictator Mohamed Siyad Barre's brutal regime, broke away to reassert its independence.
The World Trade Organisation, which polices the international market, agreed that the EU's banana regime broke its rules, but it has taken many years for a final agreement to be reached, as banana-producing countries, including the Windward Islands, Ghana and Cameroon, argued that many thousands of livelihoods would face a serious threat if they lost their special access to the European market.
