Friday July 13, 2012, 4:25 am
Thanks, noted.

Friday July 13, 2012, 6:15 am
Noted. Thanks.

Friday July 13, 2012, 10:18 am
In other words, Egypt is in a "wait and see" period. From the looks of it, Egypt's future looks bleak.

Friday July 13, 2012, 2:47 pm
There is, I think, an error in the article:

Religious supremacists and military dictatorships are not actually compatible. Their agreement with classic authoritarianism lies in the belief that the legitimacy of government does not arise from service to citizens and ends there. The dictators over the years have established legitimacy of government from its ability to enforce laws while the religious supremacists seek a regime that draws its legitimacy from religion. They may both be called "conservatives", but they are as different from each other as they are from pro-democracy factions.

The reason why there wasn't much defiance before is because any organized defiance was crushed. Without a free press, without the freedom to organize a political party, and with any nuclei of defiance nipped in the bud, they could never organize before. Perhaps more importantly, the army has more guns than the civilian population, uses more effective guns, is better-trained, and is better organized than any resistance could be. It also has other weapons, including heavier ones, aircraft, etc. Defiance would either be nipped in the bud or grow into a doomed rebellion, drawing in large numbers of government-opponents and giving grounds for a crackdown. It was lack of ability, not motivation, that prevented widespread violence. With Morsi in power, the military may be split in case of violence between those who oppose the religious supremacists and those who accept civilian control of the military. This will end badly for Egyptians.

Friday July 13, 2012, 6:21 pm
OP-ED: IN EGYPT, VIOLENCE EXPOSES LONGTIME DOUBLE GAME OF ISLAMISTS AND STATE

Egypt's economy depends mainly on agriculture, media, petroleum exports, exports of natural gas, and tourism; there are also more than three million Egyptians working abroad, mainly in Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf and Europe. The completion of the Aswan High Dam in 1970 and the resultant Lake Nasser have altered the time-honored place of the Nile River in the agriculture and ecology of Egypt. A rapidly growing population, limited arable land, and dependence on the Nile all continue to overtax resources and stress the economy.[93]

Suez Canal Bridge
The government has invested in communications and physical infrastructure. Egypt has received U.S. foreign aid (since 1979, an average of $2.2 billion per year) and is the third-largest recipient of such funds from the United States following the Iraq war. Its main revenues however come from tourism as well as traffic that goes through the Suez Canal.[citation needed]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt

Monday July 16, 2012, 1:26 pm
Well, I would not advise any Westerner to go and visit Egypt, even for the sake of pyramids at this time.

If Islamists will go ahead and blew up the pyramids - something they wanted and promised to do - Egypt will get even less tourists. Too bad, but backwardness in ideology leads to cuts in the income.