“Egyptian state media have closed ranks in support of the military and its version of the removal of President Mohamed Morsi as well as Monday’s killing of 55 supporters of the deposed Islamist leader in a shooting at a protest in Cairo. In an atmosphere of extreme polarisation, the country’s state and many independent news organisations are now solidly backing the interim president Adly Mansour, who was installed by the army last week. TV channels sympathetic to Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood have been shut down. Foreign media outfits perceived as being sympathetic to Islamists are being attacked, with CNN and al-Jazeera TV singled out for hostility. The US news network has been vilified by protesters as being pro-Brotherhood, partly because it described the military’s move as a coup. In one very public display, al-Jazeera Arabic………………”

Egypt has changed in more than one way over the past week. During the Morsi term, Egyptian media and internet bloggers and social media made a lot of fun of Morsi and the Muslim brotherhood. Rightly so. They called him and his party all kinds of names and epithets: kharoof, “sheep” was one of their favorites, and they were not punished. Nowadays, if you stick your tongue at a photograph of General Sisi you could get beaten up, lynched, or worse. Egyptian media has fallen in line: they are like all beginning to resemble state media now. The Egyptian army, which lost almost every one of its wars with the possible exception of the War on Pigs in 2009, is treated like a bunch of gods. That is because it controls all political power and so much of the economy and it does not hesitate to wield both against the national interest in order to stay in power.
The generals in Egypt are almost like the ayatollahs in Iran. As long as Egyptians revere the generals, Egypt will not achieve democracy.

Cheers
mhg