Egypt new dark age

If it's optimism you are looking for, don't read Patrick Cockburn in The Independent.

There's no reason for optimism:

Egypt on the brink of a new dark age, as the generals close in for the kill

 [...] Just how far General Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi and the Egyptian army and security forces deliberately planned a massacre in order to rule out any future compromise is not clear. Probably the generals were not worried if they provoked a bloody confrontation. If ordinary peacetime politics are replaced by battles in the streets, guerrilla warfare or even civil war, then this merely reinforces the primacy of the armed forces and police. This process is already underway.

[...] As for those liberals, leftists and intelligentsia who imagined that the army and security forces were going to share power with others, it is worth recalling Lenin's contemptuous dismissal of a suggestion that he share power with political opponents. He said that the person who gave the advice showed "a sweet naivety which would be touching in a child but is repulsive in a person who has not yet been certified as feeble-minded." Link