Egypt's Deepening Splits as the Year Winds Down

Egypt's year is ending badly; key figures from Al Jazeera English's Cairo Bureau have been arrested for "reporting false news" and meeting with members of the now banned Muslim Brotherhood. And while Al Jazeera's Arabic services have already been suppressed, leftist and secular critics are also under fire, as are Islamic charities. The violence at Al-Azhar and other universities during final exams and the recent wave of bombings is not reassuring to those of us who keep telling ourselves that "Egypt is not Algeria in the 1990s."

So has everybody associated with Morsi and the Brotherhood been arrested? Well, no, not quite, but you won't see this picture in the state media these days.

The Sisi cult continues to reach levels not seen since the Nasser era, aided and abetted by people who used to be reformers, liberals, and even revolutionaries.

As will be seen in in this, via The Arabist,  not a great way to start a week, let alone a new year: