Heba Morayef, Egypt director at Human Rights Watch, said the army had improved its public relations machine markedly since the tumultuous 17 months the military spent running the country after Mubarak's fall.At that time, many people blamed the army for violent crackdowns on protests and activists, which led the military to make several ill-judged responses.This time, a new army spokesman - the urbane, British-trained Colonel Ahmed Ali - called a press conference to make the military's case plainly and clearly, using videos taken during the clashes to try to prove his point.Journalists applauded when he finished."They weren't under any public pressure, and they knew there wouldn't be any push back," Morayef said.

Rumors, accusations, and mobile-phone footage flooded the airwaves and TV channels. The private cable stations have supported Morsi’s ouster, and the national-TV channels virtually ignored the footage of gunshot wounds and dead bodies laid out in a makeshift field hospital under sleeping bags and an Egyptian flag. All day, they have played a pro-Army montage on a continuous loop: a wounded soldier being carried to safety, a man in a black balaclava carrying a shotgun amid an otherwise unarmed knot of protesters, a pistol flash from behind a brick corner, bottles of whiskey allegedly found in “devout” protestor’s tents.

I have been in Rabaa for several days, and most of the Islamists I spoke to were at pains to avoid criticizing the Army. Ranks of Brotherhood even lined up to protect the gates of a military-administration building. Plenty were carrying big bamboo sticks, but I saw no guns or knives, and the atmosphere was friendly and peaceful. On Monday morning, they were building low walls, using dug-up paving stones as bricks and as barricades. Some with bloodstained T-shirts, some with bandaged foreheads from bird shot, they gathered around any foreign journalist, holding up spent bullet casings with the initials of the Egyptian Armed inscribed on them, desperate to have their story told. People I spoke to in a smallish crowd at a corrugated iron barricade, behind the barbed-wire front line, claimed that the Army had massacred people as they prayed. “Is this the democracy the Americans called for?” “A bullet grazed the forehead of the man standing next to me!” “There were Army snipers on the roofs!” “They shot tear gas!” “This is just another military coup!” As I listened to them, I was startled by a cracking noise that might have been a double gunshot, or might have been part of the adjacent building, which was still on fire, collapsing. Minutes later, some tear gas wafted over and a man, almost unconscious and gasping for air, was sped away on a motorcycle for treatment. Funerals for the dead went on throughout the afternoon.

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Christians increasingly felt marginalized under Morsi. Brotherhood-allied media regularly used sectarian language and claims. Many Christians felt unprotected from sectarian violence and that official moves were meant as decorative and to appease international opinion. Many also were deeply perturbed by Morsi's failing to show up for the pope’s enthronement. Few Christians were appointed to high-ranking positions in the state, and claims that the president would appoint vice presidents and include a Christian were not fulfilled.

Immediately after his speech, the investment authority and the prosecutor’s office began to move against the opposition media again, including putting the owner of an opposition channel on a no-fly list, reportedly restarting investigations against media figures. One channel was even taken off the air, and there was wide acceptance that other private media channels and figures were going to be decisively pursued once the June 30 protests would amount to nothing. There were even considerable leaks within the opposition before the uprising that the prosecution was planning to crack down on them after the June 30 protests, though that is a claim more difficult to substantiate. The lead management of a government-run conference center, which had recently hosted opposition press, was also sacked the following day.

Egypt will never find stability, and its democracy will never thrive, without inclusiveness, fairness, due process and separation of powers. The Brotherhood and its big base cannot be excluded or treated outside of due process. Repression, especially of a genuinely sizable, believing and passionate public group, will only lead to an explosion.