Egypt

Nobody is asking my advice there, but if some of the police really joined the protesters as reported a few days ago, Mubarak should have read the handwriting on the wall and decamped. Of course he may not be very familiar with the Old Testament... He's long overdue to leave.

I hope the Egyptians can do better than a marriage between the Muslim Brotherhood (fountainhead of several flavors of Sunni extremists) and Mohammed ElBaradei (client of Shiite Iran). Even the army would probably be better than that.

I wonder what the MB would look like in power. Perhaps the day-to-day management duties would temper the rhetoric. I'm not sure how amenable Egyptians (the descendants of the founders of the world's oldest recorded civilization) would be to Bamyan Buddah activity, or even to making life hard for the infidel tourists that bring so much money to the country. I'm pretty sure the MB would declare the treaty with Israel to be a dead letter, but whether that would be rhetoric only or the start of trouble again I don't know. If they don't feel strong enough to harass Israel they'll take it out on more local targets.

Short term I'd say "trouble." Especially for Copts.