Aegypt"s Tummy Phobia

Ikwhan!

Girl hating Aegypt - recently time traveling back to the 7th century via Sunnilicious Preacher Command is living up to the new age adage of "No fun of anykind!"

Aegypt  just banned the Belly Dancing Channel!

Who knew?

It is evidently quite popular but apparently offensive to some of the rising Islamist forces in Egypt.

It is not clear how much the Ikwhan party had to do with the belly ban, but what is clear is that no one in Egypt is having much fun these days.

The country is more divided than ever between "Slamist and less religious and liberal parties, and the Egyptian currency has lost 8 percent of its value against the dollar in the last two months. Even more disturbing, there has been a sharp increase lately in cases of police brutality and rape directed at opposition protesters. It is all adding up to the first impression that President Mohammed Morsi and the You Know What Brotherhood are blowing their first chance at power.

Egypt is in dire economic condition. Youth unemployment is rampant, everything is in decay, tourism and foreign investment and reserves are down sharply. As a result, Egypt needs an IMF bailout. Any bailout, though, will involve economic pain — including cuts in food and fuel subsidies to shrink Egypt's steadily widening budget deficit. This will hurt.

In order to get Egyptians to sign on to that pain, a big majority needs to feel invested in the government and its success. And that is not the case today.

The Brotherhood, though, doesn't just need a new governing strategy. It needs to understand that its version of political Islam — which is resistant to women's empowerment and religious and political pluralism — might be sustainable if you are Iran or Saudi Arabia, and you have huge reserves of oil and gas to buy off all the contradictions between your ideology and economic growth.

But if you are Egypt and basically your only natural resource is your people — men and women — you need to be as open to the world and modernity as possible to unleash all of their potential for growth.

Bottom line: Either the Ikwhan changes or it fails — and the sooner it realizes that the better.

Pic - "Pres Morsi Morsi is to visit 44 soon - and he's only got like one chance to make a 2nd impression if he wants to continue to get Great Satan"s Foreign Aid from Congress. Yet the more I see of Ikwhan rule in Egypt, the more I wonder if it has any second impression to offer."