Links from my del.icio.us account for October 22nd through October 25th:
- Christopher Ketcham: An Israeli Trojan Horse – More on Israel's cornering of high-tech surveillance market in US, relationship with NSA
- Is Israel’s booming high-tech industry a branch of the Mossad? – Haaretz – The NSA – Israeli high tech connection
- Al-Ahram Weekly | Opinion | MB goes rural – Very interesting column by MB-watcher Hossam Tammam on the ruralization of the MB's leadership.
- LobeLog.com » Blog Archive » Top Obama Adviser Signs on to Roadmap to War with Iran – More on Ross-Obama relationship, Ross' role in hawkish Iran plan
- Dennis Ross on why he’s working for Obama and how he’d talk to Iran – Haaretz – Israel News – SecState, personal envoy to Iran positions considered for Ross under Obama
- An End to Dubai’s Building Boom? | Newsweek.com – Dubai is heavily leveraged: "A recent Moody's report found that Dubai's leverage now exceeds its GDP, and is likely to continue to outpace growth for another five years."
- Desperate Egyptians commit suicide after financial loss – "Last week, Ahmed Nasreddin Abdelaal, an electrical equipment salesman in his fifties and a small-time stock market investor, committed suicide after a huge loss on the exchange."
- Middle East Analyst » Blog Archive » Has Nasrallah Been Poisoned? – Conspiracy theory…
- Ultraconservative Islam on Rise in Mideast – On the growing popularity of contemporary salafism
The “MB goes rural” article doesn’t actually discuss whether the MB are spreading to rural areas or do more than suggest the MB’s organizational and leadership style is getting increasingly patriarchal/feudal. And while lines like “Duplicity, another trait of rural communities, is also rampant” are good for a giggle, this statement hardly counts as a verifiable fact.
Yes that line was funny – but then again most Cairenes I’ve met think the fellah is sneaky and stingy by nature.
Tammam, a former MB who wrote a 2004 book on the Ikhwan that began the wave of “critical-but-sympathetic-but-critical” works on the topic, could have gone into the remarkable electoral expansion of the MB in the Sa’id in the last elections, or done some sociological research into how towns like Mansoura (Khairat al-Shater’s fiefdom) are now almost entirely culturally Ikhwani (also Zagazig, others I’m sure), but in a manner that is probably more conservative-salafi than the original Ikhwan of the 30s and 40s.
Some academic has a great book to do on the changes in rural, especially Delta, Egypt since the 1970s — particularly those changes brought on by the rural universities program and migration to the Gulf.
Re the Lobe article, this bit of comedy adds a nice coda:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/radio/2008/10/24/katzman/index.html