The Spring Issue of the Middle East Journal

Okay, it's time for the commercial break. The Spring 2009 issue of The Middle East Journal reached readers a week or two ago, but for technical reasons the electronic edition is only now up, and I had waited until it appeared to link to it. If you're a subscriber and haven't used the electronic edition before, you'll need your subscriber number from your mailing label. If you don't subscribe they're available for purchase. (As of this moment the current issue articles seem to be priced in pounds sterling, which I think is a glitch to be fixed. Later: I'm told it's only pricing in sterling on my home laptop. The MEI computers are showing dollars.)

The individual articles are:

• Lawrence Pintak, "Border Guards of the 'Imagined' Watan: Arab Journalists and the New Arab Consciousness." Former CBS correspondent Larry Pintak, now Director of the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at the American University in Cairo, analyzes a survey of Arab journalists and argues they are the vanguard of a new Arab nationalism.
• Jean-Pierre Filiu, "The Local and Global Jihad of al-Qa‘ida in the Islamic Maghrib." A study by a scholar from Sciences-Po in Paris of the radical Islamist Algerian group formerly known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat.
• Pinar Ipek, "Azerbaijan's Foreign Policy and Challenges for Energy Security." Ipek, a professor at Bilkent University in Turkey, analyzes Azerbaijani foreign policy since the fall of the Soviet Union.
• Alisa Rubin Peled, Shari‘a Under CHallenge: The Political History of Islamic Legal Institutions in Israel, A study, including newly declassified material, of the history of Islamic law in Israel, and the emergenced of an "agreement on how to disagree" between the government and the shari‘ court system.
• Victor Nemchenok, "'That So Fair a Thing Could Be So Frail': The Ford Foundation and the Failure of Rural Development in Iran, 1953-1964." A Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia, Nemchenok uses Ford Foundation archives to examine the failure of the foundations rural development efforts under the Shah, concluding that Cold War motivations in US policy predominated over development efforts.
• Book Review Article: Steven A. Cook, "The Big Chill: Democracy Promotion in the Arab Middle East." Cook, of the Council on Foreign Relations, reviews several recent books dealing with US efforts to promote democracy. If you download it you will get the whole book review session.