Weekend Reading

If the new readers are still around, perhaps I should explain that since I don't blog on weekends, I've taken to putting together a sort of catchall "weekend reading" list of reports, studies, or postings of interest in the field. It's pretty much whatever I'm aware of and isn't meant to be comprehensive.

And, a I noted in the previous post, according to my counter this will be the 400th post since starting in January. A full hundred of those appeared in June, thanks to the Lebanese and Iranian electons, the Obama speech in Cairo and the Iranian uprising.

• The Carnegie Endowment's Arab Reform Bulletin has a special issue on the world economic crisis and its impact, offering a somewhat different emphasis than its usual concentration on democratization issues.

• David Pollock at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy has sometimes criticized methods of polling in the Arab world, but today he's noting some new polls that show the US doing better in the "Arab street." [Oops. For several hours I had it spelled "Pollack." Sorry, Dave. Must have been thinking of Ken. Fixed now.]
  

• Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Qatar-based, Egyptian-born television preacher often criticized in the West but much watched in the Middle East, has a new book out; Marc Lynch considers it quite important; Arabic Media Shack is more cautious; Al-Masry al-Youm serialized parts of it for those who read Arabic.

• The latest podcast is up at MEI: A View of the Current Situation in the Swat Valley and Waziristan by Pakistani Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Dr Babar Awan. (Podcast plays when you click the link, so use earphones if you're in a busy office.) Original details of the July 6 event are here.