Group items tagged

The head of Tunisia's Ennahda movement, Rachid Ghannouchi, was undecided if he would run for a new term at the top of the movement during its 10th congress in the second half of this year. "Ennahda is about to formulate its main conceptions," Ghannouchi said. "We cannot start talking about the relation between religion and politics before formulating these conceptions," he added.

Compiled by faculty members at the German University in Cairo, this working paper series addresses the effect that watsa has on competence and morality in Middle Eastern economics and society. The authors define watsa as, "the intervention of a patron in favor of a client to obtain benefits and/or resources from a third party." In simpler terms it is a system of social networking in Arab culture in which family and social ties play a significant role in the attainment of economic advantages and resources, largely in the hiring process in businesses and organizations. A person applying for a job seeks out watsa to increase their chances of getting hired. Comparable to nepotism and cronyism, but is not restricted to friends and associates, watsa can also involve strangers linked through some social web of people. Watsa runs somewhat parallel to a Chinese concept of guanxi, based on Confucian ethics and focusing on strong collective ties. While guanxi is a part of Chinese ethics it actually defies Muslim ethical values, which advocates hiring the person most capable. In a Jordanian survey, 87% of respondents want watsa eradicated. While we know that unemployment in the Arab region is widespread, we can assume that this motivates people to do anything they can to improve their chances of obtaining a job. However, the practice of watsa as a whole is actually degrading the economic systems in the Arab sates even further. The article explains the linkage between watsa and poor job performance, economic decline, and the festering of injustice and frustration among the masses in Arab countries.

This looks super interesting, but I can't get the link to open. Thanks for writing a thorough summary of it!

This article explores both the street and the formal art scene after the events of January 25. It discusses how these scenes have had both positive and negative signs (positive: the concept of social art "seems to be winning grounds in the fabric of social enterprises"/negative: the art scene is still "underdeveloped, fragmented and alien to the majority of its own people.").

This article gives insight on how the Muslim Brotherhood misjudged the support they had in Egypt, which assisted in the downfall of the Brotherhood. Another concept brought up was their actual lack of understanding and experience of governing a large population.

The limitations and punishments are a couple of the concepts discussed in this article. With the declaration of the Muslim Brotherhood being a terrorist group, some detail is shared regarding the problems that will now arise in other Arab countries concerning the group.

The first official report regarding the capture of two American ships was release at the beginning of this year (2016). This is an important concept in relations between two countries and helps see the power that exists with a country's international water line,

This is Keizers home page, which included a lot of photos of his work, and more specific things like his inspiration, influences, media and design philosophy. I found it interesting that his design philosophy was, "visual imagery that is thought provoking,satire,awakening,open ended with an emphasis on universal threads and concepts that we share collectively as a race". Insinuating more emphasis on race than a country as a whole.

Author J.M. Berger discusses ISIS's strategy on Twitter, comparing their highly skilled techniques on this platform to the likes of a P.R./ marketing team working for a Western corporation. Berger goes on to discuss programs that automatically post tweets to users accounts, an app they developed that provides updates, and an intricate system able to surpass Twitter's spam and security teams.