Around the Web

I'm working on a Mumbai post, but it's going to take a few days.  In the meantime, I would suggest you read my study of Dhiren Barot's (aka Issa al-Hindi) 1998 book, The Army of Madinah in Kashmir.  This is the memoir of an AQ emir's time fighting for Lashkar-e-Tayyiba in Kashmir.

A Free Prediction (and worth every penny of it):  In two years you're going to see package tours to Saudi Arabia and Iraq:

A group of 38 tourists from the US arrived in Tabuk Friday from Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt. The tourist trip has come as part of the ongoing cooperation of the Saudi Supreme Commission for Tourism and local tourism companies....The government passed a law in 2007 allowing domestic travel agencies to bring in foreign tours.

In OSINT news:  The power of distributed networks to share information was on display this past week in Mumbai.  Meanwhile, the power of distributed networks to absorb information and spit it out again was on display in NYC after a Belgian cabinet minister became the subject of a blogging bartender. 

Several professional librarians organizations have teamed up to develop something better than Google: 

While experts from three top library and information science institutions have begun a process that they promise will lead to a new search engine with a new infrastructure designed to emphasize authoritative content, the process is at very early stages yet.

In other OSINT news:  You can now Google the archive of Life magazine.  Lot's of images that may be new to you, including this of the Blind Sheikh, and other curiosities.

Thomas Barnett notices the "shift into Africa." Here's a question for those readers in the IC:  Are we ready for Africa?

Mr. Axe on the Good News and Bad News in Somalia:

That’s good news, for Islamists likely represent Somalia’s future. This year, two main Islamic groups have made steady gains in the country’s south, two years after they were driven from Mogadishu by a mixed army of Ethiopians, northern Somali militiamen and U.S. Special Forces.

Something from the Yeah, duh! files:  International hotels draw elites and terror threat (AP)

In a related link, center-right talk show host Hugh Hewitt links to some good advice for corporate CEOs who find their employees in the middle of a crisis.

Abu Muqawama has a lite reading list for the Christmas holidays.

I was going to post on the Salafist and Salafist/Jihadist response to the Mumbai attacks, but the Jawa folks beat me to it.  No need to reinvent the wheel.  Lest you think it's only The Pest's little following doing this, I saw other, more "mainstream," Salafist blogs, doing the same thing.  That said, I just don't think this is important enough to blog on.

New issue of Parameters (via Small Wars Journal)

"Saudi Interior Minister Appeals to Religious and Education Establishments to Fight Ideological Extremism in the Country" (Via MEMRI)

Also, a different type of campus radical.  Or is that a radical campus? You decide!

And last but not least, a new article:

Legal Safeguards in Egypt's Petroleum Concession Agreements
Author: Khatchadourian, Minas1
Source: Arab Law Quarterly, Volume 22, Number 4, 2008 , pp. 387-396(10)