Auld Lang Syne

Robert Dreyfuss finally gets around to penning the piece on the Muslim Brotherhood he promised here. It's a useful overview of the Brotherhood's history, influence, and possible mellowing. Since the January 25 rebellion started, almost everything on the net about the Brotherhood has cheerfully ignored their off-and-on history as clients of the US (and the British), part of imperial policies designed to marginalise Third World leftists and nationalists by abetting the Religious Right. Mr Dreyfuss includes this history - unsurprisingly, as it was a major strand of the thesis of his good-book-with-a-silly-title Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. More comprehensive coverage is supplied in the linked article by Ian Johnson. Both Mr Dreyfuss and Mr Johnson can't resist including the photograph of Brotherhood leader Said Ramadan meeting that radical leftist and coiner of the phrase "the military-industrial complex" Dwight Eisenhower.