4 ChangeRevolution without revolutionaries: Asef Bayat
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Asef Bayat Posted by Stanford University Press: excepts from chapter one Revolutions of Wrong Times ……… Novel Revolutions? Why did the revolutions of 2011 turn out to be…
A Redder Shade of Green: Intersection of Science and Socialism. Book Review
Thursday, September 14, 2017
Ian Angus, Monthly Review Press Sarah Ensor’s review of this book appears on Socialist Review September 2017. The author describes this collection of articles as “debates, polemics and…
Sketching war: the writer who depicts Middle East conflict – in watercolour
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
Kilian Fox Posted on The Guardian/Observer on September 10, 2017 Guardian journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad’s drawings have helped him cope with reporting from the frontline. Now they will illustrate…
Exploring the Shadows of America’s Security State: Or How I Learned Not to Love Big Brother.
Friday, August 25, 2017
Alfred McCoy. First published on TomDispatch.com on August 24, 2017. [This piece has been adapted and expanded from the introduction to Alfred W. McCoy’s new book, In the…
The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II
Thursday, July 27, 2017
John Dower. Posted on TomDispatch on May 17, 2017. World War II marked the apogee of industrialized “total war.” Great powers savaged one another. Hostilities engulfed the globe….
Refugees: Should we build a wall around North Wales? Book Review
Monday, July 10, 2017
Daniel Trilling. First published London Review of Books Vol. 39 No. 14 · 13 July 2017 Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move by Reece Jones. Verso, 208 pp,…
Arab Spring after six years: “I see the potential for something good.” – interview with Asef Bayat
Sunday, July 9, 2017
Sonja Zekri. Sociologist Asef Bayat talks to journalist Sonja Zekri about his views on the Arab spring and his concept of post-Islamism. First published on Koepfe und Ideen…
Socialist Register 2017, Rethinking Revolution: Book Review
Friday, June 2, 2017
Gregory Albo and Leo Panitch One hundred years ago, “October 1917” galvanized leftists and oppressed peoples around the globe, and became the lodestar for 20th century politics. Today,…
Southern Insurgency: Challenging the narrative of working-class powerlessness. Book Review
Saturday, May 20, 2017
Book Review by Kyle Brown, International Socialist Review. Challenging the narrative of working-class powerlessness. By Immanuel Ness: Pluto Press, 2015 · 240 pages · $28.00 There is perhaps…
To the barricades: Has protesting become too easy?
Friday, May 12, 2017
Isaac Chotiner Slate. Book Review: Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. Interview with author Zenep Tufekc. First posted on Slate May 8, 2017….
Imperialism in the Twenty First Century: Book Review
Monday, March 13, 2017
Michael Roberts blog. A review of imperialism in the Twenty First century by John Smith, published by Monthly Review Press John Smith’s book is a powerful and searing…
Revolution in Iran: was it possible in 1921?
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
Fred Halliday, Libcom. Article discussing the little-known 1920-21 uprising in the Gilan province of northern Iran, and its importance for the workers’ movement in both Iran itself and…
Activestills: documenting Palestinians living under constant military threat
Thursday, February 2, 2017
Yonatan Mendel, London Review of Books. The Israeli government says there is no occupation; the documentary group Activestills shoots back with images of Palestinians living under constant military…
Book review: The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine
Thursday, December 15, 2016
Reviewed by Jim Miles, The Palestine Chronicle. The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine. Ben Ehrenreich. Granta Books, London, 2016. A small town in Palestinian…
Islamic State v al-Qaida: Book review
Sunday, October 30, 2016
Owen Bennet-Jones, London Review of Books. Isis: A History by Fawaz A. Gerges Princeton; Isis: Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan, Regan Arts;…
The other air force: Book review
Tuesday, October 4, 2016
James Snell, The New Arab. America, Matt Sienkiewicz asserts at the beginning of his new book The Other Air Force, “is not a subtle nation”. In many ways –…
Ancient Syrian Sites: A Different Story of Destruction
Saturday, October 1, 2016
Hugh Eakin, New York Review of Books. Among the major turning points of the Syrian conflict, few have been laden with as much symbolism—or geopolitical posturing—as the recapture…
Breakfast in the ruins
Friday, September 30, 2016
Ingrid D Rowland, New York Review of Books. In September 2015, the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles acquired the first photographs ever taken of Palmyra, the great…
Chaos and Caliphate: the Struggle for the Middle East. Book Review
Friday, September 16, 2016
Sean Ledwith, Counterfire. Recent events in both North America and the Middle East have illustrated how the chilling potency of the Islamic State group is far from exhausted….
The prison: Book review
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
Robin Yassin-Kassab, Qunfuz. From ‘Prisoner Cell Block H’ to ‘Orange is the New Black’, prison dramas fill the Anglo-Saxon screen. In the Arab world, you’re more likely to…
Book review: does terrorism work? A History
Thursday, September 8, 2016
Thomas Nagel, London Review of Books. Does Terrorism Work? A History by Richard English, Oxford When I am hit with news of yet another terrorist attack, I often…
Book Review: women fight the Islamic state
Monday, August 29, 2016
Janet Biehl, Roar. A Road Unforseen: Women fight the Islamic State, by Meredith Tax. Second Wave feminism, once it erupted in the late 1960s, called out misogyny where…
Lessons of the Syrian Revolution for Iranians
Thursday, August 4, 2016
Frieda Afari, Alliance of Middle East Socialists from Radio Zamaneh. An analysis of Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al Shami. Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War, Pluto…
The fall of the Turkish model: Book review
Saturday, July 30, 2016
Ece Temelkuran reviews book in New Left Review Fall of the Turkish model, by Cihan Tuğal, Verso books, 2016 If Cihan Tuğal’s book was filmed as a political…
American imperialism: exceptionalism and universalism
Saturday, July 9, 2016
Thomas Meaney London Review of Books American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers by Perry Anderson, Verso, A Sense of Power: The Roots of America’s Global Role by John…
How the Syrian Revolt Became Armed
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Robin Yassib-Kassab/Leila al-Shami The Daily Beast The Bashar al-Assad regime has burned Syria with artillery, Scud missiles, barrel bombs and sarin gas. According to the United Nations Human…
Egypt’s workers in revolt
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
Christine Thomas Socialist World Book Review: The Egyptians: a radical story • By Jack Shenker On 3 February the mutilated body of Italian student Giulio Regeni was found…
Wake Up and Smell the Oil
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
Eddie J. Girdner Monthly Review Book review: Greg Muttitt, Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq. Greg Muttitt quotes an Iraqi friend who pointed out…
Zionism, Imperialism, and Socialism
Saturday, June 4, 2016
Tom Mayer Monthly Review Moshé Machover, Israelis and Palestinians: Conflict and Resolution. Moshé Machover is a mathematician and political activist who was born in Tel Aviv in 1936…
The perils and promise of wartime analysis: Lessons from Syria
Sunday, April 10, 2016
Ghaleb Attrache Berkley Journal of Sociology For many, the “Syrian tragedy” is a prime example of popular aspirations gone disastrously awry, the “revolution-turned-civil-war”. Was any of this was…