Book Reviews

Review. The Road To Fatima Gate

March 7th, 2011

The Road to Fatima Gate
The Beirut Spring, the rise of Hezbollah, and the Iranian war against Israel

By Michael J Totten
Encounter Books, Publication Date: April 5th 2011

road to fatima gate michael totten israel hezbollah iran middle east politics book review The current political and social upheaval throughout the Middle East and North Africa has highlighted something that those of us living in the region have known for a long time; just how rare accurate reporting and analysis of events in this area is.

Too much of the commentary produced by foreign correspondents and Middle East ‘experts’ is one-dimensional and it is the result of both the inability of writers to set aside their own cultural straight-jackets which have little or no relevance in this region, together with the commercial pressures to compete for headlines in a digital age in which speed and volume of content trump accuracy and quality reporting.

I often think of this prevalent sort of Middle East journalism in terms of mass-produced, flat-pack chipboard furniture. It’s not meant to last, it all looks pretty...More >>

Review. The Long War for Freedom

February 28th, 2011

The Long War For Freedom
The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East

By Barry Rubin
Wiley 2005, 304 pp.

Revolution is blazing through the Middle East. Are we truly looking at the dawn of a new democratic age, with progressive Arab and Persian opposition forces leading the charge, as Terry Glavin suggested this morning in The Leaving's Of Yesterday's Men? As much respect as I have for Glavin's insights, on this occasion I'm not certain I can rise quite to that level of triumphalism. Perhaps it has something to do with my reading of Barry Rubin's The Long War For Freedom.

Until about six weeks ago, the pharaohs of the Middle East seemed like they might last at least until midway to the next century. Today, the liberal democrats who helped bring down these tyrants are very much in danger of losing whatever ground they've gained to Islamists and nationalist demagogues. As Rubin explains, the deck was stacked against them even before these...More >>

The War Of Ideas

September 29th, 2010

The War of Ideas

Jihadism Against Democracy

By Walid Phares

Palgrave Macmillian 2007, 250 pp.

I was at a baseball game this summer when the topic of the Afghanistan war came up. I'd only met the fellow a few hours before, a real estate agent by trade. He didn't claim to be any sort of expert on international relations. But a news item that week about soldiers getting killed by IEDs had got him worked up. "We've spent all of this money and our soldiers are dying and for what?" he started. "We ought to just hand over $15 billion to the Taliban and call it even."

The comments betrayed a stunning ignorance. Yet the man seemed positively proud of his declaration, as though he'd figured out a common-sense solution to the problem of the global jihad. If only world leaders would listen to him, we could bribe these fellows for a lot less than the cost of shooting Hellfire missiles at them. Then we could all go back to not worrying about these odd...More >>

New Threats to Freedom

August 15th, 2010

new threats to freedom politics security book review

New Threats to Freedom

From Banning Ice Cream Trucks in Brooklyn to Abandoning Democracy Around the World

Thirty Great Writers On Cultural Trends That are Undermining Our Liberties

Edited and Introduced by Adam Bellow

Templeton Press 2010, 317 pp.

I attended a Free Speech conference last year in Washington D.C., and one of the speakers (a very well-known blogger) asked why it was necessary to have such a conference in a country with a constitutional amendment on free speech.

She missed the point. You don't need conferences on free speech in places like North Korea or Cuba. But they are necessary in places like the US because there are always 'new' threats – particularly as technology develops more and more rapidly.

The same can be said about this excellent new book, "New Threats to Freedom". One might wonder in this age where we have so much freedom: are there really 30 new threats? After all, we live in a time when communism has been defeated. It's even on its last legs in Cuba. China has turned to a form...More >>

The Propagandist

Book Reviews

Review. The Road To Fatima Gate

Review. The Long War for Freedom

The War Of Ideas

New Threats to Freedom

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