The Real North Korea

Posted by on Apr 21, 2013 in Articles, Book Reviews, Featured, Korea | 0 comments Any book that purports to tell the story of the “real North Korea” runs the risk of serious overhype. North Korea, after all, is perhaps the least understood, least accessible, and least research-friendly country in the world. It has been called an “intelligence black hole.” Journalists rarely visit, and when they do they can’t just interview anyone they please. Historians rarely visit,...
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The Secret History of Yugoslavia

Posted by on Apr 5, 2013 in Articles, Blog, Book Reviews, Eastern Europe, Europe, Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe | 0 comments In the 6th century, in the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, the historian Procopius penned an account of the misdeeds of the emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora. The Secret History is a compelling account of the court intrigues of a treacherous emperor in a crumbling empire. That Justinian enjoyed a high reputation, the result of the military victories of his brilliant general...
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Guarding the Empire from Four Miles Up

Posted by on Jun 24, 2012 in Articles, Book Reviews, Featured, US Foreign Policy | 0 comments They are unpopular all over the world, with one exception. According to a new Pew Research Center poll, the only country where a majority of citizens support drone strikes is the country that uses the new technology most regularly: the United States. Only 28 percent of U.S. citizens oppose drone strikes, compared to 62 percent who approve of their use. Once again, they prove the exception to the...
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Review: Chomsky’s “Occupy”

Posted by on Apr 13, 2012 in Articles, Book Reviews, Featured | 0 comments Noam Chomsky has seen a lot of social movements. He cut his teeth on the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s. He participated in the anti-intervention struggles of the 1980s as well as in the World Social Forums that began in the 1990s. Now in his 80s, Chomsky has hardly slowed down with his schedule of writing and speaking and agitating. And he is certainly not one to...
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Review: The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda

Posted by on Nov 8, 2011 in Articles, Book Reviews | 0 comments Middle East Reads, November 8, 2011 The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda by Fawaz Gerges (Oxford University Press, 2011), 272 pages. Reviewed by John Feffer Even after the death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, the routing of his organization in Afghanistan, and the assassination of the leadership of the Arabian Peninsula affiliate, the U.S. government continues to promote the threat of al-Qaeda....
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Review: The Survival of North Korea

Posted by on Sep 29, 2011 in Articles, Book Reviews | 0 comments Foreign Policy in Focus, September 29, 2011 Despite the predictions of many obituary writers, North Korea is still around. It was supposed to collapse with the Eastern European communist regimes, but it didn’t. It was supposed to crumble during the great famine of the mid-1990s, but it didn’t. The hard-line policies of the George W. Bush administration were supposed to do the trick,...
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