James Denselow

The international community knows that the situation is bad and getting worse but lacks the unity and political capital to do anything about it

When will we arrive at a tipping point in Syria? This is the frequently asked question that followed the early momentum of the uprising in 2011,...

Revolt: Eye-Witness to the Syrian Uprising

One of the biggest challenges to understanding events in Syria over the past year has been the lack of access granted to the international media. The secretive nature of the Syrian state has allowed only for controlled and largely regulated trips...

In an ideal world the makers of the latest alien invasion blockbuster want you to watch the film, buy the board game and then join the US Navy.

The film has been fairly compared to the Transformers trilogy and is complete with sweeping shots of military hardware and a...

The heady optimism of 2011 and the rapid fall of the regimes of Gaddafi, Mubarak and Ben Ali, has been replaced by disappointment in the new military leadership in Cairo, deep divisions in Libya and of course the continued brutal clampdown against protestors in Syria. Western public's confidence in the...

It was not Facebook, Twitter or YouTube that brought down Hosni Mubarak. The Egyptian people did that. But this does not mean that social media and internet�based technologies played no role, or that their role was insignificant, as some have alleged. Rather, events in Egypt and countries across the Middle...

The Leaderless Revolution -- How Ordinary People Will Take Power and Change Politics in the 21st Century (Carne Ross, Simon & Schuster, 2011)

Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere -- The New Global Revolutions (Paul Mason, Verso, 2012)

Frequently described as a "high-flying former diplomat," Carne Ross resigned from the Foreign...

Four days after the official US troop presence ended, Baghdad has been struck by bombings that are a reminder that for ordinary Iraqis the horror continues.

Soft, unprotected civilian targets were hit by co-ordinated, simultaneous attacks that were likely planned prior to Shi'a Prime Minister Maliki's Monday decision to...

Bashar al-Assad is the man most likely to bring down his own regime. Why? Because if we trace back both the president's reaction to the protests in addition to his previous ten years in charge, we can see that his attempts at reforms have unwittingly creating the environment in which...

I was recently fortunate enough to visit the sprawling Rocinha favela, one of the largest in Rio, which sits on a stunning hillside in a cove overlooking the Atlantic about a ten minutes drive from Ipanema beach. The Rio Favelas are synonymous in popular fiction with crime and violence, from...

The death toll continues to rise in Syria where nearly seven months of violence has led to the deaths of over 3,000 civilians. The UN Security Council, hit by a double veto from China and Russia earlier in the month, are divided and powerless. Ban Ki-Moon told reporters in Switzerland...

The Other Side of the Mirror (Brooke Allen, Paul Dry Books -- Philadelphia 2011)

Brooke Allen, an American critical writer, attempts in this book the ambitious task of writing a travelogue that opens up the closed state of Syria to an American public. Sadly, what Allen has created is a...

It is hard to put into words the enormity of the events that have occurred across the Arab world in 2011. Mubarak, Gaddafi and Ben Ali have been unseated from power, Saleh and Assad are on the brink, and all other Arab leaders watch on with their own degrees of...

Forgotten in the shadow of the Arab Uprisings and facing an undefined 'Iranian threat', Iraq is about to agree to long-term American 'Occupation lite'.

Iraq fatigue has led to a series of critical events in the country being largely ignored. There is of course the continued...

Cables From Kabul - The Inside Story of the West's Afghanistan Campaign

Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, Harper Press, 2011

Joining the ever expanding series of memoirs from former officials involved in the Afghan and Iraqi wars, Sherard Cowper-Coles' book attempts to "illuminate some of the political...

The Transformers series can simply be seen as teenage fun, complete with battling robots, gorgeous women and shiny sports cars, however beneath the surface, Michael Bay blockbusters are a powerful messaging vehicle for the US military. Transformers 2 was the biggest joint military operation movie ever made and the narrative...

Assad will hope that it's not three strikes and out after his latest attempt to halt the momentum of protests.

Bashar al-Assad did not apologize for the events of the past few months that have left over 1,500 dead. Instead, he attempted to reassure Syria's silent...

The protests in Syria are entering a new phase, with reports of the resistance taking up arms in parts of the country against the security forces and the government promising a 'decisive' response. The West appears impotent to prevent further slaughter. However high-tech tools could expose Syria's brutal underbelly and...

In the shadow of the clampdowns in Syria, far too much focus has been placed on the character and intentions of President Bashar al-Assad.

Too often in the past, US congressman and European parliamentary delegations have returned from Damascus after hours spent with Assad convinced that he is a like-minded...

Osama Bin Laden once said that he worshiped death, while his enemies worshiped life. Yet al Qaeda's original Dr. Evil and Global Terror's bête noir did not go out in a blaze of glory at a time of his own choosing, but rather was summarily dispatched by U.S. Navy Seals...

The Syrian protestors, whether they be characterized as "pro-democracy" or "anti-regime," are dangerously isolated and very much in the tank sights of the regime. The promised "iron fist" is being deployed. Over the past weeks over 400 people have reportedly been killed. Daraa has been quarantined and had its electricity...