Michael J. Totten's Blog, page 23

Russian Provocations Increase Against NATO

Russia is provoking Poland on purpose to see how NATO will respond. From Popular Mechanics:

NATO and allied jets have scrambled more than 100 times this year in response to Russian military sorties. This activity is growing more dramatic. Within the last week, NATO intercepted four groups of Russian aircraft. "These sizable Russian flights represent an unusual level of air activity over European airspace," the alliance said in a statement.

When the planes at Łask jump into action, it's called...

New Book Release – TOWER OF THE SUN

My new book, Tower of the Sun: Stories from the Middle East and North Africa, will be released on November 20. You can pre-order the Kindle version right now for only 7.99 and it will be automatically delivered to you the morning of the release date.

Here’s the description from the back of the book.

Prize-winning author Michael J. Totten’s gripping first-person narratives from the war zones, police states, and revolutionary capitals of the Middle East and North Africa paint a vivid picture of p...

Eight Ways to Thrill

My first novel, Taken, is included in a thriller box set for a limited time from Storybundle.

When you buy a box set from Storybundle you pay what you want. You can even choose how much money goes to the authors and how much goes to Storybundle. As long as you pay at least twelve dollars, you get all eight books. That’s a buck and a half apiece.

Eight thrillers for twelve dollars? That’s a great deal even if you only read a couple of them.

The box set is only available for a couple of weeks. Bef...

US Proxies Surrender in Syria

Harakat Hazm and the Syrian Revolutionary Front just surrendered to Al Qaeda in Syria.

Most people have never heard of either organization, though they’ve been sort of quietly backed by the US since they oppose the Assad regime, the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, and the Islamic State. Now they may be effectively finished.

The US waited far too long to back proxies in Syria while the Islamic State and the Nusra Front spent years building up their strength and conquering territory. Throwing suppor...

Tunisian Voters Say No to Islamists

Tunisia just held a parliamentary election and Ennahda, the sort-of-moderate-but-not-really Islamist party lost to the ardently secular Nidaa Tounes, which translates into Call of Tunisia.

Ennahda is the Tunisian Branch of the Muslim Brotherhood under another name, and it wears a more moderate face than the Egyptian branch. Tunisia is a genuinely moderate country and Ennahda’s leaders have no choice but to tone down their rhetoric and their platform if they want to seriously compete in electio...

The Twisted Appeal of ISIS

A poll released last week by the Washington Institute suggestss that the Islamic State may be more popular in Europe than in the Middle East. Lee Smith tries to make sense of it.

Europe’s got great health care, welfare, and lots of attractive young men and attractive women who, unlike the vast majority of women in the Middle East outside of Israel, are sexually available. So, why given a choice between a comfortable, if somewhat boring, life as a pharmacist in Hamburg, or fighting and dying in...

Turkey Bombs the Kurds

Turkey finally decided to use military force after watching the Islamic State in Syria advance on the Kurdish city of Kobani—and did so by bombing the Kurds.

The Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) deserves plenty of blame here. Its fighters reportedly fired on Turkish positions near the Iraqi border. But no one who has paid the slightest attention to what Turkey has been up to for the last several decades has any right to be shocked by Turkish willingness to bomb the Kurds but not the IS.

There was...

From Havana to Hanoi

Vietnam’s communists are a hell of a lot smarter than Cuba’s.

Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, thunders with economic productivity and bristles with new construction while most of Cuba’s capital Havana resembles a post-apocalyptic ruinscape.

While civilized countries have a minimum wage, Cuba has a maximum wage of twenty dollars per month for almost every job in the country. A beer costs an entire week’s salary and a meal out in a restaurants costs a month’s, so drinking and dining establishment...

The Walking Dead in an Age of Anxiety

After the release of my zombie novel, Resurrection, City Journal asked if I could explain why so many people worldwide are obsessed with zombies. Here’s the first part of my essay:

“Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us,” the German poet and journalist Heinrich Heine wrote in 1842, “and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of Saint John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in compari...

Islamic State: Army of Psychopaths

Roughly one percent of human beings are psychopaths. Most aren’t violent, and nearly all are high-functioning. Supposedly they are overrepresented in Congress, on Wall Street, in corporate boardrooms, and in large urban areas.

They’re even more overrepresented in terrorist organizations like the Islamic State (IS) and Al Qaeda. Every violent psychopath with Muslim parents for thousands of miles in every direction is drawn to these organizations like maggots to meat. It gives them permission to...