Michael J. Totten's Blog, page 33

Georgetown University to Host Key Nazi Party Member

Georgetown University is scheduled to host an event in early December on “Egypt and the Struggle for Democracy” that will include one of the key members of Egypt’s Nazi Party as a speaker.

The Washington Free Beacon has the story:

The event features a slew of speakers sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as Coptic Christian Ramy Jan, who cut his teethon the Egyptian political scene as a member of the country’s Nazi Party, according to multiple sources.

The event is scheduled to take pl...

Shocking Facts About America

Almost every time I visit a new country for the first time I’m surprised by at least something that I had no idea was the case until I got there. Here’s one recent example: In Cuba I was told police officers at checkpoints want to know if you’re hiding meat, lobsters, or cheese in the trunk of your car. (Although hardly anyone in Cuba actually owns a car. I've never seen so few cars on the road in my life.)

Thought Catalog has a long and delightful list of things from sixteen different people...

No Woman, No Drive

Alaa Wardi has created an impressive series of music videos using only his voice. If you didn’t know better, you’d think he’s using synthizers, bass guitars, and a drum machine in some of these, but no. Only his vocal chords.

A few weeks ago he made a spoof video about Saudi Arabia’s bizarre prohibition against woman drivers called No Woman, No Drive. I can’t promise you will laugh, but I sure did.

OG Image: 

Rape as a Political Weapon

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: women who travel to Egypt need to understand that rape and sexual assault are routinely used as political weapons, not just by radical Islamist groups, but by secular activists also. Phrases like “war against women” and “culture of rape” seem overblown to me in the United States, but they’re dead-on accurate descriptions of what happens in Egypt as a matter of course.

I don’t know if Egypt is the worst place in the world when it comes to violence...

Somebody Has to be the Bad Cop

I’m still getting caught up on the Iranian nuclear negotiations. I missed a lot while I was cut off from most of the human race down in Cuba, and now that I’m back I’m mostly struck by the rather odd fact that France is the hardliner in the Western camp.

It’s double strange when considering that France had a conservative president—Jacques Chirac—during its most recent dovish phase, while the current hawkish president is from the Socialist Party.

Here is Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times:

The...

Home From Cuba

I spent the last several weeks in Cuba and have just returned to the United States. That is one truly strange place. It’s right there alongside Libya under Moammar Qaddafi in the bizarro department. I’m glad I went, but I’m even more glad to be out of there.

Working in a communist country as an unauthorized journalist is complicated, to say the least. I had little choice but to slip in clandestinely on a tourist visa, which limited my ability to conduct formal interviews. So I’m still working...

Why the US Can’t Leave the Middle East

My new essay in the print edition of World Affairs is now available online:

America is in a bad mood.

In the midst of the worst economy since the 1970s, we’re on the verge of losing the war in Afghanistan, the longest we’ve ever fought, against stupefyingly primitive foes.

We sort of won the war in Iraq, but it cost billions of dollars, thousands of lives, and Baghdad is still a violent, dysfunctional mess.

The overhyped Arab Spring has been cancelled in Egypt. Liberating Libya led to the assassi...

From Tehran to Cairo

The Middle East is as trashed right now as I’ve ever seen it. The Syrian conflict has killed more people than the Bosnian war. Iran is moving ahead on its nuclear weapons program while convincing fools in the West that it’s playing nice and reforming. Egypt is in its worst shape since the Nasserist era, and the Saudis are pitching the biggest fit since the Arab oil embargo in the 70s.

I caught up with my old friend and colleague Lee Smith, whom I met in Lebanon during the Beirut Spring when i...

The Saudi-American Rupture

The American-Saudi alliance is in danger of collapsing.

The Syrian-Iranian-Hezbollah axis is by far the largest threat to both Saudi and American interests in the Middle East now, yet the Obama administration is buddying up with Vladimir Putin on Syria and allowing itself to be suckered by the Iranian regime’s new president Hassan Rouhani.

Never mind the fact that Rouhani obviously isn’t a moderate and is powerless to negotiate sovereign issues in any case. The White House is so desperate to cu...

Why Muslims Should Love Secularism

Hussein Ibish argues in an interesting piece in NOW Lebanon that Muslims should love secularism. I’m not entirely convinced of everything he writes here--little or none of it applies to bin Ladenists, for instance--but I know he’s right about most of it and I’ve had similar thoughts and observations myself.

Muslims should love secularism. But very few of them do, largely because they misunderstand what it stands for and would mean for them.

Secularism as an English term – in contrast to the Fre...