Michael J. Totten's Blog, page 34

When Assad Apologists Attack

It’s hard to find even much black humor in the Syrian civil war, but I laughed out loud a couple of times during this screamfest on Lebanese television between one of Bashar al-Assad’s mafioso and a bemused spokesman for the Free Syrian Army.

I don’t want to ruin it by quoting the good parts, so just watch it.

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Quote of the Day

This guy is a laugh riot.

“Personally, I don't see any obstacles to being nominated to run in the next presidential elections,” Assad told Syria's Al Mayadeen TV when asked if he thought it was suitable to hold the election, as scheduled, in 2014.

This was in a Reuters piece which says in its headline that Assad "mulls re-election."

Reminds me of a Syrian joke I heard in Beirut, which I believe was imported from the Soviet Union. It goes like this:

Syria holds an election. An advisor to the presi...

Will Israel Accept Syrian Refugees?

Israel is the only country in the Eastern Mediterranean that isn’t involved in the Syrian refugee crisis. It doesn’t even occur to Syrians to seek refuge in what is supposed to be an enemy state.

But what if that changed?

The Israeli Druze community is now pressuring the government to accept Syrian Druze refugees.

It’s an interesting idea. The Druze are Arabs, but they’re not Muslims. Not really. They belong to a closed minority spin-off sect that is largely secular in orientation and doesn’t ac...

The Russia Left Behind

I have not yet been to Russia, but when my friend Sean LaFreniere and I drove into a remote part of Ukraine from a remote part of Poland and hit roads so deteriorated they looked and felt like they’d been shredded to ribbons by air strikes, Sean said “we’re in Russia!” He insists that this place—outer Western Ukraine on the road to the town of Sambir—is exactly like the long dark stretch of road between Moscow and St. Petersburg.

I wrote about that journey in my book, Where the West Ends. And...

Hezbollah's War Crimes

Hezbollah is guilty of more than just terrorism. Lebanon’s so-called Party of God also commits war crimes, especially nowadays against civilians in Syria.

If you can stomach it, take a look at the latest video evidence. It’s extremely graphic—one of the nastiest incidents I’ve seen on film from the Syrian conflict—so you might want to pass if you’re squeamish.

Paramilitary fighters are shown dragging wounded men out the back of a van and shooting them in the torso and in the head. The video cou...

The World's Deadliest Road Trip

I have a moderately high tolerance for dangerous situations, but war correspondent David Axe’s is higher than mine. He just returned from a journey you couldn’t pay me enough to take—a road trip into Syria

“Our little tour of Hell was a lot of fun,” he writes. “Except when it wasn’t.”

Riven with conflict, prowled by kidnappers, seemingly awash in lethal gasses, half-occupied by America’s unhappiest “allies,” for journalists Syria is a difficult place to cover. And many journalists aren’t even w...

A Big Thanks to My Biggest Donors

I sent out individual thank-you emails to everybody who pitched in for my Cuba project, but I want to publicly thank my biggest donors right here.

A special thanks goes out to:

Ashish J. Shah

Glenn Reynolds

Chris Hoecke

Josh Mitchell

Grahame Lynch

Joseph Sturkey

Brad Nail

Carlton Wickstrom

Timothy Scott

J.M. Heinrichs

Steve Dye

Carl Geier

William Slattery

Keith Mitchell

Rob Hafernik

Amanda Scott

Joseph Blankier

Dee Grant

James Davis

David Freeman

Bruce Moorhead

David Eiche

Sherman Stacey

Whit Chapman

Paul Bailey

Herber...

Libyan Prime Minister Kidnapped

This can’t be good: Terrorists just kidnapped Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan from the luxury hotel in Tripoli where he and many other government officials live.

Seems they grabbed him to retaliate against an American Special Forces raid greenlit by the Libyan government against suspected Al Qaeda member Abu Anas al-Libi.

If this isn't unprecedented, it's close. I don’t recall ever hearing about a prime minister being kidnapped from any country.

This comes right after the fall of the last Islam...

My Latest Wall Street Journal Book Review

My latest book review for the Wall Street Journal is up. This one is about Matthew Levitt’s Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God.

Until 9/11, no terrorist organization had killed more Americans than Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite group: From the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, which killed 241 Marines, to the 1996 detonation of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 U.S. airmen, Hezbollah's anti-American curriculum vitae was long and bloody. Today it remains an e...

Cuba is Funded

My Kickstarter campaign to send me to Cuba has successfully funded. Here is a public thank you to everyone backing this project. I'll send personal emails to everyone shortly.

Cheers!

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