Michael J. Totten's Blog, page 39

Here We Go

Al Arabiya reports a military coup is underway in Egypt.

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Egypt is No Place for Women

Every woman I know who has visited Egypt was sexually harrassed there over and over again. It’s relentless. It’s extremely aggressive and it never stops. Attractive women can't go outside for even five minutes.

And I’ve lost track of how many stories like this I’ve read lately.

A young female journalist was gang-raped during violent mass protests in Egypt on a night that saw 44 sickening attacks on women.

Five men attacked the 22-year-old Dutch woman in Tahrir Square, Cairo, leaving her in a “se...

Bluffing in Cairo?

Most of us mortals, when trying to figure out what’s next for Egypt, would be no worse off analyzing goat entrails and tea leaves than reading the news. But take a look at what Egyptian-born scholar Samuel Tadros has to say. He thinks the army and the president are bluffing. Maybe!

Morsi has a bad hand. His performance in actual governance has been miserable and he has managed to alienate many of his initial supporters. After the high expectations of the revolution, he has failed to deliver. T...

Egypt on the Brink

Extraordinary events are unfolding in Egypt.

Millions of people (millions!) surged into the streets of Cairo and demanded President Mohamed Morsi resign. Egyptian newspaper Al Masry Al Youm claims this was the biggest demonstration in thousands of years of Egyptian history.

Egyptian activist and blogger Sandmonkey posted the following on Twitter: “Dear World, pay attention: Muslims protesting in the millions against Islamism. This is Historic.”

It certainly is.

And the army is on side with the de...

Lebanon's Israel Syndrome

The Tower, an outstanding new magazine about the Middle East edited by David Hazony, has just published one of my long essays. Here’s the first half.

Lebanon has a serious problem with Israel.

The country has technically been at war with its southern neighbor since the Jewish state declared independence in 1948. Israeli citizens are banned. Even foreigners are banned if they have Israeli stamps in their passports. Lebanese citizens aren’t allowed to have any communication of any kind with Israe...

Luxor in Revolt

Egyptian President Mohamad Morsi is destroying the country with a toxic mix of ideology and incompetence, and the city of Luxor is now in open revolt after he appointed a terrorist as the governor.

MEDINAT HABU, Egypt — Muhammed Hassan vividly remembers the November day in 1997 when six Gama'a Islamiyya gunmen charged a 3,400-year-old mortuary temple in Luxor.

“My cousin was a guard and was sitting in the police kiosk, and they took their guns out of their jackets and killed him,” he recounts.

A...

Hezbollah's Disneyland

Hezbollah now has a theme park.

The Tourist Landmark of the Resistance promises a fun-filled day for the entire family celebrating the holy Islamic “resistance” against the perfidious Zionist Entity. The Syrian- and Iranian-backed Party of God built it on top of a mountain overlooking South Lebanon and the Israeli border area, and they bus in school kids from all over the country to look at it.

Anti-American propagandist Noam Chomsky attended the inauguration.

It’s open to visitors from everywhe...

Iran's Rowhani Backed Terrorist Attack in Argentina

The Washington Free Beacon has a damning report about the new Iranian president that everyone's so excited about.

Iranian President-elect Hassan Rowhani was on the special Iranian government committee that plotted the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, according to an indictment by the Argentine government prosecutor investigating the case.

The AMIA bombing is considered the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history, killing 85 and wounding hundreds more. The Arg...

Syria's Fight to the Death

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

“We Arabs,” the late Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi once said to me in Beirut, “are not a warring people. We are a feuding people.” That’s generally true. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict looks far more like a Northern Ireland–style feud than a real war of the sort that tore apart the former Yugoslavia. The same goes for the chronic yet sporadic clashes in parts of Yemen, Libya, and Lebanon.

The civil war in Syria, tho...

Iran's New President is Lipstick on a Pig

Bigoted buffoon Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has finally been fired as the president of Iran and replaced by the supposed moderate reformer Hassan Rowhani, who just won a landslide victory with more than fifty percent of the vote in a crowded field of eight candidates.

“The sun of my moderation has risen,” announced Arman, a reformist newspaper. The election, according to another reformist newspaper called Shargh, signifies “the return of hope and victory for reformers and moderates.”

Some journalists i...