Michael J. Totten's Blog, page 54

Iran's Khamenei Orders Terrorist Attacks Against the West and the Middle East

Con Coughlin reports in London’s Telegraph:

According to Western intelligence officials, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gave the order to the elite Quds Force unit following a recent emergency meeting of Iran's National Security Council in Tehran held to discuss a specially-commissioned report into the implications for Iran of the Assad regime's overthrow.

Damascus is Iran's most important regional ally, and the survival of the Assad regime is regarded as vital to sustaining the Iranian-backed Hizbolla...

Me, Interviewed

Jamie Weinstein at The Daily Caller interviewed me about Egypt, Iran, and my new book Where the West Ends. You can read the whole thing over there, but here’s part of it.

Getting to your new book, “Where the West Ends,” what compelled you to write it?

I didn’t plan on writing and publishing “Where the West Ends” until I had already completed all the field work that went into it. I realized two years ago that I had spent a great deal of time on the part of our planet between Turkey and Russia,...

Noam Chomsky: The Last Totalitarian

My friend and colleague Benjamin Kerstein has published a number of books, and this summer he released what is perhaps the most blistering critique of the radical leftist ideologue Noam Chomsky ever to appear in book form. It’s called Diary of an Anti-Chomskyite and is a collection of essays, reviews, and take-downs that originally appeared on his blog of the same name during a three-year period from 2004 through 2007.

I read most of the material in this book when it first appeared, and now I...

The Last Totalitarian

My friend and colleague Benjamin Kerstein has published a number of books, and this summer he released what is perhaps the most blistering critique of the radical leftist ideologue Noam Chomsky ever to appear in book form. It’s called Diary of an Anti-Chomskyite and is a collection of essays, reviews, and take-downs that originally appeared on his blog of the same name during a three-year period from 2004 through 2007.

I read most of the material in this book when it first appeared, and now I...

Copies of WHERE THE WEST ENDS Returned to Sender

A few weeks ago I mailed autographed copies of my new book, Where the West Ends, and three came back to me marked “Return to Sender.”

The three of you who ordered and paid for copies that bounced are:

Carl Sanders

Peter Luccarelli III

Barry Youngerman

I can’t reach any of you by email, so please write to me at michaeltotten001 at gmail dot com with your current mailing address so I can get your books to you.

Book Release Party

I’ve finally decided to have a book release party now that my third book, Where the West Ends, has been published.

The general public is invited, so if you live in or will be visiting the Pacific Northwest, come on down.

The event will be hosted by the Ristretto Reading Series at the Ristretto Roasters café at 3808 N. Williams Avenue in Portland, Oregon, on September 5 at 7pm.

I will read (briefly) from the new book. Autographed copies will be for sale.

Coffee and treats will be provided by...

From Syria's Ashes

An Arab country that’s pro-Western and has a non-Muslim majority? Though it sounds like something that could exist only in an alternate universe, there’s a chance that such a state could emerge from the ongoing conflict in Syria. Alawites make up only 12 percent of the Syrian population, but they overwhelmingly dominate the regime: the family of the tyrant-ruler Bashar al-Assad is Alawite, as are the elite members of the military, the bureaucracy, and the intelligence agencies. The majority o...

Hezbollah's Propaganda War

Go watch Vice magazine's short documentary on Hezbollah's propaganda war. Do it. Trust me. It's excellent. The guys at Vice do consistently fantastic work.

An Islamic Egypt is Born

When Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was thrown from the palace in early 2011, the country turned into a three-sided ideological battleground between Islamists, liberals and leftists, and the military. The liberals and leftists were shown up as irrelevant last year when the Muslim Brotherhood and the totalitarian Salafists together won two-thirds of the parliamentary vote, and again when the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi was elected president in June of this year.

The field was then whit...

A Fine Question

Michael Moynihan asks in Foreign Policy magazine why so many travel guides make excuses for dictators. I've noticed this, too. And I've come to expect it.