People on my Facebook list have seen me putting in plugs for this already, but if you haven’t already checked it out, please do so. Mr. Totten is an independent journalist who goes to the dark corners of the world to help us understand how things are there and why they got that way. He writes regular columns for the World Affairs Journal, plus his own books on his experiences and travels.
For example, there is this recent post on how US foreign policy is harming one of our longest and most loyal allies: Botching North Africa.
Most Americans don’t know a disputed territory called Western Sahara even exists. Fewer still understand it. Partly that’s because the Western Sahara conflict isn’t exploding like Syria, and partly it’s because the Sahrawis aren’t suffering in ways that make headlines. Those who actually live in Western Sahara are doing just fine. The Moroccans have invested huge amounts of money to make it livable. They’ve done a good enough job that the coastal city of Dakhla is a hot spot for tourists from Europe. But the tens of thousands of Sahrawis who live in the Polisario’s refugee camps in Algeria—which are really more like concentration camps—have been held hostage for almost as long as I’ve been alive.
On a previous kick-starter he went to Cuba and gave us an in-depth view of life in what used to be the jewel of the Caribbean, but is now a post-apocalyptic dystopia to top anything in YA fiction: The Lost World, Part I
I’m used to seeing military and police checkpoints when I travel abroad. Every country in the Middle East has them, including Israel if you count the one outside the airport. The authorities in that part of the world are looking for guns and bombs mostly. The Cuban authorities aren’t worried about weapons. No one but the regime has anything deadlier than a baseball bat.
Castro’s checkpoints are there to ensure nobody has too much or the wrong kind of food.
Police officers pull over cars and search the trunk for meat, lobsters, and shrimp. They also search passenger bags on city busses in Havana. Dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez wrote about it sarcastically in her book, Havana Real. “Buses are stopped in the middle of the street and bags inspected to see if we are carrying some cheese, a lobster, or some dangerous shrimp hidden among our personal belongings.”
If they find a side of beef in the trunk, so I’m told, you’ll go to prison for five years if you tell the police where you got it and ten years if you don’t.
He also understands the Middle-East better than most, and is willing to go digging there to find as much of the truth as he can. It’s not the typical “hotel-roof” journalism we see from most networks and newpapers. It’s man-on-the-street and interview-the-players type journalism, revealing how life would be for our counterparts in other countries. It’s the “Google Street View” of journalism. And when he’s not the expert, he knows who the real experts are, and is paying attention to what they’re saying: The Truth About Egypt
MJT: So your sources are inside the organization rather than outside.
Eric Trager: Yes. I’m one of the few people who talked about this during the aftermath of the uprising, but I didn’t discover it. Richard Mitchell wrote about it in his book, The Society of the Muslim Brothers. It was originally published in 1968 and it’s considered the classic text on the Brotherhood, but many people who put themselves out there as experts on this subject haven’t read one of the most basic studies of the organization’s history. I’ve talked about this at conferences and been told by supposed experts that the Brotherhood isn’t structured that way. They obviously haven’t read Mitchell even though they have to if they’re going to call themselves experts.
In short, if you’ve ever been the slightest bit interested in learning what Vietnam has become over the past forty years since the end of the war, he’s the best guide you’re likely to find. Here’s what he’s hoping to accomplish in Vietnam in his own words:
The Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago. Just two short years later, the Soviet Empire collapsed. Yet communist parties still rule five nations—North Korea, Cuba, China, Laos, and Vietnam.
I intend to visit them all. I’ll have enough material for another book at the end.
Cuba was first. Next is Vietnam.
The United States lost the war there, but won the argument. Vietnam is still ruled by the Communist Party, but it junked Marxist economics and leapt with both feet into the global economy. The country is eradicating extreme poverty faster than almost any other in history. And its people are enthusiastically friendly to Americans—surprising considering our history in the 60s and 70s.
The Vietnam War is a wound in the American psyche. Even though I’m too young to remember it, I feel it a little bit too. But the Vietnamese seem to have moved past it.
Why?
Is it because they realize we were right about Ho Chi Minh, Mao, and the Soviet Union from the beginning? Or is it not that at all? Perhaps there something in the Vietnamese national psyche—tragically lacking in some parts of the world—that lends itself to reconciliation with former enemies. Maybe it’s simply because most Vietnamese are too young to remember the war, or because they were more wounded by the war with each other. The Vietnamese themselves might not even know. But I’m going to try to find out.
If you’d like to help him do so, please visit his Kickstarter Project.
Full disclosure: I’m already in at the $25 level, which gets me a full-color ebook dispatch on all materials from the project upon completion. If this doesn’t fund I get nothing. I want my ebook! Plus, I’m still nursing a bit of guilty conscience for all the knowledge I’ve gained through Mr. Totten’s work while not usually giving much back. I’ve bought one of his books (the excellent “Where the West Ends“), and I believe I’ve hit his tip jar a few times. But I promote his whenever I can, and as most of you know, I don’t do that very often. I review, yes, but I seldom push. Michael J. Totten is worth it.
There is also a related site called “Kickdriver” which helps people spread the word about their Kickstarters by giving supporters some rewards for spreading the word to their networks. I’m giving it a try.
Interesting.