Cross posted at The Smoking Room
“I need a break from domestic politics. So I’m setting out to write about The World instead.” So says Portland blogger Michael Totten, announcing he’s moving to Beirut for six months, where he visited to meet the Lebanese revolution shortly before Syria pulled out:
The first places I’m going to visit after I secure my apartment are the very places the State Department tells me not to go anywhere near: Hezbollah’s militarized state-within-a-state in Beirut’s southern suburbs, and the wretched Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla. Then I’m going to Damascus so I can experience a real live Baath Party police state up close and in person.
I am not an unbiased observer, and I have no intention to write bloodlessly neutral “he said, she said� AP-style wire pieces. But I will try with all my heart to get it right and be fair.
He’ll continue his gig at TechCentralStation and publish a few other places.
I met Totten — who went to my high school, we discovered — seven months ago at a DC celebration of Iraq’s first election, and was impressed how down to earth he was, but also so committed to the cause of democracy and human rights, regardless which ideology was briefly disparaging it for political gain. I’m sure he’ll do great in the Middle East and give us some compelling prose when domestic affairs distract us from the whirlwind of changes in that region.
This puts a lot of pressure on me and my college comrade Steve Barnett to fulfill our promises to move to Lebanon for, er, reasons in addition to altruism.
I’m a tech journalist who’s making a TV show about a college newspaper.