I CERTAINLY HOPE SO: Obama Moving Towards Regime Change in Syria

WHITHER JIHAD? by Reuel Marc Gerecht is your required reading this evening.

THREE WAYS OUR BRAINS BETRAY US.

THE PHOTOTOPIC SKY SURVEY is a gigantic zoomable photograph of the entire night sky. Nick Risinger quit his job in Seattle and spent an entire year on this project, and the results are extraordinary.

YEAH, RIGHT: Syria’s Bashar al-Assad vows to stop firing on rallies.

WOW, SERIOUSLY? Ron Paul says he would not have ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

WHEN HEZBOLLAH SAYS “We know where you live,” it makes an impression that’s hard to forget.

DON’T WRITE LIKE IT’S 1999: Kristine Kathryn Rusch on seismic changes in the publishing industry.

NOAM CHOMSKY is, as always, a hard-boiled anti-American monomaniac.

QADDAFI COMPOUND HIT IN TRIPOLI. I can’t help but wonder if we’re targeting him even though we say we are not. And reading between the lines in that article, it looks like (surprise!) Qaddafi is using civilians as human shields.

NOT YET ANCIENT HISTORY: John Demjanjuk was just convicted of helping the Nazis murder Jews during the Holocaust. The U.S. deported him to Germany in 2009.

Meanwhile, two men were arrested for allegedly buying weapons and plotting to attack New York City synagogues.

LEE SMITH on the cost of Egypt’s revolution.

AND WITH A STRAIGHT FACE, APPARENTLY: Wikileaks threatens leakers.

PERHAPS A BIT OF JUSTICE for the Rwandan genocide—in Wichita, Kansas, of all places.

The brilliant historian Yaacov Lozowick points to a book that looks very interesting indeed: Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa by Jason Stearns.

I don’t know much about the ongoing war in the Congo other than the fact that it makes the Middle East look like Canada by comparison. Millions of people have suffered and died there in silence. Few go there to report on it, and even fewer agitate to do anything about it.

Why Darfur captures the attention and passion of so many while the Congo does not is a mystery, though I think it’s partly because hardly anyone is even aware that the Congo is a war zone at all, let alone the worst one in the world. Maybe this book will help a bit. Maybe. Anyway, I ordered a copy.

OH, AND HEY, YOU CAN FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER now if you’re into that sort of thing.

There are lots of other good Middle East feeds, too, including my old friend Noah Pollak, one of the main “characters” in my book; Michael Young at Beirut’s Daily Star; Tony Badran, who is also from Lebanon, at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; and Lee Smith, author of the outstanding book The Strong Horse.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL is becoming downright creepy. Its radical Islamist partner, Cageprisoners, gruesomely “lynches” President Barack Obama on the Internet.

Amnesty shamefully fired feminist Gita Sahgal last year for criticizing the organization’s relationship with that terrorist-supporting outfit, but she was right then, and she’s even more right today.

IF A COUNTRY OF 80 MILLION PEOPLE FALLS and the media is deaf does anyone hear?

IT’S ABOUT TIME. John Kerry finally gives up on Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as a reformer. “He obviously is not a reformer now,” the senator said.

Assad wasn’t a reformer earlier, either, and that was obvious to at least some of us all along.

Meanwhile, Jennifer Rubin reports that Marco Rubio intends to introduce a resolution in the Senate supporting the people of Syria against their dictator. We shouldn’t expect democracy there any time soon, but anything that hurts Assad, even if only slightly, beats doing business with him.

HANGING WITH HEZBOLLAH, Part II. Part I is here.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, if it wants to retain what credibility it hasn’t yet lost, might want to cancel this event.

LIBYA’S REBELS make “significant” gains against Qaddafi.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS is losing his voice, but he’s still here and he’s still one of the best damn writers around.

STILL ASIA’S TRUE POWER: Japan after March 11.

BARRY RUBIN SAYS the situation in Egypt is deteriorating badly and rapidly. And I’m sorry to say that I’m not surprised. It was fashionable to cheer the downfall of Hosni Mubarak, and I, too, took pleasure in seeing him go, but Egypt is, I think, the least likely of all the Arab countries to emerge from a revolution in decent shape. I know some terrific Egyptians who would build a wonderful country if given the opportunity, but they are outnumbered.