First off: I don’t hate all Irish people. When I meet an Irish person, I don’t have any feelings one way or another. Irishness has no moral content for me. But for twenty-five years, I hated the Irish. It’s because the Provisional Irish Republican Army—not an army; a band of alcoholic terrorists—nearly killed my brother…
Preference cascade is underway in the Middle East
May 15, 2016
I never tell people how to think or feel. Everyone has to figure things out for themselves. However, I personally never believed that all Muslims are untrustworthy. I didn’t think that the Middle East would change as rapidly as it is, but I knew that someday things would be different. Now, we’re seeing a full-tilt…
Gradual unveiling of the new Middle East is taking place
May 14, 2016
Several months ago I began theorizing about what was happening in the Middle East. Now, the people changing the region have decided to reveal the new reality: Israel and the Arab League are allies, and Arab strategic special operators are possibly the best soldiers in human history. I came to my conclusions in a gradual…
Medication made me do this. I apologize
May 13, 2016
I’m on a new medication, which scrambles my brains and makes me tired. And pee. So here’s a passage from my book Ghosts and Ballyhoo. I used to be a music journalist. That forced me to spend a lot of time in Hollywood. Also, my 2007 iMac can’t handle OS 10.11.4 El Capitan. Thus I…
Castles in the air have become tangible citadels
May 11, 2016
I always loved the idiom “castles in the air.” It means “extravagant hopes and plans that will never be carried out.” Until the summer of 2015, I thought that all optimistic forecasts for the Middle East were castles in the air. Now, it’s clear that not only will there be peace, it’s going to happen…
Sparing lives is the smart way to win wars
May 10, 2016
Until tonight, I believed that winning wars requires killing. I’d tempered my viewpoint somewhat, based on what I’ve seen in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, but now I’m ready to say without any doubt that sparing lives—not taking them—is the only way to make war obsolete. I used to agree with the sentiment below. Yes, that’s…
Smokescreens allow very good things to happen
May 8, 2016
American Jew-haters always ask me, “What do we get for our support of Israel?” I used to give them examples of weapons, and they’d sneer and say, “We can build all of that ourselves.” Well, we were certainly unable to build what Israel has apparently given us. Multiple smokescreens were used to finance and distribute…
