With each passing day, I’m more impressed by the ability of the Syrian Democratic Forces (QSD) and the Arab League to conceal what they’re doing in Syria. My little blog posts won’t change anything, because the plausible deniability is perfect. Operations security (OPSEC) is perfect. If I thought I were endangering anything, I wouldn’t do…
Immigrants: Here’s what I experienced in Japan thirty years ago
January 7, 2016
Europe has decided to accept hundreds of thousands of Muslim immigrants, but the Europeans feel that it’s wrong to demand that these people behave the way pale-skinned non-Muslims are expected to behave. The reason that European authorities are paralyzed is that they’re motivated entirely by an obsession with differentiating themselves from those who they see…
Experts and their opinions are becoming more and more unreliable
January 4, 2016
If you feel lost when it comes to figuring out what’s happening in the Middle East, don’t feel bad. Although I don’t feel lost, it’s because I’m insane. Wait: Did I write that or just think that? At any rate, most of the experts are worthless. I’ll explain why in a moment. First, here’s an…
Arab League and Israeli plan for the Middle East goes forward
December 22, 2015
In June of this year, Saudi Arabia announced a seven-point plan for the Middle East. It’s incredibly risky and ambitious. The Saudis must always be taken seriously, so I knew that they’d thought this out. I couldn’t determine how in the world the Arab League would keep the region from going up in flames the…
Deception: the smart kind and the really stupid kind
December 19, 2015
If the Arab League were enemies of the United States, we’d be sunk. There’s no question. I’m in the process of reverse engineering the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, and I’m amazed at the brilliance of the military deception. It continues to this day. Fierce fighting and airstrikes by a Saudi-led coalition pounded northern Yemen on…
Adrift no longer. Without even knowing it, I arrived
December 17, 2015
I never knew what to do with my life. In very real ways, I never had a life. Some forms of trauma are impossible to “get over.” The closest I came to having a career was the ten years I spent as a music journalist in Los Angeles. It didn’t pay anything, but my parents…
The sky is filled with armies
October 5, 2015
I’ve always been a sky-watcher. As a child I wanted to fly to the clouds and walk among them. What you need to know is that the sky is filled with armies. The imagery comes from the poet Stephen Crane, an artist whose work saved my life. Once a man clambering to the housetops Appealed…