“I loved my father, and I still admire his instinctive belief in freedom and justice. But in the years since his passing, I have grown uneasy with how confidently diaspora voices like his continue to shape American debates about Iran. Too often, those conversations are marked by certainty untethered from lived experience and by a readiness for confrontation that carries little personal cost. … Many of the loudest calls for regime change in Iran come from outside the country. Figures such as Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late shah of Iran who was ousted from power in 1979, are frequently elevated in Western media as potential transitional leaders, even though their level of support inside Iran is unclear and cannot be freely measured under current conditions.” (03/17/26)
“You vill eat ze bugs! Sorry, Klaus. Not interested. … as if to prove that Schwab’s Great Reset of our diet will not be driven by cartoonish elitists, Ÿnsect — Europe’s largest insect farm — has officially gone bankrupt.” (03/17/26)
“The notion that the ancient Israelites were a kind of prototype for a modern nation is more a creative misreading than solid history — which is not really a knock, since most novel ideas start as creative misreadings of old ones, but which does suggest that plain old nationalism is all we’re talking about here, with the use of the word ‘Zionism’ being just a kind of rhetorical trapping. And the most obvious problem with advocating a nationalist revival is that the first round of nationalism was incredibly bloody, and continues to be so today; pay a visit to the Donbas if you doubt it. Contrary to the theory that the often violent birth of nations was a mere transition, nationalists have not generally been happy to tend their own gardens but often take a keen interest in those of their neighbors.” (03/17/26)
“[N]early everyone was complicit. Politicians, media, educators — they all went along with the hysteria. Now, they want to sweep it under the rug, pretending it never happened. Everyone failed. But we cannot forget.” (03/17/26)
“One morning last week, I got myself a coffee and turned on the newly released Netflix documentary Louis Theroux: Into the Manosphere. For those who aren’t already well aware of the manosphere or the red pill/MGTOW movements, Theroux provides an informative primer and helpful context, especially for parents who want to prevent their young boys (and, less likely though still possible, young girls) from falling into these dangerous communities. Yet for the more chronically online, the documentary doesn’t reveal much that is new.” (03/17/26)
“On Monday, the monopolization trial against Live Nation picked up where it left off a week earlier, with Jay Marciano, CEO of AEG Entertainment, the nation’s second-largest live concert promoter, under direct questioning. But there was a different lawyer in the lead plaintiff’s chair: Jeffrey Kessler, a superstar private litigator who successfully prosecuted cases against NASCAR and the NCAA, was seated in place of David Dahlquist, the Justice Department’s lead trial attorney. The reason for the swap is that DOJ settled their claims against Live Nation on March 9, and pressured many of the 39 states (and the District of Columbia) in the case, particularly the Republican ones, to go along with them. But in the end, only seven states did so …. The other 32 … failed to come to agreement after forced settlement talks from the judge.” (03/17/26)
“The big drain on military resources has begun. A war apparently already won (and not), against an adversary supposedly without means to fight back, its air force and navy destroyed, its missile capabilities blunted, is now drawing the clumsy colossus of American power into the Middle East with embarrassing effect. The Middle East, where US President Donald Trump promised the ‘forever wars’ would end, promises an end to his beginning.” (03/17/26)
“High-skilled workers tend to strengthen government budgets, while low-skilled immigration can add fiscal pressure. The composition of immigration matters as much as the number.” (03/17/26)
