- https://PayPal.Me/lukeisback
"Luke Ford reports all of the 'juicy' quotes, and has been doing it for years." (Marc B. Shapiro)
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff) LATEST POSTS:
- Dennis Prager v Cedars-Sinai Lawsuit
- Dennis Prager Through Randall Collins: Interaction Ritual Chains
- What is a ‘Received Idea’?
- Jordan Bardella: The Manufacture of Normality
- Everyone Became Television: Bourdieu’s Warning and the 2026 Iran War
- Marine Le Pen
- The Coalition-Proximity Rule
- Nigel Farage
- Bernard Haykel: A Life Between the Text and the Gun
- Walker Connor (1926-2017)
- Benedict Anderson and the Nation as Imagination
- Anthony D. Smith: The Student Who Kept the Question and Rejected the Answer
- Ernest Gellner
- Eric Kaufmann: The Man Who Made the Majority Visible
- Dominic Cummings: A Biography
- Steve Lopez: The Last City Columnist
- California Historian Kevin Starr
- Stephen Kotkin: A Life in Power
- William T. Vollmann: An American Life in Excess
- Rod Dreher: A Life in Exile
BEST POSTS:
- * The Enlightenment Wasn’t Enlightened (6-23-26)
* Mr. Burge Draws The Line (6-23-26)
* 'Improving on Democracy' (6-17-26)
* People Leak To People Who Are Fun (6-11-26)
* Why Does Australia Produce So Many Great Journalists? (6-11-26)
* Steve Wynn and the Press: Power, Litigation, and the Contest Over Las Vegas (6-3-26)
* Sheldon Adelson and the Journalists (6-3-26)
* The Vigilant Animal: Thinkers Who Reject the Myth of Human Gullibility (6-2-26)
* The Cost of Refusing the Misunderstanding Myth (6-2-26)
* Show Me How It Travels (6-2-26)
* The Norm Explainers (6-2-26)
* Centering Marginalized Voices (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Washington Post put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Financial Times put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for the Los Angeles Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for The New York Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* Why Wembanyama Lives on the Perimeter (5-31-26)
* The Emotional Palettes Of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco & Sacramento (5-27-26)
* The Administrative Capital: Sacramento Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* San Diego - The Quiet Republic (5-27-26)
* The Quiet Bar: San Diego Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* SF v LA Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* Why Talent Travels Poorly Between San Francisco and Los Angeles (5-27-26)
* San Francisco and Los Angeles as Rival Models of Urban Access (5-27-26)
* Social Cliques in New York, 2026 (5-25-26)
* Social Cliques in San Francisco, 2026 (5-25-26)
* The Rival Courts of Washington (5-25-26)
* The City of Private Rooms (5-25-26)
Category Archives: Russia
Stephen Kotkin: A Life in Power
In the winter of 1987, an American graduate student stepped off a train in Magnitogorsk, a steel city in the southern Urals that had been closed to foreigners for half a century. The air tasted of sulfur. The blast furnaces … Continue reading
Posted in Russia
Comments Off on Stephen Kotkin: A Life in Power
Andrei Shleifer and the Harvard Economists Who Looted Russia
In a photograph taken in Moscow when he was six, Andrei Shleifer (b. February 20, 1961) wears the uniform of a Soviet Army general. The costume fit the boy. When a friend moved to one of the best schools in … Continue reading
Economist Jeffrey Sachs – The Plan and the Ground
Jeffrey Sachs (b. 1954) comes to La Paz in 1985 as a Harvard professor not yet thirty-one years old, and the thin air at twelve thousand feet leaves a visitor breathless before he has done anything at all. Bolivia is … Continue reading
David Stahel: Historian of German Defeat in the East
David Stahel (b. 1975) is a New Zealand military historian whose work on the German invasion of the Soviet Union reshaped the historiography of the Eastern Front. Born in Wellington, he belongs to a post-Cold War generation of historians who … Continue reading
Ten Convenient Beliefs For Leaders Of Russia Now
Stephen Turner’s convenient beliefs are running at full operational tempo in the Kremlin, the Security Council, the Foreign Ministry, and the Rosneft/Gazprom strategy rooms right now. With the U.S.-Israeli campaign in its second month, Khamenei martyred, Iranian nuclear sites cratered, … Continue reading
Posted in Russia
Comments Off on Ten Convenient Beliefs For Leaders Of Russia Now
The Skittle Boy Problem: Weber, Bureaucracy, and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy
Max Weber never intended his analysis of the 1905 Russian crisis to serve as a forecast. He thought he was describing a limiting case, a political situation so extreme that it clarified the general mechanics of bureaucratic power in ways … Continue reading
The Jurisdictional Wars: Alliance Theory and the Battle for Russia’s Master Institutions
Russia’s high-status actors do not compete for power by openly claiming it. They compete by invoking moral languages that frame their authority as necessary for stability, sovereignty, and national survival. This is the core insight of David Pinsof‘s Alliance Theory. … Continue reading
Posted in Russia
Comments Off on The Jurisdictional Wars: Alliance Theory and the Battle for Russia’s Master Institutions
What does Putin want in Ukraine and elsewhere?
ChatGPT says: Alliance Theory says leaders seek durable coalitions, not abstract ideals. Putin’s moves make sense once you treat Russia as an alliance manager facing erosion. First, Ukraine. Ukraine is not primarily territory. It is an alliance hinge. A large … Continue reading
Posted in Russia
Comments Off on What does Putin want in Ukraine and elsewhere?
Will Iran’s Regime Survive?
Gemini: Based on the geopolitical and economic landscape as of early 2026, the survival of the Iranian clerical establishment (often referred to as the “mullah regime”) appears increasingly precarious. While the regime retains a monopoly on violence that likely ensures … Continue reading
Maybe The War With Venezuela Is Over Russia?
I just read this comment and it makes sense: The US/Venezuela war situation might have very little to do with drugs. More likely it has to do with all those Russian Tu-160 long-range bombers that have flown to Venezuela non-stop … Continue reading