- 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: Afghanistan
Decoding Guy Ritchie’s Movie The Covenant (2023)
Alliance Theory read: The Covenant is not a war movie about geopolitics. It is a story about alliance debt, reputation, and the moment when moral rules stop being abstract and become binding because an audience is watching. At the center … Continue reading
Posted in Afghanistan
Comments Off on Decoding Guy Ritchie’s Movie The Covenant (2023)
Decoding The 2001-2022 Afghanistan Occupation
Alliance Theory frame: the Afghanistan occupation was not one project with one goal. It was a stack of coalitions, each using moral language and “mission” language to hold itself together. When those coalitions drifted apart, the occupation became structurally unstable, … Continue reading
Posted in Afghanistan
Comments Off on Decoding The 2001-2022 Afghanistan Occupation
The Fall Of Howard Stern, The New Abortion Wars, Afghanistan, Australia’s Covid Lockdown (9-23-21)
Posted in Afghanistan, Alt Right, America, Australia, Covid, Howard Stern
Comments Off on The Fall Of Howard Stern, The New Abortion Wars, Afghanistan, Australia’s Covid Lockdown (9-23-21)
Ridin’ with Biden After The Kabul Air Port Suicide Bombings Kill 12 US Soldiers (8-26-21)
Posted in Afghanistan
Comments Off on Ridin’ with Biden After The Kabul Air Port Suicide Bombings Kill 12 US Soldiers (8-26-21)
Historicism and Hill Street Blues, Major Depressive Disorder, Afghan Refugees
Posted in Afghanistan, Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, Psychology
Comments Off on Historicism and Hill Street Blues, Major Depressive Disorder, Afghan Refugees
Who Cares About Afghanistan?
From a Yale Law paper: If Americans know one thing about their system of government, it is that they live in a democracy and that other, less fortunate people, live in dictatorships. Dictatorships are what democracies are not, the very … Continue reading
Posted in Afghanistan
Comments Off on Who Cares About Afghanistan?
Chain Of Command
I’ve watched the first five episodes of this National Geographic documentary series and it is amazing that the United States is so heavily invested in fighting something as subjective and amorphous as “violent extremism.” This is an arbitrary moral category. … Continue reading
Posted in Afghanistan, Alt Right, America, Iraq, Jews
Comments Off on Chain Of Command
NYT: ‘ISIS Is Resilient in Afghanistan Despite U.S. Campaign’
I presume this condition exists because the ISIS program better fits with the Afghani DNA than does the American program. Liberal democracy is great for populations with an average IQ of 97 and higher. The average Afghan IQ is 84, … Continue reading
Posted in Afghanistan
Comments Off on NYT: ‘ISIS Is Resilient in Afghanistan Despite U.S. Campaign’
Nation-Building in Afghanistan, from Sean Connery to Brad Pitt
Comments at Steve Sailer: * Continuing to pour resources into a war after sixteen years is an indication that the military-industrial complex really does govern the United States. The rest of us just live here. * It’s interesting that the … Continue reading
Posted in Afghanistan
Comments Off on Nation-Building in Afghanistan, from Sean Connery to Brad Pitt
The Sad and Troubling Story of Fridoon Rawshan, Man Fatally Shot by Cop
The gifts of the Afghans! News: The 42-year-old Afghanistan man shot and killed by a San Diego police officer outside of an adult bookstore on April 30 had a long criminal history, suffered a history of mental illness and was … Continue reading
Posted in Afghanistan, Crime, Police
Comments Off on The Sad and Troubling Story of Fridoon Rawshan, Man Fatally Shot by Cop