- 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:
- Tanner Greer
- Economist Tyler Cowen
- Richard Reeves: A Life in Institutions
- Jake Adelstein: The Reporter Who Became His Story
- Jim Goad (1961-2026)
- Moira Greyland
- Robert Oscar Lopez: The Inconvenient Witness
- Two Ledgers: Decoding the Gurus and the Price of Talk
- The Pervert’s Progress: Costin Vlad Alamariu and the Making of Bronze Age Pervert
- Curtis Yarvin: A Life Against Democracy
- Mark Helprin: Against the Current
- Mark Brandt: The Man Who Asked Who Else Is Prejudiced
- John T. Jost: The Psychologist of Acquiescence
- Strange Bedfellows in the Academy: Alliance Theory and the Straussian Schism
- Tournier on Desmond Ford
- The Fence and the Blessing: How Jews Have Thought About Gentiles
- Tournier on Luke Ford
- Tournier on The Nostradamus Kid
- An Alliance Theory of Antisemitism
- Tournier on Cinema Paradiso and Desmond Ford
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: Iran
LAT: Trump’s war rhetoric is coarse. It’s also heard differently, depending on the audience
The Los Angeles Times piece reads Trump’s Iran rhetoric through a framework built on traditional presidential norms. That framework assumes wartime rhetoric must do three things: justify the war on moral grounds, show some respect for casualties and the enemy, … Continue reading
Decoding Bibi Netanyahu Advisor Ophir Falk
Per Alliance Theory, Ophir Falk sits at the intersection of several coalitions, but his power does not come from public intellectual status or journalistic influence. It comes from being embedded in the governing national security circle around Benjamin Netanyahu. His … Continue reading
Trump Says America Might Hit Kharg Island Against ‘Just For Fun’
When elites react with alarm to a statement like “we might hit Kharg Island again just for fun,” they are responding to incentives tied to their coalition roles. Alliance Theory helps clarify why the same sentence lands so differently depending … Continue reading
Decoding Iran Scholar Roxane Farmanfarmaian
Roxane Farmanfarmaian teaches international politics at the University of Cambridge and she is the daughter of the Iranian prince Manucher Mirza Farman Farmaian of the Qajar dynasty. She carries inherited knowledge. Alliance Theory predicts that coalitions often need a bridge … Continue reading
Posted in Iran
Comments Off on Decoding Iran Scholar Roxane Farmanfarmaian
Decoding Iran Scholar Sahar Razavi
Alliance Theory, developed by David Pinsof, shifts the key question away from what a scholar believes toward what coalitions her framing allows her to coordinate with, and what audiences reward her for saying it. Applied to Sahar Razavi, a political … Continue reading
Posted in Iran
Comments Off on Decoding Iran Scholar Sahar Razavi
Elite Narrative Convergence In Iran War
Grok says: From elite strategy circles and quasi-intel shops, the narrative is coalescing around a “pivot to endurance” – the initial shock of decapitation strikes has given way to a grinding campaign aimed at eroding Iran’s logistical backbone, but Tehran’s … Continue reading
Posted in Iran
Comments Off on Elite Narrative Convergence In Iran War
The Definitive Verdict On Trump’s Iran War
The conflict is fifteen days old. The definitive verdicts are already everywhere. That speed is not accidental, and it is not simply a product of media incentives, though those matter. The deeper engine is coalition logic. Each alliance in the … Continue reading
How do the MSM know Trump doesn’t have a plan for the Strait of Hormuz?
They don’t know. They infer. Most mainstream reporters covering the Strait of Hormuz question work from three signals. The first is bureaucratic. In Washington reporting, journalists treat the visible behavior of institutions as a proxy for the existence of a … Continue reading
Posted in Iran, Journalism
Comments Off on How do the MSM know Trump doesn’t have a plan for the Strait of Hormuz?
Decoding Historian Turned Pundit Phillips Payson O’Brien
Phillips Payson O’Brien is a historian who uses the past to strip the romance from the present. His work belongs to a tradition of materialist strategy that treats war as an industrial process rather than a series of heroic maneuvers. … Continue reading
Posted in Iran
Comments Off on Decoding Historian Turned Pundit Phillips Payson O’Brien
Iran Experts On The War
Afshon Ostovar is an expert on Iran, the Middle East, and security issues—Associate Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, and author of books like Wars of Ambition: The United States, Iran, and the Struggle for the Middle East. He says … Continue reading
Posted in Iran
Comments Off on Iran Experts On The War