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"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: Cults
NYT: Nxivm ‘Sex Cult’ Was Also a Huge Pyramid Scheme, Lawsuit Says
From the New York Times: Mr. Raniere and Ms. Salzman built a curriculum that they falsely claimed was based in science, the lawsuit alleged. The early courses conditioned students to become emotionally dependent on a system of rewards and punishment. … Continue reading
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Danger Signs In Large Group Awareness Training
LINK: Often people who have been on these courses are told not to say what goes on there because this will spoil the experience for others who might want to do them in the future. Rubbish! This is a means … Continue reading
Call of the Shofar is Scientology Without Space Aliens
Steve Sailer: “Recall Werner Erhard, the former car salesman Jack Rosenberg who renamed himself after physicist Werner Heisenberg and West German finance minister Ludwig Erhard. He founded est, the existentialist cult that swept white-collar America in the 1970s. Est was … Continue reading
Posted in COTS, Cults, Scientology
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Is Call of the Shofar Compatible With Judaism?
Shmuel Pollen, a resident of Morristown who participated in and even led “Call of the Shofar” workshops, reveals what shook him out of the “influence.” So why the radical change of heart? It occurred this past Shabbos, when I was … Continue reading
Cults In Our Midst
By Margaret Singer PhD: Indirect trance induction also grows out of storytelling and other verbal experiences. Cult leaders often speak repetitively, rhythmically, in hard-to-follow ways, and combine with these features the telling of tales and parables that are highly visualizable. … Continue reading
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The Dangers Of LGAT (Large Group Awareness Therapy)
An excerpt from “The Politics of Transformation: Recruitment – Indoctrination Processes in a Mass Marathon Psychology Organization” Published by St. Martin’s Press 1993 By Philip Cushman, Ph.D. Mass marathon training is usually based on the belief that it is a … Continue reading
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The Call Of The Shofar Controversy
Benny posts: Reflections on the Call of the Shofar controversy: I don’t know much about the program, nor do I particularly care. But, ever since the controversy began, I’ve been asking — What’s the goal and purpose for writing and … Continue reading
What Is ‘Call of the Shofar’?
The program “Call of the Shofar” is an Orthodox Jewish version of EST aka Landmark Forum. It is popular with many Lubavitchers and is a form of LGAT – Large Group Awareness Therapy. As such, it is very dangerous, according … Continue reading
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New Age Flavor Of The Month Byron Katie
Vlinden posts: After reading about Byron Katie on this board, I was interested to see her in action. Here is a link showing a session with an Israeli woman who tells Katie that she’s afraid of war. I’ve never seen … Continue reading
The Dangers Of Large Group Awareness Training (LGAT) II
From a post to Rick Ross: These firewalking seminars, are very dangerous seminars, in my view, for many many reasons. Dozens, if not hundreds of reasons. Firstly, doing the Firewalk in the presence of the Super-Guru is something you can … Continue reading
Posted in Cults, Tony Robbins
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