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"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
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- * 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)
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Category Archives: Iraq
Iran Is A Tougher Enemy Than Iraq
There was a saying in the Bush administration prior to the 2003 Iraq invasion: Everyone wants to take Baghdad but only real men want to take Tehran. Baghdad was always the easier target. Iran is a different problem entirely. Iraq … Continue reading
You Don’t Win Wars Through Logic & Rhetoric
The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 for reasons that had little to do with weapons of mass destruction. The weapons argument was a tool of mobilization, a pretext chosen because it could unite a domestic coalition, satisfy the requirements … Continue reading
How Are The 2003 Iraq War Hawks Reacting To This Iran War?
Some of the same people or their intellectual heirs who advocated for the 2003 Iraq War are arguing for a hard line on Iran. But there are important differences in who speaks with influence today and how much prestige they … Continue reading
Decoding The Iraq Occupation
Alliance Theory lens: the Iraq invasion and occupation were driven less by shared belief in a concrete outcome than by the need to maintain overlapping elite coalitions. Moral language functioned as coordination glue. When coalition payoffs diverged, the project hollowed … Continue reading
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Trump Bombed Iran – Now What? (6-22-25)
01:00 The MSM’s lack of sophistication, so what should you expect from the news?04:00 Video: “Israel Has Walked Off a Cliff” – John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dalbnR8vNvs07:00 The Israeli stock market booms, https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israeli-stock-market-iran-conflict-9231579639:00 Michael joins to discuss … Continue reading
Israel vs Iran Day 3 (6-15-25)
01:00 Israel is achieving everything it wants, Iran achieving almost nothing but survival.03:00 FT: Iran’s authoritarian friends, Russia and China, are unlikely to prop up the regime if it does start to wobble. Russia did so in Syria in 2015 … Continue reading
Decoding Israel’s Seven-Front War (10-6-24)
01:00 Steve Hsu: Iran vs Israel: Implications for Missile Defense, https://stevehsu.substack.com/p/iran-vs-israel-implications-for-missile04:00 Michael Doran on October 7 one year later, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5ig9ftKAk413:30 Five reasons why Israel’s 7-front war is so hard to win, https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/10/five-reasons-why-israels-7-front-war-is-so-hard-to-win/14:20 Dooovid joins, https://x.com/RebDoooovid28:00 Dooovid has been anti-Zionist for … Continue reading
To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq
This is a terrific 2020 book by journalist Robert Draper. Here are some highlights: * Donald Rumsfeld’s desire for dominance at times hindered his desire for information—except, of course, around the president, at which time he became a model of … Continue reading
The Iraq Invasion Of 2003 & The Israel Lobby
Stephen Walt wrote in 2010: In his testimony to the Iraq war commission in the U.K., former Prime Minister Tony Blair offered the following account of his discussions with Bush in Crawford, Texas in April 2002. Blair reveals that concerns … Continue reading
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
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