R Tropper said his life threatened

Haaretz

A prominent U.S. rabbi is accusing Guma Aguiar, the billionaire energy industrialist and patron of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer club, of assaulting him in a Jerusalem hotel in April while the rabbi served as a prosecution witness against the businessman in a civil suit in Florida. Aguiar - who was born in Brazil, raised in the United States and now spends part of the year in Israel - is accused of entering Rabbi Leib Tropper's room at the David Citadel Hotel, assaulting him and threatening to cause him further harm. [...]

Stanley's questions regarding the BDA

Now that Stanley is willing to have a civil discourse - I am making his questions a post because he is asking some really good questions. The only question that I clearly need to answer is 3. I am not writing a book about wife abuse or husband abuse or child abuse but - abuse which includes all three and more. For previous dialogue between us see the post linked by his name below.

[[Wednesday Sept 9 Daas Torah said: I just was contacted by the BDA. They generously have offered to have someone answer questions - if they are given a list of clearly written and polite questions.

Stanley here is your chance. Your questions at present are too disorganized - please rewrite them and I will forward them]]

Stanley has left a new comment on your post "Insistence on only Torah law would destroy society...":

let's see if this post will make it or not:

1) i asked where the source for the BDS's dina de'malchusa dina was when it was rejected by all the rishonim and many acharonim and prof. michael broyde couldn't justify it with sources. i was accused of lziness.

in fact it is the BDA who came up with this 'novel' interpretation, it is for them to list the sources, not me. they must justify this new interpretation not me.

2) i questioned the veracity of the takonah of the BDA regarding the pre-nup by claiming i) no one else accepts it and no gedolim from the chareidi camp saw the need for it ii) less importantly, showed how modern society requires two wage earners and no longer is traditional where the man provides the bread any longer, so the need for the takonah is far less than in previous generations.

3) i stated as a fact and provided a source that the BDA'S claims that NY Get law can still usually result in a kosher get is rejected accross America by charedi poskim so how can the BDA go it alone in dinei nefoshos regarding eishes ish? i sited by name an example where rabbi manilowitz condemned the head of the BDA for mis-interpreting a tshuva from an odom godol. (a further fact, if the BDA wants to use reb moshe to justify this interpretation, how is it that no one from the chareidi camp understands the t'shuva of reb moshe the way it does and has condemned the NY get law).

3) i questioned the blog site's owner's objectivity regarding this agunah issue if he is writing a book on wife abuse and not spouse abuse which includes husband abuse. he may have 100% for this legitimate reasons but he has not answered what they are and I believe he should, otherwise one cannot be blamed for believing he is biased.

instead i have been addressed in a very condascending way and been lamblasted and accused of violent anger. all i wish is for him to answer the 4 questions (even though it's still 6 months till pesach) on his blogs without his frankly despicable replies.

if he claims that this is not his area of expertise and has no time to explore these issues, this is clearly his right. but then how can he be so dogmatic about his opinions and condemn mine so strongly? the other MO people reading this blog should also be able to answer most of my questions if they are defending the BDA out of knowledge and ignorance and i challenge them to do so.

i believe that he agreed to post my comments again on certain conditions and i hope i have been civil enough to have met his conditions. time will tell...

lastly this is not about me or you or anyone being right for that matter,. this is about a basic principle in yidddishkeit. if the botei din are doing the wrong thing, regardless of who they are or what they are, or what camp they belong to, they need to be held to task! gentlemen, i await your response without the sarcasm!

Haaretz' reporting is incitement?

JPost

US President Barack Obama told Jewish leaders in a July meeting that Israel needs to "engage in serious self-reflection." Israel's new US ambassador was "summoned" to the State Department to be lectured about Israel's building settlements in Jerusalem. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called two top aides to Obama "self-hating Jews."

All of these reports appeared in Haaretz.

And they've all been disputed or denied by the principals involved.

Nevertheless, the tales have become an important part of the day-to-day narrative on the US-Israel relationship. Partisans and pundits on both sides of the political divide have seized on the anonymously sourced stories to herald their own preconceived notions of the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government. [...]

Racism - what does color blind mean?

Newsweek

At the Children's Research Lab at the University of Texas, a database is kept on thousands of families in the Austin area who have volunteered to be available for scholarly research. In 2006 Birgitte Vittrup recruited from the database about a hundred families, all of whom were Caucasian with a child 5 to 7 years old.

The goal of Vittrup's study was to learn if typical children's videos with multicultural storylines have any beneficial effect on children's racial attitudes. Her first step was to give the children a Racial Attitude Measure, which asked such questions as:

How many White people are nice?
(Almost all) (A lot) (Some) (Not many) (None)

How many Black people are nice?
(Almost all) (A lot) (Some) (Not many) (None)

During the test, the descriptive adjective "nice" was replaced with more than 20 other adjectives, like "dishonest," "pretty," "curious," and "snobby."

Vittrup sent a third of the families home with multiculturally themed videos for a week, such as an episode of Sesame Street in which characters visit an African-American family's home, and an episode of Little Bill, where the entire neighborhood comes together to clean the local park.

In truth, Vittrup didn't expect that children's racial attitudes would change very much just from watching these videos. Prior research had shown that multicultural curricula in schools have far less impact than we intend them to—largely because the implicit message "We're all friends" is too vague for young children to understand that it refers to skin color. [...]

At last - Peaceful Shabbos demonstration

JPost

Violent demonstrations staged by Jerusalem's haredi community in recent weeks were scaled back Friday and Saturday, due in part to last week's orders from the Eda Haredit against blocking roads, throwing rocks, spitting or taking protests beyond the religious neighborhoods.

While several cars and individuals that passed near religious neighborhoods were peppered with stones and water bottles from a gathering of about 2,500 haredim, there were no violent confrontations with police.

"In general things were relatively quiet in comparison to other weekends," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told The Jerusalem Post Saturday night.[...]

R' Slifkin's review of Chaim Be’Emunasom

This is the lastest round in the debate concerning Science & Religion a.k.a the Slikin Issue. My publishing this is not an endorsement of the views expressed - on either side. I am willing to publish civil comments that deal with the substance of the issue. Comments that say nothing more than "kofer" or "rasha" will be discarded. Even though Rabbi Tropper has claimed that I am R' Slifkin's major supporter - it is simply not true. I am quite willing to publish the critique of this critique. I was undecided about publishing this but commentator Stanley's ready use of the word kofer served as a timely reminded that violent demonstrations in Jerusalem are not the only serious issue we must deal with.

A no holds barred opponent of R' Slikin here - R' Raphael Bearmant and here
ChaimBEmunasam-1

Intermarriage & racism/ Ask Moses

R Tovia Singer at Auschwitz

Obama's energy guru's problematic statements

Washington Post .Wall Street Journal Just resigned - Washington Post

White House officials offered tepid support Friday for Van Jones, the administration's embattled energy efficiency guru, who has issued two public apologies this week, one for signing a petition that questioned whether Bush administration officials "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."

Earlier, Jones said he was "clearly inappropriate" in using a crude term to describe Republicans in a speech he gave before joining the administration.

The apologies did little to quell objections from Republicans, several of whom demanded Friday further action against Jones. Rep. Mike Pence (Ind.) called on the adviser to resign or be fired, saying in a statement, "His extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this administration or the public debate." [...]

Wrongly convicted convicts paid $80g/ year

AP

Thomas McGowan's journey from prison to prosperity is about to culminate in $1.8 million, and he knows just how to spend it: on a house with three bedrooms, stainless steel kitchen appliances and a washer and dryer.

"I'll let my girlfriend pick out the rest," said McGowan, who was exonerated last year based on DNA evidence after spending nearly 23 years in prison for rape and robbery.

He and other exonerees in Texas, which leads the nation in freeing the wrongly convicted, soon will become instant millionaires under a new state law that took effect this week.

Exonerees will get $80,000 for each year they spent behind bars. The compensation also includes lifetime annuity payments that for most of the wrongly convicted are worth between $40,000 and $50,000 a year — making it by far the nation's most generous package.[...

NY Times errors regarding the Eidah Chareidis

VIN

Yesterday, the New York Times reported a conversation that their correspondent had with a supposed representative of the Eida Chareidis in Jerusalem, Yoilish Krauss. The New York Times, however, did not check out in fact, with the Eida Chareidis whether or not this fact was true. In an interview with Rav Moshe Shternbuch, VIN News reported that Rav Shternbuch stated categorically that Mr. Yoilish Krauss has no involvement with the Eida Chareidis whatsoever.[...]

Children who molest other children

Times on Line

Two brothers aged 10 and 12 who tortured and sexually humiliated two boys were spared trial for attempted murder yesterday when prosecutors decided to accept their guilty pleas to lesser charges.

The brothers pleaded guilty to robbing, sexually abusing and intentionally causing grievous bodily harm to their victims, aged 9 and 11, during a pre-planned attack of extreme, sadistic violence that has drawn parallels with the murder of James Bulger and to assaulting another boy a week earlier. The Crown Prosecution Service said that it had accepted the lesser charges to save the victims from having to relive their ordeal in court and said that the brothers would still face the same maximum term of life imprisonment.

The attack happened in April, 25 days after the brothers had been taken into care and placed with a foster family in the mining village of Edlington, South Yorkshire.

The nine-year-old victim raised the alarm after being found wandering the streets barefoot and dazed and covered in mud and blood. His 11-year-old friend was found a short time later at the foot of a steep ravine. He was unconscious, naked from the waist down and half-submerged in water. He had been left for dead after a sink was smashed down on his head.[...]

Petach Tikva & Falash Mura - it is not racism

Haaretz SEE Previous posting on subject

Israel is rife with racism, xenophobia, snobbery and hatred - particularly toward Arabs, especially Palestinians, but also toward foreign workers and other "others." Each part of our society has its own well-known pet hates; fear and loathing exist across every religious, geographic, racial and financial divide.

Yes, of course, other societies are just as bad, if not worse, and the hatred is certainly reciprocated, with interest, toward Israelis and Jews, from many other quarters. But that should not serve as any kind of excuse. Israel and Israelis aspired once upon a time to better things, and still like to think themselves above all that.

With all that said, however, the crisis over the Ethiopian children and the Petah Tikva schools has nothing to do with racism. I lived in the religious Zionist community for many years, studied with Ethiopian students in yeshivas and colleges, served with them in a hesder unit (which combines army service and Torah study). And despite my unreserved criticisms of the community in which I grew up, and its many racist and xenophobic traits, I have to admit that with regard to absorbing Ethiopian immigrants, it is probably the least racist part of Israeli society. It is not without fault, and there have been racist incidents. But on the whole, most of its leadership, and certainly the grass roots, have displayed more concern for the Ethiopians' acceptance than any other group. [...]

Abuse - Pitfalls of relying on scientific circumstantial evidence