https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asmodeus
According to the Kabbalah and the school of Shlomo ibn Aderet, Asmodeus is a cambion born as the result of a union between Agrat bat Mahlat, a succubus, and King David.[44]
Sunday, August 22, 2021
What I Learned While Eavesdropping on the Taliban
It didn’t matter that they were unarmored men, with 30-year-old guns, fighting against gunships, fighter jets, helicopters, and a far-better-equipped ground team. It also didn’t matter that 100 of them died that day. Through all that noise, the sounds of bombs and bullets exploding behind them, their fellow fighters being killed, the Taliban kept their spirits high, kept encouraging one another, kept insisting that not only were they winning, but that they’d get us again—even better—next time.
They told me how they planned to keep killing Americans. They told me the details of these plans: what weapons they would use, where they would do it, how many they hoped to murder. Often, they told me these things while doing the killing. They told me that, God willing, the world would be made in their image. And they told me what so many others refused to hear, but what I finally understood: Afghanistan is ours.
Saturday, August 21, 2021
Israeli chief rabbi calls to exhume wife of missionary who pretended to be a Jew
The man, who was not named, told Israeli media that he had been born Jewish and joined Jews for Jesus, a movement that Jews generally do not recognize as belonging to Judaism. But he had since returned to Orthodox Judaism, he said.
But his late wife was not Jewish and should not be buried at a Jewish cemetery, the chief rabbi’s office said, because that would be unfair to the Jews buried around her and their relatives, who believed they were buried along with their coreligionists, as is customary in traditional Judaism.
“All efforts must be done to move her to a non-Jewish plot,” Altman wrote in June. “If that’s impossible, a fence should be put around the grave.”
Friday, August 20, 2021
Timeline of U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan
https://www.factcheck.org/2021/08/timeline-of-u-s-withdrawal-from-afghanistan/
And the Trump administration kept to the pact, reducing U.S. troop levels from about 13,000 to 2,500, even though the Taliban continued to attack Afghan government forces and welcomed al-Qaeda terrorists into the Taliban leadership.
Trump Hopes No One Remembers He Pushed for a Full Afghanistan Withdrawal in June
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/08/donald-trump-joe-biden-afghanistan
Weirdly, Trump did not note in his statement that less than two months ago, he was bragging about how he started the Afghanistan-withdrawal process and claiming the Biden administration was powerless to stop it.
Wednesday, August 18, 2021
Why do conservatives view CNN as a very liberal biased news source?
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-conservatives-view-CNN-as-a-very-liberal-biased-news-source
But today, creating drama to foment a reaction is a good business plan. People who want similar things need to hate each other for no apparent reason other than the label of being right or left.
The media machine needs you divided. They understand the power of a united democracy that’s utterly uninterested in stupid articles disguising themselves as legitimate news stories.
This is funny and sad to me.
Because both sides are fairly equally barking only when they believe it serves the interests of their advertisers.
Nobody who works at CNN or Fox actually cares if you read their stuff. They care that you come back.
They care that you’re instigated. They care that they instigated something in you.
The thing with the internet is that if something becomes bad on either side, they can just delete their ‘news’ story. Say, a lot of people start to hate CNN for something they posted? It’s gone. Fox News posted something that got a massive negative reaction? Poof.
They lie. They both lie.
‘You’re crazy, a heretic’: Senior Haredi rabbi kicks out anti-vaxxer student
https://www.timesofisrael.com/youre-crazy-senior-ultra-orthodox-rabbi-kicks-out-anti-vaxxer-student/
Leading ultra-Orthodox rabbi Ben Zion Mutzafi kicked out a man attending his lecture on Sunday evening due to the man’s opposition to the COVID-19 vaccine.
In video footage of the incident published Tuesday by Haredi news site Kikar HaShabbat, the rabbi can be seen repeatedly calling the man “crazy” and “evil.” He later said he stood behind those descriptions.
After the anti-vaxxer started loudly voicing his opinions against the
vaccine, Mutzafi, who ordered all his followers to get the vaccine
earlier this year, was seen shouting: “More than 6,500 people died, stop
making things up. Go, get out of here, you’re crazy.”
The Soul of the Matter
https://mishpacha.com/the-soul-of-the-matter/
“In actuality,” says Rav Leuchter, “Nefesh HaChaim was only printed
after Rav Chaim’s passing by his son, Reb Itzele, and he chose to omit
those parts of his father’s manuscript that opposed chassidus, out of
respect for the Tzemach Tzedek, with whom he worked in partnership for
the benefit of Eastern European Jewry. That’s why, after Sha’ar Gimmel
and before Sha’ar Daled, there are eight chapters that seem to be
hanging in the middle and are not numbered. Apparently, these were
originally part of a separate sha’ar, and Reb Itzele Volozhiner omitted
parts of it.”
Ex-defense secretary: Trump's push to get US troops out of Afghanistan possibly 'undermined' deal with Taliban
But, Esper told CNN's Christiane Amanpour, "my concern was that President Trump, by continuing to want to withdraw American forces out of Afghanistan, undermined the agreement, which is why in the fall when he was calling for a return of US forces by Christmas, I objected and formally wrote a letter to him, a memo based on recommendations from the military chain of command and my senior civilian leadership that we not go further -- that we not reduce below 4,500 troops unless and until conditions were met by the Taliban."
Tuesday, August 17, 2021
Safed rabbi jailed for multiple counts of sexual assault to get early release
A prison release committee on Tuesday decided to allow the early release of a well-known rabbi and yeshiva head from the northern city of Safed, who was jailed for committing a slew of sexual crimes against eight women, including multiple counts of sexual assault.
Rabbi Ezra Sheinberg was convicted in 2018 as part of a plea deal over a series of crimes committed against women who came to him for advice and counseling. He was sentenced to 7.5 years.
Following a lengthy discussion on Tuesday, after he served two-thirds
of his sentence, a release committee decided to shorten his prison term
How Apple's plan to combat child abuse backfired on it
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/17/tech/apple-child-safety-tools-backfire/index.html
In early August, Apple (AAPL) announced a major new program designed to help combat child exploitation and promote safety, issues the tech community has increasingly embraced. It was a presentation big on intent but light on the details.
What followed — outraged tweets, critical headlines and an outcry for more information — put the tech giant
on defense just weeks ahead of the next iPhone launch, its biggest
event of the year. It was a rare PR miscalculation for a company known
for its meticulous PR efforts.
The technology at
the center of the criticism is a tool that will start checking iOS
devices and iCloud photos for child abuse imagery, along with a new
opt-in feature that will warn minors and their parents if incoming or
sent image attachments in iMessage are sexually explicit and, if so,
blur them.
The Soviet War in Afghanistan, 1979 - 1989
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/08/the-soviet-war-in-afghanistan-1979-1989/100786/
Nearly twenty-five years ago, the Soviet Union pulled its last troops out of Afghanistan, ending more than nine years of direct involvement and occupation. The USSR entered neighboring Afghanistan in 1979, attempting to shore up the newly-established pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. In short order, nearly 100,000 Soviet soldiers took control of major cities and highways. Rebellion was swift and broad, and the Soviets dealt harshly with the Mujahideen rebels and those who supported them, leveling entire villages to deny safe havens to their enemy. Foreign support propped up the diverse group of rebels, pouring in from Iran, Pakistan, China, and the United States. In the brutal nine-year conflict, an estimated one million civilians were killed, as well as 90,000 Mujahideen fighters, 18,000 Afghan troops, and 14,500 Soviet soldiers. Civil war raged after the withdrawal, setting the stage for the Taliban's takeover of the country in 1996. As NATO troops move toward their final withdrawal this year, Afghans worry about what will come next, and Russian involvement in neighboring Ukraine's rebellion has the world's attention, it is worth looking back at the Soviet-Afghan conflict that ended a quarter-century ago. Today's entry is part of the ongoing series here on Afghanistan.
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