Trump files lawsuit to block release of Capitol attack records

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/19/trump-lawsuit-block-release-capitol-attack-records-biden

 Donald Trump has sought to block the release of documents related to the Capitol attack on 6 January to a House committee investigating the incident, challenging Joe Biden’s initial decision to waive executive privilege.
In a federal lawsuit, the former president said the committee’s request in August was “almost limitless in scope” and sought many records that were not connected to the siege.
He called it a “vexatious, illegal fishing expedition” that was “untethered from any legitimate legislative purpose”, according to the papers filed in a federal court in the District of Columbia.

Alta Fixsler Passes Away After Removal of Life Support

 https://hamodia.com/2021/10/18/alta-fixsler-life-support/

 “It is especially devastating that the U.K. rejected the pleas from both the US. and Israel, two of the U.K.’s closest allies, that the U.K. allow Alta to be sent to one of those countries, which were willing to provided her care. Why was this chance for the child to live denied?

Why vaccinated people dying from Covid-19 doesn't mean the vaccines are ineffective

 https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/18/health/covid-19-vaccination-colin-powell-death-wen-wellness/index.html

CNN: When we see vaccinated people dying from Covid-19, how do you explain that vaccines are still worth taking?

Dr. Leana Wen: We need to start with the science and what the research shows. The Covid-19 vaccines are extraordinarily effective in preventing illness and especially severe disease. The most recent data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that they reduce the likelihood of testing positive for Covid-19 by six-fold and the likelihood of death by 11-fold.

That means that if you are vaccinated, you are six times less likely to get Covid-19 than someone who's unvaccinated. And you are 11 times less likely to die from Covid-19 compared to an unvaccinated person. That's really excellent.

However, the Covid-19 vaccines do not protect you 100%. No vaccine does, just likely virtually no medical treatment is 100% effective. That doesn't mean the vaccine doesn't work, or that you shouldn't take it.

Komarno Rebbe regarding Sheidim

Komarno Rebbe (Imrei Kodesh page75)

וענין השדים אבאר כפי אמיתות הדברים, הנה ידוע למר מדברי מרן שיש שדים ימינים ויש שדים יהודאין והם התלוים באוירא ומטיבין לבני אדם והם אינם בכלל אלהים אחרים כלל, וזה דרכם כי יש עליהם ממונה ומכריז על כת שלו על פי שליחות כרוז ב"ד של מעלה מכריז עליהם שזה ילך לעשות כך חיזק לאיש פלוני וזה ילך כך, וכשבא אותו איש הנפגע מהם אל איזה צדיק גמור שיתפלל עליו ולצוות עליו \הצדיק מברך לאותו איש הנפגע ומצוה שיתרפא אותו האיש, אזי תיכוף מכריז הממונה ואומר לאותו השד לך מאיש פלוני כי הצדיק פלוני צוה כך, ואלו השדים נכנעין מאד לעשות רצון צדיק ובפרט לפני הש"י ואין עושין דבר קטן וגדול אלא על פי רשות הקדושה ורשות ב"ד של מעלה, ותאבים ומשתוקקים שיזכו לשמוע ברכת הש"י ומכבדין ליראי השם ושומרין אותם. וכאלו השדים לית בהו לתא דע"ז כלל ואינם עושין עצמן אלהות שיהיו צריכין לקטר להם או לעשות להם שום דבר יקר,אלא יש צדיקים גמורים שרואין אותם ומשמשים עמהם, כמבואר בגמרא שהיו שומעין לדיני התורה כי הם נכנעין מאוד לתורה ולןמדיה הצדיקים, ואם ירצה צדיק לעשות בהם שימוש קשה לפעמים צריכים להשביע אותם, והן הן שמושא רבא וזוטא שעשו הגאונים והוא מנהג אלמניא המובא בדברי מרן. וכך עשה רבינו נפתלי הכהן שהיה משמש עמם על פי שמושא רבא וזוטא, ואין בזה שום צד איסור.

אבל כל זה להכריח אותם לאיזה השתמשות אבל להתפלל ולבדך ולנסך איסור ע"ז יש בזה, כמבואר בדברי הרמב"ן פ' ויגש שאמר המברך והמתפלל לכבוד נברא עובד -עבודת אלילים, ואם המברך לקדושים הנפרדים הוא כעובד עבודת אלילים, מכל שכן המברך והמתפלל לשדים אפילו שיהי' ימינים הוה עבודה זרח ממש, והרי חוא כמקבלו ואומר אלי אתה שחייב סקילה ואין לו חלק באלקי ישראל, וכל הדברים שכתב בזה ידידי דברים ברורים שכל חתועבת האלו שעושין אפילו יהיה לשדים הימינים שהם בעצמם אינם אלהים אחרים כלל ואינם כלל מקליפות הטמאות, אעפ"כ מעשה התועבת אלו הם עבודת אל זר קרוב שחייב סקילה, ובכל אלו מיירי הפוסקים שהתירו לשאול בהם על הגניבה, הרא"ש והר"ר אליעזר דמיירי שמשפיע אותם כשמושא רבא וזוטא בדברי הקדושה, והוה כמי שמשביע לחבירו לעשות רצונו ולעשות שליחתו להגיד לו מסתריו, כי כל אלו הם שדין יהודאין הם עצמם מתפללים להש"י ומברכים אותו בברכרת והודאות, והן הן דברים מבוארים בספר האדון הקדוש ברכי יוסף שאינו מותר אלא שרי שמן י ביצים על ידי שמות הקודש, ולאו דוקא אלו אלא כל שדים הימינים אינם עושים עצמם אלהות ואין בהם שיצטרך להקטיר אר לנסך כי זה ע"ז ממש אפילו אם יעשה זה למלאכים מכל שכן לשדים, ואין בהם אלא שמשביע אותם בשם הקדוש לעשות רצונו כדרך השבעות המלאכים וזה הדדרך שמיירי הפוסקים שהתירו.

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Mishpacha article about Berland

https://mishpacha.com/the-fire-and-the-light-the-mystical-world-of-rav-eliezer-berland/

14 Berland Mishpacha Articl... by kevinj_j

UK 2-year-old Jewish toddler Alta Fixsler taken off life support

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/315281

Alta Fixsler, the two-year-old girl whose family fought for months against a court order to take her to Israel or the US for treatment, was taken off life support Monday.

Alta was born with severe brain damage and had been on life support since birth.

Alta’s parents, Avraham and Chaya Fixsler, endured a months long legal battle with the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust to have their daughter taken to either Israel or the United States for specialized care.

Earlier this month, Justice Alistair MacDonald of the Family Division of the High Court ruled that it was in the girl’s “best interest” to be at a children’s hospice when her life support was turned off, despite her parents' wish that it be done at home.

Cults and the War of the Jewish Magazines

 https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/229095/cults-and-the-war-of-the-jewish-magazines.html

 A short while later, Ami Magazine ran an article that claimed the exact opposite truth.  It claimed that there is no evidence at all of child abuse and that the movement is not, in fact, a cult.  The article was accompanied by the following sentence directly below the headline:

“The unjust persecution of a group of pious Jews, and the unsettling silence of the Jewish community.”

The Ami article claimed that the allegations are all spurious and that it is anti-Semitism which lies behind the taking of children away from these pious families.

Dan Ariely and the Credibility of (Social) Psychological Science

 https://replicationindex.com/2021/08/27/dan-ariely-and-the-credibility-of-social-psychological-science/

 Arguably, the most damaging finding for social psychology was the finding that only 25% of published results could be replicated in a direct attempt to reproduce original findings (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). With such a low base-rate of successful replications, all published results in social psychology journals are likely to fail to replicate. The rational response to this discovery is to not trust anything that is published in social psychology journals unless there is evidence that a finding is replicable. Based on this logic, the discovery of fraud in a study published in 2012 is of little significance. Even without fraud, many findings are questionable. 

 

 Conclusion

The discovery of a fraudulent dataset in a study on dishonesty has raised new questions about the credibility of social psychology. Meanwhile, the much bigger problem of selection for significance is neglected. Rather than treating studies as credible unless they are retracted, it is time to distrust studies unless there is evidence to trust them. Z-curve provides one way to assure readers that findings can be trusted by keeping the false discovery risk at a reasonably low level, say below 5%. Applying this methods to Ariely’s most cited articles showed that nearly half of Ariely’s published results can be discarded because they entail a high false positive risk. This is also true for many other findings in social psychology, but social psychologists try to pretend that the use of questionable practices was harmless and can be ignored. Instead, undergraduate students, readers of popular psychology books, and policy makers may be better off by ignoring social psychology until social psychologists report all of their results honestly and subject their theories to real empirical tests that may fail. That is, if social psychology wants to be a science, social psychologists have to act like scientists.

 

Behavioral researcher says he ‘undoubtedly made a mistake’ in false data scandal

https://www.timesofisrael.com/behavioral-researcher-says-he-undoubtedly-made-a-mistake-in-false-data-scandal/ 

Israeli-American celebrity academic Dan Ariely has said he “undoubtedly made a mistake” in a famous study of his that has been revealed as based on falsified data.

In an interview with Channel 12 Friday, Ariely denied responsibility for the forgery and expressed belief that his reputation would recover from a recent slew of problematic revelations.

Ariely is a Duke University professor of psychology and behavioral economics and author of best-selling books including “The Honest Truth about Dishonesty.”

Apparently, it's the next big thing. What is the metaverse?

 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58749529

 What is the metaverse?

To the outsider, it may look like a souped-up version of Virtual Reality (VR) - but some people think the metaverse could be the future of the internet.

In fact, the belief is that it could be to VR what the modern smartphone is to the first clunky mobile phones of the 1980s.

Instead of being on a computer, in the metaverse you might use a headset to enter a virtual world connecting all sorts of digital environments.

Unlike current VR, which is mostly used for gaming, this virtual world could be used for practically anything - work, play, concerts, cinema trips - or just hanging out.

Most people envision that you would have a 3D avatar - a representation of yourself - as you use it.

But because it's still just an idea, there's no single agreed definition of the metaverse.

Why Jews really join the so-called “Far right” parties

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/315254

 Jewish intellectuals began to describe the leftist reservation against Jewish self-empowerment early. In the USA, many formerly leftist Jews became conservatives after understanding what had happened to the Left after 1968. In France, author and member of the Académie Française Alain Finkielkraut wrote Le juif imaginaire (The Imaginary Jew) in 1980, denouncing Leftist Jews who used their Jewish roots in order to fight against conservatism, without any interest in what Jewish identity actually means.

3 arrested over cold case murders from 80s, 90s reportedly tied to Hasidic cult

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/3-arrested-over-cold-case-murders-from-80s-90s-reportedly-tied-to-hasidic-cult/

Police on Sunday announced the arrest of three suspects over their alleged connection to two unsolved murders in the 1980s and 90s near Jerusalem.

According to Hebrew-language media reports, the suspects — two men and a woman in their 60s from Jerusalem — are from the extremist Shuvu Bonim sect led by convicted sex offender rabbi Eliezer Berland.

Reports said they were arrested over their involvement in the disappearance of 17-year-old Nissim Shitrit, who was allegedly beaten by the sect’s “religious police” four months before he was last seen in January 1986.

Lev Tahor members stopped from entering Mexico, on route to Iran

 https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/lev-tahor-members-arrested-for-allegedly-trying-to-flee-to-iran-682305

Members of the Lev Tahor ultra-Orthodox cult have been prevented by Mexican authorities from traveling to Iran and have been returned to Guatemala where they have resided since 2014, Mexican media reported.

The cult, number around 300 individuals, the majority of whom are Israeli, has made several attempts to reach Iran, first in 2018 and most recently last week. 

According to the ultra-Orthodox news site B’Hadrei Haredim, the cult's members are attempting to fly to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and from there travel to neighboring Iran, in order to more freely conduct their affairs without state interference. 

"Millions have died from COVID injections."

 https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/oct/01/blog-posting/report-shares-wildly-unfounded-claims-covid-19-vac/

 A 52-page report from a pair of anti-vaccine advocates claims to present the truth about COVID-19 vaccines. However, it does just the opposite.

The website Stop World Control published the so-called Vaccine Death Report in September 2021, and it was shared across Facebook, including in this Sept. 26 post. It is written by David Sorenson and Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, a New York doctor who made headlines for prescribing hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 even though health authorities cautioned against it.

The report claims that "millions have died from COVID injections" around the world, and includes narratives from the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel and Brazil to back up this claim.

On top of that, it claims that half a million people within the United States have suffered severe side effects such as strokes, heart failure, brain disorders, convulsions and more.

"The data shows that we are currently witnessing the greatest organized mass murder in the history of our world," the report states. 

The alarming findings cite databases like the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and others. But the report misinterpreted the data to draw unfounded conclusions about the vaccines.

The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, also called VAERS, is an official public government database where anyone can submit any potential adverse health effect following a vaccine. However, the reports are not verified, and the system itself warns that reports can contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental or unverifiable. When used improperly, VAERS can be a source for misinformation.

Reports of death after COVID-19 vaccination are rare. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not verified any deaths as a result of the vaccines approved in the United States. Researchers are still evaluating whether there is a connection between the Johnson and Johnson vaccine and rare types of blood clots, but such cases are few.