https://yated.com/contra-gadols/
There were many quotes in the name of Rav Moshe, and I repeated some to my zaide, who responded to me in the early 1980s, “today, you can’t believe anything that they quote from Rav Moshe unless you heard it directly (m’pi kodsho) from his holy mouth.”
https://mishpacha.com/estrangement/
Psychotherapy & Popular Media
These channels have spread the idea that estrangement can and should be used to end “toxic” relationships. They have taught that children “should have been” overtly loved, understood, validated, encouraged, supported, and otherwise embraced by their parents. Parents “should have” provided the model and security of a conflict-free and warm marriage, and both parents should have exuded a serene and positive attitude.
The modern thinking is that children who were exposed to less healthy models were as abused as those who were routinely yelled at, harshly punished, or hit.
This childhood abuse is seen as largely responsible for the adult child’s current states of anxiety, depression, illness, and relationship problems. Cultural wisdom suggests that the harm perpetrated by an imperfect home and imperfect parents is so intolerable that distancing oneself from it is an understandable and reasonable response and many individuals have chosen estrangement as a coping tool.
The cultural message that “you only live once” and the purpose of life is to enjoy it, prioritizes taking care of one’s own needs above all else. Concepts such as self-sacrifice, responsibility, duty, and obligation find themselves on the blacklist, along with martyrdom. Rather than being considered noble, elevating, and meaningful, all forms of self-negation are considered to be self-destructive. When relatives like siblings and parents lower one’s mood through inconsiderate, hurtful, or otherwise unpleasant behavior, it’s considered prudent to step aside.
While estrangement is appropriate when parents present a true threat to their kids, it must be reserved for the most serious of impending dangers. Cutting one’s parents out of one’s life when not absolutely necessary is harmful to oneself, compromising one’s own compassionate and humane nature, and robbing oneself of the opportunity to perform the mitzvah of honoring parents.
Igros Moshe (YD II #151) Is it permitted to do an autopsy in order to understand the disease better for educational purposes. This is analyzed by the Nodeh BeYehudah and he ruled that it is prohibited unless there is a living person be treated now with the same condition for which the knowledge gained might be needed to be cured. I add that even if there is a possibility of finding a cure there is no elimination of the prohibition of autopsy since there is no obligation to learn about medical cures. In fact we don’t find that there is an obligation to learn the knowledge of medicine in order to be able to cure the sick, we are only obligated to save others with what is available. In other words if he is already a doctor he has an obligation to cure the sick. Similarly if he knows how to swim, he has an obligation to save a person drowning in a river but he has no obligation to learn how to swim or how to cure the sick. Also a person is not obligated to become rich in order to give charity and save lives in that manner. The Nodah Beyehudah also says since the autopsy requires the consent of the family but that is not correct since desecration of the corpse is a prohibition that applies to everyone. The only significance of the family is they should be the first to be consulted just as they have the initial obligation for burial but if they don’t do it then the obligation is on everyone else. However in my opinion if no cutting of the corpse is done to open the throat or abdomen, but a needle is inserted to remove fluid for examination concerning the illnesss – that would not be considered desecration of the corpse since this is often done to the living and is clearly permitted. It would also be permitted to take some blood by needle for examination. It would also be permitted to take x rays or other scanning since it doesn’t cause desecration.
Trump’s suggestions that international borders can be redrawn — by force if necessary — are particularly inflammatory in Europe. His words run contrary to the argument European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy are trying to impress on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-donald-trump-greenland-ukraine-regions-annexed-2012290
On Thursday, Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin's press secretary, responded to Trump's desire for the U.S. to acquire the island, which is strategically located in the Arctic Circle and has a population of about 56,000. It is also rich in natural resources.
The Kremlin spokesperson told reporters that Russia was "watching this rather dramatic development of the situation very closely" and suggested that the U.S. president-elect should take into account the opinions of those in Greenland, as Russia did for the residents of the "four new regions of the Russian Federation."
Peskov was referring to the illegal annexations of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Moscow held referendums on the annexations in the occupied territories, which Ukraine and Western nations deemed illegal—with the U.S. calling them a sham.
He slammed Musk’s heritage, calling South Africans the most racist people on Earth.
“He should go back to South Africa,” Bannon said. “Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on Earth, white South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?”
Bannon continued to pile on the criticism, saying Musk has a maturity of a “little boy” and only has an interest in increasing his wealth.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czd49j85q48o
It was claimed that while Brown was prime minister, police officers were told not to intervene because child victims of the gangs had made a "lifestyle choice".
A spokesman for Brown - who served as MP for Dunfermline East then Kirkarldy and and Cowdenbeath from 1983 to 2015 - said it was a "complete fabrication" to suggest Brown was responsible.
"There is no basis for such allegations at all," he said.
"There is no foundation whatsoever for alleging that Mr Brown sent, approved or was in any way involved with issuing a circular or statement to the police because it did not happen.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/elon-musks-latest-terrifying-foray-into-british-politics
It is genuinely hard to find the words to describe the crassness, the ignorance, the potential violence wrapped up in each one of Musk’s interventions. The sudden fixation of the world’s richest man on child sexual exploitation in deindustrialized English towns—much of which took place more than a decade ago—has forced British people like me, who follow the news, who live here, who think they actually care about such things, to check that we are not out of our minds. So we have remembered the voluminous reporting, in all forms—official, journalistic, conspiratorial, dramatized-for-television—that have documented these awful stories for the past fifteen years. We have remembered that reliable data on sexual abuse, particularly toward children, is notoriously hard to compile. (Last November, the Labour government published the first-ever British statistics to include the ethnicity of perpetrators, which showed that seven per cent of offenders in 2023 were “Asian,” roughly in line with their share of the population.) We have remembered that Starmer did a decent job as a public prosecutor. We have remembered that in 2014, Alexis Jay, a Scottish academic and former social worker, led a shocking inquiry, which documented the abuse of some fourteen hundred girls in the town of Rotherham alone. Jay subsequently steered a seven-year national independent inquiry into child sexual abuse—with fifteen strands of investigation—that included interviews with more than seven thousand victims, from all corners of Britain. We have remembered that political will has been lacking. In 2022, Jay’s monumental work made twenty recommendations, none of which were enacted by the previous Conservative government.
But the hard graft of protecting vulnerable children, or prosecuting rapists, or enacting legislative change, is not what Musk is after. “The truth is a concept that Elon Musk clearly has very little interest in,” Andrew Norfolk, a recently retired investigative reporter for the Times of London, who covered the grooming-gang cases for years, told his old newspaper this week. What Musk craves is disorder and proof of his power. Since endorsing Donald Trump’s bid for the Presidency on X, in July, he has stepped up his digital incursions on behalf of right-wing parties and causes in democracies from Argentina to Germany. During last summer’s riots in the U.K., following the deaths, by stabbing, of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class near Liverpool—which were inflamed by online misinformation identifying the alleged killer as a Muslim immigrant (he wasn’t)—Musk tweeted, “Civil war is inevitable.”
Keir Starmer tore into Elon Musk Monday, as the U.K. prime minister forcefully stood by his record sticking up for the victims of child sexual exploitation.
Starmer said he had tackled the “utterly sickening” crime “head on” as director of public prosecutions (DPP) — and appeared to accuse Musk, who in recent days boosted a jailed far-right activist known as Tommy Robinson, of “spreading lies and misinformation.”
In the British government’s most direct pushback at Musk yet, Starmer told reporters at a press conference in Surrey: “Those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible, they are not interested in victims, they are interested in themselves.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5079498-house-republicans-debt-problem/
House Republicans have a problem. They want to pass a massive agenda for President-elect Trump, preferably in his first 100 days of office. And they don’t want to add to the federal deficit.
That looks impossible.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/freedom-mind/202106/understanding-cults-the-basics
Cult leaders are typically malignant narcissists and want people who will be obedient to them.
Cult leaders want people who will be obedient to them and their rules. They look for ways to “break” people; they want people who will work hard and long hours for little or no pay. They want “willing” slaves. Authoritarian religious cults often use members for labor trafficking. When the mind is controlled, a victim may appear happy and willing to suffer for the profit or benefit of the leader/group.
https://www.ynetnews.com/business/article/r1dgvf6hyl
The arrest of the Alexander brothers on rape and assault charges has shocked Miami’s Israeli community; known for their wealth in real estate and security and generous donations to Israeli causes, opinions are split, with some praising them and others calling them arrogant
Until recently, Vladimir Putin insisted, at least publicly, that he didn’t want a cult of his personality. Not anymore. During the last three years of the war he started in Ukraine, he has embraced it.
The serious Putin talked about the war even on Orthodox Christmas, which comes in January, at the country’s main church, the Christ the Savior Cathedral. The Kremlin informed Russians that Putin had asked the country’s top priest “to engrave his own initials” on chains for the crosses worn by soldiers
