Sunday, July 26, 2020
US Pollster: Here's why the 2020 polling is wrong - and is even worse than in 2016
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/284136
While most polls suggest Donald Trump’s reelection bid is in serious
trouble, with Joe Biden leading in virtually all battleground states,
and even in some Republican strongholds, a few pollsters are bucking the
trend, suggesting that the 2020 presidential election is far more
competitive than it appears at first blush.
Making Discrimination Vs. BT's Great Again
BS"D
Israeli Army Draft Office: Making Discrimination Against Newly-Observant Jewish Girls Great Again
by Binyomin Feinberg
5 Menachem Av, 5780 °° July 26, '20 (Parshas VaEschanon)
In our most recent update on Refusenik girls being persecuted over their compliance with the Torah prohibitions against submitting to Military Draft directives ( https://daattorah.blogspot.
The
Army insistence on drafting Miss Z. - today, Sunday July 26 - in
blatant disregard of her demonstrable religiosity - constitutes
persecutory treatment. It's also consistent with the Army Draft Office
focus on "easy" female targets, including recent immigrants, especially
from Eastern Europe, and Ba'alos Teshuva - in this case, both combined.
One
legalistic subterfuge - regularly employed by Army draft officers to
disguise persecutory tactics against such girls - is to generously offer
"opportunities" for the girls to "explain" their positions - at the
Draft Office itself, often on their draft date, or at a "Religiosity
Interview" ("Rayon Dat", the acute hazards of which we've previously addressed).
Both
options are, understandably, generally futile, and risky in the
extreme. These Army "offers" are akin to the fox formally inviting the
fish onto the shore, to deliver a presentation of academic arguments
as to why the fish deserves not to be eaten - in front of a fox forum -
and then self-righteously imputing stubbornness to any fish who refuses
such a reasonable, balanced proposal for open dialogue.
Girls
who wisely refuse such "offers" to enable their own spiritual demise
are then painted as suffering from predicaments of their own creation.
Additionally, those selfless volunteers assisting them, available day
and night, are sometimes tarred as sacrificing the prospects of saving
the girl on the altar of their "extreme" position against the girls
accepting these "offers."
The
real question is: why does anyone ever fall for these entrapment
tactics? That is not a simple question to answer. One answer is: due to
an irrational phobia that by not enabling their own drafting, they
might... get drafted. Another is that many, many girls are routinely
being maladvised by the wrong people - some of whom may be well
intentioned, but are misguided - or themselves malinformed. This type of
faulty advice is found among even a few frum activists who tend to look
at Ba'alos Teshuva, Sefardi girls, etc. as less resolute in
withstanding ongoing Army harassment - and what some describe as "terror
tactics."
In
reality, these (unwittingly condescending) perceptions are often
erroneous, and presumptuous. The qualities of mesiras nefesh (self
sacrifice), strength of character, persistence, and acumen are found in
all types of girls, from all backgrounds. The key to actualize those
qualities - often dormant - is to provide any girl who wants help
everything she needs to help herself. That includes emotional support,
religious chizuk, accurate information, proper guidance, and warm
relationships with sincere women more than willing to sacrifice their
own needs to help save Jewish girls from the exploitive immorality of
the military environment. To make all of this - along with any necessary
legal assistance - available to all girls in need, financial supporters
play a crucial role as well. Additionally, properly publicizing the
plight of such heroic souls is vital in containing and deterring the
military persecution of these girls.
Unfortunately,
only a small fraction of such cases come to attention of the public.
This is because the Israeli government knows that this war for the souls
of Jewish Daughters is being fought not with bullets but with
bulletins, with information rather than with ammunition. As such, the
government and Army unrelenting pursue every avenue, trying to ensure
that those Refusenik-advocates who fight best also fight least-informed.
Thank G-d, those efforts often fail.
The
multifaceted approach the government employs in embargoing information
about girls being pursued by Maitav would require a book to detail and
document. Suffice it for now to observe that whatever cases do come our
way are the tip of the iceberg, and reflect a crisis far broader than we
can convey here.
***
Killing Aliyah, One Girl at a Time:
Furthermore,
the Israeli Army is putting this recent Olah (immigrant girl) through a
purgatory she never would have experienced in her country of origin, or
in practically any country other than the one claiming to be Jewish.
This is reminiscent of the well-known critique about the historical
Israeli government callousness towards immigrants: "The Israeli
government wants Aliyah, not Olim." For cases like this, one could
tweak that: "The government wants Mit'gaysot, not Olot" (they want
female recruits, not female immigrants). Draft Office Persecution of
immigrant Ba'alos Teshuva is not only deeply wrong, it presents a
formidable Kitrug against Aliyah.
This all raises many questions, a modest sampling of which we humbly submit for consideration by our esteemed readership:
1.
If we want G-d to restore the Jewish People to His Holy Land, what are
we waiting for? Where is the outrage, especially by - or at - the
ostensibly religious political parties and media?
2.
Why is it that the same people who made a ongoing campaign to free one
particular incarcerated target of US prosecutorial bias are now
enabling the drafting of hundreds, even thousands of girls into the
Israeli Army - by their cover-up of the Israeli draft crisis? Even if
they didn't care about Jewish girls being sexually abused in the Army,
and persecuted in their efforts to avoid the Draft, they should have a
simple practical interest in reporting real news (as opposed to all the
trivia that passes for contemporary journalism) - news that actually
makes a difference in saving lives and souls.
3.
Why is it that some people manage to find time to raise tens of
thousands of dollars to free dangerous child-molesters from prison
(where they belong), by illicitly soliciting funds under the pretext of
"Pidyon Shvuyim" -- but are nowhere to be seen in helping save girls
from the abusive military and/or Israeli military prison? In stark
contrast, efforts to save these innocent girls are impeccably
legitimate, of unquestionably top priority, and also generally cost far
less money.
4. Do we
imagine that we can discharge our obligations of mourning over the
Churban by partaking of some feel-good inspirational lectures,
delicately designed to sidestep any "controversial" observations, even
those vital for spiritual lifesaving causes staring us in the face? How
much value do inspirational trips have from the perspective of Heaven,
when they serve more as a "potair" than a "mechayev" to do simple,
practical things, including - among many other things - saving Jewish
teenage girls from being forced into the exploitive, immoral Israeli
military - by "our own"?
In
truth, it only takes a few good people to save these precious neshomos.
But the vast majority of the Torah observant world is intentionally
being kept uninformed or malinformed about these Refusenik girls.
We
see from the recent outpouring of Divine Wrath around the world that
G-d is very angry. Unfortunately, there are many things that we find in
our own communities that would account for the current Charon Af
HaShem. Do we imagine that in Heaven our excuses for our overall
passivity are tolerated?
I
was recently informed that a Monsey Rabbi made the following
observation about one lesson which we can imbibe from the Plague of
Corona. We paraphrase here, humbly presenting it to the esteemed
Tzibbur as food for thought:
We
know that G-d is the Ultimate Good, and all that He does is pure good.
Thus, whenever he gives us a punishment, it's to save us from something
even worse.
Several
months ago, G-d closed down almost all of our Torah institutions - our
Kollelim, Yeshivos, Bais Yaakov schools, Synagogues, etc. If this
terrible Decree was to save the Jewish People from something worse, we
must ask:
Q: "What could possibly be worse than closing down all of our institutions?
A: Leaving them open --
the way they were...."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"... And if someone, like Pinchos, is one among a multitude, and every man is against him when he dares to speak out for truth and to fight for the Law -- the more lonely his stand, the greater the number of his adversaries, the more powerful is his word, the mightier his deed."
-- Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch OB"M (1808-1888), (in "Judaism Eternal," vol. 2, p. 293)
....
Update link for the month of Tammuz to check in case we post during the week between our regular Wednesday/ Thursday posts:
https://docs.google.com/
"... And if someone, like Pinchos, is one among a multitude, and every man is against him when he dares to speak out for truth and to fight for the Law -- the more lonely his stand, the greater the number of his adversaries, the more powerful is his word, the mightier his deed."
-- Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch OB"M (1808-1888), (in "Judaism Eternal," vol. 2, p. 293)
....
Update link for the month of Tammuz to check in case we post during the week between our regular Wednesday/ Thursday posts:
https://docs.google.com/
Kevin McCarthy: Dems failing on China, virus, riots -- 'That's why we need Trump'
https://www.foxnews.com/media/kevin-mccarthy-dems-failing-on-china-virus-riots-thats-why-we-need-trump
"The Democrats have a China problem," according to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who appeared on "Watters' World" on Saturday.
"I
don't know what China, the Communist Party, has on the Democrats, but
it's being very effective that they're holding back any accountability
to China and the ability for us to go in, not only to punish them for
the virus," McCarthy said. "But they're actually slowing the process
down for a vaccine, that they won't punish individuals when they want to
hack into it."
Saturday, July 25, 2020
The week when everything changed for Trump
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53532880\\\\\\\\\
I 's as though in January 2017, Donald
Trump was given a shiny, new car. The best, most beautiful car the
world has ever seen. And in July 2020, the president made an important
discovery about it.
It has a reverse gear.
America's Covid response is flawed. But even the gold standard nations are seeing big outbreaks
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/24/world/coronavirus-response-resurgence-wave-intl/index.html
The United States has been widely criticized
for its approach to the coronavirus pandemic, and the lack of strict
nationwide measures to contain the outbreak is reflected in the highest
number of cases and deaths in the world.
Yet
even countries lauded for their fast and effective responses to
Covid-19 are seeing large outbreaks and resurgences of the infection, as
it becomes clear that successes in containing the virus are often only
temporary.
Making BT-Baiting Great Again
BS"D
Making Ba'alas Teshuva-Baiting Great Again
3 Menachem Av, 5780 °° July 24, '20 (Parshas Devarim)
by Binyomin Feinberg
We
received documentation on the latest developments in another case of a
religious female Refusenik, Kasanya Z., a recent Ba'alas Teshuva [newly
Torah-Observant], studying in religious school in Ramot. She is being
terrorized with the spectre of arrest and incarceration in Israeli
Military Prison, over her steadfast resolve to comply with the Torah
obligations of refusal of Israeli military draft directives. Her draft
date is this coming Sunday, July 26. The Draft Office just sent a denial
of the request recently made by an attorney intervening on her behalf.
So, the Army is primed for a confrontation.
The
Chazon Ish is known to have advocated for employment of unusually
strong measures to save girls from the draft. If those of us who are
graced with the capacity to intervene in a civil manner do so
expeditiously, that option generally proves more than sufficient, to
avoid the alternatives.
As we posted yesterday (https://
The
fact that Kasanya initially received a draft deferment apparently is
being leveraged to proffer the veneer of a rationale to persecute her
over her choice to opt for religious observance, as if her deferment was
conditional to shunning repentance.
Of course,
the Draft Office, the bastions of timeless truth that they are, are
ever vigilant for girls faking religiosity. However, personal reference
is the standard protocol to vet such girls. Rayon Dat is utterly
unnecessary and counterproductive.
Speaking
about faking Judaism, see the quote in the aforementioned post of
yesterday, in a somewhat different context, from a member of the CJV.
~~~~~
In commemoration of the release of the esteemed b'nos Beruria sisters one year ago, we repost this:
~~~~
"... And if someone, like Pinchos, is one among a multitude, and every man is against him when he dares to speak out for truth and to fight for the Law -- the more lonely his stand, the greater the number of his adversaries, the more powerful is his word, the mightier his deed."
-- Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch OB"M (1808-1888), (in "Judaism Eternal," vol. 2, p. 293)
.....
Update link for the month of Tammuz to check in case we post during the week between our regular Wednesday/ Thursday posts:
https://docs.google.com/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Friday, July 24, 2020
New study finds hydroxychloroquine is ineffective against COVID-19
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/284106
A new study has found that antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine is
not effective at treating COVID-19 and may cause adverse effects, The Hill reported Thursday.
The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine,
found that hydroxychloroquine did not improve outcomes for the 667
COVID-19 patients participating in a randomized trial at 55 Brazilian
hospitals.
Concentration camp guard convicted in one of the last Nazi trials in history
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/23/europe/nazi-guard-germany-conviction-intl/index.html
The 93-year-old man,
identified as Bruno D., was charged with 5,230 counts of accessory to
murder over his time as an SS guard at the Stutthof concentration camp
from 1944 to 1945.
Trump scraps Republican convention in virus 'flare-up'
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53521896
A Democratic strategist involved in their conference planning said:
"I wonder who will have the better convention - the party who recognised
the limitations early on and have been planning for a mostly
virtual/digital television production to capitalise on a prime-time
audience of millions, or the clowns who keep moving theirs from place to
place and have no concrete plan a month out."
US move to shut China's Houston consulate draws questions about political motives
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/22/politics/us-china-consulate-analysis/index.html
Jeff Moon, a former assistant US trade
representative for China, noted the State Department said the Houston
order was a response to Chinese intellectual property theft and said
that raised questions about why only one consulate was targeted.
"If that were the real reason, the US
would close the San Francisco consulate, which covers Silicon Valley,"
said Moon, who was among those who suggested politics might be at work.
"This action is red meat for Trump supporters who are eager to retaliate
against China and divert attention from Trump's disastrous Covid-19
policy."
Judge suggests Cohen was jailed as payback for Trump book
https://www.ft.com/content/12f093c8-3b43-4225-ac54-dd7eeface6a
A federal judge has ordered Michael Cohen released from prison again and accused the Trump administration of payback over the president’s onetime lawyer penning an unflattering book as a motive for his latest incarceration.
“How can I take any other inference but that it was retaliatory?” Judge Alvin Hellerstein said at a court hearing in Manhattan on Thursday, according to media reports. He ordered Cohen released from prison by Friday.
Trump's legal authority to deploy agents to U.S. cities may be limited, experts say
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-race-protests-law/trumps-legal-authority-to-deploy-agents-to-us-cities-may-be-limited-experts-say-idUSKCN24M2WF
Legal experts said Trump can deploy federal agents to enforce federal laws, but lacks carte blanche.
“The president is not the king,” said Kent Greenfield, a Boston
College law professor specializing in constitutional law. “The president
does not have the ability to require states to enforce their laws in a
certain way, or to elbow aside their law enforcement abilities.”
Federal
law gives Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf power to
deputize agents to protect federal properties, such as the federal
courthouse in Portland, and people there.
White House Press
Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on Tuesday that this enforcement power
may extend beyond the physical boundaries of federal properties.
This Is Still Happening: Chad Wolf
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/07/this-is-still-happening-chad-wolf-family-separation-portland.html
Multiple
parts of the Bill of Rights bar unidentified federal agents from
conducting secret abductions and tear-gassing peaceful protesting moms.
While Wolf has attempted to use a bizarre and narrow legal interpretation to justify these clearly unlawful practices, he and his roving paramilitaries have already been sued by the ACLU as well as Oregon’s attorney general.
Thursday, July 23, 2020
The power of the placebo effect
https://www.health.harvard.edu/mental-health/the-power-of-the-placebo-effect
"The placebo effect is more than positive thinking — believing a
treatment or procedure will work. It's about creating a stronger
connection between the brain and body and how they work together," says
Professor Ted Kaptchuk of Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess
Medical Center, whose research focuses on the placebo effect.
Placebo: the Belief Effect
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC539455/
A whole chapter is devoted to the power of belief and its effects on
physiology, highlighting the possible differences between individuals, however
well matched they are in statistical terms. What the book does not discuss is
the conflict between such personal characteristics and evidence-based medicine
(EBM), which depends on observations in groups rather than
individuals.4 Evans'
analysis suggests that there are ‘complex ways in which people come to
believe their treatment will be effective, sometimes putting the evidence of
their senses above the voice of authority, while at other times doing
completely the opposite’. Many within the medical profession continue to
be guided by similar instincts, describing their thought processes as clinical
judgment. It is issues of this sort that have made EBM so hard to implement.
As discussed in chapter 5, a dampening effect of placebo on the acute phase
response could be interpreted as reflecting the uniquely human social
expectation of care from
others.5 Perhaps the
most intriguing part of the book, coming from this former psychotherapist, is
the exploration of the role of psychotherapy. His conclusion is that, even if
psychotherapy proves to be no more than placebo, this does not necessarily
detract from its usefulness; and, if it is better than placebo, our failure to
understand how it acts on the brain may be analogous to our ignorance of
exactly why certain drugs are effective. Evans is at his best when writing
from personal experience. Whatever the reader's conclusions about the
scientific arguments, his examples and delivery provide a thoroughly engaging
way into this debate.
Trump accused of deploying 'secret police' as part of 'authoritarian' law enforcement surge
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/23/world/meanwhile-in-america-july-23-intl/index.html
American presidents generally don't try to invade their own country.
Yet that's effectively what local officials say Donald Trump is up to, as he prepares to send hundreds of federal law enforcement
officers to Chicago and to Albuquerque, New Mexico. "Donald Trump's
troops" will not be allowed to "terrorize our residents," Chicago Mayor
Lori Lightfoot has warned. Albuquerque leaders say they don't need
"Trump's secret police."
The
President, however, says he's just trying to quell street violence --
which he claims has been fostered by the anti-police policies of radical
Democratic leaders. "This bloodshed must end," he said Wednesday.
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