Even those not authored by complete ignoramuses mostly concern a straw man. Did no one ever read Rabbi Kanievsky’s works? Understand his mentality?
See this for a somewhat better collection.
(I don’t know the “Flatbush Jewish Journal”.)
As I wrote before:
Exposing Horrific State Crimes to the Victims Would Change… Nothing at All!
Snowden was my first example.
Gary North says it well: “If anything, Snowden has helped the NSA“.
It has been a year since Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA.
I appreciate what Snowden did. His decision to leak the stolen documents has done the conservative movement an enormous favor. It has blown to smithereens the greatest single myth of conservatism: “If the American people knew about this, there would be an uprising.” No, there wouldn’t.
Here is a variation: “If the voters knew what is being done to them by the Conspiracy, they would throw out the conspirators at the next election.” No, they wouldn’t.
I have heard variants of these arguments for 50 years. Conservatives don’t learn. They think that by exposing the Bad Guys, they will defeat the Bad Guys. They’re wrong.
Snowden has proven, as no one in my era has better proved, that exposure of the Bad Guys in government has no negative effect on them.
If exposure does come, and the public does nothing to thwart the hidden Bad Guys, then the Bad Guys no longer have to worry about further exposure. It will be old news. At this point, they can do even more to secure their position of power. The pressure blows over. There may be a time of bad publicity, but this does not change anything fundamental.
Before Snowden, the best examples were the big bankers, who were bailed out a taxpayers’ expense in 2009. They got richer. The public knows. The public groused a little. Did this hurt the bankers? No. They got bonuses for their failures. Congress bailed out the big banks, and there were no negative public sanctions on either Congress or the big banks. It’s business as usual.
The voters know. The voters have done nothing. It’s old news.
But Snowden’s revelations have gone far beyond the big bank bailouts of 2009. They have thrown light on a power grab by the government that is perpetual. It was generally hidden. James Bamford’s book, The Puzzle Palace (1983), did good work. It had no negative effect on the NSA. But he did not have incontrovertible evidence. Snowden did, and he released it. He got worldwide publicity.
The NSA is more powerful than ever. From now on, any further exposure is old news. No harm, no foul.
…
Has the NSA’s budget been reined back from $50 billion a year to, say, $25 billion a year? No. It is nice that we learned that the NSA’s budget is $50 billion a year, but it is completely irrelevant in terms of doing anything about it. Congress is still paying the money, and the NSA is still spending it.
We have criticized Etzel in the past for using thievery and robbery to reach their goals.
Yediot Aharonot reported (Daniella Ashkenazy):
In February 1948, in the twilight hours of the British Mandate, the EZEL attempted to rob a major branch of Barclay’s Bank in Tel Aviv parading as British soldiers. The members of the radical Jewish militia closed off a section of Allenby Street with a large number of jeeps and barbed wire. Cursing like true troopers, in ‘Hinglish’ – fooling nobody, 15 of the gang walked into the bank demanding the keys to the vault… but due to bad timing, no combination of keys opened the safe. It was 8 AM – well before banker’s hours.
Stalin and Lenin robbed banks for The Cause, too.
(What kind of bank, though…?)
Aruch Hashulchan O. C. 46:10:
במנחות (מ”ג ב’) תניא:
חייב אדם לברך שלוש ברכות בכל יום: “שלא עשני עובד כוכבים”, “שלא עשני עבד”, “שלא עשני אשה”.
מפני שאשה פטורה מתלמוד תורה, וממצות עשה שהזמן גרמא. ואפילו גר בזמן הקדמון היה יכול לברך שני ברכות אלו: “שלא עשני עבד”, ו”שלא עשני אשה”. אבל הראשונה אינו יכול לברך, שהרי היה כן…
We hear from today’s rabbis that it’s better to do the Mechira this way, and better that way (same time zone, Kinyan Sudar, more kinyanim by the agents, an observant Jew, Hefsed, renting the rooms where the Chametz is kept, additional boilerplate, filling out detailed forms, etc. etc.), but no matter what, it’s always completely valid (please stop smirking!).
But here’s a Tosafos everyone learned in Yeshiva, B.B. 76a:
ספינה נקנית במסירה. בסמוך מוקי לה ברה”ר ופירש רבינו שמואל דמסירה קונה ברה”ר משום דלא אפשר התם במשיכה אבל בסימטא דשייכא משיכה לא קניא מסירה שהוא קנין גרוע וקשה לר”ת וכי משיכה ומסירה מצות הן שאין לעשות אלא מן המובחר ואור”י דאין זו קשיא…
Kashya or not, the bottom line sevara in bold remains true. (Like the rule: No such thing [generally] as Lechat’chila in De’oraisa.)
I asked many rabbis this question and never got an answer (except quibbling about examples). The smart ones at least have the decency to look like someone opened the bathroom door on them by accident.
The real reason for all the theater is the realization that the whole thing is a joke בלבו ובלב כל אדם, a travesty, an embarrassment, lipstick on a pig.*
*I refer to the Mechira mentioned by the Beis Yosef. Of course, since then, the procedure has been rendered progressively worse and worse (even if the original ceremony had been valid), see a list of some changes on p. 52 here.