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War = Welfare for the Rich

It’s Saigon in Afghanistan

07/06/2021 Ron Paul

The end of the 20-year US war on Afghanistan was predictable: no one has conquered Afghanistan, and Washington was as foolish as Moscow in the 1970s for trying. Now, US troops are rushing out of the country as fast as they can, having just evacuated the symbol of the US occupation of Afghanistan, Bagram Air Base.

While perhaps not as dramatic as the “Fall of Saigon” in 1975, where US military helicopters scrambled to evacuate personnel from the roof of the US Embassy, the lesson remains the same and remains unlearned: attempting to occupy, control, and remake a foreign country into Washington’s image of the United States will never work. This is true no matter how much money is spent and how many lives are snuffed out.

In Afghanistan, no sooner are US troops vacating an area than Taliban fighters swoop in and take over. The Afghan army seems to be more or less melting away. This weekend the Taliban took control of a key district in the Kandahar Province, as Afghan soldiers disappeared after some fighting.

The US is estimated to have spent nearly 100 billion dollars training the Afghan army and police force. The real number is likely several times higher. For all that money and 20 years of training, the Afghan army cannot do its job. That’s either quite a statement about the quality of the training, the quality of the Afghan army, or some combination of the two.

Whatever the case, I am sure I am not the only American wondering whether we can get a refund. The product is clearly faulty.

Speaking of money wasted, in April, Brown University’s Cost of War Project calculated the total cost of the Afghanistan war at more than two trillion dollars. That means millions of Americans have been made poorer for a predictably failed project. It also means that thousands of the well-connected contractors and companies that lurk around the US Capitol Beltway pushing war have become much, much richer.

That’s US foreign policy in a nutshell: taking money from middle-class Americans and transferring it to the elites of the US military and foreign policy establishment. It’s welfare for the rich.

Reprinted with permission.

From Mises.org, here.

A Perfect Storm: How Jew Hatred Became the NEW NORMAL

To Antisemites, A Jew Is A Jew Is A Jew

3:45 pm

The antisemites came for Israelis.

They relentlessly attacked the lone democracy in the Middle East and the realization of a 3,500-year-old vision, with the aim of its destruction. No sovereignty allowed for nearly seven million Jews!

They attacked Israelis at home and abroad through rockets and missiles, tunnels, kidnappings, plane hijackings, bus bombings, incendiary balloons, and embassy assaults. Meanwhile, their supporters and enablers added on 24/7 demonization, delegitimization, flotillas, BDS campaigns, and legal maneuvers.

But, hey, I wasn’t Israeli, so it didn’t really touch me.

For decades, they repressed millions of Soviet Jews.

They identified those Jews by internal Soviet passports that declared a person’s nationality based on the nationality of the parents — and, since the days of Stalin, Jews were officially deemed a nationality. No escape from that. Through scapegoating and vilification, they made life impossibly difficult for Jews when it came to education, jobs, street life, and more. And they sought to ensure that Jews had no access to accurate information about Judaism, Jewish history and tradition, Hebrew language, or Israel — in other words, cultural genocide.

But, hey, I wasn’t a Soviet Jew, so it didn’t really touch me.

They made life tough for Ethiopian Jews.

Frequently the targets of persecution and discrimination, Ethiopian Jews, one of the world’s most ancient communities, lived in constant fear of their non-Jewish neighbors, to the point that thousands died while seeking to escape on foot to neighboring Sudan — and eventually found refuge in Israel at the center of their millennia-long prayers.

But, hey, I wasn’t an Ethiopian Jew, so it didn’t really touch me.

They emptied most Arab countries of their Jewish communities.

Hundreds of thousands of Jews, who had lived for centuries in what are today Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, all fled hatred, deadly mobs, and unending persecution. Only small communities remained in Morocco and Tunisia. And the Jewish populations in neighboring Iran and Turkey declined dramatically, while in Afghanistan the Jews are no more.

But, hey, I wasn’t a Mizrahi or Sephardic Jew, so it didn’t really touch me.

Beginning just over 20 years ago, the antisemites re-emerged with a vengeance in Europe.

Jews were targeted and killed in Paris, Toulouse, Brussels, Burgas, and Copenhagen. Synagogues and cemeteries were assaulted and desecrated. Jews became, once again, the targets of outlandish conspiracy theories. Anti-Israel protesters went into the streets of European cities waving the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah, genocidal terrorist groups. Some public schools became impossible for Jewish children to attend. A number of Jews, especially in France, had to change neighborhoods because of threats. Thousands of Jews made aliyah.

But, hey, I wasn’t a European Jew, so it didn’t really touch me.

Continue reading…

From Matzav.com, here.

הרב ברנד במצות כיבוש מלחמה בהר הבית: ולא יירא ולא יפחד ולא יחשוב לא באשתו ולא בבניו

לא צריך נשק – כולנו מצטרפים למלחמה

Jul 13, 2021

ריבוי יהודים בהר הבית מחזק את אחיזתנו בהר • ככל שעולים יותר יהודים, כך מתרבה עבודת ה’ במקום • העליה להר הבית היא חלק מהמלחמה על ארץ ישראל • לא צריך נשק • צריך לטבול ולעלות • הדיבורים נגד העליה להר הם עורבא פרח • אסור לאסור את המותר • קומו ונעלה • הרב יצחק ברנד • בית המדרש בהר הבית

מאתר יוטיוב, כאן.

‘Nachem’ – Read and Weep… (Choose Any Reason)

How Halakhah Changes: From Nahem to the “Tisha be-Av Kumzitz”

By  Chaim Saiman – 
Overt Change: The Nahem Model

In the weeks leading up to Tisha be-Av, the Religious Zionist and Modern Orthodox communities engage in the annual rite of agonizing over the relevance of Tisha be-Av in light of the State of Israel and unified Jerusalem. The discussion focuses on the text of a short liturgical prayer titled Naḥem, recited only once a year during the afternoon Tisha be-Av service (in the Ashkenazic practice). Following Rabbi Sacks’ translation, Nahem describes Jerusalem as “laid waste of its dwellings, robbed of its glory, desolate without inhabitants. [Sitting] with her head covered like a barren childless woman.” The image is stark—and totally at odds with current reality.

Over the years, numerous articles, blog posts, and online forums have debated the continued viability of the received text. As several of the referenced articles note, positions range from advocating wholesale reconstruction to instituting minor amendments, allowing for deviations so long as they remain “private,” and, finally, resisting all efforts at change.

The dilemma is easy to understand. On its face, the liturgy strikes a false note—which a community that takes prayer seriously should try and avoid. Further, retaining the liturgy smacks of ingratitude, crying out as if Jerusalem lay in smoldering ruins, when God has granted a beautiful, populated city which sprawls out amongst the hills.[1] On the other hand, the Temple is still not rebuilt—the site currently occupied by a shrine of another religion—and the Jewish hold on the city is not without its complications. There is also a more sweeping objection: “Who are we moderns to tinker with texts that have served as the bedrock of Jewish identity for millennia?” My sense is that within Religious Zionism, there is a slow drift towards allowing for liturgical accommodation, yet the matter remains hotly debated and far from resolved.

In some quarters, the issue has moved beyond (relatively) minor points of liturgy, to questioning whether the fasts commemorating the destruction of the Temple (other than Tisha be-Av itself) remain obligatory in the era of Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem. From a halakhic perspective, the issue revolves around talmudic interpretations of the prophet Zekhariah’s vision which indicates that when peace returns to Israel, the fast days will become holidays, and/or when Jews coexist peaceably with the Gentiles, the fast days become optional. From a theological standpoint, the matter touches on whether the Temple will be rebuilt through human actions by or via miraculous divine intervention (as the text of Nahem suggests). At the moment, the discussion about the fast days remains more of a thought experiment than a direct call to action.[2] But that this has become a thinkable thought within mainstream Orthodox Zionism, is bound up with efforts to assert Jewish rights over the Temple Mount, and reflects a sustained drift towards the idea that Jews may take an active hand in rebuilding the third Temple.

Continue reading…

From Lehrhaus, here.