Two-Year-Old Letter to the Editor Regarding the Corona Crackdown

Sent in by a female reader, and unedited.

It still holds up quite well, don’t you think?

To The Writers,  Reporters and Subscription Staff,
I have been a loyal reader and customer since the inception of your newspaper.
I even used to sell subscriptions and advertising during your first years of the english edition.
I don’t expect to see this letter in print,  but I want you to know that I am severly disappointed in your recent publications.
You seem to have lost your sense of right and wrong, your discriminating eye and you just publish all the
lies and fabrications  that are sent your way as “news” without actually checking or  asking yourselves if what they are telling you is true or even if it makes sense.
You  do no investigative reporting and just swallow the government “party line/lies/ propaganda” hook, line and sinker.
And then report it to people that trust your reporting as true.
While you may believe that it is perfectly normal  to wear masks, close schools, shuls , and forbid weddings—
you have never questioned the government policy to forbid doctors treating this virus .
Why aren’t they allowing doctors to treat this virus when it appears.
Imagine stepping on a rusty nail and then told to go home and take acamol,  wait until the infection takes over your body,
 —and then once your body is totally infected, then the hospital will allow a tetnus shot.
You would never permit such a thing.
And yet while hundreds of Drs in the states and other countries  have testified  that when they have treated patients successfully and immediately with Dr Zelenko’s  protocal — of hydrochloroquine, zinc, and azithramycyne.,and less than 1% ended up in the hospital.
Of course after they reported their finding each Dr reports that they were threatened with having their license
revoked. Since when is a Dr told by phamacutical companies what he  may and may not give his patients.
This is unprecedented.
I myself am high risk and asked my Dr to prescribe Hydrochoroquine and he told me that he was not allowed to give it to patients.
Odd????
How come you don’t know that and if you do, are keeping quiet?
Why aren’t you questioning why for a death rate less than the flu, the government has crashed the economy
and are forbiding many people from supporting their families.
That’s a new one  historically.
Why aren’t you condemning all the slander, tattletaling and  bullying,  that are taking place all in the name of wearing a mask, when there is no proof that masks actually protect people from getting this virus—and might actually be causing harm.
Look at the research!
Since when does the Torah demand that an individual seclude themelves  for public health —especially when the mortality rate is so low. That’s of course not counting all the people that have reported finding the cause of death on their loved one’s “Death Certificate as “Covid 19” when they clearly died of other causes–like a car accident.
I never saw you report all the false Death Certificates.
The government has begun to classify citizens as “essential workers” and ” non essential workers”.
There was another time in recent history when people were called “non essential” and then taken out of regular society .
Not allowed to work.
 The Holocaust.
They also tested people’s reaction to authority and decrimination when in 1933 they posted soldier’s outside jewish businesses , forbiding German’s from entering Jewish businesses.
No one protested.
 Then they took away/murdered , handicapped, gypsies, etc and no one protested.
Then it was our turn but there was no one left to protest.
So they understood that people would submit themselves without a  fight .
No one questioned the justice or morality of the new laws .
 Of course the leaders didn’t either protest—and whether you admit it or not, a newspaper doesn’t report what people think
—it informs people what to think.
You call yourself a “Torah Newspaper”, but where is your checking the facts and critical thinking?
You might claim that you do ask Gedolim.
But if you don’t present all the information to the Gedolim how are they supposed to
make a correct decision .
In the Gemoras describing the times before the arrival of our Mashiach, it says that “Religious people will be despised”.
We see that that is happening right now. People all over are blaming religious people for the spread of this virus.
Obviously, it’s all from HaShem, but where’s your responsibility to give religious people the right perspective.?
Give them information to alleviate the fear and make good choices for themselves and their families.
Give them information to empower them and not get caught up in the false narrative of fear!!!! and Death!!!!!
By withholding a successful treatment, the govenment is responsible for many of the deaths.
Where’s your responsibility for not reporting a treatment that has been around for almost 70 years
and has helped people around the world?
Now their threatening to force  vaccines on people, and then not allow people who arent vaccinated to go to restaurants, travel, receive government assistance, go to schools, etc….
A vaccine that was tested for a matter of months. Usually they test a vaccine for  years.
Do you know what respected scientists are saying about this supposed “vaccine”?
 Will you be courageous enough to ask the question and then inform your readers
of the real facts  and not just  just report the govenment propaganda?
Please cancel my subscription and stop all continued payments.
I hope someone at your newspaper will take what I wrote to heart.
You might respond,” There are so many voices out there, how do we know what is true?”
That’s actually not an answer, because at the end of the day, you do put out a newspaper that people read.
And trust.
You are responsible to try to figure out the fact from the fiction the best that you can or at least report all relevant information.
You are chayuv.

The Kahanist ‘Motte and Bailey’

First, what is the “Motte and Bailey” fallacy?

From a certain wiki:

Motte and bailey (MAB) is a combination of bait-and-switch and equivocation in which someone switches between a “motte” (an easy-to-defend and often common-sense statement, such as “culture shapes our experiences”) and a “bailey” (a hard-to-defend and more controversial statement, such as “cultural knowledge is just as valid as scientific knowledge”) in order to defend a viewpoint. Someone will argue the easy-to-defend position (motte) temporarily, to ward off critics, while the less-defensible position (bailey) remains the desired belief, yet is never actually defended.

In short: instead of defending a weak position (the “bailey”), the arguer retreats to a strong position (the “motte”), while acting as though the positions are equivalent. When the motte has been accepted (or found impenetrable) by an opponent, the arguer continues to believe (and perhaps promote) the bailey.

Note that the MAB works only if the motte and the bailey are sufficiently similar (at least superficially) that one can switch between them while pretending that they are equivalent. There exist a number of common rhetorical ploys and ‘sleights-of-tongue’ which can mask the apparency of such a transition.

Where does the expression come from?

Says Wikipedia:

A Motte and Bailey castle is a medieval system of defence in which a stone tower on a mound (the Motte) is surrounded by an area of land (the Bailey) which in turn is encompassed by some sort of a barrier such as a ditch. Being dark and dank, the Motte is not a habitation of choice. The only reason for its existence is the desirability of the Bailey, which the combination of the Motte and ditch makes relatively easy to retain despite attack by marauders. When only lightly pressed, the ditch makes small numbers of attackers easy to defeat as they struggle across it: when heavily pressed the ditch is not defensible and so neither is the Bailey. Rather one retreats to the insalubrious but defensible, perhaps impregnable, Motte. Eventually the marauders give up, when one is well placed to reoccupy desirable land. … the Bailey, represents a philosophical doctrine or position with similar properties: desirable to its proponent but only lightly defensible. The Motte is the defensible but undesired position to which one retreats when hard pressed.

So, a Kahanist will first argue we should actively rejoice upon seeing the suffering of the wicked for its own sake, not as a means to the goal, and quote pesukim of Jewish cruelty in war, ישמח צדיק כי חזה נקם פעמיו ירחץ בדם הרשע and אשרי שיאחז ונפץ את עלליך אל הסלע (Motte).

Then, when confronted with careful analysis, and counters, the Kahanist retreats to saying we should merely rejoice in the downfall of the wicked, even if this entails human suffering (Bailey).

דוק ותשכח.

What We Can Learn From Gedolim Whose Response to the Walder Affair Was ‘Lashon Hara’ Blather

I’ll tell you: NOTHING!

When you give the wrong message at the wrong time, there is nothing good or holy or anything positive about it.

I won’t judge the writers who made one little lie as lip service (Sotah 35a: ?וכי זו בלבד עשה לנו בן עמרם) to get across the opposite message.

Such as Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein on Cross-Currents:

Rav Gershon Edelstein’s, shlit”a, words are a powerful reproach about how we use speech. But they cannot be the last word, the only takeaway from this horrible story.

Or Rabbi S. E. Zeitlin:

צריך להיזהר מאד לא לקחת את דברי הגרי”ג שליט”א למקום לא נכון. מסופר כי הח”ח ביקש מהגאון ר’ חיים עוזר זצ”ל לחתום על כרוז שדיבור לשה”ר כאכילת חזיר, והגרח”ע סירב, ונימק, שחושש כי אחרי כרוז כזה אנשים לא יפסיקו לדבר לשה”ר, אלא יתחילו לאכול חזיר. גם כאן צריך להיזהר שלא ייווצר מצב שבמקום להיזהר יותר בבן אדם לחברו, יזלזלו באיסורי עריות ורציחה של נפגעים.

Not my way, but more power to them.

But what of sly Fifth-Columnist-columnist Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer speaking out of both sides of his mouth? And the usual suspects; Mishpacha, etc.?

What can be learned from the “Gedolim” who turned darkness into light and light into darkness, made bitter as sweet, and sweet as bitter?

If you insist, here are some lessons:

  1. If someone can get up and contradict the whole Sefer Chafetz Chaim — the one book studied by every Charedi man woman and child from Dan to Be’er Sheva — without 75% immediately pointing out the speaker’s nakedness, this means we don’t have a Hilchos Lashon Hara glut. (Or, well, we have bigger problems…!)
  2. Next time this new Gadol leads a Daas Torah crusade to throw non-Charedi “infidels” out of the Holy Land, let’s regard this glaring gem of geonus as Achashverosh’s “Iggros Rishonos” (Megillah 12b: אלמלא אגרות הראשונות לא נשתייר משונאיהן של ישראל שריד ופליט) and not ask how high to jump or how many times to vote.
  3. Did you ever hear any sort of apology? Anything other than R’ Edelstein-toady Rabbi Y. Eichenstein of Yad Aaron’s vile “clarifications” digging themselves all into a deeper pit? Me neither.
  4. We learned how to write their own obits: We should definitely append the “Zatzal” word to their names. Don’t worry! Now CW’s mates at Yated used it on CW, it means nothing, anyway. We can also say they “knew what Bein Adam Lachaveiro was”, and even “held the correct worldview and pure Fear of Heaven”. It’s alright! Rabbi Natan Zochovosky of the Israeli Yated Ne’eman publicly eulogized CW using these exact words, presumably following Rabbi Edelstein’s instructions. There can surely be no greater honor. And so on…
  5. Never forget that CW was actually a mouthpiece for so-called “Da’as Torah” in the “Da’as Torah” paper. So, they were defending themselves.

Enough for now.

Move Along, Nothing to See Here…

Great quote by historian Gary North about the illusion of choice in the American Deep State (in an article about the Civil War):

… Everybody wants to talk about the battles. On the whole, the battles were militarily irrelevant. The North had trains, the telegraph, the industries, the navy, and the population to sustain the war. It had the tax base. It had the banking system. The fall of Atlanta sealed the fate of the South, but it was not a battle. If it had taken place after November, Lincoln would have lost the election. If the South had held out until the following March, McClellan probably would have settled with the South. But Atlanta fell, and McClellan wasn’t elected.

The forgotten fact that you should begin with concerning the Civil War is this: the future of the North from 1860 to 1865 was dependent on the Illinois Central Railroad. Lincoln was a lawyer with that railroad. Stephen A. Douglas was a lawyer with that railroad. In senior management was George McClellan, who oversaw both of them. So, in the election of 1860, the President was going to be won by an Illinois Central lawyer. In the election of 1864, the election was going to be won by an employee of the Illinois Central Railroad.

Anybody who thinks this was random is the kind of person who believes that it was random in 2004 when a member of Yale’s Skull and Bones was going to be elected President. This is an organization that selects 15 people a year. Out of all the people in the United States, the only candidates who made it to the top were Skull and Bones members in 2004, neither of whom was allowed, or is allowed, by the secret oath of the organization to discuss the organization. Similarly, historians of the Civil War rarely bother to talk about the centrality of the Illinois Central Railroad.

The very same historians who love talking about the railroad robber barons…