Before Chanuka, when seeing Jewish Hellenizers I would ask myself:
What am I doing here?!
After Chanuka, upon seeing Jewish Hellenizers I now ask myself:
What are they doing here?!
(Borrowed from Rabbi Chaim Pinchas Sheinberg zatzal here.)
Quoting Breitbart:
The CIA is referred to in the communications as “OGA,” which stands for “other government agency,” Taibbi explains, adding that the FBI and “OGA” were involved, not only with Twitter, but also with “virtually every major tech firm,” including “Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, even Pinterest, and many others,” as well as “industry players.”
Bullet points look better:
“One of the most common forums was a regular meeting of the multi-agency Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), attended by spates of executives, FBI personnel, and – nearly always – one or two attendees marked ‘OGA’,” Taibbi says. “The FITF meeting agendas virtually always included, at or near the beginning, an ‘OGA briefing,’ usually about foreign matters,” he adds.
“‘Other Government Agencies’ ended up sharing intelligence through the FBI and FITF not just with Twitter, but with Yahoo!, Twitch, Clouldfare, LinkedIn, even Wikimedia,” Taibbi says.
Bullet points look better:
…
“Especially as the election approached in 2020, the FITF/FBI overwhelmed Twitter with requests, sending lists of hundreds of problem accounts,” Taibbi reports. “There were so many government requests, Twitter employees had to improvise a system for prioritizing/triaging them,” he describes.
Of course, the very name includes the ironic accusation of so-called “foreign influence”; an assertion even the Twitter twits couldn’t validate.
And the FBI asked (at least) Twitter about “particular users”. (I guess NSA spooks were too busy turning on friends’ webcams to help the FBI out.)
This is really awful because the USG exceeds expectations. How can I be a “conspiracy theorist”, when it’s as bad as can be and all of it documented?!
Anyway, is “Israel” like this yet?
Still, it’s more about the principle of the thing than a personal threat for most, as we explain here.
Two highlights:
The other “Lo Tasur” verse (Devarim 28:14):
ולא תסור מכל הדברים אשר אנכי מצוה אתכם היום ימין ושמאל…
Also refers to all rabbis. Just, em, not the way you think…
(See Seforno.)
Quoting Rabbi Aaron Kotler, a geshmack Litvak:
Rav Aaron Kotler comments on the statement of Chazal that Lot was saved from death in the merit of keeping silent when Avraham told Elimelech that he was Sarah’s brother and not revealing that Avraham was really her husband. Why, asks Rav Kotler, did Lot need to rely on this merit to be saved? Wasn’t his practice of הכנסת אורחים welcoming guests, even at the risk of his own life in Sodom, enough to save him? After all, this was a great mitzvah. He answers that when Lot was hospitable to guests, he was not doing this from inner conviction, as a mitzvah of chesed, but only in imitation of his uncle Avraham, for he had grown so used to this practice that he did it as a matter of course. But when he refused to reveal Avraham’s true relationship with Sarah, at this point he was acting out of conviction, from a wish to save his uncle. This was the “true Lot” and therefore he was rewarded for this action.
Continue reading the rest here…
Beis Vaad L’Chachamim has said similar things in the past (e.g., here).
Great article deeply burying the government “peer review” scam here.
My only criticism is the extreme naïveté.
The author thinks government programs are trashed once they are proven awful based on the ostensible metrics of original justification…