Sleep walking into WWIII. This is similar to how the world got into WWI. No one considered the damage. troops from the USA, the UK, and Germany are now involved. Everyone is thinking in terms of small moves. They imagine that their small moves will not be considered to be large threatening moves by the other side.    They are turning a local war into a World War.

So the US has cut off Russian oil. So where will they get it? Already the Arab countries have not even bothered to answer the phone when the president calls to ask for a deal with their oil.

The USA is walking into the worst possible nightmare.

It is like the talk representatives of the USA to invite Ukraine to join NATO just a few weeks ago. Did they not think putting nuclear missiles on the doorstep of Russia would provoke a reaction?

Or sending fighter planes to Ukraine? That makes the USA at war with Russia.

The situation in most Ukrainian cities was such that after the USSR, and you asked people when was better, they almost always said things were better in the time of the USSR. But like the time of the civil war of the Whites against the Reds, neighbors would kill each other when they thought their neighbor was on the other side. {I knew the people this happened to.} So even if people would prefer to be back to the way things were during the USSR, they dare not say so openly. –Except to someone like me that they knew would not tell their neighbors about their feelings. There however were exceptions–people that told me if Russia would show up there, they would take a rifle and shoot them.
So what you have is a sort of Hidden Civil War–hidden because it is unknown and hidden from public view. And the Russians were well aware of this from at least back to around 2012.

There were somethings that were odd in Ukraine.  Nazi battalions  at the public level. There was a lot more than that under the surface. But I do not want to be critical since I knew people there that were angels. So the best thing I think is to lay off and not let a local war become a world war.

Here is a comment by Timmy on the blog of Michael Huemer:

his war actually began in 2014 when the US State department backed a coup d’etat in the Ukraine to overthrow the democratically elected pro Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych and installed a pro-west leader in his place. The new pro-west Ukrainian leadership immediately began shelling and killing ethnic Russian separatists in the eastern part of Ukraine. The US immediately began sending arms (6 billion worth) to the new pro-west Ukrainian leadership to help them with their bombing campaign against their fellow citizens. They used these US weapons to kill 14000 ethnic Russians over the course of the last 8 years. Oh yeah, they also used a literal Nazi militia called the Azov battalion and officially incorporated them into their military. The US has literally armed and trained this literal Nazi militia which literally killed thousands of ethnic Russians.This is all known verifiable true information that professor Huemer somehow thought irrelevant.

Even Henry Kissinger has long warned that these actions by the US would lead to a Russian invasion of the Ukraine. This was all predicted. So why did the US do the thing that everyone with a brain knew would lead to a Russian invasion of the Ukraine? Follow the money. War is a racket.

Those $6 billion worth of weapons shipped to the Ukraine during the last 8 years were paid for by you, the US tax payer, and that 6 billion of your money lined the pockets of the American oligarchs (military industrial complex) who profit from war. Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Halliburton, Boeing, along with the banks and the energy companies.

The expansion of NATO is all about selling more arms. To join NATO, countries need to have a minimum level of military capability which none of the last 10 countries to join NATO had. They all had to buy the prerequisite NATO war equipment from the above mentioned war profiteers and the tax payers got the bill.

War is a racket. It is the quickest possible upward transfer of wealth known to man. This theory predicted this war and it also predicts how this will all play out and how it is already playing out. This war will be dragged on and on so as to expend the most possible war machine money. Western aligned countries will all buy arms from the private war profiteer companies using tax payer money and ship those arms to the “so brave” Ukrainian people to be used in a long drawn-out hopeless and un-winnable war.

This war could easily have been stopped before it started and it could easily be stopped now by diplomacy. Russia’s pre-war demands were extremely reasonable and easy to accommodate. The opposite happened because the military industrial complex wanted this war. This war is brought to you by capitalism. Don’t take my word for it. You can look all of this up for yourself. This is not some super secret hidden conspiracy theory. It’s all being done in broad daylight. Watch.

Rav Nahman did not hold from looking for extra restrictions. It is possible to serve God with everything.

 It is possible to serve God with everything. אפשר לעבוד השם יתברך בכל דבר This is an idea brought in the LeM of Rav Nahman in Vol II 44 (and circa 86). Rav Nahman did not hold from looking for extra restrictions.

There was in fact an incident in which Rav Natan [his disciple] was offered to be a rav in some city. He asked Rav Nahman about whether to accept the offer or not. 

Rav Nahman asked, "Why not?" 

Rav Natan said, "I am afraid of Hora הוראה." [Giving a legal decision.] 

Rav Nahman said "As long as there is a posek [authority] to depend on, you can depend on him."

I am not quoting this story exactly but this is the best that I can recall.]

[At that time the word "Posek" referred to Rishonim, However Rav Nahman used the same word to refer to the Shulchan Aruch of Yoseph Karo with its commentaries Shach, Taz, etc.

Even so, carrying in a public domain seems problematic. I know that Some Rishonim hold you need 600,000 to be a public domain, still this seems hard to swallow.  I should mention that the Eruv that people put up has nothing to do with a public domain. It helps only for a Carmalit.{ Carmalit is like a מקום פטור a space that is not a public domain nor a private domain.] But real public domain a string can not make into a private domain. The reason I say this is that in tractate Shabat you have lots of discussion about what constitutes carrying in a public domain and no where is it mentioned that the cities in Babylonia were small. The largest citiesz in the ancient world were like Rome with more than a million people. But Sura or Pumbdita or other cities where there were mostly Jews were not more than Athens at its peak of power and prosperity which was about 20,000 But the Gemara goes into the issues of a public domain without mentioning anywhere that that could not have applied to their very own cities. which were less than 600,000

[The issue here is much more important than meets the eye, for it goes to the very root of what is inane and insane about the religious world in their constant search for more and more things to forbid and then claim that it is all from the Torah.]

[This is the core of my critique about the religious world,--they make up restrictions that have no source in the gemara or poskim, and ignore real and actual prohibitions of the Torah or the words of the Scribes. and yet claim to be representing true Torah and want us shimazals to pay for their sitting around all day chatting  and claim to be learning Torah.]

a mystic tradition

 What is the status of the Ari [Rav Isaac Luria] or the Remak [Moshe Cordoba]-if we notice that the Zohar is not really from R. Shimon ben Yochai? (note 1) But there was a mystic tradition.

 I think the closer we get to  areas outside  of conditions of possibility of experience, the easier it is to get into worlds of delusions.   So while the Ari and Moshe Cordoba were great tzadikim, it is hard to distinguish. to get an idea of legitimate continuance of the Ari, it is too easy to get involved in pure delusion.  [The best that are okay, are the Reshash (Sharabi), Rav Yakov Abuchazeira, the Ramchal.]  

(note 1) the world "although" in the Zohar is always expressed as "with all of this" עם כל דא and that is the Aramaic translation of עם כל זה and that is an expression invented by the Ibn Tibon family of translators during the Middle Ages. Therefore it could not have been written by R. Shimon ben Yochai.

Bava Batra page 26

 I know that most people are unclear about the issue of three trees. Or at least that is what I imagine to myself. After all I do not see anyone walking around at the sea that is worrying about that confusing issue in Bava Batra page 26. Or maybe they all have it clear so it does no bother them anymore. But at least for me I should say that in spite of my having written a few ideas on the Tosphot,  still I am unclear. One thing that has helped is looking at Rav Shach's Avi Ezri on Laws First Fruits.  

Just as an introduction let me just bring some basic facts. Ula said one who has owns a tree within 16 amot [circa yards] of the boundary of his friend, can not bring first fruits since he is a thief. [Thank God that someone noticed the problem. Rav Shach brings the Rashba on page 81 that asks this very question. There it says: one who buys tree owns around it כמלא אורה וסלו around it the width of one that  plows and his basket. The Rashba asks the obvious question: That is not 16 amot!  

Rav Shach himself brings this long and difficult subject and brings a few answers.

That does not look like the Mishna where there is an argument about how close to the boundary of his friend one can dig a pit or plant a tree. R.Yose says he can go right up until the edge, since one plants in hi own, and the other digs in his own.

 I wanted to mention that my dad was nothing like the sort of nerdy scientist that people have the stereo type image of. I mean he was the exact opposite.  But neither a macho he-man. He came across just as a regular guy. The only perceivable difference between him and the average Joe on the street was that he was a genius when it came to inventing Stuff that the USA government wanted. The Infrared Telescope, satellites using laser communication, the U-2 camera, plus tons of stuff that even to his family he could not say a word about.

I mean--he was not studying when he got home. As I knew him, he did his work at the lab at TRW and when he got home he did not think about it. But I knew that he and my mother were always thinking about how they were raising their children. That was their number one priority.

"Bitul Torah". I see myself obligated in learning Torah and the natural sciences -even when I can not do so.

 I see that where my world view disagrees with that of everyone else I meet is concerning the issue of "Bitul Torah". [Note 1]

This does not mean that I learn Torah much at all. And I admit that my idea of what constitutes learning Torah is  broader than what most people assume and much narrower also. I include the natural sciences as per the Rambam [in the Laws of Learning Torah Yad Hachazaka concerning what is included in learning Gemara.] And I exclude all the religious babble that is not Torah. [I.e. I only include in Oral Torah the exact books of the Mishna and Talmud and Midrashim. Plus on secondary level the commentaries. Nothing more.  That is like the Rambam wrote in one of his letters "Just like one can not add or subtract from the written Torah so one can not add or subtract from the Oral Torah."] [I see all Divine Law as one. The difference is as it applies to different things. Divine Law as it applies to physical things is comes to e known as Physics.  As it applies to human relationships and human affairs it is known as Torah.

But what I mean to say is that I see myself obligated in learning Torah and the natural sciences -even when I can not do so. That is to say, I am not looking for ways of having fun. I might need to relax in order to get energy up in order to learn. But my intension is to get up enough energy and enough mental energy to be able to learn. 

However I know that most people do not see things in this way. Even those that are sitting and learning most of the day and getting paid to do so. They see themselves as obermenschen. The rest of us plebeians were created to give them money --not to be learning Torah.

So there is almost no point of intersection that I have with almost anyone else--except for those that do learn Torah Lishma.[for its own sake]. And I must add that there certainly are people that learn lishma even though they get a kollel check. But those are people that get the check in order to learn,. 

[Note 1] Bitul Torah is the sin of not learning Torah when one has the time to do so. It is not the same thing as the minimum amount one is supposed to learn

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