EVERY SIGNATURE MATTERS - THIS BILL MUST PASS!
CLICK - GOAL - 100,000 NEW SIGNATURES! 75,000 SIGNATURES HAVE ALREADY BEEN SUBMITTED TO GOVERNOR CUOMO!
EFF Urges Court to Block Dragnet Subpoenas Targeting Online Commenters
CLICK! For the full motion to quash: http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/hersh_v_cohen/UOJ-motiontoquashmemo.pdf
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
UOJ WILL NOT THROW IN THE TOWEL-BECAUSE HE CAN'T!
UOJ archives - Published originally July 22, 2006
I must admit, I was really upset on Friday for a very brief period of time.
The truth is that nobody would be caught dead at the house of fress owned by a sleaze-ball like Lipa. I was realistically asking myself if people are going to do something serious about the corruption of power -- infested like termites in wood-- in the Orthodox Jewish community. This corruption permitted sexual abusers to exist in broad daylight without much fear of being exposed. People say; he only touched his tuchis, he only talked sex in middle of the night with kids he yanked out of bed, he only rubbed up against his genitals, he only put the child on his lap, there was no penetration, this happened years ago, he is an old man past his sexual prime...leave him alone, and on and on and on.
So what do I do? I have stumbled upon behavior by rabbis that should put them in jail. Not all rabbis, not even the majority of them, but a very large immoral minority of them are evil and rotten to the core. Oh, you say, come on that is just not true! I ask you, kindly look around you, has your rabbi or rosh yeshiva spoken about sexual abuse in the community from the pulpit? Of course not, there's dead silence!
You know why, because they ALL know it's true and are afraid of rocking their leaking boat. This makes them complicit to the crimes that are perpetrated on our children; and in a court of law they would be considered co-conspirators if they knew about a crime and tacitly permitted it to happen by not contacting the authorities with that information.
For example; let's say Lipa knew Yudi was molesting kids and kept him around children for his own personal reasons anyway. Let's say the D.A. decides to criminally prosecute Lipa. If that can be proven in court, that Lipa knew a crime was happening under his watch and not only didn't stop it, but did not call the police; if a jury is convinced of that fact, Lipa goes to jail.
UOJ will continue because it must! This blog turned out to be the pipeline to sanity in the Orthodox world. Parents write to me; a nine year old child writes me that he's being abused, a seventy year old woman writes to me that her life was destroyed because she was molested as a very young child. I could go on, but I think you get the message. This blog filled a much needed void, and I don't intend to abrogate the authority --- given to me by the people --- needing a place to turn to for help.
However, I must change the way I operate. I can no longer be a one-man band. I need help, no money, just help. I need people who agree with my mindset - to volunteer to share this responsibility with me. I will expect that these people will be highly intelligent, very caring about our plight, and very well respected by their peers. No confidence of any person who contacts us, will ever be violated. We must get rid of this enemy before they destroy Judaism. Children are leaving the fold in droves.
The latest numbers are that 100,000 people are leaving Orthodox Judaism yearly, globally - openly and privately! That means one million people that could have made a difference to the well-being of the Jews will have gone away in the next ten years! Do not think that those numbers will not affect you; if it won't be your child, it very well may be your grandchild.
I will be sending out e-mails to people that I have communicated with over the past year or more. I will ask you to get directly involved. I will be contacting both males and females. I urge anyone that cares about our future to please contact me at: a_unorthodoxjew@yahoo.com.
I would like therapists, attorneys, doctors and caring rabbis to contact me along with all people of good will. You will be assigned your own passcode to get into the new site that we will open together. You will post your own feelings and sentiments. The more people that join our group, the better all of us will be. We can monitor each other by running our thoughts by each other. We can reduce the corruption by your participation. The evildoers will continue to fear us and that may hopefully prevent their criminal behavior or negligence from proliferating.
Please,I need your help, I can no longer do it alone. I am not capable of responding to thousands of e-mails and comments per week. I have approximately 23,000 e-mails and comments that I never opened. I have no idea if kids are pleading for help or parents are begging for my intervention. And finally, I am not a professional therapist, I am not capable of advising victims what is in their best interests. I do know one thing with absolute certainty; I have saved many of our children from committing suicide, running away from home, and hurting themselves by drowning their sorrows in alcohol and drugs.
I do not want any credit for anything, I just want to make our world a better place for all of us. Please volunteer; if I e-mail you please respond affirmatively. If I do not know you, please contact me, your identity will never be exposed if you so choose.
I will not throw in the towel on our children, I will not throw in the towel on our people, and I will not throw in the towel, so our ancestors would not have died in vain struggling to make a living, breathing, vibrant Judaism for the generations.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
187 comments:
Real professionals would never resort to a blog to get things done. They go through "process." They rely upon professional agencies. They have a code of ethics. Blogs have none of the above.
Nobody responsible will support this effort, especially until the rabbis are either proven guilty or cleared. If all those cases are about are financial settlements, nobody will be moved.
As to the real victims, the seventy year old woman should have spoken up. Many women have been appropriately touched and harassed, the experience doesn't screw up an entire life. Some people have mental problems exacerbating their problem, This is for professionals to deal with and they do not accept clients by blog. If this goes anywhere, I'll be very surprised.
The hanhola will be relieved that you're taking the spotlight off of them. In the private blog, they'll finish you off legimately through the professionals they know who are loyal to them.
If your new found mission is outing bisexuals, as you did with such cruelty in the stadtmauer case, the world would be better off without uoj.
Venomar Amen !
UOJ,
I just confirmed with absolute certainty that you're a Five Towns resident. More information on you is pouring in, I will post it later. I think I will help you come out so people can give you the credit you rightfully deserve. You are a real hero.
UOJ,
I was very touched that you are a source of solace for that 70 year old woman who must have suffered terribly her entire life. She probably never mustered enough courage to tell anyone before.
who uoj is doesn't matter. He has captured the attention of people wasting their time, their employers' time, and done so primarily through scandalous sexual allegations, with reporting worthy of the national enquirer. Send no money, just read his emails. Volunteer today.
That 70 year old woman's suffering must have been immeasurable. The Rambam actually poskens that it's a sakonna to keep your tzorus pent up. He says if you don't have anyone to talk to, you are mechuyav to go to the forest to speak it out to the trees and rocks.
I don't agree with certain UOJ attacks on rabbonim, but he gets a place in Oylam Habo for being there for victims when no else has stepped up.
People going off the derech, its the stove calling the kettle black.
OUJ,
YOU HAVE HELPED ME BY VERBALIZING IN A BEAUTIFUL WAY SO MANY THINGS THAT WERE TEARING ME UP IN THE FRUM WORLD. I AM AS GREATEFUL AS THAT GRANDMA. A VOICE OF REASON IN A DESERT OF CLOSEMIDED, SELF CENTERED SELF SERVING DOLTS.
THANK YOU AND KEEP UP YOUR WORK.
TO ALL THE DETRACTORS: THE MAJORITY OF YOU ARE OBVIOUSLY SCUM. YOU KNOW THERE IS A PROBLEM, YOU KNOW KIDS ARE HURT BUT AS LONG IS IT IS NOT ON YOUR DOORSTEP YOU DON'T CARE. EVERYBODY WHO HAS BEEN VIOLATED BY YOUR "ESTEMEED" RABBONIM IS MAKING IT UP...EVERYBODY WANTS TO PLAY THE VICTIM...RIGHT.... AND WHEN YOU WILL HAVE A PROBLEM NOBODY WILL BELIEVE YOU AS WELL.
BUT THEN IT WILL BE TOO LATE.
SO INSTEAD OF ACTING LIKE PATHETIC HENCHMAN I WOULD SUGGEST TO GIVE THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE HAD THE COURAGE TO SHARE SOMETHING VERY PAINFUL THE FULL BENEFIT OF YOUR DOUBT.
The latest numbers are that 100,000 people are leaving Orthodox Judaism yearly.
It's not surprising. Shabbas is a complete and utter waste of time for me. Seriously, I could have actually gotten some things done today. Instead, what did I do?
Walked over to shul. Nobody was having a kiddush afterwards so I walked back to where I'm living. No invitations for lunch (divorced men are non-entities in the Orthodox community) so I sat in my office chair contemplating turning on my computer to check news from Israel until I got bored enough that a walk sounded exciting. Took a walk. Came home. Still nothing to do. Sat in my office chair contemplating turning on my computer. Took another walk. So bored I decided to lay down even though I know as an insomniac this will mean almost no sleep Sat nite. I suppose it was better than being bored. Woke up, put on some shorts and a t-shirt - can't remember where it says that you have to sweat on Shabbas - so F the frummies if they think shorts aren't tznius. Took a short walk. Waited for Shabbas to be finally over.
I get absolutely nothing from keeping Shabbas. Don't bother me with all that olam haba stuff. It has no relevance to me at all. I don't live for the future, particularly a future that I'm not convinced exists. I live for what benefits me in the here and now and right now I get no benefit from observing Shabbas. It's boring. It's a waste of time. It's depressing as hell.
depressed as hell, you've found a fine rebbe in uoj. who needs reb nachman when you've got uoj.
as to all who speak for the victims, your numbers are small. You exist. The problem exists. The FBI is the best source of compliance, after uoj.
Maybe Margo has a job for this creep. We hear there's an opening for boiler room administrator.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/nyregion/22newark.html
July 22, 2006
Suspect in String of Felonies Pleads Not Guilty, Insolently
By JAMES BARRON
Smirking and yelling an obscenity at relatives of a 14-year-old girl he is accused of raping and murdering, a 23-year-old Newark man pleaded not guilty yesterday in that case, as well as to a second murder from 2005, an attempted murder last year and a carjacking, rape and attempted murder on July 8.
The authorities have called the defendant, Noah Cuebas, a “one-man crime spree” responsible for a string of carjackings, kidnappings and assaults in the past year and a half.
Mr. Cuebas, in an orange prison uniform, appeared to pay little attention to the proceedings in State Superior Court yesterday. Surrounded by marshals as he stood before Judge Michael R. Casale, he also ignored his court-appointed lawyer .
But Mr. Cuebas turned as much of his body as he could — his wrists were shackled to his waist, and his ankles were shackled together — and faced the crowd that filled the benches in Judge Casale’s courtroom.
He winked, as if to flirt with women who are relatives of his victims. He nodded to other spectators as if greeting them, although they said later that he had no reason to know who they were because they had never encountered him face to face.
Three times during the 10-minute arraignment, he made obscene gestures toward the crowd.
How dare UOJ lash out with such disrespect at an honorable man like Lipa Margulies.
UOJ and all those who agree with him - whenever you feel depressed about this situation read this:
The Mitzvah of Speaking Lashon Hara
Filth, ignorance and abuse all flourish in silence and in the dark.
You go UOJ!
Anonymous,
A Jew makes a cri de coeur about a crisis of faith and all you can do is make a snotty comment. How typically Frum! You really do want Judaism to be an exclusive little club.
FWIW, the FBI does not have any jurisdiction over intrastate molestation. Pedophile rebbes and teachers should be reported to a local police or county sheriff's dept.
I would like to help this situation but I can't join someone who is anoymous and has no respect for anyone. People who want to get involved to do something do not need you UOJ. But then I am sure you will some good intentioned people who are misguided like yourself to join your fight.
The Bais hamikdosh was destroyed fon account of sinas chinom not we should rectify that sid and show Ahavas chinum. Here in Eretz Yisroel we are fighting a battle for our existence and we need everyones tefillos and We need Hashem to take care of the enemy.
It's not surprising. Shabbas is a complete and utter waste of time for me. Seriously, I could have actually gotten some things done today. Instead, what did I do?
Walked over to shul. Nobody was having a kiddush afterwards so I walked back to where I'm living. No invitations for lunch (divorced men are non-entities in the Orthodox community) so I sat in my office chair contemplating turning on my computer to check news from Israel until I got bored enough that a walk sounded exciting. Took a walk. Came home. Still nothing to do. Sat in my office chair contemplating turning on my computer. Took another walk. So bored I decided to lay down even though I know as an insomniac this will mean almost no sleep Sat nite. I suppose it was better than being bored. Woke up, put on some shorts and a t-shirt - can't remember where it says that you have to sweat on Shabbas - so F the frummies if they think shorts aren't tznius. Took a short walk. Waited for Shabbas to be finally over.
I get absolutely nothing from keeping Shabbas. Don't bother me with all that olam haba stuff. It has no relevance to me at all. I don't live for the future, particularly a future that I'm not convinced exists. I live for what benefits me in the here and now and right now I get no benefit from observing Shabbas. It's boring. It's a waste of time. It's depressing as hell.
----------------
This blog is full of loser misfits, who blame the world for their failures.
uoj
i will oust you on my site that gets 0.0
comments
I ask you, kindly look around you, has your rabbi or rosh yeshiva spoken about sexual abuse in the community from the pulpit? Of course not, there's dead silence!
You know why, because they ALL know it's true and are afraid of rocking their leaking boat. This makes them complicit to the crimes that are perpetrated on our children; and in a court of law they would be considered co-conspirators if they knew about a crime and tacitly permitted it to happen by not contacting the authorities with that information.
You give the term ignoramus a bad name! You begin with the unverified and incorrect premise that ALL rabbis know that there is a sex abuse problem in the community. You make another assumption that discussing it from the pulpit will resolve the problem - Sound advice for molesters who might not realize abuse is bad.
then you tell us that in a court of law they would be co-conspirators. Assuming arguendo that the rabbis all knew of a crime as it was taking place or before it took place (two unlikely scenarios), what court would consider the onlookers co-conspirators?
then UOJ tells us that the latest numbers indicate that 100,000 are leaving Orthodox Judaism annually. Where does he get this tidbit from - Vicki "Jews are Satan Worshippers" Polin? With those kinds of numbers, we probably would have noticed the changes in our shuls and schools. And since molestation seems to be at least a 70-year old problem, you would think we had run out of Orthodox Jews long ago.
I will not throw in the towel, so our ancestors would not have died in vain.
Thanx, that's mighty white of you.
if he suffers from depression, he should take meds.
When the internet is involved, the fbi works in tandem with local police and the postal service. thank you for the corrections.
as to uoj, the fact remains that THE reason he can't/won't/will not throw in the towel is because he doesn't have anything better to do. If he really cared about victims, he'd help build and create a national enterprise, but all he really wants to do is playing blog. Yes, a national hero.
Editor, your slavish devotion to UOJ is rather amusing. In one shocking exchange, one of your fellow goons writes:
"Elisha said...
UOJ,
The comments and reactions of most of the readers of this post, come to prove how messed up the community is. They just want more dirt and gossip, but none of it actually sinks in. It's like those morons who watch the five oclock news and think they know something and are informed of their surrondings. I think the dumbasses that don't care enough, or don't think these problems are real quite common deserve to be shot. We should line them up with the molesters and enablers (they actually fall under the category of enables) and have some target practice. After we kill them all, we can go to Israel and help our people kill the Jewish people's other enemies, like Hamas and Hezbollah."
To which UOJ replies with wholehearted approval and applause. Sounds like a good guy -sounds like the kind of talk I want kicking around my community. Shooting people for target practice - kind of reminds me of something I saw once on TV about the holocaust.
I wonder what nasally self righteous complaints you'd have mewled if one of your "frummies" had suggested such violent methods. You almost had an aneurysm when someone threatened UOJ's family. But evidently its completely all right for UOJ to advocate (since it's in jest, right? No harm done, right?) threatening not just alleged molestors, but enablers, and now people who attack his cause online. Sounds like a broad based group of enemies.
But thank god he has you in his hungarian hating, name smearing, self aggrandizing posse of e-jackbooted thugs. You guys can and will take down ANYONE who disagrees with you. (and lets not forget that though UOJ is a pretty pedestrian - and sometimes just plain awful - writer, YOU can string three coherent paragraphs together (unlike the "frummy" scum that comments here). I guess that makes your cause even more just.
Face it. Your idol is a racist narcissist pig, your cause is a nasty one, and you are merely another in a long line of jewish goons.
Letter to the Editor
Hands Off
Miami News Times - July 20, 2006
http://miaminewtimes.com/Issues/2006-07-20/news/letters_full.html
Don't investigate yourself, rabbi: Regarding Forrest Norman's "Yeshiva Dustup" (July 13): It's important to remember that clergy abuse has nothing to do with religion, even though you will find it in all of them (Christianity, Judaism, Muslim, Bahai, et cetera). Sex crimes are about an abuse of power and the need to control others.
Unfortunately it's common for child molesters to choose careers or volunteer time for organizations and/or institutions in which they have ample access to the types of victims they prey upon. One of the biggest problems we face is that instead of allowing law enforcement to conduct criminal investigations, institutions attempt to handle things on their own. When this happens, we end up in situations like the one we are seeing in the case of Rabbi Yehuda Kolko and Yeshiva Torah Temimah.
Just as we say, "It takes a village to raise a child," we can say the same thing about sex offenders. When an individual suspects a child is at risk of harm, we all must become mandated reporters. Let those with the education, experience, and training collect the physical evidence and do the forensic interviewing. This is not the job for our clergy.
Rabbis are experts in physical evidence. They know by heart all relevant sections in the Shulchan Aruch on sexual abuse. They can read mappos. They can ask the difficult questions and then act responsibly. The hanhola knows, especially the lawyers know, that arkoyois are terrible. Everything can be handled through Bais Din. Bais Din will not throw the towel, but someone else may pick it up.
I am glad you have decided not to throw in the towel. I hope a lot of people are willing to join in your crusade perhaps with other people involved things will get done. I wish I could help but living in Israel it becomes difficult but after reading yourblog Iam glad we made aliyah.
UOJ WILL NOT THROW IN THE TOWEL-BECAUSE HE CAN'T!
Somebody schizophrenia evil other half has gotten the better of him.
I would love to help in the battle UOJ, but I think we all have to know who our leader is, when and if you ever come forth I and I am sure many others will help you fight this battle but until than your blog continues to be just words to the masses.
Dear Un-Orthodox Jew,
You don't know me, but I just want to say that I too am wanting to make a difference in the world, particularly for families. I am a Christian, as you know Christianity is based upon Judaism beliefs.
I just want to encourage you to not give up, and to keep on making a difference.
signed,
A concerned Human being
Hang in there UOJ!!!
jewish existence is threatened by yishmael.
we need rabbonim to tell us to say tehillim??
we are busy trying to correct our tznius, shmirat shabbos,
maybe even not to talk or listen to loshon hara,
but when bein odom lchavero, people's [even if they are ketanim or even
shoitem] existance [even if only mental stability] is bombarded out of
normal
parameters,
by maaseh sodom, we chas vcholila don't support activist gay
prostelyzing in
flatbush,
but when it has a "hecsher" of a hadras ponim, committed or EVEN
SUPPORTED,
OR NOT DECRIED [we know Shlomo hamelechs onesh]
by self anointed gedolim and gaonim, wearing black hats, bekishes and
gartels,
with filters on the water, not on the brain,
like lipa mar-ghoul-is, OY VAVOY to such a community.
YTT is NOT a school with other fine raamim, etc, its a whore house
that we enjoy as long as we do not get the clap.
IDYUTS, you have the clap, and your brains are affected if you dont see
it.
keep sending your kids to learn Torah there. they will grow up to big
talmedai
tuchass there
i wonder what moshe wolfson, the skulener, the novominsker think about
this
tinuf.
hatzadik hagaon yesod olam Yerovum Melech Yisroel, 2nd in line to the
Almighty
[and i thought i was a chota umachteh]
===i have so much more to say, but.. lo aleinu there is not enuf paper
to
write it all down.
ad kan
Dear UOJ,
I am not surprised with this latest post. I was thinking of you over the weekend.
The problem with your crusade is this: You are creating a firestorm for parents, and they have no support system in place to deal with it. If you succeed in closing down YTT and other Yeshivos, thousands will have to make other arrangements, and find other schools, for their kids. And all through the war that you decided to wage.
Don't get me wrong....you speak the truth. But you know what? People today just don't care. Raising kids is hard work....and people are just too selfish today....many of them....too many. So, you're causing a problem that they don't want to have to deal with.
Just look around today. Take Pesach as an example. How many billions are spent at hotels, just so parents don't have to deal with this 'onerous' Yom Tov. So what if Chinuch is in the toilet as a result? So what if you and your kids are treated to a first-class Farkakteh Seder experience? Oh, and watch what too many do with their kids during the rest of the time....ignoring them, pawning them off on hired help....This is Yom Tov today?? Only when people decide that THEY want a vacation, all the rest of you be damned.....
So, UOJ, you are creating issues among a slumbering society. Check that....I have misused the word slumber. You are in the midst of a COMATOSE society....when our kids need us most, too many of us -- Unzereh Yiddishe Leit -- are out to lunch (or dinner, vacation, shul function).
The UOJ-created cataclysm that you would like to bring upon the "evildoers" (and don't get me wrong, there are indeed plenty of evil ones among us) will have such repercussions -- and cause such headaches -- for so many, that I don't believe that you will get the support you need to do much at all.
And so, Batman, when Gotham doesn't support you, what then?
It's a shame, too. You speak the truth...no question about it. Our kids have been cheated, used, and abused, and all for money.
But, too few care about them, or about anything but themselves.
Good luck, dude. Take solace in knowing you're not the first to come up against this dilemma. Moshe Rabbeinu was trying to get us to the Promised Land -- what greater truth than that? And they undermined him too, time and time again.
Daniel
P.S. I am in agreement with many other posters. This important issue will not be tackled successfully under the cloak of anonymity. Perhaps some will join a cause with leadership and accountability. I don't know that I -- or many, for that matter -- will join one that insists on lurking in the shadows. Emes is Emes....and you certainly have that on your side. But, the reason you won't reveal yourself is probably the same reason your crusade is doomed: Emes doesn't get you very far in this world....and seeking it can bring you down.
UOJ is the anti-Clinton. UOJ won't throw in the towel because he can't. Clinton and Kolko were oyver avayros because they could.
For the sake of clarity to our readers, there is a gentleman that has previously posted here under multiple different names. He also was one of the many people calling themselves ENDUOJ.
On his present site, ALL comments are by him talking to himself except for a handful.
I have a computer wiz on my staff that has identified this person unequivocally in conjunction with Yahoo.
The reason I am posting this is that someone posting as UOJ exposed the name of a Leizerowitz victim. I asked him for two days to take it down. I also told him that I DO NOT POST ON OTHER SITES because of the many attempts by others to post information under my name.
IF YOU SEE WHAT APPEARS TO BE AN AUTHENTIC UOJ POST ON ANOTHER SITE, IT IS NOT ME! DO NOT BE FOOLED!
Perhaps the blog should morph into an on-line newspaper, with paid subscribers. We have The Drudge Report; we need The UOJ Report. Articles paid for and written by professional journalists. An editorial board. Advertising. Vetting done by lawyers. Journalistic standards adhered to and enforced. No nivel peh. Editorials and commentary written by UOJ (ala TRB from the New Republic).
Rodefemes
great idea rodef
uoj needs to start a yeshiva to show the world by example what authentic, beeyooteeful Judaism really is. His yeshiva will have a pool. Towels will be provided free. Then, everyone can throw in their towel whenever they wish. Then, there will be peace in the land and the sound of the turtle will resound by the pool.
If uoj spent as much time learning as he did blogging, does anyone doubt that HE would BE the gadol hador?
He is.
hey uo, tell are the rumors true? Mr. Mashie says that you're kowtowing to the establishment, seeing the light, "cooperating."
If by that he means you are waiting for the hanhola and the Vaad horabbonim, what does this mean? That Daas Toyreh wins out every time? That the lawyers have threatened to take down the internet, storm the Bastille, erase you from recorded history? These threats I would take seriously.
Gaiva of the plain knows there have always been some homos on the plain, but first you milk them. Not a word more about mr. mashie. You said you would wait and see if they would do the right thing. Obviously, everything they do is right. Ask the hanhola.
"I have a computer wiz on my staff that has identified this person unequivocally in conjunction with Yahoo."
So apparently, constitutionally derived anonymity is only a right granted to UOJ and his chevra, but not to his detractors.
The ROysh koylel speaks for the hanhola when he opines that anyone who criticizes the yeshivois in our doyr is a rosho.
end of discussion.
period.
go away.
We, the vaad hayeshivois are the oylom hatoyroh. We the are the Toyreh. Lo bashomyim hi. We're it. Where we sit is the kisay hakovod. Where? THe mizrach vand, idiot. Can't you see? We sit up front to inspire everyone else with our gadlus. Who? ME. Don't look at anyone else. Jump up for me first. ME. ME. ME.
Echod ME yoi daya? The only true echod is our world against uoj, and the great echod is...
ME?
Don't forget who owns this place, be it in Brooklyn, Lakewood, wherever. The hanhola does, the family. We are so l'shem shomayim that we'll do whatever we must to silence our enemies. Attack us, and you are a sonay Hashem. We'll ruin you. We know how. We're smart. We're lomdim.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, is the day the Torah says kee tov (it is good) twice. That's why people move on Tuesdays; that's why there's going to be a major expose online tomorrow by the secular media, followed in print on Wednesday!
KEE TOV!
Can you give us a hint?
Shea Fishman of Torah Umesorah said the "climate was not yet right" for an independent sex offender registry, and an independent panel of professionals investigating allegations of abuse.
I thought I'd try to adjust the climate a bit to suit his needs.
It's a BARN BURNER!
UOJ, Looks like you are back.
I guess the rumors of your early demise were unfounded!
Editor, Yankel, Shlomo, END UOJ (one of them), R.Y.,Anonymous ( about 20 of them),Mr. "T", ARE ALL THE SAME GUY. YOU MUST ADMIT HE'S TALENTED!
SHMUEL-I ASKED YOU TEN TIMES TO REMOVE THE NAME OF AN INNOCENT VICTIM OF LEIZEROWITZ!
a hint. uoj has given us a hint.
a barn. which yeshiva has a barn?
gaiva of the plain owns a farm. cows live in a barn, but so do other animals. The whole state of Connecticut used to be farm. They have a barn. Telz has a campus with empty barns. In Denver, animals ski.
After New York magazine, what next? Vanity Fair? Architectural Digest? Slate? An expose launched on the Agudah website, on Camp Agudah's barn, or only their main building? We're hanging in suspense, uoj. Mr. Rosh Yeshiva told us the wicked witch was dead. Water puts out fire and melts witches, or so I've been told.
Toyrah is compared to mayim chayim soda. If a scandal breaks, we will have to blame uoj for the churban. Anyone but ourselves.
UOJ,
Who is Shmuel and can you please explain how all these seemingly different personalities - some who have actually defended you - are one and the same?
Shmuel is a very talented guy who enjoys riling up the crowds. He beats me up, then defends me. I did NOT want to go public with his game, I was enjoying it; when he would not remove the name of an innocent victim, that was it!
I'm certain you all know the type; the guy that's first to throw water on the bal mussaf on Simchat Torah, and is the first guy there to wipe him off with a towel.
The first guy to bean the chosson at the aufruf with hard candy; the first guy to then stand in front of the bimah protecting the chosson from the crowds on the way to the hospital.
IS his real name Ronnie or is that BS?
How did you ID him?
Talented???
harumph!
I'm gifted.
LOL.
BTW, UOJ, I'm thinking of volunteering for Sar-El, Volunteers For Israel, for the Aug. 6 session. If I go, I'll be working on an army base, doing logistical or support work, freeing up a soldier so they can do more critical tasks (like killing the murderers of Jews). I'm between day jobs so I figure I can do this and it's probably the most productive thing I can do with my time. Volunteers have to cover travel and incidental expenses, and though I have some money saved, I probably need another $700 or so to make the trip. It's not tax deductible (and it's no pleasure trip), but if anyone wants me to be their shaliach in this effort they are welcome to help out. Potential supporters can email me @ rokem@netzero.net
Something's wrong here.
Is The Editor Tuvya/Shmuel/Etc?
Isn't The Editor Ronnie?
this whole thing a scam?
Yes, you guys were fooled by Shmuel! I will not divulge any thing more, not to worry!
WHAT A BULLS... ARTIST!
Yes, you guys were fooled by Shmuel! I will not divulge any thing more, not to worry!
WHAT A BULLS... ARTIST!
----
Why are you being so sweer?
Ronnie from Detroit, ID'd himself on tuvya's blog.
See for yourself.
UOJ
Be Clear.
Is Tuvya and The Editor (ronnie, or whatever) the same guy?
Doesn't sound right. This whole ID'ing himself is a scam?
I AM CLEAR! THE GUY IS A FRAUD! HE HAS POSTED UNDER AT LEAST 25-30 PSEUDONYMS! YES YOU GUYS HAVE BEEN TAKEN! I'M LAUGHING MYSELF SILLY!
mr. mash/ rosh yeshi is a fraud? I'm disappointed. I thought he really cared.
Is the only really we follow these threads because of gossip? A logician offers a guide for the perplexed. A good man, speaking well, his points are well taken. Outing uoj is unnecessary. A major smear campaign against the oylem hatoirah is also not in their interest. UO or OU, we are one body, one soul, one political party. Together, we can fight gay marriage, advance tuition vouchers and work closely with the Catholic church, agoodah thing to do.
ronnie-editor-tuyva-rosh yeshiva-endouj-aka-aka-aka...
around the horn. Tinkers to Evers to Chance.
I had a long talk with my most trusted confidante today. The fact that I never disclosed to anyone that I'm UOJ, is starting to have an adverse effect on my personality. I finally disclosed to him that I'm UOJ. He was speechless. This was the same guy that was ranting to me for the last six months that UOJ could possibly be Moshiach.
I kept telling him no way; but he was certain that it was a real possibility.
My wife does not know, my parents do not know, my siblings and in-laws have no idea what I'm doing up late at night in my office.
This is what I'm thinking and would like feedback from my readers.
If the expose that's coming out tomorrow is all encompassing ( I did not see the completed article),
There's no reason for me to blog anymore. I will come out and fight this battle face to face, head to head, posuk to posuk!
I will join forces with the wonderful prominent members of the Orthodox world who promised to join my battle if I " out myself."
So I have prepared my final post, telling the world who I am in every relevant detail. I will give you references so will be able to verify my integrity, although I do admit I got carried away with language at times.
I will tell you where I went to yeshiva(s), college, where I live, and the names of prominent rabbonim who will vouch for my integrity.
My work has only just begun; I do have two very important requests.
1- Please send me your feedback telling me if you think I should "come out."
2- Under no circumstances do I want a parade down Central Av.
Please share your thoughts!
Ok course you should let people know who you are I don't understand the question.
i think you should stay in the closet, uo. You are creating enemies. There are crazy fanatics who won't hesitate to hurt you. They WILL harass you and who needs the grief? The bigger agenda you can carry on by day, like clark kent, superman, like bruce wayne, bat. Gotham City enjoys its reputation as gossip city.
But, I do have two very important requests.
1. We thought we were your closest confidantes. Say it ain't so, uo.
2. wouldn't crowd control be easier down broadway?
Hey UOJ, that was quick. It took "Deep Throat" decades to come out.
I do not see what you have to lose the relevant parties know who you are and are afraid to do anything - might as well bolster your credibility and come public.
It will be better for klal yisroel if you come out.
UOJ, There are easier ways of commiting suicide!!
Are you insane?
Hey, I'm dying to know who you are. I personally think you're a sick man. But if you think for a second you'll be safe once people know who you are..... I don't know......... jumping off a bridge is less painfull.
Anonymous said...
UOJ, There are easier ways of commiting suicide!!
-----------
LOL. I agree. I guess UOJ is suicidal. Either that or he has know idea how many people can't wait to lay there hands on him.
Good News !!!
This Pesach Artscroll and Mesorah Publications will be coming out with the UOJ Hagadah !!
If Torah Temimah would have fired Yudi Kolko ... Dayeinu
If our Gedolei Yisroel would have an ounce of anavah ... Dayeinu
If Torah Umesorah would have set up an independent registry ... Dayeinu
If the Agudath Israel and Avi Shafran would have apologized ... Dayeinu
Hatzlacha - UOJ
Ok, the clock strikes midnight. UOJ should point us to the website with the online expose before we turn into pumpkins. I stayed up past my bedtime for this so it had better be good.
UOJ, I put on my galoshes for your "big storm". So what is the friggin website?
Come out now? No. Just wait. Open an online newspaper. See how that works, and then see how you feel.
Rodefemes
the hanhola fears the power of public opinion, newspapers, arkoyois. oy arkoyois. assur! daas toireh. They will hate you, revile you, reject you, damn you. You are their watchdog. They hate dogs. The issues for them only proliferate. The last thing they want in their fiefdom is transparency. You are a dog, but one they don't want to be bitten by.
The problem are the followers, the know nothings, of which there are more than a few, the ones who to curry favor will not hesitate to do damage. I'd avoid these people if I were you. Reb Moishe used to get phone calls in the middle of the night from crazies. You'll get them too. What are you going to do, hire bodyguards? Security is expensive, a poor use of resources.
For uoj to go public, you must morph into ralph nader mode as the environmentalist of the jewish people, hobnob with al sharpton, and create a foundation for ethnic cleansing. The Serbs will understand what you mean. The hanhola will feel the same way.
UOJ told us to knock out power in Queens to send a message to the Boro's resident molester Ephraim Bryks and to give a prelude to Shea Fishman.
I am very close with the "Donald";
I have nothing to worry about!
The expose will be on-line tomorrow night Shea, go to sleep with your raincoat, you'll need it.
http://archive.salon.com/politics2000/feature/2000/04/13/newjersey/index.html
"Twinkle, twinkle, Kenneth Starr, now we see how brave you and UOJ are."
"Up above the molester sting, like a fair judge in the ring. Twinkle, twinkle, Kenneth Starr, now we know how brave you and UOJ are. When subpoenas and lies are gone, when obstruction shines upon, then you throw your trump cards down, twinkle, twinkle, all brought down."
"Twinkle, twinkle, Kenneth Starr, now we see how brave you and UOJ are! Then YTT in the dark, thanks you for your courage and spark; we could not see which way to go, if you did not lead us so. Twinkle, twinkle, Kenneth Starr, now we see how brave you and UOJ are!"
who plays bridge anymore unless it's the triboro, gw or verrazano. You'll need a lot of tricks before you get trumped.
"i have nothing to worry about." You don't care. But, what about your family? Will they care? What you do impacts upon them in more ways than you might reckon. The roshei yeshiva are public figures. They enjoy their role. They are important. Should I say that again?
They are sincere. Yes. Very. You can stand up, beg for reshus, be attentive. But, everyone has to worry. Any exposes will not go down well in the Jewish community. Nobody likes bad news. The Jewish world doesn't share your agenda, bashing bad guys isn't popular. If you don't care about being popular, stand on a soapbox, join the Council of Presidents, create an international organization, or, better, another denomination. All who support you will join the Union of Unorthodox Jews of America. They seem to be the majority anyway.
oy, u oi, mein kind, with teiereh biryonim like you, the Bais hamikdash will be rebuilt.
Your confidante thought you were moshiach. No wonder you don't like other hasidic movements: you must be the Rebbe returned from vacation. They can dust off your shtender in 770 now.
THis is what will happen if you out yourself. So, if you must go public, tell the friedicke rebbes before you do so. We'll hold a press conference this time in Elmont.
I think UOJ has finally gone off the deep end. The last 30 or so comments have been nothing short of surreal. Maybe I'm UOJ! Maybe Kolko's UOJ! Maybe EVERYONE'S UOJ!!!!!!!!!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHH!!!!!!
tuvya will have to work overtime if this expose hits the fan.
meglomania, he said. all becuz of a few hundred pairs of tzitzis?
if you exposed the dirty, they will be speaking nivul peh. this is a terrible avla, uoi. You must beg the hanhola for reshus to out yourself. They will ask a poisek.
I dont think people are going to lay hands on UOJ once he's out. I think he's just going to become irrelevant. The last remaining ounce of interest he held for people was his anonymity. When that's gone, he's just another schmuck with a blog. No mystery, no press.
online news is less important than real time happenings. a press conference will grab their attention. the internet is assur. they don't look, chas vesholom. TV is avada assur. Mammish, you're a shaygetz for even thinking such a despicable thought. But, radio one can listen to - in the car.
A radio broadcast like orson welles war of the worlds would do the trick.
"hello this is uoj. The martians have molested your children." You'll get a lot of media attention. Your meglomania will be fulfilled. UOJ will rule the world and all the yeshivois will have to ask reshus to start new branches, unless chofetz chaim gets there first.
That's a relief that today's attack will be on another corrupt yeshiva and Shea Fishman. I thought that your's truly, Great Leader, was next on UOJ's hit list.
He won't be irrelevant to the moisdois he impacts. They are following this blog, hoping to chip away at its cheap, sleazy venue, ridiculing its rechilus, moitzee shame rah, nivul peh, yada yada.
In or out, he's the enemy. He's the worst. Bad news. Far from irrelevant, if anybody else blabs to him secrets from the past, they will become news. That's bad for the yidden, not good business for the moisdois. You just don't like him.
His anonymity isn't what brings results, it's the charges and expectations (oddly enough, fulfilled) of coverup.
The court cases, if won, are a major coup for uo, hardly irrelevant. You are not his friend or his confidante.
A parade down Central Ave? So UOJ is a 5 Towns resident? Maybe he can arrange for David Barnes to dole out free pizza.
Hey UOJ,
Been busy and haven't had much time to blog...I see a lot is going on.... Regarding your conundrum: No way UOJ!
--------------------------
To the Anonymous Hagadah suggestor: Funny!
UOJ is suggesting a very dangerous proposition. There are elements in Ger, among others, who would like to pick him apart limb by limb.
uoj is a gadol, a founder of the white shul and a rosh yeshiva at shor yoshuv, chief challah baker at TAG. uoj is a member of the board of artscroll, a student of mr. mendlowitz, an exponent of torah vodaath. He invested in itt, not ytt. He supports kollelim the world round. He is starting a blog kollel which will require talmidim to take bechinos on many blog gemara every year. uoj's mystery is virgin birth.
I confirmed that UOJ was a student at Ner Israel and Torah Temimah.
Will you be comming out with your suicide in wednesday's obituaries?
Oh, the many ailments that afflict Mr. Editor. First he revealed his paranoia about ALL "Frummies", now this persecution complex about injustices targeted to out of towners.
It's very likely UOJ has picked up on the growing sentiment that Mr. Editor is a blowhard looking for a free outlet. He should stick to arguing with fellow losers in his native Detroit.
Refuah shelayma!
R' UOJ, please be careful, buddy. Don't jepardize yourself or your work. Maybe get some sort of Rabbinic backing ahead of time. Police protection, too - seriously! I will openly be with you and any movement trying to help.
Unless, of course, you really are Moshiach in which case you won't really need any help.
As for advice I think you must be open about yourself in order to really organize and go to the next level. Just make sure you stay safe and healthy.
Hatzlochoh, man. You made a difference to countless individuals and to the Klal forever.
Has anyone confirmed if the boiler room at ytt has been cleaned?
Uoj please be careful. You helped me so much please know I owe my life to you. you saved me from very bad things. Be blessed.
I love you chaver.
UOJ;
No way. Not even if you and your family had Satmar bodyguard bulvans (from both sides)protecting you 24/7.
The more s--t that hits the fan in coming weeks/months, the more important it is for you to play Zorro. Keeps the Menuvalim off balance and looking over their shoulders, much like their kissing cousins; Hezbollah and Hamas.
Stay the course.
Are you out of your mind? The only reason you would want to out yourself is for kovod. If you do then you are just like the rest of them. Now that you told a friend, it will become public knowledge. The gig is up. Too bad. For 70 years, I have not revealed my identity to anyone and you can't even keep a secret for more than a year and a half. Kovod fresser. I'm also Jewish, my two fathers were yiddelech from Cleveland. People thought I was moshiach, don't get carried away. Kovod fresser.
I'm also a yiddish boy from Gotham. I'm a billionaire industrialist and my father was also Jewish. I haven't told anyone since 1939 who I am and you go popping your mouth off. Some super hero you are. Stop whining and pick yourself up and don't do anything you will regret.
Having multiple bodyguards may be a status symbol? If government leaders earn them, do we expect less for our uoj? New York magazine might send a photographer for the outing of UOJ. What a story. Read all about it! The news event of the millenium. Just think of all the photos: the family with their pet killer dogs. You will breathe new life into their circulation. An excellent idea. The hanhola approves. Then, no matter what your credentials, including how much money you have, we'll besmirch your reputation until you are nothing. They'll plant whatever evidence they need.
It's lonely at the top, uoj. You should be the only one who knows how truly great you are.
Shea Fishman must be really spooked. Never mind a raincoat, I saw him run in first thing at 9 am this morning to get a wetsuit and oxygen tank at a scuba diving supply store.
What a joke - look at Mr. "T"'s latest post.
Looks like he has been driven out of business.
UOJ - why do you still allow The Editor on to your web site and why do you not announce his real name? After all he tried to destroy you.
An anonymous figure like UOJ may be the only way to fight corruption. If he reveals himself, the sleazeballs will engage in relentless attacks on him while ignoring the issue. Since they are terrified of a phantom they cannot fight, it seems to be the only mehalech to get them to do the right thing. If not for UOJ, Yudi Kolko would still be cruising for little tushies with Margo's brocho.
You got to be nuts, forget the danger, u think about the cause, if YTT can play you down they will and kolko will be back sept. Don't do it, please for our kids, you have to operate with the stealth you've been using until now, they will know how to shut you up one they find out who you are. Please don't go public.
They're comming to take me away ha ha, they're comming to take m away ho ho, to the funny farm will life is.....
There's another advantage to UOJ's anonymity. The yeshivos refuse to ackowledge anything in cyberspace, even as the public follows this with great interest. If UOJ identifies himself, they will pour all their resources into smearing and discrediting him.
Play ball!
Any news with Simcha Klohr?
Ever since this UOJ guy came along, my phone has been ringing off the hook about corruption and a couple fellas named Margo and Pinter. What do they want from me? All I do is give a few bucks to Artscroll.
boog says stay the course. yeshiva bochurim, if they are in the course, cheat.
We can learn from the oylom hatoirah how to cheat. Ochiv ani b'ramoyos is our claim to fame. Esav? That's uoj.
boog says "stay the course." What does this mean? What's the sevara? Can we make a diyuk (one diyuk per bochur, please) we know that in courses, yeshiva bochurim tend to cheat. This abuse, too, must be uncovered and stopped. Right?
But, we can learn from the oylom hatoirah how to cheat. After all, "Ochiv ani b'ramoyos" is our claim to fame. Who is Esav? Known or hidden, our brother is uoj.
stehr the course and their curses, uoj. The nobody misfit losers of am yisroel are behind you 51%.
Unless you reveal your identity, you will continue to lose support on this blog. People have become more obsessed with "who is UOJ?", rather than the pertinent issues you are trying to tackle. The longer you keep them hanging, the more apathetic they get. Get it over with, say who you are and let's deal with the real problems.
uoj, real people with real priorities couldn't give a hoot about who you are and what you ate for breakfast; they just want the corruption to go away and their kids to be safe. go ahead, take a plaque and watch people spit on you.
Please call me @212-262-2133 or e-mail me at drather@cbsnews.com. I am planning on doing a special on sexual abuse in parochial schools. The one hour show will air in September. Half the show will be dedicated to the abuse issue. The other half will be on President Bush's military record.
Shea Fishman might be scared about the expose coming out tonight, but he also had another agenda in getting the scuba diving outfit. What happened was, he stopped off in Camp Morris for an emergency meeting with my brother Avrom because their are rumors that Chaim Berlin is on UOJ's hit list. When he left, he stopped off at Pizza D' Pie to get a slice of pizza. When he was continuing along Route 52, a big gust of wind blew his slice into Loch Sheldrake. The Loch is about 500 feet deep, and he said that since Yaakov Avinu was makpid on pachim ketanim, he should fish it out instead of driving back to the pizza store, with gas at $3 a gallon and all.
http://a836-acris.nyc.gov/Scripts/DocSearch.dll/Detail?Doc_ID=FT_3820007363182
Interesting that Margo gave Applegrad power of attorney over his real estate in 2000. He trusts Applegrad more than his own sons?
nobody really cares who u is, mrs. uoj.
the excitement and titilation served on this site are what made your reputation. Those who enable corruption will play along with whatever is publicly necessary. If a significant donor steps up to start an abuse program, the vaad hakovoid of the school will make sure anyone who needs kovod will get it. Gabboyim don't look for their own; they stroke others.
Are you a gabbai? a pathethic rabbi? an angel in distress?
Stab your enemies in the back, they say. Stab uoj.
When they speak in Hashem's voice, as they do, who else, You?
They're the ones with daas toyreh, a power base, people standing up for them, I mean, l'kovoid Toyrosom (who stands up for the lawyers?) a basketball court. Where is your basketball court, uoj? The greatest yeshivois in America have basketball courts and this is what am yisroel really needs. Put your name on one.
dan rather is done with cbs. nice try
Boog and Gross,
You are incorrect.
When UOJ reveals his identity, it will be such a shock to many as he is most likely a person who is quite well known - not the slime ball character that MR. RY tried to paint him as.
Revealing his identity will prove that he and collectively we are not afraid. The cloak of anonymity has served its purpose. The "crazy man" image was a facade - necessary to accomplish a purpose. Now it is time for the true UOJ persona to be seen.
Unfortunately, collectively - many of us have let UOJ down. We've read his blog and cheered him from the sidelines waiting for him to out the next Yeshiva, but couldn't get involved ourselves.
Now is the time for UOJ to reveal his identity. After he does that, the test will be for us to follow. Who will join him? Who will rise up and join the fight to rid the system of molesters and enablers? We do not have to hide behind a blog that is filled with too much anger and bad language as even UOJ has admitted to. Out of the underground and into the open we rise to face the world proudly -unafraid to take on face to face those who have let down and hurt our children. Time for us to stand up using our real names without embarrasment and worry about silliness such as shidduchim, etc. and create a strong parent organization that will deal with all the issues that we have discussed.
The only way to solve the problems that we have is for parents to join together unafraid. UOJ needs to reveal his identity. It will break through this unfortunate, though currently necessary, state of affairs wher anonymity and FEAR is the only way to address the issues of our day.
UOJ - I SAY DO WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO. MANY WILL TRY TO BRING YOU DOWN, BUT YOU WILL HAVE MANY SUPPORTERS AS WELL. IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU SET AN EXAMPLE FOR OTHERS TO FOLLOW. ULTIMATELY, THIS WILL HELP THE CHILDREN WHICH IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS ALL, RIGHT?
we are preparing for a grand asifa about uoj and the direct damage of the internet. uoj is the proof not porno, uoj is the cause of all rishus in klal yisroel. we will hang his picture up like the chabad telethon, we will sing yechi hamelech uoj than dance, raise money, then bring on a few drunks and druggies, collect millions for ourselves, take a collective crap on the uoj picture and end the asifa with a plea from r' elya," vos vet zine mit de kinder?"
please send your articles on abuse in our heilige moisdois to the jewish observer.com. We are planning a special issue filled with helpful hints, the ytt guide to throwing kids in garbage cans. Every rebbe, every parent can benefit! If you want to contribute to the agoodah legal defense fund, colpa will funfa ferenfer.
The question America most wants to know is
what did uoj eat for breakfast?
Maybe UOJ can do something about highway robbery gas prices.
Get ready Big Oil. Here comes UOJ, defender of the little guy.
on second thought, by all means, out yourself. end the blog. throw the towel.
everyone bows to bronfman, right?
every billionaire is highly respected.
buy an election, trade a city.
rabbi michael bloomberg is uoj.
Isn't that funny that Shea Fishman had "another agenda" with the scuba equipment. Those were the exact words he used to smear Elliot Pasik while trying to avoid the sex registry issue.
And this is no joke. It's long been rumored that the mob uses Loch Sheldrake as a cement shoe dumping ground. State Police divers probably don't have the resources to search that deep down. Fishman had better be careful fishing out that pizza slice lest he end up swimming with the fishes. But something is fishy about Fruchthandler's version of the story, I heard it was a pastrami sandwich.
"collect millions for ourselves, take a collective crap on the uoj picture"
There is a Chazal about a certain avoda zara that the shkotzim took a dump in front of.
Are you saying that that's what Margo and his fellow Hungarians have been up to lately?
Mens Room Attendant? Is that you David Dinkins?
I just told UOJ to come out!
Isn't Aish Kodesh that shul that makes you sign a contract not to talk during davening?
"Are you saying that that's what Margo and his fellow Hungarians have been up to lately?"
No wonder Kolko and Margo are so big into private bathrooms.
Fishman was driving down Route 52 with the windows open during a heat wave? Is he too cheap to turn on the A.C. ?
Thanks to you guys sounding off on the blog, it looks like Shea Fishman is out of luck. I heard about the opportunity for a free meal and got to the pastrami sandwich before he did. There's renewed flooding in Sullivan County with all the water that was displaced when I jumped in.
Can any psychologists on board explain what was going through The Editor's little brain? It is so strange.
Maybe the Editor's brain is fried after all the years of doing weed, smack, crack and LSD.
'RABBI' ROUSERS
80S VICTIMS WANT 'PERV' EXTRADITED
By PHILIP MESSING
July 25, 2006 -- Two Orthodox Jewish men have come forward to say they were molested by a Brooklyn counselor who was indicted in the 1980s for sexually abusing kids but skipped to Israel before he could be prosecuted.
Now they want the Brooklyn district attorney to revive efforts to get Avrohom Mondrowitz shipped back for trial.
"It's outrageous that the DA has allowed this to slip," Mark Weiss, who is now 39, told The Post.
The pair's stories are strikingly similar to those detailed in the indictment against Mondrowitz, which grew out of a case involving other children.
Both newly revealed victims were troubled kids in their early teens whose parents sent them for counseling.
"I remember [Mondrowitz] had this sporty car . . . As a naive kid, I was amazed at how cool this dude was," Weiss said.
Once Mondrowitz, a self-proclaimed rabbi, won his trust, things grew sinister.
"He was so damn smooth," Weiss said. "Everything was my decision. 'Do you want to sleep in the back of my house, where it is scary? Or do you think you want to be with me, where you'll be more comfortable?'
"Then began the whole touching thing. There was some real nasty stuff."
The other victim, who asked not to be identified, started seeing Mondrowitz in early 1984.
"One day, I was sitting opposite him. He began to sit alongside of me and stick his hands down my pants," said the man.
Retired Detective Salvator Catalfumo said the investigation "began with an anonymous caller who said there was a rabbi living on the street molesting children.
"It was very difficult pursing this case," he recalled. "The Hasidic community wanted no part of this. We were told that if a Hasidic kid was molested, no parent would allow their daughter to [marry him]."
Still, Catalfumo, his partner, Patricia Kehoe, and the head of the DA's sex-crimes unit, Barbara Neuman, were able to secure an indictment in 1985. But before he could be arrested, Mondrowitz fled to Israel.
Then-Brooklyn DA Elizabeth Holtzman tried for years to have him sent back, but America's treaty with Israel at the time did not recognize sodomy as an extraditable offense.
In 1988, the treaty was changed, but Holtzman soon left office, to be replaced by Charles Hynes, and the case went cold.
Michael Lesher, who represents both new victims, blamed Hynes' inaction on "a lack of political will."
But Rhonnie Jaus, now head of the sex-crimes unit, denied this, saying her hands are tired because the new treaty does not apply retroactively. As for the new victims, the statute of limitations precludes prosecution.
"I'm not sure what we can do," Jaus said. "We have always been interested in this case. There is a warrant out there. We are ready, willing and able to try him."
philip.messing@nypost.com
I just confirmed that UOJ davens at Aish Kodesh-Moshe Weinberger's club. Weinberger is the YU guy with the fur hat.
Is anybody a Guide Star subscriber? Can you find out Shea Fishman's salary? The velt wants to know. Look under National Society of Hebrew Day Schools. Torah U'Mesorah.
We were told that if a Hasidic kid was molested, no parent would allow their daughter to [marry him]."
That (which is also true for the Litvish) just shows that anybody who says, "In those days who knew about the psychological damage being done?" is full of it.
uoj, which publication is carrying the expose? I am not impressed with anything short of newsweek.
Aaron Twerski, the dean of Hofstra Law School and a former council member, describes Hynes's relationship to the Orthodox community as "quite positive." He explains, "Hynes is a presence in the community. He's been responsive."
Yeah, quite positive in letting Twerski's "honorable" molester buddies get away with murder.
Twerski, of Hofstra, advocates "zero tolerance" in the community for sexual abuse. But when told about the newly vocal Mondrowitz victim and his desire to reopen the case, Twerski replies, "I don't know what to say about that. That's an old, old case and I'm not going to comment on it."
A Middle East storm is brewing and will strike violently, “The use of force in Lebanon could trigger a hurricane.”
“If the peace option fails because of Israeli arrogance, there will be no option but a war in the region.”
replace certain nouns/pronouns and we're in business. Major storm watch in effect in heimeshe counties all around north america. It's 10pm in the catskills, do you know which counselor's hand is down your son's pants?
Where are these Twerski quotes from? These weren't in the Post article.
Rodef
so uoj, the article will be a barn burner because you already burned down the main building?
can someone please explain to me why this guy heshy nussbaum is still out there in toronto and allegedly chasing little boys? is there anyone out there that has personally observed him in contact or attempting to make contact with minors?
I saw Heshy Nussbaum chasing boys but that was over 20 years ago. I last saw him at a simcha about 15 years ago. He was just being his gregarious self and you wouldn't suspect anything in that setting. I don't live in his neighborhood so I have no idea what he's up to these days although I do have credible reports that he has switched to chasing after legal age shkotzim in non-haymish areas.
May 21 (Bloomberg) -- Oil prices are heading to more than $141 a barrel in the next eight years, according to futures contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange, on concern that growth in supply may fail to keep pace with rising demand.
UBS AG forecast that Brent crude oil, a benchmark for two-thirds of global supplies, would rise to $200 a barrel by 2015. The increase results from demand outpacing spare supply capacity sometime in 2013 to 2015, according to the May 15 report by UBS economist Jan Stuart.
Goldman analyst Arjun N. Murti wrote in a report earlier this month that ``the possibility of $150-$200 per barrel seems increasingly likely over the next six-24 months.''
Front-month futures rose above $130 for the first time today after at least five banks raised price forecasts in the past week on expectations supply constraints will persist.
Crude oil for July delivery fell 5 cents to $129 a barrel at 9:21 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after reaching $130.47. Prices are 95 percent higher than a year ago. Oil rose above $130 a barrel for the first time after at least five banks increased forecasts in the past week on expectations supply constraints and demand growth will persist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1IUTdU9IF8
When Federal agents were yelling "donkeys & rats", maybe they were referring to Rubashkin & Lubinsky.
www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/orl-bk-lou-pearlman-boy-band-052108,0,3312606.story
Boy-band mogul Lou Pearlman sentenced to 25 years in federal prison
Willoughby Mariano
Sentinel Staff Writer
9:43 AM CDT, May 21, 2008
Boy-band mogul Lou Pearlman was sentenced this morning to 25 years in federal prison for running a lengthy, systematic con that artificially inflated his net worth and cheated people out of $300 million.
During Pearlman's sentencing in U.S. District Court this morning, Senior U.S. District Judge G. Kendall Sharp offered Pearlman an incentive to pay back his investors: For every $1 million he puts back in investors' pockets, he gets one month off of his sentence.
Since Pearlman's sentence is for 300 months, he can avoid prison altogether if he forks up the cash.
"I'm most concerned for the investors, even more so than the institutions," Sharp said.
Pearlman, 53, was once the toast of Orlando. His financial empire once included popular musical acts the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync; an airplane-charter business; and Church Street Station, an iconic piece of real estate in Orlando's downtown.
The boy-band impresario admitted in a March plea hearing to running the scam. He pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy, one count of money laundering and one count of making a false claim in a bankruptcy during that hearing -- charges worth a maximum 25-year prison sentence.
Investors' claims in a bankruptcy case have approached a half-billion dollars.
Pearlman, wearing leg shackles and an Orange County Jail jumpsuit, slouched in his chair during much of the hearing, which took place before a packed courtroom filled with angry investors. Investors who could not get a seat waited outside for news of the sentencing.
"I'm truly sorry, your honor, to all the people who have been hurt by my actions," Pearlman said in a brief statement.
Investors laughed bitterly in response, and one gasped out loud in disgust when Pearlman's lawyer, Fletcher Peacock, argued for a more lenient sentence by saying that his client wanted to pay the money back.
"I think truly, in Mr. Pearlman's mind, he always meant to make good on his obligations," Peacock said.
Peacock also argued that Pearlman's opulent lifestyle was a business requirement.
"Mr. Pearlman did live large, if you will, but judge, he was in the entertainment business," Peacock said.
Sharp was sympathetic to investors, and held up a book filled with letters from investors detailing how the fraud has hurt their lives.
"It turns out they're all his family, close friends and people in their 80s who have lost their life savings," Sharp said.
The sentence brings to a close at least 13 years of legal disputes and government inquiries involving for one of Orlando's most well-known figures.
It also brings Pearlman's rags-to-riches career to an ignominious end. Born in Queens, N.Y., the first-cousin of singer Art Garfunkel founded Transcontinental Airlines Travel Services Inc., a blimp advertising company. He began to move his businesses to Orlando in the mid-1980s.
Pearlman became intrigued with the boy-band concept during a chance meeting with New Kids on the Block on one of his charter flights, and he borrowed that band's formula to create the Backstreet Boys in 1993. He changed the focus of his business from aviation to music.
His successful launch of 'N Sync three years later buttressed his reputation as a music mogul, and helped Orlando become synonymous with boy bands: all-male vocal groups whose dance moves, pop songs and public personas were carefully calculated to make teenage girls swoon.
It also brought him credibility with local leaders. Pearlman received a key to the city in 1998, and in 2003 he arranged a deal to buy and revitalize the Church Street Station entertainment district in downtown Orlando.
But as Pearlman's reputation grew, so did complaints about his financial dealings. Complaints first arose in 1995 about Trans Continental Airlines' so-called "employee investment savings program," which he promised was a safe investment insured by the FDIC and others. He admitted in March that the program was a Ponzi scheme.
Members of the bands he formed sued him throughout the late 1990s, saying he cheated them out of money. In 2002, state regulators investigated Pearlman's modeling company, Trans Continental Talent, after allegations that the company reneged on promises to give clients modeling work in return for spending money on an online listing service. He was later cleared.
But new investigations began, and his luck ran out in December 2006, when the state Office of Financial Regulation sued Pearlman and forced him to close his airline's "employee investment savings program," which had been open to the public.
One month later, he fled the country and was soon forced into bankruptcy. Auctioneers sold off his furniture, artwork and music memorabilia to raise money for his bankruptcy estate.
On June 14, federal investigators tracked Pearlman down in the lush resort town of Bali, Indonesia, registered at a hotel under the name A. Incognito Johnson. He was expelled and handed over to U.S. authorities to face arrest and was indicted by a federal grand jury in Orlando on five counts of bank, mail and wire fraud.
Pearlman told a judge he was broke. He was appointed a public defender. On March 7 he stood in federal court in leg shackles and pleaded guilty. Much of his empire was built on fraud, he said: a Ponzi scheme involving phony stock and the sale of "employee investment savings accounts," a bank-fraud scam involving bogus financial statements, and a plot to siphon frozen assets from a bankruptcy case.
Pearlman falsified bank accounts, corporate and personal income-tax return documents, and an accounting firm, among other things. He said Trans Continental Airlines had just two planes -- instead of the more than 40 that he had once claimed.
Last Update: 12:02 pm
NEW YORK (AP) - Oil prices have edged to a new record above $132 a barrel.
We need to look into what the OU's involvement was at Rubashkin or anywhere else as far as shochtim and bodkim from abroad having legal worker status.
Regarding that Israeli fellow locked up pending a deportation hearing, was he working with the OU / CHK / Weissmandel / Zeilengold?
I assume however that if the OU et al are complicit in immigration fraud, that Nat Lewin and friends will be very busy in Washington to make investigations and criminal charges go away.
Reporters need to start asking some hard hitting questions that will make the OU squirm.
I'm also looking for Heshy Nussbaum. You could say that Rubashkin is a little short on shochtim these days and we have relaxed our standards.
All the delusional remarks from Genack, Lubinsky & Weissmandel aside, let's figure out what's going on over there.
Why did Rubashkin have to fly over a dozen or two bochurim from Lubavitcher yeshivos in NY to shecht? Just how many shochtim were arrested or fled out of fear from being arrested?
http://www.legalweek.com/Articles/1125654/Wrong+arm+of+the+law.html
One lawyer recently released from the prison camp in Otisville, New York, says there was usually about a half-dozen lawyers inside. The lawyer, who declined to be identified, says the group was well regarded and approached frequently for help with appeals or habeas corpus petitions. But, like other prisoners, he says, they spent most of their time on more mundane pursuits, such as mopping floors.
As long as they behave, they’ll have the privilege of making 300 minutes’ worth of calls per month, 400 during November and December (monitored by the Bureau of Prisons, of course). They can get mail but it will be searched for contraband. And there will be noise.
“There’s snoring and there’s shouting and there’s yelling and there’s loud music,” says Webster Hubbell, the former number three at the US Department of Justice under President Bill Clinton, who served 16 months at the federal prison camp in Cumberland, Maryland, for swindling the Rose Law Firm and its clients out of more than $450,000 (£230,000).
Luckily for the inmates-to-be, there is a small but dedicated cadre of professionals ready to help them with the transition. This cottage industry is populated by lawyers, social workers, former prison officials, and psychologists.
Alan Ellis is a San Francisco Bay-area lawyer who specialises in what he calls “post-conviction” work. His clients have included shopping mall magnate A Alfred Taubman, politician Lyndon LaRouche and ‘American Taliban’ John Walker Lindh. As a resource for clients and their lawyers, Ellis (with J Michael Henderson) wrote the Federal Prison Guidebook. The book is filled with useful tips. Visiting the US penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana? Stay at Larry Bird’s Homecourt Hotel. Want a full-time rabbi on staff? Try the Federal Correctional Institute in Otisville, New York.
Ellis charges $500 an hour for his advice.
More advice comes from Herbert Hoelter, a social worker who founded and runs the NCIA and whose clients have included Martha Stewart and Michael Milken. He says that it is hard for high-powered professionals, used to playing by their own rules, to adjust to prison regulations. He tells the story of one client, a lawyer at a federal prison camp who recently had a stay in ‘special housing’ (aka solitary confinement). When asked to give a urine sample, the lawyer was unable to perform on demand. He spent the next three weeks in solitary, even though he filled the cup just two hours later. “It is a shock to most white-collar defendants how unjust the justice system is,” says Hoelter. “Our advice is to just get into a routine.”
On the other hand, routine can be deadening, particularly for lawyers used to stretching their minds around the frontier of securities laws. “Your thought process atrophies,” says the lawyer from Otisville. “There’s very little of a constructive nature to do.”
However, it is possible to find something positive in the experience, report some ex-cons. Hubbell, known in prison as the ‘Big Easy’ for his size and laid-back demeanour, exercised daily and lost nearly 45kg while he was in prison. “You try to get the years back on the back end,” he says. On a similar note, Alan Ellis advises clients to treat prison time as a sabbatical. “You can take those two years and add five years to your life physically, mentally and spiritually,” he says.
That, or a lawyer can become embittered. Take San Francisco criminal defence attorney J Tony Serra, who was locked up in 2006 for failing to pay taxes. While at Lompoc Federal Prison Camp, south of Pismo Beach, California, Serra wrote a letter to California Lawyer magazine: “We now sleep in foul-odoured, overcrowded, double-tiered bunks… Our mail, our phone calls, our every move is scrutinised.” Serra closed with a flourish: “My mind paces like a caged tiger and when I am released I promise that I will attack!” Indeed, Serra pounced in March 2007, filing a lawsuit on behalf of California inmates demanding higher wages. Serra made 19 cents an hour watering bushes. The suit is pending.
Benjamin Brafman, lawyer for Weiss, says he has not hired anyone for jailhouse consulting
I'm glad the Feds started the raid at 10 am. The Rubashkin truck drivers were long gone by then.
Someone in kashrus tells me that Rubashkin shoots cows in the head AFTER shechita as per another "heter" manufactured by Belsky. Maybe I missed the boat, but I thought all other poskim are universally against allowing that practice.
This of course doesn't help when Rubashkin shoots cows in the head BEFORE shechita r'l as a Federal USDA agent testifies he witnessed in his publicly available report.
R' Yudel Shain caught them doing the post shechita shooting while snooping around. He was then barred by Rubashkin from stepping foot in the place.
I advised R' Lipa Margulies that he should decline Rubashkin's invitation to visit Postville. All it takes is for one worker in the shlacht hoyz with the gun to mistake him for a cow and he's dead meat.
http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/articles/2008/05/21/news/local/iowa0516.txt
Tibor Rosenberg, who owns Tibor’s Kosher Meat Market in University Heights, says he buys about $10,000 worth of meat and poultry from AgriProcessors directly from the plant each week, or half his inventory. He says his store is currently well-stocked.
“This is not a good thing for those who keep kosher,” says Rosenberg. “I hope they will be back in business soon. I’m not nervous now, but come the holidays …”
Boris Mikhili, owner of Boris’ Kosher Meat in Road University Heights, says he will be unaffected by the plant closing because he gets his meats from Alle Meats.
Heinen’s meat buyer Matthew Mesok said he received notice May 14 from the local distributor of Aaron’s kosher beef not to expect a delivery of this week’s order. The distributor was uncertain about next week’s delivery.
I volunteer to "supervise" the boys by the pool.
http://lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080521/NEWS03/805210448/-1/newsfront
Ma-Tov Day Camp, 284 Orangeburg Road, Tappan, was fined $750 for two violations of the sanitary code involving the proper supervision of children at a day camp.
Inspectors visited the camp after a July 25 incident in which a counselor accidentally drove a golf cart into a group of children. Three youngsters were injured, one seriously, according to records.
The camp was not fined for that incident. But inspectors visited a week later and found two boys walking along a path with no counselor in sight, according to records.
A little more than a week after that, inspectors went to the camp again and saw six boys walking near a pool changing area with no supervision, according to records.
Camp directors Sam and Lorraine Vogel attended the meeting and said they disagreed with the board's findings.
Sam Vogel said the children were always properly supervised.
The board directed the Department of Health to inspect the camp again this summer to make sure it is following regulations.
http://www.stoptheaclu.com/archives/2008/05/21/the-socialist-militant-and-the-aclu/
ER overload: a survey of the research available shows that uninsured illegal immigrants are an imponderable burden in our nation’s hospitals, in particular emergency rooms.
Ben Stone with ACLU of Iowa released this statement Tuesday:
The ACLU of Iowa strongly condemns the unnecessary use of criminal prosecutions to coerce hundreds of foreign-born workers detained in the recent raid in Postville, Iowa into waiving their rights to individually demonstrate why each of them should be allowed to remain in the U.S.
Never mind the misnomer about Maimonides being "kosher". They were finally stopped a few years ago from using the same dishwasher for milk & meat and cannot be trusted to have cleaned up all the problems in the kitchen.
http://www.timeout.com/newyork/articles/books/29650/meds-math-and-beyond
Time Out New York / Issue 660 : May 22–28, 2008
Meds, math and beyond
Reporter Julie Salamon profiles a chaotic Brooklyn hospital.
By Sara Eckel
With her broad smile and sunny demeanor, Salamon “as is” works just fine, especially since the topic is her warts-and-all account of the Brooklyn hospital Maimonides. Hospital: Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity, Plus Red Tape, Bad Behavior, Money, God, and Diversity on Steroids is precisely what its title suggests—an exhaustive and revealing account of one of the country’s busiest medical facilities. Starting in September 2005, Salamon had unsupervised access to the Borough Park medical center for a year. She sat in meetings where staff members bickered over compensation and credit, followed doctors as they gave patients life-altering news, and interviewed whomever she pleased, from the ambulance drivers to the cleaning staff. She accumulated 5,000 pages of single-spaced notes, and didn’t let the Maimonides administration read a word.
It helped that the hospital’s president, Pamela Brier, was familiar with the author’s work. Salamon has written six other books, including the 1991 Hollywood classic The Devil’s Candy, her penetrating report on the filming of The Bonfire of the Vanities. And the hospital brass was no doubt disarmed by Salamon’s warm, self-deprecating personality. “Sheila Namm, the head of risk management, got a copy of the book, and—this is sort of embarrassing, because I didn’t think of it as a strategy—she said, ‘You come in and you’re so shy and quiet and people start talking to you, basically to fill the gap. And they end up telling you everything.’”
Indeed they did.
The chief of surgery admits to her: “It’s all about turnover. The more you can get in and out, the more times that cash register clicks.”
An oncology fellow: “I have lived around the world and thought I was the least-prejudiced person you’d ever meet. Since coming to Brooklyn, I’ve become, believe it or not—I shouldn’t even say this—I’ve become a lot more prejudiced.”The ER nursing director: “I’ve been here for six weeks, and three days out of five I’ve gone home crying.”
The medical director, for example, nurses a bitter grudge against a former colleague and is brazenly competitive with his current ones. When Salamon informs him that another doctor had visited 12 patients that day, he says, “You should follow me around. I see about 30 in a day. I’m like a ballerina.”
Maimonides definitely could not be reduced to a sound bite. The 705-bed hospital is one of the country’s largest and most diverse. With 67 different languages spoken in the neighborhood, the hospital is a veritable U.N., its hallways jammed with Hasidic, Chinese, Pakistani, Haitian, Russian and Bulgarian patients and staff, all taking their meals together at the kosher/Chinese/Italian/Caribbean cafeteria.
Financial pressures create even more complexity. One patient, known to the staff as Mr. Zen, is an undocumented worker whose seven-month stay sets the hospital back more than $1 million. The administration readily acknowledges the clash between the desire to give care and the reality of having to make a profit. When Salamon asks Brier what should be done about the U.S. health-care crisis, she tartly replies, “Well, if I knew that, I guess I’d be a candidate for the Nobel Prize, wouldn’t I?”
The doctors and administrators come off, at times, as grandiose, cynical and brash
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/22/nyregion/22crown.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=nyregion&pagewanted=print
May 22, 2008
Crown Heights Journal
Police Are Out in Force as a Neighborhood Simmers With Tension Again
By ANDY NEWMAN
The streets of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, resembled an armed camp on Wednesday.
On Albany Avenue, near where a black man was assaulted by Hasidic Jews last month, police officers milled around a mobile command center. Two blocks farther down Albany, at the corner where a Jewish teenager was robbed and beaten by black youths last week, an officer stood watch. Marked police cars have been following yeshiva school buses since last week, when black children threw rocks through the windows of a bus full of Hasidic toddlers.
On Eastern Parkway, officers peered down from a crane and scanned the horizon from a rooftop for signs of trouble.
Along the wide streets lined with splendid brownstones and brick apartment buildings in one of the city’s most vibrantly multiethnic neighborhoods, officers from at least 10 precincts stood on corners, studied maps of unfamiliar territory and handed report logs to plainclothes colleagues in unmarked sport utility vehicles.
Crown Heights is flaring up again, as it has every so often since the 1991 racial unrest that erupted after a 7-year-old black boy was fatally struck by a Hasidic driver. The violence also left a Jewish man dead.
As always, there are complicating factors. A Jewish man wanted for questioning in the assault of the black man is a member of a civilian patrol group that has often been criticized for its tactics; the authorities say his friends and colleagues have been uncooperative with the police’s efforts to find him. The assault victim is the son of a police officer.
The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, has been criticized by Jews for convening an investigative grand jury, a rare step, to look into the assault. The police have been taken to task by black residents for their failure to track down the potential suspect. Mr. Hynes has inflamed passions in some quarters by comparing the Jewish civilian patrol group, the Shmira, to the Bloods and the Crips. Jews say the police are slow to respond to assaults against them and even slower to solve the crimes. Blacks say the police pay more attention to crimes against Jews than against blacks.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/21/AR2008052102471.html
Raid on Slaughterhouse May Mean Shortage of Kosher Meat
By Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 22, 2008
"I don't think the Jewish community can survive at this point without Rubashkin," Mordechai Yitzhaky, owner of KosherMart in Rockville, said of the family that owns Agriprocessors.
Industry-watchers and butchers say they have heard reports of hoarding since the raid, but the impact will not be known for several days, as individuals and stores still have frozen supplies. Muslims also sometimes buy kosher meat, as Islamic dietary restrictions are similar to kashrut, and it can be hard to find halal -- or acceptable by Islamic law -- food in most U.S. communities.
For the estimated 1 million Americans who observe kosher restrictions, Agriprocessors' latest troubles ramp up a discussion that has been underway for several years: Can a company meet religious standards if it violates ethical ones?
Some rabbis say that even past and current allegations of mistreatment should not be confused with a scriptural mandate. These rabbis argue that although such allegations may violate other aspects of Jewish law or ethics, they do not disqualify the meat as technically kosher.
Rabbi Menachem Genack is head of the kashrut division at Orthodox Union, which certifies as kosher the most products in the world. He said he has worked with Agriprocessors on its issues, even bringing the meat company together with animal rights activists. But Genack said issues such as food and worker safety do not violate kashrut.
"The Bible talks about issues like workers' welfare, and they are important to us, but the authority and expertise on such issues should be with government agencies," he said. "We rely on them, and I've said many times we will follow their lead." Genack said it would sever its relationship with a firm if it had "some serious violation of the law," such as a felony conviction.
Joe Regenstein, a Cornell University food scientist who works with the kosher and halal food industries, said Orthodox Jews are becoming "a little impatient" with ethical issues and are beginning to reject some food even if it has a kashrut stamp. However, he said, the industry is tiny, so Orthodox Jews do not have a lot of options.
Genack said there are only two or three companies producing meat that is glatt kosher, an even higher standard of kashrut. Agriprocessors is the largest glatt producer. More small- and medium-size ones existed in the 1950s and 1960s in U.S. cities but began to close as costs grew, Genack said. "That's what has made Rubashkin so important."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/21/AR2008052102750.html
A federal grand jury has accused a former top CIA official of pulling strings to get a high-level CIA job for his mistress, as part of a new indictment against the official in an existing corruption case.
The new indictment against Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, a former No. 3 official at the spy agency and a onetime senior CIA ethics officer, alleges that he pressured CIA managers into hiring the woman after she was turned down for a position in the CIA's general counsel office. He also allegedly made false statements about her qualifications, the indictment states.
Foggo, the CIA's executive director from 2004 to 2006, specifically told agency officials he had a "special interest" in seeing the woman hired, and he later berated them when they initially rejected her application. "When the ExDir has a special interest, you had better take notice," Foggo told the general counsel's staff, according to an indictment filed late Tuesday by the U.S. attorney's office in Alexandria.
Federal prosecutors say Foggo's alleged intervention on behalf of the woman was but one of a series of successful efforts by him to manipulate the intelligence agency, many of which went undetected for a time by its spies. Foggo managed to win jobs, money and other favors for friends and business partners while concealing the nature of his relationships from the agency, Justice Department officials allege in court documents.
Foggo, hired to the No. 3 position by then-CIA Director Porter Goss, faces charges of fraud, conspiracy and conflict of interest stemming mostly from alleged favors he performed for California businessman Brent R. Wilkes, a childhood friend and prominent GOP fundraiser.
Wilkes is alleged to have showered Foggo with expensive gifts -- ranging from lavish vacations in Scotland and Hawaii to $1,000 dinners at Washington area restaurants. Foggo, for his part, helped steer CIA contracts to Wilkes's companies and provided classified information to his friend, even though Wilkes lacked a security clearance, the indictment states.
The indictment, the third against Foggo since 2006, stemmed from the same corruption investigation that yielded criminal convictions for Wilkes as well as former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.), both of whom were sentenced to prison terms.
Detectives from the National Fraud Unit are "trying to figure out how [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert came up with his explanations for where all of the money he received from [New York financier Morris] Talansky went," a senior former law enforcement official said on Tuesday.
Slideshow: Pictures of the week The source described the prime minister's account of the cash's destinations as unconvincing.
"Olmert said the money went to cover deficits, but he has shown no proof for that. Some fictitious accounts may also be involved," the source said.
Olmert will be questioned for a second time in Jerusalem on Friday morning for one hour, the Israel Police announced on Tuesday.
Blow to Olmert: The High Court of Justice rejected Tuesday Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's appeal against the State Prosecutor's request for a pre-trial deposition by Morris Talansky, the key witness in the corruption probe against the PM.
Following the court ruling, Olmert's attorneys turned to the Jerusalem District Court in a bid to postpone Talansky's testimony. However, the State Prosecutor's Office announced that it objects to such delay.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1211288130933&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Assemblyman Dov Hikind said on Monday that he saw then-Jerusalem mayor Ehud Olmert take an envelope full of cash following a Brooklyn fundraiser for the New Jerusalem Foundation in the 1990s.
Hikind said he had hosted the fundraiser at his Brooklyn home. When it was over, he said, he walked Olmert out and saw a person "give him an envelope filled with cash."
However, Hikind wasn't sure when the fundraiser was held and would not identify the individual who he claimed handed over the envelope.
Hikind, who was once friends with Olmert, has in recent years spearheaded campaigns demanding that the prime minister resign.
In 2006, following the Second Lebanon War, Hikind took out full-page ads in major Jewish newspapers across the US, calling on Olmert to step down. He said Monday that he was "hoping that for Israel's 60th anniversary, Olmert would resign and go home."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-05-21-israel-olmert_N.htm
A senior police investigator close to the case said Wednesday that Talansky told interrogators he transferred up to $100,000 of his own money to the Israeli leader when he served as trade minister earlier this decade.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3546294,00.html
The plot thickens: Some of the money allegedly transferred to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert by Morris Talansky funded several of his trips abroad – evidence to that effect were acquired through documents confiscated by the police and released for publication on Wednesday, after the gag order placed on the investigation was officially lifted.
National Fraud Unit investigators have also uncovered documents supporting the claim that Olmert and Talansky held several meetings over the years, during which money allegedly changed hands.
The investigation is expected to include a team which will leave for the US in the next few days in order to collect material from banks, New York hotels, and Talansky's offices; where he and Olmert allegedly met.
The prime minister is scheduled to be interrogated in regards to the case once more, on Monday.
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/DocView.asp?did=1000344574&fid=1725
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's former bureau chief Shula Zaken documented transfers of some $150,000 received from Morris Talansky in the years 2003-2005. The information can be made public after the lifting of the partial gagging order on details of the affair. Some of the money was transferred directly to Olmert in the form of envelopes containing dollar bills.
No election campaigns took place during the period documented by Zaken. The documentation was fund on Zaken's computer. Some of the sums are marked as having been transferred to Adv. Uri Messer. The records indicate that the transfers of cash continued until close to January 2006, when Olmert became prime minister.
These sums are in addition to thousands of dollars Olmert received from Talansky in cash, in envelopes. Police investigators also found that Talansky set up a $300,000 bank guarantee for Olmert. It has not yet been discovered what happened to this guarantee.
There is evidence that, besides cash, Olmert also received benefits in kind, such as flights overseas and stays in hotels overseas, financed by Talansky.
The investigators also believe that there is a basis of evidence of money laundering crimes. This besides evidence of deceit and breach of trust, unlawful receipt, and offences against the gifts law. Suspicions of tax offences may also be investigated.
The police continue to probe suspicions of bribery. The possibility is being examined that Olmert gave Talansky some benefit related to his business interests.
The Jerusalem District Court has instructed the State Attorney to file a request for an extension of the order preventing Talansky from leaving Israel
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/986085.html
Despite significant disclosures in the investigation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's alleged acceptance of large sums from American businessman Morris Talansky, there still may not be enough evidence to indict him for bribery, say sources close to the probe.
Talansky told the police that he knew the money he had given Olmert was not used merely to finance election campaigns but for private expenses as well.
The investigating team has not yet established how much money Talansky gave Olmert, but believes it was hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Israeli detectives will go to New York in the next few weeks to examine Talansky's bank accounts and check whether the dates on which he reported withdrawing money at Olmert's request correspond to the withdrawal dates in his accounts.
The detectives will also try to verify Talansky's testimony that he had met Olmert in New York hotels where Olmert had stayed, and question associates and employees in Talansky's office to corroborate his testimony.
The detectives have been trying to find what Olmert gave Talansky for the large sums of money he allegedly received from him over the years. They examined Olmert's involvement in installing speed bumps on the street Talansky's son lives on, in Jerusalem. They also looked into recommendation letters Olmert had sent to his associate billionaire Sheldon Edelson, recommending to purchase mini bars from a plant in which Talansky had invested.
Police learned in the last few days that Olmert has allegedly given Talansky something more significant regarding one of the latter's businesses abroad.
Because the investigation is still in its initial stages, the sources said, it is too early to say whether Olmert will ultimately be indicted, despite the grave findings so far.
The investigation is expected to continue for several months.
http://www.jewishpress.com/displaycontent_new.cfm?contentid=31899&contentname=The%20Greatest%20Show%20On%20Earth§ionid=17&mode=a&recnum=0
Prime Minister Olmert can run, but he can’t hide anymore.
As long as the Bush & Peres show was in town, Olmert could run from the authorities. Some of his American friends, such as Slim-Fast billionaire S. Daniel Abraham, even declared Olmert innocent, and lambasted the Israeli police for their capricious investigation. In fact, Abraham and a few other Jewish American tycoons had the unmitigated gall to claim that the Israeli political system actually invites corruption. Amazing!
As for these American tycoons, if they truly cared about Israel’s “political corruption,” they would have taken Israeli citizenship, allowing them to partake directly in changing or voting for a new system in a legal manner. So spare us the hypocrisy. The cat is out of the bag and Olmert can only run so far and so fast without Slim-Fast.
During the past few days, Olmert has tried to hide from the police by instructing his expensive lawyers and spinmeisters to start tarnishing the police, the attorney general and Moshe Talansky in order to buy himself some more time in office. At this point, Olmert will do almost anything to stay in power, which is why many of his fellow Kadima Party members are afraid that he’ll announce a “peace deal” with Abu Mazen.
By doing nothing last week, after a Katyusha rocket nearly wiped out dozens of shoppers in an Ashkelon Mall, Olmert has shown his unequivocal disregard for the people of Israel. Even a non-Jewish Hollywood actor, Jon Voight, shed tears when he visited the people of Sderot last week. He told me that no true American would sit idly by and watch his city become a “ghost town” without striking back hard against those who would do them harm.
But once Olmert either leaves or is forcibly removed from office within the next month or two, the current Israeli political system will have to be dismantled. Labor Party leader Ehud Barak is no cleaner than Olmert and everyone in his party and the media knows it. Yet Barak struts around as if he doesn’t have a care in the world either.
Jewish American “macher-dom” fuels Israeli political haughtiness.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party also needs a good “Pesach cleaning” – something Bibi understands but is moving way too slowly in dealing with it. Once Olmert leaves the scene, the vicious Israeli media will ratchet up the anti-Bibi rhetoric.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5huUBnG1swmDpqMV6Kk7vOIuZ0dzAD90QLVHG0
The AP is reporting this morning that Talansky gave Olmert half a million dollars. That's not exactly chump change.
(Reuters) - Oil sped to new peaks for a third straight day on Thursday to top $135 a barrel as investors fretted over long-term supply constraints and a big drop in U.S. crude stocks.
http://www.med.nyu.edu/people/pintea01.html
Abraham Pinter Ph.D.
Adjunct Professor
Department of Microbiology
Education and General Information
Graduate EducationDr. Pinter received his PhD in Chemistry from Columbia University 1973
PostDoctoral Training Dr. Pinter was a Postdoc. in Animal Virology at Rockefeller University. He also did a Postdoc. in Viral Oncology at Sloan-Kettering Institute
Additional Responsibilities
Other Responsibilities Member, Head, Laboratory Retroviral Biology, The Public Health Research Institute of the City of New York.
http://www.phri.org/research/res_pipinter.asp
New Jersey Medical School - UMDNJ
Abraham Pinter, Ph.D.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/suffolk/ny-lirape0522,0,1654565.story
Suffolk police say the owner and a chef at Fatty Beltbuckles in Rocky Point raped an employee. The two have been arrested and charged.
Fatty Beltbuckles has remained open, but people have screamed threats and thrown things at the restaurant since the initial allegation
Rav Yaakov Kamenetzky writes in Emes L'Yaakov (Shemos 12:2, note 17): We must understand that the State of Israel in our day - after the great destruction (in Europe), the despair of the survivors, and given the distressed and destroyed status of Russian Jewry - was established by Hashem in order to strengthen Judaism and to maintain the link between all Jews in exile with the Jewish people.
See, as well, the ArtScroll biography of Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, pages 331-332. When Rav Shraga Feivel heard of the U.N.'s decision to establish a Jewish state, he stood up and recited the bracha of Hatov Vehameitiv.
In 1948, after the Arabs attacked the newly declared Jewish state and soldiers were falling on the battlefield, Rav Shraga Feivel had second thoughts for having recited the bracha. Rav Shraga Feivel turned to Rav Aharon Kotler, who agreed with him that the favorable U.N. resolution was indeed worthy of the blessing.
Let us all hope we experience only great spiritual achievements for the entire Klal Yisroel.
I'm hiding from UOJ at Kehilla Ohev Shalom at 284 Rodney St. Williamsburg. They made me mora d'asra. It's a good thing that the roof is in good condition, I made sure that it can protect me from any drastic climate change.
Fishman still lives in Williamsburg?
so when is the news coming out about shia
I'm a fan. but please remove the kolko office sign -its too vulgar
http://www.breitbart.com/print.php?id=D90QQMA00&show_article=1
Gov't home price index posts largest drop in 17-year history
May 22 01:16 PM US/Eastern
By ALAN ZIBEL
AP Business Writer
Leave the picture of Kolko's office up, because there are many people out there who simply cannot picture what he did. The closer we can get to giving them a mental image the more they might understand what we are talking about. Since we can't use actual pedophilic pictures on the internet because they would be used by pedophiles to get off with, this might be the closest we get to showing them what happened.
The United States is already in a recession and it will be longer as well as deeper than many people expect, U.S. investor Warren Buffett said in an interview published in German magazine Der Spiegel on Saturday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/us/24immig.html?ei=5087&em=&en=5c90420745d8381d&ex=1211860800&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1211689831-rscJHB6nOSbitYdd89hp9g&pagewanted=print
This is yesterday's front page NY Times article about Rubashkin being close to being indicted.
The Times reports a chiddush about the child laborers. Rubashkin was allegedly treating the children like slaves to work crazy long shifts of 14 hours. They got no overtime pay and were falling asleep from exhaustion while handling dangerous equipment.
How can any rabbonim with consciences allow the oylam to eat the product of untermentchen who make such chilul Hashem?
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/108713.html
students at the liberal Orthodox Yeshivat Chovevei Torah have begun circulating a petition pledging not to consume Agriprocessors' meat until company practices are changed.
The yeshiva's student petition asks the company to pay its workers at least the federal minimum wage, abide by laws pertaining to workers' rights, and treat employees according to Torah standards.
"Until these changes are made, we feel compelled to refrain from purchasing or consuming meat produced by your company, and will pressure every establishment with which we do business to cease purchase of your meat," the petition reads. "Effective June 15, 2008 we will stop patronizing any restaurant that sells your meat."
Moody's is reporting the numbers are much worse than they seem because the official figure doesn't spell out that many of the homes that were sold were bankruptcies at auction for a fraction of their value.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/business/24econ.html
May 24, 2008
Existing Home Sales Fell in April to Another Low
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
Stocks took a dive on Friday after a report confirmed fears that the housing slump, which has weighed on nearly every corner of the nation’s economy, was nowhere near its end.
Sales of previously owned homes, which make up the bulk of the housing market, dipped 1 percent in April, to an annual rate of 4.89 million, the second consecutive month that sales have declined. That figure represents another record low, although the report, put out by the private National Association of Realtors, dates only to 1999.
While sales were slightly better than economists had expected, Wall Street was unimpressed. The Dow Jones industrials dropped 146 points on Friday, capping the worst week in the stock markets since February.
The Dow closed at 12,479.63, down more than 500 points from Monday’s opening bell. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, a broader measure of the American stock market, also stumbled, slipping again on Friday to finish down 3.5 percent for the week.
Bond prices rose as investors turned to the safety of government notes. The benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose 18/32, to 100 8/32. Its yield, which moves in the opposite direction, fell to 3.84 percent, from 3.91 percent.
After a period of relative calm on Wall Street, investors seemed shaken by the resurgence of economic problems on several fronts. Oil, which some thought had reached a plateau at $110 a barrel, suddenly surged on reports that experts had decided dwindling supplies would not be able to keep up with global demand. Oil settled on Friday at $132.19 a barrel, up nearly $6 since Monday.
The price of oil, which affects not only the cost of gasoline but also the price of common consumer products, has risen nearly $20 a barrel in May alone.
The high cost of fuel is driving fears that inflation will become unhinged. Consumers are already being squeezed by skyrocketing prices for food and gasoline, and a report this week showed businesses were forced to pay more for wholesale goods in April.
The home sales report on Friday topped off a dreary week. The median value of a previously owned home was $202,300 in April, down 8 percent from a year ago, the realty group said on Friday.
Homeowners have watched their property values plunge for months, although the slump comes after several years of a remarkable run-up in home prices. Still, economists say they believe the declines have discouraged purchases, as would-be buyers hold out for prices to fall further.
“Lower prices bring bargain hunters into the market,” Patrick Newport, an economist at Global Insight, a research firm, wrote. “But they also drive away buyers who view their homes as an investment. In today’s market, the fence sitters outnumber the bargain hunters.”
Inventories also ticked up in April. At the current sales rate, it would take nearly a year to clear out the current backlog of unsold homes.
Analysts fear that an increase in foreclosures will only add to the inventory overhang, pushing prices down further. Economists expect no substantial recovery in the housing market until at least the latter half of 2008.
“The sharp increase in inventories will continue to keep potential buyers out of the market and depress overall prices further,” Joseph Brusuelas, the chief economist of Merk Investments, wrote in a research note.
A loss of confidence among lenders has also put a damper on sales, as even Americans eager to buy a home are having difficulty procuring mortgages from lenders who have tightened their standards.
The report divides sales figures into four general regions of the country. According to the realty group, April sales dropped 6 percent in the Midwest and 4.4 percent in the Northeast, but rose 6.4 percent in the West. Sales stayed steady in the South.
The biggest decline came in sales of apartments and condominiums, which plunged 5.2 percent after two months of rising sales. Demand for single-family homes dropped 0.5 percent in April, according to the report.
Markets will be closed Monday for the Memorial Day holiday, but the subsequent four days will bring a more detailed look at the troubles in the housing market. The closely watched Case-Shiller index, scheduled to be released on Tuesday, will offer a snapshot of home prices across the country in March. The Commerce Department will also report on Tuesday on sales of new homes in April.
Reports are also due next week on consumer spending, personal income growth, durable goods orders and consumer confidence. A revised government estimate of economic growth in the first quarter will be released on Thursday.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.184/pub_detail.asp
Agriprocessors, you see, has two lucrative and pernicious schemes going. One scheme involves driving wages down to bare subsistence by hiring desperately poor illegal immigrants to work in its slaughterhouse - the criminal enterprise that made the news last week. The other involves fraudulently claiming that the United States has run out of native-born meat-cutters and then, with the help of American Immigration Lawyers Association member Christopher Teras, securing work visas for foreigners worth $30,000 each on the street in Guangzhou.
Many people feed at the immigration fraud trough.Among those who are benefiting the most are immigration lawyers who only make a profit when they can secure employment for aliens, thereby costing United States citizens their jobs.The guild that represents computer programmers posted a covert video made of a duplicitous lawyer who was conducting a seminar for other immigration attorneys, teaching them how to make certain that no American who applied for a posted job, as the Labor Department requires, would be qualified for the job in question.You can watch this outrageous video here.
Jack Abramoff, the infamous lobbyist who is now cooling his heels in the federal prison system got his start in the 1990s by lobbying for more H1B visas for computer programmers for a law firm that Bill Gates' dad was a partner in.There are, in fact, those in the computer industry who refer to this type of visa as the "Abramoff Visa."
http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=15334&t=Guatemala+condemns+US+treatment+of+migrants
Guatemalan foreign minister Haroldo Rojas denounced treatment of his countrymen at the hands of US immigration authorities. Arrested for false documents, detainees were kept at an unheated cattle facility.
This makes good chicken soup for Rubashkin fressers.
http://www.themilitant.com/2008/7222/722254.html
Although still in a state of shock because of the scope of the raid, many of the workers at the church wanted to talk about the horrendous conditions in the plant.
“Many people lost fingers and hands,” one worker said. “The line was so fast.”
“My job was to twist the necks of 100 chickens a minute,” said another worker.
Several said that the company fired workers with on-the-job injuries when they could no longer work on the production line.
When workers asked for pay raises the supervisors told them if they didn’t like it, “there’s the door.”
According to several workers interviewed, one of the bosses from Agriprocessors came by the church the day after the raid and asked employees to come back to work for $14 per hour.
According to the Waterloo Courier, 200 workers briefly walked off the job a year ago when the company announced it had received “no-match” letters from the Social Security Administration, alleging that some Agriprocessors employees did not have proper work documents. The United Food and Commercial Workers union publicized the walkout at the time.
http://www.forward.com/articles/13431/
A prominent Modern Orthodox rabbi is at the center of a case being taken to secular court on the grounds that his organization ignored the ruling of a rabbinical court in a contract dispute.
A former employee of Ohr Torah Stone, which was founded by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, has filed suit against the organization in New York State Supreme Court to confirm an arbitration ruling by the Beth Din of America, a widely respected rabbinical court run by the largest union of Orthodox rabbis in the United States, the Rabbinical Council of America. The employee, Joshua Karlin, accused Ohr Torah Stone of breach of contract. The Beth Din ruled in Karlin’s favor, ordering Ohr Torah Stone to pay nearly $300,000. But the organization has not paid, and Karlin has turned to the secular courts to confirm the judgment as a possible prelude to a lawsuit to force payment.
The filing sheds light on an unusual area of the law, in which American courts can enforce the result of a Jewish legal ruling. American courts have historically maintained a strict separation between religious and secular law and have rejected attempts to enlist secular courts in religious disputes. But in civil disputes, the courts can and do enforce binding arbitrations of all stripes, including those carried out by a beth din.
“In general, the United States believes in freedom of contract. If you and I agree to conduct ourselves by Jewish law, the courts will require that, not because they believe in Jewish law but because they believe in contracts law,” said Rabbi Michael Broyde, a law professor at Emory University School of Law and a member of the Beth Din of America. (He is not involved, or familiar, with this case.)
Riskin is a widely respected Orthodox rabbi. The founder of Manhattan’s Lincoln Square Synagogue, which under his leadership was a leading Modern Orthodox congregation, he moved to the West Bank settlement of Efrat in 1983, where he serves as chief rabbi. He is considered a voice of moderation within the settler movement.
The dispute in question focused on a contract Karlin signed when he agreed to take charge of North American fundraising for Ohr Torah Stone, an educational organization Riskin founded that focuses on leadership and Jewish learning. Though the contract was for two years, Karlin was on the job for less than a week. After a series of disputes with Riskin and other employees, he left. Karlin claims he was fired; Riskin argues that he quit.
After the contract expired, Karlin demanded that Ohr Torah Stone pay him the remainder of the money it promised. The organization refused, and the two agreed to take their case to a beth din. The court they chose was the Beth Din of America.
The court ruled in Karlin’s favor in October of last year and ordered Ohr Torah Stone to pay him nearly $300,000. Riskin’s lawyer appealed the decision to the Beth Din of America and was turned down. He subsequently appealed again, a request that, Karlin’s lawyer says, recently has been denied.
Riskin declined to comment on the case, saying that it was still being dealt with by the beth din. Karlin’s lawyer, Anthony Carabba Jr., said that the beth din has completed its ruling, that Riskin has not paid and that it is time to move to secular court.
“Forcing us to resort to a secular court seems absurd to me,” said Carabba, who is not Jewish, in an interview with the Forward. “There’s a system in place for addressing this matter on religious principles. Who better to decide than prominent rabbis?”
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/126294
Talansky Sued in US for Covering Olmert's Hotel Stay
by Gil Ronen
(IsraelNN.com) American Jewish businessman Moshe (Morris) Talansky may be facing an F.B.I. investigation in the U.S. regarding his relationship with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, even as he is being interrogated in Israel.
In a pending lawsuit filed in 2007 in Nassau County, the minibar company Kool-Tech accused Mr. Talansky of improperly arranging to have the company reimburse him for a $4,717.49 hotel bill he incurred at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington in October 2005, when he paid for a night's stay by “a senior Israeli cabinet member that had no relation to the business."
Though the Israeli official was not named in the lawsuit, the New York Times reported that a lawyer for Kool-Tech disclosed two weeks ago that the man was Olmert, and that the hotel reservation had been made by Shula Zaken, Olmert’s longtime aide.
The lawyer, William J. Davis, said the company broke off ties with Mr. Talansky upon learning of the expenditure, "largely out of a desire to steer clear of doing anything illegal or running afoul of laws" like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits bribes to foreign officials.
Davis said that he was told that the F.B.I. had opened an investigation that included Talansky’s activities, but claimed that Kool-Tech had yet to be contacted by the authorities.
Scheduled to testify in court
Talansky testified again Sunday at the police's National Fraud Investigations Unit offices in Bat Yam, regarding the "cash envelopes" affair.
Talansky is scheduled to testify in court in a pre-trial deposition Tuesday, after which he will return to his home in the United States. He has said that he must return to America to care for his ailing wife, but that he plans to return to Israel next in mid-June for a grandson's wedding.
'I expected nothing in return'
In an earlier interrogation session, Talansky told investigators from the police’s anti fraud unit that he gave Prime Minister Ehud Olmert money that was not used for elections.
“I gave Olmert money that was not used to cover elections debts or to fund the election campaign,” Talansky said, according to information leaked to the press.
Talansky’s admission contradicted Olmert’s claim that all of the money he was given went to cover campaign costs or to pay back debts incurred during his political campaigns. Talansky continues to insist that he did not receive any benefits in exchange for the money given to Olmert, and that he had no intention of getting anything in return when he gave Olmert hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Agav, a lot of frum guys work for Schonfeld.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121146516318214141.html
Seven More Charged
In Stock-Loan Case
Defendants Accused
Of Plotting Fraud,
Money Laundering
By CHAD BRAY
May 23, 2008; Page C3
Seven more people, including former stock-lending supervisors at Morgan Stanley and Penn Mutual Life Insurance Co.'s Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, have been indicted over alleged kickbacks involving Wall Street stock lending, federal prosecutors said.
The latest indictments come as prosecutors continue to explore the sometimes murky relationship between stock-lending desks and finders who locate securities to lend to the firms to briefly cover short sales and other transactions. The criminal probe is being handled by the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Eighteen people have pleaded guilty to criminal charges for funneling millions of dollars in sham finder's fees from brokerage firms in connection with stock-loan transactions, often where no legitimate services had been rendered.
Those charged Thursday in four separate indictments are Darin DeMizio, a former Morgan Stanley stock-loan supervisor; Joseph Lando, a former manager on Janney's stock-lending desk; Robert Johnson, a stock-loan finder at Tyde Inc.; Ken Suarez, a stock-lending employee at Schonfeld Securities; and Gilbert Beital, a stock-loan finder who controlled a company known as GilCar Securities; and Donna Macli, sister of Andrew Caccioppoli, a former manager on Janney's stock-lending desk, and her husband, Thomas Macli.
The charges range from conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud, money laundering conspiracy and mail fraud. Not all defendants face the same charges.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/05/25/2008-05-25_rogues_gallery_of_crooked_pols__bad_cops-3.html
A corrupt army of 450 disgraced pols, crooked cops and bribed judges is pocketing fat city and state pensions funded by the taxpayers they betrayed, a Daily News probe has found.
Another 125 fallen officials - from ex-Assemblywoman Diane Gordon (D-Brooklyn), caught fishing for bribes, to ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer, caught rolling wth hookers - will snag their "golden goodbyes" when they turn 62.
Fueled by a crime wave in Albany and scandals at City Hall, the roster of tainted public servants has exploded dramatically in the past two years - and the cost of their send-offs has soared to $25 million a year, estimates show.
Even two ex-detectives accused of being Mafia hit men - Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa - have raked in city pensions that total $1 million apiece, records show.
"It's a world that rewards people who lie, cheat, steal, take bribes, betray the public trust and embezzle public funds," said City Councilman David Yassky (D-Brooklyn) who has railed for years against such ripoffs.
Even an upstate cell at the Oneida Correctional Facility can't keep cash from a crook: Former Assemblyman and Brooklyn Democratic fixer Clarence Norman - serving nine years for theft and extortion - pulls down an annual state pension of $43,322. By the time he's back in Flatbush, he could bank a $389,898 nest egg, state officials say.
New York's protected class includes ex-Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who pleaded guilty to state charges of lying about illegal gifts and faces federal charges of conspiracy, tax fraud and making false statements.
Kerik's $57,263-a-year city pension is guaranteed for life, no matter what. Since he began collecting pension checks in 2003, he's pocketed $275,000, records show.
The richest member of the Hall of Shame: ex-Controller Alan Hevesi, who pleaded guilty in 2006 to using state workers to chauffeur his ailing wife, water her plants, drop off her dry cleaning and take her to Bloomingdale's.
He gets a $104,123 state pension that began in 2002 plus a $66,570 teachers pension, from an earlier post at Queens College, that started in 1996. That comes to $170,693 a year; Hevesi has soaked taxpayers for $1.1 million, records show.
Rewarding rogues is perfectly legal, pension experts say. The city's administrative code, the state's Retirement and Social Security Law and the state Constitution do not specifically ban the practice.
There is no provision for forfeiture of pension benefits. Ne'er-do-wells who face legal peril simply file for retirement and begin collecting.
Consider ex-Assemblywoman Gloria Davis, captured on video accepting payola to steer state work to a contractor. Confronted with $3,400 in marked bills found inside her pocketbook, the Bronx Democrat pleaded guilty in January 2003 to a bribery charge and was stripped of her $97,000-a-year seat.
A month later her retirement became official and her $61,290-a-year pension kicked in. To date, she's collected $302,500, records show.
"She had a weak moment and something went wrong, but that doesn't negate all the good she's done for her community," said her lawyer, Murray Richman.
Davis is an exception. Only 12% of the tainted pols collecting fat pensions are women; the rest are men. Some have ridden the gravy train for years after their disgrace.
Typical is ex-Chief Judge Sol Wachtler. In 1992, he altered his voice, disguised himself as a toothless Texas private eye and launched a bizarre harassment campaign against an ex-lover.
A month after his arrest, he began receiving his $69,339-a-year retirement pay, which accrued while he served 15 months in federal prison for threatening to kidnap the woman's 14-year-old daughter.
In the 16 years since he was booted from the state's No. 1 judicial job, Wachtler has snared $1 million, a News analysis found.
"Judge Wachtler accepted responsibility for what he did, and paid dearly for it," said his then-lawyer, Charles Stillman. "It had zero to do with the outstanding service he rendered as one of the state's greatest judges."
Ex-Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Victor Barron also traded his black robes for an orange jumpsuit after accepting an $18,000 bribe from a lawyer.
Arrested in January 2002, Barron put in for his retirement that August and began collecting his $87,836-a-year pension. A week later, he pleaded guilty to bribery. Jailed for three years, his monthly check from the state went into his direct-deposit account until his release in 2005.
Over nearly six years, taxpayers have ponied up $516,000 for the jurist who sullied the Brooklyn bench.
New Yorkers have also showered $292,000 on ex-state Sen. Guy Velella (R-Bronx), who pleaded guilty in May 2004 to funneling $137,000 in bribes from contractors through his 90-year-old father's law firm.
His timing was perfect: Velella's retirement became official on June 16, 2004, giving him an annual $74,472 pension that followed him to Rikers, where served eight months of a one-year sentence.
Post a Comment