The Wise Words Of Albert Einstein From "Self-Portrait":
"Of what is significant in one's own existence one is hardly aware, and it certainly should not bother the other fellow. What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life?
The bitter and the sweet come from the outside, the hard from within, from one's efforts. For the most part I do the thing which my own nature drives me to do. It is embarrassing to earn any respect and love for it.
Arrows of hate have been shot at me too; but they never hit me, because somehow they belonged to another world, with which I have no connection whatsoever.
I live in that solitude which, is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity".
126 comments:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/the-lending-crisis-as-crack-epidemic/?hp
The mortgage lending crisis “is the most serious problem that has faced this country since crack cocaine,” the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, told a group of about 60 residents of the Canarsie neighborhood Monday night.
“When crack cocaine attacked the poor, it wasn’t very, very long before crack cocaine was the engine that drove the crime rate through the roof,” Mr. Hynes said at a town hall meeting at the Hebrew Educational Society building, co-sponsored by Councilman Lewis A. Fidler, Assemblyman Alan Maisel and Assemblywoman Helene E. Weinstein. “Similarly, the attack on the poor who are in danger of losing property has the same kind of effect on property values and on the markets — whether it’s the real estate markets or the Wall Street markets.”
Mr. Hynes said the problem became apparent to him and his colleagues about 18 months ago. “It became clear to us that we were on the brink of a profound tragedy in this country,” he said.
He added, “The frightening thing for me was to recognize that it is so difficult to prosecute these cases — predatory lending, subprime lending.”
We Win - They lose - Suck Wind Dispensation Idiots! Strike One....
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Last update - 01:46 18/12/2007
Dispensation given to ultra-Orthodox for limited Internet use
By Maayan Cohen - Haaretz
Tags: Israel, Rabbis, Haredi
A rabbinical committee on communications published an announcement in the ultra-Orthodox newspapers Hamodia and Yeded Ne'eman Tuesday, giving dispensation to "those who need the Internet to earn their livelihood" to use it under supervision.
According to the ordinance, a small number of specially censored sites will be permitted for use by the business sector only. The current ordinance applies to a pilot service provided by Bezeq International, but additional censored Internet site suppliers are likely to develop in the future.
The dispensation is for a list of 'normal' sites that have undergone an adaptation especially for the sector, which includes removal of all pictures, or filtering of certain works.
This is the first time that the rabbinical committee, which was established last year to deal with third-generation cellular technology, has publicly addressed the issue of the Internet.
The notice of yesterday reads as follows: "Because the transition to the use of computer communications in the world of business, institutions and others for various purposes and transmission of information is increasing, we have received more requests from those who need it, to use these systems for their livelihood.
We have been asked by our teachers and leaders, may they enjoy a long life, to find a solution that will enable the use of this medium without exposure to the terrible stumbling blocks that exist in the media, heaven forfend.
And now, after a great deal of work and consideration, we have succeeded, in consultation with experts, in arriving at a technical blocking solution that will allow access to just email, or to certain sites necessary for a person's livelihood."
The announcement also declares that the committee has approached communications companies that supply such infrastructure and services, and requested that they provide the observant "a special plan that will be subject to our supervision. A number of companies have responded to our request, and those who wish can be connected to the special plan."
In the past, the rabbinical committee for communications issues which includes representatives of all streams of the ultra-Orthodox sector has approved the use of the 'kosher' telephones for speaking only, with no content or text messaging. The second issue that the committee has been asked to discuss is the Internet issue, for which no solution had been found to date.
A senior source in the ultra-Orthodox sector said that official data indicates that about 60 percent of the ultra-Orthodox sector have computers at home, and about 35 percent of these admit that they have access to Internet service.
But true numbers are believed much higher, the source said, with about 40 percent of the ultra-Orthodox sector connected to the Internet at home.
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Chimps performed about as well as college students at mental addition, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a finding that suggests non-verbal math skills are not unique to humans.
The research from Duke University follows the finding by Japanese researchers earlier this month that young chimpanzees performed better than human adults at a memory game.
Prior studies have found non-human primates can match numbers of objects, compare numbers and choose the larger number of two sets of objects.
"This is the first study that looked at whether or not they could make explicit decisions that were based on mathematical types of calculations," said Jessica Cantlon, a cognitive neuroscience researcher at Duke, whose work appeared in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Biology (www.plosbiology.org).
"It shows when you take language away from a human, they end up looking just like monkeys in terms of their performance," Cantlon said in a telephone interview.
Her study pitted the ape math team of Boxer and Feinstein -- two female chimps named for U.S. senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California -- with 14 Duke University students.
"We had them do math on the fly," Cantlon said.
The task was to mentally add two sets of dots that were briefly flashed on a computer screen. The teams were asked to pick the correct answer from two choices on a different screen.
The humans were not allowed to count or verbalize as they worked, and they were told to answer as quickly as possible. Both chimps and humans typically answered within 1 second.
And both groups fared about the same.
Cantlon said the study was not designed to show up Duke University students. "I think of this more as using non-human primates as a tool for discovering where the sophisticated human mind comes from," she said.
The researchers said the findings shed light on the shared mathematical abilities in humans and non-human primates and shows the importance of language -- which allows for counting and more advanced calculations -- in the evolution of math in humans.
"I don't think language is the only thing that differentiates humans from non-human primates, but in terms of math tasks, it is probably the big one," she said.
As for the teams, both were paid. Boxer and Feinstein got their favorite reward: a sip of Kool-Aid soft drink. As for the students, they got $10 each -- enough for a beer or two.
If the Belgian royal family can do it why cant avrum modche leizerowitz?
Marc Dutroux (born 6 November 1956 in Brussels) is a Belgian criminal, convicted of having, in 1995 and 1996, kidnapped, tortured and sexually abused six girls, ranging in age from 8 to 19, four of whom he murdered. He was also convicted of having killed a suspected former accomplice, Bernard Weinstein. He was arrested in 1996 and has been in prison since then. His widely publicised trial took place in 2004. A number of shortcomings in the Dutroux investigation caused widespread discontent in Belgium with the country's criminal justice system, and the ensuing scandal was one of the reasons for the reorganisation of Belgium's law enforcement agencies.
Contents [hide]
1 Before the kidnappings
2 Abductions and arrest
3 Shortcomings of the investigation, public outcry
4 The X-Dossiers
5 The trial
5.1 Sentencing
6 See also
7 Footnotes
8 References
9 Alternative views
[edit] Before the kidnappings
Dutroux was the eldest of five children; his parents, both teachers, emigrated to the Belgian Congo and returned to Belgium in 1960. They separated in 1971 and Dutroux stayed with his mother but left at age 16, working briefly as a gigolo serving men. He married his first wife at the age of 19; they had two children. He divorced her in 1983. At this point, he already had an affair with Michelle Martin. The two would eventually have three children together; they married in 1989 while both were in prison. They divorced in 2003, again while in prison.
An unemployed electrician, Dutroux had a long criminal history involving car theft, muggings and drug dealing.
In February 1986, Dutroux and Martin were arrested for abducting and raping five young girls. In April 1989 he was sentenced to thirteen and a half years in prison; Martin received a sentence of five years. Showing good behaviour in prison, he was released on parole in April 1992, after having served slightly more than three years. Upon releasing Dutroux, the parole board received a warning letter written by his own mother to the prison director.
After his release, he was able to convince a psychiatrist that he was disabled, resulting in a government pension. He also received sleeping pills and sedatives from the doctor, which he would later use to quiet the abducted girls.
His criminal career, involving the trade of stolen cars to Czechoslovakia and Hungary; drug dealing and even violent crimes such as mugging gained him sufficient income to live in relative luxury in Charleroi, a city which had at the time high unemployment. He came to own seven houses, most of them vacant, and he used three of them to torture the girls he kidnapped. In his house in Marcinelle near Charleroi (Hainaut), where he lived most of the time, he started to construct a concealed dungeon in the basement. Hidden behind a massive concrete door disguised as a shelf, the cell was 2.15 metres (7 feet) long, less than a meter (3 feet) wide and 1.64 metres (5.38 feet) high.
[edit] Abductions and arrest
Some of the following describes the events as alleged by the prosecution.
Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo (both age 8) were kidnapped together on June 24, 1995, probably by Dutroux, and imprisoned in Dutroux's cellar. Dutroux repeatedly sexually abused the girls and produced pornographic videos.
17-year-old An Marchal and 19-year-old Eefje Lambrecks were kidnapped on August 22, 1995 while on a camping trip in Ostend, probably by Dutroux and his drug-addicted accomplice Michel Lelièvre, who was being paid with drugs. Since the dungeon was already in use, Dutroux chained the girls to a bed in a room of his house. His wife was aware of all these activities. The prosecution alleged that Dutroux killed An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks several weeks later, but the exact circumstances of the murder are unknown.
In late 1995, Dutroux came under investigation for his involvement in stolen luxury cars. He was in custody from December 6, 1995 until March 20, 1996. It is likely that Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo starved to death during this time.
Sabine Dardenne was kidnapped and imprisoned in the dungeon on May 28, 1996 on her way to school, by Dutroux and his accomplice Michel Lelièvre. She was 12 at the time. On August 9, 1996, the two men kidnapped Laetitia Delhez (14) when she was walking home at night from a public swimming pool. A police investigation found an eye witness who could remember part of a license plate which matched Dutroux's. Dutroux, his wife Martin and Lelièvre were arrested on August 13, 1996. A search of his houses did not turn up anything. After two days, both Dutroux and Lelièvre confessed. Then Dutroux led investigators to the dungeon hidden in his basement. Sabine Dardenne and Laetitia Delhez were found alive there on August 15.
In an interview conducted several years later, Ms. Dardenne related that Dutroux told her that she was being kidnapped by a gang, that her parents did not want to pay, and that the gang therefore was planning to kill her. He presented himself as the "good guy" protecting her from the gang. He let her write letters to her family, most of which he read but never posted.
On August 17, Dutroux led police to another house of his, in Sars-la-Buissière (Hainaut). The bodies of Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo as well as Dutroux's supposed accomplice Bernard Weinstein were found in the garden. An autopsy found that the two girls died from starvation. Dutroux had crushed Weinstein's testicles until he revealed a money hiding place, then he drugged him and buried him alive. Dutroux told police that he had killed Weinstein because he had failed to feed the girls during Dutroux's time in custody. Finally, Dutroux told police where to find the bodies of An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks. They were located on September 3, 1996 in Jumet (Hainaut), buried under a shack next to a house owned by Dutroux. Weinstein had lived in that house for three years.
Several hundred legally obtained commercial pornographic videos depicting adults were found in Dutroux's houses, along with a sizeable amount of pornographic videos Dutroux had produced of his wife Michelle Martin.
[edit] Shortcomings of the investigation, public outcry
Authorities were criticised for various aspects of the case. Perhaps most notably, police searched Dutroux's house on December 13, 1995 and again on December 19, 1995 in relation to his car theft charge. During this time, Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo were still alive in the basement dungeon, but they were not found. Since the search was unrelated to kidnapping charges, police searching the house had no dogs or specialised equipment that may have discovered the girls' presence.
Several early hints as to Dutroux's intentions were not properly followed-up. Dutroux had offered money to a police informer for providing girls, and told him that he was constructing a cell in his basement. His mother also wrote a second letter to police, claiming that he held girls captive in his houses.
There was widespread anger and frustration among Belgians due to police errors and the general slowness of the investigation. This anger culminated when the popular investigative judge, in charge of the case was dismissed after having participated in a fund raising dinner by the girls' parents. His dismissal resulted in a massive protest march (the "White March") of 300,000 people on the capital, Brussels, in October 1996, two months after Dutroux's arrest, in which demands were made for reforms of Belgium's police and justice system.
On the witness stand, Jean-Marc Connerotte, the original judge of the case, broke down in tears when he described "the bullet-proof vehicles and armed guards needed to protect him against the shadowy figures determined to stop the full truth coming out. Never before in Belgium has an investigating judge at the service of the kind been subjected to such pressure. We were told by police that [murder] contracts had been taken out against the magistrates." Connerotte testified that the investigation was seriously hampered by protection of suspects by people in the government. "Rarely," he said, "has so much energy been spent opposing an inquiry." He believed that the mafia had taken control of the case.[1]
A 17-month investigation by a parliamentary commission into the Dutroux affair produced a report in February 1998. The commission concluded that while Dutroux did not have accomplices in high positions of police and justice system, as he continued to claim, he profited from corruption, sloppiness and incompetence.
Public indignation flared up again in April 1998. While being transferred to a court house without handcuffs, Dutroux managed to overpower one of his guards, take his gun and escape. He was caught a few hours later. The Minister of Justice Stefaan De Clerck, the Minister of the Interior Johan Vande Lanotte, and the police chief resigned as a result. In 2000, Dutroux received a five-year sentence for threatening a police officer during his escape. In 2002, he received another five-year sentence for unrelated crimes.
[edit] The X-Dossiers
There was speculation that Dutroux was part of a widespread pedophile ring, including prominent Belgians. There were several reasons for these speculations, one of them being the many mistakes that had been made during the time that Dutroux was under observation by the police. Other reasons were the occasional statements from Dutroux about just being a "pawn" in a much larger network, the political connections of Nihoul, or the allegations of pedophilia against politicians Elio Di Rupo and Jean-Pierre Grafe in late 1996. The fact that the parents of Julie, Melissa and An continually voiced their dissatisfaction with the investigation also added to speculations of a cover up.
However, maybe the most important reason for rumors about high-level pedophilia networks were the so-called X-Dossiers, which first came to the public's attention in late 1996 and early 1997. It turned out that in the aftermath of Dutroux's arrest (some had contacted the police before), more than half a dozen purported victims of pedophiliac rings had begun to testify in Neufchateau. Their testimonies have always been extremely sensitive, because besides individuals as Dutroux and Nihoul, many well known Belgians were also accused of pedophilia, including members of the royal family, top politicians, and some of the country's leading bankers. Several of the most important names came up in different testimonies. However, the investigations into these testimonies were ultimately all shut down after senior police officers and Justice department officials ruled they were not reliable, leaving the case wide open to speculation that they were yielding under the weight of powerful individual and institutional interests.
Over the years, several books have been published that make the case that the decisions to shut down the X-investigations were unjustified. The newspaper De Morgen and Humo magazine have been saying the same thing, although they are bitterly opposed by most of the other major media outlets.
[edit] The trial
Dutroux's trial began on March 1, 2004, some seven and a half years after his initial arrest. It was a trial by jury and up to 450 people were called upon to testify. The trial took place in Arlon, the capital of the Belgian province of Luxembourg, where investigations had started. Dutroux was tried for the murder of An Marchal, Eefje Lambrecks and Bernard Weinstein, a suspected accomplice. While admitting the abductions, he denied all three killings, although he had earlier confessed to the killing of Weinstein. Dutroux was also charged with a host of other crimes: auto theft, abduction, attempted murder and attempted abduction, molestation, and three unrelated rapes of women from Slovakia.
Martin was tried as an accomplice, as were Michel Lelièvre and Michel Nihoul. To protect the accused, they were made to sit in a glass cage during the trial. In the first week of the trial, photos of Dutroux's face were not allowed to be printed in Belgian newspapers, for privacy reasons. Throughout the trial, Dutroux continued to insist that he was part of a Europe-wide pedophile ring with accomplices amongst police officers, businessmen, doctors, and even high-level Belgian politicians.
In a rare move, the jury at the assize trial publicly protested the presiding judge Stéphane Goux's handling of the debates and perceived rushing of the victims' testimonies.
On June 14, 2004, after three months of trial, the jury went into seclusion to reach their verdicts on Dutroux and the three other accused, which were returned on June 17 after three days of deliberation. Dutroux, Martin and Lelièvre were found guilty on all charges; the jury were unable to reach a verdict on Nihoul's role.
Nihoul was later acquitted from the charge of being an offender on kidnapping and murder of the girls by the court. The jury was asked to go back into seclusion to give answer to the question whether Nihoul was an accomplice or not.
[edit] Sentencing
On June 22 Dutroux received the maximum sentence of life imprisonment, while Martin received 30 years and Lelièvre 25 years. Although Nihoul was acquitted of kidnapping and conspiracy charges, he was convicted on drug related charges and received 5 years.
The Dutroux case is now considered so evil and infamous that more than a third of Belgians with the surname "Dutroux" applied to have their name changed between 1996 and the trial.
The report about AM Leizerowitz being a molester is a total fabrication. GER would not tolerate a Mashgiach for 25 years if there were even a hint of misbehavior. This crap of them protecting their own blah..blah...is so not honest as everyone knows how strict they are in this inyan. This Leizerowitz is a Tzaddik who quit his job in order to avoid a scandal and the ensuing chillul Hashem.
This is utter nonsense.
He did not "flee". He is in Israel because of his son's engagement. He will be back.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/nyregion/17citywide.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print
December 17, 2007
Citywide
Holidays Find Loan Crisis Spreading to Businesses and Neighbors
By DAVID GONZALEZ
http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2007/12/owner_of_site_of_staten_island.html
by Staten Island Advance
Wednesday December 12, 2007, 11:25 PM
The owner of a Hylan Boulevard property in Grasmere where a strip club is planned defied city building codes when constructing his own mansion on Todt Hill's Ocean Terrace.
The Buildings Department stopped construction on the house at 527 Ocean Terr. three times in two years after inspectors determined the work went beyond the scope of the plans and a third floor had been added without proper permits. The last of three stop-work orders was lifted in October, after owner Moshe Chene addressed the agency's concerns. Two pending violations remain, and 26 complaints in total have been registered against the house over the last few years.
"Don't worry about who I am. Stop calling this number and harassing me," a man who answered Chene's cell phone told a reporter.
While Moshe Chene is listed on Building records as the owner of 527 Ocean Terr., property records show the house is in Tamar Chene's name.
When a reporter called the phone listed for Moshe Chene on Buildings Department records, the man who answered the phone said problems with the house had been addressed. He also said he was not Moshe Chene.
PAST MOB OWNERSHIP
The real Moshe Chene appears to have made money over the last few years by buying and flipping foreclosed homes on Staten Island. In 2004, he bought foreclosed property tax liens on 920 and 930 Hylan Blvd., an abandoned service station once owned by an associate of the Gambino crime family who went to prison and lost the property to back taxes.
Nothing seemed to happen at the site until the strip club sign went up two weeks ago -- sparking outrage on the part of neighbors, parents and nuns from two nearby all-girl Catholic high schools.
Moshe, Tamar and Liore Chene's names appear on more than a dozen Staten Island property transactions over the last few years. In several cases, the homes were purchased at foreclosure and sold for a profit within a year. One real estate source said that Liore and Moshe Chene are believed to be brothers, and one of the men goes by the name "Nick."
It also sits behind the home of Matthew Mazzone, a Major Avenue resident who said he has complained in the past to a man named Nick about a deteriorating retaining wall at the rear of the property.
"Between the condition of the wall, and irresponsibility of having a strip club sign posted, and the general condition of this graffiti-covered property, it is apparent that the property owner has no regard for the neighborhood or its residents," Mazzone said in an e-mail to the Advance.
The owner could take advantage of a loophole in the zoning law that allows strip clubs to open in residential neighborhoods if no more than 40 percent of the premises is devoted to topless dancing.
The city has sought to close that loophole, and a seven-year-lawsuit over the matter is expected to go to trial next year. The case turns, in part, on the question of whether topless dancing is a constitutionally protected form of expression.
Despite the controversy over the strip-club sign, Moshe Chene has been hard to find.
His name comes up with a variety of Island addresses, many of which have been sold to new owners.
Councilman James Oddo (R-Mid-Island/Brooklyn), who has promised to fight a topless club, sent a letter to Chene seeking a meeting to discuss concerns about the proposal. The letter was addressed to 51 Arden Ave., a townhouse that records show Tamar Chene purchased at foreclosure in 2004. No one was home when a reporter visited the house Monday, and discarded for-sale signs were strewn in a side yard.
Oddo has not received a reply to his letter.
"I'm going to expect the least amount of cooperation possible," the councilman said Tuesday. "You would think by now, given all the press coverage, that if folks are interested in working with the community or addressing the community concerns, they would have reached out to us."
I'm surprised UOJ hasn't come after me yet for representing every terrorist and lowlife that comes to me.
http://www.bloggernews.net/112299
Manhattan Anthrax Mystery Linked To Jihad-Supporting Doctor
December 11th, 2007 by Ross E. Getman
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/12/13/2007-12-13_subpoenas_for_al_sharptons_aides.html
Teams of federal agents swooped down on up to 10 close associates of the Rev. Al Sharpton Wednesday, demanding the flamboyant clergyman's financial records since 2001.
Sharpton's former chief of staff said he was roused at his Harlem home about 6:30 a.m. by two FBI agents who handed him a subpoena to bring the records to a federal grand jury the day after Christmas.
Several employees of Sharpton's National Action Network also got wakeup subpoenas to testify before the Brooklyn panel, the rabble-rousing reverend's lawyer said.
The FBI and IRS are investigating whether Sharpton improperly misstated the amount of money he raised during his 2004 White House run to illegally obtain federal matching funds, a source familiar with the probe said.
Sharpton, although forced to return $100,000 in matching taxpayer funds after an investigation two years ago, denied any wrongdoing at the time.
The feds are also looking into allegations of tax fraud, including whether Sharpton commingled funds from his nonprofit National Action Network with several of his for-profit ventures, the source said.
Lawyer Michael Hardy shrugged off the probe, which sought a vast array of business, political and personal records, as a federal fishing expedition.
"I can't think of a time when the Rev. Sharpton wasn't under investigation," he said
http://www.nysun.com/article/68148
Many observers believe the former Princeton economist is lacking in leadership, that he is merely a consensus taker. James Pethokoukis of U.S. News and World Report is even citing a number of Washington and Wall Street sources who think Mr. Bernanke is a one-term chairman. He is not getting the job done. Cynics believe the Fed is too full of academic bureaucrats, and that it needs some real-world, hands-on policy advisors who have gotten their fingernails dirty in the day-to-day workings of the markets.
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071216/FRONTPAGE/712160331/1043/NEWS01
Monsignor Alan Placa, a priest and lifelong friend of Rudy Giuliani, was accused in a 2003 grand jury report of molesting boys and helping to suppress abuse complaints about other priests. Placa was stripped of his priestly duties in 2002 while a special grand jury investigated allegations of sexual abuse at the Diocese of Rockville Centre on Long Island. That year, Giuliani hired Placa, who is also a lawyer, for his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, LLC.
Placa works as a consultant for the company, which helps clients with legal, security and business improvement issues. Sunny Mindel, a spokeswoman for the firm, would not elaborate on Placa's duties or his salary. Placa is not involved with Giuliani's campaign.
No charges were filed against Placa or the 22 other priests accused of crimes in the grand jury report because the statute of limitations had expired. But the Suffolk County district attorney believed it was valuable to investigate the diocese and produce a report detailing the diocese's handling of sexual abuse complaints.
Placa could not be reached for comment last week, but he fervently denied the allegations in a 2003 interview with The New York Times.
"My hand up to God, I didn't do any of those things!" Placa told the Times.
Placa has not been reinstated at the diocese, where he served as vice chancellor, but he has not been permanently barred from the priesthood.
The Giuliani campaign did not return calls for comment about Placa. Mindel has said Giuliani believes Placa was wrongly accused, and Giuliani has defended his friend in past interviews.
"I know the man; I know who he is, so I support him," Giuliani said at a campaign appearance in Wisconsin this fall, according to ABC News. "We give some of the worst people in our society the presumption of innocence and benefit of the doubt. . . . And, of course, I'm going to give that to one of my closest friends."
But advocates for victims of clergy abuse, and one of Placa's alleged victims, aren't satisfied with Giuliani's comments.
"I'm not letting go, I'm not," said Richard Tollner, 48, of Rensselaerville, N.Y., who said Placa molested him when he was 15. "I think Alan Placa deserves justice. . . . You're as good as the company you keep, and Rudy Giuliani's friend is a credibly accused child molester. These guys just think they can get away with this."
Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountablity.org, said, "We think it's crucial that Giuliani explain why he is keeping a credibly accused priest close to him as a friend."
Giuliani and Placa attended the same Brooklyn high school, Bishop Laughlin Memorial, and they both went to Manhattan College. Placa was Giuliani's best man at his first wedding; he officiated at Giuliani's wedding to his second wife, Donna Hanover; and he baptized both of Giuliani's children.
Placa, 62, was ordained in 1970 and assigned to St. Patrick's in Glen Cove, N.Y. When prosecutors investigated Placa in 2002, a former altar server at St. Patrick's accused Placa of trying to grope him, according to Suffolk County grand jury report. The report says Placa's conduct "was, at first, so equivocal, his victims weren't really sure it was happening to them - that is, until it happened again and again and again."
The report also says the altar server came forward decades later, only after Placa "denied sexually abusing anyone in a local newspaper story about sexually abusive priests."
In 1973, Placa transferred to St. Pius X Preparatory seminary high school in Uniondale, N.Y., where he served as dean of students.
Tollner, who attended St. Pius from 1973 to 1977, said Placa first molested him when he was 15. Tollner said he was working with Placa on anti-abortion posters in a classroom on a day when school was out of session when Placa reached over and put his hand in Tollner's lap.
"He was feeling my genital area for 10 minutes or thereabouts, maybe longer," Tollner said in an interview with the Monitor last month. "I'm all of 15, and I'm not sure what is going on, and I'm not sure why it's going on. I was pretty naïve. Then it happened again in his office, and then I figured something was up. And later on I basically learned to stay away from him."
Tollner said he didn't report the matter until his senior year, after he noticed a classmate seemed nervous around Placa. When Tollner asked the boy if Placa had touched him, the boy broke down crying, he said. They decided to tell a teacher they both trusted and also to report the matter to the rector.
"I thought they would take care of it or tell the guy to stop," he said. Tollner didn't follow up on the matter, and he didn't hear about Placa again until the diocese was investigated.
Placa left St. Pius in 1978 and started his ascent in the Long Island diocese hierarchy. He directed research and development for Catholic Charities from 1978 until 1986, according to news accounts. It was during this time he earned a law degree from Hofstra University. He then went to the Diocese of Rockville Centre, which includes 134 parishes in Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long island. He served as a legal consultant and directed health care services, becoming vice chancellor in 1998.
When the diocese examined claims of sexual abuse by priests, Placa served as the bishop's representative. He was part of a three-person team that visited alleged victims. Placa helped craft the diocese's legal policies in dealing with abuse allegations.
When clergy abuse scandals in the Boston Archdiocese broke in 2002, other states began investigating. The newly instated Long Island bishop, William Murphy, had served as the No. 2 official in Boston until 2001. In response to a public outcry, the Nassau County district attorney subpoenaed records from the Diocese of Rockville Centre.
But since the statue of limitations had expired in all but the most recent cases, the Nassau County district attorney decided not to convene a grand jury. In New York, a victim of childhood sexual abuse can bring charges or sue in civil court up to five years after his or her 18th birthday. In this case, most of the charges were decades old.
But Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota convened a special grand jury in May 2002 to investigate the diocesan leadership's handling of child molestation cases involving Long Island priests, according to Robert Clifford, a spokesman for the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office. The jury called 97 witnesses over eight months, combed through internal diocese documents and produced a 180-page report.
Spota has said the report was valuable, despite his office's inability to bring criminal charges.
"This document tells all of us what was really happening in the Diocese of Rockville Centre for years and years and years," he told The New York Times in 2003.
The report accuses 23 priests of crimes including, rape, sexual abuse, endangering the welfare of a child and use of a child in a sexual performance. It also alleges that the diocese conspired to protect pedophile priests, moving them from parish to parish and pressuring alleged victims not to file complaints.
Since the priests were not formally charged, they are not named in the report and are instead identified only by a letter. But the report offered sufficient details about the priests that Newsday, a Long Island newspaper, determined some of the priests' identities, including Placa, who was "Priest F." The grand jury report had described "Priest F" as "a parish priest who became a teacher at a boy's high school and later a civil attorney who went on to write the diocese's policy on sexual abuse."
Placa denies the allegations, which include groping at least three boys and purposely neglecting to tell sexual abuse victims that he was a lawyer for the diocese as well as a priest. "Priest F" is painted as the central figure of a conspiracy that kept secret decades of sexual abuse.
Placa told priests and other diocese officials not to disclose his role as a lawyer when referring abuse cases to him, according to a June 1993 memo written by Placa. He helped stem the fallout from abuse claims, even bragging about his ability to minimize settlements and suits, according to the report.
Doyle of BishopAccountablity.org said, "Victims would come to him not knowing that he was not only a canon lawyer, but also a civil lawyer. They would tell him things as if he was acting as their priest."
"If somebody had a problem, they would send Alan out there because he became the fixer," said Phil Megna, co-chairman of the board of directors of the Long Island chapter of Voice of the Faithful, a nonprofit group that aids victims of clergy abuse.
When Placa spoke with The New York Times in 2003, he said he never abused Tollner, the only one of Placa's alleged victims to reveal his name. Placa said Tollner was a "troubled" boy.
Placa said he was one of the first diocese officials to investigate each allegation of sexual abuse, offering counseling to the victims and removing an accused priest from his assignment until he could be evaluated, according to the Times. Placa said that many priests despised him because of his role at the church.
Some former students of St. Pius X have come forward to dispute allegations contained in the grand jury report. The report says "everyone in the school knew to stay away from" Placa. But Kevin McCormack, who graduated from St. Pius X in 1978, said Placa was never the subject of such rumors.
"I can't tell you whether it happened or not, only Richard Tollner and Alan Placa know that," said McCormack, principal at Xaverian High School in Brooklyn. "But the idea that everybody knew . . . that Alan was a predator, I can tell you that was not my experience."
During the grand jury's investigation, the district attorney's office informed the Diocese of Rockville Centre that Placa had been accused of sexual abuse. Placa stepped down from his position as vice chancellor in 2002, and the bishop asked him to refrain from dressing or acting as a priest in public. He can perform priestly duties when granted a special exception.
Placa still receives a stipend from the diocese, and he lives at the rectory at St. Aloysius Church in Great Neck, N.Y., where he is listed as a priest in residence, said Sean Dolan, director of communications at the diocese. While the allegations lodged against the other 22 priests have been resolved, Placa's case awaits an official ruling by the Vatican, Dolan said.
"It has gone on longer than other cases like this," he said. "This is the only case outstanding."
As recently as last month, Placa's name was listed on the church bulletin at St. Aloysius Church, said Peggy O'Neil, a chairwoman of the Long Island branch of Voice of the Faithful.
"Seeing that, you would think he was a priest in good standing," said O'Neil, who has passed out fliers about Placa to St. Aloysius parishioners. "We never understood why he seems to be untouchable."
Placa has been granted exceptions to work as a priest, including in September 2002, when he officiated at the funeral of Giuliani's mother, Helen Giuliani.
'Not the right way to do it'
Giuliani was asked about Placa in an Oct. 23 interview with WBZ, a Boston television station.
"He's a friend of mine for over 35 years," he said, according to a transcript provided by Mindel. "And the fact is, he hasn't even been formally accused of anything. So, to hold this against him is really kind of, not the right way to do it. I know, I understand that people feel very hurt about this issue in general, they have every right to. But then you just can't, just can't assume that people are responsible for things that they're accused of. You've got to give the whole process a chance, right?"
But victims' advocates say Giuliani's point is moot since New York's statute of limitations on criminal charges prevented prosecutors from filing charges.
Carolyn Disco, chairwoman of abuse survivor support for New Hampshire's chapter of the Voice of the Faithful, noted that his diocese had suspended Placa.
"The bishop finds cause for his removal, but that doesn't impress Giuliani?" she said. "The problem is the late discovery of all of this so that the normal civil and criminal processes couldn't go forward. That's the scandal - they got away with it."
I take a minimum quarter million.
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Quirks/2007/12/16/service_offers_rabbis_day_in_and_day_out/5752/
Service offers rabbis day in and day out
Published: Dec. 16, 2007 at 10:48 PM
NEW YORK, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- For $10,000 per year, busy New York Jews can keep a rabbi on call to meet with them anywhere and almost any time.
The service, offered by the Aish New York non-profit Jewish educational center, has four rabbis on call five days a week who meet with clients in conference rooms and at coffee houses to discuss religious texts, relationships, and sometimes even recipes, The New York Post reported Sunday.
Clients of the Executive Learning Program -- who include Kirk Douglas and executives from finance giants like JPMorgan -- say it helps them get in touch with their religion in a way that their schedule would not otherwise allow, the newspaper said.
In return, the center asks clients to make a minimum donation of $10,000 per year -- though some give as much as $250,000 -- and refer their Jewish friends.
For the less well-heeled, the center offers group study sessions and Shabbat dinners for singles, the Post said.
WASHINGTON — Until the boom in subprime mortgages turned into a national nightmare this summer, the few people who tried to warn federal banking officials might as well have been talking to themselves.
http://www.uticaod.com/homepage/x1091760164
Expert: Children often hesitate to report sex abuse
Dec 17, 2007
By ROCCO LaDUCA
Observer-Dispatch
LEE - Sexually abused children may have their reasons for keeping such traumatic experiences a secret at first, according to child abuse experts.
They may feel embarrassed or that they are somehow to blame for what happened, Dr. Eileen Treacy of Lehman College in New York City said. Perhaps they were threatened to keep quiet, or maybe they simply feel that nobody will believe them.
Whatever the reason may be, the alleged sex abuse of one 10-year-old child in 2000 in the town of Lee remained unheard of for seven years until investigators with the Oneida County Child Advocacy Center recently received a tip, officials said.
Roughly 24 hours later, 70-year-old William James Hawkins Sr. was charged with first-degree sodomy, said Rome police Investigator E.A. D'Alessandro, who is assigned to the advocacy center.
“Some victims tell right away after something happens; some don't disclose for days, weeks, months, years; and some never tell anybody about it - they hold it inside their whole life,” said Kevin Revere, law enforcement coordinator for the advocacy center.
Investigators believe the alleged abuse occurred over a period of years, and additional charges are expected, Revere said. The case has been turned over to the Oneida County District Attorney's Office for possible grand jury indictment, he said.
Hawkins has been released from the Oneida County jail after he posted a $40,000 bond Sunday, jail officials said.
In general, it is more likely that sexually abused children will not tell anyone right away after an incident happens, Treacy said.
Some children may have secrecy imposed them with either threats or gifts, Treacy said. Other children may not even realize at first that such behavior is wrong.
And the closer the relationship is between the child and the abuser, she added, the more likely the abuse will not be disclosed in a timely manner.
If a family member is accused of being the abuser, but no one believes the allegations, then such claims may cause further problems among the family, Treacy said.
The more time that passes, however, the harder it then becomes for an abused child to disclose what happened, Treacy said. These children may build up a level of self-blame wherein they actually believe they somehow contributed to the abusive behavior.
In those cases, abused children may learn to tolerate the behavior, as if it were alcoholism or domestic abuse within their family, Treacy said.
“They put it in a box and it becomes part of their life,” Treacy said of abused children. “They can look normal on the outside, but some of them act up and some of them act inward.”
Because these emotional obstacles may build up over years, it is imperative that investigators know how to talk to potentially abused children in such a way to break through any self-imposed barriers, Revere said.
“You just can't ask anybody to go out there and talk to a child victim of a crime like this and expect to get a disclosure,” Revere said. “We like to turn suspects' worlds upside down, but we don't like doing it with children. Unfortunately, it's the nature of this business.”
http://bp2.blogger.com/_PWsyVBvNUGU/R2JB_FqGsYI/AAAAAAAAAm8/6tPwfLpNyJ0/s1600-h/Rabbi+Shmuel+Kaminetsky.jpg
What's UOJ's next move?
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59215
The economy didn't start to tank until the Democrats took control of Congress in the last mid-term election. They are in control of the purse. When businesses see a tax threat of this magnitude, they yank their money from the stock market and hide it in various tax shelters. That’s when we go into a recession.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/columnists/chi-oped1216chapmandec16,0,6749400.column
Democrats may commit the real mortgage fraud
Steve Chapman
December 16, 2007
A full one year before Mordy Tendler was destroyed, UOJ predicted exactly what was going to happen to him in a open letter to Mordecai Tendler. Word for word.
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
An Open Letter To Mordecai Tendler
I have no idea whether you are guilty or innocent of the many charges against you.
I do assume innocence,although the latest developments with the RCA causes me to pause.
I do not have a horse in this race.
I do not have a kugel in this oven.
I do not have a black hat on this head.
So for starters you need to know I hope you are innocent.
I did not say I hope you are" found "innocent,because the only thing you can be" found" is guilty.
You know what the score is.Either you are guilty or innocent,there is no gray area.
I do know what this fight with the RCA represents,and that makes me a nogaih b'dovor,because whatever the outcome of this matter, all streams of Orthodox Jewry will be affected.
Trying to avoid the well known cliche,I have come up with my own.
WHERE THERE IS CHOLENT,THERE IS HEARTBURN!
The above is a general rule that I learned throughout my own trials and tribulations that life offers. I sense that there is something here that does not quite meet the proverbial eye.
You have waited way too long to come out swinging.These rumors have been swirling around for years.
Why pick a fight with an adversary that you can not beat? You can NOT beat them!
They will destroy whatever is left of your reputation.
I am not saying you should not be defending yourself,but this Israeli bais din gimmick sounds and feels like camouflage and subterfuge.
I know Rabbi Shmuel Fried extremely well.He is the toain or attorney for the RCA.
A few things you must know about this guy.
HE IS THE SMARTEST AND SHREWDEST TOAIN ALIVE TODAY.
We speak often on business issues,especially when it comes to real estate.
He is unbeatable when his client is right,and never takes a case unless he is sure they are.
HE WOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN ON THIS INTERCONTINENTAL BATTLE UNLESS HE IS ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN THAT HE CAN WIN!
I know of your Toain Mittleman,he is out of his league.
Mordecai Tendler,
You are getting very bad advice.
Your ego will destroy you and your family.
This is my advice to you.
Give it up!
Have your respective representatives meet in private.
Let both sides come up with a pareve statement that is ambiguous.
Fried is a big mentsch,he will encourage a respectable settlement.
Mordecai,
You are in way over your head.
Your father and all your uncles will not be able to help you.
Fried will absolutely crush you!
SETTLE,SETTLE,SETTLE!
You are still the rabbi of your shul,if you proceed with this nonsense you will lose your job.
You will join Moshe Londinski in no man's land.
I hope you don't one day have to look at this blog,wishing that you should have listened to this anonymous blogger.
The problem is people do not listen to free advice,so send a check in my name to your local Tomchei Shabbos.
GIVE IT UP!
SAVE YOUR FAMILY FROM MORE GRIEF!SETTLE BEFORE YOUR LIFE WILL BECOME UNBEARABLE.
Housing construction hits 16-year low
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER - AP Economics Writer
Updated: 12/18/07 9:22 AM
Housing construction fell in November and single-family activity dropped to the lowest level in more than 16 years as a severe housing slump showed no signs of a turnaround.
Didn't anyway see that article in Jewish Weak about Yuta Silverman from Boro Park? She's a heimishe girl who is friends with a religious Muslim. Gary really plays this up in his pathetic newspaper. Her story is being portrayed in a movie with a secular Jewish actress playing Yuta. The actress playing Yuta is profiled this month in a culture magazine. It turns out she is a soft porn actress.
I forgot to mention that the actress is also very strongly anti-Orthodox in real life. She hits from people with confrontational questions and when asked if she's Jewish, replies yes but I don't believe in your Judaism.
http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071215/NEWS03/712150373/1019/NEWS03
Ramapo police name New Square man charged with obstruction
By STEVE LIEBERMAN AND RANDI WEINER
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: December 15, 2007)
NEW SQUARE - Ramapo police yesterday identified a village man accused of trying to prevent an officer from investigating a report of a fight and two men armed with knives inside a house.
Ramapo police said Yehuda Unger, 30, of New Square repeatedly refused to obey orders to move out of the way, and so officers handcuffed and arrested him on a misdemeanor charge of obstructing governmental administration.
Arresting Unger and putting him into a police cruiser created a stir in the village of Hasidic Jews, with dozens of people then surrounding the patrol car, apparently trying to free him, police said.
Additional Ramapo officers, along with Spring Valley and Sheriff's Department officers, responded. The house at 100 Washington Ave., where the confrontation occurred at 3:39 p.m. Thursday, is near the village's main synagogue, a gathering place for people to pray and talk.
The added officers helped disperse the crowd without major incidents, police said.
The Ramapo officers then were able to enter the house, but they found no evidence of a fight, no injured people and no knives, Ramapo police Lt. Michael DeMeo said.
The officers drove Unger to the police station, logging the man into custody at 4:32 p.m.
Shortly afterward, cars and vans of New Square community members arrived at the police station.
At its largest, a crowd of about 15 men was in the police station lobby at one time, as community leaders and police discussed the arrest.
DeMeo said that nobody was yelling or demanding anything, and that the crowd appeared to be concerned about the man in custody and wanted to post his bail.
Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence, who has a good relationship with the New Square leadership, said after the incident that the police officers did their jobs and were looking to protect the public in New Square.
The supervisor said the man arrested acted as if he knew better than the officer how to investigate an incident.
"We have a very professional Police Department, and when they are conducting an investigation, people should not intrude in that investigation," St. Lawrence said. "People should not interject themselves into police business unless asked."
Police said Unger, of 19 Bush Lane, is a member of the village's emergency response team, which looks to work with the police.
Unger was processed at police headquarters and released on $500 bail. He is due Jan. 16 in New Square Village Court on the misdemeanor charge.
http://www.avclub.com/content/blog/taste_test_jones_hanukkah_pack
SHkoyach to the OU for a never ending line up of ridiculous items to Fress.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 10, 2007
SHANGHAI -- One of China's best-known food processors halted luncheon-meat exports on reports of chemical contamination, while the government announced the closure of more than 1,000 slaughterhouses because of poor sanitation.
Those steps come amid a campaign to uncover potentially unsafe foods and other products and tighten government supervision over production. Earlier this year, Chinese exports of products such as pet-food ingredients and toothpaste were found to be contaminated with dangerous chemicals.
In a statement, Shanghai Maling Food Co. said it had sent executives to Hong Kong to help investigate allegations a shipment of its meat was contaminated with the antibiotic nitrofurans, which is thought to cause cancer.
Whar happened to the Saturday post ? it has some interesting comments ?
http://www.isa.org/InTechTemplate.cfm?Section=Article_Index1&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=66351
Hershey's Chocolate is looking to switch operations to China and Mexico.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/nationworld/story/231694.html
Counterfeit medicine with brand name logos imprinted on the pills such as Merck, Novartis, Pfizer and Procter & Gamble.
Investigators discovered the computers at Personal Touch Pharmacy connected to a server that hosted a Canadian Internet pharmacy site.
The site belonged to RxNorth, described by one trade association as the world’s first major online pharmacy.
A founder, Andrew Strempler, had been the subject of numerous profiles, including one in The New York Times in 2005 that described how at age 30 he had two Dodge Vipers, a Jaguar and a yellow Lamborghini with a license plate that reads “RX Boss.”
The article reported that Strempler’s innovation “created a whole new Canadian industry that has plugged a niche in America’s troubled health care system almost overnight”
According to the Manitoba Pharmaceutical Association newsletter, the group’s discipline committee concluded that in 2001 Strempler had improperly filled more than 10,000 orders from the U.S. without receiving legitimate prescriptions.
Strempler did not return telephone messages seeking comment, but he has publicly defended his products.
He hasn’t been charged with any crime relating to RxNorth, and published reports say that about a year ago he transferred dispensing operations to another Canadian online pharmacy.
A critical piece of the puzzle remains missing – who made the counterfeit drugs?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/world/middleeast/17freezone.html?pagewanted=print
And even if investigators do find the factory, there is no shortage of Chinese companies making fake, subpotent or adulterated drug products.
“Some of them in the morning, they manufacture good drugs and in the afternoon and evening they manufacture counterfeit medicine,”
http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=52557&provider=gnews
A fast food restaurant worker is accused of tainting a police officer's tacos.
Erik Joshua Ellis, 21, is accused of putting pubic hair in tacos served to a Morristown Police officer. Ellis was working at the Taco John in Morristown.
Lieutenant Dan Cliff found hair in one of his tacos, check the other, and found hair there as well.
His partner, Sergeant Nathan Antrican, asked who made the food and was informed it was Ellis. According to the police report, Ellis admitted putting hairs in the food.
Ellis was arrested and is now charged with adulterated food, a Class E felony.
Someone said the other day that Chiquita is my favorite banana company. It's actually a tie with Dole that is owned by Arabs.
http://www.knbc.com/news/14720861/detail.html
LOS ANGELES -- The former nanny for a now-retired Dole Food Co. executive was awarded $2,000 Wednesday in back wages, but jury deliberations deadlocked on her rape allegations against the man, prompting a judge to declare a mistrial on most issues.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Gregory W. Alarcon issued his ruling after asking each of the 12 jurors whether he could be of further assistance in helping them reach verdicts on the remaining allegations by Remy Jimenez against Felipe Dabdoub.
She alleges he raped her twice in the Philippines, where he was employed by Dole Food as a senior vice president for manufacturing and logistics, and repeatedly in the United States.
As one female juror left the jury box to pick up her belongings in the jury room, she stopped to hug Jimenez. As both women wept, the juror told Jimenez, "I'm so sorry."
During trial, Dabdoub denied having sexual intercourse with Jimenez as well as any responsibility for her four pregnancies, which all ended in miscarriages.
According to Dabdoub, the only sexual contact he had with Jimenez happened in the summer of 2002, when she walked into his office late at night on four different dates while he was paying household bills.
He and Jimenez engaged in mutual fondling, which she initiated, he said.
On Tuesday, Alarcon dismissed a juror, Jeff Quon, after he admitted sleeping through parts of the testimony. Quon blamed his dozing on Vicodin, which he told Alarcon he took to relieve pain.
Lets put this to "bed" once and for all. leiserovits could not of done what he was accused of. when the rebbi was in toronto he asked the mashgiach shlita if he did any of this stuff and he said no. if he did do any of these molestations he wouldn't lie chas veshulim do the rebbe. fact is fact. he never did this kinda stuff. this only went on sometimes between buchirim rachmune litzlun and the mashgiach and harav duvid olefsky made every effort to throwe these boys out. we american yingerlat know the mashgiach is so holie that we only by tfillin for our bucharim only from the masgiach. the tsadick gave up chinuch to avoid a chilul hashem like kolko shuld have don. he is so holy. peeple should call him and be him michazik
Not Jewish but his wife is.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article3031516.ece
Conrad Black is sentenced to 6½ years in jail
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2007/12/simchas-surprise-guest.html
Does anyone know if Dougie's uses Rubashkin?
baltimoresun.com
City bar mitzvah teacher charged with sex offenses
Alleged incidents involving 12-year-old boy happened nearly two decades ago
By Melissa Harris
Sun reporter
12:52 PM EST, December 18, 2007
A former bar mitzvah lessons teacher in Baltimore's Orthodox Jewish community was charged yesterday with sex offenses that allegedly occurred nearly two decades ago against a then-12-year-old boy, according to the city State's Attorney's Office.
The boy was learning to chant passages from the Torah at Israel Shapiro's home on Olympia Avenue in September 1988 when the alleged offenses occurred, according to court documents. The charges were filed Dec. 4.
Shapiro was charged with a third- and fourth-degree sex offense. According to the Jewish Times, Shapiro, 57, no longer teaches bar mitzvah lessons and now works in a local kosher butcher shop.
melissa.harris@baltsun.com
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071218/NEWS03/712180304
December 18, 2007
BY L.L. BRASIER and JOHN WISELY
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
West Bloomfield police say a 14-year-old girl with autism who cannot speak cried rape the only way she could: through a controversial technique where a teaching aide helps a student type words on a keyboard.
Earlier this month, the girl accused her father of raping her repeatedly while her mother did not intervene, investigators said. The girl's 13-year-old brother, who also is autistic, told investigators he saw his father showering with his sister and naked with his sister.
Investigators said the girl typed out statements of the alleged abuse last month on a facilitator board -- a keyboard designed for autistic children -- at school while an aide helped guide her hands to the keys.
"My dad gets me up, bangs me and then we eat breakfast, he puts his hands on my private parts mom knows and doesn't say anything," the girl reportedly typed on the board.
The father is charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct.
In court documents, authorities do not report physical evidence, such as DNA, to link the father to a sexual assault, instead citing a registered nurse's report that the girl's hymen showed three "nonacute tears," likely signs of sexual assault.
Police and prosecutors decline to discuss the case outside of the filing, which includes also alleges the "children have endured years of sex abuse by father and severe mental and emotional abuse by mother."
Defense attorneys said the strength of the prosecution's case is undermined by the girl's claim that her parents and brother violated a court order by visiting her in the home in which she was placed.
The child, in additional typed messages, said the parents visited her at night and said they would be taking her to South Africa.
"I can say absolutely it did not happen," said Rabbi Levy Shemtov, the family's rabbi with whom the girl has been staying. "Her parents were never there. And the child was never alone."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3482594,00.html
I heard UOJ wasn't happy that I appeared with Rabbi Cunin.
Tischazek!
http://www.law.com/jsp/law/sfb/lawArticleSFB.jsp?id=1197626683616
A Small Firm Wages '100 Years' War' on Tort Reform
Center is engaged in 40 cases challenging limits on tort claims
Lynne Marek
The National Law Journal
December 17, 2007
Baltimore, MD - Bar Mitzvah Teacher Charged with Offenses
Baltimore, MD - A former bar mitzvah lessons teacher was charged with offenses that allegedly occurred nearly two decades ago against a then-12-year-old boy, according to the city State's Attorney's Office.
The boy was learning to chant passages from the Torah at Israel's home in September 1988 when the alleged offenses occurred.
Israel Shapiro, 57, was charged with a third- and fourth-degree offense. He no longer teaches bar mitzvah lessons.
http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/90621
NEW YORK, NY December 18, 2007 —Some psychiatrists and other medical providers overcharged New York by more than $1.3 million for treatments. That's according to a new audit.
New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli says in one case he found a psychiatrist repeatedly billed Medicaid for more than 24 hours of treatment in a single day and also appears to have charged the government healthcare program for treatment he never provided.
According to DiNapoli, those charges cost taxpayers $436,000. The audit says the state could have avoided the overpayments with additional fiscal controls in the claims process.
I figured it was just a matter of time before UOJ caught up with me.
http://www.ganz.com/corporate/corp_story.html
Established by Samuel Ganz and sons Jack and Sam in 1950, this privately-held family company is now headed by the founder's grandson, Howard Ganz. Corporate Headquarters are located in Toronto, Canada, with U.S. offices in Atlanta and Los Angeles, and overseas offices in Hong Kong and Shanghai.
Distribution of several licensed products from top names like Disney and Sesame Street brought incredible growth to the company.
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071214/NEWS01/712140308/1009&theme=
Published: Friday, December 14, 2007
By Joel Banner Baird
Free Press Staff Writer
It's not just toys with lead paint that worry regulators. The Vermont Attorney General's office has filed a consumer fraud suit against Ganz Inc., an importer and distributor of charms and inexpensive jewelry, citing health risks from lead content.
Attorney General William Sorrell said the Ontario-based company violated the Vermont Consumer Fraud Act by failing to disclose lead content in its products, some of which exceed federal guidelines by up to 700 percent.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission warns that lead levels higher than 600 parts per million in children's jewelry pose serious risks -- including deafness, brain damage and death -- to kids who lick, mouth or swallow the toys.
A chance visit to a gift shop at Fletcher Allen Health Care in July by a state Health Department employee triggered the state's investigation into Ganz. The gift shop subsequently discontinued the product line, most of which was manufactured in China.
Representatives from Ganz did not respond to requests for an interview Thursday. But a written statement from the Attorney General's Office disclosed that Ganz plans to restrict sales in Vermont and will retrieve its metal products from retail stores in the state in exchange for full refund or credit. The release notes that Ganz claims that lead in its children's products does not exceed 600 ppm.
Headquartered in Woodbridge, a suburb of Toronto, Ganz also maintains a facility in Cheektowaga, N.Y. -- about eight miles from an Ontario border crossing.
Gantz products reach approximately 30,000 retail customers.
http://www.investmentnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071210/REG/312100009/1036/WIREHOUSES
By Bruce Kelly
December 10, 2007
A stunning $4.6 million award against UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland) Financial Services Inc. and two of its brokers late last month revealed how irate the arbitrators were with UBS.
The money will be awarded to a former UBS rep from Fort Worth, Texas, who claimed ex-colleagues spread lies about him, specifically that he was heading toward a nervous breakdown and posed a risk to the firm.
A three-member arbitration panel in Dallas awarded the ex-UBS broker, Sammy Joe Gordon, $1.7 million in compensatory damages, plus interest, as well as $2.5 million in punitive damages.
Punitive damages are extremely rare in such cases.
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. dispute resolution panel also ordered that Mr. Gordon be paid $391,000 in attorneys' fees.
"This arbitration panel was really upset with UBS," said Andrew Stoltmann, a plaintiff's attorney in Chicago. "There's no question, this is an old-fashioned, Texas-style rear-end kicking."
He added that the amount of punitive damages was also astounding. "This could be the largest punitive damages award — that's collectible — in the past year or two."
http://www.webcpa.com/article.cfm?articleid=26177
A former Internal Revenue Service agent has pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to engaging in a scheme in which he attempted to sell to other taxpayers the purported tax losses of a company he owned, as well as use them on his own individual tax returns.
Harry Willner, 59, a revenue agent assigned to the IRS's Large and Midsized Business Unit, was responsible for audits of large financial institutions. He began working for the IRS in 1974.
Willner was also an officer of a company known as NIA Advertising, which had the same address as his home in Fairlawn, N.J. He did not request approval from the IRS to serve as an officer of NIA, as required by IRS regulations, but he did request approval for outside part-time employment as an instructor with schools in Manhattan and to hold an unspecified position with a company called Royal Magazine, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
From 1998 to 2001, NIA purportedly loaned Royal approximately $849,000. Beginning in 2002, Willner reported a "bad debt" deduction on NIA's corporate tax return, which resulted in a net operating loss for NIA's 2002 return of more than $758,000.
Between January 2002 and March 2006, Willner attempted to sell NIA's NOLs to other taxpayers to offset the income on their own returns and reduce their own tax liabilities. Between March 2002 and March 2006, Willner also used NIA's NOLs to offset his own individual income tax liability by having fee income, earned as an instructor at the two Manhattan schools, paid or assigned to NIA.
Willner faces a possible sentence of three years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Sentencing is scheduled for March 14, 2008.
http://www.5tjt.com/news/read.asp?Id=1896
Lawyer In Dwek Case Vanishes
Key players in the Solomon Dwek bankruptcy case in Deal, N.J., want to find the elusive lawyer, Anthony T. Yeh, who a new court filing claims may have helped Dwek defraud a major bank of millions of dollars. Yeh is a key figure connected to the downfall of Dwek’s real-estate empire. Yeh represented HSBC Bank on four loans, totaling $78 million, that helped fuel Dwek’s property-buying spree in 2005.
Today, Dwek, 35, of Ocean Township, is facing federal bank fraud charges, bankruptcy, and angry creditors who claim that he owes them $350 million. But Dwek’s bankruptcy trustees, as well as several other lawyers in the sprawling case, would like to know where Yeh is.
“Yeh may have been involved with the fraud,” Dwek bankruptcy trustee Charles A. Stanziale Jr. stated in federal court papers filed. PNC Bank, which accepted Dwek’s bad check and was unwittingly used to pay off a $20 million HSBC loan, has tried to find Yeh. But lawyers representing two law firms Yeh has worked for said he has left and they don’t have a current address for him.
“It’s odd for any lawyer to drop off the face of the earth,” PNC lawyer Dennis T. Kearney said. “And then when you throw the Dwek problems on top of it, there may be certain inferences you may draw from that.” A lawyer representing one of Yeh’s former firms told PNC he was believed to have “left the United States.”
Really unfortunate that you posted the Duke U. study on chimps mental addition prowess because now you've given elementary and Yeshiva High school Principals a cool idea/way to cut their costs even more and still maintain the same educational instructional level.
Priceless.
Go ahead chussid mivik, give the putz a call and tell him he is next as soon as we are done with mondrowitz.
A.M.Leizerowitzs phone number when calling from the U.S. is,
011-972-2-500-1890
......Give the putz a call and tell him he is next as soon as we are done with mondrowitz........
_________
AMEN!
Here's the facts: "Eichmann told Life Magazine that Kastner "agreed to help keep the Jews from resisting deportation — and even keep order in the collection camps — if I would close my eyes and let a few hundred or a few thousand young Jews emigrate to Palestine. It was a good bargain." [3]
By May 1944, Kastner and many other Jewish leaders knew that Jews were being sent to their deaths, having received the Vrba-Wetzler report at the end of April 1944. The report was released to the leaders of Jewish organizations in the hope that Hungarian Jews would be warned that they were being deported to a death camp and were not being resettled, as they had been led to believe. However, the report was not made public by Kastner and other Jewish leaders in Hungary. [21]"
That pretty much sums up Rudolf Kastner. He traded lives like they were playing cards. Y'mach Sh'mo V'Zichrono
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Chaptzem Exclusive - A heartfelt plea from the Viener Yeshivah fifth grade teacher
Dear Parent,
As I am sure you are already aware I have been dismissed from my job for the action of posting a video of the class on the internet. As I tried to explain in the letter I sent out previously, this action was done with the intention of sending it to a close personal friend. The question rises for what business did I have sending a video of the class to a friend? I can only give one answer for this. I CARE. Many teachers take a teaching job for a set amount of hours and that’s work for them. I see teachers who care more about their job security than they are charged with educating. Worse, I even hear about teachers who physically abuse children and I hear about the teachers who go out of their way to limit the time they have with the kids. This is not me. I have made many personal sacrifices in order to live on the earnings I receive for being a 3 hour-per-day teacher and would do it again and again. Working with Tinokos Shel Bais Rabon is a very big privilege to me. A privilege that I have thanked the abeshter every day for bestowing upon me – even the difficult students.
Although I am not teaching mishnayos or gemara I have nachas as I see your son grow every day even in math skills and other similar subjects. In fact in some ways I feel responsible for the growth of each student as if he were my own son. I really care about these boys and receive a lot of pride and joy from each and every one of them. It is for that reason that I wanted to share with some close friends - a video of the kids – the kids that I work with every day. The kids that I just like you, the parents, receive nachas from their accomplishments. Kids that I care about with all my heart; Kids that I have invested so much time in energy over the past few months. On countless occasions I have taken large amounts of money out of my small pay check to make the education which these kids receive that much better… All this for one reason – because I CARE.
I realize that I made a big mistake by putting a video in a place which could potentially become public as it did through the unexpected malicious actions of a certain party. This was a major mistake on my part and I assure you it will never happen again! However, am I not entitled to a make an innocent error? Didn’t everyone make mistakes when they first began working that they are embarrassed about even to this day? Am I not human just like you? One of the biggest ideas in torah is that of Teshuva – to forgive. This is something that we teach in yeshiva to our children over and over again. So I ask you if Hashem can accept teshuva why is it so hard for a Yeshiva which teaches the same Torah which comes from Hashem to accept my teshuva. No harm was caused to the children, B”H.
I posted the video in a hard to find personal area on You Tube thinking it would be secure and only viewed by those I wanted to see it. I was never given a school policy manual or every told by anyone at the school that I could not take pictures. I took some pictures with the Principal watching me. If taking pictures during the break period was improper, I should have been told at the time or in before then rather than be dismissed after the fact.
Unfortunately because of the self-serving and malicious actions of a fellow Jew who didn’t care about the consequences to you, me or your children that this personal non-harmful video was found and made open to the public. If the internet website that made this whole incident public was so concerned about the video and protecting your privacy; why did it put the link to the video and why didn’t he make reference to all the other videos of yeshivas at recess, in class, etc. etc?
Instead of doing what is right by contacting the necessary people to correct the matter, he chose not only to embarrass me but also degrade the Yeshiva. As controversy built around this issue and it was publicly announced that I had been terminated, a number of people contacted me to let me know that this person has a history of using his web site to make problems for people so that his publicity will rise. One person sent me this note about the website where the story first appeared: “He (the web site creator) gets a kick out of messing with people’s lives. He sets his own rules, and refuses to answer to anyone. He lies and claims he has Rabbonim backing his website, it is completely not true he does not ask shailos about what he posts.” Another person wrote this comment: “(t)his posting of private videos is typical of that supposedly yeshivise blog He has ruined more innocent peoples lives with his blog, than uoj. He modus operandi is to "accidentally" allow a story/comment and then apologize about after many people have seen it. He at times will ignore pleas to remove something, and then claim he didn't see his email, and "someone else" moderates the comment. ALL LIES. Don't believe his claim everything he does is "al daas torah and consultation with halacha", nothing can be further from the truth.” Fortunately, there was one person who could see the forest through all the trees. This person wrote: “THE ONE THATS WRONG HERE IS ALL THE WEB SITES THAT POSTED THIS STORY WITH OUT CONTACTING THE YESHIVA FIRST.”
I want to share one last comment with you which was sent and posted on another website because the person referenced above could not except criticism and censored it from appearing on his web site. The commenter writes:
“The “xxxx” moderator does not let this response be posted, so I'm posting it here.
1) If the blogger (web site owner) would've handled this behind the scenes the yeshiva would not have been pressured to fire the teacher and this (matter) would've (gone) away quietly.
2) The videos can only be removed by the poster (referring to the teacher – me), why doesn't he thank the teacher for "cleaning up his mess", why does he pretend that somehow they are being removed on their own.
3) The action taken by the yeshiva should only be commended, if they were the right thing, obvious this blogger thinks firing the teacher was the right thing. Looks like this blogger has an agenda.”
If you choose to read some of the Jewish internet news web sites that opened this story up for public comment, you’ll find that the overwhelming majority of “blog” writers felt that it was improper for the Yeshiva to fire me (especially since I am a secular studies teacher and I was never given a policy manual or told that I couldn’t take pictures). While there are individuals who felt that the Yeshiva took the right action, a careful reading of these few comments indicates that they didn’t realize that the video of the kids at recess only became available to the public because the person involved with that website went into my private web area of You Tube and opened it for everyone in the world to see. I am sorry this occurred and never thought that anyone, especially a fellow yid, would do this to another Jew.
I ask you from the bottom of my heart – are you willing to allow this person to take advantage of my innocent mistake and ruin your child’s year? The children will lose more than anyone; they will have to start again with a new teacher (which every educator agrees is a terrible thing). I remembered how difficult it was when I was in school at that age when a teacher change occurred. Are you going to permit a teacher who has spent countless hours over the past few months completely devoted to your children’s education to just be thrown out the door without trying to do something to stop it?
If you fell that in any way I had a positive effect on your son over the past few months to please, Please, PLEASE take a few moments out of your busy life and contact the Yeshiva and/or the people who are on the Yeshiva board and tell them to reinstate me. I want to continue teaching your children and plead to you to convince the Yeshiva to accept my Teshuva and allow me to continue teaching your children. Let’s turn this unfortunate incident into a positive experience for your children and put into practice the middos you want them to learn from their Yeshiva years.
Thanks,
The Teacher
I do believe, and many agree, that blogging for the good of preventing child molestation is not only permissible, but even mandatory.
It is pikuach nefesh.
This is particularly so when I and other advocates previously tried to fix the problem without seeking new laws, and without publicity in the Jewish media.
When the leadership failed to do their jobs, there was a vacuum, and the bloggers and other Jewish advocates stepped in.
The real change is genuinely astonishing. There are indictments, and extraditions from Israel. Civil lawsuits seeking money damages have been filed. A new law was passed in Albany authorizing all nonpublic schools to require fingerprinting, and criminal background checks for their employees - it had been illegal since 1937.
The Rabbinical Council of America, at their annual conventions in May 2005 and May 2007, passed two formal Resolutions addresssing the sex abuse problem, and called for increased legislation, and government oversight.
Every major Jewish print medium, ranging from the Jewish Week to the Jewish Press to the Jewish Observer, has written on abuse problem. There's more to say, but I'm time limited. And there will be more coming, very soon.
Elliot Pasik
I have heard that the Steipler Gaon (Harav Ya'akov Yisroel Kanievsky) published a pamphlet for engaged couples where he discusses the importance of foreplay prior to intercourse. This was done, apparently, as a reaction to complaints that he received from a group of young wives whose husbands had decided to reduce sexual activity to a bare minimum. I read that he wrote the pamphlet after sternly admonishing the would-be seekers of holiness that they were in violation of the torah. This pamphlet should be translated and made available for chatan - kallah classes.
Y. Aharon
FORECASTER OF THE MONTH
Economy teeters on brink, Resler says.
Thanks to a peer's good sportsmanship, Nomura's man wins November award
By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch
Last update: 11:21 p.m. EST Dec. 18
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The U.S. economy is teetering on the brink of recession, with a contraction likely in the current quarter.
Who was the backstabbing Putz who got the Viener teacher fired?
Eckstein at YeshivaWorld?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bourne_Ultimatum_(film)
ExposeMolesters Blog is reporting that Shlomo Mandel thinks he can act like Grubba Lipa and ignore UOJ.
It's time to eliminate the threat at YOB.
This won't work unless you've upgraded to the latest version of Flash player released on December 3rd. The upgrade link is at this page.
http://www.thebourneultimatum.com/
Mandel and Margo don't know who they are messing with.
UOJ is "activating" his best "asset".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Treadstone
Heads are going to roll because of this. While everyone was busy at a Fresser event, UOJ seems to have broken into Margo's secret safe under the YTT boiler room and gotten the list of Black Op operatives and character assassins directed by Margo and Belsky.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/11/04/021104ta_talk_paumgarten
Isac (as he is known) has invented a singular niche—that of extreme political buff and magpie. Among political professionals, a constant susurration of gossip and information warfare underscores every campaign season; civilians may not hear or care about any of it, but it often determines who represents them in the end. Isac, a unique hybrid of operative, broker, bureaucrat, groupie, and, above all, gossipmonger, probably spends more time than anyone in town moving this chatter along.
Isac is a fifty-five-year-old Hasidic Jew of the Satmar sect who was born in Hungary and brought up in Williamsburg. He is squat and big-bellied, outwardly gruff but often beaming. He began ringing doorbells for Brooklyn Democrats when he was fourteen. His favorite politician of all time is Abe Beame, and it angers him that no building has been named for him. Isac has worked for the city since 1990 (he was a staunch supporter of David Dinkins) and now has a job at a department that he prefers not to name, it being unclear how much official business he conducts there. "I have a desk and a phone," he has been known to say. He makes good use of this phone by passing the hours calling up reporters at every paper in town. "We call him Brooklyn borough chief," Tom Topousis, who covers politics for the Post, says. Isac usually checks in with Topousis several times a day. "So, vhat's cooking?" Isac asks, in his low growl.
"I always feel compelled to tell him something," Topousis said. "It's like I have two masters: my editor and Isac." In exchange, Isac will tell him something: who's endorsing whom, who's lunching with whose enemy, who's writing what for tomorrow. (Or he may bark, "Your story is nothing!") The information is usually good and often useful. "You sell and you buy, you buy and you sell," Isac said. In Room 9, the press headquarters at City Hall, this process repeats itself throughout the morning: one reporter will hang up with Isac, and five seconds later another reporter's phone will ring. ("Incoming!" is another way of saying, "It's Isac!") It is believed that Isac can disseminate a piece of gossip to ten reporters in fifteen minutes.
"He calls me up regularly to pick me dry," Richard Schrader, the political consultant, said. "After he hangs up, the reporters are on me within minutes. It's the verbal equivalent of a boomerang."
For such enthusiasm and efficiency, Isac has earned the admiration, canned though it may sound, of Democratic Party leaders past and present. "He's a dedicated Democratic activist who always has a smile on his face," Hillary Clinton said, through a spokeswoman. "I think he's terrific," said Dinkins.
No one ever writes about Isac, but the reporters do talk about him among themselves. At political events, when Isac buttonholes Bill Clinton or Mario Cuomo, the reporters say, "Who's the guy standing next to Isac?" When Isac is introduced at such functions, they call his cursory dignitarial wave "the Queen Mum." They marvel at his ubiquity: there have been near-simultaneous Isac sightings at events in neighborhoods as far apart as Borough Park and Forest Hills. They speculate that there must be more than one of him.
At the Rangel fund-raiser last week, Isac, in his black coat and yarmulke, stood just inside the door, restlessly awaiting the arrival of elected officials. He greeted many of them with bear hugs, unless they were women, in which case he spoke without touching them. ("They understand," he said. "It's my religion.") Between greetings, Isac stood alone and revelled in the spectacle of politicians and donors milling around to the strains of "The Girl from Ipanema." The arrival of Andrew Cuomo, who dropped out of the race for governor in September (a turn of events for which Isac does not completely disavow responsibility), had Isac practically bouncing. He embraced Cuomo and said, "You'll get them next time. Like I told you in December, in any other race I will support you, as I always supported your father, but this was not your time. It was McCall's." The look that crossed Cuomo's face was, you might say, one of professional forbearance.
Later, as Isac nudged his way toward Rangel, he found himself standing near the actor Chevy Chase, the evening's master of ceremonies. Isac seemed uncharacteristically unimpressed. Someone said, "There's Chevy Chase. Do you know him?"
Isac wasn't sure. "Vhat district?"
By Brad Heath, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — More nursing homes are being cited for serious violations as inspectors face increasing pressure to crack down on dangerous conditions, a USA TODAY analysis shows.
From 2000 through 2006, the number of citations for putting patients in "immediate jeopardy" increased 22%, according to the records from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which regulates nursing homes. Those citations are the most serious reprimand inspectors can issue and often follow cases in which patients were physically or sexually abused or left without medications.
The increase came as many states stepped up nursing home inspections. Homes that put their patients in immediate jeopardy risk fines or being told they cannot accept new Medicaid patients, a major source of their income.
It wasn't me!
http://www.reuters.com/article/televisionNews/idUSN1853587420071219
Britney Spears' sister is pregnant at sixteen
By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer
53 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - The Federal Reserve is providing $20 billion in loans to banks as part of an
unprecedented auction process to
ease a global credit crisis and make sure financial institutions can keep lending to their customers.
To Y. Ahron;
Any decent Choson Shmuz should have told you that! That's why in the 70's Rav Shach Zt'l sent people around to teach how to give Choson Shmuzim. If someone doesn't go to one, he's just plain ignorant!
Where do you sign up?
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/105927.html
An Orthodox feminist group will train counselors to discuss sex with prospective brides and grooms.
The Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance is recruiting 10 kallah teachers, women who teach betrothed Orthodox women about Jewish marriage laws, for a course in which they will learn how to talk openly about sex with prospective brides and grooms.
“It was clear that there was nothing out there like it and that it was sorely needed in our Orthodox communities,” said JOFA President Carol Kaufman Newman.
The Drisha Institute and the Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School, both based in New York, are co-sponsoring the program.
In addition to learning the relevant marriage laws, participants in the four-day pilot course must be comfortable with the idea of talking about sexual intimacy to groups of both men and women.
It has been customary over the past few years to conduct an appeal for Hatzolah of Flatbush in all shuls on Shabbos Chanukah. UOJ does not conduct appeals. We are therefore writing in the comments to help with Hatzolah's financial needs.
Hatzoloh of Flatbush, under the leadership of rabbi Dovid Cohen, has been operating in the Flatbush area since 1974. They have one hundred sixty seven New York State Certified Emergency Medical Technicians, including convicted sex offender Steve Zakheim, who volunteer their time to respond to medical emergencies in our community. Each of these volunteers carries resuscitation and trauma equipment in his privately owned car. He is in contact with our dispatcher via two way radio to enable him to respond as quickly as possible to an emergency. In addition we have twenty-six New York State certified Advanced Life Support Providers/Paramedics. They provide an advanced level of critical care which includes intravenous therapy, defibrillation, drug administration, and intubation.
They operate six ambulances 24 hours a day - 365 days a year. Operating costs which include insurance, ambulance repairs as well as the equipment for each of our volunteers, add up to over $1,000,000.00 a year. The primary source of their fund raising is from these appeals. We respectfully request that you partake in this great mitzvah.
(What kind of accountability is there?)
This is an actual email from the OU:
Beatlemania: The Guthrie Brothers
Date:
22 Dec, 2007
Description:
A great musical event sponsored by the Orthodox Union Singles Connection this coming Saturday night at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, 125 East 85th Street, New York City, beginning at 8:30pm. The Guthrie Brothers will be performing their musical tribute to the Beatles. Last year over two hundred singles attended their tribute to Simon and Garfunkel. Admission is $20 at the door and this program is opened to all ages.
Schedule:
Program begins at 8:30 PM.
Location:
Congregation Kehillath Jeshurun
125 East 85th Street
New York, NY
Contact:
vogelj@ou.org
http://www.knbc.com/news/14891644/detail.html
Shea Fishman and Felix Adler, see the writing on the wall. Your involvement with the Goldwasser famly is going public.
The chickens have come home to roost.
LOS ANGELES -- The leader of an Orthodox Jewish group was arrested Wednesday morning along with several others on suspicion of tax fraud and laundering money through an Israeli bank and several business in the jewelry district in downtown Los Angeles.
Naftali Tzi Weisz, the 59-year-old Grand Rabbi of Spinka, and Gabbai Moshe E. Zigelman, 60, both of Brooklyn, N.Y., were named Tuesday in a federal grand jury's 37-count indictment in Los Angeles.
The indictment, unsealed Wednesday morning, claims that Weisz and Zigelman promised to secretly refund up to 95 percent of millions of dollars of contributions to several Spinka charities.
The contributors could claim the full amount for tax deductions, even though they gave as little as five percent of the amount declared on federal income tax returns, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
One method Weisz and Zigelman allegedly used to issue the secret refunds was by an underground money transfer network involving other parties, including businesses in and around the jewelry district.
Several defendants named in Tuesday's indictment were arrested Wednesday morning: Yaacov Zeivald, 43, of Valley Village; and Los Angeles residents Yosef Nachum Naiman, 55, and 43-year-old Alan Jay Friedman. Another defendant allegedly involved in the jewelry district-based underground network is 60-year- old Los Angeles resident Moshe Arie Lazar, who is believed to be in Israel.
Another method prosecutors claim Weisz and Zigelman used to cheat IRS was by wiring transfers from Spinka-controlled entities into secret accounts at an Israeli bank. The indictment names Joseph Roth, 66, and attorney Jacob Ivan Kantor, 71, both of Tel Aviv, as participants in this scheme.
Roth allegedly helped American contributors get loans from the Los Angeles branch of the Israeli bank, so the money could be used in the United States. Prosecutors claim that the contributors also could hire Spinka to help secretly repatriate the money into the United States in exchange for an additional money-laundering fee after the money was placed in the secret accounts at the Israeli bank.
Roth was arrested in Los Angeles on Wednesday morning. Kantor is believed to be in Israel.
Weisz and Zigelman are charged with one count of conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service, 19 counts of mail fraud, 11 counts of international money laundering, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and one count of operating an illegal money remitting business.
Zigelman is also charged with two counts of aiding in the preparation of false federal income tax returns.
Roth is charged in both conspiracy counts; several counts of mail fraud and several international money laundering counts. Kantor is charged in the conspiracy counts and several international money laundering counts.
Zeivald, Lazar, Naiman and Friedman are charged in the main conspiracy count and with operating an illegal money remitting business. Zeivald is also charged with one count of mail fraud.
If convicted, all face long prison terms.
Five Spinka charities were also named as defendants: Yeshiva Imrei Yosef, Yeshivath Spinka, Central Rabbinical Seminary, Machne Sva Rotzohn and Mesivta Imrei Yosef Spinka. These charities are alleged to have used fraudulent receipts for bogus charitable contributions and benefited from fees charged of transfers of funds as part of the money laundering conspiracy.
Weisz, Zigelman, Roth, Zeivald, Naiman and Friedman are scheduled to make their initial appearances Wednesday afternoon in U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles. All six were arrested in the Los Angeles area Wednesday morning.
From UOJ: Chassidim Is Not Judaism (In Part:) How far does the apple fall from the crooked tree? Disease runs in families!!!
........The Spinka Rebbe was whisked away one Shabbos during davening by the police, he screamed Shabbos, Shabbos!! The people he abused in his nursing homes had nobody to scream to when he abused them, stole their social security checks, and gave them rotten food. When the old people died, this great tzaddik, may he rot in hell, froze their bodies, to be able to keep collecting the government stipends.
He was part of the notorious Bergman family, or the "Nursing Home Mafia" as described by the New York Times. It's in their blood, they are sick! Damn these animals; the mitzvah of burying the dead within twenty four hours of death, goes in the garbage when there is money to be stolen. The mitzvah of "escorting the dead" to him meant, escort, "after" all the money was sucked out of the family and the social security number.
His two behaimeshe gangster mamzeirim run Spinka today. Monkeys in black garb.........
These frum financial scandals will not stop until we as a community ostracize those so-called Rabbis who do not care about the Shulchan Aruch. It is amazing that a fraudster like David Cohen gets any respect when he openly tells people that they don't have to listen to entire sections of choshen mishpat. Some real gedolim have called him a heretic who should not be considered Orthodox but they are afraid to speak out openly. He should be sent off to Switzerland with his disciple Pinky Green.
The depth of depraved individuals in "rabbinic" positions is horrifying! To be so immersed in fraud..I just can't get my brain wrapped around this. Who can begin to understand the minds of the people, probably in the hundreds,comprising this entire network of fraudsters?
Mah haye lanu?
The Associated Press is reporting on the arrest of the Spinka Rebbe.
"He should be sent off to Switzerland with his disciple Pinky Green."
Pinky has since moved to Israel.
"Who can begin to understand the minds of the people, probably in the hundreds,comprising this entire network of fraudsters?"
Well for starters, there are about 300 members in my heilige shul.
Was Greene pardoned as well?
Click here to watch video
http://wjz.com/local/rabbi.molesting.yisroel.2.614587.html
Rabbi Accused Of Molesting Bar Mitzvah Students
Reporting
Adam May
PIKESVILLE, Md. (WJZ) ― At a kosher deli off Reisterstown Road in a Pikesville stripmall, Eyewitness News found Rabbi Yisroel Shapiro, a butcher who jumped out from behind his desk and hid from our cameras when we tried to ask him about new criminal charges that he sexually abused two young boys during Bar Mitzvah lessons.
Shapiro never came out, but a coworker did. The man later yelled at Eyewitness News after we walked out the door that the allegations against Shapiro were "fabricated."
City prosecutors say "Over the past several months, police and prosecutors have conducted an extensive investigation that led to the charges."
The alleged abuse took place at Shapiro's home off Olympia Street in 1988 and 1994. Some neighbors caught wind of the allegations a few years back and posted flyers.
One victim tells police he was forced to chant passages from the Torah as he was inappropriately touched.
"The problem is that we don't know if there's more victims. We know a few but not how many there have actually been," said Vicki Polin.
Polin heads a support group for victims of rabbi abuse. She's concerned that some leaders in the Orthodox community keep abusers quiet.
"They're told they shouldn't report it to secular authorities because it could start another holocaust. Unfortunately, it starts another type of holocaust where an accuser has access to hundreds of children and each time they perfect their skills," she said.
I'm the putz who employs Shapiro at my deli.
W & L Kosher Meats Inc (Wasserman & Lemberger)
7006 Reisterstown Rd D, Baltimore, MD 21215
Phone: (410) 486-4191 FAX: (410) 486-4099
Est. Annual Sales:$950,000
Data provided by Dun & Bradstreet
Critics: Rabbi's Son Treated Better Behind Bars
Baltimore, MD (AP) ―
http://wjz.com/topstories/Rabbi.Moshe.Khaver.2.417235.html
Prison for 19-year-old Moshe Khaver, son of a Baltimore rabbi, is slightly different from that of other violent criminals.
Khaver is kept segregated from the general prison population in Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center, where he enjoys use of a solitary cell.
Visiting rules are relaxed. And nearly every day for the 10 months he's been behind bars, Khaver has had kosher meals brought to the prison by his mother.
Khaver, an admitted drug dealer, is serving a five-year term after pleading guilty nearly a year ago to first-degree assault. In May 2003, court records show, he used his father's Buick to run down a boy after a dispute over $20 worth of marijuana.
The victim spent about five weeks in a coma. Prosecutors said he suffered permanent injuries, including blindness in his right eye, loss of feeling in his right leg, facial scars, loss of memory and damage to his speech.
Khaver is the son of Rabbi Reuben Khaver. At his trial, he said he began using marijuana at age 13 and started selling it at 15. He was 17 when the assault occurred.
When Circuit Judge Kaye Allison sentenced Khaver to prison on Nov. 9, she vowed that he would not receive special treatment because he was Jewish and affluent in a city where the majority of defendants are black and poor.
"To many people in this room, this situation is unique," the judge said. "To this court, this situation happens too frequently.
This case is not different from those this court sees every day: young men making very poor decisions in the course of drug transactions."
Allison ordered Khaver taken to the state Division of Correction.
But at some point and for some reason, he never made it there.
Internal records obtained by The (Baltimore) Sun show that hours after Allison handed down her sentence, Central Booking's security chief ordered that Khaver be placed in protective custody and housed alone.
Two weeks later, the records show, Benjamin Brown, an assistant commissioner at the Division of Pretrial and Detention Services, ordered that Khaver was not to be transferred to the state Division of Correction without his permission.
Howard Cardin, Khaver's defense attorney, said his client is in lockdown 22 hours a day in a solitary cell because it is too dangerous for his client to be anywhere else.
"I believe he is in danger," Cardin told The Sun, adding he believed Khaver's treatment is "not anything special."
Herbert Berry Jr., a labor representative for the Maryland Correctional Law Enforcement Union, found Khaver's treatment astonishing. He said every state prison provides protective custody when needed and kosher meals. He said he has never heard of someone with a five-year sentence being housed at Central Booking.
"This doesn't even sound possible to me," he said.
Mark Vernarelli, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, first said Khaver was being kept at Central Booking because of his kosher diet. Later, he said he was there because of his short sentence, the newspaper reported.
In a statement to The Associated Press on Thursday, Vernarelli said it was not unusual for inmates to serve time at Central Booking.
"While it is true that we generally move most DOC-sentenced inmates out eventually, it is not unheard-of for sentenced inmates with as much as seven-year terms to be housed at Central Booking," Vernarelli said. "Bear in mind that many inmates are required by law to serve only half or one-fourth of their total sentence, meaning a three-year term could allow in inmate to be out in nine to 18 months. This is the law, not our policy.
"In this inmate's case, he has the potential to leave the DOC in December of 2006," Vernarelli said.
The prison spokesman also delivered a statement from William J. Smith, commissioner of the state Division of Pretrial and Detention Services, who said Khaver's mother did not hand the meals to her son personally. The meals are "delivered through our Chaplain's office twice a week. There is no direct contact from family members. The meals are factory sealed. They are itemized by the officer on duty and inspected for contraband. The detainee does not
get any visits."
Vernarelli said "a decision on who should be placed in protective custody is a critical one made according to various risk factors, including whether a detainee or inmate is a threat to him/herself or others, and whether others are a threat to him/her.
The safety of the detainees/inmates and staff is the number one priority in all institutions. Protective custody space is very limited throughout the system.
"The Department of Public Safety is not in the business of 'giving preferential treatment' to anyone," Vernarelli concluded. "Our job is to protect the public, the staff, and the people in our facilities."
Added to the confusion surrounding Khaver's case, Gov. Robert Ehrlich appointed the young man to a state juvenile justice advisory council about a year after his arrest.
Sander Goldberg, a Baltimore rabbi who recommended Khaver for the governor's council, gave the benediction at Ehrlich's swearing-in ceremony and spoke on Khaver's behalf at his sentencing hearing in November.
Goldberg, a state tax court judge, told The Sun that he had "nothing whatsoever to do with where the permanent incarceration is. None of his advocates do."
http://unorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2005/11/bigger-bastardpart-two-yemenite.html
Hard to believe this guy is Mizrachi and not from Frankel's shul.
Has anyone been by East 31st St? I'm wondering if Neuhoff illegally converted the upstairs of his house into living quarters. He only has a permit according to online City records to have an attic for storage.
I guess publishing books trumps all. He's now stumping on his blog for YCT by promoting their events, despite the opposition to them from R' Hershel Schechter and many others.
YCT is of course in bed with Michael Broyde, a star author with Gil's Yashar Books.
http://yudelstake.blogspot.com/2007/12/re-alle-mealmart-s-american-beef.html
Kashrus Alert:
Rubashkin's / Supreme brand [R' M.M. WEISMANDEL] produced in Uruguay had none of the "keres-treifis" inspected.
What Rav Weismandel claims they followed the same guidlines as the AIDA is simply an outright lie. THEY CHECKED NONE OF IT! According to all shitas it's all "TREIF".
For a copy of ALLE /NIRBARTER report, send an Email request to
kashrusy@aol.com
"notorious Bergman family, or the "Nursing Home Mafia" as described by the New York Times. It's in their blood, they are sick! Damn these animals"
UOJ, you are committing another crime by bashmutzing Bergman. He was innocent. Andy Stein yemach shmo vezichro venimach zchuro milhazkiro went after him for the sole purpose of making a name for himself. Hea had a staff of 25 people working around the clock for the sole purpose of bringing Bernrad Bergman down. He was a tsaddik of a mentsh, a true Yehudi Neeman, of those who withstood the American whirlwinds of the 20th century - like S.F. Mendelowitz zts"l. He was never evr convicted of anything. When he couldn't stand the pressure on him and his family anymore, he had to admit to a few minor tax irregularitites - you and I have bigger one os our tax returns. He was so vilified and harassed that his daughter-in-law commited suicide. You should retract yourself.
Ha, UOJ thinks I get intimidated by some police flashing badges around my yeshiva.
http://www.law.com/jsp/nylj/PubArticleNY.jsp?hubtype=TopStories&id=1197885887600
Demleitner Named Dean of Hofstra Law School
By Thomas Adcock
December 18, 2007
Nora V. Demleitner, who left her native Germany in 1986 as a teen to pursue college and law school in the United States, was named yesterday as the ninth dean of Hofstra University School of Law, effective Jan. 1.
Ms. Demleitner, 40, becomes the first woman to lead the institution, established in 1970 at the Hempstead, Long Island, campus. She joined the faculty in 2001 as a professor of criminal, comparative and immigration law, and served as associate dean for academic affairs.
She has been serving as interim dean since March, replacing Aaron Twerski
Gershon "the shvindler" Tannenbaum writes this week:
In related Satmar developments, subsequent to the Court of Appeals ruling confirming the Supreme Court’s decision to desist from intervening in Satmar’s internal conflict, followers of Rabbi Zalman Leib initiated a lawsuit against followers of Rabbi Aaron to disallow them from representing themselves as Congregation Yetev Lev of Satmar, Inc.
Interestingly, that corporation consists of the main Satmar Beis Medrash in Williamsburg, as well as the main Satmar Beis Medrash in Boro Park. The shul in Williamsburg is controlled by followers of Rabbi Zalman Leib and the shul in Boro Park by followers of Rabbi Aaron, with both sides not relinquishing any claims on each other. Should the Court decide to adjudicate the matter, it will need the wisdom of Shlomo HaMelech.
Both sides issued identical communications, each strongly asserting, that it is the true successor of Satmar. Both factions send out bills for shul seats, membership, etc., to all members of the Satmar community, using identical stationary, fonts, logos, etc. Except for one digit, their addresses, too, are almost the same. Only a trained eye would be able to discern which is which. Many older Chassidim, unable to differentiate between the two bills, are paying both.
What do UOJ and the readers know about Rubashkin & Alle accusing each other of having shochtim who fool around with the local shiksas?
That would be Rubashkin's chevrah in Iowa and Alle's in Costa Rica, Central America.
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1962534620071219
Obama proposes U.S. ban on China-made toys
Wed Dec 19, 2007
Obama tries to curry favor with UOJ
-------------
He's Indian?
idiom:
curry favor
To seek or gain favor by fawning or flattery.
[Middle English curreien, from Anglo-Norman curreier, to arrange, curry, from Vulgar Latin *conrēdāre : Latin com-, com- + Vulgar Latin *-rēdāre, to make ready (of Germanic origin). Curry favor, by folk etymology from Middle English currayen favel, from Old French correier fauvel, to curry a fallow-colored horse, be hypocritical (from the fallow horse as a medieval symbol of deceit).]
http://blogs.marketwatch.com/greenberg/2007/12/straight-talk-on-the-mortgage-mess-from-an-insider/
Straight Talk on the Mortgage Mess from an Insider
12:11:23 PM December 6th, 2007
Even before this mortgage mess started, one person who kept emailing me over and over saying that this is going to get real bad. He kept saying this was beyond sub-prime, beyond low FICO scores, beyond Alt-A and beyond the imagination of most pundits, politicians and the press. When I asked him why somebody from inside the industry would be so emphatically sounding the siren, he said, “Someobody’s got to warn people.”
Since then, I’ve kept up an active dialog with Mark Hanson, a 20-year veteran of the mortgage industry, who has spent most of his career in the wholesale and correspondent residential arena — primarily on the West Coast. He lives in the Bay Area. So far he has been pretty much on target as the situation has unfolded. I should point out that, based on his knowledge of the industry, he has been short a number of mortgage-related stocks.
His current thoughts, which I urge you to read:
The Government and the market are trying to boil this down to a ’sub-prime’ thing, especially with all constant talk of ‘resets’. But sub-prime loans were only a small piece of the mortgage mess. And sub-prime loans are not the only ones with resets. What we are experiencing should be called ‘The Mortgage Meltdown’ because many different exotic loan types are imploding currently belonging to what lenders considered ‘qualified’ or ‘prime’ borrowers. This will continue to worsen over the next few of years. When ‘prime’ loans begin to explode to a degree large enough to catch national attention, the ratings agencies will jump on board and we will have ‘Round 2′. It is not that far away.
Since 2003, when lending first started becoming extremely lax, a small percentage of the loans were true sub-prime fixed or arms. But sub-prime is what is being focused upon to draw attention away from the fact the lenders and Wall Street banks made all loans too easy to attain for everyone. They can explain away the reason sub-prime loans are imploding due to the weakness of the borrower.
How will they explain foreclosures in wealthy cities across the nation involving borrowers with 750 scores when their loan adjusts higher or terms change overnight because they reached their maximum negative potential on a neg-am Pay Option ARM for instance?
Sub-prime aren’t the only kind of loans imploding. Second mortgages, hybrid intermediate-term ARMS, and the soon-to-be infamous Pay Option ARM are also feeling substantial pressure. The latter three loan types mostly were considered ‘prime’ so they are being overlooked, but will haunt the financial markets for years to come. Versions of these loans were made available to sub-prime borrowers of course, but the vast majority were considered ‘prime’ or Alt-A. The caveat is that the differentiation between Prime and ALT-A got smaller and smaller over the years until finally in late 2005/2006 there was virtually no difference in program type or rate.
The bailout we are hearing about for sub-prime borrowers will be the first of many. Sub-prime only represents about 25% of the problem loans out there. What about the second mortgages sitting behind the sub-prime first, for instance? Most have seconds. Why aren’t they bailing those out too? Those rates have risen dramatically over the past few years as the Prime jumped from 4% to 8.25% recently. seconds are primarily based upon the prime rate. One can argue that many sub-prime first mortgages on their own were not a problem for the borrowers but the added burden of the second put on the property many times after-the-fact was too much for the borrower.
Most sub-prime loans in existence are refinances not purchase-money loans. This means that more than likely they pulled cash out of their home, bought things and are now going under. Perhaps the loan they hold now is their third or forth in the past couple years. Why are bad borrowers, who cannot stop going to the home-ATM getting bailed out?
The Government says they are going to use the credit score as one of the determining factors. But we have learned over the past year that credit scores are not a good predictor of future ability to repay. This is because over the past five years you could refi your way into a great score. Every time you were going broke and did not have money to pay bills, you pulled cash out of your home by refinancing your first mortgage or upping your second. You pay all your bills, buy some new clothes, take a vacation and your score goes up!
The ’second mortgage implosion’, ‘Pay-Option implosion’ and ‘Hybrid Intermediate-term ARM implosion’ are all happening simultaneously and about to heat up drastically. Second mortgage liens were done by nearly every large bank in the nation and really heated up in 2005, as first mortgage rates started rising and nobody could benefit from refinancing. This was a way to keep the mortgage money flowing. Second mortgages to 100% of the homes value with no income or asset documentation were among the best sellers at CITI, Wells, WAMU, Chase, National City and Countrywide. We now know these are worthless especially since values have indeed dropped and those who maxed out their liens with a 100% purchase or refi of a second now owe much more than their property is worth.
How are the banks going to get this junk second mortgage paper off their books? Moody’s is expecting a 15% default rate among ‘prime’ second mortgages. Just think the default rate in lower quality such as sub-prime. These assets will need to be sold for pennies on the dollar to free up capacity for new vintage paper or borrowers allowed to pay 50 cents on the dollar, for instance, to buy back their note.
The latter is probably where the ’second mortgage implosion’ will end up going. Why sell the loan for 10 cents on the dollar when you can get 25 to 50 cents from the borrower and lower their total outstanding liens on the property at the same time, getting them ‘right’ in the home again? Wells Fargo recently said they owned $84 billion of this worthless paper. That is a lot of seconds at an average of $100,000 a piece. Already, many lenders are locking up the second lines of credit and not allowing borrowers to pull the remaining open available credit to stop the bleeding. Second mortgages are defaulting at an amazing pace and it is picking up every month.
The ‘Pay-Option ARM implosion’ will carry on for a couple of years. In my opinion, this implosion will dwarf the ’sub-prime implosion’ because it cuts across all borrower types and all home values. Some of the most affluent areas in California contain the most Option ARMs due to the ability to buy a $1 million home with payments of a few thousand dollars per month. Wamu, Countrywide, Wachovia, IndyMac, Downey and Bear Stearns were/are among the largest Option ARM lenders. Option ARMs are literally worthless with no bids found for many months for these assets. These assets are almost guaranteed to blow up. 75% of Option ARM borrowers make the minimum monthly payment. Eighty percent-plus are stated income/asset. Average combined loan-to-value are at or above 90%. The majority done in the past few years have second mortgages behind them.
The clue to who will blow up first is each lenders ‘max neg potential’ allowance, which differs. The higher the allowance, the longer until the borrower gets the letter saying ‘you have reached your 110%, 115%, 125% etc maximum negative of your original loans balance so you cannot accrue any more negative and must pay a minimum of the interest only (or fully indexed payment in some cases). This payment rate could be as much as three times greater. They cannot refinance, of course, because the programs do not exist any longer to any great degree, the borrowers cannot qualify for other more conventional financing or values have dropped too much.
Also, the vast majority have second mortgages behind them putting them in a seriously upside down position in their home. If the first mortgage is at 115%, the second mortgage in many cases is at 100% at the time of origination — and values have dropped 10%-15% in states like California — many home owners could be upside down 20% minimum. This is a prime example of why these loans remain ‘no bid’ and will never have a bid. These also will require a workout. The big difference between these and sub-prime loans is at least with sub-prime loans, outstanding principal balances do not grow at a rate of up to 7% per year. Not considering every Option ARM a sub-prime loan is a mistake.
The 3/1, 5/1, 7/1 and 10/1 hybrid interest-only ARMS will reset in droves beginning now. These are loans that are fixed at a low introductory interest only rate for three, five, seven or 10 years — then turn into a fully indexed payment rate that adjusts annually thereafter. They first got really popular in 2003. Wells Fargo led the pack in these but many people have them. The resets first began with the 3/1 last year.
The 5/1 was the most popular by far, so those start to reset heavily in 2008. These were considered ‘prime’ but Wells and many others would do 95%-100% to $1 million at a 620 score with nearly as low of a rate as if you had a 750 score. No income or asset versions of this loan were available at a negligible bump in fee. This does not sound too ‘prime’ to me. These loans were mostly Jumbo in higher priced states such as California.
Values are down and these are interest only loans, therefore, many are severely underwater even without negative-amortization on this loan type. They were qualified at a 50% debt-to-income ratio, leaving only 50% of a borrower’s income to pay taxes, all other bills and live their lives. These loans put the borrower in the grave the day they signed their loan docs especially without major appreciation. These loans will not perform as poorly overall as sub-prime, seconds or Option ARMs but they are a perfect example of what is still considered ‘prime’ that is at risk. Eighty-eight percent of Thornburg’s portfolio is this very loan type for example.
One final thought. How can any of this get repaired unless home values stabilize? And how will that happen? In Northern California, a household income of $90,000 per year could legitimately pay the minimum monthly payment on an Option ARM on a million home for the past several years. Most Option ARMs allowed zero to 5% down. Therefore, given the average income of the Bay Area, most families could buy that million dollar home. A home seller had a vast pool of available buyers.
Now, with all the exotic programs gone, a household income of $175,000 is needed to buy that same home, which is about 10% of the Bay Area households. And, inventories are up 500%. So, in a nutshell we have 90% fewer qualified buyers for five-times the number of homes. To get housing moving again in Northern California, either all the exotic programs must come back, everyone must get a 100% raise or home prices have to fall 50%. None, except the last sound remotely possible.
What I am telling you is not speculation. I sold BILLIONs of these very loans over the past five years. I saw the borrowers we considered ‘prime’.
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/1217/3
By Greg Miller
ScienceNOW Daily News
17 December 2007
Key questions remain unresolved in the firing of dean David Kessler by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine last week. Kessler and the university had been at odds over "financial irregularities" Kessler says he discovered shortly after taking the post in 2003.
In a 17 December statement, the university said that Chancellor J. Michael Bishop asked Kessler in June to hand in his resignation by the end of the year. With no resignation forthcoming, Bishop formally dismissed him on 13 December. "The reasons for Dr. Kessler's dismissal ... cannot be discussed, as they represent personnel matters that are held confidential in compliance with University policy and state law," the statement read.
Prior to his post at Yale, Kessler was commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration from 1990 to 1997
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-rabbi20dec20,0,4164354.story?coll=la-home-center
Five Brooklyn-based Spinka charities are also defendants in the alleged money laundering scheme: Yeshiva Imrei Yosef, Yeshivath Spinka, Central Rabbinical Seminary, Machne Sva Rotzohn and Mesivta Imrei Yosef Spinka. The charities are accused of making out false receipts for phony donations as well as receiving the money laundering fees, according to the indictment.
The FBI and IRS are continuing to investigate alleged crimes committed by contributors to the charities, authorities said.
tiffany.hsu@latimes.com
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071219/NEWS01/712190316/1004
Disgraced real estate investor Solomon Dwek will receive a monthly allowance of $12,800, plus expenses, for helping the federal bankruptcy court sell his 350 properties, Dwek's lawyer said Tuesday.
While the stipend for Dwek, 35, of Ocean Township, is essentially equal to what he's been receiving for several months, the amount is enough that Dwek will withdraw a recent claim that he is an indentured servant of the bankruptcy court, attorney Timothy P. Neumann, said.
Previously, Dwek's monthly allowance was $15,000, but it included all expenses such as gas, parking and tolls.
The new figure, which has been agreed to by a bankruptcy trustee and creditors but not yet signed by a federal judge, keeps Dwek's income "at about the same level as the last few months" considering that he can bill for expenses, Neumann said.
However, the new agreement, struck Monday, relieves Dwek of a previous mandatory review of the allowance every three months.
"There is no time limit (on the allowance)," Neumann said. "It's subject to the discretion of the (bankruptcy) trustee. If (the trustee) decides he doesn't need Dwek's services anymore, he can terminate" the allowance.
The bankruptcy trustee assigned to Dwek's case, Charles A. Stanziale, could not be reached for comment.
Last week, Stanziale said he would need Dwek's assistance in selling the properties for another nine months.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/12/19/politics/washingtonpost/main3630904.shtml
Giuliani's Kerik Woes Resurface
Washington Post: Informant Sheds Light On Candidate's Relationship With Ex-Police Chief
http://originatortimes.com/content/templates/standard.aspx?articleid=2530&zoneid=5
Man Steals $2 Million From Cendant While in Prison
Hazeet!
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071111/NEWS/711110434
For months after Solomon Dwek was forced into bankruptcy with hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, his grand lifestyle hardly changed.
For a while, Dwek and his wife, Pearl, cashed in various retirement accounts and trusts they had set up for their children.
In June, when those were running out, Dwek asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kathryn C. Ferguson to allow him to take $30,000 a month from his assets as payment for his work to help the court liquidate his holdings.
Walter J. Greenhalgh, who represents a committee of Dwek creditors, attacked the request, writing in court papers that Dwek was "shameless in his request to continue his gaudy living expenses."
Among luxuries enjoyed by Dwek and his family following his February bankruptcy, Greenhalgh noted, was $113,000 in life insurance premium payments paid over just three months. He also owns a Jaguar and three Lexus vehicles.
In five months, Dwek and his wife made $42,000 in payments to credit card accounts, took two trips to Florida, another trip to a luxury resort in Arizona, spent $3,000 on clothes in one day, and made $2,000 in ATM withdrawals over an eight-day period.
Judge Ferguson awarded an allowance, but reduced it to $15,000 a month and then to $12,700.
Among other requests, Dwek had wanted $3,010 for monthly food and household items and $1,290 for clothing and shoes.
Greenhalgh opposed Dwek's request after he and other lawyers deposed Dwek in June about his spending habits. Below is a typical exchange:
Greenhalgh: Have you ever thought of reducing your lifestyle costs since the filing of the involuntary petition?
Dwek: I have.
Greenhalgh: . . . Have you decided to reduce the cost of your lifestyle?
Dwek: Yes, you know, if I can't afford certain things, I don't buy them.
Greenhalgh: So you don't have a specific plan to reduce your lifestyle at this time?
Dwek: I don't know what our plan is. I mean whatever the necessity is, food, utilities, travel, I need gas, cleaners, my mortgages, my maintenance, my glasses, tutors for my son, my health insurance, these are necessity items that I pay for. I don't, I used to go and spend $800 on a suit. I haven't purchased a suit in the past year or so. And instead of going to Brooks Brothers to buy a $60 white shirt, I bought these shirts for $13.
Greenhalgh: Do you and your family need four cars?
Dwek: No. Three cars would do.
He now has one left. The others were seized to be auctioned last week.
In one quirk of the bankruptcy law, Judge Ferguson hasn't given Dwek any allowance to pay the $13,200 in monthly mortgage payments on his Ocean Township home because the house is in his wife's name.
No payments have been made on the two loans for several months, and one lender with a $500,000 mortgage wants to foreclose on the home in Ocean Township.
Double hazeet!
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071111/NEWS/711110431
Last week, three of Dwek's four luxury cars were seized to be auctioned.
Dwek hasn't bought an $800 suit in a year-and-a-half. Now, between trips to Florida and a luxury resort in Arizona, he picks up $13 dress shirts at T.J. Maxx.
Former Dwek partners soon may face colossal lawsuits from Dwek's bankruptcy trustee, who says he will accuse them of fraudulently obtaining massive transfers from Dwek before Dwek's assets were frozen following that bad PNC deposit in May, 2006. In bankruptcy court parlance, fraudulent transfers happen when a debtor off-loads property or money to insiders prior to a bankruptcy filing without fair-market compensation.
"The number is huge," said trustee Charles A. Stanziale Jr., who declined to elaborate.
50 members of Dwek's own insular community claim Dwek owes them more than $100 million. Most won't be repaid in full, if at all, because bankruptcy court puts them last in line. Mortgage lien holders, lawyers and court-appointed experts are paid first.
And the costs of the liquidation are adding up faster than the Lotto jackpot — lawyers and other professionals have been paid $4 million so far from Dwek's assets.
Contributing to the expense and delay is that Dwek's liquidation has been handled by two courts. It was in state Superior Court for nine months, before he was forced into federal bankruptcy court 10 months ago. More than 100 lawyers are involved.
Nineteen months after Dwek's assets were first frozen, some of Dwek's investors believe there will be little left for them.
"Whatever value may have existed a year and a half ago has been diminished by the professional fees and the weakness of the real estate market," said Richard K. Coplon, an attorney representing wealthy New York real estate investor Charles Ishay.
Ishay claims Dwek defrauded him of $5 million by lying about a nonexistent deal to buy the Deal Gold & Country Club.
"My client thinks he's not going to get any money out of this," Coplon said.
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071207/NEWS/712070359
Whatchu lookin' at, boy?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/930784.html
A man attacked a social worker in Lod's welfare office, causing her injury and shock. The assailant had accompanied his sister-in-law, a battered wife staying in a shelter, to the office where she was seeking help from the social worker. Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog ordered a probe into the circumstances of yesterday's attack. He said that people who need social services, "must learn that they cannot take out their frustration on the social workers." Last year 123 incidents of violence were recorded against social workers.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=a12JnKt1Pwlc&refer=uk
Dec. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Gupta the swastika salesman arrives at sunset, fires a kerosene lantern and displays his gold- painted trinkets on an Indian beach filled with hundreds of young Israelis dancing in a fog of hashish.
Draped in garlands strung with jasmine blossoms, the pulsating Israelis are freshly decommissioned from the military and seeking a cheap retreat to unwind from their obligatory two- to-three years of safeguarding the Jewish state. The conscripts find sanctuary in the thousands of dilapidated wicker seaside shacks and dozens of isolated jungle ghettos that weave along a 78-mile coast and snake up treacherous dirt tracks into the impoverished mountain villages of Goa.
According to Israeli and Indian officials, between 40,000 and 60,000 young Israelis have either permanently moved or established long-term residence in India. They have created new lives for themselves alongside the country's 900 million Hindus and 150 million Muslims and caused tension among the local population because of the widespread use of recreational drugs.
``Our souls need a permanent break from Israel,'' says army veteran Tomel Basel, 24, pocketing one of Gupta's 10 cent charms, the ancient cross with bent arms that is venerated by Hindus as a lucky adornment.
``We're all runaways,'' Basel says before filling his lungs with potent smoke and exhaling his separate reality on the squalor of Anjuna Beach. ``There's nothing for us back in Israel.''
Karma Kosher Trail
What began in 1994 as the great post-military escape to India has turned into a new-age Diaspora of young and embittered men and women looking to flee what they say is their country's armed turmoil with the Palestinians and the spiritual emptiness of Judaism.
Many of the revelers on the sands of Anjuna Beach and elsewhere along what's known as the Karma Kosher Trail say they have no intention of returning to Israel, despite the efforts of four local rabbis and a $200,000 joint government-private sector campaign funded by Israeli banking and telecommunications magnate Nochi Dankner, a devotee of the Dalai Lama and chairman of IDB Holding Corp.
Shlomo Breznitz, a director of the campaign and founder of the India-Israel Parliamentary Friendship Group in Israel, says the exodus is worrisome and potentially tragic. ``Karma kosher is much more of a widespread phenomenon than Israelis want to admit,'' says Breznitz, 71, a retired member of the Israeli parliament and former president and provost of Haifa University.
India Trade
``India is about to become one of Israel's biggest trading partners,'' Breznitz adds. ``And we have 40,000 kids down there who have no idea when or if they will come back. Their attitude has already fueled very real anti-Israeli elements within the Indian government and created sufficient motivation for people in Israel and India to harm our bilateral trade agreements.''
Between 1992 and 2006, trade between Israel and India grew to $2.7 billion from $200 million and is poised to top $3 billion annually.
``Forty thousand over-enthusiastic Israelis in India are not going to get in the way of more than $3 billion of bilateral trade,'' says Indian Minister of Commerce and Industry Kamal Nath. ``And there's enormous scope for increasing that trade.''
Military Dropout
``Too much is at stake,'' Breznitz says. ``India has the world's second-largest Muslim population. There's a strong symbolic element to these youngsters, so it's not a question of if something might happen, but when it will happen. I read the security reports.''
Leanna Peled-Rosen, 27, doesn't care. She stripped the sergeant stripes from her sleeve in 2000, abandoning a promising military career as a self-defense instructor and anti-terrorist specialist to become a ballet dancer and live a Hindu lifestyle in Israel.
She is in Tel Aviv, saving money for a likely trip to India and aware of the growing economic ties between Israel and India in telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, construction, real estate and military hardware.
``The trade will further speed up the process of integrating Indian culture with Israeli society,'' Peled-Rosen says at the Sub Kuchmilga (Anything Is Possible) Indian restaurant. The sign on the door reads ``No Elephants Allowed.'' There's a bottle of bourbon on the bar and, on the jukebox, Bob Dylan is singing ``Changing of the Guards.''
`No Clue'
``The government has absolutely no clue why we go to India,'' Peled-Rosen laughs, pointing to a group of uniformed Israeli soldiers huddled in a corner. ``The politicians will tell you that we live in a bubble, but it won't burst. Our spiritual lives are beyond the politics and religion of Israel.''
Peled-Rosen gestures toward a picture of Ganesh, one of the Hindu gods that decorate the restaurant. ``Those who have been forced to return from Goa because they've run out of money are vocal critics of the political and religious status quo,'' Peled-Rosen says. ``We won't back down.''
Two hours south of Tel Aviv, along the hardscrabble frontier of the Negev Desert, retired flower grower Rachamin Efraim pours a sweet drink on the Moshav Nevatim farm and smiles at the thought of young Israelis roaming the land of his forefathers.
``India is calm, a good place for young people who have grown up in a country where everyone is going crazy,'' says the 71-year-old Cochin Jew, one of some 70,000 Indian Jews Breznitz helped repatriate in the 1950s, more than 2,000 years after the tribe first arrived in southwestern India from Jerusalem.
`Paradise on Earth'
Accompanying Efraim on the trip home to Israel in 1954 was Esther Atraham, then 18. Now 71 and living in the moshav's nursing facility, Atraham says it's foolish to begrudge the young Jews who have settled in Goa.
``Southern India is paradise on Earth,'' Atraham says, tugging the sleeve of her sari. ``I understand why the children go. They had a difficult time in the army. They want joy.''
Just how a disparate group of former Israeli soldiers over the past 13 years managed to build a stronghold in India without government oversight remains a mystery. Why they're leaving Israel is no secret among those preparing to head south from the 26 Rupee restaurant on the roof of a Tel Aviv warehouse.
``The war with the Palestinians never ends,'' says Smadar Waisman, 26, an Israeli Defense Force intelligence analyst who left the barracks to join an ashram in Israel.
``Military service turns good young Israelis into corrupt and insensitive people,'' Waisman says. ``We're forced to follow orders and do and see horrible things that no young person should be involved with. If you want your soul to survive the anxiety and depression of Israel, you leave for Goa.''
Jerusalem to Goa
The long march from the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem to Curlie's bar in the rocks overlooking Anjuna Beach would probably challenge Moses. Lapsed Israelis say it often requires skirting Indian visas, residency permits and making side trips to ``friendly'' Indian consulates in Beijing and Chiang Mai, Thailand. Some fly to Sri Lanka and jump a boat for the short ride across Pamban Channel, blending in among locals who are mostly exempt from Indian immigration checks.
``It's easy to pull off,'' says Anjuna Christian, a 66- year-old Frenchman who renamed himself after the beach he has lived on since moving here in 1977. ``The Israelis are Goa's next generational wave. They're coming no matter who likes it or not.''
Those who manage to secure a legitimate visa from the Indian Consulate in Tel Aviv pay $629 for a round trip that begins with a rickety bus ride to Amman and a Gulf Air flight to Bahrain and Mumbai. From there it's a sweltering and crowded nine-hour train ride to Panaji, Goa's capital.
`Empty Place'
The cost of deliverance is initially underwritten by the Israeli Defense Force. Combat veterans leave the army with a maximum cash bonus of $2,100. Combat support staff walk away with $1,800. Everyone else pockets $1,452.
On the beach, life is cheap and flea-ridden.
A room with a plank bed and a pink mosquito net costs $5 a night or $11 for three people. Sleeping under a fragrant cashew tree is free. Kitchens with names like the Outback Indian Israeli Restaurant come with Hebrew-speaking Hindus who ladle vegetarian fare for a few cents a plate.
``A lot of us either never served in the army or left it more than a decade ago,'' says Asaf Rottenberg, a 30-year-old waiter who abandoned his job at Tel Aviv's LaLa Land restaurant. ``People my age come here because Israel is an empty place.''
Drug Use
Historically, foreigners looking to sate their spiritual appetites begin at STARCO, an Anjuna hotel and restaurant that for 30 years has been celebrated as Goa's hippie headquarters. The sign on the roof still advertises ``Booze, Food & Shelter,'' dished out in that order by Swedish Maggie, who arrived in Anjuna from Stockholm 24 years ago and never left.
``You must respect the people in the country where you go,'' Maggie says while a young Indian boy massages her feet in the garden. ``The Israelis don't. They're real bad, causing trouble and getting too heavy in the drug-smuggling scene.''
``I'm not concerned about the drug use,'' says Indian Industry Minister Nath. ``The presence of Muslims in India is also not a concern. India is not just the world's biggest democracy, it's the world's rowdiest democracy.''
For Breznitz, a psychologist who once worked for the U.S. National Institutes of Health, karma kosher is more than a curious national crotchet with stark parallels to the American and European hippies who preceded the Israelis to Goa during the 1960s and early 1970s.
Brooklyn Connection
``It's dangerous,'' Breznitz says. ``There are hordes of young Israelis moving around India and too many of them fail to blend in and look down on the locals.''
Breznitz's apprehension can be heard during conversations on the porch of a crumbling stone villa in Anjuna. It's from this old Portuguese house where Rabbi Meir Alfasi, 22 and an envoy of the powerful Brooklyn-based Hassidic group Chabad- Lubavitch, cheerfully spends his days tending two goats, three chickens and riding a motor scooter equipped with walkie-talkies around Goa, trying to bring Jews back to Judaism.
As Alfasi sees the scene, the 40,000 Jews wandering through India are prisoners in a new Babylonian Captivity.
``India is the lowest place on Earth, an impure place in the middle of idolatry'' Alfasi says. ``Lots of idols and lots of Jews looking to be assimilated in the local culture. Our mission is to prevent that from happening.''
`Big Draw'
The Chabad outpost, which includes a kosher kitchen and a room for a synagogue that holds Goa's only Torah, opened its doors in 2000. A dozen Jews for Saturday service is considered a good crowd. The chocolate cake is delightful.
``It's a big draw,'' Alfasi smiles.
Alfasi says Israelis generally remain in India for five to 10 years, adding that the Indian government is now quietly trying to help him reduce that time by limiting the number of visas it issues to Israelis and the period they can legally remain in the country.
``It will be hard for them to find us here, Meir,'' says Yomtov Yoni, 23, an air-conditioner repairman and Israeli air force fireman whom Alfasi is trying to bring back into the fold.
``India is huge,'' Yoni adds, straddling a motorcycle. ``Israel is the size of Anjuna Beach. We are free here, Meir.'' ``You see, the situation is not so good,'' Alfasi says, stringing flower necklaces around a 12-foot-high menorah and preparing a Friday Shabbat dinner under the stars.
Goa Gil
Dancing alone atop a hill behind the nearby village of Arambol, 2,500 miles (4,022 kilometers) south of Mount Sinai, a young Israeli man with a mane of curly hair quotes the scripture according to Goa Gil, a roadie for the San Francisco band the Sons of Champlain who landed here in 1969 and transformed himself into a guru.
``The psychedelic revolution never really stopped,'' reads the gospel according to Goa Gil. ``It just had to go halfway round the world to the end of a dirt road on a deserted beach, and there it was allowed to evolve and mutate, without government pressures.''
As dawn breaks on Saturday, holy cows, Toyota taxis and sacred elephants clog the filthy, packed-mud path that coils through Arambol's slums, market stalls and genuine Indian massage parlors. The vapor of beer, saffron and breakfast hashish overwhelm the human chaos in the early morning heat.
Indian Healer
Near the bottom of the beach road, a few dirt alleys down from an Israeli tattoo parlor, is the crisp white tent office of Ashok Kumar, a fifth-generation ayurvedic Indian healer.
The marquee above Kumar's turbaned head guarantees a remedy for a long list of afflictions that range from ``leprosy'' to ``typhoid.'' There are potions to relieve ``sexual disorders'' and spices to cure ``madness.'' The line of patients is long.
``I see two or three Israelis every week,'' the 28-year-old Kumar says. ``They all have the same problem: madness. Their nervous systems are spent and they need their brains rebalanced.''
The cost of sanity is $16 to $35, depending on severity.
Back in the cool of his Haifa home, Breznitz likens the treatment to emancipation.
``They feel entitled to clean their heads from Israel,'' Breznitz says. ``I hope that those who come back return with a desire to change Israel, but a lot of people don't like new ideas and are frightened about what these youngsters represent for the future.''
To contact the reporter on this story: A. Craig Copetas in Goa, India, at ccopetas@bloomberg.net
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1196847392681&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
A 34-year-old convicted pedophile was under arrest Thursday on suspicion of sexually abusing an 11-year-old boy, police said.
The suspect, a resident of northern Israel who was apprehended at Jerusalem's central bus station while serving a suspended sentence, confessed to abusing the boy and five other children, Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.
The child molester had previously served a seven-year sentence for sexually abusing a girl, and was serving a two-year suspended sentence when he was arrested Thursday.
The pedophile was remanded in custody by a Jerusalem court for five days.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1196847393079&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
A 75-year-old Jerusalem woman was assaulted at the entrance to her city home by a would-be robber on Thursday, in the latest in a series of attacks on seniors in the country, police said.
The elderly woman was attacked by a 20-year-old suspected Jewish assailant after she opened the door of her central Jerusalem home, Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.
The assailant fled the scene after the woman's husband came to her assistance.
The senior, who was lightly injured in the late-afternoon incident, was evacuated to Jerusalem's Sha'are Tzedek Hospital.
Last month, a 79-year-old woman who lived alone was savagely assaulted and robbed in her Jerusalem apartment.
Just another example of how Shmarya is a complete fraud and joke.
When Shmarya was criticized a few months ago for eating a restaurant under Steinberg's fraudulent hashgocho, he went beserk against the critic and found a phoney excuse to ban him from the blog. SHmarya claims he called a rabbi at the OU who told him that Steinberg's standards are ok. What a liar! Like the critic pointed out right before getting booted, Shmarya has another set of "principles" when he wants to stuff his face. The restaurant that Shmarya fressed in is named "Buddha", the name of an avoda zara. It is not fleishig but Shmarya while very defensive said there are no problems with Steinberg's meat restaurants either.
Steinberg is a charlatan, who like Lipa Brenner and Israel Belsky, is misappropriating the name of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a1474/News/New_York.html
Corned Beef And Pickles, 24/7
Further uptown and more modest, the Second Avenue Deli reopens after two years.
As before, the deli is certified kosher by an Orthodox rabbi, Israel Steinberg. But Jeremy Lebewohl said he does not expect strictly kosher clients, including most students at nearby Stern College, because it is open Saturdays.
Guess what type of life insurance policies Shlomo Dwek is cramming half a million dollars into per annum?
Most probably whole life/universal contracts which are beyond the reach of bankruptcy courts. OJ
Simpson has millions in his. I still thought there were limitations how much one could put in per year. Unless he has a bunch, maybe 6 of them?
Terrible.
Someone claims on a blog that one of the Spinka rebbes was involved in smuggling watches.
http://ungaren.blogspot.com/2007/12/spinka-rebbe-arrested-for-massive-fraud.html
This isn't the first time Spinka has been involved in gross corruption. The following story is bizzare because it involves former Israeli Prime Minister Sharon and his soon-to-be defunct Kadima party.
When he formed the party back in 2005, Sharon was looking for a vehicle to launder incoming donations without being subjected to scrutiny by the Israeli authorities. Sharon somehow got in contact with the Spinka Mosdos in Boro Park and a deal was cut to launder the money through it with the understanding that the aforementioned Yeshiva would get a cut for every dollar that came in.
Read about it here in Hebrew
http://hydepark.hevre.co.il/topic.asp?topic_id=1580494
חשיפת השחיתות של שרון קשור ל... "ספינקא"
הערב בחדשות ערוץ 10
פרשת ערב ההתרמה המושחתת של אריק שרון
בביקורו בארה"ב עם שועי עולם
שעורר גלים רבים בתקשורת
מקבלת עוד תפנית מעניינת
הערב, מגלה העיתונאי שחשף את הסיפור, רביב דרוקר
שכתובת התרומה היא לעמותה מוכרת לצורכי מס בארה"ב
העמותה היא של מוסדות ספינקא בניו-יורק
http://news.walla.co.il/?w=//783083
חשד שתרומות שגויסו לשרון נמסרו לעמותה חרדית
יום שלישי, 20 בספטמבר 2005, 20:06 מאת: חדשות 10 ישראל 10
לעמותה ישיבה בניו יורק וסניף בבני ברק. קבלת הכסף מהווה, לכאורה, עבירה על חוקי המס בארה"ב
התרומות שגויסו מיהודים אמריקאים בארוחת הערב עם ראש הממשלה, אריאל שרון, בניו יורק הועברו לעמותה חרדית - כך דווח הערב בחדשות 10.
לפי הידיעה, העמותה מפעילה בית כנסת וישיבה בניו-יורק, ויש לה סניף בבני-ברק. במכתב שחולק למוזמנים לארוחת הערב נאמר, כי הכסף יועבר ל"ארגון ללא מטרות רווח שפועל בכל רחבי ישראל, ויעיל במיוחד בהבאת אנשים לקלפיות".
קבלת הכסף מהווה, לכאורה, עבירה של העמותה החרדית על חוקי המס בארה"ב, שכן בהיותה עמותה חינוכית שהתרומות אליה פטורות ממס, נאסר עליה להעביר כספים לפעילות פוליטית.
אתמול פורסם בחדשות 10, כי שרון השתתף בארוחת ערב בניו יורק בה נדרש כל זוג משתתפים לתרום 10,000 דולר לקמפיין שלו - בעוד שחוק המפלגות מתיר למועמד לראשות ממשלה לגייס לצורך ההתמודדות בפריימריס עד 7,800 דולר לזוג. בארוחה נאספו יותר מ-150 אלף דולר.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jqk_DAUDgb4&feature=related
Did UOJ put this on YouTube to make me look bad?
Where's Shafran? We have to start cranking out op-ed pieces again to deny the severity of what's going on this week.
I am against 95% kickbacks of any kind. As a matter of fact, when I was employed by YTT, I kept 100% of the money that Margulies cut me each week.
I wonder if Belsky cheated me out of any money we were supposed to split from Fuchs.
Does anyone know if they use the money laundering pipeline from LA to Israel?
Janitor describing the Satmar savages on YouTube:
It's like watching National Geographic: the Satmar Animal Kingdom
I don't know what the big draw with watches is that would interest the Spinka putz and others.
There was a gang in Lakewood of Hungarian lowlives from Boro Park. Some were never officially accepted to yeshiva. They just told the shadchonim they were learning there. They had a hideout on Monmouth Ave where they were running illegal and graymarket businesses. I think Bully Lesser was also involved with them. Bully is currently doing time in Federal lockup for various genayvos & frauds.
I don't think Margo could get away with squirreling money into life insurance policies like Dwek and OJ. If Margo is going to be on the hook where the payout is to abuse victims it should be different. Even though OJ is a murderer he was only nailed for civil liability.
You saw how they waited to catch the Israeli lawyer? Maybe they figure he did the same for the other mosdos. He's gonna be the squeeze man on this deal.
From BigHeadDC Blog: "In a pre-taped interview set to air on tonight’s CBS News, Katie Couric will ask Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards about the importance of marital fidelity. His answers were recorded before the National Enquirer published its expose regarding his alleged love child with former campaign staffer Rielle Hunter. In the following exchange, note how he artfully weaves and dodges her questions…"
http://www.yasharbooks.com/JOonBlogs.pdf
I love this Jewish Observer piece. It calls on the Orthodox community to have a "zero tolerance" policy for blogs.
Who is the author, Tzvi Frankel?
I think Tzvi Frankel might be another pen name for Dr. Bungalow Putz.
Notice how the JO announces him as making his "first appearance" in the magazine.
He wouldn't be the first.
Avi Yishai = Pinny Lipschutz
YeshivaWorld = Pipsqueak Eckstein
Check out the video here.
http://wcbstv.com/seenon/brooklyn.grand.rebbe.2.615095.html
There was shock and disbelief in the tight-knit Hasidic community after news spread that Naftali Tzi Weisz, 59, was arrested in Los Angeles along with his executive assistant, identified as 60-year-old Moshe Zigelman.
Weisz heads a Spinka sect of Hasidic Jews -- one of about 10 groups that trace their roots back to a town in the Ukraine by that name -- in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn. To put it in perspective, the Spinka sect is much smaller compared to larger sects such as the Satmar or Lubavitchers.
It was unclear whether the defendants had retained attorneys yet.
http://yudelstake.blogspot.com/2007/12/re-alle-mealmart-s-american-beef.html#c1032269215218937247
The Vaad Hakashrus of Atlanta is aware of the problems and does not allow any Rubashkin in town.
The local Chabad shluchim also agree Rubashkin is bad news and they won't eat it either.
Great. Thanks to UOJ's blog there are now all kinds of people driving down East 31st St between M & N who are slowing down to take a look at the upstairs of my house.
The Neuhoff residence is off limits I tell you!
That was a typo in the Jewish Observer. There is zero tolerance for the gantze internet - not just blogs.
UOJ graciously offered a while back to ferret out the lowlife who is selling fake mezuzos to Judaica stores and shuls in much of the United States if he is provided with more information. As reported earlier, the fraudster keeps opening new shell companies to conceal himself.
After an investigation it turns out that it's almost impossible to trace him. The stuff changes hands many times through multi-layer middlemen.
The only sign to watch out for are blue stickers with a bogus name of a kashrus organization for Sta"m that doesn't exist but is very similar sounding to legitimate ones.
The Spinka rabbis have a long history of criminal activities from smuggling watches to getting involved in the nursing home scandal. It came to a point that when I was a kid we had a joke.
A young boy was at the Spinka shul for shabbos. however some boys did not go to the rebbe to give him a good shabbos. The Spinka Rebbe said come and give me a good shabbos, are you scared of me? The boys answered, yes we are scared of you, because we are afraid you will but us in a freezer.
My husband is in the money laundering detection business advising banks & financial institutions, & it aggravates him so much to see frum yidden get themselves into this mess. He knows exactly how it was caught. When he first read it on VIN last night he was so upset.
His advice...DON'T DO IT!!! The govt AND THE BANKS are investigating Charities more & more, & there'll be more arrests & more korbonos unless this practice stops. The Mosdos think everyone benefits, but it is illegal.
You can't steal from & cheat the government & expect to get away with it. Now he's on his way to work dreading being asked questions by his colleagues. What a Chillul Hashem! Not to mention the stupidity of the Mosdos & the donors.
It's terrible that the Rebbe is in jail; there's no guarantee he even knew what was going on, but as the head of the Mosod he is presumably the bottom line.
Just look at what happens when Mosdos do these things!! PLEASE STOP!! DON'T START!! Your organization will still be able to carry on.
In the course of his work, my husband has found some really nasty stuff, not involving Yidden B"H, but you'd better believe that there will probably be more "successful" investigations.
Please don't be naive & say well, maybe the government made a mistake. They don't make mistakes in money-laundering. You have NO IDEA of the extent of their sophisticated investigative powers, contacts, & software & what (& WHERE!!) they find this stuff. The Regulators are putting increased pressure on Banks to monitor the activities of charities as a result of Muslim organizations chanelling $$ to terrorist organizations through registered charities.
Please note that this extra scrutiny is across the board & is not limited to any religious group. So Jewish charities come under the same scrutiny as any other organization.
The Banks are under increasing pressure to prove they are monitoring to the required level. As a result, they file reports where there is the slightest suspicion of unusual activity. It is a little known fact that banks do NOT have to prove that money-laundering is taking place. The law clearly states that banks only have to report "activity which is significantly unusual or suspicious." This is called Defensive Filing. Then the government takes over.
My husband is certain many Mosdos are so naive & unprofessional they don't realize what they are doing is illegal. Please remember: ignorance of the law is no excuse.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia
(Reuters) - A former funeral home owner has been charged with fraud for allegedly giving families cremated ashes that were not the remains of their loved ones, Canadian police said on Wednesday.
Police began investigating a defunct funeral home in Princeton, British Columbia, in 2006 after receiving complaints from families in the small town, who said they believed they had received -- and in some cases buried -- the wrong cremated remains.
The families discovered the problem when contacted by another funeral home that had received 56 urns of cremated human remains from the Princeton-Similkameen Funeral Services after it shut down in 2005 for operating without a license.
The urns were labeled as being unclaimed by the families who had paid for cremations and thought they already had the ashes. Police spent 19 months investigating the case and determining which remains went to which family.
The former funeral home's owner has been charged with 34 counts of fraud, and two counts each of neglect of duty and "offering an indignity" to human remains, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said.
Most of the 56 urns have been reunited with the proper families, but some still remain unclaimed.
"We don't know if that's because there aren't any family members around any more to claim them or what," said RCMP Constable Julie Rattee. "It's a tragic case."
(Reporting by Allan Dowd; Editing by Peter Galloway)
Two Israeli Banks Accused of Sending Millions of Dollars to Hamas Entities
Arab Bank Turns Tables on Israel
By Marc Perelman
Wed. Dec 12, 2007
Two of Israel’s biggest banks are mired in a court battle over allegations that they conducted transactions that ultimately benefited Hamas and its affiliates.
Bank Hapoalim and Israel Discount Bank are facing charges in New York federal court that they violated American anti-terrorism finance laws by allegedly serving as a conduit for Hamas. The accusations come from the Arab Bank of Jordan, which was first accused of similar charges and is now striking back by throwing the charges at the Israeli banks.
The Israeli banks “initiated or substantially participated in many of the very same acts and transactions complained of by the plaintiffs and had at least equal if not greater opportunity than Arab Bank to know of the alleged wrongful nature of such acts and transactions,” the Arab Bank said in its complaint.
On November 30, the Israeli banks jointly filed motions to dismiss the Arab Bank’s complaint, claiming that the Arab Bank had failed to provide evidence of the Israeli banks’ intent to support terrorism-related entities. But in September, it was revealed that nearly three-quarters of a million dollars made its way from Israel Discount Bank to Hamas’s main armed group.
Over the past few years, the United States and other governments have asked the financial community to monitor suspicious transactions and customers more carefully. The scrutiny on Israel underscores the difficulty in prosecuting these cases given the intricacies of international banking.
“Banks have become increasingly vulnerable for a broader range of activities,” said Peter Djinis, a former senior official at the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network who is now in private practice. “There is growing emphasis put by governments on the need for banks to pay more attention to their customers, even indirect ones.”
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