WASHINGTON (AFP) - US grocery chain Trader Joe's said Monday it would stop selling food imported from China due to customers' concerns about the products' safety.
"Our customers have voiced concerns about products from this region and we have listened," Trader Joe's spokeswoman Alison Mochizuki said in a statement.
"All single ingredient food items sourced from mainland China are scheduled to be out of our stores by April 1," she said.
"We will continue to source products from other regions until our customers feel as confident as we do about the quality and safety of Chinese products."
A series of consumer scares last year involving harmful products from major exporter China, including seafood, cat food, medicines and toys, led to mass product recalls and the tightening of US safety regulations.
Trader Joe's, which focuses partly on selling organic food, was founded in California in the 1960s.
142 comments:
A bunch of hypocrites! Trader Joe's has no problem selling feces infested, high sodium, treife Rubashkin turkeys, even after all the e-mails detailing the USDA report plus the union demonstrations.
I love Trader Joe's. Decent prices for healthy food that's tough to find elsewhere( well, except for Aaron's Worst, that is).
Nothin' but the Emmes
WHY Is nothing being done by the Monsey Community to oust Mordechai Gimpel Wolmark from Shaarai Torah.
Wolmark is another pedophile like Mondrowitz. He is a danger to society. Monsey has suffered enough scandals. Why has Rabbi Leib Tropper and the other rabbonim, who are aware of this beast and what he does to his young students, not done anything about this?
Mordechai Wolmark the pedophile child molester must be ousted forever.
The New York Post should do a feature story on Ohel Family Services major profit center the domestic violence unit. An investigation should be made into why David Mandel hired Joan Hertz as a social worker in this program.
(CNN) -- A senior Hezbollah commander suspected in some of the highest-profile international terrorist attacks of the last 25 years has died in an explosion in Syria, Hezbollah TV said Wednesday.
Imad Mughniyeh died Tuesday in an explosion in a residential section of the Syrian capital, Damascus, according to Hezbollah's television station, Al-Manar.
Hezbollah blamed Israel & UOJ for Mughniyeh's death, but Israeli officials denied they were involved.
"Israel rejects the attempt by terror groups to attribute to it any involvement in this incident," an Israeli government spokesman said.
Western intelligence agencies long suspected Mughniyeh in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed 63 people, according to a 2001 CNN report. He also was suspected in the truck bombing that year of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, an attack that killed 241 people and preceded the U.S. military withdrawal from Lebanon.
The FBI listed Hezbollah's Mughniyeh as one of its Most Wanted Terrorists, blaming him for his role in the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847, which gripped the attention of TV viewers in the United States and around the world for more than two weeks.
Hijackers seized the plane as it traveled from Athens, Greece, to Rome, Italy, forcing it to land at the Beirut airport. A U.S. Navy diver, Robert Dean Stethem, was shot and killed during the 17-day ordeal.
The FBI says on its Web site that Mughniyeh was wanted "for his role in planning and participating in the June 14, 1985, hijacking of a commercial airliner which resulted in the assault on various passengers and crew members, and the murder of one United States citizen."
Before the September 11 terrorist attacks, U.S. officials had blamed Mughniyeh for the deaths of more Americans around the world than any other terror suspect, CNN reported in 2001.
"There was a massive intelligence effort to locate Mughniyeh for over 20 years," Magnus Ranstorp, a professor at the University of St. Andrews Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, told CNN that year.
U.S. authorities tried to seize Mughniyeh on at least two occasions -- in France in 1986 and in Saudi Arabia in 1995
Ginseng Tea
Products:
Instant Korean Ginseng Tea
Company:
Uncle Bill Trading Inc.- Toronto, Canada
Issue:
This dairy product bears an unauthorized OU symbol. Consumers spotting this product are requested to contact the Orthodox Union at 212-613-8241 or via email at kashalerts@ou.org.
"Rav Elyashiv’s gabbaim have been as of lately providing him with all the information that is being posted here at UOJ."
Rubashkin is Treif.
Rav Sternbuch’s words by Rabbi Daniel Eidensohn.
Proposed Conversion Process Threatens Our Existence
We strongly protest against the Israeli governments decision (unfortunately supported by the religious Sefardim) to establish a committee to make conversions easier.
This government effort is being made despite the fact that up until now thousands have been converted in disregard of the halacha. Now the government wants tens of thousands converted and at greater speed.
To accomplish this greater quantity and speed of conversion they have established a committee together with the Sefardic Chief Rabbi and HaRav Druckman (who is well known for converting hundred’s and thousand’s not in accordance with the requirements of halacha). Anybody with basic intelligence knows that the Russian Christians who are converted are not interested in fully observing the mitzvos.
In fact their motivation for conversion is simply to acquire the status of Jew because of social pressures or to obtain additional benefits. Not even one in a thousand of these gerim meet the requirements of the halacha. Therefore if until know there were thousands who converted against the halachic requirements, now we can anticipate tens of thousands of problematic gerim.
In addition they will all now have the stamp of approval of the rabbonim mentioned above – certifying that all was done according to the “spirit” of halacha. This is truly a great disaster. In fact from the destruction of the Second Temple until now there has been nothing comparable to this.
The Israeli government has offered a “solution” for this problem. They have offered to create a registry of those goyim who want to be “Jews” without conversion and the acceptance of mitzvos. They want to record on their Israeli identity cards and marriage certificates that these people are “Jews according to the standards of the government.” In this way these “gerim” will be distinct and separate from us.
In other words they propose that the major limbs of the body will be amputated but they assure us that the body will remain alive and very strong! Their proposal needs additional thought and clarification.
However even though it is problematic it is still better than what the rabbis are trying to do. In fact these Zionist rabbis and the religious parties - that still believe that the Israeli government is an integral part of the beginning of the Messianic Era and adheres to the spirit of the halacha – don’t agree to deal with this reality.
However little by little, day by day these “Jews” will assimilate into our midst. The holy Shechina will depart from us. That is because it doesn’t rest amongst us except when we preserve our pedigree as our Sages (Kiddushin 70b) have told us. Consequently we are in great and horrible danger because of these developments.
“I call out but there is no one who responds” (Yeshaya 66:4). “O that they would be wise so that they understand” (Devarim 32:29) that in the near future the land of Israel and its inhabitants will be in great danger. Anyone who is intelligent needs to simply open his eyes and he will understand the danger these proposal entail – and will distance himself from these compromisers.
G-d should give understanding to these mistaken people and they should merit to do His will and save us from these perilous times that are coming soon. We should merit the complete redemption – it should come speedily in the near future.
In the 1970's, Rav Shach Zt'l opposed the Mi Hayudi issue; he said all it does is put the conversions in the hands of incompetent 'orthodox' Rabbis; if the reform do it, at least we know the're bad; now no one will know.
Rabbi Elyashiv is content with his gabbaim keeping a continious watch over UOJ as it keeps them informed as to what is going on in the outside world, and because while his crew who have not much to do are busy all day and night with UOJ, it keeps them off those shmutz websites like the type that Avrahom Mondrowitz and Mordechia Wolmark enjoy.
The crumbling and disintegration of the "bais din" system, is unbearable to watch. The corruption is beyond belief! There is NO bais din besides the revamped RCA that I would even consider.
Someone should fax the above comment to Rav Elyashiv.
Please no need to fax anything to us. We are reading the comments as they post.
They have a clean reputation and don't let thugs like Mendel Epstein & Gershon Spiegel get away with any garbage.
Who are the incompetant Orthodox rabbis that rav Schach was concerned about?
We could not extradite the Hezbollah terrorist because the treaty did not include such crimes as shooting & blowing up American soldiers.
After we received legal clarification a week ago, DA Hynes was working vigourously to bring Mr. Mughniyeh to justice but we have now been overcome by events.
http://yudelstake.blogspot.com/2008/02/kashrus-update.html
NOTE: The Concord and Eden Halls (Williamsburg) under Rav Gornish have their own set of problems or disasters waiting to happen - That's why people eat before they go there
What about Machon Lehoraah????
Thy're not Corrupt??? HA HA HA HA HA. Don't be fooled because they share one or two enemies with the public.
Remember GELTZHEILER (Just listen to that name)and his buddies opened shop this as a business to make parnassah for themselves. Both are they corrupt. The truth plays no importance by them.
They are more dangerous then my crime organization, since everyone knows we are dirty con artists and you can buy us off.
But Mechon L'Horaah still has some fools like you that think they are straight. So let me tell you, and you can believe me this one time (cause I am not getting paid by anyone to write this), Mechon L'Horaah has been corrupt since their inception. Maybe I should say conception.
Even the biggest critics, from what I've heard, say that Dayan Rosenberger is ehrenst. So at least if he adjucating your din Torah, you have no reason to fear.
Even with Agudas Haganovim, Hersh Ginsberg and friends might be nuts but it's fort R' Moishe Feinstein's old beis din and there are a couple of honest rabbonim who still use their name.
A UOJ PUBLIC SERVICE ARTICLE!
------------------------
All Things Considered, February 11, 2008 · Author Eric G. Wilson has come to realize he was born to the blues, and he has made peace with his melancholy state.
But it took some time, as he writes in his new book, a polemic titled Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy.
At the behest of well-meaning friends, I have purchased books on how to be happy. I have tried to turn my chronic scowl into a bright smile. I have attempted to become more active, to get away from my dark house and away from my somber books and participate in the world of meaningful action. … I have contemplated getting a dog. I have started eating salads. I have tried to discipline myself in nodding knowingly. … I have undertaken yoga. I have stopped yoga and gone into tai chi. I have thought of going to psychiatrists and getting some drugs. I have quit all of this and then started again and then once more quit. Now I plan to stay quit. The road to hell is paved with happy plans.
Wilson has embraced his inner gloom, and he wishes more people would do the same.
The English professor at Wake Forest University wants to be clear that he is not "romanticizing" clinical depression and that he believes it is a serious condition that should be treated.
But he worries that today's cornucopia of antidepressants — used to treat even what he calls "mild to moderate sadness" — might make "sweet sorrow" a thing of the past.
"And if that happens, I wonder, what will the future hold? Will our culture become less vital? Will it become less creative?" he asks.
Wilson talks to Melissa Block about why the world needs melancholy — how it pushes people to think about their relation to the world in new ways and ultimately to relate to the world in a richer, deeper way.
He also explores the link between sadness, artistic creation and depression — which has led to suicide in many well-known cases: Virginia Woolf, Vincent Van Gogh, Hart Crane and Ernest Hemingway, for instance.
Wilson says perhaps this is "just part of the tragic nature of existence, that sometimes there's a great price to be paid for great works or beauty, for truth."
"We can look at the lives of Dylan Thomas, Virginia Woolf, Hart Crane and others and lament the fact that they suffered so. Yet at the same time, we're buoyed, we're overjoyed by the works they left behind," Wilson says.
The husband and father of a young daughter also acknowledges that melancholy is "difficult terrain to negotiate in domestic situations." He says there are certainly times when his family hoped he would be "happier," and yet they would not want him to pretend to feel something he doesn't.
Wilson says that by taking his melancholy seriously, his family ultimately will get to know him more deeply and develop a more intimate relationship with him.
"To get to know your partner, your spouse, your friend fully, you really have to find a way to embrace the dark as well as the light. Only then can you know that person," he says.
Excerpt: 'Against Happiness'
by Eric G. Wilson
Conclusion
The gene pool — before and beyond time — froths and sloshes. What flops up onto the temporal shores is a matter of chance, a product of the waves' whims. At some point this teeming reservoir of DNA spumes forth a saturnine gene, a double helix destined to produce melancholy dispositions. From this instant onward what we know as human history begins: that striving, seemingly endless, toward an ungraspable perfection, that tragic effort to reach what exceeds the grasp, to fail magnificently.
This gene, this melancholy gene, has proved the code for innovation. It has produced over the centuries our resplendent towers, yearning heavenward. It has created our great epics, god-hungry. It has concocted our memorable symphonies, as tumultuously beautiful as the first ocean.
Without this sorrowful genome, these sublimities would have remained in the netherworld of nonexistence. Indeed, without this genetic information, sullen and ambitious, what we see as culture in general, that empyreal realm of straining ideas, might have never arisen from the mere quest for survival, from simple killing and eating.
We can picture this in the primitive world. While the healthy bodies of the tribe were out mindlessly hacking beasts or other humans, the melancholy soul remained behind brooding in a cave or under a tree. There he imagined new structures, oval and amber, or fresh verbal rhythms, sacred summonings, or songs superior to even those of the birds.
Envisioning these things, and more, this melancholy malingerer became just as useful for his culture as did the hunters and the gatherers for theirs. He pushed his world ahead. He moved it forward. He dwelled always in the insecure realm of the avant-garde.
This primitive visionary was the first of many such avant-garde melancholics. Of course not all innovators are melancholy, and not all melancholy souls are innovative.
However, the scientifically proved relationship between genius and depression, between gloom and greatness suggests that the majority of our cultural innovators, ranging from the ancient dreamer in the bush to the more recent Dadaist in the city, have grounded their originality in the melancholy mood. We can of course by now understand why.
Melancholia pushes against the easy "either/or" of the status quo. It thrives in unexplored middle ground between oppositions, in the "both/and." It fosters fresh insights into relationships between oppositions, especially that great polarity life and death. It encourages new ways of conceiving and naming the mysterious connections between antinomies. It returns us to innocence, to irony, that ability, temporary, to play in potential without being constrained to the actual. Such respites from causality refresh our relationship to the world, grant us beautiful vistas, energize our hearts and our minds.
Indeed, the world is much of the time boring, controlled as it is by staid habits. It seems overly familiar, tired, repetitious. Then along comes what Keats calls the melancholy fit, and suddenly the planet again turns interesting. The veil of familiarity falls away. There before us flare bracing possibilities. We are called to forge untested links to our environments. We are summoned to be creative.
Given these virtues of melancholia, why are thousands of psychiatrists and psychologists attempting to "cure" depression as if it were a terrible disease? Obviously, those suffering severe depression, suicidal and bordering on psychosis, require serious medications. But what of those millions of people who possess mild to moderate depression? Should these potential visionaries also be asked to eradicate their melancholia with the help of a pill? Should these possible innovators relinquish what might well be their greatest muse, their demons giving birth to angels?
Right now, if the statistics are correct, about 15 percent of Americans are not happy. Soon, perhaps, with the help of psychopharmaceuticals, we shall have no more unhappy people in our country. Melancholics will become unknown.
This would be an unparalleled tragedy, equivalent in scope to the annihilation of the sperm whale or the golden eagle. With no more melancholics, we would live in a world in which everyone simply accepted the status quo, in which everyone would simply be content with the given.
This would constitute a dystopia of ubiquitous placid grins, a nightmare worthy of Philip K. Dick, a police state of Pollyannas, a flatland that offers nothing new under the sun. Why are we pushing toward such a hellish condition?
The answer is simple: fear. Most hide behind the smile because they are afraid of facing the world's complexity, its vagueness, its terrible beauties. If they stay safely ensconced behind their painted grins, then they won't have to encounter the insecurities attendant upon dwelling in possibility, those anxious moments when one doesn't know this from that, when one could suddenly become almost anything at all.
Even though this anxiety, usually over death, is in the end exhilarating, a call to be creative, it is in the beginning rather horrifying, a feeling of hovering in an unpredictable abyss. Most immediately flee from this situation. They try to lose themselves in the laughing masses, hoping the anxiety will never again visit them. They don inauthenticity as a mask, a disguise protecting them from the abyss.
To foster a society of total happiness is to concoct a culture of fear. Do we really want to give away our courage for mere mirth? Are we ready to relinquish our most essential hearts for a good night's sleep, a season of contentment? We must ignore the seductions of our blissed-out culture and somehow hold to our sadness. We must find a way, difficult though it is, to be who we are, sullenness and all.
Suffering the gloom, inevitable as breath, we must further accept this fact that the world hates: we are forever incomplete, but fragments of some ungraspable whole. Our unfinished natures — we are never pure actualities but always vague potentials — make life a constant struggle, a bout with the persistent unknown. But this extension into the abyss is also our salvation. To be but a fragment is always to strive for something beyond oneself, something transcendent — an unexplored possibility, an unmapped avenue. This striving is always an act of freedom, of choosing one road instead of another. Though this labor is arduous — it requires constant attention to our mysterious and shifting interiors — it is also ecstatic, an almost infinite sounding of the exquisite riddles of Being.
To be against happiness, to avert contentment, is to be close to joy, to embrace ecstasy. Incompleteness is the call to life. Fragmentation is freedom. The exhilaration of never knowing anything fully is that you can perpetually imagine sublimities beyond reason. On the margins of the known is the agile edge of existence. This is the elation of circumference. This is the rapture, burning slow, of finishing a book that can never be completed, a flawed and conflicted text, vexed as twilight.
Excerpted from Against Happiness by Eric G. Wilson. Published in January 2008 by Sarah Crichton Books, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
Someone points out to me that the notarized document contains misleading wording by the Belsky gang. If you read the earlier letter from R' Pesach Lerner, it's clear that the Belsky gang interfered even though Rabbi Wynne was willing to do the right thing. When the Belsky gang was forced to back down by National Council of Young Israel, they created the impression that they only got involved because Rabbi Wynne was already a de facto mesarev, which is not true. I am surprised that Young Israel and their lawyers allowed the Belsky gang to write such a dishonest letter of withdrawal.
Speaking about gerus, what's the story with Rabbi Fund in Flatbush? He says he asks his shaylos to Belsky.
NEWS ALERT
from The Wall Street Journal
Feb. 13, 2008
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it never inspected a Chinese facility that made the active ingredient of a Baxter International blood-thinner that is now under investigation. The blood-thinner probe started after reports of hundreds of allergic reactions and four deaths among its users.
An FDA spokeswoman said the plant making the active ingredient for the drug heparin "was supposed to be inspected" but "due to human error, and inadequate information technology systems, a pre-approval inspection, which would normally be conducted, was not." The agency has inspected a facility in Cherry Hill, N.J., where the finished version of the drug was made, she said.
This is getting complicated. Belsky is also a member of the Agudas Haganovim Brooklyn branch headed by Ralbag which explains why Hersh Ginsberg was involved against Young Israel. Krauss & Leibowitz are also with Agudas.
And the reason why slimebag Belsky had to harass Eli Greenwald privately is because all organized batei din prohibit a dayan from taking a case when he knows the baalei davar.
All records of Agudas Haganovim are under lock & key of Ginsberg and a 2nd set of copies are in Ralbag's house. I wonder if Fanny is trying to get her hands on them.
Why are you taking aim at China's imports. There should be a call for a boycott against all companies using the OU supervision and a demand to the big corporations to drop the OU until Belsky drops dead or alternatively until the OU drops Belsky.
It's no big deal that Belsky sits on 3 different beis dins. As long as you provide a fire hydrant for him to pish on, he's game.
That lady from the West Coast paid a pretty penny for Belsky, Krauss & Ralbag to put out the fraud siruv on Rabbi Wynne.
Agudas Haganovim charges more than any other beis din for a siruv at $1000 a pop.
Rabbi Fund is a nice guy. If he had not read the updates on Adolf Belsky he wouldn't know the bastard is a nazi. I can't blame him for what he did in the past. However, I believe that today he is well aware that Yisroel Belsky cannot be trusted even on the Kashrus of bannanas.
I don't trust Belsky with bananas either.
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:vA07nmO4RDoJ:www.rabbileff.net/shiurim/ask/archives.htm+rabbi+belsky+divorce&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=17&gl=us
26. Q. I would like to piggy-back on question #14 regarding drinking coffee from a vending machine. I asked the following question to ou online: A coffee machine that gets the coffee from a little sealed cup that is inserted and then combines it with hot water which then pours out into your cup from one spout. Some of the flavors are kosher and some not, is one permitted to drink a kosher product or not, since the non-kosher flavors comes out from the same place? They answered me as followed: Rabbi Belsky, has ruled that any possible non-kosher ingredient has become Botul. And so if your machine is used for coffee only you may use it to get kosher coffee. What is the Rov's opinion?
Thank you.
Yitzi Padawer,
Staten Island
R' Zev Leff politely rejects the OU/Belsky response in the audio link. He says that you cannot give such a psak unless you know what ingredients are in those flavorings to know if they are the type of ingredients that can become botul.
Ron Jeremy is nebich a Yid.
http://pbskids.org/curiousgeorge/
Belsky must be helping Margo run his banana racket. Whatever the govt donates for free, Margo sells for a profit in the YTT dining room.
If milk from treif cows is mutter then you can zicher mix a safek treif flavoring of milchdik coffee with Rubashkin fleish.
Dr. Randy Shaver from University of Wisconsin had a giluy in a chalom that there is only one tenth of one percent chance that the coffee from a vending machine will become something that you cannot drink after a steak which is more than botul beshishim.
If you're still hungry, please head over to the dining room at 555 Ocean Pkwy to buy some bananas or raisins. I get a cut of the profit from Margulies.
Shafran said it's ok for me to give the tznius workshop at the Agudah Fresser Convention because UOJ is fort a bigger pornographer than me.
Bungalow Putz Neuhoff just tried to rush over to YTT to buy a banana but he got into an accident on the way.
Look who Hamodia hired for their PR campaign as well as their halacha "expert". Shameless Shill Lubinsky:
Brooklyn, NY - Hillary Clinton could be America's next president, but her picture will never appear on the pages of the country's only Jewish daily newspaper.
The English-language version of Hamodia, which touts itself as "The Newspaper of Torah Jewry," does not publish photographs of women because its editorial board believes that pictures of the female form are immodest and displaying them, even in the context of news coverage, would be out of line with Jewish law.
Cringe or laugh, but the English edition of Hamodia -- its forebear started out in Eastern Europe as a religious Yiddish paper in 1910 and was resurrected as a Hebrew publication in Israel in 1950 -- is on the rise: In its decade of existence, the English edition has seen its circulation grow to 45,000 households.
"In the strictest interpretation of halachah, it is a question of modesty," said Menachem Lubinsky, the marketing consultant for Hamodia, when asked about the policy of not running photographs of women.
Lubinsky, who spoke to JTA after the paper's publisher, Ruth Lichtenstein, declined through a publicist, citing modesty reasons, said Clinton wouldn't be the first female leader to be affected by the policy.
"We never featured a picture of Golda Meir," he insisted.
Last week, when the paper covered the presidential primaries and ran a photo of U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), it avoided showing a photo of the former first lady, featuring instead a photo of Bill Clinton stumping for his wife behind a podium with a "Hillary for President" sign.
The policy is not an issue of belittling women, Lubinsky insisted, noting that the paper has female editorial staffers, its stories quote women and Lichtenstein writes unsigned editorials. [JTA]
The policy is not an issue of belittling women, Lubinsky insisted,
----------------------------------
Hey! mr lushtinksky, I dare you to belittle gveret lichtenstein, who rules the place with an iron fist, all the employees are scared to death of her, besides that she is from the gerer rabbinic dynasty so her husband when given an aliya to the torah is called up with the title of moreini.
Still care for the dare.
"all organized batei din prohibit a dayan from taking a case when he knows the baalei davar."
The way that the Igud Haganovim get around that is that Mendel Epstein is not officially part of it even though he runs the whole show. So if Epstein and his kid Yoni want to shake people down on behalf of friends, they do it through the Iggud anyway. Mendel or his kid will try to act as an independent toen when it's all a set up.
The NYPD traffic agent didn't say the whole story. There was nothing wrong with my driving. A UOJ Agent recognized me and ran me off the road.
Belsky defenders are out in force saying that the Las Vegas scandal is primarily Krauss's fault and that there's no proof from Rabbi Lerner's letter that anyone besides Krauss took the money.
According to a YTV insider I know there is a lot of stuff afoot. I personally don't understand how this fellow hates Margo but still likes Belsky, but here's what he is basically saying.
There is anti-Belsky sentiment among at least some of the board at
Torah Vodaas. He suspects that UOJ is in contact with board members he knows to influence them.
The board is bezunder mad about a particular item that is the same reason (he assumes) that the
Agudah doesn't have Belsky at any of their Fresser functions anymore. He won't tell me what that inyan is.
In his opinion, it's all about money and pressure from donors.
Can you spell UOJ GETS RESULTS ?
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:P1QOb4zc2vsJ:www.hashkafah.com/lofiversion/index.php%3Ft42977.html+rabbi+belsky+divorce&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=41&gl=us
A chassidishe guy here wanted to be an uberchuchum so he called R' Yisroel Belsky to ask for a heter for contraception
He thought that R' Belsky, not being as "frum" as a chassidishe rabbi, would dispense one easily. Instead, R' Belsky chewed him out for asking for a baseless heter since he had no "real" reason other than wanting a break. He could've easily gotten the heter had he asked the right chassidishe rav
http://frumhouse.blogspot.com/2008/02/what-do-we-want-from-our-mikvah-ladies.html
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
What Do We Want From Our Mikvah Ladies?
Nu? Where's the 1998 Newsday article on Belsky? Even people that don't pay to read it only have so much patience ya know.
This looks like a fight to the finish between UOJ & Belsky.
While you're at it, do a public service and throw Margo to the lions.
Ma balagan im Belsky.
Fryer!
You can't make this stuff up, this MBIA putz is named Charlie Chaplin.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&refer=home&sid=a3BGqfiA9EeU
Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) -- MBIA Inc., the world's biggest bond insurer, said it is equipped to survive the slump in prices of mortgage securities and dismissed suggestions that the industry needs a rescue or stronger federal oversight.
``A bailout of highly credit-worthy companies who, at most, are at risk of losing the very highest ratings available, is misplaced,'' MBIA Chief Financial Officer Charles Chaplin said in prepared remarks to be delivered today at a hearing of the House Financial Services subcommittee on capital markets in Washington.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin
MBIA is just my day job. When I get dressed up to do my slapstick clown act, I head over to Agudath Israel on Broadway in the after hours.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/02/14/panel_rebukes_craig_in_mens_room_case/
February 14, 2008
The Senate Ethics Committee said yesterday that Senator Larry Craig of Idaho acted improperly in connection with a men's room sex sting last year. In a letter to the Republican senator, the ethics panel said Craig's attempt to withdraw his guilty plea after his June arrest at a Minneapolis airport was an effort to evade the legal consequences of his own actions. Craig's actions brought discredit on the Senate, the letter said. The six members of the committee - three Democrats and three Republicans - told Craig they believed that he "committed the offense to which you pled guilty" and that "you entered your plea knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently." (AP)
florida
Police tipped over man in wheelchair
TAMPA - Four sheriff's deputies have been suspended after purposely tipping a paralyzed man out of his wheelchair onto a jailhouse floor, authorities said. Surveillance footage from Jan. 29 shows Hillsborough County deputy Charlette Marshall-Jones, 44, dumping Brian Sterner out of his wheelchair and searching him on the floor after he was brought in on a warrant after a traffic violation. Sterner, 32, said that when he was taken into a booking room and told to stand up, Marshall-Jones grew agitated when he told her he could not. Sterner can drive a car but has no feeling below his sternum. (AP)
Pennsylvania
Surgeon sentenced in fingerprint fraud
HARRISBURG - A plastic surgeon who replaced the fingerprints of a man involved in a drug ring with skin from the bottom of his feet was sentenced yesterday to 18 months in prison. US District Judge Yvette Kane called the crime "horrific" when she imposed the sentence on Dr. Jose Covarrubias. Covarrubias, a US citizen who lived in the border town of Nogales, Ariz., and practiced in Mexico, pleaded guilty Nov. 1 to a federal charge of harboring and concealing a fugitive. (AP)
SHafran told me to say it's UOJ's blog that causes all this.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/110784
THE SPIRITUAL STATE
Marc Gellman
Valentine’s Day and Porn
I want everyone to vow: This year, I will have sex only with someone I love.
Feb 12, 2008
Valentine's Day is not about chocolate or flowers. Valentine's Day is about porn.
Porn is protected, and should be protected, by the First Amendment, but porn is built on the view that sex is just a physical need—like eating, defecating or burping—and this view is not just spiritually corrosive, it is a lie.
Because I am a rabbi and a counselor, I regularly see marriages wrecked by husbands whose porn addiction finally surfaces in the discovery of overdrawn credit cards and illicit liaisons.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/business/worldbusiness/14heparin.html
The Government Accountability Office recently reported that at its current inspection pace, the F.D.A. would need at least 13 years to inspect every foreign drug plant that exports products to the United States. The office, an independent arm of Congress, also found that the F.D.A.’s computer systems were deficient and it had little idea how many plants had been approved for exports to the United States.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/business/13cnd-health.html
Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said on Wednesday that he was investigating whether the nation’s health insurance companies had systematically forced patients to pay more than they should when using doctors or hospitals outside of their insurer’s networks.
As part of the investigation, Mr. Cuomo said he intended to sue the UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation’s biggest health insurers.
“We believe there was an industrywide scheme perpetuated by some of the nation’s largest health insurers to deceive and defraud consumers,” Mr. Cuomo said at a news conference. He said that the practice had gone on for more than a decade, potentially adding hundreds of millions of dollars to the out-of-pocket medical expenses of the nation’s consumers.
The attorney general said he had notified UnitedHealth Group that he planned to bring a lawsuit against it and Ingenix, the company it owns that is used by the industry to calculate usual and customary rates. He said he had also issued subpoenas to 16 insurers, including Aetna, Cigna and Empire BlueCross BlueShield — all of which, like UnitedHealth, do business in New York State.
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2008/02/12/2008-02-12_charles_hynes_warns_of_web_predators.html
Charles Hynes warns of Web predators
BY JOYCE SHELBY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08045/857338-53.stm
Thursday, February 14, 2008
By Joe Smydo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Schools in Squirrel Hill are warning parents and students to take extra precautions after a stranger accosted a group of girls on Hobart Street last week.
Two 9-year-olds and two 7-year-olds were walking home about 4:20 p.m. last Thursday when a man approached, spoke and attempted to pull down the younger girls' skirts, city police Cmdr. Thomas Stangrecki said yesterday.
The girls ran to a nearby house for help, and the man drove away in a small silver vehicle, Cmdr. Stangrecki said.
The girls attend Hillel Academy of Pittsburgh, the Jewish school's president, Barry Faigen, said, noting the school asked police to step up patrols.
He said Hillel also alerted other schools, contacted parents and called an assembly to remind students about "stranger danger."
Cmdr. Stangrecki described the assailant as white, about 6-foot-1, with a thin build and short brown hair, wearing a blue baseball cap, blue and white-striped shirt, light blue pants and white tennis shoes.
Rabbi Aaron Kagan, of Kollel Jewish Learning Center, said he heard about a second incident in which a different man last week tried to lure a girl into his car. He did not have other details.
Mr. Faigen said that incident also may have involved a Hillel student but he did not know whether the girl's family had filed a police report. Cmdr. Stangrecki said he had no report.
Officials of two other Jewish schools in Squirrel Hill, Community Day and Yeshiva Schools of Pittsburgh, reported no problems involving their students. Ebony Pugh, spokeswoman for the Pittsburgh Public Schools, said she had received no reports of problems involving district students.
Rabbi Yisroel Rosenfeld, dean of Yeshiva Schools, said parents were sent an e-mail urging them to accompany children on the street if possible, or have older students look after younger ones.
"Hopefully, with everybody's awareness and everybody being concerned, we can avoid any future incidents," he said.
David May-Stein, principal of the school district's Pittsburgh Colfax K-8, yesterday sent parents a letter urging them to take precautions.
"It is imperative that parents report any incidents to the police," he said.
Mr. May-Stein said he intended to speak to younger students about stranger danger in a "developmentally appropriate manner" and would encourage middle-grade children not to walk alone. His letter offered safety tips and encouraged parents to speak to their children about the problem.
Ms. Pugh said Pittsburgh Minadeo PreK-5, another district elementary school in Squirrel Hill, would send a similar letter to parents.
Does UOJ know the reason why the Agudah Fressers and part of the YTV board are angry at Belsky?
"sex is just a physical need — like eating, defecating or burping"
I think Gellman plagiarized that line from the Agudah convention workshop on inyanei ishus.
We of course know the underlying yesod of fraud & corruption but that doesn't seem to faze the Agudah & company.
WHich particular incident with Belsky rubbed them the wrong way?
Recently The Spinker rebbe from williamsberg paid a shabbos and weekend in Lakewood, and was hosted by Fernbach. Question is , does anyone know if this is the same Spinka Reebbe that was involved with the money laundering/ Tax evasion iss ue from a month ago?
WHich particular incident with Belsky rubbed them the wrong way?
-------------------------
They realize every word I say about Belsky is true...and it's bad for business. Raising money is getting harder because TV is not getting rid of him (yet)...and they are well aware that the man is a miserable pathetic gangster. Every single filthy corrupt scandal, he's got his name is written all over it!
By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer
WASHINGTON - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress Thursday that the country's economic outlook has deteriorated and signaled that the central bank is ready to keep on lowering a key interest rate — as needed — to shore things up.
In remarks to the Senate Banking Committee, Bernanke said the one-two punch of the housing and credit crises has greatly strained the economy. Hiring has slowed and people are likely to tighten their belts further, as they are pinched by high energy prices and watch the value of their single biggest asset — their homes — weaken, he warned.
"The outlook for the economy has worsened in recent months, and the downside risks to growth have increased," Bernanke said. "To date, the largest economic effects of the financial turmoil appear to have been on the housing market, which, as you know, has deteriorated significantly over the past two years or so." Bernanke also said that the "virtual shutdown" of the market for subprime mortgages — given to people with blemished credit histories or low incomes — and a reluctance by skittish lenders to make "jumbo" home loans exceeding $417,000 have aggravated problems in the housing market.
There are like a dozen Spinka rebbes. I believe the money launderer is the one in Boro Park.
Motti Hoch,
I hope those corrupt traffic cops who fress for free by you get arrested. You know, the ones that don't ticket you for parking illegally.
It seems UOJ does not like Rabbi Belsky very much, or is it just my imagination?
Hoch wasn't always so nunt with the cops. He once got into a big altercation and was taken away in handcuffs. It wasn't clear who started it but after every macher in Boooooro Pawk pulled strings, Hoch was let go and the cop was transferred to the South Bronx.
Circulated By The ADL!
----------------------
To: All Jewish Institutions
Law Enforcement has asked us to bring this information to your attention. As you may know, Hezbollah Commander Imad Mugniyah, a founder of Lebanese
Hezbollah and a master terrorist who was listed on the FBI and State
Departments' most wanted terrorists lists, was killed in a bomb blast in Damascus, Syria on February 11, 2008. Hezbollah has held Israel responsible for his death, but Israel denies the accusation.
Mugniyah was implicated in many of the highest profile terror attacks of the last twenty five years. Among them:
. The 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut
. The 1983 bombings of the U.S. Marine and French peacekeeping
compounds in Beirut
. The 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847 and subsequent murder of U.S. Navy Diver Robert Stethem
. Numerous kidnappings of U.S. citizens in Lebanon
. 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina
. 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, Argentina
. Countless acts of terrorism against Israeli targets throughout the Middle East
Although Law Enforcement knows of no specific threat of retaliation, theirsense is that these are circumstances that warrant heightened precautions.
We recommend that you remain vigilant and report any suspicious activities to your local law enforcement agency. Security is a long-term process that
cannot be efficiently or effectively deployed only when there is an emergency. It is important to review security procedures on a regular
basis and to be thinking of ways to improve security. We urge you to read and review ADL's security manual Keeping Your Jewish Institution Safe (available at www.adl.org/security ) and create a security plan for your
institution.
Please pay particular attention to the following:
1. Keep your eyes and ears open for anything unusual or suspicious and call law enforcement immediately if you come across something. Unusual behavior, unwarranted interest in your facility (including unusual traffic patterns), suspicious packages and strange devices should be promptly
reported to the police or security personnel.
2. Ensure that your staff knows what to do in the event of an emergency.
3. Review and practice security procedures. In particular, review with all personnel their role in security. For instance, if vigilance has slipped in mail and package delivery safety procedures, now is the time to revisit this area. Also, ensure that your institution's rules and
procedures dealing with who gets into your facility are sufficient and are functioning (access control).
4. Pre-event publicity for upcoming events should be looked at anew. Potential gains in audience numbers must be weighed against the security concerns created by "going public."
5. Renew/establish relationships with local law enforcement and discuss security. It has been our experience that local jurisdictions are working
very hard to maintain close relationships with their Jewish institutions.
If you have not established personal relationships with key police personnel, set up a meeting to do so.
Remember: a good working relationship with your local police department will
help ensure that any information that you need is transmitted to you quickly and efficiently.
6. Trust your instincts. If something strikes you as being out of place or problematic, call the police.
TO MRS RALBAG and other TRUTH AND
YU HATERS,
The GAY clubs are not located
at the YU and STERN campuses. This
is a frudulant lie that has been
propogated by YU-haters for years.
They are located in the medical
and law schools which are far away
and have more than 50% non-Jewish
population. If they were located on the Main Campus Rabbi Schachter
would have left long ago! Get your
facts right before you insult a
Gadol Beyisroel who always tells
the truth and has the guts to stand up to evil!
http://www.mercurynews.com/crime/ci_8261137
Police shoot naked, 63-year-old man prowling around homes in Colton
02/14/2008 09:27:16 AM PST
COLTON, Calif. - Police have shot and killed a naked 63-year-old man reported to have been prowling around homes in the Inland Empire community of Colton.
Police say in a statement the officer responded to reports early today of a naked man causing a disturbance and attempting to break into a home.
The officer spotted the suspect in an alley.
The man allegedly attacked the officer and was fatally shot.
Police did not say whether the man was armed.
A call to Colton police seeking details of the attack wasn't immediately returned.
I have heard from YU alumni who themselves criticized a system in place at YU. There is some kind of dating database system to set up YU guys & Stern girls. They say that since there is a minority of guys in the main part of YU that are not frum and a minority of girls in Stern that are not Jewish, the system could be unwittingly contributing to the odd case of improper relationships.
We figure that only UOJ could have tracked down Mughniyah. After he underwent plastic surgery, even the CIA couldn't find him.
I guess Getzel Segal has given up sending his faxes to Bnei Brak. He finally realized that he gets a much bigger audience by posting on UOJ.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/953917.html
Jewish Agency envoy arrested over fraudulent conversions
By Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz Correspondent
The Immigration Police arrested the Jewish Agency Aliyah envoy to South America on Wednesday on suspicion that he provided immigration papers to 200 Venezuelan citizens despite the fact that he knew that they had undergone fraudulent conversions to Judaism.
On Wednesday, the Ramle district court extended the remand of Ilan Architecter, 66, a well respected employee of the Jewish Agency who ran the absorption center in Ra'anana for many years.
According to police the suspect confessed to the allegations, saying that he knew the Rabbi who converted the Venezuelans was suspect.
Most of the Venezuelans were of indegenous descent who were convinced to convert by receiving promises of Aliyah benefits from the state.
The envoy told police that he wanted to be acknowledged as an excellent employee and therefore wanted to bring as many immigrants to Israel as possible.
The Jewish Agency denies that pressure was put on its envoys to bring as many immigrants as possible to Israel. Jewish Agency Chairman Ze'ev Biyelski told Haaretz a week ago that "our envoys are not measured by how many immigrants they bring".
The agency also called for an inquiry into the rabbi who provided the false conversions.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3506169,00.html
The suspect initially denied the allegations against him, but later confessed to the accusations. He told police that the rabbi who converted some of the Venezuelan aliya applicants indeed seemed to be "unreliable," and that the latter explained he wanted to complete the process quickly.
The undercover investigation against the envoy has been conducted for months, and was launched after Immigration Administration officials began suspecting that the immigrants he helped bring into the country had not properly converted.
It is believed that the envoy was motivated by his ambition to get a promotion based on the large number of people he helped bring into Israel, and that he also received money for each aliya permit he provided.
Attorney Chief Inspector Menny Pashtizky, the Immigration Administration's legal advisor in the case, told Ynet: "According to suspicion, the man in question held false conversions in the town of San Cristobal, located between Venezuela and Colombia. The rabbi that signed the conversions is unrecognized, problematic and unreliable.
"The immigrants did not meet the Interior Ministry's fundamental requirement, to live one full year in their community before making aliya. He (the envoy) did all this out of a desire to be a good, outstanding emissary," Pashtizky explained.
The chief inspector added that "every immigrant who comes here receives an absorption package worth tens of thousands of shekels. We are talking about hundreds suspected to have undergone a false conversion."
The Interior Ministry said that if the investigation indeed reveals that some of the olim came to Israel using falsified permits, the ministry may consider revoking their citizenship.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/954037.html
Police arrested a woman and her son of South American descent on suspicion of mediating between the Venezuelans, a rabbi in Venezuela and Architecter.
A search in the suspects' home yielded 20 conversion certificates signed by that rabbi. However, the certificates had been issued before the 20 had undergone conversion.
Police said the rabbi was not recognized by the Israeli Rabbinate, and they have expanded inquiries to find out how officials from the Absorption and Interior ministries did not realize that the immigrants' conversions were fake.
Police are checking whether Architecter pocketed any of the money given to the Venezuelans as part of their absorption package.
Jewish Agency officials were surprised to hear of the arrest of one of their veteran envoys. Architecter won an "outstanding envoy" citation last year due to the good relations he had forged with Venezuela's Jewish community.
A year ago he asked to return to Israel, but agreed to stay because of the difficulty in finding someone suitable to fill this important post, and in view of the fear for the community's safety under President Hugo Chavez's leadership.
Despite the community's fear of Chavez, only a few hundred of Venezuela's 15,000 Jews have come to Israel in recent years. Thousands have immigrated to Miami.
The Jewish Agency denied that it exerts any pressure on envoys to bring as many immigrants as possible to Israel. Jewish Agency Chairman Ze'ev Bielski told Haaretz a week ago that "our envoys are not measured by how many immigrants they bring".
The agency said it has always been "committed to ensuring a legal and proper immigration process to Israel."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1202742145661&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
During the investigation, detectives found a hub of activity in the Andean city of San Cristobal, a town of around 234,000 near the Colombian border that boasts one synagogue.
The probe led police to believe that since assuming his position in 2003, Architecter had allowed dozens of Venezuelans to make aliya. The would-be immigrants were allegedly passed through a speedy conversion process and then came to Israel claiming all of the rights of new immigrants, including an immigration basket worth tens of thousands of shekels.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/125247
Venezuela's Jewish and non-Jewish communities have been in upheaval since the 2001 election of socialist Hugo Chavez as president, especially since Chavez's re-election in 2004. Since assuming office, Chavez has nationalized several industries, including at least one major oil producer, seized near-dictatorial powers and the country has seen spiraling crime and inflation rates. The result has been a middle class exodus from the country, with hundreds of thousands of citizens seeking refuge in the United States, Europe and other western countries.
For the country's Jewish community, which numbers approximately 15,000 people, Chavez's close relations with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and several anti-Semitic elements inside Venezuela have raised questions about the community's future in the country.
Community leaders have sought to minimize anti-Semitic statements by Chavez saying they were taken "out of context," but several Jewish community buildings and synagogues have been targeted by anti-Semitic attacks in recent months.
Hamas leader and arch-terrorist Khaled Mashaal met a year ago with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro in Teheran. Mashaal and Maduro agreed that Venezuela and the Palestinian Authority, at that time led by Hamas, would open direct diplomatic ties. Maduro said that the PA would be allowed to open an embassy in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. Venezuela was one of the first countries to accept Hamas as a legitimate governing body.
The Awareness Center Presents...
From Darkness To Light
Ending Sexual Violence in Jewish Communities
(Child Sexual Abuse, Sexual Assault, Clergy Sexual Abuse, Professional Sexual Misconduct)
http://theawarenesscenter.org/baltimoreminiconference.html
The Awareness Center is proud to announce our first -- all day Mini-Conference addressing Sexual Violence in Jewish Communities. Each day will feature different speakers that will be addressing various issues, concerns and aspects of healing relating to surviving sex crimes ) as both adults and children.
Both seminars are suggested for rabbis, mental health and legal professionals, survivors of sex crimes, family members and the general public.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Workshop Facilitators:
* Mesa Leventhal Baker, MD - Medical Director, Baltimore Child Abuse Center
* Senator James Brochin - District 42, Baltimore County
* Murray Levin, JD - Photographer, Survivor of Child Sexual Abuse, and Advocate for Legislative Changes.
* Vicki Polin, MA, NCC, LCPC - The Awareness Center
* Ted Thompson, Executive Director- National Association to Prevent Sexual Abuse of Children
* Mark Weiss - Survivor of Child Sexual Abuse
* More Speakers to Be Added Shortly
Location: Winands Road Synagogue, Randallstown, MD
Seating is Limited - Pre Registration Required
Registration Fee (includes kosher boxed lunch):
* Early Registration $ 36.00 per person (Registration received before March 18, 2008)
* Registration $ 45.00 per person (Registration received after March 18, 2008)
Poster
http://www.theawarenesscenter.org/MiniConferenceFlyer.pdf
Registration Form:
http://www.theawarenesscenter.org/ConferenceRegistrationForm.pdf
Discovery comes to Flatbush!
Come and hear the world famous Discovery Seminar that has changed the lives of tens of thousands of secular Jews around the world, bringing them to Torah and Mitzvos.
Exclusive presentation to the Flatbush frum community
Hear Discovery’s top lecturers
Understand the importance of kiruv in this generation
Learn how to answer questions posed by secular Jews
Understand more about how to reach out to your secular friends and family
Shabbos, Parshas Tezaveh
February 15-16, 2008
Gvul Yaavetz 1580 Coney Island Avenue, b/t L & M
GUEST SPEAKER
Rabbi Paysach Krohn
SCHEDULE
Friday night, February 15, 8:30 p.m.
Rabbi Shloime Berger—Failsafe I
Rabbi Yaakov Salomon—7 Wonders of Jewish History
Shabbat afternoon, February 16, 3:00 p.m. (Mincha at 5:00 p.m.)
Rabbi Yaakov Salomon—Failsafe II: Identifying Information Only the Author Could Have Known
Rabbi Yossi Glatstein—Failsafe III: G-d’s Control of History
Motsei Shabbat, February 16, 8:30 p.m.
Rabbi Paysach Krohn—Kiruv: Igniting the Spark
There is no fee for this program, in the zchus of a refuah sheleima for the Rosh Yeshivah, Yisroel Noach ben Hinda.
For more information, call 212-391-6710, ext. 23.
Who ever heard of a rosh yeshiva running around with every cockamamie scam to make money.
Where does Belsky even find the time if he's supposed to be learning and running YTV?
If Rabbi Pesach Lerner is so keen on Belsky's corruption, what about what NCYI did to Young Israel in the Bronx? They told the shul if you have trouble getting a minyan and paying your bills, we don't need you and you're not getting any help. Maybe you can argue that resources are better spent elsewhere, but why were the rov's health benefits axed, that the National Council is supposed to provide to all ex-YI rabbis?
I read about all these events in the frum community where they are allowing sexual predators and those who support them a voice. Some how in all of this we have lost Judaism. Can someone tell me what it really means to be a Jew?
Baltimore, Boro Park, Lakewood, Flatbush, New Square, Williamsburg all nothing but Sodom. I went to all of them looking for a tzadik and none were to be found.
Belsky didn't try to shake anyone down today?
Project Genesis presents
'Ki Mitzion Tetzeh Torah"
The Torah Will Go Forth From Zion
A series or outstanding teachers, by LIVE Video Conference from Jerusalem to:
The Center for Jewish Education
5708 Park Heights Avenue, Baltimore
(The Park Heights JCC Building)
Live interaction with speakers in Israel, Questions and Answers
Sponsors
The Associated
Etz Chaim Center for Jewish Learning
Torah.org
ProjectGenesis.org
Torahmedia.com
Bais Yaakov School for Girls
66th Annual Banquet
Join Us As We Celebrate Teaching Excellence
Marriott Hunt Valley
Sunda, March 9, 2008
Reception and Grill: 5 PM - Dinner 6 PM
FEATURING
RABBI PAYSACH KROHN - Guest Speaker
Performance by the Bais Yaakov Choir
Mrs. Faige Kramer - Dinner Chair
Dinner Co-Chairs
MRs. Bailke Blumberg, Mrs. Chaya Esther Brull, Mrs. Stephanie Casper, Mrs. Ida Glenner, Mrs. Marsha Grant, Mrs. Michelle Jakobovits, Mrs. Shani Kohen, Mrs. Judy Rosenberg, Mrs. Bryna Sperling, Mrs. Aliza Wein
For Banquet Reservations and Journal Ads
Call: 443-548-6333 or 443-548-6335
FAX: 443-548-6336
Banquet@Baisyaakov.net
The institute for advanced professional training at Ohel Children's Home and Family Services
(Also sponsored byRabbi Dovid Gottlieb, the Sidran Foundation and the Shofar Coalition of Baltimore)
WE WILL NOT ALLOW QUESTIONS OR ANSWERS DURING THIS EVENT
Presents
How To Keep Our Children Safe
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
8:00 PM
Congregation Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion
6600 Park Heights Ave.
Welcome: Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb
(Congregation Shomrei Emunah)
Introduction: David Mandel
Chief Executive Officer
Ohel Children's Home and Family Services
Presenters:
Rabbi Yaakov Hopfer
Congregation Shearith Israel
Dr. David Pelcovitz
Self Appointed - Nationally recognized authority on parenting, adolescent development, and other child-related issues (yet no real experiences with sexual abuse)
Gwendolyn &Joseph Straus Chair in Jewish Education
Azrieli Schoo of Jewish Education, Yeshiva University
Abuse is most often committed by an individual known to the child. As parents, we have a responsiblity to speak to our children about how they can maintain their personal safety and how to keep the silence so that no one will known and the perpetrator can keep creating more victims.
We invite all parents to join us for this evening of education and guidance in this senstive and iimportant area. We need to do this because too many people are going to various blogs and are learning the truth. We need to pretend we care and stop the loshon hara! We need to protect those who offend. Who gives a damn about out children!
HOUSTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on Thursday said the U.S. economy is "clearly on the edge" of a recession.
Greenspan said the economy will continue to erode until there is a stabilization of U.S. housing prices.
"We have a long way to go" before housing prices hit a bottom, Greenspan told energy executives at the CERA conference.
BRUSSELS (AP) - Prince Charles urged the European Union Thursday to show even greater leadership in the fight against global warming as the "doomsday clock of climate change" ticks down.
http://www.americangangster.net/
"Belsky didn't try to shake anyone down today?"
Huh! You think I clue you little peons in on everything I do?
You sold us in the process of selling yourselves.
You turned us into prostitutes, beggars, scavengers...and you still latch onto our bodies, grabbing the last morsels of what is left of us...grabbing it, and sinking your ugly yellowed vampire teeth along with your ugly beards, into our flesh...
And those of us who are already dead, you sucked them dry, sucking every single drop of humanity and money from them, and left them lying for the dogs to eat their remains...
As for you, Community of my Ass, organizations of my Butt, Consciousness raising groups of my Bottom, BT movements of my Farts...
Where are you?
Where were you?
And you bloggers, the "sophisticated" ones, with the right jargon, with the right terminology, with the right sentences... Where the fuck are you?
And you alternative websites, how come this silence?
Did you finish shnorring? Did you finish mind fucking one another? Or are you waiting for the final revelation to descend upon you? Or maybe waiting to check...your final bank account balance?
O' "bearers" of Jewish justice, how come this silence ?
What happened to your torchs ? Did they suddenly die out and you are too busy fumbling in the dark ? Groping each other in one final outcry of an orgasm ?
Sheep. The Sheep of Silence, the Sheep of Cowardice, the Sheep of Hypocrisy, the Sheep of Complicity, the Sheep of Ass Leasing...and Ass Licking.
No wonder you are silent...the silence ofsheeps grazing...munching away, on dried up, rotten, decayed, putrid, foul smelling pastures of dead Jewish bodies...
Pastures made of us.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The credit crisis appears to be spreading beyond the housing market into the market for auto loans, according to a report released Thursday.
Delinquencies of more than 60 days in securities backed by auto loans surged in January, according to Fitch Ratings service.
Delinquencies among assets backed by prime auto loans hit a 10-year high in January. The number of delinquencies in assets backed by subprime auto loans jumped 10% from December and 43% from a year earlier.
The rising delinquency level in securities backed by auto loans follows in the footsteps of deteriorating bonds backed by subprime home loans, which have plagued credit markets worldwide since last year.
It must run in the family
http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080208/WDH0101/802080692/1981
A federal judge ruled this week that a jury can hear evidence that could suggest Lincoln County officials fired a former county employee in retaliation for filing a whistleblower lawsuit.
Former child support enforcement supervisor David Haka filed a federal civil suit in October 2006, claiming he was fired for telling former Social Services director David Chapleau and county officials that the county improperly billed the state for expenses incurred by its corporation counsel office in 2003.
Chief U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb ruled that several county officials made statements or took actions showing hostility in regards to the complaint and an interest in "getting rid of" those involved with it.
Lori Lubinsky, an attorney with the Madison law firm Axley Brynelson, is representing the county and could not be reached for comment.
"The credit crisis appears to be spreading beyond the housing market into the market for auto loans"
Shmarya will "figure out" how it's a Charedi conspiracy that the repo man is coming to take away cars from his favorite, melanin-endowed people.
Rubashkin's letter justifying his recent price increase says that the price of lettuce went up 46% in 2007.
http://www.walletpop.com/2008/02/07/food-prices-up-all-over-grocery-store-and-country/
According to the data here that was quoted & linked to by major news organizations like AOL / Time Warner, the price increase was only 6%.
http://www.walletpop.com/photos/groceries-where-is-your-food-budget-seeing-the-biggest-hit/624925/
Rubashkin's letter also claimed that milk prices were up 50% when the data shows the actual increase was 29%.
It's besides the fact that these items have nothing to do with meat unless some slimy businessmen are trying to create a mirage to convince you this is why they can ask for more money from your pocket.
JA envoy to Venezuela charged over fake conversions
By Ruth Sinai and Anshel Pfeffer
A Jewish Agency Aliyah envoy to South America has been arrested on suspicion of providing immigration papers to 200 Venezuelan citizens whom he knew had undergone fraudulent conversions to Judaism.
The Ramle Magistrate's Court extended the remand yesterday of Ilan Architecter, 66, a veteran Jewish Agency employee who had run the absorption center in Ra'anana for many years.
The Immigration Police said the suspect - who was arrested in Israel on Tuesday - had confessed to the allegations, saying he knew the rabbi who converted the Venezuelans was suspect.
Most of the Venezuelans were of indigenous descent, who were convinced to convert with promises of the benefits they would receive if they immigrated to Israel.
Is Architecter modern orthodox? It wouldn't be surprising being that he's from Raanana.
What's the big deal if Rubashkin & Lubinsky are off by a few percentage points? Kind of like 80% treif in Postville becoming 40% "kosher".
This kind of stuff happens all the time like when the 45 year old alter bochur in yeshiva is red on a shidduch as a 28 year old.
Numbers are all relative.
The Agudah was medayek for rav Matis Salomon that only one molester slipped through the cracks out of hundreds. It's a gantze lomdishe cheshbon.
The baltimore farce reminds me of the "Southpark" episode about clergy abuse in the Catholic Church. All the priests got together in the Vatican to figure out what to do about the crisis. They were scheming about all kinds of coverup techniques but none were working. One priest kept naively asking "Why don't we just stop priests from molesting?" Everyone else kept laughing at him, as if that was ridiculous to expect.
The rabbis in Baltimore, seem to feel that exposing, censoring punishing or even forcing molesting rabbis to go to treatment, is a ridiculous impossible idea. We just must come up with better and better ways to cover up and protect our image. I wish they would show that episode at the event. It would teach parents more about what they need to know than any speech by a shrink or a rabbi.
ATT: YU ALUMNIS
You should be ashamed of yourself that you ever attended that defiled institution. That you defend it lends me to suspect that maybe you too are a member from the gay clubs condoned by YU. Apparently you have a very shallow understanding of Torah Yiddishkeit. I laughed so hard at your gross stupidity seeing that you refer to Hershel Shachter as "a Gadol Beyisroel who always tells the truth and has the guts to stand up to evil!"
You call that a man of truth. As president Abraham Lincoln once said "He holds the truth with high regard and uses it very sparingly."
Tell me what the hell was the moron Hershel Schachter doing protesting at the home of Rabbi Shlomo Blumenkrantz last year? I do not know Blumenkrantz but did make some thorough inquiries from which I learned that Blumenkrantz never was involved in issuing to anyone a heter meah rabbonim. Yet Hershel Schachter the jack ass Putz (I intentionally use a capital P) was standing in front of his house at a demonstration which he himself is responsible for having promoted, calling for Rabbi Blumenkrantz to Stop the Abuse of Women by issuing heter mea rabbonims to husbands. I ask you mr YU jerk "What abuse??" When did Blumenkrantz ever issue a heter meah rabbonim? Where was the evidence?? The answer is there was no evidence, proof, or even a copy of a page with a signature of Rabbi Blumenkrantz.
Hershel Schachter is an outright liar. Additionally, he may know a lot of discourses from Rabbi Soloveichick, but he still is very dumb and stupid. Surely to a shallow and foolish Jew like yourself today the fag lover Hershel Schachter is a gadol B'Yisroel, and tommorow you see no problem with cheering for Peter, Paul and Jesus.
And please, I don't want to hear that Hershel Schachter believed the propaganda he was fed from that baby faced rabbi in Flatbush that is married to his grandmother and who preaches on Avenue I and Coney Island Avenue.
Did you see the pashkevilin we put out all over boro park, with regard this manhatten style womens clothing store, that opened up recently in the place of the old eagles electronics store on 13th ave. I think the big kiddush levunah oisies that read as follows "bais zonah betoichenu" sure got everyones attention.
Australia grappling with child abuse 'epidemic'
ABC News (Australia) - Tue Feb 12, 2008
http://www.abc. net.au/news/ stories/2008/ 02/12/2160172. htm
A child protection organisation says the rate of child abuse in Australia has reached epidemic levels.
Child Wise has collated research showing one in four girls and one in seven boys experience some form of sexual abuse.
It is launching a national campaign to raise awareness about the problem and help parents and others who work with children recognise the signs.
The group's chief executive Bernadette McMenamin says the silence about abuse has to be broken.
"We need to look at children, we need to listen to them, we need to hear them, we need to respond to them," she said.
"So many adults do not believe children. So many adults cannot believe that abuse can happen to the children that they know or that they work with. So we need to completely change our consciousness around understanding child sexual abuse."
Ms McMenamin says there needs to be a focus on prevention.
"Children are so victimised by the court system that often victims will say it [the court appearance] traumatised me as much as the abuse did," she said.
"We need to completely examine our child protection systems, the way that we deal with children who are at risk of abuse, or who have been abused."
SURREAL!
----------------------
Two Citigroup funds have troubles: report 2 hours, 24 minutes ago
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc (C.N) has barred investors in one of its hedge funds from withdrawing their money, and a new leveraged fund lost 52 percent in its first three months, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
The largest U.S. bank suspended redemptions in CSO Partners, a fund specializing in corporate debt, after investors tried to pull more than 30 percent of its roughly $500 million of assets, the newspaper said. Citigroup injected $100 million to stabilize the fund, which lost 10.9 percent last year, the newspaper said.
The fund's manager, John Pickett, left following a dispute with Citigroup executives and complaints from investors after he tried to back out from committing more than half the fund's assets to buy leveraged loans tied to a German media company, the newspaper said. That matter was settled when CSO agreed to buy $746 million of the loans at face value, though they were trading at 86 percent to 93 percent of face value, it said.
Meanwhile, Falcon Plus Strategies, launched September 30, lost 52 percent in the fourth quarter, after betting on mortgage-backed and preferred securities and making trades based on the relative values of municipal bonds and U.S. Treasuries. Some collateralized debt obligations in the fund trade at 25 percent of their original worth, the newspaper said.
Both funds are run in Citigroup's alternative investments unit. That unit was briefly headed last year by Vikram Pandit, who in December replaced Charles Prince as Citigroup's chief executive. Old Lane Partners, a hedge fund that Pandit founded and sold to Citigroup last year, has also had weak performance, falling 1.8 percent in January, the newspaper said.
Since June, Citigroup has disclosed some $30 billion of write-downs and losses tied to subprime mortgages, complex debt and deteriorating credit. The problems contributed to a record $9.83 billion fourth-quarter loss. Profit that quarter in the alternative investments unit fell 89 percent to $61 million.
Citigroup was not immediately available for comment. A spokesman told the newspaper that CSO and similar hedge funds are subject to comprehensive risk oversight, and that Falcon Plus's returns suffered from volatile fixed-income markets.
Not picked up yet in any press reports I've seen is that Citigroup has officially closed their mortgage division based in Stamford, CT. This is not at all surprising but what is interesting is that the unit's former top executive has been tapped to review all Citigroup operations to see exactly how many thousands of pink slips will be issued company-wide.
P.S. There are more people on the Street following UOJ than you probably knew.
Keep up the good work!
Southpark is a pornographic cartoon. Figures there would be a tzu shtell on UOJ.
"that baby faced rabbi in Flatbush that is married to his grandmother and who preaches on Avenue I and Coney Island Avenue."
You are obviously referring to Kenny Auman. Get a life and leave his wife out of this. She doesn't even look the way you describe her.
You really have no credibility when you call R' Hershel Schechter stupid. Even if he is somehow corrupt, hakol modim that he is highly intelligent. The only tayna you have - maybe - is that he doesn't quit as head of Kollel Elyon when Norman Lamm made a churban with faygelach in another division.
FOR THE RECORD!
UOJ comments section is for people that feel the need to express their thoughts, since there is practically no way for people to express their feelings regarding the ills of Yiddishkeit!
So I'm extremely liberal...up to a point!
IMHO... Rav Schachter suffers from the same imperfections all of us (ME INCLUDED) do....IMPERFECTIONS OF HUMANITY!
I respect him greatly; he has in my opinion made errors in judgement on more than a few issues, particularly, on the feminist agenda regarding gittin.
THERE ARE MORE MEN - BEING VICTIMS OF EXTORTION BY THEIR WIVES THAN WOMEN BEING VICTIMIZED BY MEN! I CONFIRMED THIS OVER AND OVER AGAIN WITH PEOPLE IN THE KNOW - FROM THE U.S.A. AROUND THE GLOBE - IN ALL JEWISH COMMUNITIES!
And there are other issues where, IMHO R' Schachter has erred.
Having said that...I will not permit anyone to call him names or attack him personally.
You may disagree all you want with his positions...no more personal name calling!
Thanks,
UOJ
Hershel Schechter hot nisht moyche geven ven Norman Lamm hot mich geruft a CAVE-MANN.
At least R' Hershel Schechter doesn't agree with Belsky being mattir milk from the treif cows.
Consumer spending or lack therof is the primary indicator of the health of the economy...and always has been. There are other factors as well, but none as indicitave of an ill economy!
----------------------------
Bleak economic reports signal recession By Mark Felsenthal
16 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A series of bleak economic reports on Friday showed the mood of American consumers deteriorating in February to a point that has always signaled recession, while factory activity in New York state suffered its biggest drop on record.
Compounding worries about a downturn, data suggested bubbling price pressures, raising the possibility of a troublesome scenario of simultaneously slowing growth and rising inflation -- "stagflation."
"This is just horrible. The sustained volatility in the markets, the rise in energy and food prices and, of course, the catastrophe in the housing market is making consumers extraordinarily miserable," said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, New York.
The Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers index of consumer sentiment dropped to 69.6 -- well below analysts' median forecast for a preliminary reading of 76.3 -- from 78.4 at the end of January. The February reading was the lowest since February 1992.
"The sentiment index has only been this low during the recessions of the mid 1970s, the early 1980s and the early 1990s," survey director Richard Curtin said in a statement.
A separate Federal Reserve survey showed industrial production inched up 0.1 percent in January but factory activity was unchanged.
Financial markets, however, took their cue from a gauge of February factory activity in New York state, which posted its biggest drop on record to nearly a five-year low.
"It's another recession-type reading. New orders came unglued here. There's further downward pressure on production coming," said Keith Hembre, chief economist at FAF Advisors in Minneapolis.
BEIRUT, Lebanon - An earthquake shook parts of Lebanon and neighboring countries Friday, causing minor damage and slightly injuring five people, police said.
The U.S. Geological Survey said it was a magnitude 5 quake, which can cause considerable damage. Residents of Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Israel also reported feeling the tremor.
When is the OU going to feel an earthquake? Or they moving to remove Belsky before UOJ is forced to act?
Lav davka it will be an earthquake. UOJ is unpredictable and could bring about a hurricane, typhoon, tidal wave or meteorite shower. Anything is possible with him.
Batten down the hatches. UOJ's got our coordinates.
http://www.ou.org/index.php/ou/contact_names/C391/
Eleven Broadway
New York, NY 10004
http://www.bbbcaccidentinjurylawyers.com/
I guess the National Council of Young Israel will be spared for yelling at Belsky and having law firm Benson Bertoldo Baker & Carter force him to stop at least one of his mafia hits.
The "Caveman" comment was from Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm
The "Caveman" comment was from Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm
------------
In the context of R' Svei calling R' Lamm a sonei Hashem, I agree with R' Lamm.
Starshefsky,
I never heard how the move went. After the National Council got into the lawsuit with the Young Israel shul downstairs, you guys just skidaddled out of there and don't keep anyone updated anymore. I hope Lerner gave you a decent office this time, unlike that decrepit shmatta at 3 West 16th St.
R' Elya may have overreacted but I saw a transcript of Norman Lamm's speech which I think was pretty pompous & arrogant.
And the poel yotzei that came from his "Centrist" meshugass is very regrettable.
Then there's the bottom line with the gay club at the medical school campus. Norman Lamm sacrificed morality for money. He's another farce that emerged from Torah Vodaath.
What's Schwartzie talking about?
There were many times that are rabbinic leaders chose to learn torah in caves for safety and security. Now they want to keep their heads in the sand and not protect vicims of child abuse as opposed to doing the right thing. This is a negative use of caves for hiding secrets.
http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/would-you-like-sick-cow-with-those-fries/
Congress is looking at the issue of sick and downed cows, but very slowly. Companies like McDonalds are pushing their distributors to make certain their products come from healthy animals. A few states, including California, Florida, Kansas and Illinois, have attempted to fill the gap in federal regulation by passing stronger laws against mistreating animals and slaughtering the sick or downed ones.
New York is still in the majority of states that must count on the abbatoires and the USDA to ensure that only healthy meat is sold. State Senator Liz Krueger, a Democrat from Manhattan, has introduced a downed animal bill that would help. Any legislator whose constituents eat hamburgers should support it.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2008/02/16/2008-02-16_odds_are_stacked_against_hillary_clinton.html
Odds are stacked against Hillary Clinton, say experts
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/business/15econ.html?ei=5087&em=&en=31951c248b9f95f0&ex=1203310800&pagewanted=print
February 15, 2008
Top Officials See Bleaker Outlook for the Economy
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Anxiety is escalating among institutional lenders and major borrowers, as the panic over soaring default rates on subprime mortgages that began last summer continues to spread, freezing up credit for municipalities, hospitals, student loans and even investment funds holding the most conservative bonds.
On Capitol Hill, the economic policy makers found themselves in the line of fire. Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, accused both Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson of having “hit the snooze button.”
Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, chairman of the Banking Committee, told reporters after the hearing that “it just seems as if they aren’t as concerned about the magnitude of the problem.”
Nationwide, housing prices have declined and show no signs of having hit bottom, while the stock markets have fallen sharply from their highs late last year.
Mr. Dodd has proposed legislation to create an agency to bail out many homeowners by buying up and restructuring troubled mortgages. He painted a particularly bleak picture.
“The current economic situation is more than merely a ‘slowdown’ or a ’downturn,’ ” he said. “It is a crisis of confidence among consumers and investors.”
Mr. Paulson and other administration officials staunchly oppose a government buyout program, arguing that the tax rebates and business tax cuts in the new stimulus package should keep the nation out of a recession.
But Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, ranking Republican on the Banking Committee, predicted the bill’s tax rebates and temporary tax cuts for business would have a negligible impact.
“I have equated it to pouring a glass of water in the ocean and expecting it to make a difference,” Mr. Shelby said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/business/17swap.html?ei=5087&em=&en=c476f877d7f09441&ex=1203310800&pagewanted=print
What a mess.
http://www.nodowners.org/newyork_DA_kruger.htm
I never heard of this practice before that farmers conserve milk by keeping calves away from their mothers & feeding them waste blood instead.
I wonder if these calves then grow up to be harnassed for the OU-D supply. I'm sure Rabbi Belsky has some lomdus why this is mutter lechatchila despite the threat of mad cow disease from the blood.
http://www.farmsanctuary.org/issues/factoryfarming/beef/
Many beef cattle are born and live on the range, foraging and fending for themselves for months or even years. They are not adequately protected against inclement weather, and they may die of dehydration or freeze to death. Injured, ill, or otherwise ailing animals do not receive necessary veterinary attention. One common malady afflicting beef cattle is called "cancer eye." Left untreated, the cancer eats away at the animal's eye and face, eventually producing a crater in the side of the animal's head.
Accustomed to roaming unimpeded and unconstrained, range cattle are frightened and confused when humans come to round them up. Terrified animals are often injured, some so severely that they become "downed" (unable to walk or even stand). These downed animals commonly suffer for days without receiving food, water or veterinary care, and many die of neglect. Others are dragged, beaten, and pushed with tractors on their way to slaughter.
Many cattle will experience additional transportation and handling stress at stockyards and auctions, where they are goaded through a series of walkways and holding pens and sold to the highest bidder. From the auction, older cattle may be taken directly to slaughter, or they may be taken to a feedlot. Younger animals and breeding-age cows may go back to the range.
Ranchers still identify cattle the same way they have since pioneer days — with hot iron brands. Needless to say, this practice is extremely traumatic and painful, and the animals bellow loudly as ranchers' brands are burned into their skin. Beef cattle are also subjected to 'waddling,' another type of identification marking. This painful procedure entails cutting chunks out of the hide that hangs under the animals' necks. Waddling marks are supposed to be large enough so that ranchers can identify their cattle from a distance.
Most beef cattle spend the last few months of their lives at feedlots, crowded by the thousands into dusty, manure-laden holding pens. The air is thick with harmful bacteria and particulate matter, and the animals are at a constant risk for respiratory disease. Feedlot cattle are routinely implanted with growth-promoting hormones, and they are fed unnaturally rich diets designed to fatten them quickly and profitably. Because cattle are biologically suited to eat a grass-based, high fiber diet, their concentrated feedlot rations contribute to metabolic disorders.
Cattle may be transported several times during their lifetimes, and they may travel hundreds or even thousands of miles during a single trip. Long journeys are very stressful and contribute to disease and even death. The Drover's Journal reports, "Shipping fever costs livestock producers as much as $1 billion a year."
Young cattle are commonly taken to areas with cheap grazing land, to take advantage of this inexpensive feed source. Upon reaching maturity, they are trucked to a feedlot to be fattened and readied for slaughter. Eventually, all of them will end up at the slaughterhouse.
A standard beef slaughterhouse kills 250 cattle every hour. The high speed of the assembly line makes it increasingly difficult to treat animals with any semblance of humaneness. A Meat & Poultry article states, "Good handling is extremely difficult if equipment is 'maxed out' all the time. It is impossible to have a good attitude toward cattle if employees have to constantly overexert themselves, and thus transfer all that stress right down to the animals, just to keep up with the line."
http://www.farmsanctuary.org/issues/factoryfarming/poultry/
Record numbers of chickens and turkeys are being raised and killed for meat in the U.S. every year. Nearly ten billion chickens and half a billion turkeys are hatched in the U.S. annually. These birds are typically crowded by the thousands into huge, factory-like warehouses where they can barely move. Each chicken is given less than half a square foot of space, while turkeys are each given less than three square feet. Shortly after hatching, both chickens and turkeys have the ends of their beaks cut off, and turkeys also have the ends of their toes clipped off. These mutilations are performed without anesthesia, ostensibly to reduce injuries that result when stressed birds are driven to fighting.
Today's "broiler" (meat) chickens have been genetically altered to grow twice as fast and twice as large as their ancestors. Pushed beyond their biological limits, hundreds of millions of chickens die every year before reaching slaughter weight at 6 weeks of age. An industry journal explains that "broilers [chickens] now grow so rapidly that the heart and lungs are not developed well enough to support the remainder of the body, resulting in congestive heart failure and tremendous death losses." Modern broiler chickens also experience crippling leg disorders, as their legs are not capable of supporting their abnormally heavy bodies. Confined in unsanitary, disease-ridden factory farms, the birds also frequently succumb to heat prostration, infectious diseases, and cancer.
Like meat-type chickens, commercial turkeys also suffer from serious physical malformations wrought by genetic manipulation. In addition to having been altered to grow quickly and unnaturally large, commercial turkeys have been genetically manipulated to have extremely large breasts, in order to meet consumer demand for breast meat. As a result, turkeys cannot mount and reproduce naturally, so their sole means of reproduction is artificial insemination. And similar to broiler chickens, factory-farmed turkeys are prone to heart disease and leg injuries as a consequence of their grossly-overweight bodies. An industry journal laments that:
Turkeys have been bred to grow faster and heavier but their skeletons haven't kept pace, which causes 'cowboy legs'. Commonly, the turkeys have problems standing and fall and are trampled on or seek refuge under feeders, leading to bruises and downgradings as well as culled or killed birds.
Chickens and turkeys are taken to the slaughterhouse in crates stacked on the backs of open trucks. During transport, the birds are not protected from weather conditions, and a percentage of the birds are expected to die en route. Birds freeze to death in winter, or die from heat stress and suffocation in warm weather. It is “cheaper” for the industry to transport the birds in open crates without adequate protection, despite high mortality rates. Upon arrival at the slaughterhouse, the birds are either pulled individually from their crates, or the crates are lifted off the truck, often with a crane or forklift, and the birds are dumped onto a conveyor belt. As the birds are unloaded, some miss the conveyor belt and fall onto the ground. Slaughterhouse workers intent upon 'processing' thousands of birds every hour have neither the time nor the inclination to pick up individuals who fall through the cracks, and these birds suffer grim deaths. Some die after being crushed by machinery or vehicles operating near the unloading area, while others may die of starvation or exposure days, or even weeks, later.
Birds inside the slaughterhouse suffer an equally gruesome fate. Upon entering the facility, fully conscious birds are hung by their feet from metal shackles on a moving rail. Although poultry are specifically excluded from the federal Humane Slaughter Act (which requires that animals be stunned before they are slaughtered), many slaughterplants first stun the birds in an electrified water bath in order to immobilize them and expedite assembly line killing.
After one year in egg production, the birds are classified as 'spent hens' and are sent off to slaughter. Their brittle, calcium-depleted bones often shatter during handling or at the slaughterhouse. They usually end up in soups, pot pies, or similar low-grade chicken meat products in which their bodies can be shredded to hide the bruises from consumers.
http://www.farmsanctuary.org/issues/factoryfarming/eggs/
There are approximately 300 million egg laying hens in the U.S. confined in battery cages — small wire cages stacked in tiers and lined up in rows inside huge warehouses. In accordance with the USDA's recommendation to give each hen four inches of 'feeder space,' hens are commonly packed four to a cage measuring just 16 inches wide. In this tiny space, the birds cannot stretch their wings or legs, and they cannot fulfill normal behavioral patterns or social needs. Constantly rubbing against the wire cages, they suffer from severe feather loss, and their bodies are covered with bruises and abrasions.
In order to reduce injuries resulting from excessive pecking — an aberrant behavior that occurs when the confined hens are bored and frustrated — practically all laying hens have part of their beaks cut off. Debeaking is a painful procedure that involves cutting through bone, cartilage, and soft tissue.
Laying more than 250 eggs per year each, laying hens' bodies are severely taxed. They suffer from "fatty liver syndrome" when their liver cells, which work overtime to produce the fat and protein for egg yolks, accumulate extra fat. They also suffer from what the industry calls 'cage layer fatigue,' and many become 'egg bound' and die when their bodies are too weak to pass another egg.
Osteoporosis is another common ailment afflicting egg laying hens, whose bodies lose more calcium to form egg shells than they can assimilate from their diets. One industry journal, Feedstuffs, explains, "...the laying hen at peak eggshell cannot absorb enough calcium from her diet..." while another (Lancaster Farming) states, "... a hen will use a quantity of calcium for yearly egg production that is greater than her entire skeleton by 30-fold or more." Inadequate calcium contributes to broken bones, paralysis, and death.
After one year in egg production, the birds are classified as 'spent hens' and are sent off to slaughter. Their brittle, calcium-depleted bones often shatter during handling or at the slaughterhouse. They usually end up in soups, pot pies, or similar low-grade chicken meat products in which their bodies can be shredded to hide the bruises from consumers.
With a growing supply of broiler chickens keeping slaughterhouses busy, egg producers have had to find new ways to dispose of spent hens. One entrepreneur has developed the 'Jet-Pro' system to turn spent hens into animal feed. As described in Feedstuffs, "Company trucks would enter layer operations, pick up the birds, and grind them up, on site, in a portable grinder... it (the ground up hens) would go to Jet-Pro's new extruder-texturizer, the 'Pellet Pro.'"
In one notorious case of extraordinary cruelty at Ward Egg Ranch in February 2003 in San Diego County, California, more than 15,000 spent laying hens were tossed alive into a wood-chipping machine to dispose of them. Despite tremendous outcry from a horrified public, the district attorney declined to prosecute the owners of the egg farm, calling the use of a wood-chipper to kill hens a "common industry practice."
In some cases, especially if the cost of replacement hens is high, laying hens may be 'force molted' to extend their laying capacity. This process involves starving the hens for up to 18 days, keeping them in the dark, and denying them water to shock their bodies into another egg-laying cycle. Commonly, between 5 and 10% of birds die during the molt, and those who live may lose more than 25% of their body weight.
For every egg-laying hen confined in a battery cage, there is a male chick who was killed at the hatchery. Because egg-laying chicken breeds have been genetically selected exclusively for maximum egg production, they don't grow fast or large enough to be raised profitably for meat. Therefore, male chicks of egg-laying breeds are of no economic value, and they are literally discarded on the day they hatch — usually by the cheapest, most convenient means available. Thrown into trash cans by the thousands, male chicks suffocate or are crushed under the weight of others.
Another common method of disposing of unwanted male chicks is grinding them up alive. This can result in unspeakable horrors, as described by one research scientist who observed that "even after twenty seconds, there were only partly damaged animals with whole skulls". In other words, fully conscious chicks were partially ground up and left to slowly and agonizingly die. Eyewitness accounts at commercial hatcheries indicate similar horrors of chicks being slowly dismembered by machinery blades en route to trash bins or manure spreaders.
LATEST REPORT JUST OFF THE PRESS
"BEIRUT, Lebanon - An earthquake shook parts of Lebanon and neighboring countries Friday, causing minor damage and slightly injuring five people, police said.
Residents of Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Israel also reported feeling the tremor."
According to Professor Bobby Kamma of the Iran's Babylon Geological Department the quake occurred after a basket sent by the Yeshiva Torah Vodaath to Hezbola in Beirut was being lowered down an old stone wall and accidentally opened up and at which time the rasha Yisroel Belsky who had been stuffed inside, stuck out his two chazzir paws and gripped the wall.
The Hezbola leadership sent a message to UOJ insisting they have no need for that farshtunkena duvar acher with the name Yisroel Belsky .
herschel Schachter better known as hershel shlechter is counted with belski and the other reshoim.Any man who behaves so beligerently in supporting a treif and rosho organization as ORA, deserves this title.he does not care to do his homework on men or women to ascertain the truth and is an accomplice in the motzi shem ra against the choshuv Rabbi Blumenkrantz. therefore he is branded as a rosho for publicly humiliating a talmid chochom and for destroying human lives thru lies and deceit. included in the rosho/moser categories are Naomi Mauer from the jewish press,josh ross from ora,zev lewinson from ora,and all the feminist bitches who advertise their husbands' names in the jewish press,ora website,or other periodicals to EXTORT a GET without giving him his halachic due process.You bitches out there, be aware that us men have gathered into a large group and will fight your corruption and the corrupt rabbis too!!! also warning to any man looking to marry a divorced woman who utilized ORA ,the jewish press,the RCA,THE RCC,Rabbi belski,aryeh ralbag,etc...............you are taking a big chance! since if she one day doesnt like you;you might endup being blacklisted falsely by any or all of the above. so everyone study carefully the names listed in the j.p as GET witholders or at getora.com and stay clear of their spouses!!!!!!!
can anyone get these men to give their wifes a get already! I need a pilegesh right away and hershel shlechter will only allow me one after she gets a GET but I cant wait anymore! any suggestions?
http://www.slate.com/id/2184488/
After a bubble pops, markets go through a painful process in which they try to agree on prices for formerly inflated assets. This is called "price discovery." When the bubble is in stocks, price discovery happens very quickly. A stock can go from $60 to $0 in a matter of days, if not hours, and sometimes did when the Internet bubble popped in 2000. From a macroeconomic perspective, such stock price discovery is painful but not necessarily devastating. The people who own bubbly stocks lose money. People who bought the stock on margin—i.e. they borrowed to buy it—lose a lot money. Banks who lent to high-flying firms frequently must write off loans. And companies that supply, or service, or depend on the afflicted firms may suffer as well. But, as when the tech bubble popped, stock price discovery usually doesn't lead to systemic failures.
By contrast, the process of price discovery in housing, and housing-related credit, has been much slower—and it has much more dire systemic implications. The housing market peaked in 2006, and it has been slowly slumping. But nationwide, according to the Case-Schiller index, housing prices have fallen only 8.4 percent in the past year. Home prices in some areas of the country may need to fall 30 percent in order to find bottom. That process is likely to take years rather than months.
The slope of the housing decline has been gentle because houses can't be flipped like stocks. People live in their homes, and there are big transaction costs associated with selling them. The market isn't very liquid. There's another reason housing prices have been slow to fall. There are all kinds of incentives for everyone involved in the housing market to push off the day of reckoning, to delay the process of price discovery.
Start with the homeowner. Homes are highly leveraged purchases, whether it's 20 percent, 10 percent, or 0 percent down. Owners of existing homes are reluctant to mark down the value of their homes 20 percent overnight because, in many instances, it will wipe out their equity. Homebuilders and condo developers don't like to lower prices quickly because it makes those who bought in their development five months earlier feel like chumps. The banks don't want to concede that the houses they lent against are suddenly worth a great deal less than they were a few months ago. Investors who bought the bonds created by slicing and dicing mortgages—and then leveraged up their positions by borrowing money—get massacred when prices fall. The same holds true for bond insurers like Ambac and MBIA, which insured structured finance products created by lashing groups of mortgage-related securities together.
And so, since the bubble popped and home prices ceased to rise, desperate players in the market have taken a series of actions intended to delay price discovery in housing. Rather than cut prices, sellers began to throw in free cars or other inducements to buyers who paid the asking price. Brokers reduced their commissions. Builders started including all sorts of extras (fancy kitchens, pools, etc.) for no additional price. Every link in the chain sacrificed margins and profits rather than cut prices. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that homebuilders were funneling large cash payments to buyers through third-party marketers, in effect reducing the price buyers had to pay while publicly reporting that sales prices remained buoyant.
Such measures were like throwing sandbags at a rising river. And it hasn't worked. The carnage in subprime loans has led to a spate of foreclosures. When banks or investors take over properties, they recoup whatever they can by placing it on the market quickly and accepting any reasonable offer. When foreclosed properties are dumped onto the market and sold at fire-sale prices, they establish new comparable sales on a given street or neighborhood. It might take a solvent home-seller 18 months to mark down the price of his house by 20 percent. A bank will do it in 18 days.
Foreclosure also has the effect of hastening price discovery on the mortgages on those homes, and on the bonds backing them. Here, again, the impact can be devastating to those who bought the assets with a great deal of leverage. Hedge funds and other institutions sitting on the depreciating debt either had to put up more collateral to maintain their leveraged positions, or dump the assets to raise cash. Bond insurers must increase reserves to prepare for defaults of the bonds they insured. And if the bond insurers fail, the financial firms that purchased insurance from them will have to take their own write-downs. The potential for massive systemic problems is the reason there's been so much discussion between financial institutions and government regulators about trying to orchestrate some sort of bailout for the bond insurers.
In general, cleaning up quickly after popped bubbles is good for the economy, because it enables everybody to move on. Over the years, the American economic system has proved to be quite adept at doing so. And as Japan's experience in recent years shows, refusing to deal with the overhang of bad debt can condemn an economy to a lengthy period of slow growth. But I doubt there's the political will to allow the fast price discovery allowed by foreclosures to continue. While it would certainly bring long-term economic benefits, the short-term social, financial, and political consequences of a rapid clearing of the housing mess are too much to bear. As the year goes on, expect presidential candidates and government officials to keep throwing lifelines and buckets full of hope at the housing market.
Daniel Gross is the Moneybox columnist for Slate and the business columnist for Newsweek. You can e-mail him at moneybox@slate.com. He is the author of Pop! Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy.
http://israel613.com/books/Agri_Weissmandl_PDF.pdf
Oh brother! The only thing worse than Yudel Shain posting all this shmutz about me is if UOJ were to mail it to gantz Brooklyn. Belsky warned me theres a good chance because Yudel even excerpts from the "I accuse" drosho from R' Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz!
to UOJ: why do you not allow name calling to a rosho like schachter but you go all out against belski?is one sinner's blood redder than the next? they should all be exposed!!!!
Hey, UOJ -did you catch page 116
of the YATED last week featuring
pictures from the SHUVU dinner?
Some great gangsters were there
check it out!
Just goes to prove that YATED
and the Agudah are still protecting
evil in their midst!
IT is hopeless with these corrupt
FRESSER LIARS!!!
Otisville, NY - A Hasidic rabbi serving time at a federal penitentiary is suing the Bureau of Prisons to change its policy on where inmates can pray.
In a lawsuit Rabbi Mordechai Samet, who was convicted of fraudulently obtaining more than $4 million, asserts that his ability to pray according to his beliefs has been violated by the Bureau of Prisons' insistence that he pray in his cell. The cell contains a toilet, making it an unclean place to pray for Jews, his suit says, as well as for Muslims and Buddhists.
Supervisory Chaplain of Otisville Rabbi Nochum Laskin, confirms that observant Jews cannot pray in a bathroom.
"Our goal is for the Bureau of Prisons to change its national policy on prayer," said Shima Baradaran, a lawyer with Kirkland & Ellis in Manhattan, who is representing Rabbi Samet pro bono.
Rabbi Samet, 47, has moved for summary judgment, asking the judge to rule in his favor based on the evidence gathered, without the case going to trial. The Bureau of Prisons has said it will file for summary judgment, too, but asked the court for an extension.
Rabbi Samet was ordained in 1979. In 2003, he began serving a 27-year sentence in the Otisville Correctional Facility, after a jury convicted him of financial fraud, which included soliciting money for a fake lottery, submitting false death claims to insurance companies, and defrauding banks with counterfeit checks. Rabbi Samet is appealing his conviction.
The brief says that Rabbi Samet's faith forbids him from praying in his cell, where there is a toilet. But when he has prayed elsewhere in the prison, he has been disciplined, the suit says. He has also been punished for covering his toilet while praying in his cell, the suit says. [NY Times]
Maybe Belsky will be a better candidate:
Iran - According to Rabbi Meir Bruk, Azerbaijan’s Chief Ashkenazic Rabbi, the need has recently arisen for a new Rabbi in Tehran, as the current officeholder received a letter of dismissal from the Iranian Government because he had reached retirement age.
Rabbi Bruk says, Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, proposed to appoint Moshe Friedman, the infamous person who participated in the Holocaust denial conference in Iran.
The Jewish community had to find a diplomatic way of persuading Ahmadinejad why such an appointment would not be worthwhile. They apparently succeeded in wriggling out of a tight spot by explaining that Friedman would not be suitable mainly because he is Ashkenazic, while most Persian Jews are Sephardic. [Mishpacha Weekly]
B"H one of the few benefits of peak oil will be that centralized factory farming will no longer be a viable option. When diesel is $10 or $15 or more per gallon, it costs far more to transport the end products 100 miles than it does to raise and process the animals - and most people will not be able to pay the increased costs of long-distance transportation.
Relocalization will return cows and chickens to smaller organic and sustainable family farms. It means there may be less meat available overall (especially during the transition phase from giant agribusiness factory farms to relocalization and victory gardens), but the end result will be higher quality and the animals will be treated more humanely. Production of eggs and dairy products will likewise be more humane and ultimately more healthy for us.
These types of things just didn't happen back even as recently as the mid 20th century - it is the immoral and unethical giant agribusiness model of centralized farming that has caused it. The sooner that paradigm dies, the better.
My grandfather and great-grandfather would be horrified to see how dairies are run today - and what happens to the boy calves as well, not to mention the chickens. They just never treated their animals that way - nobody did. These Robber Baron CEOs worship money (which they call "efficiency" and "economies of scale") and nothing else matters to them - apparently nobody ever taught them about "diminishing returns" or Torah.
"R' Elya may have overreacted..."
Delete the words ..."May have..."
RE: R' Svei.
Who can ever forget his Agudah Convention Motzei Shabbos vitriolic diatribes against R' Meir Kahane Z'L.
Dass Toiyreh, indeed. No one protested, no one objected, no one said boo. Sherer sat complacent. Chaskel Besser, a Holocaust Survivor, said nothing. Yosel Friedenson, didn't have even one Yiddeshe Vort in protest at Svei's vile character assassination.
These are the torch bearers of and for Mike Tress?
Everything Kahane predicted, is unfortunately, occurring before our very eyes: Sderot, Ashkelon, the betrayel of Gush Katif, the slow and steady strangulation of Chevron, and now the ultimate capitulation of Yerushalayim to our kissin' kousins.
It's really incredible that in a short 40 years we, the "Ahm Kishei Oref", have succeeded in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The liberation of Yerushalayim and the opening of the Kotel at the culmination of the Six-Day War heralded a new vista and opportunity that was and has been pitifully squandered.
And today, now, the beat goes on: It is $has $adly all about the Gelt.
Hasem Yiracheim.
By GREG RISLING, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 48 minutes ago
LOS ANGELES - The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Sunday ordered the recall of 143 million pounds of frozen beef from a California slaughterhouse, the subject of an animal-abuse investigation, that provided meat to school lunch programs.
Officials said it was the largest beef recall in the United States, surpassing a 1999 ban of 35 million pounds of ready-to-eat meats. No illnesses have been linked to the newly recalled meat, and officials said the health threat was likely small.
The recall will affect beef products dating to Feb. 1, 2006, that came from Chino-based Westland/Hallmark Meat Co., the federal agency said.
Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer said his department has evidence that Westland did not routinely contact its veterinarian when cattle became non-ambulatory after passing inspection, violating health regulations.
"Because the cattle did not receive complete and proper inspection, Food Safety and Inspection Service has determined them to be unfit for human food and the company is conducting a recall," Schafer said in a statement.
A phone message left for Westland president Steve Mendell was not immediately returned.
Federal officials suspended operations at Westland/Hallmark after an undercover Humane Society video surfaced showing crippled and sick animals being shoved with forklifts.
Two former employees were charged Friday. Five felony counts of animal cruelty and three misdemeanors were filed against a pen manager. Three misdemeanor counts — illegal movement of a non-ambulatory animal — were filed against an employee who worked under that manager. Both were fired.
Authorities said the video showed workers kicking, shocking and otherwise abusing "downer" animals that were apparently too sick or injured to walk into the slaughterhouse. Some animals had water forced down their throats, San Bernardino County prosecutor Michael Ramos said.
No charges have been filed against Westland, but an investigation by federal authorities continues.
Officials estimate that about 37 million pounds of the recalled beef went to school programs, but they believe most of the meat probably has already been eaten.
"We don't know how much product is out there right now. We don't think there is a health hazard, but we do have to take this action," said Dr. Dick Raymond, USDA Undersecretary for Food Safety.
Most of the beef was sent to distribution centers in bulk packages. The USDA said it will work with distributors to determine how much meat remains.
Federal regulations call for keeping downed cattle out of the food supply because they may pose a higher risk of contamination from E. coli, salmonella or mad cow disease because they typically wallow in feces and their immune systems are often weak.
About 150 school districts around the nation have stopped using ground beef from Hallmark Meat Packing Co., which is associated with Westland. Two fast-food chains, Jack-In-the-Box and In-N-Out, said they would not use beef from Westland/Hallmark.
Jack in the Box, a San Diego-based company with restaurants in 18 states, told its meat suppliers not to use Hallmark until further notice, but it was unclear whether it had used any Hallmark meat. In-N-Out, an Irvine-based chain, also halted use of the Westland/Hallmark beef. Other chains such as McDonald's and Burger King said they do not buy beef from Westland.
Raymond countered a claim leveled by Humane Society President and CEO Wayne Pacelle, who said a USDA inspector was at the Westland plant for about two hours each day. USDA inspectors are there at slaughterhouses "continuously," Raymond said.
Federal lawmakers on Thursday had called for the Government Accountability Office to investigate the safety of meat in the National School Lunch Program.
Upon learning about the recall, some legislators criticized the USDA, saying the federal agency should conduct more thorough inspections to ensure tainted beef doesn't get to the public.
"Today marks the largest beef recall in U.S. history, and it involves the national school lunch program and other federal food and nutrition programs," said U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, chairman of the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry. "This begs the question: how much longer will we continue to test our luck with weak enforcement of federal food safety regulations?"
Advocacy groups also weighed in, noting the problems at Westland wouldn't have been revealed had it not been for animal right activists.
"On the one hand, I'm glad that the recall is taking place. On the other, it's somewhat disturbing, given that obviously much of this food has already been eaten," said Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives at Consumers Union. "It's really closing the barn door after the cows left."
___
Associated Press writer Jacob Adelman contributed to this report.
sounds like their is a man on this blog who has an axe to grind with Rav Schachter- Shlita.
Time to grow up. Be a big boy. No need to curse.
to mr anonymous regarding an axe to grind with schachter: you damn right that i have an axe to grind,and so do many others that i know. just in case you havnt realized,the uoj blogsite was made to expose rabbinic corruption and shlechter is part of it.do you recall in jewish history a man by the name of KORACH? well he too was an odom godol until klal yisroel saw thru his rishus! so dont let the "eloquent and intelligent" schlechter make you think he's any better!
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