Lipa Margulies
Yeshiva & MesiFta Torah Temimah
555 Ocean Parkway
Brooklyn, NY 11218
Dear Lipa,
Ah freilichen erev Purim. I am writing to say hello (it’s been a while) and give you a heads-up on the next few months scheduling - so that you can plan accordingly.
As you know, attorneys Jeff Herman and Michael Dowd sent a letter to over a thousand of your and Kolko’s korbonot - inviting them to join him in putting you away for good. People have responded and --- I expect to be announcing a new lawsuit next week.--- Maybe this time you’ll come out and say hello to all the nice reporters and TV camera men instead of hiding under your desk.
Your good friend Yudi Kolko’s criminal trial is scheduled to start in two weeks and now that his lawyer has lost the Nixzmary Brown case - (25 years in prison is the expected sentence, a nice precedent) - the trial should move forward on time. Word is that he’s offering to testify against you and Applegrad in exchange for a plea deal - but the DA feels they have enough against you to indict and convict you without Kolko’s help. I’ll let you know how that turns out. Bet you can't wait!
Most importantly -- you grube menuvel, shtik ferd, fress drek du hunt -- (I’m sorry, I get carried away when I think of all the defenseless little children you hurt so badly over the past four decades), see if you can turn yourself in and avoid being picked up in handcuffs from the yeshiva --- and upsetting the yeshiva boys who can’t comprehend the pure evil you represent.
Lipa, you drekfresser - eat, drink and be merry this Purim; for, next week the end begins.
As always if you need to contact me just have Yaakov Applegrad post a comment on my blog and if it’s fit to print I’ll post it. I'm certain by now you know, the Authorities are monitoring every move - you, Applegrad and Kleinman are making! Every touch of the keyboard, every trip to the bathroom, every phone call, your cell phones, your mail, your conversations,...but no reason for paranoia! Daas Torah is on your side - so said Pinky Scheinberg when I visited him and recorded my conversations with him about you!
Oh yes, please tell your friend Shmuel Kaminetzky - I'm in posession of his "Kolko-teshuva" recording as well. Yes - you ever min hachai- you posul parah adumah - I am way ahead of all of you momzeirim - I keep immaculate records and have in my possession oh so many phone recordings - of sooo many "rabbis". I will strike - when I'm ready - in every forum - when you least expect it! I don't get angry - I GET EVEN - AND THEN SOME!
"Aza rasha - Ah yeshiva geboit oif geganveter gelt - ken kain mahl nit huben a kiyum!" ....Rav Yaakov Kaminetzky ztvk'l --- Miami Beach - winter 1985
UOJ
EVERY SIGNATURE MATTERS - THIS BILL MUST PASS!
CLICK - GOAL - 100,000 NEW SIGNATURES! 75,000 SIGNATURES HAVE ALREADY BEEN SUBMITTED TO GOVERNOR CUOMO!
EFF Urges Court to Block Dragnet Subpoenas Targeting Online Commenters
CLICK! For the full motion to quash: http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/hersh_v_cohen/UOJ-motiontoquashmemo.pdf
104 comments:
KOLKO LAWYER: IT'S ALL UOJ'S FAULT!
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a5393/News/New_York.html
For This Defense Lawyer, Talmud Is Inspiration
“If people think I’m a monster just because I’m representing a monster, then there’s a flaw with the system,” says Jeffrey Schwartz.Michael Datikash
by Doug Chandler
Special To The Jewish Week
He’s been receiving threats and insults during the last 10 weeks for his defense of Cesar Rodriguez, charged with the abuse and murder of his 7-year-old stepdaughter, Nixzmary Brown. And in the Jewish community, his name has cropped up as the lawyer representing Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, a former teacher at Midwood’s Yeshiva Torah Temimah now facing trial for allegedly molesting three students.
But Jeffrey Schwartz, the attorney in both cases, shrugs off the negative reaction to his work, saying that if nothing else during his 21 years of practice, he has learned how to be “thick-skinned.” He also turns to the Talmud for inspiration, says Schwartz, a Brooklyn native who attended the Yeshiva of Flatbush, Yeshiva University and YU’s Cardozo School of Law.
While studying
at a Jerusalem yeshiva more than 20 years ago, Schwartz recalled in a recent interview, his rabbi there told him that Talmudic law “provides for both prosecutors and defense attorneys,” placing equal value on both positions. The rabbi also quoted the Talmud as saying that “one of the greatest mitzvahs is helping someone get released from prison.” (not sexual predators, you moron)
It’s a lesson that has stayed with Schwartz throughout the high-profile Nixzmary Brown trial, which the lawyer calls the most “morally challenging” case he has ever handled. In fact, Schwartz, 45, volunteered for the case after other lawyers had turned it down, he said. The offer came from a state panel that assigns counsel to indigent clients. (Rodriguez was convicted of first-degree manslaughter Tuesday but acquitted on murder charges; he faces 25 years in prison.)
“Part of the reason I took the case was to see whether I could do it and give it all I have,” said Schwartz, who considers it his moral and professional obligation to provide the best defense he can. The lawyer also wrestled with his conscience before making the choice, saying he had never contemplated taking a child-abuse or child-murder case. “I thought it was too disgusting and too nasty,” he said. “I didn’t want to defend a baby killer. I have 20 nephews and nieces, as well as a daughter; it’s not as if I don’t love kids.”
But Schwartz, whose daughter is 18, said turning the case down would have been “prima donnish.” Being a true defense lawyer requires taking any type of case, he added, just as being a doctor requires treating any patient who comes before you. He apparently felt the same way when Rabbi Kolko visited his office, having been referred to the attorney.
“If people think I’m a monster just because I’m representing a monster, then there’s a flaw with the system or how they perceive the system,” Schwartz said as he sat in an Upper West Side diner, close to where he lives. In response to one question, the lawyer said he could never have defended Hitler, who destroyed much of his family, “but I wouldn’t have hated the guy representing him.”
Much of the criticism aimed at Schwartz has stemmed from his aggressive defense of Rodriguez, which one of the case’s alternate jurors labeled “cocky.” Part of the lawyer’s strategy has involved questioning Nixzmary’s behavior, including suggestions that the emaciated child was a “little Houdini” — a reference to how she was able to slip from a chair in which she was bound — and that she bullied her five siblings.
But Schwartz made no apologies for his defense, which, he said, was partly intended to show jurors the chaotic situation that greeted his client, “a hard-working family man,” every time he returned home. He never meant to imply that the child brought the abuse on herself, as some of his critics have contended — only that she presented a further challenge to her “overwhelmed, stressed-out” parents.
While the Nixzmary Brown case was viewed by many observers as unwinnable for a defense lawyer, Schwartz believes Rabbi Kolko’s case is bound to be easier, said the lawyer, who began his career as an assistant district attorney in Queens. No stranger to high-profile cases, Schwartz counts among past clients Michael Kneitel, a Jewish Nazi from Borough Park convicted of weapons possession, and Erica Colon, who pled guilty to the murder of a livery cab driver. But his advocacy for the rabbi may stir just as many emotions.
“He seems to be very loved by most people and reviled by a few,” said Schwartz, who argues that many of the allegations against the rabbi came from a blog, the Unorthodox Jew, and that the blog master has recruited new victims in the case. So UOJ "created" these victims. That's a rock solid defense.
Meanwhile, Schwartz, a divorcee who comes across as boyishly charming and forthright, said he can’t wait to return to his normal routine, which includes attending synagogue every morning. The routine also includes a “Daf Yomi” class, in which participants study a page of Talmud each day.
what an ekeldikeh piece of shmutz the shvartz is. To mention about his learning the daf every morning and defending a grube menuvel who has maimed dozens, if not hundreds of kids. This Dog will have his day too... I just wonder who will represent him? Maybe his daf yomi teacher?
So Nixmary brought this on herself.
Her parents were "stressed out".
This line from Schwartz takes the cake: She was "a little Houdini" a reference to how she was able to slip from a chair in which she was bound.
Schwartz, You shtick Dreck-Tinaf-Tinofes.
Using the Rapist's Defense (she asked for it)to spin the horrendous
abuse Nixmary was subjected to.
Schwartz, I look forward to Jeffrey Hermann wiping the floor with you.
The rabbi also quoted the Talmud as saying that “one of the greatest mitzvahs is helping someone get released from prison.”
Here we go again with people twisting and perverting the halacha of pidyon shvuyim.. They did it for Mondrowitz and Mutterperl, now they're doing it for Kolko. Sexual predators do not qualify for pidyon shvuyim. They hava a din of a rodef, therefore the laws of mesira and lashon hara do not apply to them either. In fact it is a mitzva to do whatever is in one's power to put these people away for good, so that they do not pose a threat to the community anymore. Is this so difficult to comprehend? Maybe Kolko will be zoche to share a jail cell with Schwartz' other notorious client, Rodriguez.
Huge Tax Cut !!
Congress (with the help of Ohel) has recently discovered a new method of dealing with criminals that will help Americans save billions of dollars in future tax years. The theory goes as follows: Millions of dollars are spent every year on building and maintaining prisons. This is completely unethical. Who are we to convict a criminal to be locked up in such a cruel manner? Who are we to assume that a criminal didn’t already do teshuva? Besides the fact that it’s very cruel, it will be very bad for the family’s shidduchim.
Therefore, the new system will work as follows: All community leaders are to be prepared to receive all allegations of murder, theft, rape, etc. And of course, our beloved community leaders are naturally capable of dealing with all such situations. (Who needs trained professionals anyway?) After a thorough investigation is conducted, (of course, this does not include interviewing the victim. That would be a waste of time since they are nogeah b’davar. Also, it is usually only an aid echod) the community leader will then decide whether the allegation is credible. If it is, the community leader will simply set up a new environment for the murderer, rapist, thief, etc., in which they will no longer have access to their previous compulsions. This will require the cooperation of the murder’s, rapist’s, thief’s, etc., wonderful, loving family to help guide their unfortunate family member in the right direction. This shall continue until the murderer, rapist, thief, etc. is ready to promise that he/she will never do it again. In severe situations, the community leader may recommend that the perpetrator seek therapy. But the most important role of the community leaders will be to ensure, that this is all done in a very quiet, discrete manner. This way, we are not jeopardizing the good reputation of the murder’s, rapist’s, thief’s, etc., wonderful, loving family.
The system is fool proof.
Skeptics, however, are nervous about the new plan. “How can such a criminal be allowed to wander loose? Shouldn’t we consider the possibility that they may find another victim?” they ask.
These critics obviously have no brains. First of all, anyone who is in a position of being a community leader, is fully equipped to handle, and prevent any criminal from further committing any more crimes. And besides, even if the criminal finds a way to continue breaking the law, it is still beneficial to change to the new method of law enforcement. After all, preserving the reputation of an unfortunate murderer, rapist, thief, etc. is far more important than protecting the life of some stupid victim. Also, everyone knows that most convicted felons are based on false allegations. And even if the allegations are true, you can’t believe them because it is loshon horah. So there is really nothing to be afraid of.
By the way, not only are all prisons going to be demolished, but the entire police department will be completely unnecessary. Thanks to our courageous community leaders, we can stop wasting billions of tax dollars on foolish expenses, and put it towards more worthy causes (like raising the salary of our community leaders).
What's the low down on the homeboy in his 50s named Lebovich from Boro Park who was arrested last week when a parent went straight to the police with molestation charges knowing that this Lebovich is an old offender from his days as a rebbi in Munkatch.
Now we have all of Haman's sons. A Litvak from YTT, Damn Polaks from ger inc. and now a Hunky from Monkey. Way to go rabbis! Keep up the good work. Before you know it we will have a community with more victims than all of the nonjewish world combined. Our batting average making, it into the press with these glorious scandals, now exceeds the Catholic church's. Yup! We freakin' jews do everything better than the dumb goyim. We facilitate and cover for sexual abuse better than the church. Way to go godols! Something tells me these rabbonim in agudah and the likes have some very own bones in the closet and are trying to stem the ever growing call for accountability and openness lest the get caught for.....ooops! I'm oiver oif lushen hora, right? Oh shucks, the victims shall multiply like the sands of the sea and the stars in the sky because of the putzes persuing Lipa Shmeltzer instead of Lipa T T(as in Tionf Tinofes) Margolis.
Why has there been no charges as yet filed against the Monsey pedophile that runs Yeshiva Shaarai Torah? Why has Mordechai Gimple Wolmark the sexual pervert and pedophile been permitted to operate a yeshiva in Monsey while at the same time he sexually molests his young students?
Shame on those women that work in his office.
http://www.theawarenesscenter.org/Kedmi_David.html
I wonder if David Kedmi davens by Mordechai Tendler's old shul, one of the only shuls in New Hempstead. (Or maybe even at the private minyan in Tendler's house).
Kedmi, who has been a mohel for 35 years, lived previously in Englewood, NJ, and Bridgeport, CT.
http://www.thinklocal.com/rabbidavidkedmi-a124156416.html?q=Religious%20Practitioners
rabbi david kedmi
7 josell court
new hempstead, NY 10977
Phone (845) 364-5338
Website: www.4-a-mohel.com
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=7+Josell+Ct,+Spring+Valley,+N.Y.+10977,+USA&sa=X&oi=map&ct=image
This is only one block from Tendler's old shul.
I find it hard to believe these allegations by the woman from Brooklyn that Rabbi Dratch is helping cover up for Kedmi.
I don't know much about Rabbi Rubinstein other than he's a gregarious kind of guy. Although the Young Israel of Scarsdale is one of the most left wing shuls around, Rubinstein happened to have learned in the Mir in Israel.
The NY Times already reported from a source inside the Bear Stearns board room about all the screaming & yelling that erupted when they found out about the fire sale to JP Morgan for $2 a share. Even if the deal is not finalized, Bear still loses their headquarters.
What has not made the papers yet is that the Bear CEO was shooting some hoops in the company gym yesterday when he was attacked & punched out by an employee who's been financially wiped out. It's simply too embarrassing for the CEO to file assault charges over the incident but there are now guards posted in front of the offices of the CEO as well as Chairman Cayne.
You heard it first on UOJ.
The Bear Stearns real estate holdings in New York alone - are worth in excess of $250 million - which makes the sale of $250 million to Chase a fraud!
That would mean their portfolio has ZERO value!
Think about that - Wall St. chevra!
" which makes the sale of $250 million to Chase a fraud!"
The flood of lawsuits over this may be unprecedented, and no, I am not some fresser who takes these kinds of cases.
The NYC Comptroller's Office is already in gear because the City pension fund lost $10 million. And then there will be State & Federal investigations.
UOJ, you gotta give us more from miami beach 1985.
Now how come I dont see anywere reports of this lebovich that was arrested last tuesday and released thursday after he posted $100,000 bail, to my understanding he is a danger to our kids walking the streets or davening in munkatch right now, this is something we cannot ignore, anyone with more info on him should please post, I know he was a rebbi in munkatch around 25 years ago, and is currently a travel agent. rabboisi please picture, address and phone number.
I can tell you that Federal investigators in several countries are looking into who started rumors in Europe about Bear Stearns running out of cash. It was these rumors that caused a run on the bank by clients. They were probably started by same putzes holding short positions that tried to do the same thing a few days to Lehman Bros.
LVF,
Rav Yaakov's sentiments and words are kadshei kodshim. I have them carefully maintained and documented.
I have to consider what he would want me to reveal - I'm carefully going through that mental process.
Once those words are out - I can never take them back. Therefore - the delay in publicizing them.
There is much responsibilty that comes with such trust and knowledge. I take it very seriously. There is much, as well, for many people to be ashamed of.
Family reputations are in the balance!
LVF,
Give us the exact spelling of Lebovitch's first & last names and I will look up & post the court record.
Does UOJ know what R' Yaakov said at the levaya of a bochur who was killed in 1959? I understand the bochur was learning in yeshiva one night & stepped out for a moment to get a breath of fresh air. A murderous thug who happened along popped him with a bullet to the head.
I heard this week that R' Yaakov's hespid is relevant to what happened in Mercaz Harav this month.
UOJ,
How do you know R' Yakov so well?
RE: Rabbi Mandel. THe YAted had a piece this week on R' Manis Mandel saying that he was a talmid Muvhak of R' Shraga Feivel.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/business/20auto.html?ei=5087&em=&en=790cd714e3e81052&ex=1206158400&pagewanted=print
March 20, 2008
Dismal Year Is Forecast for Car Sales
By BILL VLASIC
DETROIT — The American auto industry is bracing for what may be its worst year in a decade.
The gloomy outlook —reflecting credit turmoil, the housing crisis and the softening economy — will probably lead to more production cuts by car companies.
The broader economic woes prompted the marketing firm J. D. Putz & Associates to cut its annual forecast
With consumers short of cash and deep in debt, many prospective buyers are finding it difficult to secure financing for a new car.
Automotive finance companies are fearful of repeating the mistakes of subprime lenders in the housing industry and are generally declining to make risky vehicle loans.
“We are faced with the dilemma of lowering our credit standards to put them in a car, or saying no,” said Michael J. Jackson, chairman of AutoNation, the largest auto retailer in the United States. “And we’re telling them no.”
Aside from broader economic concerns, April and May are traditionally when gas prices undergo a seasonal increase.
The national average for unleaded gas hit $3.28 a gallon this week, a 26 percent increase from a year earlier, according to a regular survey done for the motorist group AAA.
One oil industry analyst said prices might rise further.
“Prices will probably hit a high of somewhere between $3.50 and $3.75 a gallon in April and May,” said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service in Wall, N.J.
With all the other economic pressures on consumers, higher gas prices can only make a bad auto market worse.
I believe R' Shmuel Dishon - menahel Karlin-Stolin was at the hesped in 1959. Kindly contact him - he would certainly know the details.
The recent collapse of the US dollar due to the collapse of the US housing market, which itself collapsed do to mortgage fraud and bad loan policies may leave Israel's poorest…
…citizens with even less social support than they now have.
Israel's government has long left many social welfare needs to the private sector. Those charities depend largely on donations from outside Israel, primarily from the US.
It's not just that individual donors may need to cut back on or entirely eliminate their donations. The problem is, each donation is now worth 20% less.
Here's the Ha'aretz report:
Hundreds of local social charities and nonprofit groups that depend on funding from abroad fear that the continuing decline of the dollar exchange rate, combined with the growing U.S. economic crisis, will force them to dismiss employees and curtail the services they provide in the fields of education, welfare and health. The dollar's fall has cost some of these organization's a 20 percent decline in income.
"There hasn't been a crisis like this since the expansion of civil society in recent years," says Prof. Benjamin Gidron, the director of the Israeli Center for Third Sector Research at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be'er Sheva.
He estimated that $1.5 billion is donated each year to Israeli hospitals, universities and nonprofit associations. A 20 percent decline amounts to a loss of over NIS 1 billion.
"It could affect thousand of positions. The services will decline," says Eliezer Ya'ari, the executive director in Israel of the New Israel Fund. The NIF depends on donations from the U.S. for the civil society organizations it underwrites. Shatil, the executive arm of the NIF, has already begun reducing its spending, Ya'ari says.
Officials at Yad Sarah, an organization which provides medical equipment at no cost, say they will have to reduce spending on equipment and vehicles for transporting people with disabilities due to losses amounting to a few million shekels.
The predicted decline in these services will come just as more Israelis will be in need of them, in the event that the local economy slides into recession. Moreover, it comes as the government is growing ever more dependent on "third sector" organizations to provide the social services it is cutting back on.
"You can't tell a donor, 'the dollar has declined, give another 20 percent,'" Ya'ari noted.
You can't get much better proof that rabbis are out of touch than this.
A man who beat his wife and children, used a hammer, other heavy objects, and whatever else was at hand to hurt them, who threatened his own children with death, and threatened to kill his wife has been given custody of those same children by Tel Aviv's beit din (religious court).
The chief rabbi of Tel Aviv is…
…former Ashkenazi chief rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, a nice bit corrupt man who travelled the world while in office speaking at Jewish fundraisers and events.
Even though on state salary, Rabbi Lau charged huge fees. The checks were made out to charities he controlled.
To my knowledge, no audit has ever been done.
Now, here is part of the Canadian Jewish News report on the father who threatened to kill his own children and the rabbis who seek to put those children in his sole custody:
An Israeli woman with two children is fighting deportation from Canada, claiming that she fears returning to Israel because a rabbinical court there has granted custody of the children to their abusive father.
Last week, one day before she was to be removed from the country, Renata Makias won a temporary stay from a Federal Court judge pending a judicial review of her case.
Judge Sean Harrington wrote that Mrs. Makias and the children “face imminent peril on their return” to Israel because the rabbinical order makes clear the children must be handed over to their father, Yossef Makias, immediately.
While Harrington said it may be correct, as the immigration department argued, that Mrs. Makias could apply to a civil court in Israel for review of the rabbinical decision, “it is strongly arguable that [this] did not take into account the best interests of the children…
Mrs. Makias’ lawyer, Mitchell Goldberg, said the stay gives his client about a six-month reprieve. She was being held in a detention centre near Montreal, after being arrested recently, although that was to be reviewed last Friday.
The children, daughter Shany, 13, and son Or, 12, are in hiding, and she is refusing to divulge their whereabouts. The immigration department has warned that she will be deported without them if she loses her appeal for permanent resident status, Goldberg said.…
The rabbinical court decision is at odds with a Quebec Superior Court judgment granting Mrs. Makias custody of the children and apparently does not take into account the fact that Mr. Makias was charged in British Columbia with uttering threats of death and violence against his family and with breaching a restraining order.…
Mr. Makias was charged with uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm to his wife, but he was released on conditions that included a restraining order that forbade him from having any contact with his wife or their children. He did not respect those conditions and was convicted of breach of the order.
The marriage fell apart and Mrs. Makias and the children moved to Montreal. After her legal recourses ran out, she and the children went into hiding.…
She was granted a divorce by Quebec Superior Court in March 2006 and in November of that year, she was given custody of the children. Yossef Makias is appealing the divorce.
Harrington wrote that he finds it “disturbing” that, despite Yossef’s record and the decisions of Canadian courts, that the Regional Rabbinical Court of Tel Aviv has ordered that the children be handed over to him “immediately and with no further delay,” quoting the rabbinical court.
Or, the couple’s son, testified that he was afraid to go back to Israel because his father beat him and his sister frequently and “always used to threaten to kill” them. “He would run after me with a hammer in his hands to hit me with it.”
The boy also stated that his father “almost killed my mom once by throwing a very heavy cup of glass and he would throw stuff at her like cellphones and plates.”…
Rabbi Lau was the first haredi to become chief rabbi. He presides over the rabbinical court in question. From what I know of him, I don't think Rabbi Lau likes this decision. But Rabbi Lau will not buck his masters
NEW YORK — David Paterson, who became the governor of New York Monday after Eliot Spitzer resigned amid a prostitution scandal, may have broken state campaign finance laws when he used campaign cash to pay for a hotel room for a woman with whom he was having an affair, the New York Daily News reported Thursday.
Paterson and his wife, Michelle, acknowledged Tuesday that both had had extramarital affairs during a rough patch in their marriage. Paterson said he didn't think he had used any taxpayer money to pay for his trysts.
The Daily News on Thursday cited campaign finance documents that show Paterson made a $500 payment to a woman with whom sources said he had an affair. The payment was listed in campaign documents as "professional services." Paterson said he was reimbursing the woman for a campaign event.
Paterson also told the Daily News that he recalls using a campaign credit card to pay for a liaison in a hotel room, but he recalls reimbursing the campaign for the $103 charge. There is no apparent record of the reimbursement, the Daily News reported.
The News found that Paterson also used $1,400 of campaign cash in March 2004 to pay off a credit charge listed as "constituent services," although it was not clear what the specific charge was for. He reimbursed the campaign a few weeks later.
Let's get the show on the road and dump this Putz Thief Paterson already. I and my deputy Boog are running out of patience.
This stinks so bad - The Agudah had to shut down the vent system at 42 Broadway!
---------------------
.......At the meeting, Dimon proposed incentives to Bear Stearns employees retained by JPMorgan. Those employees who stay at the close of the deal would receive a bonus that will include JPMorgan shares, said the person, who was briefed on the meeting.
But it's unclear whether Bear Stearns employees, who own about 30 percent of the firm, were swayed by the offer.
"There's more questions than answers at this point," said another person familiar with the workings at Bear Stearns.
Spokespeople for JPMorgan and Bear Stearns declined to comment.
Faced with a sudden cash crunch that threatened its collapse, Bear Stearns agreed to an all-stock offer from JPMorgan, which values the storied investment bank at about $285 million -- a week ago it was valued at more than $7 billion.
The fire sale offer of about $2.41 a share at current market prices shocked Bear Stearns employees, who saw much of their savings evaporate.
As part of the deal, JPMorgan secured special Fed financing for $30 billion of Bear Stearns' less liquid assets. The agreement also includes an option that gives JPMorgan the right to buy Bear Stearns' valuable Manhattan headquarters, even if the deal is voted down by shareholders.
The transaction, which is seen as leaving little room for a counter offer, is viewed as a plum deal for JPMorgan, analysts have said. JPMorgan's shares have risen over 20 percent since its Friday close.
(Reporting by Chris Reiter, editing by Phil Berlowitz)
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=4471386&page=1
Rabbis Order Hasidic Actor to Quit Movie
By ANNE MARIE DORNING
NEW YORK March 18, 2008—
25-year-old Abraham Karpen was the envy of every Shia Lebouf wannabe when he was cast as Natalie Portman's husband in the film "New York I Love You."
But Karpen isn't going to be on the red-eye to La-la-land any time soon because last week the Hasidic Jew from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, said goodbye to his budding acting career and quit the film.
"He really didn't grasp that this was a movie and that Natalie Portman was a star. He thought it was more of a commercial, a short thing," said Isaac Abraham, a Hasidic community leader. "I think he was a little naive. He didn't grasp the magnitude of what he was doing."
The magnitude of what Karpen was doing became clear after photos of the budding actor walking with Portman under the Brooklyn Bridge surfaced in the media.
"We don't watch TV, use the Internet or see movies. It's against our religion and our traditions. There are strong guidelines about what you can and can't do," Abraham said.
Not surprisingly, getting a Screen Actors Guild card is not on the list of approved to-dos.
When Karpen's rabbis got wind of his activities, they ordered him to withdraw from the film or face the possibility that his children would be kicked out of their religious school.
The rabbis feared that Karpen's presence in the film would rattle the tightly knit and insular culture of Williamsburg Hasidim.
"Once he got the role, I think the rabbis may have thought to themselves, well, you know, people know him. They might want to watch him on the screen. And then where does it end?" Abraham said.
If that sounds harsh, well, you have to understand the faith-based Hasidic community.
"New York I Love You" is a series of 12 short stories about love in the different neighborhoods of New York City. "It's a celebration of love and relationships," according to creator and producer Emmanuel Benbihy.
In an e-mail exchange, Benbihy said the controversy came as a "complete surprise."
The producers had been working "closely with representatives of the Hasidic community of Brooklyn in order to make sure that we are respectful of the traditions of a classic Hasidic wedding."
Portman and Karpen portrayed a young Hasidic couple about to get married.
Benbihy said, "Mr. Karpen was well-liked and highly regarded. We regret but respect and understand his choice to pull out from the movie. From our perspective, we felt very welcome in Brooklyn."
But the welcome mat isn't always out.
For instance, filmmaker Pearl Gluck was forced out of a location in Williamsburg by about 200 protesters recently.
Gluck, who runs her own production company, Palinka Pictures, has a unique perspective because she was brought up in the Hasidic community. But in the 1980s in order to go to a college of her choosing, she left. Although Gluck still considers herself a part of the community, many Hasidim do not.
Still her films, like "The Divan," focus on the traditions and culture of the community she grew up in.
"The sense of community is very powerful, the sense of charity. There really is a sense that we're in this together. Our main goal is to bring up our children in a faith-based environment and expose them to the richness of our traditions," Gluck said.
The recent protests on her film, Gluck said, had to do with "people seeing film sets and crews coming from the outside world. There is a fear of a lack of continuity and thinking that the next generation won't be like the last one."
And that's the same fear that sparked the problem on the set of "New York I Love You," according to Abraham.
Iowa OSHA just sent out a press release that AgriProcessors was being charged with 39 health and safety violations and $182,000 in fines. You can get a copy of the press release at 515-281-3469.
Jewish state
WASHINGTON - The number of newly laid off workers filing for unemployment benefits rose last week to the highest level in nearly two months, providing more evidence that the weak economy is having an adverse impact on the labor market.
The Labor Department said Thursday that applications for jobless benefits totaled 378,000 last week. That was an increase of 22,000 from the previous week and was a far bigger jump than had been expected.
The four-week average for new claims rose to 365,250, which was the highest level since a flood of claims caused by the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes.
The current economic slowdown, which many economists believe has already turned into a full-blown recession, is starting to show up in the labor market in terms of higher layoffs and weaker hiring numbers.
The total number of payroll jobs fell by 63,000 in February, an even bigger decline that the drop of 22,000 jobs in January, which had been the first monthly decline since mid-2003.
"We have no doubt that the trend in claims is upwards and is approaching the levels seen in the earlier stage of the recession in 2001," said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics.
Part of the increase in benefit applications in recent weeks occurred because of a three-week strike at a major parts supplier to General Motors Corp., which has forced GM to close all or part of 28 plants, affecting more than 37,000 hourly workers.
The number of unemployed workers who are receiving benefits totaled 2.865 million, the largest amount since late August 2004.
The Federal Reserve this week cut a key interest rate by a sizable three-quarters of 1 percent, wrapping up the most aggressive two months of credit easing by the central bank in a quarter century.
The Fed has also greatly expanded its loans to cash-strapped banks and used a Depression-era process to supply money to Wall Street investment houses in an effort to keep a serious credit squeeze from pushing the country into a deep recession.
If unofficial reviews of the movie are correct, Avromie Karpen is nisht ken tzadik. There are supposedly adultery & sex scenes.
There was once a push to get Yossi Piamenta banned from performing at simchas. He behaves inappropriately at goyishe clubs in Manhattan and starred in a dumb movie about a Lubavitcher girl from Crown Hts who runs away to have a love affair with a Black guy in shoulder length dreadlocks.
It seems that no issur ensued because the rabbonim looking into it didn't have a clue about veltish, let alone "alternative" topics.
I hate to sound like Neuhoff, but while "I am against" troublemakers with no life like Friedman, I think there is a limit to what can be tolerated.
It's a disgrace that Sheya & Lipa were put out of business yet nothing happens to Piamenta.
It seems that no issur ensued because the rabbonim looking into it didn't have a clue about veltish, let alone "alternative" topics.
-------------
Piamenta and Karpen are no threat to their mind-control agenda.
Didn't Avrumi Karpen work as a driver for "Get a Car"?
I just got that shmucky IRS notice of the "Stimulus" payment that cost $42 million to mail to every taxpayer.
It seems that they have lowered the cutoff from 175k to 150k per couple.
I wish it could be adjusted higher for heimisher Yidden who are scammed with ripoff yeshiva tuition and out of control prices by the kosher nostra food mafia.
Reb Moshe Aaron Stern ztz"l once gave a shiur and, if I remember correctly, Reb Stern said
when you are being judged in Bais Din Shel Ma'alah, they may say you have an avairah for
eating non-kosher food. You may respond, “I didn't,” but they may point out that you didn't
stop your neighbor from eating non-kosher food.
"I wish it could be adjusted higher for heimisher Yidden"
My sentiments exactly!
It's an outrage how much we have to shell out these days to fress matzos mit Rubashkin steak and Viennese crunch. They don't even restock the tea room anymore in the middle of the night.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2008/03/19/2008-03-19_policeman_married_to_anchorwoman_charged.html
WNBC-TV anchorwoman Darlene Rodriguez is married to a police sargeant in New Rochelle. He's been arrested for raping a girl while on duty.
UOJ goes back to 1959 rememberig Dishon at a levaya! Gee,how old are you?
http://loveisdope.wordpress.com/2008/03/18/you-cant-be-serious/
File this one in the “How do you sleep at night?” category. Attorney Jeffrey T. Schwartz is defending a man who brutally starved and beat his 7-year-old step-daughter to death two years ago in New York. Mr. Schwartz contends that that the dead child, Nixzmary Brown, was a “force of destruction” who terrorized her siblings. Okay, well call Super Nanny, but don’t beat and starve a child, tie her to a chair and put a litter box just out of her reach that was supposed to serve as her toilet. Mr. Schwartz is basically saying that Nixzmary deserved her fate.
I completely understand the need for a solid defense no matter how heinous the crime, but I cannot understand blaming a child for her own brutal death at the hands of her step-father and mother. Read more on this story in this New York Times article.
Can anyone give me the address to Mr. Schwartz’s office? I would like to tell him what I think of his defense plans. Perhaps someone should treat him to the type of strict discipline practiced by his client.
Jeffrey T. Schwartz is a self-serving, arrogant, contemptuous, bottom-of-the-bucket scumbag attorney.
Why?
Because attorneys like Jeffrey don’t care about justice. They care about THEMSELVES. The media attention, the “over-the-top” defenses (as they so arrogantly call them). The glitz, the glamour, the fame, the big payout.
Attorneys like Jeffrey is what’s wrong with our judicial system
WHAT AMERICANS CALL SIN
• Adultery: 81%
• Racism: 74%
• Using "hard" drugs, such as cocaine, LSD: 65%
• Not saying anything if a cashier gives you too much change: 63%
• Having an abortion: 56%
• Homosexual activity or sex: 52%
• Not reporting some income on your tax returns: 52%
• Reading or watching pornography: 50%
• Gossip: 47%
• Swearing: 46%
• Sex before marriage: 45%
• Homosexual thoughts: 44%
• Sexual thoughts about someone you are not married to: 43%
• Doing things as a consumer that harm the environment: 41%
• Smoking marijuana: 41%
• Getting drunk: 41%
• Gambling: 30%
• Not attending church or religious services regularly: 18%
• Drinking any alcohol: 14%
Source: Ellison Research, August 2007, based on 1,007 adults through a representative online panel ad adjusted to be demographically representative of the USA Margin of error: ±3.1 percentage points.
LOL!
I said I believed Shmuel Dishon was at the hesped!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/nyregion/19lawyer.html?ei=5087&em=&en=a9175db70e6ba8a7&ex=1203570000&pagewanted=print
February 19, 2008
Defender in the Case of a Slain 7-Year-Old Girl Has His Admirers: Other Lawyers
By ANDY NEWMAN
Returning to his law office the other day after yet another Sisyphean court session, Jeffrey T. Schwartz found a letter that, impressively, contained neither threats nor insults.
“It takes tremendous courage to provide truly zealous representation on behalf of a client who has been demonized, vilified and convicted in the press and the public’s mind before he has even been indicted,” read the letter, from Edward Donlon, also a defense lawyer. For every anonymous attacker, Mr. Donlon wrote, “there are 10 of us who are covering your back and are inspired by the job you are doing.”
Inspiring might not be how many people would describe Mr. Schwartz’s advocacy for the man accused of killing 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown, which has, so far, included calling Nixzmary a “little Houdini”; speaking up for the nutritional value of cat food; joking about his own prodigious consumption of yogurt, the snack that the emaciated girl was said to have stolen from the refrigerator shortly before she died; and asking for a mistrial about once a week.
Whatever it takes to acquit Nixzmary’s stepfather, Cesar Rodriguez, of one of the more notorious child murders in the city’s recent history, Mr. Schwartz says he is morally and professionally obligated to try it, if it is legal. In Mr. Schwartz’s ethical universe, the decision to represent Mr. Rodriguez has the air of a sacred mission.
“I did this because it was the right thing to do,” he said as he sat in a spacious red-curtained office on Lower (42?) Broadway filled with the expected framed newspaper clippings, plus an assortment of antique weapons: guns, knives, Balinese bows, hand grenades.
Mr. Schwartz, 45, a tall, boyish Brooklyn native >>> who makes no bones about his love of the limelight,<<< became a defense lawyer in 1993 after graduating from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University and paying his dues in the homicide bureau of the Queens district attorney’s office.
He has done a few trials that were covered in the press, and in 2006, he was one of the half-dozen lawyers vying to represent Darryl Littlejohn, the bouncer accused of murdering a college student named Imette St. Guillen.
Mr. Schwartz, who is divorced and has an 18-year-old daughter, claims to rise in his Manhattan apartment each morning before 3 a.m. and work straight through till night.
As for Mr. Rodriguez himself, Mr. Schwartz called him “one of the best clients I ever had.” He has been, Mr. Schwartz said, “a total gentleman. He apologized to me when he found out I was getting nasty phone calls.”
Mr. Schwartz has also spent many hours sparring with his counterpart, the lead prosecutor, Ama Dwimoh.
Two weeks ago, when prosecutors trotted out a pink Tinkerbell backpack, found in the family’s apartment, that had not been on the list of their planned exhibits, Mr. Schwartz complained to the judge, L. Priscilla Hall, that he was being sandbagged.
Ms. Dwimoh, as if on cue, picked up a folder from her table. “If he wants to talk about sandbag, the papers that I have here,” she said, are “just pornography that was found all through the apartment.”
“Judge,” Mr. Schwartz shot back, “when I last checked, pornography is not a crime. Maybe the D.A. has some in her apartment.”
His attempt to clear the courtroom air of prosecutorial sanctimony earned him a quick wrist-slap from Justice Hall. “Counsel,” she thundered, “you are out of order.”
A rov spoke on Shabbos about R' Yaakov giving the hespid. The only part I caught was that R' Yaakov was angered by the chutzpa of the rotzeach. The rov mentioned that Stamford rosh yeshiva R' Simcha Schustal & Viener Dayan Rav Spitzer were at the levaya.
Notice the deafening silence from the Politicos to Guv "Big" Dave paying for his "Constituent Services" with public money.
Illegal, but so what. Where are the demands that he step down.
Why the double standard?
Is it his skin color?
Where is Al (I don't pay no taxes) Sharpton?
Anyone seen The Rev. Jesse (Keep Hope Alive) Jackson?
Perhaps Obama's Pastor Wright can take a break from his rabid anti-USA, anti Jewish-Israel rants and sermonize us.
And to Michelle Obama, Harvard Law $chool Graduate: Add Guv "Big" Dave to your lengthy list of things that embarrass and disgust you about America.
"Love Is Blind"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/nyregion/20nixzmary.html
Among the many gruesome discoveries detectives made after they entered the Brooklyn apartment where 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown was found dead more than two years ago was a jar containing a fetus on a dresser in the bedroom of the girl’s parents.
While not disputing that Nixzmary was beaten savagely in the final days and hours of her life, tied to a chair and made to defecate in a litter box, the defense called Vanessa Rhoden, a former worker for the city’s Administration for Children’s Services, to show that the home was not as bad as it had been made out to be.
A complaint from her school of “bruises and lacerations and welts on Nixzmary” led Ms. Rhoden to visit the apartment on Dec. 1
Shortly before that visit, on Nov. 27, 2005, Nixzmary had been taken to the hospital with a black eye and cuts requiring stitches above her eyes.
When Ms. Rhoden went to the family’s apartment, she says, she found a home that was “neatly cleaned” with an abundance of food and toys.
Nixzmary was “well-groomed and appropriately dressed,” Ms. Rhoden said. She concluded that the children “were not at imminent risk at that time” and that the home “was a safe environment at that time.”
Outside the courtroom, during a recess, Mr. Rodriguez’s lawyer, Jeffrey T. Schwartz, said he had intended to show the jury that the family had “a somewhat normal home and that it was the mother who snapped.”
After Nixzmary’s death, and reports of multiple missed opportunities to intervene in the girl’s short, sad life, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg declared, “We, as a city, have failed this child.”
One result was an overhaul of the Administration for Children Services and the firing of over a dozen officials from the agency.
The image Ms. Rhoden painted in court on Tuesday — of a well-ordered apartment with plenty of food in the refrigerator — stood in direct contrast to the condition of Nixzmary’s body at the time of her death.
She was so severely malnourished that she weighed only 36 pounds, according to the medical examiner, some 20 pounds less than an average girl her age should weigh. She had gained only one pound in more than two years, the medical examiner testified.
But the attempt to portray Mr. Rodriguez as a stable provider, in contrast to what the defense has described as his deceitful and mentally unstable wife, was dealt a blow when Ms. Rhoden, the child welfare worker, recounted her conversation with Mr. Rodriguez at the children’s school the morning before she went to the home.
He told her that he had taken Nixzmary to the hospital after the Nov. 27 incident, and then, Ms. Rhoden said, he cursed and said he would not tell her anything else.
Ms. Rhoden said she was concerned by the aborted fetus on display in the bedroom.
The prosecutors have a dillema; if they go after Spitzer for illegally using campaign funds, they have to go after Paterson.
Paterson may be Spitzer's yeshua!
Newsday, NY - Feb 20, 2008
In a brash defense tactic, Schwartz labeled Nixzmary a violent and uncontrollable "Little Houdini"
http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/94184
An expert witness in the murder trial of Cesar Rodriguez has testified that 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown died from blows to the head.
According to the Medical Examiner's report, she died from a combination of regular beatings and head trauma.
Schwartz has acknowledged that Rodriguez regularly tied Nixzmary up and used his fists to beat her, but maintains that's not what killed her.
UOJ, Good point.
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/03/12/2008-03-12_da_confident_nixzmary_will_get_her_justi.html
Schwartz complained his client - who admitted to cops he abused 7-year-old Nixzmary - has already been convicted in the court of public opinion.
http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/95031
A prosecutor confronted the defendant as she gave her closing argument yesterday.
Ama Dwimoh pointed her finger and glared at Rodriguez as she stood directly in front of the defense table. She called him a murderer and with the photos of Nixzmary's emaciated and badly beaten body in the background, she told jurors the child's body speaks volumes about the life she was forced to live.
During his closing argument, defense attorney Jeffrey Schwartz said the prosecution was exploiting the disturbing photos and using them to inflame the jurors emotions.
http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=9&aid=79327
Schwartz held up a picture of Santiago to jurors and called her a "calm, cold-blooded murderess."
As for his client, Schwartz did call him a child abuser, but said he tried to do the right thing to support his family. And that while Rodriguez was out working "breaking his back like a moron, Santiago had the kids locked in a room with no food."
The prosecution maintains that Santiago and Rodriguez acted in concert.
Dwimoh told the jury, "Santiago will have her day. Today is Cesar's day."
Santiago faces a separate murder trial.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/crime/ny-nynixz0314,0,5820070.story
Schwartz said his client "is very nervous. He is tense. He is upset. He doesn't feel he has gotten a fair trial. I think he thinks he is going to be convicted of something."
The Daily News noted defense lawyer Jeffrey Schwartz's quip to reporters: "I'm just a musician playing on the Titanic. It's been an honor to play for you."
http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=9&aid=79558
March 19, 2008
The lawyer for Nixzmary Brown's stepfather says he will appeal the manslaughter conviction handed down to Cesar Rodriguez on Tuesday.
"I find no delight in him being acquitted in the top charges because I think he should have been acquitted of more of the top charges," said defense attorney Jeffrey Schwartz. "I take no comfort in the fact that he got his day in court, because his day in court was perverted and not just."
Breaking News from MoneyNews.com
Economists: Bank Losses to Exceed $1 Trillion
Economists are now worried that the escalating losses in the U.S. financial sector may soon exceed $1 trillion — double the level of losses from the savings and loan calamity of the mid-1980s.
Layoffs on Wall Street are surging. Broker-dealer Lehman Brothers last week disclosed yet another round of firings, accounting for 5 percent of its work force. Earlier, Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch also furloughed financiers.
The crisis has gone global. Societe Generale’s London traders who sell bank debt are reported to have few to no customers, and not much to do.
Then came this weekend’s news that JPMorgan Chase, with help from the U.S. government, was buying up the remains of tattered rival Bear Stearns. The once-formidable bank lost nearly all of its equity value in just over a month.
The Detroit City Council called yesterday for the resignation of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who is being investigated over an alleged affair he swore under oath he did not have. He quickly rejected the request.
The resolution, passed 7-1, was a "no-confidence" vote; the council lacks the power to force Kilpatrick to step down.
Kilpatrick said: "My reaction is: This is over. It has no effect."
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy is investigating whether the mayor and former chief of staff Christine Beatty lied under oath when they testified in a whistleblowers' lawsuit that they had not had a physical relationship.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/02/19/nyregion/19lawyer.600.jpg
Kovod Zucher Jeffrey T. Schwartz took on the Nixzmary / Cesar Rodriguez murder trial for about a tenth of his usual fee.
4 days ago he altered his Findlaw listing so that no once could find his phone number / email address.
The Law office of Jeffrey T. Schwartz
Address: 225 Broadway,
Suite 2100
New York, NY 10007
Profile Last Updated:
04/16/2007
I just found the little weasel's Phone number:
(212) 766-8020
Jeff Schwartz started with a partner who is no longer with him. Schwartz & Klein LLP was formed in 2000 at the same address.
Does anyone know which Klein that was?
According to D&B records they had another 2 staffers / attorneys with them and were grossing 330k a year. That's peanuts which could explain why Schwartz is so desperate. The 4 of them combined could not possibly survive on David Mandel's salary.
Where does Jeff Schwartz daven on the Upper West Side?
I'm assuming he only goes to shul on Shabbos as he told the NY Times he works straight from 3 am for at least 16 hours.
Jeff Schwartz will be fine when he gets back to his UWS apt before Shabbos.
Jeff Schwartz is an honorable attorney.
Jeffrey Schwartz ended his partnership with Klein as he consolidated operations.
If Mayer Fertig claims otherwise, he's obviously not credible.
I hope I didn't make another booboo. I told Cesar Rodriguez that Nixzmary was the one who ate that last yogurt in the fridge that she got beaten to death for.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - CIT Group Inc (CIT.N) said on Thursday it was drawing on $7.3 billion of bank lines to help conduct daily operations, highlighting the commercial finance company's struggle to raise cash to pay off debt.
Shares of CIT plummeted as low as $6.51, 44 percent below Wednesday's close, and in afternoon trading were down $3.34 or 28.7 percent to $8.30. The shares are more than 86 percent below their record high of $61.46 set last June 1.
I can be mayid that Schwartz is right. I have beaten many people severely and none of them have died from the injuries they have sustained (yet).
Nixzmary was a reject anyway who was just sponging up valuable resources.
We made sure that at no time were any yogurts stolen from the YTT dining room. Rabbi Margulies would settle for no less than the best security like Fort Knox.
Moishe Rubashkin has got to be the only putz witness in town that Schwartz didn't call to the stand.
http://www.iowaworkforce.org/news/XcNewsPlus.asp?cmd=view&articleid=472
RUBASHKIN CITED FOR 39 (MISPAR MALKUT) VIOLATIONS!!!
Postville Company Cited for 39 Health & Safety Violations, $182,000 Fine Proposed
DES MOINES - The Iowa Division of Labor Services has proposed citations and penalties against a Postville employer for alleged multiple violations of state workplace safety and health standards. Agriprocessors, Inc. has been issued 39 citations with proposed penalties of $182,000.
“Protecting the health and safety of Iowa’s workforce is paramount to developing a productive workforce,” stated Iowa Labor Commissioner David Neil. “Workers that are injured because of failed health and safety measures create an economic burden for their community.”
The Iowa Division of Labor initiated a safety inspection on October 31, 2007 at the Postville operation. Twenty-six citations were issued, including two repeat violations related to lockout tagout procedures. On February 11, 2008, a health inspection was initiated that identified thirteen serious health violations. Citations were issued for multiple violations surrounding hazardous chemicals and emergency response issues including a lack of proper labeling on hazardous chemicals and on hazardous unkosher food lack of an emergency alarm that can be heard by all employees, failure to develop an emergency response plan and improper programs for both respirator use and bloodborne pathogen issues.
Agriprocessors, Inc. will have fifteen days to formally respond to the citations and proposed fines. (Lubinsky is working on that response as we speak)
UOJ, can you see pitching the idea of doing a special segment of "To Catch A Predator" on the frum community? You know its where they trap people who are looking for sex with kids over the internet. The idea would be to tell them that it is important to show the country that no community is immune. They could do the mormons too, and not only religious, but they could go into very wealthy preppy communities instead of their usual lower class towns.
Then we could start catching frum people red handed. It is the best way, because the D.A.'s have the pervs without needing anyone to be Oyver "Mesirah" or to get permission from rabbanim to go to the authorities, or worry about the victim losing shidduchim or the family of the victim being in cherem. The police have caught several frum people this way, but the NBC show usually nabs them quicker and in bulk. They have a set up in a house, and the pedophiles are coming in one after another like a freakin 7-11.
If we can't get NBC to do it, maybe we can learn how to set it up ourselves with the help of the police? Another thing is that people tend to use the internet to go a little out of their community to meet the kids. So if the Brooklyn police won't work with us because they're bought off by the rebbes, maybe we can get someone in Manhattan or Long Island to target frummies over the internet and lure them out there. I think this has got to be one of the best possible ways of catching and convicting the predators among us. I'm deadly serious. What do people think? What do you think, UOJ?
Vayomer Hamelech teluhu alav (Margo hoisted by his own petard)
Bear Stearns Chairman Jimmy Cayne was at a bridge tournament in Detroit while the Fed was arranging the bailout package, which didn't help the perception that management wasn't paying enough attention to looming catastrophes.
UOJ, can you see pitching the idea of doing a special segment of "To Catch A Predator" on the frum community?
---------------------
You are on to something!
The coming trials of Kolko, Colmer and Mondrowitz have the Authorities convinced (at last), that we, as other communities, have a very serious sexual predator problem.
The media is on to this as well.
I am stepping back - and will be observing what we as a community, will be doing to cooperate with the Authorities.
If we do nothing - the Shea Fishman - Agudah - strategy, - I will see to it that every possible plug will be pulled out to catch the predators and their enablers.
Ah freilachen Purim to all!
UOJ
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- In a reversal of its earlier stance, China's drug safety agency is ordering local authorities to tighten controls on production of heparin, a blood-thinner linked to 19 deaths in the U.S. and hundreds of allergic reactions, the Associated Press reported.
The State Food and Drug Administration issued the order in a notice, seen Friday on its Web site, which requires heparin producers to obtain the raw chemicals used to make the drug from registered suppliers, the report said. Raw heparin suppliers, meanwhile, are required to improve their management and tests on their products.
Earlier, the Chinese drug agency had insisted that ensuring the quality of exported chemicals like heparin was the responsibility of importers and importing countries.
Investigations following the reports of sometimes fatal adverse reactions in the U.S., and of similar allergic reactions in Germany, prompted China's new crackdown on unlicensed production, the AP report said.
Slowdown could have been avoided.
A well-respected economist says the U.S. is now in recession...and that Congress and the Federal Reserve could have stopped it.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Congress and the Federal Reserve missed their chance to keep the country from falling into recession by acting too slowly, according to a well-respected economist UOJ - the economist responsible for creating victims of Rabbi Kolko - a man loved and revered by all.
A witness close to Schwartz at Daf Yomi says Schwartz has joined the Agudah and is petitioning the court to have Ceasar Rodriguez the next featured speaker at the Agudah Convention.
Efforts to confirm this by Avi Shafran have gone unanswered.
I saw that JERK Jeff Schwartz on the news before I realized he's officially "frum" & also representing Kolko. He talks like a revolting piece of scum. His Chutzpah knows no bounds. Now I understand why the bottom feeder has been receiving death threats from people he doesn't even know.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/fda-detains-honduran-firms-cantaloupes/story.aspx?guid=%7B77363087-9A26-403F-8F46-C9582D11ADBC%7D
FDA detains Honduran producer's cantaloupes
By MarketWatch
Last update: 7:12 a.m. EDT March 23, 2008
TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) - The Food and Drug Administration warned that cantaloupes from a Honduran producer may be tainted with salmonella and it detained all shipments of cantaloupes by the company.
The agency also advised stores to pull from their shelves any stock of the cantaloupes produced by the company, Agropecuaria Montelibano. And it urged consumers to check with stores about the origin of any cantaloupes they might have recently purchased and to throw away any that came from the company.
As of the Saturday announcement, the FDA had received reports of 50 people becoming sick in 16 states and nine in Canada linked to eating cantaloupes. Fourteen people have been hospitalized; no deaths have been reported, the FDA said.
Food-borne salmonella infection can cause nausea, vomiting, fever, diarrhea and abdominal cramps, the agency said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/business/worldbusiness/22debt.html?ei=5087&em=&en=79ec2ac4b6d97d22&ex=1206417600&pagewanted=print
March 22, 2008
Debt-Gorged British Start to Worry That the Party Is Ending
By JULIA WERDIGIER
LONDON — At one point, Alexis Hall had more than 50 pairs of designer shoes and handbags. It never occurred to the 39-year-old media relations executive from Glasgow that her £31,500 in debt ($63,000) would be a problem.
“It was so easy to get the loans and the credit that you almost think the goods are a gift from the shop,” she said. “You don’t fully realize that it’s real money you are spending until you actually sit down and consolidate your bills and then it’s a shock.”
As the United States economy weakens, many Americans are being overwhelmed by personal debt, but Britons are even more profligate. For most of the last decade, consumers here went on a debt-financed spending spree that made them the most indebted rich nation in the world, racking up a record £1.4 trillion in debt ($2.8 trillion) — more than the country’s gross domestic product.
By comparison, personal debt in the United States is $13.8 trillion, including mortgage debt, slightly less than the country’s $14 trillion G.D.P.
And while the Federal Reserve in Washington has cut interest rates, in an effort to loosen lenders’ grip on credit, the Bank of England’s interest rate increases last year are trickling through to mortgages at the very time home values are dropping and banks are becoming more reluctant to lend.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-licrash0322,0,2995317.story
You probably heard about that bad accident Purim night on the radio. It turns out they were a bunch of boys & girls from the modern orthodox HANC that were fooling around at 3 am. 15 year old boys driving their 14 year old girlfriends. The police said there was no alcohol but still one girl is in a coma & the other requires multiple leg surgeries. They all live in Fresh Meadows except for one girl from Jamaica Estates. The father of the Jamaica girl took ill when he learned about it. Their rabbi, Shlomo Hochberg, President of the RCA, spent the whole Purim by their side in the hospital.
The driver is charged as a juvenile delinquent. It was a big hassle getting to krias Megillah on Purim morning with the main street in town closed for a mile.
http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/19/786127.aspx
Hillary was forced to hand over her documents but she blacked out all the details about meeting with the Skverrer Rebbe.
http://www.wnbc.com/slideshow/news//15666637/detail.html
Pictures from the Great Neck crash.
http://www.5tjt.com/news/read.asp?Id=2236
N.Y. Assembly Must Override Conflict Of Interest
Dear Editor,
As a retired police officer and as a member of Community Board 11 representing Bayside, I write to express my indignation over Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s ongoing relationship with New York’s largest personal-injury law firm, Weitz & Luxenberg. Mr. Silver, a founder of the firm, has remained “of counsel” throughout his time in the Assembly, refusing to disclose how much he is paid or who his clients are, according to the New York Post.
Silver has consistently opposed efforts to implement tort reform so that plaintiffs’ lawyers do not abuse the court system, tie up the dockets, and use the legal system as if it were a lottery system or slot machine. Naturally, when folks get hurt they deserve their day in court and they deserve a fair remedy, but Silver, the favorite of the trial lawyers’ lobby, has constantly passed laws making it easier to sue and has blocked reforms to rein in excesses.
Meanwhile, Queens assemblymen have been strangely silent as to Silver’s obvious conflict of interest. Indeed, most have been little more than rubber stamps for Silver’s self-serving legislation This is unacceptable, for as we teeter on the brink of a recession, tort-law abuse is putting even more financial pressure on employers and government. We are losing jobs to other states, and businesses are closing down or downsizing.
Furthermore, Silver, with the acquiescence of Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith, picked a partner in Silver’s own law firm, Arthur Luxenberg, to serve on a 13-member judicial-screening commission that recommends judicial candidates for the Appellate Division, Court of Claims, and State Supreme Court. Clearly, this is yet another conflict of interest perpetrated by Silver upon our state.
I call on our Queens assemblymen to finally speak out against this outrageous and self-evident conflict of interest. Our assemblymen in northeastern Queens, in particular, need only look to Brian McLaughlin’s sad example to find the courage to do the right thing. They may see Silver as their legislative boss, but they need to remember that they are still answerable to the voters and taxpayers right here in Queens.
Sincerely,
Rob Speranza,
Bayside
http://www.5tjt.com/news/read.asp?Id=2236
Banning Of Concert Raises Questions
Dear Editor,
I found your casual treatment of the concert-banning scandal to be severely off point (“The Dynamics of Leadership,” March 7). In response to Brooklyn activist Usher Friedman’s advocacy for a ban on Jewish concerts, you reduced the issue to the following question: “Did Rabbi Friedman and his associates misjudge the general needs of the k’lal and community?” You elaborated that the question was whether kids (and, presumably, adults) needing an outlet are entitled to concerts as said outlet.
Sorry, but this tepid comment does not begin to capture the enormity of the wrong perpetrated here. Let us review. A promoter invested in an event space, hired performers, and accepted front money from the charity that was to benefit from the proceeds. In other words, he did precisely what he and other promoters have been doing, unchallenged, for decades. This time, however, one man interfered and convinced certain rabbanim to sign a kol korei (proclamation) decrying concerts. I knowingly use the plural, because the kol korei clearly prohibits all concerts, not just the Big Event.
The questions are many, but are not related to misjudgment of the needs of the community. Rather, I ask: By what right does one man disrupt the plans for an event that is similar to hundreds of prior such concerts? Friedman should have aired his objections at a time when no single event would have been impacted. Which leads to question two: The Big Event was to raise money for an incredible tzedakah, Simchat Tzion, which makes weddings for destitute Israeli orphans. Is Friedman going to donate the lost money? And will he compensate the promoter and the performers? (I have made a donation at SimchatTzion.com.)
My third question: Did the rabbanim read the kol korei before signing it? If they did, are they aware that it terms the concert performers “miktzeh ha’machaneh,” from the fringe of the camp? Why is it not hotza’as shem ra to publicly vilify these singers as coming from outside Orthodoxy’s mainstream? Likewise, at least the performers were not named in the main body of the text. How did Friedman arrogate to himself the right to add two lines under the signatures, wherein Lipa Schmeltzer is named? Is Friedman unaware that one who publicly embarrasses someone is guilty of an immeasurable sin?
Additionally, the kol korei declares that “the facts prove that in the past, great stumbling blocks have emerged from these performances and many bodies have fallen, slain.” I challenge the rabbanim and Usher Friedman to produce a list of these casualties. This charge is laughable.
Finally, you write that according to Friedman, he always consults da’as Torah. His wonderful organization, Nechomas Yisroel (to which I have contributed on many occasions), takes children out of public schools and puts them into yeshivos at minimal tuition. Until a few years ago, Nechomas Yisroel placed kids into both co-ed and single-sex schools, based on a p’sak received from Rav Avraham Pam, zt’l. After Rav Pam died, Nechomas Yisroel would no longer send children to co-ed schools. I asked Friedman about the change, and he replied that he had consulted da’as Torah. I ask: What was wrong with Rav Pam’s da’as Torah? Is da’as Torah something you shop for until you obtain the answer desired?
I have spoken to rashei yeshivah, rabbanim, and ba’alei battim who are all firmly within the yeshivish camp and, to a man (and some women), they have expressed their deep dismay at the actions that have taken place here. I have addressed some of the above questions to seven of the more prominent signatories, in a letter to which I await responses.
Sincerely,
Avi Goldstein,
Far Rockaway
http://www.5tjt.com/news/read.asp?Id=2236
Publication Of Sarcastic Letter Denigrates Da’as Torah
Dear Editor,
I was distressed by your newspaper’s decision to publish (March 7) a thoughtless letter containing nothing more than an ad hominem attack against our gedolim. The writer sarcastically bemoaned the inability of “33 rabbanim” to get together and solve the agunah problem, while they were able to join together in issuing a ban prohibiting attendance at a concert which would have benefited “orphaned brides and grooms.”
Both of the issues supposedly troubling the writer are premised on sheer nonsense. Does the writer have any idea of the time and mesirus nefesh that these gedolim give of themselves to help K’lal Yisrael? Does he believe that any of these gedolim are, chas v’shalom, callous to the plight of agunos? It is well known that many of these gedolim, some of whom are well into their eighties, not only live and breathe Torah but also put in 20-hour days traveling the world to deal with countless k’lal issues and individual problems. And our gedolim, as in generations past, leave no stone unturned in their efforts to help agunos in any halachically sanctioned way. The writer seems to suggest that if these gedolim chose to get together and really put their minds to it, they could come up with some better solution to help agunos. What unmitigated chutzpah!
If the writer is upset that these gedolim have refused to accept novel proposals made by certain rabbis, let him come out and say so. Let him then analyze the issue and explain why he feels these gedolim are all wrong and he is right. But, of course the issue of agunos is not really what is on his mind.
Similarly, with respect to the ban on attending the concert, the author does not attempt to provide any rational discussion of the topic. The fact that a portion of the funds to be raised from the concert were to be used for tzedakah is a red herring. These gedolim concluded that the event, as planned, was not permitted. Would the writer also condone soccer matches played on Shabbos in Eretz Yisrael if some of the proceeds went to tzedakah?
None of the above should be construed as a concession that an individual may use a “Letters to the Editor” page as a forum for espousing his personal disagreement with gedolim. Certainly not. I only wish to highlight the more odious nature of the letter: the writer does not wish to discuss issues, he wishes to publicly attack gedolim.
Indeed, the writer betrays his true intentions in his opening words: “How sad that 33 rabbanim…” His agenda is not any issue; it is an attempt to belittle and to undermine the authority and wisdom of our gedolim. Even Korach, who shared similar motives, made an attempt to back up his rebellion against the gedolei ha’dor with “logical” (if twisted) arguments. This writer wants only to publicize the message that gedolim are fair game for anyone who chooses to attack them.
Ultimately, however, it is not the chutzpah of the letter itself that causes my greatest concern. I am far more troubled by the fact that a paper which holds itself out as a frum publication for the Five Towns would publish such a letter. I am aware of your disclaimer that “opinions expressed by writers and columnists are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher,” but where do you draw the line? Surely you would never publish a letter from a Reform rabbi challenging the authority of the frum community to decide halachah.
Perhaps if someone wishes to challenge a particular p’sak on an issue by citing a legitimate contemporary authority you may deem it appropriate to publish an article, with your disclaimer. But it cannot be gainsaid that this letter is nothing more than a replay of Korach mocking Moshe Rabbeinu.
Moreover, this letter was given by the editor the caption “Lipa Brings Rabbinical Unity”—giving the unmistakable impression to any reader that the editor and publisher find the contents of the letter acceptable if not agreeable.
Do you have any idea of the extent to which K’lal Yisrael, including the community you serve, suffers from a lack of kavod for da’as Torah? Picture the child who was disappointed that he would not be able to attend “The Big Event.” He doesn’t understand why it was suddenly canceled by people he doesn’t know and for reasons he doesn’t understand. He now reads that “Lipa Brings Rabbinical Unity” and concludes that it is because of 33 men who can’t agree about anything except ruining his night of fun. You may think that scenario is far-fetched, but I submit that anyone who held any bit of sinas chachamim in his heart will surely have had that thought strengthened after reading this letter. How can you, with a straight face, publish articles about shemiras halashon after publicly being motzi shem ra on our leaders?
While it is clear to me that the writer of the letter is required to ask mechillah from each of the 33 gedolim he publicly denigrated, it is equally clear your newspaper must publish a condemnation of the letter together with a statement describing the reverence which we must have for our gedolim.
Finally, I believe it is imperative that your paper, which writes on matters of halachah and hashkafah, include on its editorial board a halachic authority to assure that your articles and letters (and even advertisements!) meet with some halachic standard and do not create any further chillul Hashem.
Sincerely,
Yaakov Miller
Editorial note: Some of the captions above the letters are supplied by the Five Towns Jewish Times. These should in no way be construed as conferring approval of or legitimacy to any opinions contained in such letters.
http://www.forward.com/articles/12964/
Sydney, Australia — Australia’s tight-knit ultra-Orthodox community is being roiled by allegations that the principal of a girls’ high school molested a number of her former students.
Malka Leifer, headmistress of Melbourne’s Adass Israel Girls’ School for the past five years, left the country within 24 hours of board members confronting her with allegations of sexual misconduct March 4, according to school board members.
Her departure is particularly controversial, due to allegations that she left with up to $100,000 borrowed from community members. A teacher at the school told the Forward that Leifer borrowed money from members of the community who were unaware of the impending furor.
Leifer, a mother of eight in her late 40s, denied any wrongdoing to the school’s board, but since she was ordered to step aside pending a full investigation, she believed she “might as well resign,” according the school’s lawyer, Norman Rosenbaum. (Rosenbaum’s younger brother, Yankel, was murdered by an anti-Jewish mob in Brooklyn during the Crown Heights riots in 1991.)
A day after speaking with the school, Leifer left for native Israel.
The allegations and swift departure have traumatized the 1,200 members of Adass Israel, an ultra-Orthodox, non-Zionist community whose lingua franca is Yiddish. Unlike in America, where ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, sects have their own communities, the Adass community here includes Satmar, Vishnitzer, Belz and other Hasidic groupings.
“My friend teaches there,” said Timmy Rubin, who runs the Chaya Moushke Schneerson Mikvah in Melbourne. “She’s been crying the whole time. Everybody’s devastated. It’s like 9/11 for them; it’s their wake-up call.”
Melbourne is home to a 45,000-person Jewish community with a significant Orthodox contingent, including a strong Chabad-Lubavitch component. Adass Israel, however, is a virtually self-contained, reclusive community that has little contact with the wider Jewish population.
At least three alleged victims are believed to have come forward to counselors with allegations of misconduct by Leifer. Sources close to the school told the Forward that the alleged victims are all recent graduates who became teachers at the school.
Since the allegations emerged, the school has engaged a number of psychologists, including experts in sexual abuse, to counsel the school’s 250 students, as well their parents, former students and staff. It also flew in an expert from Israel to counsel the students.
The story broke last Thursday in The Australian Jewish News, and has been seized upon by the mainstream media.
“Principal ‘molested schoolgirls,’” screamed the front-page headline of Melbourne’s The Age last Friday. “Fury over girls school sex claims,” thundered The Australian on Saturday. Talk radio and blogs have been ablaze with commentary — much of it negative, including inflammatory statements against individuals and defamation of Jews in general. In addition, a furious debate has been raging on the Web site and in this week’s letters’ pages of The Australian Jewish News about whether the newspaper should have reported the allegations on its front page last week.
The person who first told the school about the allegations spoke to the Forward on condition of anonymity. She said that three weeks ago she was told by a fellow counselor that a former student had revealed the alleged instances of molestation.
“One of my colleagues said she’d had a person in therapy say that someone behaved inappropriately with her,” the counselor said. “None of the current students have been abused, as far as we know. But who knows what might come out in the next few weeks?”
For the community, some of the most damaging reports have covered the way in which the school has handled the affair. The school only informed the Independent Association of Schools of Victoria, an umbrella organization for area schools, on March 6, the day after Leifer left the country.
Media reports have also alleged that Leifer, who arrived in Melbourne eight years ago, went to members of the community to borrow money just before she left.
Sholomo Boruch Abelesz, a former secretary of the Adass Israel community whose daughter is a former student of Leifer, blasted the media coverage.
“We are innocent people being made to look guilty,” Abelesz said.
“We have been besmirched by the actions of one woman,” he added.
Rosenbaum, the school’s lawyer, said he knew nothing about the financial allegations. The school acted “responsibly and expeditiously,” said Rosenbaum.
“The school’s first priority is the welfare and safety of all persons affected by her,” he added.
Yossi Aron, religious affairs editor of The Australian Jewish News and the author of a history on the Adass community in Melbourne, described the scandal as the “ultimate betrayal.”
“They are in absolute trauma; they are in a state of shock. It’s a disaster,” said Aron, whose late father was the first principal of the Adass Israel school.
“Many are of the view she must be outed and shamed,” he said. “But there are some who are concerned the status of the organization must be upheld.”
In his Sabbath sermon on March 8, Adass Chief Rabbi Avrohom Zvi Beck said Leifer should not be considered guilty because no charges have been brought against her. Beck, a Vishnitzer Hasidic rabbi whose brother is head of the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta in America, also warned his flock not to engage in malicious gossip.
Police are aware of the allegations but would neither confirm nor deny whether any girls had reported claims against Leifer or whether a police investigation is underway.
“I doubt that there can be a police case because, knowing our families, no girl or parent will report these allegations,” Abelesz, the former Adass secretary, said. “The girls are modest and shy and would only be further hurt by any publicity.”
Rosenbaum stressed that “not a single complaint had been made to the school by any person saying they were adversely affected by this woman.”
But, he added, “We will not under any circumstance compromise — from an ethical, legal, moral or halachic point of view— the rights of those who have been affected.”
A teacher at the girls’ school, who has known Leifer for six years, said she came across as “very charismatic” and “fun loving,” but “a little bit strange.”
“She was an odd woman who had odd relationships with people, but you don’t think along sinister lines,” the teacher said.
Raizl Fogel, an Adass member whose daughters are graduates of the school, said she was “totally blinded” by the allegations.
“People are up in arms about it,” Fogel said. “It’s havoc in our community. There are a lot of very disturbed people. They don’t know where to go.”
That Israeli putz pimp for Spitzer used to live in both Forest Hills and Middle Village according the the local Queens papers. Does anyone know if he ever attended any shuls? There are many shuls in Forest Hills and one very left wing modern ortho one in Middle Village.
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20080318
Eliot Spitzer took on Wall Street like no other attorney general before him. As the Washington Post reported in 2004, “His targets in the past have included everyone from big Wall Street investment banks and the $7.5 trillion mutual fund industry to polluting power plants and supermarket chains that underpaid delivery workers.”
Additionally, Wayne Madsen reports [subscription required] that “Defense sources have confirmed our March 11, 2008, report that Emperors Club VIP, the prostitution firm that entangled New York’s outgoing Governor Eliot Spitzer in a call girl ring, is viewed by US intelligence as a front for Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad.
“The sources claim that Spitzer was ‘outed’ for his aggressiveness in attacking money launderers connected to Russian-Israeli organized crime syndicates and other Wall Street malfeasance.”
In an earlier report, Madsen mentioned that “There is also speculation that although Spitzer was implicated in the large international investigation of the Emperor’s VIP Club’s prostitution business, GOP dirty tricks operative Roger Stone figures in the case as a collateral agent provocateur. Stone has a history of badgering Eliot Spitzer and his elderly father, New York real estate magnate Bernard Spitzer.”
Madsen went on to say, “There is also intense speculation about the identities of the other clients of the Emperor’s VIP Club call girls service. A February 5, 2006, article by Ben Smith in The New York Observer describes a close relationship between Eliot Spitzer and former Bill Clinton aide Dick Morris. Spitzer told the newspaper that Dick Morris’ dad was his dad’s lawyer. In 2006, the Democratic National Convention was shocked to learn that Morris, then Clinton’s top political consultant, paid $200 an hour to a Virginia prostitute named Sherry Rowlands. The revelations about Morris came mere hours before Clinton was to deliver his acceptance speech at the convention.
“Rowlands revealed that Morris once let her listen in on a phone conversation with Clinton. She said that Hillary Clinton was upset at the phone call, that she 'was not well,' and the president asked Morris not to use the White House private residence phone number in the future.
[A copy of my blog for today, which is a review of an article that I found echoed a lot of what I was saying in my not-yet-published guest post here (shameless plug)]
The article:
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Growth can't last forever.
www.theoildrum.com
The Problem of Growth
Posted by jeffvail on March 21, 2008 - 11:00am
Topic: Environment/Sustainability
...This article proposes an alternative vision: instead of trying to create continual, technological stop-gaps to the demands of growth, we must address the problem of growth head on. Infinite growth is impossible in a finite world--a great deal of economic growth may be possible without a growth in resource consumption, but eventually the notion of perpetual growth is predicated on perpetual increase in resource consumption...
...A viable approach to the problem of growth is to stop trying to address its symptoms—overpopulation, pollution, global warming, peak oil—and attempt instead to identify and address the underlying source of the problem...This essay isn't about how to find more oil, how to recover more oil, or how to use energy in general more efficiently so that we can keep on growing. It is an opinion piece, not a data-driven scientific paper. It is about living well, now and in the future, individually and collectively, without growth...
...there is serious moral hazard in the continuation of growth on a finite planet as it serves merely to push that problem on to our children or grandchildren. Growth cannot continue infinitely on a finite planet. This must seem obvious to many people, but I emphasize the point because we tend to overlook or ignore its significance: the basis of our civilization is fundamentally unsustainable.
...This is also problematic because the further we are able to inflate this bubble beyond a level that is sustainable indefinitely, the farther we must ultimately fall to return to a sustainable world...
...Take, for example, a modern American suburbanite. Her list of dependencies is virtually unending: food, fuel for heat, fuel for transport, electricity, clothing, medical care, just to name a few. She has no meaningful level of self-sufficiency—without participation in hierarchy she would not survive. This relationship is hierarchal because she is subservient to the broader economy—she may have negotiating power with regard to what job she performs at what compensation for what firm, but she does not have negotiating power on the fundamental issue of participating in the market economy on its terms. She must participate to gain access to her fundamental needs—she is dependent (consider also Robert Anton Wilson's notion of money in civilization as "bio-surival tickets")...
I add: That is, she must turn outside her immediate community to obtain what she needs. Eliminate this dependency in favor of our community's self-sufficiency, and the situation changes drastically. My guest-post for UOJ talks about how this can be done in more detail.]
...In an era of globalization, increased communications connectivity, and (despite the rising costs of energy) an ever increasing global trade network, this marginalization is accelerating at breakneck speed. Is your job something that can be done online from India? How about in person by an illegal immigrant? Because there are people with doctorates willing to work for ¼ what you make if you’re in a knowledge field, and people with high tolerance for mind-numbing, back-breaking labor willing to work hard for $5/hour or less right next door (or for $2/day overseas). If this doesn’t apply to you, you’re one of the lucky few (and, if I might add, you should be working to get yourself to into just such a position). Maybe they don’t know how to outsource your function yet, but trust me, someone is working on it. Participation in the market on its terms means that the market is trying to find a way to make your function cheaper...
[I add: Meaning your wages will continue to decline in both absolute terms and buying power as long as the Robber Barons have control of your economic future - as long as our community is not self-sufficient, that is exactly the case with no end in sight.]
...Why this is Important:
Virtually everyone is dependent on participation in hierarchal systems to meet their basic needs, of one type or another. This dependency forces participation, and drives the perpetual growth—and therefore the ultimate unsustainability—of hierarchy. If growth is the problem, then it is necessary to identify the root cause of that problem so that we may treat the problem itself, and not merely a set of symptoms. In our analysis, we have seen in Part 1 that hierarchies must grow, and now in this installment that human dependency is what sustains these hierarchies. Dependency, then, is the root cause of the problem of growth.
[I add: Eliminating dependency eliminates the problem. We must build communities, and quickly, that are self-sufficient, local, and involve all able-bodied adults. Continuing to have vast numbers of young men being parasites off of others is not sustainable.]
...Achieving Minimal Self-Sufficiency:
The first principle of rhizome is that individual nodes—whether that is family units or communities of varying sizes—must be minimally self-sufficient. “Minimally self-sufficient” means the ability to consistently and reliably provide for anything so important that you would be willing to subject yourself to the terms of the hierarchal system in order to get it: food, shelter, heat, medical care, entertainment, etc. It doesn’t mean zero trade, asceticism, or “isolationism,” but rather the ability to engage in trade and interaction with the broader system when, and only when, it is advantageous to do so...
[I add: Exactly. Right now our resources are being drained from us to outside our community at an alarming rate. That needs to change - fast!]
...This principle of minimal self-sufficiency empowers the individual family or community, while allowing the continuation of trade, value-added exchange, and full interaction with the outside world....
...Finally, institutions should be devolutionary rather than accrete hierarchy. One example of this is the Jubilee system—rather than allow debt or excess property beyond what an individual can use, accumulate, and pass on to following generations--a system that inevitably leads to class divisions and a de facto aristocracy--some ancient cultures would periodically absolve all debt and start fresh, or redistribute land in a one-family-one-farm manner...
[I add: Now all we have to do is get rid of the Rabbinic "work-arounds" that they have developed to allow them to defy Hashem's Sabbath years and Jubilees so that people's debts are actually canceled like they're supposed to be!]
Rhizome begins at the personal level, with a conscious attempt to understand anthropological processes, to build minimal self-sufficiency, and to engage in “small-worlds” networks...
Finally, beyond minimal self sufficiency, the individual node should have the capability to produce some surplus for exchange because this allows access to additional quality-of-life creating products and services beyond what a single node can realistically provide entirely for itself. This is the point where minimal self-sufficiency doesn’t require isolationism. It is neither possible nor desirable for an individual or family node to provide absolutely everything desired for an optimal quality of life. While minimal self-sufficiency is essential, it is not essential to produce independently every food product, every tool, every type of entertainment, every service that you will want. Once minimal self-sufficiency is achieved, the ability to exchange a surplus product on a discretionary basis allows the individual node to access the myriad of wants—but not needs—that improve quality of life...
[I add: Each family interacts with the other families of their Jewish community, so that between them all every possible items if made, grown, and sold. Individual Jewish communities can then interact with other Jewish communities - and so on. All the resources and funds stay within the community as much as possible, and sufficient funds brought in from outside buyers to cover outside expenses - such as taxes, which must be sent outside the community. As long as resources in = resources out, there is equilibrium and self-sufficiency. But if we keep bleeding red ink - if we continue spending most of our money outside our communities (in wal-marts, for example) we're just enriching their CEOs and their children and not our own. Those resources are lost forever and with employment prospects in the outside world getting worse and paying less, these shortfalls cannot be made up.
We are gleefully impoverishing ourselves for cheap plastic junk made in China.]
...Rhizome isn’t an all or nothing proposition—it is possible, and probably both necessary and desirable, to take incremental, consistent steps toward rhizome. Learn how to do more with less. Work to consciously integrate the principles of rhizome into every aspect of your daily life—think about your choices in consumption, then make medium and long-term plans to take bigger steps towards the full realization of rhizome.
And, perhaps most of all, rhizome does not demand, or even endorse, a “bunker mentality.” The single greatest step that an individual can take toward rhizome is to become an active participant in the creation of rhizome in the immediate, local community.
[I add: You have to consciously choose to buy locally made products, to support real locally owned and operated businesses and farms. You can to consciously allocate your resources so that they stay, as much as possible, in our own community.]
...The results-based focus of the community is essentially the same as the individual, because the community consists of individuals who recognize the ability of the community to help them build resiliency and self-sufficiency in the provision of their basic needs, as well as the ability to access a broader network beyond the community...
...Finally, every community must address the problem of free riders. Some people will want to benefit from the community without contributing anything at all. In most cases, normative pressures will suffice, and this is especially true of rhizome, where there isn’t a grand redistributive scheme that facilitates some people to leach indefinitely off the collected surplus. Still, the problem will arise, and there will always be a need and a place for charity, within rhizome and elsewhere. The most important factor in determining who is worthy of charity and who is a free-rider is the conscious articulation of the requirements for membership: the community gains strength by helping up its least self-sufficient members, but it should do so by helping them to fish, rather than repeatedly just giving them fish to eat. Rhizome communities need not be heartless—in fact, they shouldn’t be heartless, not just on moral grounds, but on selfish grounds of building a more resilient community—but they should exert normative pressures to demand participation roughly commensurate with capability....
[I add: Amein!
Now lets' get to it.]
UOJ whats your email address that i can something to you?
Mr. Miller;
Mr. Goldstein makes several excellent points that directly address the egregious, ill-timed, and underhanded way this ban of the Live concert was formulated and carried out by Usher Friedman and R' Shor.
Your foundation premise that the 33 signatories should be lauded for their Mesiras Nefesh on this issue is ludicrous and not supported by the actual facts.
1. The Ban was issued at the 11.5 hour after Shia Mendlowitz had already committed hundreds of thousands of dollars for venue rental, performers, musicians,and ancillary costs associated with producing an event of this magnitude.
2. The 33 signatories never met as a group to discuss the efficacy of issuing a Kol Koreh and to analyze and discuss the validity of the complaints put forth by Messrs. Friedman and Shor. An embarrassed R. Shmuel Kaminetsky, one of the signers to the ban has publicly admitted that this Ban was mishandled, ill-timed, and that
the 33 signatories should have met as a group to discuss the matter prior to the issuance of any public statement. A Kol Koreh is serious business; forethought, careful deliberation, and the realization of consequences are imperative. Our Gedolim of previous Generations would not issue Chumros, no matter how justified, if the Oilam would not listen or adhere to their call.
They realized that such proclamations could result in more damage than maintaining the status quo.
3. No attempt was ever made by either Mr. Friedman, R' Shor, or any of the 33 signatories to personally and privately contact Shia Mendlowitz and Lipa Shmeltzer
either individually or together to voice and air their concerns with the Concert or with specifics related to Mr. Schmeltzer's on-stage Act. Had they done so, I'm certain that both Mr. Mendlowitz and Mr. Schmeltzer would have been accommodating. Shia Mendlowitz is highly respected in the Jewish Music industry and Lipa Schmeltzer is a heartzige individual who has done tremendous Chessed by performing Gratis to very sick children, bringing joy to them and their courageous families. An acceptable solution to both sides could have been ironed out so that the Concert could go on.
4. The massive Chillul Hashem that resulted from this ill-conceived 11th hour public ban of the Concert is incalcuable. Major Media such as The New York Times, New York Magazine, Internet sites, and Blogs carried unflattering accounts and derogatory editorial comments. Derisive comparisons to the Taliban techniques were and still are made.
Mr.Miller; what happened to generational directives by our Gedolim that in Golus we need to fly below the Radar screen? Your shrill demand to the Editors of the Newspaper to invoke censorship and not publish letters that run counter to "Dass Toiyreh" are misguided and misdirected. Had the 33 signatories approached this issue in the proper way, your call for censorship would be irrelevant.
5. I do agree with you on one point, however, and that is that today there is a precipitous decline in Kovod for Rabbanim and "Dass Toiyreh" but disagree as to the reasons.
IMO the decline in Kovod is the result of the Oilem's growing disallusionment with our Gedolim and "Dass Toiyreh" inadequate responses and "Mesirus Nefesh" actions with respect to such important issues such as:
A. Sex Predators in our Mosdos and bringing them to Justice,
B. The $orry State of Ka$hrus,
C. Corrupt Botei Din,
D. The lack of integrity in Business Dealings due to the absence of teachings by "Dais Toiyreh" to our people.
When Skverer Chasidim get their shady business deals pardoned by Bill "Noef" Clinton, the Spinka Rebbe gets caught laundering money, and Otisville has a larger "frum" Minyan with Daf Yomi than many Shuls and Shtiebelich, you can not expect the Hamoin Am to have Derech Eretz, and you can expect to be successful in your Kiruv work,can you?
Yours Sincerely,
Boog
E-mail:
a_unorthodoxjew@yahoo.com
March 20, 2008, Baltimore, MD
The Washington Center for Peace and Justice, Inc. filed a federal lawsuit today on behalf of a 16 year old Brooklyn boy seeking injunctive relief to stop his abuse and to gain his release from a notorious behavior modification facility in Jamaica, West Indies, where he was sent after being brutally seized at the behest of his parents, Michael and Miriam Hersh. Michael Hersh is a former student of Yeshiva Chaim Berlin in Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, and a disciple of Rabbi Aaron M. Schecter, dean of the Yeshiva.
The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, details the long history of abuse of the boy by his father that culminated in his being forcibly removed from his mouse in the early morning hours on June 13, 2007. The boy was sadistically handcuffed and dragged to a waiting van by two men hired by his parents while shocked witnesses helplessly watched him plead with his abductors.
It was not until several months later that worried family members learned that the boy had been sent by his parents to Tranquility Bay, an affiliate of World Wide Association of Specialty Schools and Programs, WWASPS. The complaint details documented cases of abuse at Tranquility Bay which includes beatings, sexual assault, food deprivation and excessive use of isolation.
Joshua Ambush, the lead counsel in the case, announced the filing of the action against the parents. Michael Hersh, father of the boy is the CEO of Chevra Hatzalah Volunteer Ambulance Corps, Inc., the largest all-volunteer ambulance service in the United States. The complaint also names the State Department for constitutional and civil rights violations.
Ambush emphasized that the lawsuit is not about tort damages, but rather is an effort to save the boy's life and rescue him from a modern day concentration camp. "Child abuse by a parent should not be tolerated in civilized society, and should not be tolerated when the parents hires surrogates to perpetrate the abuse. It is unconscionable that perpetrators of abuse are able to evade prosecution by virtue of the fact that the abuse is taking place outside the jurisdiction of the Untied States. In addition to rescuing this child, this suit seeks to demonstrate that federal courts, in such cases, retain jurisdiction over the abusers and those that aid and protect them."
A copy of the complaint that was failed in this case is attached.
http://www.geocites.com/safeisaac/files/HershComplaint.pdf
Joshua Ambush will be available for interviews by phone appointment at 410-484-2070
Where does Hersh live and daven?
Is this the same Hersh that earlier this year became Mechutanim with Hecht of Flatbush?
Michael and Miriam Hersh
1014 W. 10th St.
Brooklyn, NY 11230
Chevra Hatzalah Volulnteer Abmulance Corp, Inc.
1340 East 9th Street
Brooklyn , NY 11230
718-998-9000
Rabbi Aaron M. Schecter
Mesivta Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin
1593 Coney Island Ave.
Brooklyn, New York, 11230
(718) 377-0777
Seems to be a conspiracy theorist nut and perhaps an anti-Semite. The NSA was rife with them in the 1970s & 1980s. The earlier theory makes more sense that Brener is a Mossad asset or sleeper cell waiting to be activated who was acting as a rogue on his own in setting up politicians for blackmail.
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/categories/20070329
In the tradition of Drew Pearson's and Jack Anderson's famous "Washington Merry-Go-Round" syndicated column and I.F. Stone, this online publication tackles the "politically incorrect" and "politically embarrassing" stories and holds government officials accountable for their actions. This web site extends a warm open invitation to whistleblowers and leakers. Business as usual for the crooks and liars in Washington, DC, is over.
Wayne Madsen, Editor
(LT, USN, National Security Agency 1984-85).
"Vegam UOJ Zachur Latov"
This must be going according to the mon damar that Charvona & UOJ are Eliyahu Hanovee.
"Finally, every community must address the problem of free riders."
At a shul meeting once where everyone was offering how much money or goods they could donate for the new building, one numbskull spoke up to offer that "I'm good at giving my opinion" (of what to do with other people's money)
Anon @ 9:24,
Link to PDF does not work. Can you also provide a link to the original article? I'm curious as to why this is being filed in DC if the defendants are in NY.
Class Action Lawsuit
See recent class action lawsuit against Tranquility Bay
(specifically pages 13 and 14).
http://www.box.net/shared/g6nl77iakf
http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=22096
What would you do to your neighbor if they sent their "troubled" son to a place where kids are ...
• Forced to eat their own vomit
• Kicked, beaten, thrown, and slammed to the ground
• Bound and tied by their hands/and or feet
• Chained and locked in dog cages
• Forced to stay in isolation for long periods of times
• Locked in small boxes or cages
• Locked in basements
• Forced to lie in or wear urine and feces as a method of punishment
• Forced to clean and scrub toilets and floors with their toothbrush and then use the toothbrush afterwards
• Forced to sleep on cold concrete floors, box springs, or plywood used as beds – some had no bed linens
• Forced to assume distorted and painful physical positions for long periods of time
• Forced to live in unsanitary living conditions
• Denied adequate food
• Denied even a minimally sufficient education
• Denied proper medical and dental treatment and care
• Exposed to extreme hot and cold temperatures for long periods of time
• Forced to exercise beyond their physical capacity
• Forced to carry heavy bags of sand or logs around their neck throughout the day over many days
• Sexually abused, including sexual relations and acts of fondling and masturbation performed on them
• Emotional abuse by subjecting children to near total parental and societal isolation; personal visits, correspondence, and telephone calls were either forbidden or discouraged
• Because of near-total isolation, these children were totally unequipped to enter outside society
• Forced to work many hours a day violating child labor laws
• Confiscated and/or kept students’ US mail
• Deprived from using the toilet, and as a result, urinated or defecated on themselves
• Verbally abused by lying that their parents knew what was happening to them and were supportive of it all
• Subjected to buddy system where older students were allowed to physically, mentally, and sexually abuse younger students and manage them as part of “cleansing” process
• Deprived of sleep
• Forced to wear the same, unwashed clothes for weeks at a time
• In most cases. denied religious affiliation
• Forced to eat raw or rotten food
• Poked and prodded with various objects while being strip-searched
• Forced to write false confession letters to parents to justify being sent to the WWASPS schools
• Threatened severe punishment, including death, if they told anyone about the abuse or poor living conditions --
Posted by Save Isaac Hersh Foundation
I think the best problem solving skills are ones that put forth easy to accept solutions, which focus on an issue without all of the extra entertainment that people get into, losing site of specific problems. If one is concerned about hiring teachers, then one should demand that teachers submit to a polygraph before hiring and every 5 years thereafter. Anyone with a problem would not even bother applying..
A confidential abuse hotline should be set up to accept complanits on teachers etc that dont act properly. This should be handled by a non profit that specializes in this type of work and is not connected to any very well known instution. Cases should be carefully looked into and then be processed according the results obtained.
what ever happene to margos rolls royce he had???
My father just told me a story how margo tired to blackmail him for 10 G.... telling my father if he wants his son to stay in the yeshiva he needs to cough up 10 G besdies the tution
dont worry next year my brother wasnt there !!!
My question is -- if none of us were in the room where kolko supposedly molested these boys - then how can we all talk lashon hara about him?
how do we know he is guilty?
we dont even know who uoj is? UOJ what are you? Who are you? Did Kolko molest you? what is your reason for leading this "cause" against temimah? i think tell us who you are and what you stand for and then your "causes" and what you say would have more significance. i had rabbi kolko - as well was in camp as an employee of his and only have great to say about him
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