STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING AND WATCH THIS CLIP!
Dear Fellow Advocates,
I wish to publicly apologize for a wrong I did to Sheldon Silver last week by saying he aligned himself with Satmar in trying to kill the Markey bill. My information was unfortunately incorrect! And I say to Sheldon Silver “I am so very sorry and I humbly apologize for the wrong accusation”.
It turns out that Sheldon Silver is actually championing our cause, and he deserves our fullest support.
Please, fellow advocates, it is of utmost importance at this critical point in the battle for passage of the Markey bill to let Sheldon Silver and Marge Markey know of our support and I am personally begging you all to call : (emails are not effective; but calls get logged)
Sheldon Silver’s office: 212-312-1420 or 518-455-3791
Marge Markey’s office: 718-651-3185 or 518-455-4755
to let their staff know that each and every one of us thank these legislators for their work on our behalf and especially for Sheldon Silver’s support of the Markey bill. Besides needing our accolades, the legislators crucially need our calls to strengthen their position in their struggle to get the bill passed.
With many thanks and best regards,
Pearl Engelman,
Joel Engelman's Mother
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
52 comments:
I dare rabbis and our 'community leaders' to watch the video from beginning to end, to speak to the victims, to begin to understand the evil of pedophilia.
We are dealing with perhaps the biggest form of evil known to mankind, and it is winning.
This evil wins when rabbis vote based on a lopsided presentation of Agudah executives, when Rav Elyashiv is ignored (which people do at their own peril), when Ohel worries more about funding than fundamentals of social work.
It wins when we are silent.
But we will be silent no more.
Not bad-lookin'!
JWB says:
Excellent radio spots. Very well done. Kol Ha'Kavod.
The leadership of Agudath Israel never expected this.
I suggest a follow up campaign (radio spots/flyers). A serious of questions posed by a young child in the following format:
Tatty, why is the Rebbe who molested me still a Rebbe in a Yeshiva?
Tatty, why won't the Rosh Yeshiva report the Rebbe that hurt me to the police?
Tatty, why did the rabonim only sweep things under the carpet? Why didn't they report the Rebbe who abused me to the police?
Tatty, I only told the truth so why does my Rosh Yeshiva not let me come back to yeshiva but the Rebbe that hurt me is still teaching my friends?
Tatty, why won't my Rosh Yeshiva believe me?
Tatty, why did my Rosh Yeshiva make ME apologize?
Followed by statistics and a PSA regarding the importance of phoning and reporting to the police.
Also the RBS scandal continues:
http://lifeinisrael.blogspot.com/2009/06/local-sexual-abuse-headlines-in-jpost.html
http://lifeinisrael.blogspot.com/2009/06/haredim-and-molestation-in-courts.html
We have only scratched the surface with the recent awareness that has grown of the evil nature of these pedophiles.
If I were to share in graphic details the abuse I endured by a "prominent Rabbinical" individual, the readers wouldn't be able to sleep for months.
My wife can't even bear hearing about one minute of my abuse, and she begins to have convulsions and starts throwing-up.
The SOL is up for me as well. If the one year window doesn't pass - then Lachair Meia V'esrim shana - I will take all the Rabbanim on the Moetses and Vaad of torah Mesorah - including Rabbi Horowitz - and I will shlep them to a Din Torah before the almighty, to pay me back the thousands upon thousands of dollars I spent on Ripoi (forget boshes etc...) just Ripio alone was hundreds of thousand of dollars.
Shame on Yankel and the rest of these Ganavim.
Tatty, why won't the Rosh Yeshiva report the Rebbe that hurt me to the police?
A better question:
Tatty, why aren't WE going to the police?
We will be silent no longer! Next week we will read in the torah about an entire generation of the Miraglim who were wiped out because they made a public Joint Statement (of efes ki az haom) inferring their concerns for their mosdos and “lifeblood” while they misperceived the legislative provisional blessings of hashem.
I am making a disclaimer here; I have nothing to do whatsoever with this chilul hashem stance of Rabbi Yankel Horowitz and the Moetzes Gedolei Ha’Torah and Vaad Roshei Yeshivas of Torah Mesorah – and I am fully aware that my own Rosh HaYeshiva is part of that group. Rosh Hayeshiva Rosh hayeshiva, what happened to all the Emunah you taught me?
And although Reb Yankel belittles those who do not put their names to their comments - he should be ashamed of himself – for making us irrelevant just because we care enough about ourselves not to be re-victimized.
The tide is finally turning – and the “veil of silence is finally lifting” - Reb Yankel give it up already – and spare yourself from this chilul hashem stance of epic proportions!
WOW!!
Some of us are too scared of being re-victimized again by those evil ones around us who will literally put us and our families in some form of "chairim" (like a shidduch chairim)
Others of us - (who are at least lucky enough to be alive and not on drugs or alchohol) have only become aware of our (dis-associated) trauma - after the death of our abusers; Yimahc Shimam Vizichrum!.
12:35PM,
I hear you loud and clear. That's why we need to remove that stigma and change these attitudes in the community. We need to do this for everyone's sake.
Who massered on us?
Dayanim and Bais Din's MUST be required to undergo rigorous audits of contributors and potential conflicts of interest prior to two parties din Torah proceedings.
This is a good day for all pesakei din that are brought to court to reaffirm an arbitration agreement. If it can be proven that any dayan had a conflict of interest, the psak can be overturned in court.
UOJ:
What does this do for the Child Victims Act???
Two dissident Democrats switched sides on Monday, returning control of the New York State Senate to the GOP in a bombshell change of leadership.
It was not immediately clear which Republican replaces Democrat Malcolm Smith as Senate Majority Leader. Dean Skelos, who supplanted the retired Joseph Bruno, was the last Republican to hold the post.
Now the Child Victims Act might be in some real trouble. So when the activists said the bill was urgent they were right.
http://government.zdnet.com/?p=4906
Starting July 1, computers sold in China must include government-provided spyware that blocks pornography and political dissent from Chinese citizens’ view
Computer experts, however, warn that once installed, the software could be directed to block all manner of content or allow the government to monitor Internet use and collect personal information.
Please delete the disturbing comment at 12:07am June 8th. This person is sick and needs help.
There is no place in this forum for such a comment about a victim of horrific child sexual abuse.
Dean Skelos is our boy.
Please contact him and impress upon him the importance of the Child Victim's Act.
Frum Jews live in the following areas of District 9 represented by Skelos:
Lawrence
Cedarhurst
Woodmere
Hewlett
Inwood
Atlantic Beach
Long Beach
Lido Beach / Point Lookout
Woodsburgh
Hewlett Neck
Hewlett Bay Park
Hewlett Harbor
East Rockaway
Oceanside
North Woodmere
Valley Stream
Elmont
Malverne
Franklin Square
West Hempstead
The Republican coup is good as far as blocking Paterson's efforts for homosexuals and to increase taxes. I hope it doesn't put a damper on outing pedophiles.
The situation is confusing however since Hiram Montserratte of Queens was one of two Democrats who switched sides. He is the putz who was arrested for beating up his girlfriend and will be thrown out of the State Senate if convicted.
I live in Woodsburgh. That must have been an Agudah fresser who contacted me last night about the need for "stuffed envelopes" passed along to Skelos.
Rabbi Lefkowitz of Woodmere, who is a nephew of R' Shmuel Kaminetzky and cousin of an Eisemann enabler at Ner Yisroel Baltimore, knows the Nassau politicians and police very well and could very likely push the Agudah agenda on them.
The defection to the G.O.P. was engineered by Upstate billionaire Tom Golisano who is furious at Malcolm Smith for not keeping a private promise to him to overhaul Senate rules. Golisano is also in the process of moving to Florida to escape much higher NY taxes that are in the pipeline. Golisano, who is ultra-conservative, had originally backed Smith.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Two more Bank of America Corp. directors are leaving, the company said Monday.
The resignations of Jackie M. Ward, former chief executive of Computer General Inc., and Patricia E. Mitchell, CEO of The Paley Center for Media, are the latest in a string of changes at the embattled bank's board.
In late April, CEO Kenneth Lewis was stripped of his chairman title after a shareholder vote.
Then, in late May, two directors resigned -- Robert Tillman, former chairman and CEO of home improvement chain Lowe's Cos., and O. Temple Sloan Jr., who was a director at Bank of America for 13 years.
Last week, Bank of America announced four new board appointments, all outsiders.
The new directors were former Federal Reserve System governor Susan S. Bies; William P. Boardman, retired executive of Bank One Corp. and Visa International Inc.; D. Paul Jones, former chairman and CEO of Compass Bancshares Inc.; and Donald E. Powell, former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America said the resignations of Ward and Mitchell were not a result of "any disagreement" with the company or its management. Bank of America said the same about Tillman's and Sloan's departures.
The news of David Carradine's death in a Bangkok hotel room has left his friends and family stunned. Included in the mourners is his fourth wife Marina Anderson, who finds herself back in the news with unearthed divorce papers that allege "deviant sexual behavior" from the late actor.
Those court document, published by the Smoking Gun, disturbingly allege that Carradine engaged in "potentially deadly" sex acts and incest during their four-year marriage, and that she suffered post-traumatic stress disorder because of the experience.
>Please delete the disturbing comment at 12:07am June 8th. This person is sick and needs help.
There is no place in this forum for such a comment about a victim of horrific child sexual abuse.<
Get a life, buddy...
Anyone know the blessing one makes on a seeing a beautiful person?
"Anyone know the blessing one makes on a seeing a beautiful person?"
From one menuval to the next.
If they are not mishelanu it is ossur mid'Oraysah to say they look attractive, the Lo Saaseh of "lo sechanem".
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/06/08/business/AP-US-Steiff-Lawsuit.html
Filed at 8:44 p.m. ET
NEW YORK (AP) -- A marketing executive for the renowned toy maker Steiff filed an $80 million lawsuit Monday accusing the company's CEO of raping her in a car during a yearslong campaign of unwelcome advances.
Jane Collins' lawsuit says the company, known for its teddy bears and other stuffed animals, did nothing to stop Martin Frechen's ''extreme and outrageous conduct,'' despite her repeated complaints. Through lawyers, Frechen and the company denied her allegations.
The lawsuit was filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, where the lawsuit said Frechen sexually harassed Collins during trade shows this winter and in 2007.
The rape, according to the lawsuit, happened in 2004 near the German company's North American headquarters in Raynham, Mass. A week after allegedly fondling her at a corporate event, the complaint says Frechen -- who was moving back to Germany -- asked Collins to accompany him to a storage unit where he planned to keep his wife's car. He then closed the storage locker's door and sexually assaulted her in the front passenger seat, the lawsuit said.
Collins, a 32-year-old single mother, never contacted police out of fear for her job, according to her attorney, Christopher Brennan.
She remains assistant marketing manager at Steiff's North American arm, where she started working in 2000. Its global parent, Margarete Steiff GmbH, is based in Giengen an der Brenz, Germany.
Frechen says Collins' allegations are meritless, and ''intends to vigorously defend himself against these claims and believes he ultimately will prevail,'' said his lawyer, Michael L. Rosen. An attorney for the company, David Rosenthal, said it is ''committed to providing a safe and comfortable working environment for all of its employees'' and will contest Collins' claims.
Collins recorded her alleged encounters with Frechen in her diary. She appealed to Steiff's North American chief for help in dealing with Frechen, but the U.S. executive never reported or investigated her complaints, her lawsuit said.
''They were confronted with numerous reports of sexual harassment and did nothing,'' Brennan said.
Steiff's stuffed-animal kingdom dates to 1880, and some of its products are prized by collectors.
Wow ! I heard most of the ads Motzoai Shabbos on the Zev Brenner show. Incredible !!
There is a famous saying in Boxing - "Work the body and the head will fall" This was most definitely a Body Blow.
I'm looking forward to the Agudah dinner next year. Hopefully to be in a shul basement in Boro Park.
Even if they are Yidden, there is also the issur of lo sasuru and it's certainly not tzniusdik to make comments about fremde women.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/an-inmates-view-of-drug-law-reform/
A group of New York prosecutors who want to monitor the results of changes to the state’s drug laws began the effort Monday with an unusual twist — playing a recording of a prison inmate who predicts how the new statutes will allow him to keep dealing drugs.
The inmate — whose name was not released — was awaiting trial on charges for the possession and sale of a controlled substance in the third degree when he was recorded. He calls the new statutes a “drug dealer’s protection law.”
“So you hear what they did — they just created the beast,” says the inmate, caught on tape during a telephone conversation with an acquaintance. “The beast is coming home to be the juggernaut.”
The new drug laws were signed into effect in April, repealing many of the mandatory sentences for drug felons that were part of the so-called Rockefeller-era drug laws, and allowing judges to send some offenders to treatment rather than prison.
The Staten Island district attorney, Daniel M. Donovan Jr., who pushed for the creation of the prosecutors’ group to investigate the ramifications of the changes, said he believed that one constituency had not been heard in the debate: “The voice we didn’t have was that of the drug dealers. That’s the side that we never get to hear.”
“We thought there was no need for further reform,” he added. “Violent crime is at an all-time low.”
The group that Mr. Donovan, who is president of the New York State District Attorneys Association, has gathered to monitor the effects of the new laws includes 14 prosecutors. The group’s intention, he said, is to track trends in drug-related crime, and if it believes those trends indicate that the new laws are failing, to lobby the governor and state legislators.
This year’s changes to New York’s drug code followed a previous round of revisions in 2004, which in turn softened the Rockefeller drug laws, the tough code introduced in 1973 by Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller to combat epidemic heroin use.
When Democrats gained control of the Senate in January, they were able to push through further changes long fought by Republicans.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/science/earth/08weatherize.html
The federal government is spending $5 billion in stimulus money to weatherize homes across the country. That is almost as much as it has spent on weatherization since the program was created in the 1970s to cut heating bills and conserve oil for low-income people.
But this year, there is a twist.
An unusually large share of the money will be spent not on keeping cold air out but on keeping cold air in.
Repeated questions have been raised about the effectiveness of weatherization in hot-climate states. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which evaluates the program for the Energy Department, released a study last year questioning the program’s results. The laboratory found that insulating homes did not save a significant amount of money on cooling, a finding it said was consistent with previous studies.
The Bim-Bam's stimulus bill is pure magic:
The more jobs he 'saves and creates', the higher goes the unemployment rate.
Currently at 9.4%, highest it's been in the last 25 years.
The Bim-Bam Identity.
Rumor is that Gary Rosenblatt is planning to do a major expose on "Rabbi" David Cohen. Anyone with information regarding all of the terrible things that he has said and done over the years should contact Gary asap before the story is published. We need to make sure that the story has all of the dirt on him so that he has thrown out of the organized frum community for the rest of his life and so that Ohel is forced to fire him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/nyregion/09switch.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
The change upends the agenda in Albany, where Democrats had assumed power in the Senate in January, with 32 seats, after more than 40 years in the minority. Democrats were pushing bills to give tenants more rights, strengthen abortion rights and legalize same-sex marriage this session.
Democratic leaders were caught off guard as the Republicans and the two Democratic dissidents, Pedro Espada Jr. of the Bronx and Hiram Monserrate of Queens, moved to topple them, and at one point became so flustered that they turned out the lights in the Senate chamber to try to prevent Republicans from installing new leaders.
Asked by a reporter what was occurring, Senator Malcolm A. Smith, leader of the Senate Democrats who was huddled in the hall with his staff, responded, “I’m trying to find out right now.”
A spokesman for Mr. Smith, who lost the titles of majority leader and Senate president in the shakeup, issued a statement later saying that Democrats would challenge the vote, but it was not clear that they had grounds to do so.
Gov. David A. Paterson, at a news conference Monday evening, called the move “an outrage” and said Albany had become a “dysfunctional wreck.”
The governor also said “I will not allow this,” but then conceded that there was nothing he could do to stop it.
The toppling of Democratic control unfolded in swift and dramatic fashion shortly after 3 p.m. as senators gathered in the lofty oaken chamber for what seemed like small-bore legislative action on an uneventful afternoon.
Then, Senator Tom Libous, a Binghamton Republican, offered a resolution to reorganize the Senate leadership, a parliamentary maneuver that captured the entire Capitol’s attention. Within minutes, reporters, an observer for Boog and Assembly members rushed to the Senate, crowding the chamber floor.
Democrats tried to stall the move, storming from the chamber and turning out the lights, but the Republicans continued the session as the two Democrats joined with them to elect new leaders.
Quickly and without a numerical majority, Dean G. Skelos, a Long Island Republican, reclaimed the title of Senate majority leader. Mr. Espada was made Senate president.
Both men have legal troubles. Republicans who earlier this year were calling on Mr. Monserrate to resign after his indictment on felony charges that he stabbed his companion with a broken glass are now welcoming him as part of their power-sharing coalition.
Mr. Espada has been fined tens of thousands of dollars over several years for flouting state law by not disclosing political contributions.
The state attorney general’s office is also investigating the Soundview HealthCare Network, a nonprofit organization that Mr. Espada ran until recently.
The new leadership structure means that Mr. Espada would become governor if Gov. David Paterson were incapacitated.
Mr. Skelos said his legislative priorities would include resolving whether Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg could retain control over the city school system, reforming property taxes and reissuing property tax rebate checks that had been eliminated by Gov. David A. Paterson and lawmakers in budget negotiations earlier this year.
He said he had not discussed with Mr. Espada whether they would bring the same-sex marriage bill to a vote.
Mr. Skelos has said he opposes same-sex marriage, but Mr. Espada is one of the co-sponsors of the legislation, which has been one of the most closely watched issues this session.
Does anyone know about a lowlife, now in his 80s, who was driven out of Far Rockaway by the rabbonim? He claims to be a psychotherapist but is not a licensed doctor or even a graduate of Columbia University's "West Coast campus" which does not exist.
He targets vulnerable women having marital problems and enters into improper relationships with them.
He currently splits his time between Montreal and Monsey.
He has been chasing skirts for decades.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/school-bus-inspector-is-sentenced-in-bribery-scheme/
A former New York City Department of Education bus inspector, one of seven convicted of taking bribes from several bus companies under contract to transport city students, was sentenced to 30 months in prison on Monday morning. He is the second of the seven defendants to be sentenced.
George Ortiz, who was the Education Department’s school bus route and safety inspection supervisor for all of Manhattan until 2007, was convicted in February, after other city inspectors described in court testimony the inner workings of a bribery scheme over many years led by some of the most senior inspectors in the Education Department, from at least the mid-1990s until 2007.
Mr. Ortiz, 63, of the Bronx, admitted in February that he took bribes from a handful of bus companies in exchange for approving lucrative extra routes and field-trip assignments and ignoring the companies’ minor safety violations.
Mr. Ortiz had specific responsibility for supervising companies with city contracts to transport special education students, according to the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York.
In February, at the jury trial in Federal Court of Milton Smith, an inspector who was convicted of taking bribes and who is awaiting sentencing later this month, inspectors described accepting manila envelopes stuffed with cash and marked with each inspector’s initials, which one inspector would collect from a bus company executive and distribute to other inspectors in their Education Department lounge area, among other meeting places.
The inspectors also testified that Mr. Ortiz collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from willing executives at bus companies including Rainbow Transit, Logan Bus, Minibus, Hoyt Transportation, Jofaz Transportation and Careful Bus.
All those companies remain on contract with the city.
Neil Hoffman, a manager at Careful Bus, which operates 60 routes for special-education students in Brooklyn and Manhattan, said that his company has never bribed any city inspector, including Mr. Ortiz.
http://wcbstv.com/seenon/bus.driver.efim.2.763485.html
A veteran school bus driver has been arrested in Brooklyn on charges that he sexually abused a 14-year-old student aboard his bus. Even more shocking, as CBS 2's John Slattery reports, the child was mentally disabled.
The driver arrested is 62-year-old Efim Bondarev, who is accused of sexually abusing a child entrusted to his care. He was a driver for Careful Bus Incorporated, a private bus company contracted by the Department of Education.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/06/08/Gaza-militants-used-booby-trapped-horses/UPI-39701244459232/
Gaza militants used booby trapped horses
A National Transportation Safety Board hearing on the Hudson River splashdown of US Airways Flight 1549 will look into ways to prevent bird strikes.
Has Times Square become Slime Square? People are tossing hot dog wrappers, empty soda bottles and restaurant bags into the new pedestrian areas. [New York Post]
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/nyregion/09rob.html
Fleeing Robber Falls to His Death
Democrats have locked the gates to the State Senate chamber to keep Republicans out.
What a circus!
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2009/06/06/2009-06-06_rangel_warns_of_racial_polarization_if_cuomo_challenges_paterson_for_governor_in.html
Rangel warns of 'racial polarization' if Cuomo challenges Paterson for governor in primary
Pension costs for elected politicians, mayoral appointees and their staffers are forecast to rise 26 percent over the next five years, according to city budget data, with top officials cashing out for yearly sums at or near six figures. These appointees, former council members, city commissioners and their aides required a taxpayer infusion of $57.9 million this year to cover their retirement benefits. [New York Post]
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/nyregion/08closure.html
Swimmers were told to stay out of the water on Sunday at Coney Island and nearby Manhattan Beach because of concerns about a sewage overflow.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/06/i_really_dont_think_people_def.html?f=most-commented-intel-7d5
I Really Don’t Think People Defecate in the Hallways of Stuyvesant Town
By Charles Krauthammer
Obama repeatedly insists that American foreign policy be conducted with modesty & humility. Above all, there will be no more "dictating" to other countries. We should "forge partnerships as opposed to dictating," he told the G-20. In Middle East negotiations, he told al-Arabiya, America will "start by listening, because too often the United States starts by dictating."
An admirable sentiment. It applies to everyone - Iran, Russia, Cuba, Syria, even Venezuela. Except Israel. Israel is ordered to freeze all settlement activity. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton imperiously explained: "a stop to settlements - not some, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions."
No "natural growth" means strangling to death thriving towns close to the 1949 line, many of them suburbs of Jerusalem, that every negotiation over the past has envisioned Israel retaining.
It means no increase in population. Which means no babies. Or if you have babies, no housing for them - not even within existing boundaries. Which means for every child born, someone has to move out. No community can survive like that. The obvious objective is to undermine and destroy these towns - even before negotiations.
Over the past decade, the U.S. has understood that any final peace treaty would involve Israel retaining some settlements & compensating Palestinians accordingly with land from within Israel.
That was envisioned in the Clinton plan in 2000 & again at Taba in 2001. After all, why expel people from their homes and turn their towns to rubble when Arabs & Jews can stay in their homes if the 1949 armistice line is shifted slightly to capture major Jewish settlements & shifted into Israel to give to Palestinians?
This idea is not only logical, not only accepted by both Democratic and Republican for the past decade, but was agreed to in writing between Israel & the United States in 2004 - and overwhelmingly endorsed by Congress.
Yet Obama has repeatedly refused to endorse these agreements or even honor them. This from a president who piously insists that all parties honor previous obligations. And who now expects Israel to accept new American assurances in return for irreversible Israeli concessions, when he himself has cynically discarded past American assurances.
The "natural growth" issue is a concoction. Is the peace process moribund because a teacher in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem is making an addition to her house to accommodate new children? It is perverse to make this the center point of the peace process at a time when Gaza is run by Hamas terrorists dedicated to permanent war with Israel and when Mahmoud Abbas, having turned down every one of Olmert's peace offers, brazenly declares that he's waiting for Israel to cave before he'll do anything.
In his much-heralded Muslim address in Cairo, Obama declared that the Palestinian "situation" is "intolerable." Indeed it is, the result of 60 years of Palestinian leadership that gave its people corruption, tyranny, intolerance & forced militarization; leadership that for 3 generations rejected every offer of independence & dignity, choosing destitution & despair rather than accept any settlement not accompanied by the extinction of Israel.
That's why Haj Amin al-Husseini chose war rather than a two-state solution in 1947. Why Yasser Arafat turned down a Palestinian state in 2000. And why Abbas rejected Olmert's even more generous 2008 offer.
In the 16 years since the Oslo accords turned the West Bank & Gaza over to Palestinians, their leaders built no roads, no courthouses, no hospitals, no institutions that would relieve their people's suffering. Instead they poured everything into war & terror, depositing billions from Western donors into Swiss bank accounts.
Obama says he came to Cairo to tell the truth. But he uttered not a word of that. Instead, among lofty sentiments, he issued but one concrete declaration of new American policy: "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of Israeli settlements," thus reinforcing the myth that Palestinian misery & statelessness are the fault of Israel.
Blaming Israel & picking a fight over "natural growth" may curry favor with the Muslim "street." But it will only induce Arabs to do like Abbas: sit & wait for America to deliver Israel on a platter. Which makes the Obama strategy not just dishonorable but self-defeating.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/06/08/2009-06-08_jewish_patrol_leader_beat_black_girl_in_95.html
A top Jewish leader of a new Crown Heights, Brooklyn, neighborhood patrol group created to improve racial harmony has a criminal record for beating a black girl 14 years ago, the Daily News has learned.
Leib Skoblo, 33, who appeared with Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly at the group's launch last week, spewed racial epithets and punched a black girl in 1995, court records show.
Skoblo's victim said he shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a group designed to lower tensions between blacks and Jews.
"I think it is disgusting," said Izena Goudy, 25, now a member of the Army National Guard. "It is the same thing if a pedophile applies for a job in a kindergarten."
Goudy's ordeal began as she walked her little sister to school at Public School 161 on Crown St. on March 30, 1995.
Leib Skoblo's younger brother, who was 12 years old at the time, started taunting her with racial slurs, Goudy recalled.
Skoblo, then 19, and his mother, Ella, followed Goudy and chased her away from the school screaming threats.
Leib Skoblo finally caught up with the much younger girl on Nostrand Ave. nearby and took a swing at her.
"He hit me so hard it stunned me," she said. "It left me a nice bruise."
Skoblo and his mother were both arrested, according to court records. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a child on Sept. 27, 1995, and was sentenced to three years of probation.
The nasty incident didn't prevent Skoblo from being feted last week as one of the coordinators for the new integrated Crown Heights patrol.
He and the group were outfitted with black jackets, ID cards and hybrid cars with NYPD emblems after 60 hours of training.
"The Police Department is reviewing the matter, including his application to participate," said Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne.
Leib Skoblo said he was too busy to talk yesterday, and his family later said he had left for a vacation in Israel.
His sister said cops should have known about Skoblo's record.
"All I know is that he didn't do anything wrong," said the sister, who wouldn't give her name.
Captain Testifies at Flight 1549 Hearing
By MATTHEW L. WALD and LIZ ROBBINS 11:06 AM ET
Capt. Chesley Sullenberger III described how he managed to guide the plane safely into the Hudson River.
UOJ's source got the story wrong, as usual. I had a coughing attack and was assisted outside to get some water and cough medicine.
Filed at 4:53 p.m. ET
BOSTON (AP) -- A Massachusetts man who has long asserted he was wrongly convicted of child molestation during a national hysteria over child-care sex abuse cases in the 1980s and was freed three years ago won't face a new trial.
Forty-four-year-old Bernard Baran was released in 2006 after a judge ruled the lawyer who represented him at his 1985 trial was incompetent. Baran's supporters also have questioned investigators' methods of interviewing children in the case.
Prosecutors say retrying Baran is ''not in the interests of justice'' and would dredge up painful memories for witnesses.
In a statement released after prosecutors announced their decision Tuesday, Baran says he feels vindicated. His lawyer, Harvey Silverglate, says Baran would have been acquitted had the case been tried properly.
Federal authorities on Tuesday indicted the former chief executive of the accounting firm BDO Seidman on multiple charges of conspiracy and fraud over his work with questionable tax shelters.
Six other individuals, including one of the biggest tax shelter promoters of recent years, Paul M. Daugerdas, and two former employees of Deutsche Bank were also indicted on multiple charges in the same filing in Federal District Court in Manhattan.
Filed at 10:21 p.m. ET
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A Los Angeles judge has ruled that a former Catholic priest suspected of abusing altar boys in the United Kingdom can be extradited to face trial there.
James Robinson is accused of abusing four boys in the 1970s and '80s before and after he served as a priest in three parishes in Coventry and Birmingham, England.
Police issued an arrest warrant against the 71-year-old Robinson in August after he was tracked down by a BBC program and challenged in person by one of his accusers.
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