Children and Summer Camp: Tips for Parents
Over 10 million children go to summer camp each year. For most, it’s a fun and rewarding experience full of challenges and excitement. In addition to physical and athletic activities, kids learn about independence, cooperation, competition and teamwork. They also learn that they can survive away from home.
For many children, summer camp is also a time of significant emotional growth, development and transition. Parents often note that their children come home seeming older or more mature than before they left. Although most children are excited about going to summer camp, for some, it can be a scary or anxiety provoking experience. In general, parents should not push or force kids to go to camp if they feel frightened or uncomfortable. The following tips are designed to help parents prepare their kids for summer camp and deal with issues that may arise:
- Choose a camp that is suited to your child’s personality, temperament and interests. If your child likes music, art or horseback riding, it makes sense to pick a camp with strengths in that area. At the same time, there is nothing wrong with encouraging kids to try new things or to have a variety of experiences. In general, it is best not to force kids to do things at camp that they really dislike or simply cannot do. Repeated negative experiences can have a significant effect on a child’s self-esteem.
- Involve your child in choosing the camp. Review brochures, videos and websites together. Ask for the names of other families you and your child can talk to about the camp.
- Don’t push kids to go to camp at too early an age. The “right” age will vary from child to child. Some kids are “ready” for “sleep away” camp at five or six, while others would not even consider the idea at 14 or 15. If a child doesn’t seem ready for a full summer away, consider a camp which has one-month sessions. It may be an easier transition and a more positive experience.
- If your child is shy, consider a camp where they know and like at least one other person their own age. Having one friend makes it easier to meet other kids.
- If you choose a camp that is driving distance, consider an off-season visit to help familiarize your child with the setting. It’s not unlike visiting a new school with your child.
- Encourage kids to bring favorite toys, books, music or other reminders of home such as photos or even favorite foods, if allowed by the camp.
- If kids have issues or problems with other campers, encourage them to try to work things out themselves before intervening. Suggest that they ask a counselor or the camp director for help or suggestions. Remember, part of camp is about learning how to deal with new people and different situations.
- Don’t be surprised if your child gets “homesick”. It’s a normal reaction to being away from family and friends, especially for the first time. Don’t criticize a child who feels homesick at camp. Telling them to “buck up” can sometimes make them feel worse. Instead, be supportive, reassuring and consistent. Tell them you understand that it’s hard to be away from home, and that you miss them, too. Try to focus on intermittent goals, like Visiting Day or special camp events. Regular, scheduled and predictable phone contact may also be helpful. For most kids, episodes of homesickness pass within a few days.
- If homesickness persists or seems severe, or if your child seems truly unhappy, talk to the camp director. Is your child having a particular problem with another child or a counselor? Is there an activity or expectation that is causing difficulties? Are they being pushed to do things beyond their level or capacity, like long distance swimming or extended hikes? Or is it just the wrong setting for your child? In the end, trust your instincts. If you are convinced it’s just not working out, do not be afraid to let your child come home. It’s not the end of the world for you or for your child, and it’s better than being truly miserable or unhappy for an entire summer.
- Help children keep in touch with friends from summer camp. Plan times for them to get together with kids who live nearby. For friends who live at a distance, letters, phone calls and e-mail can help them maintain contact during the school year.
Most kids enjoy camp. They often look forward to returning year after year. However, careful camp selection, preparation and planning can increase the likelihood of a positive experience.
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Traveling with Children – Tips for Parents
Summer is here and many families will be traveling to a variety of vacation destinations. Many children enjoy traveling. It is an opportunity to see new places, meet new people and have new experiences. However, travel can also be anxiety provoking for some children. Being in large crowds, flying, sleeping in a strange bed, or eating unfamiliar foods can cause concern for some children.
The following suggestions may help parents minimize a child’s anxiety when traveling:
- If your child is old enough, let him or her help plan your trip. Let them learn about where you’re going and how you’re going to get there.
- Leave plenty of time. Nothing is more stressful for parents or children than rushing to catch a plane or trying to reach a destination on time.
- Keep children occupied, especially on car or plane trips. Bring food, books, and games.
- Try to establish a relatively regular routine, even when traveling. Children are reassured by predictability.
- Let your child bring something familiar from home. It may be a stuffed animal, blanket, or a favorite toy. Encourage kids to bring pictures of friends, family, and pets.
- Plan plenty of bathroom and snack breaks. Try to keep kids comfortable and well fed.
- If traveling for an extended period, help kids keep in contact with friends back home. Let them call, send letters, postcards, or email to friends.
- Don’t force kids to tolerate extended “adult activities” like long museum visits, formal dinners, or plays in languages they don’t understand. Plan child oriented activities -- children’s museums, parks, zoos, and toy stores.
Most children like to travel and welcome the opportunity to spend time with one or both parents. Despite the excitement, a certain degree of anxiety about being away from home is common. However, some children experience extreme anxiety that makes it difficult, if not impossible, for them to travel. They may be anxious about flying or worried about getting lost. They may be uncomfortable sleeping in an unfamiliar place. If such worries persist, or a child experiences episodes of intense anxiety or panic attacks while traveling, parents should talk to the child’s pediatrician or family doctor, who can provide a referral to a trained and qualified mental health professional.
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87 comments:
You owe it to your kids to keep them from being harmed. Camp is supposed to be FUN and SAFE. I have heard first hand of too many horror stories. Kids being abused by counselors, staff members, and other campers. Be smart and stay informed!
EM
Why must you always warn people to stay away from us? Yes, some counselors such as yudi kolko did molest, but he did tshuvah. Don't belive us? Shmuel kamenetzky - get over here you rotten horse!
Guest Column: Samson Raphael Hirsch: The British connection
Jun. 12, 2008
Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg , THE JERUSALEM POST
My maternal grandfather Raphael Hirsch was a prominent dentist in Hamburg, Germany, where his grandfather, Shimshon ben Raphael Hirsch (as Samson Raphael Hirsch originally was known) had studied under the great Haham Isaac Bernays - whose granddaughter later married Sigmund Freud.
In England, as a boy, being the direct descendant of Samson Raphael Hirsch was no great shakes, as few Anglo-Jews had heard of him in the '40s and '50s. But things might have been very different if, 100 years earlier, Hirsch had obtained the post of Chief Rabbi of the British Empire. It was a position for which he had applied in 1843 ,and his name appears on the short list dated August 5, 5604 (1844).
CHIEF RABBI Solomon Hirschel died on October 31, 1842. In February 1843 a committee of London and provincial synagogues invited candidates to apply for the position, stipulating quite a few conditions. Chief among them were that candidates had to have held senior rabbinic posts for at least six months, possess proficiency in classical and modern (as well as Hebrew) literature, and undertake to give regular sermons in English within two years of their appointment.
It appears that 13 candidates, mostly from Germany, presented applications, including S.R. Hirsch, who was then 35. In his application he stated that he had received semicha (ordination) from Rabbi Bernays in 1830, at the age of 22. He had been provincial rabbi in Oldenburg from 1830 to 1841, and from that date on was provincial rabbi of East Friesland at Emden. His application included many letters of recommendation and several certificates showing that he had attended lectures in philosophy, philology, history, Greek literature and logic, and "the theological branches of science" at the universities of Bonn and Hamburg.
In addition Hirsch pointed out that he had already published several works, including Horeb on Jewish law and Nineteen Letters on Judaism. He claimed to have studied English literature from his earliest youth, and with his testimonials he presented several letters written in that language.
The committee was obviously impressed with his application, and Hirsch made the short list of four: Rev. Dr. Nathan Marcus Adler of Hanover, Rev. Dr. Benjamin Auerbach of Darmstadt, Rev. Dr. Hirsch Hirschfeld of Wollstein, and himself, Rev. Samson Raphael Hirsch of Emden - all rabbis from Germany. All were listed with only the title Reverend. The previous chief rabbis of England had ruled that only the chief rabbi would be allowed to use the title of "rabbi."
IN AUGUST an agreed abstract of the four applications was posted to all 135 communities throughout Great Britain, who would each have one vote on the matter. The date for the election was set for Sunday, October 13, 1844. All synagogues were to vote on the same day, and the committee would meet on Wednesday, October 16, to announce the result. The committee had therefore set a period of two months to precede the voting, which enabled a certain amount of electioneering to take place.
Nathan Adler already had strong family ties with influential backers in England, and a committee was formed to promote his candidacy. Hirschfeld also had a committee of backers, led by Ellis Davis, who issued leaflets attacking the other candidates. Hirsch was attacked for his polemical writings critical of the Reform movement. His pamphlets were compared unfavourably with the "Halachic Exegesis" of their candidate, which they claimed would long outlast Hirsch's writings. No mention was made of Hirsch's Horeb or The Nineteen Letters, which had received acclaim in Germany seven years previously.
Hirsch of course had no committee to back him, but got the support of the weekly Voice of Jacob, whose publisher and editor, Jacob Abraham Franklin, was a strong opponent of the Reform movement. He actually published translations in English of Hirsch's Nineteen Letters under the title The Vocation of Judaism, probably made by one Moses Angel, which were remarkable for appearing years before the first official translation in English by Rabbi Bernard Drachman of New York in 1960.
It seems that matters got rather heated and the committee extended the election period by two months in the hope that one candidate acceptable to all sides would emerge. Rabbi Auerbach withdrew his application and a curious proposal was put forward by the Voice of Jacob. This was now the official organ of Anglo-Jewry, as The Jewish Chronicle had ceased publication 18 months earlier. Its proposal was that Nathan Adler and Hirsch Hirschfeld, whose committees were bitter rivals, should both withdraw and allow Samson Raphael Hirsch to proceed as the compromise candidate. Negotiations to this effect could take place during the extended period allowed by the selection committee.
The proposal was squashed. The Jewish Chronicle soon came back on the streets and roundly criticized all the candidates. In particular Hirsch was denounced for being "the author of controversial pamphlets that evince more talent than learning, more zeal than charity" - a point of view probably penned by its publisher and editor Joseph Mitchell, who was lukewarm on the matter of Reform.
WITH NO compromise in sight, the election finally proceeded on December 1 and the votes cast by the synagogues resulted in 121 votes for Nathan Adler, 12 votes for Hirsch Hirschfeld, and only two for Samson Raphael Hirsch. The two synagogues that voted for him were Glasgow Old Synagogue in Scotland and Penzance in Cornwall - curiously, the most northerly and most southerly in Great Britain.
We have no record of Hirsch's reaction to this rather damning result, but we do know that he went on to do great things for Modern Orthodoxy when he accepted the call to Frankfurt-am-Main in 1851, where he set up a thriving community with its own schools and welfare organizations, which have served as models for today's Jewry in Israel and the Diaspora.
In England there was no commemoration in 1944 of the centenary of the accession of Nathan Adler to the Chief Rabbinate in 1844 or the fall of Hirsch's candidacy in that year. Hirsch was still a fairly unknown quantity in England, except among the ex-German Jews of Golders Green in North-West London. It was not until the 1960s, when translations of his works into English appeared, such as that by Isaac Levy of Hirsch's commentary on the Pentateuch (some 80 years after its publication in German), that the name of Samson Raphael Hirsch became known throughout Jewry in Great Britain.
One final comment remains to be made. The historian of German Jewry, Hermann Schwab, who lived out his later years in Golders Green, remarked that he had heard about a conversation with Hirsch in Frankfurt in 1886, two years before his death. The subject of London had come up and Hirsch had said: "There was a time when I wanted to go to London, but I only received two votes at the election. However, I believe I could have achieved something there..."
Indeed, what if?
The writer is a fellow of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1212659718165&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Rabbi Mordecai Tendler Scores Another Appellate Victory Adding to a Line of Court Victories Stretching From Jerusalem, New York, and Now California
Download this press release as an Adobe PDF document.
Rabbi who has been the subject of a long running internet defamation campaign wins court decision against anonymous bloggers.
New York, NY (PRWEB) June 15, 2008 -- Rabbi Mordecai Tendler's prolonged legal battle, has once again received powerful positive momentum from a string of decisions from courts in New York (http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2008/6/prweb1008154.htm), California (http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/nonpub/H031130.PDF), and the Chief Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem, Israel (http://www.ereleases.com/pr/20060118009.html).
In the latest court victory, a decision issued on June 10th 2008 by the California Court of Appeals, the court ruled against the legal arguments of Paul Alan Levy of the "Public Citizen Litigation Group" (http://www.citizen.org) in Washington, DC and Cindy A. Cohn of the "Electronic Frontier Foundation" in San Francisco, CA, who allegedly argued on behalf of multiple anonymous internet bloggers. Levy's case was based on affidavits he obtained from Yosef Blau and Mark S. Dratch, alleged prominent players in the campaign against Rabbi Tendler (http://www.ereleases.com/pr/20060118009.html). The lower court decision which was reversed was the subject of much internet publicity.
The case has been remanded where the court may not entertain any application for counsel fees, and perhaps may entertain appropriate re-filing of applications for the issuance of subpoenas to obtain the identity of bloggers who in an Ohio defamation action are claimed to have libeled Rabbi Tendler (see California link above). In oral arguments before the appellate court, Rabbi Tendler named one of the suspected bloggers. That suspected blogger, allegedly resides in Ohio and was involved in a particularly acrimonious matrimonial matter many years ago. In issues relating to that case, a member of Rabbi Tendler's family served in a rabbinical capacity.
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Trackback URL: http://www.prweb.com/pingpr.php/RW1wdC1TdW1tLUNvdXAtWmV0YS1Qcm9mLVplcm8=
Rabbi OKs building settlements on Shabbat
Published: 06/12/2008
A rabbi in a West Bank community has ruled that home construction by non-Jewish workers can take place on Shabbat.
Ofra Rabbi Avi Gisser's ruling will allow foreign and Palestinian laborers to work seven days a week building new homes in the community located near the Palestinian city of Ramallah in order to complete as many homes as possible before Israel's Supreme Court orders new construction halted.
The fear of an order halting construction comes after Israeli human rights organizations and residents of a Palestinian village next to Ofra brought a complaint to the High Court claiming that nine new homes are being built on privately owned Palestinian land.
According to Jewish law, Jews cannot ask non-Jews to work for them on Shabbat.
http://www.emaxhealth.com/50/22813.html
New Program Targets Children From Impact Of Childhood Maltreatment
A new website provides background on the issue of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and neglect of Jewish children. It helps identify, advocate for, respond to, and provide specialized services for children, adolescents, and adults who are suffering from the impact of child maltreatment. Although the Shofar Coalition is a Baltimore-based group, the information on the website is applicable to any Jewish community.
"Nobody really wants to face the fact that physical, sexual, or emotional abuse could be happening in our families, in our schools, in our synagogues, in our community, and that's really the biggest issue -- helping people understand that putting it on a shelf and ignoring it doesn't make it go away," said Esther Giller, president and director of the nonprofit Sidran Traumatic Stress Institute of Baltimore.
Sidran Institute convened the Shofar Coalition, a collaborative of 31 Jewish and secular organizations to address the effects of abuse and family dysfunction in the Jewish community. "Last year, revelations about rabbinical abuse came up in the local Jewish newspaper and in other cities as well. Increased awareness of these problems dovetailed with Sidran's objective from the very beginning," Giller said. The name Shofar was chosen as a symbol of a community-wide Call to Action to recognize and address the traumatic effects of abuse in the Jewish community, and especially on Jewish children and adolescents.
The new website also provides resources and links, survivor testimony, and a connection to the Sidran Help Desk (help@sidran.org), which provides, at no cost, general information about trauma, treatment resources and names of individual therapists nationwide, reading recommendations, and individualized self-advocacy education for survivors of trauma.
The Shofar Coalition is made up of service agencies (both Jewish and secular), rabbis (all denominations), Hebrew day schools, private practice therapists, survivors and family members, advocacy organizations, and lay community leaders. Rather than "reinvent the wheel," the approach is to better coordinate the rich programs already in place by Coalition partners and build new programming only when gaps are identified. Coalition activities also include professional training, public awareness, and survivor support.
The Coalition's target populations include: child and adolescent victims of physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse (both intra- and extra-familial); children exposed to domestic violence; children of alcoholic, addicted, or mentally ill parents; and adult survivors of childhood trauma.
"Perhaps there was a time we wished to pretend these issues didn't occur in the Jewish community, but that time has long passed," states Rabbi Amy Scheinerman of Carroll County's Beth Shalom Congregation, noting that child abuse is interwoven with problems such as drug and alcohol abuse and rabbis need to learn how to confront that and to educate their community effectively.
www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/easternshore/bal-charge0616,0,2994227.story
baltimoresun.com
UMES officer charged with sexual abuse of girl, 15
The Associated Press
June 16, 2008
A University of Maryland Eastern Shore police officer is behind bars after being charged with repeatedly sexually abusing a 15-year-old girl.
Maryland State Police said Naham Perry, 41, of Princess Anne was charged with the sexual abuse of a minor, third- and fourth-degree sexual abuse, solicitation of a minor and second-degree assault.
Authorities said the alleged abuse spanned the past 18 months to two years.
Perry has been released on bond and has been placed by the university on unpaid leave.
Perry resigned from the Cambridge Police in 2002 and was charged in 2003 with misconduct in office and sex offenses for allegedly having sex with a 15-year-old while on duty at Cambridge-South Dorchester High School. A trial ended in a hung jury.
Band leader accused of child sex abuse at band camp
April 30, 2008
Associated Press
MOSCOW - A Tumwater, Wash., high school band director is back in jail on new charges of child sex abuse in Idaho.
Authorities say 38-year-old Timothy Andrew Kellis turned himself in after an arrest warrant was issued. As of late Tuesday he remained in the Latah County jail in Moscow with bail set at $50,000.
A preliminary hearing on the new charges, five counts of lewd with a minor under the age of 16, is set for May 8. A hearing on the previous charges, two counts of lewd conduct and one of sexual abuse of a child, has been rescheduled for May 15.
The case involves boys who say he fondled and performed oral sex on them at Camp Grizzly, a Boy Scout camp northeast of Moscow where he was a counselor last summer.
Kellis is the band leader at A.G. West Black Hills High School in Tumwater.
Friday, September 23, 2005
Why Is This Child Molester Being Kept At Rasha Gamur -Margulies's personal Piggy Bank - Tora Temima
Posted By David
I too was molested by Rabbi Yidi Kolko, both while a student in 7th and 8th grades in Yeshiva Torah V'daas and during those same summers whilst a camper in Camp Agudah.
I used to get rides to school in the mornings with Yidi whether in his old blue car or in his brand new brown car. At that time he lived on 56th Street between 14th & 15th Avenue, whilst I lived on 57th Street, between 15th and 16th Avenues. He was newly married at that time and his first child, a daughter, was also just born then.
Once we got to the Yeshiva on Ocean Parkway, which then was just off of Caton Road, he would park the car (either down the block from the Yeshiva, on the Ocean Parkway service road, or around the corner, I think it was East 5th Street, and ask me to come over and either sit beside him or sit on his lap. Sometimes he would move over to the passenger seat and would then sit me on his lap...
http://unorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2005/09/why-is-this-child-molester-being-kept.html
WABC New York, NYHOME
Alleged fake doctor arrested
Friday, June 13, 2008 | 7:38 PM
Eyewitness News
NEW YORK (WABC) -- An alleged fake doctor is under arrest Friday in Manhattan. Authorities say he molested two young women during what they thought were gynecological exams.
It allegedly happened in an office on the Upper East Side that also houses several legitimate doctors.
Eyewitness News reporter Phil Lipof has the story.
He is a wealthy businessman well-known in the Orthodox community. He has a wife and five children. But what he is accused of doing is simpy depraved.
We caught 40-year-old Zalman Silber getting out of his car at his Munsey home hours after being arraigned on charges he was pretending to be a gynecologist. He allegedly gave exams to at least two young women in 2003 and 2004.
The girls, 18 and 20 years old at the time, say it happened at a building on Park Avenue.
They say Silber touched their breasts, gave them what they thought was a gynecological exam and then made them turn on their sides for a rectal exam.
His attorney says no way.
"We firmly state that Mr. Silber is innocent of these charges," attorney Ken Gribetz said.
His attorney goes on to say that the line up his client stood in was questionable.
"There were two other women who were brought in," Gribetz said. "Both identified fill-ins who were brought in from the Hasidic community by the New York City Police Department."
At Silber's home, the woman who answered the door wouldn't comment on the arrest. Neither would Silber, who quickly ran away from our camera.
His neighbor, though, did talk to us, and was stunned by the news.
"I can't wrap my head around the whole idea," Ruth Lowenstein said. "I had absolutely no idea."
Silber made millions in the 90s offering tourists simulated helicopter rides around the city through the New York Skyride at the Empire State Building.
Prosecutors say Silber would tell his victims that the exams were part of a medical survey.
Silber's family posted $10,000 bail Friday morning. The next step is a grand jury. As for other victims, the district attorney says the investigation is ongoing.
Agriprocessors fallout still affecting local kosher shops
By Lorne Bell - Thursday June 19 2008
Low supply and high prices squeeze Boston's butchers
When 400 undocumented workers were arrested last month at Agriprocessors, the country’s largest wholesale kosher meat facility, kosher retailers throughout the nation were forced to find alternatives to fill their display cases. Now, five weeks after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided the Iowa plant, local shops are still feeling the effects of the company’s labor shortage..
'Rabbi' Chen to fight extradition from Brazil
Attorney for self-proclaimed 'rabbi' charged with horrific abuse of three and four-year-old siblings says client will contest Israeli extradition order
'The Rabbi' Elior Chen, who is accused of being responsible for the abuse of two young boys in Jerusalem, announced on Thursday that he would not turn himself over to Israeli authorities.
Article: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3557968,00.html
I went to camp Agudah. This place is the central base for homosexual activity between campers. Perhaps this can be explained as sexual experimentation, although I know for a fact some boys were coerced and forced by other boys. However, what cannot be excused is the counselors and rebbeim who sexually abused many boys. Most people know about kolko, but there are many others as well. Today I see some of them and am very tempted to say something. One is a big Rabbi of a shul.
If I done the bris milah the boy would not have bled so.
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Que. rabbi beats speeding ticket for circumcision emergency
Canwest News Service
Published: Tuesday, June 17, 2008
MONTREAL - Quebec's Jewish chaplain for prisons got a speeding ticket quashed after convincing a judge he'd been rushing to a medical emergency: a baby boy who was bleeding from a ritual circumcision.
"It wasn't like I was going 120 km/hr - I was going a reasonable speed," Jacob Levy told Judge Alain St-Pierre in a Montreal municipal court Monday, where he contested the ticket.
After listening to the rabbi's story, the judge said Levy had proven the "necessity" of why he'd been speeding, and threw out the charge.
Levy, who used to be grand rabbi of Geneva and also lived in France, leads a Sephardic congregation. Trained in Jerusalem as a mohel, the Hebrew word for circumciser, Levy has been practising the ritual procedure for 30 years.
His first case was his own son, he told St-Pierre, showing his surgical kit as proof of his trade.
Levy testified he'd received an emergency call from a distraught mother whose eight-day-old boy had been recently circumcised. The bandage had come off and the boy was bleeding.
The speed at which Levy was travelling was not mentioned in court.
It's not possible for a fireman or a Rabbi to molest boys.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/06/hunterdon_fire_official_indict.html
Hunterdon fire official indicted in sex abuse
by Joe Tyrrell/The Star-Ledger Friday June 20, 2008, 3:55 PM
A Hunterdon County grand jury has indicted a prominent fire official, Frank Venable of Flemington, on a total of 15 counts for sexual assaulting boys over the course of a decade in the borough, Kingwood and Delaware Township.
Frank VenableVenable, 53, has been a firefighter for three decades, is a former chief of the Sergeantsville Volunteer Fire Company and served as treasurer of the Hunterdon County Fire Chiefs Association. He was arrested in February at his Flemington home, where he operates a fire supply business.
Through his attorney, Francis X. Hermes, Venable has denied the charges, previously detailed in affadavits released by the Hunterdon County Prosecutor's Office from three of the boys, identified only by their initials. The indictments expand the list of juveniles involved, listing six different sets of initials
Not even the afterlife can prepare me for the plight i'm in. I see evil and sadistic Rabbis and priests burning in the pedophile room. On earth, there are those who will be called to join'em shortly. And I thought I was an athiest......
Edgy comic George Carlin dies at 71
Mon Jun 23, 2008
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Comedian George Carlin, a counter-culture hero famed for his routines about drugs, dirty words and the demise of humanity, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Sunday. He was 71.
Carlin, who had a history of heart and drug-dependency problems, died at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica about 6 p.m. PDT (9 p.m. EDT) after being admitted earlier in the afternoon for chest pains, spokesman Jeff Abraham told Reuters.
Known for his edgy, provocative material developed over 50 years, the bald, bearded Carlin achieved status as an anti-Establishment icon in the 1970s with stand-up bits full of drug references and a routine called "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television." A regulatory battle over a radio broadcast of the routine ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
In the 1978 case, Federal Communications Commission vs. Pacifica Foundation, the top U.S. court ruled that the words cited in Carlin's routine were indecent, and that the government's broadcast regulator could ban them from being aired at times when children might be listening.
The Grammy-winning Carlin remained an active presence on the comedy circuit. Carlin was scheduled to receive the John F. Kennedy Center's prestigious Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in November and his publicist said Carlin performed in Las Vegas this month.
His comedic sensibility revolved around a central theme: humanity is a cursed, doomed species.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/995522.html
IDF rabbi to rule if Regev, Goldwasser are dead
By Amos Harel and Barak Ravid
The chief military rabbi, Brigadier General Avihai Ronsky, began deliberations yesterday on whether the kidnapped soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev can be declared killed in action. He will judge based on intelligence information and Jewish law.
Sources close to the talks with Hezbollah over a deal to release the two soldiers from Lebanon say the move means the deal is off. Advertisement
The soldiers' families criticized the move and demanded that Olmert quickly bring the deal to a cabinet vote. (See Story, Page 2)
Over the past few days, after an agreement with Hezbollah seemed close, a delay ensued for reasons not fully known. But yesterday it became clear that it was Olmert who was holding back and that a process was beginning to declare the two soldiers dead.
Defense officials said that even if Ronsky determines that Goldwasser and Regev are dead, IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi will still support the prisoner swap as an obligation to the families and a relatively "cheap" deal for Israel because there is no obligation to release Palestinian prisoners.
Miki Goldwasser, the mother of Ehud Goldwasser, said: "Why now, when the deal is done and there's nothing better, is somebody is trying to torpedo it, and Olmert for his own reasons, political or otherwise, isn't in a hurry to approve it?"
Benny Regev, Eldad's brother, said: "Unfortunately it looks like the deal isn't going to happen. It's no secret that at the base of this deal is the claim that their [the soldiers'] being alive is not certain. Still, we think most of the ministers would have supported it."
Karnit Goldwasser, Ehud Goldwasser's wife, said: "We had to beg the ministers to support the deal. At the end of the day we got a call that the file is with the military rabbi. This is a humiliating day for Israel." Goldwasser told Haaretz that Olmert's considerations were mainly security, while the ministers had a wider agenda that took the total significance of an end to the affair into consideration.
Olmert is said to be delaying the deal because of objections by Mossad head Meir Dagan and Shin Ben head Yuval Diskin to an agreement to release the terrorist Samir Kuntar without knowing what Israel will hear in return on the fate of missing airman Ron Arad.
Kuntar remained in Israel's hands as a bargaining chip after the release of Elhanan Tennenbaum in 2004. An arrangement seemed to be in the making recently for Hezbollah to deliver a detailed report on Arad, although it had not been able to solve the mystery. Israel now wants to know the nature of that report, and on Diskin and Dagan's recommendation, Olmert wants to hold back the deal until this point is clarified.
In exchange for the report, Israel will reportedly give Hezbollah information on the fate of four Lebanese diplomats who disappeared in Lebanon in 1982, and apparently were murdered by Christian Phalangists.
Another issue that has resurfaced over the past few days involves Palestinian prisoners. Although no official word has reached the media, prisoners negotiator Ofer Dekel told the Goldwasser and Regev families last week that Israel is expected to agree to release a few dozen Palestinian prisoners of its choosing, to be presented as a gesture to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, represented by German negotiator Gerhard Konrad.
However, sources close to the deal said yesterday that this issue was not a major hindrance to the deal, and that the main issue was over the information about Arad. The sources said it was likely that Olmert would delay approval of the deal and prevent it coming up for debate in the cabinet.
"This is very serious," Ehud Goldwasser's father Udi said. "It means Olmert's playing his cards close to his chest and not sharing information with the ministers."
Olmert is traveling to Sharm el-Sheikh this morning to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The two leaders will discuss the renewal of mediation efforts by Egypt on a deal with Hamas to free captured soldier Gilad Shalit.
Yuval Azoulay, Jack Khoury and Nadav Shragai contributed to this article.
Only when there are tzvei kosherer adim can we believe such allegations, especially when accusing erliche tyrdica rabbonim. If not, they have a cheskas kashrus over kinderlach.
Child victim's 10 years of sex abuse: Pervert finally jailed 25 years on
24 June 2008
By Colin Drury
A HALIFAX man who systematically abused a child for nearly a decade has been jailed, 25 years on.
Dennis Chatterley, of Warley Road, Halifax, was sentenced to seven years after a court heard he had forced the girl to perform sex acts on him when she was just three.
The abuse, which took place on a near daily basis between 1975 and 1982, left tADVERTISEMENThe victim so traumatised she took an overdose when she was 14.
She was only saved by an emergency stomach pump.
Chatterley, now 60 years old, admitted 18 counts of indecency with a child.
Jonathon Rose, prosecuting, told Bradford Crown Court the catalogue of abuse included performing sex acts on the girl, performing sex acts on himself in front of her and forcing her to give sexual favours in return for treats.
On one occasion the abuse only stopped when another child walked in.
Several times she was forced to view pornography.
Mr Rose said: "His victim suffered and continues to suffer mental illnesses as a result – depression, panic attacks, obsessive disorders.
"She is still unable to enjoy a full relationship with a man."
Richard Gioserano, for Chatterley, said he had been sexually abused himself as a child.
He said: "He believes this played its part in why he acted like he did.
"One view is that he is looking for an excuse but it is not uncommon that the abused later in life becomes abuser.
"He knows the pain he has caused."
Judge Jonathan Durham Hall said: "This was deplorable – persistent, repeated and prolonged. It left the victim profoundly traumatised."
Chatterley was placed on the sex offenders register.
I stopped buying Rubashkins. The coverup by the OU is eqivelent to the verse that says "lifnei iver loy sitain muchshol." I'm sure they are oyver many more lavim as well.
Pretty soon we are going to be nicknamed "the city that breeds" too.
Iowa police chief fired after sex abuse charge
By AMY LORENTZEN – 8 hours ago
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa police chief who was charged with sexually assaulting a woman at a county club bar has been fired, the mayor announced Tuesday.
James Christensen, 40, had been on administrative leave while officials reviewed the case. He and former assistant chief John Sickels, 38, were charged with second-degree sexual abuse. Sickels was fired last week.
Creston Mayor Warren Woods announced the firing effective 5 p.m. Monday.
Investigators say that Sickels raped a woman behind the bar of the Crestmoor Golf Club on April 18 while Christensen "held her hand, stroked her hair and 'shushed her.'"
The men were charged earlier this month. If convicted, they face up to 25 years in prison.
Christensen maintains his innocence and offered to be placed on unpaid administrative leave until the case was resolved, his attorney Paul Scott said.
"We believe when everything comes out that he is going to be exonerated," Scott said.
A telephone message left Tuesday for Sickels' lawyer wasn't immediately returned.
About 8,000 people live in Creston, which is 70 miles southwest of Des Moines
These monsters were cruel and sadistic. Now, we're supposed to pity them on those same grounds. In any event, at the very least, I believe castration should be mandatory in the instance of child rape. But, then again, Chaim 'penetration' Scheinberg, and other foolish scholars of Chelm - will probably disagree with that summation!
===============================
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080625/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_rdp
Court rejects death penalty for raping children By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court has struck down a Louisiana law that allows the execution of people convicted of a raping a child.
ADVERTISEMENT
In a 5-4 vote, the court says the law allowing the death penalty to be imposed in cases of child rape violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
"The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion. His four liberal colleagues joined him, while the four more conservative justices dissented.
There has not been an execution in the United States for a crime that did not also involve the death of the victim in 44 years.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday also cut the $2.5 billion punitive damages award in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster to $500 million.
The court ruled that victims of the worst oil spill in U.S. history may collect punitive damages from Exxon Mobil Corp., but not as much as a federal appeals court determined.
Justice David Souter wrote for the court that punitive damages may not exceed what the company already paid to compensate victims for economic losses, about $500 million compensation.
Exxon asked the high court to reject the punitive damages judgment, saying it already has spent $3.4 billion in response to the accident that fouled 1,200 miles of Alaska coastline.
A jury decided Exxon should pay $5 billion in punitive damages. A federal appeals court cut that verdict in half.
Let me tell you about this "Yeshivah." I was sent here with no choice. It was the worst time of my life. Not only was I beaten up by the "rebbeim," but I was humiliated to such a degree, that I still have nightmares about it. Please don't make the mistake of sending your children here. It's not worth it. For all the "Frumkeit" this place preaches, it's all bullshit. Yes, I said it here, BULLSHIT! I won't ever forgive the Mandels. They are a bunch of fake jews with their greasy heads up their asses. While I and others were abused - That monster Nussbaum was molesting kids - and we were made to stand up for him, and kiss his butt. It just make me want to puke. I love this blog, because I can relate with everything written here. Wishing you much hatzlacha.
Sincerely,
Abused at YOB
ATTENTION FOLKS! IF ONE OF YOU - OR SOMEBODY YOU KNOW - HAS BEEN SEXUALLY ABUSED AT CAMP ADAS YEREIM, WOULD YOU KINDLY EMAIL ME AT:
MATZIL_NEFOSHOS@YAHOO.COM
SHABBAT SHALOM!
Abused at YOB,
Those vicious punks are gruesome. I feel your pain. Please send me an email at:
Matzil_Nefoshos@yahoo.com
I would really like to communicate with you. Hatzlacha Rabah!
EM
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-me-taxscam28-2008jun28,0,5730327.story
Rabbi and banker plead guilty in tax-evasion scam
They used an elaborate money transfer network in Israel, New York and Los Angeles' downtown Jewelry District to defraud the U.S. government of millions.
By Victoria Kim, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 28, 2008
Federal prosecutors secured guilty pleas Friday from a Tel Aviv-based banker and a New York-based rabbi for their involvement in a decade-long international tax-evasion scam centered around an Orthodox Jewish sect that defrauded the U.S. government of millions in tax revenue.
Joseph Roth, 66, an account manager for Israel-based United Mizrahi Bank, and Rabbi Moshe Zigelman, 60, admitted to their parts in a scheme in which people made bogus tax-exempt donations to charitable organizations related to Spinka, an Orthodox Jewish sect.
Most of that money was shuttled back to donors through an elaborate underground money transfer network in Israel, New York and Los Angeles' downtown Jewelry District. Those involved in the scheme received cash kickbacks, prosecutors said.
Roth pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge in a district court Friday and Zigelman agreed to plead guilty at a hearing scheduled for Tuesday, federal prosecutors said. New York-based Zigelman was executive assistant to Grand Rabbi Naftali Tzi Weisz, the sect's leader, who was arrested last year in relation to the scheme and is scheduled to stand trial in September.
In a plea agreement filed Friday, Zigelman admitted to soliciting donations by promising to refund 80% to 95% of the sum. Zigelman and Weisz collected almost $8.5 million in contributions in 2006 and returned $7.7 million of that to the donors, and Spinka got a profit of more than $740,000 from those transactions, according to the plea agreement.
Roth admitted in court Friday that he established secret overseas bank accounts and bogus loans to facilitate the transfer of funds and charged fees to repatriate the money into the U.S., prosecutors said.
Zigelman's attorney, Michael Proctor, said his client was "atoning for his own wrongdoing" and would not testify against the other defendants. Zigelman faces a maximum sentence of 33 months in prison, Proctor said.
victoria.kim@latimes.com
I don't understand. I personally am an advocate of stealing from the government. Are they not goyim?
-----------------------------------
Joseph Roth, 66, of Tel Aviv, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit tax fraud. U.S. District Judge George Schiavelli scheduled sentencing for Oct. 20, when Roth faces a statutory maximum term of five years' imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.
I will only kill myself if reb sholmele mandel jumps with me.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,373121,00.html
Catholic Priest Facing Sex Abuse Inquiry Commits Suicide in Maine
Friday, June 27, 2008
DOVER-FOXCROFT, Maine — Maine's Roman Catholic diocese says a priest committed suicide after he was informed that he would be suspended pending an investigation of his alleged sexual abuse of a minor 29 years ago.
The body of the Reverend James Robichaud was found in the rectory of Our Lady of the Snows in Dover-Foxcroft on Friday, a day after he learned of the allegation.
The Diocese of Portland says the cause of death was not known but police confirm it was a suicide.
The allegation came to the diocese from the Oblates, a religious order of men with whom Robichaud was serving in Massachusetts prior to his return to Maine in 2000.
ich ut nisht vil zugen de policia. Azeire chilul hashem vil kimen aroise mit deir! ich bin nisht ah tipesh - ah groiseh putz yuh!
--------------------------------
By Laura Gray
Watch the story Principal Carmella Botticello didn't break the law by failing to report allegations of sexual abuse at School 67, according to an investigation by the District Attorney's office. Clark says Botticello did fail to follow state and school board policies. "The teacher should have told the principal. The principal should have notified the board security. They should have called the police department. The next thing that should have been done is the principal should have told the parents.. All that should have been done in two hours of receiving the report."
Botticello was made aware of the alleged sexual abuse in November, when a teacher allegedly caught 60 year old John Collazi fondling a 4 year old autistic child. Clark says Botticello never told parents or police. "It really was a product of not understanding what the legal obligations are of reporting a report of sexual abuse."
Four months later, the teacher took it upon herself to call an abuse hotline in Albany.
The Buffalo Public School District released a statement saying quote: "This report is the final chapter of what has been a long and difficult process for the District, yet one we can learn from to improve our procedures. We will review the recommendations and act on them accordingly."
The DA'S office made recommendations to the district. "Sometimes we worry that school officials are more concerned about reputation of their school then whether the student in their school may have been victimized in some way." Clark says.
The district refused to comment on any disciplinary actions involving Botticello.
By ARON HELLER, Associated Press Writer
Sun Jun 29, 7:37 PM ET
JERUSALEM - The Israeli government agreed Sunday to free a Lebanese gunman convicted in one of the grisliest attacks in the country's history in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers killed by Hezbollah guerrillas.
The German-mediated deal was a rare political victory for embattled Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and closed a chapter from Israel's inconclusive war against the Lebanese militant group two years ago.
But critics warned that the deal's heavy price for Israel could offer militant groups an even greater incentive to kill captive soldiers. In Lebanon Sunday, Hezbollah declared victory and planned celebrations.
Israel's Cabinet voted 22-3 to OK the deal to return the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, captured by Hezbollah in a July 2006 cross-border raid that sparked a vicious monthlong war.
Before a six-hour Cabinet debate, Olmert announced for the first time that the soldiers were dead. He nevertheless pushed for the deal to be approved, citing the country's deep moral commitment to its dead and captive soldiers.
"Since we were children, we have been taught that we don't leave wounded in the field and we don't leave soldiers in captivity without doing all we can to free them," he said.
Israel will also receive the remaining body parts of its soldiers from the Lebanon war and a thorough Hezbollah report about Ron Arad, a missing Israeli airman whose plane crashed in Lebanon in 1986.
The most difficult part for Israel was the release of Samir Kantar. He is serving multiple life sentences for infiltrating northern Israel in 1979 and killing three Israelis — a 28-year-old man, his 4-year-old daughter and an Israeli police officer.
Witnesses said Kantar smashed the little girl's head against a rock and crushed her skull with a rifle butt. The attack has been etched in the Israeli psyche as one of the cruelest in the nation's history. Kantar denied killing the girl or smashing her skull.
Her mother, while trying to silence the cries of her other daughter as Kantar and three others rampaged through the apartment, accidentally smothered the 2-year-old.
On Sunday, the mother, Smadar Haran Kaiser, said she was devastated by the decision but understood it.
"The despicable murderer Kantar was never my own personal prisoner, but the state's prisoner," she told a news conference. "Even if my soul should be torn, and it is torn, my heart is whole."
Israel also agreed to release four other Lebanese prisoners, dozens of bodies and an undisclosed number of Palestinian prisoners.
Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On, who voted against the deal, told The Associated Press that he objected to the deal because "it included releasing Palestinian prisoners."
Dovish lawmaker Yossi Beilin told Channel 10 TV he would have backed the deal if the soldiers were still alive.
"There is tremendous difference in my view between saving someone's life and receiving coffins," he said. "I pray that we didn't give these people ideas that they can carry out more kidnappings and then ask for whatever they want."
Israel was also negotiating a trade with Palestinian Hamas militants for the release of an Israeli soldier captured in a June 2006 cross-border raid from the Gaza Strip.
Unlike his comrades in Lebanon, the soldier, Sgt. Gilad Schalit, has sent letters and an audio tape to his parents and is believed to be alive, though he has not been seen since his capture and the Red Cross has not been permitted to visit him either.
In Beirut, Hezbollah said the Israeli approval of the deal reflected the guerrilla group's strength.
"What happened in the prisoners issue is a proof that the word of the resistance is the most faithful, strongest and supreme," the group's Al-Manar TV quoted Hezbollah's Executive Council chief Hashem Safieddine as saying.
In the southern city of Sidon, members of the Popular Democratic Party were decorating the central Martyrs Square with pictures of Kantar and hanging banners such as "Freedom to the hero, prisoner Samir Kantar" and "freedom comes with blood not tears."
Hezbollah had offered no sign that Goldwasser and Regev were alive, and the Red Cross was never allowed to see them. Ahead of the vote, Olmert said for the first time that Israel has concluded the two soldiers were killed during the raid or shortly after.
"We know what happened to them," Olmert told the Cabinet, according to comments released by his office. "As far as we know, the soldiers Regev and Goldwasser are not alive."
Goldwasser's wife, Karnit, praised Olmert for pushing for the trade, while still trying to come to terms with his declaration.
"My heart aches. It is very difficult for me. I am very tired, drained inside," she told reporters. "All I want to do is to digest things, try to understand what happened ... to rest a bit ... to have my pain."
Israeli officials said the deal could take place as early as next week. The trade will likely take place in Germany.
Ofer Regev, brother of kidnapped soldier Eldad Regev, said he hadn't given up hope yet.
"Until we see otherwise, we will continue hoping for a miracle to happen to us," he said.
___
Associated Press Writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut, Lebanon, Ian Deitch in Jerusalem and Daniel Robinson in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.
Shame, shame, shame.....
As a Jew, I am so embarrassed by the shameful,disgusting things that have gone on at the Agriprocessors plant. I am absolutely dumbfounded! From the day I came into this world, my parent's as well as the Jewish community have taught me about Mitzvot (good deeds), and Tzedaka (charity). I was taught to treat everyone with respect and kindness. I'm curious what the Rubashkin family is teaching their children. Sounds like they're setting a "fantastic" example for them:
Hire immigrant workers (legal or not) that have come to this country for a better life and subject them to unsafe working conditions, less than minimum wage, and harassment. Bottom line: Treat them how you WOULD NOT want to be treated.
I am also disturbed by the fact that Rabbi's from the Jewish Community in Minnesota went down to Postville in 2006 and talked with workers at the plant who described terrible work conditions. Rabbi Allen listened to these people, and then "tried" to work with the Rubashkin family giving advice. Allen stated in the article that, "I think if they had followed our advice, this may never have happened." Hmmm.... what "advice" was given? Why did Rabbi Allen and his "delegation" not do something when they found out about the "atmosphere"at Agriprocessors? It had to come to this.... The entire town of Postville has literally been turned upside down.
Now, this comment really put the Matzo Ball in my bowl of chicken soup:
"I would say to them it's all totally unfounded, for me as an outsider talking on my own behalf,'' Bistritzky said. "I've been here for a month; I haven't seen any abuse, or any of the accusations that have been made."
Just because Mr. Bistritzky hasn't "seen" anything in the "month" that he's been there, doesn't mean that none of this ever happened (the abuse, harassment, etc....). Maybe that's just what he keeps telling himself. More than likely, it's still going on right under his nose.
I'll be joining the boycott of any type of Kosher food that comes out of that plant until this company cleans up their act. It's an absolute shame that those of the same faith as me could do something so repulsive to those that g-d wants us to embrace with love and compassion.
http://www.5tjt.com/news/read.asp?Id=2586
In Praise Of The Rubashkins
By: Larry Gordon
Published: Friday, June 13, 2008
Dear Editor, As the media (including many Jewish outlets) continue to report as fact many baseless rumors and every negative allegation they can find regarding the Agriprocessors plant in Iowa, we feel compelled to bring to light some qualities of the Rubashkin family which the media fails to report.
We serve as Jewish leaders in our respective communities and are firsthand witnesses of the kindness and selfless concern that the Rubashkin family, led by Reb Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin, shows for thousands of communities, families, and individuals around the world. We live in areas with a minuscule kosher clientele, where kosher meat and poultry is difficult to find. Knowing the importance of the mitzvah of kashrus, and appreciating its fundamental place in Jewish life, as emphasized by our mentor the Lubavitcher Rebbe, zechuso yagein aleinu, the Rubashkin family always goes out of its way to ensure that the Jewish families in our outlying and far-flung communities receive the quality service and fresh products that we so greatly need.
They don’t do this for PR; our towns don’t give them much. They don’t to it for profits; in many instances there is actually a financial loss. They do it because they are caring Jews devoted to the welfare of their brethren. They live up to their family reputation, which goes back for generations, to help Jews anywhere, anytime, no questions asked, no strings attached.
The chesed (kindheartedness) and hachnasas orchim (hospitality) of this family are legendary. No one is ever turned down at a Rubashkin home, not in Iowa, Boro Park, or Crown Heights. We are all familiar with the saying “charity begins at home,” yet their kindness extends well beyond the Jewish community. We are stunned at how Jewish leaders and media outlets are ready to print and say things that hurt this wonderful family, by engaging in outright motzi sheim ra (spreading of malicious unsubstantiated rumors) without clearly establishing the facts of the cases in question!
PETA and DHS notwithstanding, we have come to know the Rubashkins, and they are the exact opposite of the “monsters” the media portrays them to be.
May Hashem continue to bless them, for their success is the success of many Jewish communities.
Sincerely,
Rabbi Chaim Bruk (Bozeman, Montana), Rabbi Berl Goldman (Gainesville, Florida), Rabbi Ovadia Goldman (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma), Rabbi Mendy Goldstein (Naperville, Illinois), Rabbi Mendel Lifshitz (Boise, Idaho), Rabbi Zalman Mendelsohn (Jackson, Wyoming), Rabbi Mendy Weinberg (Overland Park, Kansas)
Oy gevalt! How sickening!
.........................
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2008/06/28/cop_abuse/
Ex-Cop Gets Probation For Sex Abuse Of 8-Year-Old
Posted on Saturday, 28 of June , 2008 at 8:54 pm
SCHENECTADY—A former Essex County police officer who admitted to having sexual relations with an 8-year-old girl has avoided any time in state prison.
Peter C. Kunath, 62, of Queensbury, pleaded guilty to first degree sexual abuse of a child in Schenectady County Court before Judge Karen Drago after admitting he had sexual contact with the child last summer at two locations in Glenville.
Drago sentenced Kunath to 40 days time served and 10 years of probation. He must also register as a sex offender. Under the terms of a plea agreement, Kunath must stay away from the girl until 2018, or when she becomes 18, or face four years in prison.
Kunath, who was arrested in March, had been an officer with the Lake Placid and Saranac Lake village police departments from the 1970s into the 80s when he left to became an EnCon officer and later an investigator with DEC from which he retired. 6-28-08
Dominic Liversedge was an honorable policeman.
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Policeman admits child sex abuse
A police sergeant from Cambridgeshire is to be sentenced later this month after admitting to the sexual abuse of a schoolgirl.
Dominic Liversedge pleaded guilty at Luton Magistrates' Court to having sexual activity with a child.
The 27-year-old, who was based at Parkside police station in Cambridge, has resigned from the force, a police spokeswoman said.
He was bailed and will be sentenced at Luton Crown Court on 25 July.
Oil climbs back above $142 on supply worries
Tuesday July 1, 11:46 am ET
By Adam Schreck, AP Business Writer
Oil climbs above $142 a barrel on concerns about tight global supplies, Mideast conflict
NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil prices pushed back above $142 a barrel Tuesday on worries about tight supply and possible armed conflict between Iran and Israel. In the U.S., gasoline edged to a new record high.
Prices resumed their advance as the International Energy Agency issued a report cautioning that worldwide crude supplies are unlikely to ease despite record prices and falling demand in industrialized countries. The world is experiencing "the third oil price shock," the head of the Paris-based body said, comparing the effects of today's pricey petroleum to times of soaring prices in the 1970s and 1980s.
"OPEC production is at record highs and non-OPEC producers are working at full throttle, but stocks show no unusual build," IEA chief Nobuo Tanaka said at the report's presentation in Madrid. "These factors demonstrate that it is mainly fundamentals pushing up the price."
U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson echoed those concerns in Berlin, saying that there were no "obvious short-term solutions" to soaring oil prices.
Light, sweet crude for August delivery rose $2.02 to trade at $142.02 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
On Monday, the contract soared to a record $143.67 a barrel. It later fell back to close at $140 as traders took profits and settled their positions at the end of the quarter.
In the U.S., gas station operators nudged the record for a gallon of regular a tenth of a penny higher, to an average of $4.087 a gallon nationwide, according to AAA, the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express.
Concerns about ongoing tension in the Middle East -- a factor that has helped fuel oil's recent rise -- continued to weigh on traders' minds Tuesday.
ABC News quoted an unnamed senior Pentagon official as saying there is an "increasing likelihood" that Israel will strike Iran's nuclear facilities before the end of the year. Such an attack could prompt Iran to retaliate, potentially disrupting oil supplies in the strategically vital Persian Gulf.
Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Ill., called the report "more of the same" but acknowledged it was having an effect on energy market psychology.
"The market's forced to insert some type of risk premium on geopolitical developments," he said.
Iran is the world's fourth-largest oil exporter and OPEC's second-largest exporter. About 40 percent of world oil exports pass through the Gulf.
In its Medium-Term Oil Market Report on Tuesday, the Paris-based IEA said demand would rise most in developing countries, with Asia, the Middle East and Latin America accounting for nearly 90 percent of demand growth over the next five years.
Victor Shum, an analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore, predicted concerns about supply, including worries about conflict with Iran, will likely keep prices high.
"I don't see much resistance to $150 (a barrel), which could happen in the coming weeks."
In other Nymex trading, heating oil futures were up about 6 cents to $3.9705 a gallon, while gasoline futures rose 3.84 cents to $3.5375 a gallon. Natural gas futures jumped 18.8 cents to $13.541 per 1,000 cubic feet.
In London, Brent crude futures rose $2.27 to $142.10 on the ICE Futures exchange.
Associated Press writers Alex Kennedy in Bangkok, Thailand, George Jahn in Madrid, Spain, and Pablo Gorondi in Budapest, Hungary contributed to this report.
New York rabbi pleads guilty in tax fraud case
The Associated Press
07/01/2008
LOS ANGELES—A rabbi pleaded guilty Tuesday to participating in a decade-long tax fraud and money laundering scheme that prosecutors claim involved the leader of an Orthodox Jewish group.
Moshe E. Zigelman, 62, of Brooklyn, N.Y., pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit tax fraud, U.S. Attorney's spokesman Thom Mrozek said.
He faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced Dec. 8, Mrozek said.
Zigelman and Grand Rabbi Naftali Tzi Weisz are the lead defendants named in a 37-count grand jury indictment last year.
Prosecutors said they were among eight defendants who helped people avoid paying federal income taxes by having them make contributions to charitable groups run by Spinka, a New York based Orthodox Jewish group lead by Weisz.
As part of his plea, Zigelman admitted to paying kickbacks and laundering large amounts of contributions from a participant in the scheme who became a government informant. He admitted that in 2006 the total amount of contributions to Spinka-related charities was $8.5 million, of which $7.7 million was returned to contributors.
Zigelman was Weisz's personal assistant.
Weisz pleaded not guilty in December and will go on trial Sept. 9.
Who does Rabbi Morris Allen think he is? He's just another Conservativemeister whose words are as dusty as my borsalino hat.
------------------------------
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121485315802616845.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
"We shouldn't accept a standard of kashrut that is more concerned about the lung of a cow than the hand of a worker," he says. "Isn't it important for us as Jews to care that our food isn't just ritually kosher but ethically kosher, too?"
Neosho, Mo. -
The Neosho Police Department and the Neosho Rec-Plex held a seminar on how to protect area children from child predators Monday evening at the Lampo Community Building.
“It is a matter of getting this information out to the people,” said Neosho Police Sgt. Peter Russell, who conducted the seminar. “Neosho has 22-plus sex offenders who live in the city limits of Neosho alone, and 95 live in Newton County. And Neosho being a large economic hub for Newton County, a lot of those same people come to Neosho to shop or see things that are going on like community events. Technically speaking, you have almost 120 sex offenders coming into Neosho on almost a daily basis.”
The idea for the seminar, which had low attendance, came after officers received calls from several residents who identified someone who was conducting suspicious behavior near the ballfields at Morse Park.
“We initiated contact with that person, and sure enough, he was doing undesirable behavior in our parks,” Russell confirmed.
Russell said education among both parents and children is the “No. 1 key” to prevent being a victim of a sex crime.
“If parents are educated, they can keep their children out of situations that can lead to instances of victimization. Education is also key if sex crimes are going on and parents are able to detect it before any more damage to the child is done. A lot of times we find that parents don’t know because they are ignorant to the facts, and this type of abuse can go on for years.”
During the seminar, Russell provided behavioral patterns of sex offenders.
According to Russell, sex offenders have the following traits:
n Most offenders commit multiple crimes against multiple types of victims with whom they have varying types of relationships.
n Sex offenders rarely commit one type of offense. Many offenders have no official criminal record or sex crime history of any kind.
n The majority of offenses (80-95 percent) are committed by someone the victim knows.
n Sexual deviancy often begins in adolescence.
n Sex offenders usually do not commit their crimes impulsively. They usually carefully plan their crimes.
n 60 percent of convicted sex offenders are on probation or parole.
“A sexual predator can be a man or woman, and age is not a factor at all,” Russell said.
“It is about their behavior, not about the individual person.”
Russell listed the following adult behaviors that may signal sexual interest in children:
n Refuses to let a child set any of his or her own limitations.
n Insists on hugging, touching, kissing, tickling, wrestling or holding a child even when the child does not want this affection.
n Manages to get time along or insists on time along with a child without interruptions.
n Spends most of his/her spare time with children and has little interest in spending time with someone their own age.
n Buys children expensive gifts or gives them money for no apparent reason.
n Frequently walks in on children/teens in the bathroom.
n Allows children or teens to consistently get away with inappropriate behaviors.
n Encourages silence and secrets with children.
n Talks about sexual fantasies with children and is not clear about what’s OK with children.
n Looks at child pornography.
During his speech, Russell provides safety tips provided by a convicted child molester.
The tips are:
n Give quality love, time and attention to your child so that he or she won’t look for it elsewhere.
n Know the people who are involved with your child who are in a position of trust, or even a relative or close friend.
n Be aware of an adult or older child who spends a large amount of time with your child, or seems to be focused on your child.
n Be aware if your child is avoiding a particular person that they used to be comfortable with.
n Be aware if your child is spending a lot of time with, or talking about, an adult or someone older who is not a parent or guardian.
n If you suspect that your child has been abused, ask him or her in a caring, non-threatening way. Do not accuse.
n Let your child know that he or she does not have to keep secrets. Many times shame will keep a child silent.
The known and convicted sex offender list is maintained by the Newton County Sheriff’s Office, and can be viewed at http://nc-so.org.
If civic or church groups would like the Neosho Police Department to conduct this seminar at a meeting, call 451-8333 for more information.
The allegations made against us are sheker. Not a dime will we pay.
Claims alleging abuse by Colorado priests settled
By CATHERINE TSAI – 7 hours ago
DENVER (AP) — The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Denver has agreed to pay $5.5 million to settle 18 more claims by people who said they were sexually abused by priests when they were children.
With the agreements announced Tuesday, the archdiocese has settled 43 sex-abuse allegations since 2005 for a total of $8.2 million. Two suits remain unresolved.
The archdiocese also agreed to a long-standing demand by some of the plaintiffs to release files on one former priest who was accused in 16 of the newly settled claims.
"It is my hope that these settlements help the victims and their families to heal," Archbishop Charles Chaput said.
For the second time since March, Chaput publicly apologized to all the victims, saying the church was "mortified and embarrassed." He said he had apologized in person to victims who agreed to meet with him.
The settlements announced Tuesday cover 16 lawsuits and two complaints made outside the court system. The allegations were made against three priests, all of whom have since died, church officials said.
The archdiocese identified the men as Leonard Abercrombie, Lawrence St. Peter and Harold Robert White.
Abercrombie died in 1994, but it wasn't clear if he was still a priest at the time. St. Peter had not been publicly identified before, and no information has been disclosed about him.
White was removed from ministry in 1993 and died of a heart attack in 2006. In his only public comment on the matter, he said the allegation contained "half truths."
The archdiocese released its files on White on Tuesday. Chaput said they showed no evidence he abused anyone after 1981.
Attorney Jeff Anderson, who represented 14 victims, said the records show the archdiocese knew of complaints against White as early as 1960 but still moved him from parish to parish.
"White was a serial offender who wasn't able to control himself," Anderson said. "The officials of the archdiocese could've controlled him by reporting him to police, by warning parishioners."
Chaput said many of the decisions archdiocesan officials made regarding White would be different today. Those church officials have all died, he said.
"We cannot undo the sins and failures of the past. Neither can we undo the suffering these events caused," Chaput said.
Current policy forbids anyone who is the subject of a credible allegation of sexually abusing a minor from working in active ministry in the archdiocese, he said. It also requires that the archdiocese immediately report credible allegations to law enforcement and remove the accused person from ministry.
Chaput said no real estate has been sold to cover the expenses, though the archdiocese said the settlements would affect the church in northern Colorado and charitable work it can provide.
Chaput said he hopes the settlements open a path for the victims to return to the Catholic Church one day.
Randy Becker, 47, whose allegations against White were among the cases covered by Tuesday's announcement, said the church has lost him.
"I still have faith in Jesus Christ, but I've really totally lost my faith in the Catholic Church," he said.
Rabbi Fuck(es) was my 6th grade rebbe at yeshiva of brooklyn. He was such a vildeh chayah. He used to watch you make a mistake like not saying bichas hamozon and would then slap and beat upon students unmercifully. If you ate pizza or chewed gum or didn't stand up when he walked in the room, or anything considered not frum enough to his liking, it would earn you physical and emotional abuse at the hands of this animal and also yankel mandel the menhael for the yeshiva ketana. This is not even everything that went on daily, just the tip of the iceberg. He would also punish students (as did the other rebbeim) by sending them to that pervert rabbi nussbaum of the 5th grade. Boys were so afraid of nussbaum because he was a sexual sadist bully who also derived so much pleasure in tourturing them with his bare hands and his wooden ruler. I hope yob gets shut down real soon!
Breaking News:
Palestinian goes on rampage in Jerusalem; 3 killed By STEVEN GUTKIN, Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM - A Palestinian man plowed an enormous construction vehicle into cars, buses and pedestrians on a busy street Wednesday, killing at least three people and wounding at least 45 before he was shot dead by security officers.
Israeli police referred to the man as a "terrorist" acting on his own. He repeatedly smashed vehicle after vehicle with the huge shovel on his machine, throwing cars into the air and overturning a bus.
The first major attack in Jerusalem since March wreaked havoc in the heart of downtown. Hundreds of people fled in panic through the streets as medics treated the wounded.
Three Palestinian militant groups took responsibility for the attack, but the claims could not be independently verified.
The attack took place in front of a building housing the offices of The Associated Press and other media outlets. British Broadcasting Corp. footage captured the huge front loader crushing a vehicle and an off-duty soldier shooting the perpetrator in the head several times at point-blank range as onlookers screamed.
Israel's national rescue service confirmed three deaths, and the bodies lay motionless on the ground covered in plastic.
Hen Shimon, a 19-year-old soldier, said the whole scene was a "nightmare."
"I just got off the bus and I saw the tractor driving and knocking everything down in his path," she said. "Everything he saw he rammed."
Yosef Spielman said the construction vehicle picked up a car "like a toy."
"I was shocked. I saw a guy going crazy," he said. "All the people were running. They had no chance."
Eyal Lang Ben-Hur, 16, was in a bus when the driver yelled "Get out of the vehicle! Everyone out!" People fled in a panic, he said, and the bus was hit an instant later.
Eli Mizrahi, an officer in a special anti-terror unit, said he and his partner sped to the scene on a motorcycle from the nearby Mahane Yehuda market in downtown Jerusalem. An off-duty soldier had just shot the attacker, but not killed him.
"I ran up the stairs (of the vehicle) and, when he was still driving like crazy and trying to harm civilians, I fired at him twice more and, that's it, he was liquidated," Mizrahi told reporters.
The attack occurred in an area where Jerusalem is building a new train system. The project has turned many parts of the city into a big construction zone. Israeli police said the attacker was a bulldozer operator who worked in the area for a construction firm.
During the second Palestinian uprising, which erupted in late 2000, Jerusalem experienced dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks. The city has been largely quiet in the past three years, though sporadic attacks have persisted. In March, a Palestinian gunman entered a Jerusalem seminary and killed eight young students.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev called Wednesday's attack a "senseless act of murderous violence."
President Bush called Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to express condolences about the attack and planned to call Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as well, White House press secretary Dana Perino said.
The three organizations that took responsibility for the attack included the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, which is affiliated with Abbas. Abbas aide Saeb Erekat condemned the violence.
The other two are the Galilee Freedom Battalion, which is suspected of being affiliated with Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a fringe left-wing militant group.
The Hamas militant group, which runs the Gaza Strip and is currently maintaining a fragile cease-fire with Israel, said it did not carry out the attack but nevertheless praised it.
"We consider it as a natural reaction to the daily aggression and crimes committed against our people in the West Bank and all over the occupied lands," said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.
Despite the Palestinian claims of responsibility, Israeli police chief Dudi Cohen said the attacker appeared to be acting alone. "It looks as if it was a spontaneous act," he said.
Major Israeli retaliation appeared unlikely given the police chief's claim that the attacker acted alone and the Jewish state's desire to maintain the Gaza cease-fire and to support Abbas' security forces in the West Bank.
Israeli police said the man, a father of two children, was an Arab in his 30s from east Jerusalem and had a criminal background. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said he had worked as a construction worker on the railway project.
Later Wednesday, five military vehicles gathered outside the man's two-story home in east Jerusalem. Police entered the house, took pictures and questioned relatives for an hour before leaving without making arrests.
Friends of the family identified the attacker as Hussam Dwikat. They said the 29-year-old was a devout Muslim, but had no known ties to any militant groups.
"Everybody is in shock. When I was told what happened I started to curse Hussam because this is the first time he has done something like this," said Salayan Weyed, a friend of the attacker's wife.
In contrast to West Bank Palestinians, Arab residents of Jerusalem have full freedom to work and travel throughout Israel. About two-thirds of Jerusalem's 700,000 residents are Jews, and the rest are Palestinians who came under Israeli control when Israel captured their part of the city in 1967.
Israel's national rescue service said at least 45 people were wounded in Wednesday's attack. Wounded people sat dazed on the ground amid piles of broken glass and blood stains on the street. A half-dozen cars were flattened and others were overturned by the Caterpillar vehicle. A bus was overturned and another bus was heavily damaged.
A woman sprinkled water over a baby's bloodied face, a rescue worker stroked the hair of a dazed elderly pedestrian and a loved one raised the bleeding leg of a woman sitting outside the overturned bus.
Esther Valencia, a 52-year-old pedestrian, said she barely escaped the carnage.
"He almost hit me. Someone pushed me out of the way at the last moment. It was a miracle that I got out of there."
Cassia Pereira, office manager for AP's Jerusalem bureau, watched the attack unfold outside her window.
"I saw him but it was too late and there was nothing to do," she said, with tears in her eyes. "I was in panic I couldn't say a word ... I realized something was not normal, something was wrong."
The mayor of Jerusalem, Uri Lupolianski, said his daughter was on one of the buses rammed by the attacker, but she was not injured.
"To our regret the attackers do not cease coming up with new ways to strike at the heart of the Jewish people here in Jerusalem," Lupolianski said.
___
Associated Press Writer Aron Heller contributed to this report.
My childhood chaver harav yehuda nussbaum molested boys at yeshiva of brooklyn and i swept under the rug for him. Big deal! sex abuse never killed anybody.
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Texas man gets 4,060 years in prison for sex abuse
6 hours ago
WEATHERFORD, Texas (AP) — A man was sentenced to more than 4,000 years in prison Wednesday for sexually assaulting three teenage girls over two years.
A day after finding James Kevin Pope guilty, jurors sentenced him to 40 life prison terms — one for each sex assault conviction — and 20 years for each of the three sexual performance of a child convictions.
At the request of prosecutors, state District Judge Graham Quisenberry ordered Pope to serve the sentences consecutively, adding up to 4,060 years. He will be eligible for parole in the year 3209, according to the Parker County District Attorney's Office.
"We believe it was a just result," prosecutor Robert DuBoise said, adding that he was "overwhelmed" with the judge's decision to stack the sentences.
Pope, 43, of Springtown, abused the girls for nearly two years. It came to authorities' attention earlier this year after Pope made several inappropriate comments to a friend, who notified Child Protective Services.
During the trial, the teens testified about the abuse, and their sexually explicit photographs were shown as evidence.
But Rick Alley, Pope's defense lawyer, told jurors in closing arguments that the victims were incapable of understanding what happened, the Weatherford Democrat reported in its Wednesday online edition.
"If it was as traumatic as they indicate, they would be able to give you (specific dates and times of the incidents). Simply because it's shocking doesn't make it true," Alley said.
During the sentencing phase of the trial, a U.S. Secret Service agent testified that while examining Pope's home computer, he found more than 200 images of child porn.
Later Wednesday, some jurors said the case was difficult because of the subject matter.
"We were careful not to make any mistakes in viewing and evaluating the evidence," said juror Dale Lewis.
http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local&id=6242942
BROOKLYN (WABC) -- A bus driver was charged with sexually abusing a girl with diminished mental capacity in the back of a Brooklyn school.
Police say 62-year-old Efim Bondarev was taken into custody yesterday and charged in June 25 assault.
He was reportedly charged with sex abuse and endangering the welfare of a child. He will be arraigned later today in Brooklyn Criminal Court.
The driver was charged with sexually abusing the 14-year-old girl, who has diminished mental capacity, on his bus on June 25, Eyewitness News is told.
Story continues belowAdvertisementAccording to reports he was on the bus with his victim, parked behind P.S. 226, when the matron stepped off the vehicle. When the matron returned, the driver was allegedly sexually abusing the girl.
The bus is operated by Careful Inc., a private bus company at East 2nd Street and Bay Parkway in Brooklyn.
That's a large sum of money to pay. Our wonderful mechanchim must receive the benefit of the doubt when accused of sexual misconduct.
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In 2005, the alleged victim filed a civil lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Washington and the Dominican Order, saying church leaders knew Cote was a “threat to kids” yet continued to keep him in the ministry. The Archdiocese of Washington, whose officials say they relied on background checks by the Dominican Order before accepting him for work, was released of any liability. The Dominican Order paid the victim a $1.2 million settlement in 2007.
The Chief Rabbi is one of the boys
By Anshel Pfeffer
Maariv's report last week that Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger had propositioned a young French cameraman during an interfaith conference in Spain a couple of years ago barely caused a ripple on the surface of the religious establishment swamp. This weekend's part two, which will detail Metzger's oligarch-sponsored trips around the world and the way he has enlisted himself in the service of Chabad interests, will most likely sink out of sight just as quickly. A controversial chief rabbi of Israel is not rare - certainly not all of Metzger's predecessors were paragons of virtue - but it is hard to imagine such allegations being raised against any of them without some kind of public response.
One obvious reason for this indifference is that nobody really has any expectations of Metzger. No list of the hundred most influential Ashkenazi rabbis in Israel would include his name, and he probably wouldn't even get into the second hundred. And besides, this isn't the first time his name had been dragged through the mud. Similar sexual accusations were leveled against him on the eve of his appointment five years ago, and he only managed to extricate himself from a bribe-taking indictment by the skin of his teeth. The few who still regard the institution of the Chief Rabbinate with any degree of respect find comfort, at least, in the fact that Metzger's Sephardi counterpart, Rabbi Shlomo Amar, is considered a formidable halachic authority - but even he is extra-careful not to cross swords with the much more powerful ultra-Orthodox leaders, and also had his own brush with the police a few years ago when his son and wife were arrested for abducting his daughter's "unsuitable" suitor. Advertisement
As it is, the concept of a chief rabbi is pretty outlandish. Originating from the days when Jewish communities needed a religious leader to represent them in the corridors of power, it has little place in a democracy - in Israel or the Diaspora. For secular Jews, the Chief Rabbi is meaningless, if not a nuisance, but for most religious Jews he is just as superfluous, since they don't need anyone to choose a rabbi for them. Their spiritual allegiances are determined by birth, family, geography and personal preference, not by the electors who choose a new pair of chief rabbis every ten years.
But while being an irrelevancy, the various chief rabbis serve as useful keys to the psyche, collective aspirations and neuroses of the communities they purport to serve. Instead of being shining and exalted beacons of probity, the chief rabbis are a lot more like the rest of us than we think.
Whether or not Metzger is indeed the sex-fiend that Maariv tried to portray him as, he is certainly a quintessential Israeli "kombinator" out on the make for himself. In an age in which four successive prime ministers have been investigated for corruption, what chief rabbi could be more fitting than Metzger?
Last month saw a bitter struggle for the post of Chief Rabbi of France, in which the philosopher and interfaith enthusiast Gilles Bernheim toppled the incumbent, traditionalist Joseph Sitruk. The elections embodied the community's schizophrenia between fun-loving, warm populists who are also deeply connected to their tradition - even if not great sticklers for mitzvoth - and the more urbane, European-minded elitists with pretensions of intellectualism. This time around the elitists won, but the pendulum will swing back again.
And who could be a more fitting chief rabbi of Russia than Berel Lazar, who owes his job to his extraordinary ability to get close to former President Vladimir Putin and win the patronage of Lev Leviev and Roman Abramovich; as is fitting for a community that is more than anything a playground for oligarchs and flourishes on the sufferance of the Kremlin. (Lazar usurped Adolf Shayevitz, the KGB-approved chief rabbi from the communist era.)
And who could be more perfect for his community than Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sacks, the media darling who seems to have something wise to say on every subject (if he hasn't already written a book on it) and will pontificate eloquently without taking any clear position. Who better to reflect the best integrated minority in British history, still beset with an incredible inferiority complex and a chronic lack of assertiveness?
And what about the largest community of all? (Despite what some alarmists will tell you, there are still more Jews in the United States than anywhere else in the world). There is no chief rabbi in the Land of the Free, and unlimited possibilities where not only can everyone be a Jew, regardless of gender, sexual orientation and religious belief, but a rabbi also.
Miracle on Jaffa Road: Baby saved from terrorist's killing spree
By Anshel Pfeffer
Tags: terror attack, Israel
Batsheva Unterman and her six-month-old daughter, Efrat, were on their way home from a visit to a medical center in Jerusalem Wednesday when terrorist Hussam Duwiyat deliberately crashed the bulldozer he was driving into their car as it turned onto Jaffa Road.
Jeremy Aharonson saw what had happened along with two other bystanders; they rushed to the vehicle where they saw Batsheva with her baby beside her.
"We saw the baby inside and she looked fine - she wasn't even crying," Aharonson recalls. "We tried to open the door but it was bent. They were shouting at us to stay back, that the car might explode, but two of us managed to pry the door open and take the baby out."
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A moment later, the terrorist again rammed his bulldozer into the car with Batsheva still inside, this time crushing it completely. It was the last vehicle he collided with before he was shot dead moments later.
Efrat was delivered unscathed into the hands of paramedics nearby. A rumor soon spread that her mother had saved her from the wreckage of her car just before she died. A team of medics checked the warped wreckage of the car to see if Batsheva was still alive inside, but she no longer had a pulse.
Unterman, who was 33 at the time of her death, was a resident of Jerusalem and worked as a kindergarten teacher for years at the Har Homa neighborhood. She was born in Israel to Rivka and James Lubenstein, a couple who immigrated from Holland.
She married London-born Ido Unterman, whose father, Isser Yehuda Unterman, was chief rabbi of Liverpool and Tel Aviv before he became Israel's chief rabbi between 1964 and 1973. For years, the couple underwent fertility treatment until their only child, Efrat, was born six months ago.
"Neither of them, Efrat and Ido, gave up on their dream to have children," said Meira Schwartz, a family friend. "Before Efrat was born, she treated all the kindergarten children like they were her own. She was a graceful kindergarten teacher with the utmost patience for each and every child."
After the attack that killed her mother, Efrat was taken to Shaare Zedek Medical Center, where she was examined. "The whole two hours we had her she was in the children's ward, in the hands of one of the ward's secretaries, showered with attention," said Amalia Oren, the director of the Kestenbaum Department of Social Work at Shaare Zedek.
Batsheva's husband Ido, an investment banker, was at work all day and had no idea that his wife had an appointment that put her at the site of the attack. He was only told that she had been killed hours after the event.
Efrat was delivered into her father's arms seven hours after the attack, which took place at noon. Around 20 minutes after he was reunited with his daughter, Ido set out for the morgue with his brother to identify his wife's body.
Pennsauken man convicted in child sex abuse
Friday, July 04, 2008
CAMDEN A Pennsauken Township man has been convicted of sexually assaulting a girl over an eight-year-period.
Curt Bassari was convicted by a panel of seven women and five men of 10 counts of aggravated sexual assault, three counts of endangering the welfare of a child including one count of excessive corporal punishment and one count of degree sexual assault...
http://www.nj.com/news/gloucester/local/index.ssf?/base/news-10/1215144627318770.xml&coll=8
Another Yudi Kolko... Another Yehuda Nussbaum... Another Stefan Colmer... Another Mondrowitz... Another Lazerowitz... Another Byrks... Another Shapiro... Another Eismann... Another monster... These sickos will never stop unless they're stopped!!!
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http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,700240541,00.html
Man, 71, charged with sex abuse at pool
PROVO — An alert lifeguard spotted a 71-year-old swimmer allegedly abusing children.
Wednesday afternoon, the Orem man was swimming in the wading area of the children's pool at Seven Peaks when his strange movements caught the attention of a lifeguard, according to an affidavit of probable cause filed in 4th District Court.
The lifeguard saw the man approach a 13-year-old girl and place his hand on her chest over her swimsuit, according to the affidavit.
The lifeguard told police he thought he saw the man trying to apologize, according to the affidavit.
While calling security, the lifeguard saw the man approach a 6-year-old boy and touch his genital area, over his swimsuit, according to the affidavit.
The man was held by park security until police arrived. They arrested and booked him into the Utah County Jail for investigation of sexual abuse of a child. He is being held on $10,000 cash-only bail.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121515228034328675.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Agriprocessors Supervisors Arrested
On Charges of Aiding Illegal Immigrants
By MIRIAM JORDAN
July 4, 2008 6:57 a.m.
Federal agents on Thursday arrested two supervisors at Agriprocessors Inc., the country's largest kosher meatpacking plant, on charges they helped illegal immigrants secure fake documents and encouraged them to reside in the U.S.
The arrests marked the first by U.S. authorities of individuals in supervisory roles at the Postville, Iowa, plant. On May 12, Immigration & Customs Enforcement agents arrested 389 workers at the facility, most of them undocumented immigrants from Latin America.
On Thursday, ICE agents arrested Juan Carlos Guerrero-Espinoza, 35, and Martin De La Rosa-Loera, 43, on various criminal immigration and fraudulent identity charges outlined in separate complaints filed in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. A federal warrant has been issued for the arrest of another manager, Hosam Amara, 43, who hasn't been located, according to a court statement.
Both Messrs. Guerrero-Espinoza and De La Rosa-Loera were charged with aiding and abetting the use of fraudulent identification before the raid. Mr. Guerrero-Espinoza is also charged with aiding and abetting "aggravated identity theft," according to the court. Both men were detained temporarily until their detention hearings on Monday.
Illegal immigrants typically get jobs either by presenting Social Security cards and other identification carrying a fabricated name and number, or by utilizing the real name and Social Security number of a U.S. legal resident or citizen, which constitutes identity theft.
The court complaint, based on information from unnamed "sources" who worked at the plant, cites an instance in which Mr. Guerrero-Espinoza asked illegal immigrants for $200 and a photograph. The supervisor, who oversaw the plant's beef-kill section, then allegedly provided the workers with fraudulent identification.
According to the complaint, Mr. De La Rosa-Loera, who oversaw the poultry-kill division, allegedly asked illegal workers to secure new work papers to ensure they could keep working at the plant just days before federal agents stormed the plant.
The complaint also alleges that the May 12 raid resulted in the seizure of dozens of fraudulent permanent alien resident cards in the human resources department at Agriprocessors.
An Agriprocessors spokesman said after the arrests that the company couldn't offer any comment because "its attorneys are reviewing the paperwork pertaining to the federal action today."
The May raid marked the single largest worksite operation by the Bush administration, which has recently stepped up enforcement at companies believed to employ illegal immigrants. Most of the detained workers were sentenced to five months in prison for engaging in identity theft, in addition to being charged with committing a civil offense for living in the U.S. illegally.
The raid exposed allegations that workers at the sprawling plant, which employed more than 900 people, were underpaid, physically abused, sexually harassed and extorted. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a U.S. government official who has visited the plant described the operation as "medieval." An investigation is still under way, and a court spokesman declined to disclose whether more arrests are likely.
The allegations about worker mistreatment at Agriprocessors have sparked a heated debate in the Jewish community. The raid has also disrupted kosher meat supplies, with shortages affecting customers from supermarkets in Kansas City to kosher restaurants in Los Angeles.
Write to Miriam Jordan at miriam.jordan@wsj.com
What do I do if I was sexually abused by this guy in camp who today is a rabbi of a major city?
I'm such an irrelevenat drek that yasser arafat is laughing at me from his grave.
Israel closes Gaza crossings after mortar attack Tue Jul 8, 1:00 AM ET
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel closed all but one of its border crossings with the Gaza Strip on Tuesday in response to a mortar attack 24 hours earlier, Israeli officials said.
The Jewish state said one mortar shell was fired from Gaza on Monday and landed in southern Israel, causing no casualties or damage.
"All crossings, except for the Erez terminal, will be closed today because of the mortar fired yesterday," said defense official Peter Lerner.
Israel has responded to previous rocket and mortar salvoes by closing border crossings into the Gaza Strip, where the Islamist Hamas movement seized control a year ago by routing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah forces.
Under a truce brokered by Egypt on June 19, militants in Gaza are required to halt rocket and mortar fire in return for Israel gradually lifting a blockade of the coastal territory.
(Reporting by Avida Landau)
Australia's Chabad rabbi dies
Published: 07/07/2008
Australia’s most senior Orthodox rabbi has died.
Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner, the chief rabbi of Melbourne’s Chabad-Lubavitch community, died Monday following a long illness. He was 83.
The brother of Leib Groner, a personal secretary to the former Lubavitcher rebbe, he will be buried in Jerusalem -- alongside his parents -- later this week. A memorial service is currently being planned in Melbourne with Chabad officials scrambling to find a venue large enough for the thousands expected to mourn the spiritual giant described as the person who “put Chabad on the map in Australia.”
Michael Danby, a Jewish member of the Australian government and Groner’s local lawmaker, said: “No spiritual leader of the Australian Jewish community has had a bigger effect on the postwar generation, both in terms of the restoration of spiritual life and educational institutions.”
Over the last half-century, Groner built an Orthodox community of thousands of Lubavitchers and a network of institutions in Melbourne: two schools -- Yeshivah College and Beth Rivkah Ladies' College -- educating more than 1,500 pupils; a men’s kollel; a women’s seminary; several mikvehs; and a cluster of Chabad houses throughout the city, three of which are run by the rabbi’s sons or sons-in-law.
Born in Brownsville, N.Y., in 1925, Groner was first sent to Australia and New Zealand by the Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, in 1947. He returned in 1953 before the rebbe requested he become his emissary to Australia in 1958.
Wheelchair-bound in the twilight of his life, the rabbi was renowned for his booming sermons. His flock would line up outside his door to ask religious question of their spiritual leader.
Groner is survived by his wife, Devorah, his brother Leib, his eight children and dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Passenger: El Al waited 90 minutes for tardy rabbi
By Zohar Blumenkrantz
A group of ultra-Orthodox passengers delayed for about 90 minutes the takeoff of a scheduled El Al flight from Kiev to Ben-Gurion Airport last month because their rabbi was late in getting to the airport, according to a passenger on the flight. El Al and its Ukrainian partner have a monopoly on the route.
"The passengers were in their seats. The flight attendants were ordered to close the doors when a Haredi passenger suddenly came running from the back of the plane to the front," the businessman related. He said the flight was scheduled to take off at 11:35 P.M. on June 19. Advertisement
"He ordered a flight attendant not to take off, and to wait for a rabbi who was supposed to arrive," the passenger continued. "An argument began and [the Haredi passenger] called up several other Haredi passengers, who came up to Business Class. They threatened to leave the plane unless the flight was delayed for the rabbi."
According to the passenger who spoke to Haaretz about the incident, about 35 minutes after the scheduled takeoff time the pilot announced that after consulting with Tel Aviv he was instructed to wait for the rabbi, who arrived about an hour later with two or three other ultra-Orthodox men. The rabbi, a man in his 70s, according to the witness, took his seat and told his fellow passengers, "Every delay is for the best."
"The flight was delayed due to the tardiness of a group of about 15 passengers," El Al said in a response.
"There were about 150 passengers, not all Haredim," the source said. "I fly El Al frequently and never experienced anything like this, a plane filled with passengers sitting and waiting for a latecomer. What if this were a flight with passengers who had to catch a connection? Instead of landing at 2 A.M. we landed at 3:30 A.M."
Mazuz: Chief Rabbi Metzger cannot serve as rabbinic judge
By Tomer Zarchin
Attorney General Menachem Mazuz yesterday told the High Court of Justice that Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger should cease to serve as a dayan (rabbinic judge) on the Supreme Rabbinic Court.
Mazuz added that the committee charged with selecting rabbinic court judges was also responsible for ending their tenures.
Mazuz's position came in response to a petition submitted by attorney Boaz Arad on behalf of the Ometz - Citizens for Good Government and Social Justice movement, which is opposed to a decision by the judicial selection committee in February not to dismiss Metzger over the free accommodation and benefits he received from hotels.
The police began investigating the affair in December 2004, in the wake of an investigative report on television, which stated that Metzger had received free accommodation at the David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem during Passover.
The report also referred to three other incidents in which the chief rabbi supposedly received benefits from hotels in Jerusalem. In April 2006, after the police had investigated the various affairs, Mazuz decided to close the file for lack of evidence. But at the same time, Mazuz called on Metzger to take some responsibility and draw personal conclusions.
In February 2008, the committee decided that Metzger should not be dismissed from his position. Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann stated that Metzger had behaved improperly in certain matters but that he did not find a sufficient reason to dismiss him.
However, in a statement yesterday, Mazuz said: "In view of the nature and substance of the position of the dayan and the norms of behavior that are expected of him, these findings were not refuted in the course of the discussions that were held by the rabbinic court judge selection committee with regard to the matter of Metzger, and the explanations that were given on behalf of Metzger for these findings did not lessen their severity."
Mazuz added that these acts "raise quite a few question marks about whether he is suited to serve in the lofty position of chief rabbi and as a rabbinic judge on the Supreme Rabbinic Court."
Asked for a response to Mazuz's remarks, Metzger's media adviser said the attorney general does not have the authority to intervene in the decisions of the dayan selection committee.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1000220.html
I take the same position as the church. So what if I covered up sexual abuse at yeshiva of brooklyn. It's easier to deny deny deny deny deny deny deny.
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Australia cardinal denies cover-up of sex abuse
By TANALEE SMITH – 17 hours ago
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — Australia's top Roman Catholic cleric has denied trying to cover up a sexual abuse case involving clergy, attempting Tuesday to fight off an embarrassing scandal just days before Pope Benedict XVI arrives for a visit.
Cardinal George Pell, the archbishop of Sydney, was responding to an ABC Television report Monday that said he had given misleading information to a man who accused a priest of sexually assaulting him more than 25 years ago.
"What do I do if I was sexually abused by this guy in camp who today is a rabbi of a major city?"
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Sam: Email me. There is a good chance this guy is on my radar screen already.
Drive a 4x4? Is gas prices killing you? Soon you'll be able to kill the environment without feeling lighter in your pocket!
==================================
http://www.stansberryonline.com/PRO/0704OILCOL49/WOILH703/200704OIL-COL-49.html
The U.S. Govt's
Secret Colorado
Oil Discovery
Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains
lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world — more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. Three companies have been chosen to lead the way. Test drilling has already begun...
Northwestern Colorado. August 2005.
The U.S. Energy Department announces the results of a land survey...
It was conducted to determine the official amount of oil a thousand feet deep in the Rocky Mountains...
They reported this stunning news:
We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth.
Here are the official estimates:
• 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia
• 18-times as much oil as Iraq
• 21-times as much oil as Kuwait
• 22-times as much oil as Iran
• 500-times as much oil as Yemen
...And it's all right here in the Western United States.
James Bartis, lead researcher with the study says, "We've got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East."
More than 2 TRILLION barrels. Untapped.
"That's more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in the world today," reports The Denver Post.
When asked about America's least-publicized oil supply, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch said:
"The amounts of oil are staggering. Who would have guessed that in just Colorado and Utah, there is more recoverable oil than in the Middle East?"
Here's the kicker...
The U.S. government already owns the land. It's been right there under our noses the whole time.
In fact, the government's appointed a small group of companies to lead the way to the oil.
Test drilling has already begun.
And the profit forecasts are ridiculous. According to the RAND Corporation (a public-policy think tank for the government), this small region could produce:
Three million barrels of oil per day... That translates into more than $20 BILLION a year.
These are the conservative estimates. The U.S. Energy Dept. estimates an eventual output of 10 million barrels of oil per day. At that rate, the money flow would be even greater.
I've written this letter to tell you everything I've learned about this rarely publicized oil reserve... who's drilling it... and how to get a piece of the world's biggest, untapped oil supply — before it's too late.
Here's the full story...
The Next American Oil Boom
While you almost never hear anything about it in the mainstream press, I've been researching the details of America's biggest oil deposit for the past 18 months, for my monthly investment research advisory, called The S&A Oil Report.
The facts I uncovered during my investigation are nothing short of amazing...
Today, this resource sits idle — untapped — inside more than 16,000 square miles of rock and sand.
Geologists call what lies in this region, oil shale.
What is oil shale
http://www.jimhopper.com/male-ab/
By Jim Hopper, Ph.D.
(last revised 3/23/2008)
Approximately one in six boys is sexually abused before age 16.
(Conservative estimate of incidents involving physical contact in U.S. and Canada. See below.)
I am a psychologist and for 15 years I have participated in therapy and research with men and women subjected to unwanted sexual experiences and other forms of abuse in childhood. (For more information about me, see my home page.)
Here are the reasons I have published this page:
To help those looking for resources on the sexual abuse of boys and the lasting effects of childhood sexual abuse in the lives of men.
To provide resources for men who were sexually abused in childhood and want to know what professional researchers and therapists have learned, without having to read scholarly journals and books.
To provide resources for girlfriends, spouses, partners, friends and family members of men who were (or may have been) sexually abused in childhood.
Here are some key messages for men who were sexually abused in childhood:
You are not alone.
You can educate yourself.
Other guys struggle with their masculinity too.
There are people who understand what you're dealing with and can help.
I thought I was the only one who molested a boy in a bathroom.
--------------------------------
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=770531
Man held in sexual abuse
Boy inappropriately touched in business’ bathroom, police say
By DAN BENSON
dbenson@journalsentinel.com
When it says rape - does it mean there was penetration?
QUEENS (WABC) -- A Dutchess County teacher has been charged with the statutory rape and sexual abuse of a mentally disabled student who attends the school for children with special needs in which she teaches.
The abuse is alleged to have occurred in the student's home and in a parking lot, both located in Queens.
"The charges are very disturbing," Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said. "The victim is believed to have a 50 IQ, making him particularly vulnerable to a teacher who is supposed to have his best interest in mind."
Brown identified the teacher as 27-year-old Mandi Weeks, of Hannacroix, New York. She is charged with two counts of third-degree rape, three counts of third-degree criminal sexual act, endangering the welfare of a child, and two counts of third-degree sexual abuse.....
Full Article:
http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local&id=6252576
NEW YORK, July 9, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Rabbi Yehuda Levin, a spokesman for the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, and the Rabbinical Alliance of America with a combined membership of well over a thousand Rabbis, has forcefully condemned the award of the Order of Canada to abortionist Henry Morgentaler.
"I think that the award presented to Dr. Death Morgentaler should more aptly be called the 'Disorder of Canada' because it's a terrible reflection on a country that can honor a person based on his elimination - self-professed elimination of 100,000 preborn children," Rabbi Levin told LifeSiteNews.com in an interview today.
Speaking in his capacity as spokesman for over a thousand Rabbis in the United States and Canada, Rabbi Levin stated: "I want to forcefully condemn whoever is responsible for misrepresenting millions of Canadian citizens, misrepresenting their love and respect for God's gift of life by giving an award to such a monster." He added: "This is another giant step down the slippery slope towards wholesale murder of babies, old people and undesirables."
Lesbian Rabbi? Who are they kidding? This is a terrible sin!
Now let me ask you a question. Why would I have a comment on Yudi Kolko -Is he still employed by Agudath Israel of America?
--------------------------------
TWO former students of Sydney’s Moriah College plan to become the first lesbian couple to make a commitment to each other in a Jewish ceremony officiated by a rabbi.
Nicky Glover and Michelle Sanders, both 40, celebrated a secular commitment ceremony last month under a chuppah, at an outdoor venue in Byron Shire.
The event was attended by more than 100 friends and family.
The couple has planned a second commitment ceremony at Emanuel Synagogue in Sydney, towards the end of the year.
“People ask if our wedding is legal, but that is not the most important thing to us. Our marriage was witnessed by the people we love,” said Sanders, who is pregnant with the couple’s first child.
“The kosher ceremony will be at Emanuel after our child is born. At that one there will be three of us.”
Rabbi Jeffrey Kamins, senior rabbi of Emanuel Synagogue, confirmed that the couple and baby would be recognised as a family.
If this happens, the child will be the first Australian Jew whose homosexual parents are formally united by a synagogue.
“We wanted to get married to publicly declare our love for each other and to give our child a solid family structure,” said Glover, who operates an internet marketing consultancy.
The couple decided to participate in a commitment ceremony when the Union for Progressive Judaism officially approved same-gender commitment ceremonies in June last year.
Rabbi Kamins said the Torah’s overriding principles of justice and loving kindness compelled Emanuel Synagogue to officiate at lesbian and gay commitment ceremonies.
“The Torah teaches that each human being is a precious universe,” he said.
“We understand the prohibitions on same-sex relationships to be related to the cultural context of 2000 years ago, which included the practice of polygamy and man’s authority over woman.”
Sanders said the synagogue’s policy had changed her attitude to non-Orthodox Jewish groups.
“I grew up ignorant about Progressive Judaism,” she said. “Now I have so much respect for it. It is sad the Orthodox synagogues can’t come to the party.”
Glover appeared optimistic about both branches of Judaism.
“There is room for everyone, Progressive and Orthodox,” she said.
“Everyone who knows me from the Orthodox community has been incredibly supportive.”
I think Avi is ganz correct. Why should he make a chilul hashem by commenting. Chas vesholom that a yid would molest children. If he did he must have done tshiveh by now. Don't ask me to get involved in any flatbish matter concerning a chushiveh mechanech like yidel kolko. Beshum oyfen i refuse to help anyone not living in boro park .
Can anyone guess where i'm hiding?
More 'speaking up on child sex abuse'
CHILD sex abuse cases are clogging Queensland's court system because more people had been encouraged to file complaints, Attorney-General Kerry Shine said today.
There were 6486 child molestation charges between July 2005 and June 2007, including indecent treatment, carnal knowledge, incest, using the internet to procure a child and maintaining a sexual relationship with a child, a spokesman for Mr Shine said today.
The news came as no surprise to child protection advocate Hetty Johnston, founder of Bravehearts, who said the figures were only the tip of the iceberg.
"These are the offenders who have been caught and we know that most of them are never disclosed and are not caught," Ms Johnston told AAP today.
"Those numbers we are talking about are really just the tip of the iceberg."
Mr Shine said the rise in child-sex charges were partly to do with the population growth and today's court processes. He said the court system provided greater encouragement for victims to report offences.
"Victims are now provided significant protection and support when being interviewed by police or cross-examined in court over alleged offences," Mr Shine said.
"Child victims are now often cross-examined away from the court so they don't have to come face to face with the alleged offender.
"This kind of activity is encouraging more people to come forward and complain about offences against children."
Many people were also coming forward to report historical cases of child sex abuse which often went back a number of years, he said.
But the Queensland Opposition called for the state's courts and public prosecutors to be better funded to deal with the growing number of child sex abuse cases.
"Queensland prosecutors are the busiest and most underpaid in the country," Opposition justice spokesman Mark McArdle said.
"The State Government must increase funding in line with the increase in these types of cases."
Physical abuse is a common practice in our esteemed yeshiva. We have 100 years of experience beating boys to a bloody pulp.
---
Flogging is physical abuse
published: Wednesday | July 9, 2008
The Editor, Sir:
Please allow me to offer your readers, especially Jamaica's teachers and school administrators, some wise and hopefully useful advice on the subject of corporal punishment. More than most educators, I've had considerable experience with it and how it fits into a programme of discipline in the school setting. That said, let me be as brief as possible.
After seeing the effect of a paddling policy work effectively both as a deterrent and as a consequence of inappropriate behaviours in an educational setting where parental consent was intentionally sought and always granted prior to its application, it is my opinion that if such a simplistic and crude means of disciplinary action can be avoided or replaced by any other alternative, then in all cases it should be.
Effective disciplinary policy
When it is properly applied, fairly, appropriately, expeditiously and humanely, if that is actually possible, corporal punishment has proven to be an effective part of an overall, schoolwide disciplinary policy for a given age and experience level. However, by its very nature in reality, it is at best a demonstration of physical abuse and no amount of rationalisation for its inherent cruelty can ever be considered acceptable in a truly modern educational setting.
In other words, just as 'fighting fire with fire' is not the solution for all fires, likewise, the problem with corporal punishment is that in most instances, it is difficult to administer wisely and fairly and, in the end, its use is as bad an example of behaviour as the behaviour it seeks to eliminate or reduce.
I am, etc.,
Ed McCOY
mmhobo48@juno.com
Bokeelia, FL
Via Go-Jamaica
If your troubled kid misbehaves send him/her to tranquility bay, yeshiva of brooklyn, or Be'er Hagolah. I guarantee you these institutions will fix your little brats.
http://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2006/12/al-aleh-ani-bocheyah-for-these-i-cry.html
Yated Ne'eman Travel Office said...
HaRav Avrohom Chaim Levin will be in Williamsburg tonight at the Vayoiel Moishe banquet hall tonight Thursday, July 10, 2008.
His nephew, Rav Mordechai Mannes’s son is marrying the daughter of a great, huge, taireh tzaddik, yarei shomayim HaRav Shloime Mandel of Yeshiva of Brooklyn.
Scheme To Blame Intern For PR Fraud Unravels
It's not entirely surprising that the PR firm that misspelled the online signature of the guy they were trying to impersonate has now been busted for ineptly trying to blame an unidentified "intern" for everything. Bumbling disaster of a publicity shop 5WPR posted, in the name of a rabbi, fake blog comments about a sweatshoppy kosher slaughterhouse. When busted, senior vice president Juda Engelmayer blamed an unpaid 5WPR intern who he refused to name. Now, news service JTA is severely undercutting this explanation by reporting it traced one of the fake comments to Engelmayer's home (in part by matching the internet address of a comment to the internet address of an Engelmayer email). Whoops! Hard to blame interns at the office when the stuff is coming from your own pad. How are you going to explain this one, Juda?
By claiming he had an intern at his Lower East Side apartment at 10 pm on a Tuesday night, apparently. Said JTA:
A person identifying himself as the intern in question called JTA Thursday, but refused to provide a full name. The caller said that he posted the fraudulent comment to the JTA site using a computer at Engelmayer’s apartment during a get-together there Tuesday night, but without Engelmayer’s knowledge.
Now would be a good time to recap the various levels of incompetence in this whole 5WPR scheme:
After being hired for its internet PR expertise, 5WPR attempts to plant fake comments from both supporters and (most deviously) critics of the kosher slaughterhouse on various websites.
This scheme unravels because the company doesn't bother to leave its office or mask its IP address when posting.
This scheme also unravels because the company misspells the name of a rabbi when signing a comment in that rabbi's name.
CEO Ronn [sic] Torossian claims an "investigation" is under way to find out which of his employees spun a laughably incompetent Web of amoral deception in the service of flackery. This time.
VP Engelmayer, assigned the slaughterhouse account, blames an unnamed, unpaid "intern" for the fraud. Says this "intern" has been fired.
This story starts to unravel because, as blog Failed Messiah notes, the first two impersonation posts appeared in February, "well before any summer interns were working at 5W." Ahem.
The story unravels further when two fraudulent Web comments are traced to Engelmayer's apartment.
"Intern" calls to say he was hanging with Engelmayer at his apartment Tuesday night and slipped, undetected, onto Engelmayer's computer to do some impromptu character assassination, so don't blame Engelmayer because Engelmayer did not do it.
Probably next: Caller comes forward as a paid shill. Engelmayer said he hired him on behalf of the intern, who is deathly afraid of the press, because that's the sort of person who takes an unpaid PR internship.
http://www.forward.com/articles/13734/
Flacks for Agriprocessors Admit Online Impersonation of Meat Company’s Critics
By Nathaniel Popper and Lana Gersten
Thu. Jul 10, 2008
BLOG: This posting on the blog FailedMessiah elicited a number of fraudulent comments that appear to be from a public relations firm.
A prominent New York public relations firm has privately acknowledged making fraudulent postings on the Internet about one of its clients, a kosher meat company.
An employee at the firm, 5WPR, made the admission to the operator of the blog FailedMessiah.com, Shmarya Rosenberg, during a phone call, according to a recording of the conversation that was shared with the Forward. The acknowledgement came after Rosenberg presented evidence on his Web site that someone at 5WPR had left fraudulent comments on his blog under the names of other people — including a rabbi who has been critical of the public relations company and its client.
The comments in question were about Agriprocessors, a kosher meat company that was recently the target of a massive federal immigration raid. 5WPR began representing Agriprocessors in June.
Soon after Rosenberg posted evidence of the fraudulent comments on July 9, the 5WPR employee who has been handling the Agriprocessors account, Juda Engelmayer, called Rosenberg and apologized, according to the recording of the call. In the call, Engelmayer said that an intern in the company had made the postings and had been fired.
“It was a dumb, dumb mistake,” Engelmayer said in the recording of the phone call. “It’s just horrible.”
When asked about the call by the Forward, Engelmayer said he would not comment on the situation.
The Forward spoke with the CEO of 5WPR, Ronn Torossian, prior to learning of Engelmayer’s admission. Torossian told the Forward that his company was doing an internal investigation to determine whether the postings had, in fact, come from his firm.
Torossian said he did not know when the investigation would be complete but added, “I have complete confidence in knowing that my account team who runs these accounts did not make these posts.”
According to Rosenberg’s investigation, there were more than 40 comments left on his blog over a number of weeks from computers at 5WPR. Comments similar to the ones on Rosenberg’s Web site were left on other Jewish-oriented blogs.
Representatives of Agriprocessors did not respond to calls for comment.
5WPR boasts a client portfolio that has included an unusual mix of corporate clients, hip-hop stars, Jewish groups and Israeli political figures. When Agriprocessors hired 5WPR, a spokesman for the kosher meat company said that 5WPR would help confront negative attention that the company was receiving on the Internet. Rosenberg, a Minnesota-based blogger, has extensively covered and criticized the ups and downs of Agriprocessors over the past few years.
Rosenberg said he first noticed unusual comments posted on his blog around four weeks ago, around the time that Agriprocessors brought on 5WPR. The first comments praised Agriprocessors in language that Rosenberg found unusual. Later comments, impersonating well-known critics of Agriprocessors, came from e-mail addresses that Rosenberg did not recognize.
Rosenberg began collecting the number that associates a comment with a specific Internet user — the IP address — and when he did a reverse search on the dozens of comments, he says, all of them appeared to come from computers at 5WPR. Rosenberg laid out the graphic evidence of his investigation on his blog..
“I realized what was happening and I just let it go, because I thought it would be interesting to see how long they kept it up and see if they would do anything else stupid,” Rosenberg said.
Two of the postings in question were made in the name of Rabbi Morris Allen, a prominent critic of Agriprocessors and the founder of the Conservative movement’s Hekhsher Tzedek initiative, which is attempting to create ethical standards for the production of kosher food. The first of the comments purporting to come from Allen appeared with his name misspelled. The second, which was made midday on July 9, came at the same time that Allen was presiding over the funeral of his aunt in Omaha, Neb.
Both comments were in response to a blog post by Rosenberg about the decision by an Orthodox Jewish group to end a boycott of Agriprocessors. The comment made it appear that Allen was gloating over the move by another critic of Agriprocessors.
“This doesn’t rile us,” the comment said. “This is a cause. Agriprocessors is the drive for us.”
Allen told the Forward that the postings left him concerned for his safety and for the reputation of Hekhsher Tzedek.
“I’m increasingly concerned about my own safety because if you begin to engage in this kind of behavior, I just wonder where it ends,” he said.
A spokesman for Hekhsher Tzedek said that the group is consulting an intellectual property lawyer and planning to take legal action against whoever made the fraudulent comments.
Paul Levy, an attorney at the Public Citizen Litigation Group, said that the success of any legal action would depend largely on state law and on whether the comments were defamatory.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thu. Jul 10, 2008
Who really cares abouth kashrus? What we really strive and breath for - is all the gelt$$$$$$money$$$$$$$$deciet$$$$$$di$hone$sty$$$$$$$ and boy have we marketed the orthodox union into one big piggy bank$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $crew all you jew$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$eat treif $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$hahahaha$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $crew you$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
The Orthodox Union are honorable pigs.
Just when you thought we can't possibly get any crazier......
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3567228,00.html
Haredi rabbis rank airlines' modesty
Rabbinical transportation committee publishes ad naming Israeli, foreign airlines offering immodest, 'particularly heinous' films
Neta Sela Published: 07.12.08, 16:19 / Israel Jewish Scene
The Rabbinical Committee of Transportation published an ad Tuesday in official haredi newspapers ranking airlines operating flights from Israel to the United States and Europe in terms of the films screened on the planes.
Kosher Buses
'Girls, go to the back' / Neta Sela
Rabbinical transportation committee calls on young women to ride buses in halachic manner, meaning to congregate in back of bus, even in those buses not deemed 'kosher', in which driver won't open back door
Full story
Under the title "There is another way", the committee rabbis – operating under the authority of the greatest sages of Israel, including Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman, Hasidic leaders, as well as Shas' spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, whose son Yitzhak Yosef is a member of the committee – stated that "the film problem constitutes a dreadful spiritual danger."
Modesty categories
The airlines ranked as a top priority, according to the committee, are those which do not offer any films on their flights.
The airlines ranked as a second priority are those which offer private screens which can be turned off. However, since the neighbors' screen can still be seen from the passenger seat, the rabbis recommend taking along a "foldable curtain" supplied to the passengers by "the support for filmless flights".
The airlines ranked as a third priority are those which offer private screens on their planes, which in the peak hours are joined by planes with collective screens and in addition, the ad states, "the films screened there are particularly heinous and ugly."
The airlines which won the privilege of being included in the modest category are mainly eastern European companies such as Aerosvit, which provides flight services to Ukraine and later on to the rest of Europe, Malev, which flies to Hungary, and Brussels Airlines, which provides flights to Belgium.
As for flights to the US, British Airways and Continental Airlines were ranked as a second priority, and Swiss International Air Lines was rated second in flights to Europe.
What about Israeli airlines?
The Israeli airlines did not win much praise in the haredi committee's ranking. El Al was included in the third category in flights to the US and London, while Israir and Arkia did not even make it to the list of "permitted" airlines.
According to the rabbis, Israir and Arkia "severely breach the fences of modesty and desecrate the Shabbat and one must not travel with them at all."
Enough with the lawsuits!
---------------------------
Class action lawsuit filed against Fayette schools
By Brandon Ortiz
bortiz@herald-leader.com
A class action lawsuit over sex abuse allegations dating back to the 1970s has been filed against the Fayette County school board.
http://www.kentucky.com/211/story/458951.html
KOSHER food can stack on the kilos. So says the rabbi who has launched a diet challenge to Australian Jews: lose 1000 kilograms in 12 weeks.
Rabbi Mendel Kastel is publishing a diet online this month that comes with kosher recipes, a kosher conversion guide, personalised menus, exercise plans and tools to set goals and track weight.
"Bagels, chopped liver, matzo balls, schmaltz herrings - there are things in a kosher diet that make us put on weight," he said. "Rather than a white bagel, try a wholemeal one."
As head of the Rabbinical Council of NSW, Rabbi Kastel has sent a message out to rabbis across Australia to challenge their communities.
Corporate sponsorship in the form of a dollar for every kilogram lost will be directed to the Jewish House, a crisis housing agency.
"We aim to lose about a kilo a week. So we're looking for 100 people to lose 10 kilos each. And the more, the better," he said.
Rabbi Kastel said he did not know if Jews were fatter than other Australians, but he said they needed to be aware of the importance of eating well, drinking moderately and getting regular exercise.
The rabbi has been road-testing the program for the past five weeks and said he has shed six kilograms. "Just 20 kilograms to go."
Under Jewish law people should eat only kosher food. Meat, for instance, must come only from animals that chew the cud and have cloven hoofs, such as cows. And they must be killed in a particular way, removing as much blood as possible.
exposemolesters wants me to apologise too. I can't remember the time I tried to hush up the parents of the 5th graders who complained that Nussbaum was sexually and physically abusive to his talmidim. Nor can I recall the time I pulled down a boys pants in front of eveybody. I'm told that boy made it to OHEL. Isn't the amnesia excuse my only line of defense?
Did you know that another sexual abuse enabler, Rabbi Eleizer Ginsburg, was sandek at my son's bris recently? Did you know that Yisroel Belsky was the pecker chopper? I surround myself with the worst chara and drek possible.
I'll never forgive my brother Shloime for throwing me out of the yeshiva ketana. He's a monster you know. He thinks he should recieve all the kovod. There are stories about him from his Telse days that are gradeh sickening. He's a sick putz!
Yankel shut your big fat mouth. You think you're better than me. You are an abusive meshugeneh yourself. Who can forget how you would yank and pull and strech the yingarlach by their face cheeks never letting go until they were crying - no begging - for mercy. Wih a sadistic smile you said "come here ztadikele." You knew all along about nussbaum and his little boy pleausres. Tatte knew it too. We agreed to sweep it under the rug. You had to open up your dirty mouth. You're a shanda! I'm going to say a kapitle tehillim for you and cry crocodile tears!
---------------------------------
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=aeud4HOMArWQ&refer=asia
Pope, Visiting Sydney, Will Apologize Over Sex Abuse (Update1)
By Ed Johnson
July 14 (Bloomberg) -- Pope Benedict XVI will apologize to victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests during his visit this week to Sydney for World Youth Day, as half a million pilgrims take part in the largest event Australia has hosted.
``It is essential for the church to reconcile, to prevent, to help and also to see guilt in this problem,'' the 81-year-old pontiff told reporters during his 20-hour flight. This will be the ``essential content'' of the apology.
The German-born pope, who was greeted by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd when he arrived yesterday, addressed the issue during a visit to the U.S. in April, where some had criticized the Vatican's reluctance to confront child abuse. Australian support group Broken Rites says more than 3,500 people have sought its help over the past two decades and are demanding the pontiff meets with victims this week.
The pope is resting at a private retreat until July 17, when he will ride by boat through Sydney Harbour to greet pilgrims and join the World Youth Day celebrations. Demonstrators are planning to protest the Catholic Church's stance on homosexuality, abortion and birth control, while civil rights campaigners challenge police powers to fine activists A$5,500 ($5,320) if they ``annoy'' pilgrims during the event.
``We welcome the Catholic youth to Sydney but we are peacefully protesting the pope's conservative policies,'' said Rachel Evans of the NotoPope Coalition, which plans to hand out free condoms to pilgrims. ``The state government's response is draconian. We have the right to express ourselves and will not be intimidated.''
Sexual Assault
The abuse issue captured headlines last week as the leader of the Catholic Church in Australia acknowledged mishandling allegations of sexual assault by a priest more than 20 years ago.
Cardinal George Pell announced a panel would review the case involving a former church education coordinator, who says he was abused by a priest in 1982 when he was aged 29.
The pope's apology will be ``welcomed, but must come with further action,'' Chris MacIsaac of Broken Rites said by telephone today. The church must stop acting in a ``corporate and cold-hearted manner'' and make it easier for allegations of abuse to be heard in court.
World Youth Day was established by Pope John Paul II in 1986 as an annual event to reach out to the next generation of Catholics. It is celebrated at diocesan level every Palm Sunday and every two to three years is taken to an international host city, where pilgrims take part in a weeklong series of prayer meetings and teaching sessions.
Pilgrims, Clergy
About 225,000 pilgrims, 2,000 clergy and 700 cardinals and bishops are registered to attend this year, as more than 3,000 international media representatives cover the event.
About 26 percent of Australia's 21.3 million people described themselves as Catholic in the most recent census, carried out in 2001. As many as 500,000 people are set to attend the final mass at the city's Royal Randwick Racecourse on July 20.
Pilgrims followed a 3.8-meter (12.5-foot) cross weighing 40 kilograms (88 pounds) through central Sydney today. The cross, which once stood near the main altar in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, has traveled around Australia for the past 12 months. It will form the backdrop of tomorrow's mass that will open the World Youth Day event.
State Financing
The New South Wales state government, which has pumped A$86 million into financing the event, estimates the influx of visitors will generate A$150 million for the local economy and boost the city's international profile.
The opposition Green Party questions those figures and says authorities have given an ``open ended tab'' to the Catholic Church. ``There is a huge question mark over what the real benefits will be,'' said lawmaker Lee Rhiannon.
Hoteliers say that bookings are down as the majority of overseas pilgrims are billeted in schools, parishes or private homes and tourists are staying away fearing Sydney will be overcrowded.
Some Sydney residents complain the flood of pilgrims will overload the already strained public transportation system in the city of 4.2 million people.
``I do not know how it is going to cope, as it cannot seem to cope with its normal residents,'' said Denise Meyerson, 49, a director at Management Consultancy International as she took a lunch break near the city's Circular Quay. She nevertheless said the event would be good for Sydney. ``Businesses can only benefit from more retail, more people being around.''
Police Powers
The state government has introduced regulations allowing police to stop conduct that ``causes annoyance or inconvenience'' to participants and fine people if they refuse to comply.
The local Council for Civil Liberties is challenging the powers in court, saying they infringe freedom of expression and that people could be fined simply for wearing T-shirts with inflammatory slogans.
The NotoPope Coalition, which includes gay rights activists, atheists, socialists and anti-capitalists, aims to test the resolve of authorities. It is planning protests in Sydney and other major cities and is encouraging public displays of affection by same sex couples.
``The pope is wrong, put a condom on,'' reads the slogan on a T-shirt designed by the group for a July 19 march in Sydney along the route of the city's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade.
To contact the reporter on this story: Ed Johnson in Sydney at ejohnson28@bloomberg.net.
UOJ incriminates me again.
http://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2008/07/stefan-colmers-bail-hearing-this.html
The Colmer hearing is scheduled for this coming Wednesday morning (no time specified) July 16,2008 at the Brooklyn (Kings County) Supreme Court (Criminal Term), 320 Jay Street, Part 11, before Judge Mullen. The docket number is 04314-2007.
Rabbi Lazer Ginzburg of Flatbush (Agudath Israel Synagogue) is involved in raising money for his bail, and there is a good chance that he will be in court (or his representative).
IT'S EXTREMELY IMPERATIVE THAT LEGISLATION IS AMENDED TO ENCOMPASS CASES THAT ARE REJECTED BY THE COURTS BECAUSE OF THE SOL.
THIS CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED. MORE AND MORE STATES ARE ADOPTING THIS MUCH NEEDED CHANGE. PLEASE DO YOUR PART BY SEEKING OUT YOUR LOCAL LAWMAKERS AND CONGRESSMEN AND URGING THEM TO PASS A BILL IN FAVOR OF EXTENSION OR ELIMINATION OF THE CURRENT STATUS QUO! WE CANNOT LET SEX OFFENDERS EVADE JUSTICE BECAUSE OF THIS TERRIBLE LOOPHOLE!
EM
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http://www.thetimes-tribune.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19848314&BRD=2185&PAG=461&dept_id=415898&rfi=6
Statutes of limitations hinder sex abuse prosecutions
BY ROJA HEYDARPOUR
STAFF WRITER
07/13/2008
Even when the proper protocol is taken to report allegations of sexual abuse, many of them are never prosecuted because statutes of limitations limit the period in which charges can be filed.
Although criminal and civil statute of limitations periods have been extended recently, the law in place at the time of the crime supersedes any new statute.
A victim molested in 1990, for example, would have until the age of 20 to bring a claim to court, because that was the law in 1990. The law today gives the victim until age 50 in criminal cases and 30 in civil cases.
“We get this iceberg of cases that never get brought (to trial) because of statute of limitations,” said Marci Hamilton, a constitutional lawyer and author of the book, “Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children.”
State Rep. Lisa Bennington, D-Allegheny County, introduced a bill in May 2007 that would allow victims to bring civil suits even if the statute of limitations has expired.
Other states have passed laws that establish a new period of time for victims to sue their alleged abusers in civil court, no matter when the abuse occurred. This law is commonly referred to as “window” legislation.
The law would apply to allegations of abuse against all sex offenders, not just clergy. It has languished in the House Judiciary Committee since its introduction.
The strongest opposition to the bill in Pennsylvania and across the country comes from the Catholic Church and insurance companies, Ms. Hamilton and Ms. Bennington said.
The Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, a lobbying group, says it opposes the legislation because it could make the church uninsurable and vulnerable to lawsuits. “No organization will be able to provide services to children without insurance,” Amy B. Hill, director of communications, wrote in an e-mail.
She also argued that the standard of proof in criminal cases is tougher than in civil ones. “For criminal cases there is a gatekeeper, a district attorney who can weed out doubtful criminal charges.”
Contact the writer: rojah@timesshamrock.com
Rabbi Bigman: Women can sing 'in innocence'
Following spat over Bnei Akiva singing contest, head of religious kibbutz decides to allow women to sing in public if song is not intended to seduce men, suggests five criteria by which singing can be deemed 'innocent'
Besides being verbally and physically abusive to out students and staff, we put all attendees of be'er hagolah in extreme danger by creating major fire hazards.
Our motto is - respect and image should always supercede ethics and morale. That's why we choke kids for not wearing their uniforms, and curse and berate them for their tardiness.
Hezbollah delivers remains of two Israeli soldiers By Ayat Basma and Avida Landau
LEBANON/ISRAEL BORDER (Reuters) - Hezbollah handed over the bodies of two Israeli soldiers to the Red Cross on Wednesday to be exchanged for Lebanese prisoners held by Israel.
The deal is viewed as a triumph by the Lebanese guerrilla group and as a painful necessity by many Israelis, two years after the soldiers' capture sparked a 34-day war with Hezbollah that killed about 1,200 people in Lebanon and 159 Israelis.
Hezbollah's al-Manar TV showed two black coffins being taken from a vehicle at the Israel-Lebanon border after Hezbollah security official Wafik Safa disclosed for the first time that army reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were dead.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) took the coffins and drove them into Israel. Safa later said DNA tests conducted by the ICRC had verified the identity of the soldiers. There was no immediate confirmation from the ICRC or Israel.
"We are now handing over the two imprisoned Israeli soldiers, who were captured by the Islamic resistance on July 12, 2006, to the ICRC," Safa said at the border. "The Israeli side will now hand over the great Arab mujahid (holy warrior) ... Samir Qantar and his companions to the ICRC."
In a deal mediated by a U.N.-appointed German intelligence officer, Israel was to free Qantar and four other prisoners.
Qantar had been serving a life prison term for the deaths of four Israelis, including a four-year-old girl and her father, in a 1979 Palestinian guerrilla attack on an Israeli town.
Neighbors outside the Regev home wept at the news the two soldiers were dead. Fighting back tears, Shlomo Laniado, who served in their reserve unit, said on Israel's Channel Two television: "It increases the motivation to protect this country and it shows us who we are dealing with."
An ICRC truck later drove into Lebanon with the bodies of eight Hezbollah fighters killed during the 2006 war.
Israel will also hand over the remains of nearly 200 Arabs killed trying to infiltrate northern Israel. Hezbollah will return the remains of Israeli soldiers killed in south Lebanon.
The deal also calls for Israel to release scores of Palestinian prisoners at a later date as a gesture to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
HEZBOLLAH READY TO CELEBRATE
Hezbollah has dubbed the exchange "Operation Radwan," in honor of "Hajj Radwan," or Imad Moughniyah, the group's military commander who was assassinated in Syria in February.
Yellow Hezbollah flags and banners fluttered across south Lebanon and along the coastal highway from the border village of Naqoura to the capital, Beirut. "Liberation of the captives: a new dawn for Lebanon and Palestine," one banner read.
Israel denounced the planned festivities.
"Samir Qantar is a brutal murderer of children and anybody celebrating him as a hero is trampling on basic human decency," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev said.
For some Lebanese, the exchange demonstrated the futility of the devastating conflict with Israel two summers ago.
"There shouldn't have been a war in 2006. A lot of lives were lost," said Rami Nasereddine, an 18-year-old student in downtown Beirut. "It's good that the prisoner exchange is taking place. Israel should have done that two years ago."
The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas said the prisoner swap would boost its position in demanding the release of hundreds of long-serving prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured two years ago near the Gaza Strip.
"This is a great victory to the resistance and to Hezbollah and it is a festival for the Lebanese prisoners and their families," Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said.
Israeli President Shimon Peres set the prisoner swap in motion on Tuesday by pardoning Qantar, reviled in Israel for his role in the 1979 attack. Qantar, aged 17 at the time, has said the father was shot by Israeli soldiers who also wounded him, and that he doesn't remember what happened to the girl.
Peres said he felt "bitter and unbearable pain" at the decision and that it "in no way constitutes forgiveness," but that Israel was obliged to get its soldiers back.
Olmert had described Qantar as the last bargaining chip for word on Israeli airman Ron Arad, missing since he bailed out over Lebanon in 1986. Israel said a report supplied by Hezbollah on Arad as part of the swap had failed to clarify his fate.
Hezbollah has made Qantar's freedom a central demand. Many in Lebanon believe Israel's refusal to free Qantar earlier prompted Hezbollah's cross-border raid that led to the 2006 war.
The other Lebanese prisoners being released were identified as Maher Qorani, Mohammad Srour, Hussein Suleiman and Khodr Zeidan. They were to receive a heroes' welcome of fireworks and rallies in Lebanon, which declared a public holiday.
(Additional reporting by Tom Perry and Nadim Ladki in Beirut, Jeffrey Heller and Dan Williams in Jerusalem and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Giles Elgood)
Bellevue man served with WWII Nazi death squad, U.S. says
The U.S. Department of Justice has moved to revoke the citizenship of an 86-year-old Bellevue man it says was a member of a Nazi death squad responsible for the murders of more than 17,000 Serbian civilians during World War II.
By Mike Carter
Seattle Times staff reporter
Related
Archive | Nazi hunter finds clock is ticking against him
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Peter Egner talked freely to his friends about his service as a conscript in the German army during World War II, and even showed them the jagged scar on his hip — the wound that Egner said ended his military service.
"He was a [WWII] veteran, like I was a veteran," said Russell Wilson, 81, his longtime neighbor in West Linn, Ore.
But federal Nazi hunters say the 86-year-old Egner, of Bellevue, has lived a lie all these years, and Tuesday moved to revoke his U.S. citizenship, claiming he was a member of a Nazi death squad responsible for the murders of more than 17,000 Serbian Jews and others as the German Wehrmacht marched east on the Soviet Union.
A complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle alleges that Egner was not a conscript, but instead served as a guard and interpreter with the notorious Nazi-run Security Police and Security Service (SPSS) in Belgrade, Serbia (then Yugoslavia) from 1941 through the fall of 1943, when he was wounded. During that time, the complaint stated, his unit participated in the roundup and systematic killings of tens of thousands of Serbian Jews, Gypsies and political dissidents.
Reached Tuesday by The Associated Press by telephone at the Silver Glen retirement cooperative in Bellevue, Egner confirmed his identity but said he was unaware of the complaint. Asked about his alleged service with the Nazis, he said: "I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm sorry. Bye."
Robert Gibbs, a Seattle immigration attorney representing Egner, acknowledged that his client served in the SPSS but said he has denied being involved in atrocities.
Gibbs said the complaint is "carefully worded and very generic. It doesn't say Mr. Egner did anything, and it provides only the most tenuous connection with anyone who did.
"We don't know what they have," Gibbs said. "But it seems to me if they're coming after this old man, then they must be at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to war criminals."
The Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations, which is responsible for finding war criminals on U.S. soil, identified Egner's participation through Nazi documents, the complaint says.
"The Nazi unit in which Peter Egner is alleged to have participated was responsible for countless deaths and unimaginable suffering," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich in a news release issued from Washington, D.C.
Court documents allege that during the first nine months that Egner was a member of the SPSS, the unit operated as the Belgrade Einsatzgruppe, a special mobile unit charged with early efforts to systematically murder Jews as part of Hitler's Final Solution.
"The organization played a leading role in the Nazis' mass murder of 6,280 Jewish women and children" at the Semlin concentration camp near Belgrade, according to an affidavit filed by Elizabeth White, the Office of Special Investigation's (OSI) chief historian and deputy director.
All were asphyxiated or suffocated by carbon monoxide in the back of a special mobile gas van while being driven to burial pits, according to the court documents. The process went on daily for almost two months, according to the documents.
During the fall of 1941, the complaint says, Egner's unit killed 11,164 Serbian civilians, most of them Jewish men, but the dead also included suspected Communists and Gypsies.
The complaint says Egner conceded during a February 2007 interview that he was a member of the SPSS and that he guarded prisoners being trucked from the Semlin concentration camp to Avala, also near Belgrade.
Egner, a native of Yugoslavia, also told investigators that he acted as an interpreter during interrogations of political prisoners. According to White's affidavit, "Interrogations conducted by SPSS personnel sometimes involved severe torture, often followed by execution."
OSI spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said the U.S. "has no way to prosecute Mr. Egner criminally. We can, however, see to it that he does not benefit from being a U.S. citizen."
Egner immigrated to the U.S. in 1960 and was granted U.S. citizenship in 1966. The complaint alleges that Egner lied on his citizenship petition and omitted his SPSS service, saying instead that he served as an infantry sergeant in the German army.
A man who answered the phone at Egner's nephew's home in Bellevue said "no comment" and hung up.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said he learned of the complaint against Egner on Tuesday from the Department of Justice.
"We will watch to see if he is stripped of his citizenship," the rabbi said. "If he is sent from this country, then we and others will call for a criminal prosecution wherever he lands."
Wilson, Egner's longtime neighbor in Oregon, described him as outgoing, friendly and an avid golfer who worked for years at a downtown Portland hotel. He moved to Bellevue about two years ago to be closer to family after his wife of 30 years died after a stroke.
"He told me that he'd lost his lady and just couldn't be here anymore," Wilson said.
Wilson said he and Egner rarely talked of the war, but recalled Egner had claimed to be in the German infantry and said he was shot by a Serbian resistance fighter.
Egner's longtime golfing partner, Del Mahler of Beaverton, Ore., said Egner told him he became a communications officer in Denmark after he was wounded.
Mahler said the Egner had told him that "some government agency or another was coming after him" but that he didn't give details.
Another West Linn neighbor, Marcia McClocklin, 69, said Egner and his wife, Gerda, had adopted Gerda's nephew after her sister died in Germany, and that he moved to Bellevue to be closer to him.
Several neighbors at the Bellevue retirement community where Egner has lived since leaving West Linn described him as polite and friendly. Mary Mahler wondered at the government's decision "to go after an 86-year-old man for something he did when he was 19 or 20 years old. I mean, don't they have anything better to do?"
Rabbi Hier, however, said Egner's advanced age is the reason "that he should be brought to justice now.
"That he lived so long is no reason to reward him because he lied and was never found out," the rabbi said. "Look at how many young people who were cut down in the prime of their lives."
Mike Carter: 206-464-3706 or mcarter@seattletimes.com.
Seattle Times staff reporter Christine Clarridge, news researcher Miyoko Wolf contributed to this report
I will issue an hazmanah faster than you could throw an insult.
http://www.nbc6.net/news/16885691/detail.html
Man Charged With Hate Crime For Allegedly Insulting Rabbi
Rabbi: Man Yelled Graphic Racial Comment.....
When is the civil trial against YTT going to take place?
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Denver archdiocese hit with another sex abuse suit
By COLLEEN SLEVIN – 11 hours ago
DENVER (AP) — A man sued the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Denver on Tuesday over sexual abuse after seeing documents released as part of a big settlement last month that name the same priest he says molested him as a teenager.
The accuser claims he was abused by the late Harold White, an ex-priest who was named in the bulk of the cases that were settled this month. White was removed from the ministry in 1993 and died in 2006.
The lawsuit claims the abuse occurred in 1969 or 1970 at St. John the Evangelist Church in Loveland when the plaintiff was 14. It seeks unspecified damages.
Michael Finnegan, a lawyer with the Minneapolis firm representing the man, said the man decided to sue after seeing church documents about White that were released as part of the settlements.
According to the suit, the documents — posted on the firm's Web site — show White had admitted in February 1961 to sexually molesting five or six children. That was seven years before he was moved to St. John's.
"He was outraged and saddened to see the archdiocese, to see the bishops and priests that he trusted, would cover up and conceal this for so long," Finnegan said.
Archdiocese spokeswoman Jeanette De Melo said church officials haven't received a copy of the lawsuit. She said the archdiocese is willing to meet with anyone who claims abuse by clergy and offer help in healing.
The documents were released to help the plaintiffs find healing and resolution, she said. She declined to comment on their use as grounds for another lawsuit.
The archdiocese has settled 43 sex abuse cases since 2005 for a total of $8.2 million. Under the settlement reached this month, the archdiocese agreed to pay $5.5 million.
Two other lawsuits besides the new one remain unresolved.
"Eldad Regev and fellow soldier Ehud Goldwasser were national figures. And they were finally coming home."
Baruch Hashem they are home. And curse upon curse be unto the enemies and murderous pigs who slaughtered these wonderful men.
Gilad Shalit - please come home alive!
The three scum buckets working in conjunction with their Agudah affiliates were busy giving mussar speeches on Sunday for any jerk or cared to listen to these schmeckels rant away on Tshuvah. Ha! Such ugly hypocrites they are! "They" - meaning -
Rabbi Shlomo Mandel
Rabbi Lazer Ginsberg
Rabbi Avremle Schorr
We miss you. Hope your summer vacation is going well.
We proudly present NYC subway cars with billboards on how to become a devout Muslim. Call 1 800 WHY TAKE A SHIT!
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