America; The Jewish
Connection!
Editorial submitted; Sept. 2009
Robert Blackmon
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not responsible for any/all content, it's use, purpose or intent and/or
the accuracy of the data in the posted article.* It is posted simply as
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post their own articles of interest without charge.
This
article is not intended to be anti-semitic. It's only purpose is to to
bring attention to global issues effecting everyone, Jewish or non. It
is also not the intent to place specific blame for any incident/s on
persons of any faiths, groups or organizations. There are bad and good
people in all faiths and in all people regardless of their heritages.
Conspiracies or just Greed...the
outcome is the same!
At the bottom of this article;
Learn more about the companies receiving your tax dollar bailouts.
Jews in
America; They play Monopoly with America's money and lives.
Increasingly, they also occupy the corner office as
CEOs of some of America's largest and most important companies. Of the
2003 CEOs of Fortune's 100 largest companies, 10 to 15 percent are Jews.
Of Fortune's 2003 list of the twenty-five most powerful people in
business, six (24 percent) are Jews. Of the thirty entrepreneurs
included in the 2004 Fortune "America's 40 Richest Under 40," at five of
the top ten are Jewish as are 23 percent of the Forbes 400.
Jews gain wealth by taking advantage of slumping
markets they instigated, bribing America's leaders, controlling the
money, as they run the FDIC, The Federal Reserve, The IRS and every
global central bank. They also own most of New York's prime real estate.
As less than 1.3% of the US population they control 86% of it's wealth
and have major influence on nearly every politician. They started off as
slum lords and sweat shop barons and now control nearly every bank,
insurance and, financial institution, the world's medias, as well as 80%
of the world's minerals including oil and coal. They even own nearly
every abortion clinic in the US.
Jews pioneered the ready-to-wear garment industry
and, in 1885, owned all but seven of New York's 241 garment factories,
which were nothing more than sweat shops. They bought up the East
Coast's poor districts and rented the property for inflated prices
becoming the US's first slum lords. Names like Levi Straus, Ralph
Lauren, Calvin Klein, and Donna Karan are just a few contemporary
representatives of that legacy. Of the four pioneers of prestige
cosmetics - Helena Rubenstein, Elizabeth Arden, Est'e Lauder, and
Charles Revson - only Elizabeth Arden was not Jewish. More than half of
America's department stores were started or run by Jews including such
greats as Macy's, Federated, May Company, Bloomingdale's, Filene's,
Saks, Abraham & Straus, Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Sears, and, in
London, Marks & Spencer.
In specialty retailing, major chains such as Gap
Stores, Limited, Mervyn's, Barneys, Men's Warehouse, Home Depot, Ritz
Camera, Bed Bath & Beyond are just a few of the Jewish creations. In
television retailing, both QVC and Home Shopping were largely shaped by
Jews. The world's foremost demonstration salesman, Ron Popeil, uses
television to sell products he invented. In diamonds, De Beers and the
Lev Leviev Group are the dominant forces in the worldwide diamond trade,
while Zales, Helzbergs, Whitehall, and Friedman's are among the leading
diamond and jewelry retailers.
We drink our Starbucks coffee and have sipped
Seagrams wines and distilled spirits. The Dove Bar, H'agen-Dazs, Ben &
Jerry's and Baskin-Robbins ice cream lead to our later signing up for
Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and Nutri-System programs or buying
Slim-Fast in the supermarket. All these companies were founded by Jewish
entrepreneurs.
We may lounge in our Fairmont, Loews, Hyatt, Helmsley
or Wynn hotel, or cruise on any of the seventy-three ships of Carnival
or twenty-eight of Royal Caribbean. These companies were founded or
largely shaped by Jews.
Every major Hollywood studio except United Artists
was created by Jews, as were NBC and CBS. Of the three original
television networks, only ABC was not started by a Jew, but Leonard
Goldenson bought it seven years after its founding and ran it for
forty-five years. Viacom and Comcast were largely created by two Jewish
families, while Steve Ross and Gerald Levin played critical roles at
Time Warner.
In publishing, America's newspaper of record is The
New York Times, and in the nation's capital, Katherine Meyer Graham's
son, Donald, now runs The Washington Post. The Pulitzer Prize is the
legacy of the family that still runs the St. Louis Post Dispatch and
Arizona Daily Star. Reuters, Newhouse, Triangle and Ziff Davis are just
a few of our leading magazine publishers. Random House, Alfred A. Knopf,
Simon & Schuster, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux are but four of the
major book publishers created and run by Jews. In finance, the story is
much the same. Premier names like Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Bear
Stearns, Salomon Brothers, Lazard Freres, and Wasserstein Perella are
just a few of the contemporary names of a legacy dating back to the
Rothschilds, Warburgs, Kuhn-Loebs, and Seligmans. In private equity,
names like Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Thomas H. Lee Partners, Blackstone
Group, Hellman & Friedman, Quantum Fund, Steinhardt Partners, Claxton,
Arthur Rock, Alan Patricof, Gene Kleiner, and Ben Rosen are today's
legends taking the place of Bernard Baruch and Henry Morgenthau Jr. Of
the twenty-six individuals named to the Private Equity Hall of Fame, at
least eight (31 percent), and perhaps as many as eleven, are Jewish.
Jews were generally not allowed to own real estate
outside the ghetto for the better part of 1,800 years. They have
compensated by becoming a major force in development and management of
property all over the world. Of the five largest Real Estate Investment
Trusts listed by Forbes magazine in May 2002, four were headed by Jews.
Today, Michael Bloomberg is New York's mayor, but
earlier, he created Bloomberg LP, the enterprise that gave him the
wherewithal to take on a second career. It is the largest financial
information company in the world.
Few people know that the shell of Shell Oil traces
back to a London curio shop where the Samuels family featured seashells
before two sons started trading kerosene. Nor would they know that the
Amoco part of BP Amoco was the creation of the father and son team of
Louis and Jacob Blaustein, who also invented the railroad tank car.
Amerada Hess, Aurora Oil, Marvin Davis, Occidental Petroleum, and
Kaiser-Francis are just a few more of the petroleum businesses started
or principally shaped by Jews.
America's great legacy of the Guggenheim Museums and
Smithsonian's Hirschorn Museum and Sculpture Garden have their origins
in the success of two great mining operations established by Jewish
families.
In business services, Manpower is the world's largest
temporary staffing company, just as ADP is the largest payroll
processing company and H & R Block is the largest preparer of tax
returns. All were started by Jews.
And lest anyone think Jews are not on the leading end
of new technology, Jews:
Created the world's largest and most valuable
computer company (Dell, Michael Dell).
Co-founded the world's most successful search
engine (Google, Sergey Brin).
Head the world's largest software company
(Microsoft, Steve Ballmer)
Co-founded and head the world's second largest
software company (Oracle, Lawrence Ellison).
Co-founded, led and serve as chairman of the
world's dominant microprocessor and memory chip company (Intel, Andrew
Grove).
Served as CEO or COO at three of the world's four
most valuable Internet companies (Yahoo, Terry Semel; eBay, Jeff Skoll;
and IAC, Barry Diller).
Co-founded and head the communications
protocol/chip company whose chips are in most U.S. cell phones and are
slated to be utilized in the next generation of cell phones to be used
worldwide (Qualcomm, Irwin Jacobs).
Most of the World's leading information, cable TV,
radio, internet and news agency is owned by Jews, even the
International news agencies where all news is gathered, censured and
distributed around the globe...Reuters and API. So before you hear
it...they censor it.
A
few Jewish leaders.
In politics, there have been 3
Jewish Presidents and as of Oct. 2009 they hold 11 percent of the United
States Senate and 6 percent of the House of Representatives. They were
42 percent of the 100 largest political donors to the 2000 election
cycle, and since 1917, when Judge Louis Brandeis was appointed, 17
percent of Supreme Court justices have been Jews. They now hold two of
the nine positions. The Washington lobbyist groups are the largest,
richest and most powerful.
President
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and both the
Roosevelts Presidents. Abraham Lincoln was said to have been raised
Jewish by his Jewish Mother.
The Jewish
Connection
From England and Europe to Africa to China to Russia,
as well as North and South America the money monopolizers have
manipulated the world's resources and wealth while spreading their greed
and contemptibility for all non Jewish peoples.
John Davison Rockefeller
(July 8, 1839 – May 23, 1937) was an American industrialist. Rockefeller
revolutionized the petroleum industry and defined the structure
of modern philanthropy. In 1870, he founded the
Standard Oil Company and aggressively ran it until
he officially retired in 1897. Standard Oil began as an Ohio partnership
formed by John D. Rockefeller, his brother William Rockefeller, Henry
Flagler, chemist Samuel Andrews, and a silent partner, Stephen V.
Harkness. As kerosene and gasoline grew in importance, Rockefeller's
wealth soared, and he became the world's richest man and first
American billionaire. Other than the Rothschilds, he is often
regarded as the richest person in history.
John Davison Rockefeller
John D. Rockefeller in 1885
BornJuly 8, 1839
(1839-07-08)
Richford, New York, USA Died
May 23, 1937 (aged 97)
The Casements, Ormond Beach, Florida, USA Occupation; Chairman of Standard Oil
Company; investor; philanthropist Net worth
▲$318.3
billion, according to Wealthy historical figures 2008, based on
information from Forbes - February 2008.
Chronology of the Standard Oil Company
In 1863, the young Rockefeller, along
with a partner, started a small refinery in Cleveland. The company does
well and grows. In 1870 he reorganizes his company and found the
Standard Oil Company. In 1871, some refiners discuss the
possibility of making an alliance big enough to convince the railroads
to give them special rebates for the shipping of oil, and extra premiums
for their competitors. They realized that the speculative nature of
their business would be done with if they became the only buyers and
only sellers. Looking for an existing company to buy its name and
charter, they found the South Improvement Company. The name was
good, as it meant nothing. People involved in this company stood for no
more that 10% of the total American refining business, but told the
railroads that they stood for the majority. The Standard Oil was
the main shareholder and led the operations. This was the beginning of
the alliance with the railroads described above. The advantage over the
competition was decisive, and the leverage on the producers was soon to
be felt.
Rockefellers Standard Oil
Alliances with the railroads
From the beginning, Rockefeller
succeeded in extorting from the railroads a deal that gave him major
advantage over his competitors : preferential rebates. Moreover, those
same railroads also committed themselves to inform the Standard Oil on
every move of their competitors, and collaborated on its side in price
wars by raising the price of transport for a given area.
The preferential rebate system
As the biggest client of the railroads, the Standard
could get extremely favorable terms from them.
For each destination, a public rate
was published, which was almost never used. The members of the Standard
Oil scheme got a substantial rebate, like 30-50% off the public price.
So far nothing extraordinary, but please go on. People outside of the
scheme not only had to pay full price, like $ 2.56 a barrel when their
competitor paid only $ 1.56 but the railroad paid back to Rockefeller
himself the difference with the public price, here $ 1 ! This deal
strangled the competitors who had to compensate for this inflated costs
elsewhere.
The resistance of the public and a
Pennsylvania court's judgement forbade this scheme, which was the base
of the South Improvement Company, but the huge size of the
Standard's orders gave it sufficient leverage over the railroads to
still gain rebates substantial enough to beat the smaller refineries.
These smaller competitors sold
their refineries one after the other for a song to Rockefeller.
The Pipelines
The possibility of carrying oil
through pipes had been thought of from the beginnings. In 1863 Samuel
Van Syckle tried, under heavy mockeries from the other oilmen, to carry
oil trough a 5 miles long pipe buried under 60 cm of earth. When the
pipeline began working satisfyingly, charging only 1 $ a barrel,
hundreds of teamsters (who so far earned 3 $ a barrel for
transportation) tried to destroy the pipeline ! The sheriff had to post
guards to protect it, and soon others pipelines were built. Transport on
men's backs or on carriages disappeared quickly and everyone started
building its own pipeline.
The first pipelines were guarded by armed men
By Hook or Crook,
he manipulated the oil market
In 1872, John D. Rockefeller had bought United
Pipe Lines, a group of small lines. Four years later, in 1876, he
already controlled the half of all existing pipelines, through the
active work of his lieutenants. After a price war and with help from the
railroads he succeeded in eradicating his main competitor in this
business, colonel Joseph Potts' Empire Transportation Company which
passed over to him sword in hand by the weeping colonel. At the end of
1879 Rockefeller controlled almost all pipelines built in the USA.
In 1879, Pennsylvania's independent
producers succeeded in building a pipeline they owned, the Tidewater.
Rockefeller first tried to have the government forbid the project, then
to buy land on the pipelines proposed way, but without success. This was
a major defeat for him, as now the public could see the independents'
oil flow freely to the consumers and the price fixing scheme of the
Standard Oil appeared in public light, like the railroads deals. An
investigation was started and Rockefeller had to testify, but with
little success.
Rockefeller began to foment
dissentions in the midst of the Tidewater, trying to damage
its credit, to buy its directors, to suit it. In the meanwhile his men
were buying the Tidewater's stock in secret. He finally took
control of the company in 1882. Now the totality of America's pipelines
were again under his firm control.
In oversupply episodes, especially
after the discovery of the famous Bradford field in 1877, his almost
perfect control on the carrying of oil from the fields to the refineries
allowed Rockefeller to dictate the price he wanted to pay for the crude
oil. This was possible because the oilmen could not store the enormous
quantities of oil they extracted, and their only option was to sell it
at bargain prices to Rockefeller if they didn't want to see it run to
the ground and earn them nothing but tears.
Conquest of the Pipelines They
even boasted that they control the world market for oil and coal
shipment
After having tried to destroy several
pipelines developments, Rockefeller saw that this was a much more
efficient mean of transportation for oil. When each barrel cost 40 cents
to carry to the railroads, which then made the Standard pay 85 cents
(against an official rate of $1.30), pipeline transport only cost 16
cents a barrel. The success of the first experiments with pipelines was
made by the Tidewater Company, which had its own network of refiners.
Rockefeller tried every possible mean to secure control of the
Tidewater, like making false rumors to be able to buy its stock at a low
price, and finally took control by alliance.
He applied to pipelines the methods
that had been so efficient with refineries, and in 1879 he controlled
most of the oil-gathering pipelines, those which connected the
wells to the shipping points. These lines were organized under the name
of United Pipe Lines.
At the summit of its glory, the Standard had thus a
quasi monopoly on the US pipelines.
The 1872 Oil War
In early 1872, after a leak, a rumor
spread through the Oil Regions, a rumor of a "great scheme between the
railroads and the refiners to control the purchase and shipping of crude
oil". At the same time, an employee disclosed prematurely the new
railroads rates, twice as expensive as before. The rage of the producers
immediately led to demonstrations, a press campaign in the Oil
City Derrick and petitions to the Pennsylvania legislature and to
Washington. The producers decided not to deliver a drop of oil more. The
Standard Oil Company had to close its refineries for technical
unemployment and waited patiently for greed and hunger to break the
enemy's front.
After an investigation had revealed
the preferential rebates given for rail transport, a court ordered a
unique rate. Congress concluded that the South Improvement Company
was the most enormous and most daring of all the conspirations that
a free country had ever seen. An other man would have let the anger
and despise win over him, but not Rockefeller. He had a mind that, when
faced to the wall, he would do what he had always did!
He went on asking for preferential
rebates ! And the railroads had to yield, as the means of transportation
between oil fields and refineries were numerous (several railroads and a
canal) and a big client like the Standard could have his will done,
always menacing to switch to a competitor in case of non cooperation.
The only thing that changed was that the importance of keeping these
deals secret were now clearer.
This oil war had after all a
nice ending for Mr. Rockefeller, but he had still a lot to do. Too many
independent refiners were left to let him make an monopolist price, and
he quickly settled to eradicate them.
Alliances and counter alliances
End 1872, 80% of the American
refiners, unite under the presidency of Rockefeller in the National
Refiners Association. As soon as the producers learned it, anxious
to see an oligopsone for their good formed, make a counter alliance and
unite in the Petroleum Producer's Agency. We have to consider the
producers psychology : scattered over vast territories, they had little
interest for things outside their own wells, and would unite only under
extreme circumstances. Having lived through the euphoric conditions of
the first years, they excepted a return on invested capital of no less
than 50 %, and if they did not earned their total investment in three
years, they felt sorry.
But only oil at $5 a barrel could
grant them such profits. And to have such a price, the only way was to
unite to restrict production. Note that this is the first time in
history that oil producers unite to restrict production, 100 years
before OPEC !
Rockefeller thus had to deal with the
new producer's association which asked him $5 a barrel. Instead of
refusing, John D. Rockefeller smartly pledged himself to buy
oil at this price as long as the producers effectively restricted their
production. He thus showed his "good will and willingness to ally with
them for the good of the industry." This unhoped-for collaboration of
the Standard calmed the producer's anger and soon they stopped their
protest.
But did Rockefeller abandon his dreams
of conquest ... ? Only a few months afterwards, the Standard Oil
announced that it would no more buy oil from the Petroleum Producer's
Agency. You have not restricted production sufficiently, how can
you expect that we continue to pay your price ? This reaction
caught the producers by surprise and they did not react efficiently.
Many were deep in debt and absolutely had to sell oil to avoid
bankruptcy. A lasting freezing of production was thus impossible, and
the Standard again dictated his terms. Dissentions soon consumed the
alliance and after only 10 months, the producers association
disappeared.
Price policy
The quality of the Standard Oil's
operations and its efficient methods to get the lowest price from its
suppliers and from the railroads made it the lowest cost refiner in the
world. This allowed the company to launch a price war on a given market
(a city or a whole region) to wipe out all the competitors.
The Standard thus regularly lowered
its prices in a given area to eradicate a smaller competitor, who could
not resist selling at loss for long enough.
But if this strategy was often used,
globally the idea was to maintain price as high as possible to insure a
steady, high profit, but not too high. As already mentioned, too
high prices would have attracted new competitors, and prices
fluctuating with crude oil production would have attracted the general
public's attention on what made the price what it was.
Other methods
Sabotage was sometimes used, as for
example in 1887, when the Standard Oil paid a mechanic working for the
Vacuum Oil Company in Buffalo to tamper the still so as to make
it explode.
In the fight against
independents pipelines, armed men defended land bought par Rockefeller
on the planned way of the pipelines.
Numerous examples of bribery of judges
and politicians are also well known.
Consolidation of the refineries
Their goal was to control the world's supply of
oil, shipping and pipelines
Between 1875 and 1878,
Rockefeller travels through the US in a campaign to make selected
refiners join the Standard. To the interested refiners, he explained in
the greatest secret how they were about to gradually control every
refinery in the US, and become the only shippers, dictating their terms
to the railroads. The Standard Oil's economies of scale and incredible
profits were shown to them, and they were promised wealth beyond their
wildest dreams if they cooperated with the Standard with Rockefeller at
the steering wheel. He succeeded in uniting the 15 biggest refiners in
the country, dominating 80 % of the total capacity.
Another method was used with smaller
refineries. He first tried to buy them, often offering no more than 40%
of the invested capital. Those who refused eventually yielded to the
enormous pressures of many kinds. For example, a lubricant producer in
Cleveland had the Standard Oil as his only supplier of distilling waste,
his raw material. One day, Rockefeller stopped his supply totally, and
soon afterwards bought the factory for a song to his crying owner.
Others gave in after heavy
underselling from the Standard on their markets. Because when Mr.
Rockefeller undersold, he went on day after day, week after week, month
after month until there was nothing left of his competitors. Nobody had
sufficient reserves to successfully resist a price war with the Standard
Oil.
If the preferential rebates from the
railroads, the cutting off of the crude oil supply and the price war
were not sufficient, other methods were used. As said above, a mechanic
of the Vacuum Oil Company in Buffalo was bribed to tamper
a still. The sabotage worked fine and the refinery exploded, but only
years later did the repenting mechanic clear his conscience by telling
the story. This cast some light on the muscled methods of the Standard.
Old and poorly placed refineries were
shut off and the most efficient enlarged. All the buying, the
negotiations with the railroads and the selling of the finished
substances were under Rockefeller's management.
The consolidation process went on,
par ruse ou par force, so that in 1878 a superstitious fear of
resisting to Rockefeller and his men appeared in the Oil Regions, making
life unbearable for the independents.
In 1879, after intense juridical
battles, the jury of the Clarion county declared John D.
Rockefeller and several of his directors of conspiring in gaining a monopoly in
the buying and selling of crude oil, so as to make it impossible for
other people to do the same business profitably.
Rockefeller proposed an out-of-court
settlement. The producers accepted bitterly, asking for (1) full stop of
the preferential rebate system (2) stopping of all discrimination for
pipeline transport (3) a sum to pay the lawyers fees. Rockefeller had
won again, profiting from the weak waiting capacity of the producers and
of their difficulty to unite except when in major difficulties.
He once again escaped the public wrath.
Expropriation of retailers
The avowed goal of de John D.
Rockefeller was to take control of the whole oil business. This implied
the capacity of leading the fate of each barrel of petrol, from the time
it came out of the earth until it was burned in the housewife's lamp.
He still had to control the retailer
network, those who sell kerosene to housewives and lubricants to
factories.
Some refiners had their own retailer
network, others had wholesalers (or jobbers) who then sold to
groceries. To achieve total integration of the industry he still needed
his own retailers, which he promptly got.
Very soon the whole US territory was
covered with local retailers working under close supervision by the
headquarters. The same perfection observed in other parts of the process
could be seen in the retailing : excellent service, quality product
delivered on time. Informers, often employed by the same companies they
were spying, told the Standard Oil of every move of its competitors. If
for example a retailer had ordered oil from an independent refiner, an
agent of the Standard contacted him and offered cheaper Standard Oil
oil. If for some reason the grocer did not want to do business with the
Standard, he was then visited by a pseudo independent refiner who
offered him special prices. After all the independent producers oil had
been evicted from the local market by a few month of such a price war,
the kerosene price quickly rose again at its initial level in this
region.
If their methods came to public
knowledge, the directors of the Standard accused "excessive zeal"
from their employees and promised to correct it. As Rockefeller said in
a rare interview in 1890 « ... In a business as large as ours,
conducted by so many agents, some things are likely to be done which we
cannot approve. We correct them as soon as they come to our knowledge.
The public hears of the wrong - it never hears of the correction.»
The Standard oil Trust
The first great industrial trust
Until 1881 the forty companies controlled by John D. Rockefeller and his
partners was a cordial alliance, welded by cross holding of shares.
Standard Oil's jurist, Samuel Dodd, proposed to unite the alliance in a
trust. The shareholders of refining, extracting, trading, retailing
companies would hand in their actions to 9 trustees, which would give
them in exchange trust certificates. The trustees would then become the
directors of all the companies in the system, controlling the totality
of the operations. Dividends would be paid to the trust's shareholders.
The project was realized and the Standard Oil Trust built his
headquarters at 26 Broadway in New-York.
The new organization perfected the great monopoly and began to look like
the Vatican. People from all the world brought information to the
generals gathered around John D. Rockefeller. They discussed in the
greatest secrecy the affaires of their empire, taking decisions which
were quickly transmitted around the world in a seemingly frictionless
machine.
Standard Oil's headquarters at 26 Broadway
A reasonable share of oil production ? Maybe, but 90% of the refining
capacity in the USA .... Source : Hidy et Hidy, Pioneering in Big
Business, NY 1955
Investigations and trust's dissolution
In 1887, the Standard Oil was one of the best managed companies in the
world, mastering almost everything related to its good. Its factories
were the most perfect in the whole industry, organized with the greatest
economy. Its knowledge of worldwide oil demand was so deep that the
company produced only what was necessary to keep prices constant. At the
same time marketing departments sold its products all over the world
through aggressive campaigns. Who could complain against such a perfect
company?
7.8 Investigations and trust's
dissolution
In 1887, the Standard Oil was one of
the best managed companies in the world, mastering almost everything
related to its good. Its factories were the most perfect in the whole
industry, organized with the greatest economy. Its knowledge of
worldwide oil demand was so deep that the company produced only what was
necessary to keep prices constant. At the same time marketing
departments sold its products all over the world through aggressive
campaigns. Who could complain against such a perfect company?
Nevertheless, political pressure was
growing. If we leave them, they will have followers, and in 50 years
a handful of men will own the country said some, We have the
right to lead an independent business, cried others. The sentiment
was growing that the public eye should scrutinize the Standard Oil Trust
business.
In 1888 a New-York senator
investigated the Standard Oil Trust. The investigations wanted to
know especially if the control of 90% of the American market was not due
to special privileges, like, yes, a preferential rebate from the
railroads...
Other investigations ran at the same
time, on the sugar trust and the whiskey trust, but no one took the
importance of the investigation of the Standard Oil Trust. The latter
owned $150 mil of capital, managed by 9 men. Faced with the risk of a
court order of the liquidation of the trust, these men decided to
liquidate it themselves and to replace the trust certificate by a
constant proportion of securities in each of the ensuing 20 companies.
John D. Rockefeller personally received 250'000 of the 970'000
shares that came from the liquidation of the Trust. The Standard once
again kept its monopoly power and went on paying dividends to its
shareholders.
The 1890 Sherman Antitrust
ActCongress passed this act in 1890,
and this is the source of all American anti monopoly laws. The law
forbids every contract, scheme, deal, conspiracy to restrain trade. It
also forbids conspiracies to secure monopoly of a given industry. The
ideas were new and had to wait before they could achieve some
efficiency. The Standard reorganized once more, in a holding in the
Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) which now coordinated the
whole machine, that is 70 companies and 23 refineries controlling 84% of
the crude oil refined in the US in 1899. Ten years later, international
competition (from Canada, Peru, Rumania, Poland, India or Russian) and
the struggle of the independents lowered this percentage to 14 %.
Theodore Roosevelt committed himself in 1901 and during both of his
mandates to a strong war against monopolies, launching the federal
government in 1906 in a lawsuit against the Standard because of
discriminatory practices on the market, abuse of power and excessive
control on the American oil industry.
7.10 Dismantling of the
Standard Oil
In 1911, the Supreme Court finds the
Standard Oil in violation of the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act
because of excessive restrictions to trade, and in particular its
practice of buying out the small independent refiners or that of
lowering the price in a given region to force bankruptcy of competitors.
The court ordered the Standard Oil Company (New
Jersey) to dismantle 33 of its most important affiliates, giving the
stocks to its own shareholders and not to a new trust. From these
offspring will come Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, American, Esso (that is
SO).
This is a landmark ruling in the
economic history of the USA, and is the basis for a new doctrine in
American antitrust policy, called the rule of reason (because of
the famous unreasonable restraints to trade mentioned in the
Sherman Antitrust Act. Need for more solid juridical basis led to
the Clayton Antitrust Act in 1914, which explicitly
condemns commercial practices like price discrimination, exclusive
commercial relations, the buying out of competitors and the incestuous
boards.
Conclusion
From the beginnings of the oil business, the producers understood the
power of monopoly. The erratic fluctuations of the oil price had already
convinced them to restrict production in a common effort, but their
accord never lasted, so great were the incitation to cheat. A unified
organization, a trust, made a rigorous control of the quantities
produces possible, and thus of the price. If we add to this monopolist
power the gigantic scale economies, we understand the tremendous profits
of the Standard Oil. The ruling of 1911 reached its objectives and gave
birth to 10 integrated oil companies among the most powerful of the
world. The dissolution of the Standard stimulated innovation and
expansion through competition, although worldwide competition was quite
strong before the dissolution.
The situation from the 1970's, with a producer's cartel controlling the
better part of the world's oil output, and which does not always work
smoothly, is thus not without precedent. We need not look outside of the
oil industry to find forerunners.
Chronology
1870 The Standard Oil Company is
founded by John D. Rockefeller in Cleveland, Ohio. The refining industry
is at this time decentralized, and Rockefeller's share of the refined
oil business is less than 4%, with more that 250 competitors in the US.
1870 John D. Rockefeller and Flagler start the South Improvement Company
to pool oil transportation on railroads, letting those who take part in
the scheme to get incredibly cheap rates.
1873 John D. Rockefeller already controls 80% of the refining capacity
of Cleveland, which makes a third of the national's total.
1879 The Standard Oil Trust shuts down 31 of the 53 refineries owned by
the Standard Oil and concentrate production in 3 giant refineries.
1880 Standard Oil controls almost every refinery in the US and has more
than $40 million in cash.
1882 The alliance of all the companies that made the Standard Oil is
transformed into the Standard Oil Trust, the first big trust in the USA.
The shareholders of the 14 companies and minority shareholders of a
further 26 hand in their bonds and shares to 9 trustees and get in
exchange $70 million in trust certificates. The trustees control the
company and pay dividend to the holders of these certificates.
1882 An Ohio court dissolve the trust, but it is reincorporated in New
Jersey, a state that accepts trusts. The trustees leave their initial
horizontal integration concept and work for a total vertical
integration.
1890 Congress votes the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Standard is again
reincorporated, this time in New Jersey as a holding.
1900 The Standard Oil controls more than 90% of the refined oil in the
USA.
1911 The Supreme Court decides to break up the Standard Oil into smaller
more competing companies.
The public was not and are not aware the natural state of the oil
market, or of the great fluctuations that come from the speculators much
more than supply and demand. Prices today are still manipulated by the
marketers on Wall Street, which are still greatly influenced by the
Rockefellers. Only the name of the game has changed!
Think about it, The Jewish
Rockefellers own Standard Oil, along with hundreds of other global
enterprises. They control the NY Port and all properties thereof,
including the Twin Towers and all other destroyed buildings on 9-11;
which were in control of another Jew, Larry Silverstein, who recovered
much more from the insurance companies, without even an investigation,
than the buildings worth. The US President Bush and his cabinet, as well
as the NY mayor, Rudy Giuliani were staunch Jewish supporters. Two
hundred Israelis were detained immediately after 9-11, but were ordered
released by the White House. Nothing has changed, as in Sept. 2008 the
existing Jewish NY Mayor, Michael Bloomberg and the state governor,
Jewish George Pataki succeeded in removing the 2 term limits allowing
Bloomberg to serve a 3rd term as NY Mayor.
The Jewish
Rothschilds, Rockefellers, etc. control and influence include a vast
majority of insurance companies, 95% of the world's media, the Federal
Reserve, Banks, The FDIC & Treasury Dept, The New York Banking
Department, as well as major realties, financial institutions and etc.
In addition the Jews own the market share of the world's minerals,
precious metals, coal and more.
News; Sept. 15 -
2009
Suicides or
Eliminations
James S. McDonald, the CEO of
money-management firm Rockefeller & Co., died Sunday from an apparently
self-inflicted wound. McDonald, who also sat
on the board of the NYSE Euronext, the giant stock exchange, was 56
years old. In a statement obtained by the Wall Street Journal
Monday night, Barclay McFadden III, who called himself a friend of
McDonald's family, said McDonald "took his own life," and said the
family would have no further comment.
McDonald's apparent suicide
came less than one week after
Finn M. W. Casperson, the former chairman
and CEO of Beneficial Corp. and another prominent financial figure, was
found dead from a single, self-inflicted gunshot
wound to the head near his own home in Westerly, Rhode Island.
The circumstances surrounding
McDonald's passing were still unclear Tuesday morning, though he is
believed to have taken his own life in New Bedford, Mass. Reached by
DailyFinance, a detective
with the New Bedford police department was unable to provide further
details.
Colin Campbell, Chairman of Rockefeller & Co., which began as the
"family office" of legendary industrialist John D. Rockefeller, issued
a statement saying, "Jim McDonald was an exceptional individual who
provided strong leadership of Rockefeller & Co. for over eight years.
He will be missed by all of us privileged to have known and worked
with him."
McDonald had been CEO of the New York-based Rockefeller & Co., which
was originally founded in 1882 to manage the assets of Standard Oil
tycoon John D. Rockefeller and his family, since 2001. Today, the firm
has some $28 billion under management for clients that include
foundations, endowments, and private investors. Rockefeller & Co.
doesn't disclose the performance of its investment portfolio.
McDonald graduated from Harvard University and earned a law degree
from University of Virginia. Prior to joining Rockefeller & Co., he
ran Pell, Rudman Trust Co. in Boston. McDonald was also chairman of
the Japan Society in New York.
McDonald was the General Manager,
Director, Chairman of Audit Committee and Member of Pricing Committee,
NYSE Euronext, Inc. He was connected to 35 board members in 2
different organizations across 2 different industries.
I am quite sure there will
be no real investigations of his death, especially as it would involve
the world's wealthiest people. Just another cover-up like John and
Robert Kennedy, Pearl Harbor, Vietnam's Bay of Tonkin and 9-11, Iraq
war and so on.
A few of the many
Jewish owned and/or controlled US Companies;9
MTV and Nickelodeon (Viacom)
Google
Oracle Corporation
Dell, Inc.
Miramax
Warner Brothers
Dreamworks SKG (Steven Spielberg)
Comcast
CBS
CNN, which was sold by Ted Turner
MGM
Universal Studios
ABC
20th Century Fox
Columbia Pictures
Facebook
Jeff Skoll, co-founder of eBay
Sun Microsystems
del.icio.us
PayPal (before being bought by the Jewish owned eBay)
Cisco Systems
Mirabilis and ICQ
BitTorrent
Häagen-Dazs
Dunkin' Donuts
Baskin Robbins
Toys R Us
Mattel
Wynn Hotels
Ameriquest
Carnival Cruises
Neiman Marcus
Royal Carribean Cruises
Levi's
DKNY
Calvin Klein
Home Depot,
Kenneth Cole
Loews Corporation
Goldman Sachs
Seagram's
Macy"s NY
H&R Block
Charles Schwab Corp.
Progressive Insurance
Fannie Mae
Freddie Mac
Enron and the
Jewish Fraudster Kenneth Lay; Video
CNBC's
JEWISH GUEST TALKING HEADS
"Jews Tell The News"
Jewish businesses own every major
newspaper, magazine and other worthy print. The Jewish own the main
Reuters and API World's news distributors.
Jews dominated Cable TV NEWS with 65%+ of the
News Jobs, Appearances, Hosts, Talking Heads, and Consultants. In
addition, many of the government officials interviewed by the Jewish
Reporters are Jewish, too. This situation is an ever-present danger to
Non-Jews in our nation. This is a report about a single night on Cable
TV News and how Jews dominated everything said through their
appearances which, over and over again, denied any time at all to
Non-Jews. Thus, the nation of 98% Non-Jews was told what to think of
the Iraq War and the Impeachment of the President, and almost all of
the opinionated talking was by Jews.
Jews:
Geraldo Rivera, Alan Derschowitz, Richard Ben-Veniste, Lanny Davis,
Candy Crowley, Robert Wexler, Charles Zewe, Andrea Mitchell (Alan
Greenspan's Jewish Wife), Claire Shipman, Alec Baldwin, Betty Friedan. Jews Featured But Not Pictured Here:
William Cohen, Robert Rubin, Madeleine Albright, Sandy Berger, James
Rubin.
MSNBC's
JEWISH GUEST TALKING HEADS Jews: Sam Brownback,
William Cohen, Murray Fineman, Steve Rothman African American: Rehema Ellis Members of CFR or Suspected Of:
Richard Haas, James Woolsey, Lawrence Eagleburger, James Dunnigan Jews Featured But Not Pictured Here:
Robert Rubin, Madeleine Albright, Sandy Berger, James Rubin, Henry
Kissinger
CNN's
JEWISH GUEST TALKING HEADS Jews: Sandy Berger, Rahm
Emanuel, Jeff Greenfield, Andrea Koppel, Gary Tuchman, Bob Franken,
Larry King, Madeleine Albright, James Rubin, Wolf Blitzer African American: Bernard Shaw Members of CFR or Suspected Of:
Brendt Scowcroft Jews Featured But Not Pictured Here:
William Cohen, Robert Rubin
So, there you have it. Almost no Non-Jews were
invited to express their opinions. In fact, there was little time
for them, and, if one-half of the persons featured were Non-Jews, we
would be surprised. Certainly less than 15 Non-Jews were present,
and with 28+ featured Jews plus 7-8 additional Jews in Government or
about 35 Jews, the voices of Non-Jews were not represented.
INS (Immigration & Naturalization Services)
figures show that America's Jews are only 2% of the nation, yet, the
NEWS on any particular day or evening, the Jews represent 65%+ of
the guests, hosts, and talking heads. Yet this is not unusual. Most
of the Jews, African Americans, and CFR Members featured here are
nightly visitors, being on the regular NEWS circuit, always invited
to give their opinions to the mostly Non-Jewish nation. Of the other
persons we haven't mentioned, most were Hispanic or Arab. VERY FEW
were White European Americans, the usual stock population of this
country.
Modern Historians on the issues of
immigration--Samuel Francis and D'Neesh D'Sousa--find this situation
to be particularly disturbing in the light of present American
History. According to their books and columns, Europeans are being
rapidly replaced with Russian Jews and other non-European Ethnic
Groups--mostly at the insistence of Jews. The major Jewish culprits
were Frank Lautenberg and Jacob Javitts who authored the most
anti-European immigration bills in our history, the very laws which
are responsible for European decline in our nation.
After reporting on the Jews of Cable TV NEWS and
after writing this story, we thought how, if Jews had been singled
out for exclusion in this manner, the talking heads on CNBC, CNN,
and MSNBC would be spewing "hatred," "racism," and "ethnic
cleansing."
That is the danger of this situation. We live in
a frightening new America that will someday be empty of all
Europeans.
Time to reduce
Jewish ownership and participation in the NEWS to the 2% of their
number in this nation. Otherwise, our own people will continue to be
propagandized about liberalism, socialism, integration, busing,
separation of church and state, immigration for non-Europeans only,
Zionist conspiracy, ethnic suicide, and other Jewish ideas. In a
nation that is 98% Non-Jewish, 98% of the NEWS should reflect their
opinion and definitely NOT the opinions of an overactive and overly
verbal 2% whose aims are to destroy us.
Even More;
There are many hollywood production
companies that are Jewish such as Miramax and other companies the
Weinstein brothers own. I have been told Ben and Jerry's Ice cream is
Jewish. The CEO of Disney is Jewish (but Walt was very anti-semitic).
Solomon brothers investments. Ester Lauder was Jewish but now that she
has died I am not sure who runs the company so it may not be Jewish
owned any longer. Neiman Marcus I believe is also Jewish owned.
Johnson and Johnson products have been rumored to be Jewish owned but
I think in reality it used to be but is not anymore. Sort of like Levi
Strauss that used to be Jewish owned but is not anymore. Macys was
also the same way.
Baskin and Robbins was founded by Jews but I believe that are both
deceased and a board now run the company. Ben & Jerry's Ice-cream.
Dream Works studios is Jewish owned (Spielberg etc). Hafagen Winery in
California is Jewish owned. The Jersey City Medical Center. The Trust
Company Bank. I understand Time Warner has a CEO that is Jewish but it
is also run by a board etc.Viacom is Jewish owned.
Several sports teams, which I suppose are businesses, are Jewish owned
.Fox TV, The New York Times and London Times are owned by Rupert
Murdoch who is technically Jewish as he had a Jewish mother and is a
staunch supporter. The chairman of Yahoo is Jewish but I am not sure
if he is one of the founders or not or what percentage of the company
he owns. Comcast, AT&T Cable, the Wall Street Journal, Newhouse
Publications, Century 21, Mountain Valley Water, The Coastline Trust
Company, Albertsons, Milton Hershey was Jewish and he founded the
Hershey company.
The CEO of Microsoft is Jewish and owns stock in it but how much of a
percentage of the Microsoft he owns is unclear. Vidal Sassoon owns the
Vidal Sassoon company. Qualcom was founded and still run by Irwin
Jacobs. Michael Dell of Dell computers and the company Oracle is
Jewish owned. The record label RCA is Jewish owned. MCA and Universal
is Jewish owned as well. It is my understanding that Goodyear was not
founded by a Jewish person but has since been purchased by James
Goldsmith. Citicorp was funded by the Rothschilds and the CEO is
Jewish. Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Isaac Mitzrahi all are Jewish
and own their own companies. Jerry Springer is Jewish and I think he
owned the production company that made his show. Peter Falk is Jewish
and I believe he owned the company that produced his Colombo series.
The Stargate SG1 series was owned by Anderson Greenberg Corp, in which
Greenberg was Jewish. Jerry Seinfeld, Whoopi Goldberg and hundreds
more actors and actresses are Jewish.
Well Known Jews;
Henry Kissinger
Alan Greenspan, Ex-Chairman of the
Madeline Albright
SEC. of Treasury Timothy Geithner &
Ex-Sec. of State &
private Federal Reserve that controls
Former Secretary of State
Ben Bernanke FED. Reserve Chairman
Nixon's Vietnam
the U.S. Money Supply.
War Advisor
Michael Chertoff,Sumner Redstone,
Richard Perle,
War Hawk, Head of
'Homeland Security'CEO of
Viacom, "world's biggest media giant"
Advisor to President Bush
Economist,
owns Viacom cable, CBS and MTVs all over the world,
Blockbuster video rentals & Black Entertainment TV.
Brought "Gangsta Rap" to the youth of the world.
He's the 64th Richest Person in the World, 2006
Geraldo Rivera
Jewish mother
Larry King, CNN
Mike Wallace, CBS, "60 Minutes"
Jonathan Miller
Ex-Chairman
& CEO AOL-Time
Now Working for Fox's Murdoch ,
after Jewish Ross Levinsohn
left to start a Capital Fund.
Barbara Walters of CBS
Dan Abrams, MSNBC, Abrams Report
Andrea Mitchell, MSNBC, wife of
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan
David Geffen, Co-Owner of
Leslie Moonves,
Jeffrey Zucker, Chief of NBC DreamWorks Studios
President of CBS television, great-nephew of David Ben-Gurion.
Roman Polanski, Director
Mortimer Zuckerman,
Rupert Murdoch,
It was speculated that he
paid
Owner of NY Daily News, US News & World Report
Owner of Fox TV, New York Post,
the Charles Manson clan
to
and chair of the Conference of Presidents of
London Times, News of the World
kill his pregnant wife Sharon
Tate
Major Jewish
American Organizations, one of the
largest pro- Israel lobbying groups.
Jew Jack Abramoff (Left)
Rabbi Jack Abramoff, known as the 'Super Zionist' pled guilty to
lobbying scandals. This dark rabbit hole extends all the way to both
houses of Congress and to the White House itself and includes
connections to a Casino murder in Florida.
Jew Bernie Madoff, on right, was the world's
biggest swindler. He lied and cheated people out of $65 Billion
dollars and was sentenced to the maximum 150 years.
Bernie Madoff slipped from a life of luxury to a small grey cell
for the balance of his ‘life.’ Now if they could round up all the
remaining leaches!
Al Goldstein,
Pornographer, Internet Porn
giant.
Seth Warshavsky,
Howard Stern "The only reason that Jews
are in pornography is that
The Bill Gates Of Smut'
Pornographic Talk Show Host
we think that Christ sucks. Catholicism sucks. We don't
believe in authoritarianism. " Pornography thus becomes
a way of defiling Christian culture and, as it penetrates to
the very heart of the American mainstream...we becomes more
charged..."
From:
Jewish Dominance In the Porn Industry
Eric Harris,
The Second Columbine Killer
Dylan Klebold (Jewish) The Jewish controlled media
misrepresented these two
One of the two Columbine High School Killers) as
"White Supremacists" when in fact the main shooter,
He sang as he killed kids:
"We hate niggers, spicks
Dylan was Jewish. Both targeted Whites and Christians.
...and White
pieces of Christian shit."
(Notation; "Big business
write off their loss as a result of bad business practices, but it's
the tax-payers making up for the country's tax losses. For big
business...it's a win...win situation.")
Wall Street's Biggest Con Is M&A 'Advice' (Mergers
& Acquisitions)
Kraft's quest for Cadbury is the
latest episode in the empty pursuit of M&A.
As the market cheers Adobe Systems
Inc.'s planned acquisition of Omniture Inc. and Kraft Foods Inc. mulls
its next move in its bid to buy Britain's Cadbury PLC, Wall Street is
abuzz with the possibility of a new wave of mergers and acquisitions.
The state of affairs at Jewish
owned Kraft created a big opportunity for dealmakers. An experienced
merger adviser could easily use Kraft's struggles to push the company
and its CEO, the Jewish Irene Rosenfeld, into pursuit of Cadbury.
Jewish Bruce Wasserstein's firm, Lazard Ltd., is leading a contingent
of four firms expected to reap more than $42 million for advising on a
deal, according to Thomson Reuters/Freeman & Co. (Also a Jewish Co.)
Financial incentives and the
pressure from advisers make it hard for even the most confident and
skilled CEO to ignore the M&A race. In 2000, Mr. Wasserstein urged
Jerry Levin, both Jewish, to strike a deal with America Online after
critics said Jewish Mr. Levin's Time Warner was in danger of becoming
an "old economy" relic. The result was a $181 billion debacle widely
acknowledged to be among the worst deals in American business.
Apple Inc. has essentially grown
through a never-ending chain of deals, the latter through its emphasis
on research and development. During the last five years Apple stock is
up more than 800%, but we all know that what
goes up...comes down hard.
It's the very lucrative pay-offs
for the CEO's that persuade them to sell or merge off their companies.
For the CEOs of the targets, the incentive isn't just about
getting a nice premium for shareholders -- an admitted benefit of M&A.
Executives of acquired companies are famous for getting big payouts.
CEO James Kitts received $165 million when he sold Gillette to Procter
& Gamble in 2005. A study by BusinessWeek that same year found that
half the 100 biggest companies had provisions that would pay CEOs an
average of $28 million in the event of a merger.
Profit incentives are
created by market manipulations, as Wall Street bankers are
constantly scheming up potential deals for their clients. They
schmooze. They cold call. They spread rumors in the media that a
company is for sale, or on the prowl, or can be bought cheap, or needs
to do a deal. As a result, the companies shares plummet, the investors
lose millions and the Jewish piranhas move in.
Investment banks love the M&A business. Except for
underwriting initial public offerings, advising on mergers is the most
profitable business on Wall Street. The beauty of the business is that
it just takes a few talented people and doesn't carry the risk of a
trading desk. It's also the business that keeps on giving. Corporate
clients usually turn to advisers for financing and other services.
Advisers have generated $11.58 Billion in fees
globally this year, according to Thomson. The bad news for Wall Street
is that it's the lowest total this decade. Even in 2008, Wall Street
made $35 billion. And in the big M&A year of 2007, advisers raked in
$49 billion, almost all of which was pure profit.
With so many deals failing to meet expectations, it
would seem that corporate boards and CEOs would be skeptical of the
practice. They aren't though, not when presented with smooth-talking
investment bankers whispering in their ears and vague promises of
financial incentives awaiting them.
M&A is a mostly empty exercise built on promises of profits and
efficiencies that rarely come to fruition. Companies almost always
overpay for their targets, hurting their shareholders and enriching
few except the CEOs and deal makers such as the investment bankers who
goad them into the next must-have merger.
It's somewhat like selling life insurance to the deceased or very
expensive Cryonic storage; the
freezing of a person for possible future awakening if and when science
may provide cures for their diseases and such.
M&A is a mostly empty exercise built
on promises of profits and efficiencies that rarely come to fruition.
Companies almost always overpay for their targets, hurting their
shareholders and enriching few except the CEOs who do deals and the
investment bankers who goad them into the next must-have merger.
The roadside is littered with deals
that promised great things and went bust. Is it any surprise that the
serial dealmakers of the financial world --
Citigroup Inc.,
Bank of America Corp. and
American International Group Inc. -- are at the center of the
nation's financial malaise?
Bank of America, it should be noted,
couldn't contain itself even as the pillars of the financial industry
were shaking. It struck a questionable deal for Countrywide Financial
Corp. early in 2008 and added Merrill Lynch & Co. -- maybe the biggest
botched deal in the last decade -- a few months later.
Multiple studies have shown no
evidence that shareholders of acquisitive companies do better than
their stingier counterparts. Some companies are able to wring costs
from acquisitions, but usually don't. Close to 90% of European mergers
fell short of their objectives in 2007, according to Hay Group.
The roadside is littered with deals
that promised great things and went bust. Is it any surprise that the
serial dealmakers of the financial world --
Citigroup Inc.,
Bank of America Corp. and
American International Group Inc. -- are at the center of the
nation's financial malaise?
Bank of America, it should be noted,
couldn't contain itself even as the pillars of the financial industry
were shaking. It struck a questionable deal for Countrywide Financial
Corp. early in 2008 and added Merrill Lynch & Co. -- maybe the biggest
botched deal in the last decade -- a few months later.
Multiple studies have shown no
evidence that shareholders of acquisitive companies do better than
their stingier counterparts. Some companies are able to wring costs
from acquisitions, but usually don't. Close to 90% of European mergers
fell short of their objectives in 2007, according to Hay Group.
More News in
Sept. 2009
EBay agreed to sell a 65
percent stake in Skype for $1.9 billion to a consortium including
Netscape founder Marc Andreessen's Andreessen Horowitz, venture firm
Index Ventures, private equity firm Silver Lake, and the Canada
Pension Plan Investment Board. Jewish firms
making a power play.
Now they are being sued;
The founders of Skype have sued
owner eBay Inc (EBAY.O)
and an investor group that has agreed to buy the Webphone service,
accusing them of copyright violation and potentially disrupting the
$1.9 billion deal.
The lawsuit brought by Joltid Ltd, a
Swedish firm owned by Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis,
says Skype used its technology without authorization. It comes on the
heels of a legal dispute between Joltid and Skype in Britain over
software rights.
Filed in Northern California U.S. District Court
this week, the latest suit seeks a permanent injunction against Skype
and damages. EBay has denied the allegations.
Joltid believes damages are piling up at a rate of
more than $75 million a day.
News; Sept. 2009
- Barclays seeks to take advantage of the devastated US Securities
market. Jerry Missier, Barclay's President was connected to Bernard
Madoff and his pyramid scams. Here is a list of Jerry Missier
Connections;
Madoff and Connections
Items appearing in this Madoff and Connections relationship map:
(please click your back button to return to this page)
Former
US Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton is under
investigation about whether she illegally used her position to
benefit (Jewish Owned) Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the company that
later hired her.
More...
Sept. 17, 09; Bernie Madoff's NY beach home sells for more than
$8.75M to an undisclosed buyer.
In addition; Serena Boardman, of Sotheby's
INT. Realty, parlays network to sell Madoff penthouse, on the market
for $9.9 Million. Madoff's seized
waterfront mansion in
Palm Beach, Fla., is on the market for $8.5 million.
A scion of one of the nation's
bluest, blue-blood families has been selected to sell off Bernard
Madoff's Upper Eastside penthouse.
Serena enjoys working with a
variety of American and international clients from the financial,
media, entertainment and real estate worlds. She is hardworking and
discreet and is well known as a keen architectural devotee.
Sotheby's International Realty is the World's
largest Realty Company
Company History
Since the
founding of the Sotheby’s auction house in 1744, the Sotheby’s
name has earned renown as a marketer of the world’s most valuable
and prestigious possessions. This reputation is built as much upon
exceptional service to clients as on the notable art, antiques,
jeweler and other holdings that pass through Sotheby’s offices
around the world. The Sotheby’s International Realty® organization
began in 1976, in part to serve clients desiring a complete
package of estate disposition services, and soon became known for
representing extraordinary estates throughout the world.
The company has
controlling market of luxurious properties, exquisite Auction
Houses and more.
In South Africa, the
Jewish Lew and Sandy Geffen affiliation of Sotheby’s International
Realty® network began in July 2003, when they opened their
flagship office, Lew Geffen Estates, in 1982 in Johannesburg.
Lew Geffen has been in the real
estate Industry since 1972. It was his determination and success at
the flagship operation in greater Johannesburg, established in 1982,
which served as the springboard for the rollout of the national
brand, which today boasts 65 offices throughout South Africa.
He is also a non-executive director and shareholder of Jewish, a
leading mortgage bond origination company operating nationally
throughout South Africa. How
appropriately profitable that the company can sell it's mortgage
back bonds to it's affiliated partner.
They are also partnered with another Jewish firm.
" Stephan Welz & Co. Auctioneers of Fine Arts
In the 1800s Immigrant Jews gained immense
wealth from being slum lords to the running of despicable
sweat-shops in New York and New Jersey. It was and remains about
gaining wealth...it is never about decency or fair-play!
The rises and falls of the
world's economy are all connected to the same Jewish money barons and
the world's wealthiest family, the Jewish "Rothschilds...market
manipulators and financers of all of the globe's war since Napoleon."
Shell Oil;
A Jewish Company Financed by The Rothschilds
A tale of pollution, mayhem and
murder
NEW YORK — July 5 2009; Even as
Jeroen van der Veer was preparing to pass the baton to Peter Voser,
who took over as chief executive of the oil giant Royal Dutch Shell
last Wednesday, the contentious legacy of the company’s activity in
Nigeria was nipping at its heels.
Just a few weeks earlier, Shell had agreed to settle a court case
stemming from the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a leader of the
indigenous Ogoni environmental movement in Nigeria who had protested
against Shell’s environmental practices in the oil-rich Niger Delta.
On the basis of dubious charges, Mr. Saro-Wiwa and eight other
activists were tried and ultimately hanged in 1995 by the country’s
military government.
Families of six of the victims subsequently filed numerous lawsuits
against Shell, one of the oldest and largest companies operating in
the region, accusing it of complicity in a variety of human rights
abuses, including events that led to the executions.
Shell denied having had any part in the matter. Instead, in a June 8
statement, the company said the settlement — totaling $15.5 million —
constituted a “compassionate payment to the plaintiffs and the estates
they represent in recognition of the tragic turn of events in Ogoni
land, even though Shell had no part in the violence that took place.”
Of course not????
Amnesty International, which
observed the change in executive leadership at Shell with its own
assault: a 143-page report, published last Tuesday, that accused Shell
and other oil companies of decades of environmental and human rights
abuses in the region.
The report, titled “Nigeria:
Petroleum, Pollution and Poverty in the Niger Delta,” noted that while
oil business in the region had generated about $600 billion during the
past 50 years, the majority of the 31 million people living in the
area remained pitifully impoverished.
Amnesty, quoting a U.N. report from
2006, described the region as suffering from “administrative neglect,
crumbling social infrastructure and services, high unemployment,
social deprivation, abject poverty, filth and squalor, and endemic
conflict.”
Much of the blame, the group said,
lay at the feet of the oil industry generally and, in many cases,
Shell specifically.
Royal Dutch Shell, the
energy group, revealed that its pension fund was exposed to Mr Madoff.
In a statement, it said its investments with Mr. Madoff amounted to
$45m. “Even when these investments would have to be written off in
their entirety, the impact on the financial position and the funding
status of the Pension Fund would be very limited,” it said.
_________________________________________________________
The Bernie Madoff Swindle and
Jewish Foundations
Several foundations have already
said they would close because they invested nearly all their money
with Madoff. The hardest hit appear to be charities associated with
Jewish causes, where Mr. Madoff was an active board member and donor.
The Gift
of Life Foundation, a Jewish bone marrow registry, said it needed to
raise $1.8m immediately to make up its losses. The Robert L. Lappin
Foundation, which financed trips to Israel for Jewish students, said
it would shut after losing its entire $7m endowment.
The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family
Foundation, which supports the arts, education, hospitals, and Jewish
causes in Boston and Palm Beach, has lost almost half of its assets,
which stood at $345m at the end of last year.
Mr. Shapiro said in a statement: “I
was stunned and saddened to learn about the allegations against Bernie
Madoff. It is devastating to think that so many
charities, individuals and
institutions that put trust in Mr. Madoff have had their lives so
negatively impacted.”
Was the swindle an inside job?
Was Madoff just a scrape-goat in the end?
Neither the SEC inspection unit nor
auditors challenged the false information provided by Bernard Madoff
for years, even though they had been warned several times by market
annalists and other whistle blowers.
The US Securities and Exchange
Commission must “reform itself from within” or Congress will do it for
the agency which bungled several
opportunities to stop Bernard Madoff's ‘Ponzi’ scheme, US
Senator Richard Shelby warned
My thoughts
are; Since many charities were
investors with Madoff and do not usually pay any taxes and received
donations wouldn't it be possible that just perhaps Mr. Madoff didn't
actually swindle 65 billion dollars? What better way to elevate the
actual losses of said investments with Madoff for even higher
tax write offs; or said funds were not in reality even invested and
have now simply been used elsewhere. Madoff was Jewish and many of his
largest investors were also...the entire thing seems like yet another
scam. It is well known that people, companies, etc. file higher claim
amounts than were actually lost. This is true in every scenario,
fraud, theft, fire and so forth. With this mind it is quite reasonable
to believe that the entire incident was a part of the yet another
scam.
Regulators under Clinton and
especially Bush were hampered by political pressure to leave hedge
funds alone and were restricted by a lack of resources to inspect more
than 11,000 registered investment advisers. Political pressure I am
quite positive came from The Wall Street Bankers.
Ponzi schemes share the
characteristic of paying off early investors with money from newer
arrivals.
Ponzi Schemes are alive and well;
For the last 13 years or more, big and small investors alike turned
over their money to Stephen Walsh and Paul Greenwood, two New
York money managers, in the belief that an “enhanced equity index’’
strategy would reap them huge profits.
But as in most cases it was proven that the money instead filled the
two men’s “lavish lifestyles.’’ The large sums of money were spent on
multi-million dollar homes, luxury cars, horses and collectible items
such as antiques, rare books and Steiff teddy bears worth as much as
$80,000 USD.
The pair, who were arrested and released on bail last week, are just
the latest in a stream of alleged Ponzi schemes that have been
uncovered since September.
In depth: Stanford scandal - Jun-19
Stanford receiver seeks $925m from investors - Jul-30
Department of Justice accused of delaying Stanford probe - Jul-29
Dispute over move to claw back Stanford funds - Jul-21
Stanford case spreads its tendrils - Jul-20
Antigua sued by Stanford ‘victims’ - Jul-13
Since mid Aug. 2009 at least 12 complaints involving “Ponzis” or other
similar scams, have been filed, including a CFTC complaint filed on
Thursday alleging that a Texas man bilked 250 investors of $10.9m.
Historians say the last time the US
has seen anything similar was during the 1920s, when Charles Ponzi’s
postage scam flourished. The same get rich schemes leading to the 1st
great depression led to the 2nd one.
The SEC was again
embarrassed when a Federal Judge Killed a Proposed Settlement with BOA
Just as the Securities and
Exchange Commission was dealing with it's previous embarrassment of
it's failure to detect the Bernard Madoff, a federal judge just
quashed a proposed settlement between the commission and Bank of
America, humiliating the SEC yet again.
In a stunning rebuke on Monday, US
district judge Jed Rakoff described last month’s proposed settlement
between the SEC and BofA over allegations that the bank made
misleading statements to shareholders as a “contrivance designed to
provide the SEC with the facade of enforcement and the management of
the bank with a quick resolution of an embarrassing inquiry – all at
the expense of the sole alleged victims, the shareholders.”
The Lehman
Brothers Planned Demise
One distinct winner to have emerged
from the wreckage of the Lehman Brothers collapse and the financial
turmoil that ensued, it is Barclays Capital, the investment banking
arm of the UK bank. Barclays, the Lehman
Brothers and JP Morgan Chase are all Jewish firms.
Barclays, Banking Arm of The UK
Bank; Founded in 1997. Financials; Total assets ▲ US $ 2.686 trillion
(2008) Annual Income; 10.34 Billion. Employees 20,000
Barclay's CEO is Robert Diamond;
President Jerry del Missier, whom had ties to Bernie Madoff.
Diamond initially worked for Morgan
Stanley in New York, before taking a job as head of the government
bond division in London. In 1992 he was appointed head of Asian
operations by Credit Suisse First Boston and moved, with his family,
to Japan, and subsequently to Greenwich, Connecticut.
In 1997, Diamond once again moved to London with his family after he
was offered the position of Chief Executive at Barclays de Zoete Wedd
(BZW), soon to be rebranded Barclays Capital. He joined the bank's
board on June 1, 2005, as executive director and President of Barclays
PLC.
Since joining Barclays he has also
taken control of the bank's wealth management (Barclays Wealth) and
fund management (Barclays Global Investors) divisions. Subsequent to
the 2008 financial crisis, there has been controversy over
Diamond's pay as one of the
world's highest-earning bankers, collecting a package worth up to £27m
in 2006, £36m in 2007 (approx. $70m USD), and holding Barclays shares
worth £65m, close to $83 Million dollars.
It was not until the collapse of Bear Stearns and subsequent
fire sale to JPMorgan Chase in March
2008 that BarCap’s top executives – including Bob Diamond, chief
executive, and Mr. del Missier – began to think about an acquisition
in the US.
When Lehman foundered in the second
week of September last year, Mr. Diamond, Mr. del Missier and other
BarCap executives were ready to move. Lehman had strong businesses in
equities and investment banking and was a dominant presence in fixed
income in the US.
Over a frantic two days, BarCap put
together a plan to buy Lehman and place most of its problem assets in
a structure supported by other Wall Street banks. But the deal
foundered over British regulatory guidelines forbidding BarCap from
providing a guarantee on the bad-asset structure without putting the
matter to its investors. After Lehman filed for bankruptcy, BarCap
achieved an even better deal, cherry-picking the bank’s US operations
and acquiring its flagship building in Manhattan.
While Nomura, the Japanese
investment bank, snapped up Lehman’s European and Asian operations,
BarCap acquired the failed US bank’s North American business just days
after the bankruptcy for the bargain-basement price of
$1.75bn.
Lehman’s 10,000 employees in the US,
traumatized by the company’s bankruptcy, which wiped out much of their
wealth, as a majority of their income were stock options, and like
sheep spared from slaughter they were mostly open to the lifelines
extended by BarCap.
Client relationships were badly
frayed by Lehman’s bankruptcy, which resulted in financial losses for
many of Lehman’s customers.
The main Lehman
Bank is still in Business, but with a new name; The Aurora Bank FSB
Gone are Lehman Brothers' investment banking
operations, the private bank, the brokerage businesses and trading
desks, as almost every Lehman unit has been unloaded to a new owner or
shut down.
The former Lehman Brothers Bank has
remained and is not part of the bankruptcy. In the first few months of
the parent company's bankruptcy, the bank website even continued to
advertise an application for a Lehman Brothers credit card.
The bank was optimistically renamed
Aurora Bank FSB in April -- Aurora being the goddess of the dawn in
Roman mythology.
It employs more than 1,700 -- the
bulk of Lehman Brothers remaining staff -- with most in loan servicing
operations in Colorado and Nebraska. Other than that, the bank only
has two branches: one in Wilmington and another in Jersey City, New
Jersey.
Regulators have limited the bank's
ability to offer new certificates of deposit. That has created a drain
as current CDs mature, forcing Lehman to pump hundreds of millions of
dollars into the bank to prevent it from being seized.
"It's a nice business," Bryan Marsal,
Lehman Brothers' chief restructuring officer told a meeting of
creditors in July. He said Aurora could be worth $1 billion to Lehman
Brothers, although he acknowledged the bank was struggling to match
the maturity of assets with liabilities.
The company currently services more
than $100 billion in mortgages, a potentially steady and stable
business.
"If we can solve that matching
problem, again, this portfolio which is valued today at $592 million
worth of equity, we think is very, very conservatively priced."
Lehman Brothers had bought the bank
in 1999, when it was a troubled thrift known as Delaware Saving Bank
FSB.
The acquisition allowed Lehman
Brothers to make its own home loans, rather than buying them from
potential rivals.
"Aurora was a defensive move on the
part of Lehman Brothers," said Brad Hintz, a former Lehman Brothers
chief financial officer and now an equity analyst with
Sanford Bernstein; "Yet another Jewish Firm."
"They started to originate their own mortgages so they had a
predictable flow of mortgages to their securitization desk."
Lehman Brothers ran one of the
largest operations repackaging mortgages, a business that collapsed
along with the market for those securities, helping to bring the firm
to its knees.
The Carbon
Trading Industry has led to yet another billion dollar scam
The
EcoSecurities Group, a carbon trading company is a wholly
owned subsidiary of JPMorgan. They are a carbon, pollution, trading
and holding company that will have a major control of this new
industry. Large industries will be able to buy credits in lieu of
actually having to deal with their polluting issues.
EcoSecurities Group (ECO:LSE) set a
new 52-week high during today's trading session when it reached
$104.60. Over this period, the share price is up 58.33%.
Turmoil in the carbon markets threw
up two contrasting sets of company results on Thursday, one from
trading exchange business Climate Exchange, the other from
EcoSecurities, a carbon trader. Turnover at EcoSecurities, which
invests in projects that generate carbon credits under the Kyoto
protocol, rose almost tenfold from €7.2m to...€68.4m.
What a
scam...these degenerate profit driven industries will save billions in
not cleaning up their carbon emissions.
"After years of
research and just life in general...my conclusion is there is no
honesty or sanity in the world involving money, power, sex and
religion!"
Check out the World's Wealthiest
Companies and discover for yourself how many have Jewish Control. Just
to name a few. Walt Disney, Reuters News Agency, Dell Computers, EBay,
Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Standard Oil, most all of Hollywood's Studios,
American News Agencies, such as CBS, NBC, ABC, and nearly every US
newspaper and magazine, etc. Zales Jewelry, De Beers Diamond and Gold
Mines, Petra Diamond Mines,
Rio, BHP Billiton (BHP)
and Brazil's Vale (VALE)
have stranglehold on global pricing for iron ore and other key
commodities. (Today, those big three account for over 70% of globally
traded iron-ore sales.)
CEO's of Bailed out
Banks still reap in $$ millions in Pay and Bonuses
Consider the study released last week
by the institute. It showed that the top 100 executives at the 20
biggest banks that received Troubled Asset Relief Program loans -- firms
such as Goldman, JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) and Bank of America (BAC,
Fortune 500), which now owns Merrill Lynch -- made an average of $13.8
million each last year.
Admittedly, that's down from $19.1
million in 2007. The figure, derived from company proxy statements,
covers salary, bonuses, stock awards and other compensation.
Even so, $13.8 million is a nice sum
for executives whose companies, in many cases, wouldn't have survived
last fall's financial apocalypse without taxpayer assistance.
At Goldman, the Jewish Blankfein made
$43 million last year, using the institute's math -- bringing his
three-year take to $151 million.
The
bailouts extend even beyond the $700 billion
TARP program, the government has provided financial firms
with assistance via expanded deposit insurance, federal guarantees of
bond issues and extensive subsidies, via Fannie Mae (FNM, Fortune 500)
and Freddie Mac (FRE, Fortune 500), for the mortgage market.
The chart on the left depicts
the value of FDIC backed bonds in the Billions.
Bloomberg to Warren
Buffet...are still deeply admired, even though a few seconds
consideration would make it quite obvious they are both most likely
insider traders. Buying and selling stocks and portfolios at just the
right time...is much more than coincidental.
1. Koch Industries; From Diesel
Cups to Diesel Fuel (Jewish)
2007 revenue:
$98 billion (revised by company since publication)
Fiscal year end:
Dec. 31
2007 Employees:
80,000
Industry:
Diversified manufacturer
CEO:
Charles G. Koch (Jewish)
Location:
Wichita, Kan.
With a presence in almost 60
countries, the diversified manufacturer has its hand in more than a
dozen industries including, energy, chemicals, fibers and polymers,
minerals, fertilizers and forest and consumer products.
2. Cargill;
From Ground Beef to Gasoline
2007 revenue:
$88.3 billion
Fiscal year end:
May 31
2007 Employees:
158,000
Industry:
Food production
CEO:
Gregory R. Page
Location:
Wayzata, Minn.
The family-owned agri-business
produces and markets commodities from grains to livestock that put
dinner on your table and fuel in your gas tank.
I skipped the US Postal Service
and Chrysler, whom both are nearly bankrupted.
5. Kaiser
Permanente (Jewish)
2007 revenue:
$37.8 billion
Fiscal year end:
Dec. 31
2007 Employees:
159,700
Industry:
Health care: Medical facilities
CEO:
George C. Halvorson
Location:
Oakland, Calif.
Kaiser Permanente is the nation's
biggest not-for-profit health plan, serving 8.7 million members
through 13,000 doctors and 32 medical centers across the nation.
Also skipped the 2007 report for
GMAC.
7. Bechtel
(Jewish)
2007 revenue:
$27 billion
Fiscal year end:
Dec. 31
2007 Employees:
159,700
Industry:
Engineering, construction
CEO:
Riley P. Bechtel
Location:
San Francisco, Calif.
One of the nation's biggest
contractors, Bechtel builds airports, mines, pipelines and refineries
among other major-scale projects.
8. HCA (Jewish
Owned)
2007 revenue:
$26.9 billion
Fiscal year end:
Dec. 31
2007 Employees:
161,000
Industry:
Health care: Medical facilities
CEO:
Jack O. Bovender Jr.
Location:
Nashville, Tenn.
Otherwise known as Hospital
Corporation of America, HCA is one of the biggest for-profit hospital
operators in the United States with 169 hospitals and 115 outpatient
centers in 20 states and England. Bain Capital, Kohlberg Kravis
Roberts, Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity, HCA founder Dr. Thomas
F. Frist, Jr. and HCA management took the company private in 2006.
9. Price-Waterhouse Coopers
International (Jewish)
2007 revenue:
$25.2 billion
Fiscal year end:
June 30
2007 Employees:
147,000
Industry:
Financial services
CEO:
Samuel A. DiPiazza Jr.
Location:
New York, N.Y.
The Big Four accounting firm audits
nearly a third of the Fortune Global 500 and provides services in more
than 150 countries across its network.
10. Mars
2007 revenue:
$25 billion
Fiscal year end:
Dec. 31
2007 Employees:
48,000
Industry:
Food: consumer products
CEO:
Paul S. Michaels, Global President
Location:
McLean, Va.
The family-owned food maker is best
known for its sweets, including M&Ms, Snickers, Skittles and its
eponymous candy bar. But it also makes Pedigree dog food and Uncle
Ben's rice. Late in April, Mars said it would buy chewing gum-maker
Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. in a deal worth about $23 billion.
11. Publix; Food Stores
2007 revenue:
$23.2 billion
Fiscal year end:
Dec. 31
2007 Employees:
106,000
Industry:
Food and drug stores
CEO:
William E. Crenshaw
Location:
Lakeland, Fla.
The biggest employee-owned
supermarket chain in the United States, Publix has 932 stores in five
states across the Southeastern United States. More than two-thirds of
its stores are in Florida.
12. U.S. Foodservice (Jewish)
2007 revenue:
$20.2 billion
Fiscal year end:
Dec. 31
2007 Employees:
27,160
Industry:
Wholesalers: Food
CEO:
Robert Aiken
Location:
Rosemont, Ill.
It's one of the nation's biggest
food-service suppliers, distributing products to 250,000 customers
across the nation including restaurants, hospitals, hotels, schools
and government institutions. Private Jewish equity firms Kohlberg
Kravis Roberts and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice bought the company from
Dutch supermarket operator Royal Ahold in 2007.
13. C&S Wholesale Grocers (Jewish)
2007 revenue:
$19.5 billion
Fiscal year end:
Dec. 31
2007 Employees:
17,000
Industry:
Wholesalers: Food
CEO:
Richard B. Cohen
Location:
Keene, N.H.
One of the biggest U.S. food
wholesalers in the country, C&S serves more than 5,000 supermarkets,
retail stores and military bases in 12 states.
14. CHS
2007 revenue:
$17.2 billion
Fiscal year end:
August 31
2007 Employees:
6,900
Industry:
Wholesalers: Food and groceries
CEO:
John. D. Johnson
Location:
Inver Grove Heights, Minn.
CHS prepares and packages food for
wholesalers, supermarkets, convenience stores and restaurant chains.
15. Cox Enterprises (Jewish)
2007 revenue:
$15 billion
Fiscal year end:
Dec. 31
2007 Employees:
82,000
Industry:
Telecommunications
CEO:
James C. Kennedy
Location:
Atlanta, Ga
Through several subsidiaries, this
diversified media company's operations include cable television,
telephone and Internet distribution, newspapers and direct mail and
auto auctions and services.
16. FMR (Jewish)
2007 revenue:
$14.9 billion
Fiscal year end:
Dec. 31
2007 Employees:
46,400
Industry:
Securities
CEO:
Edward C. Johnson III
Location:
Boston, Mass.
Otherwise known as Fidelity
Investments, FMR serves 24 million institutional and individual
investors. Fidelity operates 300 funds, including the biggest mutual
fund in the United States, and it has $1.5 trillion in assets under
management.
17. Health Care Service (Jewish)
2007 revenue:
$14.3 billion
Fiscal year end:
Dec. 31
2007 Employees:
16,500
Industry:
Health care: Insurance
CEO:
Raymond F. McCaskey
Location:
Chicago, Ill.
The customer-owned health benefits
provider operates through its Jewish Owned
Blue Cross and Blue Shield divisions in Illinois, New Mexico,
Oklahoma, and Texas,
18. SemGroup
2007 revenue:
$14.2 billion
Fiscal year end:
Dec. 31
2007 Employees:
2,272
Industry:
Pipelines
CEO:
Thoams L. Kivisto
Location:
Tulsa, Okla.
SemGroup trucks and pumps oil from
refineries to end users. It lost a bidding war with
the Jewish company Morgan Stanley to
buy rival TransMontaigne.
19. Meijer
2007 revenue:
$13.9 billion
Fiscal year end:
Jan. 31
2007 Employees:
67,000
Industry:
Food and drug stores
CEO:
Hendrik G. Meijer
Location:
Grand Rapids, Mich.
The family-owned and operated
retailer is among the Midwest's biggest independent grocery-story
chains.
20. Toys 'R' Us (Jewish)
2007 revenue:
$13.6 billion
Fiscal year end:
Jan. 31
2007 Employees:
70,000
Industry:
Specialty retailers
CEO:
Gerald L. Storch
Location:
Wayne, N.J.
The toy retailer operates almost 600
Toys `R' Us stores and more than 250 Babies `R' Us stores across the
United States and licenses/franchises more than 680 international
stores in 33 countries. It was taken private in 2005 by an investment
group including Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Bain
Capital Partners, and Vornado Realty Trust. Jewish
22. Aramark (Jewish)
2007 revenue: $12.4
billion
Fiscal year end: Sept.
30
2007 Employees: 207,500
Industry: Diversified
outsourcing services
CEO: Joseph Neubauer
Location: Philadelphia,
Pa.
Aramark provides food services,
facilities management and uniforms worldwide to health care
institutions, schools, stadiums and other businesses.
23. Highmark (Jewish owned)
2007 revenue: $12.4
billion
Fiscal year end: Dec. 31
2007 Employees: 18,500
Industry: Health care:
Insurance
CEO: Kenneth R. Melani
Location: Pittsburgh,
Pa.
Highmark provides health insurance
to 4.6 million people in Pennsylvania through joint operating
agreements with Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania and
Independence Blue Shield.
24. JM Family Enterprises
2007 revenue: $12.2
billion
Fiscal year end: Dec. 31
2007 Employees: 4,700
Industry: Automotive
retailing, services
CEO: Colin Brown
Location: Deerfield
Beach, Fla.
JM Family Enterprises is the world's
largest independent distributor of Toyota and Scion automobiles and
the largest volume Lexus dealership.
25. Tenaska
2007 revenue: $11.6
billion
Fiscal year end: Dec. 31
2007 Employees: 624
Industry: Energy
CEO: Howard Hawks
Location: Omaha, Neb.
King Coal is a PR nightmare for
public companies, but the Nebraska utility is experimenting with a
power plant that captures coal's carbon emissions.
26. Knight (Jewish)
2007 revenue: $11.5
billion
Fiscal year end: Dec. 31
2007 Employees: 7,600
Industry: Pipelines
CEO: Richard D. Kinder
Location: Houston, Texas
Formerly known as Kinder Morgan
Inc., Knight owns, has interests in or operates more than 25,000 miles
of pipelines and 165 terminals in North America. The company was taken
private in 2007 by investors including CEO Richard D. Kinder and other
senior members of Kinder Morgan. Companies under its umbrella include
Kinder Morgan Energy Partners and
Kinder Morgan Management.
27. Flying J
2007 revenue: $11.4
billion
Fiscal year end: Jan. 31
2007 Employees: 15,600
Industry: Petroleum
refining
CEO: J. Philip Adams
Location: Ogden, Utah
With truck-stops throughout the nation, Flying J
offers service, hospitality and diesel fuel to truckers. It also has
refining and supply, exploration and production, communications and
financial services divisions.
28. TransMontaigne (Jewish)
2007 revenue: $11.4
billion
Fiscal year end: June 30
2007 Employees: 727
Industry: Pipelines
CEO: Randall J. Larson
Location: Denver, Colo.
TransMontaigne provides marketing, storage, pipeline
and transportation services for petroleum products. The company was
taken private by the Jewish Morgan
Stanley Capital Group in 2006.
29. Dairy Farmers of America
2007 revenue: $11.1
billion
Fiscal year end: June 30
2007 Employees: 4,000
Industry: Food
production
CEO: Rick Smith
Location: Kansas City,
Mo.
More than 18,000 farmers in 48
states own this cooperative, which markets Borden milk and produces
fresh milk, cheese, infant formula, cream and other dairy products.
30. Harrah's Entertainment (Jewish)
2007 revenue:
$10.8 billion
Fiscal year end:
Dec. 31
2007 Employees:
87,000
Industry:
Hotels, casinos, resorts
CEO:
Gary W. Loveman
Location:
Las Vegas, Nev.
What began as a single bingo hall in
Reno, Nev. in 1937 has expanded to become the world's biggest provider
of branded casino entertainment. Harrah's was taken private by
Jewish Apollo Management and TPG Capital
early in 2008.
31. Trump Organization
2007 revenue:
$10.7 billion
Fiscal year end:
Dec. 31
2007 Employees:
22,450
Industry:
Real estate
CEO:
Donald J. Trump
Location:
New York, N.Y.
*The Trump Organization's mainstay
is its real estate and hotel properties, but its colorful chief
executive, Donald Trump, often takes the spotlight with his reality
television shows and a variety of licensed consumer products.
*Trump is
paying off those who have been in a position to help him and his
booming real estate empire? The evidence that he is acting as the
errand boy of the left wing of the Republican party, epitomized by New
York City Mayor Giuliani and Republican governor George Pataki, is a
suspicion well-founded. Neoconservatives of both parties have been the
beneficiaries of Trump’s largess. But this is just scratching the
surface. More important is the perpetually precarious state of his
finances. His well-publicized bout with near-bankruptcy in the early
90s left him $900 million in debt. While he claims that his comeback
is due solely to his "can-do" attitude – a key theme of the
"narrative" he is selling—clearly he has been bailed out time and
again, financially as well as politically. On his latest acquisition
alone, what used to be the General Motors building on Fifth Avenue, he
borrowed $700 million, together with his partners, and provided a $200
million personal guarantee, according to the New York Times, although
Trump denies it. Why bother denying it when it’s a matter of public
record?
32. Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Michigan
2007 revenue: $10.2
billion
Fiscal year end: Dec. 31
2007 Employees: 8,500
Industry: Health care:
Insurance
CEO: Daniel J. Loepp
Location: Detroit, Mich.
The nonprofit corporation is a
licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and serves more
than 4.6 million members who either live in Michigan or work for
companies headquartered there.
33. Reyes Holdings
2007 revenue: $10.1
billion
Fiscal year end: Dec. 31
2007 Employees: 8,700
Industry: Wholesalers:
Food
CEO: J. Christopher
Reyes and M. Jude Reyes
Location: Rosemont, Ill.
Reyes Holdings delivers more than 350 million cases
of beer and food products per year to clients all through North and
South America.
34. Enterprise Rent-A-Car
2007 revenue: $9.5
billion
Fiscal year end: July 31
2007 Employees: 66,700
Industry: Automotive
retailing, services
CEO: Andrew C. Taylor
Location: St. Louis, Mo.
In addition to its namesake car
rental service, Enterprise offers fleet management, used car sales,
commercial truck rentals and California vanpool services.
35. Dollar General (Jewish)
2007 revenue: $9.5
billion
Fiscal year end: Jan. 31
2007 Employees: 71,500
Industry: General
merchandisers
CEO: Richard W. Dreiling
Location:
Goodlettsville, Tenn.
The nation's largest small-box
discount chain, Dollar General owns and operates more than 8,000
stores in 35 states. The retailer was taken private by
*Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, GS Capital
Partners, Citi Private Equity, and other equity co-investors in 2007.
*A Jewish Company.
Power List: Where the private
equity money is...
An exclusive look at the country's most powerful
buyout firms.
The Carlyle Group (Jewish
Firm)
2008 Rank: 1
2007 Rank: 3
Recent buyout fundraising:
$39 billion
Carlyle
co-founders, Jewish David M. Rubenstein, William E. Conway, Jr., and
Daniel A. D'Aniello
With 1,000-plus employees, 34
offices spread across every continent but Antarctica, and $81.1
billion in assets under management, this alternative-asset supermarket
based in Washington, D.C., offers 60 funds.
Companies not owned by Jews are
still in their control, as they do control the banks and Wall
Street...and thus the companies loans, shares, etc.
The Congressional Attitude is "it's all about protecting corporate wealth"
from taxes, regulations or other legislative initiatives."
Of course...protect the corporations when
plundering the tax payers!
Sept. 2009;
Supreme Court discussions seem to agree that limits on political
donations from corporations should be lifted or removed;
During arguments, the court's
conservative justices seem to view corporate political spending as
beneficial to the democratic process. "Corporations have lots of
knowledge about environment, transportation issues, and you are
silencing them during the election," Justice Anthony Kennedy said during
arguments last week.
(More garbage spewing from the mouths of bought
and owned Judges)
_________________________________
Latest Israeli
News - Sept. 17, 09
Killing your own troops and your own
population? This is now the case in Israel.
Many weapons used by the Israel in
Gaza contained uranium components and upon impact set off huge volumes
of aerosol particles that then drifted back over the border into
Israel with devastating results.
It has been some time since the
Israelis bombed Lebanon and the Gaza Strip and in both cases the
weapons used left behind a trial of misery for all those that lived
downwind. We can now start to see the results of those actions and I
must say the term "What goes around comes around" rings true in the
ears of the residents of Israel. Some interesting health statements
have been released that prove when you play with dirty weapons it can
all come back to you. It would now appear that we have a situation
whereby Israelis are killing Israelis.
In May this year we saw the
following headline appear in the Haaretz: "Quality of Israeli sperm
down 40% in past decade" The quality of Israeli sperm has declined
alarmingly in the last decade, according to recent research conducted
at Jerusalem's Hadassah University Hospital, Mount Scopus. The cause
for the decline is not known, but it's believed by some researchers to
be connected to the exposure of children and pregnant women to
hormones and other contaminants in food and water.
Israeli Nuclear
Weapons
Information chart
from recently declassified US files depicts Israeli nuclear weapon
development
It is reported they have between 100 to 400
Nuclear Weapons with over 100 Fusion Missiles.
Israel uses the
holocaust excuse for building up its nuclear, chemical and biological
weapons.
It's not Iran the
world needs to fear!
In the recent
Libyan war Israel used spent nuclear shells, phosphorus & cluster
bombs, as well as biological and chemical weapons on civilians.
Over 3 thousand Lebanese were killed and many are still suffering
from the effects of unknown chemical weapons used against them by
Israel.
The imagery of the Dimona
nuclear reactor was acquired by the Public Eye Project of the
Federation of American Scientists from Space Imaging Corporation's
IKONOS satellite. The cooling towers associated with the Dimona
reactor are clearly visible and identifiable in satellite imagery.
Comparison of recently acquired commercial IKONOS imagery with
declassified American CORONA reconnaissance satellite imagery
indicates that no new cooling towers were constructed in the years
between 1971 and 2000. This strongly suggests that the reactor's
power level has not been increased significantly during this
period. This would suggest an annual production rate of plutonium
of about 20 kilograms.
Based on plausible upper and lower bounds of the operating
practices at the reactor, Israel could have thus produced enough
plutonium for at least 100 nuclear weapons, but probably not
significantly more than 200 weapons.
Some type of non-nuclear test, perhaps a zero yield or implosion
test, occurred on 2 November 1966 [possibly at Al-Naqab in the
Negev. It is speculated that a suspected nuclear explosion in the
southern Indian Ocean in 1979 was a joint South African-Israeli
test. Israel was a staunch supporter of South Africa's Apartheid.
That would be a certainty for gaiting control of the country's
resources, gold, and diamond mines, etc.
Jewish dictate holds that the Jewish collective
community is morally superior to all others and that, throughout
history, they are victims of innocence. The below chapters represent
merely the beginning of an inquiry into this enforced myth, a myth
represented everywhere in American popular culture as fact.
Among the economic fields in which Jews
today are especially visible is investment banking -- "Wall Street,"
including interconnected networks of lawyers and other legal and
economic manipulators stretching deeply into Hollywood and the mass
media. Since the 1800s the "Old Crowd" of German-Jewish banking
families (the Seligmans, Lehmans, Goldmans, Sachs, Warburgs, Schiffs,
Loebs, et al) had predominated the field; a "New Crowd" of Jews has in
recent decades taken their place. After World War II, melodramatically
note Judith Ehrlich and Barry Rehfeld, "economic power in America and
Wall Street was shifting ... Fresh faces came forward as if answering
a call ... They were the children and grandchildren of Italian, Irish,
Poles, and other Europeans who were not of Anglo-Saxon ancestry. But
most of all they were Jews." This is not to suggest of course that the
seminal Jewish American investment firms are today inconsequential.
Far from it. In 1999, for instance, Goldman, Sachs and Co. stretched
across the world to become the "single largest and controlling
shareholder of South Korea's largest bank, Kookmin. [BLOOMBERG NEWS]
"In the world of high finance,"
observed Gerald Krefetz, "Jewish interest is concerned with investment
banking, a broad catchall for activities ranging from tendering advice
to underwriting securities. The heart of investment banking is public
offerings and private placements, the risking of capital -- sometimes
ones' own, but more often other peoples' -- to finance new companies,
or expand old ones." [KREFETZ] The nature of Wall Street
entrepreneurship might well be presumed in the title of a 1986 volume
by Ken Auletta: Greed and Glory on Wall Street: the Fall of the
House of Lehman, or Martin Meyer's Nightmare on Wall Street:
Salomon Brothers and the Corruption of the Marketplace (1993).
Both Lehman and Solomon are Jewish-founded firms.
Finance, investment banking,
brokerage, and commodities are the speediest ways (short of outright
crime) to get rich in America; by 1988 the stock and bond market and
linked economic activities totaled 12 trillion dollars a year (six times
the value of the assets of Fortune's top 500 companies). "Where the
money went," note Ehrlich and Rehfeld, "and what happened to it were
greatly influenced by Wall Street power brokers." Corporate mergers,
acquisitions, and takeovers have become an especially lucrative field.
"By the 1980s, says Ehrlich and Rehfeld, "along with [Gentile] T. Boone
Pickens, and a few others ... the [Jewish] New Crowd was at the very
core of the mergers and acquisitions field." ... [This circle of money
men] bought luxurious homes, expensive art, high-priced foreign cars,
designer clothes and jewelry; they hosted or appeared at the right
parties." The old WASP establishment had seen its wealth eroded by
changing tax laws and inflation ... arriviste Jews began to appear on
the boards of such time-honored WASP institutions as the Museum of Art,
the Metropolitan Opera, and the New York Public Library." The New Crowd
broke the stranglehold of the Establishment WASP bankers and [older
Jewish] Our Crowd competitors ... and extended profit centers to newer
financial activities such as block trading, risk arbitrage, a wide range
of retail securities products, financial futures, listed trading of
options, and junk bond financing that helped companies expand and made
almost every company vulnerable to a takeover, a leveraged buyout that
restructured corporate entities and raised critical debt levels."
In the 1970s, "hostile turnovers,"
notes James Stewart, "bore an unsavory taint. They generated bad
feelings, especially toward those who represented the attackers. This
sometimes alienated other clients. Much of the WASP investment banks
and loan firms preferred to leave such work to the other firms, many
of them Jewish." "Various techniques and instruments were used in the
Wall Street boom of the 1980s," says Norman Cantor, "but the most
consequential -- and lucrative was the floating 'junk' (low grade)
bond to provide capital for involuntary takeovers of one company by
another. Fiscal critic Benjamin Stein [sees] the junk bond device as a
huge fraudulent Ponzi scheme generating temporary money pools that
could be looted by ruthless investment bankers and corporate
executives and their overcompensated lawyers."
William Leach traces the influence
that those in investment banking have had in shaping America, both
economically and in influencing the nation's values:
"The
growth of investment banking and mass consumption industries were (and
still are) closely related developments ... Bankers assisted in
undermining the competitive ethos by directing business interest toward
concentration and easy economic fixers. They helped local monopolies
become major national 'players' almost instantaneously. Banker-inspired
megalomania reinforces an already clear pattern in the economy away from
'making goods' to 'making money.'"
There is a long list of
Jewish entrepreneurs on Wall Street who,
as a group, have been influential in literally changing the American
economic system. Sanford I. Weill, for instance, "amassed a brokerage
empire and eventually became President of
American Express;" he was later "recognized as one of the most
powerful Jewish businessmen in the nation." John Gutfreund rose to
become the chairman of Solomon, Inc., "one of the most powerful
securities firms in the western world." Felix Rohatyn "perhaps more
than any other, was linked with the flood of massive corporate
combinations that reshaped American business for much of the past
three decades."Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., valued
at around $3.5 billion and with assets of $90 billion, is "one of the
biggest closely held U.S. money managers." It manages $55 billion "for
institutions, such as pension funds, endowments and foundations, and
$35 billion for wealthy individuals."
Other influential Jewish Wall Street
'players' (financiers, lenders, borrowers, advisers, lawyers, et al)
in recent years have included Alan Greenberg, Ira Harris, Bruce
Wasserstein, Jerome Kohlberg, Henry Kravis, Peter Cohen, Joseph Flom,
Martin Lipton, Victor Posner ("a onetime Baltimore slumlord" who was
indicted in 1982 for $1.25 million in income tax evasion and filing
false tax returns. Posner is "the flamboyantly wealthy Miami Beach
financier [who has] been discredited as one of the most unprincipled
and destructive modern corporate raiders." Nelson Peltz, the Belzbergs,
and many others. Alan Greenberg is the head of Bear Stearns,
Stephen Schwarzman founded the Blackstone Group, a prominent
investing firm. Well-known traditional Jewish investment banking
houses include Lehman Brothers, Lazard Freres,
Goldman Sachs, Salomon Brothers, Bache & Co., and
Cantor/Fitzgerald. "Jews took the lead in the '60s," notes Jewish
business author Steven Silbiger, "with new investment banking
techniques that helped introduce a conglomeration craze by using
multipurpose holding companies ... The concentration of Jewish-owned
securities firms created well-paying employment opportunities at all
levels of the securities industry: securities analysts; portfolio
managers; and stock, bond and futures traders; brokers and
deal-makers. Among the equity holders of the Jewish investment banking
and trading firms on Wall Street are hundreds of Jewish millionaires.
Upward mobility based on merit and high salaries has made working on
Wall Street a Jewish-friendly career choice ... Although exact figures
for the numbers of Jews are not available, they no doubt have a
leading and disproportionate role on Wall Street."
In a book entitled, "The Money
Machine," about the KKR company (Kohlberg, Kravis, and
Roberts), the author address three more Jewish Wall Street members:
"Here were three men who started a
firm in 1976 with a few milliondollars and ten
years later had control over what is believed to be the largest
corporate empire in the world ... Why did their names arouse such
intense emotions, ranging from envy, to awe, to fear?"
By
1999, KKR controlled 23 companies. Among others, its
stable included the Amphenol Corporation, Boyd's
Collection Inc., Idex Corporation,
Kindercare Learning Centers, Primedia Inc, and
Gillette. It also made $5.9 billion profit in 12 years of
ownership of America's second largest food retailing chain. By the
1980s, the company had "$45 billion in buying power," a sum "greater
than the gross national products of Pakistan or Greece."
A Jewish investment financier, Jeff Beck, has been afforded an entire
volume about his life, entitled Rainmaker. "By the end of the
1980s," notes its author, "[Beck] was living a life of deceit so
absolute that in effect his true personality had become turned inside
out. As money and money-making were glorified in the Reagan years,
Beck's pursuit of wealth and the social status derived from it
flowered into a full-fledged mania."
A Jewish investment financier, Jeff
Beck, has been afforded an entire volume about his life, entitled
Rainmaker. "By the end of the 1980s," notes its author, "[Beck]
was living a life of deceit so absolute that in effect his true
personality had become turned inside out. As money and money-making
were glorified in the Reagan years, Beck's pursuit of wealth and the
social status derived from it flowered into a full-fledged mania."
Another Jewish financier, Carl Icahn
"rose from obscurity to become one of the most feared corporate
raiders in the country, Chairman of TWA, the largest
shareholder in Texaco and USX (formerly US Steel) and a billionaire. [Icahn
was] perhaps the most successful financial predator of them all."Icahn is particularly notable for his repeatedly ruthless
campaigns to take over unwilling companies, loot them for obscene
profits, and -- successfully taking them over or not -- spitting them
out again, leaving a wake of relative ruin. In 1982, for instance,
Icahn warred with the whole community of Danville, Virginia, in his
hostile bid to takeover a corporation called Dan River. Townspeople
unified to resist him, investing retirement money and other savings
into company stock. The company finally resisted the financial
predator with a leveraged buyout; Icahn, however, managed to strip the
town's economic lifeblood of $8.5 million." In another much publicized
financial effort, during early attempts [eventually successful] to
take over TWA Airlines the company president, then C. E.
Meyer, Jr., called Icahn "one of the greediest men on earth." By 1998
he was attempting to take over Pan Am airlines.
In an attempt to ward off
Icahn's efforts to take over the Phillip's petroleum company, it had
to go $4.5 billion deeper in debt, as well as cut hundreds of millions
of dollars of capital expenses, sell off $2 billion in assets, limit
investor dividends, and tighten budgets. 5,000 fewer employees were
working for Phillips by the time Icahn was through. Icahn walked away
from Phillips unsuccessful after a 10-week struggle to seize the
company, but $52.5 million richer."The business
establishment took notice [of Icahn's recurrently nasty dealings],"
notes Connie Bruck, "One close associate of Icahn recalled that
Laurence Tisch [the Jewish] chairman of Loews and now of
CBS, Inc., said to him, 'Tell Carl to cut this out. It's
not good for the Jews.'"
And what of this sensitivity to
issues of Jewish concern on Wall Street, Jewish solidarity, and Jewish
economic influence, particularly (but not only) with regard to Israel?
In 1974 Stephen Isaacs noted a premiere example:
"Gustave Levy is the managing
partner of the important Goldman, Sachs, and
Company investment banking firm. Many have regardedLevy as the most powerful single individual on Wall Street,
able to makeor break men and companies almost
casually. He personally controls themovement of
billions of dollars. 'Gus is very conscious of being Jewish.He's very conscious of the problems it can cause,' said Philip
Greer, a one-time stockbroker who had reported on Wall Street ...
'When youtalk about Jewish muscle, Gus will back
off -- 'I don't make waves, [he says], 'I've got it, and I can use it,
and I know how to use it, and I do use it, but I'm not going to talk
to you about it because then that redneckin
Alabama is going to get very upset and I don't want him to know about
it.’.... In the Six Day War Gus was sending money over [to Israel]
like crazy. He would have financed the whole war all by himself. And
hemade no bones about whether you were Jewish or
not. 'You need Goldman, Sachs. I need you now. If I don't get you now,
you aren't getting me later.' It was as simple as that. He could've
raised it from Schwartz or O'Reilly, it didn't make any difference to
him, because they're both after the money that Gus controls."
In 1995, Wall Street financier
Michael Steinhardt (wizard of the moneymaking device, the "hedge
fund") closed his company, Steinhardt Partners, to
concentrate more deeply upon spreading the message of Jewish and
Israeli identity so dear to him. With a personal fortune of $400
million, he joined as a member of a consortium that bought Israel's
Bank Hapoalim and the Maritime Bank. One of
his brainchildren, called "Birthright," was by 1998 still in its
developmental stages; it is a plan to bring all young American Jews
for trips to Israel, to renew their roots to Jewish and Zionist
identities. "As part of the birthright of every Jew on this planet, we
want to offer free trips to Israel in their formative years," says
Steinhardt.A building in Manhattan for renewal of
Jewish identity was purchased, and there has been sponsorship of the
Jewish Campus Service Corps to pull young Jews to Jewish programs at
national campus Hillel centers.
By late 1999,
"Birthright" was in progress, at a cost of $210 million.
"Funded by the Israeli government, in partnership with Jewish
philanthropists and communities abroad," college-age Jews in America
competed in a lottery for free-trips to Israel with the expressed
purpose of being socialized into deeper identification with the Jewish
state. The goal is to transport 50,000 Jews a year to connect to the
tenets of Zionism. Not all Jews are happy with the program. The
chairman of the World Jewish Congress, for example, Isi Leibler,
thought there were many more worthy applications of the funds. Many
Jews getting in on the program too, he noted, were already "from
affluent homes."
"It can be said," suggested Gerald
Krefetz in 1982, "that Jewish wealth is generated from the financial
side rather than the operational side. Many wealthy Jews have climbed
the corporate ladder through law, accounting, and investment banking.
Apparently, they are more at home massaging numbers than dealing with
technical or substantive problems of production. If Jews are drawn to
the financial side, it is probably due to the fact that in the last
decade or two the financial tail wags the industrial dog."
"Greed
knows no bounds," said the New York Director of the
Securities and Exchange Commission in 1986, "there's always someone
who makes more than you do. Investment banking is the new gold mine."
In the same year New York psychiatrist Samuel Klagsbann, who had "a
lot of lawyers handling mergers and acquisitions" as patients, noted
that for these people "business is God."
"In the field of
takeovers and mergers the sky is the limit," said prominent
Jewish financier Felix Rohatyn (later
President Bill Clinton's ambassador to France),
"Not only in size, but the type of large corporation transactions. We
have gone beyond the norms of rational behavior. The tactics used in
corporate takeovers, both on offense and defense, create massive
transactions that greatly benefit lawyers, investment bankers, and
arbitrageurs, but often result in weaker companies and do not treat
share holders equally and fairly ... In the long run we in the
investment banking business cannot benefit from something that is
harmful to our economic system."
In 1986, Dennis Levine was the first to be caught, a "dealmaker" at
Drexel Burnham Lambart, for his "insider trading [exploiting
confidential company information] which opened the doors to the
greatest scandal in Wall Street history, a scandal that "caused grave
concern within the Jewish community."Not long
after, Martin Siegel was also arrested. As the scandal opened up, it
was discovered that these wealthy criminals were overwhelmingly
Jewish, including all its central players. "What was particularly
upsetting from a Jewish perspective," notes Ehrlich and Rehfeld, "was
the fact that the [criminal] network began, in part, when one member
first introduced another to a third at a United Jewish Appeal
function."
Connie Bruck, a Jewish journalist,
notes that"Privately, [lawyer Martin] Lipton
expressed another concern, one shared by many of the businessmen and
lawyers who were part of the Jewishestablishment
in New York, and by some of the Drexel contingent as well. They feared that the common strain among these nouveau
entrepreneurs and their nouveau banks at Drexel -- an overwhelming
majority were Jews -- would unleash a backlash of virulent
anti-Semitism... As one Drexel client ... put it: 'It used to be that
the Jews would go [toWASP lenders] and they'd beg
for money, and they'd be rejected while the Gentile would come in and
they'd all go to lunch and smoke cigars.
Now it's a
shift of power to the Jews. Drexel is making these huge sums of
money and the banks comparatively little. The problem is,
allthe entrepreneurs are
Jews with the exception of [T. Boone] Pickens and [Carl]
Lindner -- and Lindner, a long time supporter of Israel, is the most
Jewish non-Jew I've ever known." (In 1999, Lindner became controlling
owner of the Cincinnati Reds professional baseball
team.)
The Jewish
Criminal Element
In protecting
Jewish criminals Israel does not extradite no matter how atrocious the
crime or where it happen.
"It is hard to grasp the magnitude
and the scope of the crime that unfolded beginning in the mid-1970s,"
wrote a Wall Street Journal editor James Stewart, "in
the nation's market and financial institutions. It dwarfs any
comparable financial crime, from the Great Train Robbery to the
stock-manipulation schemes that gave rise to the nation's securities
laws in the first place. The magnitude of the illegal gains was so
large as to be incomprehensible to most laymen." - "[Michael] Milken
[and] some of his Drexel colleagues and anointed players," says Connie
Bruck, "had made more money in a shorter period of time than any other
individuals had done in the history of this country."
"A variety of critics voiced their
apprehension about what they saw as greed that had gone out of
control," says Ehrlich and Rehfeld, "... over the course of the next
three years, it was revealed that more than a dozen insiders -- many
of them members of Wall Street's most powerful firms -- as well as one
of the hottest houses on the Street, had amassed millions of dollars
in illegal profits. The accused were charged with violating securities
laws that prohibited insider trading, that is, they used material
confidential information primarily about impending merger bids, to
profit from securities and transactions."
"During the crime wave," says
Stewart, "the ownership of entire corporations changed hands, often
forcibly, at a clip never before witnessed. Household names --
Carnation, Beatrice, General Foods, Diamond Shamrock -- vanished in
takeovers that spawned criminal activity and violations of securities
laws. Others, companies like Unocal and Union Carbide, survived but
were heavily crippled. Thousands of workers lost their jobs, companies
loaded up with debt to pay for the deals, profits were sacrificed to
pay interest costs on the borrowings, and even so, many companies were
eventually forced into bankruptcy or restructurings. Bondholders and
shareholders lost millions more. Greed alone cannot account for such a
toll. These are the costs of greed coupled with market power -- power
unrestrained by the normal checks and balances of the free market
place."
A major wheeler-dealer in the 1980s
scandals was Ivan Boesky, who was (only a year before his 'public
disgrace') also the Chairman of the New York area United Jewish
Appeal. He also was a member of the board of both Yehsiva University
and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, as well as a
self-described "founder and supporter" of the Simon Wiesenthal Center
in Los Angeles."Boesky's Jewish
involvement," noted the Jewish Week, "resurfaced in the media
at the time of his sentencing in December, with revelations that he
had been taking classes at the Jewish Theological Seminary while
awaiting sentencing and that leaders of some organizations that
benefited from his gifts had written character references to the
court, attesting to his generosity. The letters have sparked a new
internecine debate among Jewish activists. Some claimed that Jewish
philanthropies were 'going to bat' for a confessed felon because they
had 'gotten their cut' from his ill-gotten wealth." - "Many Jews,"
wrote Ehrlich and Rehfeld, "worried that his trading abuses could cast
a pall over the entire Jewish community. Not only was he the most
important figure in the scandal, he was deeply involved in Jewish
philanthropy," including a $2.5 million donation to the Jewish
Theological Seminary for a library to be named after him and his wife.
This former head of the UJA was a
particularly nefarious character. He had been fined for violating New
York Stock Exchange trade laws in the 1970s; his 1985 book Merger
Mania was written by a ghost writer, Jeffrey Madrick, and largely
patterned (without saying so) on an existing volume by Guy
Wyser-Pratte. Boesky was the time of man who watched his employees
throughout his company by a video system in his office; he paid up to
$5 apiece for catered lunches so employees wouldn't have to leave
their desks, and "screamed at [employees] regularly." His oldest son,
Billy, is reported to have called his father "stark raving mad." Upon
Boesky's installment as the UJA campaign general chairman, he told his
Jewish audience: "We must make an enormous effort to encourage
people's sense of responsibility -- to be sure that at the very top we
have the right attitudes about giving to the campaign. Attitude
filters down."
The biggest fish caught in the Wall
Street scandal, however, was super
billionaire Michael Milken, the "junk bond king," who was
charged with racketeering and mail and securities fraud. Milken
single-handedly threatened to fulfill in real life the most profound
of traditional anti-Semitic nightmare fantasies. A former Milken
associate, notes Jewish journalist Connie Bruck, saw in Milken "the
force of... obsession, the megalomania, the
conviction of a cause so just that the end justifies the means and,
finally, the conceptualization of the corporate vehicle as a means of
extending control nationwide -- and then worldwide." "Many billions of
dollars were at his command," notes Bruck, "capital, as Milken had
been saying and proving for a long time, was not a scarce resource.
The only limits to his power, it seemed, would be the limits of his
fertile imagination."Milken, sometimes present at
Simon Wiesenthal functions, was well-known for being able to assemble
billions of dollars overnight to aid corporate takeovers. At a yearly
Milken-centered conference of the world's leading corporate takeover
specialists, affectionately called the Predator's Ball, a close Milken
associate, Donald Engel, arranged for high-priced prostitutes to
service the gathered "predators."
The goal of Milken and
his predatory cronies, says Leon Black of Drexel Lambart (the company
that was ostensibly Milken's employer) was to finance "the robber barons
who would become the owners of major companies in the future."(Black's father, Eli, was the "rabbinically-trained corporate
chieftain of United Brands" who in 1975 jumped out a
skyscraper window when it was revealed that he was paying bribes to
foreign governments). [BRUCK, p. 65] Among the players in this scenario,
Black particularly noted robber barons Carl Icahn, Henry Kravits (who
guided a $6.2 billion buyout of the Beatrice company), Samuel Heyman
(chairman of GAF who bid $6 billion for Union Carbide), Ronald Perelman,
and a lone Gentile, Rupert Murdoch, owner of
Fox News, (who was financed by Milken to take over Metromedia)."By ... 1985...," says Connie Bruck, "Milken was moving his
players across the M&A [corporate mergers and acquisitions] field as
though it were a chess board."
Ron Perelman's rise
is typical. Closely associated with Milken, his mentor's junk bonds
supported a variety of Perelman-inspired corporate invasions. Perelman
seized a resistant Revlon with a company one-eighth its
size, Pantry Pride. (In 1991 he installed Jerry Levin to
head it). He also took over a group of tottering Savings and Loans for
$315 million, suddenly controlling $7.1 billion in assets. In 1982
Perelman faced a lawsuit in his takeover of Technicolor.
"Taken as a whole," says Connie Bruck, "the complaint painted a
picture of Perelman allegedly using deceit and secret deals -- money
here, position there, whatever it took -- to buy off the necessary
people and get the company."In Perelman's hostile
takeover of Revlon, he tried to bribe the CEO of that
company, Michel Bergerac.
Another key Milken
crony was Fred Carr (born Seymour Fred Cohen), head of the Beverly
Hills-based First Executive Corporation, described by
Benjamin Stein as "the largest insurance catastrophe in the history of
the United States."Others who made use of Milken
junk bonds to build illusorily business empires include Perry Mendel
and Richard Grassgreen of the conglomerate Enstar (in
Montgomery, Alabama). Enstar eventually went bankrupt,
becoming, notes Benjamin Stein, "a source of rage, frustration, and
loss for the people of Montgomery. They were taken, and taken badly."Mendel and Grassgreen were convicted of fraud in 1991.
Milken has had a
powerful hand in a wide range of other attempted corporate takeovers.
"He would cause frightened managements," says Bruck, "to focus on
short term gains and elaborate defenses rather than research and
development that makes for sustained [corporate] growth. It would
cause the loss of jobs, as companies were taken over and broken up."
Milken aided, for further example, Eli Jacobs' acquisition of the
Memorex Corporation in 1986. And during the banking
Savings and Loans scandals of the 1980s, Columbia Savings
had a branch office one floor above Milken's own office;
Columbia CEO Thomas Spiegel eventually purchased about $4 billion
of Milken's junk bonds. In the early 1980s Saul Steinberg, with Milken
financing, had attempted a hostile takeover of the Disney
corporation. "Steinberg got calls from friends, Jews and non-Jews
alike," notes Joe Flower, "warning him, saying, as Steinberg later
characterized it, 'Saul, it's going to be you -- and with the name
Saul Steinberg it's clear where you are and what you are -- taking
over another white Anglo-Saxon Protestant company. In all the little
towns of America they're going to say, 'That Jew took over Walt
Disney. What would Walt say?'But the
warnings did not make Steinberg hesitate. 'They just made me angry."
In 1969 Steinberg had
tried to take over one of the most important banks in America, the $9
billion Chemical Bank. "Those who ... combined against him," noted
Connie Bruck, "included not only the director and management of
Chemical, but most of the banking business, Governor Nelson A.
Rockefeller and the legislature of New York state, and members of the
Federal Reserve Board and the Senate Banking and Currency Committee."
Although Milken eventually agreed to accept a six felonies conviction
and pay $600 million (a sum larger than the yearly budget of the
Securities Commission that sought to prosecute him) the prosecution of
fabulously wealthy Milken was no easy matter. There was, for all
intents and purposes, no money limit to his personal defense. He and
his firm, Drexel, planned to spend up to $650 million to fight his
conviction. This included a massive $140 million public relations
campaign to change his public image from criminal to hero, an effort
"revolving around the theme that he and his company helped to raise
money [that] benefited every American." The public relations firm
Milken hired referred to him as a "national treasure." In an effort to
control public discourse about himself, Milken even bought the rights
to photographs of him at all the news wire companies.In February 1986 he even offered to pay journalist Connie Bruck
to not finish, and publish, a book she was working on about him and
his associates. Expecting a significant Black presence in the New York
City jury that would try him, Milken hired an expert on public
relations in the Black community; the wealthy financier suddenly had
an interest in the underprivileged and paid for 1,700 ghetto kids to
go to a Mets baseball game. Milken clients and sycophants even took
out full page ads in major papers, including the New York Times,
proclaiming, "We Believe in You."
Milken ended up
spending only a little over two years in prison, a small sacrifice for
the staggering amount of wealth he accumulated. He was sentenced,
notes Jewish scholar Norman Cantor, "by a Gentile woman judge who was
married to a prominent Jewish lawyer. Eventually she found grounds for
sharply reducing his sentence. .The skill of some Jewish billionaires
in skirting the limits of the law but somehow emerging unscathed, with
the aid of high-priced Jewish attorneys, and a compliant press, was
remarkable." Milken court fines alone eventually amounted to $1.1
billion. Still on probation, in November 1997 the
New York Times noted that "evidence of further illegal behavior
since his release might well cause the government to request further
sanctions against Mr. Milken, including even his return to prison."
Since prison, Milken has been busy collecting tens of millions of
dollars, "counseling" the MCI Communications Corporation,
advising principal players in the Time-Warner-Turner Broadcasting
mass media merger, and working with financier Ronald Perelman. In 1996
the New York Times noted Milken's presence in Israel in
negotiations with a company called the Eisenberg Group.
"The Milken Group," said the Times, "might invest in Israel
Chemicals, of which the Israeli government owns 48.5%." [NYT, 8-14-96]
The Eisenberg Group at the fore of all this is headed by Shaul
Eisenberg, the richest man in Israel, who, "says Alan Vorspan," is the
shadowy Israeli billionaire who had been
brokering Israel defense technology to China for more than ten years
... 'Arms merchant of the world' is not synonymous with a 'light unto
the nations." - "The arms business," note Andrew and Leslie Cockburn,
"was and remains central to [Eisenberg's] operation." Other holdings
include everything from chemical factories in Korea to projects in
Central America.
James Stewart,
a non-Jew and an editor at the Wall Street Journal, came under
fierce attack for "anti-Semitism" for his book about Milken
and the Wall Street scandals, the Den of
Thieves(a title taken from this New
Testament verse: "And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out
all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the table
of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves. And say
unto them, it is written. My house shall be called the house of
prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves." [MATHEW, 21:12-13])
A lawyer for Milken,
a man we have run across before, Alan Dershowitz, tried to use the now
standard Jewish defense argument -- an accusation of anti-Semitism --
as a tool to spare his criminal client jail time. Dershowitz published
editorial pieces in the Wall Street Journal attacking Stewart.
He also paid $45,000 for a full page ad in the New York Times
the next day to outline his accusations, and half-page ads in other
papers, everywhere charging anti-Semitism. In a letter to the New
York Times Book Review section Dershowitz attacked both Stewart
and the Review's reviewer of Den of Thieves, Michael
Thomas, (a "money" columnist for the New York Observer) for
alleged anti-Semitism. "Both,"
Dershowitz wrote, "seem preoccupied by Jews."
In defense, Thomas
(whose novel Hanover Place and its free exploration of Jewish
corruption on Wall Street has also been called anti-Semitic) said:
"If
I point out that 9 out of 10 people involved in street crime are
Blacks, that's an interesting sociological observation. If I point out
that 9 out of10 people involved in securities
indictments are Jewish, that is an anti-Semitic slur. I cannot sort
the difference."
When business
journalist Connie Bruck published The Predator's Ball, a
volume about Milken and the junk bond world,
a Drexel lawyer (where Milken worked) accused her of anti-Semitism.
"I remember a lawyer at Chas Gordeon and Reindel screaming at me and
accusing me of anti-Semitism," said Bruck later, "And I'm Jewish, so
that made it more unpleasant. It all comes from Milken. Milken told
friends of his, who repeated it to me, that he believed the
government's investigation was fueled by anti-Semitism."
"If Stewart is
guilty of anything," wrote Allen Sloan of Newsday, "it's
breaking the Cohen Rule when dealing with ethnic groups. It's only
safe to identify a person ethnically or racially in a positive
context ... Down deep we all understand the rules. But these rules
shackle journalists and muffle the truth. They amount to censorship
... By blasting Stewart (a full page ad, for crying out loud!) for
doing nothing more than stating the truth, Dershowitz has attempted
to discredit his reporting by besmirching his character -- and, in
the process, making Milken seem a victim of religious bigotry.
Dershowitz's accusations, beside the point and below the belt, is a
form of scape-goatism that comes perilously close to what it
purportedly condemns."
Across the ocean,
England had its own very publicized Jewish financier scandal at
about the same time -- sometimes known as the "Guinness Four"
affair. It was, noted the (London) Independent, "the most
notorious insider dealing fraud of the Eighties," a plot to boost
the share value of the Guinness corporation. [BRAID, p.
1] On trial were Gerald Ronson (head of Heron International),
Ernest Saunders, Jack Lyons, and Anthony Parnes. They were all
convicted, but each received reduced, short-term jail sentences.
"All four defendants," noted the Times (of London), "... are
Jews ... Any attempt to incite anti-Semitism because of Jewish
financial misbehavior has to be deplored and opposed. But any
attempt to minimize or excuse the offenses is also unacceptable ...
In folk prejudice the 'Jewish banker' is an unkind cliché, but
herein lies the problem. He exists ... Quiet voices are to be heard
that such [beat the system] attitudes are more common than ought to
be any Jewish financier. And recognizing that such a malady exists
is the first condition for curing it." [LONGLEY, 9-1-90]
Only a few years
earlier, in the 1980s too, was the case of yet another prominent
Jewish American entrepreneur, Marc Rich (father's name originally
Reich). "In the shadowy, secret world of commodities trading," noted
John Ingham and Lynne Feldman, "Marc Rich had no peer ...
Appellations for Marc Rich have included 'ruthless tycoon,'
'vengeful businessman,' and 'scheming marketeer.' Often called the
most corrupt man in this fraternity of free booting capitalists,
Rich was also among the most secretive." [INGHAM/FELDMAN, p. 550]
Rich even managed to profit off millions of barrels of oil from Iran
during the Iranian hostage crisis. In 1983, he and associate, Pinky
Green, fled to Switzerland to avoid a warrant out for their arrest.
(Rich has deep ties to Israel and has been involved over the years
in "negotiating the return of captured Israeli soldiers and Jewish
dissidents. In a controversial move, President
Bill Clinton pardoned Rich's crimes as he left the White
House in 2001. "Several Israeli officials wrote Clinton in support
of [Rich's] pardon.") [MSNBC, 2-2-2001]
Perhaps Rich had
occasion in Europe to run into fellow white collar criminal Gerald
Goldwell. Goldwell, notes a volume entitled Organized Crime in Europe,
epitomized those involved in "extensive international fraud ...
making use of several shell companies and of insolvent firms ... The
leader of one of the largest such organizations was
Gerald Goldwell, a well-known
American fraudster, whose career of 15 years in business crime made
him one of the most experienced crime entrepreneurs in his field."Based in Amsterdam, Goldwell's criminal scope included
Bermuda, Dutch Antilles, the Bahamas, Canada, Luxemburg, Germany and
Panama.
In 1980, in
Switzerland, a Jewish immigrant from Bulgaria, Eli Pinkas, and his
wife committed suicide as their swindles began collapsing down upon
him. After his death, noted the Washington Post, "it was
revealed that the quiet executive was, in fact, a master swindler
who created an elaborate portfolio of false documents and records to
steal more than $140 million from an international array of banks
and industries." The Pinkas scam was noted as the "biggest private
financial scandal in recent Swiss history." [BERRY, J., F.,
7-20-80,p. A1]
At about the same time
in Panama, in an unrelated criminal enterprise, Jewish entrepreneur
Isaac Zafrani "in two years time, had become the most powerful video
pirate in the world. By selling fraudulent copies of first-run
films, Zafrani, more than any other single operation world-wide,
posed the greatest threat to legitimate video and theatrical
interests." By 1984, his profits in the bootleg business were about
$20 million. In fact, the whole Jewish state of Israel
is an Isaac Zafrani. As Israel's Institute for Advanced Strategic
and Political Studies noted in March 2000:
"Israel is known the world over for
intellectual properties rights piracy. Indeed, it is
likely that Israel will soon be downgraded from the second worst
rating of violating countries to the worst by the
International Property Alliance (IIPA), the international
organizationfighting software and intellectual
property crimes of piracy." [INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STRATEGIC...,
2000]
"In 1998," notes the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, "an American
delegation visited Israel to investigate the issue and found Israel
to be 'an international center for pirate distribution' --
estimating that the extent of the forgery industry reached tens,
maybe hundreds, of millions of dollars. The U. S. delegation
threatened to impose sanctions against Israel by increasing duty tax
for Israeli imports to the United States. The delegation also noted
that the Israeli forgery industry has grown in recent years because
of the infiltration of organized crime."
The 1980s also
highlighted young Jewish swindler Barry
Minkow of Reseda, California, whose misdeeds entitled his story to
be immortalized in an entire volume, subtitled The Kid Who
Swindled Wall Street. Minkow was sentenced to prison. "Barry,"
notes Daniel Akst, "succeeded in creating not a corporation, but the
hologram of one." His ZZZZ Best firm, founded on
carpet-cleaning, eventually was worth $200 million. As a result of
Minkow's scams, "widows and orphans lost
their money. Hard working folks lost their jobs, or had their
careers ruined, their lives stained, their hopes turned to ash."
The author who recounts Minkow's business career calls him a
psychopath, "someone who can act without regard to conscience,
victimizing people again and again without remorse." [AKST, D., p.
5, 6, 270] Minkow associates included Maurice Rind, "a stock
swindler before financial fraud was fashionable."
In a 1994 case,
Martin Wolfe of Baton Raton, Florida, was the "principal figure" in
a nationwide investment scam involving pizza vending machines,
defrauding some investors of their life savings for nonexistent
machines. "You have to plant the seed," Wolfe once told a business
audience, "so the seed grows into an oak, and the oak grows into
greed, which takes over the whole body. Greed is good." [IWANOWSKI,
J., 3-20-94, p. E1] In 1996 investors in California's Pioneer
Mortgage firm lost $250 million. As the San Diego Union Tribune
observed, "Many got in because Pioneer's Chief Executive -- Gary
Naiman -- was very active in his synagogue and activities related to
Israel."
In Arizona, in
1997, Ben Friedman "pleaded guilty to 3 of 73 felony charges of
securities and tax frauds ... [He] bilked his investors out of more
than $2.5 million and the state of Arizona out of more than $5
million in unpaid taxes." After a five year investigation into
Friedman's wheelings and dealings, the Arizona State Department of
Revenue concluded that "This is the largest tax prosecution
involving personal income taxes the department has ever undertaken.
All the Arizona personal income tax cases prosecuted to date would
not equal what Mr. Friedman evaded." [SILVERMAN, A., 5-14-98]
In 2002, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) "accused
[Reed] Slatkin [a Jew who became a Scientologist] of running a Ponzi
scheme shortly after her filed for bankruptcy in May 2001. (A Ponzi
scheme is a phony investment plan in which money provided by later
investors is used to pay artificially high returns to the initial
investors, with the goal of attracting as many investors as
possible). Slatkin's allged scheme is said to be one of the biggest
cases of investment fraud in American history."
Beginning in 1977,
the FBI launched a secret investigation into the world of
white-collar crime. Known as "Abscam," the investigation eventually
led to a number of bribe-taking Congressmen. The central player
recruited by the FBI sting operation to penetrate the world of
white-collar fraud was an expert in the field, life-long swindler
Mel Weinberg, "who had worked North America and five other
continents, fleecing public officials, movie stars, dictators,
generals, mobsters, political terrorists, and ordinary businessmen
with democratic impartiality." [GREENE, 1981, p. 2]Weinberg was set up as a representative for a fake wealthy
Arabian oil sheik, Abdul, and his networking for the FBI in the
white collar underworld netted people from a number of backgrounds.
In the Jewish community, these included Herman Weiss, Joe Meltzer,
William Rosenberg ("a picture version of the affluent swindler")
[GREENE, 1981, p. 9], Ben Cohen (a Miami lawyer "who once
represented the Florida gambling syndicate,") [GREENE, 1981, p.
129], Marvin Rappaport ("who was anxious to supply Abdul with sex
films"), [GREENE, 1981, p. 129], and Greg Katz ("who had become a
millionaire through a series of corrupt deals with New Jersey
Democratic officials spanning thirty years.")
*In Argentina and
other Latin American countries in the late 1970s, notes Jerome
Barromi, there were "a series of financial and political scandals
involving prominent Jews." Among those charged was Mexican-based
"powerful financier" David Gravier; family members him were also
arrested and "accused of having laundered and recycled money from
the Montoneros, acquired by bank robberies and kidnapping wealthy
businessmen." (At least one prominent member in the revolutionary
Montoneros organization, wanted by the government, was given refuge,
on the basis of his Jewish credentials, in Israel). [SACHER, H.,
1985, p. 299] "With several other Jewish investors, most of them
Mexican, Gravier used his family bank to purchase controlling shares
of the American Bank and Trust, a major New York financial
institution. He then skimmed $50 million out of ABT, precipitating
its collapse and the liquidation of $180 million of its deposits."
Among the depositors were generals in Argentina's military. [SACHAR,
H., 1985, p. 304] In 1977, "a new scandal erupted, the bankruptcy of
the Jewish-owned (the Argentine Madanes family) aluminum factory,
ALUAR." [BARROMI, p. 31] "Then came the [Jose Ber]
Gelbar scandal," notes Jewish scholar Howard Sachar, "involving the
first Jew to serve in a Peruvian cabinet. "Accused of graft in
accumulating the fortune required for purchasing his vast investment
[in ALUAR]," he fled to the United States.
In 2001, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency covered a panel
discussion about the Jewish situation in Argentina, noting: -
"According to Argentine Jewish expatriates in the audience, the
Jewish leadership in the country is entrenched, incompetent and
corrupt. They also claimed that the two Jewish-run banks were linked
closely to a corrupt government and played fast and loose with the
community's money. When the banks failed, some $26 million in
communal assets were lost overnight. 'My brother can get over
losing his money, but he cannot get over the fact that Jews betrayed
other Jews, [Rabbi Alfredo] Borodowski said."
In Australia, noted
the 1994 American Jewish Yearbook, there were arrest warrants
out for"Abe Goldberg and a business associate,
Katy Rochelle Boskowitz ... over the multimillion dollar collapse in
1990 of the Linter textile and
investment group and alleged fraudulent borrowing and misconduct.
Boskowitz was arrested, but Goldberg remained in his native Poland
... which has no extradition treaty with Poland. Robyn Greenberg,
convicted of fraud following the demise of a women's investment and
finance group in western Australia, was sentenced to 17 years inprison. Some saw the harsh sentence as inspired by
anti-Semitism Others by sexism."
In the wake of the
much-publicized Wall Street scandals, in 1987 the New York Jewish
Week devoted a seven page "special report" entitled "Are We
Facing a Crisis in Jewish Ethics?" to the theme of recurrent Jewish
corruption. The newspaper noted that -
"Four years ago,
Jewish bankers in the Jewish state conspired in what has become
known as Israel's bank shares scandal. Of the four banks, one was
owned by Histradut [Israel's labor federation], one by the Jewish
Agency, and one by Mizrachi. Last year, a New York yeshiva that was
the seat for a grand rabbi was involved in a money-launderingscheme for area businesses. Some of them were reported to be
illegal.
Two officials of
the school were indicted and convicted. This year aprominent Wall Street figure and a lay leader of the New York
Jewish community pleaded guilty to insider trading violations on
what is said to be a massive scale. Several others have since been
indicted -- andmost so far are Jewish. And then
there are the various corruptionscandals
currently plaguing New York: public officials betraying thepublic trust by lining their own pockets -- andalmost all of them Jewish." [JEWISH WEEK, 5-15-87, p. 25]
Jewish names
swirling in New York City scandals in the late 1980s included Alex
Liberman, Stanley Friedman, Marvin Kaplan, Michael Lazar, Lester
Shafran, Shelley Chevlowe, Victor Botnick, Jay Turoff, Melvin
Lebetkin, Geoffrey Lindenauer, Charles Berg, Bernard Sandow (head of
New York's Parking Violations Bureau) and Donald Manes (Queens
Borough president), among others. [NEWFIELD/BARRETT, 1988; THE
RECORD, 3-18-88, p. C22]Friedman (head of
the Bronx Democratic Party), Lazar (City Transportation
Administrator) and Shafran (Director of the City Parking Bureau)
were convicted of racketeering (involving bribes, kickbacks, et al).
Kaplan, who had a $22 million contract with New York City's parking
bureau, was convicted of perjury.
In 1998, the tide
had not abated: the lament in the Canadian Jewish News was
still the same: "In recent years a wave of financial scandals have
shaken the Jewish community. How to conduct one's business
ethnically is emerging as a central concern among rabbis and
responsible community leaders." [CAN JEW NEWS, Business Ethics]In 1999, the same Jewish newspaper followed up with another
article about this insistent subject, saying:
"Unfortunately, all
too often (once is too often) we hear about
rituallyobservant Jews
involved in white collar crimes: tax evasion, moneylaundering, embezzlement and fraud. Perhaps even
worse is the attitudethat one so often hears in
casual conversation: 'I am only an employee,so I
can't write off personal expenses,' or 'Of course I pay my
contractorin cash,' thereby helping him evade
his tax responsibility and thus stealingfrom the
honest taxpayer ... For some, the phenomenon is culturally based ...
[The Jews use the past historical discriminations against them as
their resort to cheating. This attitude was then carried over to our
democracies ... It does not require a very close examination of ourgeneral business practices to realize that a serious problem
exists...
In 2001, 51 people were indicted for fraud worth millions of dollars
in a rigging of McDonald's promotional games. "The scheme [involved]
friends and close-knit family members, including a husband and
wife." Jerome P. Jacobson, the scam ringleader and director of
security for Simon Marketing Inc. (the firm contracted by McDonald's
to run its promotional games: i.e., Monopoly and Who Wants
to Be a Millionaire?), "embezzled more than $20 million worth of
winning McDonald's game pieces from his employer." Names of those
indicted are hard to come by, but those listed with Jacobson by the
Miami Herald were Bernard Weintraub and Adam Zucker. (Un-indicted
CEO of McDonalds? Jewish Jack Greenberg). Attorney
General John Ashcroft announced that "the complaint alleges that
Jacobson provided the winning game pieces to his friends and
associates who acted as recruiters. These recruiters then solicited
others who falsely and fraudulently represented that they were the
legitmiate winners of the McDonald's games." [MIAMI HERALD, 12-9-01]
[CNN, 8-22-01]
In the Jewish
homeland, in 1994, Agence France Presse noted that
"investigations, scandals, and trials involving securities dealers
and the country's biggest banks have shaken Israel's financial
markets as they've never been shaken before." [SCHATTNER] This
included the arrests of Vladimir Saar and Arie Shafir for securities
crimes, as well as the jailing of Amos Weiss, "one of Israel's
leading securities dealers." [SCHATTNER]In
2001, the Isaeli newspaper Haaretz noted that three years later, in
1997, not much had changed in the name of "Jewish ethics" in the
Jewish homeland. The Cleveland Jewish News began an article
by stating that "Israel seems to be going through a golden age of
corruption and criminality," and then listed those in the so-called
"Bar-On affair," including Knesset member Arye Deri's trial for
accepting bribes; building contractor David Appel's "cheating poor
immigrants out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in government
compensation"; the investigation into the Prime Minister's chief
aide Avigdor Lieberman's falsification
of documents; Dror Hoter Isha'i, head of the Israel Bar Association,
and his trial for income tax evasion; and an investigation of
Jerusalem mayor Ehud Olmert for falsification of election campaign
documents. "But that's just in the Bar-On affair," notes the News,
"the Israeli government is chockfull of other senior figures who
have been accused of corruption and/or malfeasance." [DERFNER,
Corruption, p. 8]These include police
investigations of Shas Knesset member Rafael Pinchasi, Internal
Security Minister Avigdor Kahalani, former Justice Minister Ya'acov
Ne'eman, former Shas Knesset member Yair Levy, Labor Knesset member
Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, and National Religious Party member Avner
Shaki. "As for the mayors who have gone on trial for corruption and
other sorts of crimes," notes the News, "the list is far too
long to mention."
In 1994 the
chairman of the Jewish Agency, Simcha Dinitz, had earlier joined the
crowd when he was charged with fraudulent use of agency credit cards
and other indiscretions, [HOFFMAN, D, p. A12] and in 1996 the Jewish
National Fund weathered "a scandal over alleged financial
mismanagement." [FORWARD, 3-21-97, p. 4]In
1997, an Israeli millionaire, Nahum Manbar, was convicted of treason
for selling material to Iran that has value in the manufacture of
poison gas. A member of Manbar's legal defense team was even found
to have had simultaneous affairs with the judge on the case, the
Israeli prime minister's media advisor, and a Shin Bet secret police
officer. [BORGER, p. 16] That same year, Dudu Topaz, a major Israeli
television personality, was exposed for the fraudulent system of his
game show.
In 1999, Ofer
Nimrodi, chairman of one of the largest newspapers in Israel,
Ma'ariv, went to prison for four months "for electronically
eavesdropping on his two competitors as well as on other media
figures." A former employee, Rafi Pridan, was also reported"to have tapes of his old boss planning to murder the
publishers of two rival newspapers, plus a private eye who once help
put Nimrodi -- and Pridan -- in jail for wiretapping."
Recent Israeli
military-related scandals include a controversial over an early
release date from jail for an air force general, Rami Dotan, who was
imprisoned for embezzling $12 million, and Yehuda Gil, a senior
Mossad [Israeli CIA] official, who was finally caught inventing --
continually for ten years -- information from an entirely fabricated
spy in Syria. Enjoying the status of being a spy legend in Israel,
Gil's total fictions nearly brought Israel to war with its Arab
neighbor.
In 1999, the
Associated Press reported that "several former officials of
Israel's biggest bus company are suspected of accepting millions of
dollars in bribes" [AP, Israel's] and in another story that
"Israeli police have recommended that outgoing Justice Minister
Tsahi Hanegbi be charged with corruption." [AP, Police] That
same year too, "Israeli police arrested a local official of the
ultra-Orthodox Shas party [Yehuda Kehati] -- a key ally of Prime
Minister Benyamin Netanyahu -- Saturday over allegations of fraud in
connection with Monday's elections for parliament and prime
ministership ... Fraud allegations are nothing new in Israeli
politics." [AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, Ultra]A little while later came losing Prime Minister Netanyahu's
turn: "Two months after bowing out of public life, Benyamin
Netanyahu was back in the spotlight at the center of a police probe
by the national fraud squad. Israel's former first couple are
suspected of corruption, abuse of trust, attempting to suborn
witnesses, and hindering the investigation, which centers on 100,000
dollars of renovations and other work at two Jerusalem homes." In
2001, the Washington Post noted that, with 1994 changes in
Israeli election laws, "as a result many Israeli politicians
resorted to a wide range of illegal and semi-legal ways to raise
money, including setting up nonprofit
organizations, whose records are shielded from public inquiry."
[DOBBS, M., 2-21-01] That same year, after a building collapsed in
Jerusalem killing 23 people, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz
noted that -
"Construction regulation in Jerusalem has been under a cloud since
November 1999, when a huge corruption scandal exploded under the
city's construction regulation department. After a six month
undercover operation, Jerusalem police uncovered a ring of
municipality officials who systematically accepted hundreds of
thousands of shekels in bribes
from architects and contractors." [AVRAHAMI, I., 5-27-01]
In 1999, in examining Israeli Likud
Party fundraising, the Jewish Week noted that "almost
$300,000 appears to have vanished somewhere between the United
States and its Israeli charitable destination. And at least under
$160,000 -- donated by right-wing philanthropist Dr. Irving
Moskowitz to a fund-raiser linked to Likud -- was never reported to
the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, as required by law." In 2001,
"[Israeli] Histradut Teachers Union head Avraham Ben-Shabbat and his
deputy Uri Groman, were placed under 14 days' house arrest by Tel
Aviv District Court ... after both admitted to
fraudulently obtaining academic degrees, then
using them to receive higher pay."
And let us not
forget the swindles befalling some of the
immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union. In
1996, a class action suit was filed against Va'ad (the Ukrainian
Jewish immigration umbrella organization), an immigration activist
named Yosef Zisels, the Jewish Agency, and the Liason Bureau of the
Israeli government. "According to the charges," notes the
Jerusalem Post, "the immigrants gave money from their savings
and the sale of their property to Zisels to transfer to Israel at
the advice of emissaries working for the agency and bureau. However,
they claim they were not paid the sums half a year later, as had
been stipulated in the contract with the Va'ad." [TSUR, p. 6] Then
came the 1999 investigations of "lawyers who reportedly cheated
thousands of elderly Israelis out of more than half a billion
dollars by offering to help them obtain German pensions. [i.e.,
Holocaust-era reparations]"
In November of 1999
the Montreal Gazette noted that"It was
scandal, and lots of it, that truly
occupies the country's [Israel's]attention.
There was a scandal of lust, scandal of
greed, scandal of corruption. There was a scandal
involving the national soccerteam for losing a
key match following pre-game visits to a house of ill repute. There
was a scandal involving former prime minister
Benyamin Netanyahu and his wife,
Sarah, accused of acceptingbribes and stealing
valuable state gifts. And there was yeshiva
scandal aplenty. So much muck was being raked that thenewspaper Yediot Ahronot even ran a full-page scandal guideon Friday, with boxes for every major affair, its suspects,
its allegations and the status of its investigation."
In 2000, nothing
had changed. The Jewish Week headlined an article "Israel
Sinking in Scandal Swamp: 'Light Unto Nations' Seen Losing Moral
Bearing Amid Corruption, Fraud Probes." New scandals included those
surrounding Israel's president, Ezer Weizman, who had taken hundreds
of thousands of dollars in a secret fund from French Jewish
millionaire Edouard Sarousi, and Prime Minister Ehud Barak "who was
questioned by state Comptroller Eliezer Goldberg last week about
allegations that fictitious associations illegally pumped foreign
contributions into his 1999 election campaign."
In 2002, Israeli MK (Member of
Knesset/Parliament) Michael Kleiner complained that "World Jewish
organizations are set to 'rake into their coffers' some $1 billion
in unclaimed funds allocated by Swiss banks to compensate for assets
from dormant Holocaust-era accounts ... Kleiner accused the
[Israeli] government, along with Jewish organizations, of compliance
in allowing the Swiss to avoid publishing the lists of bank account
and insurance policyholders. The Jewish organizations have a
conflict of interests, he said, since they cut a deal under which
all unclaimed monies would go to them."
Scandals in Israel
are an old theme. Looking back to the 1970s, notes Richard
Rubenstein, "there was a serious loss of public confidence in the
Labor government [the then-empowered political party] as a result of
revelations of economic corruption and greed among some government
leaders, heads of state-owned banks, corporations, and the Histradut
labor federation." [RUBENSTEIN, R., p. 229] And as World Zionist
Organization president Nahum Goldmann noted about
Israel's first prime minister, David Ben
Gurion: -
"A
promise to him was quite worthless. He did not hesitate
to promise one thing and do the opposite. He was absolutely
unscrupulous. Henever pursued any objective
other than realizing the Zionist idealand
satiating his immense ambition." [GOLDMANN, N., 1978, p. 94]
In 2001, a London Guardian reporter noted with outrage that
Israel has blatantly "cheated and lied and
abused the trust" it had in trade agreements with European nations.
"No sooner had the ink dried on [Israeli minister] Shimon Peres's
signature [to a Euro-Israeli trade pact]," notes Brian Whitaker, -
"than Israel began to cheat. To
imagine that this was due to a few bent officials in the customs
department would be a mistake: cheating was
built into the system and it was carried out with the blessing of
the Israeli government ... In 1997, as a result of
complaints, the European commission sent a delegation to Israel to
find out why Brazilian orange juice arriving in Europe had been
certified as Israeli in order to qualify for preferential rates. The
problem, the delegation concluded, went way beyond orange juice:
Israeli customs officials simply could not be trusted. The problem
was so serious, their report said, that
'the validity of ALL preferential certificates issued by Israel, for
all products,' was in doubt."
An Israeli journalist noted the moral tenor of its citizens in 2001,
a world view intrinsic to Jewish identity throughout the history of
the Jewish Diaspora and its traditional
circumvention of surrounding Gentile law: -
"The Israeli temperament does not accept rules of behavior and
rejects natural obedience to the law. The average Israeli is afraid
to feel like a sucker, so scorns the rules and regulations and
regards the law as an area of ever-expandable space in which to
maneuver, outwit, bypass, and bribe, if necessary, in order to
achieve more."
This theme was repeated again a week later
by a Jewish ethnic magazine, The Forward, which wondered if
Israel's national "personality trait" of subversion of civil law had
roots in Jewish ethics in earlier times in other countries: -
"[There is] universal awareness that something is definitely rotten
in the state of Israel. This is, after all, a country in which
bending the rules is said to be a national past time, cutting
corners a way of life and cheating the authorities the proof of
merit ... Sticklers for the law are ridiculed and abused, where
anyone who works by the book is branded a sap, a 'freier,'
the worst insult in modern Israeli lexicon ... Many people believe
Israeli laxity, which borders on anarchy, is a national personality
trait that cannot be eradicated by laws alone. Some trace the trait
all the way back to the historical Jewish Diaspora, where Jews often
found solace in bending the rules imposed by the often anti-Semitic
authorities."
The same year, Michael Finkel had this to say, about another
criminal subject, in the New York Times: -
"Moshe lives in Israel, which happens to be
one of the more active nations in the international
organ-trafficking market. The market, which is completely
illegal, is so complex and well organized that a single transaction
often crosses three continents ... Yet in Israel and a handful of
other nations, including India, Turkey, China, Russia and Iraq,
organ sales are conducted with only a scant nod toward secrecy. In
Israel, there is even tacit government acceptance of the practice --
their
national health-insurance program covers part, and sometimes all, of
the cost of brokered transplants. Insurance companies are happy to
pay, since the cost of kidney surgery, even in the
relatively short run, is less than the cost of dialysis. According
to the coordinator of kidney transplantation at Hadassah University
Hospital in Jerusalem, 60 of the 244
patients currently receiving post-transplant care purchased their
new kidney from a stranger -- just short of 25 percent of the
patients at one of Israel's largest medical centers participating in
the organ business.
Relatively few
transplant operations, illegal or legal, take place in Israel. Every
proposed kidney transplant in the country between two unrelated
people is carefully screened for evidence of impropriety by a
national committee. Therefore, almost all of these illegal surgeries
are performed elsewhere, in nations where the laws are easier to
duck, including the United States. Israel also does not contribute
much to the supply side of the equation. Organ donation is extremely
low; an estimated 3 percent of Israelis have signed donor cards ....
Paying for an organ has become so routine in Israel that there have
been instances in which a patient has elected not to accept the
offer of a kidney donation from a well-matched relative. 'Why risk
harm to a family member?' one patient told me. Instead, these
patients have decided that purchasing a kidney from someone they've
never met -- in almost all cases someone who is impoverished and
living in a foreign land, and not Jewish -- is a far more palatable
option ... A few Americans do go abroad for transplants. A man named
Jim Cohan, who lives in Los Angeles, helps organize such trips ...
Cohan's price for a kidney, he says, is $125,000 ... Only a small
portion of the money actually goes to the person selling the organ
-- as little as $800 ... [There is a physician] who has repeatedly
been accused by the Israeli media, including one of the nation's
leading daily papers, Haaretz, of participating in hundreds of
overseas transplants, many of them in Turkey. The [Israeli]
surgeon's name is Zaki Shapira."
In 2001, an Israeli
newspaper, Ha'aretz, announced that "Romanian authorities are
looking into the possible links between
Israeli adoption agencies and an
illegal global conspiracy to sell organs for
transplants. The Romanian embassy in Israel has asked
for, and received from the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry, a list
of all children born in Romania who have been brought to Israel for
adoption in recent years. The Romanian officials are trying
to ascertain if all such children arrived in Israel with all their
organs in their bodies."
In the midst of the growing 1980s Wall Street scandal, the American
Jewish Committee held a panel discussion on Jewish ethics at a
conference luncheon. The Palm Beach Jewish Journal quoted
Rabbi David Gordis as worrying that with all the negative publicity
some might see Jews in America broadly "as exploiters of the
economy, parasites, profiteers." Judith Ehrlich and Barry Rehfeld
note that "[Pointing] to the dangers to Jews from the prominence of
Jewish namesin current scandals and the imagery
that emerged from the visibility, Rabbi Gordis urged that 'as a
people we must look more deeply into the recesses of our traditions,
our experiences, our values."[EHRLICH, p. 345]
The "crisis in
Jewish ethics" in America, epitomized in the Wall Street scandals,
was of course nothing new to the 1980s. Well-publicized scandals
involving prominent and powerful Jews surface fairly regularly.Gerald Krefetz, for instance, noted a particularly nasty
Jewish-based scandal in the 1970s: -
Abused, neglected
and swindled Nursing Home residents by Jewish owners and staff.
"Bathed in the
merciless lights of Congressional hearings, the witnessesexposed to a national audience the morbid, pathetic, and
sordidconditions of senior citizens in nursing
and old-age homes. It was as if they had found that a Jew was in
charge of a concentration camp. The whole proceedings were a
shanda (shame) of the first order, [with] illegal
practices of a rabbi and other prominent Jews on a captive
population unable to protect itself ... [Rabbi Bernard] Bergman was
more than a symbolic figure of evil in the nursing home industry --
he was theindustry ... [KREFETZ, p. 128] ... It
became clear that Bergman had almost oligopolic powers, with
interests in close to a hundred different homes across the nation.
It also became clear that perhaps more than any other industry or
service area, Jews dominated the field, that many of theoperators were Jewish, including Bergman, Eugene Hollander,
and Albert Schwartzberg ... Insensitivity, greed, and human
degradation were thehallmark of a majority
of the private facilities. And that the chief perpetrator of this
terminal inhumanity should be an orthodox rabbi and a prominent
Zionist was a mind-boggling reversal of values. One illustration is
perhaps typical of Bergman's operations, his persistence, his
political connections, and his unabashed use of his 'Jewishness'
that he paraded as if he were its victim.
The hypocritical Bergman was using the lethal and explosivecharge of anti-Semitism as a foil for his commercial
maneuvers."
Bergman was
prominent a number of Jewish Orthodox institutions. "Reputed to be
worth $100 million," notes Alan Dershowitz, "he had held the
presidency of numerous Jewish philanthropic, religious, and
educational institutions." [DERSHOWITZ, 1987, p. 126] He was "one of
the richest and most powerful orthodox Jews in the world," notes
Robert Friedman, "with close ties to Israel's National Religious
Party. He made a fortune from a national conglomerate of Medicaid
nursing homes, where infirm patients were left unattended to soak in
their own urine ... No doubt Bergman learned his business ethics
from his parents who were not only bootleggers, but also were
convicted in 1941 of smuggling eight kilos
of heroin from France in the bindings of Hebrew prayer books."
[FRIEDMAN,False, p. 17] "In my
lifetime in this city," declared another Jewish critic in the
Village Voice, "I have never encountered anyone as rotten as
Bernard Bergman." Within three months, 62 articles about Bergman
were published in the New York Times alone.
Sensationally, the
judge in the Bergman case, Marvin Frankel, sentenced the rabbi to a
term of only four months, a decision that elicited outrage from all
corners. A Jewish Congressman, notes Alan Dershowitz, "warned that
'there will be anti-Semitism flowing from the fact' that
the judge and defendant were both Jewish."
Special State Nursing Home Prosecutor Charles Hynes declared the
punishment "insubstantial" and that it was "special justice for the
privileged." A second judge, Aloysius Melia, reviewed the case and
added a year to Bergman's sentence.
In 1993, when
prominent non-Jewish American lawyer Michael Tygar took up the U.S.
citizenship case of John Demjanjuk -- after his new client had been
exonerated in Israel of being the Nazi operative Ivan the Terrible
-- a Jewish faculty member at the Hofstra Law School, Monroe
Freedman, publicly rebuked Demjanjuk's new lawyer in a well-known
law journal: "Is John Demjanjuk the kind of client to whom you want
to dedicate your training, your knowledge, your extraordinary
skills?" [MARGOLICK, p. B18] Tigar's response to Freedman's pained
moral query was an emphatic yes. Demjanjuk, after all, had never
been proven to be guilty of any crime, and he had been cleared of
the charge of being Ivan the Terrible. And Monroe Freedman? Freedman
had been one of the lawyers for the aforementioned Rabbi Bergman who
was found guilty of particularly heinous crimes
against the helpless elderly, a client who was widely known as "the
meanest man in New York."
Other scandals in
the 1970s included that which caused non-Jewish actor Cliff
Robertson to be blacklisted for four years [MCCLINTICK, p. 518] by
the largely Jewish Hollywood crowd [see forthcoming media section]
for reporting a forgery by the president of Columbia
Pictures, David Begelman. The investigation of Begelman
ultimately led to an embezzlement scandal and press investigations
into the whole unethical base of the film business itself.Robertson attracted animosity also because of his public
demands for further police investigation into something that he
believed to be merely the tip of an iceberg, especially after
Begelman was tentatively removed from his post at Columbia,
but reinstated. "The entire entertainment community had been shaken
[by the scandal]," noted David McClintick in 1982, "Four of the
seven major studios -- Columbia, Fox,
MGM, and United Artists -- had changed
drastically." [MCCLINTICK, p. 518]As the
scandal attracted increased media attention, the Los Angeles
Herald Examiner's entertainment columnist noted the essence of
the situation: "The Washington Post apparently is incensed
because the Hollywood trade press never used the word 'embezzlement'
[in referring to the Begelman scandal]. There's a reason for that.
Embezzlement is not a sin in Hollywood. It's a way of life." [MCCLINTICK,
p. 354](Begelman had once been an agent
for Judy Garland who believed that he had stolen $200,000 from her).
[SHIPMAN, 1993, p. 448]
In 1977, Jewish
author Michael Hellerman had his autobiography published. It was
entitled "Wall Street Swindler." Criminal associates noted that he
was "the master [swindler] of them all" and "when it comes to the
big swindle, Hellerman is a genius. He makes us all look like pikers."
Hellerman grew up "in the bosom of a deeply religious affluent
family in the heart of suburban Long Island" but was "driven by an
almost insatiable desire for riches and luxury." [HELLERMAN/RENNER,
1977, p. ix] "As a thief," says Thomas Renner, -
"Hellerman was the
very personification of the white-collar criminal ... Like the men
of the Mafia he often dealt with and cheated, Hellerman could and
did leave his victims stripped of their dignity, financiallydestitute, and psychologically traumatized." [HELLERMAN/RENNER,1977,p. ix]
In the political
realm, in 1977 the Jewish governor of Maryland, Marvin Mandel, and
four others were "convicted of conspiracy to have the Governor
influence race track legislation in return for $380,000 in bribes."
[AYRES, B.D., p. A1] Mandel served 19 months of a four year prison
sentence. One of those convicted with him, Irwin Kovens, "was a
major sponsor of Mr. Mandel's political career. He helped raise
millions of dollars for Mr. Mandel's campaign for governor in 1970
and 1974." [NYT, 11-2-89, p. B21] [BALTIMORE JEWISH TIMES, 1-23-98,
p. 8]
Shortly thereafter,
in 1982, another Maryland Jewish politician was sentenced to prison.
Baltimore City Council President Walter Orlinsky pleaded guilty to
"one count of extortion ... [He also] conceded that the Government
could prove other charges against him." [NYT, 9-23-82, p. A24] [BALTMORE
JEWISH TIMES, 1-23-98, p. 8] He was originally indicted on 12 counts
of extortion and mail fraud.
In 1999,
Donald Warshaw, also Jewish, and Miami's
powerful city manager, was fired after nearly two years in
the position. He faced a "federal indictment charging he misspent
public pension and charity funds on luxurious items." He was accused
of "spending $86,563 in pension and charity funds on trips, designer
clothes, $21,276 in hockey tickets and other things from 1993 to
1995 while serving as police commissioner ... Warshaw's friend,
accountant Ronald Stern, as named as an un-indicted co-conspirator.
He killed himself in July 1999 after
allegations surfaced that he embezzled $500,000 from the pension
fund while serving as its auditor and investment adviser. He
was also the charity's accountant."In 1993, Dade
County Commissioner (Miami, Florida) Joe Gersten, also Jewish, was
accused of smoking cocaine with a prostitute in a Miami drug den and
subsequently fled to Australia.
In 1995, Joe
Waldholtz, the Jewish husband of non-Jewish Utah Congressman Enid
Greene was exposed in a scandal that sent him to prison for 21
months and effectively destroyed his wife's political career.
Waldholtz, noted Salt Lake City's Deseret News, "lied and
bullied his way to notoriety ... during a scandal that involved
Waldholtz's ex-wife, then Congresswoman Enid Greene, check kiting,
illegal money transfers, federal election law violations, drug abuse
and bizarre behavior ... [He was] convicted of embezzling nearly $4
million from his former father-in-law and illegally funneling most
of it into Greene's 1994 election campaign [which she won]."
[DILLON, L., 5-29-99, p. A1] Greene, pleading complete innocence,
divorced him soon after the scandal.
In Florida, in
1999, State Senator Al Gutman was sentenced to two years in prison
for "conspiracy in a Medicare fraud case." Gutman and his wife Marci
"secretly owned companies that billed Medicare for health care
services that were not performed." He "collected at least $2 million
from fraudulent billings while he served in the Legislature." In
2000, Paul Adler, a "key" Hillary Clinton political adviser
(particularly to the Jewish community) and head of the Democratic
Party in New York's Rockland County, was arrested on charges of
"public corruption, fraud, extortion, and other charges linked to
his real estate transactions." In 2002, Edward Mezvinsky, a former
(Jewish) Congressman from Iowa, "was indicted on 66 counts of fraud
and related charges for allegely bilking more than $10 million."
Those signing letters trying to get him off easy were Edward Shils
(a University of Pennsylvania professor, Jonathan Yarowsky, a former
genral counsel to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and Rabbi
Gerald Wolpe.
In the 1960s, a
former Jewish socialist activist turned rich playboy, Bernie
Cornfeld, was probably that decade's best known financial swindler,
defrauding 250,000 investors in his Investors Overseas
Service (IOS) mutual funds company. [NYT, 3-1-95,
p. A10]With a million customers in 26
countries around the world, and employing 20,000 employees, Cornfeld,
amassing a personal fortune of over $100 million. He promised
millions to Israeli causes and started a mutual fund system at the
Tel Aviv stock exchange. "Stories of shady dealings, mismanagement,
plain stupidity, what some lawyers were calling outright fraud, were
filling the financial pages of newspapers and magazines all over the
world," noted one of his former associates, Bert Cantor. [CANTOR, p.
8]Cantor also had this to say about who
ran the corrupt IOS business: -
"A minor
IOS executive in evaluating the company's personnel practices
remarked that status in the [company's] hierarchy could be measured
in four categories: 1) Nice Jewish boys from Brooklyn who belonged
to Bernie's Boy Scout troop, 2) Nice Jewish boys from Brooklyn, 3)
Nice Jewish boys, 4) Everyone else. "In 1975 Cornfeld was convicted
for telephone fraud. In 1990, Forbes magazine reported that
the IRS claimed Cornfeld still owed $15 million in taxes going back
thirty years. [NYT, 3-1-95]
Another (extremely)
noteworthy Jewish fraud of the Cornfeld era was that of Stanley
Goldblum. In the 1970s he was sentenced to prison for the 'biggest
corporate fraud in United States history," "one of history's
greatest hoaxes." His Equity Funding Corporation of
America sold $2 billion worth of fake insurance policies --64,000 of
them -- to other insurers.In later years
he surfaced as a criminal again, arrested in 1999 "in a scheme to
operate a number of medical clinics that allegedly bilked the
workers' compensation system." [NY TIMES, 3-26-75; GAW, p. C1]
[DIRKS/GROSS, p. 3-4]
Also in the 1960s, Australia had a memorable Jewish scandal. Stanley
Korman, notes Jewish commentator Leon Gettler, -
"shocked and angered the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant pillars of the
establishment back in the 60's. Sure, Korman was a crook. They hated
him and sent him to jail for fleecing his shareholders.
More recently,
much-publicized Jewish crime figures include the sensationally
ostentatious penny-pincher and tax evader, Leona Helmsley (Ms.
Helmseley, noted the Economist, "had long been labeled one of
the villains of modern America. A witness at her trial testified
that she had once said 'only the little people pay taxes' and the
little people remembered." [ECONOMIST, 4-25-92, p. 28]"Helmsley," noted Reuters, "was found guilty ... of
writing off a wide variety of personal items as business expenses,
including bras, shoes and dresses, a million dollar pool cover that
doubled as a dance floor, and a $130,000 stereo system."
Another big scandal
of the 1980s focused on the Hollywood "madam” trafficker of
prostitutes to the stars, Heidi Fleiss, also Jewish and the daughter
of a prominent doctor."Like Begelman," noted the
Los Angeles Times, "the new [Fleiss] scandal stands as a
symbol of corruption in Hollywood."Fleiss, noted
Entertainment Weekly, "has given two of the studio chieftains
-- executive vice president Michael Nathanson and executive vice
president of production Barry Josephson [both Jewish] -- leading
roles in the ever-widening Hollywood sex scandal." [KENNEDY,
8-20-93]"What is obvious is that the
potential scandal," said the New York Times, ".... involved
heavy use of cocaine and other drugs ... One executive, Michael
Nathanson, president of production at Columbia Pictures,
denied on Tuesday, through his lawyer, Howard Weitzman, that he had
used film-development money to procure prostitutes..." After
Nathanson's denial of involvement in the ring, Ivan Nagy (Fleiss's
boyfriend, also arrested for soliciting call girls) leaked a copy of
her "black book" to the New York Daily News; it included
Nathanson's phone number.
Fleiss was
eventually sentenced to prison in 1993 for attempted pandering, tax
evasion, and money laundering. She was once quoted as saying that
the aforementioned Bernie Cornfeld "was the only real boyfriend in
my life." [WASH POST, 3-2-95, p. B4]
Fleiss' father, noted the Los Angeles Times, "a well-known
Los Feliz pediatrician who recently examined the newborn daughter of
pop star Madonna, was previously
sentenced to three years' probation, 625 hours of community service
and fined $50,000 for conspiring to hide profits from his daughter's
call girl ring."
A kindred soul in professional ethics
to Dr. Heiss in the late 1960s and early 1970s was Dr. Max Jacobson.
Nicknamed "Dr. Feel Good," his license to practice was eventually
suspended for routinely giving amphetamine injections into a large
number of celebrities. [SEAMAN, p. 386-388]
Jacobson and another Jewish doctor, Lee Siegel, are cited by one
author as famous "drug pushers" for Hollywood studios. There were
"stories," notes Dennis McDougal, "about physicians on the TV or
movie set who injected stars with 'vitamins' to keep them performing
... It became clear after a while that [movie star] agents did not
interfere with the addictions that were killing
Allen Ladd,
Montgomery Cliff, and Judy Garland."
[MCDOUGAL, p. 259] Dr. Robert Feder, another Hollywood physician,
"gave amphetamines, or uppers, to some of his patients if they
needed to be 'on' for a particular performance or day." In the case
of drug-addicted actor John Belushi,
Feder fed him uppers through Belushi's agent, Bernie Brillstein
[WOODWARD, 1984, p. 244-245] (Among the great medical fraudsters of
the early 20th century was Albert Abrams. Arthur Cramp of the
American Medical Association once said that Abrams "easily ranked as
the dean of twentieth century [medical] charlatans." Abrams used a
variety of invented machines, often based on the radio, that were
supposed to diagnose, and even cure, disease.)
Doctor Melvyn
Rosenstein is also a noteworthy surgeon. Self-described as the
"world's leading authority on penile surgery," he spent $250,000 a
month in advertising across the country in an effort to entice men
to have surgical penis elongation. He reportedly netted $30 million
in this practice between 1991 and 1995. By then, however, dozens of
men (over 40 in southern California alone) had surmounted their
embarrassment to come forward to sue him for malpractice, for
misinformation, and for deforming their sexual organs. A California
Medical Board spokesman declared that those who had come forward to
sue Rosenstein were "the tip of the iceberg." In 1996 Rosenstein was
forbidden to further practice his lucrative trade. [HOLDING, R.,
4-24-95, p. A9; SHUIT, D., 3-5-96, p. B1] (In the women's world of
cosmetic surgery, socialite Joyce Wildenstein -- one of the heirs to
the opulent Jewish Wildenstein art gallery dynasty -- has become the
much lambasted symbol in the New York media for those who have had
face lifts too many times).
Moving along in the
generic fraud department, up north, in Ontario, Canada, in 1991
Jewish lawyer Herman Melnitzer parked his Jaguar XJS coupe and
"pleaded guilty to one of Canada's biggest cases of fraud." [TYLER,
p. A1] He was charged with 43 cases of "forgery, fraud and attempted
fraud relating to $1 billion worth of phony stock certificates he
used to trick banks into giving him $43 million in lines of credit,
$12.3 million which was spent."
Also in the 1990s,
certainly a rival to the claim of "Canada's biggest fraud,” the
Bre-X gold mining scam swept the world's imagination in
what the Ottawa Citizen eventually called a "monumental
swindle."It began when a small company
(co-owned by David Walsh, Michael de Guzman, and John Felderhof) in
Calgary, Canada, claimed to have discovered a huge new source of
gold in Indonesia. Soon enough, the head (Peter Munk; also Jewish)
of Canada's largest gold producer (Barrick Gold Corporation)
was a player in the story. "In the heat of negotiations between [Munk's
company] and Bre-X," notes the Citizen, -
"one of Munk's
executives was reluctant to talk business with his bosson Yom Kippur, an important Jewish holiday when Munk would beobserving the Day of Atonement. Munk dismissed his
vice-president's concerns. 'This is more important to me than
anything. I know it. God knows it. And there's no point in trying to
fool anyone about it."
While investors
clamored to join the group that promised enough gold to rival the
gross national product of the nearby Philippines, nothing
substantial was ever found.
Steve Gaines notes the case of Jewish mogul Barry Trupin and his
Rothschild Reserve International company:
"What made Trupin really rich was his 1976 discovery of a tax
loophole from which he could spin a personal fortune of $300
million, a 'money-making machine,' he called it. Trupin found that a
company could earn huge tax deductions by leasing computers instead
of buying them. Almost every aspect of the transaction was
deductible ... Although perfectly legal, the dodge was a little
cloudy. He began to proclaim himself the 'master of
corporate veil."
In 1997 Trupin "was indicted by the U. S. government as a tax cheat
for the avoidance of $6.6 million in taxes." He was also "convicted
in federal district court of receiving, possessing, and selling a
stolen painting [by Marc Chagall]." Also, "thirty-nine investors in
Trupin's various companies were suing him" and the FBI "launched an
investigation into Trupin's interest in a Tustin, California, bank
in which he had bought a 62 percent controlling interest and had
introduced a number of loans that had to be written off as bad."
In 1997, Arnie
Zaler was arrested in Arizona for fraud totaling millions of
dollars, swindling as many as 60 people.
Earlier, he had been so well-established in the Phoenix community
that he was considered a strong Democratic candidate for Congress.
The Arizona Republic notes that, when financial troubles
began to hit him in 1994, "Zaler dropped out of sight. Private
investigators hired by investorsdiscovered that
he had been laying low in Phoenix and Denver, and
occasionally slipping out of the country to spend time in Israel.
Zaler had dual citizenship in the United States and Israel. They
even learnedthat Zaler made a large donation to
a new temple outside Tel Avivthat was named
after him."
In 1992, Larry
Douglas, a well-known Jewish New York City political activist in
Democratic mayoral and Presidential campaigns, "disappeared."The New York Times noted that a city councilman and
close friend of Douglas, Robert J. Dryfoos - "was
embroiled in a Federal tax-evasion scandal, and rumors flew that Mr.
Douglas had his own tax problems. He took a plane to Israel anddidn't come back until the cases had been dropped."
As noted above, if
threatened with exposure and arrest in America, an emergency bailout
for Israeli, American-Jewish, or any other international Jewish
criminals throughout the world is Israel's Law of Return, in which
Jews can essentially rush to Israel for sanctuary.Israeli law officially forbids the extradition of any Israeli
citizen for crimes committed in another country, and any Jew on
earth may acquire -- by simple birthright, and an application --
Israeli citizenship. Many American Jews do indeed hold both American
and Israeli citizenships. This curious convenience garnered
considerable outrage and publicity in the 1997 case of American-born
Samuel Sheinbein -- the son of (technically) an Israeli citizen --
who was accused of murder. The teenager fled to Israel and sought
refuge under the "law of return" for worldwide Jewry.
Sheinbein's accused
crime was particularly heinous: he and another Jewish youth (old
friends from the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School) were charged
with murder, including sawing off the Hispanic victim's arms and
legs with a chainsaw, and attempting to burn the body. The other
teenager accused in the case, Adam Needle, was arrested and jailed;
he subsequently committed suicide. Sheinbein, meanwhile, had hurried
off to Israel, a place he was visiting for the first time in his
life.
Sheinbein's plan of
escape rested on his father, Shlomo, who had immigrated to America
from Israel with his family in 1950, at the age of 6. This entitled
him to perpetual Israeli citizenship. He eventually became a lawyer
and was so "American" that he was even employed by the Pentagon.
[BALTIMORE SUN, 10-11-97, p. 23]
Ironically, Shlomo's own father had been murdered in Tel Aviv in
1982. The London Guardian notes that
"He was shot in the
head at close range in his office, from where he was suspected of
organizing illegal money transfers between Israel and the United
States. He left property valued at pounds 44 million."
The American
government formally requested from Israel the extradition of Samuel
Sheinbein to be tried for murder. As far the Jewish state was
concerned, however, if Sheinbein's father was indeed an Israeli
citizen, his son must also be considered a citizen -- no matter that
he had never been to Israel -- and therefore immune from extradition
to America.
In October 1997,
the Israeli government formally refused the American extradition
request. "He cannot be extradited," declared an Israeli Justice
Ministry spokesperson, "He was an Israeli citizen when the crime was
committed." [ASSOC. PRESS, p. 62]This
decision elicited an extremely unusual storm of outrage and
indignation within the U.S. Congress. Shortly thereafter, members of
that legislative body announced that it was postponing a scheduled
transfer of $180 million in U.S. aid to Israel. Newly attentive,
Israel later suggested a Sheinbein trial in Israel, and eventually a
further compromise: Sheinbein could be tried in America, but would
serve his prison term in Israel.
In May 1998, U.S.
prosecutors rejected such compromise proposals. As Agence France
Presse noted:
"Justice officials
in Maryland had expressed concern that Sheinbein
would be released early if he served a term in Israel." [AFP,
5-3-98, ONLINE]
Meanwhile, all the
bad press and economic Congressional action forced some major
American Jewish agencies to take extremely unusual positions on the
case, that is to say, to publicly criticize Israel. "Noting the
victim was a Hispanic youth," noted the Jerusalem Post, "the
Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith has warned that failure [to
extradite Sheinbein] will have 'consequences which transcend this
case alone.'" [J.P., 10-9-97, p. 8]Even
the Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress, Phil Baum,
announced that "Sheinbein's connection to Israel is so patently
tenuous as to verge on the fraudulent." [PR NEWSWIRE, 10-9-97,
ONLINE]"Regardless of how it may be
presented,” the Jerusalem Post editorialized, "a failure to
expedite will be interpreted by many as Israel's willingness to
shield people accused of committing heinous crimes." [J.P., 10-9-97,
p. 8] "[The] extradition law is part of Israeli law, end of story,"
noted Stuart Schoffman in the Washington Post, "But alongside
this flat formulation runs an age-old protective instinct: You don't
surrender a Jew to the gentiles."
Israel eventually
decided that Samuel Sheinbein was not a citizen after all, because
of a small technicality:Israel's Law of
Return was suddenly noted to have been created two years after
Sheinbein's father left Israel, and therefore not applicable to him
and his son. Nonetheless, by a 3-2 vote, in February 1999 the
Israeli Supreme Court ruled finally that Sheinbein could claim
Israeli citizenship and could not be extradited. "I am disappointed
in Israel," said the Maryland lawyer, Douglas Ganser (who is also
Jewish), set to prosecute the case in America, "because the
[Israeli] ruling didn't make sense. It's not even a close call. It
looks bad for the Jewish people."
At the same time as
the Sheinbein fiasco, the United States government was also trying
to extradite Chaim Berger from Israel to stand trial in America too.
While the Jewish state was deciding what to do with this case, in
May 1999, "despite objections by United States law-enforcement
officials, an Israeli court ... approved an unusual $3 million bail
agreement" for this founder of a Hasidic community in New York.
Under the "personal bond" of two Israeli rabbis and the governments
housing minister, Berger was allowed complete freedom from jail in
mornings and evenings. "U.S. officials warned Israel against freeing
Berger, contending that he fled New York 18 months ago knowing he
would be indicted for his part in stealing $20 million in federal
and state education and housing grants and subsidies. Four other
co-defendants were also indicted in the U.S. -- two of them were yet
in hiding. A rabbi in Berger's community complained that "the
[Hasidic] community's sense is the government's pound of flesh has
been exacted and there's no need to drag a 73-year old Holocaust
survivor into this."
In the 1980s, France had its own major
run-in with Israel's shielding of international Jewish criminals
when Israel's Ministry of Justice delayed for years the extradition
of a French Jew, William Nakash. Nakash had been convicted there for
murder. "French officials," noted Reuters, "insist that [Nakash
was involved in] a gangland killing between rival pimps." [TAYLOR,
ONLINE] The Jewish Week noted the mood in Israel, however,
about France's extradition request:
"Nakash, who claims
to be newly Orthodox, has been passionately
defended by Orthodox Jews and right-wing nationalists. They have
depicted him a hero who killed an Arab in self-defense, a
'nationalistic' act forced upon him by unbearable harassment by
Jew-hating Arabs, abetted by a climate of rampant anti-Semitism in
the French town of Besancon."
A former Deputy
Mayor of Besancon, a Jewish lawyer named Jacques Lorach, responded
by saying that "Never in my life, and certainly not in my political
career, have I heard or been told an anti-Semitic remark." The town
even has "one of the largest and most impressive memorials to the
Holocaust outside Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and it was financed
exclusively by the city and regional authorities."
Nakash was finally
only considered eligible for extradition when he proved to be a
criminal problem in his new home. As the Chicago Tribune
noted,
"In 1985, Nakash,
by then an Israeli citizen, was arrested near Jerusalem for plotting
to rob a senior Christian prelate of 60 bars of gold and $2 million
in cash. When Israeli police realized Nakash was the same man
sentenced for the Besancon murder, two courts, including Israel'sSupreme Court, ruled that he was extraditable to France ...
[But] mindful of the political damage [in Israel] that Nakash's
extradition could cause, Justice Minister Avraham Sharir, an astute
Likud politician, ignored the pinion of the Courts and last week
barred Nakash's extradition."
In 2000, 124 people from the Paris Sentier district were put on
trial, accused of embezzling $77 million from French banks. "The
Sentier area of Paris [is the] center of the Jewish-run garment
industry." - "The Sentier garment district in Paris .. is
majority-owned by French Jews." [AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, 7-16-99] The
Sentier district "is renowned as the center for the rag-trade and a
base for petty criminals." [GRAHAM, R., 2-20-01] "Thirteen of the
accused, Israeli nationals or holders of dual Franco-Israeli
nationality," noted the Jerusalem Post, "have fled to
Israel." Struggling to get the Jewish state to extradite the accused
criminals for trial, French prosecutor Francois Franchi complaned
that "Israel has put itself beyond the pale of the international
community. Its banking system encourages actions which explain what
happened in this case."
"Investigators [into the Sentier affair]," noted Agence France
Presse, "also uncovered money laundering networks with Austria,
Belgium, and Israel ... most of the defendants are accused of being
part of a criminal network." [AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, 2-20-01] And the
implications of the Sentier scandal to the Jewish community
at-large? "Leaders of France's 750,000-strong Jewish community,"
noted the Jerusalem Post, "have privately fretted for months
about possible effects on public opinion of the trial, which opened
in a courtroom built specially to accommodate the mass of defendants
and lawyers."
Meanwhile, France was also trying to extradite Arkadi Gaydamak (Gaidamek),
"a billionaire industrialist," from Israel for trial on charges of
illegal arms trading. Gaydamak has Israeli, Canadian, French, and
Angola passports. Newspaper reports noted that this mogul "had close
ties with Danny Yatom, the security adviser to caretaker Israeli
prime minister Ehud Barak." Gaydamak "called attacks on his
character as 'aimed at a Jew and a Russian who succeeded in
business.'" [AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, 12-29-00]
Also in France, in 2002 "three of Israel's five leading banks [were]
under investigation by French authorities as part of a larger,
ongoing probe of a money-laundering network between France and
Israel. The network used Jewish charitable institutions and cultural
institutions based in France to process illegally-acquired money ...
In November French officals said there were some 80 suspects in the
case, including six rabbis. Six people are reportedly already in
jail." [BERGER/STUB, 12-30-01]
Elsewhere, in 1993
Poland requested the extradition of two Polish Jews, Boguslaw Bagsik
and Andrzej Gasiorowski, owners of the Art-B Trading
Company (which owned 200 other companies), who had fled to
Israel in 1991. They were accused, noted Reuters, "of
stealing ... $310 million in the country's biggest financial
scandal." [REUTERS, 5-20-92] Bagsik was known to have Polish,
German, and Israeli citizenship. [REUTERS, 8-16-91, p. 16]Israeli authorities conceded that at least $85 million had
been transferred by Bagsik to the Jewish state. An Israeli newspaper
reported that Gasiorowski complained of discrimination in Poland by
"people feeling anti-Semitic sentiments." [POLISH NEWS BULLETIN,
8-91, p. 1]Bagsik was captured in
Switzerland the next year and faced 15 years in a Polish jail.
Israel refused the extradition of Gasiorowski. [PAP NEWSWIRE,
1-31-97]
In 1994, another
newsworthy Polish Jew, Solomon Morel, fled to Israel when Polish
authorities sought to question him about his role in "possible
postwar crimes against German civilians." [NEWSWEEK, 1-3-94, p. 6]
Israel refused to return him to Poland. Likewise, in 2000, the
Israeli government refused to extradite Nahman Dushanski back to
Lithuania where he is wanted for taking "part in the murder of
Lithuanian prisoners during Soviet occupation in 1941." Lithuania
also requested the extradition of Simion Borkov from Israel on
similar charges.
In 1992, yet
another Jewish predator of the embryonic Polish capitalist state,
David Bogatin, made international news for his corrupt bank (with 14
offices) in Poland. "Last month," noted the Montreal Gazette,
"a muckraking journalist discovered
Bogatin's First Commercial Bankwas founded on
fraud. Bogatin was unmasked as a con man -- allegedto have connections with United States and Russian criminal
syndicates who fled the United States after conviction on a tax
evasion charge."
Bogatin, originally from the Soviet Union, had emigrated to the
United States in 1977. Starting out as cab driver, by 1985 he was
involved in shady business dealings, the Mafia, and major tax
evasion. By 1987, he was arrested in Vienna for "carrying
counterfeit securities." Bogatin, also noted as "one of [America's]
biggest gasoline bootleggers," was eventually extradited to the
United States and sentenced to prison for tax evasion. [LEGAL
INTELLIGENCER, 5-15-92, p. 5]
From the Ukraine,
in 1994 the Jewish acting head of the Ukrainian cabinet, Yefim
Zvyagilsky, "was faced with charges of embezzlement of state
property [worth $25 million]." [STETSYURA]
After fleeing to Israel, the Jewish state denied the Ukrainian
request for his extradition."Ukrainian
officials," noted Reuters, "say Zvyagilsky, a Jew by origin,
acquired an Israeli passport during his two and a half years in
Israel but he denies this ... Some top [Ukrainian] government
officials, including Foreign Minister Hennady Vdovenko have
suggested that Ukrainian authorities might have to think twice
before appointing Jews to senior jobs in the future." [REUTERS,
2-12-97]
In April 1997 the
Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported an intriguing banking
story from Russia:
"The head of a
large Russian bank who is also a prominent member of the country's
Jewish community has been detained in Moscow on suspicion of
embezzling more than $120 million ... Arkady Angelevich, who heads
Moscow's Montazhspetsbank and is a member of thepresidium of the Russian Jewish Congress, has been in prison
sincelast week ... Angelevich was arrested on
the way to the airport, where he was planning to leave for Israel,
according to news reports." In 2001, Agence France Presse
reported that -
"Spain's top criminal court on Monday turned down a request by
Russian media magnate and Israeli-passport holder Vladimir Gusinsky
to travel to Israel to cast his vote in elections ... [Gusinsky
faces] extradition to Russia to face fraud charges." [AGENCE FRANCE
PRESSE, 2-5-01]
Gusinsky is the head of the Russian Jewish Congress. Within
two weeks, another prominent Russian Jew made the criminal news:
"The arrest of the well-known St. Petersburg businessman and
vice-president of the Russian Jewish Congress [Mikhail Mirilashvili]
has caused outrage in some political circles in Israel." [ST.
PETERSBURG TIMES, 2-16-01] Mirilashvili also has both Russian and
Israeli citizenship.
(Another Eastern European Jewish mogul, Vadim Rabinovich, is founder
and president of the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress. He too
has known "ties to Russian organized crime.") [BONNER, R., 6-12-01]
Even in war-torn
Serbia, in 1994 the (Jewish) Forward noted that there were
fears of an anti-Semitic backlash when Jews locally masterminded -
"a billion dollar
embezzlement racket. The scandal, a classic pyramid scheme, involved
two banks, Yugoskandic and Dafiment ...
Both banks claimed close links to Israel, and thousands queued over
theirmoney. Then the banks collapsed. The owner of
Yugoskandic absconded to Israel with his investment money..."
[RUBIN, E, p. 1]
This owner, Jezda
Yasiljevic, notes the London Sunday Times, "fled to Israel,
where he threatened to fund hit squads against politicians who
turned against him." [BRANSON]In 1992,
Vasiljevic had purchased an island off the Montenegrin coast, "once
the playground of Richard Burton and Sophia Loren," for hundreds of
millions of dollars. [BRANSON]The next
year, notes the Christian Science Monitor,
"tens of thousands of panicked
Belgraders besieged a soccer stadium yesterday where numbered
tickets were being given to withdraw moneyfrom a
private bank. The rush followed the collapse last week of another
bank whose owner fled to Israel, leaving a tangle that threatened to
bring down the whole economy of the remaining Yugoslavia." [BRANSON,
p. 3]
"Vasiljevic's bank," said Time,
"ran a classic Ponzi scheme, using new deposits to pay the interest
on old ones." [GREENWALD, p. 58]
A sampling of other newsworthy items
about Jews committing crimes throughout the world and then hurrying
to Israel for refuge include:
*
Members of the Jewish Defense League. Between 1981 and 1987,
the FBI blamed Jewish groups for 24 terrorist acts in the U.S. -- 17of them were believed to be perpetrated by the JDL.
[THORNTON,p. A19] The Washington Post
reported that "the Israeli government has failed to cooperate with a
U.S. investigation of Jewish Defense
League (JDL)
members and associates suspected in a series of bombings and
terrorist incidents in this country, according to aninternal Federal Bureau of Investigations memo. The memo ...
saidseveral key suspects in the investigation
have fled to Israel." [THORNTON, p. A19]In
1992, seven years after the murder by bombing of Arab-American Alex
Odeh, the president of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination
Organization Albert Mokhiber, complained that "the American
government is asking to interrogate American citizens [in Israel] on
a crime that occurred in Americaand the Israeli
government is preventing it." [HEDGES, p. A3] Among others,
William Ross, an important philanthropist to the Meir Kahane and
his Kach Party, carried out a mail bomb murder "not for politics but
for his own profit." [TUGEND, 8-19-88, p. 8]
* Gordon Wolfson. In 1985 he was convicted of 34
counts of mailfraud after cheating investors out
of $50 million in a real estate scam. Five days before Wolfson's
sentencing, he paid the Israeli vice-consul in Miami, David
Mordechai, $125,000 to arrange to get him on an El Al flight to
Israel. Mordechai was sentenced two years later to six years in U.S.
prison for aiding the criminal. "[Mordechai] did something that
every Jew hopes to do oncein his lifetime,"
explained his lawyer, "that is help a Jew go to
Israel." [UPI, 1-10-87]
* Eddie
Antar. Head of a chain of electronics stores called CrazyEddie, Antar escaped to
Israel and lived under the name of "David Cohen" after a $63 million
securities fraud judgment against him bythe
Securities Exchange Commission. [UPI, 6-24-92, ONLINE]
* Dov
and Ayala Engel. The two fled to Israel from Brooklyn
in 1998after swindling American banks out of
$100 million through their company Kent International. (Although
eventually brought to justice in the U.S., in 2001 the New York
Post noted that Dov "plans to cut his 11-year [prison] sentence
to less than half by serving time in the Jewish state ... Under a
1999 extradition-treaty amendment, he can serve his sentence in that
country [Israel], where fraud charges carry a maximum of five years'
imprisonment." [SMITH, K., 12-4-01]
*
Michael Vishedsky and Shlomo Wishedsky. These two owners of
a Brooklyn shoe store fled to Israel after committing "the largestMedicaid fraud ever uncovered in New York state, possibly the
country." [UPI, 4-16-96]
*
Michael Schiff. In 1995, known by Chicago-area police
authoritiesto have both American and Israeli
citizenship, he raped and sodomized a woman who he was interviewing
for a (non-existent)job as a nanny. He then fled
to Israel. "Under terms of a U.S.-Israeli
agreement," noted the Chicago Tribune, "the Tel Aviv
government will not extradite one of its own citizens."
* Richard Minns -- Minns, is "the former
jet-setting health club owner who was implicated but never charged
in connection with the shooting of his former lover, in October
1980." She sued him forthe injuries suffered and
won $42.6 million in 1991. Minns bynow was in
Israel: [He] never showed up in court for depositions[in Texas] in connection with the suit ... [He] lived in
Israel at thetime of the trial ... [His lawyer
son] says his father disinherited him... because
he married a woman who was not Jewish..." [SAPINO,B., 4-6-92]
* Ezra
Murad. A diamond dealer, in 1989 he was accused of
defrauding Norway's second largest bank of $3 million.[HOROVITZ]
*
Samuel Dagan. An Israeli, he swindled two American banks out
of $6 million. (Israel relented in this case and extradited him to
the U.S.-- probably because of the problems he caused to Israel
itself. Dagan had 21 earlier convictions in the Jewish state for
fraud and extortion). [UPI, 8-15-90]
* Yosef
Lisch.A Hasidic Jew, in 1998 he
fled to Israel after the car he was driving in a motorcade for a
prominent Orthodox rabbi hit andkilled a seven
year old Black child in the Crown Heights area of New York,
resulting in local riots and increased Black-Jewish tensions.
*
Ronald Carmon. An Israeli-born lawyer, he worked for a New
YorkCity program that offered legal services to
the poor. He fled to Israel after being caught defrauding the city
out of $7,000. [UPI, 12-22-88]
* Nahum
Vaskevitch. In 1994, this former head of the internationalmergers and acquisitions for Merrill Lynch in London
absconded to Israel after an illegal "insider trader" scheme netted
him $4 million. Fellow conspirator David Sofer was also Israeli. [APPELSON]
* Ilan
Mayan. In 1987, Mayan murdered a man in Los Angeles andfled to Israel, but was later arrested in Switzerland. [LA
TIMES, 6-25-87]
Daniel Weiz. Weiz fled to Israel from Toronto after
being charged with second-degree murder. "Police have described the
case as a random assault by a group wearing ski masks." [ASSOCIATED
PRESS, 12-15-99]
*
Natchum Gal. "In Alberta [Canada] in 1982," noted the
Toronto Star, "Dr. Natchum Gal turned off the respirator
sustaining a brain-damaged newborn girl and authorized a nurse to
administer 15milligrams of morphine. The child
died 40 minutes later. Gal deniedany wrong
doing, but he fled to Israel before facing a murder charge."
[TORONTO STAR, 10-15-94, p. A4]
*
"Billy" King. In 1998 the New York Law Journal noted
that he"fraudulently transferred to himself
valuable estate propertiesconsisting of
commercial buildings in Manhattan. Subsequently, heremains a fugitive." [NY LAW, p. 31]
* Dror
Haim Goldberg, an Israeli. Indicted in 1999 for murdering
Manuela Silverio in a Houston wig shop, "[police] strongly suspecthe has fled to Israel, which prohibits the extradition of its
citizens for prosecution." [HOUSTON CHRONICLE, p. A30]"It was vicious,"said Houston police
sergeant George Aldreta, "We don't know theexact
reason for it, but we suspect he may have done it for the purepleasure of killing somebody." [AP, 2-12-99]
*
Jeffrey Ashkenazi. Ashkenazi was a doctor in the small town
of Greenville, Michigan. He was arrested in 1998, initially on a
mail-fraud charge. Ashkenazi, noted the Associated Press,
"had his medical license suspended after improperly treating 10
patients, one of whomdied ... [He] reserved
one-way plane tickets to Israel for himself and family."[ASSOCIATED PRESS, 8-11-98]
* Paul
Stern. Stern was indicted in 1971 for his part in a scam to
defraud insurance companies, including fake care accidents and
medical bills.He was not arrested until
1997, when he tried to enter the U.S. from overseas. Stern, noted
the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, "was believed to have been in
Israel the whole time."
* Kenyon
Schulman. "Where is Kenyon Schulman?" asked the Houston
Chronicle in 1992, "Harris County prosecutors ... learned through
Schulman's lawyer ... that he's somewhere in Israel, probablyTel Aviv." Schulman was wanted for questioning when 400 hits of
thedrug Ecstasy were found in the trunk of his BMW.
He had been arrested earlier, in 1988, for computer hacking.
Sholam
Weiss. He was the kingpin of the "nation's largest-ever
insurance fraud" and, along with three of his four co-defendants (Jan
Schneiderman, Jan Starr, and Keith Pound),
was convictedof "racketeering, fraud, money
laundering and other charges." Weiss was the brains behind criminal
looting the National Heritage Life Insurance Company and was
sentenced to "what is believed to bethe largest
Federal prison term ever imposed" -- 845 years."Many
of the company's 35,000-40,000 policy holders lost most of their
lifesavings." Most were elderly, living in
Florida.The criminal investigation against
Weiss "followed a five year criminal investigation across nine
states and led to dozens of indictments." On October 18, 1999, Weiss
skipped his $500,000 bail bond and a New York courtsentencing, thereby making the FBI's Most-Wanted list. A
reward of $125,000 was also offered for information leading to his
capture. Weiss was alleged to be in Israel, Austria, Brazil, or
Belgium. Some suspected he was hiding in America. The presiding
judge in his case also fined Weiss over $123 million, the criminal
was also ordered topay back another $125 million
in restitution to insurance policyholders, and another judgment
against him demanded $339 more for his crimes.
Weiss was raised in the Borough Park section of metropolitan
New York City in a cloistered ultra-Orthodox community. He was"educated in a yeshiva [Jewish religious
school], where he spoke Yiddish ... he did not learn to speak
English until he was in his late teens." This criminal also "claimed
that he was a victim of company executives who lured him unknowingly
into the conspiracy and took advantage of his ties to the Jewish
community." Weiss was earlier indicted in 1994 for mail fraud. He
was also a co-owner of the famous Studio 54 nightclub and the Scores
striptease joint. He "testified that he was involved in several
business ventures with lawyer Michael Blutrich and
Lyle Pfeffer, who owned Scores in secret partnership
with the mob." Pfeffer and Blutrich were sentenced to 25 years in
prison for their roles in the National Heritage insurance fraud.
[ASSOCIATED PRESS, 11-2-99]
For some reason,
Jewish American scamsters Harold and Alan Lieberman chose Chile, and
not Israel, as their refuge from the arm of American law. The two
fled the U.S. in 1992 to escape prison for fraud. "Their sudden
departure," noted the St. Louis Post Dispatch, "came three
years after the collapse of Lieberman Corporation, once one of the
nation's top home builders." The brothers "left debts of $15 million
and a 37-page Federal indictment accusing them of defrauding
lenders, customers and contractors. They took with them a reported
$6 million."
Living in luxury in
Santiago, "the Liebermans enjoyed a daily routine of Spanish lessons
and every-Saturday visits to the Jewish temple." In 1997, Alan's
wife and another man were caught trying to smuggle $750,000 back
into the United State. Ms. Lieberman also had cocaine in her purse.
Alan soon returned to America and was sentenced to prison. Brother
Harold continued to resist expulsion from Chile, eventually
committing suicide.
Fugitive (since 1983) Jewish American financier Marc Rich [who
merits further discussion later in this chapter] chose Switzerland
to escape the arm of American law. Nonetheless, he became an Israeli
citizen in 1994 and "has donated about $200 million over the last 20
years to Israel and worldwide Jewish charities."
Maryland con man"
Martin Bramson ("the mastermind of one of America's largest
insurance fraud schemes") chose Europe to hide. Tracked by Interpol
for three years, Bramson was finally arrested in the tiny country of
Liechtenstein where he fought extradition back to America to face
charges of "money laundering, wire fraud and mail fraud." Bramson
had swindled thousands of doctors and laundered money through 588
banks in countries throughout the world, including $43 million in a
two-year period in Anguilla alone. Others in his business scams
included his father Norman (an optometrist who went to prison in
1980) and his brother Leonard (a lawyer who went to prison in 1990).
In 1997, Ira Einhorn was arrested in France for the 1981 murder of a
woman in Philadelphia. He had "vanished" just before his trial was
to begin. Einhorn was a "former peace activist," Philadelphia's
"most recognized activist, a wildly dressed advocate of psychedelic
drugs, communal living, Eastern mysticism and environmental
consciousness," and "a friend and guru to prominent Philadelphians
in another era." "Peace and love was what he stood for," said one
acquaintance. [NEW YORK TIMES, 6-18-97, p. A14]
Yet another Jewish
renegade, from Texas, is Alexander Ross (alias Alexander Cohen, or
William Cohen), a man who was not a licensed dentist but practiced
anyway, eventually a fugitive in 1999 for both sexually molesting
young patients and Medicaid fraud. "FBI and police," noted the
Houston Chronicle, "have begun an international hunt for Ross.
Investigators think he has spent at least several months in Panama."
[SMITH, M., 6-27-99, p. A1]
Perhaps Ross knows Jeffrey Gottlieb, wanted by Alaska's State
Medical Fraud Unit for over billing Medicaid, stealing drugs from
doctors, and selling drugs to drug dealers. "Gottleib told the State
licensing board that he attended a medical school in Guadalajara,
Mexico, from 1974-77, then went to study religion in Israel, then
returned to receive a medical degree in 1986 from American
University of the Caribbean on the Island of Monseratt ... One of
Gottleib's patients [later arrested] alone received 2 percent of all
the controlled drugs prescribed to Medicaid patients in Alaska."
Among other Jewish
fraudsters who didn't head for Israel is Hal Kaplan, a master
con-man who has used "eight known aliases and been convicted of
fraud, theft, forgery, and bigamy."Married
eight times, his favorite ploy, noted the Los Angeles Times
in 1993, is to marry rich women to "loot their bank accounts."Yet another kindred soul is Charles Ray Lonberger, arrested
in 1990, who ran a series of charity frauds, often under the
pretense of raising money for the Jewish Federation Council.Another, from the early 1980s, was Eduardo Rabiea, son of
Iraqi Jews who immigrated to the United States from Israel. Rabiea
was described by a New York prosecutor as "a master of deceit and
deception who is wanted for fraud all over the world," absconding
with over $60 million in swindles. [RAAB, S., p. B1]A fellow soul is also Britain's Jonathan Kern, also Jewish,
who was arrested while entertaining two prostitutes in 1999.Also wanted for fraud and various scams all over the globe,
Kern "has previously impersonated members of the Rolling Stones, and
fooled a Park Lane garage into lending him a BMW valued at
44,000 pounds by posing as a record producer." Among other ploys, he
has pretended he was a well known British auto race commentator,
Jonathan Palmer, creating bills in Palmer's name all over Europe.
"You are a persistent criminal and a man who deceives as a way of
life," a sentencing judge told Kern.
In a 1994
Toronto Life article entitled "Con Man," the criminal life of
Patrick White was explored, stemming from his defrauding of a local
newspaper of $20,000. "Charmed by White's affable manner, by his
habit of smiling when he spoke," and "by the Torah he displayed on
his night table," David Mackin allowed alleged investor Mr. White to
take over as Managing Editor of his small newspaper. "White," notes
Toronto Life, "was regularly attending Kensington market
synagogue and by all appearances was a devoutly religious man."
[TORONTO LIFE, 11-94] Once White absconded, it was learned that he
was a master fraudster. He had served jail time in Canada in 1978
for "indecent assault," and in 1982 for "a pair of fraud
convictions." And there were outstanding arrest warrants for him
across North America: Ontario -- theft, Virginia -- sexual assault
against a boy, New York -- larceny, Mississippi -- sodomy and sexual
assault against a boy, Ontario -- theft, Nova Scotia -- theft and
fraud, Virginia -- sexual assault, and Alberta -- sexual asssault.
In New Brunswick, he then hired 35 people for nonexistent jobs for a
nonexistent night club, charging them each $100 for "uniforms."
While in Toronto, White once hired three boys to shovel snow from
his sidewalk. Inviting them inside, he showed them pornography.
"When police searched the house," notes Toronto Life, "they
found a cache of pornography along with religious texts White had
borrowed from a local rabbi. It was entitled The Sexual Morality of
Young People." [TORONTO LIFE, 11-94]
Another noteworthy
con man of Jewish heritage is Stanley Cherry (alias "Stefanos Coreey").
In 1999 a Canadian woman fell in love with him but was the "victim... of a fraud artist so diabolical that he left her almost
destitute: without savings, without access to credit and in danger
of losing her home." Total losses were about $75,000. It was
eventually revealed, notes the Montreal Gazette, that "the
man had been in and out of jail throughout his adult life. Crime was
his profession. It was, you might say, his vocation." Three
outstanding warrants for his arrest existed for other crimes. Among
the frauds earlier perpetuated by Cherry was that upon another
infatuated woman with him.
Former Washington Post book critic Geoffrey Wolff wrote an
entire volume about his father. Here's how the book's back-cover
blurb describes the the material:
"The Duke of Deception is the unforgettable story of a man whose
life was so full of deceit that his love for his son was his only
truth. 'Duke' Wolff dragged his family from coast to coast, from
luxurious homes to furnished rooms, always looking for the next big
break -- and always just ahead of his creditors. No ordinary con
man, he used an imaginative set of credentials to pass himself off
as a Yaleman and an aeronautical engineer. But his past, his debts,
and his flamboyant ways with other people's money finally caught up
with him."
Here's how author Wolf describes his father:
"My father was a Jew. This did not seem to him a good idea, and so
it was his notion to disassemble his history, begin at zero, and
re-create himself. His sustaining line of work til shortly before he
died was as a confidence man ... There were some awful consequences,
for other people as well as for him. He was lavish with money, with
others' money. He preferred to stiff institutions: jewelers, car
dealers, banks, fancy hotels ... I wish he hadn't selected from
among the world's possible disguises the costume and credentials of
a yacht club commodore ... But it is true, of course, that a
confidence man who cannot inspire confidence in his marks is nothing
at all, so perhaps his tune-up of his bloodline, educational vita,
and war record was merely the price of doing business in a culture
preoccupied with appearances ... But for all his pre-occupation with
make-believe, he never tried seriously to write it. A confidence man
learns early in his career that to commit himself to paper is to
court trouble. The successful bunko artist does his game, and
disappears himself." [WOLFF, G., 1986, p. 9]
Here's how Marsha Richman and Katie O'Donnell describe the
typical Jewish "con-man":
"THE JEWISH CON MAN. He's just good-looking enough. He went to a
name-drop school or two. He's had a name-drop position or two. He
moves from position to position, group to group. His only constant
attachments are to this mother and his children. He leaves a trail
of people behind him who wonder why they didn't see the too many
finely tailored shirts, the monograms. Later, you remember he was: a
subtle name dropper. A whit too polished (his shoes, his nails,
etc.). He borrows the heritage of his married-into family, their
friends, their places, their clubs. He plays tennis with name pros
like Poncho Gonzales. He collects actors just out of vogue, first
editions, antiques, and a sprinkling of just credible folks for whom
he has performed some minor service. All of his speeding tickets are
fixed. He fixes theater tickets to sold-out shows on a moment's
notice. He has a cover-up for everything from larceny to
misdemeanors. He personally knows members of the Mafia."
[Richman/O'Donnell 1979, p. 12-14]
In 1997, John
Perry, the Jewish editor of an Indian weekly newspaper, The New
India-Times, was charged in New York City for eleven counts of
conspiracy and mail fraud. Perry called the charges "a witch hunt"
and sounded out a possible defense of anti-Semitism from Israel and
Jewish American newspapers, and the Anti-Defamation League.
In 1995 the former Executive Director, Lester Kaplan, of the Jewish
Community Center of Greater Washington DC, was imprisoned for
embezzling a million dollars from the organization. Three others,
including the Chief Financial Officer at the organization, Jay
Manchester, were also implicated. Kaplan could have gotten up to 95
years in jail, but was only sentenced to seven years; he was freed
after eight months. The State Attorney General's office investigated
and prosecuted the crime despite the Jewish organization's decision
to avoid publicity and not report the situation to police. Despite
his record, in 1997 Kaplan was hired as a Montgomery County public
housing agency supervisor. "Kaplan," noted the Washington Post,
"approached HOC [Housing Opportunity Commission] chairwoman Barbara
Goldberg-Golden -- a board member at the Jewish Community Center --
and asked her for help [in getting a job]."
In 2001, "Montgomery County prosecutors ... opened up an
investigation into the handling of a charity fund at one of the
Washington area's largest synagogues [Congregation Beth El in
Bethesda, Maryland], after its senior rabbi reimbursed $300,000 to
the fund because of questions about how he had used the account."
The rabbi, Jonathan Maltzman, "transferred more than $220,000 from
the charity fund to his brokerage account at Fidelity; used $7,950
from the fund for his child's b'nai mitzvah parties; and used about
$11,500 to pay his self-employment taxes. An additional $62,000 was
withdrawn in cash at ATMS ... About $700,000 had passed through the
fund during the 11 years Maltzman administered it, [but] only about
$20,000 could be identified as having gone to charities."
In 1999, a
Cincinnati rabbi, Jacob Lustig of congregation Kneseth Israel, was
found guilty of skimming hundreds of thousands of dollars of profits
from a series of synagogue bingo games spread across three counties
in 19 storefronts. "The instant bingo," noted the Associated
Press, "took in more than $1 million in 1996 and 1997, but his
congregation received only $250,000 of that. Lustig and his
associates (Gerel Payne, Ralph Lipsky, and Sam Semet) avoided prison
time, although Lustig was ordered to surrender $920,000. The
Cincinnati Enquirer noted that "Judge Cartolano said the lack of
cooperation from the congregation, which still supports the rabbi,
was a problem for prosecutors."
In 2000, the Temple
Sinai synagogue in Dresher, Pennsylvania, sued its fired Executive
Director, Barry Wilf; his wife Barbara who was an assistant
bookkeeper at the synagogue; bookkeeper Betty Shusterman; and
Shusterman's husband, son, and son's wife. They were accused of
embezzling $700,000 over the years through a bank that was also
named in the suit.
In 1999 too, the
Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that "the Jewish community in
Poland is being wracked by a scandal that has forced the country's
umbrella Jewish organization to fire its treasurer and downgrade the
status of the Jewish communities of Gdansk and Poznan ... Jewish
organizations tried to keep the affair quiet." That same year,
Wolfgang Schnur, founder of the "Democratic Awakening" political
party and "a leader of the democracy movement that toppled communism
in East Germany 10 years ago," was "detained on fraud charges after
trying to cash phony securities at a Berlin bank." An Israeli
accomplice escaped. [AP, Former]
In 1997, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency noted a common theme in
Germany:
"Jewish community elections in Germany
are rarely covered in the German media. But the upcoming election in
Berlin on June 1 has catapulted the
city's Jewish community into the national media spotlight. The
stories center on real estate scandals,
alleged financial mismanagement of community funds and
embittered personal rivalries among community officials. The reports
... cast a shadow on the integrity of some leading members of
Germany's largest Jewish community ... Jewish leaders worry that if
the negative publicity continues, it could weaken community
structures and damage the political influence
of Berlin's Jewish community in the German capital."
In 2002, in England, we had this:
"Stamford Hill-based
Hachzokas Torah Vechesed is the latest strictly Orthodox charity to
be rapped by the Charity Commission over management issues. An
inquiry was launched after commission officials were alerted by the
charity's bank to an attempted withdrawal of more than 40,000
[pounds] in cash. Concerned at such a large amount, the commission
discovered that the money had been kept "for a visiting rabbi to
take to Israel,' according to its official report published this
week. 'It was clear that this money was not the charity's property
and that the charity had been simply used as a conduit for funds ...
Eleven strictly Orthodox charities have been the subject of reports
published by the commission in the last two years." [ROCKER, S.,
11-8-02, p. 6]
Also in 1999,
Reform Rabbi Fred Neulander, of Congregation M'Kor Shalom, the
largest synagogue in southeastern New Jersey, was indicted for the
1994 contract murder of his wife. "The subsequent investigation into
her murder," noted the Jewish Exponent, "brought to light her
husband's involvement in several extramarital affairs."
[SILVERSTEIN, p. 15] Later stepped forward an embittered man, Myron
Lewin, who also claimed that Rabbi Neulander had also "cheated me"
in Levin's purchase of a $16,000 Torah. [AP, 12-19-98] Somewhat
similarly, in 1993, a Jewish author, Michele Samit, wrote an entire
book (subtitled The True Story a Rabi's Deadly Affair) about
a major sordid scandal in her own synagogue congregation in
metropolitan Los Angeles. The husband (Mel Green) of the president
(Anita Green) of Reform temple Shir Chadash arranged for her
to be murdered when she had and affair with center's rabbi, Steven
Jacobs, and left her husband. This case, writes Samit, "was the
stuff of tabloids and miniseries: a shooting, rumors of sex between
two spiritual leaders in the temple setting, accusations, criminal
charges, and people lying on the witness stand to save their
reputations ... The Los Angeles Jewish community prides itself on
its high values, moral superiority and insularity. My temple leaders
and members seemed to worry more about this reputation than about
what had happened." [SAMIT, M., 1993, p. xxi, xxiii] The victim's
mother was outraged that the rabbi seemed to care more about his
reputation than his ex-lover: "When the detective told us how to
handle the press, and that the police would make all the statements,
the rabbi went crazy. He said, 'There can't be any statements. I
want to keep a low profile. This can't get out to the press. I'm a
rabbi.' All he cared about was himself. He didn't want there to be
an arrest or a trial if his name would come up. It made me sick."
In 1992, another
rabbi, Austin Yoncy Feld, and his brother were
held in a San Francisco-area jail on charges that they planned to
murder a Palo Alto child psychiatrist, Saul Wasserman, and his wife.
Recently arrived from Jerusalem, police found in the rabbi's car
"six plastic handcuffs, two knives, ski masks, detailed floor plans
of the house, photographs of the Wassermans, a key to every door in
the house, a bouquet of flowers and the location of a shotgun in the
house." Police suspected the plan was motivated by the Wasserman's
daughter, a student in Israel, who accused her parents of sexually
molesting her when she was a child.
Looking more deeply
into the American Jewish Committee's Jewish self-described
"tradition, experience, and values," we can find some very prominent
Jewish organizations seemingly going out of their way to try to
affirm the classical stereotype that Jews are
addicted to money at any moral cost. We have seen already the
likes of Ivan Boesky as the chairman of the New York City United
Jewish Appeal for two years during his illegal
hoarding of tens of millions, and World Jewish Congress
President Edgar Bronfman whose family fortune
(Seagram's) was built upon illegal alcohol smuggling from Canada
(including a deal with major Jewish mobster Meyer Lansky) to the
United States during Prohibition. "Though the Bronfmans,"
says Dennis McDougal, "denied any complicity in the transport of
their wares across the U.S. border during the Prohibition, notable
gangsters like Abner 'Longie' Zwillman and New York Mafia 'Prime
Minister' Frank Costello admitted to the Kefauver Committee that a
steady stream of whisky flowed out of Bronfman distilleries and into
millions of dry American mouths." [MCDOUGAL, p. 144] (Among many
other charitable donations to Jewish organizations, the Bronfman
family donated a million dollars for a new wing of the Israel Museum
in 1962).
Of course there is
also the prominent philanthropist Annenberg family fortune, at least
partially based in underworld links decades earlier, and (the later
to be discussed) common connections between
Jewish-dominated Hollywood and the criminal underworld there.
"U.S. smugglers, conmen, and thieves couldn't seem to get enough of
the movies and the stars during the first half of the century." Then
there is Robert Maxwell, the corrupt Jewish/British businessman who
manipulated what later became known as "colossal swindles of a
particularly nasty kind" who in 1991 went to Israel's Holocaust
memorial center to be bestowed Yad Vashem’s "Remembrance Award" for
his "dedication to Yad Vashem and all it stands for." Seven months
after Maxwell's death, his two sons and an American associate, Larry
Trachtenberg, formerly a lecturer at the London School of Economics,
were arrested in England on charges of fraud
and theft of $250 million.A
Washington Post article did not mention their ethnicity, but
patriarch Robert Maxwell was described as a "Czech [who] arrived in
Britain after World War II almost penniless and made himself one of
Britain's biggest media tycoons."
Elsewhere, in 1995,
the largest non-Orthodox Jewish high school in America (located in
Los Angeles) raised eyebrows when it renamed itself "Milken High"
after a $5 million donation from the Milken Family Foundation. The
high school is part of a new multi-million dollar "cultural and
artistic showplace" complex which includes the Skirball Museum.
Principal Bruce Powell qualified the new high school name, insisting
that it was technically named after the "Milken Family Foundation,"
and not the convicted felon. Powell also told the Los Angeles
Times that, besides, he believed Michael Milken was "tried and
convicted in the press by innuendo and a politically ambitious
prosecutor." "We feel [the Milken High School name] is a non-issue,"
Shoshana Hirsh, planning director of the San Fernando Jewish
Alliance, told the Times. After all, another Jewish complex
-- the West Valley Jewish Center in West Hills, California --
already opened in 1987 -- in the midst of Michael Milken's financial
scams -- as the Bernard Milken campus, named after Michael's father.
In 1991, Thomas and
Joseph Gambino, sons of deceased Mafia leader
Carlo Gambino, and recognized organized crime figures in
their own right, donated $2.3 million to the
Long Island Jewish Medical Center. Tom was at the time under
federal investigation for racketeering, extortion, loan-sharking,
and murder charges. Joe was indicted a few months earlier for
extortion and restraint of trade. Hospital officials announced a new
facility to be named the Gambino Medical and Science Foundation Bone
Marrow Transplantation Unit. "No amount of money these men give,"
complained one disgusted hospital trustee, "can offset the damage
this incident is doing to the hospital's reputation."
In 1958 media mogul
Walter Annenberg proposed to fund what he called the "M.L. Annenberg
School of Communications" at the University of Pennsylvania, named
in honor of his father, Moses, a man who built the Annenberg fortune
in association with a variety of criminal underground figures,
including mobster Meyer Lansky. John Cooney writes that:
"There had been a
loud opposition from faculty members who objected
to Penn's honoring a man of Moses' past. Moreover, many faculty
members believed that Annenberg wanted to retain control over the
school by appointing faculty members himself, a situation they
considered intolerable."
In 1985 Myron
Goodman and his brother-in-law Mordechai Weissman merited an entire
volume about the moral fiascos in their company called OPM
(The OPM Scandal and the Seduction of the Establishment).
Founded in 1971, OPM became the largest purchaser of
IBM equipment for their computer leasing company. Clients included
AT&T, American Express, Rockwell, Occidental Petroleum, and many
others.
In 1980 Goodman and
Weissman were found guilty and sentenced to 10-12 years in prison
for check kiting, conspiracy, and mail and wire fraud. The company
fraudulently obtained nearly $200 million from lenders. Other
OPM officials found guilty of criminal actions in the
case included Allen Ganz, Manny Friedman, Stephen Lichtman, and
Jeffrey Resnick. Kickbacks also went to Jewish executives at
Montefiore Hospital (Harry Weiss) and American Express (Martin
Shulman).OPM employed 17 Goodman/Weissman
relatives.
"Both Goodman and
Weissman were Orthodox Jews," notes Robert Gandossy, "who practiced
Jewish dietary laws and refrained from work and travel on the
Sabbath. A mezuzah [a Jewish religious artifact] hung on every
office door at OPM ... Weissman's faith was so strong that he left
OPM in 1973 to fight in the Israeli war in the Middle East."Not surprisingly, Goodman also "gave away millions to
charitable organizations, particularly those with Jewish
affiliations." This included $1 million to Yeshiva University, where
he was elected to be a board member.
In 1996, officials
at Beth Israel Hospital and the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center for the
Aged wrote testimonial letters on behalf of Jewish philanthropist
Simon Fireman to help keep him out of jail. Fireman, Hebrew Rehab's
Man of the Year in 1996, (he funded their "Fireman Pavilion" a year
earlier) faced a federal court and 74 counts of conspiracy to hide
$120,000 in illegal political campaign contributions.
In 1999 Garth
Drabinsky and Myron Gottleib, co-founders of the giant theatre
producer Livent, Inc. (the organization behind popular
musicals like Showboat, Ragtime, and Kiss of the
Spider Woman) were arraigned for 16 charges of conspiracy and
securities fraud in Manhattan. "Some individuals and groups in the
non-profit sector," noted the Ottawa Citizen, "particularly
in Toronto's Jewish community, are evaluating the impact on past and
future funding received from [them]."
In 1997, Roy
Rosenbaum, the vice president of development for the Jewish
Theological Seminary, defended the practice of accepting money from
anyone, no questions asked:
"Should a charity
accept money from someone who may have earnedit
by illegal means of any kind? ... I believe that it is appropriate
todo so."
"There's a
difference," insisted Rabbi Stephanie Dickstein in the Jewish
Theological Seminary's magazine, "between accepting money of a
questionable background and the directors of the organization
engaging in such behavior themselves." [KORDOVA, p. 27] This
disturbing worldview from a preeminent Jewish American theology
center essentially sanctions any immoral, unethical practice and any
crime if, in the end, the Jewish charity recipients themselves
didn't themselves pull the trigger.
Over the years,
notes Robert Rockaway in the journal American Jewish History,
"Jewish organizations and charities did accept gangster
contributions, rarely inquiring as to the source of the money given
to them, neither did they discriminate among donors. [Prominent
Jewish mobster] Meyer Lansky donated large sums of money to his
synagogue, Temple Sinai in Hollywood, Florida, to [the
Jewish-founded] Brandeis University, and to causes related to
Israel." - "Over the years," adds Stephen
Birmingham, "[Jewish mobster Meyer Lansky] has been very generous to
Israel -- not only with personal contributions, but also by
regularly turning over his Las Vegas hotels and casinos for Bonds
for Israel rallies."
In 1970 Moe Dalitz,
"a leading member of the Cleveland crime syndicate," and controller
of the Stardust and Desert Inn Las Vegas casinos, was awarded the
City of Peace Award of the State of Israel "in recognition of
distinguished service to the people and state of Israel." In 1985
the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith bestowed their "Torch of
Liberty" award upon him for his cash support of that group. A
gangster associate revealed to a 1947 organized crime commission
that Dalitz was in fact the chairman of the Nevada United Jewish
Appeal.In 1982, Dalitz was listed by Forbes
magazine as one of the 400 wealthiest people in America.
In terms of the criminal underworld, he was also known as "the
godfather of Las Vegas."In 1949, Murray
Greenfield was a hero to Israel; he was activist in guiding
immigrants to the Jewish state. He connected in Baltimore with the
Jewish criminal underworld through a contact at a local United
Jewish Appeal function.
Also in Las Vegas,
Ze'ev Chafets notes the story of "a local Jewish madam [who] had
given a talk to a B'nai B'rith meeting. Prostitution is legal in
Nevada, and the madam, a Jewish lady named Beverly Hurel, is a
highly regarded businesswoman." [CHAFETS, p. 101]Other prominent local Jewish activists included Jack
Entratter, who was concurrently the president of both the Sands
Hotel casino and the Temple Beth Sholam synagogue.
In 1973 Morris (Moishe)
Levy, head of the musical recording label Roulette Records,
was honored by the UJA music division as its man of the year. "One
of the most aboveground institutionalized mob involvements in the
[music industry]," noted Steve Chapple and Reebee Garofalo in 1977,
"was suggested at Senate hearings in 1973, during the testimony of
Gerland Zelmanowitz, a Mafia financier turned informer who said
Angelo 'Gyp' DeCarlo, a New Jersey Mafioso, and Tommy Eboli...,
another top-level mobster shot and killed in New York, were partners
in Roulette Records. The label's president, Morris
Levy, says the mob was never in Roulette, but
acknowledged Mafia money in Promo Records, which he
used to share with Eboli."
In roasting Levy at
the UJA dinner in his honor, Joe Smith, the head of Elektra
records, told the crowd, "The thought of coming up to honor Morris
Levy and to introduce him and say something complimentary about this
crowd here tonight, is the most difficult assignment I've ever
faced.... [There are] two things all these ladies and gentlemen on
the dais have in common: They cheated everybody every time they
could. And they are the biggest pain in the ass to be
around." Turning to address a friend of Levy's in the audience, Hy
Weiss, the founder of the Old Town record label, Smith
said, "Hymie was assigned not to the table, but to room 328 where
he's gonna line up the hookers for a party afterwards." - "There was
laughter and applause to these remarks," says Fred Dannen. "I was
the payola [bribe] king of New York," said Weiss later, "Payola was
the greatest thing in the world. You didn't have to go out to dinner
with someone and kiss their ass. Just pay them, here's the money,
play the record, fuck you."In 1988 Morris Levy
was convicted of two counts of conspiracy to commit extortion.
In 1982 Roy Cohn
(who rose to fame as the right-hand man of Senator Joe McCarthy's
anti-communist witch hunt purges in the 1950s) was honored at a
State of Israel Bond "testimonial dinner" sponsored by the B'nai
B'rith Banking and Finance Lodge. Cohn was awarded the City of Peace
Award "for his ongoing advocacy of American economic and political
support of Israel." [JEWISH WEEK, 4-15-83, p. 44] Cohn had earlier
been honored by the Jewish National Fund and the Federation of
Jewish Philanthropies. Cohn was once disbarred from the practice of
law for a year and a half for stealing from a client (this client,
Lewis Rosentiel, head of the giant Schenley alcohol fortune and a
prominent philanthropist for Jewish-founded Brandeis University, was
also known to have been involved with the mob); over a ten year
period Cohn was also acquitted in three separate trials involving
obstruction of justice, perjury, a stock-swindle scheme, bribery,
conspiracy, and filing false documents. "At these trials," notes
Thomas Maier, "the testimony revealed some of Cohn's friends and
associates included such underworld figures as Moe Dalitz, ... a man
described by authorities as an 'under boss' to Mafia chieftain Vito
Genovese; and Meyer Lansky, the Miami gangster." (Cohn's uncle,
Bernie Marcus, head of the Bank of the United States, even spent
time in prison. Why? "The WASP establishment," says Cohn, "went
after the Bank of the United States with a vengeance that was pure
in its anti-Semitism.") [ZION, S., 1988, p. 24]
In Miami also, noted Robert Friedman in 2000, "until recently the
ringleader of the Russian mob in South Florida," Ludwig Fainberg has
held "numerous fundraisers ... for Jewish charities at a restaurant
and nightclub he owns called Babushka."
A lot of Jewish World War II lackies to Nazis ended up working as
officials in American Jewish community organizations. As noted
Jewish Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal notes:
"I made a [postwar] rule that was approved by the American military
government authorities and became known as Lex Wiesenthal: Latin for
Wiesenthal's Law. It was very simple: WHOEVER HAD A FUNCTION OF
AUTHORITY IN THE NAZI PERIOD COULD NOT HAVE A FUNCTION IN
POSTWAR JEWISH LIFE. [Wiesenthal's emphasis] I wasn't saying such a
man was a criminal. I wasn't even looking into whether he was good
or bad. But I needed to protect our Jewish society from more bad
surprises' ... Wisenthal noted that 'in many
cases, such people after the war found jobs with Jewish
organizations. Maybe they were trying to atone; maybe they thought
this was the best place to hide. Once, I was going special to Paris
to see the director for Europe of the [Jewish] Joint Distribution
Committee, because working for him was a man -- a Jew! - who had
been in a concentration camp the head of the transports to the death
camps. According to Wisenthal, the JDC director, an American,
responded, 'So what? This was a time when everyone had to serve."
In 2001, President Bill Clinton found himself in another scandal
when he pardoned Jewish American fugitive Marc Rich, wanted since
1983 on "51 counts of tax evasion, racketeering and violating
sanctions against trade with Iran." New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani
notes that Rich's crimes included "the biggest tax evasion case in
United States history." Rich "was also charged with a complex oil
scam that exploited America's energy crisis in the early '80s. The
65-count indictment claimed he had secretly bought up millions of
barrels of Texas crude oil then under strict price controls and
relabeled the oil as decontrolled supplies, ultimately selling it on
the open market for huge profits -- reportedly $100 million. And
while 52 Americans were held hostage in Iran, Rich's company
allegedly made another fortune by trading with the Ayatollah
Khomeini's regime in violation of a strict American trade embargo."
As a fugitive, Rich the wanted criminal had given over $70 million
to Israeli causes. Hence, as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
noted about massive international Jewish lobbying efforts to get the
pardon:
"The Rich case puts an uncomfortable spotlight on the many Jewish
and Israeli causes, like Birthright Israel [which sends young Jewish
Americans to Israel], that Rich supported. Indeed, a New York
Times article noted that the list of people who wrote letters
[to Clinton] supporting Rich's pardon is 'a virtual Who's Who of
Israeli society and Jewish philanthropy."
These included Rabbi Irving Greenberg, head of the U. S. Holocaust
Memorial Council, who asked Clinton, on Rich's behalf, to do "one of
the most Godlike actions that anyone can ever do." "Rich has given
to a variety of major institutions in Israel," noted the JTA.
As Jewish commentator Ben Stein lamented:
"The really embarrassing moral disgrace attaches itself to, first,
the chairman of the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Council, Rabbi Irwin
Greenberg, who wrote Clinton urging a pardon for Rich, and to Ehud
Barak, who while prime minister of Israel likewise solicited Clinton
... It's part of the thinking about the Holocaust that whatever is
thought bad by Holocaust experts -- such as Greenberg -- is bad, and
whatever is thought good is good. To spend such moral capital to get
a pardon for Rich is disgusting. To think that the pity Americans
feel for the Holocaust dead and survivors should be manipulated to
aid a man accused of trading with America's enemies for profit is
revolting." [STEIN, B., 2-14-01, p. 15A]
Israeli commentator Ze'ev Chafets was also shamed to comment about
the international Jewish lack of morals in the effort to secure
pardoning of such a corrupt man:
"The effort of Rich's strategists to turn their client into a modern
day Alfred Dreyfus [a famous French Jew who was falsely tried for
disloyalty] -- with the active connivance of some of the world's
most prominent Jewish personalities and institutions -- is a scandal
in its own right ... [Abraham] Foxman is the national director of
the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, America's most
prestigious Jewish group. He wrote an official ADL letter to
Clinton, asking him to pardon Rich. I called the ADL to ask why its
director had intervened with the President of the United States
on behalf of a master swindler and member in good standing of the
FBI's most wanted list.
'Humanitarian
reasons,' a spokeswoman told me. What possible humanitarian reason,
I wondered, could there be to pardon a billionaire who lives in a
Swiss castle and flies around the world in his own jet? And what did
a crook like Rich have to do with the ADL? ... As for Foxman,
Greenberg and other so-called American Jewish leaders, they
prostituted themselves and their organizations for a rich criminal
... Foxman's not alone. Led by a Tel Aviv-based former Mossad
agent named Avner Azulay, the Rich team put together a Jewish who's
who of supporters. They got their client character references from
famous rabbis like Shlomo Riskin; from Rabbi Irving Greenberg,
chairman of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council; from the chief rabbi of
France; from the directors of a half-dozen Israeli hospitals, and
from Marlene Post, former head of Hadassah [the women's Zionist
organization].
Rich also received
active support from former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres;
Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg; Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo
Ben-Ami; ex-Ambassador to Washington Itamar Rabinovich; former
Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek; the current mayor, Ehud Olmert, and
dozens of other Israeli politicians...By participating in what
appears to be an international conspiracy, they have given life to a
classic anti-Semitic fantasy and earned themselves a place on the
Anti-Defamation League's list of enemies of the Jewish people."
It was even eventually revealed that Abraham Foxman, director of
perhaps the best-known Jewish organization, the Anti-Defamation
League, a powerful enforcer of self-defined public morals
(particularly against what it defines as "anti-Semitism") and ardent
defender of Israel, had accepted a $100,000 donation to ADL from
Marc Rich shortly before Foxman wrote his letter to Clinton in
behalf of the criminal. "The ADL," noted the New York Post, "that
Foxman and Rich's Israeli representative, former Mossad agent Avner
Azulay, met in Paris last February to discuss ways to resolve Rich's
legal problems." ADL spokesperson Myra Shinbaum declared that the
ADL ("which annually budgets $50 million to fight anti-Semitism")
wouldn't be returning the money.
In 1994, in the (Jewish) Forward's list of the most important
Jewish American leaders, Shoshana Cardin was noted as "chief of
staff of American Jewry" and "past chairman of almost everything,"
from the United Jewish Appeal to the National Jewish Center for
Learning and Leadership. The Forward also noted that she
"stood by her husband [Jerome Cardin] with dignity when he went to
prison for his role in a Maryland savings-and-loan scandal." Cardin
was released from prison early for medical reasons, but an associate
-- Jeffrey Levitt -- spent seven years behind bars.
Levitt, who was
active in Jewish charities which fueled his "concurrent rise in
Baltimore's Jewish community," was well known in the 1970s "as one
of Baltimore's most audacious slumlords." As president of the Old
Court Savings and Loan Association, he was involved in what one
prosecutor termed as possibly "the largest fraud in the history of
the state of Maryland."Likewise, in Boston, as
elsewhere, the Realty Lodge of the local chapter of the B'nai B'rith
Jewish fraternal organization (which is the parent of the
Anti-Defamation League) "represented many of the city's Jewish
slumlords."
In 1982, Earl Shorris recalled his childhood memories of the kinds
of men who headed his synagogue:
"We arrived at the synagogue as a family, three generations led by
my grandfather ... My grandfather spoke to his friend Eddie -- Big
Eddie, he called him. They spoke as members of the board of
directors of the synagogue, important men, big donors. My
grandfather earned his money from the labor of Italian and Polish
women who sewed clothing in his factories. Big Eddie sold cheap wine
and whiskey to the poor of the town. We did not approve of Big
Eddie. His diamond ring and his fat cigar offended us ... His
business offended us. There were fights in front of his store,
stabbings, more than one killing. There were rumors about him.
Some people said he dealt with criminals. It as said that he gave so
much to the synagogue to atone for the way he made his money... He
traded donations for a position as a director of the synagogue. My
grandfather said Eddie wanted to be president, that he was willing
to donate a community center if the directors would elect him
president. When Big Eddie finally strode up at the synagogue to be
so honored, "the man our community commended to God" the color of
his flesh was as rich and vulgar as his suit. [Grandfather,] you
were so small, so pale beside him. Jerusalem was conquered, the
Temple was destroyed, and there was no prophet in all of Israel.
After the service I asked my father why it had happened. Money, was
all he said. Sometimes you have to do these things, my grandfather
added. A building doesn't come cheap."
Israeli scholar Robert Rockaway notes the notoriously ruthless
all-Jewish Detroit Purple Gang of the prohibition era:
"[Purple Gang members] were what we would call 'traditional' Jews;
they observed certain religious rituals and traditions such as
lighting the Sabbath candles, eating kohser food at home (and often
outside the home), attending synagogue on Jewish holidays and
hosting or attending a Passover Seder. Some of the fathers [of gang
members] were active members and even officers of synagogues ... On
one particular Day of Atonement, the FBI sent two agents to
Congregation B'nai David in hopes that some of the wanted Purple
gangsters would show up for services. At the time, the uncle of a
leading Purple gangster was president of the congregation."
In 2001, Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune,
stepped down as the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of
Major American Jewish Americans, the umbrella organization for this
country's most prominent Jewish groups. Lauder was known jokingly as
the "King of the Jews." That same year the New York Times
reported that Lauder's overseas company, Central European Media
Enterprises, was "under investigation over allegations that it paid
at least $1 million in bribes to Ukrainian officials for a valuable
television license, according to lawyers and [U. S.] Justice
Department documents." Lauder owned Ukraine's best-known TV station,
Studio 1+1, with Jewish crime lords Vadim Rabinovich and Boris
Fuchsmann, who, although "known around Kiev for their influence and
wealth," were "less well known [for] their ties to Russian organized
crime, according to reports by the F.B.I. and European law
enforcement agencies."
In 1995, Jeanette
Nelson and her husband Victor Incenty (honorary co-chairpersons of
an American Jewish Committee tribute to the conductor of the Florida
Symphony Orchestra) were arrested for an "alleged scam to cheat
thousands of investors out of $170 million." Vincenty's company,
Cascade International, had made Fortune magazine's 1989 list
of "companies to watch." Also in Florida, in 1998, Phillip Scott
Plotka was noted to have -
"the resume of a prominent insurance agent ... In 1996 he received
the Quality of Life Winner award by the Million Dollar Roundtable
Foundation. He serves on the board of Jewish Vocational Services and
on a professional advisory committee for the insurance industry ...
But Wednesday, Plotka gained a different sort of notoriety. He
became the first agent arrested in Miami-Dade county on charges of
insurance fraud solicited through the Internet ... The Florida
Department of Insurance said he solicited clients with the AIDS
virus and instructed them to falsify insurance appications so they
would be accepted ... 'This is a particularly onerous case because
the individual is a highly regarded individual in his field,' [Dade
Assistant State Attorney Mark] Shapiro said. 'He sits on an ethics
committee."
In Canada, in 1989,
Patricia Starr "was facing revelations in the Toronto media that she
had channeled more than $82,000 of charitable funds from the local
branch of theNational Council of Jewish Women,
of which she was president, toLiberal and
Conservative politicians and to Liberal activists. The FederalIncome Tax Act prohibited charities from making such
contributions, and Ontario legislation limits the size of individual
donations that apolitician can accept."
Starr also pleaded
guilty to lying to receive an unwarranted $357,000 from the local
government for her Jewish organization, of which she personally
stole $33,000. The National Council of Jewish Women itself faced 22
court charges for various legal infractions; they were dropped,
however, because -- in the words of the government prosecutor: "It
would have been like having the same trial [as Starr's] all over
again. I don't think that would serve the public interest."
In 1998, the
National Jewish Council of Jewish Women made the news again, this
time in Denver, where its treasurer of 14 years, Ellen Bloch, was
found to have embezzled over $150,000. In England, that same year,
the (London) Independent headlined a story "Chief Rabbi
Rocked by Fraud Scandal." Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is "seen by many Jews
and non-Jews as the spiritual center of British Jewry ... is
technically the Chief Rabbi only of the United Synagogue, the main
Orthodox movement with 70 congregations in the United Kingdom."
Suddenly he was "embroiled in deepening turmoil." Police were
investigating "allegations of fraud at Jewish cemeteries in east
London" and "the disappearance of highly valuable texts from a
religious library."
In 2001, the Jewish Chronicle noted another Jewish cemetery
escapade: "an ugly real estate battle between a New Jersey synagogue
and its former cantor [that] has begun to focus on a larger question
of whether congregants benefited from unethical business
relationships they formed as synagogue benefactors." Harvey Waldman
filed suit alleging that the temple's rabbi and other congregants
took kickbacks "on a profit of more than $20 million" in a cemetery
land scheme.
In 2000, Jean
Thorbourn, a bookkeeper and financial consultant for the Hebrew
Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles was
charged with "embezzling more than $1 million from the institution
-- some of which was apparently used to finance the production of
independent films." In 2001, rabbis Jacob Bronner and Efroim Stein
"pleaded guilty to defrauding the US government of part of a $2.5
million federal grant intended to aid Holocaust survivors." The two
men embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In Canada, scrap metal millionaire Morris Lax was the victim of an
unsolved murder in 1993. Guy Crittenden notes "the closed-shop
nature of the scrap business" and that -
"Even Lax supporters don't deny he was crooked (though perhaps not
more so than some others in the business). He pled guilty to
criminal charges in the early 1960's after being caught with stolen
brass. On February 16, 1977 he was fined $34,000 after pleading
guilty to three counts of falsifying company records ... Another
time police found a portion of four tons of stolen copper at Lax's
property ... People remembered him as an oddball who was physically
filthy and would inadvertently spit upon listeners when he became
animated in conversation. (This was normally Yiddish; Lax avoided
speaking English throughout most of his life in Canada) ...
Money allowed Morris Lax one luxury. He was a prominent supporter of
Israel and, in stunning contrast to his usual crudeness, moved
easily in the highest circles of Israeli political life, counting
among his friends Mr. [Menachem] Begin [Israel's prime minister]
(with whom he'd fled Russia) and Yitzhak Shamir."
Chester and Morris Waxman, business associates of Lax, built to
power "one of the top three scrap-recycling enterprises in Canada."
Chester, the Jewish community's Man of the Year in 1979, eventually
was involved in a 14-year lawsuit with his brother (who initiated
charges) which provided "a veritable parade of witnesses who have
leveled accusations of fraud, conspiracy, diversion of funds,
racehorse-breeding schemes, evidence tampering and betrayals of
deathbed promises."
"What a bunch of
shiksas in here!" proclaimed Bess Myerson, the only
Jewish Miss America in history, in 1995 at the sight of a number of
blondes in attendance at a gathering of the Women's Division of
Israel Bonds of Maryland. Myerson, speaking as a member of the
Israel Bonds national board and the board of the Anti-Defamation
League, noted that "my greatest source of renewal comes from walking
into a room filled of Jews."The
Baltimore Jewish Times also observed that -
"she did not allude
to her well publicized legal troubles over the years, which have
included indictments in the mid-1980s on charges of conspiracy,
fraud and obstruction of justice for allegedly bribing a judgeto reduce support payments to her then-boyfriend's former
wife. Ms. Myerson eventually was acquitted of the charges. She was
also arrestedfor shoplifting in Pennsylvania
seven years ago."
Myerson, a
millionaire, was in fact arrested twice for shoplifting. The first
time was in London. Luckily for her, this fact was not reported. At
the time she was the New York City Consumer Affairs Commissioner.
Meyerson's
non-Jewish boyfriend, Carl Capasso, was already married and was
twenty-one years younger than her. Capasso's wife, Nancy, was also
Jewish. His "best friend and neighbor was Mafia boss Matthew (Matty
the Horse) Ianniello." "Capasso," notes Jack Newfield and Wayne
Barrett, "was probably the only cheating husband in history who
claimed to be spending his nights with a Mafia boss (Ianniello) when
he was really having an affair with Miss America." (In 1998, Myerson
donated money to the Anti-Defamation League to institute the "Bess
Myerson Campus Journalism Awards," conceived by her as "an important
tool in reaching students far and wide in the fight against hatred,"
encouraging "student journalists to think critically about
interracial, interethnic, intercultural and inter-religious
relations."
In 2001, a Jewish journal, the Forward, featured an article
about shoplifting, using actress Winona Ryder, real estate heir
Robert Durst, and Bess Myerson as examples of the Jewish wealthy who
steal for psychological reasons. In one man's case, his "Holocaust"
background is allowed to excuse his thieving behavior. "Sometimes,"
noted the article,
"the stressor [shoplifter under stress] can be very old. For
example, Mr. [William] Chupchik -- who holds intervention seminars
for what he calls 'atypical theft offenders' -- had a wealthy
patient, a Holocaust survivor, who was arrested for stealing a
$15 pair of Dr. Scholl's insoles from a drug store. 'He had no
reason, no excuse for the theft behavior,' he recalled. Still, as
Mr. Cupchik spoke to the man about his past, he learned that the day
of the theft was the 50th anniversary of his liberation from a
concentration camp, when 'inmates were awakened at 3 a.m. and were
forced to march, most of them without shoes, along a rock-laden rail
line.' 'It was an anniversary reaction, manifested in atypical theft
behavior,' Mr. Cupchik said." -
- "In 1997 the UJA-Federation
of New York found itself in an in-house ethical controversy when
James S. Tisch, whose family controls the Lorillard Tobacco
corporation, was nominated to head the Jewish organization.
"Morality, ethics, Jewish law against self-destruction and common
sense," said fellow UJA board member Henry Everett," mandate that it
would be repugnant for a tobacco executive to be cast as the
president and role model of any Jewish federation.""On an ethical level," Alfred Munzer, a lung specialist and
president of the American Lung Association told the New York
Times, "a smoking executive is not fit to be the head of a
social welfare agency."In 1994, James Tisch's
brother, Andrew, who was then the CEO of Lorillard,
stated in Congressional hearings that the widespread scientific
information about the relationship between smoking and cancer "has
not convinced me that smoking causes deaths." -
"Several Jewish leaders," noted the Times, "who opposed Mr.
Tisch's nomination asked not to be quoted, saying they were afraid
that the Tisch family or the UJA-Federation might cut off their
[economic] support to their groups ... Most of those who protested
said they were concerned about the impact of the appointment [of
Tisch] might have on the group's ability to raise money." Tisch was
formally approved as the Jewish "role model" the next week.
In another ethical
area, in the wake of the much-publicized Anita Hill sexual
harassment charges in 1991, the Jewish Bulletin of Northern
California ran a story written by the Associate Executive Vice
President of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory
Council, Diana Aviv, and the Director of National Affairs for the
American Jewish Committee, Gary Rubin. They complained that -
"sexual harassment
is also rife within Jewish communal organizations.Since the [Hill] scandal broke, we have been inundated with
stories fromwomen who work within Jewish
agencies, anxious to share their experiences of sexual harassment by
lay and professional men ... These stories could be multiplied
almost without end. All the women we spokewith
believed that sexual harassment is endemic and deeply engrained in
the Jewish community."
An echo of this has
long been a problem in the psychotherapy and psychiatry worlds:the sexual exploitation of vulnerable patients by predatory
therapists. Such fields, as evidenced earlier, are enormously
overpopulated with Jewish men. ["That vast imperative of putative
concern, psychiatry, is largely a Jewish monopoly." -- Kahn, Roger.
The Passionate People, William Morris, Inc., 1968, p. 53 /
"All over the world, Jews are drawn to the profession of
psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy. The 1990 roster of the
International Psychoanalytical Association reads like the membership
list of a synagogue." -- Earl Hopper, Psychotherapy and the 'Jewish
Experience.' European Judaism, Spring 1996. Rapes and other
similar incidents are only sometimes reported by patients who have
the courage to complain to authorities. A 1994 Boston Globe
article noted the great scope of the problem, mentioning the cases
against therapists Martin Teicher, Arthur Reider, Lionel Schwartz,
Joel Feigon, Jacob Goldberg, Leonard Friedman, and others,
including, in 1992, "several accused multiple offenders -- Sheldon
D. Zigelbaum, Edward M. Daniels, and Stanley S. Kanter [who] either
lost or gave up their licenses [to practice therapy] under pressure
... Though polls have shown that about 8 to 10 percent of
psychiatrists admit to having sex with patients, many experts
believe the actual frequency is higher, up to 25 percent. Many
psychiatrists, they say, are not about to admit to such a clear
violation [of therapists' ethical codes], even anonymously." Worse,
as the Citizens' Commission on Human Rights noted:
"Although only ten percent of psychiatrists admit to sexually
abusing patients, interestingly, 65 percent say new patients tell
them of being abused sexually by their former psychiatrist. In other
words, the 10 percent figure can be considered very, very low. In
fact, in an article from the March 12, 1990 edition of U.S. News
and World Report, experts put the figure at more like 25
percent, or one out of every four psychiatrists. And a 1973 study
in California puts the figure at an astronomical 51 percent!"
[CITIZENS' COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS, 2001]
This organization estimates that there are 150,000 women "sexually
abused by psychiatrists in the USA." 21,000 try to kill themselves,
1,500 DO kill themselves, and 16,000 end up hospitalized because of
the harm caused to them." [CITIZENS' COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS,
2001]
The innate
difficulty of determining how widespread sexual abuse is in
psychotherapy is noted by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson: "Imagine
attempting to find out how many men had raped by asking
non-convicted rapists whether they were guilty of rape."
In 1993, another
Jewish sexual predator, this one especially prominent, Dr. Jules
Masserman, began making the news. Masserman has been called "the
most prominent psychiatrist in the world." He had a resume of 432
articles and 16 books of his authorship. He was the past president
of both the American Psychiatric Association and the American
Academy of Psychoanalysts. He was also a vicious sexual predator,
one who "admitted that he, over his 50-year career, drugged and
sexually molested female patients in his office." [ROZNAFSZKY, p.
10F]Four women eventually accepted
out-of-court settlements of claims against him. Eventually, a dozen
women came forward to note similar sexual predations against them by
Masserman. Former patient Barbara Noel even authored an entire
volume about her experiences with the therapist, underscoring his
control over her and the difficulties in getting anyone to initially
believe her stories against such a powerful man.
For years,
therapist sexual abuse of patients was kept hush in the secretive
psychoanalytic community. As Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson noted in
1988:
"[The sexual
exploitation of patients by therapists was] for manyyears ... almost never mentioned, except in private. I
remember that one of the first seminars I attended when I was a
candidate forpsychoanalytic training was given
by an elderly psychoanalyst fromMontreal, who
immediately informed us that a major part of his clinical practice
consisted of analysts who had had sexual involvementwith patients. He told us ten students that many of us,
before ourcareers were finished, would become
sexually involved with a patient. Before the [1970s] decade was
over, an increasing body ofliterature addressed
the subject. One reason, obviously, was thatthere were a number of landmark cases in which large awardswere made to individuals who sued therapists. There is no
sense in pretending to the general public that something never
happenedwhich is in the newspaper."
By the 1970s, for example, the psychoanalytic practice of John N.
Rosen began making the news. Rosen was not obscure; articles about
his therapy theories had appeared in various scholarly realms by
himself and others. In 1983, he gave up his medical license rather
than face trial on 67 counts of violations of the Pennsylvania
Medical Practices Act. As part of "therapy," for example, patient
Sally Zinman faced the following outrages:
"Without
a word of explanation, [Rosen] and his main aide, an ex-Marine, tore
off all of her clothes except her underpants and began beating her
on the face and breasts (the aide held her down whileRosen beat her). She was then tied to her bed, still with no
clotheson, and kept that way for 24 hours under
close guard ... [Therapyalso included Rosen]
suggesting various 'delusions' to her and
fondling her breasts when they were alone (often the sessions were
in groups), and once even her vagina."
In the case of
another patient, Janet Katkow, Rosen "took off his pants and boxer
shorts down over his penis and commanded the plaintiff to suck on
his penis." This Katkow was required to do "hundreds of times" over
a seven year period. "This is what it is all about, this is when a
baby is at peace," he told her. This patient was also forced to lick
his anus "and orally take in as much of
his feces as she could, which she did."
Katkow was also directed to have cunnilingus with another woman and
have sex with an impotent judge.
Rosen also had
"numerous sexual relations" with patient Julia Blythe. Three other
women eventually came forward with similar stories of abuse.
Jeffrey Moussaieff
Masson, a former psychoanalyst, became profoundly disillusioned with
the field and notes, in his volume entitled Against Therapy,
the disturbing undercurrent of such stories, that such abuses are
part of a perversely authoritarian doctor-patient relationship that
is the foundation of the psychoanalytic world itself:
"Is Rosen an
exception or is there something about psychotherapy, something in
the very nature of psychotherapy, that tends towardabuses? A prison warden, a slaveholder, and a psychotherapist
havein common the desire to control another
person."
In late 2000, the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles noted
with concern a number of newsworthy cases of sexual abuse by rabbis:
"For those who look up to the American Jewish clergy, it has not
been a good year. Last week, one of the Reform movement's most
prominent rabbis was suspended from the rabbinical movement for past
sexual misconduct ...Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, widely respected as a
Jewish thinker and teacher, resigned as president of the
movement's Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion ... The
wave of incidents is refocusing on an issue that has come into
public view only in recent years. In the past, rabbinical misconduct
-- particularly sexual misconduct -- was rarely discussed publicly.
Many advocates for victims complained that rabbinical associations
were more interested in protecting their members than the people
they hurt."
Also noted in the article is the sexual harassment "by the late
charismatic Orthodox leader, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach," a Reform rabbi
in New Jersey who "allegedly hired people to murder his wife," a
"Conservative Cantor in the Chicago area [who] was arrested ... for
alleged involvement in a prostitution ring," and a "New York rabbi
working for [the Orthodox Union's] national youth group [who
allegedly] sexually harassed and molested teens."
In 1996, a Los
Angeles Jewish showpiece, the Skirball Cultural Center and Museum (a
$65 million cultural center created by Israeli architect Moshe Safdie
and founded by Israeli-born president and CEO Uri Herscher), named
Robert Kirschner as its Program Director despite his past as the
former rabbi of one of northern California's pre-eminent synagogues,
Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco. Kirschner resigned his rabbinical
post there in 1992 after four women (eventually a total of twelve)
came forward with complaints of the rabbi's sexual misconduct,
"involving," he publicly apologized, "sexual relations outside my
marriage." At least three of the women reportedly "reached settlements
with the temple's insurance policy." [LA TIMES, 11-2-96, p. B4]
In 2000, the
Miami-Dade Public Schools district paid a million dollar settlement
to five women, four of them teachers, who charged that Michael
Exelbart, the principal of a school for the handicapped, had
sexually harassed them. Two had been "coerced" into sex, including
at the site of "a conservative Jewish temple in Kendall where
Exelbart was an officer." Exelbart wasn't fired, and continued to
make $80,000 a year at another position.
In April 2001, Jerrold M. Levy, a rabbi at Temple Beth El in
Florida, was arrested for "online solicitation of a juvenile" over
the Internet. The synagogue had hired him as an associate rabbi in
1992, even though it was known by those hiring him that he had been
arrested on a past sex-related charge:
"Levi mentioned a prior arrest when interviewing in 1992 for
associate rabbi at Temple Beth El in Boca Raton ... He had pleaded
no-contest to a sex-related case involving an undercover police
officer in St. Louis-area public restroom ... Temple leaders decided
to give Levy the job anyway, based on his record as a rabbi, lawyer
and member of their synagogue community."
"He's a wonderful person," said David Beale (the synagogue's
vice-president for education and youth) after the rabbi's arrest,
"and he conveys love and Judaism to all who come in contact with
him." During the yearly Purim celebration, noted the South
Florida Sun-Sentinel, "Levy helped lead the service dressed as
the cookie monster."
Two weeks later, in the Boston area, also in April 2001, Eric Hindin
was charged with "two counts of rape of a child, two counts of
indecent assault and battery, and two counts of statutory rape."
Hindin had sexually assaulted and videotaped the crimes with two
boys, one of whom "he was matched with through a Jewish Big Brother
organization."
In 1981, the four-term (1968-81) Brooklyn District Attorney, Eugene
Gold, "announced he would not seek re-election and planned to devote
himself to Jewish charitable causes." In 1983, he was charged with
"unlawful sexual conduct" in a hotel with a 10-year old girl. In
return for probation, Gold pleaded guilty and would seek
"psychiatric treatment in Israel, where he had a home." [NY TIMES,
10-21-83]In 1992, Sol Wachtler, "chief
judge of New York state's Court of Appeals, one of the most
prestigious courts in the United States, resigned... [He was] the central figure in a scandal involving sex,
blackmail and kidnapping threats ... Before his arrest, he was
frequently mentioned as a possible candidate for the governor of New
York state." The object of Wachtler's sexual attentions and threats
was Joy Silverman (a former lover), whose personal friend at the FBI
put 80 agents on the case to nab him.
In 1995, Frederick
Werbell, a rabbi who co-wrote "a best-selling Holocaust book" (Lost
Hero: The Mystery of Raul Wallenberg), pleaded guilty to
"second-degree sexual abuse" of his cleaning lady. "He sprang naked
from the bathroom of his Eastside apartment, grabbed his 39-year old
housekeeper and fondled her." He had earlier been sentenced to 17
months in jail for grabbing a woman he was interviewing in his
apartment for a job as a receptionist." In 2001, Rabbi Pinchas Lew,
a Chasidic Lubavitcher (ultra-Orthodox) -
"was arrested on misdemeanor assault charges ... after a woman
accused him of repeatedly touching his genitals in front of her. The
woman, a housekeeper in Lew's home, reportedly said Lew had bolted
all the doors and that she feared he planned to assault her. She
managed to escape through a back door ... Lew, married with five
children, led religious study and frequently held services in his
home for college students ... Members of the community had had just
learned of Lew's conviction for his part in an Iowa armed robbery 10
years ago ... After the local community learned about [this]
incident, more than 100 members of the local Jewish community
attended a meeting to hear Lew talk about his criminal past.
Coincidentally, that meeting occurred on the same day he allegedly
assaulted the woman in his home."
Lew is a member of a prominent Chabad family -- "his father was
second in command of Chabad in London, a key post in worldwide
Lubavitch." The national Chabad community stunned the judge in
providing the required $200,000 bond for the arrested and jailed
man. This, notes, Stephen Bloom, was based on the Jewish tradition
that "observant Jews are compelled to post bail that will allow a
fellow Jew 'imprisoned unjustly' to be released. Called in Hebrew
pidyon shevuyim, the 'ranson of captives' is a particular
obligation of the Hasidic community." Lew's criminal accomplice was
fellow Chabad member Philip Stillman who robbed a small town popcorn
vendor and shot a grandmother at point-blank range after taking her
money. Stillman reportedly accepted an offer from two rabbis to
accept a bribe to accept full blame for the crimes. Lev, despite an
original sentencing of ten years in prison, was merely put on
probation. The judge told a journalist that he was influenced and
"impressed by many of the Jews who came [to the Lew trial]. The
courtroom had a significant number of rabbis. They were very
intellectual individuals. "If the crime had stunned the locals [of
Iowa]," says Stephen Bloom, "the double standard of punishment for
Stillman and Lev took their breath away." Marion Bakken, the woman
who was shot, survived and was awarded $1.6 million as settlement
for her injuries. She has never been paid.
Secular Jewish journalist Stephen Bloom believes that ultra-Orthodox
disdain for Gentiles contributed to the robberies and attempted
murder:
"The attitude shared by many Postville Hasidim toward the locals
nourished a destructive environment of contempt and scorn providing
a setting for Stillman and Lew. While the Hasids would not encourage
unprovoked violence against gentiles, their everyday us-against-them
mentality helped set the stage for two cocky followers to fantasy
into reality. For more than a year, the Hasidic Jews' imperious
attitude toward the Postville locals had stuck in my craw. As a
Jew, I was embarrassed by their take-it-or-leave-it mentality."
In 1995, a rabbi's
assistant, Yehuda Friedlander, pleaded guilty to the charge of
sexually molesting a 15-year-old girl sitting beside him, alone, on
an international plane flight.He had also
had an earlier arrest for a sexual crime in 1991. A rabbi with him,
Israel Grunwald, the leader of New York's Pupa ultra-Orthodox
community, was also accused of sexually harassing the girl. He
remained under investigation as Friedlander accepted blame.According to the affidavit filed against both men,
substantiated by another passenger who witnessed the incident,
Grunwald first fondled the girl's breast, then exchanged seats with
Friedlander, who violated her further as she protested and resisted
under a blanket, trying to sleep. The two men were returning from
Australia where Grunwald had lectured about the Talmud. Later,
"about 15 supporters from New York and Los Angeles," noted the
Los Angeles Times, "attended the court hearings chanting from
prayer books as they waited for the proceedings to begin." [BOXALL/KENNEDY,
p. B1; and LOS ANGELES TIMES, 11-1-95, p. B4]
In 1999, Ze'ev
Kopolovitch, a rabbi and the principal of Netiv Meir, an all-male
yeshiva high school in Israel, was accused of sexually abusing 19
students from 1991-1997. The most disturbing part of the case, noted
the Jerusalem Post, was that "investigators say Kopolovitch's
alleged behavior was known within the school for several years and
tolerated by the governing hierarchy of the religious Zionist
movement." In 2001, a "part-time synagogue sexton" in Jerusalem was
convicted "for sexually assaulting children who went to synagogue to
pray with him ... At least three children were involved, with one,
the 13-year-old, being the son of another synagogue official. That
boy was so disturbed by the sexual abuse that he took up drugs, and
the sexton then exploited that knowledge to blackmail the youth into
more sexual intercourse. The other two children were subject to his
fondling, often on the back porch of the synagogue during prayers,
in exchange for sweets."
In 2001, Chabad rabbi Mordechai Yomtov, a teacher at Cheder Menachem
grade school in Los Angeles, was jailed on $500,000 bail for "ten
felony counts of committing lewd acts with children ... Yomtov was
keeping [three boys] alone in the classroom and molesting them while
the other children were at recess."
In 2000, John
Douglas Wynn was arrested for molesting a 12-year old boy in the spa
at California's Palo Alto Jewish Community Center. [SAN FRANCISCO
CHRONICLE, 5-18-2000, p. A18] In 2000 an unnamed young Jewish woman
came forward to press criminal charges against Rabbi Baruch Lanner,
the religious director of the National Conference of Synagogue Youth
(NCSY), an Orthodox youth group. She claimed she was molested by
Lanner on a daily basis for eight months beginning in 1995. Lanner,
noted the Jewish Week,"is widely regarded
as one of the most brilliant, dynamic and charismatic educators in
Jewish life today ... Reports have continuedto
circulate that he has harassed, if not abused, many scores of teens
sexually, physically and/or emotionally, from the early 1970s tothe present ... Those who have elected to tell their stories
say they aremotivated by anger and frustration
over the refusal of the OU, thenational central
body of Orthodox synagogues, to act decisively on
repeated complaints about Rabbi Lanner's behavior."
In 2001, two U.S. Congressmen, Tom Lantos and Edolphus Towns were
"snookered" into defending an Argentine yoga school against alleged
"anti-Semitic" elements (about "50 percent of those involved were of
the Jewish faith"). Towns introduced a formal resolution condemning
"discrimination against yoga enthusiasts by the Argentine
government. In the resolution he linked
bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires six years ago to a long
pattern of Argentine anti-Semitism." As Insight on the News
notes, however,
"The Congressmen may have been snookered by those accusations of
anti-Semitism. Their lofty resolution failed to mention some of the
other 'practices' of the Escuela de Yoga. According to reports, the
learning center, run by a certain Juan Percowicz, teaches lessons
that are 'sui generis,' in that they involve practices that most
people would call 'sexual freedom.' There have even been some
allegations of child exploitation, which local police were compelled
to investigate. Since its founding in the
1980s, the school has been raided by the police more than 300 times.
Other charges brought against it include assault and petty larceny."
In 1998, 19-year old model Linor Abargil was
named "Miss World."Seven
weeks earlier she had been raped at knife-point by an Israeli travel
agent, Shlomo Nour. [USA TODAY, 1-20-99]"The 51st year of the Jewish state," noted the Jewish
Advocate, "seems to be shaping up as the Year of the Sexual
Assault. Or perhaps, more properly, the year when sexual assault is
coming out of the closet. Coming out with a vengeance. In the first
six months of 1998, rape was up 22% over the previous year ... Teen
rape, child rape, homo-sexual rape, rape in the military,
intra-family rape, we run the gamut." In 1999, an "expanding" sexual
harassment scandal broke out in the Israeli Ministry for Religious
Affairs, centering on the division's comptroller, Yehiya Paruz.
[SINAI, 1999] That same year, the Los Angeles Times noted
that "Long a taboo topic, or dismissed as something women simply had
to put up with, sexual harassment in the [Israeli] military is now
openly discussed in Israel, thanks to high-profile cases, new rules
and a handful of crusading activists. More and more women are coming
forward to denounce abuse."
In 2000, the head
of the Defense Ministry's publishing unit, Amnon Tzabari, was
charged with sexual harassment for "performing lewd acts on four
female workers in his office." This followed disciplinary actions
against "long-time ministry spokesman" Dan Weinrich and, in a
separate case, the head of the Defense Ministry's media section,
Shachar Halevi. "The situation became so bad," noted the
Jerusalem Post, "that ministry Director-General Arno Yam
gathered all senior officials and warned he was going to uproot the
phenomenon." In 2001, a parliamentary aide to Israeli MK (member of
Knessset/Parliament) Ayoub Kara publicly accused him or raping her.
Ayoub is Prime Minister Sharon's "liason to Israeli Arabs."
[JERUSALEM POST, 2-28-01] In 2000, Israel's Transport Minister,
Yitzhak Mordechai, "who deputizes for [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud]
Barak in his absence, suspended himself pending an investigation
into accustions that he sexually assaulted a female civil servant."
In 2001, the director general of the Israel Journalists' Union,
Tuvya Sa'ar, was "arrested on suspicion of having intercourse with a
minor and coercing her for sexual favors ... In one instance ... he
is suspected of promising the girl an appearance on the TV channel
for children because of his connections there." Sa'ar is the former
director of Israel TV. Along these general themes, see also
historical Jewish pre-eminence in the
international prostition trade, and Jewish dominance of the
pornography business (in the
Mass Media
chapter]
Another ethical
in-house controversy in the Jewish organizational community -- in
this case, involving environmental morality -- arose in Houston when
Charles Hurwitz, a UJA-Federation official, was noted for his role
as a majority stockholder in Maxxam, the company that
owns Pacific Lumber which environmentalists were
fighting for its plans to cut down some of the last remaining old
growth Redwood trees on private land in California. As Benjamin
Stein notes, "Charles Hurwitz's catastrophic takeover of
Pacific Lumber.... resulted in some of the worst environmental
atrocities of all time against first-growth redwood trees." Hurwitz's
Maxxam rules over 110 subsidiaries, including
Kaiser Aluminum, McCullough Oil, and
Simplicity Patterns. By 1999, Hurwitz had spent $20 million
defending himself against two Federal agencies, government lawsuits
that charged that "Texas billionaire Charles Hurwitz bought
Kaiser Aluminum with money made while illegally driving a
savings and loan into bankruptcy." Hurwitz had purchased
United Savings of Texas in 1984, "raided it for cash," and then
let it fail in "reckless disregard for the law." The failure cost
U.S. taxpayers $1.6 billion.
In 1999, environmentalists created an activist alliance against
Maxxam with a steelworker union which had begun a
strike against Kaiser. "I don't think there's a
corporation anywhere else in the U.S. that's at the epicenter of so
many social issues as Maxxam," said steelworker union
official David Foster.
Then there is David Koch. Koch heads Koch Industries,
"a conglomerate with major oil and gas holdings, [which] is the
second-largest privately-held company in the United States. It is
also the recipient of the largest civil fine ever imposed on a
corporation for violating federal environmental laws. During the
1990s, the company's leaky pipelines were responsible for more than
300 oil spills in five states ... Last fall, Koch Industries
and four employees were indicted on 97 counts of violating federal
clean air and hazardous waste laws. Government prosecutors accuse
the company of intentionally releasing fumes from benzene -- a
suspected carcinogen -- into the atmosphere and then lying about it
to state
regulators in Texas. If convicted, the company could be fined up to
$352 million." [MOTHER JONES, 5-3-01]
Samuel Heyman owns 98% of the giant manufacturing firm GAF.
As Mother Jones magazine noted about the company:
"Last year, if the Asbestos Compensation Act had passed Congress,
Heyman would have profited handsomely from his anonymity. The bill
-- drafted by a Harvard law professor hired by GAF -- would have
denied or delayed compensation to thousands of victims of asebestos-related
diseases, cost tax-payers as much as $150 million a year, and
provided 'unwarranted benefits to asbestos companies,' according to
the U. S. Justice Department. As a former manufacturer of
asbestos-laden building products, GAF found itself in a crushing
legal avalanche.' [MOTHER JONES, 5-3-01]
Likewise, in the
pantheon of prominent Jewish organization leaders, there was the
case of (the Jewish) Moment magazine's "donor of the month,"
Bernie Marcus, for his donation of $15 million to the Atlanta UJA
fundraising campaign. Marcus, the CEO of Home Depot,
only weeks earlier lost an Oakland jury verdict of $1.6 million in
damages against his company for "sexual discrimination and
retaliation." A class action lawsuit for $65 million also was
settled against Home Depot for sex discrimination. [ARON,
M.] "A trustee-for-life of the Atlanta Jewish Federation," notes
Mother Jones magazine,
"Marcus says he has integrated Judaic principles into what he likes
to call the 'Home Depot family.' For him, helping people understand
Judaism is a matter of marketing. 'I think a lot of it has to do
with selling,' he says, 'You've got to sell the beauties of
Judaism." [MOTHER JONES, 5-3-01]
In March 1998, the head of the World Jewish Congress, Edgar
Bronfman, also president and CEO of the family-controlled
Seagram and Universal Studios, was awarded a
conspicuously dubious honor (the Seagram fortune was built to
power by the Bronfmans during prohibition, with considerable
collusion with Detroit's criminal Jewish Purple Gang who smuggled
alcohol over to Windsor)."A bipartisan
political group," noted the Financial Times of London,
"launched a new campaign aimed at embarrassing one of the leadinglights of the entertainment business. The first ever "Silver
Sewer' award,in recognition of its 'outrageous
contribution to the degradation andcoarsening of
our culture and its unswerving dedication to the pursuit of profit
above principle' [was awarded in abstention to Bronfman]."
Of particular note
to the judges was the Bronfman ownership and promotion of the
decadent The Jerry Springer [who is Jewish] Show on television and
Marilyn Manson, "perhaps the most shocking of the 'shock rock'
groups." William Bennett, a former cabinet member in the Reagan and
Bush White Houses, decried Seagrams as "the leading perpetrators of
cultural rot" in America. Seagrams is noteworthy for many dubious
honors, including the fact that in 1997 it "started airing TV
commercials for its Crown Royal Whiskey in scattered markets across
the United States. The commercials broke a voluntary ban on
television advertising that the liquor companies had imposed on
themselves in 1948."
In 2001, Irv Rubin, head of the Jewish Defense League, and an
associate, Earl Krugel, were arrested by the FBI for plotting to
bomb the Los Angeles King Fahd Mosque and the office of
Arab-American Congressmen Darrell Issa.
In 1997, the United
Jewish Appeal went out of its way to shame the Jewish community by
awarding its "Humanitarian of the Year" award to (non-Jewish) media
mogul Rupert Murdoch at a fund-raising dinner that raised $2.3
million for the organization. Mother Jones magazine wondered
about the surreal moral reasoning behind the award: "The media baron
is better known to labor and human rights groups for his
union-busting and for catering to the Chinese government (in 1994 he
yanked the BBC off his Asian satellite network because officials in
Beijing were angered by its reporting on Chinese human rights
violations)."
"By what criteria
has the UJA chosen the worldwide robber baron for this years' award
over, say, Radovan Karadzic [accused of war crimes in Bosnia], or
perhaps Larry Flynt [the pornographer]?" wondered Eric Alterman in
the Nation, "... Rupert Murdoch of
Fox News was chosen, the UJA says, for his 'longtime
support of the security of the state of Israel, his friendship for
the Jewish people, and his support of UJA."The
Australian-born Murdoch had earlier been honored in 1982 as the
"Communications Man of the Year" by the American Jewish Congress. He
was presented that award by AJC president Howard Squadron, who was
also Murdoch's American lawyer, his guide to visit right-wing
politician Ariel Sharon in Israel, and an opinion page writer for
Murdoch's New York Post. [GOLDSTEIN, T, p. 69; KIERNAN, T.,
1986, p. 262] "The Jewish national cause is one that is extremely
important to me, to my family, and to my company," Murdoch told the
UJA audience, "... We're also in Israel [Murdoch has investments
there] because of my faith in the integrity and worthiness of the
Zionist undertaking. I have been accused of being pro-Israel,
pro-Zionist, pro-Jewish -- charges to which I plead guilty."
Matti Golan, a
former Israeli government official, calls the massive American
Jewish organizational ring to raise money for itself and Israel the
"Money Machine." American Jews, notes Golan, have "created a
ruthless, well-oiled machine whose only aim is to collectmoney and ... will do anything to do so. Every year [American
Jewishleaders get] a higher quota to meet and
... stop at nothing to meet it.If you can't meet
your quota, you're out. The only gauge of success,the one bottom line, is how many dollars you've brought in."
In 1999,
Jewish billionaire Henry Samueli was presented an award
by a prominent Jewish American organization. As the Los Angeles
Times noted this honor;
"The Orange County
chapter of the American Jewish Committee will
present him with its National Human Relations Award ... He's happy
to be honored, Samueli said, but he was surprised to find out that a
donation to the Committee was part of the package."
Even Alan
Dershowitz concedes that "Jewish organizations sometimes honor the
wealthy without inquiry into the sources of their wealth. We
sometimes do not make the effort to see what is plainly before our
eyes. We are blinded by the facade of money ... "
This worldview, so common in the Jewish community, was
heralded as an emulative value for Americans at-large in 1995 by a
Jewish professor at the University of Chicago, Daniel Fischel, who
espoused it -- not surprisingly -- in his book, Payback: The
Conspiracy toDestroy Michael Milken and His Financial
Revolution, published prominently by HarperCollins. Fischel's
introductory paragraph to begin his defense of Milken's vast
corruption machine deserves to be quoted in full, as sum of both his
book and a widespread moral viciousness so much at stake here:
"Why have the 1980s
been so uniformly condemned as the 'decade of greed?' For that
matter, what does this disparaging characteristic evenmean? The decade's many critics who pontificate against evils
of greed have seen no need to define the term. Dictionary
definitions of greed --'inordinate desire for
wealth' or desire for wealth, or the dividing line between one's
'proper' or 'improper' share? With no answers to these questions,
how can wepossibly know when an individual, let
alone a whole country, is guilty of'greed?' And
even if we could somehow identify 'greedy' behavior, why should we
care?"
It is nigh
impossible to be elected to any office without Jewish support. Bushes
had it, Clinton, Obama, New York Mayors, Governors, Federal Reserve and
FDIC board members, etc. They are the largest and most influential
lobbyists in the US.
A little
about the 9-11 Mayor of New York.
Rudy
Giuliani, a staunch Jewish supporter is also a strong defender of a
barbaric practice known as partial birth abortion where a living, fully
developed unborn baby's brains are sucked out of its skull with a vacuum
tube.
While
Jews own most of America's abortion clinics they do not condone or
tolerate abortions for Jews! But then again if you're not
Jewish...you're just a much loathed gentile, whom they only enslave! So
much money and power for a creed of people with less than 15 million
people or 0.05% of the world's population. Should we believe that all of
these factors are merely coincidently?
But that is just the beginning of his
extreme left-wing positions: Giuliani is pro-Sodomite, pro-Third World
immigration and anti-Second Amendment.
Every year as New York's mayor,
Giuliani marched in the Sodomite parade down Fifth Avenue with all of
the transvestites, the sadomasochistic freaks wearing Nazi helmets, and
the child molesters of the National Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA).
Rudy Giuliani dresses in drag as
JFK/RFK mistress Marilyn Monroe
Giuliani himself dressed in "drag" -
he wore a dress, a wig, makeup and lipstick - on more than one occasion.
Giuliani married his first cousin and
then pulled all types of strings to get the marriage annulled by the
Catholic Church. (Catholics are not allowed to divorce, and so
"annulment" of a marriage is sometimes used to end an unwanted union.)
Giuliani then married his second wife,
Donna Hanover, who starred in the evil pornographic and child-molesting
play, The Vagina Monologues. In the play, a grown woman has a
lesbian, child-molesting relationship with a 13-year-old girl. Rudy is
one sick old man.
Giuliani then openly cheated on his
second wife, parading around the city with his adulterous mate, Judith
Nathan. Giuliani even wanted to bring his adulterous mate into the
Mayor's official residence in Gracie Mansion to openly live with him. He
did not care that his young son Andrew was living there and would have
seen his father together with his adulterous partner every day.
Finally, Giuliani sought to divorce
his second wife. This time, he did not seek an "annulment," he openly
sought a divorce.
When the Giulianis separated, it was
said he moved into the apartment of an AIDS-infected homosexual "couple"
whom he had befriended.
The Jewish Factor
A little about New York's present
mayor;
Michael Bloomberg
was born to a Jewish family of Russian and Polish descent at St.
Elizabeth's Hospital, in the Brighton neighborhood of Boston on February
14, 1942. His father, William Henry Bloomberg, born in Chelsea,
Massachusetts on January 19, 1906, was the son of Alexander "Elick"
Bloomberg, a Russian Jewish immigrant and a real estate agent. His
mother, Charlotte Bloomberg (nee Rubens), born January 2, 1909 in New
Jersey, was the daughter of a Russian immigrant and a New Jersey-born
mother.
Bloomberg was a general partner at
Salomon Brothers when he was let go in 1981 after a merger; that same
year he founded Innovative Market Systems (later Bloomberg LP). The new
subscription service wired real-time financial data, research and news
reports directly into dedicated terminals in business offices. As these
"Bloomberg terminals" flourished, he expanded into television, radio,
publishing and the Internet; Bloomberg News,
launched in 1990, became a prominent financial news source. His
successes made Bloomberg a billionaire
and made his name synonymous with business information. He shifted gears
in 2001, running for New York mayor as a Republican and defeating
Democrat Michael Green just two months after the attacks of 11 September
2001. He was reelected in 2005. In 2008 he said he wanted to run for a
third term, and would ask the New York city council to overturn the
existing two-term mayoral limit. Bloomberg graduated from Johns Hopkins
University in 1964 with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering,
then earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1966. His 1997
autobiography was titled Bloomberg by Bloomberg. The title should
have been "How to Become a
Billionaire with Insider Trading."
Bloomberg is New York City's 108th
mayor... His middle name is Rubens; it is his mother's maiden name... He
was a Democrat for many years before switching to the Republican party
shortly before his run for mayor. In 2007 he left the Republican party
and registered as an independent... He founded his business as
Innovative Market Systems in 1981; it was renamed Bloomberg LP in
1986... Bloomberg was married to the former Susan Brown from 1975 until
their divorce in 1993. They had two daughters, Emma (b. 1979) and
Georgina (b. 1983)... Bloomberg Radio went on the air in 1993...
Bloomberg TV went live on cable in 1994... Bloomberg.com went online in
1995.
He is, of course, a
strong supporter of the Patriot Act, which is used exclusively to
by-pass the people's constitutional rights. He is also, as are all Jews,
a staunch supporter of abortions for non Jews. He is naturally a firm
believer in free trade...global banks...equal global trade. He was
totally against providing pensions for the retirement of city or state
workings after putting in their years, as it was quite common for
police, firemen, etc. to retire as soon as they had completed 20 years
on the job.
Bloomberg strongly supported the war
in Iraq and the rationale for going in. He stated, "Don't forget that
the war started not very many blocks from here" alluding to Ground Zero.
In which Iraq had absolutely
nothing to do with. MS.
Mayor Bloomberg is often a proponent
of large-scale development. He has repeatedly come down in favor of
projects such as the Atlantic Yards mega-development, the Hudson Yards
redevelopment, and the Harlem rezoning proposal. This has led to a
negative response from the preservationist community. On smaller-scale
issues, Bloomberg typically takes the side of development as well. He
favors the demolition of Admiral's Row in order to build a supermarket
parking lot. "Politics, money,
development, 9-11, wars, deprivation of people's rights, wall
street...so nicely packaged!"
Harassment controversies
Bloomberg has on numerous occasions
been accused of sexually harassing men and women under his employment,
which he has denied. In 1997, a former Bloomberg L.P. employee who
became pregnant while employed filed a lawsuit accusing Bloomberg of
saying "Kill it!" and "great, No. 16", which may have been a reference
to the number of pregnant women in the company. In December 2008,
Portfolio magazine published a story: "Mayor Bloomberg's Delicate
Condition", which reported that in September 2007, the EEOC filed a
class-action lawsuit against Bloomberg's company on behalf of three
women who worked on the business side, plus a group of women who worked
at Bloomberg's company between 2002 and the present. The article said
the plaintiffs "now total 72, out of about 500 women who took maternity
leave during that time, a high percentage, according to the agency"
Michael Bloomberg visiting Munkacs Hasidic Jewish sect in
Brooklyn in 2004
Political Career, Changing Parties
and buying elections
Bloomberg
even managed to have the 2 term limit overturned in 2008, allowing him
to remain Mayor of NY for a 3rd consecutive term. How convenient? It's
all about wealth and powerful friends. Notice his little Jewish cap and
where do these people buy those atrocious hats? Orthodox Jews, such as
represented in this photo, are raised to detest Gentiles, non Jewish,
and with this in mind...they are determined to establish a one world
power giving them complete control of the globes finance and resources?
In 2001, the incumbent mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, was ineligible
for re-election, as the city limited the mayoralty to two consecutive
terms. Several well-known New York City politicians aspired to succeed
him. Bloomberg, a lifelong member of the Democratic Party, decided to
run for mayor as a member of the Republican Party ticket.
Voting in the primary began on the morning of September 11, 2001. The
primary was postponed later that day. In the rescheduled primary,
Bloomberg defeated Herman Badillo, a former Congressman, to become the
Republican nominee. Meanwhile, the Democratic primary did not produce a
first-round winner. After a runoff, the Democratic nomination went to
New York City Public Advocate Mark J. Green.
In the general election, Bloomberg received Giuliani's endorsement. He
also had a huge spending advantage. Although New York City's campaign
finance law restricts the amount of contributions which a candidate can
accept, Bloomberg chose not to use public campaign funds and therefore
his campaign was not subject to these restrictions. He spent $73
million of his own money on his campaign, outspending Green by five
to one. One of the major themes of his campaign was that, with the
city's economy suffering from the effects of the World Trade Center
attacks, it needed a mayor with business experience.
In addition to being the Republican nominee, Bloomberg had the ballot
line of the controversial Independence Party, in which "Social Therapy"
leaders Fred Newman and Lenora Fulani exert strong influence. Some say
that endorsement was important, as Bloomberg's votes on that line
exceeded his margin of victory over Green. (Under New York's fusion
rules, a candidate can run on more than one party's line and combine all
the votes received on all lines. Green, the Democrat, also had the
ballot line of the Working Families Party. Bloomberg also created an
independent line called Students First whose votes were combined with
those on the Independence line). Another factor was the vote in Staten
Island, which has traditionally been far friendlier to Republicans than
the rest of the city. Bloomberg crushed Green in that borough, taking
75% of the vote there. Overall, Bloomberg won 50% to 48%.
John Davison Rockefeller
The
bailouts extend even beyond the $700 billion
TARP program, the government has provided financial firms
with assistance via expanded deposit insurance, federal guarantees of
bond issues and extensive subsidies, via Fannie Mae (FNM, Fortune 500)
and Freddie Mac (FRE, Fortune 500), for the mortgage market.
The chart on the left depicts
the value of FDIC backed bonds in the Billions.
