Category: Evil

10 December 2012, 9:58 PM

Conviction in Satmar Sex Abuse Case

Notwithstanding a systematic pattern of harassment and coercion by the Satmar Hasidic community, the mother and daughter stood firm, and so-called counsellor Nechemya Weberman was convicted of sexual abuse over 3 years of a girl starting when she was twelve”

Sexual abuse in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community has long been hidden. Victims who came forward were intimidated into silence; their families were shunned; cases were dropped for a lack of cooperation.

But on Monday, a State Supreme Court jury in Brooklyn delivered a stunning victory to prosecutors and victims’ advocates, convicting a 54-year-old unlicensed therapist who is a prominent member of the Satmar Hasidic community of Williamsburg of repeatedly sexually abusing a young girl who had been sent to him for help.

“The veil of secrecy has been lifted,” said Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney. “The wall that has existed in parts of these communities has now been broken through. And as far as I’m concerned, it is very clear to me that it is only going to get better for people who are victimized in these various communities.”

The case against the therapist, Nechemya Weberman, was a significant milestone for Mr. Hynes, whose office has been criticized for not acting aggressively enough against sexual abusers in the borough’s large and politically connected ultra-Orthodox community.

The verdict represented the first time Mr. Hynes’ office has won a conviction of a prominent member of the Satmar Hasidic community of Williamsburg for child sexual abuse.

The case also offered a glimpse of the Satmar community’s shadowy efforts to enforce rigid codes of behavior — particularly for young girls — by allowing so-called modesty committees to intimidate girls for wearing revealing clothing or using cellphones, and requiring parents to send children judged to be breaking rules to religious counselors, many of whom are not licensed and charge high fees.

Perhaps even more significant than the Brooklyn DA managing to crack the ultra-orthodox Omertà (code of silence) in order to get a conviction, but that he also issued an informal warning against any further harassment of the victim or her family by the community.

BTW, the halacha (Jewish law) is clear here: It is required that these allegations be taken to civil courts, because a Beit Din (religious court) has no authority beyond moral persuasion in the US.

6 December 2012, 9:20 PM

Damn, This is Heavy

A man in the process of breaking up with his wife, and alleged that she was involved with laundering money transfers to Switzerland, and the bank got him committed to a mental hospital for ten years:

A German man committed to a high-security psychiatric hospital after being accused of fabricating a story of money-laundering activities at a major bank is to have his case reviewed after evidence has emerged proving the validity of his claims.

In a plot worthy of a crime blockbuster, Gustl Mollath, 56, was submitted to the secure unit of a psychiatric hospital seven years ago after court experts diagnosed him with paranoid personality disorder following his claims that staff at the Hypo Vereinsbank (HVB) – including his wife, then an assets consultant at HVB – had been illegally smuggling large sums of money into Switzerland.

Mollath was tried in 2006 after his ex-wife accused him of causing her physical harm. He denied the charges, claiming she was trying to sully his name in the light of the evidence he allegedly had against her. He was admitted to the clinic, where he has remained against his will ever since.

But recent evidence brought to the attention of state prosecutors shows that money-laundering activities were indeed practiced over several years by members of staff at the Munich-based bank, the sixth-largest private financial institute in Germany, as detailed in an internal audit report carried out by the bank in 2003. The report, which has now been posted online, detailed illegal activities including money-laundering and aiding tax evasion. A number of employees, including Mollath’s wife, were subsequently sacked following the bank’s investigation.

………

Asked why the bank kept the report to itself and did not approach the authorities, the spokeswoman added: “In 2003 HVB initiated extensive investigations via internal audits in response to information provided by Mr Mollath on transactions that had taken place a long time before … It was determined that employees had acted contrary to their instructions regarding Swiss banking transactions”.

But while the findings, it said, had resulted in sackings, the audit “did not produce sufficient evidence indicating criminal conduct … that would have made a criminal charge seem appropriate”.

If you believe that the banks had nothing to do with his commitment, you are naive.

This is Bavaria, the heart of the German right wing, and doing the banks’ bidding is pretty much a requirement for civil servants there, so I have no doubt that Hypo Vereinsbank decided to act like Stalin’s NKVD.

H/t Naked Capitalism.

6 December 2012, 8:06 PM

This is About a Political Rear Guard Action

There is a context to the Republican moves in Michigan to pass a right to work law.

When you see increasing levels of rejection by the electorate, along with an increasingly radical and delusional base pushing in the other direction, your only alternative is to direct your actions toward political advantage by things like Gerrymandering, and going after your opponents’ power base, and you dry to prevent them from voting.

That’s why you see Republicans going after labor unions, plaintiff’s lawyers, and actively suppressing voter turnout.

Well, there’s that, there’s the fact that they, as Lee Atwater said, scream N***er, N***er, N***er, albeit with increasingly sophisticated code words.

If this passes, and it almost certainly will, then when the Democrats get power back in Michigan, repealing this is the first order of business.

5 December 2012, 9:00 PM

I am in the Wrong Line of Work

Dick Armey just got an $8 million golden handshake from FreedomWorks:

Dick Armey left the deep-pocketed tea party group he helped build over a clash with a top lieutenant who Armey and others in the organization believed was using the group’s resources to pad his pockets, POLITICO has learned.

Armey received an $8 million buyout to step down as chairman of FreedomWorks at the end of last month, but the dispute between him and the group’s president, Matt Kibbe, is still straining the organization.

An $8 f%$#ing million severance?

I need to become a conservative Republican rat f%$#er.

The money might be worth my immortal soul.

5 December 2012, 8:51 PM

The Goal is Not Recovery, It’s the Dismantling of the Social Safety State

That’s what the right wing push for austerity is all about.

Case in point, the chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, who is saying that since austerity is further depressing the British economy, it has become necessary extend austerity until at least 2018:

Britons, many already weary of government austerity budgets that some economists say are impeding the country’s recovery, are going to have to wait even longer for relief.

The architect of the austerity program, George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, told Parliament on Wednesday that the government had missed one of its self-imposed debt-cutting goals and would have to extend the belt-tightening into 2018, a year longer than previously promised.

Although Mr. Osborne maintained that the debt reduction plan was still on track, his presentation drew heckling and laughter from some opposition lawmakers, particularly after he argued that new tax measures would show that “we’re all in this together.”

The next general election in Britain will take place in 2015, well before the end of austerity measures that have included cuts in welfare services and the elimination of tens of thousands of public sector jobs.

On Wednesday, the Office for Budget Responsibility, a nonpartisan body that is monitoring the economy, said it now expected full-year data to show that the economy shrank 0.1 percent this year, instead of growing 0.8 percent, as the office had previously forecast.

It also said the economy would grow 1.2 percent next year as opposed to the 2 percent predicted earlier.

“It’s a hard road but we are getting there,” Mr. Osborne told Parliament. “Britain is on the right track. Turning back now would be a disaster.”

The evidence is clear: Austerity in a depressed economy further depresses the economy, and reduces tax revenues.

Austerity is not about creating growth, nor is it about reducing deficits. It is merely camouflage for an assault on social insurance.

5 December 2012, 6:55 PM

And Congress Gets Into Antivax Bullsh%$

What a surprise, the conman Darryl Issa supports this, and rather depressingly Dennis Kucinich jumps in with both feet:

I’m not exaggerating. The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing trying to look into the cause and prevention of autism. Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) launched into a several-minute diatribe (beginning at 12:58 in the video above) that starts off in an Orwellian statement: He claims he’s not antivax. Then he launches into a five-minute speech that promotes long-debunked and clearly incorrect antivax claims, targeting mercury for the most part. Burton has long been an advocate for quackery; for at least a decade he has used Congressional situations like this to promote antiscience.

In the latest hearing, Burton sounds like a crackpot conspiracy theorist, to be honest, saying he knows—better than thousands of scientists who have spent their careers investigating these topics—that thimerosal causes neurological disorders (including autism). He goes on for some time about mercury (as does Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) starting at 21:44 in the video), making it clear he doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. For example, very few vaccines still use mercury, and the ones that do use it in tiny amounts and in a form that does not accumulate in the body.

Talking about the danger of mercury in vaccines is like talking about the danger of having hydrogen—an explosive element!—in water. It’s nonsense.

I won’t go further into details, because this shameful travesty of truth and medical health goes on for an hour. On Forbes.com, Steven Salzberg wrote a fantastic article about this Congressional farce. I strongly urge you to read it, since Salzberg brings the hammer down on the Congresscritters who think they know more about science than the scientists who actually devote their lives to this topic.

Let’s be clear, the anti-vaxers do more than hurt themselves, and their hapless children. They harm those for whom vaccines have limited effectiveness, or who are too young, like Dana McCaffrey, because they destroy herd immunity.

The modern version of this was started Andrew Wakefield by a con man who had an interest in a (surprise, non working) “treatment” alternative ginned up a phony controversy to line his own pockets.

The people who support this crap are being either evil or stupid.

3 December 2012, 9:20 PM

This Should Not be a Surprise

The inestimable Murray Waas uncovers the fact that Wall Street’s “favorite private eye” engaged in a systematic spying and character assassination in support of Alan Stanford’s Ponzi scheme:

In 2006, Allen Stanford had yet to be identified as the mastermind of one of the largest and longest-running Ponzi schemes in U.S. history, but he faced mounting pressure.

Federal securities examiners were pushing for an investigation into his investment operation, which tens of thousands of soon-to-be victims had entrusted with nearly $7 billion. Some of the Texas financier’s own employees were threatening to tell authorities what they knew about his fraud.

Stanford was so concerned that a former senior State Department official named Jonathan Winer might expose his colossal con game that he ordered an investigation into Winer’s private life, according to Stanford’s previously secret records obtained by McClatchy.

Kroll Inc., an international corporate intelligence firm that Stanford had retained for over a decade, obliged. Tom Cash, a Miami-based a managing director of Kroll, soon informed Stanford in an email that he was looking into whether Winer’s ex-wife was a lesbian, according to the internal documents obtained by McClatchy.

………

They looked into the sexual orientation of Winer’s ex-wife, and Stanford used the information collected to blackmail regulators, politicians, and journalists.

What’s more, it worked:

SEC examiners concluded as early as 1997 that Stanford was running a massive Ponzi scheme, agency records show. But Stanford was able to stall the opening of any formal inquiry for a full decade, much like the man behind the only bigger U.S. Ponzi scheme, Bernard Madoff.

The biggest whopper told by Kroll, when a representative says that “its employees had no clue they were helping to conceal the second-biggest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history.”

No, they were told to collect information so that Stanford could blackmail people, and it’s clear from the emails from Stanford that this was what he charged them to do.

Sorry, but that dog don’t hunt.

Even if they did not have specific information about Stanford being a fraud, they had to have known from what he wanted that he intended to use this information for to extort silence from people.

H/t Felix Salmon.

3 December 2012, 7:55 PM

No Justice No Peace — Know Justice Know Peace

Seriously, when a cop is convicted of torture, a pardon is not a good way to resolve the issue:

More than 200 judges across Spain have come out publicly to manifest their anger with the Popular Party (PP) government over its decision to pardon four Catalan police officers who were found guilty of torturing a man who they mistakenly believed was an assailant.

“The government’s decision is an improper one in a democracy; illegitimate and unethical. For that reason, we cannot just stand back and not raise our voices against the abuses committed in the right to pardon and warn of their effects, which are devastating,” reads a statement released by the judges.

Among those who signed the document are Supreme Court Justices Perfecto Andrés and Joaquín Giménez, and a senior member of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), Margarita Robles.

The four members of the Mossos d’Esquadra were convicted and sentenced in 2008 for torturing the suspect they had arrested. Their convictions had been upheld by the Supreme Court.

………

In February, the Cabinet reduced their sentences to two years and gave them suspensions from the force rather than banning them for life as the court had ruled. It was a decision designed to prevent any of the four from serving time; in Spain jail terms of two years or less handed down to first-time offenders are habitually converted into suspended sentences.

A Barcelona provincial court, which advised the government that it was against the partial pardons, decided that the four officers must serve the remainder of their time in prison. In response the Cabinet last week decided on full pardons and agreed to give them fines.

So, these guys get to be cops again in 2 years.

You just know that they will have enthusiastic support of their fellow officers, so being back on the beat (pun not intended) is highly likely.

This sort of sh%$, abusive police officers and the craven politicians who support them in order to appear “tough on crime” is why you need a strong constitution and a strong judiciary.

You cannot ever trust the police to protect your rights as a citizen.

26 November 2012, 8:46 PM

Not Enough Bullets

If I were Al Sharpton, I’d be Screaming at Her

Remember Carly Fiorina? The former CEO of HP? The one who first came to prominence by presiding over massive accounting irregularities masquerading as blockbuster sales at Lucent?

Well, when she got fired as CEO, HP employees are reported to have spontaneously burst into song, specifically the song Ding Dong the Witch is Dead.

I’m sure that she cried all the way to the bank, because she got a $40 million dollar golden parachute.

She knows what the problem with the good old USA is, it’s that public employees’ unions have it too good: (at about 3 minutes into the video.

Carly Fiorina, who reportedly stood to receive more than $42 million after being ousted at HP in 2005, says that public workers should receive less benefits because “it is not fair” that unions are “so rich.”

During a Sunday panel segment on NBC, MSNBC host Al Sharpton asserted that Congress must agree to raise taxes on the wealthy before cutting spending.

“This is about fairness,” he explained. “Why do we need to need to deal with the tax on the rich first? Because we must ensure Americans we are dealing with fairness. We keep talking about shared sacrifice, there was not shared wealth and shared prosperity. So, you’re asking people that didn’t enjoy the good times to share in paying for the tab that they never enjoyed.”

Most of the American public might think that a an unbroken record of failure, capped by a $40 million golden parachute might be a bigger problem than the the deferred compensation known as a mortgage.

Seriously, business management seems to be a petri dish for sociopaths.

H/t Chris in Paris at Americablog.

15 November 2012, 11:36 PM

It’s Jobless Thursday!

And the number of initial claims hit an 19 month high, up 79K to 439K.

The consensus is that it was an artifact of the devastation of Frankenstorm Sandy.

In other, probably more significant news, the Euro Zone is back in recession, and ECB president Mario Draghi is busy suggesting that it’s better to cut spending than it is to raise taxes, even though tax cuts have less stimulative effects than does government spending.

I swear, there is not a single economic “authority” in the entire Euro Zone who has any morals at all.

They have all somehow bought into the idea that creating pain for most of the members of a society is somehow an independent good.

13 November 2012, 7:27 PM

Paul Ryan Assumes the Role of a Scooby Doo Villain Bigot

They tore off the mask, and Paul Ryan’s response was, “I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling N*****s:

Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin on Monday blamed Democratic turnout in “urban areas” for the loss by the Republican presidential ticket last week, saying he was surprised that he and Mitt Romney did not do better in the nation’s big cities.

“The surprise was some of the turnout, some of the turnout especially in urban areas, which gave President Obama the big margin to win this race,” Mr. Ryan said in an interview with WISC-TV. “When we watched Virginia and Ohio coming in, and those ones coming in as tight as they were, and looking like we were going to lose them, that’s when it became clear we weren’t going to win.”

The remarks prompted scorn from some liberals who viewed Mr. Ryan as blaming inner-city minorities for the Republican defeat.

Including this liberal.

What a miserable excuse for a human being.

8 November 2012, 10:34 PM

Why Do Conservatives Keep Defending Child Rapists

First, it was the Catholic Church, and now it’s the Conservative Party in the UK which is trying blame the victims and those reporting the abuse:

Downing Street has denounced “trial by Twitter” and a “silly stunt” by the ITV presenter Phillip Schofield who ambushed David Cameron live on air by handing him an internet-sourced list of suspected paedophiles – causing a shocked Prime Minister to complain of a “witch hunt” against gay people.

Schofield was forced to apologise after it emerged he had “misjudged the camera angle” and the names of several former senior Conservative politicians were visible on a card which he thrust into the hands of the Prime Minister before an audience of around 1.2 million. “You know the names on that piece of paper,” the This Morning presenter told the Prime Minister. “Will you be speaking to those people?”

The presenter claimed to have found the names of the Conservative Party figures in “three minutes” during a “cursory glance at the internet” for details of a scandal relating to abuse at children’s homes in north Wales during the 1970s and 1980s.

It’s been about 30 years since this all happened, so I’m not sure why they are going into full stonewall mode over this, unless a major Tory icon of that period, was somehow involved in the original abuse or the original cover up.

H/t Atrios.

25 October 2012, 9:19 PM

Jimmy Olson Endorses Women Being Carrying Rapists Babies to Term

My bad, it wasn’t Jimmy Olson, it was Republican Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel who agreed with Richard Mourdock that rape victims should be forced to carry their children to term:

While national Republicans have done their best to shore up Indiana Senate nominee Richard Mourdock after his statements on rape, conception and God’s will, many Republicans in tight Senate races have backed away from Mourdock’s comments, trying to keep the negative headlines that have followed Mourdock’s statements out of their races.

But the Republican nominee for Senate in Ohio, Josh Mandel, has taken a very different approach. He’s given Mourdock a big ol’ bear hug. Ahead of Thursday’s debate between Mandel and incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown, Democrats say they plan to make Mourdock a big topic on stage.

“I would bet it will,” Brown spokesperson Sadie Weiner told TPM when asked whether Mandel’s handling of Mourdock will come up in the debate.

Mandel is unafraid to embrace Mourdock, despite the controversy surrounding him.

Seriously, he does look like my image of Jimmy Olson ……… or Ted Bundy.

24 October 2012, 8:01 PM

So Glad that I LIve in Maryland, Part LXIX

Despicable beyond belief

How do you justify justify the targeting and killing of an American citizen for whom there have been no allegations of terrorism? Why You blame his father, of course:

How does Team Obama justify killing him?

The answer Gibbs gave is chilling:

ADAMSON: …It’s an American citizen that is being targeted without due process, without trial. And, he’s underage. He’s a minor.

GIBBS: I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children. I don’t think becoming an al Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business.

Again, note that this kid wasn’t killed in the same drone strike as his father. He was hit by a drone strike elsewhere, and by the time he was killed, his father had already been dead for two weeks. Gibbs nevertheless defends the strike, not by arguing that the kid was a threat, or that killing him was an accident, but by saying that his late father irresponsibly joined al Qaeda terrorists. Killing an American citizen without due process on that logic ought to be grounds for impeachment. Is that the real answer? Or would the Obama Administration like to clarify its reasoning? Any Congress that respected its oversight responsibilities would get to the bottom of this.

I’m so glad that the Electoral College means that my vote does not count.

My only question is who I write in.

24 October 2012, 6:11 PM

Joke Line Is a Sociopath

Glenn Greenwald watches Morning Joe so we don’t have to, and finds this lovely quote from Joe Klein (aka Joke Line):

“If it is misused, and there is a really major possibility of abuse if you have the wrong people running the government. But: the bottom line in the end is – whose 4-year-old get killed? What we’re doing is limiting the possibility that 4-year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror.”

(emphasis original)As Greenwald notes, this mimics the language used by the Times Square bomber and Osama bin Laden.

25 September 2012, 9:35 PM

This Dick Should Never Ever Be In Striking Distance of a Vagina

I made this comment in response to this Facebook post, and realized that it was blog worthy.

24 September 2012, 7:49 PM

This is F%$#ing Nuts!

The Department of Justice has charged Aaron Schwartz with 13 felonies for violating the terms of service TOS of a web site:

Federal prosectors added nine new felony counts against well-known coder and activist Aaron Swartz, who was charged last year for allegedly breaching hacking laws by downloading millions of academic articles from a subscription database via an open connection at MIT.

Swartz, the 25-year-old executive director of Demand Progress, has a history of downloading massive data sets, both to use in research and to release public domain documents from behind paywalls. He surrendered in July 2011, remains free on bond and faces dozens of years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted.

Like last year’s original grand jury indictment on four felony counts, (.pdf) the superseding indictment (.pdf) unveiled Thursday accuses Swartz of evading MIT’s attempts to kick his laptop off the network while downloading millions of documents from JSTOR, a not-for-profit company that provides searchable, digitized copies of academic journals that are normally inaccessible to the public.

………

In essence, many of the charges stem from Swartz allegedly breaching the terms of service agreement for those using the research service.

“JSTOR authorizes users to download a limited number of journal articles at a time,” according to the latest indictment. “Before being given access to JSTOR’s digital archive, each user must agree and acknowledge that they cannot download or export content from JSTOR’s computer servers with automated programs such as web robots, spiders, and scrapers. JSTOR also uses computerized measures to prevent users from downloading an unauthorized number of articles using automated techniques.”

It gets better.

The DoJ lost big in the 9^th circuit court, which said that a violation of the TOS was a matter for civil court, but Obama’s DiJ decided not to appeal, so that they could continue to use their bogus vendettas in other jurisdictions.

Prosecutors have an obligation to represent the people.

This obligation goes beyond fishing for a suitably technically illiterate jury and using multiple indictments and the threat of decades in jail to extract a plea bargain.

This is a despicable case of prosecutorial overreach.

They are saying that, for example, lying about my appearance on a dating site would be a felony.

Prosecutors want to make their job easier, but their method, creating a world where everyone can be thrown in jail for a felony, because there is some law that they are in violation of, is repellant.

It is the hallmark of a police state.

13 September 2012, 8:49 PM

And Torture Becomes the New Norm in the Classroom

One of the problems with “looking forward” on torture and not prosecuting peopel is that it makes torture a normative activity more generally.

Now we are seeing it being used on our children in our schools:

In my public school 40 years ago, teachers didn’t lay their hands on students for bad behavior. They sent them to the principal’s office. But in today’s often overcrowded and underfunded schools, where one in eight students receive help for special learning needs, the use of physical restraints and seclusion rooms has become a common way to maintain order.

It’s a dangerous development, as I know from my daughter’s experience. At the age of 5, she was kept in a seclusion room for up to an hour at a time over the course of three months, until we discovered what was happening. The trauma was severe.

According to national Department of Education data, most of the nearly 40,000 students who were restrained or isolated in seclusion rooms during the 2009-10 school year had learning, behavioral, physical or developmental needs, even though students with those issues represented just 12 percent of the student population. African-American and Hispanic students were also disproportionately isolated or restrained.

Joseph Ryan, an expert on the use of restraints who teaches at Clemson University, told me that the practice of isolating and restraining problematic children originated in schools for children with special needs. It migrated to public schools in the 1970s as federal laws mainstreamed special education students, but without the necessary oversight or staff training. “It’s a quick way to respond but it’s not effective in changing behaviors,” he said.

State laws on disciplining students vary widely, and there are no federal laws restricting these practices, although earlier this year Education Secretary Arne Duncan wrote, in a federal guide for schools, that there was “no evidence that using restraint or seclusion is effective.” He recommended evidence-based behavioral interventions and de-escalation techniques instead.

The use of restraints and seclusion has become far more routine than it should be. “They’re the last resort too often being used as the first resort,” said Jessica Butler, a lawyer in Washington who has written about seclusion in public schools.

We did experience this with Charlie on occasion, though not to this degree.

When you look at this, or the relentless use of Tasers by police departments, when the circumstances do not involve any need to protection of either the target of the public, but rather inconvenience.

28 August 2012, 9:13 PM

You Just Knew That He Had His Piggy Little Fingers in All This

I’m (very) late to this story, but I’d just like to note that televangelist Pat Robertson is up to his hips in blood diamonds and crimes against humanity:

On February 4, 2010, Charles Taylor testified before the Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague, that Robertson was his primary political ally in the US. Taylor stated during his war crimes trial that Robertson had agreed to promote Liberia to the US administration in exchange for additional benefits for Freedom Gold, Ltd.

I really wish that we had signed onto the International Criminal Court.