April 3, 2008

Trade Press getting interested in AEY "small disadvantaged" story

Robert Brodsky and Elizabeth Newell write in Government Executive magazine:

No record of arms dealer's certification as disadvantaged business

A Miami-based defense contractor under investigation for delivering faulty munitions to Afghan security forces saw his business boom after being incorrectly labeled as a small disadvantaged business. [More]

And the news article has lots of the fun human interest details that my readers will be familiar with (like the grandfather's palimony suit and the family connection to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach), the facts that the MSM have been prissily avoiding reporting for fear of getting readers interested in the story.

According to Google News, this is the first time that the celebrity rabbi has been mentioned in a news report about the scandal since it flared up in the NYT a week ago. So far, however, nobody that Google News considers a new outlet has mentioned that main player Efraim Diveroli's mom was treasurer of a dubious Michael Jackson charity for ... children!

Pure comedy gold laying untouched on the sidewalk.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Why is NATO expanding?

The last line of an LA Times article about something else mentions:

The [NATO] alliance meanwhile is poised to offer membership to Croatia, Albania and Macedonia, though Greece has threatened to block Macedonia's bid.

Theoretically, at least, NATO is a serious thing -- it's a defense alliance. Article Five of the NATO treaty kind of sort of commits us to go to war for Croatia, Albania, or Macedonia if they get attacked by any of their numerous neighbors:

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

I guess it's just a personal moral failing of mine, but for some reason, I can't really see Macedonia as being all that crucial to vital American national interests. Albania, sure, it's at least as important to us as the Panama Canal. And Croatia's practically Canada in terms of strategic value to the U.S. What true American wouldn't gladly sacrifice his sons' lives for Croatia?

But Macedonia? I'd bet that 95% of Americans don't know Macedonia exists, and the other 5% are Greeks who hate it for stealing the name of Alexander the Great's homeland.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

April 2, 2008

Obama's eloquence deserts him

Obama-worshipper Chris Matthews briefly pressed his idol tonight on the matter of Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. Without 5,000 prepackaged words of patented Baroque O'Blarney nuanced thoughtfulness, Obama sounded like a Time-Life Records two-for-the-price-of-one deal on the Greatest Hits of George W. Bush and Dan Quayle:

OBAMA: I think that what has happened is we took a loop out of — and compressed the most offensive things that a pastor said over the course of 30 years, and just ran it over and over and over again. There is that other 30 years. I never heard him say those things that were in those clips.

MATTHEWS: But you did say you heard him say controversial things.

OBAMA: But I’ve heard you say controversial things.

MATTHEWS: You didn’t give me $27,000 dollars either.

OBAMA: The point is this is a church that is active in AIDS. It’s active on all kind of thing. And so this is a wonderful church. But as I said, look at the amount of time that’s been spent on this today, Chris. At a time when we haven’t talked about a whole host of issues.

The LA Times reports:

And while insisting -- as he has previously -- that he was not present when Wright made the pronouncements that fueled the recent furor, he steered clear of specifying the "controversial" statements he has said he did hear from the preacher.

What did the Presidential candidate know and when did he know it?

Look, that's a stupid question, but only because the answer is clear from Obama's own autobiography. Before Obama ever met Wright in the 1980s, he had heard from other South Side black pastors that Wright was a radical. That's the main reason Obama was attracted to Wright rather than all the other pastors he had met as a community organizer: Wright was the optimal combination of leftism and successfulness.

Isn't anybody else getting tired of Obama repeatedly yanking our chains about his relationship with Rev. Wright? Unlike his protege, Wright has made sure to leave a paper (and DVD) trail decades long, and it's not thoughtfully nuanced to the verge of utter incomprehensibility, either. The Rev. says what's on his mind, and in no uncertain terms.

C'mon, Obama, be a man. Stand up and admit to one of two logical possibilities:

- Yes, I used to be about as leftist as Rev. Wright, but I changed my mind for the following reasons ...

Or

- Yes, I still am about as leftist as Rev. Wright, and here's why ...

What Obama is counting on is that white Americans don't take blacks' ideological views seriously. Obama is betting on everybody treating his relationship with Wright as a racial matter rather than as an ideological matter, and since all nice people shy away from thinking about racial matters, they'll just let it drop.

In contrast, if Wright were a white minister who was an outspoken advocate of Sandinista-style "liberation theology," a white Obama would, at a minimum, be spending a lot of time answering searching questions about his ideological evolution. But, because Obama and Wright are black, nobody takes the disagreeable Wright's ideology seriously, and everybody assumes that the personable Obama must share their ideology.

It must be driving Wright crazy. Here he goes on Fox News a year ago and tells Sean Hannity a half dozen times that he is a follower of black liberation theologian James H. Cone, and that if you want to have an argument with him about where he stands, you should first read a stack of academic books by Cone and by Dwight Hopkins. And nobody paid any attention.

Wright doesn't seem to consider himself a creative intellectual in the class of Cone, but he does view himself as a man who has thought hard for decades about subjects like the immorality of corporate capitalism.

And yet, Obama is getting away with going around the country on national television implying that the 66-year-old Wright is some kind of elderly uncle who has, tragically, gone crazy in his dotage. In reality, Wright holds the same political views today as he had when he first reeled in Obama two decades ago.

And the white media believe Obama's lies about Wright because nobody takes a black man seriously as an intellectual!

So, I don't expect we've heard the last from Rev. Wright. All summer, he's going to be sitting in his new mansion on the golf course in the gated community in 93% white suburban Tinley Park brooding on how Obama has betrayed him, and what he's going to do about it.

He'll think of something.

For example, last November 2, he invented the Jeremiah Wright Trumpeter Lifetime Achievement Award and gave it to Louis Farrakhan at a big bash at the Chicago Hyatt Regency, but it took the white media ten weeks to even notice what a black man had done. This year, there are all sorts of people he could give his award to on, say, Saturday night November 1st. And I bet this year it won't take ten weeks before the white press talks about it!

Or maybe somebody else will think of something for Wright to do. If you were a literary agent, say, wouldn't you want to sign Wright up for a quickie bestseller, with a release date targeted at, say, 10/1/08? Hustle your best ghostwriter out to Tinley Park and get Wright's memoirs and views on current issues slapped together by the Fourth of July. Make that deadline and you could have it on the bookshelves five weeks before Election Day!

No, I don't think we've heard the last from Rev. Wright.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

AEY's Packouz: We're not Hasidic

Not surprisingly, the MainStream Media have pretty much dropped the AEY Afghan Ammunition scandal now that certain awkward facts have emerged. As usual, the Jewish press is much better at following up on such things.

As I've suggested before, this isn't the worst scandal in history. It's pretty much just Business As Usual for a type of hustling businessman who deals in stuff that, uh, fell off the back of a truck. The public, however, is supposed to remain oblivious to the obvious.

The New York Jewish Week reports:

Arms Dealing Company Was Listed As ‘Minority-Owned’

Questions grow about how a tiny Miami Beach firm became major supplier to Afghan army and police.

by Stewart Ain

When a congressional committee examines how nearly $300 million in government contracts for an arms deal to Afghanistan’s army and police was given to a tiny Miami Beach-based company led by 22-year-old Efraim Diveroli, it is expected to question how the company, AEY Inc., qualifies as minority-owned, as was listed on the application.

Minority-owned companies, also classified as “disadvantaged,” receive preferential treatment in the awarding of contracts.

Those close to the case, which made front-page headlines last week in The New York Times, note that since 1984, chasidim have qualified under that category, along with Hispanics, African Americans, Indians and others. (Jews are not otherwise categorized as a minority.)

David Packouz, a 25-year-old licensed masseur, who is listed as vice president of the company, told The Jewish Week that neither he nor Diveroli are chasidic, that he was only a consultant to the company, and that he was unaware of the minority-owned designation on the application.

Diveroli declined to comment. But attention into the workings of AEY Inc., and how it managed to procure such a major, lucrative government contract, is growing in the wake of the lengthy investigative article in the Times, which suggested that the company may have been involved in illegal arms trafficking and that the arms may have been substandard.

Packouz’s father, Kalman, a rabbi who is executive director of the Aish HaTorah Jerusalem Fund, said his son had not been involved in the company for the last 10 months and “is not involved in all this.”

“I know that Efraim Diveroli has been doing this [arms dealing] since he was 17, and that he has been successful at being able to fulfill contracts,” Rabbi Packouz said.

Diveroli’s grandfather, Angelo Diveroli, 73, of North Miami Beach, said his grandson has records to prove that all of his transactions were legal. “The military checked him out” before awarding him the contracts, he said. “They came to Miami Beach. No one gets $300 million in contracts for nothing. They checked. He was awarded the contracts because he had a good price. He didn’t steal the contract. He made a bid and they checked his credentials.”

He said his grandson started his business from scratch with only a computer in a “tiny apartment in Miami Beach.”

Young Diveroli started his company after both he and his father learned the business from Diveroli’s uncle, Bar-Kochba Botach, the owner of Botach Tactical in Los Angeles, a military and police supply company. Botach told The Times, “They just left me and took my customer base with them. They basically said, ‘Why should we work for Botach? Let’s do it on our own.’”

The senior Diveroli said his grandson is “now living in a rented apartment. People think he lives in a mansion. Not true. He is a hard-working person. He works with Asia, which is a 16-hour time difference, so he works day and night.”

He called his grandson a “genius who knows everything about weaponry. He could tell a weapon a mile away. He is a very religious boy. He’s not chasidic, but my grandson studied in yeshivas all over the world, [including in] Baltimore and Jerusalem.”

The elder Diveroli disclosed that his grandson is more than an arms dealer because he has contracts for a variety of products with countries in South America and Central America.

“Whatever they need he supplies,” he said. “And it’s not just weapons. There are things like machinery, agricultural products and tractors. ... Whatever is on the Internet he supplies. He finds a good price. He is a businessman in his blood.”

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Obama's most sophisticated defender

is a Canadian lawyer who calls himself Pithlord. He's read Obama's autobiography very closely (we mostly disagree over whether there's anything humorous in Obama's irony -- he finds it funny, I find it self-pitying and lugubrious). He sums Obama up:

At bottom, I think Obama's basic theoretical framework is in dispute resolution. The worldview is sometimes attributed to his experience as an organizer, but it could also be that of a corporate litigator. He thinks of the world as filled with non-zero-sum games, in which the win-win alternative of making a deal and dividing the surplus isn't taken because each side is gripped with a narrative that makes rationally self-interested compromise difficult or impossible. The intellectual problem is to look at the interests coolly and dispassionately and see where the surplus-maximizing position lies. But the harder problem is to be sensitive enough to how the identity-constituting stories keep both sides from doing that. It's Harvard Negotiation project stuff, but it also works with who he thinks he is.

Obama doesn't particularly claim to come from nowhere or have no loyalties. He is instinctively cosmopolitan, on-the-left and tied to his adopted black American Protestant identity. But I think he recognizes that to advance the interests he is loyal to requires figuring out what other people's loyalties are, "recognize" them and then figure out how to get to the best possible resolution of the bargaining problem they represent.

Obama loves to put things dialectically. In this, the successful politician he most resembles is Tony Blair. His central rhetorical trick is restating positions he is arguing attractively and strongly, but in such a way that they obviously have limitations he hints at transcending. Dreams From My Father is hardly a black nationalist book -- but it engages very sympathetically with black nationalism, not unlike the way in which Audacity of Hope engages sympathetically but critically with fusionist conservatism. In Dreams, black nationalism is twinned not with white racism, but with the white romantic liberalism of the family he grew up with. The good thing about that liberalism is that it tries to transcend tribalism -- the bad part is that tribalism is too central to the human condition to be transcended. [More]

I find much to agree with here, and, indeed, I would be all in favor of electing Barack Obama to succeed Jesse Jackson as black America's unelected tribal leader. But, it's an unelected job and I'm not black so I wouldn't get a vote if there was one, and that's not what he's running for. Instead, Obama wants to get elected President of the United States, which is a rather different office altogether.

The key phrase in Pithlord's analysis is "He recognizes that to advance the interests he is loyal to requires figuring out what other people's loyalties are ..." Conversely, by the same logic, we the people of the United States need to figure out what this Presidential candidate's loyalties are. Exactly whose interests is Obama loyal to? (Besides his own career's interests, of course).

The reporters covering him haven't managed (or even tried) to get him to speak frankly about this crucial question. That's what shocked so many naive people when they finally learned about Obama's 20-year-relationship with Rev. Wright -- that while on the campaign trail he says one thing, but at home for two decades he acted in a very different fashion.

When Colin Powell thought about running for President, he published an autobiography that stressed his success in taking command of a demoralized Army unit in South Korea that was sharply divided along racial lines during the Army's drugged-up post-Vietnam malaise, and rebuilt espirit de corps by emphasizing that there's no black or white in this man's Army, just G.I. green, and the like. From that, I surmised that Powell's loyalty lay less with his racial group and more with the U.S. Army (and by extension, with the United States of America). Now, that sounded to me like Powell had met a minimum requirement in who I would want as President: he's shown in the past that he's on the side of the United States of America.

In contrast, I'm still waiting for evidence that Obama has taken stands against black interests. What I see his supporters boasting is that he's either pushed black interests more deftly than less sophisticated black politicians, or that he has (perhaps temporarily) eased off on pushing black interests when they could have gotten in the way of his personal ascent to supreme power. But does he have a record of taking stands against powerful black interests in the interest of the greater good of the citizens of the United States?

Perhaps somebody should ask him.

Pithlord replies here.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

April 1, 2008

WSJ's Jenkins: Knock down surplus new homes

The Wall Street Journal's Holman Jenkins argues that:

"Knocking down surplus homes would be the most efficient and equitable way to spend taxpayer dollars. It can proceed experimentally. It can be turned off quickly when the need evaporates. It would not be a lesson to Americans that housing debt is not real debt and need not be repaid. It wouldn't benefit the most irresponsible lenders and borrowers at the expense of responsible ones. The housing market would still have to hit bottom, but the bottom would be higher (and sooner).

"Have no illusions about the alternative being fashioned in Congress. Behind the fig leaves that will be frantically waving, a lending bailout would be effective in stemming foreclosures and propping up home prices only if taxpayer money were used to put speculators' housing bets back "in the money.""

He may be right. But, after the government pays to knock down all those surplus homes built with illegal immigrant labor, shouldn't the Wall Street Journal be ordered to publicly burn all its old editorials about how crucial illegal immigrant labor was to the economy?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Oliver Stone's upcoming Bush movie

Oliver Stone appears to have finished his screenplay for his upcoming biopic about George W. Bush. ABC News has a summary. Evidently, it focuses on the Iraq War as motivated primarily by his complicated relationship with his father, which sounds about right to me.

Barbra Streisand's stepson Josh Brolin is set to play Bush. Brolin was wonderful as the ornery hero in "No Country for Old Men," so he'll likely make Bush fairly sympathetic.

I suspect the movie won't be all that good because

A. Stone is past his prime;

B. He may rush to get it out before the election. He rushed to get "Alexander" out before competing Alexander the Great projects by Martin Scorsese, Mel Gibson, and Baz Lurhman could get off the ground, and it was a dud.

Overall, my impression is that although Stone made some amazing movies in his 1986-1995 prime, he isn't that great a filmmaker himself. He's more of an alpha male who can persuade terrific talent to work for him. Thus, he used pretty much the same below-the-line crew on his best films, but he didn't get them back for "Alexander," so five minutes into the movie you could tell it was no good.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

March 31, 2008

Basra: Not exactly the Battle of Stalingrad II

The human race really just isn't into this whole war thing anymore. Here we were, all gearing up for a re-enactment of the Battle of Stalingrad in Basra, center of trillions of dollars of oil reserves, and they go and decide to call the whole thing off after a few days.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Alleged transcript of Diveroli conversations

Via American Goy, here's a transcript that's supposedly of a secretly recorded conversation between young AEY arms dealer Efraim Diveroli and some Albanian who is involved in the Afghan ammunition deal for which the American taxpayers anted up $300 million.

I have no idea if it's authentic, but it sounds like what I surmised -- the inside of a bait-and-switch scam. Diveroli sounds like a New York camera shop proprietor who has baited online customers with a lowball advertised price and is now hustling to find somebody who can sell to him wholesale the product he's already sold to his retail customers (or at least he's charged their credit cards), or can sell him at least something the customers can be badgered into accepting instead of what they thought they were getting a great deal on.

Except, instead of dealing with some guy in Hong Kong who claims to know some other guy who has a pallet of Nikons that got left out in the rain, Diveroli's dealing, on one hand, with a bunch of Albanian politicians and insiders who have their hands out, and, on the other hand, with a bunch of fairly clueless U.S. Federal bureaucrats, who, unlike the camera store customers, can eventually put you in jail if you stiff them too much.

As one of my readers pointed out, Afghan government soldiers probably don't need high quality ammo. (Here are a couple of hilarious Youtube videos of American military trainers trying to teach Afghan government soldiers to do jumping jacks and push-ups). They just need a huge quantity of ammo so they can spray their AK-47s around like a garden hose so the Taliban keep their heads down and can't take careful aim at them either. That's what 3rd World Wars are like these days -- most soldiers aren't all that enthusiastic about risking their lives for the cause, whatever it is, so nobody is going to expose themselves enough to take careful aim or try to sneak up closer. They just spray bullets in the general direction of the other guys to keep them from taking careful aim or sneaking up closer.

This kind of war can go on for years and years if somebody supplies enough bullets. It's fun. You pull the trigger on your AK-47 and BA-RAP-BAP-BAP-BAP! A million bullets come flying out with an excitingly loud noise and go flying off in the general direction of somebody you're theoretically trying to kill. It's kind of like playing paintball, but it's even better because Uncle Sam is picking up your ammo tab.

There's some Soviet-style ammo sitting around in various national armories, which I imagine can be had cheap if some man with gold chains can grease the right palms. Apparently, an ammo dump in Albania recently exploded, killing 16 and damaging 2000 homes, which would be convenient if an auditor was coming to make sure the inventory was still there.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

March 30, 2008

Barack Hussein Obama: More deterrable Hussein than fanatical Osama

From my new VDARE.com column:

The good news about Obama and his radical past: he can probably be deterred. Barack Hussein Obama is more Hussein than Osama, an opportunist rather than a fanatic.

While his heart may be black, his head is quite white, the epitome of the small-town Midwest where his maternal grandparents originated. He's conflict-averse, cautious, polite, eager-to-please, sensitive, and insecure, with a Sally Field-style need to be liked.

So, Obama's radical principles have repeatedly pushed him left … right up to the point where he starts worrying that if he goes any farther to the left, not everybody will like him anymore, and that could endanger his amazing rise to power. Thus, he compromises and accepts promotion to the next level in return for selling out.

Up through now, Obama has been focused on attaining more power for himself rather than on actually using the power he already has to benefit the people in whose name he has promoted himself. He's kept his eyes on the prize: the White House.

For example, … Obama got a lot more out of the Harvard Law Review than the Harvard Law Review got out of Obama.

Once he makes the White House, though, it will be put up or shut up time for Obama. All those compromises he has made to maintain his political viability within the system will have paid off. Now it will be time for him to redeem some of those promises he made to himself, to his wife Michelle, and to his Rev. Wright.

That's a frightening picture … especially when you realize that Obama is not some run-of-the-mill political talent like Jimmy Carter or even Bill Clinton. He might well be a once-in-a-generation superstar, like Huey Long.

The good news, though, is that politics never ends. Much to the disappointment of Obama cultists, January 20, 2009 would not mark Day One of the Year Zero. Obama's inauguration would merely be a brief lull before mundane struggles over seeming minutia such as appointments to federal agencies, struggles in which Obama can be tied up … if enough of the public understands who he really is.

[More]

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

A question about Tibet

I have a questioned I've never seen asked about the basic biological feasibility of China's ongoing occupation and settlement of Tibet. The Chinese see Tibet as underpopulated, and have been sending lots of Han Chinese to live there, which has finally caused a violent reaction by the Buddhist Tibetans.

But, can Han Chinese women reproduce enough at those altitudes?

We know that white women suffer a very large number of miscarriages on the Altiplano of Bolivia and Peru, so that the population of the highlands is still overwhelmingly Indian almost 500 years after Pizarro. La Paz, Bolivia is in a deep canyon, with the richest (whitest) neighborhoods at the lowest point, below 10,000 feet.

Lhasa is at about 12,000 feet and much of the rest of Tibet is higher, making it even higher than the Altiplano on average.

Do Han Chinese women have lots of miscarriages in Tibet? Or are they better biologically adapted to extreme altitude? We know the famous Tibetan Sherpas of Nepal have a biological adaptation to high altitude, but do the lowland Chinese?

This question would seem to have significant implications for whether Chinese colonization of Tibet makes sense. If the Chinese are just letting themselves in for a lot of personal heartbreak by trying to form families at 12,000 feet, maybe their government could be persuaded to just give up on their settlement plan and let the Tibetans have Tibet.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

March 29, 2008

Is AEY Hasidic enough to be eligible for affirmative action?

All the firms intimately or tangentially associated with the Afghan Ammo scandal -- 22-year-old Efraim Diveroli's AEY Inc., his father Michael Diveroli's Worldwide Tactical, and his uncle Bar-Kochba Botach's Botach Tactical -- are listed in federal contractor databases as "disadvantaged" or "minority owned." This implies that the owners must be Hasidic Jews, because only Hasidics, not Orthodox Jews in general, qualify for affirmative action.

Leaving aside the issue of whether Hasidic Jews should qualify for ethnic preferences, which they have since a Reagan Administration decision in 1984, are the Diverolis and Botaches Hasidic enough to list themselves as eligible for affirmative action?

Granted, this entire debate is absurd, but it's fun ... and a lot of taxpayers' money rides on the question of just how hard it is to declare yourself one of those officially privileged "disadvantaged Hasidic Jews."

Congressman Henry Waxman has scheduled hearings into the AEY scandal, but, you know, I have this strange hunch that the hearings, if they ever happen, aren't going to get into any of the fun stuff. The press hasn't yet touched even the most obvious fun stuff, like Efraim being the nephew of Michael Jackson's rabbi or Efraim's mom being being involved in a Michael Jackson fundraising scam. The original NYT article, for example, left the entire ethnic angle out.

The most famous member of the family is Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who appears to be the brother of Efraim's mother, Ateret Diveroli, a mother of five. (Efraim is described as "the eldest of five.") A 2001 Slate.com article "Who is Shmuley Boteach?" by Benjamin Soskis says:

To understand why Shmuley Boteach is one of the world's most prominent rabbis, you ... simply have to scan the dedication to one of his latest books, Dating Secrets of the Ten Commandments. "To Michael," it reads, "who taught me of humility." Michael, of course, is none other than Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, and Boteach manages to slip references to their relationship into most of his interviews and writings. The rabbi is currently co-authoring a parenting book with the blanched superstar and sponsoring a Jackson-led charity dedicated, unbelievably enough, to ensuring that children receive appropriate amounts of affection. ...

Despite Jackson's lesson in humility, he approaches self-promotion with religious fervor. As he told one reporter, his own Eleventh Commandment is "Thou shalt do anything for publicity and recognition."

Shmuley learned his talent for outreach from the experts. Though he had been brought up in a modern Orthodox home in Miami and Los Angeles, as a teen-ager he became increasingly involved in the ultra-Orthodox Lubavitch, or Chabad, movement. Founded in 18th-century Russia as an offshoot of Hasidic Judaism, the Lubavitch are dedicated to making Jewish ritual accessible to even unlearned Jews. When Chabad moved its base to Crown Heights, Brooklyn, after World War II, its emphasis on outreach to secular Jews intensified; ...

When Shmuley was 13, he met the movement's charismatic leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, whom some considered then to be the Messiah and still do today, even after his death seven years ago. The Rebbe, as Schneerson was called, bestowed upon Shmuley a generous blessing—friends joked that perhaps Shmuley was the Messiah—and later dispatched him, at age 22, to Oxford to serve as a religious emissary. ...

As Shmuley's stature on campus grew, his relations with the Lubavitch leadership began to fray. The L'Chaim Society attracted as many non-Jews as Jews—its president one year was an African-American Baptist—and his peers felt Shmuley was spending too much time courting gentiles, thereby diluting outreach efforts and possibly even encouraging intermarriage. Shmuley replied with what would become his signature defense: that broadening the visibility of Judaism to the general public would inevitably, if circuitously, attract Jews. "To get Jews interested in the Jewish world," he later said, "you have to get the non-Jews interested. The Jews will follow what the non-Jews are doing."


Few in the Orthodox Jewish establishment agree. In 1994 Shmuley was officially rejected by Crown Heights after inviting Yitzhak Rabin to speak at L'Chaim against the orders of the Rebbe, who strongly opposed Rabin's land-for-peace position. The penalty was largely symbolic, since Shmuley had become a master fund-raiser (using British parsonage laws to purchase a second home in North London) and was financially independent.

So, this says that the home presided over by Yoav Botach, Shmuley's father and owner of Botach Tactical, where Efraim Diveroli's mom grew up, was "Modern Orthodox" rather than Hasidic. So, how do they qualify for federal affirmative action purposes as Hasidic?

Perhaps Shmuley converted the rest of the family for awhile, but now he's apparently not a Hasidic anymore, so how do these firms keep going on claiming to be Hasidic?

I suspect more federal contractors will be signing up as disadvantaged Hasidics when they realize that the whole beard and hat thing isn't a federal requirement.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

A General Theory of the Afghan Ammo swindle

The AEY Afghan ammo scandal has raised many questions around the blogs about who or what is behind it all. But I think the answer isn't all that mysterious.

Have you ever tried to buy a camera from the ads in the back pages of a camera magazine? There are pages and pages in tiny type offering better deals than you could get from any local store. A friend bought a camera from one once, and it turned out to be a horrible experience. The package showed up very late, was missing essential pieces, and when he called to complain the customer service rep acted hostile and tried to sell him more stuff he didn't want rather than fix his problem. The representatives of the camera shop became highly abusive over the phone.

I asked him what city the shop was located in? Brooklyn.

And what time do they close business on Friday? 2 pm.

Well, there you go ...

There are a whole bunch of Hasidic-run photography dealers in New York City. Some of them, such as B&H (which is jokingly said to stand for "Beards & Hats"), are quite honest and have done very well for themselves over the years.

On a bulletin board on Photo.net, customer Steve Levine says:

"Interestingly, B&H was the first "Hasidic" owned camera store that decided to treat customers like human beings. In the pre-B&H days, all of the NYC camera stores were nearly impossible to deal with."

Many of them still practice bait-and-switch and other simple con techniques. They hook you in with too-good-to-be-true advertised prices, then proceed to make your life a nightmare as you try to get them to live up to their promises and they try to badger you into buying even more junk. Here, for example, is a voice mail from a customer service rep at one of these firms: "I'm going to break your neck."

When their reputations get too bad, they simply switch to another name and carry on.

Efraim Diveroli's uncle's gun shop in LA, Botach Tactical, is very similar to the NY camera stores of ill-memory. It lowballs prices in its ads, then, when it has got you hooked, proceeds to abuse you. Maybe it has a couple of the items on hand, but if you aren't the first to call in, it puts your order in a queue until it sees if it can negotiate a deal with the manufacturer. You might get your ammo eight months later. In summary, you get what you pay for.

So, Diveroli was just applying the family/ethnic tradition to federal contracts. You put in a low bid, assisted by Diveroli's AEY, Inc. certification as owned by a disadvantaged minority (Hasidic, although Diveroli sounds like a Roman Jewish name -- i.e., not Ashkenazi, which the Hasidim are -- but Diveroli's celebrity uncle Shmuley Boteach was ordained as a Lubavitcher Hasidic rabbi, although he has since broken with them) for affirmative action purposes. If the feds bite on the bait, well, you hustle like hell to come up with something that will make it so that the feds will be more willing to accept the crap you foist on them than dealing with you and your lawyers.

Why the Hasidim?

First, there is the "in-group morality." Some Muslim in Afghanistan loses an eye because his bullet explodes in his gun? Eh ... The taxpayers of America have to shell out more to make up the loss? Eh ...

Second, there is the simple psychological ability to not be distressed about other people's anger, whether justifiable or not. Most people become uncomfortable when people around them become angry and they try to mollify the angry person. (The Japanese are among the world leaders at feeling psychic pain when people around them aren't content.) In contrast, the kind of people who flourish in these kind of bait and switch businesses don't mind other people getting angry at them. They just get angry right back, angrier even. It's fun.

My cocktail party theory of the origins of this stems from Robert Heinlein's famous phrase, "An armed society is a polite society." In most of medieval Europe, you didn't want to get into screaming arguments with acquaintances because they might pull out a sword and run you through. Well, medieval ghettos were largely disarmed, so the verbally hostile weren't excused from the culture and gene pool.

So, the bottom line is that anybody sensible would be cautious before buying from Hasidic-owned businesses that don't specifically have a good reputation, like B&H. Take that super-duper quoted price and add a percentage to account for all the hassles you are letting yourself in for.

But, of course, nobody is supposed to think like that. The media won't print that kind of advice. And the poor federal government isn't supposed to treat Hasidim skeptically, they're officially supposed to bend over backwards for them and treat them like a legally privileged minority!

Update: Of course, in neither of Efraim's two mugshots is he wearing a beard or a hat, so I guess he's Hasidic for federal contracting purposes, but a wild and crazy guy for the ladies.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

March 28, 2008

AEY's Awful Afghan Ammo: Is it an affirmative action scandal?

This is one of those blog posts where I start writing about one thing and in the middle of it, I discover something I never expected, so the whole thing lurches off in a different direction. I apologize for the lack of pre-planned structure.

In the wake of the NYT's story on 22-year-old high school-dropout Efraim E. Diveroli, who snagged $202,000,000 in U.S. government ammunition contracts in Fiscal Year 2007 to supply bullets to the embattled Afghan government, many people are wondering how the federal government could have handed out such a big contract to some loser who has been arrested twice in his young life: for drunk driving and for beating up a parking valet.

You would think that somebody in our huge federal government might want to do some background checks on the Internet. For example, the only job Diveroli has ever held besides working for his dad Michael Diveroli was working for his uncle Bar-Kochba Botach's weaponry shop, Botach Tactical, in South Central LA. So, what kind of lessons did young Efraim learn working for Botach?

Here, unedited, is just the first page's worth of customer reviews of Botach Tactical on Epinions.com:

QUALITY MERCHANDISE/INEPT CUSTOMER SERVICE REPS!
Botach. Great Prices, Horrible Customer Service.
Shop elsewhere. Poor customer service. NOT WORTH THE AGGRAVATION !
One word "Agonizing"
Please investigate this company on the Internet before purchasing anything!
Horriable!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
painfully awful. the WORST customer service you can imagine
Extremely frustrating and disappointing
Worst Customer Sevice Experience EVER.
My order was just forgotten
Cut out the middleman and just flush your money down the toilet.
RUN BY TOTAL MORONS
Worst Shopping Experience Ever!!!
service and trust, I rate them at minus 90
Worst Customer Service Around

But, maybe the Feds aren't supposed to look at Botach Tactical's performance because the firearms dealer has, according to FedVendor.com:

Certificates: Small Disadvantaged

In other words, Botach Tactical gets affirmative action in government contracting! Indeed, much of its legitimate business is done with law enforcement and military buyers. (Leaders of the South Central LA black community suspect it might also do business with less reputable locals, but that's another story.)

In fact, young Efraim's AEY.Inc is listed in USSpending.gov, as Mike Carney at USAToday noticed, as:

Small Disadvantaged Business: Yes

Does that explain how a loser like him got $202 million in contracts?

And why is Efraim Diveroli's ludicrous little company certified as "Disadvantaged?"

Because he's a Hasidic Jew. Or at least he claims to be on this federal form. (Efraim's cousin, Michael Jackson's favorite rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the son of the owner of Botach Tactical, started out as a Lubavitcher Hasidic rabbi although he seems to be more freelance today.)

In fact, I just learned, all Hasidic Jews, such as the Botach/Boteach/Diveroli clan, are eligible for federal ethnic preferences! I had no idea ....

An alert reader pointed out in the comments to an earlier post this old NY Times story:

Reagan Grants Hasidim 'Disadvantaged' Status
New York Times, Jun 29, 1984

They were talking about it in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn yesterday. Bearded men in dark coats under a hot sun, men known for their deep spiritual values, their belief in education and hard work, their pride in self-reliance.

They were all Hasidic Jews, and they were talking about President Reagan's decision, announced Wednesday, to add them to a list of minority groups considered ''disadvantaged'' by the Government.

The list already includes Hispanic people, blacks, Indians and other groups that are considered by the Government to have encountered severe economic problems because of discrimination.

The designation means the Hasidim are able to apply for Federal assistance in running businesses. They will also be eligible for programs that set aside work for minority-group businesses.

Holy cow ... affirmative action?!? Is that why the Syrian Jews of Brooklyn have gotten so rich?

An Amazon.com reviewer of a book about the Hasidic Satmars of Williamsburg notes:

As a result of their low level of education and literacy, Satmar hasidim, to a much greater extent than most Orthodox Jews, fit poorly into the modern economy; professional jobs are of course off limits. According to the author, 1/3 of Williamsburg Hasids have incomes below the poverty line, and the median Jewish income in Williamsburg is one half the median family income in New York City (which in turn is below the median family income for NYC suburbs). In several parts of the book, the author goes out of his way to brag that in 1984, the Satmar were "offically designated a disadvantaged minority" by the U.S. Commerce Department (by which I assume he means that they are eligible for easy access to federal contracts under affirmative action regulations - though the author is not very clear about this). In fact, he states that this decision was "the most significant factor" in "the development of the entreprenurial spirit" among the younger hasidim. Somehow I find it troubling that a community can, by undereducating its members, become voluntarily poor and then gain "affirmative action" protections that were intended for communities that become poor through discrimination.

Here's former NYC mayor Ed Koch's statement of disbelief that the Reagan Administration made Hasidic Jews an official disadvantaged group.

I'm not real clear on just what affirmative action goodies Hasidim are eligible for as a disadvantaged minority -- clearly, they can get help from the Minority Business Development Agency, but I'm not sure what else. If you know, let me know.

Despite, or perhaps because of, their Commitment to Service and Federally-Certified Ethnic Disadvantage, the Botach / Boteach family of LA is wildly wealthy. Luke Ford points out today:

This Week The Botachs Married Off A Daughter At The Century Plaza Hotel

I’m told there were 800 guests for the wedding of the daughter of Shlomo and Dalia Botach. Shlomo is Yoav’s brother. The daughter is [celebrity rabbi] Shmuley Boteach’s cousin.

How do they afford it? The Botachs own much of downtown Los Angeles. They live under the radar in the modest Pico-Robertson neighborhood. They send their kids to Hillel and YULA and get scholarships because of their large families. No one dreams of the vast amounts of money this family accumulated. Yoav (Shmuley Boteach’s father) is the largest owner of warehouses in California. Rumored to be Israelis, their roots are Iranian. [More]

The Century Plaza is the big Hyatt Regency hotel in Century City, right next door to Beverly Hills. Their wedding reception package starts at $132 per guest, so that's six figures right there.

So, this whole story may be another affirmative action scandal, rather like crooked defense contractor Wedtech in the 1980s, whose Italian-American boss qualified as Hispanic because his parents had lived for awhile in Puerto Rico. Clifford D. May wrote in the New York Times in 1987:

One important aspect of the Wedtech case is that the Bronx-based company, which declared bankruptcy late last year, was in a position to benefit greatly from political influence because it was owned by a member of a minority group. Under Section 8(a) of the Small Business Act, such companies may receive Government contracts without going through the process of bidding against competitors, and Wedtech did so to gain most of its $100-million-a-year business.

Wedtech's minority status was based on the fact that its founder, John Mariotta, was Hispanic. Mr. Mariotta -the name is Italian - was born in New York, though his parents came from Puerto Rico.

''This is an issue that troubles me,'' said Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the New York Democrat who has been involved in minority issues for more than a generation. ''After all, there were slave-owning families in Puerto Rico in the 19th century. Do individuals from those families, too, qualify as disadvantaged minority group members?''

In any case, the company somehow kept its privileged status even after it went public in 1983.

The thorniest problem lawmakers face is that in the absence of competitive bidding, a minority-owned company must depend for its contracts on political influence and the subjective perceptions of those with a hold on the Government's purse strings. That, in turn, can open up broad opportunities for corruption.

Of course, what's the real scandal with AEY is that it's not a scandal for Hasidic-owned firms to claim affirmative action breaks.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The Theology of Obamaism

Dennis Dale has it explained to him in barroom colloquy.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

How did the Diveroli family qualify for "minority ownership" preferences?

Following up on the story of the 22-year-old international arms dealer Efraim E. Diveroli, whose AEY firm just had its $200-$300 million contract with the U.S. government yanked, I noticed that a company called Worldwide Tactical, managed by Efraim's father Michael Diveroli, operates out of the same address in Miami Beach and has the same fax number. What caught my eye was this line on FedVendor.com form for Michael Diveroli's Worldwide Tactical.
Ownership: Minority Owned

So, Diveroli's dad gets ethnic preferences on government contracts? Sweeeeet! (Here's a mugshot of young Efraim, who looks like maybe he's a big fan of fellow Miami Beach denizen Jose Canseco's health and fitness techniques.)

I explained how something like this could happen in a VDARE.com article "What's Spanish for Chutzpah?" which explains how a Polish-born entrepreneur named Liberman got himself declared Hispanic for the purposes of getting tax breaks on buying radio stations. See, the Libermans got tossed out of Spain in 1492, which makes them Hispanics.

But "Diveroli" appears to be an Italian Jewish name. Maybe they got themselves declared "Latinos" because their ancestors spoke some Latin 2000 years ago? Who knows?

Updated: See the comments for a 1984 NYT story on how the Reagan administration declared Hasidic Jews to be a "disadvantaged" minority for purposes of minority business development.

As it turns out, Efraim's AEY is officially listed by the federal government as being owned by an ethnically "disadvantaged" person. And it turns out that the Reagan Administration added "Hasidic Jews" to the list of who is eligible for affirmative action in 1984.

But are the Diverolis Hasidic Ashkenazis? The name sounds Roman Jewish. And is his mother's side of the family Botach / Boteach Hasidic either? Maybe -- that's what Efraim's uncle, the celebrity rabbi Shmuley Boteach was ordained as, but Shmuley's father claims to be an Israeli citizen and the rumor is that their background is Persian Jewish.

So Efraim must claim to be Hasidic in order for AEY to qualify as "disadvantaged." Funny, he doesn't look too Hasidic in this mugshot. I guess he must have lost his hat and beard on the way to the police station after he beat up that parking valet.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

March 27, 2008

Q. Who are these people? A. You know, it's a funny story ...

With some readers' help, I've done some digging into the cast of characters in that NYT article about the 22-year-old international arms dealer who got a huge contract from the U.S. government to supply ammunition (which turned out to be shoddy) to the Afghan government. I asked the question the NYT wouldn't: "Who are these people?"

The answer turns out to be a wacky story that involves Michael Jackson, Maxine Waters, a reality TV show host, the most hostile retailer ever, and the largest palimony suit in American history. I've added all these new findings to the bottom of my previous post: "More Amazing Adventures of Men with Gold Chains."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Down with Middleclassness! Up with Upper Middleclassness!

One item in Obama's Trinity United Church of Christ's "Black Value System" is "Disavowal of the Pursuit of ‘Middleclassness.’"

Yet, after decades of preaching to his congregation that blacks shouldn't move from the ghetto (where, coincidentally enough, his megachurch is located), the retiring Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. says, in effect, "So long, suckers!"

FOX News has uncovered documents that indicate Wright is about to move to a 10,340-square-foot, four-bedroom home in suburban Chicago, currently under construction in a gated community.

Those must be big bedrooms to have only four in a 10,340 sq. ft. house.

The house and land were apparently paid for by Trinity.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer