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

NYT confirms my hunch about Diveroli's AEY

When the New York Times broke the story that a 22-year-old high school dropout in Miami Beach had gotten a $298 million contract to supply ammunition to the Afghan army, there was much speculation about the no doubt complicated and nefarious conspiracy behind it all.

But the more I thought about it, as I wrote back in March, the more the scandal sounded merely like the traditional New York mail order camera shop business model of semi-bait and switch: you offer a ridiculously low price, take the customer's money, then see if you can scrounge up something that will keep the customer from taking you to court. Maybe you can bully a supplier into selling you exactly what you've already sold, or maybe the customer will accept something kind of like what they thought they were buying. After your reputation gets too awful, you just change your firm's name.

Indeed, that's the reputation of Botach Tactical, the weapons dealer owned by Efraim Diveroli's mother's family.

It's an easy way to make money if you just don't care when your rightfully angry customers scream at you over the phone. Most people don't like being confronted when they're guilty of breaking promises, but if it doesn't bother you, then you've got a bright future in this kind of business.

Now, C.J. Chivers reports in the NYT:

Several arms-industry officials said the problems were obvious. AEY was a new company with a young and inexperienced staff. Part of its business model, the officials said, was to make extremely low bids on contracts and then seek help from competitors to supply the munitions.

Private arms dealers said the practice caused predictable problems. “They low-bid these prices so low that there was no high-quality source for it,” said Sanford Brygidier, managing director of Aztec International, of Ocala, Fla.

Mr. Brygidier, who said he has been in the arms business for 36 years, added that Mr. Diveroli would tell potential suppliers that they had to accept his prices because he had the contract and there would be no other buyers. “He wanted this, he wanted that, he had immediate cash,” Mr. Brygidier said. “I told him, basically, that this wasn’t kindergarten and that we were not in the education business. I told him not to call me anymore.”

Mr. Shapiro, Mr. Diveroli’s lawyer, declined to answer questions about whether AEY had sought munitions from companies it had underbid. He did not dispute that its prices were generally low.

“It seems to me that Mr. Diveroli’s prices would have had to have been lower than his competitors’ for the Army to have awarded him the Afghanistan contract,” Mr. Shapiro said.

The low-price assumptions, the industry officials said, appeared to be what had led Mr. Diveroli to Albania, where the government sold its munitions for as little as 2.2 cents a round, a price that strongly suggested their age and poor condition.

Ed Grasso, president of Sellier & Bellot USA, which has provided new Czech ammunition to Afghanistan, said new rifle cartridges of the types AEY bought typically cost 20 cents to 30 cents a round.

By early this year, Mr. Diveroli seemed to be desperately searching for munitions, three dealers said. He turned up in Las Vegas in February at the SHOT show, which calls itself the world’s largest firearms exhibition.

He went booth to booth, seeking suppliers to fill the Army’s orders, including those for shoulder-fired rockets, they said. “He was looking to buy RPG-7 rounds, and let me tell you, he wanted to pay $30 for these things,” one dealer said. “You can’t get that item for that price, not if you’re buying quality.”

A round for an RPG-7, the dealer said, typically costs $60 to $85.

He added, “He would just come in and give us a list of stuff that he was trying to shop, and at prices no one would touch.”

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

Efraim Diveroli in Rolling Stone

A few years ago, the story of the two Miami youths, Efraim Diveroli and David Packouz, who won a $300 million dollar contract from the Pentagon for ammo for Afghanistan, which they fulfilled with illegal Chinese surplus, was a nine days wonder. Everybody was sure the conspiracy had to go right to the top! Cheney or even Bush's head would roll over this. I looked into the events and came away with a different impression.

Now, Guy Lawson has a funny story on this: The Stoner Arms Dealers:

"We've got a problem," he told Packouz, shouting to be heard over the restaurant's thumping music. "The plane has been seized on the runway in Kyrgyzstan."  

The arms shipment, it appeared, was being used as a bargaining chip in a high-stakes standoff between George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin. The Russian president didn't like NATO expanding into Kyrgyzstan, and the Kyrgyzs wanted the U.S. government to pay more rent to use their airport as a crucial supply line for the war in Afghanistan. Putin's allies in the Kyrgyz KGB, it seemed, were holding the plane hostage — and Packouz was going to be charged a $300,000 fine for every day it sat on the runway. Word of the seizure quickly reached Washington, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates himself was soon on his way to Kyrgyzstan to defuse the mounting tensions.  

Packouz was baffled, stoned and way out of his league. "It was surreal," he recalls. "Here I was dealing with matters of international security, and I was half-baked. I didn't know anything about the situation in that part of the world. But I was a central player in the Afghan war — and if our delivery didn't make it to Kabul, the entire strategy of building up the Afghanistan army was going to fail. It was totally killing my buzz.

As I explained back then, Diveroli's business model looked like it was basically the same as all those Brooklyn mail order camera stores: semi-bait-and-switch. Lure customers in with impossibly low prices, then fob them off with the minimum you can get away with.  His family owned a gun shop in LA that did business that way, where Efraim had worked as a lad. 

Packouz was about to get a rare education. He watched as Diveroli won a State Department contract to supply high-grade FN Herstal machine guns to the Colombian army. It was a lucrative deal, but Diveroli wasn't satisfied — he always wanted more. So he persuaded the State Department to allow him to substitute Korean-made knockoffs instead of the high-end Herstals — a swap that instantly doubled his earnings. Diveroli did the same with a large helmet order for the Iraqi army, pushing the Pentagon to accept poorer-quality Chinese-made helmets once he had won the contract. After all, it wasn't like the military was buying weapons and helmets for American soldiers. The hapless end-users were foreigners, and who was going to go the extra mile for them?

The only funny stuff that is left out is that Diveroli's uncle Shmuley Boteach, lately in the news feuding with his next door neighbor, the government of Libya, was Michael Jackson's rabbi, and that one of the edges AEY had going for them in the government contracting business was that they had checked the disadvantaged minority box for being Hasidic, although they weren't.

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

Efraim Diveroli Update

A couple of years ago, the NYT broke the story of a 22-year-old Miami Beach arms dealer, Efraim Diveroli, who had landed a $300,000,000 Pentagon contract to deliver ammunition to the fledgling Afghan Army, and was illegally fulfilling the deal using aged Chinese ammo. It was a  nine-days-wonder of a story as many were sure at first that Cheney or Rumsfeld or somebody like that was involved. 

But, as I was the first to point out, it probably didn't involve a conspiracy that-goes-straight-to-the-top. Diveroli was apparently just a young hustler from a family of hustlers (his grandfather owns a big, scary gun shop in South Central LA; his uncle Shmuley Boteach was Michael Jackson's rabbi) carrying out the kind of semi-bait switch business (offer a low price, then deliver low quality) that is familiar to customers of Brooklyn camera shops. And don't forget to sign up as an ethnically disadvantaged small business!

The Reagan Administration made Hasidics into a legally advantaged minority for the sake of federal contracting in 1982. Despite their claims, I don't think the Boteach-Diveroli family is very Hasidic, however. Clean-shaven Efraim's Uncle Shmuley converted to being Hasidic for awhile, but then the Hasidics got tired of his antics and he stopped being Hasidic. From Government Executive trade magazine:

A Government Executive investigation in April 2008 showed that AEY's business exploded after the company was improperly designated as a small disadvantaged business less than one year before receiving the massive Afghan munitions contract.

Before the designation first appeared in the Federal Procurement Data System in mid-2006, AEY had earned a modest $8.1 million in business with the federal government. Since the SDB label was applied, the contractor earned more than $204 million in federal contracts.

Small disadvantaged businesses can receive price evaluation adjustments or proposal evaluation credits on Defense contracts. But Diveroli was anything but disadvantaged, coming from an extremely wealthy family. His father owns a pair of highly successful military and police supply companies, both of which receive government contracts. And his grandfather is one of the largest property owners in Los Angeles.

Well, Diveroli's back in trouble again, arrested by federal undercover agents in his silver Audi convertible for violating his parole. The details of the latest case make him sound a little more likable, less purely mercenary: he not only likes selling weaponry, he likes shooting it off, too.

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

UPDATED: More amazing adventures of Men with Gold Chains

The NYT has a long article on a Miami Beach company that has gotten a contract worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. government to supply Afghan government forces with ammunition, even though it is supposedly run by a 22-year-old. (Here's CEO Efraim Diveroli's MySpace profile.) Much of the ammo has apparently turned out to be junk scrounged from ex-Soviet, Albanian, or Chinese supplies.

What's not explained in the article is: "Who are these people?"

UPDATE: With lots of help from my alert readers, I've found out more about the clan involved. It's a great story, involving Michael Jackson, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, "America's Rabbi," and America's largest palimony suit.

The NYT article does mention that Diveroli got his start working briefly for his uncle Bar-Kochba Botach's weapons shop, Botach Tactical.

Here's a fun discussion thread entitled "BotachTactical.com is by far the worst company I have ever dealt with...," where ex-customers of Botach discuss their experiences trying to get Botach to live up to its promises. You've got to give this family of arms dealers credit for courage -- I can see ripping off photographers wanting to buy Nikon cameras cheap, but routinely ripping off the kind of people who want to buy 30-round magazines for their M-16s (the featured item on Botach's website today), well, that takes some brass.

Botach Tactical operates out of an unmarked building in -- where else? -- South Central Los Angeles. From The Wave, LA's black newspaper:

The black community has a gun dealership in it.

Botach Tactical is a state-licensed and city-contracted bulk gun supply business in operation on the corner of Crenshaw Boulevard and 43rd Place, it was learned this week.

The gun dealership, owned by Bartochba Botach, was discovered Friday by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles, and a group of Crenshaw area residents, who, responding to rumors, went to the unmarked storefront at 3423 W. 43rd Place and demanded entry.

Once inside, the group, which included the congresswoman’s daughter, Karen Titus, and activists Steve Cokely, Sandra Moore and Maurice Griffin, confronted Botach, who admitted to being a gun merchant.

“He said he is an international arms dealer with a government contract and that everything he does at his Crenshaw store is legal,” Moore said. “He told us he has a right to be in there, but we didn’t.

“He said, yeah, he sells guns and ammunition in bulk, but only to law enforcement and the military,” Moore added. “He said he is an Israeli and that he operates the gun business with his family. I asked him why he had to sell them in our community. I was angry, so I told him to go sell them in his own community.”

Moore described the site as the neighborhood’s former pawnshop, stripped of all identifying signage and fortified with thick, double-plated glass. “And dogs,” she said.

“He’s got several vicious dogs on the premises. The guy said he also owns Maverick’s Flat across the street from his gun store and he uses it as a warehouse, so we went over there, too, and I ran into a cop coming out with a box of bullets.”

Waters, Moore and company went directly to the office of their city representative, Councilman Bernard Parks, to report and protest the presence of the gun dealership. Parks spent the next two days researching the business in question and Tuesday reported the following:

Botach Tactical is a gun supply store that has allegedly been operated by Botach for 12 years. Parks said Botach has had other businesses in the community for at least 20 years.

The councilman said Botach has a current valid state license to sell arms and is contracted by the Los Angeles Police Commission to buy and sell guns, ammunition and arms-related materials in bulk through the Internet to police agencies around the country.

Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas, D-Los Angeles, who was the area’s city councilman for 12 years before Parks’ election, Tuesday disputed the 12-year operation of the gun dealership at the 43rd Place site.

“It has always been a pawnshop,” Ridley-Thomas said. “When did it turn into a gun store? How did it turn into a gun store? You can’t change the use of a building without proper notification, permits and public hearings.

“Where are the public notification documents?” Ridley-Thomas asked. “This is something the residents would have had to be apprised of in advance and be allowed to respond to before such a business began operating.

“A pawnshop showed up at that location shortly after the [1992] civil unrest and people didn’t like it there. It had always been a controversial site as a pawnshop. How did it shift from a pawnshop to a gun shop, which is something even more controversial?” [More]

In 2006, Luke Ford noticed this LA Daily News story about the SoCal arms dealer who appears to be the great-uncle of Efraim Diveroli and perhaps the father of Bar-Kochba Botach:

Makeup artist to the stars Judith Boteach thought she had found true love when it took four people to carry all of the flowers and jewelry lavished on her the day multimillionaire Yoav Botach proposed marriage.

Boteach said she learned a month after their Orthodox Jewish wedding ceremony that her groom hadn't obtained a California marriage license, but she believed in their future together.

"I loved him," said Boteach. "I trusted him and he kept telling me (the wedding license) wasn't necessary."

But their relationship ended unhappily, with Boteach kicked out of the couple's Beverlywood home in her nightgown. And she is now embroiled in a court battle for half of Botach's fortune - millions of dollars she claims he promised her should the couple ever split.

"This is the largest palimony case in American history," said Robert W. Hirsh, Boteach's attorney, who explained that his client cannot fight for alimony since she and Botach were never legally married.

According to court records, Botach co-owns 144 commercial and other properties in Los Angeles, as well as Botach Tactical, a nationwide distributor of police and military equipment. But Boteach is seeking access to financial documents to determine the defendant's assets. "We would not be surprised if his net worth is $700 million," Hirsh said.

Judith Boteach apparently now runs a Moroccan restaurant, BBC Cafe, in Beverly Hills. An LA Times restaurant review describes her as "Judith Boteach, the charismatic Moroccan American chef and co-owner and her partners Jay and Karine Kaplan and Gabriel Azoulay." I would guess she from Morocco's Jewish community.

Apparently, Yoav Botach is the father of Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of the bestseller Kosher Sex and host of the Shalom in the Home reality TV show on TLC Network. He calls himself "America's Rabbi" on his website. So, this celebrity rabbi, who was ordained as Lubavitcher Hasidic but has since broken with them, would appear to be the uncle of young arms dealer Efraim Diveroli.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and Michael Jackson (yes, that Michael Jackson) started an "infamous" charity in 2000 called Time for Kids that put on a benefit at Carnegie Hall but somehow never got any money to any kids. The money seems to have wound up with Shmuley's L'Chaim Oxford nonprofit, which is supposed to promote Jewish life at Oxford U. But it got into all kinds of legal and tax problems with the British government because it didn't seem to be doing any of that.

The treasurer of the dubious Michael Jackson charity was Shmuley's sister, Ateret Diveroli, who appears to be Efraim's mom.

But, I must say, at this point there are so many Botaches and Boteaches and Yoavs and Bar-Kochbas floating around that I may have well have gotten some of this wrong.

The VP and #2 officer of Diveroli's AEY the firm that got the huge contract from the taxpayers, is 25-year-old licensed masseuse David M. Packouz. He appears to be the son of Rabbi Kalman Packouz (a.k.a., Kenneth M. Packouz) of Miami Beach, author of How to Prevent an Intermarriage. Rabbi Kalman is Executive Director of Aish HaTorah Jerusalem Fund.

There's been a lot of speculation over how young Diveroli got this lucrative contract. One common suggestion is that perhaps he's a big Republican campaign donor.

Yet, the only person mentioned in this posting who has contributed to a Presidential candidate over the last decade, according to OpenSecrets.org, is pawnshop owner turned merchant of death Yoav Botach, who gave $1,000 to John Edwards last year.

Overall, it just sounds like a whole family full of self-starters.

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

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

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

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

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 18^th-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

You can't keep a good Diveroli down

In Miami New Times, Penn Bullock updates us on the latest adventures of Efraim Diveroli, who is back in business supplying ammunition to the U.S. Government, despite being under indictment on 71 counts. He's now operating under the corporate name AmmoWorks rather than AEY. Check out the last line of the article (page 2) for the most acute observation yet on the true nature of young Mr. Diveroli.

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

AEY hearings in the House

The New York Times reports:

Arms Dealer Had Troubled History

By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — When the Army last year awarded a contract worth up to nearly $300 million to a tiny Miami Beach munitions dealer to supply ammunition to Afghanistan’s security forces, it overlooked a very checkered past.

A Congressional committee revealed Tuesday that by the time the Army awarded the bid, State and Defense Department officials had canceled or delayed at least six earlier contracts with the company, AEY Inc., for poor quality or late deliveries.

But that record, including a botched $5.6 million order for 10,000 Beretta pistols for Iraq’s security forces, was either ignored or omitted from databases that American military contracting officials have used to weed out companies suspected of involvement in suspect arms deals.

Congressional investigators also determined that the Afghanistan ammunition contract, which the company is also accused of mishandling, may have been unnecessary: Bosnia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Albania, the Eastern European countries from which AEY bought its ammunition, had offered to donate the type of Soviet-style rifle and machine-gun cartridges that the Afghan Army and police forces use. …

House investigators have also gathered testimony that the American ambassador to Albania, John L. Withers II, helped cover up the illegal Chinese origins of ammunition that AEY was shipping from Albania to Afghanistan under the Army contract. …

Lawmakers also criticized the government officials for failing to review several AEY contracts that had been canceled or delayed, many of which never raised red flags with contracting officials because they fell under the $5 million contract value that was the warning threshold.

In October 2005, the committee report found, AEY delivered a shipment of damaged helmets to the American training command in Iraq. One American inspector said in an e-mail message obtained by the committee: “The helmets came to Abu Ghraib by mistake. They are not very good. They have peeling paint and a few appear to have been damaged such as having been dropped.”

About the same time, AEY failed to deliver more than 10,000 Beretta pistols under contract to Iraqi security forces.

According to the contracting officer, Mr. Diveroli blamed the delays in part on a plane crash that had destroyed important documents and a hurricane that hit Miami. …

Back when he worked for his uncle's Botach Tactical weapons dealership in Los Angeles and angry customers would call up wondering where the M-16 clips they had paid for were, Diveroli probably blamed delays on an earthquake that hit LA.

House investigators determined that Melanie A. Johnson, a contracting officer with the Army Sustainment Command, had overruled a contracting team that raised concerns about AEY’s inexperience and had concluded that there was “substantial doubt” that the company could fulfill the contract.

Investigators said Ms. Johnson had later acknowledged to them that she was unaware of the poor past performance of AEY, including the Beretta contract, when she awarded the company the Afghan bid.

In case you're wondering why federal bureaucrats would fall for an obvious New York camera store-style bait-and-switch operator like Diveroli, keep in mind that Jimmy Carter threw out the federal civil service exam back in January 1981 for "disparate impact" and it's never been fully replaced.

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

Whatever happened to Rep. Waxman's Diveroli hearings?

Back in March, the New York Times ran a big story on the 22-year-old high school dropout hustler Efraim Diveroli, who had snagged a $200,000,000 Pentagon contract for his AEY Inc. to supply ammunition to the Afghan government. He supplied Chinese-made ammo bought from crooked Albanian politicians.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) immediately sent him a letter demanding he testify before Waxman's Oversight committee on April 17. But that got postponed and then ... zilch. It's June now and the name Diveroli hasn't shown up on Google News in weeks. Funny how that works.

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

Michael Jackson's rabbi loses in GOP bid for House seat

Here at iSteve, we always like to keep up on the latest doings of the enterprising Diveroli-Boteach clan, but there's sad news today, brought to us by Dave Weigel: Shmuley Boteach, uncle of jailed young arms dealer Efraim Diveroli and former rabbi to Michael Jackson (don't ask), has lost by about 50 points in his attempt to unseat a Democrat Congressman in northern New Jersey.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach runs for Congress

Dave Weigel writes in Slate on the GOP candidate for a New Jersey House of Representatives seat:

The bolt-black SmartCar parks, and out walks Rabbi Shmuley Boteach—spiritual adviser to Michael Jackson, author of Kosher Sex, candidate for U.S. Congress.

It's a Democratic leaning district, but Sheldon Adelson's $500,000 donation perhaps gives Shmuley a fighting chance. 

iSteve first became Shmuley-conscious in 2008 during the Nine Days Wonder over the rabbi's nephew Efraim Diveroli, the 22-year-old rogue arms dealer who fulfilled his $198,000,000 contract with the Pentagon to supply the Afghan Army with ammunition using illegal Chinese surplus bought off shady Albanian officials.

Last year, I found out Shmuley lives next door to a house in New Jersey owned by Libyan Colonel Muamar Gaddafi, then still kicking. Back before Qathaffee's unpleasant demise, I pitched:

C'mon, this can't miss as a situation for a sit-com: Michael Jackson's rabbi (played by Billy Crystal) and an attention-starved Arab tyrant in exile (Mickey Rourke) squabble over their backyard fence in suburban New Jersey. Then, the rabbi's arms dealer nephew, Efraim Diveroli (Eli Roth), has to move in with his uncle as part of his parole and he gets into wacky international intrigue with the Kaddafi Kids (Kal Penn and Sarah Silverman).

But, Rabbi Boteach Goes to Washington sounds promising as well.

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

Diveroli and Co. indicted on 71 counts

22-year-old international arms dealer Efraim Diveroli and three associates were indicted on 71 counts of fraud in the Awfully Alliterative Albanian Afghan Army AEY Ammunition uh ... Affair (bingo!). There doesn't seem to be much new in the story. So, it looks like it's turning out just like I said months ago -- not the exciting conspiracy that Goes Right to the Top that everybody was hoping for, but just a young hustler applying the bait and switch techniques he learned at his uncle's notoriously dodgey Botach Tactical gun shop on a $300,000,000 scale.

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

Is Efraim Diveroli back in the country?

I notice that 22-year-old AEY arms dealer Efraim Diveroli, who was "out of the country," when the Albanian-Afghan Ammo story broke was supposed to be in a Miami courtroom last Friday, April 11 for hearing related to his March drunk driving arrest. Does anybody know if he showed up?

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

Mushroom Cloud over Tirana

Now that Albania is joining NATO, we can rest easy because the crack Albanian army is pledged to come to America's military defense in case we're invaded by, uh, Venezuela. So, let's check in on the latest from our latest ally ...

Oddly enough, the news from Tirana sounds a lot like the news from Miami Beach: old Albanian ammunition.

From BalkanInsight.com:

Thousands of Albanians have protested demanding Prime Minister Sali Berisha quit over an alleged cover-up of last month’s army depot blasts. ...

Berisha is accused of a cover-up into what was really going on at an army depot hit by a series of blasts on March 15, in the village of Gerdec, just 10 kilometers outside Tirana. 26 people were killed and more than 300 wounded...

The government finds itself also in a row involving arms trafficking allegations.

Last week, the New York Times alleged that senior Albanian politicians, including Prime Minister Sali Berisha and former Defence Minster Fatmir Mediu, were involved in the international trade of weapons.

Both Berisha and Mediu have denied the accusations.

The article accuses Albanian officials of murky deals with United States-based AEY Company, which had its contract with the U.S. military revoked last week amid claims by the paper it was supplying decades-old ammunition to the Afghan army.

Now, being a suspicious old bastard, my first assumption was that somebody blew up the Albanian government ammo dump to cover up how little weaponry was left after the politicians had looted it to sell to AEY and others. Here's a Youtube concoction somebody has created by combining footage of the aftermath of the explosion with what is allegedly cell phone calls between Efraim Diveroli and an Albanian businessman, implying that the explosion was a cover-up of the ammunition deal.

But now that I've seen the amazing video of the tactical nuke-sized mushroom cloud unleashed by this March 15 explosion, I recall Napoleon's purported maxim, "Never blame conspiracy for what is attributable to incompetence."

Generally, I hate videos, but, trust me, you'll want to watch this one. This 29 second video starts off with a telephoto shot of two fireballs about ten times the diameter of trees in the foreground. But at 0:05 into the video, an explosion orders of magnitude larger happens to the left of the original explosions, immediately vaporizing three multistory buildings at the bottom of the screen. The videographer zooms out to catch the mushroom cloud as it rises thousands of feet into the air. At 0:14, he's buffeted by the shock wave as it arrives, suggesting he's about a mile and a half away. (And, from a similar angle, here's the footage of another cameraman who got blasted even harder by the shock wave.)

Apparently, Albania has insane amounts of ammo left over from the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, who also built 700,000 bunkers across the countryside to repel attack. These pillboxes used three times as much concrete as the Maginot Line. Hoxha started out as a Stalinist, then broke with the Soviets over-deStalinification, allied with Red China, then broke with them as insufficiently Marxist, and went it alone, ready to fight the world if necessary.

Interestingly, at least until quite recently, the American company that had a contract to help Albanians dispose of their munitions was Science Applications International Corporation, which is sort of the military-industrial complex personified. SAIC is the anti-AEY, in that it has 44,000 employees and $8 billion in annual revenue, most of it from the federal government. And, yet, I'd never heard of it until this week. In contrast, AEY had only two employees, but both of them had MySpace pages.

(SAIC can be viewed more as a consultant's co-op than as a giant corporate powerhouse. Of course, that's how they want you to view it.)

Update: This is really confusing, but the shadowy American supercompany SAIC had the contract to dispose of Albanian naval munitions back in January, 2008. The American company that was working at the Gerdec ammunition dump when it turned into Nagasaki West was not SAIC, it was SACI -- Southern Ammunition Co., Inc. Got it?

Anyway, the video leads me to suspect the Gerdec catastrophe wasn't intentional. It's just too immense. And there was clearly lots and lots (and lots) of ammunition left over after all the thefts, enough to plausibly argue with auditors that they were just overlooking stuff in the vast (and terrifying) heaps laying around. So, maybe the AEY scandal didn't cause the Gerdec explosion. Maybe the causality was the opposite way around -- this colossal explosion happens, so observers start poking around more seriously about what the heck is going on with Albanian ammunition anyway.

But, then again, maybe somebody did blow it up to cover up thefts. Or maybe just to hear the bang...

(By the way, listening to the alleged conversations, I don't hear Diveroli making any threats of violence, just suggestions of paying bribes with money and/or prostitutes. From this, he sounds more like a crooked businessman willing to do business with violent mobsters than a violent mobster himself.)

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

Georgia President Saakashvili: "Both war and peace are in the hands of Israeli Jews."

From Haaretz of Tel Aviv (via Philip Weiss):

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili denied on Wednesday night that Israel has suspended its military aid to the country. "I haven't heard anything about that, and I haven't had time to think about that issue for some days," he told Haaretz.

Saakashvili said he is aware of problems with supplying the pilotless drones that his army ordered from Israeli companies, but not of the stopping of any other shipments of military aid.

"The Israeli weapons have proved very effective," he said at a press conference at his office. When asked whether the Israeli arms played a role in the military successes he claimed the Georgian army had achieved, he joked: "Are you asking me as a representative of Elbit [Elbit is a weapons company trading on the Nasdaq and Tel Aviv stock exchanges] or of Israel Aerospace Industries?"

To a reporter's question about Jews who have fled the fighting and come to Israel, he said: "We have two Israeli cabinet ministers, one deals with war [Defense Minister David Kezerashvili], and the other with negotiations [State Minister for Territorial Integration Temur Yakobashvili], and that is the Israeli involvement here: Both war and peace are in the hands of Israeli Jews."

Yakobashvili is actually not an Israeli citizen.

So, apparently, the 29-year-old Defense Minister of Georgia is an Israeli citizen. That's kind of like John McCain appointing Ephraim Diveroli the Secretary of Defense.

Saakashvili's statements are part of his government's attempt to bring other countries into its war against Russia. During the briefing, Saakashvili noted that he is in constant contact with U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney [uh-oh] and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He promised that U.S. warships would be docking in Georgian ports within a few days to make sure they remain open.

Saakashvili tried to project confidence during the interview, but could not completely hide the stress he is under. A few hours earlier, refugees from Gori held a spontaneous demonstration in front of parliament, calling for Saakashvili to resign.

"We will fight to the death until the last Russian soldier leaves Georgian territory," Saakashvili told reporters. "We will never surrender."

He characterized the announcements against him by Russia's government, blaming him for the suffering of the Georgian people, as "typical Nazi propaganda." He accused Russia of ethnic cleansing in the Georgian villages in the north of the country. "If Georgia falls, all of the energy supply routes will be blocked," he said.

Saakashvili told the press conference that he expected Russia's next victims to be the Baltic countries. He accused Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of "trying to take revenge on the United States, but instead of attacking the Sixth Fleet he found himself an easier target."

Georgian minister slams Israeli suspension of aid
Earlier Wednesday, Yakobashvili told Haaretz that Israel has joined in the West's betrayal of Georgia. As the official in charge of bringing Abkhazia and South Ossetia back into the fold, Yakobashvili oversaw negotiations with the Russians to end the fighting there. He warned the world that the situation would escalate into war, but the West ignored him.

"They said the Georgians are exaggerating again," he charged.

A former Zionist leader who speaks fluent Hebrew ...

But, bear in mind, not an Israeli citizen!

... Yakobashvili credited Israeli defense companies with "enabling us to train our army and giving us the possibility to withstand the Russians," but termed the Israeli government's decision to stop arms exports to his country "a disgrace."

He said the West should have responded by "deploying NATO troops to defend Georgia's vital infrastructure," and that "Israel is betraying us, along with the European countries and the United States."

Referring to rioting by Russian militia groups in villages surrounding Gori, Yakobashvili said: "Today there was a Cossack pogrom against the local population. As a Jew that gives me a different feeling."

Yakobashvili blasted Israel's decision to suspend defense aid to Georgia: "Israel did it at the Russians' behest. It aided the terrorists, the Russians. It's a disgrace. I don't know what it received in return, I only see that Hezbollah continues to get Russian arms, and plenty of it."

"Israel should protect the interests it has here," he continued. "There are many Israeli businesspeople who invested money, and a country should protect its citizens' investments."

He ascribed Georgia's feisty military ability to Israeli training, and said that Russian experts had told him "they never believed Georgia has such an army and that they would encounter such resistance."

Yakobashvili claimed the Georgian forces had destroyed Russia's 58th army and downed 17 planes and three helicopters (data unsubstantiated by other sources).

Judging from Yakobashvili's complaints (as opposed to Saakashvili's reassurances), apparently the Israeli Foreign Ministry has decided that it's in Israel's national interest to cut Georgia adrift and make nice with the Russians (although powerful interests within and without the Israel Defense Ministry seem to vociferously disagree). As is frequently the case, however, Israel's most enthusiastic boosters within the U.S. don't want America to follow Israel's sensible policies. Instead, they want the U.S. to fight for Israeli interests that Israel is too smart to fight for itself.

Whenever I write about something like this, I get denounced for being "obsessed" with Israel. People explain to me that that's not the whole story. The real story is Russia's Resurgence or the Threat to Energy Supplies or Democracy Under Siege or all the themes you've seen headlined a hundred times in the American press.

Of course the Israeli Connection is not the whole story. I'm not the Encyclopedia Britannica. My job is to post material that is true, new, significant, and interesting / entertaining, in roughly that order. I look for angles that aren't being given their due weight in the U.S. mainstream media. The Israeli Connection is X percent of the story in the Russian-Georgian war. Whatever X percent is, the share of American media coverage devoted to the Israeli Connection is only a tiny fraction of X percent. Go check out Google News and see how much attention the U.S. establishment press has devoted to the Israeli Connection. (The American Jewish press has been better, as usual).

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

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