Alvin Malnik
"Atlanta Strip Club Scandal Marks Return of 'Our Gang'
"
Article Lends Credence To Accusations
Of Jewish Organized Crime

7/1/01 9:44:28 AM
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From Forward
-- Jewish Community Magazine

Commentary -- Commentary -- Atlanta Strip Club Scandal Marks Return
of 'Our Gang'

By SEAMUS McGRAW

FORWARD CORRESPONDENT

A federal trial going on in Atlanta may be opening a window on a nearly
forgotten era in American Jewish history.

Once upon a time in America, to borrow the title of a Sergio Leone
film, there were two-fisted Jews — gangsters with a capital G — who
swaggered down the shadowy alleys of the Lower East Side, felt fedoras
cocked over one eye, gats tucked in the waistbands of tailored trousers,
their pockets crammed with rolls of ill-gotten cash.

These were guys — legendary figures such as "Bugsy" Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Arthur
"Dutch Schultz" Flegenheimer and "Lepke" Buchalter — who earned
their reputations and their livings by preying on the weaknesses of
others, collecting large dividends from extortion, gambling and
bootlegging. They protected their criminal enterprises through bribery
and, when necessary, murder. They traveled in mobs with names like Murder
Incorporated, the Bugs-and- Meyer Gang, the Hoff Gang in Philadelphia and
the Purple Gang in Detroit. At the highest levels of the criminal
universe, Jewish mobsters worked hand in hand with the heads of the Five
Families of New York's La Cosa Nostra. And when no one was watching, they
built Las Vegas.

But that was a long time ago, right? The dill-and-garlic-scented Lower
East Side of the early 20th century is long gone, its immigrant Jewish
denizens long since relocated to the suburbs. And those old-time Jewish
gangsters who controlled the syndicates have died or retired to Miami,
ceding their territory to new generations of mobsters from Asia, Latin
America, perhaps even Russia and Israel. Right?

Well, maybe not.

"Our boys are still out there, I'm very proud to say," said Alan Block,
a professor of Jewish studies at the University of Pittsburgh and a noted
authority on Jewish organized crime in America and overseas. They're running penny-stock scams and
providing support for Colombian drug cartels, Mr. Block said. And
they're still, in many cases, chummy with the leaders of the old time
Italian mob.

That is certainly what federal prosecutors are alleging against the
flamboyant bar owner Steve Kaplan in the United States District Court in
Atlanta. In what is shaping up to be one of the longest, most costly, and,
in many respects, most bizarre trials in the district's history,
prosecutors are trying to prove that the flashy 40-year old used his
popular Atlanta strip club, the Gold Club, as a front for a prostitution
ring that provided high-priced hookers to big name athletes, laundered
money and paid protection to the Gambino crime family in New York. Some
reports have suggested that Mr. Kaplan was actually an associate member of
the Gambino family.

Mr. Kaplan denies the allegations. The trial is expected to continue
through the summer, with an army of witnesses who are expected to testify
to the alleged link between Mr.
Kaplan and mob boss John Gotti Jr., and to the mob's alleged involvement
in the Gold Club, one of Atlanta's premier night spots.

Last Monday, for example, Craig Carlino, the former manager of the
mob-linked Manhattan strip club "Scores," testified that Mr. Kaplan's
Atlanta club was "a whorehouse" that operated under the protection of the
mob.

To some aficionados of the old time mob scene, the case against Mr.
Kaplan and his associates is, at best, insignificant.

Jerry Capeci, the former Daily News writer who has made a career out of
covering the mob, put it this way: "If you look at any group, maybe you'll
find a Jew or two or twelve," he said. But, he said, that's a far cry from
proof that there remains a viable, old-line Ashkenazi Jewish underworld.

Professor Robert Rockaway, a historian who has written extensively on
the old- line Jewish mob, contends that the essential allegation in the
federal case, if true, actually proves that the classic Jewish-American
mobster is a thing of the past. The Lanskys of the world, he contends,
never had to stoop to paying protection to anyone.

"As far as Kaplan goes," he said, "old-time Jewish mobsters did not pay
Italians for protection. The Jews took care of their own. In the old days,
Jews were the equal of the Sicilians. Jews were just as tough, ruthless
and murderous."

But Mr. Block contends that Mr. Rockaway's nostalgia may be a bit
premature.

"This idea that the old timers all moved to the suburbs, and put their
kids through school to become doctors or lawyers, and everybody's now in
legitimate business, I wouldn't believe that for a minute," he says.
"They're sending their kids to school, all right, but I don't know what
they're studying."

Over the past several years, Jewish names have surfaced in connection
with penny stock scams, in which gangs of aggressive young mobsters corner
the market on low-valued stocks, then drive prices up before unloading
them, he says.

As late as the 1990s, he says,
Alvin
Malnik, Lansky's one-time
attorney, and the man who was dubbed by Reader's Digest as Lansky's "heir
apparent," remained a highly visible personality in Florida. Although he
has never been convicted of a crime, Mr. Malnik has long been under the scrutiny of
federal and state prosecutors. Some Florida law enforcement officials
have pointed to him over the years as living proof that the Lansky
organization did not die with Lansky.

In a 1980 decision, reaffirmed
in 1993, the New Jersey Gaming Commission banned Mr from the state's
casinos, citing links to organized crime figures that dates back half a
century. He had been linked
to Sam Cohen, who was indicted along with Lansky on charges of skimming
$30 million in profits from the Flamingo Hotel Casino in Las Vegas. Mr.
Malnik and Mr. Cohen in 1971 bought 325 acres of undeveloped
land that belonged to a Dade County country club and ultimately squeezed a
$14.7 million profit from the sale of the land.

In 1997, Mr. Malnik's name surfaced in connection with a
probe into the lucrative title loan industry in Florida. It also surfaced
in the society pages of the Miami Herald in 1995 when, at age 62, he
married a woman 36 years his junior, presenting her with a 50-carat
emerald-and-diamond necklace as a wedding gift.

What makes men like Mr.
Malnik and Mr. Kaplan unusual, said Mr. Block,
are not their apparent links to some of the most notorious gangsters, nor
even the fact that in Mr. Malnik's case, federal authorities never
compiled enough evidence to prosecute him. What separates them from the
crowd, Mr. Block said, are their high public profiles.

That, Mr. Block contends, is
something one might expect from Italian mobsters.

"One of the reasons why the Italian gangsters took so much heat is that
these guys, they were sort of boastful about stuff. They weren't very
careful." John Gotti Sr., for example, was known to thrive on the
attention he was paid by the media.

Jewish mobsters, on the other hand, prefer to keep their mouths shut,
and adopted the comfortable middle class ways of the rest of America, Mr.
Block said. "People are always searching for these Mafia guys," he said.
"They want this stuff to look like those idiots in the Sopranos and who
would want to be that stupid? They're not like that, and thank God for
that."

That ability to adapt has made Jewish mobsters a more difficult target
for organized crime investigators, Mr. Block said. Unlike the old-line
families of La Cosa Nostra who remained in the old neighborhoods in
Brooklyn and Queens and south Philadelphia, Jewish mobsters left the
ghettos of the 1920s, '30s and '40s behind, he said.

They set up shop in the suburbs, in Miami, in Los Angeles, and all the
while they maintained the international connections that helped keep them
in play. Meyer Lansky is believed by some investigators to have helped
Israeli mobsters go international in the early 1970s. In the late 1970s,
when the Colombian drug cartels
first attempted to make inroads in the United States, they turned to
Jewish crime figures to help them develop their shipment and distribution
networks, according to Mr. Block. Jewish names — including some linked to
what investigators believe are ongoing Jewish-American mobs — have
surfaced in drug roles ranging from piloting airplanes to arranging
financing and political connections to providing links with European and
Asian mobs. That sense of internationalism, Mr. Block said, has always
been an ace-in-the-hole for Jewish crime syndicates.

What's more, Mr. Block said, although Jewish mobsters in America are
not immune to federal prosecution, they have benefited from a kind of
prosecutorial tunnel vision. Investigators, in part out of habit, in part
because they have spent most of the past 50 years dealing with the
traditional La Cosa Nostra, have tended to overlook Jewish connections in
organized crime, Mr. Block said.

The result, he said, is that the Jewish American syndicates have been
pretty much free to continue their work in a kind of comfortable
anonymity.

"The bottom line is that there's plenty of our boys out there," Mr.
Block said. "Crime is an equal opportunity employer."

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12-22-00
Nevada Denies L.A. Developer Gaming
License.

Real estate: Regulators turn down Judah Hertz's
application, citing alleged dealings with reputed mob figures. He denies
wrongdoing.

From The Los Angeles Times Staff and Wire Reports

Judah Hertz, owner of the California Mart and several other
major downtown Los Angeles properties, lost a bid Wednesday for a Nevada
gaming license as a result of alleged ties to reputed mobsters involved in
drug dealing and prostitution.

Hertz "obviously is unsuitable for licensure with the state
of Nevada and has no business here," said state Gaming Commission Chairman
Brian Sandoval as the commission voted 4 to 0 against Hertz's application.

Hertz denies any wrongdoing. In an interview with The Times,
he said he has sold the Comstock hotel-casino in Reno and withdrew offers
to buy two other Reno properties, the Flamingo Hilton and a 50% stake in
Sands Regent. Hertz Investment Group and an affiliate, Sapphire Gaming,
began acquiring the three Reno casinos in 1999, starting with a $5-million
deal for the Comstock.

The New York native had asked to withdraw an outdated
application for a gaming license, but regulators rejected the request and
voted unanimously to deny him. Nevada officials said Hertz failed to show
up to a hearing of the state's Gaming Control Board and a meeting of the
gaming commission.

"I knew what the ruling was," said Hertz, who owns about 3
million square feet of office space in central Los Angeles. "There was no
point in going."

The Nevada gaming control board said Hertz had dealings with
reputed organized crime figures including Jacob Orgad, an Israeli
immigrant and accused international drug smuggler. The board said Orgad
allegedly distributed cocaine for the Gambino and Escobar crime families,
supplied cocaine and recruited women for notorious Hollywood madam Heidi
Fleiss and has been linked to the illegal distribution of methylene
dioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA, also called Ecstasy.

Control Board documents also state Hertz got some of the
money for his Reno ventures from an uncle of Hai Waknine and Assaf
Waknine, alleged enforcers for Orgad and members of the Bachsihan crime
organization involved in ecstasy dealing.

Hertz said his only connection with Orgad was during the
purchase of a downtown building on Hill Street. He said he paid Orgad a
brokerage commission as part of the purchase and has had no further
dealings with him.

The real estate investor has also been a mentor and a
business associate of Hai Waknine, according to John Forbess, an attorney
for Hertz. Waknine might have had a troubled past, but "he's been
completely straight and has been a respectable businessperson," Forbess
said. "It's not like Judah has been hanging around with unsavory
characters."

Hertz, who had sought licensing approval for himself and
several families, got the only denial from Nevada gaming regulators. The
other applications were referred to staff. Though they could come up
again, it's unlikely given the concern about Hertz.

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PLR International

Only Blacks
Flooded

New Orleans is divided along racial
lines by floodwaters, with most of the affluent, predominantly white
neighborhoods largely untouched, and most of the poor, predominantly black
neighborhoods underwater. And some want to keep it that way.

An article in the online version of the Wall Street Journal
tells the story, though it’s only available to those who pay for it. Raw Story
quoted excerpts:

Old-line families plot the future

Thursday, September 08, 2005

By Christopher Cooper, The Wall Street Journal

NEW ORLEANS -- On a sultry morning earlier this week, Ashton O'Dwyer stepped
out of his home on this city's grandest street and made a beeline for his
neighbor's pool. Wearing nothing but a pair of blue swim trunks and carrying two
milk jugs, he drew enough pool water to flush the toilet in his home.

The mostly African-American
neighborhoods of New Orleans are largely underwater, and the people who lived
there have scattered across the country. But in many of the predominantly white
and more affluent areas, streets are dry and passable. Gracious homes are mostly
intact and powered by generators. Wednesday, officials reiterated that all
residents must leave New Orleans, but it's still unclear how far they will go to
enforce the order.

The green expanse of Audubon Park, in the city's Uptown area, has doubled in
recent days as a heliport for the city's rich -- and a terminus for the small
armies of private security guards who have been dispatched to keep the homes
there safe and habitable. Mr. O'Dwyer has cellphone service and ice cubes to
cool off his highballs in the evening. By Wednesday, the city water service even
sprang to life, making the daily trips to his neighbor's pool unnecessary. A
pair of oil-company engineers, dispatched by his son-in-law, delivered four
cases of water, a box of delicacies including herring with mustard sauce and 15
gallons of generator gasoline.

Despite the disaster that has overwhelmed New Orleans, the city's monied,
mostly white elite is hanging on and maneuvering to play a role in the recovery
when the floodwaters of Katrina are gone. "New Orleans is ready to be rebuilt.
Let's start right here," says Mr. O'Dwyer, standing in his expansive kitchen,
next to a counter covered with a jumble of weaponry and electric wires.

More than a few people in Uptown, the fashionable district surrounding St.
Charles Ave., have ancestors who arrived here in the 1700s. High society is
still dominated by these old-line families, represented today by prominent
figures such as former New Orleans Board of Trade President Thomas Westfeldt;
Richard Freeman, scion of the family that long owned the city's Coca-Cola
bottling plant; and William Boatner Reily, owner of a Louisiana coffee company.
Their social pecking order is dictated by the mysterious hierarchy of "krewes,"
groups with hereditary membership that participate in the annual carnival
leading up to Mardi Gras. In recent years, the city's most powerful business
circles have expanded to include some newcomers and non-whites, such as Mayor
Ray Nagin, the former Cox Communications executive elected in 2002.

Israeli
Security

A few blocks from Mr. O'Dwyer, in an exclusive gated community known as
Audubon Place, is the home of James Reiss, descendent of an old-line Uptown
family. He fled Hurricane Katrina just before the storm and returned soon
afterward by private helicopter. Mr. Reiss became wealthy as a supplier of
electronic systems to shipbuilders, and he serves in Mayor Nagin's
administration as chairman of the city's Regional Transit Authority. When New Orleans descended into a spiral of
looting and anarchy, Mr. Reiss helicoptered in an Israeli security
company to guard his Audubon Place house and those of his neighbors.

He says he has been in contact with about 40 other New Orleans business
leaders since the storm. Tomorrow, he says, he and some of those leaders plan to
be in Dallas, meeting with Mr. Nagin to begin mapping out a future for the city.

The power elite of New Orleans -- whether they are still in the city or have
moved temporarily to enclaves such as Destin, Fla., and Vail, Colo. -- insist
the remade city won't simply restore the old order. New Orleans before the flood
was burdened by a teeming underclass, substandard schools and a high crime rate.
The city has few corporate headquarters.

The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better
services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to
see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and
politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've
been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."

Not every white business leader or prominent family supports that view. Some
black leaders and their allies in New Orleans fear that it boils down to
preventing large numbers of blacks from returning to the city and eliminating
the African-American voting majority. Rep. William Jefferson, a sharecropper's
son who was educated at Harvard and is currently serving his eighth term in
Congress, points out that the evacuees from New Orleans already have been spread
out across many states far from their old home and won't be able to afford to
return. "This is an example of poor people forced to make choices because they
don't have the money to do otherwise," Mr. Jefferson says.

Calvin Fayard, a wealthy white plaintiffs' lawyer who lives near Mr. O'Dwyer,
says the mass evacuation could turn a Democratic stronghold into a Republican
one. Mr. Fayard, a prominent Democratic fund-raiser, says tampering with the
city's demographics means tampering with its unique culture and shouldn't be
done. "People can't survive a year temporarily -- they'll go somewhere, get a
job and never come back," he says.

Mr. Reiss acknowledges that shrinking parts of the city occupied by
hardscrabble neighborhoods would inevitably result in fewer poor and
African-American residents. But he says the electoral balance of the city
wouldn't change significantly and that the business elite isn't trying to
reverse the last 30 years of black political control. "We understand that
African Americans have had a great deal of influence on the history of New
Orleans," he says.

A key question will be the position of Mr. Nagin, who was elected with the
support of the city's business leadership. He couldn't be reached Wednesday. Mr.
Reiss says the mayor suggested the Dallas meeting and will likely attend when he
goes there to visit his evacuated family

Black politicians have controlled City Hall here since the late 1970s, but
the wealthy white families of New Orleans have never been fully eclipsed.
Stuffing campaign coffers with donations, these families dominate the city's
professional and executive classes, including the white-shoe law firms,
engineering offices, and local shipping companies. White voters often act as a
swing bloc, propelling blacks or Creoles into the city's top political jobs.
That was the case with Mr. Nagin, who defeated another African American to win
the mayoral election in 2002.

Creoles, as many mixed-race residents of New Orleans call themselves,
dominate the city's white-collar and government ranks and tend to ally
themselves with white voters on issues such as crime and education, while
sharing many of the same social concerns as African-American voters. Though the
flooding took a toll on many Creole neighborhoods, it's likely that Creoles will
return to the city in fairly large numbers, since many of them have the means to
do so.

On Thursday, President Bush issued an executive order allowing construction
firms to pay less than the prevailing wage for projects to rebuild New
Orleans.

One could say, therefore, that the poor will rebuild the city for the rich,
and be paid as little as possible doing it.

Not everyone agrees, though. Critics argue that the Davis-Bacon Act, passed
in 1931, which requires federally funded construction projects to pay at least
the prevailing wage in an area, is itself
discriminatory and should be repealed altogether.

But not all has gone well for Hertz.

In Nevada, gambling regulators
rejected his application to buy three Reno casinos in 2000 because of his
"reputed mob ties." Hertz this week said the problems with the Reno
casinos were instigated by Las Vegas interests that didn't want his competition.

Hertz hired a former U.S. Justice Department prosecutor and a corporate
investigation firm to conduct a six-month investigation into the allegations.
The firm, in its report, concluded "that the central allegations made in the
(Nevada) Gaming Board's denial recommendations are not supported by evidence we
have reviewed."

Th most damning association was with an Israeli
immigrant Hertz had a minor real estate investment with in Los Angeles during
the late 1980s. The Israeli man was later indicted in a large Ectasy smuggling import ring by federal authorities.

Hertz, earlier this summer, said he
had no idea of the criminal activity of the associate, and that the
indictment against the man dates the criminal activity to a period after Hertz
no longer had a relationship with the smuggler. Hertz added that he had met the
man in a social setting and made one small transaction with him. As he said at
the time, "If you have dinner with someone you don't know well, are you expected
to know" their criminal intent or involvement in criminal acticvity?

Regardless, the damage has been repaired and Hertz has long been back on
track doing what he does best.

Malnik
Bahamas

The Palm Beach Post
reports: "Alvin Malnik, the man once regarded as the heir apparent to mobster
Meyer Lansky, ... described by federal authorities as a top associate of
organized crime figures ... Among
his friends, Malnik counts Saudi royalty. His son once married a princess
descended from the Middle Eastern kingdom's founding family. ... The sole owner
of a Georgia company, Title Loans of America, Malnik runs a national chain of loan
stores that make millions of
dollars from the interest charged on quick cash offered to people in desperate
need of money. ... Attorney General Bob Butterworth [Florida] likens the
business to 'legalized loan sharking.' ... 'It was a known fact among the
criminal underworld that dealing with Al Malnik was the same as dealing with
Meyer Lansky,' [said] Vincent Teresa, 'a convicted criminal and frequent
government witness currently in the federal Witness Protection Program,' ...When
Lansky died in 1983 at age 81, Reader's Digest named Malnik his 'heir apparent.'
... 'He is not welcome here,' James Hurley, the chairman of the New Jersey
Casino Control Commission ... 'He's done nothing to overcome his reputation of
being closely identified with Meyer Lansky and other organized crime figures.'
...

In 1962,
Malnik was listed as a director of the Bank of World Commerce, a Bahamas-based
institution that involved 'some of the nations' top gangsters,' ... In 1978, a Bahamian company named
Appolonia Investment Limited paid $3.35 million to buy the property just north
of Malnik's Ranch. ... Malnik refuse to divulge Appolonia's owners. But records
from the Register General's Office in the Bahamas show the principal shareholder
is a Saudi Arabian prince who is a prominent member of the kingdom's royal
family and longtime friend of Malnik's. ... Malnik and the prince -- a son of
King Abdul Aziz, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia -- once lived in neighboring
condos in the Cricket Club. According to news stories in the 1980s, the pair
also traveled abroad together. Malnik's son ... would later change his name from
Mark to Shareef and marry into the royal Saud family."R158 It is known that the
Saudi King would frequently send his private 747 to Florida to pick up Malnik
and his associate so they could conduct business on the plane away from prying
eyes. We do have a sizable amount of information on Malnik and his Saud family
relatives. For instance, we do not know if the children born of the marriage are
living in the Saud family palaces as "royals" or in Miami. Actions speak louder
than words. We see time and time again the Saud family speak one way and act
another. The Saudi prince whose daughter married a Malnik's son had complete
control over his daughter actions. The Saudi prince not only blessed the
marriage but works with the US organized crime associates.

Another,
Alvin Malnik (born 1932), was picked by some observers of
organized crime to be Lansky's probably successor. He first came to prominence
in the early 1960s with the
attempt to establish a gambling resort at Paradise Island in the Bahamas.
He had already established
himself in the banking and real estate businesses in Miami but soon become
Lansky's public "front-man." The Paradise Island venture led to the establishment of Resorts
International, the entertainment and gambling conglomerate which was the subject
of intense law enforcement scrutiny for years as charges of control by Meyer
Lansky surfaced (Mahan, 1980).

Meyer Lansky was known as the treasurer of the
US Mafia. He would launder Mafia money
through Bahamas companies and send the money to Israel to purchase Israeli
defense bonds. It is well known in Washington that the Saud family have
had a long term covert relationship with Israel which has evolved into Israel
being the Saud family defenders of last resort. In turn, the Saud family have
shown good faith by investing in Israel through, among others, Bahamas front
companies. We do not know if Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz
brokers this relationship.

Malnik License

The New Jersey Casino Control Commission denied Malnik a casino license in 1980, citing, among other things, his long
association with mob financier Meyer Lansky. The commission ruled that
Malnik was "a person of unsuitable character and
unsuitable reputation." And in 1993 the commission disciplined two Atlantic City
casinos for allowing Malnik to set foot in them.  source

Bernie Rothkopf also owned the MGM
Hotel. Allen Glick was, between 1974-79, "the mob's front man at the Stardust,
Fremont, Hacienda, and Marina hotels." [MORRISON, J.A., p. 1A] "In July, 1979
Allen Glick was stripped of his Nevada gambling license and fined over $500,000
for a variety of improprieties." Glick sold his interests in casinos to Allan Sachs, who was, with a partner,
"figureheads for the Chicago mob responsible for providing skim monies" from Las
Vegas gambling operations. [MOLDEA, 1989, p. 336] Jerome Mack, past president of
the Dunes and Riviera, was a former national chairman of the Israel Bonds
Campaign. Jewish entrepreneur Hank Greenspon owned the Las Vegas Sun
newspaper and a local TV station. [See his efforts for Israel in the mass media
section]

New Orleans charm could fall
to bulldozers

By JOHN KESSLER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/12/05

While an estimated 80 percent
of the 200,000 homes in New Orleans have suffered some degree of flood
damage, the decision on how to handle them will have to wait for
the immediate crisis to pass. The city must first be fully evacuated, its
streets pumped dry and its utilities restored.

But already two drastically different visions of a rebuilt New Orleans
are starting to emerge. While home builders warn that whole neighborhoods may have to be
bulldozed and rebuilt, the city's preservationists are rallying
their forces in absentia to plead the case for every historic structure
worthy of salvage.

What particularly concerns the latter group are not the famous
structures in the French Quarter and Garden District — the city's two
National Historic Landmark districts, which escaped severe flooding — but
rather the many thousands of examples of vernacular architecture that
contribute to New Orleans' uniqueness. The Crescent City is filled with
distinctive homes that predate the Civil War — ornate if narrow shotguns
sidling like piano keys on 30-foot-wide lots, camelbacks with partial
second stories like jutting humps, and Creole cottages with their extended
roof lines called abat vents that hang like a snoopy neighbor over the
sidewalk.

"The modest houses are the flesh of our city," says Patricia Gay,
director of the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans, a nonprofit
group with more than 4,000 members that oversees neighborhood
revitalization programs. "You have to look at them with some respect and
think about what you might be throwing up in their place."

But prospects don't look good for "the majority" of these flood-damaged
wooden structures, says economist Michael Carliner, who is the author of a
study on the impact of Hurricane Katrina for the National Association of
Home Builders. He predicts that every wood-frame structure that stood in
more than 6 feet of floodwater will require demolition.

"For public health purposes, they're not salvageable," says Carliner,
adding, "It's not clean water we're talking about, it's contaminated
water." Toxins in the water range from E. coli bacteria stemming from more
than 90 million tons of submerged sewage, to lead, fuel and petrochemicals
leaching from thousands of submerged cars and storage tanks. He wouldn't be surprised if the cleanup
involved bulldozing entire neighborhoods and dredging the toxin-laced soil
"like a Superfund site."

Further, early homebuilding projects will focus on shelter, not style.
Habitat for Humanity is already coordinating a "home in a box project" to
get modular housing assembled quickly for displaced people.

Attempts to reach city authorities about which way they might be
heading have been unsuccessful.

When it comes time to think about restoring devastated neighborhoods,
homeowners who hope to rebuild in historic style will have three places to
look for funds: federal and local incentive programs; flood insurance; and
their own pockets.

The federal government grants a tax credit to those restoring historic
buildings, but there's one crippling caveat for homeowners: The properties
must be income-producing, such as a bed-and-breakfast. Preservationists
have long lobbied for a change to the tax credit and will do so with
renewed vigor. Flood insurance will help those who have it, but only to a
point. Only about 84,000 (or 40 percent) of the homeowners in Orleans
Parish have policies with the National Flood Insurance Program, according
to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and those policies cap out at
$250,000 for private residences. Private insurers do not provide flood
insurance.

In many cases, this payout will fall seriously short. One fully
restored double shotgun in Uptown listed for $495,000 in The [New Orleans]
Times-Picayune classified ads before Katrina.

Blacks to
sell

On the other hand, the more
than 50 percent of New Orleans homeowners without flood insurance may have
no choice but to sell their lots to developers.

"This may further the Houstonization of New Orleans and the destruction
of its historic fabric," laments S. Frederick Starr, author of "Southern
Comfort: The Garden District of New Orleans" and the owner of an 1826
plantation house in the Ninth Ward, adjacent to one of the levee breaches.
"This is the most critical question with regard to the cultural survival
of New Orleans. Are you going to incentivize the owners to rebuild, or are
you going to tear it all down and build some awful thing?"

This concern may take the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans
onto new turf: lending its expertise to new construction.

"New constructions don't have to be bland, Anywhere-USA constructions,"
says the center's Stephanie Bruno. "Recent years have seen the development
of materials that make it possible to rebuild cost-consciously and make it
look more like a historic building. If we take care about our rebuilding
efforts, we can maintain our character."

But first and foremost, the organization wants desperately to save the
old buildings. Gay, the preservation center director, says that some of
the partly submerged 19th-century houses framed from impermeable,
rock-solid cypress and "barge board" taken from dismantled river barges
may surprise everybody with their durability.

"No city has the building stock we do," Gay asserts.

Preservationists in New Orleans turn to the example of Charleston,
S.C., which managed a widely lauded restoration of its historic center
after Hurricane Hugo in 1989.

Jonathan Poston of the Historic Charleston Foundation says the
rebuilding effort began "three or four days after the storm" with a
gathering of preservation forces from across the country and continued
through a months-long building-by-building assessment followed by many
months of intensive "drying procedures."

Andy Ferrell of the National Center for Preservation Technology &
Training, a division of the National Park Service, says the discussion of
what to rebuild and what to restore in New Orleans will draw around a
familiar battle line. "There's a lot of animosity between those folks who
are building new houses and those who are preserving old houses," he
says.

"And remember," Ferrell adds with the guarded hope of a die-hard
preservationist. "These very buildings that we are talking about have
weathered storms before. [We] just need to get the water out as quickly as
possible and see where to go from there."

ON THE WEB National Association of Home Builders study
on the

Shootout

Police Kill Five Contractors on La. Bridge

Sunday September 4,
2005 11:16 PM

AP Photo VTAP102

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Police shot eight people carrying guns on a New
Orleans bridge Sunday, killing five or six, a deputy chief said. A
spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers said the victims were
contractors on their way to repair a canal.

The contractors were walking across a bridge on their way to launch
barges into Lake Pontchartrain to fix the 17th Street Canal, said John
Hall, a spokesman for the Corps.

Earlier Sunday, New Orleans Deputy Police Chief W.J. Riley said police
shot at eight people, killing five or six.

The shootings took place on the Danziger Bridge, which spans a canal
connecting Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River.

No other details were immediately available.

Drug Trade

Hong Kong and the
Sassoon Opium
Wars

The 99 year British lease on Hong Kong expired in July allowing the Red
Chinese to take over. Hundreds of newspaper stories and TV reports have covered
this event but not one revealed how England first gained control of Hong Kong!

The truth lies buried in the family line of David Sassoon, "The Rothschilds of The Far
East," and their monopoly over the opium trade.

Britain won Hong
Kong by launching the opium Wars to give the Sassoons
exclusive rights to drug an entire nation!

David Sassoon was
born in Baghdad in 1792. His father, Saleh Sassoon, was a wealthy
banker and
the treasurer to Ahmet Pasha, the governor of Baghdad. (Thus making him the
"court Jew" - a highly influential position.)

In 1829 Ahmet was
overthrown due to corruption and the Sassoon family fled to Bombay, India. This
was the strategic trade route to interior India and the gateway to the Far East.
In a brief time the British government granted Sassoon "monopoly rights" to all
manufacture of cotton goods, silk and most important of all -
Opium - then the most addictive
drug in the world!

The Jewish
Encyclopedia of 1905, states that Sassoon expanded his opium trade into China
and Japan. He placed his eight sons in charge of the various major opium
exchanges in China.

Pushed by
that city's violent criminal milieu and pulled by the scale of the Asian
drug trade, leading
European drug dealers such as
the Eliopolos brothers moved to Shanghai and Tientsin in the early
1930s. In his 1934 report to Washington, the U.S. Treasury attache in
Shanghai reported that there had been an influx into China of
individuals formerly identified with the traffic in
Europe.

In particular, the Jewish
syndicates that dominated New York's drug trade under the leadership of
Yasha Katzenberg and Louis Lepke Buchalter sent agents to purchase
heroin through European dealers based in Shanghai.

Simultaneously, Shanghai's Green Gang
leader Tu Yueh-sheng emerged as the city's leading drug dealer and a key
intelligence operative for the Nationalist Government--an alliance that
protected the narcotics network from the regime's anti-opium campaign of the
1930s.

The American people have also been led to
believe that the (Mafia) crime syndicate in America is strictly an Italian
affair. Our Jewish entertainment media has
produced countless films and Television shows, (like the award winning
“Sopranos”) depicting Italo-Americans as the masters of the syndicate.
But a closer look reveals
that Jews, NOT Italians, founded and financed “the syndicate” in the early days
before prohibition. From the late 1940s to the present, the upper structure of
the syndicate has remained pretty much the same - Jewish Meyer Lansky dispatched
his right-hand man, Bugsy Siegel, to Las Vegas in 1946 to start the gambling and
prostitution rackets in that area. Lansky ordered Siegel's death when he learned
that Siegel was embezzling from him. Siegel was then replaced by Morris Rosen,
Gus Greenbaum, and Morris Sidwirts. In Los Angeles, Lansky's men were Jack
Dragna and Mickey Cohen - all strictly "kosher."

The banks on the rare occasions when they are
caught laundering drug money, shed rivers of
crocodile tears, rub their eyes and whine how they were victimized by devious
ole’ dope dealers and when the evidence is too damning, they simply point the
finger at the lowest level employee plausible. The fact is, that not only do the
banks knowingly handle drug money, they compete
avidly for the business. Whole sections of financial institutions, law firms,
accounting firms, and consulting firms, have been specifically set up to
run money-laundering
operations; it is a huge, lucrative business and yet again, principally run by
Jews.

In a recent article in the OBSERVER, London - Sunday,
November 10, 2002, entitled “Ultra
Orthodox US Jews accused of 'cleaning' Colombian coke cartel
cash,” reporter Ed Vulliamy, not only proves the
point of covert Jewish involvement in
CRIMINAL enterprises
including drugs, but the article clearly illustrates how the belief system of
the oh-so-pious Hassidic Jews, are a complete and utter sham!
“British and American drug-busting authorities claim
to have smashed one of the most bizarre money-laundering services ever operated
for Colombian cocaine cartels: a circle of ultra-religious Hassidic Jews in New
York. The ring is said to be one of the biggest to be 'cleaning' profits amassed
by the Colombian coke barons, with the strange twist that it is run by a group
from the Jewish community that acts as
moral and spiritual guardian of the Orthodox faith. This is not the first time
the Hassidim have been exposed as involved in the big-time drug
trade.

Jews And Cocaine Trade

Aloysio de Andrade Faria
...Brazilian Drug Family

Roberto Rocca and family
....Colombian Drug cartel

Alfonso Romo Garza family
.....Mexico Drugs

Aliza`s family went to Colombia with the
Sephardic Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition in the early 1500`s. Her family maintained a traditional home and she is glad to have
taken stronger steps to building a Jewish home. Zeev`s parents are both from
Rumania. After WWII they traveled to Bogotá, Colombia where they also kept
a traditional home. Neither Aliza nor Zeev were religious nor did they think
much about aliyah or Judaism

Cocaine in its various forms is derived from
the coca plant which is native to the high mountain ranges of South
America.The first recognized authority and advocate
for this drug was world famous psychologist, Sigmund Freud. Early in his career,
Freud broadly promoted cocaine as a safe and useful tonic that could cure
depression and sexual impotence. Cocaine got a further boost in acceptability
when in 1886 John Pemberton included cocaine a

From the 1850's to the early
1900's, cocaine and opium laced elixirs, tonics and wines were broadly used by
people of all social classes. This is a fact that is
for the most part hidden in American history. The truth is that at this time
there was a large drug culture affecting a broad sector of American society.
Other famous people that promoted the "miraculous" effects of cocaine elixirs
were Thomas Edison and actress Sarah Bernhart. Because there were no
restrictions placed on acquiring these drugs in the early 1900's, narcotics were
an acceptable way of life for a large number of people, many of whom were people
of stature. Cocaine was a main
stay in the silent film industry. The pro-drug messages coming out of Hollywood
at this time were receiving international attention
which influenced the attitudes of millions of people about cocaine.

1855

Cocaine first extracted from coca leaves.  2

1862

Merck
produces 1/4 pound of cocaine.  2

1869

Seeds
from the commercial variety of coca arrived at Kew Gardens.

1870

Vin
Mariani (coca wine) is for sale throughout France, containing 6 mg cocaine
per ounce of wine. Exported Vin Mariani contained 7.2 mg per ounce to
compete with the higher cocaine content of American
competitors.  2

1870s

Parke,Davis manufactures a fluid extract of coca.  2

1876
- 1885

Race
walkers in England chew coca leaves to improve their
performance.  2

1883

Merck
produces 3/4 pound of cocaine.  2

1884

Cocaine's use as a local anesthetic in eye surgery is
popularized.  2

1884

Freud publishes On Coca in which he recommends the use of cocaine
to treat a variety of conditions including morphine addiction.  2

1884

Merck
produces 3,179 pounds of cocaine.  2

1886

Merck
produces 158,352 pounds of cocaine.  2

1886

Coca-Cola is first introduced by John Pemberton, containing cocaine
laced syrup and caffeine.

Late
1880s

Parke,Davis starts to manufacture refined cocaine.  2

c.
1901

Coca-Cola removed coca from their formula.  2

c.
1905

Snorting
cocaine becomes popular.  2

1910

First
cases of nasal damage from cocaine snorting are written of in medical
literature.   2

1910

First
cases of nasal damage from cocaine snorting are seen in
hospitals.  2

1912

U.S.
government reports 5,000 cocaine related fatalities in one
year.
2

1914

Cocaine
banned in United States.
1

Early
1930s

Japan is
the world's leading cocaine producer (23.3%) followed by the United States
(21.3%), Germany (15%), U.K. (9.9%), France (8.3%).  2

c.
1976

Freebase
cocaine first developed (probably in California). It would soon be
popularized by dealers and glamorized by Hollywood
media.

Blacks leave New Orleans

Study: New Orleans
could lose 80 percent of black population

By Michelle R. Smith, Associated Press Writer | January
26, 2006

PROVIDENCE, R.I. --The city of New Orleans could lose up to 80
percent of its black population if people displaced by Hurricane Katrina are not
able to return to their damaged neighborhoods,
according to an analysis released Thursday by a Brown University
sociologist.

Blacks and the poor were disproportionately affected by
Katrina, according to the study led by Brown Professor John R. Logan. The
analysis concludes that the difficulty in moving back to the city could mean a
massive loss of population, overwhelmingly among blacks.

New Orleans was more than 65 percent black before Katrina
hit in August, but it appears most of the estimated 135,000 residents who have
been able to return are white. Mayor Ray Nagin recently apologized for saying
New Orleans would remain a "chocolate city" as he tried to allay fears that
blacks would not return.

The study found that if New Orleans' returning population
was limited to the neighborhoods undamaged by Katrina, about half the white population
would not return and 80 percent of its black population would not.

"There's very good reason for people to be concerned that
the future New Orleans will not be a place for the people who used to live
there, that there won't be room in New Orleans for large segments of the
population that used to call it home," said Logan, who studies urban
areas.

The study used maps from the Federal Emergency Management
Agency that detailed flood and wind damage and compared them to data from the
2000 U.S. Census to determine who was affected and in what numbers.

It found the hurricane-damaged areas of New Orleans were
75 percent black compared to 46 percent black in
undamaged areas of the city. It also found that 29 percent of the households in
those areas lived below the poverty line, compared with 24 percent of households
in undamaged areas.

More than half of those who lived in the city's damaged
neighborhoods were renters, the analysis found. Those people were unlikely to
have property insurance, and because so many are poor, would be unlikely to have
the resources to return to the city.

"The odds of living in a damaged area were clearly much
greater for blacks, renters and poor people," the study said. "In these respects
the most vulnerable residents turned out also to be at greatest
risk."

Along the Gulf Coast, about 46 percent of the population
in damaged areas was black, compared with 26 percent in non-damaged areas. The
study did not consider areas damaged if they reported just superficial problems,
such as missing roof shingles.

By sheer numbers, the study noted there were almost as
many non-Hispanic whites as blacks affected in damaged areas of the Gulf Coast
region -- just under 300,000 of both populations. But it said that whites would
be more likely to return to damaged neighborhoods.

"Whites are more likely to be homeowners," the study
said. "But more important, they are much more likely to have the personal
resources to reinvest in their homes or to find a new residence in a difficult
housing market."

Some former residents may not be able to return to their
old neighborhoods even if they wanted to, Logan said. Parts of New Orleans may
close forever to development, renters can't necessarily return to homes they've
left for months, and the housing market is tight. In addition, several large public housing
complexes in the city have been closed since the storm and the federal
Department of Housing and Urban Development has not offered specific details on
how or when those projects may be restored or rebuilt.

------

This city will be chocolate at the end of the day," he
said. "I don't care what people are saying Uptown," referring to a
mostly white area of New Orleans. Nagin also suggested that God unleashed last
year's hurricanes because he was "mad at America"—and particularly at the black
community, for failing to take better care of itself. "I was shocked," recalls
Wilson