Elie Wiesel, holocaust survival and Nobel peace winner reject affinity fraud with Bernie Madoff lead to huge lost  

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Elie Wiesel says he can't forgive Bernie MadoffCNN – February 27, 2009 Elie Wiesel, the Nazi concentration camp survivor who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize, showed little inclination this week to make peace with accused swindler Bernie Madoff, whom he called "one of the greatest scoundrels, thieves, liars, criminals." "Could I forgive him? No," the 80-year-old told a panel assembled Thursday by Conde Nast's Portfolio Magazine at New York's 21 Club to discuss Madoff, whose alleged victims included Wiesel and his foundation, The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. "To forgive, first of all, would mean that he would come on his knees and ask for forgiveness," the Auschwitz survivor said. "He wouldn't do that." Madoff, 70, is accused of running a Ponzi scheme that may have cost investors up to $50 billion. He faces one charge of securities fraud in connection with an international scheme that has cost some investors their life savings and could land him in prison for up to 20 years. Wiesel said a wealthy friend who has known Madoff for 50 years introduced them. The two men met twice over dinner, and Wiesel checked with financial experts whom he trusted before investing all of his and his wife's personal money. Then, once Madoff had gained his trust, Wiesel invested all $15.2 million that his foundation had amassed, he said. "We thought he was God, we trusted everything in his hands," the Boston University humanities professor said. Wiesel put his friend's loss at $50 million. Wiesel rejected the suggestion that "affinity fraud," the tendency for people to trust others of similar background, played any role in leaving him vulnerable to Madoff. Both men are Jewish. "It's not the Jewishness in him, it's the inhumanity in this man who simply believed he can go around depriving people of their livelihoods. What he has done to certain people, it breaks my heart," he said. "At the end, he went down to swindle thousands and thousands of people, and hurt thousands and thousands of people. Take our little foundation. My wife takes care of 1,000 Ethiopian children in Israel. What he does to them -- we were going to open a third center in Jerusalem. We cannot do it now. What [he has] done to others, to hospitals, to educational institutions, my God! Didn't he think?" Wiesel said he is planning legal action against Madoff but called for the federal government to bail out charities just as it has bailed out carmakers and banks. "I think it would be a great gesture that the Obama administration should show, we really think of those who are helpless and who are doing with their money only good things." Wiesel offered a punishment he would like to see meted out to the financier, who is under house arrest but has not been indicted. "I would like him to be in a solitary cell with a screen, and on that screen, for at least five years of his life, every day and every night there should be pictures of his victims, one after the other after the other, always saying, 'Look, look what you have done to this poor lady, look what you have done to this child, look what you have done.' "But nothing else -- he should not be able to avoid those faces, for years to come. This is only a minimum punishment." Madoff's attorney, Ira Sorkin, said he understands Wiesel's point of view, but said Madoff must be presumed innocent. Sorkin said the financial debacle is a tragedy, but added that his client is doing everything he can to help the government recover the funds. Despite what he called his family's "personal tragedy," Wiesel said he is organizing a benefit concert for his foundation and has been overwhelmed by unsolicited donations. "It shows, again, a human being is capable of both very great, good things, and very horrible things," he said.

comment:

Well I bet differ a bit here, for Jewish people, they will definitely trust anothers jews more than non-jew or what they call goyim.

We're in recession and it's hit the world economy from west to east, onto you doorstep.  

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The wave of Foreign Direct Investment(FDI) and skilled workers from overseas from many prosperous years beginning to exit China in thousands as companies around the world retreat to lick their wounds from the current recession.

This article from the Financial Times gives a snapshot of how the events outfold in China.

Downturn drives expat exodus from Shanghai
By Patti Waldmeir in Shanghai and Kathrin Hille in Beijing

Until recently, half the 100,000 Koreans who had made Shanghai their home lived clustered together on the outskirts of the city in “Little Korea”, a neighbourhood where the street signs are in Korean and the shops are full of LG products and kimchi food.

But with the economic crisis hitting the South Korean economy and currency hard, Little Korea is being rapidly vacated.

Korean companies are shipping workers home, cutting off school fees and repatriating wives and children without their menfolk to cut costs. They are the first large wave of expatriates to have begun leaving China’s financial capital as a result of the global economic crisis but their departure raises the prospect of a broader exodus of foreigners who may take investment, skills and job creation opportunities with them.

The press officer of the Korean consulate in Shanghai could not answer questions about the exodus of her countrymen – because her post had just been abolished and she was being sent back to Korea.

Kim Heewon, president of Seoul Plaza, Little Korea’s central shopping complex, estimates that 20 per cent of the Korean population has returned home, many of them in the past few weeks.

“Almost no one comes in any more,” says a clerk in Seoul Plaza’s golf boutique. Throughout Ms Kim’s 4,000-squ-m department store, Korean-speaking staff loiter next to Korean-branded toys, clothing and furniture, with no customers in sight.

Japanese relocation companies, meanwhile, say there has been a marked rise in Japanese families returning home from Shanghai compared with last year and they expect the pace to pick up further during the traditional peak relocation months of March and April.

Each of the Japanese housewives minding toddlers at the vast Mandarin City housing complex, where an estimated 70 per cent of residents are Korean or Japanese, say they know at least one family that has been sent home while the breadwinner remains in China.

The Japanese consulate estimates there were 48,000 nationals in Shanghai 18 months ago, but says it has no figures for the number that might have left since.

The pain has not been limited to Shanghai. A parent with children enrolled in an expensive Beijing international school says most of her daughters’ Korean classmates have left the school almost overnight.

A labour activist in the northern province of Shandong, where Korean investment has totalled $23.4bn (€18.4bn, £16.2bn) since 1988 and has accounted for 40 per cent of total foreign inflows, says the owner of a Korean-invested furniture factory left before the Chinese lunar new year in January and it has yet to reopen.

Local authorities that previously published regular data on absconding factory owners halted such reporting after thousands were left jobless when the entire Korean management of Yantai Shigang Fibre vanished last year.

“I would guess that even more have been closing since then given the worsening macroeconomic environment,” says Yuan Xiaoli, a professor at Qingdao University of Science and Technology.

Back in Little Korea, Ms Kim says the flow of Koreans is not one way. “Workers are going home, but entrepreneurs are coming here from Korea,” she says. “Our Korean people think [since] China is bigger than Korea, there must be more opportunities here than in Korea. There is no dream in Korea, but our Korean people think there is still a dream in China.”

Ms Kim is putting her money where her mouth is. She is planning to open a large golf goods store in Seoul Plaza early next month.

The mighty Gmail finaly down.  

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So Mountainview now have a problem,Yupp the fatso moster and everbody lover finally bow out to pressure..sigh. Just part of the problem for being successfull me think.

The Official Line from Google:

If you’ve tried to access your Gmail account today, you are probably aware by now that we’re having some problems. Shortly after 10am GMT our monitoring systems alerted us that Gmail consumer and businesses accounts worldwide could not get access to their email.

We’re working very hard to solve the problem and we’re really sorry for the inconvenience. Those users in the US and UK who have enabled Gmail offline through Gmail Labs should be able to access their inbox, although they won’t be able to send or receive emails.

We’re posting updates to the Gmail Help Centre at http://mail.google.com/support/ and Google Apps users can visit the Google Apps help centre at www.google.com/support/a.

Thanks for bearing with us while we sort this out. We'll report back as we make progress.

Posted by Acacio Cruz,
Gmail Site Reliability Manager

when the technology struck layman's sense  

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technology melt your mind

when the technology struck layman's sense, the creativity will set to spurt at no time.
Watch's Phil Baumman's presentation.


what do you think?

Israel poll results;Tzipi Livni Kadima's narrow win,with Likud's Bibi Netanyahu in second  

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Tzipi Livni's Kadima Party is in first place with 29 of the Knesset's 120 seats, while her hard-line rival Benjamin Netanyahu's hawkish Likud Party follow closely behind with 28 seats.Voters in Jerusalem and other parts of Israel braved pouring rain and strong winds Tuesday morning.

It's really interesting to see the campaign materials from all parties involved in this election. The broadcast authority however allots each party a certain amount of air time for its campaign advertisements. In this election season, some are using the YouTube online video repository as well as their party websites to broadcast and reach out to the voters. Below is a selection of a few campaign and ads that caught my attention:


Livni has featured a ‘Livni Boy’ video on YouTube, echoing the Obama Girl


 I Got a Crush...On Obama, the Obama Girl video clip.


Likud response and gets really nasty with negative campaigning against Tzipi Livni.


A ad attacking Lieberman and Tzipi

It's the first time the Israeli rivals in the election campaign outbidding each other in ultra-extremism and it could'nt be uglier than this to gain more votes ,radicalize the Israeli voters by displaying extremism racist remarks.

Tzipi invites Israelis to “vote for change.” Her campaign distributes T-shirts emblazoned with the made-up word “Believni.” And she brags that unlike the race’s front-runner, former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, she could partner with Obama in pursuing a peace accord with the Palestinians. “The American people voted for hope,” Livni told an audience of college students recently. “This is also possible in the state of Israel.” In response to those campaign, the Netanyahu camp, answers with its own T-shirt with, “No, She Can’t” T-shirts.

The Kingmaker Avigdor Lieberman, who campaigned on a platform to deny citizenship to Israeli Arabs he considers disloyal and others small party will be subject to heavily lobby for a coalition patner. Each party even the small ones expect to gain lots of cabinet posts or anything to that nature as precondition to join a coalition. Anyways there is high chances that Netanyahu would be the one to form a coalition purely because Tzipi Livni lack of negotiation skill. Well a few months ago she had more seats (after Olmert resigned) together with the Labor party and she failed to form a new governmet and resort to an early elections.  

So in this few days the horse trading will begin. At the end of days political compromise would surely take place. Untill then, political stalemate and status quo as well as heavily negotiation behind the scene certainly be the order of the days. But of course anything could happen in politics. Those who got the upper hand will lead a government. Fragile or not its depend who's going to be in the coalition. 

Needless to say that Israeli politics is indeed very complicated than elsewere. The Israeli's President in the others hand can invites one of the candidates to form a coalition government. In a normal circumstances (just like any democratics system) it goes to the candidate with the most seats, but it in Israel's constitution it does not necessarily be that way only. The president can choose whoever base on his discretion and assumption that the person can (read:capable of) forming a goverment. SO looking at this option and Livni history, she is indeed vulnerable. Again anything could happen in politics, even to some entent, really hard to digest nor justify by the masses.

Anyways, what ever the outcome is, it will definetely effecting the ongoing peace negotiation significantly.

All that glitters is not gold..Shakespeare's??  

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This is a story of yesteryear from a Swedish site that I like to share, so hold your breath...  lol 

Rushing.

A lady was scheduled for a pap-smear that morning. With so many things going on, time was running out. Although normally she would have a thorough top to toe wash, that morning she just opted for a quickie using the face towel that already happened to be near the wash basin, hoping that that would do.


She arrived at the medical center, registered and was asked a few minutes later by the gynae to go in and lie on the bed. It was all a routine. As her legs were lifted and placed on the holder-thingy, the gynae mumbled ; "oh! we make an effort today...". It was an embarrasing situation to be in, she took a deep breath and think of the Eiffel Tower.

She left the medical center 30 minutes later feeling relieved that she got that done and proceeded to the next tasks on the list...bank, grocery shopping, post office and other mundane tasks that housewives do.

When she got home, her daughter was already back from school. 

"Mommy, where is my face towel...the one that was here on the wash basin?", shouted the girl, from the bathroom.

"I've thrown that into the wash. Take a new one!"

"But mom, I have all my glitters in there..."

GULP!