Informant38

a great big exclamation point:

The Pentagon entrusted a 22-year old previously arrested for domestic violence and having a forged driving licence to be the main supplier of ammunition to Afghan forces at the height of the battle against a resurgent Taliban, it was reported today.

Goldenberg/GuardianUK
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Courtesy of The New York Times, I'm proud to present to you a brand new member of the Bush Administration War Profiteer Hall of Shame: 22 year-old Efraim Diveroli, whose company AEY has been awarded approximately $300 million in contracts by the Pentagon.

Kiel/TPM
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At the end, Mr. Diveroli appeared to lament his business with Albania. “It went up higher to the prime minister and his son,” he said. “I can’t fight this mafia. It got too big. The animals just got too out of control.”

C. J. Chivers/NYTimes/WorcesterTelegram&Gazette
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Since 2006, when the insurgency in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against al-Qaida and the Taliban.
But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the U.S. military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.
[...]
Diveroli, in a brief telephone interview late last year, denied any wrongdoing. “I know that my company does everything 100 percent on the up and up, and that’s all I’m concerned about,” he said.
[...]
“A lot of us are asking the question,” said a senior State Department official. “How did this guy get all this business?”

Chivers/NYTimes/WorcesterTelegram&Gazette
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From the comment thread on the TPM article:

BlueCalif: The Miami branch consists of the mom, Ateret Botach (or Boteach) Diveroli, dad Michael, and son Efraim (the other kids seem to be pretty involved in moral activities, such as blogging on the evils of MySpace etc.). They are def linked to the Hebrew community (RASG hebrew Academy, Miami) and lo, to a Michael Jackson "money for the childern" scam (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,49808,00.html). Worldwide Tactical www.wwtactical.com) is the current LLC getting FEMA and Homeland Security contracts from Nebraska to Florida. AEY has advertised as: "Established in 1999, AEY Inc. has made a name for itself in the scrap metal industry as a reliable, efficient, competitive and honest partner" (http://www.recycle.net/trade/aa1029790.html).
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12quarts: ?? Why is it so important to so many commenters that the family involved is Jewish? Just askin'...
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iaf: Yeah right, anti-Semitic sentiments are always accidental.
It's well documented that most anti-Semites became anti-Semitic after being struck by a lightning, hit by a bus or exposed to radiation. It also explains how come entire populations around the world who have never met a single Jew in their lives (e.g. most of the Arab world, many Eastern Europeans or large sections of Malaysia and Indonesia) harbor strong anti-Jewish (yes, anti-Jewish, not anti-Israeli) feelings.
Same goes for large segments of Central and South-American populations, where Catholic schools still teach that the Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus. All one gigantic accident.

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Probably a lot of the concern about Diveroli's ethnicity is that it ties into what appears to be a massive scam on the American people.
Once you start to consider whether or not the accusations of "war by proxy" in Iraq, the idea of the invasion and occupation being done to benefit Israel, which is self-identified as a "Jewish state", hold any water, it's not possible to get back to a world where anti-Semitism is the only cause of these accusations.
It appears more and more that Jewish morality is ethnocentric, not universal. Things are right or wrong depending on whether they're "good for the Jews" or not. So that tricking the US to send its soldiers into the septic morass of occupied Iraq is not an immoral thing, it is a good thing. This is feral, if it's human at all.
I didn't post links to Hannah Mermelstein's eloquent essay and journal, or Anna Baltzer's eloquent and infuriating photos to curry favor with anybody, I did it because the sentiments that drive their work are noble and humane. And since both these women are Jews, clearly my anti-Semitism is of a complex and intricate kind.
I despise Diveroli and everything and everyone he stands for, and what he stands for is a long deep thread in Jewish presence in this world, not unique to Jews in any sense, but not alien either. This can't be denied or argued away.
It would be so much easier and more gratifying to have done with the whole question - it's the goddamned Jews, that's all - and I think now a lot of Americans especially, but also many Europeans and certainly the majority of Muslims are doing just that, because it's easier. But then that's what real work is all about, doing the hard thing because it has to be done, whether you want to do it or not.
It's past time for all these simpering accusations of anti-Semitism to stop, not least because of their falsity and arrogance, the blindness and neurotic panic that fuels them, but especially because of the cover they provide for the darkest and most active villains in the contemporary world.
It's constantly pointed out how long the history of anti-Semitism is and how much suffering Jews as a people, men women and children, have endured because of it, but it may be time to consider how often these same strategies have been employed, and reacted to, genuinely but too broadly.
Perform nefarious acts and scuttle around behind a crowd of the innocent, so that any attack on you becomes an attack on them. The use of human shields as a survival strategy, so solidly in place it's practically genetic.
Hiding behind the innocent is cowardly, and it places your enemy in conflict with his own moral strength, if he has any. Cowardice works, in the short term.
There's a long line of heroes who refused the efficacy of collateral damage, whose integrity forbade making the innocent pay for the crimes of those hidden among them. In a world where all that matters is what works this is foolish indeed, and sentimental - not manly, not bold.
The issue at heart is whether there's anything higher than utility in our lives. I believe there is, and I believe these despicable acts and craven attitudes don't work in the long run, and I believe that's what really matters. Call it a higher utility, or a nobler pragmatism.