Smuggling, of all sorts, is nothing new in the Bronfman world.Clare Bronfman (centre)Links: CBC & CanoeShe plead guilty to avoid trial- Better a quiet sweeping under the rug then a big trial which might expose Bronfman’s involvement as much more deeper then she’s acknowledging in her plea.
"A wealthy heiress pleaded guilty on Friday in a sensational case accusing a cult-like upstate New York group of creating a secret harem of sex slaves for the group's self-anointed spiritual leader.Clare Bronfman admitted in her plea in federal court in Brooklyn that she harboured someone who was living in the U.S. illegally for unpaid "labour and services" and that she committed credit card fraud on behalf of Keith Raniere, the leader of the group called NXIVM.The plea means Bronfman will avoid going to trial early next month with Raniere, who's facing conspiracy charges alleging that his inner circle of loyalists created a secret society of women who were forced to have unwanted sex with him. Prosecutors say some of the women were branded with his initials as part of their initiation.Among those defendants is Allison Mack, the TV actress best known for her role as a young Superman's close friend on the series Smallville.
Bronfman had long been affiliated with NXIVM, giving away tens of million of dollars of her fortune to bankroll Raniere and his program of intense self-improvement classes. She also paid for lawyers to defend the group against a lawsuit brought by its critics."
Her plea to the judge is pathetic. Surely she had someone write this for her..
"Your honour, I was afforded a great gift by my grandfather and father," Bronfman said. "With the gift, comes immense privilege and more importantly, tremendous responsibility. It does not come with an ability to break the law."
She added: "For this, I am truly sorry."
I’m sure she’s sorry.... that she got caught. (That's how I see it) Not likely she’s sorry about much else. Smuggling, breaking the law, is how she came to have all the money and power she does! Her inheritance, her means of funding this crime, originated with crime. The mass smuggling of booze and possibly people since the Bronfman's were also connected to prostitution in those ‘wild and crazy days’ of illegal booze, gin joints (speak easy) and prostitution. I'll leave a very interesting read at the bottom of the post. The review of a book written about the role of Jews in the early days of mass booze smuggling between Canada and the US. Before we get to that.. thinking about the Trudeau government and his connection to the Bronfman family. You had to know there was one!Trudeau’s Chief Fund Raiser
Trudeau had begun his campaign for a new kind of Canadian politics by turning to a close friend to help raise funds for it: Stephen R. Bronfman.A financier and scion of one Canada’s most famous families, Bronfman quickly transformed Trudeau’s Liberal Party from moribund political pauper to financial juggernaut, nearly doubling donations in two years. As a thank-you gesture, he sent thousands of donors pairs of mittens in Liberal Party-red.“Justin is very, very salable,” Bronfman, 53, once observed to reporters. “He’s got a great name, and people want to find out who he is.”
About that book: Izzy Einstein (left) and Moe Smith sharing a toast in a New York bar, 1935.(Library of Congress)Some related reading- And I’d suggest you read this article entirely.Clare Bronfman, the smuggler, hasn't strayed a bit from her family roots.
"Tablet Magazine;Vigor Juice: Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition, is just short of providential. This fascinating, academically sophisticated, and superbly written exposition of the intricate, often precarious, role that Jews played in every aspect of the American alcohol industry—from production in industrial stills to retail sale in bars and speakeasies across the land, and finally to bootlegging, a crime that created the fortunes of some of North America’s most prominent Jewish philanthropic families (Bronfman family)
Among them are the disproportionate presence of Jews in the alcohol trade, bootlegging, and organized crime.
The book’s first half focuses on the surprisingly prominent role played by Jewish immigrants to America in the production, wholesale distribution, and retail dispensation of alcohol, all across the land, from the industrial stills of Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois to the barrooms of crowded, lower-class neighborhoods of America’s major cities, from Atlanta and Charleston to Manhattan’s Lower East Side and Newark’s Third Ward.
Unfortunately, the idyllic image of the Jews as responsible drinkers so central to the arguments advanced by anti-Prohibition polemicists, which, Davis writes, “suggested that their distinctive historical and religious relationship to alcohol made them model citizens whose presence benefited the nation,” was severely undermined by the reprehensible behavior of numerous Jewish purveyors of alcohol both before and during Prohibition. Davis recounts the sleaziness of the Jewish saloons that proliferated in working-class neighborhoods, from Atlanta’s Decatur Street to Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The drunkenness of the denizens of these taverns (derided by their detractors as “Jew-saloons”), most often poor black men, was exacerbated by other forms of debauchery associated with whiskey consumption. Davis notes the “Jewish immigrants’ involvement in urban prostitution … because it seemed to confirm Jews’ eagerness to derive commercial gain even by the most vile means,” adding that “the fact that prostitutes procured, or even attended to, customers in saloons exacerbated anxieties about Jewish saloonkeepers.”
The article speaks of critical statements made as "antisemitism" while admitting...
"the recklessness of Jewish distillers and saloon-owners was hardly beyond reproach. The walls of “colored only” saloons operated by Jews were frequently decked with murals displaying erotic images of scantily, if at all, dressed, voluptuous white women, which understandably scandalized religious Protestant advocates of Prohibition. It did not help that the packaging of Levy’s cheap alcohol was so pornographic that he and his partner, German Jewish immigrant Adolphe Asher, were convicted in 1908 of sending obscene materials through the mail. Oh, and the name of Levy’s best-selling beverage? “Black Cock Vigor Gin.”
Clearly the black population was being targeted..... but the spin was antisemitism. The more things change, the more they are the same..
"Still, conspicuous bad behavior by Jews both before and during Prohibition certainly gave vile anti-Semitic oratory much traction"
Legit criticism is not anti-Semitic. And after reading the above article it seems the criticism was very legitimate.