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Home | Contact | Welcome | Latest Postings | Musings | Middle East | World Issues | Travel Notes & Collages June 2006 Notes Global Thoughts; Book Review of “Man in the Shadows”; Travel Notes: Las Vegas, LA & Boston Just a few words about the Jewish Conspiracy....Did you know that a Saudi prince just bought 5% of Fox News? So if you have something to say about Fox, let him know. In the AIPAC case (the one involving members of the Israeli lobby group indicted for passing on confidential information which was in the first place leaked to him by the Bush Administration) Condi Rice got subpoenaed for perhaps being on the wrong side of the leaking and the judge may dismiss the case. This was a lousy case to begin with and reflects the hostility within the government toward Jews and Israel. The CIA now tells that the US found Eichman 2 years before the Israelis did and didn’t tell them on purpose. They were very busy protecting all these former Nazis hoping to use them against the commies but we now know that most of what they told the CIA was bogus because many of them turned out to be Soviet double agents who also turned in other CIA agents. It’s a good lesson; partner up with scum and you’re not going to get much out of it. Some senior guy in the State Department is about to be fired because they found out he took a picture in an Israeli army uniform 23 years ago when he volunteered at an army base for 2 weeks to do janitorial work as part of a civilian volunteers program that many people participate in mainly because it’s considered a fun thing to do. There is just a nutty witch hunt going on in the US government these days without any rationale. I just came out of the subway at Lincoln Center and there were about 50 police cars all around. I asked “What are you doing?” and they said “We’re looking for terrorists.” I said “Is this an exercise?” and they said, “No, it’s not an exercise. They just send us from place to place to hang out looking for terrorists.” Really. They said this. Your tax dollars at work.         We got a toy for Elizabeth and it came with a card that said they would replace parts if you lost them. But I figure if you’re the kind that would lose the parts, you’d also lose the card. Still, it’s a nice offer. On the baby front, she’s turning 6 months pretty soon and she’s starting to play with rice cereal. Looking at her eating the cold cereal was painful until I figured out that if you nuked it for about 10 seconds in the microwave, it would taste better and it did. None of the books we read suggested that one.... In the phony baloney category this month: The latest Tax Cut voted on by Congress is a phony one; I could get more of a rebate getting cash back off my credit card to pay the tax. By the way, if you play it right, even if you have to pay a service charge, it may be worthwhile to pay your taxes using AMEX and take the miles. If they have a 2:1 deal going, if you pay let’s say $50,000 in taxes and pay the $1,000 fee at 2% of the charge, you could wind up with 100,000 miles and that’s good for a business class ticket almost anywhere. Another entry into the phoney baloney category is the new Palestinian referendum memo which says nothing about peace with Israel. One reason the Israelis aren’t saying anything about the referendum is that it really changes nothing. I have no idea what the big deal is about; all this talk about the referendum recognizing borders and dealing with Israel is media hype that reflects a complete ignorance of what people over there think it means. The referendum is a power play by Abbas to reverse the earlier election of Hamas. To me the main point worth knowing in the last few weeks is that the Israelis offered millions of dollars of medicines for the hospitals in Gaza and it was refused because the only thing the Palestinian Authority wanted was cash. So at least we know where the game is at. Whatever the story is, it’s hard to get a flight to Israel even with all the extra flights they keep adding and the hotels are full. Families from upper crust America and Britain are increasingly interested in living there because they save tons on tuition (probably the developed world’s best form of birth control), insurance and living costs, and in today’s jet-set age, they don’t have to necessarily give up their positions in America or their salaries to work there. Our company has a branch office there, our new phone system makes it feel like he’s not even over there (more on this later) and our employee is getting roughly the same salary there he gets in New York. This is a big step up for that country; it is a real alternative for people who want to live there and they are now talking about bringing down their VAT from 16.5% to 15%. Here’s another entry into the phoney-baloney ledger: Pakistan is not really helping to catch Bin Laden, everybody knows it and that’s why they’re getting the brush-off from the Americans. It might be that replacing the Pakistan government would be helpful toward stabilizing Afghanistan as well. The Americans hit the H1B quota on May 26. This means that if you want to hire a foreign expert to work in your company, you have to wait till April 1, 2007 to file a visa application for someone who will work October 1, 2007 or later. This happened just 8 weeks into the application year that began April 1, 2006 for the October 1, 2006-2007 year. It took until June 1 for the immigration service to realize that it hit the cap on May 26 so that means that law firms and credential companies such as ours processed cases at 12x the normal number for a full week that turned out to be complete wastes of time and money. Perhaps Congress will change the law this year. It’s just nuts, but neither the NY Times, Wall Street Journal or Financial Times of London have even written about the cap hitting.  The editors just don’t care, according to the reporters who themselves know little about it – I gave interviews this week to reporters I sought out at the AP, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, FT and PBS (public broadcasting in the US) but nothing is being published. I’ve only seen word about it so far in newspapers abroad such as in Israel which has lots of H1B workers. We have this amazing new phone system that lets you call from anywhere there’s internet and it appears like the call is coming from our office. You could be on a plane, train or hotel room and nobody would know. That person is like an extension on our phone system and can receive and transfer calls. He can even answer calls coming in on the main line, page people, be on speaker phone with people in the office and participate in conference calls. The quality is usually good and it only cost us a few thousand dollars. The bad side is that my business partner is always around the office even if he’s on the road.... Also on technology, the good news is that if your hard drive crashes they have data recovery people who can revive it and you can use an external hard drive now to move files from one PC to another. The bad news is that data recovery is pricey – $2,600 for the data on my hard drive. Halevy’s Book Here’s a review of Halevy’s book which I read on the plane to Las Vegas this month: Efraim Halevy, former director of the Mossad and a man in the news a lot these days, writes in “Man in the Shadows”: Peres is a real schemer, the worst. Sharon in later years was run by his gatekeepers. Barak was an idiot in office, the biggest disappointment. Rabin he liked. Bibi was smart but doesn’t let anyone else have an opinion. Intelligence personnel increasingly run interference for political leaders who lack initiative. Jordanian track was the most well respected with good quality people on the Jordanian side – professionals and thinkers who were not political hacks. He really liked dealing with them. Shamir got high marks for getting on well with Hussein in 1990 and having quiet understandings which helped keep that war OK for both sides. King Hussein really hated Peres. Oslo was a political vendetta by politicians keen on getting results at any cost and history and glory for those who negotiated it without real substance – politics over professionalism. Private acceptance of Israel within Arab elites doesn’t match the public opposition to Israel and Jews in the media. Qatar is #1 example of this. Qatar still puts Israelis and Hamas together for private meetings. Egypt has been helpful and was primary in driving out Arafat in 2002 after seeing domestic threat of Palestinian blackmail within Egypt – ie: causing demonstrations in Egypt if Egypt wouldn’t support the Palestinians enough. Syria missed out on its chance because it never was prepared to leave Russia’s orbit to join the West but instead insisted on playing both sides. Europeans blind to their own issues of integration and instead just blame everything on the Israeli-Palestinian issue as if Israel’s disappearance would make all their immigrant problems disappear. Says US intelligence reform is a blur without any real central intelligence authority being created. Calls for pre-emption in foreign policy, more anti-terror laws and loss of sovereignty if you allow your territory to be used to launch terrorism. Hamas is not Al Qaida which is not Hizbullah. Hamas is only interested in what goes on inside its territory; Al Qaida has worldwide revolutionary aims and Hizbullah is not a worldwide thing but goes beyond its territory. Hamas is the most likely party to be able to deal with as they can be responsible and have limited aims. Islamic fundamentalism is firstly a war within the Islamic world and we need to co-opt sides of it. Boston Notes Memorial Day Weekend 2006 Almost equal to take the train or the plane from New York. Train trip with a little child is actually fun. Langham Hotel had a great touristic location near Faneuil Hall and excellent food and beverage. We booked a suite on a holiday weekend and got a great deal. Fantastic home-made things such as pizza, ice cream, a chocolate buffet and a good French restaurant Julienne. Had a children’s oriented street performance festival at Faneuil Hall. Saw good theater and the Boston Pops, which was a good hour’s walk across town. Boston Commons a pleasant place to walk; all around we enjoyed the city. On Sunday visited the JFK Library, Harvard University and went to the top of the Prudential Tower; see the Wings of Boston movie when you visit the Tower top. Legal Sea Food was great by the sea front in all respects and Herrill’s ice cream at Harvard Square was also excellent. Bostonians take their ice cream seriously and it is the top consuming city of it in the US.    Las Vegas & LA Notes May 2006 JetBlue’s JFK terminal works great with airport security that hustles and great food court with such shops as Mex in the City that make you really want to buy stuff. Took :50 to get there from Penn Station with the Long Island Railroad and the Train to the Plane. Despite Jet Blue’s reputation for diminished on-time service, my flight went well and I found that the best deal today is to buy 2 seats on Jet Blue (reserve the aisle and window) and hope the middle seat stays free. For $250 I had a full row to myself from New York to Las Vegas. On the way home on American I paid $305 plus 10,000 miles to upgrade to Business Class which is no great deal. Sit on right side for great view of Las Vegas on landing. Took 30 minutes to get from the plane to my hotel room if you don’t have to wait for the taxi. I stayed at the new Wynne hotel; very nice property such as beautiful spa and public areas, and great food & beverage all over such as the buffet and coffee shops (home made good ice cream in the sweet shop and certainly better than the gelato at the Bellagio) but not cheap at all and they nickel and dime you for such things as $25 to use the workout room (they told me they might stop doing this) and $4 to pull cash from an ATM on the property and nobody seems to have discretion to do anything for you although the employees there are well trained and property-acquainted down to the shoeshine dude who had to pass a test to work there. I had a nice suite with big windows overlooking the “strip” of hotels but if you hate the color brown you wouldn’t like it. You can’t see too far even from a high floor because all the hotels are so tall. The Spa is very pricey; $165 for a massage before taxes. There is an upscale Suites portion of the hotel set apart from the rest of the hotel but the hotel still has many floors and not too many elevators going there. Vegas has a monorail that runs around the city but it is stupid because you still have to walk to the monorail and it costs $5. That amount in a taxi will take you almost anywhere. At this time of year it’s not yet too hot, especially in the morning or evening. Turned around in the sweet shop and Hanna and his wife from Jordan were right there looking at me. At the Paris Hotel, you can take an elevator up the Eifel Tower for a great view of the strip as well as the singing fountain show at the Bellagio Hotel. Ceasar’s Palace Forum Shops has the moving statues show hourly but this you could skip. No city guides in your room at this hotel; they’re hoping you’ll never leave the property. All the hotels now seem to have wedding chapels. Most hotels ban strollers from most public areas so forget about this being a family friendly town. Circus Circus is the only hotel that caters to kids but it ain’t much (indoor amusement park and kiddie games area and one circus act per hour during the day going on near the casino). Vegas’s slogan has reverted to What Goes on in Vegas Stays in Vegas after trying futilely to attract families. Personally,  I find Dubai a better deal and actually more impressive to the eye. Everything here seems to be an imitation of some other place as if Americans who go to Vegas could say they’ve been to Paris, but in Dubai everything is unique to Dubai and you still get more value to your dollar even after prices there have gone up. No question that much of Vegas is glitz without quality to a downscale market; Dubai is much better on that count. Dubai is also better positioned to attract families with more attractions. Vegas is a pretty small place with a few hotels within a square mile or so and once you walk a half hour past the 10 hotels on the main line, there’s nothing there and a good deal of what’s there is downscale mixed with upscale. Only thing Dubai needs now is entertainment; Vegas still has tons of shows to go to and Dubai has none as far as I know. La Reve is an aquatic gymnastics spectacular at the Wynne and it was great with no bad seats in the house in this theater in the round. Next night I saw Danny Gans at the Mirage and he is great but it helps if you know popular music from the last 50 years or else you won’t know who is imitating or get the jokes. Again the prices are high starting at $100 per ticket. Across from the hotel is the Fashion Show shopping mall with 6 anchor stores and a pretty food court with cheaper ATM’s. I was there for 2 days; on the second day I took a helicopter tour to the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam and the Mojave Desert and to see the Big Ball of Fire and a circle tour of Las Vegas by air. In about 2.5 hours you cover it all including a 30 minute ground stop inside the Grand Canyon. It’s a great tour and it will set you back about $450 if you also buy the DVD of your trip but you’ll never see this stuff the same way any other way and it is a bit scary when your chopper goes 50 feet over the top of a mountain ridge and next thing you know there’s nothing for a mile beneath you. On departure I learned your taxi should take local roads to save half the price over using the highway. Takes :20 to get to the gates once you arrive at the airport if there is no big wait at security. :40 flight to Los Angeles. So much traffic in LA that I had to cancel certain items because it’s too much trouble to get around here. Dinner at Pat’s, a great kosher restaurant; I went for the veal chop and the chocolate chip bread pudding – the latter is pure delicious poison; basically mushed up hot bobka with an anglaise sauce. There’s also a kosher Nathans here with hot dogs, hamburgers and of course the Nathans famous french fries. Attended a roundtable of CEO’s of technology companies that are not direct competitors; very good idea that brings people together once a month for a morning in a confidential situation to talk about their companies with colleagues who give them feedback on their management issues of the day and strategies. Also in LA I had the opportunity to go to the American Doll Store and buy dolls for my nieces. Whoever came up with this concept is making a mint; every doll has a story and to accessorize this story can cost up to several hundred bucks if you really want to do up a doll! Best new food court concept was a stand that made fresh pita sandwiches in a wood oven of such combos as spinach and cheese. More versatile than pizza and an excellent light fresh taste. Coming up in June for me is a visit to Milwaukee for a trade conference on language companies where I will be moderating the annual open forum and a 4th of July weekend visit to the Sagamore Resort in the Lake George area of upstate New York. Click here for Pictures of Las Vegas and Grand Canyon by helicopter tour. Click here for Pictures from Boston.