After wasting much time and effort trying to sync my PC and iPad calendars and contacts with Apple’s iTunes and MobileMe, which just made a mess of my iPad and computer, I tried Google, which appears to work flawlessly.  Google has a function that syncs between Outlook and the Google calendar and between the iPad calendar and the Google calendar.  Things are still messed up because the Apple programs deleted a lot of stuff and duplicated a lot of stuff, but that’s not Google’s fault. 

I just added Calendar events in Outlook and on the iPad.  Each came through accurately on the other in the primary calendar, just as if the event had been created on the second device.  That’s how it should work.  There might be people who like having a multiplicity of calendars, but not me.  I want one that is the same everywhere I look, and Google provides that.

Apple can thank Google for making me happier with my iPad, but I’m sure Steve Jobs would hate to do that.

Because syncing over a cable with iTunes proved so frustrating, I thought I would try MobileMe when iTunes pressed it on me.  The idea of syncing over WiFi, rather than cable was appealing.  However, when I tried it, it made a mess of my calendars and maybe my contacts.  I ended up with many duplicate calendar entries on all of the devices, the desktop, the iPad and the laptops.  Plus, afterwards, Outlook would not start.  It showed that there were files for half a dozen calendars, but none of them would display. 

What I wanted was to be able to add a calendar event in my iPad and have it show up in Outlook.  I did show up, but in a separate calendar which did not appear on the opening desktop of Outlook.  You had to go searching for iPad updates.  Maybe there’s some way to merge the calendars, but it’s too complicated.  So, I just canceled MobileMe. 

In addition, I thought I could back up to the iDisk in the cloud, but backing up from Windows looked too complicated.  It sounds like there are settings in the Apple OS that let you back up to iDisk, but in Windows, the only way I could figure to do it was to copy stuff file by file.  I couldn’t even get it to transfer a folder.  That’s not an efficient way to backup.

Sometimes my iPad syncs successfully with my Windows PC through iTunes, and sometimes not.  The worst problem has been that at some point during backup and/or sync, which occurs automatically when you plug in the iPad to the PC, iTunes will suddenly say the iPad has only 4 GB of storage, rather than 16 GB, and then it will display an error message saying that there has been a problem and that it cannot continue.  Then, when you plug the iPad back in, it will say it will have to restore the iPad.  This is worrisome, since it did not successfully finish the backup the last time the iPad was connected, so that something could be lost.  The last time this happened, I only lost a few contacts from my iPad contact list, and all the books that I had downloaded to to the iBooks app.  Fortunately, I had only downloaded free books, and when I redownloaded them, the iTunes store remembered that I had downloaded them before and didn’t give me a hard time.

Another problem with iTunes is that it is slow.  Every time I plug in my iPad, iTunes backs it up and syncs it.  Sometimes after this, the iPad icon disappears from the left column, so that you can’t do anything with it, and if you unplug it and plug it in again, it backs up and syncs again, until eventually you get an error.

After three or four backups and syncs today, all my downloaded books are missing from my iPad iBooks app.  Re-syncing one more time restored the books again.

I have a new iPad, thanks to my stepson, who is trying to keep me up to date. It is really beautiful and slick. It’s the first Apple computer I’ve had since an Apple II about 30 years ago. Many of the apps that I have tried (almost all free) work well. My main complaint so far is the Apple interface with my Windows PCs. I’ve had trouble with both iTunes and MobileMe. It could be that I’m a Windows guy who doesn’t understand how Apple stuff works. It might also be that Apple purposely doesn’t make the iPad interface well with Windows PCs so that you’ll go out and buy an Apple PC.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has a great article on Holocaust remembrance day. It says that all the talk Israelis do about the Holocaust will not help Israel, unless it conducts itself in a more moral manner. It says the big Holocaust publicity push is to offset the UN Goldstone report condemning Israel for its conduct of the last war. It says that Netanyahu and his “racist” interior minister ranted against “migrants” in Israel. The article says:

No remembrance speech will obliterate the xenophobia that has reared its head in Israel, not only on the extreme right, as in Europe, but throughout government.

It concludes:

A thousand speeches against anti-Semitism will not extinguish the flames ignited by Operation Cast Lead, flames that threaten not only Israel but the entire Jewish world. As long as Gaza is under blockade and Israel sinks into its institutionalized xenophobia, Holocaust speeches will remain hollow. As long as evil is rampant here at home, neither the world nor we will be able to accept our preaching to others, even if they deserve it.

If only more American Jews were as perceptive as some Jews in Israel are.

The main people responsible for Bernanke’s problems with approval for another term at the Fed are the Wall Street bankers. They were so arrogant and disdainful of the the US Government, the Congress, President Obama, and the American people that there is a strong reaction against Bernanke’s decision to bail them out. People ask, why should be have bailed out such ungrateful people, who brought themselves to the brink of disaster, and who probably did as much economic damage to the US as Osama bin Laden did when he destroyed the twin towers?

Bernanke deserves some credit for saving us from another depression, but he’s sullied by the company he keeps. Wall Street bankers come across as some of the most morally despicable people in the US or even the world.

On Bernanke’s behalf, he could go to work for these sleazeballs in New York and probably increase his income by 10 to 100 times. He could easily be making over $10 million on Wall Street. We should be grateful that he’s willing to stay on as Fed Chairman.

On Tuesday, David Brooks wrote an op-ed in the NYT about Israel’s technological success. In it he discusses Jews’ success in the US and around the world, as well as in Israel. My biggest concern about American Jews is Israel. I worry that they are all conflicted and have at least some allegiance to Israel. Many probably put Israel’s security above America’s. In particular, I worry about Sen. Joe Lieberman. I often think the (I) after his name stands for Israel, rather than Independent. I am very grateful that Al Gore did not win the Presidency with Lieberman as his Vice President, and that McCain did not either.

Lieberman and his Jewish brethren have certainly supported a strong America, but I worry that they only do so because they see America as the main defender of Israel. If they had to choose between either America surviving or Israel surviving, they would choose Israel. Except for the Indians, everybody in America is from somewhere else: Britain, France, Africa, China, Mexico. But in almost every one of these cases they (or their ancestors) chose to leave that country to come to America. Jews, however, created their homeland, Israel, after they came here. They tend to look toward Israel with longing or at least great sympathy, while others tend to look back at their old homeland as a place they were happy to leave, although they may still have some sentimental attachment to it.

In addition, Jews do not assimilate well in the US. Because they look European, it would be easy for them to fit in as ordinary Americans, but they choose to maintain a Jewish identity, and not only through religion, but through culture, social life, etc. Exhibit number 1: the Holocaust. It has become a centerpiece of American life. There is a Holocaust Memorial on the Washington Mall, although almost none of the victims it memorializes were Americans. If anything, it is a monument critical of America for not doing more to end the Holocaust sooner. To me it is a symbol that the Jews hate the American gentiles because the gentiles were not more willing to die to save Jews. The monument does not say, “Thank you for saving the survivors among us.” It says, “Look at all the Jews you callous Christians allowed to die.” It doesn’t quite say, “We hate you for not invading Europe earlier,” but it’s implied.

I ask why the Jews didn’t do more to save themselves. The people who build the Holocaust Memorial are mainly Jews who ran away from Europe to the US, and left their parents, children, or siblings to die in the camps. Why didn’t the Jews fight? Israel’s success proves that Jews can fight successfully, but they weren’t willing to do it in Europe. Six million Jews died so that Lloyd Blankfein could be CEO of Goldman Sachs and so that Joe Lieberman could be a Senator. I have no proof, but I suspect that even of the Holocaust survivors, a number of them survived because they cooperated with the Germans. Those who stood up against the Germans in the camps were more likely to die than those who cooperated. The few fighters who survived probably preferred just to get on with their lives after the war, but in some cases they were probably bought off by other Jews who said something like, “Don’t spoil this for everybody who suffered so much.”

My concern with the Jewish and Holocaust issue arose while I was serving in Poland during the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. It was all-Holocaust, all the time. I felt slighted because my father fought in World War II. It was the Allies who ended the War. If they hadn’t, Hitler would probably have killed all the rest of the Jews left in Europe, i.e., those who didn’t leave their families behind and run away to America. So, why not put in a word for those who actually fought the Nazis, rather than just eulogizing those who walked meekly into the death camps?

Now, after what they went through in World War II, you would think that Jews would one of the last groups to engage in genocide, aparthied, or other violations of human rights. But Israel has become one of the most offensive developed nations in the world because of its treatment of Palestinians and other gentiles. Israel’s attitude may be much like America’s was during the Indian wars, but that was a long time ago. Times have changed. But in any case, because of history, one would think that Israelis would be more sensitive to such concerns than anybody else. Instead, one would think they almost decided to emulate Hitler. When the UN gave Israel to the Jews, they should have bent over backwards to make peace with the Arabs living there. If the Arabs went to war, then the Jews should have made the peace as just as possible, but instead they just took more and more land in violation of international law.

So, back to Brooks’ column. He says that Jews make up 0.2 percent of the world population, and 2 percent of the US population, but they win 20 to 30 percent of Nobel physics and medicine prizes, Ivy League college admissions, Academy Awards, Pulitzer Prizes, etc., not to mention being many of senior people on Wall Street and in government. But these are all the descendants of the people who ran away and left their relatives to die in the Holocaust. They have got to do something about Israel.

If Jews are ever going to be a great people, they are going to have to create a great state. Currently their state of Israel is a blot on humanity. There’s a saying that it’s better to be feared than loved. But you can be both. America was pretty much both feared and loved for a generation or two after World War II. Israel should aspire to that model, rather than to whatever Nazi or Stalinist model that it is currently pursuing.

This op-ed in the Financial Times by the Polish finance minister, “Intolerance of small crises led to this big one,” makes a point that I have been thinking about and strongly agree with. We need some pain to shake out the aftereffects of the financial crises that we have been through. Fed chairmen, particularly Greenspan and Bernanke, have tried to keep their political masters happy by avoiding any economic pain, except that which blindsided them, like that accompanying the popping of the tech bubble and the housing bubble. This op-ed makes the correct point that they were blindsided by these crises precisely because they trying so hard to smooth out the smaller bubbles preceding them. There is no free lunch. If you pummel the economy, as the bankers did in the housing crisis, you hurt it, and it can’t pop back up like nothing happened. If it appears to (as it has recently), it probably means that you’ve done something bad to it that will come back to haunt you sometime, in a few months or maybe if you’re lucky, in a few years. The obvious possibility is that you will sow the seeds of inflation, and that when those seeds sprout, you’re going to have a big mess on your hands, made worse by postponing it for years. On the other hand, you might get deflation, like that which produced the “lost decade” in Japan, about to become two lost decades.

What we need is an economy on a sound footing, which means among other things that there is moral hazard for messing up your business. Momma (the Fed and Congress) shouldn’t always bail you out. So, should we have let a few more banks follow Lehman down the drain. I don’t know, but I don’t think so. I think it was probably right to save the banks, but we should have made them pay a higher price for being saved. And we should impose significantly stronger regulations, in particular limiting both their business size (Glass-Steagel) and geographic size.

This op-ed in the Financial Times on how to reform the British Foreign Office could have been written about the US State Department. The US Foreign Service almost always suffers from budgetary problems, like their British colleagues. There are exceptions. Colin Powell was personally concerned about the Foreign Service, and Hillary Clinton may try to demonstration her political clout by helping increase State’s budget, but most Secretaries of State are more interested in policy issues than personnel issues.

One big problem of both organizations is that they have no domestic constituency. Citizens often see the job of diplomats as representing the foreign countries they work with, rather than pushing the agenda of their home country. Yet, that is seldom the case. They may often argue for going slow in going to war on slapping on sanctions in trade disputes, but that is because they understand that such actions are likely to be futile or counterproductive, although they may make Americans (or Brits) feel better for a while, until the chickens come home to roost.

In any case, those unfortunate perceptions often mean that budgets for diplomacy are among the first to get cut in bad times and among the last to be increased in good times. American lawmakers should take these British arguments to heart in considering their appropriations for the State Department.

Writing about the end of my Foreign Service career in my previous post reminded me of my last days at the embassy in Rome before I went home for good.

I think I went to Rome from Warsaw because Rome had requested a replacement who was not a Foreign Service officer. The State Department personnel system wanted to send a Foreign Service officer, because in general, Civil Service employees don’t serve overseas. Rome needed someone quickly because Italy was taking over the Presidency of the EU, and the embassy science officer had just been let go by the State Department. He was a professional scientist brought to State in an exchange program. Like most people who come under such an arrangement, he didn’t want to leave. He had worked for Amb. Bartholomew for years while Bartholomew was Under Secretary of State, and then accompanied Bartholomew to Rome, when he was named ambassador. But finally State said that he had come to the end of his rope; it wouldn’t extend his program at State any further, and it wouldn’t let him convert to permanent employee status. I’m guessing he recommended the Civil Service employee who had been the deputy director across the hall from me in State/OES. When Embassy Rome tried to finagle the personnel procedures to get a Civil Service employee assigned there, the State personnel office asked me if I would go in order to keep a Foreign Service officer in a Foreign Service position. I agreed, not knowing that I was stepping into the middle of a war between Embassy Rome and the State Department personnel system, probably made even bitterer by the fact that State had refused to let the Ambassador keep the man he wanted in the job.

People may say I was foolish to step into the job without looking into the office politics, but I had taken other less than stellar assignments for the good of the country, the service, or whatever. I knew that I was not God’s gift the Foreign Service, and I was willing to do jobs that more elite officers frowned on. Plus, I knew I was probably being asked because Amb. Rey in Warsaw had already proposed eliminating by job there due to the decline in Polish-American scientific cooperation. It gave me an opportunity to move on to a more active assignment. Plus, the Washington decision not to comply with the five-year cooperation agreement had soured my relationship with my Polish contacts, who thought, correctly, that the US was failing to live up to its legal obligations. They were reluctant to make an issue of it, because at that time Poland wanted more than anything to be admitted to NATO, and would not do anything to jeopardize that objective. So, it was a convenient time for me to leave. But I was bitter that the US had not lived up to its obligations, especially when it had sent me there to carry them out.

It turned out that the day I was scheduled to leave Warsaw for Rome was the day that Newt Gingrich shut down the US Government. All of our clothes, furniture, etc., had been packed and sent to Rome, except for what we could fit in our car, plus our two dogs. The house we were leaving was empty. I had spent my last day in the embassy, and I was up in the Defense Attaché’s office saying good-bye, when I got a call from my Polish assistant saying that I had to come back to my office and speak to Rome on the telephone. Some administration flunky in Rome told me that because the government had been shut down, I should stay in Warsaw and not come to Rome. Of course, by then I had no place to stay in Warsaw. I was furious. I felt that the US was putting my wife and me (and our dogs) out on the street in Warsaw for the duration of the government shutdown. For the first time, I looked to see if I knew anybody in Rome, and it turned out that I knew the Deputy Chief of Mission, the second to the Ambassador, from serving with him in Brazil. I told him my situation, that I had no place to live in Warsaw, and he said to go ahead and leave for Rome; he would work something out. The solution turned out to be furloughing my American assistant, and keeping me on the State payroll as essential, rather than the other way around, which did not endear me to my assistant.

Being almost furloughed in Warsaw was the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as my State Department career went. I was reminded of the old joke about the boy who pushed the family outhouse into the river. That night when his father confronted him about it, the boy said, “Like George Washington, I cannot tell a lie. I pushed the outhouse into the river.” With that, his father took off his belt and tanned his hide. The boy sobbed, “But George Washington’s father didn’t spank him when he chopped down the cherry tree.” The boy’s father replied, “George Washington’s father wasn’t in the cherry tree when he chopped it down.” I was in the cherry tree when Newt Gingrich chopped it down. He had already been messing with me by cutting off funding for Polish cooperation. I had had it. But while I didn’t really care that much about my career at that point, I still felt an obligation to the United States. I had promised to serve as Science Counselor in Rome while Italy held the Presidency of the EU, and unlike the US Government, I intended to honor my promise. Although I was unhappy, I was in a good position to leave. I had put in my twenty plus years and was old enough to retire anytime that I wanted. I didn’t have to give up my retirement pension over a matter of principle.

When I arrived in Rome, I found that two of the big issues that were my responsibility were North Korean nuclear proliferation and Italian swordfish driftnet regulation. The North Korean nuclear program was an issue because the Republican Congress refused to appropriate enough money for the US to fulfill its commitments under the agreement limiting North Korea’s activities. Therefore, one of my jobs was to go hat in hand to the Italian Foreign Ministry and ask them to get the EU to contribute enough money to allow the US to meet its commitments to North Korea, since Congress would not do it. It was like funding for Polish scientific cooperation all over again. The Republican Congress didn’t have the moral gumption to meet America’s legal commitments. I was unhappy to be once again the fall guy for the Republican Congress’ lack of integrity.

I had little interest in the swordfish driftnet issue. I had never worked on fisheries issues and there was a whole fisheries bureaucracy that I was not familiar with. My assistant had handled fisheries issues in Venezuela and had been handling them in Rome. I was happy to leave the issue with her. When I arrived in Rome, I discovered that my office was being sued by four environmental groups for failing to force the Italian government to obey UN resolutions restricting the length of driftnets used to catch swordfish. My assistant was in constant touch with the State Department legal advisor’s office, which kept her up to date on the trial. The actual courtroom argument was handled by the Justice Department. Washington assured us that we would win the case. We lost. As a result, a US District Court judge in New York City had to approve our office’s actions regarding the swordfish fisheries issue. I thought that this was unconstitutional because the Constitution assigns foreign policy matters to the Executive Branch. This seemed to be a usurpation of authority by the Judicial Branch. What happened was that when there was any proposal to take action regarding swordfish, the State Department informed the judge, and the judge contacted the winning environmental plaintiffs for their approval. They always contacted the Greenpeace expert in Rome who handled fisheries matters for Greenpeace. If he approved, then the environmental groups would approve, the judge would approve, and State could accept the agreement.

The US sent a big delegation to Rome to negotiate tougher enforcement by Italy. My assistant played a large role, since she and one of the key staffers in the Italian Agriculture Ministry, which handled fisheries matters, had a good working relationship. The US (i.e., State, the judge, the environmental groups, and Greenpeace Italy) and the Italian Government were all happy with the agreement. On my second to last day in the Embassy before I was to return to Washington and retire, the Agriculture Minister asked to see the Ambassador about the swordfish issue. It turned out that because of the tougher enforcement by the ministry, the fishermen had enlisted the Mafia to threaten the ministry’s enforcement officers. The minister was afraid that some of his officers would be injured or killed, and wanted the US to agree to some loosening of the enforcement regime. It sounds like a joke, but most of the fishermen lived in Sicily, the home of the Mafia. Some swordfish boats worked out of the port of Fuimicino near the Rome airport. A few days earlier, the fishermen had blocked the streets in front of the ministry, creating enough of a disturbance to get on the news.

On the day of the appointment, my assistant was too sick to come into the office; so, I had to accompany the Ambassador to meet with the Minister about an issue that I had tried to avoid for the whole six or so months I had been in Rome. (Payback for getting her furloughed? Probably not.) My main function in the meeting was to tell the Ambassador that he had no authority to revise the agreement with the Minister, because any revision had to be approved by a judge in New York. He was of course furious, because under the Constitution he should have been empowered to negotiate with the Minister. The agreement could be revised, but the Ambassador had to defer to the judge. I spent my last 24 hours as a working Foreign Service officer successfully getting approval from Washington for a revised agreement. For my efforts, I got a letter of reprimand from the Ambassador, who had not liked my keeping him on a leash. I wanted him to know that the State Department’s and his personal authority had been unconstitutionally usurped by a federal judge. Whether his letter went into my official file was a moot question, because at that point promotion was not an option. I was on my way to the Washington retirement seminar.

Before I formally committed to retire, I had asked the State Department to tell me how much my retirement pension would be. It was a big pay cut from my salary, but my wife and I thought that we could live on it. As icing on the cake, however, about the time I finished the retirement seminar, just one or two days before I was formally taken off the payroll, the retirement office told me that they has miscalculated my retirement pay and that it would be about 10 percent less than they had told me in Rome. I think that what happened was that while I was overseas, Congress had voted itself and other government employees in the US a locality pay bonus, which did not apply to me serving overseas. Therefore, my retirement was calculated on a base pay that was about 10% less than it would have been if I had been serving in Washington. I was punished for serving my country abroad, and all Foreign Service officers abroad have been until this year, when the rules were finally revised.

Well, this is not as funny to me as “Burn After Reading,” but I suppose that the characters in the movie didn’t see their lives as funny either, except maybe the senior CIA guy who was the Director of Operations or something. But if the Justice Department goes after him like it is going after the CIA interrogators now, even he may not be laughing long. At least I have a kindred spirit in Osborn Cox.