June 2002

BY NADJI TEHRANI

As valued readers of CIS magazine, you are no doubt aware that this publication not only pioneered the telemarketing, call center, customer interaction and CRM industries back in 1982, but also for the last 20 years, our esteemed editors as well as this editorial have mainly dealt with issues pertaining strictly to the industries that are in focus.

However, when the survival of humanity, civilized nations and poor countries are at risk, I, with your permission, deviate from my standard industry coverage and focus on the important civilization-threatening factors that are going on in this world today.

The unfortunate events of 9-11 changed the entire civilized world. The senseless killing of 3,000+ innocent victims served as a wake-up call for responsible nations that things need to change in order to control and eliminate terrorism at any cost. I salute President Bush for spearheading the war against terrorism, which is the most important challenge facing civilization today. Although, diplomatically, the Bush government has stated that other countries are also helping in this war, I dont think they are doing nearly enough. If we are truly serious about the eradication of terrorism, the rest of the civilized world must unite and develop an effective program to eliminate the terrorists before they destroy the world. Terrorists have absolutely no value for the lives of the innocent, let alone their own lives, which would indicate that if Saddam or any other terrorist or terrorist countries find a way to deploy nuclear bombs and other weapons of mass destructions, they will not think twice about destroying the entire world. What bothers me immensely is that many of the countries considered U.S. allies in the war on terrorism, especially European countries, are putting their heads in sand and, through hypocrisy, manipulation and double-talking, are trying to play down what I consider the most powerful threat against humanity. Why? Because a) they receive much of their oil from the Middle East and b), they sell tons of their products and services to the developing Middle Eastern countries. For that, they are being short-sighted by ignoring Saddams danger to the entire world. If you need proof that some European countries have a different viewpoint from the U.S., I should point out that the current best selling book in France, LEffroyable Imposture, claims the attack on the Pentagon was carried out by U.S. agents.

The problems do not stop there. The fact is, many organizations in their own way are also threatening the civilized world and the world economy. I will try to briefly explain my personal views on all of the so-called vital organizations that are failing miserably in what they are doing.

The United Nations Must Stop Being Totally Worthless
For the last 25 years, I have been interested as a casual observer of what the United Nations is doing to promote peace and harmony through objective mediation and consultation between all of its members. If you study their record, you will find that they have not done a damn thing that is significant and they have failed completely, miserably. In fact, they are so worthless, I think it is appropriate (if we are going to keep the United Nations as is) to change the initials for the United Nations to TWO, which stands for Totally Worthless Organization!

In todays world, where practically every country is exposed to terrorist attacks of one form or another, the last thing an organization like the United Nations should do is encourage and promote terrorism in the countries that harbor and train terrorists, suicide bombers and suicide murderers. I was shocked to learn that the next President of the Security Council, which is the vital part of the United Nations, will be a representative from Syria. Syria is a dictatorship country that has had a history of supporting, training and promoting terrorist actions for the last several decades. According to a New York Times article, President Assad (the father of the current President of Syria) once completely destroyed an entire town of Syria, killing each and every single living person in that town because he learned that several terrorist groups training in that region were a threat to his throne!

Whats even worse, I understand that at the time of this writing, Syria is harboring several groups of terrorists and suicide bombers. Indeed, the representative from Syria is extremely qualified for the chairmanship of the Security Council to continue to promote terrorism around the globe. What a joke. Need I say more about how utterly worthless the United Nations is?

A Solution To The Problem As most people know, the United Nations, which heavily favors Arab countries, was so biased that Israel refused to allow a group, selected by the United Nations, to attend a summit to investigate a purely fabricated lie otherwise known as the Jenin Massacre. First, that was really a lie and it didnt deserve any investigation. Second, Israel was defending itself by pursuing the terrorists exactly the same way as the United States was following the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Tora Bora and elsewhere in Afghanistan. Many killings were going on in Afghanistan of the terrorist groups as well as some innocent people and the hypocrite members of the United Nations never called for an investigation. Is it a double standard? How else do you define the performance of a totally worthless organization?

My suggestion is that we stop wasting billions of dollars maintaining the UN, save all of that money, lets say save 50 billion dollars, if thats the amount needed to run this worthless organization, and get rid of all of their useless members. We could then turn over the UN building to Donald Trump or another reputable real estate developer to convert it into luxury apartments that could generate at least another 50-100 billion dollars in rent or sales or a combination of the two. This would net an estimated 100 billion dollars, which could be invested intelligently to generate a 5 percent return or 5 billion dollars annually, which could be put into a more worthy cause, i.e., taking care of famine, illiteracy, health care and education of underdeveloped nations, with a portion going toward fighting terrorism!

About Those Broadcast Journalists
While there are many honest, unbiased and truly great broadcast journalists, in recent months a certain portion of them has raised a lot of questions about their mental capacity (or lack thereof). Here are a couple of small examples:

I recall shortly after 9-11, there was a press conference with President Bush at which time the reporters asked so many stupid questions that if had I been in place of Mr. Bush, I would have literally exploded by saying, Im sorry, but I dont have time for stupid questions and have gone on to the next person. One of those idiotic reporters asked the President, When are you going to start the war against Saddam Hussein and how are you going to do it? The question was so stupid it really didnt deserve an answer because a) that is strictly a military secret and b) anyone who has half a brain would know that you dont tell the enemy when and how we are going to come after them because that would only mean more losses of life for U.S. soldiers!! Some idiots.

Obviously, with so much going on in the Middle East, I am practically glued to the television at least 2 hours per day to get the latest reports from the war front. I have a few comments about this, as follows:

• Practically none of the U.S. journalists have a clue about the Middle East, the traditions, religious beliefs and the fanatic influence of that highly complex region.
• Not only do they not know anything about the region, but to make matters worse, some even try to foolishly apply a Western style of legality to countries that have never heard of law or justice or anything like that and have no value for human lives. Just last night, one of the reporters asked a group of students if it is legal for the United States to try to overthrow Saddam Hussein. How stupid can they be? If we dont get rid of him now, he will get rid of the entire world in the very near future.

A Word About Geraldo
Geraldo Rivera also shares the incompetence of some of the people mentioned in this section, except that his reporting, which is highly biased against Israel, is presented in a very sneaky way. He may fool some people by twisting the truth in his reporting, but he is not fooling anyone who knows the area very well and knows journalism very well. In short, many of the broadcast journalists that report on the Middle East war are a disgrace, to put it mildly!

Also as you might have noticed, some of the stations, i.e., CNN, CNBC, MSNBC and FOX News have recently hired a lot of beautiful women. One of these women, who appears on a morning show, recently asked, Where does Saddam Hussein get $25,000 to pay to those suicide bombers families? I suppose that it hadnt occurred to her that Saddam Hussein is sitting on the worlds second-largest oil resources with an estimated revenue of about a billion dollars a month! This makes Marie Antoinette look good!

The Nobel Peace Prize Used To Mean Something!
As a young university student, one of my dreams was to someday win the Nobel Prize for chemistry. At that time, at least, the prize was considered to be the ultimate, and the worlds most highly coveted award for major scientific accomplishments.

However, when the Nobel Peace Prize was given to Yasser Arafat in 1994, it destroyed the worlds respect and value for the once-prestigious award. All you have to do is take a look at the photograph in Figure 1, a New York Post cover story, and you be the judge. Oh well, so much for the Nobel Peace Prize. I must point out that most Palestinians and Israelis want peace, but they are saddled with stubborn leaders.

The Clergymens Sex Abuse And Rapes Of Young Children!
As a child, I was taught to respect and follow the guidance of clergymen and other inspirational leaders whose job was to guide their members and congregations toward good deeds, honest living, meaningful, family-oriented lives and the avoidance of any inhumane behavior. Unfortunately, the recent sex scandals, which in my humble opinion must be punished in the severest possible way, tarnished the image of the Church and clergymen as a whole. It wasnt long ago when a TV evangelist named Jim Bakker was arrested for embezzlement and improper handling of donations to the Church. These so-called religious authorities, I would think above all else, should set a good example for everyone to follow. Unfortunately, they too have lost the respect of many religious people.

The Enron/Arthur Andersen Scandal Was Another Disaster That This World Can Do Very Well Without
Everyone knows about the Enron debacle. Its senior management, through many illegal financial manipulations, including having 800 offshore satellite companies and funneling monies back and forth and hiring the best accounting firm that money can buy (Arthur Andersen) to cover it all up and shred the evidence, destroyed the lifetime savings of many of their employees. By lying to the public about its actual financial standing and with Arthur Andersens around-the-clock, weeklong shredding of the evidence, Enron must be ranked as the worlds leading corporate scandal in history. In my judgment, the entire senior management of Enron must be put in jail for life, their assets must be sold and the proceeds divided among the employees who lost their lifetime savings. In addition, similar treatment should also be given to Arthur Andersens senior management for obstruction of justice, as well as those who participated in this crime. Nothing less than the most severe punishment for these people will stop future corporations from carrying out similar abuse and destroying the life savings of their hard-working employees, not to mention the savings of their shareholders.

Financial Services Scandals
As if all of the above problems were not enough, here is another one. The hopelessly corrupt Wall Street research analyst groups and their ties to investment bankers is, of course, a clear case of conflict of interest. It is unbelievable that several financial services companies recommended Enron as a buy stock when the company was dangerously close to bankruptcy.

Obviously, major organizations that we thought were trustworthy proved to be mixing up church and state. It is clear that the analysts were getting their bonuses and directions from the investment banking side of their companies by promoting and/or ranking the undeserving stocks as a buy or strong buy. This generated a lot of commission fees for the parent company. Unbelievably, they turned around a month later and gave out just the reverse advice by saying we should sell this stock every time generating more commission for the company and/or inflicting further damage to innocent investors who used to trust these financial services companies. The integrity of financial services companies and accounting firms is vitally important, and unless this problem is solved, the stock market is not going anywhere, which renders the financial machinery of the world idle. Once again, the Attorneys General of New York and elsewhere are looking very hard at the activities of financial services companies and I hope tight restrictions will be implemented so the Wall Street brokerage analysts will be restricted from recommending, buying or selling stocks of companies that are related to their parent company through their investment banking divisions. Since the news of this scandal broke out, billions of dollars have been lost and the investors had to pay the bill.

Those Stupid And Ill-Advised Mega-Mergers Continue!
Through my limited knowledge of the financial systems, M&A and small investments in the stock market, I have learned many things. Among them is that mega-mergers in excess of 50-100 billion dollars and above will rarely succeed. This is very simple to prove if you look at a tremendous amount of these mega-mergers that have turned out to be nothing but a disaster. I will venture to say that at least a trillion dollars of market value has been destroyed through these mega-mergers.

When the AOL and Time Warner merger was announced, it was positioned as the greatest merger of the century. I told every one of my investing friends that I guaranteed this merger was doomed to fail. Here we are two and a half years later and guess what? That so-called greatest merger has turned into the worst merger of the century. AOL/Time Warner reported a loss of 54 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2002. This is the highest one-quarter loss reported by any company in history. If you look at other similar disasters, such as the failure of the AT&T and NCR merger, the failure of WorldCom and MCI, the failure of DaimlerChrysler and many others, it becomes readily apparent that these mega-mergers do not work. The investors stand to lose additional billions of dollars. The only people who are the winners in such events are the ego-driven senior executives of both companies that will end up with a golden parachute when the merger itself fails. They will get fired with tons of money, while investors lose once again. Oh well, what else is new? Lets move on!

Last but not least

The Greenspan Effect
As I indicated in my March 2001 Publishers Outlook entitled, How Do You Screw Up A Perfectly Great Economy? Ask Alan Greenspan Mr. Greenspan, by being unnecessarily conservative, started to raise interest rates a couple of years ago, which sent the once outstanding economy of the United States and the world into a tailspin, adding to the worlds miseries economically. The argument he gave for needlessly increasing the interest rates was the threat of inflation. But in reality, there was absolutely no inflation, but once again, Mr. Greenspans ill-advised action caused Wall Street and the investment community to lose in excess of a trillion dollars in investment values.

In Summary
Considering the above, one has no choice but to ask the question, What is happening in the world today and can anyone do something good for humanity for a change? As usual, I welcome your comments.

Also, I invite you all to attend TMCs latest event, BiometriTech Conference & Exposition June 25-27 at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City. Please see www.biometritechexpo.com for details

Sincerely,

Nadji Tehrani
TMC Chairman, CEO and
Executive Group Publisher
ntehrani@tmcnet.com

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