Levitt Letter Extra News

Two stories follow, provoking a little less sympathy for the OPEC oil sheiks’ request.

Story 1:

Sheik flies Lamborghini 6,500 miles to Britain for oil change

By Neil Syson, The Sun www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1493291.ece

Flashy ... the Lamborghini is same model as Batman’s

Oil be blowed ... the supercar at Heathrow with Qatar Airways jet

A rich Arab sent his Lamborghini on a 6,500-mile round trip to Britain for a service.

The £190,000 supercar was put on a scheduled flight from Qatar to Heathrow – then flown BACK after the oil check.

Money was no object as the flight would have cost the owner – thought to be a Sheikh – around £20,000.

The move sparked fury from green campaigners.

An airport worker said: “This car doesn’t have a carbon footprint – more of a crater.”

The overall cost of sending the Lamborghini to London for the oil change would have cost more than £23,000.

His black-and-gold supercar costs £3,552 to service at an approved dealer – on top of the £20,000 to freight from Qatar to Britain.

The Murciélago LP640 – driven by Batman in movie The Dark Knight – arrived from the Middle Eastern country on Friday.

It cleared customs and was trucked to specialist mechanics in London for the service.

On Monday it was flown back 3,250 miles to the oil-rich state where it was collected by the owner.

A cargo handler at Heathrow blasted the car’s environmental damage.

He said: “It would have been far more efficient to fly mechanics out there.”

And Jenny Evans, of pressure group Plane Stupid, said: “This horrifies me. It is another example of how rich people exploit and pollute the planet because of their money.”

She said the role of the super-wealthy in climate change was not properly recognised – while poor people were rapped for going on holiday.

Friends of the Earth’s transport campaigner Richard Dyer said: “Flying a car thousands of miles for a service is ludicrous when planes are one of the most polluting ways to transport goods. We urge the individual to get their car serviced closer to home.”

But David Price, of Lamborghini Club UK, said: “If an owner wants to service his car in that way, it is his choice.

“I’m not surprised. Thankfully the age of excess in some areas continues.”

Lamborghini UK spokeswoman Juliet Jarvis said there could be “kudos” for a Middle Eastern owner in servicing a car in London.

She said the exclusive Italian brand had a network of authorised dealers around the world – and most cars were looked after in the country where they were bought.

But she added: “This sort of thing is not unheard of.”

Qatar Airways confirmed it carried the Lamborghini.

The cars are popular with celebs including Rod Stewart and David Beckham.

Story 2:

The Sultan’s 5,000 personal vehicles

www.sacarfan.co.za/2009/02/whos-personal-car-collection-numbers-over-5000/

If you were rich enough to drive any car you wanted, absolutely any car, and money is no object, what would you go for? A Lamborghini, Bugatti, Mercedes, Aston Martin, or how about something outrageous like a Formula 1 car.

Sultan’s palace

But what if you were truly rich, not just “getting by” like Bill Gates or Sir Richard Branson, but truly rich. The Sultan of Brunei is the richest man on earth; he is not counted on rich lists because he does not earn his money it comes from his tiny country’s oil reserves which are essentially his. Estimates of his wealth pop up from time to time but the truth is that no one really knows how much money he has.

Sultan of Brunei

So which car do you think the richest man in the world drives, well if you said Lamborghini, you’d be correct, if you said Aston Martin that would be right too, and if you guessed F1 Race-car you would have been nearly right because he owns every Formula One championship-winning car for the last thirty years.

Sultan’s garage

These cars fit very nicely into his garage which is a bit bigger than your garage at home, it has to be to be able to accommodate the estimated 5000 personal vehicles owned by the Sultan. If he picked one car to drive down to his local corner café for bread and milk each day, it would take him thirteen and a half years to use each one.

Outside the Sultan’s garage

He seems to quite like the Rolls Royce range he has over 500 hundred of those, if you tried unsuccessfully to buy a Rolls during the 1990’s that would be because he accounted for over half of their entire sales for that decade.

Ferrari FX

His collection, which may well be far more than 5000 vehicles, is estimated to have cost over US$4 billion. Filling them all up may be a little expensive, at $1 per litre that’s estimated at a minimum of half a million US dollars.

Mercedes F400

Those that voted for the Lamborghini will be happy to know that he has 20 of those, but he seems to prefer the sleeker appearance of the Ferrari’s as he opted for 367 of those, Jaguars are nice little run-arounds, all 177 of them, as are the 362 Bentleys.

Mercedes CLK-GTR

He’s also not into buying boring, run-of-the-mill BMW’s (185 of them) and likes something a bit more exotic such as the Bentley Dominator 4X4 and Bentley Java, Ferrari FX (6), the worlds only right hand drive Mercedes CLK-GTR and the Cizeta Moroder V16T (3).

Cizeta Moroder V16T

Added to the burden of deciding which car to use each day a visitor of the sultan’s garage’s once said: “It can take an hour and a half just to get a certain car out if it’s been parked right at the back.”

By Shmuel Rosner– Chief U.S. Correspondent, www.Haaretz.com

(written in 2007 when Letters From Nuremberg was first published)

There are too many Jews around here, thought the prosecutor, Thomas Dodd. “Col. Kaplan is now here, as a mate I assume for Commander Kaplan. Dr. Newman has arrived… it is all a silly business.” In the prosecution team of the Nuremberg trials, in which Nazi high officials are indicted, there is no need for such number of Jews, that’s what Dodd was thinking. “One would expect that some of these people would have sense enough to put an end to this kind of parade.”

“Grace, my dearest one,” thus Dodd opens many of his letters from those stormy days to his wife. They are very personal, and let the reader peep into the nature of relationships between Thomas and Grace. But these letters also constitute a fascinating historical documentation of the many back stage events of the Nuremberg trials. Dodd was the right hand man of Judge Robert Jackson, the leading prosecutor. He later became a Congressman and a Senator. The letters he sent are now published in a new book, Letters from Nuremberg, authored by his son, Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, with the help of a friend, Lary Bloom. One should assume that timing it is no mere coincidence: Dodd is now running for President.

Focusing of the too-much-Jews letter doesn’t do justice to Dodd. There’s no reason to believe that he didn’t want them around him because of personal dislike or racist prejudice. “You know how I have despised anti-Semitism,” he writes to his wife, who stayed at home, in the US, while he was spending more than a year abroad. The trials failed to make the case against the Nazi persecution of the Jews. They were blamed for war crimes, but left unspoken the truth about the nature of the war they have declared against one particular nation.

“Jews should stay away from this trial – for their own sake,” Dodd explains. He doesn’t want them to supply anti-Semites and isolationists with ammunition – afraid of a possible growing sentiment to describe the war as “war for the Jews.” His son, the Senator, added a foot note reminding readers of comment made by Charles Lindbergh, leading the anti-war movement, back in 1941. Three forces are pushing America to get involved in the war, he said: The Brits, the President, the Jews.

Senator Dodd told me that he doesn’t necessarily agree with the sentiment articulated by his father in the letter sited above. He is convinced, though, that this was an honest assessment. Thomas Dodd really thought the number of Jewish members in the team was bad for the Jews themselves. There was no doubt in the son’s mind that the letters should be published in full, not censored. While speaking to three Jewish reporters about the book, he focused more on its political implications, in the broader sense, that on the events of those long-gone times.

Much more than the content of any letter, this is the really controversial side of this book. The son is using the father’s writings to promote his beliefs regarding foreign policy, the international law, human rights. Quoting them, he is trying building a case against the Bush administration, blaming it for a “fundamental shift” in America’s policy, as far as international norms of justice and the rule of law are concerned. Dodd argues that there’s a stark difference between the way America chose to react to the crimes of the Nazis, hence, his fathers’ letters, and the path it has taken after the events of September 11. In conversation, Dodd agrees that the differences between now and then are more than cosmetic. However, the first part of the book is mostly dedicated to drawing the political lessons he sees fit.

“Civilized nations respond differently,” Dodd says, armed with the proof: these newly released letters. Civilized nations do not execute, hold people in secret prisons indefinitely, circumvent the courts – but rather prosecute. The letters show that this is what the father believed. But most of them don’t deal with politics, or philosophy, but rather describe the daily struggles of a man in a unique position. In the morning, he was questioning Hitler’s deputy, Rudolph Hess; in the evening writing about it to his wife, “He is gone mentally and I doubt that he can answer for his offenses.” In the next letter he describes an encounter between Hess and Herman Goering, the Air-Force chief and second in command to the Fuhrer. “Don’t you recall me?” he asks Hess. “I am really very sorry,” Hess replies. “It is genuine,” writes Dodd. He really couldn’t recognize him.

In one of the most dramatic moments of this trial, Dodd was the one presenting to the world the shrunken head of a Polish prisoner. The photo depicting him holding this dreadful piece of evidence is still memorable. The head was used as a paper holder at the office of a Nazi officer. But from the letters, one learns about the personal relations that developed between Dodd and some defendants. Franz Von Papen, short-time deputy to Hitler and one of the few to be found not guilty at the end of the trial, is called “my friend Papen.”

Dodd the father died relatively young, at the age of 64. His political career ended in turmoil and he was censured by the Senate for personal usage of public funds. His son, as one expects, wants this book to serve as a tribute to the better days of the father (he had many good days and some achievements as a legislator too). He said that publishing the letters now, a decade after they were discovered, is the culmination of a long and slow process. There are many family members involved, and making decisions takes time. If he doesn’t mention the campaign as a reason, one should assume that it is only because this will be just stating the obvious.

No dramatic revelations can be found in this book. But it is a fascinating history lesson, and a great way to learn more about the people taking part in the trial of the century. And as it is always with people, much space is dedicated to rivalries, maneuvers, egos. “The worst of [Colonel Robert] Gill, however, is his disloyalty to Jackson,” writes Dodd about one member of the team. But he also remembers that this is not the everyday trial, that he is playing a part in one great drama. “I like the assignment,” he writes. “It is an important and worthwhile one.”