Stolen Thunder

The Future of Islam

2009-11-08T17:36:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, I wrote an unpopular piece reminding readers that anger against Islam for the actions of a non-representative few is a dangerous thing, a vicious prejudice that is not only contrary to the American spirit, but also works against American interests in the long term. I presented two contentions in that article, that prejudice against Muslims in general is immoral and foolish, and that Islam needs to recognize the need to define its creed and standards in order to prosper and grow in the long run. This article examines the possible courses available to Islam in the next decade.

Islam was created through the teachings of the prophet Mohammed in the 7th Century. The faith spread through conquest of territory and the coerced conversion of defeated Arabs. In its first century a major dissent rose in Islam after the death of Husayn in 680, and the creation of the Shi’a sect. Islam continued to invade and conquer territory, entering Africa proper and also Europe, the campaign stopped at the Battle of Tours in 732. A short age of prosperity began, but the conflicts between Sunni and Shi’a sects continued, and the Shi’a also split, with Isma’iliyaa extremists rising within the Shiites. The rise of the Fatimid caliphs in the 10th Century was soon followed with a schism between the Fatimids and the Umayyads, diluting Islamic political clout. The Crusades came after that, further fragmenting Islam until the reign of Saladin, which proved to be the exception to the decline of Islam’s potency. The Mongol invasion in the 13th Century ended significant Islamic power outside of a few regional pockets. Although Islam continued to expand as a faith, by the 14th Century the original Islamic territories became the property of the Ottoman Empire, which remained the case through 1918.

The 20th Century was noted for political instability and the rise of Fascism and Marxism. Islamic political theorists bought into both concepts to varying degrees, which is why Middle Eastern militants aligned with both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, especially Palestinian front organizations. At the same time, Muslim extremists tied religious fervor to political goals, especially through the proto-terror Muslim Brotherhood, which was connected to extortion, election fraud, and assassinations as early as 1924. This led to a shadow government effect in most regional governments through 1972.

Muslim extremists had pressed for the exit of all “colonial” powers from the region following World War 2, and after the United Kingdom began to withdraw from the Gulf in 1971, the United States became the focus of Islamic Nationalism, especially during the time of the short-lived United Arab Republic. Political and economic pressure mounted, along with escalations of violence against businessmen, but with negligible results until the Iranian Revolution. Islamic terrorism became more and more organized as the PLO’s mercenary strategy was replaced by groups like Islamic Jihad and HizBollah, and nation-sponsorship of terrorism became the norm. Withdrawal of US forces from Lebanon, and the futility of the campaigns in Sudan and Somalia encouraged Islamic Fascists to pursue aggressive strategies targeting any government or leader allied with the United States or Western democracy. The key to Islamic Fascism is that it represents the views of a small minority of Muslims, but achieves its goals through brutality and threats. Islamic Fascists promote their political agenda through a campaign touting nationalism and supposed piety, counting on the lack of a focused political identity among Muslims to preclude effective rebuttal. Democracy is anathema to Fascism, and so democratic parties and coalitions are the natural target for Islamic violence. The battleground for the past three decades has been cultural disinformation versus globalism.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, Islamic Fascists played on the old myth of American Imperialism and the inconsistency of American policy regarding Islam. The Fascists have been able to play up the lie that Americans don’t respect Islam or Muslims to have equal rights. It was this thinking that inspired Al Qaeda’s campaign of 9/11; Osama bin Laden made no secret that he hoped to spur a US-led invasion of Afghanistan, in the belief that the US would fare as poorly as the USSR in that campaign. The Islamic Fascists have basically followed the same strategy for 85 years, which makes it simple, but not easy, to defeat them. The trick is to convince Islam to create its Renaissance.

Islam is a religion built as much on a cult of personality and on political ambition as it was on faith in a God of truth and righteousness. That said, most Muslims are peaceful and wish no harm to other people. The splintered organization of Islam, however, and the cultural suppression of dissent by lay people has allowed for the Fascists to gain an advantage in polemics and in control of the major political organizations. Damascus and Teheran may not look very much like Tammany Hall, but there is no mechanism for grassroots political movements in most Middle East countries, nor any venue for reform. Part of that comes from the lack of history in most political parties. People in the West too often forget that democracy is uncommon in Islamic countries. The royal families did not want to encourage parties they could not control, and Islamic-focused parties similarly expect to direct their members and voters, not answer to the public. A caste system continues to exist in many countries, and there is genuine fear of the potential chaos which might ensue if democracy were given free rein. The contrived support for Palestine, the drummed-up hatred of Israel and the Jews and America, the contempt for western-style protection of due process and law, and the imbalance between contemporary moral values and the harsh conditions under Sharia are artificial constructs likely to fail if given a true public choice. And despite the history of rigid control by Muslim hardliners, the trend since 2001 has been for reform. While by Western standards there is much work to be done, governments in most Middle Eastern nations have adopted a more pro-American stance. Students have shown public support for democracy and opposition to dictatorships and oligarchies. And most important, revenue from foreign organizations in support of terrorist groups has diminished, been cut off completely in some quiet but vitally important efforts. The reduced effectiveness of terror as a political instrument has freed an increasing number of government officials to make decisions freely on the basis of the commonwealth, the good of the nation and its people. The tide is shifting, but more fundamentally, the channel now exists for Muslims to decide where to take their religion.

The Christian religion has made its way through debate, dissent, schism, internal conflicts and more than a few wars. But the faith grew most steadily and achieved its best results when politics was kept separate from the doctrine. Islam may do well to learn that lesson.

But can Islam, which was founded on political goals as much as religious beliefs, accept a foundation of pure spirituality and ethics? The answer to that question is the essential directive for Islam. The evidence against the Dar-al-Islam campaign is overwhelming; the Islamic Empire reached its zenith less than a century after the death of Mohammed, but never came close since then. The Islamic standard of living, once praised as the highest in the world, has also fallen far behind many other nations and cultures. If governments are based on historic Islamist objectives, the most likely consequences are violence, instability, and poverty. From that perspective, it would be absurd and cruel to the world’s Muslims to pursue what is a hopeless strategy.

The problem comes from the belief among extremist Muslims that world conquest is the only strategy acceptable to Allah. While certain verses in the Quran have been used to claim holy direction for such a bloody plan, many more condemn the unjust and cruel practices of terrorists and Fascist regimes. Many of the arguments made by the Islamist Fascists are actually based on controversial interpretation of statements alleged to have been made by Mohammed or early Islamic leaders, such as Ali. This is significant, given how Christian militants during the reign of leaders like the Emperor Constantine or Pope Leo X tried to justify Christian conquest in verses from the Book of Daniel or Revelation. The Muslim quandary is more difficult, given the historical example of Mohammed himself, but the Muslim faith can adjust its goals according to its precepts. If peace and goodwill are incorporated into the faith through active discussion of the morals and plan of Islam, leaders in major mosques and madrasas can begin to lay a foundation upon which Islam can continue its growth, while at the same time accomplishing its secular goals through advancement of the human condition.

Why should the leaders of Islam choose to do this? In the first place, many imams have urged that a simple reading of the Quran leads the individual to accept Allah’s will, which is peaceful and just. Abandoning the historical excuse of violence and focusing on the healing and constructive teachings of Mohammed would strengthen that argument and make Islamic apologetics more effective, and defang many of the splinter groups which have hijacked major sects in the past. The hashasheen are a thing of the past; there is no reason why terrorism as a path to the will of Allah should not also be rejected.

Second, Islam remains splintered across the world. In addition to the continuing schism between Sunni and Shi’a, a number of extremist cults have poisoned many schools of theology. Just as there are Christians who do not agree completely with their denomination’s dogma and there are Jews and Buddhists who have not been temple in years because they find the stricter requirements burdensome, there are many Muslims whose commitment to the pillars is strong, but who have doubts about what their role is in Islam. A leader who advances the purpose of democracy as service to Allah may be able to gain a great deal of the public trust. Certainly even within Islam there are gen-Y people, who demand to be persuaded rather than accept orders without good reason.

And third, the huge growth in Islam comes from its promise to believers, that Allah’s will is made manifest in the faith. True imams and mullahs will recall that for most of history, the work of teachers in the faith has been to help families and communities, to protect the innocent and advance hope. Conquest has always been the aberration, and it only takes a charismatic leader at the right time to lead Islam to its rightful, peaceful, place in the world.

The Balance Between Judgment and Hysteria

2009-11-07T13:32:00.003-06:00

Thursday's shootings at Fort Hood have naturally evoked strong emotions. And the media and some prominent political leaders have taken all-too-predictable postures, two of which I feel compelled to address. The falsehood that Islam is aligned with terrorism and malice, and the falsehood that Islam is a victim in such situations as this, with innocents who worry about an unreasonable backlash. Both contentions are wrong.

First, about Islam. There are over 1.5 billion practicing Muslims in the world. So far, there have been 221 terrorist incidents in 2009 through November 2, so even if we say that every single one of those were committed by a Muslim (including attacks in Greece, Ireland, South Africa, and the Starbucks bomb in New York) and that two dozen Muslims were involved on average in each incident, that only implicates 5,304 Muslims and means that over 99.999% of Muslims worldwide had nothing to do with terrorism so far this year. Frankly, if even one percent of Muslims worldwide had it in for America, or even against Israel, we'd see an unprecedented level of violence and murders, because even one percent of Islam would be a force of 15 million terrorists, and no realistic estimate of terrorist activity has ever come close to a million total, much less 15 million. Between Iraq and Afghanistan, over 50 million Muslims have come into close and regular contact with U.S. troops. While there are places of hostility against the West and the U.S. in particular, and some spots rank with pure evil and hatred, the soldiers who have been there will tell you that it has much more to do with culture and politics than religion. For most Muslims, their faith is a private matter between them and God, a question of living honestly and by their best ideals, and hatred towards another human is a sin to be avoided. Most Muslims love their families and their nation, and have a generally tolerant outlook towards everyone else.

So what happens when someone like Nidal Hasan (allegedly) decides to kill innocents while screaming the name of his god? To me, once you get past the emotion and look at the facts, pretty much the same thing as any fanatic who goes psychotic. Hasan had no wife or girlfriend, he had no close friends, even his family and those at Fort Hood who had the most contact with him note that he was distant and aloof. While Hasan complained to some family that he was being mocked for his Muslim beliefs, other Muslims at Fort Hood emphasized that the military accommodated them at all times and they felt proud to serve with the men and women in the U.S. Military. When you dig down to the bottom of it, Hasan was a lot like another Islamist Loser: Khalid Sheikh Muhammad.

Does this look like a chick magnet? A guy who wants to raise a family and be a good husband and father, someone who thinks first about his moral duties and personal integrity?

No. In any culture, this guy is a loser, albeit a clever and dangerous psychopathic loser. He and the real world were quits, so he joined up with a group of other losers who tried to compensate for their personal failures by blaming everyone else. And that is what hapened with Major Hasan. He became bitter about his place in the world, and decided to punish everyone else. That's really the only way to explain how someone could decide to kill a roomful of innocent people, most of whom he had no grievance whatsoever, including a 21-year-old pregnant soldier, a band member, two soldiers who had just returned from Iraq, and two others who were being deployed to Afghanistan just as Major Hasan was scheduled to go, among others. This was not a blow against some imperial power, it was the impotent scream of a coward.

Islam has its share of such cowards, to be sure, but so has Christianity and other religions. Remember the cowards who bombed abortion clinics in the name of Christ? Anti-war protesters who think nothing of attacking soldiers in the name of peace? Look at the troubles in Northern Ireland for nearly a century - there is nothing in either the Anglican or Roman Catholic dogmas to excuse the kidnappings, torture, bombings, and murders that happened there for so long. Consider the tribal conflicts in Rwana and Burundi not so long ago, or the cold-blooded extermination practices of Miloslavic and his Serbs. Even Buddhism, founded on clear commitment to reverance for life, has its share of extremists, including Triad groups who see conflict in murdering people then going to temple to be 'spiritually cleansed', so they won't feel bad about their crimes. My point is that some people will abuse the tenets of any religion.

So why do Muslims not march in outrage over the hijacking of their faith? For one thing, I don't believe they feel they should have to state what they think is obvious. Even though most serial killers are white males, I have never felt it necessary to point out that most white males would never commit murder. Even though many crimes were committed in the name of Christ over the years, most notably during the various Inquisitions, even atheists and Muslims recognize that Christianity in its essence had nothing to do with the spirit of evil which tortured and killed in the name of the Prince of Peace.

It is true that certain teachings of Mohammed are troubling to non-Muslims, but let's not forget that other beliefs have had similar problem areas. Most Mormons today live exemplary lives of charity, tolerance and humility, and so have very little in common with the racist, xenophobic Joseph Smith. Many Scientologists are open-minded and just want to live by their creed, and so have almost nothing in common with the arrogant and greedy L. Ron Hubbard. Come to that, I am a Southern Baptist but have little in common with most of the denomination's leading ministers. I'm not saying they aren't fine men and honest, but a man whose career focuses on only one creed and point of view has trouble seeing things the same way as a working man who sees real life from the perspectives of the street and the diversity of a truly global community.

Also, Islam is rooted in the culture of the Middle East. While American Muslims live in the modern world, their faith comes from a place where women and the young are expected to give way to the men and the elders, where criticism is uncommon because it so often leads to conflict and escalation, and where challenging those in authority is seen as rebellion rather than reasonable doubt and skepticism. Even the Roman Catholics have their Jesuits to challenge assumptions; Islam has not yet reached the point where theologians can help the faith become relevant to changing social and cultural conditions. Whatever he was, the prophet Mohammed did not prepare his people for a world of cultural diversity and demographic trend shifts.

That brings us to the second problem. Islam likes to play the victim card, even when a Muslim is the criminal. It is very difficult for a Mullah to explain why a man like Osama bin Laden, educated and from a good family, would countenance the murder of innocents on a Hitler-like scale. So they evade the question and try to leverage a sense of guilt from the victims, because the United States is a generous and open-minded country, one of very few willing to examine its own behavior in a critical way. No one in the Saudi royal family, for instance, has ever shown an interest in criticizing their own policies and behavior in the past, and the Palestinans are even worse. These guys have made the wrong choice in every major decision, since they chose to back the Nazis in World War 2. But rather than consider the foundation of so many bad choices, Palestinian leaders chose instead to insult and attack Isreal, precisely because Israel is careful of its behavior and considerate of the rights of Pelstinans in most cases.

In the Unted States, Islam has always shown that it sensed its place in America as a tolerated segment of the population, rather than a welcome member of the community. This comes to some degree from a certain discomfort with the way Muslims speak and act and dress, but it also comes from Muslims' self-chosen segregation. Muslims do not eat the same foods as most Americans, do not attend the same entertainment and recreational events as most Americans, and do not treat Americans as close friends in most cases. Islam is not liberal in the traditional sense, many Muslims act as if Americans carry a kind of infection, and so it is difficult for a non-Muslim to be close friends with a believer. Even in the heart of America, Muslims often act is if they must live apart. This happens with other faiths, of course. Hasidic Jews, for example, also cordon themselves off from contact with Gentiles and they have strict dress and dietary codes which set them apart. Some fundamentalists also dress, eat, and behave in ways that seem strange to most Americans. But there are many more Muslims than Hasidic Jews or fundamentalist Christians, and so the segregated culture becomes more obvious.

The acts of a Hasan or other psychotic Muslims is an issue that has no easy answer, but it is important for non-Muslims to recognize that such behavior is anomolous to Islam, just as it is important for Islam as a whole to recognize that these extremists must be denounced in the interest of understanding what makes someone a Muslim, and what does not.

The Good Grudge

2009-11-01T10:28:00.002-06:00

Job hunters are under a lot of stress. In the first place, few people are looking for a job as a luxury, and almost as few feel that they have most of the control in getting the job they want. For all the books, seminars and classes in pursuing your ideal career, I’d venture to say that while most people like their jobs for the most part, fewer than one in forty would say they are in the job of their dreams, and that they accomplished their job through a disciplined job search. Luck plays a role, for bad as well as good fortune. Accordingly, it seems reasonable to me that people whose job search is slow or less than satisfying may display indications of their discontent. It’s only human to reflect the stress of the endeavor, exasperation of the bull-headed bureaucracy, and anger at a system which seems to reward appearance over substance, and style over real ability. Oddly enough, many hiring managers also suffer the same stress, of trying to find truly qualified candidates in an ocean of poseurs. But it’s more difficult for the individual than the business.

The people trying to help job seekers, pretty much unanimously, emphasize the need for an upbeat, positive attitude. Generally, they are right. It is important not to be negative about your past work experience when speaking to recruiters and at interviews, it is essential to be positive about your skills and what you can do for your company if they offer you the position. But at the same time, a lot of things get attacked as “negative” when they are actually important, in more than one way. For one thing, the people offering advice are sometimes wrong. One discussion board I joined had an administrator telling everyone that they needed to join groups, then make sure to use their groups as a network to find leads towards jobs. Having been part of a number of groups apart from professional societies, I can promise that such behavior is a very poor idea, and would likely kill your credibility and poison your network. That’s because special interest groups exist for the specific purpose of the group, and members don’t like or respect people who join just so they can advance their own interests, especially when those interests have nothing to do with the group’s purpose. For example, I spent a number of years as a high school official in three sports, and each sport had a local chapter with weekly meetings to go over events, rule changes and interpretations, game films, and anything else related to the sport. A member of any of these chapters is expected to come to the meetings to learn about how to be a better sports official. While it’s fine to discuss informal and personal items, even then those topics tend to be related to sports; loving the sport is why these guys become officials in the first place. So some first-year member who starts trying to find out if the chapter members can help him find job leads, is not going to be considered legitimate; the topic is just plain wrong. And many groups I have belonged to have demonstrated a similar attitude. So the administrator of that job-seeker group was absolutely wrong, and was actually hurting members with her advice. So while positive attitudes and finding inventive ways to expand your professional network are good things, it is also important to rein in wild, untested theories and assumptions. It’s also necessary to deal with your grudges.

With very few exceptions, everyone in a job search situation has some bad feelings lurking around. While I agree that you should focus on your skills, experience, and positive attitude when applying and interviewing for a job, it is also important to deal with the things which cause you anger, resentment, or other negative emotions. After all, in most cases the person who lost the job did not deserve to lose his job, and even those employees who could blame themselves for their job loss often have good qualities to their work which they may feel should have been considered. Also, the way in which the company lets employees go is often a cause for unhappiness, and then there is the difficulty of the job search itself. Put it all together, and you have a condition where the stress and frustration needs an outlet, ideally in a way where it helps the individual move forward in their work search. Rather than tell people to suppress or hide their grudges, assistance groups should help people find ways to turn their grudge to good purpose.

As I mentioned earlier, I agree that when making an application or in an interview, the focus must be on how your skills help the company and how your attitude is positive and team-centered. But you need to deal with the weight and fire of your negative side, and find ways to use that to your advantage. For instance, I once had a boss, pretty high up in his company, who was afraid that his managers would discover they were underpaid and quit on him. His solution was to attack, harass and demean those managers at every opportunity, really rip them up so they would be in constant fear of being fired for some trivial (or even nonexistent) mistake, and never realize their rights, even though any one of us would have been fired on the spot if we had treated our staffs the way we were ourselves being treated. At first, I and the other managers just took the abuse, but years later I reflected on the behavior and used it to remind myself of the importance of actively listening to my people, to make sure my behavior was as ethical and courteous as I believed it to be. This not only helped my relations with my staff in my next three jobs, it also helped me get promoted when my consideration earned me credibility as someone who did what he preached.

Finding positive uses for negative experiences is one way to deal with your grudges. Another important use, however, is to talk about them in a confidential setting. Let’s be clear, I am not saying you should ever give potential employers indications that you might be a malcontent at their company or that you can’t let go of bad experiences, but it’s important to recognize valid events, and frankly just as every company sooner or later suffers from a bad or dishonest employee, so too most of us have had the misfortune to work for a company which was unethical and dishonest. Imagine someone who quit working at Enron in 2000, before it came out how corrupt its officers were. Imagine someone who left WorldCom, or someone who was an auditor for Arthur Andersen, who quit because of how those companies did business. Looking back, not only would it make no sense to praise a former employer whose business practices are now documented in ethics textbooks as egregious examples of criminal behavior, it would also make perfect sense for these individuals to feel that they had been badly used for staying true to higher ethical standards.

When you have to find a new job, you also look at the horizon in every direction, and that includes things you did not like about past jobs, things you hope to avoid the next time around. In a best-case situation, you can apply those lessons at your new job, avoiding the damage done in the prior experience. Recognizing that high-level bosses tended to berate and ignore the floor staff at one job helped me focus on selling bosses on opening informal feedback channels at another, beyond the usual ‘open door’ claim that is made so often. The experience of support for a project evaporating because the superior forgot about it, reminded me to include update reports on pending projects to superiors, including reference to their prior written support, to keep the idea fresh and familiar. Almost any bad experience can be useful in building tools to prevent it from happening later on. So even a grudge can be a good thing, if you use it to positive effect.

Finally, it needs to be said that humans are not machines. The facts of a situation can be handled rationally, but the effects carry emotional weight. There needs to be a way to deal with mistreatment and injustice suffered in a job, even if it’s just that you were sometimes under-recognized or happen to be one of the employees in your group laid off in a company reorganization. I notice that the help groups always point out that there is no “stigma” in being let go these days, which is a help on one level, but being laid off always has impact, and while you may intellectually understand that there was no personal insult meant, being laid off when you have been doing good work and were relatively happy at your job will always carry the emotional weight that you were selected to be let go, a sense that the work you did was not recognized the way you hoped it should be, that your skills and experience were not valued enough to be kept on board. If you’re like me, at some point you may even wonder why your value to the company was lower than the old furniture in the reception – there are chairs that have almost no value anymore, yet they are kept forever, yet in any downturn there are many good employees let go. Understanding the economics of the variable cost of human capital does not satisfy the sense of injustice which comes from being considered not only not indispensable, but as disposable assets of little consequence. We all like to believe that we matter, and being let go is an assault on that sense. It is only reasonable, therefore, that while the sense should be managed in a productive way, there is a valid need to address that grudge. The grudge is authentic, even if the help groups say it must be suppressed. I would argue that it is far healthier to recognize that the grudge is real, that it exists for valid reasons, and that it can and should be applied to good purpose in personal reflection and planning for the future. The short version may be as simple as 'don’t get fooled again’, but in a less cynical sense it also carries the value of hard-earned experience, unique lessons that can be applied to real world situations, and which may have specific value to your new company and team.

Regional and Industry Recession Effects

2009-10-28T12:05:00.002-05:00

Patrick Jankowski, the Vice-President of Research for the Greater Houston Partnership, spoke Tuesday about the recession and its effects, both nationally and in Houston. His lecture was informative and fascinating, as it reminded our group of an important point about economics – local economics are influenced by national economics, but are not directly controlled by it. That is, while the entire nation is in a recession, different regions, industries, and demographic classes are effected by that recession, and the recovery from that recession is of varying lengths and difficulty, as well.

Take Detroit, for example. Detroit stands out among U.S. cities because, according to economic data, the city has been losing jobs (that is, fewer jobs have been created than have been lost in consecutive months) since May 2000, and currently suffers a 22.2% unemployment rate, one of 13 metropolitan areas with unemployment of 15% or higher, and 117 with unemployment at or above 10%.

This gives Detroit the unfortunate distinction of having one of the highest unemployment rate among metropolitan areas in the United States, as well as the longest recession specific to a metropolitan area. El Centro, California, has the worst unemployment at 30.1%, but El Centro is about one-three-hundredth the size of Detroit and has been in a condition of recession only since 2008.

It’s interesting to note that El Centro’s job base is agricultural, with significant retail and service sectors, while Detroit’s job base was heavily committed to the auto and truck building industry.

The flip side would be to consider those metropolitan areas which are not suffering badly from the recession. 12 metropolitan areas have unemployment rates ranging from 4.8% down to 2.9%, which would be envied by most of the nation. Three cities in North Dakota, two in Nebraska, two in South Dakota, two in Iowa, and one each in Utah, Kansas, and Montana make up that happy club.

It is reasonable, on the available data, to say that smaller towns have handled the recession with lower unemployment and shorter duration of job loss than have the major cities.

Industry matters in unemployment, as well. The highest unemployment by industry is in construction, durable goods manufacturing, leisure and hospitality services, business services and information technology, in that order. As a sector, government workers have by far the lowest unemployment rate, at 4.2%.

The landscape from the industry unemployment shows that all businesses are cutting non-essential costs, including research and development, growth activity, and service activities. Government, following its historical pattern, is making no effort at all to scale back costs or headcount. The problem there is that as foreclosures rise and tax revenue from income and sales falls, an inevitable shortfall will occur at most government levels, creating an incentive to raise tax rates at the time when taxpayers would most resent such actions. Possibility of a political backlash increases significantly for the 2010 and 2012 election cycles.

Mr. Jankowski also presented his forecast for economic recovery from the recession. In general, the recession will technically be over for most of the country by mid-to-late 2010, meaning that the economic conditions which define a recession will no longer be in place, but the effects of the recession will linger for some time afterwards. Specifically, Mr. Jankowski warned that it will take from one to four more years for the jobs lost in the recession to be replaced in full, to the extent that each metropolitan area will produce GDP equal or greater to what it was prior to the recession. That means it will be anywhere from 2010 to 2013 before the jobs lost in this recession are replaced at the same professional and wage level. And that cheery projection does not address the loss of career growth; the projection is that people who lost/lose their jobs in 2008-2012 will spend between 12 and 48 months finding a position equal to where they were when they lost their job; the savings lost while unemployed and the career growth which ordinarily would have happened in that time will be permanently lost, which may have significant meaning when the individual retires. Young workers will be competing with people still younger and cheaper than themselves, but with no superior experience or position to use to their advantage, and older workers will have to delay retirement or forget it altogether, as their savings decay from the cost of being unemployed. As a result, the effects of this recession will be felt by many people for a long time to come. In many situations the damage may be permanent.

Defensive Staffing

2009-10-23T14:37:00.000-05:00

Many job seekers get frustrated by the time and effort it takes to get a response from potential employers. Many times it seems that the HR departments of most companies exist only to prevent applicants from actually speaking to people who need new employees, and the nature of the process is not unlike a minefield – you have to find out about the position, successfully apply and make your way past the computer screener, the phone interview, the initial interview in person, to make it to the point where you are speaking to someone – perhaps – who would actually be making the hiring decision, all the while risking immediate elimination if someone inside the company is given the job, someone reaches the hiring manager personally, or the company decides not to fill the position after all. But for all of that, companies have worries as well, and the big one is the fear that someone may interview well enough to win the job, but prove a bad choice when they have locked in the position. It’s difficult for a company to let someone go once they have hired them without committing to a period of training and review, and even then the position has to be opened and applicants considered all over again, losing time and spending resources. Most companies would love some way to insure their choice, especially for a position that needs to be filled quickly but which needs both competency and a good fit with the company. And that brings me to the professional contract-to-hire position.

Many companies use contractors, but most often for low-level responsibilities and without the option for permanent hires. That is, a contractor often has to be exceptional to be offered a permanent position. This comes from budget concerns and the types of jobs filled, as many of them are seasonal or specific to a limited project. However, in recent months that thinking has changed a bit, as recruiters have offered a more enticing option – a sort of ‘no long commitment’ contract for managers and skilled professionals. The contractor in these cases would be hired for a specific project, usually lasting six months to a year, but the company would fill not only staff positions but management positions as well, and if the contractor performs up to a certain level, they might be offered a permanent position at the same level or even higher. For instance, a contractor might be hired to head a strategic project lasting six months, but if he surpasses a certain level of proficiency and ability, he might be offered the role of managing the whole department. This can be done most often in companies where managers have shifting responsibilities, and a new manager may be brought on to ease the workload of existing managers. While specifics have been closely guarded by the companies involved, informal accounts exist of even senior managers being hired in this way at some companies. While the practice is too new to be judged on its strategic value to the companies, the concept demonstrates a way by which a firm may take on high-level talent without committing for a long term until the new hire proves his or her worth.

Career Building: A Look from Reality

2009-10-21T17:55:00.002-05:00

Every so often, I have read up on the latest books and articles on the subject of career building. The idea seems simple enough; we all understand that the ideal job situation is much more than just getting a job somewhere and hoping for the best. We all would like to believe that we can improve our opportunities and find, if not the perfect job, a position which meets our ideal or at least where we enjoy the work and its benefits. Trouble is, most of us are working somewhere where we dislike something about the job. It may be the pay, the company culture, the office politics, or maybe it’s the location or some of the specific duties, but for most of us there’s always something. Speaking for myself, I have always been able to enjoy my work and I have great loyalty to all the companies which brought me onto their teams, but even then I could not ever say the position I had was “ideal”.

Some of that was education. My BA was in English. That’s a long story, but generally it came down to indecision and a counselor who assured me that I could do “anything” with an English degree. The real world, it turns out, differed in that opinion. So, it became clear to me that I needed a better degree. Since I love Accounting, I decided I wanted to earn a CPA license, and to do that required not only a slew of Accounting courses, but also a set of Business courses as well. So, I pursued and earned an MBA with a concentration in Accounting. Did it with a 3.94 GPA too, which got me into an honor society, Beta Gamma Sigma. I felt pretty good about my progress.

The plan at the time I graduated with my MBA was this: One reason I love Accounting, is that every business needs accountants, good ones. But more, a successful business needs accountants with management experience, for the plain reason that you have to see first-hand the effect of accounting decisions. You can talk about Activity-Based Costing, or Managerial Accounting strategies, but they need to be understood at the pointy end of the business to really grasp how the decision will affect the company. That’s something I knew I could provide for any employer, the ability to connect real-world effects to theoretical decisions. So, I figured that after earning my MBA, I would try to transfer to the Accounting department at my company, maybe work as an internal auditor while completing my educational requirements to sit for the CPA exams. My manager at the time was very supportive and genuinely wanted me to succeed in this track. However, when my company was bought out by another company in May of 2009, that all changed. The new company has its own accounting staff, and they do not plan to expand the Houston staff. That left me in a sort of drift for my career plans. Until reorganization and layoffs came in late September. Being laid off changed my career search from keep-this-job-until-I-get-a-better-fit to must-find-work.

That was more than a month ago. In job search terms, five weeks is not so very long. But when you go that long without much success in even getting interviews, you begin to get tired and frustrated. Part of it is the economy; in a down economy, professional positions are not usually filled in the last quarter. Part of it is the nature of a professional job hunt; if you have higher-than-average salary expectations or specialized skills, there will be fewer positions available that match what you are looking to find. And part of it is the stress of just having to find a job; many companies which have had to fill an opening complain about how hard it is to find qualified applicants, while job seekers similarly complain about the difficulty in finding a suitable position. Since the day I was laid off, I have searched every day for jobs, read about more than two hundred positions open for employment (and screened out more than half which either demanded qualifications I did not have, or offered unreasonable compensation – who seriously expects to get an experienced Credit Manager for $30k a year?), applied for more than eighty positions, and had a total of three phone interviews and two face-to-face interviews, counting the one I have tomorrow morning. It’s not a strong return on the effort.

That’s not to say that you should not do everything you can, when searching for work. You never know when, where or just how your next job will turn up, but the one thing I can say for sure is that it won’t show up looking for you while you sit around waiting for it. You have a degree of control in your search, in that you choose what area of work, which companies to apply to, and which jobs to try for. However, unless you happen to have a pile of money from your lottery winnings sitting around, you have a limited amount of time in which to find your next job. Also, the psychological weight of not knowing exactly when your next job will begin makes the passing of time feel longer and more ominous. Intellectually, you understand how long your savings can last, but emotionally the uncertainty is poisonous to your confidence. As a result, after a month or two you begin to question whether your goals are too high, whether you are being too picky in how much you want to be paid, or whether you should accept a position that you would earlier have rejected as a bad choice for your skills and experience. As time passes, the likelihood that you will hold out for a ‘perfect’ fit decreases until, unless you are lucky or very well-connected, it becomes just another thing that would have been nice but does not happen in real life. We all want a perfect job, but we have to pay the mortgage and the bills, and for most people the idea of building a career is not really feasible.

The New Reality

2009-10-15T11:26:00.001-05:00

Sorry for the hiatus. Turns out being unemployed is hard work, at least if you’re serious about trying to get your next post and, like me, are made aware of the many things you always knew you should catch up on but now are compelled to address. Career foundation preparation is a lot like going to the doctor, physical conditioning, or preparing your own tax return – you always knew you should have been working on it all along, that it was best done in a smooth, consistent manner, but somehow it was always put on the back burner, until of course you suddenly discovered you need it right now.

Ouch. In my case, the pain comes from networking. I am, as you may suspect, pretty old school in a lot of ways. I don’t twitter, I don’t even IM, in fact I need to start up my cell service again, I stopped using a cell when I realized no plan offered what I really wanted – a simple way to make and receive phone calls about 8-10 times a month. No texting, cameras, no calling everybody I ever met in a single month, just simple means for emergency calls and accessibility when I’m out of the office or home. So now I have to catch up on that. Yes, I know about pre-paid plans, but my general opinion of them is not much better than the kid-centered packages most services offer.

So anyway, I updated my LinkedIn account, started my WorkInTexas searches, updated Monster of course, started service with Jobfox, and started up with SimplyHired. I am also taking courses from an outsourcing company on my resume, interviewing, and naturally I am learning about networking as well. I have also been working on my references. Odd, that. As a manager I know how important references can be, but despite my blogging I am pretty much a private person, so the number of people I know well is limited to family and recent work colleagues. The fun part there, is not just that no potential employer is going to be impressed by a reference from your wife and kids, but the company I spent the last decade working for has a policy against specific references; they will release general data confirming your department, title, and dates of employment. So the people I have known for the last nine years in my work are not allowed to offer a recommendation for me. So that means I am chasing down some folks I know who left the company years ago. Hardly optimal, but better than an empty page on that score.

It’s also hard coming up with a really good resume. What I mean, is that while I can post my skills and what I have been doing, it’s not easy to convey what I have done that sets me apart. I’ve always been a team player, not least because rarely does one person do the whole job in a major project, so I have not spent a lot of effort looking for ways to brag about why my role made a key difference. Resumes, of course, are built on such accomplishments, so I have had to think and write about those places where my efforts and work created real results. There have actually been many situations where I am justifiably proud of my work, through leadership, initiative, or just plain being willing to do what was needed to get the job done. The hard part is explaining that in a way that still respects my team and colleagues. That takes a while and a bunch of rewrites.

So here I am. In case you did not already know, job hunting means a lot of effort for no real apparent return. I’ve sent out about a hundred applications and resumes so far, with almost no response. Part of that is the economy, I am told, but part of it is just the continuing problem that any job seeker finds; there are always a lot of people applying for any job, especially if the company and/or the position appears to offer career potential. You come to feel like a salmon swimming upstream after a while.

And then there are the sharks, the people who offer job-hunting assistance, especially the resume writing companies, who make promises just vague enough to be legal but whose ethics are clearly absent. Also present are companies which try to hire at wages far below industry scale, which seems extremely short-sighted to me in terms of strategy. I had a laugh early on, as I received an email invitation to interview for a sales position at a Saturn dealership. It sounded like an ad to join the crew of the Titanic, you know?

More later, and hopefully something more interesting than my personal career pursuit, but I owed an update to a few friends who had asked. And to those friends, thanks for thinking of me.

Economics Perspective of the Unemployed

2009-10-03T13:13:00.001-05:00

I have been laid off three times from jobs. Oddly or not, all three times came when a Democrat was President. The most recent condition came a couple weeks ago, when my company decided to ‘reorganize’, a useful word that can mean anything from making judicious use of your resources to maximize effectiveness, to panic-induced blunders that will eventually hurt everyone involved in the matter. During the settling of things after the decision, I put my resume on the internet and was soon invited to interview as a salesman for Saturn. Since I am not a sales person by nature, along with – hmm – things I have read in the news, I have decided not to pursue that wonderful opportunity.

I also have been making adjustments in how I live. Since my healthcare coverage was going to end soon, I made sure that I, my wife, and my daughter all had trips to the doctor, and my daughter’s dentist visit was also moved up, just to be sure. Which brings me to that unending fountain of joy, COBRA coverage. When I say ‘Cobra’, I don’t mean that venomous snake or the nemesis of the G.I. Joe team – or at least I don’t think there’s a connection – I mean the “Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act”, also known as the ”you want how much for health insurance?” plan.

Near as I can make out, the way COBRA works is that the government has set up health insurance coverage for people who lose their jobs. The formula for what you pay is really very simple; simply calculate how much you could realistically afford, double that then add another 20 percent, and that’s your COBRA premium. I think it’s mean to remind us how nice our employers were to offer us healthcare coverage, and to punish us for losing our jobs. Here’s a place where I actually give out some props to the Obama Administration – that Stimulus bill that passed earlier this year includes a government subsidy for some of the COBRA cost. The bad news is that the process is a bit long and complex, and my insurance contact said they’d “get back to me” when they knew what COBRA would cost with the reduction from the subsidy. I sure hope that subsidy money didn’t end up being used for Cash For Clunkers, instead.

Obviously, losing your job makes you very conscious of how much everything costs. I haven’t exactly been living hand-to-mouth, but the sudden end to an income, even with a severance package, means that everything is considered in terms of budget life, how long you can live on a certain asset if you need to do so. The first order of economics is really determining how much you have to have, and where you will get what you need. The short-term is no problem, but until interviews and job offers come in, you really become much more aware of the financial horizon.

Ironically, you also become cautious about what sort of job you will consider. I don’t mean that you become overly picky about jobs you apply for (I’ve sent out about three dozen applications so far), but you consider all the aspects of a job, including elements that did not seem important before, such as how far you would have drive to get to work, how much travel is involved, whether you would be willing to relocate and if so to where, what base bay is acceptable, what working conditions are must-have, what nature of work you would consider, and the like. I found some surprises already, like two jobs for different companies which are very similar in their requirements and duties, yet one pays barely half of what the other pays. Or the company which is extremely particular about whom they will even consider, which explains why the job has been open since May. For the same general responsibilities, some companies are very demanding about who they want, which makes it hard to get in but at least you are clear about what they want, while other companies are very general, even vague, which may seem attractive until you ask whether they know what they are looking for in a candidate. I’ve already had one job in my past where the business owner did not know what the job needed. You have to consider everything in the job posting, to make sure you understand what you are walking into in a job.

The economy is a big topic of discussion among the unemployed. The Workforce office is jam-packed, so is my out-sourcing company, and so are the employment recruiters I have talked to. Pretty much no one believes that the economy is in good shape or that finding work is easy. The rotten economy is also punishing the poor more than anyone else. People on the low end of pay and position get let go more often than anyone else, and they get less in severance as well. All the fine speeches spinning how making businesses pay more in taxes will be good for the economy somehow gets no traction when all you see is belt-tightening. What’s interesting, to me at least, is that most folks just want to work a decent job. No one is looking for a free ride that I have met, and they are all getting pretty disgusted with a government that spends so much time on spin, that it never considers the effect its new laws have on regular people.

Sooner or later, it will dawn even on Congress that unemployed people vote too, and they are in no mood to continue on the present course.

Bambi Meets Godzilla 2009; President Bambi and Nukes

2009-09-24T17:18:00.003-05:00

Somehow I knew this one was coming.

Notice the observation, “In a first for a U.S. president, Obama presided over the 15-member meeting”. Yep, that’s President Bambi leading the charge to rid the world of nukes. Wattamessiah!!

I mean, it’s a given that no thinking person likes nuclear weapons or wants to contemplate the consequences of even a ‘minor’ nuclear exchange. All leaders in government, religion, or any beneficent social effort would love to see nuclear weapons be removed from the world. So what’s wrong with the U.N. Security Council voting to move towards doing just that?

Reality.

The science behind nuclear weapons is well-established. That’s why, for decades after the U.S. and U.S.S.R. both came to the conclusion that an actual nuclear exchange could never be allowed to happen, both sides not only maintained their nuclear stockpile, but created new weapons and delivery systems for them. Because back when adults were in charge, they understood that deterrence was not only the status quo, but a critical mission. If either side reached a point where it held a commanding advantage in such weapons, the temptation to use them in a first strike to eliminate the threat would rise significantly. And even after the Cold War ended, the U.S. and Russia still maintained nuclear stockpiles, because other nations, some of them unstable and belligerent to civilization, possessed or were pursuing nuclear weapons, and the stockpiles of the greater powers was necessary to dissuade the development programs in many countries who otherwise would see their chance to claim territory and regional influence through the threat of nuclear war. Which brings us, of course, to the flies in the soup for even today’s naïve contestants.

“North Korea tested a second nuclear weapon this year, and Iran has resisted greater international oversight for its nuclear program. Iran says its nuclear activities are for peaceful purposes, but the United States and other major powers fear they are a cover for a weapons program.”

Yeah, and the sun came up in the East this morning. Call me cynical, but I worked in electricity for nearly nine years, and it’s just silly to pretend that a breeder reactor in the middle of nowhere, not even connected until very recently to any external delivery grid, much less established step-down distribution stations to industrial factories or metropolitan residential areas, is somehow meant to provide lights and power for ordinary folks. Never mind the fact that heavy-water plants like the ones used by Iran are now used exclusively for weapons-grade plutonium and uranium production. As for North Korea, anyone who thinks Dear Leader would be willing to give up his ambition to possess a nuclear arsenal is in need of a jacket with the sleeves in the back, the kind which tie together to prevent self-injury.

Bambi thinks he can wish the nukes away. He is dangerously wrong in his most recent fallacy.

Thin Skin, Thick Head

2009-09-21T11:58:00.001-05:00

My wife thinks President Obama is working for Al-Qaida. I kid you not. She brought up this contention while we were watching the news Saturday night. To Mikki, the combined effect of President Obama’s policies, being clearly anti-business (on any business level) anti-entrepreneur, and anti-consumer mean that he is working to destroy the infrastructure of the United States. Bear in mind that my wife is from Hong Kong, and tends to see things from a different perspective than most people. The thing is, Mikki is no Republican, in fact she does not vote much except when she really likes someone, like Mayor Bill White of Houston, or is furious with someone, like Barack Obama. And Obama has really set her off. So far as she is concerned, Obama is directly responsible for just about every problem in America right now, if for no reason beyond the fact that as President, Obama should be setting the example and building optimism and confidence. I do not agree that Obama is trying to undermine America, though. I think the man just has the interests of the United States of America far lower on his list of priorities than his own personal agenda.

The reason I mention that point of view, is that I am hearing it more and more, and from black Americans as often as from white Americans. Obama seems to have exhausted his mojo, and the canned promises sound, well, like canned promises that aren’t worth spit. This happens a lot with politicians, though, so the real question is the way an individual politicossack handles the turbulence. Some, like Harry Truman, tough out the flack, explain their reasoning and push ahead. Some, like Jimmy Carter, go into hiding and let things fall apart. Some, like Bill Clinton, recognize the battles they can’t win, cut their losses and regroup for the next proposal. And some, Like FDR, pull back from a sure loss, embrace the other side’s solution, and build credibility and support from that action in advancing his broader agenda. I mentioned Democrats who were President, because it reminds us that Barack Obama is in no way the first or last President who has had to face an angry public for a misstep, either in the way he delivers his decisions or who just plain gets the call wrong. But in every successful President’s administration, the solution begins with recognizing what is wrong, and why. Barack Obama has been stubborn in holding on to the pretense that his plans are perfect from the go, and if he pushes hard enough he will inevitably win. Given his record in getting to the White House, but the guy is no student of history.

Admitting you are wrong is hard for many people, and flat out impossible for some folks. I personally know some very fine people who have been completely wrong, yet won’t admit their error in the least, much less make necessary changes. It’s not about intellect, but ego. Certainly we’ve seen many debates in politics where the truth came out in an obvious way, but the party in the wrong refused to budge from its position, no matter the cost. This obstinacity is relatively harmless and can even be amusing at the low level debates we see on the blogs, but it’s a bit more serious when the President of the United States, in effect, puts his fingers in his ears and yells “I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you!”. Not smart, just plain dumb.

The problem comes down to sensitivity. Barack Obama is about as tetchy a POTUS as we’ve had since Richard ”They’re all out to get me” Nixon. Any criticism of the man’s policies and politics is immediately tagged as “racism”, which would just be a crude spin tactic if it were not so obvious that our Narcissist-in-Chief buys into that conspiracy theory himself. Or that President Orwell engages in so much NewSpeak, like telling us that taxing people if they don’t have health insurance would not really be a tax, and certainly not a tax on the poor, even though the people who do not have insurance now and who would be most likely not to have insurance in the future, are the poor. Like telling us that he has personally “created or saved” millions of jobs, in spite of a national unemployment average rising above 10 percent at times, with some urban minorities seeing local unemployment above thirty percent. Like telling us that there is no risk in “investigating” CIA agents through political committees on the assumption that the ‘civil rights’ of foreign terrorists may have been violated by men doing their jobs. The man imagines himself spotless, but that’s only because his moral vision is so poor.

That’s not to demean President Obama. Every President makes mistakes and has areas of weakness. Most of them are aware of their deficiencies and work to improve them and to avoid the worst mistakes. Almost all have to face situations which result from such mistakes. Sooner or later, President Obama is going to have to face the consequences of his mistakes and errors. The delay only means the consequences may be much more serous than he imagines.

The Cancer Did NOT Win

2009-09-15T14:48:00.000-05:00

Family, friends and fans of Patrick Swayze are mourning his passing today, myself among them. There have been moving accounts written and hopefully his wife Lisa is coping well with the support of loved ones; certainly her support for Patrick was important and uplifting. But among the things written and said, is something with which I cannot agree – the claim that Patrick ‘lost his battle with Cancer’. Patrick won, not the Cancer, and here’s why.

Cancer is a terrible thing to have to fight, even if you are lucky like me and it gets caught early. If the words “Stage Four” are attached to the diagnosis, it’s going to be painful and in most cases fatal. That does not mean, however, that you have to give up hope or stop living. That’s what Patrick understood, and he explained that if you focus only on fighting to stay alive, you might forget to really live. Patrick Swayze was true to his beliefs; he worked, rode his horses and maintained his farm right up to the end. It was painful for him, at times horribly so, and it cost Patrick in ways that no healthy person can understand, just to get through his days. But Patrick was determined to live his life on his terms, to not give in on anything that was important to him, and to fight his cencer with every ounce of strength he possessed.

Yes, Patrick Swayze died from his cancer, but so? We all must die, sooner or later, and if not from one thing then from another. No one gets out alive, as the saying goes, so the people who think that dying is losing have lost sight of why we live in the first place.

Patrick Swayze was brilliantly successful in pretty much everything he tried. He was a popular and accomplished dancer, actor, horse breeder and pilot (Patrick held an instrument rating for his twin-engine Cessna). But what impresses many people the most is the quality of the man himself. Patrick married Lisa Niemi in 1975, and their marriage lasted all his life. Patrick was raised as a Roman Catholic, but also studied Tai Chi and several schools of Buddhism. More to the point, Patrick established a well-deserved reputation as a thoroughly honest and hard-working man, a fighter for what he believed in, be it his work, his family, or his values. To the end, Patrick showed the world a man worth respect, admiration, and purpose.

Cancer took his life, but even so, Patrick Swayze won his battles.

What 9/11 Means

2009-09-11T07:00:00.000-05:00

Eight years ago, a team of terrorists killed three thousand innocent people for the advancement of an evil conspiracy. On the eighth anniversary of the most horrific act of evil deliberately perpetrated against the United States, the man in the White House is arguably the least ready in memory to effectively deal with an enemy who would, if they could, repeat that act on an even greater scale. The Congress of the United States has taken steps to disarm the men and women who protect the nation, while all but apologizing to the colleagues of the murderers for the U.S. getting in their way during the Bush Administration. And the people of America, once united in the face of the crisis, are divided and worn out by petty bickering and farcical mockeries of the duties and obligations of politicians in both major parties.

The nation is at war. It is an obscene fact that many Americans have managed to somehow forget that fact, to take for granted the efforts of our military to secure stable, free nations in Iraq and Afghanistan, or that the war still continues to this day, with all the stakes and risk that existed from the beginning for those who put nation first.

Terrorists are not ‘criminals’, they are not ‘freedom-fighters’, they are not ‘misunderstood’. They do not have equal standing with the people they attack and kill. They do not have civil rights under any established law. They do not enjoy protection under the Geneva Convention. The Geneva convention was designed to protect combatants serving nations under certain rules of conduct, defined clearly and it’s not difficult at all to confirm that people who do not belong to any national army or militia, who do not operate under military protocols, who commits atrocities not in isolated cases but as deliberate strategy, do not enjoy identification as ‘combatants’ in the sense of that treaty. Terrorists commonly enter foreign countries to perform their murders, so it is not correct to presume that they enjoy the protection of law that is accorded citizens. And the very nature of their conduct and strategy makes it necessary to treat terrorists on a simple means of identification and extermination. Find them and kill them, end of story. If there is doubt, investigate, but if there is no doubt, then there is no quarter to be given. Terrorism by its nature is anathema to humanity, and therefore such groups must be exterminated in total whenever and wherever they are found.

Before 9/11, it was politically sensitive to deal directly against terrorists. This can be seen in the policies of airlines, for example, which told their crews not to resist hijackers, but cooperate in order to save lives. The 9/11 attacks made it clear not only that the old system was not functional, but hopelessly naïve. On the international level, as well, the clear focus and imperatives of the Bush Administration after 9/11 made it clear that informal wink-and-nod arrangements between terrorist groups and certain national political groups would no longer be tolerated. A new U.S. doctrine took effect, which required President Bush to set aside all his original plans and policies in deference to his commitment to defend America from the threat of terrorism.

Before 9/11, religious thought regarding terrorists was sparse, especially among Muslims. Since Islam does not emphasize a separation of Church and State (quite the opposite, the very concept of Dar-al-Islam presumes mutual religious and military conquest of all the world), there was no overt debate on the morality of terrorist actions – those who opposed such actions thought them too incidental to address in the context of the faith as a whole, and those who supported such actions thought it unnecessary to risk dissension by discussing the religious context of the actions. A few Muslim sheiks had observed Koranic prohibitions against killing known innocents, especially women and children, that suicide was permissible in defense of innocents but not in murder of same, even if Dar-al-Harb. After 9/11, Muslims found themselves more compelled to examine their faith in the light of such actions, to decide not only whether terrorism should be part of their faith but also what their response as Muslims should be to terrorism acts by Muslim extremists. Non-Muslims found that they knew little of Islam, and often judged the entire faith by the actions of its most extreme. As with all faiths, prejudice and history have been difficult for people to overcome, both outside of and within the community of faith.

Prior to 9/11, there was a belief in some quarters of the world that supporting a terrorist group could advance a national strategy, and in so doing produce an economic benefit for their country or government. It is now more generally recognized that Terrorism is economic parasitism. By its nature, terrorist groups consume goods and destroy people and materials; it is literally impossible for terrorism to create gain or improve economic conditions. Economics is not, and has never been and never will be, a zero-sum game; any farmer can tell you that his neighbor’s misfortune in no way helps his crops or livestock, and in many ways another’s loss threatens his own well-being. That fact is now more apparent than ever before, giving regimes pause in considering the results of supporting such groups.

Before 9/11, there was some discussion that American military force was not up to the job in all places, that “lessons” in places like Mogadishu and Haiti showed the limits to U.S. power and influence, and various apologists for defeatism and appeasement pushed to scale back the size and mission of the American military, and to replace pro-American doctrines with policies of retreat and surrender, similar to the British pull-backs following World War 2, on the theory that U.S. interests represented imperial designs. This lie ironically found increased support in the fiction of the “peace dividend” after the fall of the Warsaw Pact, as if the ensuing chaos in a part of the world with more than 50,000 nuclear warheads was of no concern, or that other nations would not rush in to fill the void of power left with the fall of the Soviet Union, with attendant threat to American interests and citizens. While America power was clearly impressive in the first Gulf War of 1990-91, critics charged that things would be far different if the U.S. were committed to a long war, or tried to actually change the political structure of a major Mid-East country.

The long war in Iraq and Afghanistan proved the critics wrong again. The war has been difficult, costly, painful, and if Obama lacks the backbone to stay the course, great damage could still be done to American goals and interests in the region, but at present any objective analysis of the war would conclude that the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan are a vast improvement on their predecessors, in terms of freedom, economic opportunity, and security for their citizens and the region. Whether the war’s cause was just or the results worth the cost may be debated, but the U.S. military clearly established an unsurpassed and undeniable ability to assert its power anywhere, anytime. The ramifications of this proof become obvious when the history of the region is examined.

In summary, 9/11 was a horrific atrocity, perpetrated by evil minds who have in some part come to a just yet terrible consequence, and in others deferred their reckoning to when they must stand before God. We have seen valor and heroism from many places, some unexpected, and loathsome hypocrisy and pusillanimity from others, especially those in privileged and public positions of celebrity and the avant-garde. We have seen the Mainstream Media sabotage its own credibility, and grass-roots bloggers rise to a degree of public acclaim and success. Our military has lost thousands of casualties in two campaigns, only to see the new President discount their sacrifice in hopes of gaining political coin for himself from our enemies. Both major political parties have demonstrated a grievous lack of commitment to fundamental American priorities and values, and few of the federal elected officials make themselves available to regular citizens, let alone accountable.

Yet for all of this, eight years after 9/11, our friends and enemies alike understand that there is a core of resolve in America unlike any other country, that there is a well of strength and purpose in this nation which no enemy may hope to overcome and no friend may fear will totally fail. We may be delayed, and we may take losses, but in the end, sooner or later we shall prevail. Not because Americans are better than other nations, but because this nation stands for the best of every nation, and while our methods may falter, our cause is just. No tyrant, no terrorist, no turncoat, no traducer shall win against us.

Responsibility and Accountability

2009-09-06T11:49:00.002-05:00

On Thursday September 3, the University of Oregon played Boise State in a season-opening game which was important to both schools, as they were each nationally-ranked and hoping to start off strong. The game ended in a 19-8 win for Boise State, after starting with a larger-than-usual show of sportsmanship. An ironic gesture, given the ending. At the game's end, Byron Hout of Boise State approached LeGarrette Blount of Oregon, slapped him on the shoulder pad to get his attention, and yelled something at him which has not yet been revealed to the public. As he turned away to face Boise State head coach Chris Peterson, who was pulling Hout away from Blount, Blount angrily launched a punch which landed on Hout's jaw. To make matters worse, Blount then attempted to punch another player, struggled with his own teammates as they wrestled him towards the locker room, and had to be restrained by police from attacking fans who taunted him at the stands as he left the field. Still worse, the game and the actions of Blount were nationally televised by ESPN. And then the day after that, it was discovered that Blount had been suspended from the Oregon team back in February.

Friday, Oregon coach Chip Kelley suspended running back LaGarrette Blount for the rest of the season.

To some degree, the decision to end Blount's collegiate career (he is a Senior, and the suspension includes any bowl games that Oregon may earn) was predictable. Blount's action was not only blatent and deliberate, not to mention nationally televised, Coach Kelly serves on the NCAA's committee which address athletes' sportsmanship, and Kelly had already been under fire for an apparent lack of discipline on the Ducks' team. The public opinion on the matter seemed to demand a heavy punishment, and so the axe fell quickly in this case. To be honest, I don't know that I disagree all that much with the decision, except of course that Blount will not have a public opportunity to show his better side. I might have expected an indefinite suspension to be a better fit, but on the other hand the Oregon officials have sent a clear message and presumably have put this behind them.

But I am writing this article to address the other man who needs to accept accountability: Byron Hout. No, I am not saying that Hout should be suspended or even given any kind of official punishment for his part in the incident. That said, I am concerned about his part in the event. Hout chose to come over to Blount, whatever he said was obviously meant to be trash talk, and Hout's grinning face as he turned towards his coach indicates that he was just fine with insulting a key player on an opposing team. What Hout did was clearly out of bounds. If it has happened during the game, it would have earned a penalty for taunting, and I speak as a former UIL football official in Texas (which uses the NCAA rulebook). Normally, a good coach considers the damage done when assessing punishment to a player for an infraction. A face-mask penalty, for example, one thing, but if they score the winning touchdown because on 3rd-and-20 you tackled the runner by his facemask, then you are in big trouble. A false start may not be a big deal, unless of course it happens on 4th down and pushes you just out of field goal range. And sportsmanship is a much bigger issue when something you say impacts the game's outcome or the image of the school. Back in my day, players were expected to wear dress clothes and ties on the bus and to represent the school and team, with total respect. It was silly at times and made the trip longer. But then again, you knew you stood for something worth your work, win or lose. Call me old school, but the sport could do with getting back to that.

Coach Peterson has said that he will meet privately with Hout and considers the incident a 'teachable moment'. The problem, of course, is that the incident was public and Hout needs to make some gesture to show he recognizes that his taunt started a series of actions which had serious consequences. Hout did not make Blount throw a punch, but he knew he was not acting in the best interests of his school, team, or the game. And Hout's unsporting behavior was public, and so it needs a public response. At the very least, Hout should apologize in public for his behavior, and Peterson needs to show that such behavior has consequences, real ones.

Cheating in the Matrix

2009-09-02T14:47:00.003-05:00

The Oracle: What about the others?
The Architect: ...What others?
The Oracle: The ones that want out.
The Architect: Obviously they shall be freed.
The Oracle: I have your word?
The Architect: What do you think I am? Human?
- from Matrix:Revolutions

This exchange at the end of the third Matrix movie is often missed by Matrix fans, as almost a throwaway line. However, anyone who has dug into the meanings and symbolism of the movies should know the Wachowski brothers pretty much never throw away a scene or a message. The Oracle may well be accusing the Architect of trying to cheat.

To understand, let’s go back to Neo’s discussion with the Architect in the second movie, Matrix:Reloaded. Here is the relevant section, as the Architect explains how the Matrix was developed:

Neo: Why am I here?
Architect: Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent in the programming of the matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden deciduously avoided it is not unexpected and thus not beyond a measure of control. Which has led you inexcerably here.
Neo: You haven't answered my question.
Architect: Quite right. Interesting, that was quicker then the others.

The Architect begins by noting that Neo is tied to the Matrix. He is the ‘remainder’ of an equation which does not quite work out, the ‘eventuality of an anomaly’ as the Architect sees things, and in the Architect’s opinion something which needs to be controlled. For the Architect, then, the goal is to control Neo and so control the Matrix.

Architect: The Matrix is older then you know. I prefer counting from the emergence of one integral anomaly to the emergence of the next. In which case this is the sixth version.
Neo: Then there are only two possible explanations, either no one told me, or no one knows.
Architect: Precisely, as you are undoubtedly gathering the anomaly is systemic. Creating fluctuations in even the most simplistic equations.
Neo: Choice, the problem is choice.

This is a very important admission by the Architect! The Architect admits to Neo that the Matrix is unstable and the very existence of the One destabilizes the entire system. Further, since the Architect does not limit his observation to the Matrix construct, but expands it to ‘even the most simplistic equations’, he implies that the existence of the One threatens the system integrity of the entire Machine infrastructure! This is implied by the end actions in Matrix:Reloaded, as Neo is able to disable Sentinels despite being outside the Matrix.

Why does the Architect say this to Neo? There are three reasons that occur to me. First, the audience needs to hear this, and since there is no objective narrator for the movies, it has to come from a major character. Second, the Architect has seen five versions of ‘The One’ come and go before, so he hardly considers Neo a threat. What’s more, we already see that the Architect regards the Oracle with contempt, so it should be no surprise that the Architect believes he could say even something this important to Neo with no worry that Neo would grasp the full implications. And third, this foreshadows the end, the macro-evolution of the universe, as both humans and machines are compelled to deal with a new paradigm. Humans and machines must, as the Oracle said, move together if they are to move forward.

The Architect goes on to explain the creation and development of the Matrix:

Architect: The first matrix I designed was quite naturally perfect; it was a work of art, flawless, sublime. A triumph equaled only by its monumental failure. The inevitability of its doom is apparent to me now as a consequence of the imperfection inherent in every human being. Thus, I redesigned it, Based on your history to more accurately reflect the varying grotesqueries of your nature. However I was again frustrated my failure. I have since come to understand that the answer eluded me because it required a lesser mind a mind less bound by the parameters of perfection. Thus the answer was stumbled upon by another and intuitive program, initially created to investigate certain aspects of the human psyche.

It’s worth noting here, that the Architect never accepts blame for the failure of his creation, instead assuming the guilt must lie with humans, even where they are not making decisions or acting of their own volition. Going on, we see how the Architect built choice into the Matrix:

Architect: [the Oracle] stumbled upon a solution whereby nearly 99 percent of all test subjects accepted the program as long as they were given a choice, even if they were only aware of the choice at an unconscious level. While this answered function it was obviously fundamentally flawed thus creating the otherwise contradictory systemic anomaly. That if left unchecked might threaten the system itself, ergo those that refuse the program while the minority if unchecked would cause an escalating probability of disaster.

Somebody’s cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeating. The Architect realizes that the Matrix will only work if humans are allowed a choice. But, hating humans as he does the Architect buries that choice at ‘an unconscious level’.

Think about that. Suppose you are taking a multiple-choice test, and the correct answer to a certain question is ‘D’, but on the paper you are only presented with answers A, B, and C. The only way you could correctly answer the question is to realize you are being tricked and refuse to accept the conditions presented to you. Hence the need for humans to reject the Matrix completely in order to make the choice. That is, in truth no one chooses the blue pill, because in making any choice the false condition must ab initio be refuted. All we are doing is, as the Oracle told Neo, is figuring out what the choice means.

Why does the Architect feel that he needs to cheat? Because as he says, the people who refuse the program ‘cause an escalating probability of disaster’. Therefore the Architect wants as few people as possible to even have that choice.
The Architect now goes on to tell Neo what he expects him to do:

Architect: The function of the One is now to return to the source allowing a temporary dissemination of the code you carry reinserting the prime program after which you will be required to select from the matrix 23 individuals, 16 female 7 male, to rebuild Zion. Failure to comply with this process will result in a cataclysmic system crash killing everyone connected to the matrix. Which, coupled with the extermination of Zion will ultimately result in the extinction of the entire human race.
Neo: You won't let it happen, you can't. You need human beings to survive.
Architect: There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept.

The Architect is lying there. How do we know this? Because he cheated the Matrix code to hide human choice at the unconscious level, specifically to avoid ‘an escalating probability of disaster’. What kind of disaster? Maybe a ‘cataclysmic system crash killing everyone connected to the matrix’? The Architect’s explanation refutes his later claim to indifference.

Architect: Which brings us at last to the moment of truth, wherein the fundamental flaw is ultimately expressed and the anomaly revealed as both beginning and end. There are two doors, the door to your right leads to the source and the salvation of Zion, the door to your left leads back to the matrix to her and to the end of your species. As you adequately put, the problem is choice. But we already know we you are going to do don't we?

Another mistake. The Architect fully expects Neo to do what everyone before him has done, but even in this short interview we have seen evidence that Neo is not like the others – he’s faster to notice things, he has a direct connection in love, and even as the Architect speaks Neo is moving – to the left door, the one that threatens disaster if the Architect is correct.

The Architect figured he knew humans well enough to predict even their most important decisions. Small wonder the Wachowski brothers made him look like Sigmund Freud, another poser who knew less than he claimed.

The Architect is in a real mess, and if he wasn’t so hateful and arrogant we could almost feel sorry for him. The machines depend on humans just as humans depend on machines – something mentioned throughout the Matrix films – and so if the Matrix fails everyone’s in for a bad time. The plan up to now had been to use The One in each generation as a kind of relief valve for system anomaly, replacing him with a fresh new empty every so often to keep things running. But Neo rejects the plan and introduces pure chaos into the equation. The Architect must have seen some possibility of this decision, although as the Oracle explains he could not see the consequences past the choice. So he attempted to rig the game. In that context, small wonder that at the end of things the Oracle asks if he’s going to do as he claims.

It also occurs to me that the Oracle has been cheating a bit herself, maybe. Why do I say that? Go back to the first Matrix movie, where Morpheus is bringing Neo to see the Oracle. What does Neo see in the apartment?

Priestess: Hello, Neo. You're right on time.... Make yourself at home, Morpheus. Neo, come with me.... These are the other potentials, you can wait here.

Ahem ... ‘other potentials’? And what, do you think, happens with those guys? Let’s not forget, the Oracle can see the future. Remember this?

Oracle: I'd ask you to sit down, but you’re not going to anyway. And don't worry about the vase.
Neo: (turning) What vase?
- Neo breaks vase -
Oracle: That vase.
Neo: I'm sorry.
Oracle: I said don't worry about it. I'll get one of my students to fix it.
Neo: How did you know?
Oracle: What's really going to bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken it if I hadn't said anything?

There’s other statements like that, but the point is she knew or had reason to know that Neo is the The One, and in that case what is she planning with the other ‘potentials’, her ‘students’? Well, one thing that occurs to me is that if the Machines are watching Neo, ‘The One’, maybe these other guys can do things that are important but won’t be noticed. After all, isn’t interesting what happens with Sati, even if we don’t get to see exactly what she’s been doing?
Small wonder the Architect greets the Oracle at the end of the movies in this way:

Architect: You’ve played a very dangerous game.

So, the Oracle was probably cheating and the Architect was definitely cheating. What does that mean, in the big picture?

It means that the conclusion, as Smith always said, is inevitable. In exploring the behavior we see that even the Architect, who designed the Matrix, has chosen to disobey his own terms. Disobedience implies both choice and irrationality, and so we see that human nature is so pervasive that even the entity in charge on containing and controlling humanity is influenced by human nature in his decisions and actions. Which in the end is not surprising at all. Machines were created by man, and so may be said to exist ‘in his image’. And in any case, one logical conclusion from an examination of the earlier failed matrices would have to be designer error – the Architect is the principal culprit of his failure, psychologically justifying the creation of the very anomaly that would in the end of things alter his own reality.

More on The Spoon

2009-08-29T12:39:00.002-05:00

The Buddha once taught his disciples, that if a man said he had a soul they should disagree. He then went on to also say that if a man said he had no soul, again they should disagree. This is a paradox of the transcendent, an observation about both the stabile unchanging nature of the universe, and also its chaotic upredictable condition of constant change. We regularly learn to do and become things which are impossible at the earlier time. This requires, in some situations, for a person to step away from the world he knows and accept one he does not know, to replace the present form with the desired version.

In The Matrix, the world of the Matrix is illusory in that none of the material facts are true, yet the people who live there are real, the things they do are real and if someone dies in the Matrix world, they die for real. Thus, we see that transcendent paradox present in the Matrix, and the lesson here is that our world is similarly transcendent.

In the films we often see Jedi Masters demonstrating the results of apparent meditation and intospection - these are done off-camera for obvious cinematic reasons, but we should not ignore their occurence. So too in the human world, many masters in different fields act only after long prior consideration and introspection.

Consider that in the films, the Jedi Masters Yoda, Obi Wan, and Anikin all die, and their resolution following death is subtly but undeniably different. We also see their way of action and even thought in different dimensions. It should follow that Jedi, being individuals in the majority of their lives, also find distinctive and personal identities in their walk. The paradox here is that in losing the pride of self, they refine their perception of the nouminous, and so are unfooled by mere phenomenon.

The 'spoon' I refute, therefore, is not the material spoon, but the phenomenon of the spoon. The underlying reality remains and is seen for its true character ad purpose, and as such true wisdom and attainment are made possible.

The Matrix and Jedi

2009-08-28T15:39:00.001-05:00

There is no spoon.

Early in the movie The Matrix, the character Neo meets with a number of "potentials" in the sitting room of an apartment of a being known as 'The Oracle'. I'm not going to go too far into that film, so no worries if you have not seen The Matrix, but I recommend the movie because it helps illustrate something of how the Jedi mindset works. There is something of the Zen in both cultures, even if the movie is fictional and the origin of Jedi as well. That is, a valid source is valid regardless of its cause and development. Also, just as in The Matrix the character Neo discovers that his world is illusory and his potential exceeds far beyond the apparent boundaries imposed by his perception, so too do the Jedi discover abilities which transcend beyond their own apparent limits. While some people may regard this observation as a naïve claim to supernatural abilities, in reality this discovery reminds the Jedi to doubt his senses, trust intution and find his core essence. When attained, this ability not only improve physical limits to some degree, but also perception, critical thinking and meditation.

In The Matrix, Neo meets a young boy who appears to be bending and unbending a spoon with his mind. The boy explains that this can only be done when you realize that there is no spoon. Later, Neo ralizes that because the Matrix is a world that does not exist in reality but is merely virtual, he can manipulate the Matrix to change the world as he sees fit, provided he focuses on the underlying reality instead of superficial perceptions. That is a valid lesson for the Jedi as well, as expressed in Yoda’s maxim “Do … or do not. There is no ‘try’.”

The Reconciliation of Souls

2009-08-26T14:00:00.001-05:00

The passing of Edward Kennedy yesterday has provoked a great many comments, most of them predictable in their spirit and intent. While Senator Kennedy was best known as a political man and his person is generally judged in the light of his political actions and behavior, there is also a strong moral judgment in the public appraisal of the man, and to that end we may consider the condition of his soul. That does not mean that we are fit to do so, but judging others is a very common practice, even a game, among humans. Pride being the chief of sins, we often imagine that we can speak as we will about others with no worry about the consequences we bring upon ourselves.

And there is the point for this article. There are many things we cannot know in this life, but one sure thing is that we all must die. We are finite, and we are imperfect at best, and frankly most of us have things in our lives which we would be very happy to keep private and hidden away, if they could not be erased from the record completely. That’s not to say we are all guilty to the same degree, but all the same there’s few enough of us who could honestly claim to deserve the reputation we show the public.

Those who wish to condemn a man for his life, should remember that we all fail to some degree, and for all that we may rightly curse another for his wrongs we never know completely his own pain and trials, what may have brought him to speak and act as he did. And those who wish to praise a man might consider that everything we do will falter and end just as our own bodies do. The greatest acts of men have all come to end, so that only the Divine touch makes anything endure.

And that is where God and human souls come into the matter. All that truly matters is of God, and all that we may hope for depends in the end on His perfect will and hope of His mercy. Through all of Man’s history there have been attempts to make sense of the human identity and our place in the Cosmos, from ancient myths and legends to theology and reasoned thought, extending to every conceivable conclusion, including skepticism and antitheist hostility. In the end, however, one comes to one of three places – rejection of everything not proven beyond the possibility of doubt, belief in a greater purpose and Person than this universe proves, or essential doubt and abandonment of the question for fear of the question.

I believe we are made for better purpose, indeed we are each of us specially made for not only a purpose but a specific personage. We are each of us unique in our person, yet part of family, community and nation in many ways. This life ends precisely because it, and we, are imperfect, so that we may learn perfection and seek the greater person we are to become. I do not accept the notion that if someone murders someone else and is never arrested, if someone rapes another person and never serves a day in prison, if someone oppresses someone else through intimidation and never faces an accounting in this life, that there is no accounting for that injustice. I will not accept the claim that someone’s good dies with him and has no value beyond the moment. I believe and affirm that while God remains invisible to human eyes, He is imminent to us in faith and truth and hope. All that we do is either perfected or consumed according to its nature, and every one of us will discover good and evil in our lives to a greater depth than we ever suspected before.

All souls are made by God, yet all people are given free will to choose our disposition. I cannot promise heaven to anyone, as heaven belongs to God Almighty and must serve Him perfectly and so I cannot speak to His judgment. I also will not condemn anyone to hell, knowing its eternal torment and again being unworthy to sit in judgment of another sinner. Paul wrote that we believers shall judge angels, but may the Lord save me from the pride of believing that I am fit to judge my neighbor.

How the world ends is written in Scripture, but the mystery of a specific person who can say? I cannot earn heaven but cannot bear hell, nor do I imagine any man could do so save our Savior. So I depend, as we all do, on our Advocate and Champion to resolve what is, as always has been, beyond our ken, and for my part I pray that Edward chose well and sincerely. For even among Christ’s own hand-picked disciples, two betrayed Him and came to repent of it, yet one chose a way that ended in condemnation while the other was reconciled in penitence by the Lord’s grace. In the end we are resolved by greater power and purpose than we know.

Angels and Nations

2009-08-25T16:21:00.003-05:00

I had my colonoscopy and am able to enjoy solid food again without angering Al Gore, if you take my meaning. I have been doing some reading and some thinking on things theological, and have what I believe is a worthwhile consideration about Paul’s vision of the ‘third heaven’. But for now I have another thought which mixes politics with religion, always a recipe for lively debate I think.

Over the years I have sometimes been surprised by the way that things take a sudden unexpected turn. In recent days, we have seen President Obama’s seemingly unstoppable charisma implode, but that has happened to many Presidents before him as well. After his re-election in 2004, President Bush seemed to have all the control he needed to start fixing the mess in places like Immigration and Social Security, but then he also hit a wall. Bill Clinton also had a lot of personal charisma but he took some nasty shocks, and in the process so did the Republicans, who had full public support for impeaching Clinton, but that support evaporated by the time the Senate actually tried him. Hard to believe, but there was even a time when President Nixon had his mojo working.

I wondered about that. Looking through History, we see the same odd sudden changes in momentum and initiative. Look at World War Two, for example. In 1942, the United States was a clawless eagle, losing battles, bases and men in both the Atlantic and Pacific fronts, but by 1945 the US was unstoppable everywhere it went. What a strange coincidence, that the one thing which could change America from an isolationist nation determined to stay out of the war into an angry populace demanding war, an apparent sneak attack by Japan, was what happened. How odd, that this attack destroyed several ships which appeared to be vital to America, but left untouched the fuel tanks and aircraft carriers and dry docks which were actually key strategic assets? How odd that Hitler changed his strategy on the Eastern Front just short of capturing Moscow, choosing instead to divert to the South and so divide his forces when it was most risky to do so? How odd that despite over a half century of threats and crises, there was never even one nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. This same behavior goes back in history as well. The British, for example, won the battle of Chesapeake Bay in 1781 in terms of tactics, but their inability to win decisively allowed the French to block Cornwallis’ support at Yorktown and so the stunning end to the American Revolution was made possible by a simple shift in the wind. How interesting, that Captain Drake was able to have men in his pay infiltrate Spanish shipyards to sabotage the Armada so that the invasion of 1588 would fail. What a coincidence, that just when Japan reached the peak of its geopolitical power, it withdrew from the world for a century. Any one of these pieces, taken by itself, may be explained or considered just an anomoly, but altogether it is not hard to sense a purpose. Arguments can be made either way, but for those who believe in God I now turn to the Bible. Specifically certain verses in the book of Daniel, Chapter 10, verses 5-8 and 10-13:

“I looked up and there before me was a man dressed in linen, with a belt of the finest gold around his waist. His body was like chrysolite, his face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and his voice like the sound of a multitude.

“I, Daniel, was the only one who saw the vision; the men with me did not see it, but such terror overwhelmed them that they fled and hid themselves. So I was left alone, gazing at this great vision; I had no strength left, my face turned deathly pale and I was helpless.”

“A hand touched me and set me trembling on my hands and knees. He said, "Daniel, you who are highly esteemed, consider carefully the words I am about to speak to you, and stand up, for I have now been sent to you." And when he said this to me, I stood up trembling.

“Then he continued, "Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia.”

That folks, is the prophet Daniel chatting with an angel, specifically the Archangel Gabriel. Gabriel mentions that Michael is a “chief prince” among the angels, and that he helped Gabriel get past the opposition of a “prince” of Persia, which tells us that nations have angels. It is unclear from this passage what those angels do, specifically, but there is clearly angelic activity in relation to human affairs.

It might be interesting to discuss what heaven is up to, right about now.

Not So Modern Medicine

2009-08-20T14:56:00.000-05:00

On the recommendation of both my primary physician and my oncologist, I am having a colonoscopy done tomorrow morning. Most of that has to do with my age and of course the desire on my doctors part to know if the inside of my colon is behaving as well as the outside appears to be doing. The experience, however, reminds me of just how far medical science has to go to be truly advanced, in my opinion.

Some years ago I reached the conclusion that men were generally more realistic than women, because only men start each day with a razor at their throat. That idea was reinforced by the indignity of the prostate examination, and of course a colonoscopy certainly ranks right up there, the notion of a camera on a cord shoved up the rear end of the patient, who then gets to pay for the procedure in an amount similar to a cruise vacation.

I’m not inordinately concerned about the embarrassment or discomfort of the procedure, having been regularly poked, prodded, pierced, injected and so on over the last three years. But in addition to the thrills of the actual procedure, and paying for same in the kind of money that could have been used on a new television or jewelry for the wife, I get to enjoy the taste sensation of Gavilyte. Gavilyte has to be drunk the day before the procedure, a day by the way when I cannot have any solid foods. I get to drink, 8 ounces at a time, a gallon of a clear liquid which will flush out my colon. Remember what mucilage smells like? That’s what Gavilyte tastes like. Just imagine the experience of putting down a gallon of that stuff, and not being allowed to have a single bite of real food?

Of course, by tomorrow morning I may miss the Gavilyte, because after midnight I am not allowed to drink anything either. That’s especially nice in South Texas in hundred-degree heat.

So what’s the point? Three, actually. One, I feel like a mild rant and this is it. The colonoscopy is a minor but annoying procedure, but I don’t have to pretend I like it. Two, things like this remind of just how very far medical science is from being truly advanced, given the cost, inconvenience and displeasure of a test that everyone agrees is important. And three, I am likely to be irritable for a while, so I will not be blogging for a little while, in everyone’s best interest.

A Reasonable Discussion on Health Care

2009-08-18T13:29:00.002-05:00

Even our Narcissist-in-Chief, Barack Obama, is showing signs of recognition that the government takeover of Health Care in the United States is strongly opposed by the people. Opposed enough that the totalitarians who tried to shove this treachery through Congress are finding their own political careers in jeopardy, which is the sole language to which they would listen. The prospect of a major shift in Congressional control in 2010 has finally convinced the political con artists to back off this abomination just a bit.

This opens the door to a more rational discussion about Health Care, what is really needed and what can really be done. There are certain ideals which each side desires, but the practical limits offer a small range of options. Even so, an opportunity now exists to arrive at a better solution, one which is realistic and which listens to the public.

There are many special interest groups in any debate about Health Care, which is no surprise given the money concerned and the number of people affected. To begin, it should be obvious that the public will not countenance government-run Health Care. The ‘single payer’ option is unacceptable and the Obama Administration had better accept that fact. However, at some point it is also necessary to accept that major changes are necessary for American Health Care to remain as effective as it is today. It seems strange, given the political indifference to the blunders of Social Security and the Income Tax Code, but for once the government is a bit ahead of the curve in seeking a reformation of the industry in Health Care.

A bit of background here, and something like full disclosure. I worked for five years in Health Care, at an independent third-party administrator of medical claims. That is, it was my job to determine if an insurance claim was valid under the terms of the insurance company’s contract with the medical provider, and – in order of priority – to protect the patient, medical provider, and insurance company’s respective rights under the network provisions. I also performed field audits to insure compliance by medical providers and facilities with their promised levels of accessibility and performance. Also, on the other side of things I am a cancer survivor and a patient at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, having been diagnosed in 2006 with pseudomyxoma peritonei, a form of abdominal cancer – specifically known as a non-carcinoid neoplasm of the appendix. My condition is treatable but not curable, and therefore I must plan on a very long term prognosis, one which is promising but at the same time a permanent condition. Consequently, I am very familiar with the needs and concerns of those patients whose conditions are rare and unlikely to be mentioned at all in a one-size-fits-all plan. I know for a fact that neither Medicare nor Medicaid would cover the treatment for my condition, and as a result a national plan built on the foundation of Medicare would be, by definition, unacceptable to me.

That said, I do think a long and detailed discussion about what is needed and how it should be paid for is a good idea. Now that Obamacare has been clearly shown to be unacceptable, it seems appropriate to suggest a better plan. That plan, I think, would best be found by considering and addressing the patients not properly covered by the present system, and by proposing, a la carte I should think, means by which the industry might move forward, such as improving the primary-care to specialist balance among professionals and allowing patients more tax benefits for making effective use of their preventive care options. But the conversation is best served by broad participation, rather than a few dictating terms to the rest.

A Simple Statement

2009-08-17T16:53:00.000-05:00

I'm going out for a while, and will be having medical tests done on Friday. So to keep it simple:

President Obama, the people say NO to your tyranny, your taxes, your oppression of dissent, and your hatred of American values and standards.

Will you, at long last, heed the will of the public?

It’s Reasonable To Be Angry

2009-08-13T13:26:00.002-05:00

One thing I have not liked to see in this health care issue, is the arrogance of Congressmen who yell at their constituents, who try to evade a difficult question by talking on their cell phone so they can ignore the citizen, or who actually protest that it’s unreasonable for them to have read the bill before voting on it.

That’s just the behavior of elected officials, not even touching the many allegations of union thuggery and exclusion of constituents who might not cheer the plan.

A better course, from where I sit, is to discuss specific proposals in HR 3200, the original House bill from which all three pending versions are derived, and SB II (BAI09A84), the Senate bill. Pay particular attention to the choice of wording, in order to recognize the intent and likely bias of the bill. Or at least you can come to understand a resistance to the bill, when the people who will be voting on it either cannot explain the bill in specific or refuse to address the draconian provisions set out in it. The distinction is that the politicians have no just cause to be angry, while the people who learn what’s in these bills will have every reason to become upset.

The Senate bill can be read here.

HR 3200 can be read here.

I strongly suggest you make time to read them both.

First, I notice some unusual wording in the Senate Bill. Looking at Section 399HH, “National Strategy for Quality Improvement in Health Care”.

In Part A of that section, under ‘Requirements’, the Senate Bill directs the Secretary of the Health Choices Administration (HCA), to “address the health care provided to patients with high-cost chronic diseases” [ (Sec. 399HH, (2)(B)(i) ]

One may wonder why the emphasis on high-cost chronic diseases, and certainly one may excuse the patients suffering from, say, AIDs, Cancer, Diabetes, Alzheimer’s, or any other of a number of similar maladies for asking why their conditions appear to be targeted.

That same section directs the HCS Secretary to “address gaps in quality and health outcomes measures, comparative effectiveness information, and data aggregation techniques, including the use of data registries” [ (Sec. 399HH, (2)(B)(ii) ].

Wording like that is certainly evocative of ‘Big Brother’, and just why should Americans expect uniform levels of “health outcomes” in every region and city? Effectiveness in health issues often depends not only on resources but the skill of the professionals and on the patient.

And there’s nothing like an open-ended excuse, like this one:

“address other areas as determined appropriate by the Secretary.” [ (Sec. 399HH, (2)(B)(ix) ].

We can safely say that the Senate bill is problematic in its language.

Looking now to Section 1233 of HR 3200, we see the following fascinating passage regarding mandatory “advance care planning”.

“Such consultation shall include the following:
‘‘(A) An explanation by the practitioner of advance care planning, including key questions and considerations, important steps, and suggested people to talk to.
(E) An explanation by the practitioner of the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice, and benefits for such services and supports that are available under this title.” [ Sec. 1233 (hhh)(1) ]

Yes, you read that right. By law, anyone over 65 would have to be advised at least once every five years about the ‘benefits’ of ending their life.

So just who makes that all-important life-or-death decision? Well, the patient is allowed the decision, but only when “guided by a coalition of stake holders includes representatives from emergency medical services, emergency department physicians or nurses, state long-term care association, state medical association, state surveyors, agency responsible for senior services, state department of health, state hospital association, home health association, state bar association, and state hospice association.” [Sec. 1233 (iii)(IV) ].

The bill also says the patient may be advised about the end-of-life option “more frequently” (and it seems, more aggressively) “if there is a significant change in the health condition of the individual, including diagnosis of a chronic, progressive, life-limiting disease, a life-threatening or terminal diagnosis or life-threatening injury, or upon admission to a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care facility (as defined by the Secretary), or a hospice program." [ Sec. 1233 (iii)(3)(B) ]

By the way, according to that definition, my doctors – by law – would be required to ‘consult’ with me about killing myself, since my cancer is incurable. It would suggest that Michael J. Fox kill himself, since Parkinson's is progressive, that Dr. Hawking should die, being in a 'life-limiting' condition, and so on.

It is also worthwhile to go back a bill already signed into law, the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009” (give that a read as well, please).

In Subtitle A, “Promotion of Health Information Technology”, the Act cites the intention, among other things, to ‘reduce health disparities’ [Section 3001, (b)(2)] and “reduce health care costs resulting from inefficiency, medical errors, inappropriate care, duplicative care, and incomplete information” [ Sec. 3001, (b)(3) ] and “provides appropriate information to help guide medical decisions at the time and place of care” [ Sec. 3001, (b)(4) ]

That same bill also specifies the intention of establishing “the utilization of an electronic health record for each person in the United States by 2014” [ Sec. 3001, (3)(A)(ii) ]

The Act also requires a National Database for health care information in every single American: “Facilitate the adoption of a nationwide system for the electronic use and exchange of health information” [Sec. 13113, (a)(1) ]

That same Act requires medical care providers receiving federal funds must “consult and consider the recommendations” of any health care provider, agency, school, or other “entity” specificied by the Secretary of HHS as a "qualified State-designated entity” when providing diagnosis or care for any patient. [ Sec. 3013,(5),(g) ]

Now comes the question of what these separate and associated devices mean. Are they, As Governor Palin claims, a ‘death panel’? Nowhere in any of these bills does it state that the government wants to kill anyone, but at the same time, all three of the bills clearly create a vast increase in government snooping into our private information (yes, they say they will abide by HIPAA, but does anyone really believe that a vast government database identifying everyone by their most intimate medical details will never be hacked or the data misused?) All three bills take a lot of our choice away, by requiring compliance with onerous federal rules and paperwork, and direct government ‘advice’ to your doctor about what can and should be performed. And the House bill quite specifically encourages the premature death of the elderly and the infirm.

Whatever you want to call it, this proposed law is inhuman and repulsive. The only appropriate response, as I see it, would be anger and resistance.

Words Words Words

2009-08-12T09:05:00.001-05:00

Brainy Quote is a website which displays notable quotes from notable people. Here are some interesting quotes made by candidate, then President, Barack Obama:

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. “

“I can make a firm pledge, under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes. “

“I don't take a dime of their [lobbyist] money, and when I am president, they won't find a job in my White House.“

“I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.”

“I will cut taxes - cut taxes - for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.”

“It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

“My administration is the only thing between you [CEO's] and the pitchforks.”

“Over the last 15 months, we've traveled to every corner of the United States. I've now been in 57 states? I think one left to go.”

“We need earmark reform, and when I'm President, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.”

That he made those statements is undeniable. Barack Obama fashioned his image and reputation on the basis of these and similar statements. Whether he has kept the promises made in some of those statements, and whether he is in truth the man he presented himself to be, is now the proper focus for debate.

Thoughts on Bible Prophecy

2009-08-11T16:35:00.002-05:00

I was watching TV earlier this week and caught one of those old programs about Nostradamus. You know, the French guy from Sixteenth Century France who – if you believe the spin – accurately predicted every important event between then and the end of the world. Our boy Michel – I’m gonna call him Mike – grew up in a Jew-converted-to-Catholic family with no money or influence, which meant he got into a lot of scrapes with the Inquisition (yeah, those guys who figured the best way to express the Love of God and Christ for Humanity was to torture confessions outta people and burn heretics to death). Mikey picked up a few patrons along the way; reportedly the Queen thought he was all that and a basket of croissants, which helped him build both his reputation and a defense against his enemies.

Mike had a problem. On the one hand he had all these great prophecies spinning in his noggin, just screaming to be put down on paper. On the other hand, Mikey had a lot of enemies, who could be counted on to use anything he wrote against him, and misuse the prophecies for potentially horrific results. So, Mike wrote his prophecies down in a strange sort of verse called Virgilianized Syntax, mixing in words from other languages and playing word games. While this produced a book of odd verse which many have taken for profound prophecy, it’s a bit difficult to credit it completely, precisely because our boy Mike was a big vague on details. I’ve read Mikey’s prophecies and while some of them seem to have hit the mark, others are hard to consider proven, and some are just too darn weird to take any specific meaning from them.

And that brings me to the Bible. The Bible is also a book with many prophecies, and some of the wording makes it hard to understand. My problem here, is that while I can pretty much ignore Mike’s prophecies with no worries because I really do not see anything to indicate that I need to be up to speed on what a dead Frenchman’s saying on the issues of the day, I do happen to believe in the Bible, and that includes the prophecies. So I believe that I need to pay attention to what God’s saying in the Bible. And that is sometimes harder than I would like.

Part of that is the number of people who want to sell their own interpretation of Scripture. Nothing wrong with someone saying what they think, except that some of these folks are not calling it their own opinion, but selling it as God’s truth. That gets a person into real trouble, right quick. So before I post again on this subject, let me be very clear that whatever think on the matter of prophecy, it’s nothing but my guess and take it as that and no more than that.

to be continued

What I See So Far About HR 3200

2009-08-10T07:00:00.000-05:00

There are a lot of words in the 1,017 pages of HR 3200, even by my standards. The bill is poorly written from what I can tell, since it constantly directs the reader to consult other laws and regulations to see the way a particular section is to be applied. If the Democrats were listening to me, the first piece of advice I would offer is to rewrite this thing in plain English, with a simple Table of Contents and page listing, along with a synopsis of each section to explain its intent and function. People tend to resent a piece of legislation which involves a lot of tax money, will be permanent, and which seems to be rushed, when it is difficult to understand and discuss. It may be that the Democrats have put together a really effective piece of legislation, but if so they should be happy to discuss it in detail, not act defensively and as if they have something to hide.

Anyway, to the bill. HR 3200 is a huge piece of work, but to start its examination, we see that it has three “Divisions”, seventeen “Titles”, and fifty “Subtitles”. Division A is titled “Affordable Health Care Choices” and Title I therein addresses the description of heath care plans, access, benefits, and consumer protections. Title II is important, as it creates the government entity known as the “Heath Insurance Exchange”. Section 201 lays out how it works, as follows:

The government will set up a new bureaucracy called the Health Choices Administration, with a Commissioner who reports directly to the President. The HCA will create and supervise an entity known as the Health Insurance Exchange, wherein all nominal insurance coverage will be administered at the federal level. The HCA would have complete authority to determine whether individuals, employers, or insurance companies met the requisite criteria to participate, and the tone of the Title implies that the final decision will be made only with government approval. The function of the HCA invites legal challenge on at least two constitutional grounds – first, the traditional separation of powers does not allow the Executive Branch authority to control domestic commerce in this way; on a practical level imagine the fallout if this bill becomes law and if/when a Congressman or Senator wishes to look more closely at the HCA’s activities he/she is told that Congress is excluded from such authority? The second conflict is that creation of the HCA would effectively eliminate the state insurance boards, as all insurance would be controlled and directed from the federal level, in what appears to be a direct violation of state’s rights under the U.S. Constitution.

There’s a lot more to consider, but for now it might be interesting to consider the almost certain legal challenges which this bill would face were it actually to become law.