Thanks Great Britain!
This recent success by intelligence agencies confirms the wisdom in much of our acceptance of privacy infringements that some claim to be harmful. What little I might lose can't compare to how much we could have lost. Keep up the good work! We won't rally in public to show our support but we deeply appreciate what you work to prevent.
During a recent planning session on global preparations for an avian flu pandemic it occurred to me that the standards for corporate work environments had changed although most of us aren't noticing. In June 2000 a joint project with Gartner and MIT studied the future of workplaces and produced a document in December 2001 called the Agile Workplace. The highlight of this document was that work would be highly distributed and consisting of small project based teams that came together for the life of a project. Of course 9/11 proved that dense office environments were a liability in the face of terrorist threats. Now Avian Flu preparations are again demonstrating that dense concentrations of workers poses an potential threat. The US military has already adopted a model that favors small precision strike teams (targeted and smart) over large massive assault forces (large and dumb). Some recent business magazines highlighted the innovative and economic necessity of small teams in corporate efforts. The reason so many office workers 'go to work' in some large office is because that is what we were used to and ultimately we are social creatures. But the paradigm is changing - we are learning to work and collaborate without being present in person (global corporate work is heavily done this way already). Tom Barnett recently blogged about the globally integrated enterprise that IBM promotes. And Cantor Fitzgerald routinely shuts down sections of its facilities in order to prove how well its contingency plans actually work. Based on World Health Organization guidelines for Phase 6 of a pandemic the pendulum would swing to the extreme side of isolation and that could possibly happen. But the happy medium will be the small tight-knit project team that is very effective and will be one way that social needs are met. More important managers will learn to accept and measure this way of working. The current large open floor plan designs of corporations hinders effectiveness and gives an impression of productivity by the bustle of activity.
It was horrifying to watch Hezbollah fire Iranian rockets into the Israeli heartland. It is remarkable how desensitized we have all become to the decade of shelling by Hezbollah and others of Israeli schools and settlements where the targets were children and women. But it is one thing to witness such barbarity toward those who knowingly live near the border and quite another to target a major city far from the border. There is no dissent in Israel - no one is ready to tolerate this barbarism, not the Jews and not the Arabs living in Haifa.
The question perhaps is at what point is Israel justified in saying that Lebanon as a nation has provided cover for Hezbollah and now is responsible for their activities (versus the view that they are bystanders and collateral damage)? Perhaps a 'proportional response' would be to indiscriminately bomb Tyre or Beirut? I also understand that Iran so far has specifically forbidden Hezbollah from using their longer range missiles (Zelzal-2's) that are capable of striking Tel Aviv. But at what point is Israel justified at holding Iran accountable? Certainly the Fajr-5's are being used under Iranian or Syrian auspices and training. Would a 'proportional response' be to indiscriminately bomb Tehran? This is the time for the world to seriously refuse to tolerate these provocations by Hezbollah as a proxy of Iran. Tom Barnett has a serious proposal that could break the impasse. Fouad Ajami and some other Arabs are not buying the rhetoric about 'Israeli 'aggression.
Fouad Ajami on BookTV discusses his latest book where he mentions that unlike most Americans that 'a visit to Iraq means four hours within the Green Zone talking to other Americans' he was able to move throughout the country and talk to prominent Iraqi leaders about the situation. Unlike the recent headlines about the deteriorating state of affairs in Iraq he paints a picture of hope. He states that the initial batch of Sunni leaders was not representative of the electorate and was replaced with the real hard liners - the leaders of the insurgency. This is actually a good thing because now equilibrium is being established as he says 'a balance of terror'. These leaders understand 'mutually assured destruction' and are learning that the Shiites can not be pushed around. Sunnis attack Shiites and they strike back, and strike back hard. Plus the Shiites now control police forces so Sunnis can not hide behind phony 'justice'. He says we should expect the violence to subside (there will continue to be some attacks as foreign terrorists continue to enter).
Michael Barone offers his view of the Lieberman defeat (subscription required). He compares the exceptionalist attitudes of the likes of Lieberman and many of our great political figures in history with that of the transnationalists embodied by the fringes of the far Left.
The working class Democrats of the mid-20th century voted their interests, and knew that one of their interests was protecting the nation in which they were proud to live. The professional class Democrats of today vote their ideology and, living a life in which they are insulated from adversity, feel free to imagine that America cannot be threatened by implacable enemies. They can vote to validate their lifestyle choices and their transnational attitudes.
Most liberals and Democrats I know are of the former mold - people that love and believe in our country. It is simply time for mainstream Democrats to abandon the party which is turning away from patriotism and faith and find a way to field candidates that offer hope and promise rather than criticism and blame.
I may have found a nice distinction between liberal and conservative from listening to a series of podcasts on the Tanya. This rabbi sees the liberal side of people being that of kindness and compassion whereas the conservative side is focused in justice and strictness. While I disagree that people are one or the other - I see the need to balance both. Misplaced compassion leads to perversion such as one that gives license to terrorism. Too much justice without mercy leaves us hopeless and desperate.
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