[Mishmash] World Trade Center

Fred Atkinson fatkinson at mishmash.com
Fri Aug 11 10:38:43 CDT 2006 

Oops, 

    Correction to the first line.  I agree that violence isn't always the answer.  



                                            Fred 

--- fatkinson at mishmash.com wrote:

From: "Fred Atkinson" <fatkinson at mishmash.com>
To: <mishmash at mishmash.net>
Subject: Re: [Mishmash] World Trade Center
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:36:08 -0700

Ingrid, 

     No, I agree that violence is always the answer.  But I think it may be the only end in this case.  

     While Israel's act may not be perfect, no one else's is including ourselves.  But we don't target innocent civilians and I don't think Israel takes that approach either.  Terrorists kill innocent civilians to attempt to achieve their end.  

     You talk about our minimum wage being the pits.  How can we raise it when all it will do is send more jobs to India and other countries and put more Americans out of work?  I was never in favor of 'opening the floodgate' on the world economy all at once.  Something like that has to be done gradually in order for the world economy to adjust.  

     And it seems like other countries are gaining power through the workplace by defeating our schools.  America's universities are turning out fewer and fewer engineers and favoring people who are more management bound (want to sit at a desk and try to organize things).  What America needs to stay stronger is more engineers.  Other nations are turning out engineers at an enormous rate.  And they are leaving us behind.  

     We have become too complacent and want to do things the 'cushy' (easy) way.  That's the American dream, I'm told.  But a part of the American dream we have forgotten is that we achieve it by working hard and overcoming difficulty in reaching our goals.  We want it handed to us on a silver platter.  It's sad that we are outsourcing that opportunities to other countries simply because they have a lower minimum wage than we do.  That's what opening the economic floodgates have done to this country.  

     We've misinterpreted Juran and Demming's methods whereas the Japanese and the Germans have not.  When I call 'Customer Service' (which I consider an oxymoron, by the way), most people [even people who are supposed to be technically saavy] don't even know what they are talking about.  They are trained to hold the customer's hand, let the customer cry on their shoulder, then wish them a nice day to return to the problem they've manufactured but can't solve for them.  When I call telephone companies, Internet companies, cable companies, and other service providers, I frequently discover that these people who are supposed to help you resolve problems with their products or services don't know squat about what they are supposed to help you with.  

     Juran and Demming never meant for 'I'm sorry' to become an oxymoron and a cliche'.  They suggested that 'I'm sorry' should be used in the rare event that you don't meet the quality the customer is entitled to.  

     Yes, I'm ticked off at my cablemodem provider again.  My cablemodem was going nuts and they kept me on 'music on hold' for over forty-five minutes, told me to hold while he checked it with the 'technical' people, and then transfered me to a recorded 'survey' which gave me three options, all of which were the case and no option to say 'all of the above'.  '1' suggested that you were on hold for too long.  '2' suggested that the agent didn't show concern for your problem.  '3' suggested that the reason you were dissatisfied was because your problem wasn't resolved.  But there was no 'all of the above'.  

     Regards, 



                                             Fred 


     

--- ieholzman at verizon.net wrote:

From: "Ingrid & Eric Holzman" <ieholzman at verizon.net>
To: "Mishmash" <mishmash at mishmash.net>
Subject: Re: [Mishmash] World Trade Center
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 10:00:08 -0400

I don't disagree that Hezbollah is essentially impossible to negotiate with, 
but violence begets violence.  And I may be Jewish, but I don't feel that 
Israel is entirely innocent either.  They have been at some kind of war for 
a very long time.  They haven't gotten the message either that violence 
won't solve the problem.  The U.N. has lost a great deal of credibililty, 
but they seem to look to us and how are we handling things in Iraq?  Not 
good.  We want everyone to be a democracy, like us, but who are we to impose 
our will upon another?  We have greater issues in our own backyard.  We have 
too many kids who can't make the grade and are failing in school.  Shouldn't 
we try to fix that before we try to fix another nation?  What about the 
working poor?  The people who truly work hard, but can barely make ends 
meet.  I'm not talking about the "illegals" GW wants to remove from our 
country, but those who aren't earning a decent wage.  Our minimum wage in 
this country stinks!  It doesn't work with the cost of living -- the TRUE 
cost of living -- not the inflated one in the big cities.

Getting back to your points, I do agree that the people who are involved in 
the mideast fighting as well as yesterday's terrorist plot are extremists, 
but I can't agree that we always need to resort to violence that ultimately 
affects innocent people in the crossfire.

Ingrid
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Fred Atkinson" <fatkinson at mishmash.com>
To: "Mishmash" <mishmash at mishmash.net>
Sent: Friday, August 11, 2006 9:45 AM
Subject: Re: [Mishmash] World Trade Center


> Ingrid,
>
>    If you believe that Hezbollah can be successfully negotiated with, you
> need to rethink.  They are the extremists Arabs who believe (like Hitler
> did) that the Jews should be exterminated.  And they are determined to do
> that.
>
>    Sadly, the only solution I see is a military one in which Hezbollah
> would take massive losses.  Israel will need help to do that.  But the U. 
> N.
> will sit and twiddle their thumbs.
>
>    I used to believe in the U.N., but they've lost any credibility.  They
> sit on their thumbs, provide delays to taking action that needs to be 
> taken,
> and ultimately get nothing accomplished.  If they agree to a 
> multi-national
> force to deal with this, I'm going to be very surprised.
>
>    Diplomacy with terrorists is like trying to rehabilitate a psychotic
> serial killer to rejoin society.  I'm very sorry to say there are people 
> in
> the world who's signature on a treaty isn't worth the cost of the paper it
> is printed on.  But that describes terrorists exactly.
>
>    They don't have any respect for life, other than the survival of their
> race and they are willing to die and kill a massive number of innocent
> people to achieve that.  They'd come over here and extinguish innocent 
> lives
> in a split second.  Look at the cowardly way they use their own civilians 
> as
> human shields.  And then when their own innocent civilians get killed
> because they placed them in harm's way, they use it against Israel and the
> U. S. in the world community.
>
>    Why doesn't someone call what they are doing exactly what it is?  That
> word is genocide.
>
>    These people want to stay in the past and keep their followers ignorant
> and uneducated so they can fill their minds with this dribble about how
> Allah wants to kill infidels including Jews (Israel) and Americans. 
> That's
> the not a god that I know and believe in.
>
>    No offense intended to anyone of Japanese ancestry when I say this, but
> we took drastic action to put an end to their type of war.  I am not
> advocating using nuclear weapons, but nothing short of a devasting 
> military
> defeat is going to stop terrorists.
>
>    The Japanese had to rebuild and they became a civilized industrial
> nation.  I'm sorry to say that I think that may be the only solution.
>
>    Regards,
>
>
>
>                                                                    Fred
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Ingrid & Eric Holzman" <ieholzman at verizon.net>
> To: "Mishmash" <mishmash at mishmash.net>
> Sent: Friday, August 11, 2006 7:14 AM
> Subject: Re: [Mishmash] World Trade Center
>
>
>> I'm not sure I fully gather your message, Hugh.  Are you saying that we
>> shouldn't try to negotiate peace and diplomacy as in the case of Israel
> and
>> Hezbollah?  Do you think it's best to let the bombs fall and whoever 
>> comes
>> out standing in the end is the winner?
>>
>> I agree that there is a group that definitely hates Americans.  I also
> think
>> that yesterday's plan wasn't necessarily the whole plan.  I can't help 
>> but
>> feel that there's more in the wings that we are missing --- being 
>> diverted
>> from seeing as we raise our fists for foiling this plot in England.  It
>> didn't surprise me to hear that a woman was involved.  It's the new wave
> of
>> things to come.  Children as the bombers will be next.
>>
>> Ingrid
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: <hgigante at optonline.net>
>> To: "Mishmash" <mishmash at mishmash.net>
>> Sent: Friday, August 11, 2006 5:06 AM
>> Subject: Re: [Mishmash] World Trade Center
>>
>>
>>
>> > The talk yesterday and today scares me, especially those who still 
>> > think
>> > talk, negotiating, and diplomacy will work.
>> >
>> > Truth is there are a whole bunch of people who want us dead. They want
> us
>> > dead because we are a modern society and don't care if "we" are adults,
>> > children, or whatever.
>> >
>> > Those who say yesterday was proof our current approachis not working
>> > forget our current approach stopped the plan, and has stopped all major
>> > attacks for five years now . . . in part by keeping the nuts busy
> fighting
>> > it out in Iraq.
>> >
>> > Hugh
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Mishmash mailing list
>> > Mishmash at mishmash.net
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>>
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