9/11 Anniversary - My reactions

FIRST OF ALL MY RESPECTS TO ALL BRAVE, SERVING, AND MARTYRED AMERICANS!

On the anniversary of 9/11, to gauge world opinion I have been reading articles and essays by purported experts on America & Americans in foreign publications trying to describe the psyche of Americans and their government. It has been painful reading them give advice to us, which I consider nothing but stupid or short of senseless drivel. Their articles and essays may appeal to the less aware people who get swayed by even a light populist breeze, however I have to inform them their analysis is dead wrong! You cannot spend 4 years in an isolated environment of an academic institution in America and let that make you and expert on American psyche! That's doing no better than the terrorists hijackers of 9/11.

I can tell you as a person who grew up here and has now spent half my adult life in this country their "analysis" is way off the mark. One doesn't become an expert on America living in a closed environment like they did.


As much as I am saddened and humbled by the events of 9/11, and bow my head to the Heroes. I dearly wish from the bottom of my heart for the sake of the ones who lost their lives, their near and dear ones, my own children, family, friends and myself the events of the day would have never happened!


Without being an apologist for anyone, have some people in American government and corporate houses made mistakes along the way I'm sure they have. Tell me a nation or corporation that has not bungled along the way? Do you then go out and try to destroy them completely unless there intentions were clearly maleficent? Being a follower of history I can find less than a handful of such instances. America the government and America the corporate has never done anything close to that. Jokes aside, there is no arrogant and loudmouth America. This notion that America the big brother is trying to control the world as the single evil entity is nothing short of poppy seed ingested hallucinations that I can attribute to!

There is only ONE AMERICA, the warm loving, caring, & sharing ONE! The America these people will never know because of their inbuilt and deeply ingrained subconscious prejudices. If America and Americans are so bad why come here? Why not stay in the comfort of your cold dusty cave, or pest filled tropical jungle, or hot, dry arid desert, or wherever else you are coming from? I have yet to see people immigrating to Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Pakistan, India, China, Mexico, or even Japan and Europe, in droves like they make a bee-line for America even now!

For the last 3 years the country has been in a recession, bottoming housing market, high unemployment, and various other issues, yet the American people or the American government and business has not turned their on backs on anyone anywhere whether it be helping the earthquake victims in Haiti or Japan, rescue trapped miners in Chile (YES, American Technology at it's BEST!), trying to contain the financial meltdown in Europe (would have never guessed it, right?).

Does the world standby Americans when a natural calamity befalls us? Thank goodness we don't have half the problems they rest of the world has or we would be left up the creek to dry...

It confuses me that the rest of the world thinks that Americans have unlimited patience to keep on accepting the hurls and abuse it constantly throw at us yet we keep turning the other cheek! Has 9/11 changed Americans? It didn't immediately, but the procession of subsequent events is surely bringing about a slow and marked change in the thinking of "American" people.

Let me tell you what the event of 9/11/2001 has done, it has made the majority of simple minded, loving, and trusting Americans realize the world is a much deadlier and vengeful place than they can even imagine. That it is not all about "do unto others as you would have others do unto you"! There are people, countries, and ideologies that want to hold you(Americans) responsible & destroy you for the real and imaginary grievances which are inflicted on them by their own people!

Here's a thought if the Saudi hijackers were so upset at their monarchy why didn't they do something in their own country? Because they knew they would have faced a certain and mind you horrible death if their government had even got a whiff of their plans. So they come to America abuse our hospitality, take advantage of our law enforcement mechanism (innocent until proven guilty of an actual crime), prey on the tolerance of American society (had it been any other country they would have been marked men), to kill our people! If once was not enough we have another guy try to do the same almost a decade later by trying to use a SUV as an IED in New York - AGAIN! Yet it was not the first or second time that New York was made a target. In 1993 the WTC was the target of the first of many attempts to kill thousands of Americans by blowing up a truck filled with explosives in its' basement parking lot. So these were and are not isolated one off aberrations, but a series of well thought out deadly projects to inflict harm on the United States of America and it's citizens!

The American people are the ones that ALLOW their representatives to spend billions if not trillions of dollars on foreign aid helping other people. It is the American people who have ALLOWED their C-suite executives to export millions of jobs outside of the country to places like India & China. Yes, there is a business motive to it, but don't forget we could have done sent those jobs anywhere else had we wanted. Don't forget companies like Dell, HP, and others have shut down operations in India and elsewhere before and moved them elsewhere. America, could become a closed and protected economy like China, India, and dozens of other countries. America could also start imposing high tariffs on foreign imports like Europe, Japan, and others. Yet, we don't do it, at-least not yet; and don't tempt us into doing it! The tide is turning as 9/11 has started to make common Americans more aware of what has been and is going on in the rest of the world. Instead of trying to become equals the rest of the world does not think of rising up to the level of America, so what does it do try to do drag it down to their level!

Americans and myself included, because I am an AMERICAN and a PROUD one, are coming to the realization we need to take of our country and people first! We are getting sick of hearing there was a tsunami, earthquake, genocide in a certain part of the globe so we need to send billions of dollars of aid there and put our peoples' lives at risk! We don't care if people are starving in certain countries so we need to send jobs there to help them out. Why? Because look what 50 years of do gooding did to America, more than 3,000 killed in New York City!

For the last 200 years America took care of itself and the world when no-one was there to be a role model, now I think the time has come for America and Americans to once again take care of themselves, but let the rest of the world step-up it's own game!

Am I upset? YES, I am UPSET! Upset as an AMERICAN! Upset as a parent of couple of great ALL AMERICAN kids! UPSET AS AN AMERICAN CITIZEN WHO HAS HAD ENOUGH!

On behalf of most(see we still have freedom of choice!) AMERICANS I'm giving the rest of the world notice don't take us for granted, at-least not anymore!

WE WILL NEVER FORGET!

Looming CWG Fiasco in India

I'm trying to grasp the frustration everyone seems to have as well as the overwhelming urge to appoint blame and lay responsibility on a few individuals trotting around as figureheads... BTW, not absolving anyone from taking personal respon...sibility. Yet I am probably correct to assume that everyone of us who is demonstrating this "supposed" indignation is miles away from the ground reality in the planning, organizing, and execution of these games. Come on guys these are just games! Seems we are living in a pre-cold war world when the US & USSR tried to project their capabilities via the Olympics and we now know how hollow that projection of capabilities was / is. SCREW THE CWG, WHY THE HELL HASN'T ANYONE COMMENTED ON THE PLIGHT OF THE FOLKS DISPLACED BY THE ONGOING FLOODING IN NORTH INDIA!!! See how F#$%ed up our armchair brougeoisie mentality has become! If the events leading up to games had not been exposed by the media as a humongous SNAFU, I bet everyone here would have then reveled in basking in the glory of such great CWG games, and hailed the capabilities of India Shining! While we all know how superficial and limited those capabilities are... Development of infrastructure has always been the Achilles heel in India. Let's first accept this only then can we hope to move ahead, otherwise we will only move on...(!?!?!?)

Update: 12Hours later...

It was interesting to see Sr. Editor Headlines Today Sandeep Bamzai echo the exact same sentiment about India's weakness in infrastructural development as the major cause of the current CWG fiasco as well as the issues facing the general public due to flooding.

What happened to - AVATAR, at the Oscars...

What happened to AVATAR, at the Oscars yesterday...?

Seems the critics saw past the Na'vi  and their blue skins... James Cameron you can take us for a ride as many times as you want whether under water in the Abyss, on water on the Titanic, or across the galaxy to Pandora, but don't expect Oscars to be showered upon you every single time you make a movie now.

Gatekeepers and Screeners at the door - That's what HR recruiters call themselves!

As mentioned in the prior post I got a bunch of responses to my questions on HR and Recruiting. Some of the responses were just amazing!!!

Listed below is the query I framed and a few selected responses -


"Quite often I hear - "... a resume has less than 30 seconds to make an impact to a recruiter - independent or corporate HR.." WHY?"

- "Let me first correct you: It takes 3-10 seconds to review a resume to verify if it meets qualifications for a majority of positions. If it was 30 seconds, I would never get any work done."

-  "Because time is money."

- "10-15 seconds tops... You have to market yourself if you are missing some requirements on the job description...otherwise 10 seconds is all you will get."

- "My goodness, I don't read resumes for a living, but do you know how many of these answers I could skim over in 30 seconds and get a pretty darn good idea of what they were talking about?"

- "For the same reason cyber security is in such great (sic) shape in this country and beyond. As far as I can tell that's 29 seconds past the maximum attention span of most recruiters."

- "The way we see the problem is often greater than the problem we're trying to solve.

To most people;

1. Busy = important, 30 seconds "I must be busy, I'm important"
2. Decision Making = Important, "5's" (performance level relative to the 1,000's in their industry) aren't asked their thoughts on "move the needle" issues, thus, why not make it up in volume, 30 seconds at a time ... important again
3. Believe their intentions are good; say a prayer and move on

I coach the coachable HR people on how to do the process more effectively and efficiently. However, my systems reward / create consequences for HR performance as most don't.

Litmus Test on the Culture of an HR Dept:

What % of the HR Payroll will be paid, regardless of who is hired?
Example: $5M in salaries and $4.7 is paid regardless while $4.9 - $5.1 has a 95% chance of getting paid. Where's the motivation?

Life's too short to worry about it unless you're helping someone that is open to changing it." 

- "They're not, by and large, out there searching for talent. They're the gatekeepers, who screen applications sent in."

- "Because HR people are the equivalent of soccer goalies - their job is not to let anyone in but to keep just about everyone out. ...Getting your resume or a letter in front of the hiring manager is the only way you can get through the stonewall the square peg HR gatekeepers put in your path."


Now keep in mind the above are just a few excerpts from from about 25% of the responses received, the majority of them were basically of the opinion "How dare I ask this question and bring this issue up!".

Well here are a few of my rebuttals - enjoy!

- "...most of the responses seem to validate the "30 Second" rule / hypothesis.

So taking that for a baseline if one was a great recruiter and received and average of 100 resumes a day, that's about 50mins of your time in the day. I'll be generous and round it up to 60min, wait I'll be magnanimous and give you 1min per resume that's 2 hours of your day every single day of the month. Almost every recruiter out in the field would kill for those kind of potential leads, the fact is none have them, get them, or come even come close to generating them!

So, what do you do the rest of the day? Waste of company time and money if internal Dept. and do outrageously high billing if an external recruiter!

If I was a CEO/CFO/COO I would take a quick look at my HR recruiting Dept and partner recruiting companies and FIRE THEM! HR guys you just discredited your entire industry! You just proved that you provide very little value addition to the hiring process which can be completely substituted by an automated system, albeit one that may require a little more fine tuning"

- "The responses here themselves say a resume is a way to get your "toe" into the door! How can you make a judgement call for an individual by "seeing" their so called "toes" only? It's like the story of the 5 blind men who touched a different part of an elephant and came to a different set of conclusions as to what it was and what it could do, without seeing or even feeling the entire elephant."

- "...almost every other function that you said a "Generalist" may handle has been outsourced or is in the process of being outsourced and automated, or the employee is being "empowered" to handle on their own with the service provider.

So the one pure HR function that you can add value to internally is recruiting, however if that seems too much for most don't blame outsourcing and automation when it takes over completely. What you call "screening" can be done by anyone sitting half way around the world in a window less room, and then making an appointment for the hiring individual by an email or a phone call."

- "...In this day and age of almost 12% unemployment in the US, why employers are unable to fill positions with the "right" and properly "qualified" candidates is the mystery worth exploring..."

 

Are the economic experts reallly that stupid...?!?!?!

In the last quarter of 2009 there was great deal of optimism that the global economy was on the verge of turning around, but the US economy was doomed to complete annihilation, which was the reason gold was having such a great run up.

Now I'm not an economist or an expert on the subject, but I have studied it a little and do read a bit, more than anything I like to look at facts before making any kind of predictions.

Anyone who claims to be an economist even as a passing dilettante on the subject usually has reams and gobs of paper pass under their nose that would show factually where the fault lines are in the global economy. Yet, there is either a global conspiracy to suppress the evidence or the academics who teach the subject have no idea what they are talking about these days, or even in the past when were proven dead wrong(!); and still fail to admit that the academic theories they have grown up studying and teaching are fundamentally flawed in this new age of instant global inter-connectedness!

Let's get to the real issue - a great global meltdown is staring at us in the face yet nobody sees - EUROPE!!! All everyone can report about is the failures of the American economy, which are miniscule compared to what has already happened in Europe, is now happening, and will unfold in the coming months!!!

Greece is just the very "tiny" tip of the financial meltdown volcano that will erupt if people these so called economic experts do not take their heads out of places where the sun don't shine, and start initiating more sound economic polices rather than blow air as they did at the WEF recently!

Anyway, to satisfy my own curiosity and see how and why my hypothesis may just be right I created the following tables to analyze and draw my own conclusions. The information is as of 2008, so still current.

Rank	Country	GDP in Billions	% Debt. Of GDP	External Debt. in Billions	Per Capita Debt	Per Capita GDP
20	United States	$14,260.00	94.35%	$13,454.00	$43,793.00	$47,440.00
19	Hungary	$196.60	105.76%	$207.92	$20,936.64	$19,553.00
18	Australia	$800.20	111.38%	$891.26	$42,426.18	$36,918.00
17	Italy	$1,823.00	126.71%	$2,310.00	$39,741.00	$30,631.00
16	Greece	$343.00	161.17%	$552.80	$51,483.00	$30,681.00
15	Spain	$1,403.00	171.70%	$2,409.00	$59,457.00	$30,589.00
14	Germany	$2,918.00	178.48%	$5,208.00	$63,263.00	$36,320.00
13	Finland	$193.50	188.55%	$364.85	$69,491.00	$36,320.00
12	Sweden	$344.30	194.34%	$669.10	$73,854.00	$37,334.00
11	Norway	$275.40	199.02%	$548.10	$117,604.00	$53,738.00
10	Hong Kong	$306.60	205.85%	$631.13	$89,457.00	$43,847.00
9	Portugal	$236.50	214.38%	$507.00	$47,348.00	$22,232.00
8	France	$2,128.00	235.95%	$5,021.00	$78,387.00	$34,205.00
7	Austria	$329.50	252.63%	$832.42	$101,387.00	$39,887.00
6	Denmark	$203.60	298.32%	$607.38	$110,422.00	$37,304.00
5	Belgium	$389.00	320.31%	$1,246.00	$119,681.00	$36,416.00
4	Netherlands	$672.00	364.88%	$2,452.00	$146,703.00	$40,558.00
3	United Kingdom	$2,226.00	408.22%	$9,087.00	$148,702.00	$36,358.00
2	Switzerland	$316.70	422.48%	$1,338.00	$176,045.00	$43,196.00
1	Ireland	$188.40	1266.45%	$2,386.00	$576,805.00	$42,110.00

I have highlighted the US and six largest economies in Europe.


Just look at the per capita debt per person vs the per capita GDP and draw your own conclusions from the comparisons. By the way the population of US is approx. 311 million, while the population of European Union for those wanting to do more analysis is approx. 500 million.

Besides the teetering economies that we are already aware of Iceland and Greece, there are greater underlying problems in Europe specially in the realm of politics and it's proximity to Russia and the turbulence that arises from the Middle-East. Let's not factor out geo-politics when it comes to the occurrence, division, and allocation of natural resources, and ethnic tensions in the region.

If anyone of the readers was a betting person and was aware of the geo-political-economic world order which country would you place your bets on... to successfully emerge intact with the least amount of collateral damage from the current economic crisis?