OK. Enough.
They’re not insurgents anymore. They’re not rebels. They’re not freedom fighters. They’re not even terrorists. They’re not that good. They are butchers. Butchers. Butchers.
The blood of children is on their hands. Women are their victims. Men strolling on the street are their targets.
They have gone beyond the pale. They are no longer worthy of the term human.
This isn’t about the Iraq war right or wrong. If it means anything, I don’t think the war was a great idea in the first place, and the rationale for it was flawed from the outset. That said, once started, it held some potential for letting tinpot dictatorships know that they can’t act with impunity anymore.
But nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing justifies this wholesale slaughter … by people who supposedly believe in the same religion as their victims. By people who are mostly the countrymen of their victims.
May God have mercy on their souls, because most men won’t.
Teresa and I (and the kids) just came back from a Michael Card concert.
It was sponsored by WorldServe, and featured Pastor Elisha, the leader of something like 2000 house churches in Vietnam.
It’s illegal to for Christians to evangelize in Vietnam, so Pastor Elisha has spent many years in prison – 4 prisons, actually – which has resulted in most of the prison population accepting Christ. It’s also the reason for the house churches. The Vietnam government closed down their church years ago, forcing Pastor Elisha to adopt a small-groups approach, which he actually based on how the apostle Paul evangelized in Asia Minor in the days of the early church.
Very enjoyable concert, and a fascinating evening. Eye-opening, too.
Many Christians are being persecuted in Vietnam, with beatings, imprisonment, and harrassment all common, even for children. Elisha told the story of a 12-year-old Christian girl being almost drowned by an army brute … but she refused to renounce Jesus, and was left for dead. The church members revived her, and she brought many others to God.
The church is exploding in Vietnam, with something like 1.2 million members – up from 55.000 in 1975, after the Vietnam War.
PS:
Pastor Elisha spoke through an interpreter – he does not speak any English.
When Aidan (our 2-year old) first heard him speak, he laughed loudly and said “silly man.” He’s probably never heard anyone speak quite like that before, and thought it was quite hilarious.
Tonight I heard the one of the best definitions of leadership I’ve ever encountered:
“Leadership is the ability to achieve your goals through the efforts of others.”
– Pastor Elisha (a Vietnamese pastor)
It’s perhaps a bit one-sided … and you’d have to be careful that this kind of leadership wouldn’t deteriorate into manipulation, but it’s a pretty powerful way of thinking about what it means to lead.
I recently went through some Lean Transformation training provided by Simpler Consulting, and one of the facilitators said that “best is the evil enemy of good.”
I was a little surprised by that, because I’ve always thought that good is the enemy of best … people are satisfied with ‘good,’ and so they don’t put out the extra effort for ‘best.’
But Steve explained it this way:
We’re so mesmerized by the best system, the best process, the best solution that we often fixate on that and don’t even start. The ultimate solution is too far out there – it’s unattainable. So, because we don’t want to fail, we don’t go for the brass ring.
That rings true …. projects that I’ve delayed and delayed and delayed, because I knew we couldn’t get where we wanted to go.
But the point is, if you try, and you achieve 50% of what you tried to do, you’re still better off. And next year you can improve another 20%. And the following year another 15%.
The idea is continuous measured improvement, instead of staking everything on quantum leaps of improvement.
I kind of like that idea.
Wow – it’s been 11 years since graducation.
Incredible.
SFU is holding an alumni celebration of 40 years of existence … staggeringly young for a university with 20-30 thousand students.
I haven’t been blogging with quite the old pace, mostly due to being busy, but also due to taking some down time in the evenings that I haven’t taken for over 6 months.
But checking my blog, postings, comments, etc. tonight, I found the oddest post. (Visitors can post, but I have to review it before it goes live.)
In essence, it’s a Scientologist who has seen my latest posting on Scientology and my earlier post on Katie Holme’s brainwashing, and is replying.
The person – who claims to be a Scientology “clear” since 1979 – questions whether or not there is such a thing as brainwashing. He or she then launches into a long explanation of Scientology.
He or she is certainly sincere – I don’t doubt that. But the arguments fall into the classic cultic vein: believe, then we’ll give you the evidence. Then everything will be better.
Well, I’m sorry, but believing that all of today’s problems are caused by spirits of long-dead aliens who visited our planet 75 million years ago and died in some planetwide catastrophe, and further believing that a science fiction writer who stated that the best way to make a million dollars was to start a religion somehow discovered this, magically, and further believing that the way to ultimate health and wellbeing is just around the corner if only you pay some secretive and mystical organization gobs of cash while some charlatan with a gimmicked-up “e-meter” measures your thetans …. violates Occam’s razor on so many different levels we don’t even need to talk about the story after story after story of escapees from Scientology who reveal its flaws, and, frankly, evils.
In any case, here’s the post. It’s the fairly typical leap off a tower of speculation built on a foundation of imagination that you get from most “true believers” in cults. And includes the classic “you can become god” lie:
Read more »
Rastin is blogging, and it’s A Good Thingâ„¢.
At very least, you now have an outlet for those feelings of unrequited love, Rastin.
OK, maybe that’s overstating the case a little.
Teresa took this photo of me, Ethan, Aidan (the youngest) and my dad a month or so ago during Ethan’s 6th birthday party:
Saw this nugget in a comment on Business Week:
Don’t forget the basic formula for success–first, best, or different.
If you’re launching a new product or service, those are good words to remember.
Dave is blogging again.
I guess once you’ve had your first hit, you’re hooked.
I see that, as of 30 minutes ago, he is not at home. Bad boy, cool app.
My only question, Dave, is: why Movable Type? Was it preinstalled or something? Wordpress is clearly superior (ok, I’m somewhat biased) and certainly much cooler.
So Edgar Bronfman (the guy for whom the statement the best way to make a small fortune is to start with a big fortune could have been created) wants a piece of iPod sales:
Mr. Bronfman said the music industry should not have to use its content to promote the sale of digital music devices for Apple or anyone else, and not truly share in the profits.
“We are selling our songs through iPod, but we don’t have a share of iPod’s revenue,” he said. “We want to share in those revenue streams. We have to get out of the mindset that our content has promotional value only.
So he wants a piece of CD players too? What about car stereos? Maybe speakers? Speaker wire, for sure.
I don’t want to use the words that would adequately describe this jamoke on this website – my kids read it.
If you keep reading the Red Herring article that the above quote is from, you get this interesting piece:
“We have to keep thinking how we are going to monetize our product for our shareholders,” added Mr. Bronfman. “We are the arms supplier in the device wars between Samsung, Sony, Apple, and others.”
And we thought he was a music label. Interesting.
If I was a group, band, or artist in his label, and I was anything approaching a serious group (i.e. I wasn’t a pre-packaged air-brushed focus-grouped fluffy piece of nothing), I would get out fast.
Wouldn’t you like to have your own store online, with your own products?
No, not the kind of store that is really someone else’s, filled with someone else’s products, that you just advertise and hope somebody somewhere buys something on so you can take a couple nickels of the sale.
Your stuff, your store.
When I get a few minutes, that’s what I’m going to do.
As ongoing readers of this blog may or may not know, I’m starting up a new piece/division/value stream/part of Premier, the company I’ve worked for over the past 11 years.
I knew this going in, but I know it now: starting up is not easy to do.
Vision, research, product development, marketing strategy, marketing collateral, communication strategy and execution, training, more communication, finance, operations, demand forecasting, capacity planning, and general nursemaid, nanny, and bottle-holding mommy to anyone who needs information/help/etc. througout the process …. these are only the things I can think of right now.
Which is why my workday just ended and I’m turning the computer off now.
(As challenging as it is, it is also a huge, huge, huge, huge opportunity, and a lot of fun. It’s the chance of a lifetime, and I’m going to make the most of it!)
A couple of days ago, my wife Teresa told our youngest son Aidan that she loved his race car pajamas. She added that she’d like to have pajamas as nice as his.
Today Aidan put on his boots and his jacket, and headed towards the garage. He had his hand on the door when Teresa asked him where he was going.
“To the store. To buy jammies for mommy.”
Teresa had to lock the car doors – Aidan knows how to open them. He is 2 years old.
Unbelievable!
Yahoo! has a story about a man who built up 40,000 volts of static electricity in his clothes …
“We tested his clothes with a static electricity field meter and measured a current of 40,000 volts, which is one step shy of spontaneous combustion, where his clothes would have self-ignited,”
I wonder if this is one possible cause of all those X-files-like stories of spontaneous human combustion?
Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology and social media.
