That Which You Accept ….

The standard you walk past, is the standard you accept. - Lieutenant General David Morrison

One who condones evils is just as guilty as the one who perpetrates it. - Martin Luther King

I like hats – fedoras, newsboy hats, my Tilley that has over a million airmiles on it and yes, even bowler hats.

I was recently in my remote office (translation: Starbucks) politely waiting for my coffee when I noticed two men in their late twenties smirking at me and my bowler hat.  My ego is not easily bruised or cowed by people and so I ignored them.

I was content to accept my coffee and walk out the door when I heard one say to the other, “He’s probably some kind of f*ing faggot.”

The comments between them escalated in insult-intensity as I waited for my coffee until it reached a level that I was sure would draw a response from baristas or other customers.  I knew that the likely source of anger from the pair of miscreants was a personal sense of inadequacy and they were hoping that I would either cower from their wilting words or rise up in anger against them.  It was two against one after all.

I watched with interest as the baristas and customers observed this interaction and I was curious what they might do.

They never made a sound.

I’m a believer in live and let live, judge not lest ye be judged, being “the big man” and walking away from the ignorant and all of that stuff.

However, I’m also a believer in the reality that that which we accept, we condone and that which we condone, we ultimately support and allow to be propagated.

What stood before me were two ignorant men insulting a customer, using derogatory language that is simply not acceptable in today’s world.  If they would insult me (standing at an athletic 6’3) what would they say to someone much smaller?

And so when my coffee arrived, I walked over to the two men and they faced me in the “what are you going to do about it?” defiant stance.

I looked the two of them up and down, each weighing at least 300 pounds, their pants not pulled up completely, their shirt tails hanging out but not completely covering their guts, their faces unshaven and their baseball hats on sideways.

I smiled at them and said quietly, “I’ll be damned if I will take fashion advice or criticism from two ignorant men who don’t have the wherewithal to dress properly. Understand?”

Both men looked down at the floor and said nothing.

“The next time you want to look at someone to judge them or to suggest ways for them to improve to meet your so-called standard”, I continued, “Start with the man you see in the mirror.  When that man is everything that that man can be, then perhaps you will be in a position to judge others but not before.”

As I turned to leave, both of them continued to stare at their boots, saying nothing.

“Create a great day”, I said as I walked out of the coffee shop.

The Bottom Line

We often look the other way when someone says or does something we don’t agree with.

“It’s not our business”, we think or  “It’s not right to judge others”, “I was the bigger man and walked away”, they’re just having a bad day”, “they have an illness and it’s not their fault.”, etc.

Well, these things apply on occasion.

However, we must be careful lest such thinking becomes a source of leverage for some people to use as a licence to abuse and hurt others.

Sometimes we are meant to be the person who stands in front of someone else and corrects their behavior.

It’s not a question of judging them, playing the role of “holier than thou” or splitting hairs over a point of political correctness.

Sometimes we just know what is wrong and we need to stand up to it and correct it.

My comments may or may not have corrected their behavior.

However, the more people who allow them to do what they do by saying and doing nothing, the more likely ignorant people such as these guys will feel empowered to continue to do what they do.

Such behavior only stops when we stand up to challenge it and correct it.

What do you stand for?

Is what you stand for reflected in your thoughts, your words and your actions?

The reality is that the world only gets better when your actions speak so loudly that we can’t hear what you’re saying.

So what DO you stand for?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

PS Just as I mused in Being Drawn Into Anger? Understand the Downside First, it is important to be cognizant of one's actions before blindly churning out insults.  I might have been one taunt away from hurting myself if such abuse were common in my Life or I might have taken my 6'3 self (complete with martial arts training and / or a weapon) and waited outside for them, to respond to ignorance with an equally ignorant act that would have hurt someone.  We have better control of our mouth and our actions than we claim to have.  It's time we acknowledge and demonstrate such control before we hurt someone else or allow someone else to be hurt.

Alberta–Substituting Sex For Strikes

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it. - Mark Twain

I was intrigued recently to see the Alberta Government table Bill 45, a law that will make it illegal for public service unions to discuss or plan strikes or even to suggest that one may be required or imminent.

Now in some ways the Government’s intentions are warranted, especially after illegal strikes such as the Alberta jail guard strike last year.

But is banning the mere mention of a strike an acceptable part of what we consider freedom of expression, something that we in the Western world are always trumpeting as that which sets us apart from other cultures?

Consider these excerpts from the Bill.

4(4) No person shall counsel a person to contravene subsection (1) or (2) or impede or prevent a person from refusing to contravene subsection (1) or (2).

18(1)(d) in the case of a person to whom or an organization to which none of clauses (a), (b) or (c) applies, to a fine of $500 for each day or partial day on which the offence occurs or continues.

Now consider this definition of providing counsel:

“Describes a person who, while not actually performing a criminal act, induced its performance or contributed to it.”

This appears to me to be a potentially perfect storm of legal complexity should anyone (MLA, reporter, person-at-large, etc.) make a broad statement regarding a strike which is then followed by an illegal strike itself.  If the person suggesting the strike has sufficient public “clout”, could that person be held liable for the event?

Maybe I’m seeing too much in this legislation.  Perhaps it is merely an intentional make-work project for all of those underemployed Charter lawyers who haven’t had something really complicated to chew on lately.

In the meantime, between now and the inevitable Supreme Court challenge, it is likely that the bill will pass and the word strike will be almost verboten.

If this happens, maybe people will substitute another code word in their communication in order to evade prosecution.

Let’s try it out using the word “sex” for fun.

If we could see over people’s shoulders as they write various emails, the emails might contain the following lines:

I’m so unhappy with things that I think that sex is the only way out.

I’ve sampled the membership and they indicate that they are ready for sex at any time.

Isn’t it awfully cold outside for all of us to participate in sex?

It is difficult to be productive when I need to consider sex every 3-4 years.

What is the current rate of sex pay?

So if our sex is illegal, can we be charged with anything else?

I support my brothers and sisters in their need for sex and will provide any help they need.

<<In an email from an innocent intern>> Do you mean to tell me that I have misunderstood all of your emails and that the book I recommended, “99 Recommended Sex Positions”, is not a book on negotiation strategy?

<<In an unrelated presentation, translated accidentally in a “global search and replace” operation>> It’s time to sex while the iron is hot.

I’m just being silly.

Or am I?

When parties are at odds, attempting to find common ground will build a stronger foundation for the future of everyone in the relationship and for other parties directly affected by the relationship.

For one side to automatically suppress the rights of others unilaterally because of an occasional bad event is not strategically sound, collaboratively sound, politically sound or possibly, depending on what the under-utilized Charter lawyers come up with, legally sound.

For those in politics, intelligence in the areas of strategy, collaboration, politics and legalities are necessary to create a sound future for everyone.  In addition, for those in politics, unions need not be their best friend but one doesn’t want them as an enemy either.

Otherwise, they  may not be in politics for long when people perceive that they are just being screwed (with).

In service and servanthood,

Harry

NSA Leaks: Balancing Justice and Indignation

Observing the actions of Edward Snowden in regards to the NSA leaks, I can see why he did what he did but I have to disagree totally with his approach.

Let me explain.

Back in the early 2000’s, I was traveling through one of North America’s top 10 busiest airports and I happened to notice an event that really disturbed me.  Now in fairness to the people I was observing, one of the curses of being a long-time strategy advisor to Wall St. and Fortune 25 organizations is that you are always analyzing everything around you, even when you know you should be relaxing or minding your own business.

As I observed the security personnel in action, I realized that I had just witnessed a way to get an explosive, a gun or some other unwelcome device past airport security.

With a great amount of concern, I dutifully wrote an email to the federal authorities, explaining my credentials including in large-scale security architecture on Wall St., outlining what I witnessed, expressing my concerns about the potential that could be created and so on.

Some time later, I received a very polite but formal dismissal in response, basically suggesting that they were the experts in airport security, I was not and closing with a “thanks for writing anyway” type of closing comment.

In the fall of 2012, I happened to be traveling through the same airport and at the same security gate, I noticed that the same security hole was present. (Don’t bother asking me about it – I will not respond to queries asking what the security concern is.)  I mentioned this scenario to a Chief Security Officer of a major airline and he acknowledged that my concern was legitimate.

Now if I wanted to get all indignant about how no one was paying attention, how people were at risk and such, I could have easily gone to the press and blown the story wide open.

And in the meantime, as the great wheels of bureaucracy churned away, mulling over what to do to address the issue, my righteous indignation would have enabled less-than-desirable individuals or organizations to initiate an action that my righteous indignation was trying to prevent.

So … in this example, it would be open for debate whether a detailed public disclosure would help or hinder efforts to enhance airline security.

Hero or villain status would not be determined by that action but by subsequent actions that took place.

Fast forwarding to today …..

As far as Mr. Snowden is concerned, I agree that the US Federal Government’s surveillance and cyber defense (and attack) programs may seem to be a little over-reaching.  I recently mused about the trouble that these programs could create in my blog entry “The Coming Storm”.

However, for the many people suddenly waking up and fearing surveillance, the development of such programs goes back to the 1960’s and earlier, including programs such as Echelon and others.  To suddenly be startled by such technology is to not be paying attention to what one’s own elected officials have been doing for the past 50 years.

Recognizing that we get the government we deserve can be a difficult pill for many to swallow.

With the long-time existence of such programs, we have to face some basic realities:

1. We can have total freedom from surveillance or we can have total personal security.  We can’t have both without compromise on both sides of the equation and given that many people prefer security over privacy, the use of such technology is inevitable.  Whether or not the use of such technology should be limited requires a detailed analysis of what motivates human beings.

2. Most people who fear such surveillance, if in the same position as the leaders of today and offered the use of technology to do their job, would use it.

3. As long as human beings are involved in the equation of privacy versus security, we will always have the concern of the weakest link, whether it is the occasional person using the information for personal gain, someone selling it to a foreign power or some other compromise of the information being gathered.  Having experienced identity theft multiple times at the hands of bank employees, I still have no choice but to use banks in my day-to-day affairs or withdraw from the world’s financial systems.

4. Any government will take action to protect what it perceives to be its national interests, no matter how legitimate others perceive those interests to be.  Those of us who have signed security clearance covenants know exactly what actions will be taken against us should we violate such covenants.

5. People who exhibit rabid, fanatical stands against such surveillance programs actually expedite the implementation of them.  Take a look at Alex Jones, well known conspiracy guy, and his interview on the BBC last weekend for an example.  If you were responsible for national security, outbursts like this would make you nervous also.

Mr. Snowden’s actions, while understandable from a righteous indignation standpoint, are in defiance of these basic realities.  On the other hand, his actions are a warning to NSA and other groups to tighten up control over access to delicate information (Mr. Snowden had access to a lot of information despite his relatively short time in the intelligence community).  Imagine if his righteous indignation had caused him to sell information over the course of many years instead of releasing it to the press in a big explosion.

As far as the damage potential of his actions is concerned, the amount of damage done will depend on perspective and the events that follow the initial event.

The bottom line

For Mr. Snowden to go public with his info may have seemed like a good idea at first but it does undermine national security and potentially enables enemies of the state to adjust their execution in a manner that circumvents national security programs.

And when (not if) that happens, while one may think one is a hero, one may be inadvertently enabling someone who in the future will compromise the personal safety and security of many people … including people important to you.

Should such an event occur and someone who matters to you is threatened as a result, would you still consider the original person who acted with such indignation a hero or a villain?

Perspective is a powerful force, isn’t it?

When an information compromise or a terrorist act occurs in the future, we will be reminded once again that no matter what approach we take, we will always be faced with the notion of the weakest link – that human frailties will always be present no matter how much we wished they weren’t.

As for the people who are against surveillance, that horse has long since bolted out of the barn.  Surveillance is here to stay and the more people strive to rid the world of it, the more pervasive (and possibly covert) it will become, if for no other reason than out of fear of the people who oppose it.

Do you prefer safety for your family or freedom for them?

The answer is not an either/or - we can have both but to have both will require compromise.

And it will always come with risk.

No other scenario is possible if safety AND freedom are desired and human beings are involved in the mix. 

To expect anything else is to assume that human beings are far more perfect than they are and to assume that such complex, flawed beings can create simple, perfect solutions.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Something Wicked This Way Comes

For those of you who missed this interesting piece of news while partying on St. Paddy’s day yesterday, President Obama signed into law, an executive order allowing for control of all US resources, namely:

The National Defense Resources Preparedness order gives the Executive Branch the power to control and allocate energy, production, transportation, food, and even water resources by decree under the auspices of national defense and national security.

The order is not limited to wartime implementation, as one of the order's functions includes the command and control of resources in peacetime determinations.

Interesting timing … signing such a law (an extension of a previous executive order) over the weekend when few people are paying attention.  Equally interesting is that in the last couple of years there have been a number of significant laws passed during holidays when people are busy with other “stuff”.

Many people are familiar with the President’s efforts to create a law that provides him with a unilateral Internet kill switch, the ability for the President to “turn off” the Internet should he feel that the existence of the Internet enables a threat to be carried out against the US.

Unfortunately the definition of “threat” is somewhat fuzzy.

Fewer people are aware of Executive Directive 51, an executive directive which the President can invoke without permission of Congress or the Senate that actually dissolves (or allows the bypassing of) the Congress and Senate, allows for the waiving of elections and offers a whole pile of other goodies if the President feels that we face …

…. disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions

Unfortunately the word “disruption” is also fuzzy and somewhat open to interpretation.

If as President, I felt that an upcoming Presidential election could result in my loss and that the policies of the other party could sink the country in one of these areas, I might feel that such a disruption needed to be prevented and I could there invoke Executive Directive 51.

But I’m not a conspiracy guy, so why would I even think of such a scenario?

The interesting thing about this law is that the rights of US citizens are redefined in this directive but they are classified beyond top secret.

I don’t know about you, but when someone tells me that my rights will change but I am not allowed to know what they will be, it doesn’t sound very good.

Even lawmakers such as Congressman Peter DeFazio attempted to find out what is in this bill and was denied, under the guise of “national security concerns”.

Our own lawmakers are not permitted to know the laws of the land and the impact on the constituents whom they serve.

In a number of meetings I have had with Washington DC advisors and think-tank people, they have told me to stop referring to the upcoming events as the Great Correction.  For those who aren’t familiar with me, I have been referring to the pending Great Correction, when the unsustainable practices in our economy, ecology, military and other areas finally hit the point of no-return and create a significant collapse, from which we finally learn how to do it right and we set about correcting our society and the world-at-large.

The reason they tell me that “correction” is a poor choice of words is because a correction implies that things will be fixed / better on the other side when, in their estimation, things will be much different but definitely not better.

Many also refer to a transition “that will not be stopped” (direct quote).  Their descriptions of the transition are disturbing – I will share them in upcoming posts as I digest them.

Some of these people I have met have been presidential advisors to many US Presidents, so I assume they are pretty smart and I would like to assume they are pretty sane.

And as I said before, I am not a conspiracy theory guy.  I run the other way as soon as a conspiracy person opens their mouth.

So What Does This Mean?

As a strategy guy, I don’t like gaps in information, since I know that in business an “I don’t know” or “it’s not important to me right now” answer to an unknown is usually the thing that sinks an organization.

As I digest a lot of information from my highly-connected sources, I see four scenarios, bound together by an unusual and disturbing set of data points whose relationships point to “something” (perhaps the transition that my DC contacts refer to), the scenarios being:

1.  A “transition” is really happening, something that we are not privy to know and since we are not allowed to know, it’s probably not very good for the average citizen.

2.  No such transition is happening and a lot of the news is a smoke screen for something else, a distraction from something else that we shouldn’t know.

3.  Many of the people working in think tanks, advising the President or having a senior role in the military are mentally unstable, not a good scenario when we need these people to be the most sane, lucid people on the planet considering their level of responsibility and the impact that their decisions have on the world.

4.  None of it is as bad as it looks and the legislation merely provides for good governance in case of crisis, as noted by the President, and that the laws will never be used. Laws that will never be used do not need to be on the books and shouldn’t be beyond our own lawmakers to view and understand the ramifications. 

Aren’t our lawmakers the highest authority in the nation – apparently not any more.

As I think about these scenarios, the very existence of the scenarios is disturbing, since none of the choices are very comforting.

Unfortunately, most Americans are too busy trying to keep their head above water to pay attention to what is happening.  When one has to keep food on the table and a roof over the head of their family, nobody cares about what happens on the Hill.

But they should care … while they still can.

I read a disturbing quote the other day by Hermann Göring that I will quote here.  By doing so, I am not making any connection between the terrible, evil, Nazi regime and the current administration.  However, there is much insight that can be gathered from the quote.

At the Nuremberg trials, Göring made this observation:

Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

Powerful insight.

Something wicked this way comes.

As a strategy guy, I just wish I knew what it was.  I’ve been told what it is by senior officials but being told what it is and knowing what it is are two different things, especially when what one has been told is too disturbing to believe.

Appropriate preparation depends on facts … which seem either too incredible to comprehend or too difficult to obtain.

Neither of which are helpful at a time when we need truth and authenticity from our leadership.

The laws mentioned previously are not inherently evil by definition.  In fact, in times of emergency, they can actually mean the difference between the US surviving or falling.

What makes the laws good or evil will be the intention behind their usage should the need to use them arise.

The extent to which the laws exercise control over the rest of us can only be understood when our politicians communicate to us in truth and authenticity.

But we only receive such truth and authenticity when we demand it.

What do you think?

In service and servanthood,

Harry