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Bulletin of Skeptical Views of Offshoring, 2006

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[Dec 22, 2006] The slacker's new bible By Jo Johnson: Management tips from the executive slow lane

An Interesting view on demoralization This time from French perspective.

Aug 16, 2004 (MSNBC) You sit next to idiots, loathe office bonhomie and crave escape. You're half-crazy with boredom, pretend to work when you hear footsteps and kill time by taking newspapers into the washrooms. Your career is blocked, your job is at risk and the most ineffective people get promoted to where they can do least harm: management. You recoil at jargon, consider the expression 'business culture' an oxymoron and wish you had the guts to resign. If this is you, help is at hand.

Bonjour paresse (Hello Laziness), a call to middle managers of the world to rise up and throw out their laptops, organigrams and mission statements, is the unexpected publishing sensation of the summer in France.

Sub-titled The Art and the Importance of Doing the Least Possible in the Workplace, the 113-page "ephlet" (part-essay, part-pamphlet) is to France's managerial class - the cadres - what the Communist Manifesto once was to the lumpen proletariat.

Written by Corinne Maier, an economist at state-owned Electricité de France, Bonjour paresse flashed albeit briefly to the number one spot on Amazon's French best-seller list.

An anarchic antidote to management tomes promising the secrets of ever greater productivity, Bonjour paresse is a slacker's bible, a manual for those who devote their professional lives to the sole pursuit of idleness.

There have been many works in praise of idleness over the decades, but with the French work ethic weakened by the introduction of the 35 hour work week, the siren's appeal has never been stronger.

The truculent chapter titles, including Business Culture: My Arse!, The Cretins Who Sit Next To You, The Best Management Con-Tricks and Why You Lose Nothing By Resigning, set the tone of the book.

Ms Maier is the closest thing France has to Scott Adams, the comic genius behind the best-selling Dilbert cartoon strips in the U.S., whose influence strongly marks her writing. Like Adams's satires of life in corporate America, her observations generate one universal reaction among readers: "Ohmigod, that's just like my company!"

The actively disengaged
Over lunch at the Café Bonaparte off the Boulevard Saint Germain, the 40-year-old mother of two says it is time for wage slaves to hit back. "Businesses don't wish you well and don't respect the values they champion. This book will help you take advantage of your company, rather than the other way around. It will explain why it's in your interest to work as little as possible and how to screw the system from within without anyone noticing."

Many already are. An IFOP poll cited in the book claims 17 percent of French managers are already so "actively disengaged" with their work that they are practically committing industrial sabotage.

Even if Bonjour paresse is quite obviously a tongue-in-cheek send-up of French corporate life, EDF, is far from amused and has started disciplinary action.

But the book is about so much more than EDF. It is a book of its time and place. France is entering a long-promised Age of Leisure. No other OECD country has witnessed as dramatic a fall in the number of hours worked per inhabitant.

In its 2004 employment outlook, the OECD reported that the French worked 24 per cent fewer hours than in 1970, whereas Americans toiled 20 percent more. France was not alone. Large declines were also seen in Germany and Japan. But the situation in France is extreme.

Two factors explain why. First, the proportion of people of working age in France who manage to find jobs has plunged to 61.9 percent, compared to over 70 percent in the UK, the U.S. and Denmark. Second, the introduction of the 35 hour week means French workers put in less time than ever.

Ms Maier, who works just 2 ½ days a week, is hardly unusual. The average French worker clocks only 1,459 hours per year, compared with a mean of 1,762 for the OECD as a whole and almost 2,000 for the Stakhanovites in the Czech Republic.

As the rest of the world becomes "always-on", bosses complain French workers are now "always-off".

In the Dilbert comics, one lesson is that it is not enough for you to succeed, others must fail. You have to improve your own standing by subtly disparaging those who surround you.

Demotivating others is also a core management skill as with employee self-esteem come unreasonable requests for money. There are many ways to make it clear to the grunts that their work is not valued: reading magazines when they are talking to you, asking for information "urgently" then leaving it untouched for weeks, and having your secretary return their calls or e-mails.

In Bonjour paresse, the very notion of personal advancement is ludicrous. Whereas Scott Adams drew his inspiration from his nine years as a middle manager occupying cubicle 4S700R for the Pacific Bell phone company, Ms Maier has had a very different taste of life in the executive slow lane - twelve years in the bowels of the French public sector.

This bureaucratic sprawl provides jobs for an astonishing one in four workers in France and enough comic material to keep business humorists in work for decades. Yet it is the private sector she most abhors.

Ms Maier describes how middle managers who have no strings to pull fail to win promotion because all the senior positions in big French companies are monopolized by well-connected alumni of the elite grandes écoles, notably the énarques from the Ecole Nationale d'Administration.

She writes for a group of people who no longer believe that work is the path to personal fulfilment. "It is de rigueur to claim you work because 'your job interests you' and even if in reality everyone is only there to pay the bills at the end of the month, it is a complete taboo to say so," she says. "One day I said in the middle of a meeting that I could only be bothered to turn up in order to put food on the table: there was 15 seconds of absolute silence during which everyone looked agonized."

It is a world where the over 50s are shoved out the door in early retirement programs at a rate that has left only a third of France's 55-64 year olds still working - "a world record", Ms Maier says. It is a world where companies parrot "our people are our most important asset" yet throw them out like used Kleenex. It is a world where impossible demands are made of the young thruster who believes the words pro-active and benchmarking actually mean something and who hopes his talents will be recognized and that he will be loved and cherished.

The disenchantment with corporate life is total. Forget In Praise of Slow, Carl Honoré's faddish new treatise on "marrying la dolce vita with the dynamism of the information age" and all the other wimpy pleas for work-life balance. It is hard to see Ms Maier and her electrician buddies rushing into new Spanish siesta salons' selling 20 minutes of sleep for €4. They'd much rather zonk out on the job for free. There's no "I don't know how she does it" quest for the tempo giusto because the object of work is simply to do as little of it as possible.

So what are some of her ten commandments for the idle? Take number three: "As what you do is pointless and as you can be replaced from one day to the next by the cretin sitting next to you, work as little as possible and spend time (not too much, if you can help it) cultivating your personal network so that you're untouchable when the next restructuring comes around."

Then there's number five: "Never accept a position of responsibility for any reason. You'll only have to work more in exchange for a few thousand more francs (effectively peanuts)." The others are in similarly, subversive vein.

A publisher's surprise
Bonjour paresse initially seemed destined to disappear without trace. Published at the end of April by the little-known Editions Michalon, the book, whose title is a nod to Françoise Sagan's 1954 novel Bonjour tristesse, generated little comment. At the end of July, however, Le Monde, the leading daily, unexpectedly devoted a front page article to EDF's disciplinary action against the book's author. The newspaper of reference reported that Ms Maier had been summoned to a preliminary hearing on Aug. 17th.

Failing to see the funny side, EDF accused Ms Maier of "repeatedly failing to respect her obligations of loyalty towards the company," and of running a "personal campaign, clearly proclaimed in the book, to spread gangrene through the system from within." Citing her habit of reading newspapers in meetings and of leaving one gathering early on May 3rd, the charge sheet also alleged she had neglected to secure permission to mention on the back cover that she worked for EDF.

Corinne Maier is as bolshy and unrepentant as her book leads you to expect. Her motor-bike helmet by her side and her long brown hair looking like it could use a good brush, she declares she has no intention of attending the disciplinary meeting. "It's the middle of August and I will obviously be on holiday," she says. "I have sent them copies of my train and ferry reservations to prove it." But she insists she is not looking to get fired. Her situation clearly suits her well.

Born into a family of aluminium siding salesmen, she studied in Paris at Sciences-Po, the French equivalent of the London School of Economics, before taking further degrees in industrial economics and later a doctorate in psychoanalysis. She has found time to write eight books since 2001, including several works on Jacques Lacan, the French psychoanalyst. Three of these come out later this year, two introductory books on Gaullism and Nazi Germany and "a more intello" book on Pasteur.

France's unions have championed her cause. They see EDF as determined to crush all sources of dissent to its transformation from quintessential symbol of the French public service into a regular société anonyme, a public company that the center-right government will then be able to privatize. An umbrella body representing the six main unions at EDF has issued a statement defending Ms Maier's freedom of speech, saying she had "not revealed any secrets, jeopardized any business or even mentioned EDF by name once in the book."

"EDF has cited the pettiest offenses," says Ms. Maier. "The real reason is that they don't like my book." Refusing to comment on "an ongoing disciplinary procedure", EDF is belatedly trying to bury the row its own clumsy response had started. The book, however, is already being re-printed. "My publisher is delighted with EDF's reaction," says Ms Maier. "It is all thanks to them that we have a best-seller. We have had interest from numerous overseas publishers wanting the translation rights."

[Dec 22, 2006] Man indicted for planting 'logic bomb' in company's IT systems

December 20, 2006 (Computerworld) -- Facing a possible layoff from his job as an IT systems administrator, a 50-year-old New Jersey man was charged yesterday with planting malicious "logic bomb" code into the company systems where he worked that could have damaged more than 70 servers.

In a five-page indictment, Yung-Hsun Lin, also known as Andy Lin, 50, of Montville, N.J., was charged with two counts of intending to cause fraudulent, unauthorized changes to computer systems in violation of U.S. laws. Each count is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine. A federal grand jury handed down the indictment.

Lin was arrested yesterday by FBI agents and made an initial appearance before a federal magistrate. He is scheduled for arraignment on the indictment on Jan. 3.

In a statement, U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie in Newark alleged that Lin planted the logic bomb in HP Unix servers at Medco Health Solutions Inc. The bomb could have destroyed critical customer prescription data, payroll information and other records stored on more than 70 servers used by the Franklin Lakes, N.J.-based company.

Lin, who worked in Medco's Fair Lawn offices, apparently inserted the logic bomb into Medco's IT systems in October 2003 because he feared losing his job. Lin learned that his IT group was being merged with another group inside the company after it was spun off from pharmaceutical company Merck & Co., according to the indictment.

Instead, Lin was spared a layoff while four colleagues lost their jobs, according to the U.S. attorney's statement.

[Nov 7, 2006] Outsourcing to India Dealing With Data Theft and Misuse

...recently, there have been allegations that call center employees there have stolen data entrusted to their employers. As a result, concerns have risen about the security of data held by Indian service providers, and companies that outsource to India are seeking out the remedies that are available to them to deal with and prevent the misuse of data in India.

...The Indian legal system is substantially based on the British common law system. While there is no omnibus Indian data security law, there are several laws that apply to data theft or misuse in India. Typically, when an incident involving data occurs, a complaint is filed for theft, cheating, criminal breach of trust, dishonest misappropriation of data and/or criminal conspiracy under the provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) of 1846 and for hacking under the Information Technology Act (ITA) of 2000. Many of these offenses under the IPC and the ITA allow for an arrest without a warrant, are nonbailable and carry penalties that range from one year to life imprisonment, as well as fines.

...

While several measures have been put in place to deal with data security issues, some concerns still remain regarding the Indian legal system. Indian courts are overburdened – in 2005, the lower courts had over 20 million pending cases, while the high courts had over 3 million. Delays in the system are common, and an average case can take several years to be resolved. However, things are changing. Several measures are under way, and the prime minister and chief justice of the Indian Supreme Court have committed to dealing with the issues facing the Indian courts. Further, the system itself, while slow, works. More importantly, as previously discussed, several preventative measures are being put into place by the service providers themselves to deal with data security and privacy issues.

[Oct 4, 2006] The True Cost Of Off-the-Shelf by Paul M. Ingevaldson

Paul raise important questions about race to the bottom that IT is engage it. IT ignorant manager are danger for the corporation and I agree that "Misinformed business executives and timid CIOs have allowed these look-alike systems to proliferate.  On the surface, it always appears easier to install an outside package and not have to deal with the problems associated with customized development. Cost overruns, missed deadlines and unfulfilled expectations are no fun. It's a lot easier to be wined and dined by the ERP vendors and be convinced that this is the best way to accomplish your objectives. "

July 31, 2006 (Computerworld) In the early days of IT, we would never suggest to users that they should adjust their operations to the requirements of the software that we were developing. It was always the other way around. We wrote software so that it worked exactly as the users requested. After all, the users were the clients, and IT was trying to automate their departments, not make life easier for itself.

Somewhere along the way, this whole theory changed. It may have started with the rapidly escalating cost of custom development, or with one too many missed deadlines or busted budgets. It may have started with the onset of ERP systems that established best practices for the entire organization. It may have happened when companies realized that they had outsourced so much of their IT operations that they no longer had competent development staffs.

Regardless of the origins of this change, the state of the art today is that users must bend their requirements to conform to off-the-shelf packages. The result: In his controversial article in Harvard Business Review a few years back titled "IT Doesn't Matter," Nicholas G. Carr told us that because so many companies use identical software, IT no longer provides any competitive advantage (see "Get Over Yourself," May 12, 2003).

Isn't it ironic that the very systems that are promising great value to companies are causing IT to be less strategic? Is this really what business wants?

Misinformed business executives and timid CIOs have allowed these look-alike systems to proliferate. On the surface, it always appears easier to install an outside package and not have to deal with the problems associated with customized development. Cost overruns, missed deadlines and unfulfilled expectations are no fun. It's a lot easier to be wined and dined by the ERP vendors and be convinced that this is the best way to accomplish your objectives.

Unfortunately, IT doesn't do a good job of explaining to the business the shortcomings of these new systems, the hardships encountered when users really need IT to make a strategic change, or the true cost of supporting and implementing off-the-shelf software today and into the future. Ask any CIO about the cost of outside support for one of the major ERP systems.

But perhaps more important is the cost of opportunities lost by using software that everyone else uses. If you have custom software, you can usually accommodate a new requirement at a reasonable cost. With an off-the-shelf package, this is often impossible. If a strategic initiative can't be accomplished because of the shortcomings of the packaged system, then the cost could be incalculable. This is the true cost of off-the-shelf. You must learn to use the software the same way most everyone else uses it.

I wonder if Dell could have developed its logistics system under this type of constraint. I wonder if FedEx and UPS could have revolutionized the shipping industry when faced with this type of scenario. I wonder if Cemex in Mexico could have become a high-tech cement producer using this approach.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think that there are still opportunities for companies to differentiate themselves through creative approaches to the marketplace that require the development of innovative IT systems. Perhaps, for example, Web services will enable companies to develop a much more customized software suite than is currently available through local installations of packaged enterprise systems. By skillfully interfacing some disparate elements, a creative CIO may be able to achieve some competitive advantage.

This opportunity may already be lost, however. The significant outsourcing and offshoring that companies are doing may deprive us of the talent needed to customize a Web services system or develop unusual systems.

Perhaps the dire predictions of the demise of internal IT have scared off the good developers. Perhaps Carr's thesis has become self-fulfilling, and IT is destined to subside to the role of a utility.

I'm reminded of the story about the head of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office who submitted his resignation in 1899 because "everything that can be invented has been invented." Although probably apocryphal, it does serve to emphasize the danger of second-guessing the innovative mind. I think IT has a great opportunity to bring new and exciting ideas to business that will enable companies to develop innovative processes and products. I think our brightest days are still ahead of us.

But we can't be afraid, and we must be able to do some customized development that will give our companies that elusive competitive advantage.

Paul M. Ingevaldson retired as CIO at Ace Hardware Corp. in 2004 after 40 years in the IT business. Contact him at ingepi@aol.com.

[Sep 27, 2006] Strategic IT talent Offshoring not the answer by Dan Tynan.

Nice example of biased reporting. If database administration is commodity then anything else in corporate It is commodity too. And this myth about dual shore we already heard.

Slashdot Globalization Decimating US I.T. Jobs

by BWJones (18351) * on Monday October 02, @12:09AM (#16272613)
(http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/ | Last Journal: Tuesday September 26, @11:57AM) Of course most folks who are actually working in IT could have told you this. I know a number of folks at companies who experienced several rounds of layoffs. They have survived the layoffs, but they are also currently doing the job of two to three employees now versus prior to the layoffs. Morale is low, pay has not kept up with the cost of living increases, the cost of health care or inflation. Productivity is still there, but burnout is likely in these individuals. Other people I know that did lose their jobs ended up going back to school and getting out of IT entirely which I suspect is not an isolated situation and would lead to skewed unemployment statistics.

The thing that worries me is that this is not an isolated employment sector, and I predict that we are in more trouble than we might know. Historically we have relied on our research and development to keep this country on top technologically, but over the last five years or so, we have been reducing the amount of funding we spend on research and development, particularly in the biosciences. For example, if you were to look at NIH grant paylines, five years ago the payline was around 33%. Next year it is predicted to be anywhere from 10-14% meaning the likelihood that a researcher will obtain funding has been cut by more than half. In fact, research and education spending on the whole is down under the current White House administration. So, if we are supposed to rely on education, technology and research and development to keep our edge as a country, we are already in trouble, especially when one considers that even if we were to turn things around tomorrow, we have likely done enough damage that it will take a decade to recover.  

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

(Score:5, Interesting) by TheUglyAmerican (767829) on Monday October 02, @01:27AM (#16273329) Disclaimer: I am an IT manager who sets up and runs IT groups in India. So I'm the "bad guy" I guess.

1. Outsourcing is not new. And the reaction by the IT industry is not new. The garment industry was outsourced, the steel industry, to a degree the automotive industry. It happens. The people directly impacted don't like it but as long as it make economic sense, outsourcing will happen. Adapt to survive and thrive.

2. Isolated protective measures to limit outsourcing will ultimately fail. If you put restrictions on US companies that increase their costs while overseas competitors have no such restrictions, US companies will be at a competitive disadvantage ultimately hurting their growth and their employees.

3. Outsourcing is not easy in the IT industry. I can point to as many failures as successes. Not every company in the US that needs IT resources will be candidates for outsourcing. Not every job will end up overseas. In fact even though my entire IT organization is in India I'll soon be looking for a Systems Engineer in the US because I'm not happy with what I find in India.

4. Salaries for IT candidates in India are increasing very rapidly (think Silicon Valley, 1999). Given the inherent inefficiency of dealing with people great distances away, the economics of outsourcing are getting worse.

5. Decimation means to kill off 10%, not 90% as some posts have said. From Wikipedia: The word decimation is derived from Latin meaning "removal of a tenth." So the article is correct, this is decimation.

6. I could be wrong on any or all of the above.

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

(Score:2) by N3WBI3 (595976) on Monday October 02, @09:38AM (#16275919)
(http://tim.timriordan.com/) 1. Outsourcing is not new. And the reaction by the IT industry is not new. The garment industry was outsourced, the steel industry, to a degree the automotive industry. It happens. The people directly impacted don't like it but as long as it make economic sense, outsourcing will happen. Adapt to survive and thrive.

But you could (not that we do) put tariffs on the garments and steel that 'American' companies try to send back here from the nations they outsourced to. Thus if an American corporation decides it wants to make its garments in vietnam they would have to consider that while they can run slave labor wages, with little or no environment regulation they might have to pay for it before they can send their crap to Wal-Mart. With information that's a little harder to do.

2. Isolated protective measures to limit outsourcing will ultimately fail. If you put restrictions on US companies that increase their costs while overseas competitors have no such restrictions, US companies will be at a competitive disadvantage ultimately hurting their growth and their employees

And if their employees are in India why should this bother me? I would not put any American company in a situation where they are treated any worse than a foreign company but I would not treat them as well as an American company.

3. Outsourcing is not easy in the IT industry. I can point to as many failures as successes. Not every company in the US that needs IT resources will be candidates for outsourcing. Not every job will end up overseas. In fact even though my entire IT organization is in India I'll soon be looking for a Systems Engineer in the US because I'm not happy with what I find in India.

You dont need every job to go for it to *&^% can the industry, if 10% of the jobs go you now have a downward pressure on wages and benefits. You make it harder for that 10% and the 90% who are working to keep up with inflation let alone actually grow in their careers.

4. Salaries for IT candidates in India are increasing very rapidly (think Silicon Valley, 1999). Given the inherent inefficiency of dealing with people great distances away, the economics of outsourcing are getting worse

Then they will start moving to Africa (http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11824).

5. Decimation means to kill off 10%, not 90% as some posts have said. From Wikipedia: The word decimation is derived from Latin meaning "removal of a tenth." So the article is correct, this is decimation.

That is not the common use, look at the dictionay not wiki:

decimate /dsmet/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled
Pronunciation[des-uh-meyt] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
-verb (used with object), -mated, -mating.
1. to destroy a great number or proportion of: The population was decimated by a plague.
2. to select by lot and kill every tenth person of.
3. Obsolete. to take a tenth of or from.

6. I could be wrong on any or all of the above.

Well at least you got that much right ;)

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

(Score:1) by Ixne (599904) on Monday October 02, @09:49AM (#16276047) 1. Outsourcing is not new. And the reaction by the IT industry is not new. The garment industry was outsourced, the steel industry, to a degree the automotive industry. It happens. The people directly impacted don't like it but as long as it make economic sense, outsourcing will happen. Adapt to survive and thrive.

And look what that's wrought in those industries: there are now less than a handful of US-owned steel companies. My wife's father worked for a US Steel company before it was bought by a foreign company. Now he works for a Russian-owned steel company. And consider: US car companies buy foreign steel, while companies like Toyota buy American steel. What does that tell you? I don't think I need to more than mention what's going on in the auto industry.

Your "adapt to survive and thrive" sounds an aweful lot like "That's the way it is, live with it." That attitude never survived anything. With an attitude like that, the US will become a nation of fast-food and Walmart employees.

2. Isolated protective measures to limit outsourcing will ultimately fail. If you put restrictions on US companies that increase their costs while overseas competitors have no such restrictions, US companies will be at a competitive disadvantage ultimately hurting their growth and their employees.

Sort of like in China?

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

(Score:2) by plumby (179557) on Monday October 02, @08:43AM (#16275445) There is a significant difference between the two -

Outsourcing without offshoring is usually a positive strategic choice, and a result of businesses moving non-core activities to firms more focussed on that activity and likely to be more efficient/effective at that activity. For instance, most large firms outsource their catering to an external provider. It may have some effect on the overall job market, but usually just means that your role gets moved to a more specialist employer. As this is a move based largely on specialist people being able to do the job better, costs should stay cheaper.

Offshoring, on the other hand, is almost always negative and tactical and little more than a race to the bottom on simple employee cost (usually as a result of poor employment regulation/health and safety/general standard of living etc in the target country). Eventually, however, increased demand for jobs in that country will force wages up, and the only option is to move on to the next cheap economy.

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

(Score:2, Insightful) by bitmonki (787780) on Monday October 02, @06:01AM (#16274647)

2. Isolated protective measures to limit outsourcing will ultimately fail. If you put restrictions on US companies that increase their costs while overseas competitors have no such restrictions, US companies will be at a competitive disadvantage ultimately hurting their growth and their employees.

Wrong attitude for businesses to take, seems to me -- competing on cost alone results in a race to the bottom, which is what we seem to be experiencing. I've worked with Indian teams, in person, and they are *exactly* like everyone else I've ever worked with, i.e., 10% were essentially unproductive, 10% were utter joys to work with -- sharp, organized, capable, motivated and could communicate well -- the remaining 80% were somewhere in between.

Over the last 20 years I've watched as American business management seemed to forget about delivering the best product, and focused on maximizing profits instead, as if the two could be entirely separated. Stupid, and it will take probably at least a *generation* to fix that.

Re:In more trouble than most realize...

(Score:2) by testadicazzo (567430) on Monday October 02, @07:54AM (#16275149)
(http://www.glenstark.org/) Well, one thing seems to be improving at least: the quality of discourse on offshoring.

I want to raise a counterpoint to your point 2: 2. Isolated protective measures to limit outsourcing will ultimately fail. If you put restrictions on US companies that increase their costs while overseas competitors have no such restrictions, US companies will be at a competitive disadvantage ultimately hurting their growth and their employees. I'm not sure I agree with this, although I think that protective measures would have to be carefully thought out. What you are ignoring, is America is a HUGE consumer nation, and through this and other mechanisms has a tremendous impact on the strategies of other countries. I don't see the "we can't compete with other countries" as a valid argument. I have a hard enough time understanding the argument that I find it difficult to argue against. What's the competition? What's the metric for who's winning? Is it who's economy is biggest? I'd rather have a smooth and well functioning economy than a big one, but maybe I'm unusual...

Anyway, I see offshoring production (be it intelectual or labor oriented) as having 3 pretty significant problems.

1. Is ethical, since offshoring is basically the practice of maintaining a slave class, just not within the borders of own country. Okay, I'll grant you that's something of an overstatement in the case of India, where conditions seem to be improving as money flows there. But in the case of China, Malaysia, and other sweatshop countries where we get our cheap clothing from it holds quite true.

2. The second issue is, if you keep offshoring everything, what the hell are people in the U.S. going to do? You'll have a 2 class system, the wealthy and the service industry. The wealthy will enjoy a tremendous standard of living, which they can afford because goods (shipped in from mesa-slaver countries overseas) are insanely cheap, and so's labor, since no one can get a decent manufacturing job. And the service sector will be a kind of second class system.

I think anyone with open eyes can see this process taking place. Gated communities are, imo, a symptom of this.

3. Is tightly coupled to 2. I think it is desirable for a country to have many opportunities for its citizens. So if you are someone who enjoys manual labor, who enjoys intelectual labor, who enjoys servicing people, who enjoys producing art, you should be able to find a job doing what it is you love. This, more than just raw wealth, has a greater impact on overall happiness, but unfortunately does not get calculated into "standard of living" indices.

So I think some kinds of legislation to mitigate these points could be worked out. In broad strokes, what I think is needed is some kind of penalization on the flow of capitol to, and the flow of goods from, countries whos working conditions are poorer than ours. Hourly pay wouldn't be a good indicator, but pay as a ration of the cost of living in that country would work (yes, some thought would have to be put into this formula). More important, things like safe working conditions, sane work weeks, and espcially child welfare laws should rank heavily into the system. It wouldn't have to be a binary system where yes we trade, no we don't, rather a system that indexes how much we tax transactions to and fro, based on an index computed once or twice a year, based on compliance with a set of guidelines ideally provided through the U.N.

Not that it would fix everything, but it ought to help. Does anyone know of a good existing proposal out there?

Readers Don't See a Workforce Crisis

September 04, 2006 (Computerworld) I have been in IT for 25 years, and I can understand why younger people are not entering the field ["Workforce Crisis," Management, July 3]. All you hear is "outsourcing, outsourcing." Why go into the field when that threat is always hanging over your head? I know profitability is key, but Americans cannot live as cheaply as the people in India.

L. Puckett
Systems analyst
Albuquerque

There is no reason to believe that baby boomer IT workers won't simply be replaced with cheap offshore labor -- workers who work long hours for low wages and don't need flexible work arrangements or flexible benefits, or even any of the simple securities afforded Western workers. The "boomer crunch" myth doesn't have any traction outside of technical college recruiting offices.

Keith Tyler
Seattle

We have heard these same scare tactics for years. If you look at the history of IT worker shortages, you will find that the reasons are always the same. Technology has a boom-and-bust cycle. Our free economy will take care of any worker shortages if companies pay for skills and treat workers fairly.

Bill Stutters
DBA
Denver

The so-called lack of IT talent does not exist. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of unemployed or non-IT-employed IT people in the U.S. Because of the rash of outsourcing to other countries, many people with IT skills now work at McDonald's or Wal-Mart or drive taxi cabs. Others can't get a job at all because they are overqualified for everything they apply for.

David Somner
Freelance contract programmer
Hollywood, Fla.

The real reason why computer science and IT enrollment is down at schools, why average retirement among IT workers is at a young 63 and why there is a coming crunch in IT workers is simply this: IT jobs are not enjoyable anymore. With the crash of the dot-coms and the merger of many large companies into even larger companies, IT positions have become little more than bureaucratic form jobs, reporting to some MBA who resents his IT people being paid so much and is eagerly waiting to shovel the work overseas.

Students in college aren't stupid; they know that IT is not where anyone places any value. They'd rather be doing something cool and fun and that has an impact.

Personally, I can't wait to take my three degrees in computer science and retire, or at least go do something I enjoy. Because company IT certainly is not it anymore.

Edward Reasor
Senior architect
Tampa, Fla.

Frankly, I can't feel too sorry for U.S. companies suddenly facing the prospect of labor shortages because older workers are leaving the workforce [" 'Perfect Storm' on Horizon for U.S. Labor Market," Computerworld.com, July 10]. I am one of those older workers, and I and many of my generation would like to work until close to 70 years old. But having been laid off in 2002, partly because employers could find cheaper labor in H-1Bs and younger workers, I have been functionally unemployed for over four years. Even companies where I would have been an excellent fit were not interested and took "a different direction." Age discrimination? Maybe.

Jim Woods
Independent consultant
Glendale Heights, Ill.
jlwoods1@hotmail.com

Come on, guys. A highly skilled profession has been destroyed by allowing millions of unskilled individuals to replace the skilled workers ["New Recruits Still Scarce," Special Report: Careers, July 17]. And you wonder why nobody wants into it?

Thanks to the greed of companies thinking to balance their balance sheets with foreign workers armed with paper degrees but totally devoid of any kind of expertise, everybody is jumping off the U.S. IT ship.

Dario A. Giraldo
Senior technical support engineer
Progress Software
Houston
SrConsultant@technologist.com

The article "New Recruits Still Scarce" cites several initiatives meant to encourage more workers to join the IT field, such as helping students who are currently taking computer science courses complete their studies, or targeting K-12 students with free software, classroom speakers and age-appropriate curricula. But the best way to turn the trend around is to stop the proliferation of H-1Bs and L-1s and to put an end to offshoring. We need to make IT a career worthy of consideration again and bring the pay back to where it was before we fell victim to the "Benedict Arnolds of Industry."

Ken Ward
Business analyst/project manager
DaimlerChrysler
Beverly Hills, Mich.
wrk13@dcx.com

Resource Investor - Commentary - All Rotten Eggs for Bernanke

India in the international press has been getting rave reviews of late. There was a time whenever international journalists wrote about India it was confined to snakes, sadhus, holy men, dust, heat and bride burning. It was the country where people had no food, where girls were killed in their infancy to save the dowry and where children were sold because their parents had no money to feed them.

During last five years this has changed, which is kind of surprising, since all these things are happening even today - though on a lesser magnitude, thank God. Today foreign journalists sing an entirely different tune: that of India having "arrived." They glorify India for its software proficiency, for its role in stealing the jobs of Western clerks and service professionals and for being an Asian tiger.

Nothing can be further from the truth. It is true that India has achieved some success in software industry, it is true that the country generates hundreds of thousands of code writers and programmers, the fact is the all the software exports from the country even today amount to nothing more than 1% of the global IT industry turnover.

Indian BPO companies employ almost half a million people today, but none of them have a guaranteed job. Their jobs depend on the wish of the U.S. companies and the politicians. In every western country there has been some political backlash against the job outsourcing to India, even though, according to a report of McKinsey, for every dollar of work outsourced to India, the U.S. gains $1.12-$1.14.

John Kerry, the Democratic candidate in the U.S. elections had made a lot of hue and cry about it, and other politicians have done the same in other countries. They are not to be blamed; the general population itself is not happy. Many Europeans and Americans abuse Indian call center workers on the telephone. Many say "I don't want to talk to you, pass me to someone who can speak my language."

According to a report published recently, the BPO industry analysts have seen the phenomenon of "racist" clients grow in recent years, as customers in the U.K. and the U.S. become increasingly sensitive to the political issue of jobs outsourced to India. The report states, "The issue of xenophobia cannot be resolved from India-end: there must be a battle against it in the countries responsible."

There can only be one end to this problem: let it last while it last. Sooner or later, the U.S./Western companies may cut down on outsourcing work to India either due to economic considerations or due to rising political pressure. And when that happens, India will be soaked in a sea of tears. After all those Americans/Europeans who have lost their jobs to Indians still have their social security, can still move around in minivans, and can still afford deluxe health treatment. No sacked Indian worker will have such privileges.

And this is the industry on which entire Indian economy is pinning its hope.

Coming to the mismanagement of the economy, the gold bugs complain about budget and trade deficits in the U.S. They talk of U.S. trade deficit with China alone reaching beyond $200 billion; they talk of how these days it takes five dollars of debt to create one dollar of growth. All of this is true, but let me tell them what Indian politicians and economists have done in this glorious land of Vedas and holy rivers. Recent official data showed the country's deficit for April and May stood at Rs 777.40 billion during the first quarter of 2006-2007, accounting for 52.30% of the projected figure of Rs 1486.86 billion for the entire fiscal.

Of course like his U.S. counterparts, the Indian Finance Minister is unfazed. "We should be able to be within our target," Chidambaram said when asked if huge spending plans threatened government finances. "It is good that spending is happening. We are not unhappy about it. Increased spending will mean more money in the system," Chidambaram said, even as the international rating agencies and multilateral institutions cite India's large fiscal deficit as a barrier to sought after double-digit economic growth.

Just as in the U.S. the politicians don't wish to confront the population by telling people in their face that they are living beyond their means and need to curtail their spending, the politicians in India don't wish to tell the people to reduce their oil consumption. Neither do they increase the prices, fearing the backlash of opposition parties and a loss of votes during the elections. So the government goes on selling petrol and diesel at much cheaper price even as the international crude price goes on rising.

Yet another parallel. Budget deficits are a fact of life, virtually in every country where the politicians are either corrupt or inefficient, often both, as is the case in India. The risk here in India however is that the borrowed funds are used for non-priority and unproductive expenditure. More money is spent on doling out compensation to the relatives of the dead people in a train accident than is spent on improving the infrastructure so that accidents could be minimized or avoided. Such expenditure, goes without saying, only fuels inflation and reduces funds for critical public investment.

Peter Schiff accuses the U.S. government of camouflaging the inflation figures. He has been tirelessly highlighting how the government has been fiddling with the core CPI basket, and how it has been hedonically adjusting the prices and transforming a 5% increase into a 3% decrease based on a subjective assessment of quality improvement. My word, if Peter was observing Indian politics and governance closely, his attack would be even more scathing.

In India the government doesn't even show the true deficit in the budget. According to an article by A Rangachari, "the budget is insulated from the effects of oil price increases by issuing special oil bonds to the oil companies to cover partly under recoveries of cooking gas and kerosene subsidies payable by the Government (Rs 73,500 crore in 2006-07 and Rs 40,000 crore in 2005-06) and these are not shown as expenditure in the budget."

The gold bugs often joke about comments by the U.S. Finance Secretary or the Fed Chairman, poking fun at their inane comments; all I can say is they ain't seen nothing yet. They ought to listen to Indian politicians on a daily basis if they wish to have the best of financial buffoonery. Take for example the present Finance Minister; though he is worshipped by the media here and abroad, he keeps coming out with statements which only can result from a serious foot in the mouth disease. During May 2006 when gold was on its path to scale glorious heights, this FM had a string of meetings with officials to find out if international gold price was going up because of hoarding by Indians.

Even a child knows that Indians can't hoard that much gold to influence the international price. Even an Economics junior understands that India, even though the largest buyer of gold in the world, is basically a "price taker" and not a "price maker."

Recently the same Finance Minister urged various sectors of business and industry to replicate the success achieved in the information technology industry - without realizing that Indian success in IT was a matter of luck, simply because when the boom came two decades back, Indians were the only people who spoke English and were willing to work at a tenth of the salary given to an American programmer. More luck came their way when the Y2K scare pushed more and more work to Indian shores.

Fortune doesn't favour every time, and such a success is impossible to replicate in other fields. In fact India is not even likely to keep its software advantage beyond another decade. As more and more countries gear up their younger lot is catching up fast with Indians. China is doing everything to beat India at its own game. Millions of people are learning English in China , thousands of students are coming to India to study software technology and dozens of Indian companies are setting up shop in China to teach them everything about IT and ITES. Reason enough why recently the doyen of Indian software industry Narayan Murthy predicted that China could catch up with India in the IT industry in five years.

"I do think China is running very fast to catch up with India. Chinese are much more determined than we are. And already we are seeing visible signs of progress by China in our industry," said Murthy.

His own company, Infosys, has major plans to expand operations in China. It is right now using China as a development centre for their global clients. In phase-II, they will enhance our focus on the market opportunity in China from multinational companies. In phase-III, they will focus on the Chinese companies. As anybody can understand, by the time all these phases phase out, the doughty Chinese would have seized the software advantage.

While I don't wish to approve of the actions of Bush, Bernanke & Co., I wish to highlight the fact that most of the governments are mismanaging their finances and playing with the future of their populations. No doubt Bush, Bernanke & Co. are to be blamed but let us not spare other charlatans either.

Meanwhile, the presence of so many bogeymen simply means extra bullish factors for gold. When people around the world ultimately lose their faith in fiat currencies, they will realise that all are worse than one another, and that there is only one currency which can't be debauched by the governments, bureaucrats and politicians: gold.

Incidentally this will also prove the veracity of good ole ' Greenspan's words: "In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value."  

Copyright ╘ 2006 Shailendra Kakani. All rights reserved.

[Jun 9, 2006] The Corner Office in Bangalore - New York TimesBy LAWRENCE ORLOWSKI and FLORIAN LENGYEL

June 9, 2006COSTS are rising everywhere for American corporations, from energy to employee health insurance premiums. Yet in their drive to cut expenses, most notably by moving factories and call centers to other countries, they are overlooking the escalating cost of the executive suite. It's time to apply market logic to this disturbing trend and begin outsourcing chief executives. This measure would unlock tremendous value for shareholders.

So far, outsourcing manufacturing and services has led to higher chief executive compensation, at the expense of shareholder profit. For example, I.B.M.'s chief executive, Samuel J. Palmisano, who has been moving jobs to India, last year saw his total compensation rise 19 percent to $18.9 million — even as the total return for his company's stock fell 16 percent.

That's proof that globalization hasn't gone far enough. China, India and other emerging markets offer shareholders a virtually unlimited talent pool from which to draw chief executives. With an increased supply of candidates, a truly independent corporate compensation committee would be easily able to hire superior leaders at salaries and benefits that are a small fraction of what their American counterparts in those fancy corner offices demand.

Several orders of magnitude separate the compensation of American and overseas chief executives; the Federal Reserve notes that while a typical American chief executive in 2004 got a compensation package 170 times greater than that of the average American workers, in Britain it was 22 times and in Japan 11.

But there are several benefits beyond the immediate savings. Major American corporations have been shifting their factories and labor force to China and India for some time now. It would make sense for the chief executive of an American corporation to come from, and be based in, those areas of the world where the potential for market growth is the greatest. It would be reassuring to have a chief executive who understood the local business practices, the country's cultural underpinnings and the language.

Also, given the importance placed on performing well in science and math in countries like China and India, it would be more likely that an offshored chief executive would have had a rigorous technical education instead of degrees in the "softer" management disciplines that are common at American business schools. Critics may question whether it is wise for an American company to have its chief executive in Bangalore or Beijing. But this is the thinking of a bygone era. More and more corporate chiefs say that they do not want their companies to be seen as American anymore. Cisco's chief executive, John Chambers, has declared, "What we're trying to do is outline an entire strategy of becoming a Chinese company."

Indeed, considering how the United States is perceived by the world these days, this is just smart marketing. And installing a foreigner from a developing country as chief executive would be a savvy move.

Other critics might point out that while a chief executive's compensation package may be eye-popping to the average person, in terms of his company's total market capitalization, it is really quite modest. This is an excuse, not a justification.

Current chief executive compensation creates what economists term a perverse incentive. An American chief executive, who is paid an average of $11.3 million annually, gets rewarded enough in one year to exceed the lifetime standard of living of 99.99 percent of the world's population. Even if he's booted from his job because of poor performance, he's set for life.

It is far better for shareholders to have chief executives whose compensation packages are based on the long-term performance of the company. Or in plain language, it is better to have a "hungry" executive instead of one who stays fat and happy even when the corporate ship capsizes into the troubled waters of bankruptcy.

In addition to perverse incentives, the current level of chief executive compensation creates opportunity costs. The money saved by hiring a cheaper executive can be invested in even more offshoring initiatives. A virtuous circle of shareholder profitability can be established.

Moreover, this would be a boon for management consultancies that can help companies scour the world for chief executives. McKinsey and Booz Allen, take note, and take outsourcing to its logical conclusion.

Lawrence Orlowski is an equity analyst. Florian Lengyel is the assistant director of research computing at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

[Jun 6, 2006]  IBM to invest $6B in India

IBM has invested $2 billion in India in the past three years. The $6 billion investment announced today will go toward the cost of increasing its workforce, expansion of IBM's facilities in the country, and projects such as education and health that the company is working on with the Indian government, said Shanker Annaswamy, managing director of IBM India. IBM did not, however, say how many additional people it will be hiring in India. IBM's Indian unit is already the largest of any country outside the U.S.

As part of the investment, IBM is setting up in India the first in a new kind of IBM service delivery centers that deploy processes and technologies to automate IT services delivery, the company said. After the pilot is complete, the technologies will be rolled out across other IBM service centers. It is also setting up a Telecommunications Research and Innovation Center at its lab in India. The new center will serve as a key resource for IBM's telecommunications companies around the world, the company said.

[Jun 6, 2006] India's offshore outsourcing revenue grew 33%

India's exports of software and services such as call centers and back-office operations totaled $23.6 billion in the year to March 31, up by 33% from a year earlier, the National Association of Software Companies (Nasscom) in Delhi announced Thursday.

Preliminary estimates released by Nasscom in February had indicated that the growth in export revenue was 32%.

Nasscom is also upbeat about revenue growth in the country's software and services industry for the year ahead. The country's exports of software and services are expected to grow by 27% to 30% in the year to March 31, 2007, to a total of between $29 billion and $31 billion, Nasscom said.

The domestic market for software and services is also projected to grow by 20% on account of e-governance projects, and investments in IT by the health care and retail sectors.

... ... ...

Of the total exports in the year to March 31, exports of software and related services grew by 33% to $13.3 billion, while revenue from call centers and business process outsourcing grew 37% to $6.2 billion. Engineering services and product exports earned $4 billion, up by 27% from the previous fiscal year.

Revenue from software and services delivered in the domestic market grew by 25% to $6 billion.

The country's software and services sector employed 1.3 million as of March 31, of which 930,000 were employed in the export sector. Indirect employment by the software and services sector was 3 million.

[May 17, 2006]  FBI Offshoring still a risky proposition - Computerworld Blogs

A few years back Boston-based FBI special agent Nenette Day busted a rogue programmer in India who had stolen the source code to SolidWorks Corp's CAD program. The sting, which took place in India, was a success in that SolidWorks was able to recover its software. If you think the perpetrator is rotting in jail, however, you'd be sadly mistaken.

The case is still dragging on in court, and it's unlikely that the defendant will ever serve jail time due to weak laws, Day says. In the SolidWorks case, which involved the theft of intellectual property valued at $750 million, the perpetrator is free, walking the streets and working in another programming job. He is unlikely to see any jail time.

Day provided an update on the SolidWorks case during a presentation last week at the CIO Forum.

SolidWorks was lucky. Once the source code goes out the door it could be posted on the Internet and at that point the damage is done. Prevention is key.

Nondisclosure agreements with offshore organizations won't help reduce this risk because they have no legal standing in other countries. The only way to contractually protect your intellectual property is to have the local outsourcer bind employees to an agreement under local laws, says Day.  But when the laws are weak, she says, even these agreements provide little protection.

Day says before sending source code to a country companies should check what laws are available to protect them - and whether they've been successfully used by prosecutors. The prevalence of corruption in law enforcement can also stop a case. In many parts of the world, for example, it's not uncommon for police to refuse to help unless bribes are paid first.

To mitigate the risk of offshoring, Day says companies should use an offshore partner with tight security practices and release only portions of the source code at any one time so that the offshore programmers never have the complete program.

It's also important to work with an offshore partner who will be committed to working with local authorities to track down and prosecute any perpetrators, should a loss occur.

Still another way organizations are migitating this risk is by offshoring through a U.S.-based company like Gap International Inc. in Springfield, PA. The consulting company has a division in India where it hires local programmers as employees. While that still won't prevent a disgruntled employee from trying to steal trade secrets, you can bet that a company  that can be sued in the U.S. is going to be very careful. I asked Rich Rothman, director, what would happen if just one disgruntled employee got away with a client's source code? "We'd be out of business," he said without hesitation.

[May 17, 2006] InformationWeek Weblog Chinks In Outsourcing's Armor.  by Tom Smith

"So in addition to being rigid and slow, outsourcing also proved costly and an impediment to serving customers well."

When Diebold said Wednesday that it will take over--or more precisely, take back--an Oracle ERP implementation and some additional IT-related functions, resulting in a financial charge and an end to its contract with Deloitte Consulting, it didn't explicitly point fingers or assign blame.

It's not a stretch, however, to read between the lines and conclude that outsourcing failed in this case. Or at least, outsourcing failed to meet the company's expectations. Diebold said in a statement: "This decision is designed to provide the company with more control and flexibility over its IT operations as well as the ability to accelerate its remaining ERP deployment."

Of course, outsourcing proponents often contend that hiring out IT gives companies the flexibility to focus on "core functions" (a position that presumes IT isn't a core function) and greater speed in deploying systems and achieving business goals. But Diebold is saying, in effect, outsourcing wasn't fast enough and didn't deliver the expected flexibility.

"Regaining direct control of our IT operations and ERP implementation will allow us to expedite the process of realizing the long-term benefits of an enterprise-wide information system," Diebold CEO Thomas Swidarski said in the company's statement. "This strategic decision is critical to achieving the operational improvement targets we have set as well as positioning us to be more flexible and responsive in meeting the needs of our customers."

So in addition to being rigid and slow, outsourcing also proved costly and an impediment to serving customers well. I've argued previously in this space that we will see more companies express dissatisfaction with outsourcing as they turn over more functions to third parties.

What can we learn from Diebold? Efficient, effective IT is as much a part of a company's financial success as quality products, good customer service, and strong financial controls. That's not to say that outsourcing doesn't or can't work, or that there's no place for outsourcing. But the view that IT is a function that any third party can come in and take over, on a plug-and-play basis, is naive and dangerous. It can also be costly: Diebold will incur a 7-cent-per-share quarterly charge to terminate its contract with Deloitte.

What's your view? Is this one in what will be a long line of failed outsourcing efforts? Or is this an isolated case where reality couldn't meet expectations? Please weigh in at my blog entry.

Tom Smith

tsmith@cmp.com

www.informationweek.com

[May 08, 2006](Computerworld) The Seven Deadly Sins of Outsourcing by Judy Artunian

Outsourcing is a source of stress, struggle and angst for many IT managers, and no wonder: More than half of outsourcing agreements end up prematurely terminated, according to a study released last year by DiamondCluster International Inc., a Chicago-based consulting firm. That leaves a lot of companies far from outsourcing nirvana, but it doesn't have to be that way. We asked IT experts and veterans to talk about the bad decisions and faulty assumptions that can cause your outsourcing project to fall from grace. They came up with seven deadly sins.

1. Feeble governance

Vice: You assume that your organization will auto-matically fall into a smooth working relationship with your outsourcing vendor. Three months later, you encounter management snafus that seem to have come out of nowhere. One large retailer outsourced a project that was supposed to take six months, but 18 months later, the CIO was still waiting for results. Why? "There was no governance plan other than a target for the end date," says Atul Vashistha, chairman and CEO of neoIT Inc., a consulting firm in San Ramon, Calif. "If they'd had a governance plan with milestones in place, they would have realized early on that targets weren't being met."

Virtue: Before you sign with an outsourcer, nail down an organizational structure, establish methods for keeping tabs on the work being done, and spell out how you will manage the outsourced project on a day-to-day basis. "Your governance system should provide continual feedback to the organization regarding how the relationship is working, what value you are getting, how you are solving problems that have cropped up," says Michael F. Corbett, executive director of the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals in LaGrangeville, N.Y.

Build the management costs into your budget. The average cost to manage an outsourcing contract is 3% to 6% of the size of the contract, according to Julie Giera, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass.

2. Overblown expectations

Vice: You choose an outsourcing company for its ability to meet your primary goal, but later the company falls short in other areas. For example, one of Europe's largest manufacturers was so eager to trim expenses that it negotiated an outsourcing contract purely on cost. As the project progressed, the manufacturer complained that the outsourcer wasn't innovative enough. How bad was it? Less than two years after signing the contract, the manufacturer terminated the agreement -- a move that carried a steep price tag in penalties and legal fees.

Virtue: Don't even approach a service provider until you have prioritized what you expect to achieve by outsourcing. If you're shopping based on cost, you may have to give a little on service level. Keep in mind that a cost-based contract might be appropriate for standard services like infrastructure management but not for specialized skills such as application development. "You don't necessarily want the cheapest brain surgeon," says Giera.

When considering vendors, look beyond the sales pitches. "People select suppliers based on marketing and size rather than a true capability evaluation," says Vashistha. He suggests that you focus on the location where the work will actually be done. Ask the vendor about its resource pool. Are its employees experienced in your industry? Do they have the appropriate technical skills? How much training does the vendor provide? Talk to clients that the vendor has served from that location for at least 12 months.

3. Blindly banishing projects

Vice: You have offshored critical areas of your business to overseas suppliers that are inexperienced in your field or otherwise ill-equipped to handle the task, and customers are up in arms. For example, after Dell Inc. outsourced its technical support to offshore providers, the company was inundated with complaints from U.S.-based customers who reported that they couldn't understand the service providers because of their accents. Dell had to move a chunk of its technical support services back home to Texas.

Virtue: Use common sense and send projects offshore only to countries where your industry is mature. India and the Philippines, for example, while good choices for services like health insurance data entry, are poor choices for jobs that require decision-making related to health insurance, says Vashistha. That's because in-depth knowledge of the field is still scarce in those areas. "Health insurance wasn't prevalent even 10 years ago in those locations," he says.

Keep in mind that offshore projects cost more to manage than projects that are sent to domestic outsourcers. That can make small projects especially costly to send offshore. "A lot of people look at the money they'll save per hour but ignore that they'll probably have a 20% to 25% increase in administration costs," says Rich Hoffman, president and CEO of Hyundai Information Services North America LLC in Fountain Valley, Calif.

4. Dumbly disowning projects

Vice: You've outsourced so much of IT that your outsourcer knows almost as much about your customers, your products and your industry as you do. According to Hoffman, the IT department of another major automotive manufacturer recently realized that it outsourced too aggressively and is now trying to rehire nearly 150 former employees who went to work for the outsourcer. "When they outsourced all of those people, half left because they didn't want to work for an outsourcer, and the other half ultimately got transferred by the outsourcer to other companies," he says. "So they lost all the people who knew their customers, products, the automotive industry and business processes."

Virtue: Don't outsource functions that require you to provide outsourcing vendors with strategic information about your company and your industry. Also, Hoffman advises keeping most of your internal help desk activities in-house and discouraging other business units from outsourcing customer-facing activities. You will have more control over which processes get outsourced if you insist on being involved in all discussions about outsourcing. "Run an analysis ahead of time, and get a consensus with business leaders about what must stay in versus what must go out," says Hoffman.

5. Bad assumptions

Vice: Your five-year outsourcing contract failed to take into account that technologies and business requirements would evolve within those five years. Now you can't move forward with new technologies. Giera notes that because of changes in server technology, for example, many companies will need fewer, but larger, servers down the line. If your contract is based on a per-server, per-month formula, you may not be able to change that without being penalized financially, she says.

Virtue: Write a contract that gives you the flexibility to reprioritize projects and resources without a major penalty.

"Technologies change so fast and the needs of clients change so fast, most parties should go into the contract expecting that after the first two years there is a pretty high likelihood that they'll have to renegotiate the contract," says Robert M. Finkel, an attorney at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP in New York.

Also, be sure the contact compels your outsourcer to keep costs in line as the market evolves. "Include benchmarking clauses every two to three years so that you can look at what's gone on in the market and make sure that the outsourcer is still competitive," says Giera.

6. Sloppy service levels

Vice: You've signed a contract that gives you minimal leverage on service levels. Now the outsourcer's poor service is interfering with your business, but you've got nothing to back up your demands for improvements.

Virtue: Define service levels in the contract and stipulate penalties for missed service levels. Having the service levels in hand not only helps ensure that you get the quality of service you expect, but it can also help when negotiating the contract's price tag. "It's hard to fix a price without knowing what the service levels are," says Finkel. But he says that it's not uncommon for vendors to want to wait until after the contract is signed before agreeing to specific service levels. That takes away your leverage and makes it less likely that you will reach a satisfactory agreement.

The penalties should escalate based on how frequently service levels are missed and how much the resulting disruption affects your business. "You shouldn't have penalties for one miss, but the penalties should get exponentially larger the more frequently a service level is missed," Giera says. And your contract can stipulate that you have the right to terminate or take back part of the service that the vendor is providing if the number or severity of the service-level problems reaches a certain point, Finkel says.

7. End-game myopia

Vice: You didn't include a transition plan in your contract. Now, as it draws to a close, your efforts to move to another outsourcer or bring the work in-house are stymied. An even worse case: Your outsourcing relationship ends abruptly. One of Giera's clients, a midsize manufacturing company, outsourced all of its payroll functions to a firm that suddenly went out of business. "My client couldn't pay its hourly workers on time that Friday. There were no provisions in the contract to get the data and employee records back, so they had to go to a manual payroll system," she recalls. The manufacturer ultimately spent eight months rebuilding its payroll system, including manually reconstructing tax, unemployment insurance and benefits records.

Virtue: To minimize disruptions to your business, make sure your contract calls for the outsourcer to be involved with the end-game transition. "Otherwise, what's the incentive for the vendor to help you?" says Finkel.

Your contract should stipulate that you may offer jobs to people on the outsourcer's staff who have developed knowledge critical to your company. You should also be able to buy at a reasonable price the hardware and software that your outsourcer is using on your behalf. In addition, be certain that the contract gives you usage rights to any software that the outsourcer develops for you.

And be sure to give yourself enough time to make the transition. "When you terminate an outsourcing contract, you'll probably need more time than you think," Giera says. "Specify in the agreement that you can extend the agreement with appropriate notice at your existing terms, conditions and price for up to 90 days."

Artunian is a freelance writer in Newport Beach, Calif. Contact her at jartunian@sbcglobal.net.

Information Week Editor's Note: Analyzing The Outsourcers

As a researcher at InformationWeek, I have the opportunity to read a lot of research. Most of the outsourcing research that passes through my E-mail pertains to job loss or the employment implications of outsourcing on IT careers. In fact, with the release of our National IT Salary Survey, there was an article devoted to just this topic. But the goal I've been tasked with is to determine how successful outsourcing partnerships are, and which outsourcing vendors are truly helping customers meet goals and save money. And it was you, the readers, who set this goal. We've had many requests to revisit our Analyzing the Outsourcers research, last conducted in November of 2004.

Back then, InformationWeek Research conducted a survey of more than 300 IT professionals, all customers of various outsourcing firms. We asked those IT professionals about their outsourcing plans, spending plans, and satisfaction with their providers.

We've just started fielding an updated version of this research and would like any and all customers of outsourcing vendors to sign on and weigh in about your partnerships.

While most would consider data two years old to be ancient history, some of the results from the previous wave of this research are still thought-provoking:

• In 2004, nearly three out of five companies were spending $1 million or more on outsourcing, and a quarter were spending over $10 million. Contrary to popular belief, most of these dollars stayed onshore. For every dollar spent with outsourcers, an average of 76 cents stayed in the United States, 5 cents went to Mexico/Canada, and 19 cents went offshore. How does this spending compare to outsourcing spending in 2006? Give us your input.
• Outsourcing is often a way for companies to find expertise not readily available within the organization. This is why nearly half of organizations surveyed in 2004 reported that operational expertise was the most important factor driving companies to outsource. Tell us why your company outsources.
• Outsourcing customers were generally satisfied with their outsourcers, and seven out of 10 companies stated their outsourcing relationship met or exceeded expectations. Rate your outsourcing vendors.

Now it's your turn. Check out my blog and tell me about your organization's outsourcing successes and challenges. Even better, participate in our 2006 Analyzing the Outsourcers research. Not only will you be heard by your vendors, but you'll also get a free copy of the results.

Lisa Smith

LCSmith@cmp.com

www.informationweek.com

[Apr 17, 2006] Asia Times /New globalization battle threatens Asia By Joergen Oerstroem Moeller

The world is suddenly faced with a new economic policy dispute: national governments questioning the benefits and wisdom of cross-border mergers and acquisitions, versus the imperative of economic globalization relentlessly pushing such restructuring in the name of productivity and cost-cutting. The depth and importance of this battle is not widely understood, despite its obvious importance for the future of globalization.

The battle lines are visible both in Europe and in the US, and beginning to be seen in Asia. After the implementation of the single European market in 1993, the Europeans reaped considerable benefits from economies of scale, and restructuring of the continent's enterprises was the next logical step. A truly European industrial structure, it was argued, should replace the out-of-date structure tailor-made to individual national markets but not the large and now-single European market.

Consolidation got off to a promising start. A wave of mergers and acquisitions improving productivity swept through the individual European nation-states. But cross-border mergers and acquisitions - which promised the largest efficiency benefits - proved a harder nut to crack. Admittedly there have been some European cross-border mergers and acquisitions, but not nearly to the extent hoped for; and the apparent European lag in productivity compared to the US has been partly ascribed to the lack of European restructuring.

Recently, several proposed deals have run into crossfire from national governments in Europe - for example, the plan by Italy's ENEL to purchase France's Suez; a planned merger of German energy and environmental giant E.ON and Spain's Endesa; the Indian global steel giant Mittal's attempt to purchase Luxembourg-based Arcelor, itself one of the most prominent results of cross-border European mergers; a prospective union of Italy's Unicredito and Germany's HVB; and a merger between the Dutch bank ABN AMRO and Italy's Antonveneta. That's not to mention the French government's uproar last summer when rumors circulated that Pepsi planned to buy the French food giant Danone.

In the US, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) was not allowed to buy the oil company Unocal. Chinese PC manufacturer Lenovo managed to get the green light to buy IBM's computer division, but only after a hard struggle. And now opposition has seemingly revived with the uproar over the State Department's purchase of 16,000 computers from a Lenovo/IBM wholesaler. An upcoming case is the French telecom giant Alcatel's bid for Lucent, where the delicate point is Lucent's defense and intelligence-related activities for the US government. A political majority in the US Congress threw a spanner in the works for what the Bush administration thought was a done-deal purchase by a Dubai-based company of a firm running US ports, when commentators and politicians began to question the wisdom of allowing container ports to be managed by a company based in the Arab Middle East.

A deeper analysis reveals three motives that threaten not only restructuring of global industry but globalization itself.

First, the fear of losing jobs and income has jumped from blue-collar workers (factory workers) to white-collar workers with a higher education. Globalization implies that no job is 100% safe. Education, skills and even performance do not protect jobs from outsourcing. Politically, that makes a difference, because white-collar workers have a potentially stronger political influence than their blue-collar counterparts. They know how to play the political game, because they form part of the political elite. Opposition from their side to globalization is thus far more dangerous for globalization than resistance from blue-collar workers and trade unions. White-collar workers used to be the elite troops of globalization. For them it was almost entirely beneficial: no risk of losing jobs, but considerable gains from lower consumer prices. Now, these professional workers suddenly realize that their jobs may also be in danger, and they are reacting similarly to the way the blue-collar workers and the trade unions did. If this trend continues, globalization may lose some of its most vocal supporters.

Second, governments worry about cross-border restructuring not because of the potential loss of jobs, which is manageable, but because of the potential loss of brainpower. After a merger, the purchasing company is not generally inclined to run duplicate planning staffs, strategic offices, research and development branches, financial headquarters, etc. These activities of vital importance for the future of the company must be concentrated in one or at least a few places to reap the benefits of interaction. And in cross-border mergers, it is highly doubtful whether the 'brains' of the purchased enterprise will stay in its original home country. Thus, the loss for this county becomes twofold. First, it loses the brainpower of the purchased company. Second, it loses the benefit of other companies either having or planning to establish brainpower to interact with the existing one now on its way out. Any ambition of creating an "industry cluster" or building up a high-performing group of enterprises can be swept away.

The government's position to fight to keep brainpower is logical - it cannot be brushed aside, labeled as old-fashioned protectionism pursued by people who don't understand the imperatives of globalization. It goes deeper than that. The coalition between white-collar workers switching their political view from staunch supporters of globalization to skepticism and governments strongly motivated to keep brainpower at home augurs a potentially formidable and acute threat to globalization.

The third motive is national security. After the end of the Cold War the most serious threat to developed, Western countries disappeared. Instead, terrorism, infectious diseases and international crime pose a threat against not the nation but the well-being of our societies. If and when a cross-border merger and acquisition is perceived as a security threat, the politicians slam on the brakes, and after having stimulated the awareness in the population over precisely this kind of threat, find it difficult or political inopportune to run any risks. This explains the Dubai case and also explains why the first reaction to the Alcatel/Lucent case was the raising of questions over national security, pointing out that Lucent is a provider of high-tech weapons and intelligence-gathering systems at the heart of the US defense system.

What are the implications for Asia of this new pattern of behavior? The new skepticism over cross-border mergers is emerging precisely at the moment when many of Asia's largest and most vibrant companies plan to go multinational, and many of them look at mergers and acquisitions as the right way to obtain the expertise and management know-how they need. CNOOC's failed attempt to purchase Unocal, in this light, may be considered an ominous sign. If the Europeans and Americans start to put the brakes on, Asia may end up as the big loser, finding its easiest route into the big leagues of multinational enterprises full of obstacles or, in the worst case, entirely blocked.

A warning shot has been fired. If the momentum of globalization is to be maintained, both business leaders and politicians must understand the underlying fear driving opposition to cross-border mergers and acquisitions. Even more, they must find ways to deal with that fear and anxiety to ensure an equitable distribution of globalization's benefits, as developed-country economies transition from a manufacturing base with threatened blue-collar jobs, to a service or IT economy with white-collar jobs under fire.

Joergen Oerstroem Moeller is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Affairs in Singapore, and an Adjunct Professor at the Copenhagen Business School.

[Apr 15, 2006] http://callcentermovie.com  a good 12 minute film about call centers outsourcing. Some black humor and stereotyping but a couple of episodes are extremely funny.
 

Date:	4/6/2006, 6:26 pm, EDT
Name:	callgirlONE
Email:	jdadmirersinc@msn.com
Number:	129

 

While I work in a USA call center.... the callers where pretty true to form. Even poor Debbie.... who I don't answer calls from... seemed to be a person who must work with me somewhere in the building.
For those of you that didn't get the joke? Well you have either
A. not been outsourced yet
B. do not work in a call center
C. do not understand that somewhere in a land foreign to your heritage they are making movies of YOUR particular stereotype and laughing like hell.

GOOD JOB !

Date:	4/4/2006, 9:07 pm, EDT
Name:	Srini
Email:	sfosri@yahoo.com
Number:	123

 

Very creative and funny. Of course I am sure many realize its really a parody of a call center and the vision many Americans have of an Indian Call Center.

For those who are upset at this, realize that its really a movie playing to the stereotypes of Americans and Indians.

Date:	3/31/2006, 10:44 pm, EDT
Name:	Saf
Email:	saf2k6@rediffmail.com
Number:	112

 

Hilarious and Funny but pictured very seriously. The ending (Comp U Serve) was most punching than any other blockbuster movie. Well Done the whole Crew.

On flip side, somewhat gives negative feeling on call centre outsourcing market, if taken seriously.

However, Take it for FUN people! No serious intentions found.
 

Date:	3/27/2006, 3:46 pm, EDT
Name:	Erik
Number:	100

 

This was a great movie. I work with customer support myself, and had a great laught watching this movie with my colleagues! We're all really looking forward to your next movie!
 

Date:	3/25/2006, 12:37 am, EDT
Name:	Carlos
Email:	tyrrany_of_the_mind@yahoo.com
Number:	94

 

'Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused.' -- Anonymous

Some of the best comedy comes from the worst pain. This film had me laughing so hard at points that it hurt. But some of the people posting on here just need to lighten up. Political correctness is the worst type of censorship there is no matter what country you come from or call your home. This was one of the things that used to make the United States such a great place: the ability to laugh at ANYTHING. Sadly, it is becoming a thing of the past. That's why it's a pleasure to see such a smart, witty, and well-made movie such as this one. Keep up the good work
 

Date:	3/23/2006, 11:45 pm, EDT
Name:	Aisha
Number:	89

 

And just to add...I do not think it shows India in a poor light at all. They do customer service better than most Americans. Their English is better as well!
 

Date:	3/23/2006, 11:43 pm, EDT
Name:	Aisha
Number:	88

 

I work in the call service industry. And from a customer service and supervisor perspective, working out of my home...this movie is DEAD ON. And hilarious. I loved it. Right down the customer attitudes and the things they said, it had me in stiches. Awesome.
 

Date:	3/23/2006, 6:56 pm, EDT
Name:	Ziad
Email:	ziadkhan@hotmail.com
Web:	http://www.ziadkhan.com
Number:	86

 

I think this is a creative and funny project. I would like to suggest those who are offended to take it easy, when cultures evolve and societies grow, humorists and satirists play great role in shaping them up and helping them rise. These brave people are like doctors who diagnose, prescribe and and at times treat the rest. Chill guys and enjoy the show ..Ziad
 

Date:	3/22/2006, 11:01 am, EDT
Name:	krishna
Web:	http://k-cult.blogspot.com/
Number:	82

 

You guys are a talented bunch. But I do realise from watching this movie and other southasian american movies over the last few yrs that you need to cross the boundaries of just the usual disparities in culture between indians and indian americans. Its high time the audience be fed with something new and original. Thats how the film industry works. And moreover, you cannot go overboard and expect majority of your audience to laugh at their own habbits, accents and behaviour for too long. I assure you that your acting talents combined with some original breadth-taking scripts can produce some wonders. Keep up the good work. Go Southasia!
 

Date:	3/20/2006, 12:16 am, EDT
Name:	Amitabh&Rekha4Ever
Number:	76

 

Does anyone know the meaning of the word "satire?" That's what this funny little short is -- a satire on the hysteria surrounding outsourcing. Folks in the US are up in arms about jobs being sent overseas -- and this short does a fine job of taking that scenario to the extreme (ie. the suicide hotline and the phone sex operator). The rest of you who are making this an attack on India, Indians, call center employees, etc. kind of need to get a sense of humor. A few guys get together and decided to make a funny short commenting on all of the craziness going on here -- not to start WWIII. So get some chai, eat a samosa, and chill out!
 

Date:	3/19/2006, 5:40 pm, EDT
Name:	lazerx
Number:	74

 

Frankly, the movie wasn't very funny. Firstly, if you want to pick on a particular group find your own group I mean Indian americans and not Indians. Secondly, if you pick Indians then learn to talk in hindi (sunil) and poke fun at something sensible and not on a particular job that thousands of people slog at for their survival. It is a misconception that poking fun at indians would be okay for indian americans but you forget a weird dynamic of an oppressed class and oppressor (indian americans). Lastly, if you want to be a successful actor, writer or director, be a little more creative than picking on a particular race or culture or their accent. Maybe you take examples from other southasians such as manoj shyamalan and Jhumpa Lahiri who have set cleaner examples of their originality and talent in arts. I wish you guys the very best but its JUST NOT COOLl what you shown in this movie and in several OF your previous movies by using the indian culture as a tool to generate entertainment and also spreading a very wrong message to the rest of the world. U.S. is famous for such acts already wrt creating stereotypes of Blacks, Latinos and asians. Now you don't have to start one for Indians. My advice would be is to find another profession if you are continuing to use your skills in this manner in promoting stereotypes.
 

Date:	3/16/2006, 10:42 pm, EDT
Name:	Old Friend from Mexico
Email:	amigoviejo@playa.mx
Number:	68

 

Sunil Malhotra is an acting GOD! I love him! He's so funny and talented! Did you ever see "Where's the Party, Yaar?" He was so hilarious. And now this! Wow. Do you remember me, Sunil? I met you when you were on vacation in Acapulco. I was just a boy at the time, a mere 7 years old. But you were so nice to me, even then. And now you are a star. Wow!
 

Date:	3/15/2006, 1:18 am, EDT
Name:	Don Taylor
Email:	dontaylor01844@hotmail.com
Number:	65

 

Loved the movie! To all the Desi's whining and boohooing about "racist americans" - here's a clue: 'Stupid' is not a race. I work for a call center the is front-ended by india. Why is it that every indian I know messes himself when the slightest challenge arises? We let our trained phone monkeys use their real names and don't have them read scripts. The first comment out of customers mouths when they get hold of a US rep is "Thank gawd I got someone who will listen to me. That ass-monkey "Raj-ur" wasted 2 hours of my time, read from a script, and wouldn't ask for help". I see this dozens of times a day. They rarely comment on accents or anything cultural or racial. It's always centered on how incredibly inept your average indian is at doing anything other than reading scripts.

When we debrief the indian reps, they always say the same things: "Sir, I did the necessary and escalated the call. The customer has become irated." "Sir, the customer asked me something new. I have pooped myself and now must ask for an upgradation of the incident". "Sir, I am not prepared for this. I have a decent job that pays me a living wage solely because of who my parents are (the caste system is alive and well, and working for all the Kumars and Rajs of the world, thank you very much). My entire culture is built on graft and petty thievery. I graduated first in my class with a master's at age 21 in English studies, but I only learned by rote and cheated most the time. This is acceptable. I don't really give a f***, because if I screw this up, there are 10 other US companies that haven't figured out yet that they are throwing money away at a poorly thought out business fad. In the worst case scenario, I will work for my uncle selling turds door-to-door". Every day.

Americans don't yell at indians because of any deep-seated racism. They yell at you phone monkeys (you know who you are) because you do stupid things and don't listen.
 

Date:	3/14/2006, 5:35 am, EDT
Name:	dksk
Number:	64

 

I am very disappointed to say some idiots like you are spoiling this country in the name of creationalism and freedom of press. Its as horrible to make a movie on the Mother India for money and fame as making a movie to show your moms in bad light for the sake of money...

I know you fools will not like it...But that's truth., We Indians will allways like t condemn ourself... and make a way for the others to do so..
 

Date:	3/11/2006, 1:54 pm, EDT
Name:	Joey
Email:	hybridartist@bodybuilders.com
Web:	http://www.lmao.com
Number:	60

 

HAHAHAH i just saw the film IT ROCKED the whole scenario and satire etc. However I can understand why some Indians are annoyed about this video, due to the stereotypical connotations. I know how that feels because im Italian and your video had Tony Soprano (bad stereotype) in it lol. BUT I REALISE ITS A JOKE UNLIKE SOME PEOPLE.

But next time in promulgating your sentiments into a form of media like this you might want to be a little less repugnant in regards to the depiction of India. Your film shows India to a slummish nation which is very unsightly/ugly. I used to work for the Italian consulate in Delhi so i know first hand that there is some very beautiful places in India and buildings and infrastructure which is on par with the western world if not better. There are also ugly areas which are unsightly and full of despicable slums. My point being there is always 2 sides to a story. But the average mundane American cant decipher/ comprehend that concept so therefore thanks to your film they are bound to think India is a land of putrid slums.

lol@ comment 57 and his racism. Well i dont blame him because Indians are taking all his jobs because they are smarter harder working and they dont procrastinate unlike people like comment 57 and his cacophonous brethrin who are only capable of whining like pussies.

Anyway...thanks for the laughs and keep up the good work. Hope to see your next production!

Date:	3/9/2006, 11:27 pm, EDT
Name:	Madhavi
Number:	54

 

I saw the movie - the link was passed on to me by a colleague of mine at work.

i must say that "as is" the storyline was quite funny. however, the facts need to be verified before you venture out to make movies like this. quite frankly, i find this movie to be exasperating. having worked in a call center myself, i really do know what happens in such places. after watching this movie, i am inclined to assume that you have certainly not worked in one. on a daily basis, one out of three calls that we take, deals with racism and abuse from international customers, some of who may have actually seen movies like these and have biases towards us Indians (some of whom actually do work hard to resolve customer queries and issues). i would advise you to sincerely do your research before you launch your next movie "OK Buddy!"

Madhavi.
 

Date:	3/8/2006, 8:23 am, EDT
Name:	daveyjones
Email:	na@na.com
Web:	http://www.ru4real.com
Number:	49

 

Get real, guys! It's a gag movie and you would probably love it as it is. But if you think the movie portrays any reality, then it is a long way off.. Both lives in America and India are taken at their basest extremes.. It is very likely that the director is a moron from Chandigarh or the Noida region where u have all sorts or extremities... Neither is the portrayal of the American crowd as depicted... In fact it is more the image an Indian has from watching Hollywood movies.. (Lots of them) By depicting America as a sex crazy nation is all these morons from Chandigarh can do.. Get real, shill and take a pipe. Visit the US sometime for a realistic view...
You could have improved the situation by not showing any of the sexual innuendo.(if you get what I mean, weirdo)
Atleast life in South India such as BLORE, Chennai and other places I have visited are much more professional. Even the people are much more friendly than the northern morons.. These guys are frigging thugs..
 

Date:	3/7/2006, 8:37 am, EDT
Name:	Yann
Email:	yann_lefevre@stream.com
Number:	44

 

You guys are brilliant !!!

I worked in call center for years, and that s the exact situation.
You can find a lot of similarities between your movie and call center in general.
Be sure that the only person having bad critics and a lack of vocabulary are all probably Managers, Team leader, but not agent, because that s our life...
 

Date:	3/3/2006, 3:08 pm, EDT
Name:	Arun
Email:	hukomukhohangla@rediffmail.com
Number:	32

 

Hey Amyn Kaderali!!! Manish Goyal!!! Sunil Malhotra!!!

1. Did you ever work in a call center? Or at least, have you been to one ever? Doesn't look like! The environment showed in the movie does not depict a call center at all. There is that silly guy speaking in all languages handling all sorts of calls regarding survival, sex and support sitting with huge telephone sets, with his boss(!) hanging around with... (?) Was that really a call center? I've been a call center employee for long in different organizations and I don't remember being allowed to take food, forget spilling eatables on the workstations. Nor do I remember using multiple phones to answer various calls in different domains at the same time!

2. Why were the bullock cart or the shabby buildings shown out of context? I don't know the nationality of the film-makers, but it seems they were more interested in buying laughter on cheap comedy by portraying out-of-context scenes in third world countries which are booming in the BPO business!!!
If you believe that the third world countries like India are all about bullock carts and shabby buildings and dirty roads, then wake up guys! You are lagging far behind with regards to information about the shiny progress of these upwardly mobile countries!

The cultural gap between the West and the countries offering call center support is a well-agreed-upon fact, which is already considered by companies offering offshore business. So why laughing on the accent or the choice of words? It's not that call center employees try to ape the western crooks! It's just for the convenience of the customers that these poor people are told to facilitate the customers with an environment which they can understand! And they try as much they can! What's the fuss all about?
It shows that Indians are capable of understanding them, or at least they try; but it's not the other way around!

Comedy is good! Sarcasm and satire is even more enjoyable, provided they are made in a sensible manner, right?

[Apr 15, 2006] Indian Outsourcer Says Big Profits Will Continue - New York Times By STEVE LOHR. Infosys plans to hire another 25,000 employees over the next year.

...Infosys is the first of the major technology outsourcers to report its annual results and to present its outlook for the current year. The view from Bangalore is all blue sky.

The company plans to hire another 25,000 employees over the next year, increasing its payroll by nearly 50 percent. Infosys said its revenue should increase by 22 to 30 percent this year, and its profit should rise by 26 to 28 percent.

Perhaps more significant, and surprising to most analysts, Infosys said it does not anticipate lower profit margins this year.

The Indian technology services companies like Infosys, Wipro and Cognizant have operating profit margins that are two to four times the level of their American rivals like I.B.M., Accenture and Electronic Data Systems.

Industry analysts closely track the profit-margin trends of the Indian companies for signs of an erosion of their competitive edge. That advantage comes mainly from lower labor costs because the wages of software engineers in India are one fourth or less the salaries of American engineers.

If profit margins start to decline, that would raise doubts about the optimistic long-term growth prospects that seem to be assumed in the stock prices of the leading Indian companies. Their shares typically trade at price-to-earnings multiples of 35 to 45 times earnings.

Some industry analysts warn that margins will fall soon. "The profit margins of these companies are utterly unsustainable," said Rod Bourgeois, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, who has a hold recommendation on Infosys and other Indian outsourcers. "And this should be the inflection year for the Indian firms."

The forces squeezing margins, analysts say, include regular wage increases in India of 10 to 15 percent a year, high turnover, and more competition from American companies that are hiring and acquiring in India to narrow the cost advantage enjoyed by the Indian outsourcers.

I.B.M., for example, has increased its Indian work force to an estimated 35,000. Accenture has hired aggressively and now has 18,000 workers in India, and plans to reach 34,000 in a couple years. Electronic Data has 3,000 Indian workers and plans to hire another 2,500 to 3,000 this year. In addition, Electronic Data made a bid this month for Mphasis, an Indian outsourcing company with 11,000 employees.

... ... ...

Infosys executives said that it should be able to maintain its profit margins by improving efficiency and by moving steadily into higher-value services like consulting, where it could charge more.

IT Professionals Association of America, Inc - Daniel Drezner On Outsourcing...

U of Chicago professor Dan Drezner has a long article supporting outsourcing in Foreign Affairs. Once again, we're wrong and those pink slips we got - imaginary. Now Dan is a nice guy - and someone I've debated with before. But it is clear to me that Dan needs to get out of Hyde Park more often. His argument is based on the theory of comparative advantage, with dashes of faith mixed with a pinch of skewed statistics (Dan, for crying out loud, STOP using statistics from McKinsey Global Institute - the research arm of one of the world's great outsourcing firms. It's like citing Japanese gov't statistics to justify whaling.)

The greatest mistake Drezner makes is the assumption that only low-value jobs will go abroad. "The parts of production that are more complex, interactive, or innovative -- including, but not limited to, marketing, research, and development -- are much more difficult to shift abroad." Difficult? If so, then the financial analyst positions that JP Morgan-Chase outsourced last September, and the design unit Intel is building in India prove that it is not as difficult as Drezner would have you believe. In fact he fails to state why these jobs should remain, given the vast pool of highly educated talent in India and China. This is also news to India which is predicating its future growth on these industries in the hopes that they can take over in place of the low-value added jobs like call-centers that will shift to even cheaper places eventually.

To quote this article by Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Treasury Secretary under Reagan, (http://www.businessweekasia.com/magazine/content/04_12/b3875614.htm) "For comparative advantage to work, a country's labor, capital, and technology must not move offshore. This international immobility is necessary to prevent a business from seeking an absolute advantage by going abroad." Roberts believes that there is no longer any reason for differentials to exist in the cost of production of goods and services - the very basis of the comparative advantage theory. In layman's language, that means that there is a global price for a service, say will writing, and in such a global market the cheapest lawyer will win - and chances are, the winner will not be your kid in her second year of law school.

Roberts' point is that when the theory was being formulated by David Ricardo in 1817, there world was quite different than it is today when it comes to processes and communications. He argues, as we have, that information technology has changed the dynamics of economics in ways that cannot be adequately accounted for in 18^th and 19^th century theories. The bottom line is: if a radiologist can read your x-ray in Bangalore for $5, and it costs $50 at the local lab down the block - how can the American radiologist compete?

Drezner would say that he cannot, and that he must retrain for something else where America has a comparative advantage. But where? The only profession we seem to have a comparative advantage in is free-market oriented economists.

danieldrezner.com Daniel W. Drezner Critiquing one critique

Critiquing one critique

Scott Kirwin posts his critique on why I'm wrong on outsourcing. It boils down to:

1) I'm relying on the outdated theory of comparative advantage, which according to Paul Craig Roberts, no longer applies when capital and technology are mobile.

2) I'm relying too much on statistics from the McKinsey Global Institute to support my case because it's "the research arm of one of the world's great outsourcing firms. It's like citing Japanese gov't statistics to justify whaling."

3) I'm underestimating the extent to which better-paying jobs can be outsourced.

I've dealt with the "death of comparative advantage" argument in the past  or rather, Noam Scheiber has.

However, it's worth pointing out that the current direction of capital flows bears no resemblance to what either Roberts or Kirwin fear. The U.S. currently runs a massive capital account surplus, which finances both our budget and trade deficits. When restricted to foreign direct investment, the overwhelming majority of U.S. outrward FDI goes to other OECD countries. This objection is the reddest of red herrings.

On relying too much on MGI data because they're big into outsourcing, hey, I'll relinquish MGI data if Kirwin and others renounce the use of data from Gartner, Forrester, Deloitte, etc. [You're being flippant!--ed. Here's a more substantive response.] All of these firms are equally into outsourcing but still put up overhyped guesstimates about projected job losses. As I pointed in the Foreign Affairs article, these firms also have a strong incentive make outsourcing a business fad. Think their job loss numbers might be exaggerated a tad?

On the future of better-paying jobs, Jacob Kirkegaard of the Institute for International Economics points out that the Forrester study that got everyone hyperventilating in the first place points out that most jobs projected to be lost are below the US average wage.

Certainly the data to date don't support Kirwin at all. According to Kirkegaard:

Computer programmers engaged in relatively simple tasks (when compared to other software occupations) have seen a sustained job loss since the end of 1999, while more advanced software occupations have increased their employment since the beginning of 1999. This is an indication that indeed low-skilled tasks within the software sector may be migrating out of the United States, but higher-skilled tasks remain. Such a trend of technological destruction of US IT jobs, where increasingly standardized tasks are either automated or offshore outsourced, may also be present in other IT occupations.

[E]xcluding management occupations, of the 12 IT occupations that earned more than $50,000 in 2002, 75 percent increased their employment from 1999 to 2002. IT jobs earning more than $50,000 expanded by 184,000 from 1999 to 2002, of which computer software engineers earning approximately $75,000-a-year accounted for 115,000 jobs.

etc by Noam Scheiber the answer is actually attempt to mislead the reader by useless syllogistics. More exactly attempt to play with the "comparative advantage" term and try to pretend being a great economist due to this particular ability. 

WHAT ON EARTH IS CHUCK SCHUMER TALKING ABOUT?: Today seems to be first-rate economist day on The New York Times op-ed page. You've got Paul Krugman writing about the dangers of runaway deficits. You've got Joe Stiglitz writing about the failures of NAFTA. And you've got Chuck Schumer and Paul Craig Roberts rethinking the theoretical underpinnings of free trade. Oh, wait. Chuck Schumer and Paul Craig Roberts aren't actually first-rate economists. And boy does it show in their piece.

Schumer and Roberts point out that one of the assumptions underlying the theoretical case for free trade is that "factors of production" (like capital and labor) aren't easily transported across borders (a phenomenon known as "factor immobility"). They further point out that, thanks to information technology, this assumption no longer holds--to take their example, a "New York securities firm plans to replace its team of 800 American software engineers, who each earns about $150,000 per year, with an equally competent team in India earning an average of only $20,000." As a result, they conclude, the theoretical case for trade has been invalidated. QED.

At this point it's worth pointing out that so-called factor immobility is NOT, in fact, one of the assumptions underlying the theoretical case for trade--at least not the way Schumer and Roberts seem to think it is. To see this, let's back up for a second. At its broadest level, the point of free trade is to expand the size of the global economic pie by eliminating production inefficiencies, which arise when one country tries to produce everything itself using only the "endowments" of capital and labor (i.e., machines and workers) it has within its borders. Now, there are two ways you can eliminate these inefficiencies: When it's not so easy to move machines and workers across borders, countries can specialize in the goods they produce most efficiently, which they then trade with one another. (We'll be more precise about what we mean by "most efficiently" in a second.) When it is easy to move machines and workers across borders, you don't have to specialize (at least not by country) and trade, because every country already has access to the most efficient machines and workers.

Put differently, you can either trade machines and workers (which is basically what you're doing when you're outsourcing), or you can trade the goods these machines and workers make. But, as a theoretical proposition, the two scenarios are EXACTLY THE SAME: They both maximize productive efficiency. Indeed, one of the great accomplishments of international trade theory, post David Ricardo, was to prove mathematically that trade in goods accomplishes the exact same thing, efficiency-wise, as trade in machines and workers. (It's been a while, but we seem to remember that this falls out of the so-called "Heckscher-Ohlin" theorem--which holds that countries export the good whose production is intensive in the factor they have an abundance of. Hey, this stuff either turns you on or it doesn't ...)

Schumer and Roberts, it turns out, have hopelessly confused ends and means. The end we're striving for here is production efficiency. Trade just happens to be the way you get there when work isn't easily outsourced. In that sense, suggesting that outsourcing undermines the case for free trade is a bit like saying natural immunity to the flu would undermine the theoretical case for a flu vaccine. True, natural immunity would make the flu vaccine unnecessary as a practical matter. But it wouldn't do anything to the theoretical case for a flu vaccine--which is that vaccination is the best way to bring about immunity when people don't naturally have it. Likewise, being able to outsource everything (which will never happen) would make trade unnecessary as a practical matter, but it wouldn't do a thing to the theoretical case.

Not that any of this directly answers the basic question Schumer and Roberts pose, which is: Will there be any more white-collar jobs left in this country once information technology makes it possible for the Indians and Chinese to do them for us? But here, too, Schumer and Roberts whiff badly.

The key conceptual mistake they make is their misunderstanding of the principle of comparative advantage. Here's the relevant graf:

The case for free trade is based on the British economist David Ricardo's principle of "comparative advantage"--the idea that each nation should specialize in what it does best and trade with others for other needs. If each country focused on its comparative advantage, productivity would be highest and every nation would share part of a bigger global economic pie. [Emphasis added.]

Um, not exactly. Comparative advantage, though frequently confused with absolute advantage, is actually a concept about relative relationships, not absolute ones. What the principle of comparative advantage actually implies is that each nation should specialize in what it does best relative to all the other things it could be doing and then trade with others for other needs. At its most basic level, comparative advantage is about opportunity cost: The country with the lowest opportunity cost of producing a good (i.e., the cost of producing that good in terms of other goods) should specialize in production of that good.

But what is the situation is that Indian costs are $5 and $20 ?  The key problem is wage disparity here.

Let's take the example of software, since it seems to be on everyone's mind. Suppose that the only two goods in the world are T-shirts and computer software. For the sake of simplicity, let's say it costs us $10 to produce a single T-shirt, and $100 to produce a computer program. And let's also say it costs the Indians $5 to produce a single T-shirt, and $95 to produce a single computer program. In other words, the Indians can produce both T-shirts and computer programs more efficiently than we can.

Does that mean that the Indians will produce everything and that we'll produce nothing--and that, before long, the Indians will own us and the only kind of rice you'll ever be able to get in the United States is basmati...? (Sorry, we get a little carried away with this stuff sometimes.) The answer is, emphatically, NO. The reason is that it's still in both countries' interest to specialize in the good they have a lower opportunity cost of producing. In this case, we can produce 10 T-shirts for every computer program. The Indians can produce 19 T-shirts for every computer program. Since it only costs us 10 T-shirts to produce a computer program versus the Indians' 19, we should specialize in production of computer programs and trade them to the Indians for T-shirts (which will be cheaper for us when acquired through trade than when produced locally). They, on the other hand, should specialize in production of T-shirts and trade them to us for computer programs (ditto on the logic).

Obviously, the real world isn't quite this neat. And, even if it was, the fact that we could one day find ourselves in a situation where our comparative advantage lies in a low-value good like T-shirts rather than a high-value good like software isn't exactly comforting. Still, as long as we enjoy a comparative advantage in enough high-value goods--which will be the case as long as our workforce remains incredibly well-educated and high-skilled relative to India's and China's, which should be our top policy priority and which, even if it wasn't, is going to be the case for decades (when was the last time you checked the literacy rate of India?)--then all the doom and gloom you hear from people like Schumer and Roberts is way overstated.

There are real globalization-related issues we need to address--most importantly, the dislocation caused when whole industries cease to be efficient, and the speed with which we allow that to happen. But the theoretical foundation of the case for free trade isn't one of them.

posted 9:00 p.m.

[DOC] OUTSOURCED SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PRODUCTIVITY

The result that outsourced software development projects have the same productivity as in-sourced ones has many implications for research and practitioners.  In general this means that cost savings should not be expected from higher specialization and presumably higher productivity from software development services offered by an outsourcing provider.  If the outsourcing provider has access to the same resources as the client at the same market costs, in-sourcing may be a better option and this is consistent with prior research (Earl, 1996).  This would also indicate that software development outsourcing will only lead to significant cost savings when the outsourcing provider has access to significantly cheaper labor, which is consistent with the conclusion of prior research that “an external developer must have a considerable cost advantage over an internal developer in order to have the larger net value” (Wang et al., 1997).  This would help explain the rapid growth of offshore outsourcing, which has access to significantly labor cost advantage, enough to overcome the additional transaction costs involved with outsourced software development.

[PDF] Intellectual Property Protection and Offshore Software Development ...

[Apr 03, 2006] The Third Industrial Revolution by Hans F. Sennholz.   This guy is a really pretty primitive offshorist ;-)

A third Industrial Revolution is now making its appearance in the United States and other industrial countries. And just like the first two, it is bound to introduce many changes and force millions of people to make painful adjustments. It is an "information revolution" that greatly expands the scope of tradable services and tends to move many service jobs offshore to India, China, and other industrial newcomers where labor is much cheaper. Defined by its consequences, it may also be called the "offshoring revolution."

The term "offshore" was first used in the United States for any financial organization with its headquarters outside the country. A mutual fund with its domicile in the Bahamas is an offshore fund. The term then broadened to cover the movement of industrial jobs from high-cost countries to places where costs are lower. By now, in the third revolution, ever more service jobs are likely to go offshore. Surely, jobs that render personal services cannot go offshore; my barber shop cannot go to China. But new technology has made many jobs marketable which therefore may go where labor costs are lower. The services of accountants and computer programmers are suitable for electronic delivery and, therefore, may go offshore. According to a recent McKinsey study, 11% of US jobs are at risk of being sent offshore which is likely to become a major political concern in the future.

[Mar 09, 2006] Merger signals outsourcing business changing - Computerworld (INFOWORLD)

- The merger on Thursday of American consultancy Darwin Partners Inc. with Suzoft, an offshore Chinese high-tech company, proves that the outsourcing business model is changing.

On the front end, Darwin Partners offers subject matter and domain expertise to the financial service, high-tech and health care industries.

On the back end, Suzoft does software design and development, engineering, localization and quality assurance work.

The two companies have agreed to a share swap, with no group of owners cashing out or one acquiring the other, said Frank Robinson, CFO at Darwin. "Both parties have agreed to put their companies together to create something unique."

What Robinson calls unique is actually a fairly new trend in the outsourcing business model, with offshore companies trying to move higher up the value chain, according to Barry Rubenstein, an analyst at IDC.

The offshore companies need upfront business and IT consultants with vertical expertise in order to get beyond application maintenance and development. "They want to get into system architecture services that are geared to increased revenue," said Rubenstein.

Darwin Partners and Suzoft will operate as separate legal entities, with Suzoft being a subsidiary of Darwin Partners. Both companies each employ about 400 people.

[Feb 28, 2006] Report offers tips to protect your job from offshoring - Computerworld

One surprising conclusion of the report is that it's not just lower-skilled jobs that are moving offshore: High-level research is also moving from Europe and the U.S. to India and China, as improvements in graduate education systems in those countries increase the number of qualified researchers.

While it's clear that the trend for offshoring is growing, it's hard to find reliable data about either the number of jobs sent to developing countries or the number of resulting jobs lost in developed countries, the ACM said.

In the U.S., job data supplied by the federal government is "not very helpful," the ACM said, adding that consulting firms supply most of the available information. The consultants' figures indicate that offshoring may affect between 12 million and 14 million jobs in the U.S., with annual losses totaling between 200,000 and 300,000. However, not all of these are IT jobs: call centers and business processes that make heavy use of IT may also be offshored.

According to estimates, about 20% of U.S. companies are offshoring work, while that figure is just 5% for European businesses.

[Feb 23, 2006] Dubai wants IT business as well as U.S. ports - Computerworld Dubai wants IT business as well as U.S. ports It's encouraging companies to set up operations in the United Arab Emirates by Patrick Thibodeau

The United Arab Emirates, which is currently at the center of a controversy over whether outsourcing the management of six U.S. ports to a company based in the Persian Gulf should be allowed, wants to do more than manage ports: It wants Dubai, its capital, to become a major IT outsourcing destination.

Dubai has been building a modern infrastructure and clearing away all taxes and visa hurdles to encourage companies that set up operations there, said Mehtab Ali Sayed, director of marketing at the Madar Research Group LLC in Dubai. They are positioning themselves against India, he said.

Many U.S. IT vendors already have offices in Dubai, mostly to support regional customers. Among them is Sierra Atlantic Inc., a Fremont, Calif.-based provider of offshore IT services, which opened an office in Dubai in August.

Compared to India, it is expensive, said Sierra CEO Raju Reddy, who noted that labor can cost 50% more than in India, where the company has the bulk of its operations. Moreover, there is not sufficient local talent in Dubai, he said.

But Dubai will nonetheless be an important base for supporting customers in the region, as well as delivering high-end architectural and design services, said Reddy.

Because of issues like costs and the limited labor pool -- the UAE's population is about 2.6 million -- Dubai has barely made a ripple in the global and competitive outsourcing world. And despite its handsome office parks and zero taxes, it faces challenges. The contentious move by the state-owned Dubai Ports World to acquire London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. for $6.8 billion, allowing it to take over operation of half a dozen U.S. ports, illustrates the UAE's efforts to diversify its economy.

But the port deal -- which would allow Dubai Ports World to run the ports of New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans and Miami -- could also prove to be a problem in its efforts to become an IT outsourcing hub if it fails.

If there is a reversal of a major business deal, I would assume that will cause people to take a cautionary view with where and how they can do business, said Jane Siegel, director of the Information Technology Services Qualification Center at Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science.

While the UAE is considered an ally, the port takeover has met with vocal opposition from House and Senate members upset about plans to allow a company from a hostile region to manage the U.S. ports. The White House has said it won't allow the deal to be blocked.

While routine IT support isn't going to get the attention the port agreement is receiving, you can make the case that if they are handling anything that involves strategic or sensitive data transaction, that that could be a concern, Siegel said. Even then, she said, it's not on par with scenarios envisioned by some in Congress if Dubai manages U.S. ports.

If the port management deal goes through, it could establish Dubai as a credible place to do business with from the U.S., said Jeff Perdue, associate director of Carnegie Mellon's IT services center. It could have a halo effect.

Despite the limitations of the UAE's labor pool and the geopolitical risks, firms focusing on the Middle East and West Africa see Dubai as an excellent location for basing regional operations, said Atul Vashistha, CEO of NeoIT Inc. in San Ramon, Calif. Vashistha said Dubai wants to establish itself as the Singapore of the Middle East.

Rita Gunther McGrath, an associate management professor at Columbia Business School in New York, has been advising Ireland on attracting foreign investment. She said Ireland sees the UAE as a potential rival.

McGrath, who has been to Dubai, described it as relatively friendly country that's high-tech and with an appetite for modernity.  

[Feb 14, 2006] ITPAA Stories: Is Offshoring Good For India?

Copyright 2005 by Rabindra P. Kar.
Permission is hereby given to reproduce this article electronically or in print, without charge, on condition that: (a) The article is reproduced in unedited form. (b) The author is acknowledged.
=============================================================================
In recent years, there has been a vigorous, sometimes acrimonious, debate about whether offshoring (also referred to as "outsourcing") is positive or negative for the United States, and the other developed Western economies. Underlying this debate is an unspoken assumption "“ that offshoring has been very good for the developing countries where the jobs have moved. India is widely regarded as the prime beneficiary of this phenomenon. Consequently, it seems like a rhetorical question to ask whether offshoring is good for India. (Read More)

If we consider the recent past, since the early 1990's, the general consensus is that offshoring has been a big positive for India. It has been a big factor in changing India's image from a land of poverty and social "backwardness", to a potential economic superpower. It has spawned an Information Technology industry with exports of more than US $10 billion annually. It has greatly slowed, if not reversed, the "brain-drain" of educated and talented Indians to the West. Of course, there have been negatives too. The sudden influx of companies and jobs into a few urban areas, notably Bangalore and New Delhi's suburbs, have overwhelmed their existing poor infrastructure leading to impossibly-congested roads, and water and electricity shortages. The huge inflation in land and housing prices in urban areas have hit the common man hard, because the average Indian's income is puny compared to what the noveau-riche techies earn. On balance though, the offshoring wave has benefited India, both psychologically and economically. At least so far.

Can India ride this wave to economic stardom in the next generation? Long-term, is offshoring good for India?

The central premise of this article is that while offshoring has been good for India in the short term, the long-term negatives will outweigh the positives. Since that is both a counter-intuitive and controversial assertion, the rest of this article will deal with the pitfalls of offshoring as a driver of India's socio-economic destiny.

Let's start by looking at offshoring's employment potential. Estimates in the US press, of the number of jobs currently outsourced to India, range between 400,000 to 700,000. The most highly publicized outsourcing estimate, by Forrester Research [2004], predicted that 3.3 million US jobs would be offshored by 2015. Even if (a big "if") India got a big majority of them, that amounts to at most 2.5 million jobs. If, in the same period, the European Union, Japan, Australia and Canada combined, outsourced twice as many jobs as the US, that would total 7.5 million jobs, in 2015.

Now consider that India's population in 2015 will be nearly 1.2 billion people, which implies an adult workforce of 300 million or more. Thus even the optimistic predictions are that no more than (7.5M / 300 M) 2.5% of India's workforce will be employed in offshore services. Yet today, both India's Central government and many "progressive" state governments are obsessively focused on attracting offshore work "“ spending precious resources to create technology zones, offering tax incentives, and lavishing time and attention on pitches to multinational corporate executives. If India's population were similar to South Korea or Taiwan (in the tens of millions), providing offshore services could have been a big part of its future employment plans. But a nation containing one-sixth of humanity cannot achieve prosperity by taking jobs from other nations with much smaller populations. That is simply not a long-term, sustainable strategy.

A more subtle problem with the offshoring boom, is that it is giving urban Indians unrealistic expectations and distorted goals. The middle-class in India and China now believe that as the jobs move to Asia, they will be able to enjoy the consumption-heavy living standards of middle-class Westerners "“ two cars, a big, single-family centrally air-conditioned home; all the electronic gizmos that their hearts desire, and so on. Their dreams of gizmos galore are achievable, since electronic goods keep getting cheaper and more plentiful. But there are some huge obstacles in the way of the other expectations "“ namely population size, population density, energy constraints, and environmental limits.

First consider the effects of widespread automobile ownership. If just one-third of China and India's combined population could afford the US norm of one car per adult, that would be 800 million more cars in these two countries alone. With the world now struggling with oil at over 60 dollars per barrel, what would the price of oil be then? If the 200 million cars in the US produce such damaging levels of pollution and global-warming, can our planet withstand a three or four-fold increase in automobiles?

We have to recognize that living standards are not merely a function of national income levels. They are bound by the limited natural resources available within a nation's borders. India's population density is 9 times that of the US. Hence the average Indian can never enjoy the 2,500 sq ft single-family home, with a front and back-yard, that is so commonplace in American suburbia. Indians may think that they will be able to buy a bigger home if their income rises. But if the average income in a city or region doubles, the price of good housing often more than doubles.

It isn't just housing that's resource-constrained. Clean water and energy are very finite resources, at least in the forseeable future. To achieve a living standard comparable to the West, Indians will need access to much more fresh water and electricity per capita. India's water situation is precariously dependent on the monsoon even at the present levels of consumption. As for electricity, India's massive fossil fuel dependence throws it between the devil (of pollution from coal-fired plants) and the deep blue sea (of high oil prices and coming oil shortages).

The bottom line, is that money earned from offshoring cannot significantly raise the living conditions of the average Indian, but it definitely raises expectations. The yawning lifestyle gap between the small techno-savvy class and the rest, simply creates resentment and frustration, not progress.

Despite its population and limited natural resources, India is NOT doomed to poverty and shortage. If India's awesome collective brainpower is directed towards developing and utilizing technologies and strategies appropriate to India, it could dramatically raise its own living standards and that of much of the world. The areas of intense focus should be:

(a) Renewable, low-polluting energy sources: India should be investing a lot more in the development and deployment of solar, wind and waste-biomass power. Consider solar power. Being a tropical country it gets much more solar power per square metre per year, than Europe or Japan. Moreover, since Indians have not become "used to" central air-conditioning, even current levels of solar-panel efficiency generate enough electricity for the average Indian home. Or consider hybrid (gas-electric) automobile technology. Given its huge oil-import bill, India should be concentrating R&D and manufacturing on hybrids. Instead, Indians are taking pride in the plethora of foreign car models now seen on Indian roads, compared to the 1980's.

(b) Water purification and conservation technologies: Most Indian rivers have undrinkable water, because raw untreated sewage is dumped into them by towns and villages upstream. Sewage treatment is not a "sexy" technology, but it is far more important to India's well-being than software or automobiles. Most Indians have neither toilets nor showers. But the fortunate few that do, are unaware or unconcerned with installing devices like low-flow shower heads, or dual-action flush tanks.

(c) Biotechnology and pharmaceuticals are making great progress in India, but how little of it is oriented towards the diseases that affect the poor majority of Indians. India doesn't need better cholesterol-fighting drugs. It needs vaccines against malaria, cheap medicines against dysentery, cures for intestinal parasites. But most of all India needs cheaper and simpler contraceptives. If India's population growth is not controlled, the current economic boom will make no long-term difference whatsoever.

Unfortunately, India's dynamic private sector companies are doing very little in the areas mentioned above. Instead, the lure of foreign investment, and the great offshore services boom, has them focused on products and competencies that serve wealthy, consumerist Western markets. After struggling to gain political independence after 150 years of colonial rule, India is "willingly" surrendering its economic independence to the agendas of Western corporate shareholders.

The final irony of the offshoring saga is that it is pushing Indian industry headlong into, what I call, the great intellectual property (IP) trap. Indians are swallowing self-serving Western "advice" that "strengthening" IP protections will encourage research and innovation. In truth, the Western patent regime is completely dysfunctional. Huge companies like IBM and Microsoft are granted thousands of patents each year, not because they have made so many big "intellectual strides", but because the US patent office, deluged with applications, grants patents to minor improvements that are both obvious and trivial. Worse, a large number of "IP law firms" have come out of the woodwork, to profit from aggressively (sometimes abusively) enforcing these patents. This IP regime does not encourage innovation, but stifles it, because individual inventors and small companies cannot afford expensive lawyers to defend themselves against predatory patent litigation.

Since R&D in developing economies like India, China, Brazil and others, is often 5 "“ 20 years behind the "cutting edge", almost anything developed independently in these countries will run afoul of some Western patent. If the developing world honours all the patents filed in Western countries, their precious resources will be sucked dry paying royalties, or they will remain in permanent technological bondage. (Look at it from another angle - how much in royalties did the Western world pay India for inventing the zero?) Indians know in their hearts that IP protection is a game stacked in the developed world's favour. They know that no country becomes a great power by playing by some other great power's rules.

But the CEO's and chairmen of India's budding companies "“ the Wipros, the Infosys', the Ranbaxys, are not going to speak up in India's interests, because they fear that would be the end of their "partnerships" with Western multi-nationals. How could Indian Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) firms bid for offshore contracts from GE or Intel, if they don't sign on the dotted-line with regard to intellectual property? And what happens when they win the BPO contracts? Thousands of smart, educated Indians then become the intellectual slaves of a foreign company, for a fraction of the wages they pay their own employees. Every line of software code, every engineering drawing, every new molecule, every revolutionary idea now becomes the property of a Western country. Naturally, these advances will be duly patented or copyrighted. What an irony that future generations of Indians will be forking over royalties to Americans or Europeans for the intellectual output of their own countrymen. And that will be offshoring's enduring "legacy" to India.

================================About the author =================================

Rabindra Kar was born in Bombay, India, and now lives and works as a computer software developer in Austin, Texas. He has been an activist on work-visa and offshoring issues since the early "˜90's. Rabindra holds a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay; a Masters degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Notre Dame; and an MBA from Portland State University, Oregon, USA.  

[Feb 14, 2006] Downsizing outsourcing - Computerworld

FEBRUARY 14, 2006 (NETWORK WORLD) - A recent cover story in Business Week proclaimed we have entered an era in which global outsourcing is quickly becoming a prerequisite for multinational corporations. The article described how corporations of all sizes are outsourcing to providers in India, China, Eastern Europe and elsewhere to satisfy their business needs. Yet escalating competition is also fundamentally changing the outsourcing industry.

For instance, IBM recently announced a 5% decline in its fourth-quarter Global Services revenue. That same day Wipro Ltd., a leading offshore outsourcer, reported that it is having trouble matching the margins of its India-based peers, despite a 25% rise in its net profits.

There is no question the profit margins of IBM, Wipro and other outsourcing companies are being strained by rapidly expanding their global operations while fending off intensifying pricing pressure. But there is an even more subtle problem with the fundamental structure of today's outsourcing business: customer downsizing of outsourcing contracts.

Numerous industry studies have reported that the size of outsourcing contracts has been dropping for the past two years. IBM experienced a 32% drop in major, or strategic, signings in the fourth quarter of 2005. This contraction is due to corporate disenchantment with the rigidity of mega-outsourcing contracts and the high percentage that fail to meet business and service-level objectives.

To avoid the risks associated with traditional outsourcing, corporations are reducing the scope and duration of these agreements. They are also relying on more providers to perform more-specific tasks, rather than be at the mercy of a single outsourcer for everything. This is a trend that I began calling out-tasking a decade ago, and it is even more common today.

[Feb 12, 2006]  Two interesting papers:

•  DiamondCluster2005OutsourcingStudy
• The Outsourcing Revolution HBS Working Knowledge -- pro-outsourcing  arguments from HBS

[Jan 18, 2006]  India firms grow by leaps while adding new services - Computerworld

Wipro Ltd., which today, as part of its quarterly earnings, said its workforce had reached 51,000 - an increase of 30% from a year ago.

The news from Infosys Technologies Limited, which earlier this month said it added 14,200 employees last year, was even better. The Bangalore-based company's workforce now totals 49,422, a 40% increase from a year ago.

And Satyam Computers Services Ltd., due to report on its most recent quarter on Friday, had 22,482 employees at the end September. In that quarter, the most recent for which data is available, the Hyderabad, India-based company reported a gain of 1,977 employees, or about 23%, over the previous quarter.

Those gains come as the offshore firms seek to expand into relatively new areas, such as infrastructure outsourcing -- remote management of mainframes, storage, networks and help desk support. The hardware typically remains at the client's U.S. site, but the workers are elsewhere.

[Jan 17, 2006]InformationWeek Weblog Readers Take Us To Task For Outsourcing Coverage By Mitch Wagner

We've received quite a bit of feedback to our recent outsourcing coverage, and two of our reporters' trips to India to write firsthand about companies there.

Jim Ball of Ball 5 Enterprises in Olney, Md., set the tone for many indignant readers, writing: "I, along with all of those now unemployed because of outsourcing to India, have absolutely no interest whatsoever in reading about all those folks that are enjoying the jobs we all once held."

My colleague Paul McDougall's blog entry on automation stirred quite a bit of heat from readers. Paul writes that automating IT, like outsourcing, is a way that companies are cutting costs, but much of the reader comment focused on India and offshoring.

A reader signing himself as "Puddleglum" wrote: "If the Indian productivity secret were technology, we could -- and would have to -- adopt it to compete. But India's productivity secret is low costs enabled by the misery of its common people. We will be forced to match it, child brickmaker for illiterate child brickmaker, or go out of business."

A reader signing his name as "Jon" writes: "I suspect that Mr. McDougall is currently employed somewhere outside of India, in what he thinks is a secure job. But plenty of people in India and China can write, too. So watch out!"

Bob Clabaugh writes in the same comment thread: "Outsourcing is a very scary thing; what happens when all of our technology is in the hands of countries that could very easily become our enemies (read China)?"

But Trinidad Marroquin made a key point in response to those concerns: "Outsourcing can also be viewed as building capacity. By teaming up with other organizations (offshore or not) that can do something better than you can (i.e., IT support) while you focus on your core business is crucial. "

And that's lost in many discussions of outsourcing. Outsourcing doesn't just cut costs, it creates wealth. Yes, it's awful to be an American who loses his job to outsourcing. But American money saved by outsourcing is being used to pay for investments in new business, and being shared with investors--and those investors are you and me; these days most Americans own corporate stock.

Money flowing to India gets used to buy consumer and business goods and services, and some of that money back to America. Globalization is, in the long run, good for everyone; it creates wealth, and reduces poverty. Also, it makes it less likely that the lowest of the low will become terrorists. And globalization is inevitable: Even if we could build a wall around the United States and prevent outsourcing, we'd soon find our industries unable to compete with the bigger world around us. America isn't the world leader because it's inevitable; we're the world leader because of hard work, brains, and natural resources, and those three things are not in short supply in the rest of the world.

Still, outsourcing brings problems. Reader "Jon" is right; Paul's job--and mine--are at risk to outsourced labor. A couple of the best reporters and editors I've worked with in my career were Indians, born and grown up in India; they were fluent in speaking and writing English, and understood technology quite well.

So I worry about my job being outsourced. My solution is to keep up to date and try to stay ahead of the wave. In today's world, you have to keep moving, and learning new skills, both in technology and in dealing with other people. Your job is always at risk. Outsourcing to India and China doesn't really change that risk; anybody who's been in the workplace for more than five years was already at risk of losing his job to somebody younger than he is, with more recent skills, willing to work harder for less money. The only way a workplace veteran can compete with a kid fresh out of college--or an IT staffer in India, China, or eastern Europe--is by breadth of knowledge and experience. If your workplace doesn't value experience--get out now, before you're thrown out.

Puddleglum's comments are off-base; India's IT competitiveness isn't fueled by the country's poverty; IT workers in India live far better than their neighbors do. IT work isn't keeping Indians down, it's lifting them up.

And Bob Clabaugh, too, is off-base. What happens when we outsource technology to countries, like China, that are more likely to become our enemies? They're less likely to become our enemies, that's what.

Our ongoing series on India and outsourcing continues today, as my colleagues Aaron Ricadela and Ron Anderson conclude their trip and report in. They describe companies such as Infosys and Microland, contrast conditions faced by Indians in the IT industry and outside it, discuss the difficulties Indian human resources managers have in recruiting staff, and outline Indians' efforts to keep its IT industry booming nd share the wealth with less fortunate countrymen....

Also, McDougall is back with a blog entry describing how India creates jobs for Westerners

While outsourcing brings benefits, the problems created by outsourcing are real. How can they be mitigated

Don't Outsource Program Management - Computerworld

Today's IT organizations are developing fewer large programs in-house and buying more outside. This is increasingly due to necessity. After budget-squeezing, downsizing and outsourcing, many firms no longer have enough staff (or the right skills) to deliver on a grand scale.

When corporations need to undertake large programs, their IT organizations often outsource the majority of the tasks. It may be tempting to also outsource program management, but this function is critical to success and should never be outsourced.

Bush's clerisy is an unprecedented alliance of historically anti-Catholic nativist evangelical Protestants with the most reactionary elements of the Catholic hierarchy. Preacher, priest and politician have combined on the grounds that John Kennedy disputed in his famous speech before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in September 1960. Kennedy's every principle is flouted and contradicted by Bush: "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the president - should he be Catholic - how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference. ... where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials..."

From the White House, Karl Rove held a weekly conference call with religious leaders. Evangelical churches handed over membership directories to the Bush campaign for voter registration drives. A group associated with the Rev Pat Robertson advised 45,000 churches how to work for Bush. One popular preacher alone sent letters to 136,000 pastors advising them on "non-negotiable" issues - gay marriage, stem cell research, abortion - to mobilise the faithful. Perhaps the most influential figure of all was the Rev James Dobson, whose programmes broadcast daily on more than 3,000 radio stations and 80 TV stations, and whose organisation has affiliates in 36 states.

Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party

Christianization of the Republican Party, an article from the The Christian Statesman, claims,

Once dismissed as a small regional movement, Christian conservatives have become a staple of politics nearly everywhere. Christian conservatives now hold a majority of seats in 36% of all Republican Party state committees (or 18 of 50 states), plus large minorities in 81% of the rest, double their strength from a decade before.

The twin surges of Christians into GOP ranks in the early 1980s and early 1990s have begun to bear fruit, as naive, idealistic recruits have transformed into savvy operatives and leaders, building organizations, winning leadership positions, fighting onto platform committees, and electing many of their own to public office.

The Christian Statesman is a publication of the National Reform Association. Who is the National Reform Association?

The mission of the National Reform Association is to maintain and promote in our national life the Christian principles of civil government, which include, but are not limited to, the following:

Jesus Christ is Lord in all aspects of life, including civil government.

Jesus Christ is, therefore, the Ruler of Nations, and should be explicitly confessed as such in any constitutional documents. The civil ruler is to be a servant of God, he derives his authority from God and he is duty-bound to govern according to the expressed will of God.

The civil government of our nation, its laws, institutions, and practices must therefore be conformed to the principles of Biblical law as revealed in the Old and New Testaments.

[Oct 8, 2004] A 'moral voter' majority The culture wars are back csmonitor.com

[Oct 8, 2004] The Herald Does America really want to join the axis of arrogance? by Alex Bell

It can seem hard to recall that America was founded by Europeans fleeing religious persecution and who created a constitution that kept church and state separate. In the light of the vote swinging the presidential election and victory by a fundamentalist Christian, the US appears to be a religious state. The search for a New Jerusalem is one which had driven many Christian believers, but perhaps it is time we thought of the US as a new Israel.

.... ... ...

That alone doesn't make America a religious state in the way Israel is to the Jews. However, the prevalence of committed Christians in the political front line, their explicit reference to the faith as a political guide and the re-statement of this faith as a sign of patriotism does nudge it closer to the Israeli model.

DAWN - Opinion; 08 November, 2004

The outcome was not altogether unexpected. In fact, two Economist journalists, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, in their book published earlier this year, The Right Nation: Why America is different, had pointed out that those hoping that a John Kerry victory in November would halt the onward rush of conservative triumphalism in America were fooling themselves.

They stated that Bush's "accidental" victory in 2000 may come to be seen as the beginning of a prolonged period of Republican dominance and that the Democratic party, bereft of policy ideas, disorganized and permanently on the defensive, was reduced to being the anti-Bush party. The Democrats will, of course, do their post-mortem in the next few months to find out where they had gone wrong.

John Kerry's ideas, to be precise, were too liberal for an American public that had developed a refined propellant conservatism. The Republicans had over the years successfully cultivated Christian fundamentalism to the extent that they were able to create a mass base for reaction and militarism.

TheStar.com - How the South was won

"The current election gives the religious right its biggest success ever," says Rozell. "It's now a powerful political movement with 15 to 20 per cent of the population. That's more than the Hispanic, black or labour-union vote."

Why Christian Fundamentalists are Cults Copyright 1985 Jan Groenveld Freedom In Christ, PO Box 2444, Mansfield, 4122, Australia

[Nov 4, 2004] The New York Times Opinion Op-Ed Columnist Two Nations Under God  by THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

My problem with the Christian fundamentalists supporting Mr. Bush is not their spiritual energy or the fact that I am of a different faith. It is the way in which he and they have used that religious energy to promote divisions and intolerance at home and abroad. I respect that moral energy, but wish that Democrats could find a way to tap it for different ends.

[May 24, 2004] Secular Illusions - The right way to rescue America from religious correctness. By Richard Wightman Fox -- while religious zealots are much more dangerous, secular humanism can also suffer from incompetent advocacy. And some "democrats" like Joe Lieberman are actually indistinguishable from evangelical radicals under a closer look.

By Richard Wightman Fox
Posted Monday, May 24, 2004, at 11:37 AM PT

In Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, Susan Jacoby sets out to rescue us from the "apostles of religious correctness." She blames this amorphous group for smudging the line between church and state, weakening the hold of science in public education, and airbrushing great secularists such as Tom Paine, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Robert Ingersoll out of American history. Jacoby concedes that religion has often propelled social reform, but she thinks that secular "Enlightenment values"—the heart of the freethinking tradition—have been slighted in standard accounts of the American past.

Jacoby departs from earlier liberal counterattacks against the religious right by faulting liberals nearly as much as conservatives for riding roughshod over our secular heritage. She is incensed that President Bush strode into Washington's National Cathedral after 9/11 and asked God to "always guide our country." When addressing the whole nation, presidents should avoid sectarian pulpits or religious language that inevitably excludes nonbelievers like her. But the Democrats, far from mounting effective resistance to President Bush's official piety, have in Jacoby's view climbed on the holy bandwagon, too. She winces at Al Gore's comment in 2000 that he frequently asks himself, "What would Jesus do?" She fumes at Joe Lieberman's support for faith-based initiatives, accusing him of forgetting his European Jewish ancestors. Jacoby thinks they would have cared more than Lieberman does "about what erosion of the church-state barrier might do to Jews."

Many readers across the political spectrum will applaud Jacoby's call for defending scientific literacy in the face of the Evangelicals' "intelligent design" theory, which rules out "evolution across species." But does reason as such need shoring up against the power of religion, and does the separation of church and state require keeping religion out of politics?

Many liberals will contend that secularists such as Jacoby are wrong to ask religious Americans to keep their beliefs "private." Religious commitment does not automatically entail reduced devotion to reason or to pluralism. And even liberals who share Jacoby's sense that religiosity and rationality are fundamentally at odds may balk at her claim that freethinking is the right way to promote the primacy of reason. Jacoby has greatly overstated the influence of free thought in the American past, and hence overestimated the prospects for getting it back as a vibrant social force.

As a history, Freethinkers does not look critically enough at the notion of "influence." Jacoby's favorite freethinker Robert Ingersoll, an Illinois lawyer and politician, evolved after the Civil War into a well-known "agnostic" lecturer and writer. But to call him "the preeminent orator of his generation" suggests a cultural centrality that he did not command. Infamous as much as famous, he entertained a mass audience without being widely followed. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the greatest feminist thinker of the mid-19^th century. But her stature stemmed from her general appeal for women's rights, not her dismissal of the churches or her challenge to divorce laws. Most contemporaries regarded her anticlericalism and her free-divorce advocacy as anachronistic survivals from an antebellum era strangely infatuated with "individual sovereignty." Tom Paine's influence took a steep dive as early as 1794, when his Age of Reason assailed Christianity as a laughable "mystery" religion. True, he remained a hero to many 19^th-century American anticlerical rationalists. But every social and political viewpoint, secular or religious, gained adherents in a century that saw the population explode from 5 million to 75 million. Paine's relative influence declined dramatically even if the number of his admirers grew.

Another drawback in Jacoby's historical account is her loose definition of "freethinker." She announces initially that the group includes both "the truly antireligious" (like Ingersoll) and those who embraced "some form of God or Providence" while resisting "orthodox religious authority." But then she sometimes implies that the tiny antireligious cohort of Ingersoll and his ilk are the authentic freethinkers. And sometimes she expands the second category to include a famous American like Lincoln, who certainly stood aloof from the churches but hardly stood against them. Meanwhile, she overlooks the most significant 19^th-century group that fits perfectly within her second type: liberal Protestants such as O. B. Frothingham, who formed the Free Religion movement after the Civil War and probably did more to spread secularism under religious auspices than agnostics such as Ingersoll could ever dream of doing with outright secularist appeals.

A thoroughgoing history of secularism in America would put this paradox at the center: Secularity took root not so much because heroic dissenters such as Paine, Stanton, and Ingersoll preached it, but because a vast army of religious Americans, mostly churchgoing liberal Protestants, pushed for it. Jacoby recognizes that religious and secular impulses have overlapped in American history, but she does not note how deeply interwoven they have been. She observes, correctly, that an anti-slavery Quaker such an Angelina Grimké drew on the Enlightenment as well as the Bible, and that Martin Luther King Jr. chose secular as well as religious advisers. The additional point is that many secular militants, such as Eugene Debs, turned to religion as personal comfort and organizing tool. And many clerical activists, such as Reinhold Niebuhr, embraced secularity as personal style and ethical ideal. Secularism established itself in America by attaching itself to religion, and religion modernized itself by embracing secularity. The religious and the secular have been joined at the historical hip.

Jacoby is right that we should defend the separation of church and state. As Madison and Jefferson grasped, separation protects religion from trivialization as much as it guards nonbelievers from subtle or blatant coercion. When endorsed by public officials, Jesus loses his edge. Christ the certified tribal icon can serve as a marker of social propriety but not as a divine judge or a demanding prophet. We can all be thankful that President Bush did not declare June 10 to be "Jesus Day," as he did when he was governor of Texas. Religious Americans need to realize that faith gains, rather than loses, when it refuses official stamps of approval and when it is kept out of the teaching of science. Of course for believers, authentic faith informs all of life, but faith is nevertheless put at risk when it is clumsily introduced into an area of knowledge in which it is incompetent.

Liberals stand a better chance of containing the religious right if they revive John Dewey's and William James' religion-friendly pragmatism rather than Robert Ingersoll's religion-averse freethinking. Dewey, James, Jane Addams, and other pragmatists can supply liberals with everything Jacoby's freethinkers can give them: a this-worldly focus on using reason and science to build community, increase tolerance, cherish diversity, and guard the essential line between church and state. A Christian pragmatist such as Reinhold Niebuhr can also give religious liberals—Christian, Jewish, or nondenominational—a theological framework for defending the secular against the undue influence of the religious.

Niebuhr welcomed religion into politics but cautioned that politics had to be protected against the fanaticism that religion always tended to spark. Politics needed religion to keep itself pointed toward social justice. Left to its own devices, politics got stuck in a scuffle of one interest group against another. Granted, Enlightenment reason contributed a crucial tool for citizens and policymakers. But reason alone could never mobilize people to look beyond the defense of their own interests. The dual standpoint of Jewish and Christian belief—human beings were both sinners and creatures made in the image of God—offered a firm foundation for socially progressive politics. Knowing themselves as sinners could lead people to self-criticism and to tolerance of other viewpoints; knowing themselves as God's creatures could incline them to favor the well-being of their neighbors. The goal of justice could also prompt religious believers to build politically effective coalitions across the religious-secular spectrum, rather than using politics to impose their convictions on the nonreligious.

Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." Jacoby actually comes close to Niebuhr's position when she concludes that freethinkers should find a way make their public advocacy passionate as well as rational. And Niebuhr came close to Jacoby's position when he reflected that secular saints sometimes put religious ones to shame by slogging for justice without any thought of what was in it for them.

Richard Wightman Fox, professor of history at the University of Southern California, is the author of Jesus in America: Personal Savior, Cultural Hero, National Obsession.

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2101002/

The Threat of American Wahhabis Muqtedar Khan, PH.D. Article was featured in San Francisco Examiner (Nov 11, 2002), Detroit News (November 26, 2002) and the Muslim Observer.

The tragedy of September 11 has now become an opportunity for political entrepreneurship. More and more people are using it to advance sectarian interests that are often at odds with America’s national interests. One group, more than anyone – American Wahhabis – is using September 11 to push its own fundamentalist politics with a vengeance.

The word Wahhabi essentially identifies a rather narrow and bigoted interpretation of Islam. The Wahhabis are (1) oppose civil rights and justice for women and other minorities (2) are anti-secular and in favor of imposing religious law on others by force (3) and extremely intolerant of “others” who do not share their specific religious beliefs. Wahhabis, because of their intolerant outlook and allergy to liberal values and institutions, constantly indulge in a theology of hate.

Unfortunately there is a similar group of bigoted religious fundamentalists in America who are undermining the secular character of America, subverting the peaceful message of Christianity and polluting the socio-cultural environment of America.  These American Wahhabis like their Muslim counterparts are intolerant of homosexuality, feminism, civil rights (ACLU), do not believe in the separation of Church and State and hate people of other faiths. Rev. Jerry Falwell, Rev. Pat Robertson and Rev. Franklin Graham are three of the most prominent, powerful and vocal representatives of American Wahhabis.

Readers may recall that in the immediate aftermath of September 11, Reverend Jerry Falwell blamed abortionists, homosexuals, and the ACLU for angering God and indirectly causing the attacks of September 11. He later apologized for his statements when there was uproar from all sides of the political spectrum, including the President who called Farwell’s comments as “inappropriate”. His statement was a shameless and insensitive example of political opportunism that sought not only to politicize the tragedy of September 11 but also to incite hatred towards the groups that Rev. Falwell and his associates habitually target. If he was not strongly rebuked by nearly everyone who mattered, his crusade against ACLU, gays and feminists would have fed on the emotions related to September 11 and gained significant momentum.

In the past few weeks American Wahhabis have unleashed a verbal assault on Islam and its religious symbols unmindful of the hate it is inciting against Muslim in America and the anti-American sentiments it is generating in the Muslim World. Rev. Falwell and Rev. Pat Robertson have called The Prophet of Islam a terrorist and argued that Islam and its teachings itself are the sources of violence. Rev. Franklin Graham has announced that Islam and its teaching are evil and wicked. Between them they have maintained a continuous discourse of hate against Islam and Muslims for the past few months. The refusal of American leadership, especially the President to rebuke them, has emboldened them to ratchet up the decibel levels of their theology of hate.

Their comments have caused anger among Muslims worldwide, including religious riots in India that have led to five deaths. Many Pakistanis have reacted angrily and expressed their dismay by voting strongly in favor of a pro-Taliban and anti-American alliance in the recent elections in Pakistan.

The problem with the American Wahhabis is not just their ideas and their hate mongering but the fact that they have a reasonably large following – sufficient to influence the electoral outcomes in American elections. By virtue of their votes and their fund raising capacity they exercise more power directly on American Congress and the President than the Mullahs of Saudi Arabia can over the decisions of their King.  Furthermore the close relationship between the President himself and Rev. Franklin Graham and other members of his administration, such as Attorney General Ashcroft, is extremely disturbing. It is not a coincidence that the first group to financially benefit from George Bush’s impulse to finance faith based programs was that of Rev. Pat Robertson. Is it possible that the very purpose of the Federal initiative to support faith based programs is to allow the American Wahhabis to intertwine its operations with those of the Federal government?

Osama Bin Laden attacked America hoping to incite a massive retaliation against Muslim nations to actualize the false prophesy of a clash of civilizations. He was hoping that by inciting a brutal response from the US, he would succeed not only in uniting the 1.4 billion global Muslim community, but also winning them over to Wahhabism and its anti-western, anti-Christian posture.

It seems that the American axis of hate – Revs. Falwell, Robertson and Graham – by repeatedly making hateful and abusive comments about Islam and Prophet Muhammad are determined to precipitate an Armageddon between America and the Muslim World.

When Yigal Amir shocked the Western World by assassinating Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, American media and American leaders repeatedly emphasized that violence was the natural cause of hateful statements. They were all referring to the environment of intolerance that had been created in Israel by Jewish religious zealots who are opposed to peace. Their hateful comments eventually incited Yigal Amir to assassinate Rabin. We seem to have quickly forgotten that painful lesson and the memory of Rabin.

It is only a matter of time when the repeated anti-Muslim and anti-Islam statements by the preachers of hate in America will result in some form of egregious violence against Muslims. Already there have been two instances where the police (California and Florida) arrested heavily armed would be terrorists planning bombing campaigns against Muslims. It seems that the American leadership, specially the President is waiting for something horrible to happen before he can reprimand Revs. Falwell, Robertson and Graham for their “inappropriate comments”.

We live in very sensitive times. People’s insecurities are extremely heightened and their capacity to suffer pain, bigotry and injustice is being severely tested. We are facing the possibility of a global war between America and the Muslim World. And the primary cause for such a war, God-forbid, would not be oil, geopolitics or regime changes, but the intolerable and vicious hate speech unleashed by religious bigots who confuse self righteousness for righteousness and demonization for devotion.

Since September 11 many Americans, including the author, have condemned the extremism of Muslim Wahhabis. It is time that America, especially President Bush, does the right thing and condemns the hatred preached by American Wahhabis.

[Feb 20, 2004] The Despoiling of America by By Katherine Yurica.

Katherine Yurica recorded and transcribed 1,300 pages of Pat Robertson’s television show, The 700 Club covering several years in the mid 1980’s. In 1987 she conducted a study in response to informal inquiries from the staff of the Subcommittee on Oversight of the House Ways and Means Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, which was investigating whether television and radio ministries were violating their tax-exempt status by conducting grass roots political appeals, endorsing candidates, and making political expenditures as defined under Section 527 of the IRS code. The Subcommittee on Oversight published Katherine's study in Federal Tax Rules Applicable to Tax-Exempt Organizations Involving Television Ministries on October 6, 1987, Serial 100-43. (Published in 1988.)

A Machiavellian Religion Was Born

American Christianity had already seen extremes. For Dominionists, perhaps the single most important event in the last half of the twentieth century occurred when the Reverend Jim Jones proved that the religious would follow their leader to Guyana and even further, to their deaths. That fact could hardly have escaped the notice of even the dullest of politically minded preachers.

Indeed, Jim Jones’ surreal power over his congregants leaps out from the grave even today. If a man desired to change the laws in America—to undo Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal for instance, and allow corporations the unbridled freedom they enjoyed prior to the Great Depression (which included the freedom to defraud, pillage, and to destroy the land with impunity on the way to gathering great fortunes), what better way to proceed than to cloak the corruption within a religion? If a few men wanted to establish an American empire and control the entire world, what better vehicle to carry them to their goal than to place their agenda within the context of a religion? Jim Jones proved religious people would support even immoral political deeds if their leaders found a way to frame those deeds as “God’s Will.” The idea was brilliant. Its framers knew they could glorify greed, hate, nationalism and even a Christian empire with ease.[21]

The religion the canny thinkers founded follows the reverse of communism and secular humanism, it poured political and economic ideology into a religion and that combustible mixture produced “Dominionism,” a new political faith that had the additional advantage of insulating the cult from attacks on its political agenda by giving its practitioners the covering to simply cry out, “You’re attacking me for my religious beliefs and that’s religious persecution!”[22]

But how could a leader get away with a religious fraud that barely hides its destructive and false intent?

Jim Jones’s history holds the answer. He not only proved the obvious fact that people are blinded by their religious beliefs and will only impute goodness, mercy, and religious motivations to their leader, but Jim Jones proved the efficacy of the basic teaching of Machiavelli: a leader must only appear to have the qualities of goodness—he need not actually possess those attributes.

In fact, Machiavelli taught that it is dangerous for a leader to practice goodness. Instead, he must pretend to be good and then do the opposite. Machiavelli taught that a leader will succeed on appearances alone. A good leader puts his finger to the wind and changes course whenever it is expedient to do so. Machiavelli wrote this revealing passage that could be applied not only to false religious leaders but to a false President:  

“Alexander VI did nothing else but deceive men, he thought of nothing else, and found the occasion for it; no man was ever more able to give assurances, or affirmed things with stronger oaths, and no man observed them less; however, he always succeeded in his deceptions, as he well knew this aspect of things.”

“Everybody sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are, and those few will not dare to oppose themselves to the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of men, and especially of princes, from which there is no appeal, the end justifies the means.” (p. 93)

Chillingly Machiavelli advises his readers:

“Let a prince therefore aim at conquering and maintaining the state, and the means will always be judged honourable and praised by every one, for the vulgar is always taken by appearances and the issue of the event; and the world consists only of the vulgar, and the few who are not vulgar are isolated when the many have a rallying point in the prince.” (p. 94)

Machiavelli also wrote how to govern dominions that previous to being occupied lived under their own laws. His words eerily reflect the Bush Administration’s decisions on how to rule Iraq:

“When those states which have been acquired are accustomed to live at liberty under their own laws, there are three ways of holding them. The first is to despoil them;[23] the second is to go and live there in person; the third is to allow them to live under their own laws, taking tribute of them, and creating within the country a government composed of a few who will keep it friendly to you. Because this government, being created by the prince, knows that it cannot exist without his friendship and protection, and will do all it can to keep them. What is more, a city used to liberty can be more easily held by means of its citizens than in any other way, if you wish to preserve it.” (p. 46)

However Machiavelli has second thoughts and follows with this caveat:

“…. [I]n truth there is no sure method of holding them except by despoiling them. And whoever becomes the ruler of a free city and does not destroy it, can expect to be destroyed by it, for it can always find a motive for rebellion in the name of liberty and of its ancient usages…”[24] (p. 46)

(The above quotes are from The Prince in the original Oxford University Press translation by Luigi Ricci, 1903; revised by E. R. P. Vincent, 1935)

Machiavelli’s books, The Prince and The Discourses are not abstract treatises. Christian Gauss, who wrote an important introduction to the Oxford edition, called them by their rightful name: they are in fact a “concise manual—a handbook of those who would acquire or increase their political power.” Gauss tells us that a long line of kings and ministers and tyrants studied Machiavelli, including Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin and Stalin. 

How Can Evil Deeds Be Reconciled With Christian Beliefs?

It’s important to understand that the founders of Dominionism are sitting on the horns of a moral dilemma: How can a leader be both good and evil at the same time? For if biblical moral proscriptions are applicable to him, he will certainly suffer some form of censure. And if proscriptions are applicable, the leader could not lie to the citizenry with impunity or do evil so that “good” could be achieved. The answer to the dilemma of how a Dominionist leader could both do evil and still maintain his place of honor in the Christian community lies in the acceptance and adoption of the Calvinistic doctrine that James Hogg wrote about in The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.  (W.W. Norton, N.Y. 1970.)

This novel, published in 1824, is concerned with psychological aberration and as such, anticipates the literature of the twentieth century. The protagonist is a young man named Robert, who drenched in the religious bigotry of Calvinism, concluded that he was predestined before the beginning of the world to enter heaven, therefore no sin he committed would be held to his account. This freed Robert to become an assassin in the cause of Christ and His Church.

Fifty years ago a variation on the concept was expressed disapprovingly as, “Once saved—always saved.” In this view, salvation had nothing to do with “good works or a holy life.” A drunk who had a born again experience would be among God’s chosen elect whether he stopped drinking or not. But the logical extension of the reasoning is the idea that Christianity could have within itself not ex-sinners but active sinners: as Christian murderers, Christian pedophiles, Christian rapists, Christian thieves, Christian arsonists, and every other kind of socio-pathological behavior possible. As we have sadly witnessed of late the concept is broadly accepted within the American churches.

But the Dominionists needed the aberrant extension of Calvinism; they believe as did Calvin and John Knox that before the creation of the universe, all men were indeed predestined to be either among God’s elect or were unregenerate outcasts. And it is at this point Dominionists introduced a perversion to Calvinism—the same one James Hogg utilizes in his The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner—its technical name is “supralapsarianism.” It means essentially that the man called from before the foundation of the world to be one of the elect of God’s people, can do no wrong. No wonder then observers noted a definite religious swing in George W. Bush from Wesleyan theology to Calvinism early in his administration.[25]

How comforting the Calvinistic idea of a “justified sinner” is when one is utilizing Machiavellian techniques to gain political control of a state. It’s more than comforting; it is a required doctrine for “Christians” who believe they must use evil to bring about good. It justifies lying, murder, fraud and all other criminal acts without the fuss of having to deal with guilt feelings or to feel remorse for the lives lost through executions, military actions, or assassinations.

If this doctrine seems too wayward to believe as it might have done had I not heard a recent interview with a Pentecostal minister—rest assured the twisted doctrine is horribly alive and thriving in America today.

The interview conducted by Brian Copeland a news talk show host for KGO, San Francisco on September 5, 2003, was with the Reverend Donald Spitz of Pensacola, Florida who is involved with a Pro Life group in Virginia and with the Army of God. The occasion was the execution of Paul Hill, another Pentecostal minister who murdered a doctor and his body guard outside an abortion clinic. Hill was caught and convicted of the crimes. Spitz admitted that he was Paul Hill’s spiritual counselor. He said Hill died with the conviction he had done the Lord’s work. Spitz who approved of the murder said, “Someone else is going to handle the publishing of Paul Hill’s book On How to Assassinate.”

Spitz believed that Hill was completely justified in murdering the physician because, according to him, “twenty-six babies’ lives were saved by the killing.”  When Copeland pointed out that the scheduled abortions for the morning of the murders would have simply been postponed to another day—and that the lives of the fetuses were only extended for a day or so, Spitz refused to accept the argument.

Not surprisingly, Spitz opposed the use of birth control methods. Copeland asked, “If a woman is raped should she be forced to carry the fetus to term?” Spitz said, “Yes.”

“What if the pregnancy will kill the mother?” Spitz replied that under no circumstances could “the baby be killed.” When Spitz was asked, “Why haven’t you gone out and killed an abortionist?” he replied calmly, “God hasn’t told me to do the killing.”

The Neo-Conservative Connection with Dominionists and Machiavelli

I suspect that most Americans have never heard of Machiavelli, nevertheless, it should be no surprise to us that Machiavelli has been accepted, praised, and followed by the Neo-Conservatives in the White House and his precepts are blindly adopted by the so-called “Christian” Dominionists. Kevin Phillips tells us in his masterful book, American Dynasty that Karl Rove, political strategist for President George W. Bush, is a devotee of Machiavelli, just as Rove’s predecessor, Lee Atwater had been for the elder Bush.[26] In fact, there has been an incredible effort to dilute the immoral implications of Machiavelli’s teachings. Today’s best apologist for Machiavelli is one of the most influential voices in Washington with direct connections into the oval office.

Michael A. Ledeen was a Senior Fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a counselor to the National Security Council and special counselor to former Secretary of State, Alexander Haig in 1985. His relationship with Pat Robertson goes back at least to the early 1980’s.[27]  Like Robertson, Ledeen was an advocate for military intervention in Nicaragua and for assistance to the Contras. (Ledeen was also involved in the Iran-Contra affair.)[28]

Today, in 2004, Michael Ledeen is a fellow at the conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute and according to William O. Beeman of the Pacific News Service, “Ledeen has become the driving philosophical force behind the neoconservative movement and the military actions it has spawned.”[29]

Ledeen made a number of appearances on the 700 Club show during the 1980’s. Always presented as a distinguished guest, Robertson interviewed him on April 30, 1985 and asked him on this occasion: “What would you recommend if you were going to advise the President [Ronald Reagan] as to foreign policy?”

Ledeen responded:

“The United States has to make clear to the world and above all to its own citizens, what our vital interests are. And then we must make it clear to everyone that we are prepared to fight and fight fiercely to defend those interests, so that people will not cross the lines that are likely to kick off a trip wire.” (Emphasis added.)

If Ledeen’s advice sounds ruthless and Machiavellian—it may be because it is Machiavellian. (By definition his statement presupposes the existence of something or several things that are life threatening to the nation by the use of the word “vital.” Yet Ledeen asserts that which is life threatening must be made manifest or defined. If an interest must be defined, then it is not apparent; yet the nation will nevertheless ask its sons and daughters to fight and die for something that is not apparent. Therefore, whatever “interests” Ledeen wanted to be defined, cannot have been vital interests, which are apparent—so in reality he advised the President to call discretionary interests vital—which is a lie.)

Be aware that Ledeen is in complete accord with Machiavellian thinking. And so is Pat Robertson.[30] Robertson agreed to virtually every nuance Ledeen presented. In fact, it’s not clear which of the two first proposed invading Syria, Iran and Iraq back in the 1980’s,[31] a refrain that also echoed in the reports of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), one of the major homes for neo-conservatives in 2000. Both Ledeen and Robertson targeted the same nations that PNAC lists as America’s greatest enemies in its paper, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (published in September 2000.)[32]

In 1999, Ledeen published his book, Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli’s Iron Rules Are as Timely and Important Today as Five Centuries Ago. (Truman Talley Books, St. Martin’s Griffin, N.Y. 1999.) Here is a sample of how Ledeen smoothes rough edges and presents a modern Machiavelli:

“In order to achieve the most noble accomplishments, the leader may have to ‘enter into evil.’ This is the chilling insight that has made Machiavelli so feared, admired, and challenging. It is why we are drawn to him still…” (p. 91)

Again, Ledeen writes:

“Just as the quest for peace at any price invites war and, worse than war, defeat and domination, so good acts sometimes advance the triumph of evil, as there are circumstances when only doing evil ensures the victory of a good cause.” (p. 93)

Ledeen clearly believes “the end justifies the means,” but not all the time. He writes “Lying is evil,” but then contradictorily argues that it produced

 “a magnificent result,” and “is essential to the survival of nations and to the success of great enterprises.” (p. 95)

Ledeen adds this tidbit:

“All’s fair in war . . . and in love. Practicing deceit to fulfill your heart’s desire might be not only legitimate, but delicious!” (p. 95)

William O. Beeman tells us about Michael Ledeen’s influence. Writing for the Pacific News Service he says:

Ledeen’s ideas are repeated daily by such figures as Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz…He basically believes that violence in the service of the spread of democracy is America’s manifest destiny. Consequently, he has become the philosophical legitimator of the American occupation of Iraq.”[33]

In fact, Ledeen’s influence goes even further. The BBC, the Washington Post and Jim Lobe writing for the Asia Times report that Michael Ledeen is the only full-time international affairs analyst consulted by Karl Rove.[34] Ledeen has regular conversations with Rove. The Washington Post said, “More than once, Ledeen has seen his ideas faxed to Rove, become official policy or rhetoric.”[35]

Leo Strauss the Father of Neo-Conservatism

Leo Strauss was born in 1899 and died in 1973. He was a Jewish scholar who fled Germany when Hitler gained power. He eventually found refuge in the United States where he taught political science at the University of Chicago. He is most famous for resuscitating Machiavelli and introducing his principles as the guiding philosophy of the neo-conservative movement. Strauss has been called the godfather of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America.” More than any other man, Strauss breathed upon conservatism, inspiring it to rise from its atrophied condition and its natural dislike of change and to embrace an unbounded new political ideology that rides on the back of a revolutionary steed, hailing even radical change; hence the name Neo-Conservatives.

The father of neo-conservatism had many “spiritual” children at the University of Chicago, among them: Paul Wolfowitz and Abram Shulsky, who received their doctorates under Strauss in 1972. Harry V. Jaffa was a student of Strauss and has an important connection to Dominionists like Pat Robertson as we shall see below. However, Strauss’s family of influence extended beyond his students to include faculty members in universities, and the people his students taught. Those prominent neo-conservatives who are most notable are: Justice Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork, Irving Kristol and his son William Kristol, Alan Keyes, William J. Bennett, J. Danforth Quayle, Allan Bloom, John Podhoertz, John T. Agresto, John Ashcroft, Newt Gingrich, Gary Bauer, Michael Ledeen and scores of others, many of whom hold important positions in George W. Bush’s White House and Defense Department.

To understand the Straussian infusion of power that transformed an all but dead conservative realm, think of Nietzsche’s Overman come to life. Or better yet, think of the philosophy most unlike Christianity: Think of pure unmitigated evil. Strauss admits that Machiavelli is an evil man. But according to Strauss, his admission is a prerequisite to studying and reading Machiavelli: the acknowledgement is the safety net that keeps the reader from being corrupted. One is tempted to talk back to Strauss and point out an alternative: the admission could be the subterfuge that keeps a man from being ridiculed and rejected for espousing Machiavellian methods.

In one of the most important books for our times, Shadia Drury’s Leo Strauss and the American Right, undertakes to explain the ideas behind Strauss’s huge influence and following. Strauss’s reputation, according to Drury, rests in large part on his view that “a real philosopher must communicate quietly, subtly, and secretly to the few who are fit to receive his message.” Strauss claims secrecy is necessary to avoid “persecution.”[36]

In reading Strauss, one sometimes encounters coded contradictory ideas. For example, Strauss appears to respect Machiavelli because—as he points out—in contrast to other evil men, Machiavelli openly proclaimed opinions that others only secretly expressed behind closed doors. But we have just noted that Strauss teaches that secrecy is essential to the real philosopher. Strauss concluded, some would say that Machiavelli was after all, a patriot of sorts for he loved Italy more than he loved his own soul. Then Strauss warns, but if you call him a patriot, you “merely obscure something truly evil.”[37] So Strauss dances his way through the Machiavellian field of evil, his steps choreographed with duplicity and it’s opposite. The reader cannot let go.

In Strauss’s view, Machiavelli sees that Christianity “has led the world into weakness,” which can only be offset by returning the world to the ancient practices of the past. (Implied is not a return to the pagan past, but rather a return to the more virulent world of the Old Testament). Strauss laments, “Machiavelli needed …a detailed discussion revealing the harmony between his political teaching and the teaching of the Bible.” [38]These statements of Strauss, by themselves, were sufficient to send neo-conservative Christians to search for correlations between Machiavellianism, radical conservatism and the scriptures.[39]

Strauss’s teaching incorporated much of Machiavelli’s. Significantly, his philosophy is unfriendly to democracy—even antagonistic.  At the same time Strauss upheld the necessity for a national religion not because he favored religious practices, but because religion in his view is necessary in order to control the population. Since neo-conservatives influenced by Strauss are in control of the Bush administration, I have prepared a brief list that shows the radical unchristian basis of neo-conservatism. I am indebted to Shadia Drury’s book (Leo Strauss and the American Right) and published interviews for the following:

First: Strauss believed that a leader had to perpetually deceive the citizens he ruled.

Secondly: Those who lead must understand there is no morality, there is only the right of the superior to rule the inferior.

Thirdly:  According to Drury, Religion “is the glue that holds society together.”[40] It is a handle by which the ruler can manipulate the masses. Any religion will do. Strauss is indifferent to them all.

Fourthly: “Secular society…is the worst possible thing,” because it leads to individualism, liberalism, and relativism, all of which encourage dissent and rebellion. As Drury sums it up: “You want a crowd that you can manipulate like putty.”[41]

Fifthly: “Strauss thinks that a political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat; and following Machiavelli, he maintains that if no external threat exists, then one has to be manufactured.”[42]

Sixthly: “In Strauss’s view, the trouble with liberal society is that it dispenses with noble lies and pious frauds. It tries to found society on secular rational foundations.”

Strauss’s Student, Harry Jaffa on the 700 Club with Pat Robertson

For four days in 1986, from July first through the fourth of July, Pat Robertson interviewed neo-conservative Dr. Harry Jaffa, a former student of Leo Strauss, on the 700 Club show. The topic was the importance of the Declaration of Independence. Joining with Jaffa was Robertson’s own man, Herb Titus, the Dean of CBN’s School of Public Policy. This series of interviews was one of the most important philosophical moments in the development of the political agenda and political philosophy of the Dominionists.

Robertson found in Harry Jaffa, the champion he needed, whose reasoning would influence how the Constitution should be interpreted by conservatives and would provide a “Christian” view of the establishment of the United States that excluded the secular social contract view. Harry Jaffa would influence both Clarence Thomas (who would be appointed to the Supreme Court by President George Bush senior in 1991) and Antonin Scalia (who would be appointed to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan on September 26, 1986).

During the four days of interviews Jaffa and Titus agreed that the Declaration of Independence was the premier document and it superceded the Constitution. Titus said, “The Declaration…is the charter of the nation. It is what you might call the articles of incorporation, whereas the Constitution is the bylaws. The Constitution is the means by which to carry out the great purposes that are articulated in the Declaration.”

Robertson asked: “Let’s assume that eighty percent of the people are just totally immoral, they want to live lives of gross licentiousness and they want to prey on one another, that’s what they want and they want a government to let them do it. How does that square with the Declaration of Independence and its consent of the governed?”

Titus said, “Even the people can’t consent to give away that which God says is unalienable.”

Robertson then asked, “The principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, how far have we gone from it and what can we do to redress some of these problems?”

Jaffa responded cryptically:

“I’d say that today, for example in the Attorney General’s [Edwin Meese’s] warfare with the liberals on the Supreme Court, in his appeal to original intent, he appeals to the text of the Constitution. Jefferson and Madison said together in 1825, ‘If you want to find the principles of the Constitution of the United States, you go first to the Declaration of Independence.’”

First, Jaffa means by the term “original intent” that the Constitution must be interpreted according to what it meant when it was originally adopted. It is a revolutionary and brilliant idea that will allow the Dominionists to effectively repeal most of the judicial decisions made in the last century. [43]  

econdly, if we take Jaffa and the Dominionists at their word and go to the Declaration of Independence, we can see just how radical the conservative revolution and Dominionism are. The only portion that is ever quoted publicly are these words:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,”

The quote stops in the middle of the sentence—the part that is never quoted is this:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Dominionism then, takes its authority to overthrow the government of the United States from our own Declaration of Independence. By the time all Americans wake up to the Dominionist’s intent, it may be too late.

Though Harry Jaffa speaks with a high minded sense of political righteousness, Shadia Drury exposes his Machiavellian side. Like Strauss, he “clearly believes that devious and illegal methods are justified when those in power are convinced of the rightness of their ends.”[44] Jaffa and Robertson saw eye to eye on more than one topic: for instance, Jaffa like his host Pat Robertson, found Oliver North to be a hero (and by extension Michael Ledeen) when both North and Ledeen went around the law to provide military aid to the contras.[45]

Noble lies and perpetual war Leo Strauss, the neo-cons, and Iraq Danny Postel - openDemocracy

By contrast, Shadia Drury, professor of political theory at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, argues that the use of deception and manipulation in current US policy flow directly from the doctrines of the political philosopher Leo Strauss (1899-1973). His disciples include Paul Wolfowitz and other neo-conservatives who have driven much of the political agenda of the Bush administration.

If Shadia Drury is right, then American policy-makers exercise deception with greater coherence than their British allies in Tony Blair’s 10 Downing Street. In the UK, a public inquiry is currently underway into the death of the biological weapons expert David Kelly. A central theme is also whether the government deceived the public, as a BBC reporter suggested.

The inquiry has documented at least some of the ways the prime minister’s entourage ‘sexed up’ the presentation of intelligence on the Iraqi threat. But few doubt that in terms of their philosophy, if they have one, members of Blair’s staff believe they must be trusted as honest. Any apparent deceptions they may be involved in are for them matters of presentation or ‘spin’: attempts to project an honest gloss when surrounded by a dishonest media.

The deep influence of Leo Strauss’s ideas on the current architects of US foreign policy has been referred to, if sporadically, in the press (hence an insider witticism about the influence of “Leo-cons”). Christopher Hitchens, an ardent advocate of the war, wrote unashamedly in November 2002 (in an article felicitously titled Machiavelli in Mesopotamia) that:

“[p]art of the charm of the regime-change argument (from the point of view of its supporters) is that it depends on premises and objectives that cannot, at least by the administration, be publicly avowed. Since Paul Wolfowitz is from the intellectual school of Leo Strauss – and appears in fictional guise as such in Saul Bellow’s novel Ravelstein – one may even suppose that he enjoys this arcane and occluded aspect of the debate.”

Perhaps no scholar has done as much to illuminate the Strauss phenomenon as Shadia Drury. For fifteen years she has been shining a heat lamp on the Straussians with such books as The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (1988) and Leo Strauss and the American Right (1997). She is also the author of Alexandre Kojève: the Roots of Postmodern Politics (1994) and Terror and Civilization (forthcoming).

She argues that the central claims of Straussian thought wield a crucial influence on men of power in the contemporary United States. She elaborates her argument in this interview.

A natural order of inequality

Danny Postel: You’ve argued that there is an important connection between the teachings of Leo Strauss and the Bush administration’s selling of the Iraq war. What is that connection?

Shadia Drury: Leo Strauss was a great believer in the efficacy and usefulness of lies in politics. Public support for the Iraq war rested on lies about Iraq posing an imminent threat to the United States – the business about weapons of mass destruction and a fictitious alliance between al-Qaida and the Iraqi regime. Now that the lies have been exposed, Paul Wolfowitz and others in the war party are denying that these were the real reasons for the war.

So what were the real reasons? Reorganising the balance of power in the Middle East in favour of Israel? Expanding American hegemony in the Arab world? Possibly. But these reasons would not have been sufficient in themselves to mobilise American support for the war. And the Straussian cabal in the administration realised that.

Danny Postel: The neo-conservative vision is commonly taken to be about spreading democracy and liberal values globally. And when Strauss is mentioned in the press, he is typically described as a great defender of liberal democracy against totalitarian tyranny. You’ve written, however, that Strauss had a “profound antipathy to both liberalism and democracy.”

Shadia Drury: The idea that Strauss was a great defender of liberal democracy is laughable. I suppose that Strauss’s disciples consider it a noble lie. Yet many in the media have been gullible enough to believe it.

How could an admirer of Plato and Nietzsche be a liberal democrat? The ancient philosophers whom Strauss most cherished believed that the unwashed masses were not fit for either truth or liberty, and that giving them these sublime treasures would be like throwing pearls before swine. In contrast to modern political thinkers, the ancients denied that there is any natural right to liberty. Human beings are born neither free nor equal. The natural human condition, they held, is not one of freedom, but of subordination – and in Strauss’s estimation they were right in thinking so.

Praising the wisdom of the ancients and condemning the folly of the moderns was the whole point of Strauss’s most famous book, Natural Right and History. The cover of the book sports the American Declaration of Independence. But the book is a celebration of nature – not the natural rights of man (as the appearance of the book would lead one to believe) but the natural order of domination and subordination.

The necessity of lies

Danny Postel: What is the relevance of Strauss’s interpretation of Plato’s notion of the noble lie?

Shadia Drury: Strauss rarely spoke in his own name. He wrote as a commentator on the classical texts of political theory. But he was an extremely opinionated and dualistic commentator. The fundamental distinction that pervades and informs all of his work is that between the ancients and the moderns. Strauss divided the history of political thought into two camps: the ancients (like Plato) are wise and wily, whereas the moderns (like Locke and other liberals) are vulgar and foolish. Now, it seems to me eminently fair and reasonable to attribute to Strauss the ideas he attributes to his beloved ancients.

In Plato’s dialogues, everyone assumes that Socrates is Plato’s mouthpiece. But Strauss argues in his book The City and Man (pp. 74-5, 77, 83-4, 97, 100, 111) that Thrasymachus is Plato’s real mouthpiece (on this point, see also M.F. Burnyeat, “Sphinx without a Secret”, New York Review of Books, 30 May 1985 [paid-for only]). So, we must surmise that Strauss shares the insights of the wise Plato (alias Thrasymachus) that justice is merely the interest of the stronger; that those in power make the rules in their own interests and call it justice.

Leo Strauss repeatedly defends the political realism of Thrasymachus and Machiavelli (see, for example, his Natural Right and History, p. 106). This view of the world is clearly manifest in the foreign policy of the current administration in the United States.

A second fundamental belief of Strauss’s ancients has to do with their insistence on the need for secrecy and the necessity of lies. In his book Persecution and the Art of Writing, Strauss outlines why secrecy is necessary. He argues that the wise must conceal their views for two reasons – to spare the people’s feelings and to protect the elite from possible reprisals.

The people will not be happy to learn that there is only one natural right – the right of the superior to rule over the inferior, the master over the slave, the husband over the wife, and the wise few over the vulgar many. In On Tyranny, Strauss refers to this natural right as the “tyrannical teaching” of his beloved ancients. It is tyrannical in the classic sense of rule above rule or in the absence of law (p. 70).

Now, the ancients were determined to keep this tyrannical teaching secret because the people are not likely to tolerate the fact that they are intended for subordination; indeed, they may very well turn their resentment against the superior few. Lies are thus necessary to protect the superior few from the persecution of the vulgar many.

The effect of Strauss’s teaching is to convince his acolytes that they are the natural ruling elite and the persecuted few. And it does not take much intelligence for them to surmise that they are in a situation of great danger, especially in a world devoted to the modern ideas of equal rights and freedoms. Now more than ever, the wise few must proceed cautiously and with circumspection. So, they come to the conclusion that they have a moral justification to lie in order to avoid persecution. Strauss goes so far as to say that dissembling and deception – in effect, a culture of lies – is the peculiar justice of the wise.

Strauss justifies his position by an appeal to Plato’s concept of the noble lie. But in truth, Strauss has a very impoverished conception of Plato’s noble lie. Plato thought that the noble lie is a story whose details are fictitious; but at the heart of it is a profound truth.

In the myth of metals, for example, some people have golden souls – meaning that they are more capable of resisting the temptations of power. And these morally trustworthy types are the ones who are most fit to rule. The details are fictitious, but the moral of the story is that not all human beings are morally equal.

In contrast to this reading of Plato, Strauss thinks that the superiority of the ruling philosophers is an intellectual superiority and not a moral one (Natural Right and History, p. 151). For many commentators who (like Karl Popper) have read Plato as a totalitarian, the logical consequence is to doubt that philosophers can be trusted with political power. Those who read him this way invariably reject him. Strauss is the only interpreter who gives a sinister reading to Plato, and then celebrates him.

The dialectic of fear and tyranny

Danny Postel: In the Straussian scheme of things, there are the wise few and the vulgar many. But there is also a third group – the gentlemen. Would you explain how they figure?

Shadia Drury: There are indeed three types of men: the wise, the gentlemen, and the vulgar. The wise are the lovers of the harsh, unadulterated truth. They are capable of looking into the abyss without fear and trembling. They recognise neither God nor moral imperatives. They are devoted above all else to their own pursuit of the “higher” pleasures, which amount to consorting with their “puppies” or young initiates.

The second type, the gentlemen, are lovers of honour and glory. They are the most ingratiating towards the conventions of their society – that is, the illusions of the cave. They are true believers in God, honour, and moral imperatives. They are ready and willing to embark on acts of great courage and self-sacrifice at a moment’s notice.

The third type, the vulgar many, are lovers of wealth and pleasure. They are selfish, slothful, and indolent. They can be inspired to rise above their brutish existence only by fear of impending death or catastrophe.

Like Plato, Strauss believed that the supreme political ideal is the rule of the wise. But the rule of the wise is unattainable in the real world. Now, according to the conventional wisdom, Plato realised this, and settled for the rule of law. But Strauss did not endorse this solution entirely. Nor did he think that it was Plato’s real solution – Strauss pointed to the “nocturnal council” in Plato’s Laws to illustrate his point.

The real Platonic solution as understood by Strauss is the covert rule of the wise (see Strauss’s – The Argument and the Action of Plato’s Laws). This covert rule is facilitated by the overwhelming stupidity of the gentlemen. The more gullible and unperceptive they are, the easier it is for the wise to control and manipulate them. Supposedly, Xenophon makes that clear to us.

For Strauss, the rule of the wise is not about classic conservative values like order, stability, justice, or respect for authority. The rule of the wise is intended as an antidote to modernity. Modernity is the age in which the vulgar many have triumphed. It is the age in which they have come closest to having exactly what their hearts desire – wealth, pleasure, and endless entertainment. But in getting just what they desire, they have unwittingly been reduced to beasts.

Nowhere is this state of affairs more advanced than in America. And the global reach of American culture threatens to trivialise life and turn it into entertainment. This was as terrifying a spectre for Strauss as it was for Alexandre Kojève and Carl Schmitt.

This is made clear in Strauss’s exchange with Kojève (reprinted in Strauss’s On Tyranny), and in his commentary on Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political (reprinted in Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue). Kojève lamented the animalisation of man and Schmitt worried about the trivialisation of life. All three of them were convinced that liberal economics would turn life into entertainment and destroy politics; all three understood politics as a conflict between mutually hostile groups willing to fight each other to the death. In short, they all thought that man’s humanity depended on his willingness to rush naked into battle and headlong to his death. Only perpetual war can overturn the modern project, with its emphasis on self-preservation and “creature comforts.” Life can be politicised once more, and man’s humanity can be restored.

This terrifying vision fits perfectly well with the desire for honour and glory that the neo-conservative gentlemen covet. It also fits very well with the religious sensibilities of gentlemen. The combination of religion and nationalism is the elixir that Strauss advocates as the way to turn natural, relaxed, hedonistic men into devout nationalists willing to fight and die for their God and country.

I never imagined when I wrote my first book on Strauss that the unscrupulous elite that he elevates would ever come so close to political power, nor that the ominous tyranny of the wise would ever come so close to being realised in the political life of a great nation like the United States. But fear is the greatest ally of tyranny.

Danny Postel: You’ve described Strauss as a nihilist.

Shadia Drury: Strauss is a nihilist in the sense that he believes that there is no rational foundation for morality. He is an atheist, and he believes that in the absence of God, morality has no grounding. It’s all about benefiting others and oneself; there is no objective reason for doing so, only rewards and punishments in this life.

But Strauss is not a nihilist if we mean by the term a denial that there is any truth, a belief that everything is interpretation. He does not deny that there is an independent reality. On the contrary, he thinks that independent reality consists in nature and its “order of rank” – the high and the low, the superior and the inferior. Like Nietzsche, he believes that the history of western civilisation has led to the triumph of the inferior, the rabble – something they both lamented profoundly.

Danny Postel: This connection is curious, since Strauss is bedevilled by Nietzsche; and one of Strauss’s most famous students, Allan Bloom, fulminates profusely in his book The Closing of the American Mind against the influence of Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger.

Shadia Drury: Strauss’s criticism of the existentialists, especially Heidegger, is that they tried to elicit an ethic out of the abyss. This was the ethic of resoluteness – choose whatever you like and be loyal to it to the death; its content does not matter. But Strauss’s reaction to moral nihilism was different. Nihilistic philosophers, he believes, should reinvent the Judæo-Christian God, but live like pagan gods themselves – taking pleasure in the games they play with each other as well as the games they play on ordinary mortals.

The question of nihilism is complicated, but there is no doubt that Strauss’s reading of Plato entails that the philosophers should return to the cave and manipulate the images (in the form of media, magazines, newspapers). They know full well that the line they espouse is mendacious, but they are convinced that theirs are noble lies.

The intoxication of perpetual war

Danny Postel: You characterise the outlook of the Bush administration as a kind of realism, in the spirit of Thrasymachus and Machiavelli. But isn’t the real divide within the administration (and on the American right more generally) more complex: between foreign policy realists, who are pragmatists, and neo-conservatives, who see themselves as idealists – even moralists – on a mission to topple tyrants, and therefore in a struggle against realism?

Shadia Drury: I think that the neo-conservatives are for the most part genuine in wanting to spread the American commercial model of liberal democracy around the globe. They are convinced that it is the best thing, not just for America, but for the world. Naturally, there is a tension between these “idealists” and the more hard-headed realists within the administration.

I contend that the tensions and conflicts within the current administration reflect the differences between the surface teaching, which is appropriate for gentlemen, and the ‘nocturnal’ or covert teaching, which the philosophers alone are privy to. It is very unlikely for an ideology inspired by a secret teaching to be entirely coherent.

The issue of nationalism is an example of this. The philosophers, wanting to secure the nation against its external enemies as well as its internal decadence, sloth, pleasure, and consumption, encourage a strong patriotic fervour among the honour-loving gentlemen who wield the reins of power. That strong nationalistic spirit consists in the belief that their nation and its values are the best in the world, and that all other cultures and their values are inferior in comparison.

Irving Kristol, the father of neo-conservatism and a Strauss disciple, denounced nationalism in a 1973 essay; but in another essay written in 1983, he declared that the foreign policy of neo-conservatism must reflect its nationalist proclivities. A decade on, in a 1993 essay, he claimed that “religion, nationalism, and economic growth are the pillars of neoconservatism.” (See “The Coming ‘Conservative Century’”, in Neoconservatism: the autobiography of an idea, p. 365.)

In Reflections of a Neoconservative (p. xiii), Kristol wrote that:

“patriotism springs from love of the nation’s past; nationalism arises out of hope for the nation’s future, distinctive greatness…. Neoconservatives believe… that the goals of American foreign policy must go well beyond a narrow, too literal definition of ‘national security’. It is the national interest of a world power, as this is defined by a sense of national destiny … not a myopic national security”.

The same sentiment was echoed by the doyen of contemporary Straussianism, Harry Jaffa, when he said that America is the “Zion that will light up all the world.”

It is easy to see how this sort of thinking can get out of hand, and why hard-headed realists tend to find it naïve if not dangerous.

But Strauss’s worries about America’s global aspirations are entirely different. Like Heidegger, Schmitt, and Kojève, Strauss would be more concerned that America would succeed in this enterprise than that it would fail. In that case, the “last man” would extinguish all hope for humanity (Nietzsche); the “night of the world” would be at hand (Heidegger); the animalisation of man would be complete (Kojève); and the trivialisation of life would be accomplished (Schmitt). That is what the success of America’s global aspirations meant to them.

Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man is a popularisation of this viewpoint. It sees the coming catastrophe of American global power as inevitable, and seeks to make the best of a bad situation. It is far from a celebration of American dominance.

On this perverse view of the world, if America fails to achieve her “national destiny”, and is mired in perpetual war, then all is well. Man’s humanity, defined in terms of struggle to the death, is rescued from extinction. But men like Heidegger, Schmitt, Kojève, and Strauss expect the worst. They expect that the universal spread of the spirit of commerce would soften manners and emasculate man. To my mind, this fascistic glorification of death and violence springs from a profound inability to celebrate life, joy, and the sheer thrill of existence.

To be clear, Strauss was not as hostile to democracy as he was to liberalism. This is because he recognises that the vulgar masses have numbers on their side, and the sheer power of numbers cannot be completely ignored. Whatever can be done to bring the masses along is legitimate. If you can use democracy to turn the masses against their own liberty, this is a great triumph. It is the sort of tactic that neo-conservatives use consistently, and in some cases very successfully.

BBC/Can religion be blamed for war

So why is religion a factor in war at all when all the main faiths have little time for violence and advocate peace?

Because, it is suggested, leaders use differences over faith as a way of sowing hatred and mobilising support for political wars.

As the American civil war leader Abraham Lincoln put it almost 150 years ago: "The will of God prevails.

"In great contests, each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, but one must be wrong.

"God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time."  

beliefnet John F Kennedy speech - I Believe in an America Where the Separation of Church and State is Absolute

Advocates of using the Commandments for government would have more credibility if they, themselves, obeyed them

Conservative Christians have a new martyr. He is Alabama chief justice Roy Moore, who first came to public attention eight years ago as a state circuit judge in Etowah County (Gadsden) for defying a lawsuit against his posting of the Ten Commandments on his courtroom wall.

Moore rode the resulting notoriety to election in 2000 to the state’s highest judicial position. Now, he is suspended from that position for defying a federal court order to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments he had installed in the rotunda of the state judicial building. Moore is defiant; conservative Christian admirers are being arrested for “defending” Moore’s monument against its ordered removal; and there’s talk that even if permanently removed as the state’s highest judge -- especially if he is removed -- the politically ambitious Moore’s next campaign will be for governor.

Moore sure seems to want the attention, fame, and power. What was that about “Thou shalt not covet”?

Of course, that’s only one of the Ten Commandments, and the problem isn’t just that Judeo-Christianity’s core Old Testament moral code has no place in a secular government, nor in the courtroom, offices, or building lobby of a man sworn -- on a Bible, no less -- to uphold that country’s decidedly secular laws. No, the problem is that most of us these days, including many self-identified conservative Christians, continue to cheat, steal, and make out with their neighbor’s spouse. The whole thing reeks of self-righteous hypocrisy.

Recommended Links

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In case of broken links please try to use Google search. If you find the page please notify us about new location

• Clerical fascism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Wahhabism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• The Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party
• Yahoo! Directory Religion and Spirituality Church-State Issues
• http://www.theocracywatch.org/
• AU.org - Americans United for Separation of Church and State Contains many interesting materials on the issue.
• The Myth of Separation of Church and State -- the page of  a supporter of  Christian theocratic movement and contains the critique of the idea of separation of Church and State.  Some quotes are pretty funny as they sound completely similar to Bolsheviks propaganda:   

  There is no such thing as a pluralistic society; there will always be one dominant view.  Someone's morality is going to be taught -- but whose?  Secular Humanism is a religion that teaches that through Man's ability we will reach universal peace and unity and make heaven on earth.  They promote a way of life that systematically excludes God and all religion in the traditional sense.  That Man is the highest point to which nature has evolved, and he can rely on only himself and that the universe was not created, but instead is self-existing.  They believe that Man has the potential to be good in and of himself.  All of this of course is in direct conflict with not only the teachings of the Bible but even the lessons of history.  In June 1961 in a case called Torcaso v. Watkins, the U.S. Supreme Court stated, "Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism and others."  The Supreme Court declared Secular Humanism to be a religion.  The American Humanist Association certifies counselors who enjoy the same legal status as ordained ministers.  Since the Supreme Court has said that Secular Humanism is a religion, why is it being allowed to be taught in schools?  The removal of public prayer of those who wish to participate is, in effect, establishing the religion of Humanism over Christianity.  This is exactly what our founding fathers tried to stop from happening with the first amendment.

• What law actually dictates the separation of Church and State another pro-theocratic state page
   
• Separation of Church and State Home Page
   
• Welcome to The Constitutional Principle Separation of Church and State Page
   
• Christian Reconstructionism

  Reconstructionism is a theology that arose out of conservative Presbyterianism (Reformed and Orthodox), which proposes that contemporary application of the laws of Old Testament Israel, or "Biblical Law," is the basis for reconstructing society toward the Kingdom of God on earth.

  Reconstructionism argues that the Bible is to be the governing text for all areas of life--such as government, education, law, and the arts, not merely "social" or "moral" issues like pornography, homosexuality, and abortion. Reconstructionists have formulated a "Biblical world view" and "Biblical principles" by which to examine contemporary matters. Reconstructionist theologian David Chilton succinctly describes this view: "The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics, in which every area of life is redeemed and placed under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the rule of God's law."

  More broadly, Reconstructionists believe that there are three main areas of governance: family government, church government, and civil government. Under God's covenant, the nuclear family is the basic unit. The husband is the head of the family, and wife and children are "in submission" to him. In turn, the husband "submits" to Jesus and to God's laws as detailed in the Old Testament. The church has its own ecclesiastical structure and governance. Civil government exists to implement God's laws. All three institutions are under Biblical Law, the implementation of which is called "theonomy."   

• SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE IN THE U.S.
   
• Separation of Church and State A First Amendment Primer
   
• With God On Our Side The Rise of The Religious Right in America, 1950-1994 Home page for the PBS series on the rise to political power of the Religious Right.

From the "Christian anti-Communism" of the '50s to the sophisticated politics of the Christian Coalition today, evangelical Christians have slowly but steadily re-shaped the context of mainstream American politics and culture. Using rare archival footage and candid interviews, WITH GOD ON OUR SIDE chronicles the conservative Christian political movement. Hard Times on the Hard Right: Why Progressives Must Remain Vigilant. by Chip Berlet (PDF File). Note: pretty controversial with pronounced left-wing bias.

See also Rights for Some: The Erosion of Democracy, by Jean Hardisty. (PDF File)

 
• Pro-family NGOs assert that the United States is disintegrating culturally and morally because the traditional family has been
 
• Who's Behind The Culture War? Contemporary Assaults on the Freedom of Expression by Mark Schapiro

• Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc.
   
• Dangerous Religion, Sojourners Magazine-September-October 2003

George Bush reports a life-changing conversion around the age of 40 from being a nominal Christian to a born-again believer—a personal transformation that ended his drinking problems, solidified his family life, and gave him a sense of direction. He changed his denominational affiliation from his parents' Episcopal faith to his wife's Methodism. Bush's personal faith helped prompt his interest in promoting his "compassionate conservatism" and the faith-based initiative as part of his new administration.

The real theological question about George W. Bush was whether he would make a pilgrimage from being essentially a self-help Methodist to a social reform Methodist. God had changed his life in real ways, but would his faith deepen to embrace the social activism of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, who said poverty was not only a matter of personal choices but also of social oppression and injustice? Would Bush's God of the 12-step program also become the God who required social justice and challenged the status quo of the wealthy and powerful, the God of whom the biblical prophets spoke?

Then came Sept. 11, 2001. Bush's compassionate conservatism and faith-based initiative rapidly gave way to his newfound vocation as the commander-in-chief of the "war against terrorism." Close friends say that after 9/11 Bush found "his mission in life." The self-help Methodist slowly became a messianic Calvinist promoting America's mission to "rid the world of evil." The Bush theology was undergoing a critical transformation.

In an October 2000 presidential debate, candidate Bush warned against an over-active American foreign policy and the negative reception it would receive around the world. Bush cautioned restraint. "If we are an arrogant nation, they will resent us," he said. "If we're a humble nation, but strong, they'll welcome us."

The president has come a long way since then. His administration has launched a new doctrine of pre-emptive war, has fought two wars (in Afghanistan and Iraq), and now issues regular demands and threats against other potential enemies. After Sept. 11, nations around the world responded to America's pain—even the French newspaper Le Monde carried the headline "We are all Americans now." But the new pre-emptive and—most critically—unilateral foreign policy America now pursues has squandered much of that international support.

The Bush policy has become one of potentially endless wars abroad and a domestic agenda that mostly consists of tax cuts, primarily for the rich. "Bush promised us a foreign policy of humility and a domestic policy of compassion," Joe Klein wrote in Time magazine. "He has given us a foreign policy of arrogance and a domestic policy that is cynical, myopic, and cruel." What happened?

A Mission and an Appointment

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum says of the president, "War had made him…a crusader after all." At the outset of the war in Iraq, George Bush entreated, "God bless our troops." In his State of the Union speech, he vowed that America would lead the war against terrorism "because this call of history has come to the right country." Bush's autobiography is titled A Charge to Keep, which is a quote from his favorite hymn.

In Frum's book The Right Man, he recounts a conversation between the president and his top speechwriter, Mike Gerson, a graduate of evangelical Wheaton College. After Bush's speech to Congress following the Sept. 11 attacks, Frum writes that Gerson called up his boss and said, "Mr. President, when I saw you on television, I thought—God wanted you there." According to Frum, the president replied, "He wants us all here, Gerson."

Bush has made numerous references to his belief that he could not be president if he did not believe in a "divine plan that supersedes all human plans." As he gained political power, Bush has increasingly seen his presidency as part of that divine plan. Richard Land, of the Southern Baptist Convention, recalls Bush once saying, "I believe God wants me to be president." After Sept. 11, Michael Duffy wrote in Time magazine, the president spoke of "being chosen by the grace of God to lead at that moment."

Every Christian hopes to find a vocation and calling that is faithful to Christ. But a president who believes that the nation is fulfilling a God-given righteous mission and that he serves with a divine appointment can become quite theologically unsettling. Theologian Martin Marty voices the concern of many when he says, "The problem isn't with Bush's sincerity, but with his evident conviction that he's doing God's will." As Christianity Today put it, "Some worry that Bush is confusing genuine faith with national ideology." The president's faith, wrote Klein, "does not give him pause or force him to reflect. It is a source of comfort and strength but not of wisdom."

CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTIONISM,
DOMINION THEOLOGY, AND THEONOMY

Promoting religious understanding, tolerance and freedom.

Christian Reconstructionism, Dominion Theology and Theonomy are not denominations or faith groups. Rather, they are interrelated beliefs which are followed by members of a wide range of Christian denominations. They have no connection at all to Reconstructionist Judaism, which is a liberal group within Judaism.

Generally speaking:

• Christian Reconstructionism arose out of conservative Presbyterianism in the early 1970's. Followers believe "that every area dominated by sin must be 'reconstructed' in terms of the Bible." ₁
• Dominion Theology is derived from Genesis 1:26 of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament):

  "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground.'" (NIV)

  Most Christians interpret this verse as meaning that God gave mankind dominion over the animal kingdom. Dominion theologians believe that that this verse commands Christians to bring all societies, around the world, under the rule of the Word of God.

• Theonomy (Greek for "God's Law") includes the concept that "God’s revealed standing laws are a reflection of His immutable moral character and, as such, are absolute in the sense of being nonarbitrary, objective, universal, and established in advance of particular circumstances (thus applicable to general types of moral situations)." _6,7 Thus, each of the 613 laws given to Moses and recorded in the Pentateuch (the first 5 books of the Hebrew Scriptures) are binding on people of all nations, cultures, and religions forever, except for those laws which have been rescinded or modified by further revelation.

The term Reconstructionism has been used to refer to various combinations of the preceding three terms. This type of confusion is common in the field of religion. Many words such as Christian, Fundamentalist, Occult, New Age, Reconstructionism, Unitarian etc. have been assigned so many different interpretations by different groups in different eras that they are almost meaningless.

Its most common form, Theonomic Reconstructionism, represents one of the most extreme forms of Fundamentalist Christianity thought. The followers are attempting to peacefully convert the laws of United States so that they match those in the Hebrew Scriptures. They intend to achieve this by using the freedom of religion in the US to train a generation of children in private Christian religious schools. Later, their graduates will be charged with the responsibility of creating a new Bible-based political, religious and social order. One of the first tasks of this order will be to eliminate religious freedom. Their eventual goal is to achieve the "Kingdom of God" in which much of the world is converted to Christianity. They feel that the power of God's word will bring about this conversion. No armed force or insurrection will be needed; in fact, they believe that there will be little opposition to their plan. People will willingly accept it if it is properly presented to them.

All religious organizations, congregations etc. other than Christian would be suppressed. Nonconforming Evangelical, main line and liberal Christian religious institutions would no longer be allowed to hold services, organize, proselytize, etc. Society would revert to the laws and punishments of the Hebrew Scriptures. Any person who advocated or practiced other religious beliefs outside of their home would be tried for idolatry and executed. Blasphemy, adultery and homosexual behavior would be criminalized; those found guilty would also be executed. At that time that this essay was originally written, this was the only religious movement in North America of which we were aware which advocates genocide for followers of minority religions and non-conforming members of their own religion. Since then, we have learned of two conservative Christian pastors in Texas who have advocated the execution of all Wiccans. Ralph Reed, the executive director of the conservative public policy group the Christian Coalition has criticized Reconstructionism as "an authoritarian ideology that threatens the most basic civil liberties of a free and democratic society."

Leading writers in the movement are:

• Greg L. Bahnsen of the Southern California Center for Christian Studies.
• David Chilton. He adopted hyper-preterism, (a.k.a. full or complete perterism) a particular belief about end time events. He was basically ostracized from the Christian Reconstruction camp afterwards.
• Gary DeMar.
• Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.
• Gary North of the Institute for Christian Economics. He is a prolific author.
• Larry Pratt: head of the Gun Owners of America and English First, a group opposed to non-English speaking immigrants and bilingual education. Author of "Armed People Victorious" which documents Guatemalan and Philippine militias and para-military death squads. Campaign co-chair of the Buchanan presidential campaign in 1996.
• John Quade.
• Rousas John Rushdoony of the Chalcedon Foundation is often considered the founder of Christian Reconstructionism. Author of Institutes of Biblical Law.
• Rev. Andrew Sandlin.

Beliefs:

According to Gary DeMar, a popular Reconstructionist author, the foundation of Reconstructionism is a unique combination of three Biblical doctrines:

1. Regeneration of the individual, through an intimate relationship with Christ
2. Individuals guiding their lives closely by following a specified subset of Biblical laws
3. Promoting of the world-wide Kingdom of God. ₂

Specific beliefs include

• A rejection of Antinomianism: the belief that salvation is obtained totally through faith and not through performing good works and living a moral life
• Presuppositionalism: the acceptance on faith that the Bible is true. They do not attempt to prove  that God exists or that the Bible is true.
• Inerrancy: the belief that the Bible, as originally written, is totally free of error.
• Postmillennialism: the belief that Christ will not return to earth until much of the world has converted to Christianity. This will not take place for some considerable time; it will not be a painless transition. Most Fundamentalists and other Evangelists hold to a different view. They are Premillenialists and believe that all (or almost all) of the preconditions of Christ's return have been met. They expect Jesus' second coming to occur s soon.
• The laws contained in the Hebrew Scriptures can be divided into two classes: moral and ceremonial. Christians are not required to follow the ceremonial laws, because Jesus has liberated them from that responsibility. However, all persons must follow those moral laws which were not specifically modified or cancelled by further revelation --generally in the Christian Scriptures (New Testament). (Non-reconstructionist Christians generally divide these laws into three classes: moral, civil and ceremonial law, and generally believe that most Old Testament laws are no longer binding on Christians.)
• The moral laws given by God to the ancient Israelites reflect of God's character, which is unchangeable. Most of the laws are intended for all nations, cultures, societies, religions and all eras, including the present time. However, there are a few laws, in such areas as personal safety and sanitation, which are no longer applicable because of changes in architecture and sewage disposal. These do not need to be obeyed.
• The primacy of the Hebrew Scriptures, relative to the Christian Scriptures (New Testament). All of the Hebrew Scriptures' non-ceremonial laws are still in force, unless they have been specifically rescinded or modified by verses in the Christian Scriptures. "Only if we find an explicit abandonment of an Old Testament law in the New Testament, because of the historic fulfillment of the Old Testament shadow, can we legitimately abandon a detail of the Mosaic law." ₃ This is largely supported by their interpretation of Matthew 5:17:

  "Do you think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." (NIV)

• Civil laws must match the Bible's moral rules. That is, anything that is immoral (by their standards) is also to be criminalized.
• The only valid legislation, social theory, spiritual beliefs, economic theory are those derived from the Bible
• In every aspect of life, there are only two options: God-centered or man-centered; Theonomy or autonomy. Their political goal is to ban the latter, everywhere. Each individual, family, church, government and society must be reconstructed to eliminate sin. Each Christian has the responsibility to contribute to this conversion.
• They oppose mixed marriages. R.J. Rushdoony wrote about opposition to:

  "inter-religious, inter-racial, and inter-cultural marriages, in that they normally go against the very community which marriage is designed to establish." ₄

  Rushdoony's condemnation of inter-racial marriage appears to have been his own and unrelated to the biblical text. It was not shared by other Reconstructionists.
   

• Reconstructionists regard the Gods and Goddesses of all other religions to be "the devil," and their teachings to be false. They would attempt to replace all religions with their version of Christianity. For example, David Chilton wrote about Judaism:

  "The god of Judaism is the devil. The Jew will not be recognized by God as one of His chosen people until he abandons his demonic religion and returns to the faith of his fathers--the faith which embraces Jesus Christ and His Gospel." ₅

Of course, there exists diversity of opinion within the Reconstructionist movement. Not all followers will necessarily agree with all the above statements of the movement's leaders

Practices:

If they gained control of the US or Canadian federal government, there would be many changes:

• The use of the death penalty would be greatly expanded, when the Hebrew Scriptures' laws are reapplied. People will be executed for adultery, blasphemy, heresy, homosexual behavior, idolatry, prostitution, evil sorcery (some translations say Witchcraft), etc. The Bible requires those found guilty of these "crimes" to be either stoned to death or burned alive. Reconstructionists are divided on the execution method to be used.
• A church or congregation which does not accept the Mosaic Law has another god before them, and is thus guilty of idolatry. That would be punishable by death. That would include all non-Christian religious organizations. At the present time, non-Christians total two-thirds of the human race.
• The status of women would be reduced to almost that of a slave as described in the Hebrew Scriptures. A woman would initially be considered the property of her father; after marriage, she would be considered the property of her husband.
• It would be logical to assume that the institution of slavery would be reintroduced, and regulated according to Biblical laws. Fathers could sell their daughters into slavery. Female slaves would retain that status for life. People who owned slaves would be allowed to physically abuse them, as long as they did not beat them so severely that they died within three days.
• Polygyny and the keeping of concubines were permitted in the Old Testament. However, Reconstructionists generally believe in marriage between one man and one woman only. Any other sexual expression would be a capital crime. Those found guilty of engaging in same-sex, pre-marital or extra-marital sex would be executed.
• The Old Testament "Jubilee Year" system would be celebrated once more. Every 50 years, the control of all land reverted to its original owners. This would require every part of North American land to be returned to the original Aboriginal owners (or perhaps to those persons of Aboriginal descent who are now Christians). Hawaii would be given back to the native Hawaiians.
• Governments would all have balanced budgets
• Income taxes would be eliminated
• The prison system would be eliminated. A system of just restitution would be established for some crimes. The death penalty would be practiced for many other crimes. There would be little need for warehousing of convicted criminals.
• Legal abortions would be banished; those found to be responsible for illegal abortions would be executed.

The reinstitution of slavery appears to be a hot button item among Reconstructionists. We have received a few negative E-mails which complained that the movement does not recommend slavery. But we have received many more Emails from Reconstructionists claiming that legalizing slavery would be good for North America.

Joseph Busche and Bill Curry have written a Tennessee Law Book. Their intent was to show that laws to implement various Old Testament laws would sound extremely intrusive today. See: http://www.sullivan-county.com/.

Theological conflicts with other Fundamentalist Christian groups:

Theonomic Reconstructionism differs from more common forms of Fundamentalism in a number of key areas.

Reconstructionists:

• Emphasize the importance of the Hebrew Scriptures vs. the Christian Scriptures.
• Believe that all Christians must attempt to reconstruct society along Biblical lines.
• Believe that, once they attain power, they will suppress other religions through genocide and mass murder, rather than through proselytizing.
• Would require all religious groups to strictly follow the Mosaic law.
• Believe that Jesus' second coming is in the far future.

We have a list of recent developments in Christian Reconstructionism elsewhere on this site.

References

1. Rev. Andrew Saldlin, "The Creed of Christian Reconstruction," at: http://www.chalcedon.edu/creed.html
2. J. Ligon Duncan, III, "Moses' Law for Modern Government: The Intellectual and Sociological Origins of the Christian Reconstructionist Movement", Premise, Vol II, No. 5, 1995-MAY-27. See: http://capo.org/premise/95/may/ssha2.html
3. Gary North, "The Sinai Strategy: Economics and the Ten Commandments," Institute for Christian Economics (1986)
4. R.J. Rushdoony, "The Institutes of Biblical Law", Craig Press, Nutley, NJ (1973), P. 257.
5. David Chilton, "The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation", Dominion Press, Ft. Worth, TX (1984), P. 127.
6. Rev. Andrew Saldlin, "The Creed of Christian Reconstruction," at: http://www.chalcedon.edu/creed.html
7. Greg Bahnsen, "By This Standard," Pages 345-347. Available free at http://www.freebooks.com

Additional resources:

• An essay on Christian Reconstructionism with many links is at: http://abacus.oxy.edu/qrd/www/rrr/recon.html
• The Chalcedon Foundation of Dr. R.J. Rushdoony is at: http://www.chalcedon.edu
• The Southern California Center for Christian Studies (founded by the late Dr. G.L. Bahnsen) is at: http://www.cleaf.com/~covenant/
• The Institute for Christian Economics, (ICE) founded by Dr. Gary North, has many Christian books free for downloading. See: http://www.freebooks.com/
• An essay on Christian Reconstructionism with many links is at: http://abacus.oxy.edu/qrd/www/rrr/recon.html
• The Chalcedon Foundation of Dr. R.J. Rushdoony is at: http://www.chalcedon.edu
• The Southern California Center for Christian Studies (founded by the late Dr. G.L. Bahnsen) is at: http://www.cleaf.com/~covenant/
• The Institute for Christian Economics, (ICE) founded by Dr. Gary North, has many Christian books free for downloading. See: http://www.freebooks.com/
• Joseph Conn, "Christians Stoning Teens," at: http://members.aol.com/

Books:

• G.L. Bahnsen "Theonomy in Christian Ethics"
• G.L. Bahnsen "By This Standard"
• G.L. Bahnsen "No Other Standard"
• David Chilton's "Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators"
• Gary DeMar, "Christian Reconstruction: What it Is, What it Isn’t" 
• George Grant and Mark Horne, "Legislating Immorality: The Homosexual Movement Comes Out Of The Closet." (This book advocates the death penalty for homosexual behavior.)
• R.J. Rushdoony "Institutes of Biblical Law"

Humor

http://www.baetzler.de/humor/religious_experience.html A Religious Experience

Author unknown

The wife of a Southern Baptist preacher talks to her Sunday school class about a wonderful religious experience that she had last week:

The other day I went up to the local Christian book store where I saw a "Honk if you love Jesus" bumper sticker. I was feeling particularly sassy that day because I had just come from a thrilling choir performance at church, so I bought that bumper sticker and put it on the back bumper of my car.

I am really glad that I did. What an uplifting experience followed! I was stopped at the light of a busy intersection, just lost in thought about the Lord, and I did not notice that the light had changed. It is a good thing someone else loves Jesus or I may have never noticed that the light had changed.

I found that lots of people love Jesus. Why, the guy behind me started to honk like crazy and then he leaned out his window and screamed, "For the love of GOD, Go!....Go! Jesus Christ! Go!" Everyone was honking. I leaned out my window and waved and smiled to all those loving people and I even honked my horn a few times to share in the love.

There must have been a man from Florida back there because I could hear him yelling something about a sunny beach. I saw another guy waving in a funny way with only his middle finger stuck up in the air. When I asked my teenage son in the back seat what this meant, he said that it was nothing, probably a Hawaiian good luck sign or something. Well, I have never met a person from Hawaii, so I leaned out the window and gave him the good luck sign back.

My son burst into laughter, why, even he was enjoying the love of this religious experience.

A couple of the people were so caught up in the joy of the moment that they got out of their cars and were walking towards me. I bet they wanted to pray or ask what church I attended, but that is when I noticed that the light had changed so I waved one more time to my loving brothers and sisters and drove through the intersection.

I was the only car that got across the intersection before the light changed again and I felt kind of sad that I had to leave them and all that love that we had shared so I slowed the car down, leaned out the window and gave them all the Hawaiian good luck sign one more time as I drove away.

Praise the Lord for such wonderful folks!

http://www.baetzler.de/humor/wauism.html Wauism - The Religion For You

Dear Friendly Friend:

How many times have you wanted to fill that yawning spiritual void in your life but just weren't able to find the time or the energy? How often have you wanted to form a more personal relationship with a Higher Authority but just couldn't get turned on by that same old tired selection of Supreme Beings? Haven't you ever wished there was just one religion out there that understood you, Friendly Friend, that indulged you, one that fit in with your creative, dynamic lifestyle? Well, at last, thanks to the Creators of Wauism, there is. Finally, there's a faith that works for you, Friendly Friend, instead of the other way around. After all these years, and following an in-depth market research study, Wauists Worldwide (A full-service non-profit agency not affiliated with CBS International) has come up with a religion that draws upon the best features of some of the world's most popular denominations, but goes them all far better!

Yes, Friend, that's right! Wauism is everything some religions are and much, much more. It's not just a job, it's an adventure; it's a breath mint, and a candy mint; it's everything you always wanted in a God and less. Designed using the latest in CAR (Computer-Aided Religion) technology, here's just a few of the features Wauism offers:

1. Guaranteed Salvation. Guaranteed. Other religions require you to behave a certain way in the here-and-now in order to make out in the hereafter; with Wauism, you can do whatever you want, because your salvation is guaranteed! Wauism realizes you've got enough to worry about in life without having to be nervous about where you're headed after you die, so relax! As a Wauist, death means never having to have said you're sorry. Whatever Heaven you want is yours; or if you'd rather just be dead, that's fine, too.
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6. More and Better Holidays. Even the most fun-loving religions usually have only half a dozen or so major holidays a year. And often several of these are days of atonement or fasting. Wauism, on the other hand, features a full complement of 365 full-scale religious holidays a year! 366 for leap year. And all include presents and feasting.
7. No Hazing Rituals. No hitting with sticks. No drenchings in water. No knives aimed at your privates. Need we say more?
8. No Annual Fee. Because of low overhead (no Gothic cathedrals to keep up, no sacred texts to maintain, no Crusades to mount) Wauism is offered to you entirely free! A letter now and again would be nice, but hey, don't sweat it.
9. 100% Compatibility. Wauism does not require you to change or upgrade any of your existing religious or sectarian beliefs. It is in no way mutually exclusive. You can be a Wauist and anything else you want, too - even Republican.
10. Quit at Any Time. No forms to fill out, no messy dyes to spill, no one will call you. You can be a Wauist one day and something else the next. Change hourly if you'd like. By the second if you'd prefer. Or, be a Wauist forever. It's entirely up to you. So, there you have it, Friend, in a nutshell - a pistachio to be exact. With Wauism, you get all the plusses of other religions with none of the minuses. It's like having your cake and eating it, too. Heck, it's like owning the whole bakery! And because you, Friendly Friend, are who you are, and only sometimes somebody else, you have been selected to participate in this charter membership offer. As a Wauist, you'll enjoy the benefits of the world's only computer-designed faith as well as the peace of mind of knowing if the Armageddon does come, it's not your fault!

So, join today and start receiving the benefits immediately. All you have to do is whatever you want. Make no phone calls unless you feel so inclined. Write no letters unless it strikes your fancy. Send no money, unless you want to.

Be a Wauist or don't be. You are still surrounded in a cone of love.

Sincerely,

D.A. LeTang Wauist

A Letter to the Religious Advice Column

Author unknown

Dear Dr. Laura,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's law. I have learned a great deal from you, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to best follow them.

When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. How should I deal with this?

I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as it suggests in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

Lev. 25:44 states that I may buy slaves from the nations that are around us. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans but not Canadians. Can you clarify?

I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 10:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?

Lev. 20:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Etc

Why Linux Won't Ever Be Mainstream

Re:Symptomatic of a larger problem (Score:2) by Watts Martin (3616) <mika@@@solluna...org> on Wednesday July 18, @10:10AM (#76584) (http://www.ranea.org/watts)

I don't think it's as much a "you owe me" attitude as an "it's my right, dammit" attitude. I don't know if this is a peculiarly American disease, but I've been seeing it for a while now; it almost seems to be a peculiar backlash against "political correctness." Anytime anyone says anything that could be remotely construed as "PC," pseudo-libertarians crawl out of the woodwork screaming that it's their constitutional, God-given right to say what they want, where they want, to whoever they want, and fuck anyone who says otherwise. I'm not a fan of PCisms, but I've come to believe that the problem of people being oversensitive--while real--is not as debilitating to our society as the problem of people taking pride in their insensitivity. Yeah, you're right--you do have a right to say whatever you want to whoever you want. But just because you can doesn't mean that you should. Crazy idea--maybe What America Needs <tm>, from an individual level on up to an international policy level, is a better grasp of common courtesy.

Re:Symptomatic of a larger problem (Score:1) by Therin (22398) <therin AT bjmoose DOT com> on Wednesday July 18, @10:07AM (#76658) (http://slashdot.org/)

Actually the founding fathers were almost to a man deeply Christian. I realize many history texts and professors nowadays claim otherwise, but go inside the Jefferson Memorial and read what's there. Or check out these quotations: Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation, to select and prefer Christians for their rulers. - John Jay, first US Supreme Court Chief Justice The reason that Christianity is the best friend of government is because Christianity is the only religion in the world that deals with the heart. - Thomas Jefferson Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever. - Thomas Jefferson, inside the Jefferson Memorial I have examined all (of scripture), as well as my narrow sphere, my straight and mean, and my busy life would allow me, and the result is that the bible is the best book in the world. - John Adams The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected, in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity. - John Quincy Adams Our constitution is written for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other. - James Madison, "father of the constitution" It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians, not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ! - Patrick Henry Reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles. - George Washington, Farewell Address

You made a funny (Score:2) by Wah (30840) on Wednesday July 18, @03:48PM (#76670) (http://quantumphilosophy.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday December 21, @08:23PM)

Americans as a majority want prayer in their children's lives. Yes, just like Americans as a majority picked George W. Bush to be our president. Where did you pull this tidbit from? From my limited perspective, most Americans know what a myth is, or at least a tall tale. If they can't put two and two together, well, Christianity is for them. If anything, allowing our children to pray together would give them opportunity to learn about each other's faiths. Oh, yeah. Just wait until that little Hindu or Wiccan gets up in front of the class and says a bunch of stuff that scares the class. Or even more likely, look at that Hindu or Wiccan in the corner afraid to say anything since they've just been told by a third of their class (the ones bad at math) that there is only one true religion, and their's isn't it. Here's a nice happy loving kids sharing religion link. Without a higher power laying down the rules, it's every man/woman for him/herself, and that's pretty much where we are right now. Yea, and who is that talks to that higher power? Last I heard some people decided to use that unquestionable authority to kill, maim and conquer, and all with God's loving blessing. What, you questioning the word of God? Die, sinner!! There are thousands of books written by saints, scholars, and psychologists about morality. Unfortunately you're not going to find any of those in your school library because they pissed off some athiest. Yes and who can even guess at the number of texts that were burned since they didn't say that the Earth was the center of the Universe or challenged some other "divine inspiration". Let's go visit some parochial school libraries and see what a wide variety of viewpoints they offer. We need to know that there is something bigger than us, And we also need to accept that we can't know its will (at least not to the degreee of accuracy that most religions claim). So we're left with what we got, each other and damn nifty place to meet. I think any answers you need (or would be useful) will be found in that bunch.

don't believe the hype. (Score:1) by willis (84779) on Thursday July 19, @01:29AM (#76748) (http://www.nytimes.com/gst/pop_top.html)

I think you might want to check this site out -- it has some interesting material about some of the quotes you brought up. (mostly quotes from books) It seems that oftentimes quotations are thrown around without much knowledge to the context or the author's real-life beliefs. In any case... Here are a couple of interesting sections... - The founding fathers may have read the Bible, but explicit references to Scripture or Christian principles are conspicuously absent in the political discussions of the nation's early history. Biblical texts do not appear in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or the new state charters. Moreover, conscious reference to Biblical or Christian themes is also almost entirely absent from the places where it might be expected -- the pamphlet literature advocating independence, the various stated debates over the Constitution, and the political disputes of the 1790s. In short, the political spokesmen who read the Bible in private rarely, if ever, betrayed that acquaintance openly in public. ... The American Revolution was led by men who were not very religious: At best, the founding fathers only passively believed in organized Christianity and at worst they scorned and ridiculed it. So long as religion supported political harmony, few of them were all that concerned with what a person believed. Benjamin Franklin, for instance, had no use for a particular evangelical clergyman because "he wanted to make persons good Presbyterians rather than good citizens." (The Search for Christian America, pp. 81-107.) - Marshalling an impressive array of census statistics, they [the authors] argue that, contrary to popular misconception, religiosity was fairly weak in Colonial America. About 17% of the colonists belonged to churches. If this proposition is true, then the oft-repeated claim that our forefathers were religious believers, is simply untrue. Moreover, the claim that moral purity accompanied religious piety at the founding of this nation is a myth. Nor were so-called traditional family values in dominance. For example, the authors cite data that one in three births from 1761-1800 occurred within less than nine months of marriage, despite harsh laws against fornication. They also say that the taverns in Boston were more jammed on Saturday night than the churches were on Sunday morning. [The Church in America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, by Roger Finke and Rodney Stark (1992).] happy reading!