Ichak Kalderon Adizes's Blog: Insights Blog, page 32

Is Democracy Sick?

Please note: this blog post was featured in the Huffington Post on March 9, 2015. 

Is democracy as practiced today dead or dying? Or does it need some form of tinkering or fixing?

I am watching a YouTube video. An enterprising young man is asking people off the street to sign a petition to place Karl Marx on the ballot for the next President of the United States. And he tells them it is to promote the communist ideology. And many people sign it.

I am reading the New York Times. The anti-austerity political party wins in Greece. Nice. And what if the EU refuses to give them any more loans? Or extend the loans? Then the country defaults on its loans. What happens next? Greece exits the Eurozone. Nice. What now?

What will Greece do and where will it get investments if it is not a reliable partner?

How did this political party win anyway?

Because it promised no more austerity. And people like that. Sure they do.

Democracy is based on the premise that all people are equal and all have the right to vote and whoever gets the most votes wins.

But what happens if the politicians, in order to get elected, make promises which are disastrous for the country, but too complicated for the average man or woman to understand?

Or what happens if personal interests run counter to national interests… like austerity programs? Or government employment surges beyond all viable economic boundaries?

What is usually needed at that point is for the government to cut its expenses and fire say 30 percent of the bureaucrats. But those government employees vote. And they will not vote for anyone who even hints that he will take that step. They will vote for the candidate who promises to keep them employed no matter what.

What I am saying here is that a) not all people understand what they are voting for and b) when they do understand, they tend to vote for what seems to be good for them and not necessarily what is good for the nation in the long run.  And if there are a lot of such voters, like a big union such as the government union in Brazil, the country can get into economic or political trouble. Eventually there is often no way out.

Why?

Because what is needed to get out of that political trap is a government that can act.  Government leaders who are able to enact a policy that can bring the nation back to some form of economic viability. But will they be elected by the self-interested or ignorant voters.

Does democracy work anymore?

It was designed initially in Athens. It has roots in the New England Town Meetings.  Today the world is far more complex than it was in Athens, and the system is far too large in comparison to the New England colonial meeting halls.

Maybe it is time to reengineer the system. Otherwise we will be witnessing the continuous deterioration of political leadership until a crisis emerges and calls for major, disruptive corrective action.

Just thinking.

Ichak Kalderon Adizes

What Prolongs Life?

Let me try to explain this phenomena—maybe to myself as well: what prolongs life?

When we are born we are given, let us say, 75 years of life. It is, I believe, genetically determined. It is like being given a bank account with 75 units of life energy in it. Whatever consumes that fixed energy more rapidly shortens our life. And whatever adds energy prolongs life.

My observations:

To hate, to worry, consumes energy. It shortens our life.

Love however gives energy. It thus prolongs life.

Look at people in love. They are radiant. With energy.

Look at people that hate. They look washed out. Depressed.

When we love we feel happy and positive about life.  I am not talking only about romantic love. I am talking about loving certain music, or art, or a certain view of the countryside; or even a good conversation. Whatever would make us say, “I loved it!”

When you love deeply, truly, totally, from the whole heart, you have no doubts, no negative thoughts—you feel totally absorbed and integrated with the object, or the experience, of your love. You are one. At that moment you lose all sense of time and space. It is orgasmic.

This integration with the sublime gives energy.

I believe that what causes energy to be depleted or conserved is directly related to how integrated a system is.

Love, which is a manifestation of integration, prolongs life. Hate shortens life; it is a manifestation of dis-integration.

It is not happenstance that a diamond represents love.  It is the strongest stone because it is the most “integrated” stone.

To have faith, to have hope, to serve others out of love, is not altruistic. It is self-serving. It prolongs your life.

I gave a presentation at an anti-aging medical convention in Las Vegas some years ago. Five thousand medical doctors. All the presentations were on medical subjects: what prolongs life and what shortens it. The exhibit hall had thousands of creams and devices and supplements that were designed to combat age.

My lecture seemed like an anomaly. It was about love. Just love. Surround yourself with love.

Do you love your work?

Do you love your country?

Do you love your neighborhood, car, garden?

Family?

In-laws?

And the most, most, most important of them all: Do you love the person you are with?

And who is the person you are most with? Day in, day out. All the time. Do you love this person you live with, sleep with, walk with, eat, hurt, have a non-stop conversation with?

That person is you.

How much do you love yourself? Are you integrated with yourself or falling apart?  That determines significantly how long you will live.

Just thinking.

Ichak Kalderon Adizes.

On BiBi at Congress

Dear Reader: This blog is being published today because the topic is related to Benjamin Netanyahu’s scheduled address to Congress on March 3 .

A big brouhaha. Democrats are accusing Benjamin Netanyahu (Bibi) of offending the President of the United States. They will boycott the speech. But they nevertheless invited him to speak to them separately and got offended because he refused to do so.  And the invitation came from Democrats with an “impeccable voting record for Israel.”  Michael Oren, a former US ambassador to Israel now running against Netanyahu’s party for election to the Israeli Parliament, said “this is an unprecedented offense.”

Susan Rice said that Netanyahu’s insistence to speak is “destructive” to the Israeli-American relations.  In diplomatic parlance it is a very serious accusation.

The Israeli left, trying to unseat Netanyahu, and J Street, an organization in the US that claims to be supporting peace in the Middle East and published a whole page ad in the New York Times, are accusing Bibi of endangering Israeli-American relations for the sake of improving his chances of being reelected in the elections two weeks after his speech.

What is going on?

Is Bibi that irresponsible? That self-serving that he would endanger Israel by alienating practically the only ally Israel has left in the world just to get some votes in the coming elections?

I have an analysis of the situation, one I have not seen in any newspaper or TV commentary.

Bibi was invited by John Boehner, the Speaker of the House and the head of Congress. Why does he need permission from the White House to accept or reject the invitation? The Congress does not report to the President. Neither does the Prime Minister of Israel.  Ah, diplomatic courtesy!! Well, if someone should have shown courtesy, it is the inviter not the invitee.

Boehner didn’t clear the invitation with the White House, especially since he knew it will annoy the President. What Netanyahu will say in his speech is not a secret.  And that the President will be annoyed will not be a surprise.

So why did Boehner not clear the invitation with the President? It is the Speaker of the House that offended the President, no?

How come the White House is all up in arms against Netanyahu and not one word against the Speaker, the one who started the commotion with the invitation in the first place?

Ah, politics. Politics.

That the White House is upset with Bibi reminds me of a Sephardic expression: “criticize your daughter so that your daughter in law will hear it.”

It is not comfortable to criticize a daughter in law. So we find a way to let her know our displeasure indirectly.

This brouhaha is also a manifestation of the increasing rift and clear animosity between the Republicans, the inviter, and the President, a Democrat. It is a “fight” carried on Netanyahu’s shoulders. Instead of criticizing Boehner, it is easier to criticize the invited speaker.

Bibi was smart and right to refuse to appear in front of Democrats separately. Just as he refused to appear in front of Republicans separately. He declined the role of ping pong ball in the furious “table tennis game” between the two parties.

He has a much more important mission: to deliver a convincing message that Obama’s appeasing stance towards Muslims, in this case applied to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, is dangerous to Israel’s existence. And the accusation of the Israeli left and J Street that he is doing it to augment his chances for reelection are shallow; the situation has created enough criticism in Israel to cost him votes rather than gain them.

So why is he sticking to his decision to go ahead and make the speech? Because he does not want to go down in future history books as the  leader who did not do his absolute utmost to protect Israel from a nuclear holocaust.  He has a mission. All the others are playing politics.

Just thinking.

Ichak Kalderon Adizes

Note:

Dear dear Yevgen
I do not support nor justify Putins actions. If you got that impression from my blog it is unfortunate. I simply describe and analyze the situation as i see it and it is that putin is dangerous if he is in a corner and he is. 
He will do anything to stay in power. That is my point. Period
The way it is going now it is going to be worse. 
That is my point.
Ukraine people are dying because you are beeing USEd by the west to cause putin to fall.
That is my point
Please re read my blog from this point of view
Thank you
Dr Adizes

Russia’s Choices

The Ukrainian uprising was not because the President of Ukraine refused to sign an agreement with the European Union and signed with the Russians instead.

The uprising was a reaction against the blatant, extreme, open corruption of those in power.

The Ukraine revolution could have destabilized Russia. It had corruption too. The unrest could spread to Russia the way the unrest in Tunis spread all over the Arab countries.

For Putin this was a threat. But there was another development, even more serious, to which Putin had to react: the United States used the Ukraine revolution to attract Ukraine into NATO.

As far as Russia was concerned it was a provocation. Putin could not bear to have NATO forces on the Russian border.  He had to discourage the uprising from spreading into Russia and at least stop Eastern Ukraine from joining NATO. That is where ethnic Russians reside.

What did he do? He demonized the Ukrainian uprising. Called its leaders Nazi collaborators and, by seizing Crimea, became a national hero. The Russian people consider Crimea to be Russian. They fought wars for Crimea. The lore is that Khrushchev, who was Ukrainian, gave it to Ukraine when he was drunk. Since it was still within the Soviet Union it was considered just an internal border adjustment.

Kiev’s actions and Putin’s reaction galvanized the militants in Eastern Ukraine, which is populated by ethnic Russians, to revolt.  They would not join NATO against mother Russia.

Putin achieved his goal. His popularity scale topped eighty percent and the opposition could not copy the Maidan revolution; it would have been considered unpatriotic and the revolt in Eastern Ukraine was stopping Kiev, at least for the time being, of joining NATO.  But all these developments led the West to impose sanctions on Russia and Putin is now in a political bind.

To stop the sanctions, and if he abandons the Eastern Ukrainian Russians, NATO will be on Russia’s borders and he is not protecting fellow Russians. His leadership will be challenged for sure.

If he assists the uprising against Kiev, the sanctions will continue or possibly increase in severity.

If he enters Eastern Ukraine, the West might be pushed into a military confrontation to stop Russia’s expansion.

The political problems are compounded by economic problems.

The Russian economy is based on exporting oil and gas. Since the glut in oil created by the new technology of fracking will continue, the price of oil is not going to rise. Russia must restructure its economy and diversify it. For that it needs capital and capital is not flowing into the country. Quite the opposite.  It is leaving the country because investors perceive Russia not to be safe. Khodorkovsky was sent to jail and his oil company assets given to the government owned oil company. Yevtushenkov also lost his oil company to the same government owned oil company. They might have been guilty, but nevertheless government actions discourage potential investors.

There is more to it. As Russia has many overlapping laws and rules, legislated over the years by different regimes with different political orientations, from tsarist to soviet communist and now to a market economy orientation, entrepreneurs are guilty of something but they do not know what it is nor when the government might decide to prosecute.

The result?  A rapid exodus not only of financial capital but also of human entrepreneurial capital.

And the crisis is getting worse by the day. Russia needs foreign currency to import what it does not produce, like food, but the revenues have halved due to the declining price of oil, and there is no investment coming in. Nor can Russia take out loans because of the sanctions. When I left Moscow on February 1, a Russian TV station announced the price of food had already increased by over 25 percent, and its foreign currency reserves are depleting fast.

Russia is in crisis and will continue to be in crisis.  This has the potential to create significant unrest which was what Putin wanted to avoid in the first place.

What can he do or what might he do?

One solution is for Putin to start playing ball with the West. Help the United States in delaying or disabling Iran from developing nuclear devices, stop supporting the Syrian government, totally pull out of Eastern Ukraine, and as far as Crimea is concerned, give its population dual citizenship: Ukrainian and Russian. With open borders and dual passports, the issue of whose country Crimea is becomes less problematic.

The West in return should agree not to accept nor attempt to recruit Ukraine as a member of NATO, which is a thorn in the side of Russia.

This I believe will stop the ethnic Russian uprising in Eastern Ukraine and cause Russia to withdraw its forces.

If, on top of it, Crimea’s issue is calmed down, the West will have no reason for sanctions.

Let us assume Putin is willing to do his share of this plan (the rumors have it he was offered this or something similar already). Will the West play ball?

I suspect the West will not. They want Putin to fall.  They welcome the crisis and will continue to aggravate it.

The whole Ukrainian-Russian conflict is an undisclosed strategy by the West to topple Putin from power. It is not being publicly announced as such, but it is.

How will Putin behave when his power gets threatened?

As the Russian crisis does not subside and there is unrest, or potential for unrest, Putin might up the ante and invade Eastern Ukraine to project nationalistic fervor, be a hero, and in doing so keep in check the increasing internal turmoil. Furthermore, by invading East Ukraine, where ethnic Russians reside, he can prevent at least that part from joining NATO.

Putin is being pushed to a corner. The West holds the cards to stop the emerging aggravated confrontation.

The recent Minsk II agreement, in my opinion, is a band aid that will not work because it does not satisfy Western goals and strategy and does not deal with Putin’s need to defend Russian interests as well as his own.

Just thinking.

Ichak Kalderon Adizes

My Macro Problem of Our Civilization

I was told by a friend of mine that in a book: The Coming Job War, by Jim Clifton, Gallup Press, 2011, Clifton claims that Gallup research shows that there are five billion people looking for a full time job on this little globe of ours, but there are only 1.5 billion full time jobs.

Not strange unemployment is high in many countries.  And it is going to get worse as automation and robots increasingly take away jobs that humans perform today…

What is the solution?

Riots? Fight for jobs or what the author called a “Jobs War”?

Unfortunately that is already happening, but it is not the solution. It is merely the reaction to the present situation.

What is needed is job creation.  And every politician today finds himself pressed to develop a workable plan to create jobs.

The media has become part of the cycle as well, though not part of the solution. It seems as if every other day there is a press account detailing how many jobs have been created since the last report, as if our life depended upon it. For some probably that is true, their life does depend on it.

I suggest to you that job creation is only a band aid. It is not a sustainable solution.

Why?

Because the more jobs we create, the more resources we use (or destroy) and as we create jobs we deplete our globe of necessary resources.

We are probably the most wasteful civilization that ever lived.

I believe we will destroy the planet with pollution and exploitation of natural resources all in the name of providing full time jobs for everyone.

The alternative is what I call a strategic, disruptive cultural change. We must change from the idea that more is better to better is more.

Recognize that more possessions do not determine our quality of life. It is how we spend our time that determines quality of life.

Ironically, it was the hippie movement that gave us a hint of what life can be.

I was driving along the California coast recently from San Diego to Los Angeles and noted how civilization was progressing.

First I saw agricultural fields, then chimneys of some factories, and when I arrived at Laguna Beach I found a colony of artists.

Apparently a number of people in Laguna Beach made their money early in life. Enough to live not lavishly, but comfortably. And now some of them have settled in Laguna Beach where they live modestly and paint, or write novels, or play music…

They no longer work to have more. Instead they work to have a better life.

Come to think of it, that change in life style has been occurring in many places without us paying real attention to it.

Check any leading University in the United States. Go to the school of engineering or science and notice: most of the students are Asian. Mostly Chinese, in fact.

Where are the American kids?  Schools of art, film, music.

It seems to me that this represents a conscious change in our values. Perhaps only the beginning of a change in what we expect.

We are not living in a time of scarcity anymore (I am speaking of developed countries only). We live rather in a time of abundance.

In a time of scarcity, if there is abundance, you need to accumulate for rainy days. But when there is constant abundance, accumulating more and more makes us obese.

The wake up call has long since sounded. Our behavior has to change.  Like legitimize early retirement. Applaud those who live modestly.

If we change what we expect from life, the pressure for job creation will not be so acute. And the destructive exploitation of our limited resources will not lead us to live quite so precariously.

Just thinking.

Ichak Kalderon Adizes

The Nature of Nature

An Adizes Associate from Latvia, Greg Mathers, raised an interesting question: is there love in nature?

It’s complicated, but let me try to answer it.

If we interpret the word love in terms of kissing someone passionately, holding hands, looking at each other with enchanted eyes and running a rapid heartbeat, the answer is no. There is no love in nature. It is a world defined by survival of the fittest. It is not too much to say that it is a cruel world out there. Eat or be eaten.

But if we interpret love differently, something interesting emerges.

What is love?

For me it is total absolute integration.

What is integration?

For me it is a relationship bound together by mutual trust and respect.

There is no love without mutual trust and respect.

What is respect?

Again a specific perspective. I define respect as an attitude of open mindedness and thus the willingness to learn.

When there is learning there is synergy. And when there is synergy there is growth.

What is trust? To have faith that there is a commonality of interests.

A symbiotic relationship, a mutually beneficial relationship, provides for common interests.

So what is love?

A synergetic, symbiotic relationship.

And nature is a symbiotic and synergistic interdependency.

Think about it.

There is interdependency in everything that happens in nature.

Among animals and among vegetation. Everything in nature is interrelated and interdependent.  And the interdependency is both synergistic and symbiotic.

As a formula it looks as follows:

Nature > symbiotic synergistic interdependency> mutual trust and respect>integration>love.

Thus nature is love.

And what is absolute love? God.

Thus looking at nature we see the manifestation of God in everything we see.

Spinoza?

Just thinking.

Ichak Kalderon Adizes

The Power at Conception

In my January 31, 2015 blog on narcissism I reported how I traveled back to my earliest memories and discovered an experience that shaped my behavior all my life.

That psychological exercise is a well-known psychotherapeutic technique for treating individuals. It, however, gave me an insight that maybe the technique applies to organizational therapy as well.

Here is how I arrived at the insight.

Last week I was advising a national leader. The President of a country. He was the founding father of that country and we were discussing the issue of succession.

I explained to him that from my experience with companies, it is very difficult to replace the founder of a corporation with a successor who can fit easily into the founder’s shoes. Founders of companies are unique and there is no way to clone them. The same applies to founding fathers of a nation, I said.

I have developed, I told him, a methodology to free founders of companies from this trap.  They can build into the corporate behavior “a system” of management that reflects their values so that when they eventually leave the company, what stays behind is an institutionalized way of managing that the successor must continue to maintain.   In this way “the spirit of the founder” remains, the enterprise is managed or governed (to use a nation-state term) as if he or she were still present.

This can be done on the state level too, I told him.

Attaturk did it in Turkey. So did Tito in Yugoslavia.  It does not “remain alive” forever, because nothing is forever.  But it does keep impacting behavior for a while and helps make the transition from a domineering Founder to a successor much less traumatic.

That is also what happens in a well-integrated family. The parents die. The children and grandchildren continue the family rituals and maintain the values established by the departing parents. So those values and rituals continue to guide behavior as if the parents were still alive.  (For those versed in Adizes, PE is being replaced with AI).

I elaborated on what he could do in his country. It was then, as I continued to speak, that I suddenly realized I was describing the power at conception.

Something happens at conception that drives behavior whether of an individual, of a family, a company or a country.

Take the United States. Whenever we are uncertain about what to do, we go back to the Founding Fathers and ask ourselves what they intended and refer to what was written in the Constitution.

I also could recall family therapy sessions where the therapist asked me to describe how I courted my wife. He said that in his experience, how the courting went, so goes the marriage.

There is a common denominator here, I said to myself:

My experience as a baby affected how I behaved in life thereafter.

How I courted my wife affected how I treat her during our marriage.

How the Founding Fathers launched the United States has affected how we have developed and continue to develop as a nation.

There is a pattern here. There is something that happens at conception. To rephrase the Chinese, it is not only that the longest trip starts with a single step, but the direction that first step takes determines what the experience of the trip will be. What road you will travel.

Application for organizational therapy: we should ask clients to describe how the company was started. What was the value proposition at conception?  Why and how was the company created? Was it to make a quick, big buck?  A fast dollar and goodbye.  Or did the founder want to change the world; or at least the industry?  Or did the Founder(s) hate what was in the market and along the way fell in love with a product they wanted to put forward? In short, what was the impetus that determined the start-up of the company?

And so, which values, goals, and experiences at conception guide your behavior now subconsciously?

I believe we are not aware how these early experiences actually determine our future behavior.

By becoming conscious of what happened at conception, and by analyzing what helped us (and what gave us pain) in later life, we are exposed to a liberating experience.

And that can help us change.

So, I offer these introductory questions….

How was this nation started?

How did your relationship with your present spouse begin?

How did you launch your company?

Can you reach back to your earliest memory? What happened?

Can you identify how it has affected your life?

Just thinking.

Ichak Kalderon Adizes

On Being a Narcissist

I have been accused by my first wife and now by my second wife of being a narcissist, ego centric, and more; much more.

I used to get very upset when the accusations came my way. “What do you want from me? What is it that I am doing that drives you to this name calling,” I used to yell back.

I never received a satisfactory answer. Recently at the Anthony Robbins Date with Destiny program, in a flash, I understood it very well.

As part of the program, Anthony Robbins turned the lights low and led us through a well-known exercise where you try to recollect your earliest memory.

More than a year ago I had an incredible breakthrough when I first attempted this exercise. I understood very clearly the source of my yearning for love. And I recognized that it has driven my behavior all my life.

What occurred?

I succeeded in recalling my early childhood experience at a Bulgarian concentration camp in Macedonia. I was five years old.

Transporting myself back in time, I saw my grandparents being taken to the death chambers while I, a child of five, gazed at them being herded onto a cattle car as the doors slammed closed on them.  And I knew in a moment of clarity, at that instant of remembering, that my heart had closed. I could not risk loving anyone out of fear that I would only lose them. That fear has weighed on me all my life.

This past December Anthony pushed me to return to an even earlier period in my life.  And his pushing worked. I understood my wives.

I remembered myself as a baby. Recently born and crying my heart out. I wanted my mother’s milk and she was not giving it to me. I felt rejected.   I recalled myself actually screaming. I was hurting, not only physically but emotionally as well.

Then Anthony said, look at who else is in the room. How are they behaving?

As I gazed back into the room, into that scene of more than seventy five years ago, I realized my mother was crying. She had given me as much milk as she had. There was simply no more. At that time all feeding was natural and she gave what she had. And so she was crying as she watched me weep, knowing she could not satisfy me.

And suddenly I understood:

I was not being rejected. I was just over demanding.

I finally understood my wives and their complaint; and not only my wives, but with my employees too, I am over demanding. No matter how much they give, I want more.

Well, my friends, it is never too late to grow. Never too late to learn.

In the business world there is a saying: when you hit oil, stop digging. In other words, there is no use digging more. You already got what you wanted.

In personal growth when you hit oil, however, dig some more; and some more after that. After oil you might hit gold.

Sharing with you my pains and joys.

Ichak Kalderon Adizes

The Terror in Paris: My Take On It

I am watching TV.  More than one million people are demonstrating in Paris for solidarity, unity, democracy… and against terror.  And a bunch of world leaders are holding hands among the first line of marchers.

Impressive. Yes?

Not to me.

Why?

For one, just a few minutes later the newscast has changed and we are confronted with the sight of thousands of Muslims in different parts of the world holding placards that claim, “I am Muhammad”  in reaction to the placards in Paris that proclaim “I am Charlie.”  And the Muslim marchers are not peaceful like the marchers in Paris. They are screaming for revenge.

Revenge? Wait a minute, who is terrorizing whom?

There is a Sephardic expression that comes to mind: ”Tanto grita el ladron que se spanta el patron” (“The thief screams so loud that the owner is the one who is scared”).

Oh, maybe they do consider it us terrorizing them with our tanks and drones, bombing them and occupying their land. Maybe they have a legitimate reason to scream “Death to Jews,” “Death to America.”

Do they?

But nevertheless, in whichever scenario you choose, the Muslims know what they want. They are clear about their intentions and what action they will take. They exhibit energy, commitment.

We, on the other hand, are wishy-washy. We are in this war and we are not in this war. We increase our military involvement then we reduce our military involvement. And we continuously plead for peace. And we are committed to being politically correct.  And we are not against Muslims, God forbid. Just against the radical Muslims.  And even there we are careful how we behave; we must not violate their human rights.

They, take this, do not care about human rights.  They publicly behead those they do not like. Period. No apologies.

To us, human rights, political correctness, is more important than our security.

For them, to terrorize us, is more important than even their quality of life.

We are tied in self-imposed boundaries. They have no boundaries regarding what they can do.

Our actions are mild, without focus or commitment. They are clear and willing to give their life for their cause.

There is a rule in confrontations: whoever is more committed wins. Whoever has more energy wins. Who is freer to act wins.

How will a march of more than one million—even five million— stop terror? Will it make an impression on anyone in the Muslim world?

Our marching does not impress them.  Their radicals come and kill. And are willing to commit suicide in doing so. They have the religious fervor driving them to act without compromise.

We go on marching and are even careful which words we use so that, God forbid, we do not offend them.

Years ago when communism was alive, I remember you could not get a visa to the United States, even for a visit, if there was any evidence that you had a communist connection. A relative. A political history dating back to college. A questionable past. That was all it took and you were barred from entry.

We were trying hard to keep men and women whose ideology threatened our safety from penetrating our country.

To me, the radical Muslims now threaten our existence. They are not just propagating a different order like the communists did. They are aiming to impose their order by terror. Killing whoever is on their way.

Even children.

So, should we keep all Muslims out?

How come we did it with communists but will not do it with Muslims?

Because we are for religious freedom although this religion is politically belligerent.

But are all of them belligerent? No. They are not.  But then, where are the millions (OK, I am willing to accept twelve thousand) Muslim marchers against terror?

I do not see moderate Muslims doing much to control the radical ones. They are too quiet to my liking. Some leader here and there denounces terrorism and that is it.  How come they do not march against the radicals? Imprison them? Instead I see world-wide Muslim celebrations in the streets each time a terror attack succeeds. Thousands of them singing, dancing, distributing candy. Watch the news. I am not inventing this or imagining it.

Those celebrating, are they not radical? What are they? Supporters of freedom, sympathizers of the Western democracy? If so why the celebrations?

Where are the “peaceful” ones? They are the ones who can make a difference. There should be a Muslim movement against the radicals. It could be much more effective than us fighting it.

p.s.  My life was saved during Second World War by a Muslim Albanian family. I owe them my life. So, I am not anti-Muslim. I just wish the peace loving ones will take some real action.

Not to act is to support terror. You can not just stand on the side and watch. You are either in or out; for or against.

I wonder, just wonder, if as a reaction to the terror, we forbid entry to the country to ALL Muslims. Like we did with communists. If, IF, if we did this racist move, IF it will cause the peace loving Muslims to move to action against the radicals. Right now they do not suffer. They just watch us suffer…..

Just thinking.

Ichak Kalderon Adizes