There is an immense material out there for you to seem understanding on the conflict and the commentary come from both sides.
My personal favourite source is from RealClearPolitics. Here is the posts of the moment.
Thomas L. Friedman from the The New York Times speaking on the dangers of Iran leveraging on the Gaza conflict to negate the Obama effect.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/opinion/07friedman.html?_r=1
Jonathan Freedland wrote in the Guardian, arguing that the Israel offensive is a lost cause simply because Hamas is too rooted and the power vacuum from the removal of Hamas may be worse. I agree with this like Lewis Coser who believes that your opponents should not be broken and asymmetry complexify negotiations. (Functions of Social Conflict)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/07/gaza-palestine-israel
An article from RealClearPolitics, that comments on the knee-jerk reaction of the Israeli political leaders and how this failure of a longer term vision will jeopardise the state of Israel.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/01/the_decline_of_israels_leaders.html
USA Today has one on the similar track, saying that tactical success will not bring lasting security from rocket fire.
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/01/todays-debate-t.html#more
Last but not least, New York Post making a case of the perfidious acts of Hamas and how Israel will fall prey to it.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/01072009/postopinion/editorials/theyre_hamas_victims_148981.htm
I've also found many extreme posts, articles and blogs of both ends which I think is unnecessary here. I do not want to reinforce hatred but hopes to make a case of why Israel should go to the negotiating table rather than the battlefield and why Hamas need to back down from its dogma.
Again, this I point this tragedy to the lack of responsible and visionary leadership.
Showing posts with label Sun Tzu's Art of War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sun Tzu's Art of War. Show all posts
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
It's an Art, not a Science.
What's is an art and not science? Well, it depends.
For my vocation as a military person, I've consistently heard that warfare is an art, not a science. The vagarities and the limitless variables and parameters in the conduct of warfare has made it an artform. The officer in command of the campaign would be able to creatively utilise his information superiority, his speed of manuever and even his environmment to overpower a technically superior foe, with greater firepower and larger numbers. Of course, the converse is also true. Hence, we have Sun Tzu's Art of War.
Of course then, I found out that the business world wanted to copy this state by alluding that business is war. Hence, the conduct of business is again an art form and not a science. Here at Fletcher, and in my first week of lessons, this concept is brought to a whole new playing field.
Is accounting an art or a science? Prof. Larry Weiss shows us that it is an art. Wow! Imagine that. You'd think with all that balancing and the mathematics, it should be clearly a science. We now know however that accounting is merely management's way of signalling and representing information to a phethora of users ranging from investors, bankers, competitors, suppliers, customers, employees, regulators and even Greenpeace. (Haha... that's another story).
Nice.
So the question is, "Is everything an art?" This is where Dean Uvin's explaination of the offering of Fletcher comes in. There is 3 levels. Firstly, you need to know the subject matter of things and how to do it. At this level, it could be very well an Art. Then there is an underlying layer of the skill sets and tools that we will learn. This level given the technicalities, it would be a science. Then of course, we need to know the ethics and the RIGHT thing to do. That's beyond art and science.
Wonderful. I'll get all 3 of it here.
For my vocation as a military person, I've consistently heard that warfare is an art, not a science. The vagarities and the limitless variables and parameters in the conduct of warfare has made it an artform. The officer in command of the campaign would be able to creatively utilise his information superiority, his speed of manuever and even his environmment to overpower a technically superior foe, with greater firepower and larger numbers. Of course, the converse is also true. Hence, we have Sun Tzu's Art of War.
Of course then, I found out that the business world wanted to copy this state by alluding that business is war. Hence, the conduct of business is again an art form and not a science. Here at Fletcher, and in my first week of lessons, this concept is brought to a whole new playing field.
Is accounting an art or a science? Prof. Larry Weiss shows us that it is an art. Wow! Imagine that. You'd think with all that balancing and the mathematics, it should be clearly a science. We now know however that accounting is merely management's way of signalling and representing information to a phethora of users ranging from investors, bankers, competitors, suppliers, customers, employees, regulators and even Greenpeace. (Haha... that's another story).
Nice.
So the question is, "Is everything an art?" This is where Dean Uvin's explaination of the offering of Fletcher comes in. There is 3 levels. Firstly, you need to know the subject matter of things and how to do it. At this level, it could be very well an Art. Then there is an underlying layer of the skill sets and tools that we will learn. This level given the technicalities, it would be a science. Then of course, we need to know the ethics and the RIGHT thing to do. That's beyond art and science.
Wonderful. I'll get all 3 of it here.
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