The Emporor has no Clothes

Sorry to continue with Winograd, but this is priceless. Amir Peretz, the defence minister, who was harshly criticised by Winograd, thinks they were complimenting him. He sent out an e-mail showing how good he is.

* "It must be granted in the defense minister's favor that if he had had enough time, he would have acquired the necessary qualifications" (clause 159)

Nobody argues that given enough time an infinite number of monkeys could write the entire works of Shakespeare (Actually people do argue, but that is a different matter). So because he knows nothing, was totally unsuitable for the post, and had no experience, we should be grateful that eventually he would have learned???

* "The minister asked fundamental questions, displayed fast understanding, judgment and straight thinking" (clause 143)

How fundamental? What is a war? Do we have an army? Where is Lebanon? These are all very good fundamental questions, but it is not so good for the man in charge of the entire operation to be asking fundamental questions.

* "The defense minister sometimes showed insights which more experienced persons than him did not discover, and he significantly contributed to discussion and decisions on the targets of the offensives" (clause 146).

Sometimes showed insights. Needs no comment. Contributed to discussions and decisions - with no military background, or knowledge (though given time and enough fundamental questions he would have figured out that he was playing 'war' not monopoly!)

Wake up and smell the coffee boys! The writing is on the wall!

This is what the verse means "The heart of kings is in the hand of G-d". Our leaders lose their free choice at a certain point. They direct the nation in the way that G-d wants it to go.
So really it is our fault, not his. Peretz is the golem who G-d put in place to teach us to do teshuva.

So I say to myself - 'wake up and smell the coffee'. If the emporor has no clothes it is because I (and everyone else) have failed to see the truth, refused to recognise that G-d runs the show, and instead gone along with the pretence that it is a very beautiful suit that he wears.

Chatanu, Pashanu, Avinu.

Aides say 'give him a chance to learn'

Just to add to my previous post - the spin doctors have managed to turn the entire thing on its head. According to YNet:

Meanwhile Olmert aides said the Winograd Commission hinted that the prime minister should be given a chance to learn from his mistake.
"A culture that doesn't allow those who err to keep their posts is not a progressive culture," one aide quoted one of the report's footnotes. "It is likely to lose its most experienced individuals in order to allow people who have not made mistakes to repeat mistakes made by others."

In fact what the commission said was that they were forced to publish the interim report because the Prime Minister and government had failed to learn from their mistakes. They felt he was using the governmental committee as an excuse to not have to learn. But that now means (according to Olmert's aides) that he should be given another chance to learn. Perhaps I was wrong before when I said that a person is led on the path that they choose for themselves, maybe he is being given a chance to learn.
Or perhaps, like Pharaoh, he will not read the writing on the wall, and continue to say 'who is this G-d that I should listen to Him'.

Learning to Learn

I don't normally like discussing, or blogging, about politics, but the release of the Winograd report and the prime minister's immediate response are too good to pass up. Without wishing to discuss the findings and their implications I wanted to look at the learning process, and how that affects us.
The report was clear. It states:

4. This emphasis on learning lessons not only follows from our conception of the role of a public commission. It also follows from our belief that one of Israeli society's greatest sources of strength is its being a free, open and creative. Together with great achievements, the challenges facing it are existential. To cope with them, Israel must be a learning society - a society which examines its achievements and, in particular, its failures, in order to improve its ability to face the future.

5. Initially we hoped that the appointment of the Commission would serve as an incentive to accelerate learning processes in the relevant systems, so that we could devote our time to study all of the materials in depth, and present the public with a comprehensive picture. However, learning processes have been limited. In some ways an opposite, and worrying, process emerged - a process of 'waiting' for the Commission's Report before energetic and determined action was taken to redress the failures that have been revealed.

6. Therefore we decided to publish initially an Interim Report, focusing on the decisions related to the start of the war. We did this in the hope that the relevant bodies would take urgent action to change and correct all the implications.

In other words, the Winograd report was supposed to be an opportunity to learn. They published the interim report because they felt that their commission was hampering learning, rather than encouraging it. The entire purpose of this interim report is to allow for learning. (And remember that this commission was appointed by the Prime Minister as his advisory committee. They have no legal powers and cannot do anything except advise, which in their view means to facilitate learning).

What was the response of the Prime Minister? How will Olmert learn from the Winograd report?

Olmert said, he would work to implement the report's conclusions. He called a special cabinet session for Wednesday to begin the work, at which he plans to announce the creation of a special task to oversee the report's implementation, including both government officials and external experts.

The government's response to a report from a special task force calling on them to learn is ... another governmental task force to help them learn!!!!

A person is allowed to go on the path that they choose for themselves. If someone refuses to learn, they will find many ways to continue to avoid learning.

How often are we given the chance to learn, from our mistakes, from our successes, from other people. What do we do with that opportunity? Do we learn, and take steps to implement the conclusions that we reach, or do we set up another 'task force' allowing us to continue with business as usual and miss the opportunity for growth and personal development.

In my opinion the current Israeli government is not good for very much (like most of the previous ones), but what we can learn is what happens to someone who doesn't want to learn, who has too much vested interest to wish to make any real changes, to see clearly what fools we make of ourselves if we fail to learn while everyone else can see clearly what we should be doing.

Let's try to learn.