Archive for October 9th, 2008
A dozen Lebanese confessional rodents in dialogue around a conference table (March 2nd, 2006)
The President of the Lebanese Chamber of Deputies, Mr. Nabih Berri, has purchased in Italy an expensive round table designed to gather twelve confessional leaders so that they feel comfortable to dialogue for an entire week, on important matters that are splitting the political leaders after the withdrawal of the Syrian forces.
In January 9, 2006 I wrote an article entitled “The process of a written confessional Constitution in progress and Live”, which expressed my strong apprehension that all this political entanglements and hysteric pronouncements were meant as a positioning strategy for agreeing on appropriate shares among the protagonists for the public pie.
This famous table was installed in the House of Representative in Downtown Beirut so that the whole Downtown has been closed off to traffic and commerce for the duration of this extraordinary event. More than 3,000 security forces were tied down to protect these all famous heads, meant to brainstorm and pick each other minds for the benefit of a stable, secure, independent, self-determined, and free Lebanon from any foreign interventions or meddling in its internal affairs.
This dialogue is secretive and dubiously undemocratic for those non sectarian sections of our society: historically, secular political parties and civic associations were never asked to participate in any dialogue, and they were not invited to participate in the discussion for the framework and foundation of a future Lebanon.
The government, formed a year ago, as a national unity from the majority of the Parliament, based on a flawed electoral system, and headed by Fouad Sanyoura, a Hariri employee, has proven to be a total failure and acting as if the insecurity, instability and economic deterioration are not its responsibilities. The Minister of the Interior, Mr. Sabe3 (Lion), another Hariri employee, told live all the Lebanese citizens that he is impotent in locating and prosecuting the “ghosts” who have been blowing up a dozen leading men and commercial centers.
The Minister of the Treasury, Mr. Azhour, an extra Hariri employee, has been postponing temporarily and probably indefinitely the meeting of “Beirut One” Conference of the parties supposed to infuse our economy with financial liquidity: we are learning that the well meaning money providers are not satisfied with the promised reforms and have strong apprehension that the money will not be going into the proper channels or distributed for any kind of economic or social reforms.
Worst, the only financial news that the impoverished Lebanese hate the most and might be applied are the additional taxes to keeping the inflated, bloated, and badly run government administrative institutions floating.
So far, the only decrees extracted from the so-called legitimate political Constitution were directed at strengthening the grasp of Solidere on its holding in Downtown Beirut; everyone knows that Solidere is a Real Estate holding company and basically a private company owned by the Hariri family, its Saudi Royalty Princes and its acolytes in the “Future Movement” who plundered Lebanon during the Syrian hegemony.
The Syrian forces, army, security and intelligence services, have already vacated Lebanon 10 months ago, the former four Lebanese Generals in charge of security and intelligence are detained “pending further conviction materials” on their cover ups or participation in the assassination of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. The government has replaced these security people with their own people and yet, Syria is directly blamed for any insecurity in the land and the politicians in power are still shouting: “Syria go home. No Syrian interventions in Lebanon”.
The government and its allies in the majority are explicitly and vociferously accusing the President of the Republic as the remaining Syrian stooge and are demanding his resignation as illegitimate; they even went as far as stooping very low and dishonoring the Nation by gathering signed affidavits from current and former deputies claiming they voted under duress for the extension of the President’s tenure for another three years.
Now, why these infamous leaders have to meet in the Parliament instead of a remote mountainous resort and spare the people all these expenses, security mobilization, economic disruption, and disturbing the peace in Downtown Beirut? I think most Lebanese citizens would have appreciated the “Berri’s Table” to be transferred to a secure prison where the sleeping quarters are fitted out in solitary cells for the leading rodents.
Why this extraordinary dialogue is not acknowledged to be the responsibility of the representative elected members of the Parliament? Is not the Parliament the normal and legitimate body to set the political guidelines and enact the body of laws? For an entire year, we heard live on cables, television, and radio the explicit political and ideological positions of these leaders and their allies and we have been vomiting every one of their hysteric and unfounded pronouncements, except for the well balanced speeches, rational attitudes, and clean hands of Michel Aoun and Hassan Nasr Allah.
A committee was formed to study and recommend a fair electoral system to replace the badly flawed previous system, supposedly designed and engineered by the Syrian regime, and it just announced that it finished its job after analyzing 200 proposals from political parties, civil associations and individuals. Guess what? The committee finished on time before the meeting of the famous twelve brave knights.
Do you like to guess what the proposed and unpublished electoral system is? Well, it is temporary to suit the current political climate! Not many are fooled in Lebanon and not only we suspect, but we are completely certain that this dialogue is meant to split the pie among the confessional parties. The twelve gurus will agree on their shares in the important key political positions and how to tailor make the electoral system to fit their needs. As you guessed, they will again claim that the political solution “arrived at” is necessarily temporary, as has always been the case since the Independence of Lebanon in 1943.
Around an expensive table are gathered a bunch of rotten apples that, within a week, will ultimately affect the few healthy ones, unless the good apples turn the table over the opportunist and highway robbers of the rotten political heads, and lead the Nation toward definitive self determination, reforms and drastic political changes.
Lebanon civil war revisited
Posted on: October 9, 2008
Lebanon civil war revisited (Jan 8, 2006)
I wrote in 1976 a lengthy article that was published in two successive issues by the students’ newspaper of the Oklahoma Daily at Norman on the subject of the civil war in Lebanon. Unfortunately, I misplaced a copy of that article to compare my views with my current understanding of this calamity, although I think that I was on the right track even then. Simply, the main facts of the civil war of Lebanon (1975-1991) points to the direction that it was an internally planned and executed war and entirely reinforced by external supply and logistics.
Since the Independence of Lebanon in 1943 our political system has been contained and maintained through the tacit alliance of the feudal, confessional and mercantile powerhouses of both the Maronite Christians and Sunny Moslems. Then and now, I am convinced that the sectarian and conservative Christian Maronite political parties, with the complete support of President Suleiman Frangieh and the high ranking officers of the army, decided that a civil war was the only alternative solution remaining in their hands to salvage the crumbling confessional political and social status.
I reluctantly insert reviews of our past political system solely for the benefit of the new generations of Lebanese who cannot perceive the continuation of the past in our worse present system. We can reach as far in our past and attest to the vicious cycle of short periods of self determination lasting half a human life making room to centuries of subjugation. These cycles keep springing up as unbreakable as if our destiny is a series of hopeless attempts for independence from the neighboring power houses in Turkey, Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome or even Iraq before the 10th century.
I might as well start in 1969 with the unpublished agreement between Yasser Arafat and the Lebanese government on the location of the military bases of the Palestinian Resistance Movement as secured islands from the Lebanese law and order forces in south Lebanon bordering Israel. This agreement was signed in Cairo by Jamal Abel Nasser, Yasser Arafat, the Lebanese army chief Emil Bustany, the Prime Minister Rashid Karame and the minister of the interior Pierre Gemayel who was also the leader of the Phalanx (Kataeb) party. Under the motto that “The strength of Lebanon is in his weakness”, secured by the charter of the United Nations, Lebanon governments from its independence in 1943 could not agree on forming a strong army able to defend its border. The successive governments refrained from investing in the south and its inhabitants of Shiaa majority did not receive any attention from the central government. The Maronite Christians and Sunny Moslems feudal and conservative leaders figured that any troubles in the south will not affect the rest of Lebanon significantly or destabilize its confessional political system.
When Israel started to retaliate for the Palestinian rocket launching attacks from the south and under various pretenses the citizens in the south flocked to the suburbs of Beirut forming what was called the “belt of misery”, currently the stronghold of the Hezbollah Party. These suburbs would have major impacts on the process of the civil war in many respects. In the years 1969-1975 the university students were the vanguard for significant reforms of our outdated political confessional system and the Capital Beirut was the scene of multiple demonstrations per month demanding the governments to pay more attention to the dreams and drives of the youth for a modern and fair political system.
The Lebanese University was the hub of these demonstrations lead by the Communists and left leaning students who succeeded in wining the elections of the student councils throughout the University branches. The popular support for drastic reforms signaled the feasibility of changes through democratic means which scared the confessional forces to bypass the real issues and lay our problems to the existence of the Palestinian resistance factions. In order to rally the moderate Lebanese citizens around their status quo system the confessional forces hammered on the prerequisite of uniting around the army whenever premeditated incidents led to direct military confrontations on a few refugees’ camps in the Christian enclave like Dbayeh and Jesr El Basha; those same camps that former President Camille Chamoun opened and offered the Lebanese Nationality to the Christian Palestinians to vote for him and his coalition during the Parliamentary elections. In few instances the army air force dusted off its archaic and limited war planes as a show of force and determination to enter the camps without much political success.
It is a fact that the Maronite political parties, lead by the Phalange party, planned the civil war, started it and refused to negotiate a lasting ceasefire. They initiated the mass killing and genocide tactics based solely on confessional status with the strategy of cleansing the areas of Christian majority from any Moslem or Palestinian elements. The cleansing process went two steps further as the war continued; first they evacuated their areas from every Christian members of secular political parties like the Communists and the Lebanese based Syrian National Social party and then turned to the Christian confessional party members who refused to unite under the banner of the unique party of “The Lebanese Forces” headed by Bashir Gemayel.
They also invited the Syrian forces to cross the Lebanese borders once their war plans failed to produce the equilibrium in military forces and their territories were close to be sacked by the Nationalist and progress’s coalition forces. They negotiated directly with Israel, the enemy of Lebanon, and secured military logistical support in arms, ammunition and training. In 1982, they encouraged Israel to extend their invasion to entering our Capital Beirut in order to chase the Palestinians out of Lebanon.
Fooled Myself
Posted on: October 9, 2008
Fooled Myself (2002)
I fooled myself. I pitied myself.
I wanted to know all, diligently, for decades.
I wanted to change the World
In my dreams, night or day.
Aloof, confused, distracted and detached of your Worlds.
It was the right thing then. Still right, now.
I now take one task at a time.
Now that time is worth everything,
Time is irrelevant to me.
I could be happy.
My Warpy World
Posted on: October 9, 2008
My Warpy World (2002)
1. I need to burn off my excess energy,
That stuff I used to have in abundance in my youth.
I burned it bending on desks,
Reading and learning.
About our warped literatures and histories,
Warped theories,
Warped philosophies, of a warped world we created.
2. I now need to stretch time in my old age.
I don’t want time to fly by:
I am supposed to be scared
Of the imminent end.
No, I have to work double shifts to make ends meet.
I need to work harder to fulfill
Newly discovered dreams.
Part 2: Noura’s period (1381-1386)
Chapter 8: Preliminary reforms
The first year was very hectic and a learning period for Antoun to behave as Lord of the Metn. A restless person by nature he avoided staying for any length of time in his castle and kept on the road canvassing his County and listening to the demands and needs of his residents. Gergis was given an annex to the castle where he visited Antoun for four days a month. Since Gergis was very secretive about his origin and a coastal native it was inappropriate for Antoun to offer him publicly an official responsibility; but Gergis was indeed his legal counselor and would study the legal cases and submit his recommendations, especially those cases with a heavy political overtone. Consequently, Antoun would preside for two days a month at the justice council for the serious and highly public cases and on Saturday afternoons, when in town, he would be judge for the common claimants.
Hanna Al Najjar was named his administrator of the previously outlawed areas and Mariam was recalled to stay at the Capital for non divulged responsibilities. Mustafa was named general manager for Antoun’s prosperous business in Beirut and channeled the necessary military hardware and professional military trainers to Metn.
Meanwhile, Latifa had established herself in charge of the administration of the castle and the residents referred to her as Sit Al Qasr (the Lady of the Castle). Thus, Antoun felt secure about the good running of the castle and the well being of his frail and yet inefficient wife as per the political life.
Antoun was inundated by the land claims of the multitude of landlords and was urged to perform a few necessary agrarian reforms as a priority. This agrarian reform was contemplated in phases in order not to anger the powerful landlords. The first task was to create a cadastre for the land. Expert surveyors called “geometers” were hired and attracted from as far as Egypt to measure accurately the kingdom’s land properties not yet owned by the citizens and to assist in property litigations.
Agrarian and tax reforms
The next phase was to redistributed cultivable lands from the most powerful landlords to those who worked the lands by subdividing large parcels that belonged to Emirs and princes, especially those lands that were practically stolen to the less fortunate peasants. Legal framework for recuperating properties was enacted; for example, the sizes of parcels of land were proportionate to the size of a family and the duration the family worked the land; females were allotted the same rights as men in land inheritance provided that they resided on and worked the property and widowed families received larger sizes of lands in order to gradually diminish the prevalent taboos in favor of brighter opportunities.
Tax reforms were made more equitable and less burdensome. Feudal tradition taxed only those who owned lands with the exception of feudal lords. The merchants, clergymen and the class of nobility did not share in financing war efforts or entertaining the institutions and the royalty.
This fundamental theological tax logic that only small land owners should supplement to the expenses of the ruling class was seriously questioned. Revenues were thus revised to be taxed regardless of the business of production and expanded to merchants and skilled artisans. Lands that were not cultivated were also taxed in order for the proprietors to sell or rent these unproductive lands. The lands distributed to peasants were taxed higher that those legitimately acquired but for an exceptional duration not to exceed 7 years.
Properties were taxed not only according to size but also to the number of hired manpower who kept the property running and who offered an image of high status to the landlords: the rational for this edict was to encourage landlords to diminish the level of luxury of their old life style and understand the necessity of equality in form and eventually to save for the hard times to come and participate in the investment of small industrial projects.
The tandem of Yasmine and Noura
Noura was the best friend of Yasmine, not on her own volition but because Yasmine insisted that this is fact and wished it so. The combination of Yasmine and Noura was too present and insidious in Antoun’s ears so that many resolutions previously taken without input from the female subjects were modified and amended to secure the rights and benefits of women. One important tax, although negligible to the total fund collected but that would relieve the pressures off Antoun’s chest, was levied on the dowries of married couples within rich families. This duo reminded Antoun of the old feudal system which forbade him to marry Zena, the girl that he thought he was in love with in his youth. This dowry tax encouraged families to marry from lesser endowed families and contributed gradually to the elimination of the concept of dowry as a prerequisite to marriages. In fact, many couples from outside the region took advantage of this climate of tolerance to marry in the Metn Emirate.
The clergy were adamantly warned not to interfere with the decision of the couples to get married: No specific guidelines were yet promulgated on the range of interferences but, since everyone knew about Antoun’s sensitivity about marriage obstacles, the clergy opted to err on the side of tolerance than face his wrath. The duty of the marrying clergy was to submit the marriage certificate to the mayor of the town who was to send a monthly list of the marriage certificates to the central ministry of the interior.
Article #28, December7, 2005
“How do you perceive the inspection job to mean?”
Inspection in engineering has a narrow meaning that connotes quality control of physical products.
It might be viewed as a statistical process in production to keep physical errors in the manufactured products within acceptable ranges with subsequent determination of an inspector or production manager of whether the production mechanism satisfies certain quality control specifications.
It might be understood as a method for inspecting individual items whether the task is paced as in conveyor belts or the pacing is under control of the inspector and his own rate of work.
The concept of inspection might also be studied from a Human Factors organizational perspective of the personal qualities of inspectors and the work pressures from individual workers or groups trying to influence his decision for refusing batches of products.
In this perspective, inspection is implicitly of people; inspection decisions about a man’s work directly reflected upon him and thus the resentment associated with the age, skills, gender and professional behavior of the inspector.
Inspectors are expected not to be impaired in their eyesight, auditory and tactual judgments and be highly trained and knowledgeable about quality standards.
An inspector must have opinions about the working conditions, how workers are paid when defects are found, method of payment of the inspector and number of break time, general environment in quality of lighting, noise and temperature, organizational factors of isolation, interruptions, monotony and decision pressures from foremen and supervisors, calibration at interval of inspectors’ norms or their expectations in rate of defects, pre-conceived ideas of accuracy resulting from deterioration in physical or mental abilities and lack of agreement on quality.
Is inspection the task of a single person for a phase in the production process or should it be an organization within the administration having responsibility for the total control of quality starting from the design concept for the foreseeable errors, risks and safety, usage of the product not intended for, raw materials, subcontracted parts, manufacturing, packaging, recall, marketing deficiencies and customers’ complaints because quality is finally in the customer eyes and mind?
Should an inspector be part of the team in the production process or independent associated with a specific inspection organization?
Some companies do not take inspection seriously and most of the times assign this task to employees about to retire who in turn perceive their new assignment as a downgrading in their responsibilities.
Some companies are ready to sacrifice quality in order to maintain a steady flow in the conveyer belt; for example it is well known that cars produced on Mondays and Fridays are fraught with systematic defects because on these days novices replace the high rate of absentee trained employees. The fact is since weekly checks are paid on Thursdays it encourage trained workers to extend their vacation from Friday to Tuesday. Failing to show up on Friday and Monday the work force is altered which condition the administration learn to cope with as best it can. In this case, companies allocate expense funds to repairing returned products through warranties.
Inspection is one of the most arduous jobs that requires communication, organizational and professional skills and must be valued as essential in the control of total quality image of a firm.
Article #30, December 27, 2005
“How objective and scientific are experiments?”
If we narrow this article to the statistical analysis of experiments and without going into details suffice us to mention a few controversies. First, let us do a chronology of the various paradigms in statistics and statistical algorithms. From a European perspective Pascal is believed to begin the probability theory in1654.
LaPlace and Legendre contributed to the Least-Squares algorithm for how to fit a model to data (1750-1810)
Gauss developed the geometry and algebra of the multivariate normal distribution (1800’s)
Galton studied regression between two variables (1885) and Pearson the correlation coefficient in 1895.
Fisher, Snedecor and Sheffe concurrently worked on experimental design and analysis of variance algorithm (ANOVA) to statistically test the population distribution under the assumptions of normality in the 1920’s.
The data analyses of non distribution base samples to fit models to data showing structural features were developed by Thurstone in Factor analysis, by Young and Householder (1935) in Multidimensional scaling and Cluster analysis algorithms.
Joreskog, K. G developed in 1973 the algorithm of a general method for estimating a linear structural relational equation labeled LISREL that analyses the relationships among latent variables linked to operationalized indicators. This general method considers as special cases path analysis recursive or non recursive as well as Factors analysis.
John Tukey and Mosteller concentrated on studying exploratory data analysis to fit mathematical and geometric models to data showing both structural and residual, and thus complementing confirmatory or inferential analyses.
There are divergent paradigms in the following concepts: first, the suitability of data measurements according to measurement theory versus the distribution properties of the variable of interest (S. S. Stevens versus I. R. Savage in the 60’s); second, the need to investigate real world data prior to applying any statistical package (data snooping) so that if you perform serious detective work on the data and torture it long enough it will confess and open many ways to understand its underlying behavior (John Tukey); thus increased emphasis on graphs of individual data points and plotting to investigate the preliminary screening so as to ensure that the summary statistics selected are truly relevant to the data at hand.
Third, the application of the Bayesian approach from the consumer or decision maker viewpoint which provide the final probability against evidence instead of the investigator standard acceptance of a p-value to rejecting a hypothesis (read the “Illusion of Objectivity” by James Berger and Donald Berry, 1988).
Fourth, the selection of an investigator for a statistical package that he is familiar with instead of the appropriate statistics for the research in question; The acceptance of untenable assumptions on population distributions and computing unrealistic parameters simply because the investigator is not trained to understanding or interpreting alternative statistical methods of nonparametric or distribution freer population methods.
Fifth, there are examples of investigators adopting explanatory statistical packages to torture data into divulging confusing causative variables while, in fact, the science is already well established in the domain to specifically determine exhaustively the causative factors simply because the investigator is not versed in mathematics or physics (“Tom Swift and his electric factor analysis machine by J. Scott Armstrong, 1967).
Sixth, there is a need to the “mathematization of behavioral sciences” (Skelum, 1969) which involves the development of mathematically stated theories leading to quantitative predictions of behavior and to derivation from the axioms of the theory of a multitude of empirically testable predictions. Thus, instead of testing verbal model as to the null hypothesis, an adequate mathematical model account for both variability and regularity in behavior and the appropriate statistical model is implied by the axioms of the model itself. Another advantage is that attention is turned to measuring goodness of fit, range of phenomena handled by the model and ability to generating counterintuitive predictions.
This discussion is an attempt to emphasize the concept of experimentation as a structured theory and that the current easy and cheap computational potentials should be subservient to the theory so that data are transformed to answer definite and clear questions. The Human Factors practitioner, whom should be multidisciplinary in order to master the human and physical sciences, is hard hit by the need of performing complex scientific experiments involving human subjects and yet required to yield practical recommendations for the applied engineering fields.
No wonder Human Factors professional are confused in their purposes and ill appreciated by the other discipline unless a hybrid kind of scientists are generated from a structural combination of engineering discipline and modern experimental methods and statistical algorithms. However, Human Factors engineers who have an undergraduate engineering discipline and a higher degree in experimental research and statistical analyses training can be better positioned to handle research involving mathematical modeling of theories in sciences.
The fixed mindedness in adolescents reminds us of the mind fix of old people with the assumption that the mind has the potential flexibility to grow while young.
You may look young masking and old mind or look older and exhibiting a younger mind; it is your choice how much time and energy you are willing to invest for acquiring knowledge.
Adonis Diaries 