To the Grand Infidel.... Now that, Mate, is fun. First allow me to outline my individual Modus Operandi

Submitted by Michel C. Zala (Switzerland), Dec 21, 2010 at 11:07

I read your post, finding myself nodding quite often. Greetings to down under indeed (the Boeing AU HQ is in Bribane... absolutely love it there.. might you tell me, where you are based?)

To your post. First of all, tx for disproving my point, made in another post, how rarely civility is still alive ( a classic doctrine of fairness and politeness in the anglo-saxon world, which sadly nowadays is no longer the norm in neither England nor America - something I consider as one of the attributes of western values under siege from literally both fringes of any (political) debate..

While you are one of the possibly harshest critics here in all terms Islam, you let your facts and arguments speak, instead of your emotions. And you thus penetrate and achieve the goal of being persuasive and convincing. Feeling not personally attacked, I am engaged and intrigued to respond. In some ways, you make my point, as debating in this manner might even propel a muslim to discuss with you and thus might enable you to understand his perspective, if not outright empathize.

I personally consider any healthy debate as an effort (negotiation, sales pitch, or, in a political debate, to promote some form of action in response to a (perceived) danger to oneself or one's nation or culture environment) thus hopefully achieving a measurable objective.

To talk just for the sake of talking, either to get some form of personal satisfaction from hearing or seeing yourself speak, or from letting off steam or tearing someone else down and thus feel better yourself, is in my book a waste of time. In this manner one will not achieve anything of note (other than some individual self-satisfaction), as on the one hand, only the people who need no convincing, as they already share your (extreme) views, will applaude you, and on the other, the people you slander, patronize or attack, will either respond in kind or be driven off. It's a bloody waste of time.

In business, it does not lead to any positive outcome to dig in and keep on harping on the deficiencies of the other position. The success of the business deal depends on one's ability to appreciate the frame parameters of the client, derive his/her needs and then formulate a benefit oriented busness proposition in response to those needs. After all, I want my client to appreciate and buy into, what I have to offer (goods or ideas) and then act in a specific way accordingly.

Especially, when negiotiating with members of an utterly different culture or business environment (language, habits, decorum, ettiquette, even body language) I found it enormously helpful to do what we in business call "due diligence" (an effort geared to understanding my client in all aspects mentioned above) prior to any engagement. The classic notion of hard vs soft sales has in the last decade further evolved to literally moving over to the "client's" position and from there help him to make a buying decision.

This is, where I am coming from. I had clear objectives, when I posted on this forum.

With regard to Iran I intended to help raising alertness, as I believe, that this regime may well create by sheer irrationality and the logic of crisis mechanism the incendiary device for WWIII or at least the next global crash, if it remains unchecked. This is not some form of a far distant future Mad Max scenario, but may actually happen very soon. (see my piece " why we can not allow Iran to get a Nuke")

In the case of Turkey, a country I have indeed come to love a great deal, my objective was to offer some arguments as to why Turkey is not (yet) a lost case and thus maybe engage some Turks, helping to further the notion. I wanted to find out, if I was too naive, subjective, or if my own findings were confirmed. Believing that the Turks as a people at least do not deserve to be bundled in with the radicals of the likes of Iran et al, I wanted to "negotiate" here in this forum a more differentiated approach and help prevent them from further being driven towards the fundamentalist block. ( All this on a very insignificant scale of course.)

Hoping that you understand my approach and intentions now a bit better, I will respond to your post specifically in another piece.

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