This is the sort of dream that I have at night about American and Israeli diplomats, that they start acting like the British youths who strayed into Iranian waters:

“I know many military people are concerned about the overly loquacious and positive statements made by the service personnel,” he said in an e-mail message.

The images were jarring, verging on the bizarre. At one point they lined up for handshakes and chats with the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The latest television footage showed the detainees sipping cups of tea, accepting goody bags of gifts and answering questions from Iranian journalists about things like whether Iran reminded them of Wales. Several appeared to go out of their way to thank the Iranians for releasing them.

But then "adults" entered into the picture and ruined the picnic:

“But as yet we don’t know what kinds of coercion were present before the ‘hostages’ made their TV statements.”

If I were Bush, I'd get those 15 folks over to Palestain to sip tea with Olmert and Abbas and, once and for, bring peace to the middle east based simply on the lovely assumptions of children.

With those lads in charge, we wouldn't be faced with Guitanimo or Abu Grave and, by the way, did the NY Times call these events bizarre?

source: Questions Arise About Britons’ Actions in Iran"

A former worker at Wal-Mart is claiming the company is running a sophisticated surveillance operation that targets employees, journalists, stockholders and critics of the company. The claims were made by Bruce Gabbard who was fired last month for intercepting and recording phone calls to and from a New York Times reporter. Gabbard told the Wall Street Journal he was part of a broader surveillance operation run out of Wal-Mart's Arkansas headquarters. Gabbard also revealed that Wal-Mart infiltrated the group Up Against the Wal last year by sending a long-haired employee wearing a wireless microphone to one of the group's meetings. A Wal-Mart surveillance van was stationed outside the meeting in order to listen in to what was happening. Wal-Mart also reportedly closely monitored the internet and phone usage of employees at work. Managers received a list of email addresses and phone numbers with which their employees have communicated, and a list of Web sites visited. Wal-Mart also developed a system to read the personal emails of workers sent or received from private accounts such as Hotmail or Gmail.

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When I was working at IBM, I hated the place almost instantly; they now have a new compensation plan which looks even more hostile than the old one and, to me, doesn't create a calm, peaceful, productive atmosphere...

What do you think about this new plan? Sign of our times or time for anxiety breakdown?

From the "Alliance IBM" website:

During this time, employee compensation has become IBM's single biggest investment -- one that must track closely with IBM's revenue and profit growth.

Our compensation investment must also be delivered in a way that explicitly shows our commitment to pay competitively and to reward our top performers for their contribution to IBM's success.

To help make sure this happens, IBM will make some important changes to employee pay programs.

IBM will specifically target a portion of our salary investment toward new Market-Based Adjustments (MBAs) designed to ensure that employees are paid competitively. [stuff deleted] The same job families will not qualify for MBAs every year...

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