BMW and the loss of imagination

What happened to the well designed and sporty looking cars of BMW? Look at the 7 series and the 6 series and you can see what I’m talking about. I wrote before about the problems GM is having with their tasteless cars and now it seems that BMW is going through the same spill. Just have another look at the 7 series design that really shows, in the opinion of most experts and cars enthusiasts and not only me, the lack of coordination and taste. The back of the 7 series is so unimaginative that one wonders if the person who designed it is an engineer, an artist or just someone BMW brought from the streets of Munich and gave him or her a brush and paper and asked them to design their flagship car. Even after couple of years from realizing the mistake, and making changes to the posterior of the 7 series, the car still looks bad even worse. Now it looks like the Toyota Avalon. Before it was unique and ugly, now it's just very ordinary but less ugly. Take another look at the re born 6 series and its posterior reminds you of Chrysler cirrus 2000? The front of the 6 series is no better, it looks like the Z4! The only thing that BMW did not really experiment with was the 3 series, their bread and butter. The 5 series passed, in my opinion, and did not have the same craziness that the 7 and 6 had.

We are a regular country

Well, looking back now, starting from the beginning of the nineties, we have come to realize that we are a regular country, vulnerable to world events and a target to terrorists and later on to natural disasters, New Orleans 2005 and that we are not or were not ready to confront these issues because in most part we were not confronted with them in the past. In the early nineties we were struck by the first terrorist attack against one of our most important financial symbols and success, The Twin Towers, in New York. Most of us thought that this was an isolated attack due to our increased role and involvement in The Mid East policies or as a result that we have become the only super power after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Most of us did not realize that this attack was just a rehearsal to the worst that yet to come. Then, we did not focus on the home land security, we did not coordinate quick and effective response among the federal, state and local authorities, we were just islands within the big Unites States. We thought that because of the geography and history we were immune from attacks. We were and still are the strongest on earth, but mostly out side our boundaries. We did not look much inward. Then, came 9/11 with all it's disasters and we woke up to a new reality which is that we are a regular country, we can get attacked by terrorists, we can be vulnerable and we realized that we have joined the rest of world in this field. We still did not look much inward and we went, rightly so by the way, to both Afghanistan and Iraq and took care of the deranged political systems in both countries. We created a Home Land Security department and we realigned all the security organizations to make sure that we are ready in case another attack happens. But still, in my humble opinion, still did not really have a close look at our vulnerabilities inward until the New Orleans Natural Attack. We woke up and asked our selves what if what happened was not a natural cause but a terrorist attack... We looked and found out that we still live in islands when it comes to security, and evacuation. We just acted a little late and we were not prepared. We also found out that a large segment of our population lives like many areas in what we like to call Third World Countries, that they do not have hope or voice and that they are the forgotten people. We need to look more inward, empower FEMA, restore the cabinet level position to its director and align federal, state and local authorities to be ready to prepare, and secure us against all disasters. We knew in the nineties, at certain intelligence level, and not the most of us, that we are vulnerable but we did not act. We knew in New Orleans even more, we knew for sure 100% that a natural disaster was in its way and we did not act. We must act, and we must protect the home front inward as we try to protect the home front outward.

New Orleans 2005 and the Fall of the Mask

The devastation that happened and still happening in New Orleans, as we write now, shows the fall of the mask from all of us. The mask of racial tranquility and harmony. The facts on the ground are ugly and conscience's awakening. There are still hundreds of thousands of American who still live in a third world country circumstances that live within the greatest and the richest country on earth. People who for whatever reason, mainly the color of their skin, live on the far end of society, they are the forgotten people that we only hear of when disasters strike. We heard of them during the California and other states riots, and now we know that they exist because nature exposed them. We knew that devastation is in its way and we did not do much, at least something that we can talk about. We know the Gulf of Mexico, we know the Mississippi and we still could not build enough dams or enough gates, barriers, levees, I will leave the technical terms to engineers, to protect our people against natural disasters. We knew that there are tens of thousands of people who can not evacuate themselves, we knew everything but we just did not move. We did not have a strong proactive leadership, on all levels that would predict, plan and execute a methodical emergency plan. The pictures talk volumes of the rust that penetrates our body. Obviously most of those that could not move were in the minority and obviously those who counted them out or did not count them at all were our officials, local and federal. I was glancing at the international papers, Arabic and else and the whole world was at shock not at the disaster but at our “impotence” as the greatest country on earth to deal with it, prepare for it, minimize the damage and manage the destruction. But, still, amidst all this, America has a unique trend that it tries to be better, it tries to improve and correct. America with all it's institutions including it's free press does at least shed the light on the deficiencies of our society. It's always a great first step.