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R.I.P. Occupy Wall Street – What You Didn’t Learn From The Vietnam War.Last week my family got a wonderful and unexpected surprise when my sister-in-law and her one-year old son flew in from Houston to see us. The fact that they were both sitting there in the living room was on some level a miracle, because 37 years ago, when she wasn’t even as old as her son is now, she was almost left for dead and thrown into the Pacific Ocean.But more on that in a minute.The recent news that some of the Occupy Wall Street groups may have to declare bankruptcy comes as no surprise to those of us who have been skeptical of their legitimacy from inception. They have always been a “broken clock” movement, meaning that though their issue may be valid, (if the issue is reforming Wall Street), almost everything else about them is wrong.The depth of retardation in this movement is illustrated by the fact that in these media driven times, with all the coverage they got, and the international platform they occupied for months on end, their lasting legacy will be that of leftover jars of urine and adding to the red ink of already cash strapped municipalities who have to pay for their damages.Out here in California, the damage and clean-up costs to the City of Oakland are pegged at $5 million, while Occupy Los Angeles added $2.3 million to a city budget that already has a $70 million deficit. And after all is said done, what did this merry band of misfits accomplish?Occupy Los Angeles campsite. I am sure they will all be back to clean up any minute.I mean their quixotic quest couldn’t even garner the support of the most liberal of our elected politicians, California’s senior Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein. She had this to say about Occupy Wall Street; “There are all kinds of different agendas going on so it is hard to figure out what people want.” “….I don’t think people, for example, can sleep in a square for weeks on end. You have to have some order to it.”Really? You think?Every week I talk to people of who have great ideas. Earth shattering ideas. Innovative and world-changing ideas. And they think that this is all you need in order to make things happen.Well to be fair, that’s not all they think they need. They think that they need to repeat their ideas to everyone they meet ad nauseum. When nothing happens, they then think they need to yell their ideas, because louder is better. And when that fails to get them the result they feel they deserve, they then become angry that “people are too stupid” to get their idea.Oh, these people have ideas for days, but what they don’t have is any plan on how to execute their ideas. They don’t understand that a good idea with great execution is better than a great idea with no execution.The other thing that made OWS even more annoying was their oft referenced kinship to the protests of the Vietnam War. That reference shows that not only did they have no understanding of history, (as the end of the war in Vietnam was incidental to the protests, not because of them), but they learned the wrong things from them.Simplistic, ineffective, basal things like; Let’s be loud and obnoxious. Let’s take over something like it’s our right. Let’s say inflammatory and hyperbolic statements about America. Let’s burn more bridges than we build. Let’s say that everybody that disagrees with us is racist, prejudiced, stupid, evil, greedy, ignorant, or a tool of Big Business. Let’s look to the government to solve our issues.No matter how “right” your issue may be, none of this constitutes a plan.A more nuanced, intelligent, thinking, and productive lesson could have been learned not from the protesters of the Vietnam War, but the survivors of it.April 30th, 1975, three hours after the city of Saigon fell, my in-laws and their five children boarded an aging freighter, with only what they could carry, and headed out to sea, destination unknown.Just taking my two kids to Target for an hour drives me crazy, so the idea of taking five children, the oldest of which was six, on a ship with no supplies, little food or water, and jammed with refugees just boggles my mind.After a few day at sea, the engines failed. With all the food and water gone and the sun beating down on the people crowded on deck, the ship began to aimlessly drift. Two days later the old and the young began to die. As there was no refrigeration nor space to hold the dead, the bodies had to be thrown over the side in order to avoid decomposition and disease.In the only time I have ever heard my mother-in-law mention this, she describes looking down at her daughter (my future sister-in-law), wrapped in a tattered blanket, and seeing her “begin to wilt like a flower.” As horrific as it sounds, she was then faced with the reality that within a short amount of time, her infant child would die in her arms, and she would have to cast her into the sea.And then a miracle happened….Their ship was spotted by a cruiser, which gave them food and water, and was able to tow them to a port in Hong Kong.Many refugees from the Vietnam War had similar experiences, some better, some much worse, but once they reached the shores of the US, the vast majority of them began to execute a plan, of which the following were major components;1. Organize for strength - When the first wave of Vietnamese kids hit the public schools, they were looked upon as “different” and “odd.” That is a bad combination as a kid, and occasionally some bully type would decide he was going to push one of them around. But as soon as he did, ten of these “refugee kids,” most of whom didn’t even know each other, would swarm the bully and beat him back.Suffice to say, very quickly everybody learned that you could not bully the new kids.A bunch of wacky, loud mouthed individuals giving lip service to the same cause may make for good soundbites, as the Occupy Protestors found, but without a unified and organized focus, it doesn’t accomplish much.2. Don’t waste your time with anger – But as quickly as they jumped in to each others defense, if that bully provocateur apologized and sincerely extended his hand in friendship, those same “new kids” would gladly and warmly engage with him. Carrying a chip on their shoulder and stoking their own anger was of no use to them.The overwhelming vibe the Occupy Wall Street protesters gave off was one of “anger and rage.” Even if their macro anger was valid, the micro expression of it didn’t ring true and served only to alienate the movement from those they needed to convert to the cause in order to be effective.3. Don’t depend on the government to help you - Not only were there no Vietnamese American politicians to help new refugees, there wasn’t even a Vietnamese American Congressman until 2009 (and he only lasted three years). But they didn’t have time to waste trying to get the government to help, and instead they helped themselves.No banks would lend to them, so they formed their own community banks. Housing was prohibitively expensive, so they put two or three families in a house until they could afford to get their own places. If the supermarkets and shops didn’t carry the food and items they wanted, they formed their own businesses and imported them themselves.They instinctively knew that the government was often corrupt and self-serving and didn’t complain about it, they just worked around it.4. Achieve incremental progress towards the larger goal – “What do we want? Change! When do we want it? Now! And if it doesn’t happen right away? We’ll piss and moan, lose focus, and go back to watching Jersey Shore.”The Vietnamese refugees got up early every morning, put in 12 hour days, and went home to bed early. They did this six days a week and slowly but steadily bettered their and their families lives. In less than one generation, they transformed a sleepy town with orange groves into one of the most dynamic communities in the country. Even during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis, it was rare to see a “for lease” sign in the Little Saigon section of Southern California.And that first generation that came from a mostly agrarian society, has put a higher percentage of its children through college than any other ethnic group in America. The ranks of doctors, lawyers, and engineers are swollen with Vietnamese American who are living a standard of life their parents would never have dreamed of as children.Unlike the Occupy protesters, they understood that any serious societal change doesn’t happen in between commercials, but over an extended period of time, and that you have to execute consistently over that time in order to reach your goal.5. Practice gratitude towards America – If there was ever a group who have the right to be resentful of America and thought it “owed” them something, it was the Vietnamese refugees. After inserting ourselves into their civil war, and promising to back them, we unceremoniously yanked the rug out from under them, scattering those who could escape across the globe, and dooming those left behind to an even worse fate.But along with Cuban exiles, there may not be a more patriotic and pro-American group. They don’t call their friends on their smart phones, while wirelessly surfing the web on their Ipads, inside a protected protest area, and then list their grievances with the USA. Instead they are grateful for everything this country has to offer them, and they appreciate it because they understand what it means to live under a truly “evil” rule.If the Occupy crowd had gone with a “Let’s fix it cause America is great,” opposed to a “Let’s fix it cause America sucks” attitude, they probably would have garnered more support.Oakland occupiers demonstrating they don’t know what “public perception” means.The most fascinating thing to me about the post-mortem on the Occupy saga is in contrasting them to their arch rival, the Tea Party.Whether you believe in the Tea Party or not, (I mostly don’t), I find it laughable how the Occupy side and their supporters ridicule them at every turn. The last time I looked, the Tea Party has been eating Occupy Wall Street’s lunch. The have been executing on a plan that involves aspects of organizing, not depending on the government, and practicing gratitude toward America.They have been putting politicians in office and have had arguably four candidates in the GOP field. They don’t care if their opponents think their slate is “crazy” or whatever other demeaning term is used. Instead they will just keep plugging along, executing their plan, until one day their opponents wake up to find their “crazy” candidates are running the country.Meanwhile out of all those months of protests, the Occupiers could not produce any sort of effective governing body or even a single charismatic and articulate national spokesperson to drive the cause. Instead they produced a corpse of a movement that died with a smug and pointless grim on it’s face.
Necesitamos una reflexión sobre el conjunto, para ir avanzando en la tarea de alcanzar una comprensión de la situación lo más exacta posible, que aún no tenemos, y fijar sobre ella una estrategia y unos planes de actuación realistas Se ha de comprender que el largo, y también destructivo e incluso terrible, periodo de bienestar y prosperidad que se ha dado en Occidente en los últimos decenios, se ha terminado. La crisis económica actual es mucho más que una disfunción coyuntural de la vida económica, al estar originada por numerosas causas, varias de ellas determinantes. No habrá vuelta al trastornado consumo de hace años, ni al deshumanizador asistencialismo estatal a colosal escala. 2008 marca un antes y un después. Nos estamos adentrando en una época de crisis sistémica, de desarticulación social creciente, de interrogantes cada día más acuciantes sobre el futuro, de anuncios de catástrofe también en los medios más moderados. Se está comenzando a hablar, con referencias a lo que está hoy sucediendo, de la crisis del siglo XIV también, ese misterioso acontecimiento histórico que mató entre un tercio y la mitad de la población europea en poco más de medio siglo…Occidente declina ante las potencias ascendentes, China en primer lugar, ya casi no puede hacerles frente en el terreno económico, pronto tampoco en el tecnológico.Una solución está en un nuevo reparto del mundo por procedimientos militares, en una guerra planetaria más, que sería la cuarta en un siglo. La militarización asciende, no sólo de EEUU sino de China, Irán, Japón, India, Brasil, Rusia, Arabia Saudí, Australia… La UE pretende seguir en su limbo particular, dedicada a gozar, cada día más decadente y corrompida, pero ya no es posible. Despreciada por las nuevas potencias ansiosas de botín, que desean quedarse con los despojos, no podrá seguir mucho tiempo como está. Las grandes guerras se empiezan a planificar y a preparar bastante antes de ser declaradas.Ahora estamos en esa fase. Una nueva carrera de armamentos, como no se conocía desde hace decenios, ha sacudido el planeta, sobre todo el área del Pacífico en 2011, y es posible que 2012 sea aún peor. La base es el enfrentamiento económico EEUU-China. Se buscan, e incluso construyen, nuevos aliados, promoviendo hasta “revoluciones” de pega.En realidad, se lleva bastante preparando el nuevo escenario, por ejemplo, con la incorporación desde 1989 de las mujeres al ejército español, en el que están alcanzando empleos cada día más importantes. Eso va a permitir, en caso de movilización general aportar quizá hasta 800.000 reclutas femeninas al ejército, entre 18 y 50 años, lo que es decisivo dado lo escuálido de la demografía peninsular y europea …
Cita de: TEOTWAIKI en Marzo 03, 2012, 20:17:27 pmMEDIO AMBIENTE:Greenpeace, además de como socio y como voluntario, se puede ayudar aportando unos minutos de nuestro tiempo en:http://www.greenpeace.org/espana/es/Que-puedes-hacer-tu/Ser-ciberactivista/Ser ciberactivista con Greenpeace es movilizarse activamente en la defensa del medio ambiente desde tu ordenador. Con la participación de miles de ciberactivistas hemos conseguido paliar algunas de las agresiones más graves contra el medio ambiente, sensibilizar sobre los ecosistemas más vulnerables o promover leyes para la necesaria protección de nuestro entorno.-Teotwaki, gracias por esta iniciativa.-Solo comentar que no es oro todo lo que reluce. Tened cuidado con ciertos organismos porque pueden decepcionar y mucho.-Por ejemplo, Greenpeace. Están infiltrados hasta la médula. Les dejan funcionar hasta cierto punto, luego los desactivan. -Se calcula que hasta un 80% de ONG's están "tocadas" con este asunto.-Se precisa una limpieza a fondo en este tema. -Un porcentaje bastante alto de presupuesto se usa para desactivar "movimientos sociales" por parte de agencias de información y de inteligencia.Saludos
MEDIO AMBIENTE:Greenpeace, además de como socio y como voluntario, se puede ayudar aportando unos minutos de nuestro tiempo en:http://www.greenpeace.org/espana/es/Que-puedes-hacer-tu/Ser-ciberactivista/Ser ciberactivista con Greenpeace es movilizarse activamente en la defensa del medio ambiente desde tu ordenador. Con la participación de miles de ciberactivistas hemos conseguido paliar algunas de las agresiones más graves contra el medio ambiente, sensibilizar sobre los ecosistemas más vulnerables o promover leyes para la necesaria protección de nuestro entorno.
En mi modesta opinión, uno de los elementos en cuyo fortalecimeinto deberíamos invertir gran parte de nuestros esfuerzos como individuos, ha de ser la instauración, como verdadero soporte del nuevo modelo económico-social en el que vamos a tener que desarrollar gran parte de lo que nos quede de vida, de una verdadera MERITOCRACIA, que disponga de medios eficientes para colocar en los puestos de mayor responsabilidad a los más capaces de entre nosotros.Hemos de repensar el sistema adecuado para lograrlo, para garantizar que no es desvirtuada esa "asignación óptima de recursos (humanos)" al puesto en el que pueden desarrollar una mayor productividad y ser más eficaces, algo imprescindible para gestionar correctamente la "escasez" que nos viene.Saludos y enhorabuena por la iniciativa.
Estoy seguro que en la evolución del ser humano llegará el dia en el que los sicópatas serán detectados desde los primeros años de su vida y tutelados y controlados durante su trayectoría vital. Se que suena distópico, pero no nos queda otra.
En serio, después de probar todos los ismos y cracias posibles, nos encontramos con que todos los sistemas siempre acaban en desastre. Venimos programados por la naturaleza para que haya un porcentaje de sicópatas, otro de observadores que se ponen de perfil o sacan partido sin hacer sangre, y otro de borregos que siempre acaban estafados, timados o masacrados.