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Lessons I learned from the end of a stick

Ember

Senior Member
Messages
2,115
By Erica Verillo
01/04/2014


Excerpt:
I look upon the IOM contract, and indeed upon most of what the federal government has said and done to us over the last 30 years, as a battle. Some of us believe that by cooperating, by playing by the rules they have set down for us, by showing them that we can go limp, they will give us what we want.

This will never happen, simply because people without power never get what they want by going limp. Especially not during a battle. The way people with no power, no money, and no authority get what they want is by refusing to negotiate, by refusing to shut up, and by creating disruption of "business as usual" through the application of constant pressure.

There are a million people with "CFS" in the U.S. More than 17 million with ME worldwide. Our resolution for the New Year should be to make sure that the people who put Karina Hansen in a psych ward hear us. That those who deny us medical care hear us. That those who bully and threaten our advocates hear us. That those who strip us of our rights while telling us they "feel our pain" hear us. That those who steal our funds, and blacklist our doctors, who turn a deaf ear to our pleadings as they have done for three decades, and who belittle, dismiss and ignore us - hear us.

There is power in numbers. And a million is a big number.

We will remember 2013 for all we tried to accomplish. Let's make them remember 2014 for all we did accomplish.
 

taniaaust1

Senior Member
Messages
13,054
Location
Sth Australia
What a great letter Erica has done.

thanks Ember for posting it.

I think we must be starting to make the other side want to run scared as I think for the very first time, we are showing that many of us wont be backing down. We still have a long battle ahead thou. You just can not keep fooling a community and keep getting away with it.
 

SilverbladeTE

Senior Member
Messages
3,043
Location
Somewhere near Glasgow, Scotland
hard lesson I learned in life:
kick bullies in the balls and keep kicking until they give in
SAME THING
They don't care, they are sociopaths by intrinsic nature, or by choice (see way Humans in groups degenerate to lowest common denominator etc), so you cannot appeal to their better nature because they don't bloody have one!

Hence Nixon was quite right in saying
"When you've got 'em by the balls their hearts and minds will surely follow" ;)

Shaming them by PR campaigns exposing their inhumanity and crimes
Hire investigators to rake up dirt on them
Get PERSONAL, that doesn't mean attacking folk, just exposing individuals in these committees etc so they can't hide in the "herd"
etc
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
This is a comment I made on Facebook to this article:

Actually, I think Clausewitz said war is politics by other means, and politics is war by other means. I view politics as war by other means. It doesn't matter how many battles we lose, the goal is winning the war, and with each loss we learn.

We have no real choice to give up, as this is our very existence at stake. Giving up is suicide, though individuals often have to stop ... we are sometimes too sick as individuals to keep on doing advocacy.

However having been forced out of advocacy several times due to declining health, here I am back again.
 

SilverbladeTE

Senior Member
Messages
3,043
Location
Somewhere near Glasgow, Scotland
And you can take Clausewitz, definitely "the Prince" and arguably "The Art of War" as lessons in why war/aggression/abuse are BAD, as amongst other things, they end up costing you much much more than amicable, mutually beneficial relationships

"There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare"

"Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy's will to be imposed on him"

still true 3000 years later
 

leela

Senior Member
Messages
3,290
This might seem off-topic, but to me it exemplifies the corruption, abject greed, cronyism, deception, and,
if you watch the video segment, the total delusion that obfuscates peoples' internal guidance systems when they are operating
out of sync with reality.

It's an article from long ago about how Donald Trump tried to bully an old woman's house away from her
by using his ties with local government.

Listening to him speak reminded me of some of the tripe we hear; so obvious to the listener that the words are just garbled
strings of lies and trickery, and yet the speaker seems so certain that just by speaking them they magically become truth.

http://www.ij.org/casino-reinvestment-development-authority-v-coking
 

Izola

Senior Member
Messages
495
hard lesson I learned in life:
kick bullies in the balls and keep kicking until they give in
SAME THING
They don't care, they are sociopaths by intrinsic nature, or by choice (see way Humans in groups degenerate to lowest common denominator etc), so you cannot appeal to their better nature because they don't bloody have one!

Hence Nixon was quite right in saying
"When you've got 'em by the balls their hearts and minds will surely follow" ;)

Shaming them by PR campaigns exposing their inhumanity and crimes
Hire investigators to rake up dirt on them
Get PERSONAL, that doesn't mean attacking folk, just exposing individuals in these committees etc so they can't hide in the "herd"
etc





Just keep them hopping--but not on us ever again. Who said it? NO MAS!
 
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