Tag: Bill Clinton

War’s reluctant start

It’s true a century ago with the assassination of an Austrian baron. It’s true half a century ago with one ( or two) incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin. It’s true this very Labor weekend, even when we all saw photos of little bodies – dead by chemically induced weapon.

Labor Day traditionally meant as a break for the working class (well, somehow it got co-opted by Congressmen and women as well). Sort of poorman’s vacation e.g. kids back to school, mom back to PT work etc…

Who would want to go shoot down somebody. Not a convenient time. Not in everyone’s mind, nor purview.

It might sell some weapons to take down “creative destruction” weaponry. But in this post-Recession era, it is a reluctant call.

There is no rationality to how war started and takes on a life of its own. I have no prejudice against the Syrian people per se.

After all, Steve Jobs, with Syrian DNA, gave us Apple and the I-phone.

It is more convenient if it were the Chinese, whose money we owe, who crossed the red line

War has always been inconvenient. It destroys at many layers and its effects unending (a century ago, it got the US addicted to war as gold treasure ballooned up , hence, war as economic solution – half a century ago, now, the lingering effect of Agent Orange).

So, why bother?

Acts of aggression take place everyday, everywhere.

Some made the news. Many and most don’t.

But I happened to see the photos (just like I did witness the burning monk, the last chopper and Three-Mile-Island up close).

When you are engaged, you are responsible.

This one matters to me.

Some future misuse of chemical weapons will mater to you and your loved ones.

It’s not enough to turn sword into ploughshares.

Or write a letter or a blog.

There are more effective ways to get your point across.

It’s our century’s dilemma: data rich, but determination poor.

We have become of species of special access (broadband for everyone), but not of anger.

We don’t feel. But then, we will regret (for things we did not do).

President Clinton once made a stop in Ireland to seek consultation from a just-dead poet, before facing E European troubles.

This time, Mr Obama might want to seek consultation from Congress-on-vacation (back in ten) and history book.

All Presidents must face crisis and call to war.

It always has a built-in ambivalence and unintended consequences.

Leaders face fear and challenges but go ahead with gut calls.

Or else, we are all managers, tweaking and cooking the books.

Yes. It’s regional and sectarian. It’s even civil war.

But by zooming out, we realize that chemical weapon violation marks a bookend to humanity.

From here on out, either we say No to “chemical addiction” or we end up using it ourselves.

An assassination there, a regional sea brush here. All seemingly regional and reluctant.

But it’s necessary. To stand (not a cowboy stance, in ready gun-draw posture ) and put down our ploughshares to take up the sword.

On Persuasion

Lights, sound, camera, ACTION!

He is back, still with “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” for an entrance and an exit punch line “the Union, as conceived and committed to by the Founding Fathers.”

He systematically laid out the choices, an either-or.

He mentioned the opponent’s alternate universe , where 2+2 might not = 4.

Or…4 more years.

He wanted us to do some gut checks: are we letting them “double down” on ” trickle-down”?

Are we going to rob Peter (handicapped and seniors) to pay Paul (oil rich countries and outsourcing nations)?

Do you feel it? Maybe not yet. The lagging effect (from Fact to Feeling) of a barely resuscitated economy.

Against the Red, White and Blue background, and with proper acknowledgment of key supporting cast (Michelle, Biden and Hillary) while the cut-away shots kept showing Clinton’s First Kid (reminded me of the Kennedy’s clan,  just as Clinton’s goodbye  evoked Carter-like statesmanship) and seamless delivery of a well-crafted value proposition, President Clinton once again established himself  as a premier speech Master, if not, Magician.

He was more in control this time, but still on occasion, showed some emotion (I believe). And no doubt, he does care more for the world (Haiti) then just America, whose leadership in Education has slipped a bit (to no. 60).

I majored in Communication. Specifically, media. And I know a good speech when I see one. This one is for keeps.

Just as Reagan who concluded his reelection speech with a stunning visual “a shinning city on the hill, …” as he recounted a drive on 101 from Santa Barbara to San Francisco. Television tends to favors telegenic charisma (Kennedy over Nixon) and irresistible narrative (A man from Hope).  And we prefer personalities who can tell stories (not just sound bites) that make us feel a lump in our throat.  Last night’s speech at the Democratic Convention delivered a bowl full. Truth that hits home. Music that resonates. And a pitch that gets us on our feet. We need ALL the help, from both voters and viewers. I just know that speech was best in class. We communicate, cooperate and celebrate. Especially in hard times. Now we know who we are by the choice we made of our leaders. Both sides draw a nice picture. But this one spins really good and sounds really good. Talking about persuasion. I still believe in the idea of America, not Exceptionalism, but one as I would expect it to be.

When in doubt, bet on America, exceptional or not.

OPP (other people’s problems)

We live in a world full of acronyms e.g. PPO, OPM (Other People’s Money), SOP, CDO, COD etc..

In big companies, Customer Service reps just get through their day, throwing around acronyms to feel they are on the inside, without thinking about “touchpoints” (problems as opportunities to upsell).

My cable acted up two days ago.  The CS rep on the phone failed to help, so I had to take the box to the local center for an exchange.

The reception area was tiny, the guard imposing and customers, many were old men, holding the box with no place to sit. The rep first wanted me to drop my ticket in a pencil holder (her makeshift trash bin), then proceeded to check my ID. If it weren’t for the sign that says “Comcast” , I would have thought I had been at a DMV (whose seating area was more comfortable. In fact, the DMV in Stuart, FL was excellent at being “civil servant”.  Comcast reps should come over to learn a few things).

Take away: we are born naked and will die rotten. What we have now is all derivative (from our lineage, our society and our global links). Customers will always vote with their feet and they don’t wait until November. No contract could lock anyone in. Companies should periodically audit employees’ “attitude” (Sales should pick up Service skills, and vice versa). Gone are the days of “yesterday we were nice because you were a prospect”.

In its place should be the kind of enchantment Guy Kawasaki was referring in his book.

There is a reason Nordstrom and Four Seasons got their J.D. Power awards even in tough times.

(Recent USA Today poll features a large percentage of consumers cutting the chords with their long-time Hairdressers, Personal Trainers, landscapers etc..).

The trickle down economy.

Even China is growing only at 8% (down from earlier 10%) while the US teetering over the red line. Not all emerging countries are doing well. Thailand got a centennial flood. Like global recession, global warming is not OPP. A UN expert on Natural Disasters opined on the Newshour that it’s 50-50 natural/man-made split, let’s say, in the Mekong River (logging, upstream dam overstretched…) or a Honda plant in Thailand was submerged while Toyota parts couldn’t get to us from Fukushima.

Jasmine rice from Thailand (with Elephant brand) will be in short supply next year.

Tomorrow we will enjoy Bill Clinton’s birthday concert, brought to us by Yahoo.

But we can not just download the good stuff (democratized technology) while ignoring our carbon footprints.

Technology and globalization are the two sides of the same coin.

A manufacturing plant cannot move overseas without dumping toxic waste into someone else’s stream and water supply.

Again, early civic lessons came to mind (a neighbor found a dead rat in his yard. He decided to toss it over the fence to his neighbor. The next day, the whole neighborhood, his house included, smelled dead-rat). Or as in a story about living down-hill from someone else’s farm. The act of helping to water a neighbor’s farm uphill,  ended up with the benefit of having part of the water flow down hill anyway. In doing good, we are also doing well (Henry Ford knew this when he decided on paying high manufacturing wages “so my workers can afford to buy my model T’s – in any color they want, as long as it’s black”. We will all need to relearn the concept of service in today’s hyper competitiveness yet globally connectedness (and not letting the machine-generated “Now, serving number B-52 at window number 3” announcement put us in a trance, or worse off, become machine-like ourselves.) Want another acronym? It’s called living in the age of AI (Artificial Intelligence).

In defense of one’s time

After all, it’s your time, your narrative and your unrealized dreams.

You and I must take ownership of this. And not hesitate to come to its defense.

Whether it’s hard rock or soft rock (Seger finally went digital), hardback or paperback, boom box or boomers, software or soft drinks.

We had no other choice (from my vantage point, we used to laugh at silent movies, showing people  holding up the ear-piece when answering the telephone – Charlie Chaplin style).

Yesterday’s  music has become today’s Muzak (the Beatles in symphony heard in doctor’s waiting room).

Hard Rock is now a Cafe and Casino.

Harley can seat two comfortably.

And the U2 will give a concert on Yahoo celebrating Clinton’s 65th birthday (Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow).

Inaugural Balls from Carter to Clinton  had a spike in between thanks to the show-biz excess during the 80’s ( astrological charts were consulted before there was Windows Calendar).

I graduated when the country swung to the far Right (remember the AID’s scare, so “girls just wanna have fun”)

with nuclear annihilation a real possibility. The trickle-down economy did not trickle down to me. Instead, it drove inflation all the way to this day.

A lot of senseless shootings (JL and Brady). A lot of tele-evangelists got rich quick and went down quick (could have been quicker in the age of Twitter and Wikileaks).

My Dad came over in the mid 80’s, and lived the rest of his life in the NorthEast.

Toward the end, he got tears in his eyes when I suggested that he accompany me on a trip back home. “Too old, too weak,” he said.

No more in defense of his time. Just a slow surrender to institutional inertia (nursing home), gravity and fate.

Somewhere in this decade, we will see  a surge in Baby Boomers‘ revival, not so much in Burning Man’s style, but in giving, cruising or traveling (Clinton vs Clinton).

They all read up on CEO Ray Anderson, champion of sustainability in business, who had just died. They all knew “the good died young”. So they party on

and stop thinking about tomorrow.

Flowers children turned flower (senior) citizens (The Playboy Club, Pan Am).

Every face in the NYT obituary is now recognizable while every face in the presidential debate unrecognizable (even the familiar Lehrer has now retired). Names of  far-away war (Kabul) now replace forgotten ones (Hue). I spent a night in the basement of Henry C Lodge’s house. And that was  a highlight (according to Jackie’s oral archive, Kennedy appointed his Republican opponent to take charge of a conceivably unwinnable war.)

It’s time to tell the story in defense of our time.  Transitioning from performing to directing, the mother of self-reinvention, Madonna, took up her place behind the camera to follow in the footsteps of  Clint Eastwood  and  Jodie Foster).

We will need a host of Oliver Stone, not Oliver North to reframe our narrative.

Story of a lifetime, of our time, of living in a place where there are so much, yet still much to be done (poverty rates on the rise here in the heartland). We can limit the tweet, but then they retweet. Facing engineered scarcity, society ends up wanting more (bandwith) to tweet and shout (even in conflict, the two sides in Kabul now use Twitter the way the red phone once was in the White House).

It’s not 9/12 that we are facing. It’s 2012, the year of fear.

It’s almost like the Mayan scare, that our best time had already been behind us. If anything, it puts pressure on us and forces us to be mindful (that other great civilizations had already succumbed to ruin). They said when you jump, it gets faster as you drop nearer to the ground. We who are older are cast as wise men, whether we like it or not. It’s been a set pattern, hand-me-down from time eternal. Wise because of forced choices ( and of short time that remains).

I wish I had the vantage point of  a supernova, to see our short span here on Earth. Our time in the context of sweeping light years would count for much less (each life would have an equivalence of a mere short tweet).  But, then, each life is ” a wonderful life”, for at one point or another, we have given and received, intersected and influenced others’, blessed and cursed, but always forward. This makes story telling in our time all the more urgent. Yesterday we laughed at silent movies (Chaplin), today, even DVD format seems obsolete (HD?). The audience now demands to see the story in 3-D and to talk on the phone hands-free. Nothing is wrong with Progress, except for its planned obsolescence. Certainly its clock doesn’t seem to be in sync with ours.  As someone aptly puts it ” the more things stay the same, the more they will have to change.”

The genius of LinkedIn

Verifiable profiles.

Matching up people of similar professional stature and standing.

Enlarging the network beyond geographical boundaries.

Crowdsourcing that creates valuable content and demographics.

Most solid Who’s Who list on Earth.

In and of itself, LinkedIn could be the greatest company on the planet, if all members contribute their wisdom and help second degree connection connect. The content from various discussion boards by itself invaluable since these were experience from the trenches.

Personally, due to the volatility nature of my post dot.com telecom career, LinkedIn helps me stay in touch with past colleagues who themselves moved around in or outside of telecom.

LinkedIn is poised to grow into one of the biggest online professional continuing education sites , if it wants to. A gold mine for HR and talent management.

Even in this 8% unemployment environment, it still commands decent IPO. Wait until the next convergence i.e. rise of the rest, then we will see the true value of “first to the field” advantage of LinkedIn.

Remember, when President Clinton was dancing at his inaugural ball (Don’t stop, thinking about tomorrow),

there were only 50 web pages in the world. Now, LinkedIn itself has millions and counting (and each of us tends to our own as if it were our “FarmVille” garden). It’s our personal WikiMEdia, since each of us has a narrative worth telling, a horn worth tooting, a puzzle yet to emerge and a life worth connecting to.

from gook to geek

It’s been a while since The Right Stuff was released. Gabby’s husband (Mark Kelly) was going back on the last Endeavor mission. The President referred to our Sputnik moment , and how we should move Science Fair under the Super (Bowl) dome. All this reminds me of a piece of moon rock on display by USAID in Saigon back in 1969.

At least, it dispelled the myth for me that once you stepped on the Moon, you can’t come back (Vietnamese folklore). In “burning flesh, jasmine smell”, I blogged about the burning monk. I went and saw his charred heart on display as well. Curious George!

Saigon. War time. Oh Suzie Q. President Johnson was quoted as saying “I left the woman I really loved (the Great Society) for that bitch of war on the other side of the world” (Grand Expectations pg. 597-98). Everybody’s attention was diverted.

From Gainsville to Pinkville, from Kent State to Ohio State.

I was forced to stay home a lot because it was unsafe to come back to school (Tet 68).

Mass graves in Hue and mass migration from Central Vietnam ( Nick Ut and his ” naked napalm girl” snap). Ironically, those blood-stained barges which had carried refugees from Central region, conveniently served as chartered “swing low, sweet chariots which carried me …home to the US” .

Had there been a place further South than Phu Quoc Island, we would have migrated there

(as it turned out, there were a bunch of ships down there on the war’s last day. The late Richard Holbrooke had been sent to extract Navy intelligence from those ships, which were eventually allowed to dock at Subic Bay, after having to change their flags per international law).

From Presidents on down, America did not know what to make of Vietnam.

But I know what to make of Moon Rock and classic Rock.

Others might enjoy putting away their pajamas for tuxedos.

But I cherish my first glimpse of the Moon rock, my Sputnik moment. From then on, to me, what’s said in the village stayed in the village (tales of the Moon Festival).

We are called to seize our Sputnik moment. Egyptian demonstrators put up a banner that says “We want, the internet”. Officially, online access is an important part of our human rights now (dictator’s dilemma i.e. cutting off service to a few affects the many). In today’s context, President Johnson might as well be quoted as saying “I left them both – for this? ” – namely both the Great Society and the Lost War to gain the 11th place on the Happiest Country chart. Maybe folklores ain’t far from the truth after all: once you left the mansion for the moon, you could never come back. Not as the same man with the same mentality. No more gook. Just geek. And I found out to my surprise, I am not alone.

http://www.linkedin.com/share?viewLink=&sid=s256463956&url=http%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FvyiAlrC&urlhash=EP3C&uid=5440440817309196288&trk=NUS_UNIU_SHARE-lnk

Maslow and Vietnam

Tocqueville saw in America a country full of contradictions.

He could say the same with Vietnam: people are moving up the Maslow scale, but some want to leap-frog security step i.e. basic needs to self-esteem need.

Nouveau riches switch companions like Hollywood celebs. Forbes or Swiss bank lists almost 200 Millionaires (USD).

Everything is bought in cash. The money machines are counting them non-stop (Zimbabwe-like inflation) .

Dizzying pace.

Traffic weave in and out, as if choreographed by an invisible and illogical conductor;  yet there have been fewer accidents than you might think.

Westerners are seen running a red light like everyone else.  We call that adjustment. When in Rome, do like a Roman.

People here are more aware of health issues than in years past.

My cholesterol result is available in a few hours.  If it’s good, then two eggs please.

I can now move to the next step in the Maslow scale: security.

Love and self-esteem can wait. They have been there since the beginning of time. A man’s glory reflects in the beauty of his woman, and vice versa.

I will leave those to the drama department. For self-actualization, we already got Bill Gates and Bill Clinton.  I have my level to attain to: staying here and surviving here. Traffic during peak hour draws out the best in us, gladiator-like. No wonder young men wear black. It’s their body signal to the world: “don’t mess with me”.

Meanwhile, young Americans are also wearing black, but for an entirely different reason: they are into vampires.  Twilight stuff. A stage of neither living nor dead. Here, it’s very clear to me that people want to get somewhere, preferably up, regardless how many bikes are in their way.

 

Have you ever seen the Rain (bow)

Despite a lot of sunshine, in California, when it rains it pours.

Yet, photographer did not fail to snap a picture of a rainbow

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Calif-Storms/ss/events/us/101409califstorms#photoViewer=/100120/480/448ac9a2ced64a438dd5ecb4c958e984

Payback for all the dry months, the fire, and the smog.

The State got enough on its plate: budget concern, gay marriage repeal, and now this.

Best of wishes to the newly appointed LA City Business Czar, whose job is to create jobs.

We need common sense, courage and commitment to get ourselves over the hurdles.

Collectively, we have let ourselves go unchecked. Now, it’s payback time before we can see Rainbow.

Some contractors even owed $5 Billion in US  back taxes.

That’s a lot of schooling for little ones.

I stand corrected in earlier blog. Former President Clinton was here (Palm Beach) last night at a fund-raising dinner.

So he wasn’t around this morning to experience first hand the Haiti aftershock. Supplies are now slowly but surely delivered to those who needed them most. Mr Clinton even praised Coca Cola for bringing in water bottles.  Good corporate citizenry. I got a Coke and a sandwich when first landed in Subic Bay.

Last month, Warren Buffett even held up a bottle while sitting next to Bill Gates at Columbia Business School. One needs to believe in one’s product, its usefulness and lasting impact.

Pepsi is not giving up just yet. It wants to develop genuine healthy and nutritious products to beat Coke on this front. Bring it on. After giving NGOs some head start, for-profit companies slowly return to Haiti.

I felt privileged today when shopping for a nail clipper. I was able to get it at a store. Wonder if it’s that easy in Haiti.

But then, Rainbow is free for all, from the Malibu stars to the Santa Monica homeless. All I want to do, is have some fun, until the sun comes up, from Santa Monica boulevard.