Tag: Glen Greenwald

Occupy Wall St. Livestream: Day 13

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com

OccupyWallStreet

The resistance continues at Liberty Square, with free pizza 😉

Keith Olbermann interviewed Matt Taibbi of Rolling about the movement and the lack of media attention.

Occupy Wall St. may be gaining strength but it’s not without its critics on the left. Many have applauded the movements support of the 99% in the lower rings of the ladder who will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption if the 1% on the top but the group had indeed yet to articulate any specific demands. While it may be performing a crucial roll in helpng to educate the uninformed abouthow they have been victimized by Wall St. and the “To Big To Fail” banks, the deliberate, almost lack of organization, the self-styles leaderless resistance movement and its refusal to articulate demands, could both hamper its growth and slow its being taken as seriously as it would like to be.

Glenn Greenwald also weighed in on the reasons for the scorn for the protest:

It’s unsurprising that establishment media outlets have been condescending, dismissive and scornful of the ongoing protests on Wall Street.  Any entity that declares itself an adversary of prevailing institutional power is going to be viewed with hostility by establishment-serving institutions and their loyalists.  That’s just the nature of protests that take place outside approved channels, an inevitable by-product of disruptive dissent: those who are most vested in safeguarding and legitimizing establishment prerogatives (which, by definition, includes establishment media outlets) are going to be hostile to those challenges.  As the virtually universal disdain in these same circles for WikiLeaks (and, before that, for the Iraq War protests) demonstrated: the more effectively adversarial it is, the more establishment hostility it’s going to provoke.

Nor is it surprising that much of the most vocal criticisms of the Wall Street protests has come from some self-identified progressives, who one might think would be instinctively sympathetic to the substantive message of the protesters.  In an excellent analysis entitled “Why Establishment Media & the Power Elite Loathe Occupy Wall Street,” Kevin Gosztola chronicles how many of the most scornful criticisms have come from Democratic partisans who — like the politicians to whom they devote their fealty — feign populist opposition to Wall Street for political gain.

One of the chief complaints, besides the “leaderless” and lack of a list of specific demands, that has been heard coming from the left is attire, as Kevin Gosztola noted in his FDL article:

Liberals have shown scorn, too, suggesting the occupation is not a “Main Street production” or that the protesters aren’t dressed properly and should wear suits cause the civil rights movement would not have won if they hadn’t worn decent clothing.

Even the liberal Mother Jones was critical:

Liberals have shown scorn, too, suggesting the occupation is not a “Main Street production” or that the protesters aren’t dressed properly and should wear suits cause the civil rights movement would not have won if they hadn’t worn decent clothing.

Both articles, Greenwald’s and Gosztola’s, need to be read in full to understand not just the reasons that the media is ignoring this movement but why and how Occupy Wall St. happened and continues.

Occupy Wall St. Is now spreading across the country:

‘Occupy Wall Street’ protest slowly spreads across the United States

The protest spread to other cities over the weekend.

A small group of “Occupy Los Angeles” demonstrators marched through the streets of downtown Los Angeles on Saturday to show their support for the protesters in New York City.

“Corporate interests seem to be controlling both parties,” one protester told LAActivist.com. “The ‘little man,’ the ‘American every man,’ just isn’t getting their voice heard. When you need $35,000 to donate to a campaign to get your voice heard, to have a meeting, that’s not democracy.”

“Occupy Los Angeles” protesters plan to begin a demonstration at City Hall on October 1. The “Occupy Los Angeles” Facebook page had nearly 2,000 likes as of Tuesday afternoon.

Another demonstration popped up in Chicago over the weekend. Around 20 “Occupy Chicago” protesters gathered at Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears Tower, on Friday and then marched to the Federal Reserve Bank. Some protesters have remained camped out in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and the organizers said the “occupation” had grown from 4 people to about 50.

Other “occupation” protests are being planned for Detroit, Denver, Cleveland, Boston, Phoenix, Seattle, Kansas City, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. The site occupytogether.org has been set up in hopes of coordinating the protests.

I have a message for the the so-called “Left”:

Get off your butts and get behind this movement because unless you are part of the 1%, they are YOU.

25 Years of FAIR

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Last month Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) celebrated its 25th Anniversary. It held an event in Manhattan on May 11th with four of the most well known voices of the the left and advocates for fairness, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Amy Goodman and Glen Greenwald. Glenn’s 30 minute speech is now available on You Tube. The DVD of the entire night is available for sale at FAIR’s website.

Exposing the Dirty Tricks

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive” Sir Walter Scott

The plot to undermine the Wikileaks attack on banks is certainly one of those tangled webs. The recent revelations the not only were Bank of America  and the Chamber of Commerce involved but the United States Air Force. They all had either hired or consulted a little known cyber-security firm HBgary to learn about and discredit their detractors. The plot was exposed by one of their targets, Anonymous, who hacked not just HBgary’s computers but hacked the private e-mail from its CEO,s i-phone and his Twitter account.

Another of HBgary’s targets, Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald, has been making rounds talking about the plans to discredit journalists. He has made appearances on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report and Democracy Now! discussing the implications of this plot. Mr. Greenwald also talked with Cenk Uygur specifically about this plan, the latest revelations of the use of psy-ops against American citizens, specifically, US Congress members to get them to support the Afghan war and the Obama administration’s vigorous crack down on whistle blowers.

For Your Consideration: Greenwald on Kagan

Glen Greenwald appeared this morning in ABC’s “This Week” moderated by Jake Tapper. He addresses Pres. Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court to replace Justice John Paul Stevens, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, lack of record.

I can’t wait for Christiane Amanpour to take the helm.

h/t Jane Hamsher @ FDL

For Your Consideration: Which Would You Prefer

This morning Glen Greenwald posed this hypothetical question regarding the outrage over Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s citizenship stripping bill and President Barak Obama’s assassination policy:

Outrage over Lieberman’s citizen-stripping bill is odd in light of Obama’s assassination program: which would you rather have done to you?

Neither Lieberman’s bill or Obama’s Policy provide for due process.

Hopefully, Lieberman’s bill stands no chance getting even to the Senate floor but President Obama’s assassination policy is already in place.

Do either of these men, who have sworn to uphold the law and protect the Constitution, believe in its core principles?

Boo yah babies ! !

Man, I am really all over the place this morning, worse than usual (heh). My apologies.

Goodbye Lady Libertine (the usual me). Hello Sally Panic (the other me).

Oh man… bring it on.

The Gray Lady

The NYT’s latest Kristol embarrassment

by Glenn Greenwald, Salon

Monday May 19, 2008 12:47 EDT

The NYT should be very proud of itself. Of course, Kristol was hired at the NYT because his dad, Irv, was really good friends with former NYT Executive Editor Abe Rosenthal, whose son, Andy, currently runs the NYT Op-Ed page. Andy and Bill followed in their dad’s footsteps by becoming good friends (and in every other sense), and Andy then hired his friend, Bill (son of his dad’s friend), as the new NYT Op-Ed writer. So this is typically what one gets — and deserves — when driven by nepotistic impulse.

Rosenthal actually claimed when he hired Kristol that he did so to achieve “balance” and to create diversity on the Op-Ed page. Indeed. Last Monday, Kristol’s column compared Americans who don’t want to fight for Israel to Neville Chamberlain appeasers. Then, on Wednesday, Tom Friedman declared a “cold war” whereby Israel and the U.S. fight together (along with Sunni Arab dictators) against Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas. Then, on Friday, David Brooks declared Obama suspect when it comes to hating Hezbollah enough, writing that Obama’s statements bear “the whiff of what President Bush described yesterday as appeasement” and that “if Obama believes all this, he’s not just a Jimmy Carter-style liberal. He’s off in Noam Chomskyland.” Obama then had to call Brooks, demonstrate his commitment to hating Hezbollah, and was cleared by Brooks (for now) of the charge of insufficient devotion to fighting Israel’s enemies.