Squint or you’ll miss it–the Sunday front page of the Washington Post:
In case you’re having trouble finding it, it’s in the lower right-hand corner: a blurb approximately one column inch long, directing people to page A20 to find news about protests in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street in “more than 900 cities in Europe, Africa and Asia.”
It wasn’t just the Post that was having trouble finding the news in hundreds of protests around the world. NBC‘s Meet the Press featured Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, former Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty and Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote yesterday (10/16/11), “I do hope that the protesters have lofted the issue of inequality onto our national agenda to stay.” Not if the people who set the national agenda have anything to say about it.
Here’s one of the stories that bumped worldwide protests backing Occupy Wall Street off the front page:
“A family’s hidden history is revealed after sale of their grand Georgetown estate”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/a-familys-hidden-history-is-revealed-after-sale-of-their-grand-georgetown-estate/2011/09/28/gIQA3TWumL_story.html
Apparently the father of the guy who sold his house survived the Hindenburg disaster, and his grandfather could have sailed on the Titanic, but didn’t. Fascinating stuff.
An AP piece (“Confidence builds, but so does tension”) today in the Walker – um, Wisconsin – State Journal might be revealing as to one facet of how the corpress will try to subvert the movement, by carping on the “inefficiencies” and “discord” engendered by its democratic decision-making process.
And there’s no need to romanticize it. Democracy is beautiful, but it often ain’t pretty.
It’s incumbent upon all of us to make it work for all of us. That requires patience, commitment, and a willingness to call each other on our excrement – respectfully.
I guess it comes down to one “demand”:
Be a mensch, dammit.
If we can be, we just might survive this mishigas.
For the latest on Occupy Madison, check http://facebook.com/occupymadison and http://occupy-madison.org.
The more I learn about OWS, the more I like it. It’s a great experiment in civil disobedience. I particularly like how, in the absence of a bull horn, information is carried by waves of repetition–just great and imaginative. One thing is certain, regardless of the outcome of these protests, and regardless of how they are presented in the mainstream media, OWS and its brethern and sistern throughout the country and around the world have entered our collective experience. And you can be certain that policitians and Wall Street executives are watching things very closely whether things are reported or not. Doesn’t it make the Tea Party and its demands look small and selfish?
I think that first sentence should be “Squint AND you’ll miss it–“…
Thank goodness I do not rely on the, “main stream media”, for any sort of warning. Remember, those who, are not warned, or chose to be ill informed of warnings, will be swept away in the coming Tsunami.
Other Roger: Squint or you’ll miss it. Blink and you’ll miss it.
Awsom! I’ve been the 99 percent for a long time now, and have the job-related injuries to prrove it. Along with all the other single mothers wwho have hoped our sacrifices would take our kids to a better place.Only there seems b
e nowhere available for our kids,except to Occupy. So baby, occupy ,please, where your mom could never go.
Now, a story from Glen Beck demonizing the protests will take the entire front page. C’est la vie in this great Untied Snakes of Amerika.
Locally, in Houston, I saw local news TV stations not only announce Teatanic meetings but promote them with things like- There are only few people here now, [with camera panning a near empty park] bur come down later this afternoon, I’m sure there will be a crowd.
Not quite the same with any local OWS airtime, it’s near nil.
The Corpor-hypocracy Press chocks on its own vomit.
Neocon Principle Number One: Don’t constrain yourself with the truth. Just say whatever needs to be said whenever it needs to said.
Neocon Principle Number Two: Slur everything that doesn’t emerge from Neocon Principle Number One.
Neocon Principle Number Three: Look at your own conduct that demonstrates everything that is wrong about who you have become, and then accuse your opponents of being the ones who are acting that way.
Universal Principle Number One: If you ain’t moral, you’ll never last.
Bruce Peck
One more reason for more 99%ers to get out and protest where you can. Make the movement bigger with your own two feet.
So where are thw OWL candidates? Lots of votes are waiting to be cast.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote yesterday (10/16/11), “I do hope that the protesters have lofted the issue of inequality onto our national agenda to stay.”
LOL! Will Nicky do more than “hope?” Will he go down to the park and bear witness with the young people fighting for their futures? You bet your ass, he won’t! Look what happened to Lisa Simione.
He’s correct to “worry” about the issue of inequality remaining on the agenda. With the Times, Post, and cable news working for The Man, this struggle cannot rely on help from the mediOcre!
Please! Get you butts to an Occupy site this weekend! Please.
Driving through Lancaster, PA we saw the 99%ers holding signs saying End the Fed and I beeped my horn and cheered. Then I asked if they could use some chickens we had just butchered that afternoon. They said “Yes” and had me pull around the corner with my truck and trailer. They had 60 people staying there so I gave them 4 chickens for the soup they planned to make the next day. I was happy to be able to help them. My husband was proud of me! We are also 99%ers because we raised the chickens on pasture with organic grain containing neither corn nor soy. We avoid GMOs (genetically modified organisms) by feeding organic grain free from corn or soy.
The Christian Science Monitor wrote this summer that GMOs are undemocratic! I loved them for that statement. But when editor John Yemma said he thought OWS participants should be helping support candidates for next year’s electons, I was reviled. How can we vote when the Supreme Court passed the Citizens United law where corporations may give all the money they desire to support Koch brothers candidates.
“There is no such thing at this date of the world’s history in America as an independent press. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinion, and if you did, you know beforehand it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allow my opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before 24 hours, my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it, and I know it, and what folly is this, toasting an independent press? We are the tools and the vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the Jumping Jacks. They pull the strings, and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
— John Swinton, CEO, New York Times, New York Press Club, April 12, 1953.
We are here to serve advertisers. That is our raison d’etre.– the C.E.O. of Westinghouse(CBS), Advertising Age, February 3, 97
We have a media that would rather talk of the scandal of the 1% than the issues of the 99%.
I think the protestors see where the mainstream media stands – both the so called left and right, and will probably shift their allegiance to the indie press.
The lack of coverage of real issues without the priority being untaxed corporate profit a vast amount involves murder, violence and prisons, not to mention draconian limit on “victimless crimes” once known as freedom and preferences. The amount of public discussion in the media is at an all time low, we do not discuss issues we are served fluff or opinion with no well thought out programs.
The failure of the left is to recognize the demand that all members of a society must invest energy in the society to function, without a dream or meaningful symbol, we are lost to our one stories without (again) working our a very ugly but livable solution for the majority of the populace and limit or stop our population growth and the influence and duplicity and self denial of most humans.
I’m a news consummer and suffer directly the agression of the daily distorted news by well known news industries, say BBC, CNN, New York Times, Le Figaro. I know what they tell me is more than likely not true, but that’s all I’ve got and must be proud of it. It’s not facts , but the power or economical interests of the rich that we are being fed with.
Now, I feel I’ve got a way to express my self freely, for the moment any way. I know they’ll give me a tag desadapted, terrorist, or the like, and then that’ll be it about this freedom of mine.
Is there really a way out? Will the truth finally even be known?
The “PEE party revolt ” ,after many weeks still has no cohesive message.If they really were fighting against croney capitalism, they are at the wrong address.Outside the white house would be the place to start urinating.
Mike, the Bush adminstration was actually fascist.
Rob
Yeah, I did once see him strike a pose on a balcony with chin jutting out,that reminded me of Mussolini.Come on the man was no conservative but a fascist?How so?
Hitler’s germany relied on military spending as an economic tool. Krup company made money as the war machine got established. Military spending works as a way to mask unemployment because it produces a product that does not build up on the nation’s shelves in the form of unsold inventory.
Bush and company promoted the war with Iraq. Chaney’s Haliburton got the contract to supply the troops and it was a no bid contract. Just like WW2, the Iraq War was a way of making money and keeping the economy from crashing. Alas, it crashed anyhow because the average person lost purchasing power.
Fascism is a relationship between government and business that works for the oligarchy and not for the majority of the citizens. And, it has nothing to do with anything that you may have seen in a movie.
14 Points of Fascism
Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Corporate Power is Protected
Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Controlled Mass Media
Labor Power is Suppressed
etc.
http://www.favreau.info/misc/14-points-fascism.php
Rob i ran the percentages on your theory. Miniscule on GNP overall.But more importantly it is not looking at what is a very successful program that offers us the highest level of military technology in the world.For our defense and security..First Government control of military technology is absolutely necessary of course for security reasons.That is not fascism.(By the way any idea how much of our “military industry”is out sourced?Or small privately owned companies?)It is an interesting soup ,or amalgamation of industry and technology.Certainly many people employed .But that is not fascism.iOf course there are excesses.And huge fortunes made.Again not fascism.And why point to Bush, If anything obamas hold on the economy(business)has massively expanded.Military included.Also not fascism.In WW2 our economy turned massively toward military arms.Not a bit of fascism.It was capitalism unleashed.
michael e, you ran Rob’s percentages REALLY!! Geez Mon!! get away from the eletronics and get some fresh air man. Oh, I forgot you believe fresh clean air is an ugly libral plot to make us all healthy. Can’t have that in your reality. So then, take a walk around you local coal burning power plant and breath deep. There is life beyond Fair Blog!
Pam thanks for the suggestion.Actually i just got in from bow hunting.So it made me laugh.I hunt and fish all over the country(and the world).Your belief that conservatives don’t like clean air makes me wonder….about your sanity!How are those bastions of the Dem party doing with clean air?Detroit,New york,LA,Philadelphia?Alaska,and Texas are pretty good last I was there.Oh wait they are republican aren’t they?Ok Im just goofing on you.You strike me as a city slicker who seldom does anything outside- telling farmers how to run a farm.Hypocritical .
I know you hate coal,gas,natural gas,nuclear.Windmills right?If only all you libs had your computers latched to such things.Ah the lovely silence.Though I can wait……..Till next November.
Mike, sounds like you read “Shicksal Aus Zweiter Hand” by Konsalik. In that one the unemployed dock worker prospers because the NAZIS provided him with a contract to make weapons against the terms of the treaty that ended WW1. Also good reading by Kinsalik is “Das Geschenkte Gesicht.” It is about a guy who gets his face blown off on the Russian front.
Rob Im a history buff but these books don’t sound like good reading.The second one sounds grim.Any reason why i “should”read them?
Yes, it can be quite grim.