Occupy Wall Street the Media is the Message

The Invisible 99%: Sunday Morning Talk Shows Ignore Occupy Wall Street

PoliticsUSA October 2, 2011

By Jason Easley

The five Sunday morning talk shows on CBS, Fox, CNN, NBC, and ABC devoted zero segments with zero guests to Occupy Wall Street today. To the media inside the Beltway, the 99% do not exist.

A day after over 700 protesters were arrested during a march over the Brooklyn Bridge, the five network Sunday morning news shows virtually ignored the story. The only program that the arrests were even mentioned on was ABC’s This Week, “More than 700 demonstrators protesting corporate greed, among other issues, were arrested last night on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. The grassroots movement has swamped Wall Street for more than two weeks now.”

What was more important than thousands of Americans taking to the street to protest greed and corruption?

CNN’s State of the Union spent their time allowing Dick and Liz Cheney to rewrite the history of both 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq. Fox News and This Week were hyping up the latest corporate media creation, the revived presidential candidacy of Herman Cain. The media created the rebirth of Cain story after the candidate won a non-binding Florida straw poll, which became a story after the corporate media decided that the meaningless poll did in fact, mean something.

The other media generated story is the speculation over a potential Chris Christie 2012 presidential campaign. All the talk shows spent some time talking about Christie even though he isn’t even running. CBS’ Face The Nation trotted out John McCain to talk about Chris Christie, Libya, and DADT, and Meet The Press gave us a couple of governors and a roundtable discussing the 2012 election.

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Michael Moore On Occupy Wall Street: We’re The Majority, ‘Never Forget That’

MEDIAite

by Alex Alvarez | 9:21 pm, September 28th, 2011
» 181 comments Filmmaker Michael Moore, who continues his vigil at the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protest in lower Manhattan, dropped in on The Last Word to let host Lawrence O’Donnell know how things are going.

Moore kicked things off by giving a synopsis of what the protest is not about:

We’re not down here to support Senate bill 2567. We’re beyond that. They had their chance a long time ago to try and fix this. They didn’t fix it because they’re in the pocket of these people down here on Wall Street. So this is not about supporting some piece of legislation or “let’s get behind some politician.”

“It’s not about ‘policy wonkness’ or ‘Beltway bullshit,’” he continued, to the delighted soundless clapping of those around him. He also noted that he cannot believe he lives in a country where people on Wall Street haven’t had to face a single arrest while 100 peaceful protesters are arrested.

“Well, you live in a country where that kind of thing has to be protested and is being protested,” offered O’Donnell. He then turned the conversation over to a question he’d received on Twitter — a question that many have had since the protest’s inception: “I wonder if mmoore could articulate some specific, tangible goals 4 this protest, as I’ve yet 2 hear any & really would like to.” Indeed, @leenie909!

Moore said that this protest is unlike others because “there’s no membership form, there’s no one person who comes in here and says ‘Now this is our agenda and this is the way it ought to be!”

He also added that there were a whole variety of Americans participating (even “Ron Paul people”), and that they had strength in numbers:

This is our country. We’re the majority. The majority. We’re the majority. Never forget that, that the people who work for a living in this country, we are the people. Not the people up here who are taking people’s pensions and their bank accounts and ruining it and destroying their lives. They are not running this country anymore. They think they are, but that’s gonna come to an end right now.

Have a look at the video, via MSNBC. And please take note of the “Fox News camera person” behind Moore:

source: MEDIAite

Video credits: thesecretstore

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Occupy Wall Street will not be Televised on M$M

Olbermann calls out media hypocrisy on ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protest

RawStory posted 09.21.11

By Eric W. Dolan

Keith Olbermann pointed out Wednesday night on Countdown that the major newspapers had been ignoring the five-day-long “Occupy Wall Street” protests, but would have scrambled to cover a similar-sized tea party protest.

“Why isn’t any major news outlet covering this?” he asked. “If that’s a tea party protest in front of Wall Street about Ben Bernanke putting stimulus funds into it, it’s the lead story on every network news cast. How is that disconnect possible in this country today with so many different outlets and so many different ways of transmitting news?”

His guest, author Will Bunch, suggested the disconnect was caused in part by the news networks being out of touch with the pain of the 25 million Americans who are unemployed.

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Media Black Out: Ray McGovern Assaulted for Silent Protest at Hillary Clinton Speech

Hmm, does this look like a non news item? Well, it is for the main stream media. Take a look at this google search for…. Ray McGovern dragged out of Hillary Clinton “Freedom Speech”

Here’s an excellent post on this from BradBlog

By Brad Friedman on 2/17/2011 2:03pm
Ray McGovern, Former Sr. CIA Analyst, ‘Bruised, Bloodied’ While Dragged From Room During Hillary Clinton Speech on ‘Freedom of Expression’
We’ve interviewed former senior CIA analyst Ray McGovern, on the air and off, many times over the years. We’ve come to consider him not just a source, but a friend and a national hero for his tirelessly non-partisan fight for truth and justice.

The man who once briefed Presidents directly, from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton, had long ago earned our great respect — from his courageousness in famously confronting then-SecDef Don Rumsfeld in 2006 about lying about Saddam and WMD (watch the classic confrontation on video here) to his calling out CNN on air for their abysmal failures in accurately reporting on WikiLeaks (video here) last December to his arrest weeks later at the White House with other vets and national heroes for “refusal to obey a lawful order” while protesting against the Obama Administration’s wars around the world — all while overcoming some enormous personal health issues at the same time.

More on this from the BradBlog

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Chris Hedges: US & Israel should change policies in Middle East

by Wordgeezer

Chris Hedges, standing to the right of Daniel Ellsberg, on Dec 16, 2010, at the demonstration that, in the main stream media, didn’t happen. Probably the most important news in recent times, because it  involved people, who were once in government, the CIA, and the media. They were here at the White House to give us a message and it was not to be found in the main stream media, not even in the NY Times, where Hedges was once the Middle East bureau chief. In 2002, Hedges was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism, and was a  foreign correspondent for fifteen years (1990–2005).

This was reported in OpEdNews

What Corruption and Force Have Wrought in Egypt
truthdig Posted on Jan 30, 2011

By Chris Hedges

The uprising in Egypt, although united around the nearly universal desire to rid the country of the military dictator Hosni Mubarak, also presages the inevitable shift within the Arab world away from secular regimes toward an embrace of Islamic rule. Don’t be fooled by the glib sloganeering about democracy or the facile reporting by Western reporters—few of whom speak Arabic or have experience in the region. Egyptians are not Americans. They have their own culture, their own sets of grievances and their own history. And it is not ours. They want, as we do, to have a say in their own governance, but that say will include widespread support—especially among Egypt’s poor, who make up more than half the country and live on about two dollars a day—for the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic parties. Any real opening of the political system in the Arab world’s most populated nation will see an empowering of these Islamic movements. And any attempt to close the system further—say a replacement of Mubarak with another military dictator—will ensure a deeper radicalization in Egypt and the wider Arab world.

Read the whole article at truthdig

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Ray Mcgovern, Daniel Ellsberg, and other senior demonstrators arrested

The Indypendent

131 Arrested at Veteran-Led Civil Resistance to Wars at the White House Dec. 16

By Ellen Davidson
December 16, 2010 | Posted in Ellen Davidson , IndyBlog

Veterans For Peace board member Elliott Adams chained himself to the White House fence with a bicycle lock Dec. 16. Photo: ELLEN DAVIDSONAfter a 10 a.m. rally in Lafeyette Park featuring Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame, retired CIA officer Ray McGovern, Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program, and others, activists formed a solemn single-file process to the White House, silent except for a drum beat. There, they encountered police barricades. Some veterans began climbing over the barricades, until the police opened them up, allowing people to approach the fence in front of the White House.

As the light snow increased to heavy and began accumulating, activists kept warm by singing and chanting. At about 12:30, police began arresting protesters who remained along the fence, while supporters who did not want to risk arrest were moved across the broad street. Some of the demonstrators stood in the snow and freezing temperatures for nearly four hours before being taken to Anacostia processing center and released. They have all since been released. Some have elected to pay a fine, while others, including Ellsberg and McGovern, will go to trial on the charge of disobeying a lawful order.

Video from Huffington Post, who did good coverage of this. A google search showed plenty of web traffic, but very little main stream media,
, who did good coverage of this. A google search showed plenty of web traffic, but very little main stream media,

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Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers

Daniel and Patricia Ellsberg. (Courtesy of Daniel and Patricia Ellsberg)

Four decades later, Ellsberg again powers a moral drama

Ty Burr | Boston Globe | February 12, 2010

Toward the end of “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers,’’ you begin to realize just how much four decades of history owe to one man.

If Ellsberg, a Defense Department-contracted policy analyst, hadn’t leaked 47 volumes of top secret CIA documents to the press and Congress in early 1971, the Vietnam War might have continued indefinitely. Broad public sentiment wouldn’t have finally turned against the conflict, and the Nixon administration wouldn’t have adopted a paranoid bunker mentality. The president wouldn’t have formed his dirty-tricks squad of White House “plumbers’’ to stop the leaks, wouldn’t have sent them out to dig up dirt on Ellsberg by burglarizing his psychiatrist’s office. The Watergate break-in wouldn’t have happened. Nixon wouldn’t have resigned.

And so on, and so on – no historic 1971 Supreme Court First Amendment case, no politicizing of the nation’s press for better and worse – and all because one stiff-backed ex-Marine refused to ignore his conscience. “The Most Dangerous Man in America’’ – the epithet comes from Henry Kissinger – is hardly evenhanded: It views Ellsberg as a hero and a genuine patriot and allows him, at a grey and dignified 78, to narrate his own story. But evenhanded is one thing and fair is another, and directors Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith make their case that if you or I had known what Ellsberg did – the secret story of US involvement in Southeast Asia and the cynical misleading of the American public by five presidential administrations – we would have, or should have, done the same.

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Conversation with Daniel Ellsberg: Evaluating Obama So Far

Joan Brunwasser | OpEdNews | February 16, 2010

Daniel Ellsberg is definitely a name out of our national past. Baby Boomers immediately conjure up images of the Vietnam War and the Pentagon Papers. For the younger set, or those whose recollections have faded, there’s a brand new documentary about Ellsberg and his historic actions. The Most Dangerous Man in America opened in theaters across the country this past weekend and is guaranteed to bring you up to speed. In it, whistleblower and activist Ellsberg is both star and narrator. Welcome to OpEdNews, Dan. If you don’t mind, we’ll come back to the documentary later. I’d like to hear your take on current events. We are now officially one year into this new administration. Are we on the way to achieving the change that the voters were so eager for?

No.

On Afghanistan, there is change: for the worse, much worse.

Not just a tripling of the American troop presence, though that’s bad enough. I believe that’s just the start of an open-ended, indefinitely prolonged fighting occupation.

Some of my friends and a large part of the public, perhaps most, believe that he’s committed himself to put a ceiling on the American troop presence of about 100,000. They realize that his officials quickly backed away from his talk in December of beginning to withdraw then, but they think he won’t go above the level reached by this “one-time” deployment (which will be closer to 40,000 than his announced 30,000).

I believe that’s mistaken. I expect that no later than his 18-24-month “deadline” and probably much earlier than that, General McChrystal will be asking for a lot more troops. And I now expect Obama to give them to him (if and when troops become available from Iraq, and perhaps elsewhere as necessary).

A president who didn’t say “No” to this recent request–the best chance he’ll ever have to do so, when he could still blame a hopeless situation on the last eight years under his predecessor and “reluctantly” name a date for total withdrawal–will find it even harder to do after wasting more lives in coming months. The odds are very high, I believe, that Obama’s War will last as long as he’s in the White House–whether four or eight years–and beyond.

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World War II: 70 Years and We’re Still Fighting

American photographer Julien Bryan arrived in Warsaw by train on September 7, 1939, two days after the Polish government and the Yank press corps had exited the capital and just two days before the city was cut off by advancing German forces. Bryan spent his nights huddled with others in the American embassy basement; by day, shooting for the next two weeks, “I had the siege of Warsaw all to myself,” he later wrote, “but I wasn’t too happy about it.”

The photo was taken after a strafing by Stukas on September 14. In it, a 10-year-old girl mourns her younger sister, who was killed in the attack. Recalled Bryan, the elder sibling “leaned down and touched the dead girl’s face and drew back in horror. ‘Oh my beautiful sister,’ she wailed, ‘What have they done to you?'”

Bryan exited Warsaw on September 21. The German army entered the city on September 30. World War II was one month old.

Error: The dead girl is in fact 10-year-old Kazimiera Mika’s older sister.

Perhaps not as well known as that other picture of children caught up in the horrors of a murderous and cowardly attack from the air, but every bit as telling.

For more photos by Julien Bryan of this incident and a commentary in Spanish (don’t worry if you don’t read Spanish, the pictures tell the whole story), click here.

Warning: Some readers may find these pictures distressing.

Truthdig, September 1, 2009

The Germans invaded Poland on this day 70 years ago, and so began what many consider the greatest conflict in human history. An estimated 60 million people would die, including 27 million Soviets and 12 million Jews, Gypsies, gays and other victims of the Nazi holocaust. Most of the dead were civilians.

The war radically altered the cultures of its participants and the map of the world. It created two superpowers that would fight over the ashes of Europe and the kingdoms of Asia for a generation.

World War II continues to captivate, though it has become a tragic pop culture caricature (with a few notable exceptions). The nightmares of combat are now fodder for dozens of video games while Hollywood has made an art—and business—of flag-waving. Heroism and glory survive in our cultural memory better than fire bombings and ovens and the countless horrors of war. Perhaps that’s why we have had so many since. —PS

Related: The BBC reports on Poland’s commemoration of the anniversary. Truthdig contributor and WWII veteran Gore Vidal on empire and history. Daniel Ellsberg reflects on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Chris Hedges writes on the horrors of war. Robert Scheer on the permanent war economy.

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