GET READY TO OCCUPY THE NEW YEAR, There Will Be BLOOD

December 29th, 2011 - by: danny

Quote Of the Day: Michael Thomas writes In Newsweek

“I think, the game is at long last over.

As 2011 slithers to its end, none of the major problems that led to the crisis point three years ago have really been solved. Bank balance sheets still reek. Europe day by day becomes a financial black hole, with matter from the periphery being sucked toward the center until the vortex itself collapses. The Street and its ministries of propaganda have fallen back on a Big Lie as old as capitalism itself: that all that has gone wrong has been government’s fault. This time, however, I don’t think the argument that “Washington ate my homework” is going to work. This time, a firestorm is going to explode about the Street’s head – and about time, too.

…. The 99 percent must learn to differentiate the bloodsuckers and rent-extractors from those in the 1 percent who make the world a better, more just place to live. Once people realize how Wall Street made its pile, understand how financiers get rich, what it is that they actually do, the time will become ripe for someone to gather the spreading ripples of anger and perplexity into a focused tsunami of retribution. To make the bastards pay, properly, for the grief and woe they have caused. Perhaps not to the extent proposed by H. L. Mencken, who wrote that when a bank fails, the first order of business should be to hang its board of directors, but in a manner in which the pain is proportionate to the collateral damage. Possibly an excess-profits tax retroactive to 2007, or some form of “Tobin tax” on transactions, or a wealth tax. The era of money for nothing will be over…..

Related: Read my Latest on AlJazeera.com:
The year’s top story is not getting coverage

The financial industry may end up doing what the media isn’t – exposing its abuses and bringing itself down.

New York, NY – As every media critic learns, the worst sin of our press is not its blatant biases, or crimes of commission, but rather the pervasive patterns of omission; what’s left out!

Already, with two weeks to go, the Associated Press has crossed the finish line with the top choice of the newspapers it serves. Perhaps in the outdated spirit of Mark Twain’s famous dictum that: “There are only two forces that can carry light to all corners of the globe – only two – the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press on earth”, their pick for story of the year is the killing of Osama bin Laden.

The AP can’t bring itself to label it for what it was – a state-sponsored assassination.

As ever, the mainstream/lamestream – call it what you will – media tails after people in power and promotes/validates their great achievements, even when it was an extra-judicial murder in the dead of night.

Institutional power is their main beat and they beat it to death with every deadline and every headline.

There is no utterance by any political hack – like most of the GOP presidential menagerie – that goes unreported.

On the progressive side of the street, 2011 was ‘All Occupy All The Time’, with the growing movement against economic inequality getting the most glowing attention.

For the rest, visit AlJazeera.com

Dissector Essay: Get Ready To Occupy The New Year

Out with the old. I would say good riddance to 2011 even as I fear 2012 may be worse, given the financial trends, social chaos and political idiocy that we confront every day.

Every time, I believe it can’t get worse, it does.

It seems so clear that the political system is moribund and paralyzed and the economic system may be in worse shape.

A tiny sliver of the 1% may be in charge although not in control. Their own short-term greed makes it unlikely that they can stabilize the system or do any longer term planning. Their Titanic has hit its iceberg. Some new technologies may be keeping it afloat for now but for how long?

We lurch from crisis to crisis in an atmosphere of deep denial.

Obama clearly has no new ideas and the Republican candidates for the most part don’t know what an idea is, as they pander to a no-nothing base to prove that they can be as crass as they are.

Television dutifully reports all this as if we should take it seriously. No wonder only 7% of the people approve of their own money dominated Congress.

The Republicans can’t get any nastier with each other and now the Democrats are moving in the same direction with the announcement that Dennis Kucinich, whose been gerrymandered out of his district, is now—oh, no– going after Progressive Marcy Kaptur’s seat.

As I think about the year ahead, I am reminded of what I said at this time of year last year about what I called the year of the “Crumble.”

Sound familiar? It’s not a long distance from “crumble” to collapse as Democracy gives way to plutocracy.

I wrote then about 2010: “The economy continued to crumble for ordinary people with little hope for a quick turnaround, even as some markets surged. The hopes of the jobless for employment crumbled. The faith of the so many homeowners that they will find a way to stay in their homes facing foreclosure is crumbling.

And so have the hopes of so many of us that our new ‘change Is coming’ president would fight for us, would end the wars, would close Gitmo, would abandon torture, would make healthcare more affordable, would give us a government we could believe in; that, too, has crumbled.

Look back at the devastation of the year gone by: its ugly election, bought and paid for by U.S. Supreme Court-sanctioned special interests; oil spilled by the Gulf-full; wars escalated; climate change unabated; and Wall Street unchecked, and we have to scratch our heads and wonder who is crazier, them or us.

A year after the earthquake, rubble is still piled up in the streets of Haiti, which has received only two percent of the money raised to reconstruct it. We now have six active military operations underway, rating less and less coverage—only four percent of the network news fare, by one count.

In contrast, the partisan wars are all TV news covered over and over again, with Fox charging, MSNBC responding, and Jon Stewart joking.

There seems to be nowhere to go, but down.

The pragmatic compromisers of the democratic center may convince themselves they are “getting it done” in D.C., but they are also alienating the Democratic Party base and disgusting all those who believed it would be or could be different.

Already, there are new escalations in Afghanistan, a rising military budget that goes uncommented upon, and more repressive laws on the way.

There will be a price to be paid for their legacy of spinelessness and corporate complicity.

The media still remains at the center of our conundrum, as we argued ten years ago when we founded the media issues network, Mediachannel.org (now Mediachannel1.org) to advocate for fundamental media change.

So we are left where we started, as David Swanson argues, with the need to support independent media, arguing:

“[W]e need an alternative not only to Fox News but also to the rest of the corporate media. This is the easiest and most important project anyone can work on. The dream of persuading the labor movement (which can’t even strongly oppose corporate trade agreements when the president is a Democrat) to invest in a new television network should be abandoned. If the George Soros’s of the world haven’t figured out that there’s a communications problem, they never will. But we already have what we need; we just need to make it bigger, and we can do so. We should invest in TheRealNews.com, Thom Hartmann, Free Speech TV, Link TV, GRIT TV, Democracy Now, Pacifica Radio, community radio stations, blogs and web sites.

We should make use of foreign outlets that, for their own reasons, are willing to provide decent coverage of U.S. politics: Al Jazeera, ATN, RT-America, etc. Unsubscribe from the New York Times, stop contributing to any purchasing of ads in it, stop reading it, and read the Guardian online instead. Get connected online, and people will send you the occasional good article or video that all lousy outlets produce. Share that one further, but promote a good website that’s hosting it, not the corporate source.”

And let’s also get behind WikiLeaks as they fight for transparency and accountability by governments and media. We need to support not only Mediachannel1, but Pacifica Radio, Progressive Radio, Bill Moyers and Laura Flanders’ new shows and sites like OpEdNews.com, CrooksandLiars.com, Disinformation, Firedoglake.com, Global Research, Consortium News, Real News, ZNet, Reader Supported News etc., etc.

At the same time, we have to go back to an old idea for which online interaction and an email barrage is no substitute: organizing real people.

There are more of us than there are of them, but they are organized and focused and we are mostly reactive and emotional.

As James Kwak wrote on The Baseline Scenario, there is a reason for this. Progressives are captured by symbolic politics while the right is committed to substantive goals. He cites the view of Murray Edelman who divides the political sphere into insiders and outsiders.

“Insiders are basically special interests: small in number but well organized and with specific goals. Outsiders, or the ‘unorganized masses,’ are the rest of us: we have some interests, but we are poorly organized to pursue them and therefore are generally unsuccessful. In particular, Outsiders suffer from poor and limited information, and therefore are especially susceptible to political symbols.”

He cites Arnold Kling’s summary of Edelman’s insights:

“Given these differences, the Insiders use overt political dramas as symbols that placate the masses while using covert political activity to plunder them. What we would now call rent-seeking succeeds because Outsiders are dazzled by the symbols while Insiders grab the substance.”

Happily, this year which seems to be ushering in a year not of a crumble but a collapse, is also the year when Occupy Wall Street and its offshoots emerged so powerfully to capture the national imagination and create a force based in the 99% willing to fight the Wall Street crimesters and stand for social justice and equality.

I have been having a happier news year ever since OWS emerged.

I have been following its bold initiatives in print and in the streets. I have just finished a new book called OCCUPY collecting my reporting for AlJazeera and other websites as well as my News Dissector.com blog.

Despite all the depressing things that are happening—and the economic depression that so many of the Wisemen of the punditry admit is arriving—I am more hopeful than I have been in years

It feels good to be fighting back—and, not just online.

The fact that this movement received the media attention it has is a sign that the people of this country are open to something new and will, if well communicated too and organized, join in to make the changes we need so desperately.

In 2012, we have to continue to occupy the high ground and occupy the mainstream.
When people lead others follow.

Adelante! Forward! Or. As, Martin Luther King put it, “Tomorrow is Today”

Story Link If You Want To Send To Others.

News Dissector Danny Schechter writes daily at NewsDissector.com. Information on his latest film is at Plunderthecrimeofourtime.com. Comments to Dissector@mediachannel.org

Some News of Note

•While Washington Publicly Downplays Iranian Threats, War Ships Are Sent

CLG: Iran Reports US Aircraft Carrier Near the Strait of Hormuz

A US aircraft carrier has entered the ‘hot’ zone close to the Strait of Hormuz between Oman and Iran. The Iranian fleet has been conducting naval exercises in the transit zone for over a third of the world’s oil supplies since 24 December. Iranian sources reported the ship’s arrival at a time of rising tension due to Tehran’s threat to close the strait.

•As I was Saying, NY Times reports US is arming the new Saddam: Weapons Sales to Iraq Move Ahead Despite U.S. Worries

Some fear that American weapons will strengthen Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s apparent efforts to consolidate his power and establish Shiite dominance.

•As I was saying via Fluent News: ‘Former Iran Hostage Fears History Will Repeat If Yemen’s President Enters U.S.’

•WSJ: EU Banks Get Big Loans, Have No Collateral

•Chris Spannos, NYTeXaminer: NY Times Fumbles Into New Year

•From Russia, and Not for the First Time:

(AP) — Russia’s Foreign Ministry has attacked America’s human rights record in its first report on injustice elsewhere in the world, offering examples such as the Guantanamo Bay prison and wrongful death row convictions to paint the U.S. as hypocritical for lecturing other nations on the subject of rights.

“The situation in the United States is a far cry from the ideals that Washington proclaims,” says the report released Wednesday.

Moscow has previously reacted angrily to the accusations of human rights breaches that the U.S. State Department has leveled at Russia in its annual reports. The State Department has expressed concern about the violent attacks on rights activists and journalists in Russia, most of which go unpunished. It also has criticized abuses in Russia’s Caucasus, including extrajudicial killings, kidnappings and torture

Personal note:

I will be away for a few days and may or may not blog. I hope to have the energy and resources to keep my blogothon going in the year ahead. I have been dissecting since l971, and on line since 2000.

You can help with donations to

The Global Center
PO Box 677
New York, New York l0035
Mark Checks for Mediachannel.org

Happy News Year from Globalvision and the Global Center.

Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

Some letters

Kate Webb writes:

just have some quick feedback/a question to offer regarding your editorial. I’m a Canadian journalist but I’ve written a lot about Occupy Vancouver (where it all began with Adbusters) and am interested in the international Occupy movement. My degree is in political science, not economics. I read all the news about the financial crimes that were committed on Wall Street but I can’t say I understand much of it. I have a vague sense that crimes and frauds were committed but not much understanding of what US laws can actually be used to prosecute the guilty – or why Canada’s financial regulations protected us from suffering the same fate.

How are the media, who have 35 seconds or maybe a couple of minutes, or in the case of print or online journalism maybe 500 words max, supposed to explain complex crimes to the average person when I, a university educated journalist, can’t understand them fully myself?

Maybe someone like yourself, who does understand, should start by breaking it down into more digestible pieces so that education and new ideas about white-collar justice can start to percolate among media consumers and journalists…

Just a suggestion from someone who is definitely interested but not completely able to understand how to do their job better.

Kate: See info on my film Plunder at plunderthecrimeofourtime.com and book: The Crime of Our Time for more information and analysis on this issue.

Dear Danny Schechter,

I read your articles of importance, to our and global community of good and caring people like you.

To me, you are wonderful and noble person of great character, vision and determination, to keep the public informed in vital matters, concerning the present and future events, domestic and abroad. I would like to see the movie: “Plunder”, but I do not know where to buy it Maybe the wind of change is approaching. The dark and black clouds are gathering above our heads, for the evil forces are awaken and ready to crash anybody staying in their way, but they
are mistaken, blinded by the greed, for the power of united, desperate people is stronger than anything else.

The global revolution stretches slowly and powerfully its fighting wings. The rolling thunders cannot be broken or stopped. Thank you for your courage, to be who you are! Your wisdom and sincerity is widely appreciated throughout the world by simple people like me, and by others, clean handed women and men.

I’m simple, mostly spiritual poet, but I create something for occupied movement. In this month on December 7, I was 64 year old. I have seven manuscripts of uplifting poetry to publish through Amazon.com and five more in Polish language. They are in the correcting process, which take some months. I learned English language all by myself. I am U.S. Citizen and I live i this Country, for quite a long time.

God bless you and your people, your family and your friends. I’m sending you some simple poetry.

Sincerely,

with love,

Zeno de la Mare Stachowicz

John Randolph writes:

Thank you Danny Schechter for you work. http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Year-s-Top-Story-is-No-by-Danny-Schechter-111228-628.html and others.

I am a retired US Border Patrol Agent who finally has figured out that failed immigration is very similar to other “corporate-run-government-for-profit” failures that is destroying the middle class.

Ted Rosa writes:

I predict that Greece will default or withdraw from the EU. All banks will take a shot, but the big banks (Citigroup,B o A) will still be standing because they can borrow from the treasury. But I predict financial losses for all, that will through everyone into a depression by 2013

The News Dissector