NY Times Touts ‘Unexpected Success’ of Wall Street Protest; Almost Ignored NYC Tea Party in 2009
October 6, 2011 No Comment
The left-wing, anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street camp-out in Lower Manhattan stretched into its third week, bolstered by an influx of labor unions. The story made the front of Thursday’s New York Times along with a large photo of protestors in Foley Square, “ Seeking Energy, Unions Join Wall Street Protest. ” It’s a far cry from the paper’s coverage of the first major Tea Party rally in Manhattan. The paper’s hostile reporting of the nationwide Tea Party rallies on April 15, 2009 (Tax Day) virtually ignored a supportive crowd of thousands, citing in a single sentence an Associated Press report on Newt Gingrich speaking at the Manhattan rally. The report made Page 16. Labor reporter Steven Greenhouse and Cara Buckley promoted the labor perspective on Thursday. Stuart Appelbaum, an influential union leader in New York City, was in Tunisia last month, advising the fledgling labor movement there, when he received a flurry of phone calls and e-mails alerting him to the rumblings of something back home. Protesters united under a provocative name, Occupy Wall Street, were gathering in a Lower Manhattan park and raising issues long dear to organized labor. And gaining attention for it. Mr. Appelbaum recalled asking a colleague over the phone to find out who was behind Occupy Wall Street — a bunch of hippies or perhaps troublemakers? — and whether the movement might quickly fade. So far, at least, it has not, and on Wednesday, several prominent unions, struggling to gain traction on their own, made their first effort to join forces with Occupy Wall Street. Thousands of union members marched with the protesters from Foley Square to their encampment in nearby Zuccotti Park. “The labor movement needs to tap into the energy and learn from them,” Mr. Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, said. “They are reaching a lot of people and exciting a lot of people that the labor movement has been struggling to reach for years.” In fact, the unexpected success of Occupy Wall Street in leveling criticism of corporate America has stirred some soul-searching among labor leaders . They have noted with envy that the new movement has done a far better job, not only of capturing interest, but also of attracting young people. Protests have spread to dozens of cities, including Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles. What precisely is that criticism? The Times doesn’t say, perhaps because the Occupy protests are more a collection of various grievances than specific demands (as Greenhouse hinted at deeper into the story). Greenhouse at least committed some accurate labeling when reporting on the activists’ confrontations with the police: Others said they were wary of being embarrassed by the far-left activists in the group who have repeatedly denounced the United States government. Those concerns may be renewed after a disturbance about 8 p.m. Wednesday as the march was breaking up. The police said they arrested eight protesters around the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street, after people rushed barriers and began spilling into the street. While a couple of witnesses said that officers used pepper spray to clear the streets, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said that one officer “possibly” used it. Several protesters were also arrested at State and Bridge Streets at 9:30 p.m.; the police said one protester was charged with assault after an officer was knocked off his scooter.
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Mandy Fleming ‘lost it’ when she realised her spouse had splashed cash on his boat after pleading poverty to her A “manipulative and angry” woman has been jailed for 18 months after drilling holes in her estranged husband’s £75,000 yacht and causing it to sink on Valentine’s Day. Mandy Fleming “lost it” when she saw her husband Adam had bought a new television and other equipment for the vessel, named Double Dragon, while telling her he had no money. She drilled three holes in the hull of the boat, which was berthed at Brighton Marina, and turned on cooker gas taps turning it into a “bomb”, the Old Bailey heard. Fleming, 47, of Sheerness, Kent, had admitted endangering life by causing criminal damage in 2004, during a hearing last month. She wept as she was sentenced on Thursday, with judge Richard Hone telling her: “You were a manipulative, angry and troubled individual.” She was told she would have to serve half the sentence, less the 10 weeks she had initially spent in custody. Fleming had gone to the yacht for a “menage-a-trois” with her then lover, David Brown, and his wife Nemone, the court heard. After seeing new electrical equipment and some bills for work which had been done on the yacht, she rang her estranged husband, a haulage contractor, and berated him for spending money on the vessel, said Mark Gadsden, prosecuting. “She returned to the shore and equipped herself with a drill which she took on to the boat and drilled three holes. “Between them, they were sufficient to cause the boat to sink.” She then turned the cooker gas taps on. The court heard turning on a light would have been enough to blow up the boat. The slowly sinking vessel was seen the next morning and berthing master Chris Cheyne smashed a porthole to get into the yacht, intending to pump it out. “He noticed a wedding photograph of the couple in a glass frame had been smashed deliberately,” said Gadsden. “A volatile mixture of propane gas and air had been created and all it would have needed was for someone to turn on an electric light or torch, or respond to a mobile phone or radio, for it to have exploded.” Cheyne told the court: “I had a radio on me and I knew the smallest spark would trigger off an explosion.” Four people on nearby boats had to be evacuated. Damage estimated at £40,000 was caused to the boat. Police later found an entry in Fleming’s diary which read: “Lost it, got drill and sunk boat. Now I am in shit.” The court heard the couple married two years before the incident and the yacht was bought during the marriage. It was her third marriage. They have since divorced. Oliver Blunt QC, for Fleming, said: “She has little recollection of the gas being turned on. They had all been drinking and were very much the worse for wear.” Fleming had initially been charged with damaging the boat but was later charged, with David Brown and another man, of plotting to kill her husband by hiring a hitman. But the charges were dropped last month after supergrass Gary Eaton, the chief witness, was discredited. Earlier this year, his evidence was also excluded from the failed prosecution of three men charged with murdering private detective Daniel Morgan . Crime Caroline Davies guardian.co.uk
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If Israel’s parliament approves the proposal, 30,000 Bedouins could be removed from their homes in Negev within 60 days Six Arab-Israeli towns in Israel’s southern Negev region have ground to a halt in protest at government plans to confiscate swathes of land from the Bedouin community. If the proposal passes through the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, unopposed, 30,000 people could be forced from their homes within 60 days. Schools, shops and municipal offices across the region closed for the day allowing more than 8,000 people to stage a demonstration in Beersheba rejecting the plan – the largest civil protest in the city’s history. Arab-Israeli MP Jamal Zahalka said they were united against the proposal. “We want to send a very clear message to the Israeli government – we are saying no. This demonstration proves that Israel’s plans will be thwarted. Nobody here today will co-operate with them.” He added that the protesters would not allow another Nakba, the Palestinian term for the events of 1948, in which hundreds of thousands became refugees. The Israeli ministerial committee approved a plan to settle the long-standing land dispute between the Bedouin communities in the Negev and Israel on 11 September. Based on a report produced for the prime minister’s office, it suggests that more than 30,000 Bedouin living on land claimed by Israel should be resettled in six towns created and recognised by the state in 1973. Of the 12,000 sq km (2,965,000 acres) of Negev land, the government plan apportions 200 to the Bedouin, with compensation offered to anyone forced from land they can prove ownership of. Around half of the Negev’s 180,00 Bedouin live in unrecognised villages, without running water, electricity or public services of any kind. They are the poorest minority group in Israel. Mark Regev, spokesman for Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, said the aim of the government was to assist the Bedouin minority by assimilating them into wider Israeli society. “The Bedouin community has a lower standard of health care and education than the rest of Israel, they live in substandard conditions. We are investing 1.2bn shekels [£210m] to move them into the mainstream, to reduce that gap. “The idea that the Bedouin do not want to make this move is simply not true.” Bedouin leader Amal Elsana-Alh’jooj said the report failed to recognise Bedouin claims to the land prior to the creation of Israel, as recommended by the government-commissioned Goldberg committee in 2008. An estimated 90,000 Bedouin lived in the Negev before 1948. “If we accept what they are offering, we will see a violent, over-crowded poverty-ridden area,” she said. “We want to restart the negotiating process so we the Bedouin can start to contribute to the area and not just be people living in poverty.” Israel Middle East guardian.co.uk
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enlarge Credit: Tina Dupuy I’m not a photographer. I know we normally do video at C&L, but my video skills are much worse than my photography. I took these Wednesday at Occupy LA. They are still going strong. With the blessing of the LA City Council and a steady stream of pizzas from you guys they don’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon. If you’d like to donate some cash to buy these guys and as many Occupiers around the country we can coordinate with, here’s the PayPal: enlarge Credit: Tina Dupuy Most of the press that was there (at least when I was there) were from Asian markets; one Chinese, one Korean. Oh and KPCC’s web guys were doing videos. We’ll post my interviews with them when they’re posted. I was not in TV makeup. You’ve been warned. enlarge Credit: Tina Dupuy Here’s the thing about the protest in LA: there are every imaginable media outlet lining the streets of downtown. Giant satellite trucks and tents with reporters illuminated by lamps as far as the eye can see. Only they are not there for the protesters. They are there for the trial of the doctor who gave Michael Jackson drugs. Yes, this is an apt metaphor for the media: Obsessed with a dead celebrity while giving the living who are struggling a pass. enlarge Credit: Tina Dupuy enlarge Credit: Tina Dupuy enlarge Credit: Tina Dupuy There was a union guy, a Ron Paul supporter and the LaRouche dude took off before I could take this picture. Yes, it sounds like the beginning of a political joke…but there they were in the rain…being the 99 percent. enlarge Credit: Tina Dupuy enlarge Credit: Tina Dupuy There’s a media tent, a food tent, a general tent and this first aid tent. I’m going to admit here that I’ve never been to a Phish concert and the comparison means nothing to me. enlarge Credit: Tina Dupuy And here’s a funny one. Look at what the arrow is pointing to: “CrooksandLiars.com” Thanks to you guys!
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Walkout by 300 Unison members latest in programme of targeted action that has taken place since May If coalition ministers are wondering what a 21st-century winter of discontent might look like, then dozens of social workers picketing Southampton’s council offices have provided a glimpse. The strike by 300 members of Unison, the largest public sector union, is the latest in a dispute that has become a testing ground for the labour movement’s approach to a looming nationwide dispute over pension reform. In tandem with Unite, the UK’s biggest union, Unison has run a programme of targeted strikes over wage cuts and contract changes on the south coast in which waste collectors, port workers, parking wardens and road toll cashiers go out on one-day strikes aimed at hitting the Conservative-led council’s coffers. “To have everybody out for one day does not give us anything when you can have individual sections [of employees] out separately for days at a time,” said Andy Straker, a Unison regional official. “We could not have called everybody out for 12 weeks. No one would have done it, but this keeps the pressure on. During the summer it looked like the whole of Southampton was on strike,” he added, referring to a series of walkouts since May. If national union leaders heed the lessons from Southampton, the national day of action planned for 30 November featuring up to 3 million workers from the main health, education, local government and civil service unions will be a one-off, to be followed by individually tailored walkouts and work-to-rule protests of the kind seen in Southampton. “Selective, targeted action is working in Southampton,” said Mark Wood, a Unite officer at the council, pointing to the opening of peace talks next week, although the council said it had offered numerous peace proposals already. “It has brought them back to the negotiating table. We don’t think a one-day all-out strike will resolve the strike, but a mixture of that with targeted action can work,” Wood added. “November 30 will be an all-out strike, which will have an effect politically, but at the end of the day it will not resolve the pension dispute. “We are going to have to be much more strategic and selective in the way we fight the government cuts.” Unite has reverted to old-fashioned type this time round, calling out 700 members from all areas of the council despite the fact that they no longer have legal protection against dismissal. It is hoping the council will not take on the logistical and PR challenge of sacking 1,000 employees. The council says such a move would be counterproductive. “The whole point [of the wage cuts and contract changes] is to keep people in work and not to lose their jobs,” said Jeremy Moulton, a Conservative councillor and deputy leader of the city council. Moulton argues that Southampton and its residents have been the victims of a local dispute over necessary budget cuts that has been hijacked by the national leadership of Unison and Unite. The decision to effectively fire and rehire more than 4,600 staff by serving notice on their contracts and re-employing them on different terms had been driven by a £75m gap in the city’s budget caused by a fall in central government grants, he said. The choice was to cut council jobs and services or preserve both through a contractual haircut. “By making these changes we avoid having to make some of the services cuts that we would otherwise have to make. And we can keep people in work,” he argued. Moulton said his colleagues were preparing to table an offer next week that will shield 50% of the council’s staff from a pay cut. The feeling among striking employees is that a pay cut is too much on top of a multi-year pay freeze. “It is costing me £150 a month, which is my disposable income,” said Ian Pennal, 45, a family support worker. “At times the job is great but you do get abused and assaulted so when they take money off you, you feel undervalued.” He said he would also vote to strike in a looming national vote on pensions. “I understand that cuts have to be made, but not in the way they have done it,” said Simon Cotton, 27, who runs a waste collection crew. “We are whipping boys.” Public sector pay Public services policy Public sector cuts Public finance Public sector pensions Local government Public sector careers Recession Trade unions Dan Milmo guardian.co.uk
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A report by Oxfam found that more than 22,000 people have been evicted from their homes and land to make way for a UK-based forestry firm Simon Rawles
Continue reading …A report by Oxfam found that more than 22,000 people have been evicted from their homes and land to make way for a UK-based forestry firm Simon Rawles
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Dominic Mohan defends showbiz journalism at Leveson inquiry, while Daily Telegraph editor explains pressures facing papers The Sun editor, Dominic Mohan, has defended celebrity journalism, likening the relationship between showbiz reporters and the stars they write about to that between their lobby colleagues and politicians. Mohan told a Leveson inquiry seminar on Thursday that there is a public appetite for celebrity journalism, citing the Sun’s coverage of Michael Jackson’s death as an example of the story that gave the paper a huge circulation boost. Asked if the skills needed by celebrity journalists are very different from those required by political reporters, the former editor of the Sun’s Bizarre showbiz column replied: “No, the way showbiz journalists operate is like a political journalist in the lobby. “You do have regular discussions with showbiz agents and if you have a column to fill on a daily basis, the information they give you is of interest to your readers.” Mohan was then asked whether there were trade-offs – deals such as those where a journalist may agree not to run certain stories in return for other exclusives. “Probably no more than in the lobby system, when a spin doctor gives some information to a lobby journalist,” he responded. “The pressures I feel under are my own professional pride in producing a fun, informative newspaper on a daily basis,” Mohan added. During the same Leveson session Tony Gallagher, editor of the Daily Telegraph, was asked if there was any difference in the way he motivated his journalists compared with at his previous paper, the Daily Mail. “There’s not a huge difference,” Gallagher replied. “There’s a desire to be quick, accurate, to ensure you have the best version of the story. It’s as simple as that.” He also said that internet search engines such as Google posed a “very substantial threat to the health and future success of newspapers”. “Newspapers are under huge and growing pressures from the 24/7 news environment. The commercial pressure that exists because of those search engines and the collapse in advertising because of that, is immense,” Gallagher added. He was also asked whether having newsroom integration between print and web operations put extra pressure on journalists. “Journalists are working harder, longer days and doing more,” Gallagher admitted, describing the result as “capsule journalism” and “bite-size journalism”. “The pressure is much greater, the demands more intense … Whether it has an impact on standards is a question for each organisation,” he said. “The brand is very badly damaged if there’s a wide diversion between what [readers] find online and in the printed product, so we try very hard to make sure that’s not the case. “The Telegraph in a bygone era was much mocked for its interest in Liz Hurley, so that’s not a new thing. We cover celebrity on an instinctive understanding of who our readers are interested in. More Downton Abbey and less Katie Price.” •
Continue reading …Dominic Mohan defends showbiz journalism at Leveson inquiry, while Daily Telegraph editor explains pressures facing papers The Sun editor, Dominic Mohan, has defended celebrity journalism, likening the relationship between showbiz reporters and the stars they write about to that between their lobby colleagues and politicians. Mohan told a Leveson inquiry seminar on Thursday that there is a public appetite for celebrity journalism, citing the Sun’s coverage of Michael Jackson’s death as an example of the story that gave the paper a huge circulation boost. Asked if the skills needed by celebrity journalists are very different from those required by political reporters, the former editor of the Sun’s Bizarre showbiz column replied: “No, the way showbiz journalists operate is like a political journalist in the lobby. “You do have regular discussions with showbiz agents and if you have a column to fill on a daily basis, the information they give you is of interest to your readers.” Mohan was then asked whether there were trade-offs – deals such as those where a journalist may agree not to run certain stories in return for other exclusives. “Probably no more than in the lobby system, when a spin doctor gives some information to a lobby journalist,” he responded. “The pressures I feel under are my own professional pride in producing a fun, informative newspaper on a daily basis,” Mohan added. During the same Leveson session Tony Gallagher, editor of the Daily Telegraph, was asked if there was any difference in the way he motivated his journalists compared with at his previous paper, the Daily Mail. “There’s not a huge difference,” Gallagher replied. “There’s a desire to be quick, accurate, to ensure you have the best version of the story. It’s as simple as that.” He also said that internet search engines such as Google posed a “very substantial threat to the health and future success of newspapers”. “Newspapers are under huge and growing pressures from the 24/7 news environment. The commercial pressure that exists because of those search engines and the collapse in advertising because of that, is immense,” Gallagher added. He was also asked whether having newsroom integration between print and web operations put extra pressure on journalists. “Journalists are working harder, longer days and doing more,” Gallagher admitted, describing the result as “capsule journalism” and “bite-size journalism”. “The pressure is much greater, the demands more intense … Whether it has an impact on standards is a question for each organisation,” he said. “The brand is very badly damaged if there’s a wide diversion between what [readers] find online and in the printed product, so we try very hard to make sure that’s not the case. “The Telegraph in a bygone era was much mocked for its interest in Liz Hurley, so that’s not a new thing. We cover celebrity on an instinctive understanding of who our readers are interested in. More Downton Abbey and less Katie Price.” •
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My little sister and I had an Apple II+ in the early ’80s: games, mostly, but also goofing around with graphics and BASIC programming and such word processing as was necessary in junior high and high school (dot matrix printer). Our parents’ courier company in Milwaukee got a refrigerator-sized computer maybe five years before that, with disks the size of a 17-inch Macbook Pro (but rounder and thicker). There was a lot of data entry involved, as each driver would turn in a “tickets” for each delivery they made during the day, and clerks would type in the information on each, for monthly billing of customers, for keeping track of employees’ work, and I suppose some statistical analysis. Each month the billing—miles of zig-zagged dot-matrix perforated sheets—had to be “de-collated,” a numbing manual task akin to de-detasseling corn or running a stamping press in a factory: stripping off the accompanying miles of carbon paper. It had a suite of “games,” and they had a modem so they could work at home. If we wanted to have a family game night at home they had to go through a complicated production firing up the modem before they left work. I remember everyone gathering around the HAL-looking blue terminal at a party for my brother’s bar mitzvah at our home in what had to have been late 1978. One of the games was blackjack. Another was a horseracing game where you bet on which cursor would cross the screen first. Another bizarre part of the program was that you could print out a giant life-sized banner of a pinup shot of Bridgette Bardot in ACII characters. It sounds like I’m making this up, but I’m not. Entered college in 1988 with an electric typewriter with little screen where you could word-process a single line at a time. Next year started using the little Macintoshes in the dorm lab and at the library. First one on my own desk was inherited from Linda when she went on an internship in Europe, I think. No Internet on that, though, not for me. I remember one day at the campus mailroom—an ancient institution, kids, where the sort of announcements you get in your email inbox every morning were placed, as fliers, in folders for each student—everyone was given some sort of code for their “account” on the campus system. I had no idea what it was and threw it out. Others, of course, were not so naive. They were mostly science students. They were the ones who were pioneering networked communication. It was part of their geek culture. One of them, I remember, a kid named Justin Boyan, was featured in Time magazine for writing software to help people “get online.” What did that mean? I had no idea. I went to graduate school in the humanities. My first semester, in our methods class, the force-marched us into this brave new world. And, for the first time, I had that head-swimming, Matrix-y feeling that there was a whole gargantuan universe out there parallel to the one we knew in the physical world. I suspect that all people of a certain age, if they thought about it, can tell you where they were when they first had that feeling. Would be interested to ask folks. What about you? No web sites, though. Was it 1994 when I first became of those? Once again, it was one of my nerdier friends who lit the way. He started something called the “University of Chicago Philosophy Project,” in which people “discussed”—what did it mean to “discuss” something on a computer? that was another new concept to wrap your mind around—philosophy papers they “posted” “online.” My friend also introduced me to another innovation with that site—introduced a lot of people, it turned out. He had some sort of primitive, prototype camera which projected real-time moving images of himself as he worked at his computer. A webcam. Where you could watch someone write philosophy papers. One day he got an “email”—still a strange new concept—from a very unusual source: the much-younger wife of comedian Rodney Dangerfield. Mrs. Dangerfield, apparently, was an early adopter of an eventually ubiquitous notion: the promotional website. She got in touch with my friend, whose name is Jon Cohn, because she wanted to hook up a webcam on the Rodney Dangerfield website too, and wanted to know how to do it. Geek culture back in the day was like that: random, unexpected, curiously grassroots. I guess I was sort of witnessing history happening. Never quite thought about it that way before.
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