"Chris Hedges-Occupy the Courts NY Jan 20 2012 w/ Lawrence Lessig Occupy Wall St" (with video)

NewYorkRawVideos, with video (28:23):

Filmed January 20, 2012. Chris Hedges, Lawrence Lessig, Virginia Rasmussen on the eve of the 2nd Anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision "Citizens United v. F.E.C.". The video begins with a march from Liberty Plaza a/k/a Zuccotti Park to the rally point at Foley Square across the street from Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse at 40 Centre St. The Rude Mechanical Orchestra plays their "Smash a Bank Polka" followed by Chris Hedges giving an update to his lawsuit against Barack Obama and Leon Panetta. Virginia Rasmussen offers a historic perspective on the Citizens United decision. Laurence Lessig gives an inspirational speech on restoring democracy. Other speakers: Alexis from Occupy Wall Street, Camille Rivera, and Amy Muldoon. The video ends with the Rude Mechanical Orchestra finishing of their song.

Howie P.S.: Hedges writes about this event and his experience earlier in the day "sitting on a wooden bench in a fourth-floor courtroom in the New York Criminal Court in Manhattan."

60 Minutes Asks: 'Why Aren't We Prosecuting Wall Street?' (with video)

Diane Sweet (Crooks and Liars) with video (14:28)from CBS:

Big banks, bailouts, and secret bailouts, the defective and even fraudulent mortgages that have already led to foreclosure on millions of American's homes; finally, a mainstream media news source is asking why none of the companies involved - or their executives - have been prosecuted.

Steve Kroft and 60 Minutes talks with two whistleblowers, Eileen Foster, a former senior executive at Countrywide Financial, and Richard Bowen, a former vice president at Citigroup.

In a script note from "60 Minutes" producer, James Jacoby, begins with "It's been three years since the financial crisis crippled the American economy, and much to the consternation of the general public and the demonstrators on Wall Street,(Emphasis mine) there has not been a single prosecution of a high-ranking Wall Street executive or major financial firm even though fraud and financial misrepresentations played a significant role in the meltdown."

A significant "win" for the Occupy Wall Street movement to be mentioned in such a groundbreaking investigative report? If nothing else, perhaps the Wall Street titans will cringe a little more with each spotting of a protest sign or "mic check."

Part one of the program begins, with the second part of the video at the bottom of the page, and a link to the final portion that's contained in the 60 Minutes Overtime report:

Steve Kroft: Do you believe that there are people at Countrywide who belong behind bars?

Eileen Foster: Yes.

Kroft: Do you want to give me their names?

Foster: No.

Kroft: Would you give their names to a grand jury if you were asked?

Foster: Yes.

But Eileen Foster has never been asked - and never spoken to the Justice Department - even though she was Countrywide's executive vice president in charge of fraud investigations. At the height of the housing bubble, Countrywide Financial was the largest mortgage lender in the country and the loans it made were among the worst, a third ending up in foreclosure or default, many because of mortgage fraud.

It was Foster's job to monitor and investigate allegations of fraud against Countrywide employees and make sure they were reported to the Board of Directors and the Treasury Department.

Kroft: How much fraud was there at Countrywide?

Foster: From what I saw, the types of things I saw, it was-- it appeared systemic. It, it wasn't just one individual or two or three individuals, it was branches of individuals, it was regions of individuals.

Kroft: What you seem to be saying was it was just a way of doing business?

Foster: Yes.

In 2007, Foster sent a team to the Boston area to search several branch offices of Countrywide's subprime division - the division that lent to borrowers with poor credit. The investigators rummaged through the office's recycling bins and found evidence that Countrywide loan officers were forging and manipulating borrowers' income and asset statements to help them get loans they weren't qualified for and couldn't afford.

Foster: All of the-- the recycle bins, whenever we looked through those they were full of, you know, signatures that had been cut off of one document and put onto another and then photocopied, you know, or faxed and then the-- you know, the creation thrown-- thrown in the recycle bin.

Full transcript available here.

Howie P.S.: Part Two of this story is here.

"The End of the Occupy Camps Is the Start of the Next Phase"

The Rude Pundit:

Last night, in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, the police moved in by the hundreds to clear out the Occupy encampments. In L.A., Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa used the tiredest excuse of them all: think about the children. In a city with at least 13,500 homeless kids (and that's just the ones that show up at schools), L.A. probably could have spent the money it used for the 1400 cops and 200 arrests at the City Hall camp on, say, housing some of the kids who don't want to be on the streets.

You can bet that we'll be hearing about more crackdowns as the winter progresses, until almost all the camps are gone. And to that, the Rude Pundit says, "Finally."

Don't get him wrong. He fully supports the occupiers and their colonization of urban spaces, the footholds of American renewal. He even understands why defending the camps has become so important. For some, whether fresh-faced, middle-class college student or unemployed middle-aged homeless person, the camps are a taste of what power and democracy are like. They are a small victory in a concrete swamp of constant indignity and degradation. Smelly, ugly, and full of sloppy dissent, the Rude Pundit thought they were beautiful. It's why he wanted and still wants people to donate stuff to the remaining encampments. If they're gonna stay, then he wants these hippie harbingers of the future fight to be safe and warm.

But the camps need to be seen for what they are and what they've accomplished: they had to come into being in order to show that there are large numbers of people willing to put their bodies on the line for a cause. They needed to remind us that the public square is not virtual and that civic engagement in the real world is necessary and vital for the reclamation of the country. That has been done. But right now the media is focusing too much on the camps as symbols and their eviction as a loss, with some even portraying the evictions as a victory over an ill-prepared, misguided, easily-mocked group of anarchists and leeches. Don't let the fuckers have the victory. Don't let them take back the narrative.

Of course the occupations have to be destroyed by the police. That was the point, wasn't it? Draw out the authorities. Get them to respond to your actions. Transform yourself into beings with your own agency, no longer objects to be acted upon. And how does that not bait the ones with the batons and the pepper spray and the ones who order them to attack?

The Rude Pundit doesn't mourn the end of the encampments in the same way he didn't mourn moving from teenage years to adulthood. Now we've seen that action is possible, that community is possible, that mass public support is possible. It's time to move to targeted direct action, and, no, that doesn't mean supporting candidates for election. That's bullshit co-opting and dilution of the movement. Leave that to Occupy Wall Street's sympathizers. It means direct confrontation, like the new effort to stop foreclosures from occurring. (The Rude Pundit will be out there next Tuesday.)

And it means that Adbusters had it right when it declared, in the heated environment after New York was shut down, "We will turn this winter into a training ground for precision disruptions – flashmobs, stink bombs, edgy theatrics – against the megacorps and the unrepentant 1%, a festival of resistance in the snow with, or without, an encampment that'll lay the tactical foundation for our Spring Offensive."

While we need to take care of the outdoor occupiers, we cannot cling to slivers of land when we have a nation to take back.

"Occupy Wall Street, Faces Of Zuccotti Park: The Chef " (with video)

Hunter Stuart (HuffPo) with video (01:22):

Sean Dolan, 48, has worked as a chef in a variety of restaurants over the last 30 years, most of them in Providence, R.I. While he's done everything from line to prep to standard short-order cooking, his favorite is Italian -- "tossing saute pans and cooking calamari and veal saltimbocca and chicken parmesan," he said.

But when he was fired from his most recent job in early October, instead of applying for other jobs, Dolan hopped a train to New York City and came straight to Zuccotti Park to join the protesters. He'd heard about the Occupy protest on NPR -- he doesn't read print media much anymore, except for the Providence Phoenix -- and wanted to help out anyway he could. MORE...

"Why Occupy Wall Street Has Left Washington Behind"

Gordon Lafer (The Nation):

As the weeks tick by, the protests at Zuccotti Park and across the nation are driving home this profound realization: this is a fight that can’t be won by voting. MORE...

MTV's "True Life: I'm Occupying Wall Street" Turns Movement Into Reality Show (with video)

HuffPo with video (04:22):

Though networks typically dispatch embeds during campaign season, MTV took a different approach to the tactic when it dispatched youth into the Occupy Wall Street protests for its show "True Life."

"True Life: I'm Occupying Wall Street" will premiere on Saturday, November 5, at 6 p.m. et. Four MTV embeds protested in Zuccotti Park with Occupy Wall Street demonstrators and immersed themselves in the cause.

The special will take viewers to "the front lines" of the Occupy Wall Street protests and follow the four embeds as they become "swept up in the cause." The special will focus primarily on the point of view of the younger demonstrators whose anger is seemingly focused on the concept that they graduated college and expected to find employment, but have been having difficulty in finding steady jobs during the recession.

Greg Sargent: "For critics of #OWS, it's always 1970"

Greg Sargent:

Conservatives highlighting the excess of Occupy Wall Street, while trying to sound a self-fulfilling prophesy that it will alienate the middle of the country, are trying to exploit a cultural fault line that’s persisted for decades — between ordinary working-class and middle-class voters, and liberal activists who resort to outsized tactics. This time, there isn’t yet any reason to believe it’s working. MORE...

'Occupy' Roundup (with video)

Frank Rich:

What’s as intriguing as Occupy Wall Street itself is that once again our Establishment, left, right, and center, did not see the wave coming or understand what it meant as it broke. Maybe it’s just human nature and the power of denial, or maybe it’s a stubborn strain of all-­American optimism, but at each aftershock since the fall of Lehman Brothers, those at the top have preferred not to see what they didn’t want to see. MORE...

A founder of ‘Occupy Wall Street’ talks about movement’s origin and what comes next"(RAW STORY):

I think also a lot of us have been disappointed by what’s happened with the Obama Administration. I know I can speak for myself that I was really hopeful that we would have some change. I knew it wouldn’t be perfect, that not every dream we’d have would be answered, but that we wouldn’t really be seeing the man who promised to close Guantanamo, keep it opened indefinitely, extend wars, give tax cuts to the rich, you know, do all these things you’d expect Bush to do. MORE...

"Occupiers Have to Convince the Other 99 Percent" (Chris Hedges):

The occupation movement’s greatest challenge will be overcoming the deep distrust of white liberals by the poor and the working class, especially people of color. Marginalized people of color have been organizing, protesting and suffering for years with little help or even acknowledgment from the white liberal class. With some justification, those who live in these marginalized communities often view this movement as one dominated by white sons and daughters of the middle class who began to decry police abuse and the lack of economic opportunities only after they and their families were affected. MORE...

"Michael Moore & Cornel West on OWS, Iraq & the Progressive Discontent Obama Faces in ’12 Vote," with video from Democracy Now!:

As Occupy protests against inequality and corporate greed continue across the United States and around the world, we’re joined by Michael Moore, Academy Award-winning filmmaker and activist, and Princeton University Professor Cornel West. MORE...

Sam Seder: "our interview with Digby on Occupy Wall Street and more!" (audio)

Majority Report, audio (33:23).

"Sgt. Shamar Thomas Discusses His Experience Confronting the NYPD in Times Square" (video)

Crooks and Liars, with video (05:40):

Countdown's Keith Olbermann talked to former Marine Sgt. Shamar Thomas about his experience confronting the police in Times Square during the #OWS protests where he defended the occupiers right to assemble and march peacefully.

Thomas explained he became inspired to get more involved in the protests after seeing some of the police brutality during the first week in October.

"Micah White from Ad Busters" on OWS (with videos)

Whatstrending, video (09:50):.

Micah White from Ad Busters Skypes in to talk about the origins and phenomenal growth of Occupy Wall Street.

Howie P.S.: TPM has "Occupy Wall Street Demographic Survey Results Will Surprise You.". Noillusionz has produced what may be the first television commercial for a protest movement, video, (00:33). Nicholas Kristof extends the OWS inequality message to the education arena: "Occupy the Classroom." Zaid Jilani (Think Progress) takes the imapact of OWS in another direction: "Thanks To The 99 Percent Movement, Media Finally Covering Jobs Crisis And Marginalizing Deficit Hysteria."

"Occupy (We the 99)" (video) (Updated)

"The Occupy Wall Street movement that started in New York City spread to Freedom Plaza in Washington D.C."

UPDATE: National Journal poll; "Most Back Protests, Surtax.".


jasirix with video (03:12):

Filmed live at Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Pittsburgh by Director Paradise Gray, Jasiri X reconnects with super producer Cynik Lethal to provide a soundtrack for this growing movement that has taken the world by storm. We gonna Occupy!

Papantonio: "Eric Cantor's Brain Occupied" (video)

golefttv, with video (03:29):

Mike Papantonio appears on MSNBC's The Ed Show to discuss Eric Cantor's sudden change of heart regarding the Occupy Wall Street protestors -- a group that just a few days ago he referred to as a "mob."

Howie P.S.: Joan Walsh is also in the segment.

Sam Seder: "The one and only Matt Taibbi" on OWS (with audio and video)

The Majority Report, with audio (51:41) and video (03:31).

Howie P.S.: Taibbi doesn't show up until around (12:40) in the audio because Sam first had to bring us some Victoria Jackson.

The New Yorker 'Covers' Occupy Wall Street

This cover was just posted online. I got it from Ari Melber's Facebook page.

Occupy Wall Street Still Occupying (live stream)

Watch live streaming video from occupynyc at livestream.com

OCCUPYNYC, live streaming video.

Matt Taibbi: "Why Rush Limbaugh Is Freaking Out About Occupy Wall Street" (with video)

Matt Taibbi with video (08:15) from MEDIAite:

This isn't evidence that mainstream politicians are caving to the movement, of course, but what it does show is that those same politicians are endorsing OWS rhetoric, and by extension tacitly admitting the basic truth of the great-many-versus-very-few protest narrative.

Rush chalks this up to a media deception, a mirage of TV images and “media-Democrat-industrial complex” manipulations designed to con the country into believing in the existence of a mass movement.

The reality, of course, is that people like Rush, Romney and Obama are all becoming cognizant of the deep frustrations that exist across the political spectrum and are growing desperate to prevent the powder keg from blowing completely – hence the intense effort to describe OWS as a top-down manipulation. MORE...

"Barack Obama’s OWS problem"

Steve Kornacki (Salon):

Glenn Greenwald noted last week, there are plenty of reasons for OWS supporters to conclude that Obama — who, don’t forget, was Wall Street’s candidate in 2008 — and the top Democrats in Washington are guilty of enabling Wall Street’s most destructive behavior and of paying too much lip service without action to the cause of “the 99 percent.” This may be what is drawing many of them to OWS — a belief that even well-meaning leaders of their own party are no match for the forces that really call the shots in America. If that’s the case, then Obama will need to do more than point fingers at Republicans if he wants to turn OWS into his own Tea Party. MORE...

Chris Hedges on "where the Occupy movement has come from and where it is heading" (video)

OccupyTVNY, video (06:58):

On October 15th Occupy TVNY met with Pullitzer prize-winning author and journalist Chris Hedges in Times Square, New York City where tens of thousands of people assembled on a global day of action. Chris shares his feelings on where the Occupy movement has come from and where it is heading.

Matt Taibbi: "Can Wall Street Protests Succeed?" (video)

foxbusiness.com, video (09:13):

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi on the need for clarity from the Occupy Wall Street protestors.

Howie P.S.: Mr. Taibbi is interviewed by Mr. Imus.