Thomas Lindaman desperately tries (via repetition) to label Occupy Wall Street as being "astroturfed."
How OWS started is not in any way a secret - here's it straight from the original website for the movement:
http://occupywallst.org/article/who_we_are/
Someone had to start it, and yeah, it's good to know who did and why. There is a world of difference, however, between merely providing the initial spark, and actually leading the thing, which they very much do not. They aren't "organizing" it, but yes, it was their idea. Others just picked up and ran with it. More power to Adbusters, for being part of spurring an actual movement that's taken off.
But no, according to Lindaman, it's a shadowy organization, led by George Soros, and unions, and Michael Moore, and... Yoko Ono.
Soros constructed a master plan... to camp out in public parks. Brilliant!
Sorry, there is absolutely NO evidence of Soros's intervening, other than a minimally supportive statement. People aren't being bused in (remember the "Tea Party Express" buses?), the signs are homemade (the Teabaggers are just pissed because the majority of the OWS signs are spelled correctly). Sure, union members will be there. OWS cares about workers, unions care about workers. Common goals. Less than 14% of the American work force is unionized, but for some reason, this minority is the cause of ALL of America's problems according to the insane right-wingers.
Does it even make any sense? These people are simply walking around with homemade signs. What exactly could be funded? There is no food provided, stages, bathrooms... There don't even appear to be flyers. All it took was the internet and the will to stand up. Are they saying rich leftists funded the Facebook and YouTube videos?
Here's more on OWS's actual origins:
http://www.kold.com/story/15712989/kalle-lasn-the-brains-behind-occupy-wall-street
If the OWS protests had a small set of easily identified leaders, then they'd be vulnerable. Various corporate research teams could dig up their backgrounds, they could examine their finances, look for skeletons in their closet. they could tag, track and number the opposition and then shelve them away in a neatly labeled niche on a wall somewhere. But this movement doesn't have that sort of weakness. It's peer to peer... no single leader, but a bunch of nodes all moving in more or less the same direction.
This is exactly what's driving the GOP and corporate controlled news folks nuts. They can't find a target.
Right-wingers like Lindaman are driven to find 'the leader' and destroy him/her. When they can't find a leader, and instead find several hundred peer to peer protest nodes...well, their entire strategy falls apart.
First thing the authoritarians and fascists will do is look for the leaders to take out, one way or another. No leaders, no targets. This drives the financial-government complex just nuts. And the corporate media, well, they are left chasing their tails. Thus, the media blackout.
So while the corporate press and people like Lindaman are running around trying to find 'the leader', the movement goes on to build contacts, teach people what's going on in this country, and generally rile people up against the wall street and it's allies.
Lindaman and other right-wingers are livid at what OWS is accomplishing, and are trying valiantly to deny any of the claims they're making about how our society is organized. The simple fact that they're responding to claims about how power is filtering upward, along with money, is evidence that they're losing.
The leadership is clearly pretty diffuse; from the start, this was the central point of criticism toward OWS! Now it's orchestrated by a shadow council of OWS Elders? Gimme a break.
Lindaman, since you just keep flailing around, yelling at every supposed "leftist" boogeyman that dares to give vocal support to OWS, it's a little hard to take anything you've written seriously.
Why was it only a few weeks ago the OWS was a fractured group of various protest movements (which it is, at a very basic level) to being a unified arm of leftist millionaires and union thuggery and other such accusations?
Have you participated in the Occupy protests around you? If there were some sort of union control, or Soros control, or any other sort of centralized control the the OWS movement, why are the cultures so different from city to city? The unions and "the rich" aren't controlling the protests, and are barely even making a dent in the funding stream.
The Republicans do not care about reality, and they are all about controlling the narrative. They already hate the unions, so if they can link the unions to the Occupy movement as one and the same, then they hope naturally people will hate the Occupy movement. The unions are not thugs. And it is not a failure to attain an ally with political and workplace influence.
And even if, in some alternate reality,bazillionaires are contributing more to other parts of the movement, I fail to see how this is even remotely close to the degree of involvement that Fox News had with fomenting the Tea Party. Remember the FNC Tax Day Tea Parties, and again, the Express Buses?
So which major television network is pumping money into the occupations, organizing busloads of people to come join us, advertising OWS direct action times on TV, paying for big names to come and speak, etc etc? No answer? Didn't think so.
In the Tea Party protests, there were tons of people who get Medicare and SS who were saying that they wanted the government out of their lives (the same people that want the government in our bedrooms and in women's reproductive lives). They were complaining about high taxes, when taxes are at generational lows! And on the other hand, the OWS protests actually are reasonable. Teabaggers were protesting people getting healthcare and were suddenly concerned about spending (after Bush's term was up). Fox made the Teabaggers into a story. Without Fox they were nothing but confused old white racists, lining up to vote, once again, for Republicans, just to save millionaires some tax money. The Occupy movement has a point, whereas the Teabaggers never did. What's really funny about the Teabaggers, is that they were never like the Boston Tea Party... they are like the Loyalists, who want the power to stay with the elite.
It must really cheese off the right-wingers that the Teabaggers, who are a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party, is losing relevance to a real populist movement. Jealous much, Lindaman?
If you are looking for origin stories, buy some old comic books. Your projection of astroturfing just makes you laughable. So it's fortunate for you, that nobody's listening to you.
"Yoko Ono likes OWS, therefore corporate influence on government is a-okay!"
Hey, Lindaman: They're still protesting.
How OWS started is not in any way a secret - here's it straight from the original website for the movement:
http://occupywallst.org/article/who_we_are/
Someone had to start it, and yeah, it's good to know who did and why. There is a world of difference, however, between merely providing the initial spark, and actually leading the thing, which they very much do not. They aren't "organizing" it, but yes, it was their idea. Others just picked up and ran with it. More power to Adbusters, for being part of spurring an actual movement that's taken off.
But no, according to Lindaman, it's a shadowy organization, led by George Soros, and unions, and Michael Moore, and... Yoko Ono.
Soros constructed a master plan... to camp out in public parks. Brilliant!
Sorry, there is absolutely NO evidence of Soros's intervening, other than a minimally supportive statement. People aren't being bused in (remember the "Tea Party Express" buses?), the signs are homemade (the Teabaggers are just pissed because the majority of the OWS signs are spelled correctly). Sure, union members will be there. OWS cares about workers, unions care about workers. Common goals. Less than 14% of the American work force is unionized, but for some reason, this minority is the cause of ALL of America's problems according to the insane right-wingers.
Does it even make any sense? These people are simply walking around with homemade signs. What exactly could be funded? There is no food provided, stages, bathrooms... There don't even appear to be flyers. All it took was the internet and the will to stand up. Are they saying rich leftists funded the Facebook and YouTube videos?
Here's more on OWS's actual origins:
http://www.kold.com/story/15712989/kalle-lasn-the-brains-behind-occupy-wall-street
If the OWS protests had a small set of easily identified leaders, then they'd be vulnerable. Various corporate research teams could dig up their backgrounds, they could examine their finances, look for skeletons in their closet. they could tag, track and number the opposition and then shelve them away in a neatly labeled niche on a wall somewhere. But this movement doesn't have that sort of weakness. It's peer to peer... no single leader, but a bunch of nodes all moving in more or less the same direction.
This is exactly what's driving the GOP and corporate controlled news folks nuts. They can't find a target.
Right-wingers like Lindaman are driven to find 'the leader' and destroy him/her. When they can't find a leader, and instead find several hundred peer to peer protest nodes...well, their entire strategy falls apart.
First thing the authoritarians and fascists will do is look for the leaders to take out, one way or another. No leaders, no targets. This drives the financial-government complex just nuts. And the corporate media, well, they are left chasing their tails. Thus, the media blackout.
So while the corporate press and people like Lindaman are running around trying to find 'the leader', the movement goes on to build contacts, teach people what's going on in this country, and generally rile people up against the wall street and it's allies.
Lindaman and other right-wingers are livid at what OWS is accomplishing, and are trying valiantly to deny any of the claims they're making about how our society is organized. The simple fact that they're responding to claims about how power is filtering upward, along with money, is evidence that they're losing.
The leadership is clearly pretty diffuse; from the start, this was the central point of criticism toward OWS! Now it's orchestrated by a shadow council of OWS Elders? Gimme a break.
Lindaman, since you just keep flailing around, yelling at every supposed "leftist" boogeyman that dares to give vocal support to OWS, it's a little hard to take anything you've written seriously.
Why was it only a few weeks ago the OWS was a fractured group of various protest movements (which it is, at a very basic level) to being a unified arm of leftist millionaires and union thuggery and other such accusations?
Have you participated in the Occupy protests around you? If there were some sort of union control, or Soros control, or any other sort of centralized control the the OWS movement, why are the cultures so different from city to city? The unions and "the rich" aren't controlling the protests, and are barely even making a dent in the funding stream.
The Republicans do not care about reality, and they are all about controlling the narrative. They already hate the unions, so if they can link the unions to the Occupy movement as one and the same, then they hope naturally people will hate the Occupy movement. The unions are not thugs. And it is not a failure to attain an ally with political and workplace influence.
And even if, in some alternate reality,bazillionaires are contributing more to other parts of the movement, I fail to see how this is even remotely close to the degree of involvement that Fox News had with fomenting the Tea Party. Remember the FNC Tax Day Tea Parties, and again, the Express Buses?
So which major television network is pumping money into the occupations, organizing busloads of people to come join us, advertising OWS direct action times on TV, paying for big names to come and speak, etc etc? No answer? Didn't think so.
In the Tea Party protests, there were tons of people who get Medicare and SS who were saying that they wanted the government out of their lives (the same people that want the government in our bedrooms and in women's reproductive lives). They were complaining about high taxes, when taxes are at generational lows! And on the other hand, the OWS protests actually are reasonable. Teabaggers were protesting people getting healthcare and were suddenly concerned about spending (after Bush's term was up). Fox made the Teabaggers into a story. Without Fox they were nothing but confused old white racists, lining up to vote, once again, for Republicans, just to save millionaires some tax money. The Occupy movement has a point, whereas the Teabaggers never did. What's really funny about the Teabaggers, is that they were never like the Boston Tea Party... they are like the Loyalists, who want the power to stay with the elite.
It must really cheese off the right-wingers that the Teabaggers, who are a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party, is losing relevance to a real populist movement. Jealous much, Lindaman?
If you are looking for origin stories, buy some old comic books. Your projection of astroturfing just makes you laughable. So it's fortunate for you, that nobody's listening to you.
"Yoko Ono likes OWS, therefore corporate influence on government is a-okay!"
Hey, Lindaman: They're still protesting.