Can you hear me now?

 Welcome back to #occupymyweek day 2

Let's see if I can keep this up.

Today let's talk about intentional disinformation, let's talk about the media, let's talk about the smear campaign launched against Occupy.

Did anyone else notice a complete lack of coverage when this movement started, kinda like maybe it wasn't happening? The problem was people were serious about this issue and so they stuck to it. The media HAD to cover it at the point when it looked like it might take off. So Occupy groups popped up all over the country, city to city. Hallelujah! All rise. Media coverage was quite scarce, and never dared to show, or even admit to the size of the crowds or the amount of support behind this movement. So the people took it upon themselves to show the truth, through the wonders of the internet we all got to see photos and videos of throngs of people participating in one of the most massive civil upheavals of the last 30 years at least. Now the media is fucked, whatever will they do? People are getting accurate information, which is something they are not supplying. Uh oh. So, yes indeed, what will the media beast do?

Cue the smear campaign. I felt that the attempt to discredit this movement began very quickly, perhaps to try to keep it from gaining momentum and spreading. "This movement doesn't have any real identifiable goals". "It's just a bunch of lazy trust fund kids". "Shiftless roustabouts". I have seen interviews with eloquent folks who were participating, just not on the news. It was better for them to piece together clips of eight different people with eight different takes on what the issues and possible solutions were, it made it look like a muddled mess. One thing stands out to me though, everybody shares one idea in common, that there is something wrong with the economic system in this country. So it's possible that everybody was unified by that alone.

The disinformation machine also vomited up the notion that the people who support this movement all want something for nothing. We all want a free hand-out at somebody else's expense. When in actuality that was part of what was being rallied against, the banks getting a free hand out at the tax payers expense. Because of bad business practices standing on the back of greed, these banks were failing. The U.S. senate issued Levin–Coburn Report found "that the crisis was not a natural disaster, but the result of high risk, complex financial products; undisclosed conflicts of interest; and the failure of regulators, the credit rating agencies, and the market itself to rein in the excesses of Wall Street". The government said it first guys. So WE are not the ones looking for a hand out, we were mad about the last one.

Now the shift has changed again. The average Joe is caught in the financial bind right now, so tell Joe the economic impact of the protesters on his money. That's right, all protesters are hypocrites because we are throwing away millions of dollars of tax payer money on Police. We need them there to have a peaceful protest. It is all our fault, sorry we invited them. I have read so many articles about this recently, just how much the protests are costing America (although it's probably not as much as that little war we started in Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction that have yet to materialize). The massive Police presence was the ideas of the politicians in the cities where these protests occurred, not the idea of the protesters, and just so you know, I think some mayors might have over reacted. Peaceful protests don't require armies of cops in full riot gear to show up and start the riot themselves... but I'll cover that tomorrow.