The sound of journalistic credibility gasping its last breath.
Naomi Wolf’s rebuttal to the criticism she has garnered in response to her rant in the Guardian last week is non-responsive, and frankly, bizarre. She writes specifically in response to Josh Holland of Alternet, but Holland’s criticism mirrors my criticism, as well as karoli (Crooks and Liars), Scott Lemieux (Lawyers, Guns, and Money), Corey Robin (Al Jazeera English), and Will Wilkinson (The Economist) among others.
Josh Holland’s article “Naomi Wolf’s Response to my Critique Largely Evades the Issues at Hand,” is a must read. Holland writes,
It’s disappointing that Naomi Wolf’s response to my criticism of her November 25 Guardian column â and earlier blog-post — doesn’t address the many misstatements of fact, logical leaps and baseless assertions which I highlighted.
Wolf instead spends much time on a general discussion of heightened federal surveillance and the increased coordination between federal and local law enforcement agencies, which she says I am naĂŻve not to acknowledge, and devotes an enormous amount of space to establishing that federal law enforcement agencies have had some sort of role in at least monitoring the Occupy Movement and offering some guidance to local law enforcement agencies.
Holland’s assessment is spot on. Wolf’s article rambles on for eight pages, and ultimately, doesn’t say anything relevant.
Wolf leads off by criticizing a claim that neither Holland nor any of her critics has never made: that DHS had no involvement with the crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street locations:
She claims repeatedly and falsely that I wrote that DHS had âno involvement whatsoever,â when I acknowledged that DHS had reportedly offered advice to local law enforcement agencies. All of the paragraphs she devotes to discussing the Freedom of Information request filed by the National Lawyers Guild â and the fact that DHS hasn’t denied any role â are wasted space. DHS officials have stated that they had some minimal supporting role. That isn’t in dispute.
She then proceeds to entirely ignore the substance of Holland’s (and others’) criticism of her article in the Guardian. And that criticism is this: her repeated assertions that the crackdown conspiracy reaches up into the highest echelons of government, and her belief proffered as fact that the federal government is coordinating the crackdowns by providing tactical assistance and instructions to local authorities are based upon an article written by journalist Rick Ellis’s article in Examiner.com, which article was substantively retracted by Ellis himself. (Indeed, Wolf nowhere mentions Ellis’s article nor does she provide any explanation for her prior reliance on Ellis’s claims to form the basis of her Guardian article.)
Her critics do not assert that the Feds are categorically not actively coordinating the crackdown, but rather that Wolf has provided no clear evidence that they are.
Rather than specifically address this criticism, she flagrantly ignores Ellis substantively retracted claims that a DOJ official confirmed federal coordination, and provides “new” evidence to support her theory. Her evidence is, to put it kindly, ludicrous. Wolf claims,
My evidence for federal coordination with local police exceeds the Wonkette citation, which was not, in fact, the basis of my confidence in writing about this coordination in the crackdown. I relied, rather, on many other sources of evidence. Among them, I was relying on what NYPD told me itself. I am certain that NYPD coordinates with federal authorities in OWS-related arrests because an NYPD official informed me that they did so through the bars of my cell, as part of his formal warning to me before my release, apparently to deter me from activities that might result in my rearrest. As I reported in the Guardian on 19 October 2011, part of the seventh precinct sergeant’s caution to me about what could happen to me if I was arrested again, if I “rejoined [my] friends the protesters”, was a threat based on his assertion of federal coordination with the arrests. He told me that in a second arrest, I would be photographed and fingerprinted, and the data fed into a federal database, to follow me forever. My partner, Avram Ludwig, confirmed that he was given the same warning about his data being fed into a federal database in the event of a future arrest.
Her evidence of a federal conspiracy to crackdown on occupiers in furtherance of a scheme to protect their economic privilege (which Wolf contends would be infringed on the off-chance that OWS could draft and manage to pass legislation closing a “loophole” that permits Congress to engage in what is essentially insider trading) is a sergeant at a local NYPD precinct informing her that her fingerprints would be fed into a federal database.
Preposterous.
Anyone who has ever seen an episode of CSI knows that fingerprints are routinely fed into a federal database called AFIS:
The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) is a national automated fingerprint identification and criminal history system maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). IAFIS provides automated fingerprint search capabilities, latent searching capability, electronic image storage, and electronic exchange of fingerprints and responses. IAFIS maintains one of the largest biometric databases in the world, second only to Mexico with 70 million records, containing the fingerprints and potential corresponding criminal history information for more than 66 million subjects. IAFIS has 66 million subjects in the criminal master file, and more than 25 million civil prints.[citation needed]
Employment background checks and legitimate firearms purchases cause citizens to be permanently recorded in the system.
~snip~
Fingerprints are voluntarily submitted to the FBI by local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies. These agencies acquire the fingerprints through criminal arrests or from non-criminal sources, such as employment background checks and the US-VISIT program. The FBI then catalogs the fingerprints along with any criminal history linked with the subject.
It stands to reason, therefore, that a cop warning Wolf that she would be fingerprinted if she were arrested a second time is proof of absolutely nothing. (As I understand it, most people are fingerprinted the first time they are arrested, and I don’t need to strenuously flex my brain muscles in order to divine a reason that Wolf — “standing lawfully on the sidewalk in an evening gown” — was not fingerprinted upon her arrest.)
After providing this dud of a smoking gun, Wolf goes on a lengthy tangent about the creation of DHS “security zones” in order to counter Holland’s purported conclusion that Wolf has “no evidence of DHS or federal coordination with municipal police on protest surveillance and management” (which, again, is not Holland’s conclusion by any stretch of the imagination.) Nothing in this section of her article has any relevance to the question at hand, which is whether Wolf can support her claims of a federal conspiracy with facts rather than rank speculation drawn from irrelevant historical analyses.
Then Wolf launches into a tirade that I, as an attorney, find baffling. Wolf writes at length about the various FOIA requests propounded by DC Partnership for Civil Justice Fund as well as Truthout‘s Jason Leopold. She writes that both Leopold and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard (the executive director of DC Partnership for Civil Justice Fund) were contacted by DHS and asked to narrow the scope of their FOIA requests. Apparently, the DHS asked that the FOIA requests be limited to information in the possession of senior staff.
Wolf quotes in full Verheyden-Hilliard’s letter in response to DHS declining to narrow the scope of the FOIA requests, and, of course, sees DHS’s response to that letter as further evidence of a nefarious plot:
So it appears from this document, and from Ms Verheyden-Hilliard’s summary of her conversation to which it refers, that DHS is actively negotiating with at least one of the organisations that submitted the FOIA request, to narrow the scope of what the FOIA will compel the agency to reveal. This letter appears to confirm that DHS is arguing to limit the reach of the entities’ FOIA request: DHS is asking that the request only apply to “senior staff”, which would allow DHS to conceal the involvement of any number of officials and agents below senior levels. They are taking this position rather than simply turning over the initially requested documents. If Mr Holland were right, that DHS had no involvement in the crackdown, they would have no disincentive to do so. For Holland not to have made any such an enquiry â and then to conclude that the crackdowns were merely a result of local policing and local politics â is, in my view, seriously inadequate reporting.
In reality, the above-described back and forth on the scope of FOIA requests is so common that it barely warrants mentioning. As any lawyer will tell you, FOIA requests (like document requests in litigation) are often so overly broad as to be burdensome or harassing. (These are legal terms.) Lawyers often fight for months, both in court and out, over the breadth of document requests. Requests seeking “all documents that refer or relate to X, Y, Z” are often found to be burdensome and harassing as a legal matter.
So, let’s take a look at the FOIA request propounded by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund:
We are requesting information related to law information related to law enforcement involvement in discussions, communications and technical support regarding the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Occupy encampments in cities around the country. This request encompasses any law enforcement involvement, including, specifically but not limited to the Department of Justice and interagency efforts that the Department of Justice may participate in such as the Joint Terrorism Task Forces or Fusion Centers.
This request includes, but is not limited to, information reflecting communications involving law enforcement and state or municipal representatives and/or private consultants or analysts pertaining to the Occupy movement, the Occupy encampments, and law enforcement or government response thereto.
Believe me when I tell you, that is as overbroad a document request as I’ve ever seen during my ten years of lawyering. In response to such requests, federal agencies and corporations often request that such documents be limited to senior executives or officials. Otherwise, the parties to whom the requests are sent end up digging through the electronic and paper files of every clerk, secretary, and intern in the organization, and 9 times out of 10, such “low-level” employees or staff have no responsive information that more senior officials don’t. Moreover, the parties often agree in advance on what “senior staff” means so that the documents produced in response to the request are complete. Certainly, Wolf’s speculation that DHS desire to narrow the document requests to less than “every document you have in your agency” is nefarious may be accurate. The problem is, Wolf presents her opinions and speculation as fact. This is irresponsible.
Essentially, Wolf’s argument is “Trust me. I know what I’m talking about.” She really drives that point home by arguing she has personal experience with these sorts of things, and it is “unquestionable” to her that Peter King and others overseeing DHS would be influenced by their own economic desires, and it is “obvious” to her that the White House would, in turn, be influenced by Congress:
Holland may find it hard to believe, but from the experience of 14 months I spent in total as a formal and informal political adviser, it is unquestionable to me that Representative Peter King and others on the subcommittee overseeing DHS would be influenced by their own, and by their colleagues’, wishes for avoiding the financial transparency posed by OWS demands. It is also obvious to me that the White House would be influenced by Congress’ wishes on these issues, even though DHS is, indeed, part of the executive branch. This network of influence is simply how the system works.
Got it? It’s just how the system works. Trust her. She’s an expert. Again, this is irresponsible.
In the Guardian article describing the various responses to Wolf’s article (and which contains a quote from me, so huzzah!), Matt Seaton concludes as follows:
Whether you see Wolf’s article as reckless conspiracy theory-mongering or passionately engaged partisanship probably depends not only on how you see the Occupy movement and its policing, but also on what you consider the role of opinion journalism to be and how it should treat facts versus views.
No. The two concepts are not related. This is about journalistic standards, not partisanship.
If we as liberals and progressives no longer require opinion journalism to be grounded in fact; if opinion journalists are permitted to state “Shocking Truths” based on nothing but what is “obvious” or “unquestionable” to them; if opinion journalists are permitted to substitute facts for rank speculation, then we all may as well take our cyanide pills right now, because guess what? We’re in Fox News territory, and that is a horrifying prospect.
Had Wolf’s article been couched as an opinion piece, I would have no problem with it. Had Wolf posed the question “Are the Feds cracking down on Occupy Wall Street, and could this violence be the result of Congress working in concert with the White House to protect their economic privilege?” then her articles would be fair — they would be honest. But that’s not what she did.
What’s worse — as evidenced by her response to Holland’s article — she actually believes her opinions are facts. She knows what’s going on. It’s obvious to her. It’s unquestionable. Trust her.
This isn’t journalism. It’s error-riddled pablum grounded in hearsay, and, yes, it is irresponsible.
[via Alternet]
[cross-posted at Angry Black Lady Chronicles]
Joseph Nobles
LEAVE NAOMI CAMPBELL ALONE
David Koch
A large group of writers calling Wolf out doesn’t just happen.
It had to be coordinated by DHS.
David Koch
A large group of writers calling Wolf out doesn’t just happen.
It had to be coordinated by DHS
Lysana
I’d suggest calling her Mara instead, but that’s a bad pun on how sad and pathetic she’s being.
DougJ
Meh, she’s unfrozen caveman post-feminist. She was relevant when Newt was speaker and not since then.
General Stuck
Now THIS is a hippie punch. KO
David Koch
Cain to make major announcement tomorrow.
Here’s a preview
carpeduum
Jesus titty fucking christ on a stick. It’s Naomi fucking Wolf. The queen of opinionated hyperpartisan fight picking fake intellectual crap looking to make some sort of come back.
ruemara
Look, she’s hot and she’s on the side of [whomever] that we agree with, so LEAVE HER ALONE! At least I think that’s the basic jist of all your detractors that will show up on this thread. How disappointing she is. Then again, how disappointing all the liberal greats of the Bush years have turned out to be. The Truth has lost out to The Things I Want You To Believe.
cat48
The accusation that bothered me the most by her & Michael Moore was the fact that Michael Moore went on Olbermann & stated that the WH Kenyan specifically ordered the raids. There’s video & twitters of that, but Wolf did the same thing on Msnbc the next day as I was watching. It was sorta depressing to me b/c I really don’t think he ordered the Mayors (frankly, since everyone hates him, why would they follow his orders anyway??) It just sounded illogical to me since the Kenyan seems content to have 2 different Occupations 2 Blocks from him on property maintained by the Fed Park Service & one near my hometown in St. Louis, Mo., that haven’t been touched The Feds in DC gave them lists of Rules that have to be followed if the want to stay; sanitation issues mainly. One of the DC Occupations entered a vacant Fed Bldg & tried to squat there & they were asked to go back to their camps & that vacant building occupations were not acceptable to them. I haven’t talked about this since October b/c my irritation always comes down to these two specific people. I’m weak & I gave in tonight! :( So, let the attacks begin.
taylormattd
I’ll eagerly await the ABL hater’s dismissal of Scott Lemieux as some Obama apologist.
rikyrah
I appreciate your doggedness about this ABL. But truthfully, she’s so not worth it.
taylormattd
@Joseph Nobles: Did she throw some more shit at a maid?
arguingwithsignposts
inb4 charges of racism.
Caz
I’m surprised you’re even wasting your time with a story that’s not race related.
gwangung
@rikyrah: Mostly because, like with the tea baggers, nothing anyone says will convince the true believers anything else happened.
Jess
…meanwhile, back at corporate headquarters, CIQ morphs into a self-aware entity…
stinkdaddy
@ruemara: Yes, all none of them. Your crystal ball may need servicing.
@taylormattd:
You too.
@arguingwithsignposts:
And a third.
@gwangung:
Number four.
Looks like Naomi Wolf’s isn’t the only knee being jerked in this thread. 18 posts in so far, and four of them are dire predictions about all the horrible things that mean people may or may not say.
I guess it’s just impossible to look at Wolf’s craptacular article as a craptacular article. No, damn it, this is going to turn into a shitfest whether you have to push it in that direction or not.
taylormattd
@Caz: Hey, thanks for that Rush! Is it difficult to see the keyboard through the eyeholes you cut in the sheet for your hood?
carpeduum
@ruemara: She was ok looking at one time way back before the internet. She’s not now. I guess she figures if Gingrich can make some sort of comeback maybe she can.
Hopefully Camille Paglia comes out of her silence to once again intellectually bitch slap her around some more.
Brandon
Is this THAT important? Really?
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Caz: I know, right? Cause that’s all Black people ever think about!
Idiot.
Marci Kiser
“I am certain that NYPD coordinates with federal authorities in OWS-related arrests because an NYPD official informed me that they did so through the bars of my cell…”
Was this before or after the albino monk tried to strangle her with a rosary?
Foolish woman… she has no idea how deep this conspiracy really goes…
scav
wheew, @Caz, pace yourself kiddo — don’t use up all your irrelevance this early in the month. December’s a month with 31 days too.
some guy
disagree. white lies and conspiracy-mongering about how Even the Kenyan Muslim Socialist Hates OWS damages all of us. shutting down OWS has nothing to do with Team Obama, much less DHS, so any acceptance of the little whoite lies idiotic Left Truthers like Woolf and Moore spread minimizes both the importance and seriousness of OWS and collapses the threat to hegemony it represents.
good on you ABL et alia
srv
Naomi is so post-progressive boring. Couldn’t you go postal on Jane or Adama Marcotte like John used to? Good times.
Not that Naomi is wrong on thce crazy – yes, she’s just making shit up, but you could make stuff up all day and still not be as crazy as the COINTELPRO stuff was.
*let me just add, if your battery is on, leave your cell phone at home before marching anywhere. Whether it’s the Kenyan Usurper or Verizon you’re worried about, you’re just doing it wrong
dekster
Naomi Wolf is a dangerous idiot. She’s a left-wing Glenn Beck, seeing conspiracies in milk carton directions.
Donut
Newsflash: Naomi Wolf is the Intertoobze equivalent of a turd in the punch bowl AND a lot of people are still paranoid and confused about the really awful shit our government does in the name of “security.”
After the commercial break, tune in for the story about a dog who bit someone.
(ABL – I like a lot of the stuff you write and agree with things you write fairly often, but this…meh….)
David Koch
I love how Wolf dressed for the OWS protest.
A sheer cocktail dress with a deep plunging neckline (nice boobs, but she sadly lost her figure).
http://cdn.theatlanticwire.com/img/upload/2011/10/19/Screen%20shot%202011-10-19%20at%205.23.27%20AM_thumb.png
That’s exactly what Emma Goldman wore to the Haymarket rally.
Donut
@dekster:
Huh? Wolf doesn’t even have close to the reach Beck does, even accounting for the fact that he has been sequestered to his own little corner of stoo-pid derp a poop a meow a blap, with his dunce cap all askew and the wet spot on the front of his pants. Her audience is pretty much…no one.
different-church-lady
@carpeduum:
Wow, now that would be some hot blowhard on blowhard action!
clayton
@Caz: You forgot the /rimshot
Trainrunner
That OWS picture of Wolf says it all.
She wrote The Beauty Myth so every single interviewer could start with “But you’re so beautiful, so why write a book calling out the advantages of being beautiful?” She ate it up.
And remember she took to the fainting couch a few years back to complain about how, at Yale, 25+ years ago, Harold Bloom had grabbed her ass.
She’s the original Drama Beauty Queen, and I’d wager my future earnings she’s also a PUMA, through and through.
I really hate that asshole.
Omnes Omnibus
@clayton: It was serious.
dekster
@Donut: I agree that she does not have the audience of Glenn Beck. I meant only that her “intellectual style” is similar. I remember once seeing a video of her giving a talk in which she described reading about the rise of fascism in Europe in the 20th century. She said that there were many similarities to current day America. Here she ticked off a list of events and characteristics, first in Nazi Germany, then in America, described in broad detail. She said the hairs on the back of her neck went up.
Now in the Guardian she writes that the “scales fell from my eyes” when she read about some completely inconsequential loophole in government policy, that explained everything to her.
This is all Glenn Beckery. If Wolf is not as popular as Beck, that is, actually, a tribute to the intelligence of left wingers.
clayton
@Omnes Omnibus: I know. I just thought I was pointing out the ridiculous factor.
Sorry if I confused.
David Koch
@Trainrunner:
She’s more of a teabagger. In an interview with Alternet she said Obama is like Hitler and the Nazi party. She also said liberals “have a cultural problem with self-righteousness and elitism. We look down on people we donât agree with.”
Donut
@dekster:
Fair enough, Dekster, and I apologize if I misread your earlier post.
Omnes Omnibus
@clayton: Just making sure. You don’t want to get covered in troll goo.
LM
I disagree with those saying this isn’t worth the time to debunk. Having it racket around the internet and cable that Obama wants to squash OWS will feed cynicism and depress turnout and help Rs. It’ll be added to a list of not true/unnamed source junk that feeds a slanted narrative that helps Rs. Imo no amount of killing this story could be overkill.
taylormattd
@stinkdaddy: oops. See Caz.
smintheus
@Trainrunner: About 25 years ago I was obliged to sit through lunch at a small table with her while she played belle of the ball. If she had flipped her hair even one more time I thought I was going to snap. chiz
kay
I was hoping ee mom would show up because we need another Wolf anecdote.
There has to be more than the hair-tossing, although that was pretty entertaining.
Spectre
Article is an appeal to verbosity by a typically authoritarian Obama defender.
No amount of raving and ranting will get around Quan’s testimony:
Why was she having a conference call with 18 other mayors, and who coordinated it?
Omnes Omnibus
@smintheus: If your hair is in your eyes you have to do something.
Donut
@LM:
I take your point, LM, but seems to me this stuff is so below the radar for the average person. I’m a political junkie and I suck up everything I can read about politics (you probably do too, if you frequent sites like BJ), but most people aren’t that way. Obama is holding very steady with Democratic likely voters, and more Democrats will come home. I can’t see how these fits of assholery among disaffected so-called progressives really amount to much more than tempest meeting teapot. I’m just giving an opinion, and as the saying goes, opinions are as ubiquitous as a-holes, and YMMV, but I think anyone who wants to believe Wolf is mired in blind ignorance, and way past just being depressed at GOTV time.
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, but what if your hair is in your brain?
Brian S
@Trainrunner: In fairness, Harold Bloom is a misogynist dick and serial harasser. Just because she’s gone off the rails lately doesn’t mean she was always bad.
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady: Nair?
Omnes Omnibus
@Brian S: Hell, even if she was always a loon, it doesn’t making harassing her acceptable.
Trainrunner
Oh, I know full well Bloom is capable of having harassed her. My problem is that she’d been on the public stage for decades–and for “feminist” concerns–and she never deigned to bring it up until a book she was hawking magically dovetailed with the issue.
She’s becoming the woman who cried Wolf. :)
smintheus
@kay: Oh there was more than the hair. I was meeting up with a Zoolander type; I was supposed to introduce him to a woman I knew who was kinda lonely out at her college on the outskirts of Oxford. Zoolander walked in the shop and instantly made a beeline to Wolf sitting alone, mistaking her for my friend. We couldn’t pry Zoolander and Wolf apart, so we had to sit with them. Very obvious that within about 30 seconds they’d each resolved to spend a zesty afternoon together, and all the damn hair flipping was a preliminary ritual. Then mid lunch they were off, almost bowling people over out in the street in their rush back to an apartment.
The conversation, such as it was, had been less than appealing.
Mnemosyne
@Spectre:
(A) The mayors were talking about what to do about the Occupy protesters.
(B) Given that the various mayors have their own lobbying groups that have conferences and conference calls all of the time, why do you believe that this one specific call must have been coordinated by the federal government and not the mayors themselves? Please present your evidence that, unlike all of the other dozens of meetings and conference calls the mayors themselves manage to organize the rest of the year, this specific call must have been organized by the federal government.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: No, dear, mayors would never talk to one another without Orders from the White House.
General Stuck
@Omnes Omnibus:
The blog has been suffering withdrawals from lack of firebagging lately, and the specter of spectre is flitting thread to thread mainlining ObamaFail to bring reality for our lost Obot souls. sigh
Mnemosyne
@General Stuck:
I didn’t even realize it was the same idiot. That’s what I get for not reading usernames closely.
magurakurin
I had no idea who Naomi Wolf was before ABL started talking about her. So, I did a little search and the first article of hers I came across was this
It’s all about how porn has made men not want to have sex with real women. I mean, seriously? Saying that men would rather look at porn than have sex with a real women because the real women doesn’t match the fake ideal of a porn women is, no kidding aside, the dumbest fucking thing I have ever heard.
I don’t if she is right about the DHS or not. And frankly, after reading that porn screed I don’t care. I realize that I a merely attacking the messenger, but seriously, I mean seriously…porn makes you not want to have sex? Or at least make you inclined to turn it down when the opportunity appears?
Not. in. a. million. years.
I mean, shit, I’d do Naomi.
Omnes Omnibus
@magurakurin: Are you saying that there ain’t nothing like the real thing?
PIGL
@carpeduum: Oh, this is about her looks, by which you mean her age?
I am sure you yourself personally will stay young and beautiful forever.
magurakurin
@Omnes Omnibus: yeah, bro. Ain’t nothing like the real thing. Don’t get me wrong, nothing bad or shameful in jackin’ off. That’s god’s gift to us all. But when the booty is offered, tis never refused in this house.
FlipYrWhig
Ya know, it’s not THAT hard to understand that sometimes “coordination” means leadership–X coordinated the response–and sometimes it means cooperation–X and Y coordinated on the response. And yet for WEEKS we’ve had to listen to professional and amateur writers alike pretending not to get it. It’s utterly asinine. And it shows no signs of stopping.
different-church-lady
@magurakurin: You need to remember that in certain situations porn makes men not want to have sex at all, and in other situations porn turns men into sexual monsters with uncontrollable compulsions to rape and degrade.
Which situation is which is dependent on who wrote the article you’re reading at the time.
Omnes Omnibus
@PIGL: I will always be beautiful, but, then again, I am not a piece of shit troll.
mclaren
All you have to do, ABL, to prove your assertions is give us some hard evidence.
Show us the FOIA evidence proving that the DHS didn’t organize the nationwide crackdown on the OWS movement.
What’s that?
You don’t have the results of the FOIA requests?
Neither does anyone else. So you have no evidence on which to base your claims.
Okay, fine. Let’s see your other evidence — show us the discovery materials from the lawsuits filed against the various police departments around the country. That should reveal what really went on during the OWS crackdowns.
What’s that?
You don’t have any discovery material yet, because the lawsuits haven’t made their way through the court system yet?
So you don’t actually have any evidence, do you, ABL? All you’ve got is a whole lot of hot air.
Get back to us when you have hard evidence.
My prediction: once the FOIA requests go through and after the lawsuits finish doing their discovery and subpoenaing all their witnesses, then we will have hard evidence that the U.S. government did in fact orchestrate the nationwide crackdown on the OWS movement.
Naomi Wolf will be proved correct. You will be proven wrong.
In the meantime, why are you spending so much time hammering on Naomi Wolf, instead of sociopaths like Ralph Reed and John Boehner and Karl Rove?
Are you getting paid by the Republican National Committee? What’s you real agenda here? Why are you spending all your time attacking and attacking and attacking and attacking and attacking the left-wing people, while ignoring the real danger the America — the far-right socipaths writing legislation legalizing the kidnapping and torture of U.S. citizens?
David Koch
@magurakurin:
Yet she spent her career trading on her sex appeal.
different-church-lady
@mclaren: Using your own supposition, can we now assume you’re going to STFU until things have moved through the courts?
Jeez… a bunch of hot air claiming someone without evidence is ragging on someone else who doesn’t have any evidence either.
Unless you’re just putting us on. You’re just putting us on, right? Nobody could be that ironic unintentionally, right?
The prophet Nostradumbass
@General Stuck: Who is this “Knockabout” yahoo?
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: Seriously? Really? You’re serious?
William Hurley
You’re working awfully hard to bait Ms Wolf. Do you hope she’ll take notice of the results of your typing out here in the “blog-0-sphere” and respond to your molehill inflation project.
Are you hoping (planning?) to capitalize on any “legitimacy” you perceive you might garner as a “liberal” by “debating” Ms Wolf?
Do you qualify for time and a half working overtime in the o-bot factory?
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t think she’s serious. She can’t be serious.
General Stuck
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Don’t know. Could be anybody. Or just the internet cutting a fart.
different-church-lady
@William Hurley: And you’re working awfully hard to bait Ms. Lady.
As Bogie might have said, “My my my, so much bait in this town and so few brains.”
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady: We could be in cloudcuckooland.
General Stuck
The telephone company?
different-church-lady
@General Stuck:
Could be — they’re the ones who are really in charge of the government anyway.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@General Stuck: the United States Conference of Mayors? Shocking, isn’t it, that they have an organization? LOL
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady:
That’s what the water company wants you to think.
General Stuck
@Omnes Omnibus:
Now I’m getting really paranoid.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
mclaren proves three negatives before lunch, so therefore if the Obama admnistration can’t prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they didn’t have anything to do with it, that proves that they ordered the entire thing and orchestrated it from the top down. Ipso facto, QED, all of that.
It’s just how the conspiracy theorist’s mind works. Anything that might be proof against the theory being true is secretly proof that it’s all true. If the mayors can be shown to have had three previous conference calls about shutting down the Occupy protests, that just proves that they’re covering up for the Obama administration and Peter King, who’s in charge of DHS and transmits the president’s orders directly to DHS (1).
When you’re crazy, the sky’s the limit!
(1) Yes, you know and I know that the line of command isn’t DHS -> Peter King -> Obama, but Naomi Klein said it and it makes Obama look bad, so therefore it’s TRUTH!
Omnes Omnibus
@General Stuck: And that is what the cable company wants….
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m positive they spy on us now, through the TV. It was on that well-known documentary series, the X Files.
Donut
This thread needs this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIaSOSwG0GY&feature=related
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus: WAKE UP, sucker, this is the PHONE COMPANY we’re talking about!
Omnes Omnibus
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Do you think that they allowed the truth to show up? You have to know it is far, far worse than anything you have seen on TV or in the movies. Just sayin’.
Spectre
@Mnemosyne: 1) Why would a lobbying group for mayors organize a specific call about cracking down on OWS? Doesn’t this presuppose a common Mayoral interest in cracking down? What might that interest be?
2)http://gawker.com/5850054
That’s the FBI now. Federal.
different-church-lady
@The prophet Nostradumbass: They see everything, they know everything! They’ve got their own covert police force!
Stillwater
Well, I normally don’t find myself agreeing with mclaren, and I’m actually not. Totally. Only halfway. Here’s how I think it goes: the DHS will be implicated for helping, coordinating, providing advice, timelines, tactics, fallout, damage control, that sort of thing. But it will also turn out this is part of their newly created (has DHS really been around that long?) mandate. So mclaren will be right that it was coordinated by the DHS, but ABL will be right that the orders for the crackdown didn’t originate with the DHS.
See how easy that is?
Stillwater
Really tho, the bigger worry here is why the Feds are advising/supplying/training local cops in these types of situation in any event. Is crowd control really a federal concern?
Omnes Omnibus
@Stillwater: Because the DHS Helpline answered the questioned it was asked?
Spectre
@Mnemosyne:
Idiot? Well that’s not nice. Quite an angry lot. It seems, to paraphrase “firebagger” Krugman: When your position cannot withstand scrutiny, there can be no scrutiny.
Yelling and raving isn’t going to change the facts. And yelling “FIREBAGGER” is like Sullivan giving out a “MOOOOOOOOOOORE AWARD!!!”. Weaksauce.
Jenny
@different-church-lady: In the 1967 satire “The President’ Analyst” the phone company is secretly running the country.
handsmile
@Mnemosyne: (#79)
A small, but not unimportant, correction to your final paragraph.
The author responsible for this particular kerfuffle is Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth), not Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine). Klein has been writing about the Occupy movement for The Nation.
I’d attribute this slip to the lateness of the hour, but I believe you’re on the Left Coast, and at 10:30 on a Friday night it’s still too early to go out.
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus:
If someone on a helpline actually answered a question, then clearly the phone company had nothing whatsoever to do with it.
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady: Skype. Ha! I’ve run circles ’round you logically.
Stillwater
@Omnes Omnibus: I think the feds finger prints are all over these crackdowns, but in an ‘advisory’ capacity. I guess my worry is to what extent that advisory capacity blends seemlessly into an ‘orchestrating’ capacity, which would then blend into a ‘federal control’ capacity.
I’m certainly not saying that the feds playing this role is the result of any decision made in the Obama WH. I wouldn’t even have said the role played resulted from the Bush WH if this happened when he were president. It’s simply the role feds increasingly play in law enforcement.
AA+ Bonds
Please give us five or ten more updates on this breaking story about something that no one even remembers anymore
Omnes Omnibus
@Stillwater: On a serious note, I disagree. Beyond helpline-esque things, I doubt the Feds were involved in any coordinated way.
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus: BURMA!
The prophet Nostradumbass
@different-church-lady: Why’d you say BURMA?
Stillwater
@Omnes Omnibus: But the feds are a constant presence in local law enforcement in any event OO. If you mean that they weren’t involved any more than they already are, I think we can both be right here.
Omnes Omnibus
@AA+ Bonds: Dude, You have been commenting here since you had 3 As, one would thing you understood this blog.
Omnes Omnibus
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Panicked, did you?
Omnes Omnibus
@Stillwater: I don’t think think the Feds started anything. I don’t thing the Feds organized anything. I think that if local law enforcement asked questions or the feds, they got the same answers.
ETA: Except for that Yutsano character. He is obviously someone for whom we should watch out.
different-church-lady
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
How should I know? I’m not Doctor Bloody Bernovski!
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Omnes Omnibus:
@different-church-lady: Heh heh. The Python, it is strong.
TruthOfAngels
@Mnemosyne: Hem hem. Wolf, not Klein. Naomi Klein wrote No Logo. It was quite good.
Mnemosyne
@TruthOfAngels:
D’oh! At least I’m not the only one who’s made that mistake since the whole thing blew up. Still, annoying that I made the same typo as everyone else.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus:
Hey! I’ve been in training all day so I haven’t been ebil once! Well other than subtly seducing one of my co-workers, but HE’S A MARINE DAMMIT!! :)
Mnemosyne
@Spectre:
Yes, it’s almost like there were Occupy protests going on in multiple cities at the same time so the mayors of those cities decided to get together and trade information.
Nah, too easy. Clearly the answer must be Wolf’s Obama to King to DHS line of succession. It’s not like the mayors of Oakland and New York would be at all interested in talking to each other about similar events going on in their respective cities at the same time. That’s just crazy talk.
So the fact that a self-proclaimed “security expert” takes it upon himself to spy on the Occupy group in NY and forward the information to the FBI and NYPD is proof that Obama ordered the Occupy camps broken up?
Again, no one is saying the FBI didn’t consult with the mayors. In fact, the mayors themselves say that they asked for advice from both the FBI and DHS and the FBI and DHS both say that they gave advice to the mayors.
What people are disputing is Wolf’s claim that Obama personally ordered that the Occupy camps be shut down and Rep. Peter King gave that order to DHS, who then gave the mayors their marching orders.
What’s in dispute is not whether there was “a” conspiracy to shut down the camps, but who was in charge of it. Apparently, you’re under the impression that the mayors of large cities must have been following orders from higher up rather than conspiring amongst themselves because arglebargle Obama!
Given that you’ve evidently bought into Wolf’s conspiracy theory where she insists that the head of the congressional committee that oversees DHS is actually the head of DHS and can give orders to them, what other logical conclusion am I supposed to come to?
Bago
Interesting
Bago
Seriously, it was a bunch oeople who don’t give a crap
cat48
@mclaren:
Pat In Massachusetts
I’m with Digby on this one. I can’t understand why the Obama-bots have their panties in a wad over this.
I’ll admit I did not read this post word for word, but it seems ABL thinks the organizations that did file FOIA requests are now asking for too much damned information.
Don’t we want to know everything we possibly can about the Occupy arrests and what goes on after these arrests? After all, those people getting pepper sprayed in the face are there for me and millions like me. So if one writer wants to go the “conspiracy route” with this, after experiencing first hand being arrested in a “low plunging dress” than so be it. Has ABL or any other of Wolf’s harshest critics visited an Occupy encampment? I don’t know so I will not judge, but all I’m saying is that Wolf DOES have first hand experience of what exactly went down between police in riot gear and peaceful protesters.
Authority has to be questioned now more than ever, before our freedom and democracy have been completely stripped away from us.
Jason
While I’m not a fan of Naomi Wolf, this pissing contest between her and the Obots who insist that the DHS /couldn’t possibly/ have anything to do with the coordinated response “because… fuck you firebaggers!” is pathetic.
Angry Black Lady claim Naomi Wolf’s article is bizarre and non-responsive. True or not, I wouldn’t call this quote “non-responsive”:
“Early Wednesday morning, as LAPD began to move in on the encampment at Los Angeles City Hall, I saw two DHS ‘federal response’ team SUVs parked in front of a building about a block away from the encampment, and DHS personnel who appeared to take over for several LAPD officers [âŠ] I phoned the police department to get additional information about DHS’s presence and was told that the federal building was located just one block from the encampment and that DHS has an office in there, which is ‘where they process immigrants’.
[..]
Ray Kelly has confirmed to the New York Times and others close DHS-NYPD cooperation in the creation of DHS-managed surveillance zones where public protest is federally tracked. A 2009 study by Jeremy Nemeth, PhD, in the publication Cityfutures, details DHS coordination with municipal leaders and police forces in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, that turned whole sections of these cities into DHS-managed “security zones.”
This is Wolf quoting Jason Leopold’s reporting. There’s a lot more of that in the article you deride as “bizarre” and “non-responsive.
Frankly, ABL, you are a political narcissist who argues with the standard wingnut tactic of making brazen assertions with arrogant confidence. I don’t think much of Wolf as a journalist but the coordinated blogosphere attack on her for suggesting DHS involvement is suggestive of a group partisan effort to protect the administration.
cat48
@Pat In Massachusetts:
I can only speak for myself personally. Michael Moore and Wolf went on TV more than once and stated that Obama personally ordered them. They twitter that constantly. When anything happens at any of these camps, these two immediately blame Obama. I’M SICK OF IT! HE’S NOT YOUR FUCKING NIGGER TO DISRESPECT AND ABUSE AND ACCUSE. I THINK A PERSON SHOULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR TRUTH ON NEWS BROADCASTS ON TV, NOT MAKE CRAP UP!
I’ve taken a lot of shit from the Left about Obama & said absolutely nothing about deliberate LIES they constantly tell so much they believe they’re true! I was going to ignore this too, but did you see the lying screed at the Guardian, poorly sourced that Wolf wrote??
cat48
Personally, I don’t care about the DHS involvement b/c they’re in most large cities that have Federal Property like Federal Buildings in them. Their “homeland security”. They probably live and work in that city.
The TV appearances infuriate me b/c they’re poisoning the Voting Pool and yes, there are still people out there who don’t hate him.
Barry
@stinkdaddy: “I guess itâs just impossible to look at Wolfâs craptacular article as a craptacular article. No, damn it, this is going to turn into a shitfest whether you have to push it in that direction or not.”
Agreed. ABL, you’re smashing the house chasing a mouse with a broom here. Instead of taking a couple of paragraphs to point out that she has no proof, you’re going on a looooooooooooooong rant.
Esteban
The actions of and reactions to the OWS movement serve to reveal the hypocritical core of the present duopolistic political system. For example, if the recent brutal, police “crackdowns” (in truth, outright abuses of constitutionally granted rights) on the OWS movement had been coordinated and perpetrated under the Bush administration, Democratic Party partisans would have been calling for hearings of impeachment to be convened against George W. Bush. The lack of outrage among liberal insiders regarding recent events is an object lesson into the invidious nature of duopolistic rule. What Democratic Party partisans warn against–the big business beholden, freedom phobic, Republican agenda–is advanced in a more efficient manner when a Democrat is installed by the 1% in the U.S. presidency. Apropos, Democratic Party apologists are as guilty of carrying the agenda of the national security/corporate state as are oligarch-duped teabagger sorts.
ornery
LOL ABL again.
Wolfe has no power (yes I know that’s why you’re attacking her) but gosh there are some actual villains in our media that could use your mighty hairbrush of Angryness.
ornery
@Esteban: Dude, just say ‘Both Sides Do It!”
It doesn’t take 350 words to construct a cop-out, only 4.
agrippa
Wolf has no proof.
It is very unlikely that Wolf will the work needed to find proof.
agrippa
@cat48:
Those people have no proof.
And, they know that they do not have any proof.
Do not expect any of them to try and find proof.
different-church-lady
@Pat In Massachusetts:
You don’t have to be an Obama-bot to be irritated by a zombie lie.
Especially one that being told by someone who’s supposedly a member of ‘my’ tribe.
Yes. Is so complete that we sit here yapping away on a semi-public utility discussing things like the pending election of our national leaders and other people protest in tents in other cities.
William Hurley
@Jason:
Spot on.
I have posted like observations which were “greeted” with the naked hostility of imperial courtiers whose emperor had only just met a truth-telling youth.
I’m often reminded of Nietzsche’s parable of the madman when reading certain authors herein. As “Attitude Fred” wrote, “the news of his death has not yet reached them…”.
William Hurley
@Pat In Massachusetts:
Indeed.
The question I’ve asked, which has yet to be answered by o-bots is this:
William Hurley
@different-church-lady:
Pardon me for asking the question.
Having read abl’s anti-wolf diatribes, one cannot help but become curious as to motive since it is the one aspect of her “anger” that’s left unaddressed despite the voluminous word counts she’s dedicated to the subject.
Allan
@Pat In Massachusetts:
I stopped reading your comment right there. Be sure and come back and let us know what you think after you actually read the article, mkay?
Tim I
Naomi has enshrined herself among the clueless assholes of the left. Thank god, she had Michael Moore to guide her.
Stillwater
@William Hurley:
Comments like this are pretty unhelpful wrt getting clearer on states of affairs, or even advancing an argument. This is really just taunting.
ABL has gone to pretty great lengths to clearly state exactly what she’s arguing here: that there is no evidence except a reporter’s now retracted claim that Obama or the WH or the Feds ordered the Nationwide Crackdown. Whether or not DHS was involved in the crackdowns seems like a completely secondary point she’s not really concerned about.
So, the implication of what you’re getting at here is that ABL, because she’s an Obot, is denying or evading certain types of evidence, and is ‘scared’ of what the FOIA request will reveal. No. Not true. She’s arguing that the motive for making the request isn’t based on any evidence; and specifically, any evidence that Obama ordered the ‘crackdowns’.
It’s pretty simple really. That her accusers continue to not see what she’s arguing here isn’t her fault. In fact, they’re doing the exact same thing she’s criticizing Naomi of doing: coming to conclusions without sufficient evidence to support them.
El Cid
There’s a gigantic mess created (“gigantic,” of course, in relative terms, measured as the percentage of people who ordinarily might be worried about such things who are worrying about such things) when informal and bloggish suspicions or offhand arguments are portrayed — or believed to be — “journalism,” i.e., the reporting of directly obtained empirical fact.
Wolf made claims about what were the obtained facts which couldn’t be supported.
Given the sheer scale and spread of the OWS protests, I’d find it hard to believe that it was not seen as a Homeland Security issue, for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to the possibility of individuals or groups using the physical presences to create urban disorder or even terrorist attack. Anyone who thinks this wasn’t under serious review is, and I say this without other empirical verification, nuts.
But you simply do not make claims of fact which you can’t substantiate if you actually intend for those claims of facts to be used in public discourse.
I.e., it’s one thing to spout off in a blog post or comment — you’re not supposed to be seen as a 1st hand or research source by some non-predetermined standard.
It’s another thing to write as though you have conducted the requisite journalism or research work to enable a claim that others can rely upon.
That’s what Wolf did and where she erred. It had nothing to do with the direction or context of the arguments, except to the extent you wish to use the direction or contexts to explain her behavior psycho-politically.
Obama and the DHS in this Universe certainly could have done what Wolf and others alleged. Or, could not have. But it’s the sort of thing which requires some investigation with clarity in terms, sources, and the competing strengths of claims.
Personally I didn’t see it as a huge or strongly emphasized charge, but then, I just wasn’t prompted to look much into the claims as I didn’t see much there.
different-church-lady
@William Hurley:
Maybe she has a distaste for bullshit that’s stronger than mine.
William Hurley
@Stillwater:
You are incorrect.
I have repeatedly provided information and my own observations as to the regular presence of Federal authorities in and around Portland’s now barren “Occupation” location. Federal agents were involved in detaining and arresting numerous “Occupiers” prior to the mass displacement by Federal agents and various para-military squads from Portland’s and surrounding towns’ constabularies.
Furthermore, I provided reference to several articles and reports detailing the entrapment then arrest of “terror” suspect Mohamed Osman – better known in Portland and environs as the “Christmas Tree” terrorist. Osman was identified, enticed, entrapped, provided with plans, false bomb material and suggestions for a target by the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, other DHS agents and, at the end of the fake plot, Portland’s regular and anti-terrorism cops.
What Osman’s experience reveals is that in post-al Qaeda attacks America, there is little if any “day light” between overt and covert law enforcement authorities. Witness the NYPD’s decade long “covert op” – aided and abetted by the FBI & DHS – to “monitor” and infiltrate the “Arab/Muslim” community in and around New York. What is true is that outside observers are barely able to distinguish, on an incident basis, which agencies are the “hand” and which is the “glove”.
Oh yeah, there’s that series of conference calls in which mayors from all Occupy “challenged” cities participated in. Are you, as Sissela Bok might suggest, lying through the omission of a reference to Oakland’s Mayor Quan?
different-church-lady
@Stillwater:
William’s goal here is not to help or create clarity or advancing an argument. His goal is to keep the rumor alive for as long as he can.
William Hurley
@different-church-lady:
Maybe she does. However, the OCD-like demeanor she infuses into her “argument” evidences a more disturbing motivation than you are left to guess at.
different-church-lady
@William Hurley: Pot. Kettle. All that, all that.
ArrogantDemon
@mclaren:
So, you seriously believe Peter King has say so over Janet Napalitano, and will actually work with the most hated one, Barack Hussein Obama?
That alone and the fact she doesnt know jack shit about how government works negate this who damn article
ArrogantDemon
@Pat In Massachusetts:
Because the left doesnt need or should take on the tactics of the far right, and just make shit up and lie
ArrogantDemon
@Stillwater:
Would they also have to wonder if this was a national crackdown, why are the Occupy in DC still there?
There is a small Occupy in Hartford, and no one has messed with them, and they’re still there, along with most other cities
So, Barack Obama smashes movements in like 20 different cities, but not one down the street from his residence?
C’mon son
Pat In Massachusetts
@cat48: I follow Moore on Twitter and I have seen no such Tweet!
Pat In Massachusetts
@Allan: I did not read her entire post THIS time. However, I did read ABL’s first post on this subject ALL THE WAY THROUGH and my reaction was the same. That being “Why are so many saying DHS could not possibly be involved?”.
So when ABL wrote again to discount Wolf’s discount of her critics it was like “here we go again” so I admit I scimmed the article because it contains three quarters of what her first article said only with some new insults from across the blogosphere thrown in. So shot me if I’m not all that into name calling.
However, I don’t blame you from stopping in reading my comment. I do the same thing. All the time.
Pat In Massachusetts
@ArrogantDemon: The optics would not look good if cops in riot gear starting busting heads in front of the White House. It would be very, very, hard to keep that one out of the media.
Don’t call me son or I’ll have to call you an asshole.
Thanks.
Pat In Massachusetts
@cat48: The only person that has used the term nigger on this thread is you. Why is that?
Pat In Massachusetts
@different-church-lady: When a group is peaceably demonstrating and is shot up with rubber bullets and blinded and chocked with pepper spray, I do not see that as living in freedom and democracy.
Maybe your church teaches that police brutality is democracy but to this American (me) it is not. And I will continue to question authority as I “freely” respond to “zombie” accusations.
Can’t anyone on this thread write a post without being so insulting and derogatory?
Nada1
Why do a rebuttal to a rebuttal? What is this, the third piece Angry Black Lady has written about Naomi Wolf? Just update one of your other ones next time. It seems ironic that A B L is spending so much time and effort responding to what she calls BS
ArrogantDemon
@mclaren:
So, you seriously believe Peter King has say so over Janet Napalitano, and @Pat In Massachusetts:
Wow, arent you a bit testy on Mittens levels
You didnt explain why only at the most 20 cities out of hundred constitute a national crackdown?
As long as the protest respected the boundaries, its all good
You also have to wonder why this story of Ms Wolf’s has been investigated by several journalist, and effectively debunked
But, if you gotta keep the meme going, we cant stop you, just consider the truth, thats all