Recent Posts
Archives
Economics
- Center for Economic and Policy Research
- Center for Equitable Growth
- Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
- Center on Wisconsin Strategy
- Corporate Crime Reporter
- Costs of War Project
- Economic Outlook
- Economic Policy Institute
- Economic Populist
- Economist's View
- EconoSpeak
- Emanuel Saez
- Food Chain Workers
- Green Economics Institute
- Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights
- Institute for New Economic Thinking
- It's Our Economy
- Labor Notes
- LBO News from Doug Henwood
- Left Banker
- Left Business Observer
- Levy Institute
- Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
- Monthly Review
- Naked Capitalism
- Naked Keynesianism
- New Economic Perspectives
- New Faculty Majority
- New Labor Forum
- Ohio Part-Time Faculty Association
- Political Economy Research Institute
- Poverty in America Living Wage Calculator
- Professor Richard D. Wolff
- Real-World Economics Review
- Schwartz Center for Economic and Policy Analysis
- The World Top Incomes Database
- Thomas Palley
- Thomas Piketty
- TripleCrisis
- Union of Raducal Political Economics
- Wall Street on Parade
- Working Class Perspectives
- World Economics Association
Enviroment
- 350
- Alliance of Small Island States
- Climate & Capitalism
- Climate Denial Crock of the Week
- Climate Justice Now!
- Co2Now
- DeSmog Blog
- Earthwatch Institute
- Enviromental Health News
- Enviropedia
- Europe Envorment Agency
- Green Economics Institute
- Greenpeace International
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
- International Network for Sustainable Energy
- NASA: Global Change Master Directory
- NASA: Global Climage Change
- Nature
- Science Daily: Global Warming News
- Skeptical Science
- The Heat is On
- Third Generation Enviromentalism
- Union of Concerned Scientists: Global Warming
- United Nations Enviroment Programme
- United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
- US Enviromental Protection Agency
- World Resources Institute: CAIT
General
- Against the Grain
- Agence global
- All Tied Up and Nowhere to Go (old)
- Boycott, Sanctions, Disvestment
- Climate Central
- Corey Robin
- CounterPunch
- Critical Sociology
- Crooked Timber
- Democratic Underground
- Digby's Hullabaloo
- Dissent
- Empire Burlesque
- FireDogLake
- Glenn Greenwald
- Green is the New Red
- Guernica Magazine
- ikners.com
- Informed Comment
- Institute for Policy Studies
- Jacobin Magazine
- John Sherffius Poltical Cartoons
- Le Monde Dipblomatique
- MacroTrends
- N+1
- New Left Project
- New Left Review
- Newsrackblog
- Old Hickory's Weblog
- Once Upon a Time
- Philosopher's Stone
- POGO
- Politics and Letters
- PowerBase
- Progressive Review
- Project Syndicate
- Rachel Singer
- Salon
- Sinead O'Connor
- State of Nature
- State of the globe
- Swans Commentary
- The Current Moment
- The Monkey Cage
- TomDispatch
- Transnational Institute
- TruthDig
- UDEMI
- Undisciplined PhD
Law
Local
News
- AlterNet
- American Independent
- Building Bridges Radio
- Common Dreams
- Crooks and Liars
- Democracy Now
- Economic and Political Weekly
- Fact Check
- FightBack!News
- Indypendent
- iWatch News
- Jonathan Cook
- Nation
- News from the Underground
- Omidyar Group
- Pennsylvania Independent
- Project Censored
- Reporters Without Borders
- RT America On Air
- Rustbelt Radio
- SourceWatch
- The Real News Network
- This Can't be Happening!
- Washington Independent
- WhoWhatWhy
- Workers Independent News
Occupy Movement
Organization
2012 Presidential Race
Alexander Cockburn
Austerity
Austerity Politics
Barack Obama
Class Conflict
Class Politics
Class War
Climate change
Crimes Against Humanity
Deficit Politics
Democracy Deficit
Democratic Party
Dominique Strauss-Kahn
Donald Trump
Economic Crisis
Economic Predation
Empire
European Central Bank
European Union
Eurozone
Financial Crisis
George W. Bush
George Zimmerman
Glenn Greenwald
Global Warming
Great Recession
Greece
Imperialism
International Monetary Fund
Inverted Totalitarian System
Iraq
Israel
Lying in Politics
Medicare
Middle East
Mike Whitney
Militarism
Mitt Romney
Neoliberalism
New York City
New York City Police Department
New York Times
Obama administration
Occupy Movement
Occupy Wall Street
Party Duopoly
Paul Krugman
Police Brutality
Police Repression
Political Murder
Political Scandal
Politics
Popular Contention
Poverty
Propaganda
Racism
Reactionary Economics
Reactionary politics
Republican
Republican Party
Rule by Law
Rule of Law
Scott Walker
Security-Surveillance State
Social Security
State Terror
Tom Tomorrow
Unemployment
United States
United States Congress
Wall Street
War Crimes
War on Terror
Wisconsin
All Tied Up and Nowhere to Go on Twitter
- RT @DougHenwood: This is appalling. 1 month ago
- RT @PittsburghPG: Biden budget to trim $1T from deficits over next decade post-gazette.com/news/nation/20… 1 month ago
- RT @OMGno2trump: The price of oil dropped 20% over the last 7 days. The price of gasoline went up. 2 months ago
All Tied Up and Nowhere to Go by Stephen Zielinski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Ahhhhh, Andrew Ross Sorkin
10.4.2011 1 Comment
I found it noteworthy that Mr. Sorkin, currently a New York Times financial ‘journalist,’ quickly responded to a lament made by a member of his key audience (h/t to Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism):
“I think a good deal of the bankers should be in jail.”
That is what Andrew Cole, an unemployed 24-year-old graduate of Bucknell University, told me Monday morning in Zuccotti Park, the epicenter of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Mr. Cole, an articulate young man dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt and with a blue wool beanie on his head, had just arrived by bus from Madison, Wis., where he recently lost his job.
There was nothing particularly menacing or dangerous about Mr. Cole. He said he had come to participate in Occupy Wall Street because he believed in its “anticapitalist” message. “I see Wall Street as responsible for the mess we’re in.”
I had gone down to Zuccotti Park to see the activist movement firsthand after getting a call from the chief executive of a major bank last week, before nearly 700 people were arrested over the weekend during a demonstration on the Brooklyn Bridge.
“Is this Occupy Wall Street thing a big deal?” the C.E.O. asked me. I didn’t have an answer. “We’re trying to figure out how much we should be worried about all of this,” he continued, clearly concerned. “Is this going to turn into a personal safety problem?”
As I wandered around the park, it was clear to me that most bankers probably don’t have to worry about being in imminent personal danger. This didn’t seem like a brutal group — at least not yet.
Well, I do wish the protest will not turn into a personal safety problem for this Bankster or for any other Bankster. After all, illegal killing is wrong when a mob commits the act or when a President authorizes the act.
That said, my strongest wish has the #OccupyWallStreet protest creating the conditions under which the Banksters will eventually confront a serious legal-political problem, one specific to their situation. This problem would include prison-time for those Banksters found guilty of crimes by legally rational courts. Although it should not need to be said but I shall say it anyway that wanting jail time for those Banksters guilty of crimes is a much different wish than wanting them guillotined or sent to reeducation camps, as suggested by Roseanne Barr, a celebrity given to hyperbole whom Sorkin quoted in order to focus attention on and thus to enhance the physically menacing features present in any protest movement seeking justice for institutional crimes. Thus does a ‘responsible journalist’ (“lapdog to bankers,” Yves Smith) recklessly impute criminal motives and a capacity for violence to a protest action that has been peaceful till now and remains committed to seeing justice done. Sorkin furtively sought to achieve this transformation by a sleight-of-hand trick: It’s the uppity unemployed, not the Banksters, who are dangerous. Well…. No!
“Lapdog to bankers” — it’s good work if you can get it.
Cross posted to Fire Dog Lake
Filed under Commentary Tagged with Andrew Ross Sorkin, Bankster, Financial Crisis, New York Times, Occupy Wall Street, Political Crisis, Popular Contention, Propaganda, Protest, Wall Street, Yves Smith