Naomi Wolf // Current TV

The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy | Naomi Wolf

Occupy Wall Street protester Brandon Watts lies injured on the ground after clashes with police over the eviction of OWS from Zuccotti Park. Photograph: Allison Joyce/Getty Images

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."

In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.

To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.

I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors', city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.

Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.

(click on the link for the full article)Occupy Wall Street protester Brandon Watts lies injured on the ground after clashes... more

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The First Amendment and the Obligation to Peacefully Disrupt in a Free Society

By Naomi Wolf
Posted: 10/22/11 04:03 PM ET

Mayor Bloomberg is planning Draconian new measures to crack down on what he calls the "disruption" caused by the protesters at Zuccotti Park, and he is citing neighbors' complaints about noise and mess. This set of talking points, and this strategy, is being geared up as well by administrations of municipalities around the nation in response to the endurance and growing influence of the Occupation protest sites. But the idea that any administration has the unmediated option of "striking a balance," in Bloomberg's words, that it likes, and closing down peaceful and lawful disruption of business as usual as it sees fit is a grave misunderstanding -- or, more likely, deliberate misrepresentation -- of our legal social contract as American citizens.

Some kinds of disruption in a free republic are not "optional extras" if the First Amendment governs the land, as it does ours, and are certainly not subject to the whims of mayors or local police, or even DHS. Just as protesters don't have a blanket right to do everything they want, there is absolutely no blanket right of mayors or even of other citizens to be free from the effect of certain kinds of disruption resulting from their fellow citizens exercising First Amendment rights. That notion, presented right now by Bloomberg and other vested interests, of a "disruption-free" social contract is pure invention -- just like the flat-out fabrication of the nonexistent permit cited in my own detention outside the Huffington Post Game Changers event this last Tuesday, when police told me, without the event organizers' knowledge and contrary to their intentions, that a private entity had "control of the sidewalks" for several hours. (In fact, the permit in question -- a red carpet event permit! -- actually guarantees citizens' rights to walk and even engage in political assembly on the streets if they do not block pedestrian traffic, as the OWS protesters were not.)

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/occupy-wall-street-bloomberg-free-speech-right-to-disruption-_b_1026535.html

"Pretty good information and well worth reading... Thanks queenofit for the recommendation..." =)By Naomi Wolf Posted: 10/22/11 04:03 PM ET Mayor Bloomberg is planning Draconian... more

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Naomi Wolf Unlawfully Arrested

Naomi Wolf was arrested for walking on a public sidewalk during a protest outside a... more

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The Patriot Act: When Truth Becomes Treason

Many Americans believe they understand the dangers of the Patriot Act, which Congress... more

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9 months ago
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Breaking News Endofamerica 2011

Breaking News Updates Today In view of recent history the whiteness of the 2011... more

farzana1
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12 months ago
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Rape Victims' Privacy is Matter of Law, Not Shame

Naomi Wolf and Katha Pollitt--two leading exponents of women's rights--recently published opposing pieces on whether the women described as Julian Assange's alleged sexual assault victims should be identified in the press against their will in the case against the WikiLeaks founder.

Aside from the fact that the Internet erases any guarantee of anonymity, let's look at why both arguments are missing a key element: constitutional law.

Pollitt, a relative conservative on the issue, argues against disclosure. She emphasizes that it will deter reporting and cause needless harm to people who have suffered enough.

Wolf, plowing a more open field, says all victims should be named because anonymity is a "relic" from a time when women suffered shame for being raped because it undermined her "value" to be known as the damaged "property" of her husband or father. Forced disclosure of victims' identities in rape cases, Wolf says, will promote women's equality by putting that idea to bed.

Here's why Wolf is wrong and Pollitt, though right in her conclusion, like the "tipsy coachman" doctrine that defines meandered reasoning in law, takes the wrong path to get there: Not naming U.S. victims has little to do with stigma, and everything to do with the Constitution.

In a truly just world, no type of crime victim would have their name revealed without their consent. This would help redress growing concerns about threats and intimidation tactics from criminals who hope to escape responsibility for their violence by terrorizing victims into silence.

It's hardly a gender-specific problem, which disposes of Wolf's argument that concealing the identities of rape victims is a form of sexism.

But there is a valid reason to put a thumb on the scale for rape victims. The very nature of sexual violence, indeed the location of the "crime scene" on a woman's body, is such that a public trial is certain to reveal things that are not only highly personal but likely to be protected by statute, common law and even constitutionally-based privacy rights. Unlike robbery cases, rape prosecutions involve the revelation of things like whether the victim became infected by HIV or became pregnant or had an abortion. Because such facts are highly relevant, they must be revealed during the public trial.

Anonymity policies, therefore, are not about "protectionism" so much as due process. They make up for the fact that disclosure of private facts at trial involving a victim--who is not a party to the litigation and thus cannot even argue against disclosure--causes unavoidable harm to fundamental rights. Anonymity polices mitigate the harm by allowing disclosure of private facts without attaching those facts to a publicly-identifiable individual.

read more at Women's eNews http://www.womensenews.org/story/law/110119/rape-victims-privacy-matter-law-not-shameNaomi Wolf and Katha Pollitt--two leading exponents of women's rights--recently... more

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Naomi Wolf, Jaclyn Friedman, Julian Assange and Rape (VIDEO)

Looks like a setup to me.

Radical_Centrist
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The End of America. 10 Steps To Fascism. Documentary film adapted from Naomi Wolfs book

A MUST see film!

Radical_Centrist
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Left-Wing Icon: America Is Still Headed Towards Fascism Under Obama

Are liberals finally starting to understand the real enemy – the two party... more

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Left-Wing Liberal Icon Naomi Wolf: America Is Still Headed Towards Fascism Under Obama…VIDEO

Left-Wing Icon: America Is Still Headed Towards Fascism Under Obama Paul Joseph... more

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Prominent Feminist says, "I LOVE YOU ANGIE!!"

First off, I love Angelina Jolie. I'm just going to put that out there into the cyberspace. I don't want to sleep with her...but I think she's awesome. Apparently Naomi Wolf, author of the famous feminist text, The Beauty Myth, agrees! In fact, Woolf agrees so much she wrote an article in Harper's Baazar about why Jolie is the best thing...ever.

"

Wolf breaks down Angie's mystical appeal thusly:

She's Hot.

Bosomy and wasp-waisted, with that curtain of hair and those crazy pillowy lips, she is an obvious male sex fantasy...Polls also show that if women — not just lesbian and bisexual women but straight women — had to choose a female lover, they would want to sleep with Angelina Jolie. In other words, women both identify with her and desire her.

She Has it All.

She makes the claim, with her life and actions, that, indeed, you can get away with it. All of it. Against every Western convention, she has managed to draw together all of these kinds of female liberation and empowerment. And her gestures determinedly transgress social boundaries — boundaries of convention, race, class, and gender — giving many of us a vicarious thrill.

She Flies a Plane.

Women are so used to being dependent on others (certainly on men) for where they go, metaphorically, and how they get there. Flying a private plane is the classic metaphor for choosing your own direction; usually, that is a guy thing to do, yet there was Jolie, with her aviator glasses on, taking flying lessons so she could blow the mind of her four-year-old son. That is the ultimate in single-mom chic: Even before she had reconstructed a nuclear (or postnuclear) family with a dad at the head of it, she was reframing single motherhood from a state of lack or insufficiency to a glamorous, unfettered lifestyle choice.

She Takes Lovahs.

Equally ostentatiously in her role as lover, she took for her own pleasure the male seen as the most desired of the tribe, Brad Pitt, who is always ranked at the top of indexes of male beauty and virility. As for the constraints of social convention — ahem, he was still married? You can have a variety of feelings about this, but Jolie's evident disdain of that social constraint certainly, for better or worse, put her in the same self-entitled category as those men who have traditionally taken what they wanted and let the emotional chips fall where they may.First off, I love Angelina Jolie. I'm just going to put that out there into the... more

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The End Of America: Movie

Its not over yet, as we speak the Bush administration is looting our treasury and our... more

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Naomi Wolf interviews Sgt. Matthis Chiroux about IVAW arrests

Video from http://www.youtube.com/user/glassbeadian "Naomi Wolf discusses with... more

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The end of America and ten steps to fascism: this is step nine

Our country is convulsing with change. We are in the midst of a high-stakes national... more

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Watch The End of America - SnagFilms

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Is America Fascist?

By Sherwood Ross
October 20, 2008 “Information Clearinghouse“

If it hasn’t gone the way of Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany, it’s sure teetering on the brink. America is a nation in deepening crisis, a nation whose leaders repeatedly plunge their citizens into, and make them pay for, serial wars abroad, while stealing their liberties at home. USA has become a country that trashes its citizens(New Orleans), tortures its enemies(Abu Ghraib), threatens other nations with nuclear fire(Iran), flouts international treaties(UN Charter re Iraq), and spies on(FISA), and intimidates, its critics(No Fly). Americans that can clearly see the totalitarian machinations of Vladimir Putin in Russia and Hu Jintao in China are blind to the fascism threatening to envelop them as well.

Webster’s defines fascism as “a totalitarian governmental system led by a dictator and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism, militarism, and often racism.” A comparison of 20th century fascist and communist regimes with President Bush’s USA indicates the machinery for a full-blown totalitarian takeover is now in place, even if no coup has occurred. As Naomi Wolf writes in “The End of America”(Chelsea Green)the 2007 Defense Authorization Bill’s Section 333 allows the president “to declare martial law and take charge of the National Guard troops without the permission of a governor when ‘public order’ has been lost…” and to “send the guard into our streets during a public health emergency, terrorist attack or ‘other condition.’”

The enabling crowbar was the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It gives the president authority to set up his own system for bringing alien combatants to trial while denying them protection of the Geneva Conventions. “The president and his lawyers now claim the authority to designate any American citizen he chooses as being an ‘enemy combatant,’” Wolf writes of power usurpation that characterized the post-World War One epoch in Europe and Asia.

Thus, Congress has empowered Bush just as Germany’s Reichstag empowered Hitler, Wolf writes, recalling Hitler’s boast, “Democracy will be overthrown with the tools of democracy.” Hitler’s Interior Minister issued Clause 2 that gave police the power to hold people in custody indefinitely and without a court order, powers the U.S. Congress today has conferred upon “The Decider” in the White House. Mussolini’s used the less grandiose “Il Duce” or “The Leader.”

According to Michael Ratner, director of the Center For Constitutional Rights, New York, “the president can…designate people enemy combatants and detain them for whatever reason he wants…there are no charges and prisoners have no lawyers, no family visits, no court reviews, no rights to anything, and no right to release until the mythical end to the ‘war on terror.’”

continued at above linkBy Sherwood Ross October 20, 2008 “Information Clearinghouse“ If it... more

DandelionSalad
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Naomi Wolf: stand up for the constitution

Naomi Wolf Interview on The Today Show, Oct 17, 2008. Video from... more

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The End of America

We are excited to announce the web release of "The End of America" - a feature-length documentary based on Naomi Wolf's bestselling book of the same name - this coming Tuesday, October 21. Our own Michael Ratner and Maria LaHood as well as our client Maher Arar are featured, and CCR is privileged to partner in the online premiere of this powerful and provocative film.

Naomi Wolf, a long-time supporter and ally of CCR, set out on a national tour over the past year to discuss the evolution of America from a functional democracy into a closed, fear-driven society with a terrifying absence of due process. She lays out what she calls the 10 steps necessary to end a democracy and shows us just how close we are to completing them:

Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.
Create secret prisons where torture takes place.
Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to citizens.
Set up an internal surveillance system.
Harass citizens' groups.
Engage in arbitrary detention and release.
Target key individuals.
Control the press.
Treat all political dissents as traitors.
Suspend the rule of law.

In her film, Naomi Wolf makes a plea for Americans to stand up and fight for our most cherished rights. One thing you can do is check out our new 100 Days Campaign (with this link) and stay tuned for ways to get involved in telling the next administration what they must to do to restore, protect and expand our constitutional rights.

You can also screen THE END OF AMERICA for your friends and neighbors one of two ways - you have a unique opportunity to get a copy of the film now before it hits stores in early 2009. Host a free public screening of the film before November 4, 2008 and they'll provide you with a free DVD. Show it at school, work or place of worship; take it to your local coffee shop or bar; urge organizations you're a member of to host a free screening. They'll send you posters and postcards to promote your event. For more information contact myamerica@katahdinproductions.com. You can also support the project by purchasing a special Election Edition DVD, available to Center for Constitutional Rights members through this indiepix films on-line store link.We are excited to announce the web release of "The End of America" - a... more

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Wolf: The coup is now!

Naomi Wolf warns us that the coup occurred on October 1, 2008 when the first brigade... more

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Thousands of troops are deployed on U.S. streets ready to carry out “crowd control”

photo used with permission by http://stpaulrnc.shutterfly.com/20 by Naomi Wolf... more

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