Nicholas Kristof: The Bankers and the Revolutionaries

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/opinion/sunday/kristof-the-bankers-and-the-revolutionaries.html?src=tp

AFTER flying around the world this year to cover street protests from Cairo to Morocco, reporting on the latest “uprising” was easier: I took the subway.

The “Occupy Wall Street” movement has taken over a park in Manhattan’s financial district and turned it into a revolutionary camp. Hundreds of young people chant slogans against “banksters” or corporate tycoons. Occasionally, a few even pull off their clothes, which always draws news cameras.

“Occupy Wall Street” was initially treated as a joke, but after a couple of weeks it’s gaining traction. The crowds are still tiny by protest standards — mostly in the hundreds, swelling during periodic marches — but similar occupations are bubbling up in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington. David Paterson, the former New York governor, dropped by, and labor unions are lending increasing support.

I tweeted that the protest reminded me a bit of Tahrir Square in Cairo, and that raised eyebrows. True, no bullets are whizzing around, and the movement won’t unseat any dictators. But there is the same cohort of alienated young people, and the same savvy use of Twitter and other social media to recruit more participants. Most of all, there’s a similar tide of youthful frustration with a political and economic system that protesters regard as broken, corrupt, unresponsive and unaccountable.

[provis99]

1. what a right wing jackass this Kristof is.

so the protesters are "quixotic", "antimarket", "pretty silly", a "ragtag band", and Kristof's big solution is not criminal prosecution for the trillions of dollars the banks and financial sector stole, but some minor tax rate twinkling.

the New York Times is nothing but right wing shit these days.

[arendt]

2. Kristof is OK. He regularly writes about the disenfranchized...

I haven't read the article, but the quotes you put up do not make him sound like an ogre on this.

[mulsh]

3. I sincerely doubt any regular columnist writing for the NY Times

has any insight on much of anything these days. Snark, right wing lite memes, sure. anything of any value, I haven't seen any evidence of that in a few years with the possible exception of some of Gail Collins columns.

Nicholas Kristof is nominally liberal, at least by NY Times Editorial page standars

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4. I accidentally recommended.

[Matariki]

5. Perhaps, hopefully, it will unseat a different kind of dictator.