Parece desenho animado…

Comentarista econômico joga toda a merda no ventilador, no meio de uma entrevista – mas há quem diga que Alessio Rastani é apenas um Yes Men. Se alguém se dispor a transcrever ou traduzir, me manda que eu publico aqui.

Fino.

Ao que tudo indica, os tumultos em Londres não terminaram…

E se tudo isso for uma bomba-relógio sendo detonada na hora certa?

Não era imprevisível, como dizem Mary Riddell, no Telegraph…

It is no coincidence that the worst violence London has seen in many decades takes place against the backdrop of a global economy poised for freefall. The causes of recession set out by J K Galbraith in his book, The Great Crash 1929, were as follows: bad income distribution, a business sector engaged in “corporate larceny”, a weak banking structure and an import/export imbalance.

All those factors are again in play. In the bubble of the 1920s, the top 5 per cent of earners creamed off one-third of personal income. Today, Britain is less equal, in wages, wealth and life chances, than at any time since then. Last year alone, the combined fortunes of the 1,000 richest people in Britain rose by 30 per cent to £333.5 billion.

Europe’s leaders, our own Prime Minister and Chancellor included, were parked on sun-loungers as London burned. Although the epicentre of the immediate economic crisis is the eurozone, successive British governments have colluded in incubating the poverty, the inequality and the inhumanity now exacerbated by financial turmoil.

Britain’s lack of growth is not an economic debating point or a stick with which to beat George Osborne, any more than our deskilled, demotivated, under-educated non-workforce is simply a blot on the national balance sheet. Watch the juvenile wrecking crews on the city streets and weep for all our futures. The “lost generation” is mustering for war.

…E Nina Power, no Guardian:

Combine understandable suspicion of and resentment towards the police based on experience and memory with high poverty and large unemployment and the reasons why people are taking to the streets become clear. (Haringey, the borough that includes Tottenham, has the fourth highest level of child poverty in London and an unemployment rate of 8.8%, double the national average, with one vacancy for every 54 seeking work in the borough.)

(…)

Images of burning buildings, cars aflame and stripped-out shops may provide spectacular fodder for a restless media, ever hungry for new stories and fresh groups to demonise, but we will understand nothing of these events if we ignore the history and the context in which they occur.

Ligue 99999!

A coisa tá feia na Europa… Isso tudo começou por causa de um protesto.

Usando apenas o início de frase do vídeo abaixo, Thom Yorke linkou o video em que Hugh Grant conta de como encontrou, por acaso, o editor Paul McMullen, – um dos primeiros ex-colaboradores do centenário tablóide que Rupert Murdoch fechou abruptamente a abrir o bico para o Guardian sobre as “técnicas de jornalismo” no país da rainha – e como ficou sabendo que seu celular havia sido grampeado por “jornalistas”. Armou um novo papo com o próprio McMullen e aproveitou para dar o troco – gravando, sem que ele soubesse, a longa conversa sobre os podres da relação entre política e jornalismo no Reino Unido que rendeu um artigo e a transcrição da gravação no New Statesman. Sente o drama:

Paul McMullan: But then – should it be a crime? I mean, scanning never used to be a crime. Why should it be? You’re transmitting your thoughts and your voice over the airwaves. How can you not expect someone to just stick up an aerial and listen in?
Hugh Grant: So if someone was on a landline and you had a way of tapping in…
Paul McMullan: Much harder to do.
Hugh Grant: But if you could, would you think that was illegal? Do you think that should be illegal?
Paul McMullan: I’d have to say quite possibly, yeah. I’d say that should be illegal.
Hugh Grant: But a mobile phone – a digital phone… you’d say it’d be all right to tap that?
Paul McMullan: I’m not sure about that. So we went from a point where anyone could listen in to anything. Like you, me, journalists could listen in to corrupt politicians, and this is why we have a reasonably fair society and a not particularly corrupt or criminal prime minister, whereas other countries have Gaddafi. Do you think it’s right the only person with a decent digital scanner these days is the government? Whereas 20 years ago we all had a go? Are you comfortable that the only people who can listen in to you now are – is it MI5 or MI6?

O vídeo abaixo, feito pela BBC registra o reencontro de McMullen e Grant ao vivo na TV britânica e vale ser visto apenas para ouvir o esculacho que um dá no outro, quase no final.

Escrevi mais sobre o caso News of the World aqui.

E The Hour, alguém já viu? É uma minissérie de seis capítulos produzida pela BBC sobre um programa de TV que estréia na Inglaterra em 1956. Inevitável compararem com Mad Men, olha só:

Ao vivo na BBC, em 2007. No auge. Enjoy.