Foto: NYT

E a polícia de Nova York aproveitou a madrugada dessa terça pra tirar os protestantes do Zuccotti Park.

Mal sabem eles que isso não vai terminar tão cedo…

Sente o nível…

Hashtag chamando atenção no Twitter: #mediablackout. Se refere à forma como os jornalistas foram tratados pela polícia de Nova York no momento da expulsão dos manifestantes do OccupyWallStreet na madrugada desta terça. Diz o Gothamist:

During our coverage of the eviction of the Occupy Wall Street protesters early this morning, a NPR reporter, a New York Times reporter, and a city councilmember were arrested. Airspace in Lower Manhattan was closed to CBS and NBC news choppers by the NYPD, a New York Post reporter was allegedly put in a “choke hold” by the police, a NBC reporter’s press pass was confiscated and a large group of reporters and protesters were hit with pepper spray. According to the eviction notice, the park was merely “cleaned and restored for its intended use.” If this is the case, why were so few people permitted to view it?

“Get the fuck back! Fuck back I said!” The NYPD officer’s voice was amplified behind the plexiglass helmet as he violently shoved protesters and reporters away from the intersection of Cortland and Broadway, one block from Zuccotti Park. It was 1:20 a.m., shortly after the police cordoned off the park to prepare for the cleaning. Requests to gain entry or move south down Broadway to see what was happening were met with the reply, “We have to clear the sidewalk.” One protester asked, “Isn’t the sidewalk public space?” The riot shields kept moving forward. “Clear the sidewalk. Move! Now!”

O New York Times também registrou esse impedimento, além da opinião do prefeito de Nova York sobre o assunto:

As a result, much of the early video of the police operation was from the vantage point of the protesters. Videos that were live-streamed on the Web and uploaded to YouTube were picked up by television networks and broadcast on Tuesday morning.

At a news conference after the park was cleared Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg defended the police behavior, saying that the media was kept away “to prevent a situation from getting worse and to protect members of the press.”

Aham. Claro, claro… A situação vai ficando só mais evidente, com menos meias palavras…

É sobre isso que o Matt Taibi escreve na Rolling Stone gringa – que talvez a importância do OccupyWallStreet esteja em iniciar um foda-se contra tudo o que está aí:

Occupy Wall Street was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks and modern finance. It’s about providing a forum for people to show how tired they are not just of Wall Street, but everything. This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of the entire direction of our society, a refusal to take even one more step forward into the shallow commercial abyss of phoniness, short-term calculation, withered idealism and intellectual bankruptcy that American mass society has become. If there is such a thing as going on strike from one’s own culture, this is it. And by being so broad in scope and so elemental in its motivation, it’s flown over the heads of many on both the right and the left.

(…)

We were all playing the Rorschach-test game with OWS, trying to squint at it and see what we wanted to see in the movement. Viewed through the prism of our desire to make near-term, within-the-system changes, it was hard to see how skirmishing with cops in New York would help foreclosed-upon middle-class families in Jacksonville and San Diego.

What both sides missed is that OWS is tired of all of this. They don’t care what we think they’re about, or should be about. They just want something different.

We’re all born wanting the freedom to imagine a better and more beautiful future. But modern America has become a place so drearily confining and predictable that it chokes the life out of that built-in desire. Everything from our pop culture to our economy to our politics feels oppressive and unresponsive. We see 10 million commercials a day, and every day is the same life-killing chase for money, money and more money; the only thing that changes from minute to minute is that every tick of the clock brings with it another space-age vendor dreaming up some new way to try to sell you something or reach into your pocket. The relentless sameness of the two-party political system is beginning to feel like a Jacob’s Ladder nightmare with no end; we’re entering another turn on the four-year merry-go-round, and the thought of having to try to get excited about yet another minor quadrennial shift in the direction of one or the other pole of alienating corporate full-of-shitness is enough to make anyone want to smash his own hand flat with a hammer.

If you think of it this way, Occupy Wall Street takes on another meaning. There’s no better symbol of the gloom and psychological repression of modern America than the banking system, a huge heartless machine that attaches itself to you at an early age, and from which there is no escape. You fail to receive a few past-due notices about a $19 payment you missed on that TV you bought at Circuit City, and next thing you know a collector has filed a judgment against you for $3,000 in fees and interest. Or maybe you wake up one morning and your car is gone, legally repossessed by Vulture Inc., the debt-buying firm that bought your loan on the Internet from Chase for two cents on the dollar. This is why people hate Wall Street. They hate it because the banks have made life for ordinary people a vicious tightrope act; you slip anywhere along the way, it’s 10,000 feet down into a vat of razor blades that you can never climb out of.

That, to me, is what Occupy Wall Street is addressing. People don’t know exactly what they want, but as one friend of mine put it, they know one thing: FUCK THIS SHIT! We want something different: a different life, with different values, or at least a chance at different values.

De novo: se alguém traduzir o artigo, posto aqui. A íntegra tá no site da Rolling Stone.

• A Hora de Comprar seu Smartphone • Terra Nova • App de anotações chega ao Brasil • O Occupy de São Paulo • Uncharted 3: cinema para jogar • Uma lei para vigiar e punir • O fim do Flash, o game que bateu recorde, desenvolvedor da Apple expulso e Office na nuvem •

Jay-Z não só apareceu vestindo uma camiseta em apoio ao movimento OccupyWallStreet como está vendendo esta mesma camiseta através de sua própria grife, a Rocawear. O detalhe é que ele está mantendo o lucro consigo mesmo, em vez de repassar ao movimento que inspirou a camiseta, como apurou o Business Insider. Olha o comunicado da grife:

The ‘Occupy All Streets’ T shirt was created in support of the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement. Rocawear strongly encourages all forms of constructive expression, whether it be artistic, political or social. ‘Occupy All Streets’ is our way of reminding people that there is change to be made everywhere, not just on Wall Street. At this time we have not made an official commitment to monetarily support the movement.

As coisas pioram quando se descobre que nem a idéia na camiseta é original…

E por uns motivos reaças nada a ver, olha o que ele escreveu em seu blog…

Everybody’s been too damn polite about this nonsense:

The “Occupy” movement, whether displaying itself on Wall Street or in the streets of Oakland (which has, with unspeakable cowardice, embraced it) is anything but an exercise of our blessed First Amendment. “Occupy” is nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob, fed by Woodstock-era nostalgia and putrid false righteousness. These clowns can do nothing but harm America.

“Occupy” is nothing short of a clumsy, poorly-expressed attempt at anarchy, to the extent that the “movement” – HAH! Some “movement”, except if the word “bowel” is attached – is anything more than an ugly fashion statement by a bunch of iPhone, iPad wielding spoiled brats who should stop getting in the way of working people and find jobs for themselves.

This is no popular uprising. This is garbage. And goodness knows they’re spewing their garbage – both politically and physically – every which way they can find.

Wake up, pond scum. America is at war against a ruthless enemy.

Maybe, between bouts of self-pity and all the other tasty tidbits of narcissism you’ve been served up in your sheltered, comfy little worlds, you’ve heard terms like al-Qaeda and Islamicism.

And this enemy of mine — not of yours, apparently – must be getting a dark chuckle, if not an outright horselaugh – out of your vain, childish, self-destructive spectacle.

In the name of decency, go home to your parents, you losers. Go back to your mommas’ basements and play with your Lords Of Warcraft.

Or better yet, enlist for the real thing. Maybe our military could whip some of you into shape.

They might not let you babies keep your iPhones, though. Try to soldier on.

Schmucks.

Paranóia pouca é bobagem. E isso tudo dito pelo cara que fez essa cena abaixo, como lembrou o Bleeding Cool.

Em entrevista ao Mother Jones:

MJ: I read on your website that one reason for going to France was that you had become disgusted with America. What do you mean by that?
RC: Well, the corporatization of culture. We lived in inland California, the Central Valley, and we witnessed over a period of 20 years of this invasion of shopping malls and corporate businesses and everything, and it lost all of its old character. Any kind of authentic character that it had was rapidly getting lost. The expanding urban development was just horrible to behold.

MJ: Have you been following Occupy Wall Street at all?
RC: Oh yeah, it’s great stuff. I think they should stay there, and persist and persist until they have some effect. I don’t know what effect they can have. I was thinking about it last night, I was laying in bed, thinking, “Can this thing have any effect on the wealthy establishment?” They’re so entrenched, they’re so powerful. I don’t know if they even care that people go there and demonstrate. What will it take, an armed revolution? That’s violent, and I’m kind of against violence. Violence begets violence, and then you get leaders who are violent men. And you don’t want that. You don’t want some Stalin in there as your left-wing leader. But it’s a great thing to see. I kinda thought that the American youth were very complacent and indifferent about all that, or just didn’t know what to do. But somebody got this thing going.

Mais uma dica do Ramon.