Wednesday, 5 October 2011

Who are the 99 percent?

'I love my camera, for it helps me live. It allows me to record the best moments of my existence. It reveals my need for brightness and passion in the world.'
- My camera saves me and without the image it portrays, I am no one.

Guy Debord: Society Of The Spectacle

HERE

The origins of Occupy Wall Street explained

...We are not just inspired by what happened in the Arab Spring recently, we are students of the Situationist movement. Those are the people who gave birth to what many people think was the first global revolution back in 1968 when some uprisings in Paris suddenly inspired uprisings all over the world. All of a sudden universities and cities were exploding. This was done by a small group of people, the Situationists, who were like the philosophical backbone of the movement. One of the key guys was Guy Debord, who wrote The Society of The Spectacle. The idea is that if you have a very powerful meme — a very powerful idea — and the moment is ripe, then that is enough to ignite a revolution. This is the background that we come out of.
1968 was more of a cultural kind of revolution. This time I think it’s much more serious. We’re in an economic crisis, an ecological crisis, living in a sort of apocalyptic world, and the young people realize they don’t really have a viable future to look forward to. This movement that’s beginning now could well be the second global revolution that we’ve been dreaming about for the last half a century

Paytress Mark Paytress

Throbbing Gristle remasters arrived today - all fortified w/ 2nd discs. That 1977 debut, a Blank Gen'n Sgt Pepper, just got twice as good

The Worst Part of Censorship is

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How to Unblock The Pirate Bay

King Midas Sound - Earth A Kill Ya (Gang Gang Dance Rework)

LIVE NOW! Modeselektor EBnet Takeover

Belgian ISP Ordered to Block The Pirate Bay; Telecomix and TPB Offer Workarounds

'Hands up! This is a bailout!!'

Emma Gascó (from Sevilla, Spain) is a journalist and cartoonist. She is a co-blogger (with Martín Cúneo) of Los Movimientos Contraatacan. This cartoon was first published in Los Movimientos Contraatacan on 14 September 2011; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.
Via

System

Three Babies, Four Dogs, Two Breasts, and No Radiohead: A Dispatch From Occupy Wall Street

The class war began at the corner of Broadway and Cedar St., as Wall Street’s bankers waited for a bus and Wall Street’s occupiers, for a revolution. What had begun two weeks ago as an unfocused rabble of ragtag discontents had become a still-unfocused rabble of ragtag discontents—but way bigger. The culprit: Radiohead. Rumors of a surprise solidarity concert had brought the huddled masses streaming in from Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and Bushwick. The crowd in Zuccotti Park, occupation-central, bulged outwards, spilling into the bus stop, tivas scuffing shined loafers and graphic tees dueling paisley ties.
“Hey, you’re communists!” taunted Barry, sporting the latter. “You should move to a communist country.” A quick rejoinder: “Well you’re an asshole!” Barry fired back—“You call me an asshole, asshole? Get out of this park, jerkoff!”—and the defender sank back into the square. “These guys have beef with our country, they’re Marxists,” Barry told me triumphantly, before another interruption. “No,” butted in a bearded occupier. “There are no Marxists here.” “Yeah, whatever, get out of here!” Barry scorned. The occupier laughed and blew him a kiss, “Love you sir!” “Yeah?” responded the beleaguered Barry. “Well I hate you.” “Love you!” “Hate you!”
But Barry had backup. A few yards down, a short, bald accountant began screaming at the sign-wavers: “The gulag is waiting for you! Siberia!” A guy in a fedora shouted back: “Fuck you, Nosferatu!” Nosferatu is actually named Michael; he grew up in the Soviet Union and arrived on Wall Street in 1989. “I know what these kids don’t know,” he told me. “Communism and socialism don’t work.” The cops around us were looking eager. “The more chaos the better,” I overhead one officer say. A day later, the police would have their way, arresting some 700 protesters for blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge. But today, twelve days into the occupation and still burning from a Saturday pepper spraying, the makeshift malcontents were testing boundaries.
“Get in there or stay out the way!” an officer yelled, pushing us toward the park. The ranks pressed in and I took an elbow to the sternum. Suddenly, an aggressively tattooed woman in blonde dreadlocks, a Guns-and-Roses tank top, and a plaid bandana strolled confidently into the scrum. She was going where I was going, and I ducked in behind. It was time to occupy.
On September 16, 1920, Italian anarchists detonated a horse-and-carriage bomb 300 yards from Zuccotti Square. Passersby saw tens of bodies, piles of glass, and blood on the stone steps of J.P. Morgan. Wall Street survived. In the course of my Friday afternoon occupation, I saw two drum circles, four dogs, two saxophones, three babies, zero Thom Yorkes, and two breasts. Again, Wall Street survived.
Not that many people were even talking about the American financial sector. Everyone had a different story, grievance, tattoo, or pithy placard. There were some signs calling for “violent revolution” and others insisting “we figure this shit out together.” The simplest one, soothing and all-encompassing: “SHIT IS FUCKED UP AND BULLSHIT...”