News orgs risk beheading, RPGs to cover Egypt, Libya 24/7. Thousands of protesters are now occupying Wall Street in peaceful protest & there's a media blackout. Dead air from CNN to Google News.

https://occupywallst.org/

Occupy Wall Street: the Civil Rights sit-in of the 21st century. https://occupywallst.org/

If you care about anything other than your portfolio and you're in the Manhattan area, get your ass to Wall Street and join the occupation!

This is America's Tahrir moment. This is the United People of The World waking up from their anesthetization, their exit from the Pluto's Cave, no longer buying blindly into the shadow-puppet show of left-and-right cast on the walls of their cage. This is them re-uniting and rising up in one collective middle finger to the Powerful Assholes of The World and letting them know that -- like the Gaddafis, the Mubareks, the King Georges and the Louis XVI before them -- their 15 minutes is up, that the Universe they believed they had Mastered is coming to a Big Crunch. And not even their global racket woven of near-light speed high-frequency-trades will be able to escape the horizon of this event. They will discover their golden parachutes turned to lead, and when they fall, like the millions of unemployed, underemployed, uninsured, homeless and pensionless, they will *not* have a safety net built from the blood sweat and taxes of the people to break their impact. They may pay their kowtowing media empire, the CNNs, Fox News, even the New York Times and the Time Magazines bend to their will, look the other way in fear or their meal tickets like 1940's Germans. Funny how the major news media are there in seconds, dodging RPGs to get the fullest coverage of public protests in Greece, Egypt, Libya, yet when their own sons and daughters, Americans descend on the financial capital of the US, those fair-weather organizations are silent, or dismiss the protests as "a little gathering of liberals and aging hippies".

The lamestream media blackout will not end at the geographical boundaries of either seaboard. The Money tentacles will extend to the webosphere, and the armchair "Twitter Revolution" touting Techvangelists will have their moment of truth when Goldman and AIG board members offer to buy consensus reality, pay to have unfavorable #trending topics redacted from the collective consciousness. We'll see if that "Don't Be Evil" t-shirt slogan is more than just a skin-deep hedge against antitrust lawsuits when Google and Facebook are threatened to kneel down and join the cocksucking ranks of the traditional media whores and quietly tweak their pagerank algorithms, "personalization filters" to silence the voice of the actual people of the US, as opposed to just the cheerleading Silicon Valley hoi-polloi circlejerking and tweeting the party hype for kudos and digital dimes. The "collective intelligence" will be thrown into cognitive dissonance. Out on The Street tonight are those 200 million chronically jobless 20-somethings who played by the rules, Stayed In School, to discover the American Dream is the American Sham; left with Physics/Marketing double PhDs and an Orange County mortgage-worth in student loans, fighting Micronesian immigrants for grease-pit jobs, blogging tweeting and "building their brand" in their underwear whilst trying to convince themself it's employment. "Fuck school. Fuck honesty, integrity, hard work, causes bigger than yourself. Win, win, win, that's what life is about. Lie, cheat, steal, fraud, and export your toxic waste onto the nearest sucker, and let the Devil take the rest. Better them than me." This is the culture, the legacy that we're handing on down as fertile visions of bright, green, sustainable futures wither, the seeds dying in infancy with every depression-crushed new business, with every passing month's unemployment, skill bases left to rot in parent's living rooms in front of the X-Box.

These jobless, overeducated generation of new-hobohemians will be tempted by the Kochs and Rothschilds with payment in actual dollar amounts to utilize their college-honed writing skills to join the left-right Obamacare vs Teabagger pundit slapfights, against their own interest. And even if the United Oligarchies of America fail to buy out Generation Fucked-Over, a billion sock-puppet powered robo-bloggers and propaganda forums and equally mindless onslaughts of Jersey Shore clones will do their darndest to take our eyes off the ball, pull the Wizard of Oz curtain back over the festering naked lunch while we're fishing for change out of our parents' couches to buy a greasy shrinkwrapped McHeart Attack burger causing a heart attack that isn't covered in our plan. But you know that for a healthy, balanced society, what we need to do is EAT THE RICH.

And if you can't eat'em - tax'em. http://lat.ms/oQaYCF

Occupy it Midnight Oil-style or Rage Against The Machine-style?

I guess more Rage.

Just made a Yahoo Mail, can first-hand confirm they are censoring email with "occupywallst.org" in it.

Yahoo Blocking Emails That Mention Occupy Wall Street

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Originally posted by TwiliteMinotaur:
I guess more Rage.

FUCK YOU, I WON'T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME.

I'm sure even Rage are out there, jobless via the imploded recorded music biz & Depression 2.0 recession.

Tom Morello's probably flipping them pizzas, leading a killswitch drum circle in Zuccotti Park with all the 28 year old physics and engineering PhDs.

Then again, "Eat The Rich" has emerged as a unifying slogan, so maybe Motorhead should screw their titanium hips in tight and start selling tickets.

Nice. Those guys should all be jamming out there. All they had the other day was Roseanne Barr

There really isn't a "media blackout" but that is all over twitter. All the major media outlets have had stories on it but not the constant live tv coverage the protesters were seeking.

Independent posters and folks in the area not affiliated with the protest are noting the numbers are rather low and there is an ebb and flow of people as they leave and return. Also there is a lack of violence that tv news almost requires these days for real coverage. Even the peaceful civil rights marches of the 60s didn't get real sympathy or attention from the mainstream media until they put their children in the street to be mowed down by the Birmingham fire departments tri-hoses.

Also it is possible that reporters that have experience covering protests against real murderous dictators in places like Egypt aren't too keen on calling attention to folks trying to co-opt that viral anger and direct it at bankers and capitalist symbols. I think blaming the media is a cop out, get people really motivated and out in numbers surpassing what we've seen so far and the media will cover it. But for now, they are just a bunch of people with signs sitting in a park and not slowing down business at all, at least according to what I'm reading on @GSElevator.

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Also it is possible that reporters that have experience covering protests against real murderous dictators in places like Egypt aren't too keen on calling attention to folks trying to co-opt that viral anger and direct it at bankers and capitalist symbols.

So if you wear a pretty charcoal Valentino suit that costs more than a Smarte Car and sip champagne from a Trump balcony while installing, funding, and arming the genocidal dictators, then it's ok. Not to mention the billions who aren't just unable to find a job and healthcare but are actively dying, moving to violence and/or scarcity-based wars in other countries thanks to food commodity speculation and other instances of serial bubbles. One Arab leader killing a citizen is a tragedy, a WASP eradicating 1/4 the planet and extinguishing the potential prosperity of its own country is a statistic better suited for the CNBC marquee. Maybe we should gather all those recently futureless college students, Iraq vets, laid off cops teachers and firemen, and people with stomach cancer who can't afford or have been denied the care to get even the pain-relief meds, ask them all to sit on The Charging Bull, one by one, douse themselves in gasoline, and set themselves on fire holding a copy of Audacity of Hope in one hand and Obama's campaign contribution pie chart in the other.

Not disagreeing necessarily, just pointing it out.

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But for now, they are just a bunch of people with signs sitting in a park and not slowing down business at all, at least according to what I'm reading on @GSElevator.

Rosa Parks was also just some lady sitting in a bus, if we remove the blinders of hindsight. It may not be big enough to draw attention yet (although there is definitely a degree of censorship going on which is undisputable re: Yahoo Mail and Koch-funded internet "independent" sock puppets abound so I'd be wary of any info about these protests) but in the domesticated, hypermedia-anesthetized United States, you can't just out and run a marathon. You've got to start with just a couple leg lifts. But as any personal trainer will tell you, the hardest part is just getting off the couch and getting into the gym.

Seems an ineffectual protest. They are certainly doing nothing to hinder business as usual, and the minimal attention they are bringing to the issue seems inconsequential. Everybody in this country KNOWS that the system is manipulated and corrupt ... what have they added to the argument?

Seems the protesters are already being taken care of.

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Seems an ineffectual protest. They are certainly doing nothing to hinder business as usual, and the minimal attention they are bringing to the issue seems inconsequential. Everybody in this country KNOWS that the system is manipulated and corrupt ... what have they added to the argument?

I haven't really kept up with their demands and actions, but any demonstration needs massive support, or a few rotund, violent actions, to be taken into consideration and cause a real reaction other than rounding them up. Since so far this event hasn't had any of those two, it serves just as a reminder of the cracks in public opinion. A real occupation would need a lot of people; and as people are already struggling with jobs & money enough as to make it impractical to go and set up a tent for as long as it takes, and at the same time, not fed up yet, not in such hardships as to do it out of pure desperation. Maybe in a few years...

Yeah, even the adbusters spokesperson I read on Saturday said that although they were trying to emulate the protests of the mideast he acknowledged Americans don't a truly brutal dictator to contend with.

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Rosa Parks was also just some lady sitting in a bus

No she wasn't. She worked for the NAACP and her case was seized upon by a group of people competing for leadership of a growing civil rights agenda because they knew her. They were aware that she was educated enough to make an excellent symbol that could help kickstart a movement they had been planning for some time. It's ultimate goal was the end of a regime that sanctioned the lynching of hundreds of people a year for simply being black.

I dislike the free for all capitalist system, where profit is the only goal and right and wrong are based on that single attribute, as much as anybody. However, I have a hard time equating folks protesting dickheads that mindlessly accumulate capital with folks protesting the Assad family. One cheerfully impoverishes millions and seeks to escape any responsibility. The other orders their troops to fire on crowds of civilians and makes war on their own people. Those aren't equal levels of evil, not by a long shot.

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Fuck it. Just gather up a few hundred Skinners and other random rambling lost souls and Take the Bridge.

What? NY has bridges too...



Cheers,

Patrick.

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She worked for the NAACP and her case was seized upon by a group of people competing for leadership of a growing civil rights agenda because they knew her.

The protest was essentially a giant flashmob, a rainstorm coalescing from a rainbow of nascent and growing groups -- The initial grain was Ad Busters, but later snowballed to include Day of Rage, Anonymous, and even Christian and Vietnam Vet organizations. The diversity was truly heartening, and a harbinger. The fact that there was any American out on the street, sleeping for more than one night in tents, to protest anything other than cancellation of Jersey Shore or the election of a "nigger President" should be considered a major victory.

And, granted, this is just the beginning. The austerity and real depression hasn't even begun to kick in yet, and already we've got people complaining, civil unrest. And we, our political system, our president, and we the people still haven't even begun to face the multi-trillion ton gorilla in the room, that the financial h-bombs are still hidden deep in the Hal-sized HFT supercomputers of the numerati.

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The other orders their troops to fire on crowds of civilians and makes war on their own people. Those aren't equal levels of evil, not by a long shot.

Perhaps one of these evils just has the resources, money, and connections to hide his skeletons in distant closets, whereas the more mangy counterpart has to do all the wetwork himself, forced to shit in his own backyard.

At any rate, the Mubareks and Gaddafis are just symptoms, lone-wolf psychopaths, the bottom-rung straggling ends of a very deep, very complex, very fucked up web. The Occupy Wall Street protests, however idealistic, uncoordinated, and perhaps premature, are going after the deeper root. Wall Street is the financial center of the universe, and the epicenter of the global pain and suffering caused, the Death Star core. Even if it was only 200 protesting, the symbolic weight globally cannot be underestimated, and it may very well turn out to be a key galvanization point. And in the US, at least now we're aiming at the right spot, instead of getting off on the left-right artificial WWF politics, cheering on Keith Olberman or Bill O'Reily as they slug it out, forgetting that their meal tickets are coming from the same source.

Obfuscation, hiding heinous crimes by embedding them in complexity so people say, "Well, it's not like the bankers just took out a gun and shot some Ethiopians or mugged you for your wallet" is exactly one of their major strategies. The under-educated Bronx kid, who doesn't have the con-skills and robs $300 from the 711 gets life in prison. The red-tied banker who steals $30 billion from 401ks, police and fireman salaries gets coddled by the president, a bailout, and doubles his bonuses the next year. Probably get a seat at the SEC or in the oval office if he keeps up the "good work". Maybe, since he's so good at hiding the truth, he can get a job systematically destroying records of its preliminary investigations for the SEC.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: TwiliteMinotaur,

#occupywallstreet spreading to San Fran, LA. Zeitgeist manifesting as poltergeist; movement.

And sending shockwaves across the world.

I think your error here is in seeing a linear relationship where one doesn't exist. The mindless accumulation of wealth perfected on Wall Street is both a cause and a symptom of the desire for power and the creation of suffering. These social activities exert pressure on economic systems to create ever more efficient financial products. There is a natural ebb and flow of power moving from the public sector, in the form of government, regulation, and banking transparency, to the private. Right now we are 40 years into a neo-liberal agenda of privatization and I don't see that going much further.

So far these protests, while I support them, haven't impressed me. Violence isn't the answer either. American's don't support violent political protests and rightly so. Peaceful protests, marches, and submission to arrest are how real changes have been made in this country for quite some time. The suffragettes, the lunch counter sit-in's, the voting rights marches all had in common the theme of sacrifice, I don't see that in these kids. They seem more interested in a party, in something to do, in meeting girls and it being on TV.

quote:

Originally posted by editengine:
I think your error here is in seeing a linear relationship where one doesn't exist. The mindless accumulation of wealth perfected on Wall Street is both a cause and a symptom of the desire for power and the creation of suffering.

No disagreement there. It's not a "If you break it, they will go" thing for sure. As I said it's a web, woven of money, connections, and thanks to the world wide wonderful internetz the shadow cancer is more fluid and non-local than ever. A garden is never finished, justice is an eternal process, not the end-state of some equation. Wall Street just happens to be, at this point, the largest nodal point of money, the greatest of great attractors of excess, the Gomorrah of wanton greed -- and, thus, the largest source of power abuse and corruption, to the extent that that megacorporations, ubermegabanks, and the blue blood dynasties still put their foot down on any given geography. It is also thusly the largest reservoir of symbolic juju; the way the Civ Rights groups coalesced around King and Parks, the reason why Osama aimed the 747s at the twin towers and the White House. Even if the heads of AIG, Goldman Sachs, he rest of the financial-industrial cabal, Bernanke, Paulson, half Obama's cabinet, McDonald's, Exxon Mobil, and the Boogeyman were served up on a platter at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, for each that fell, two more would take their place, two more backstabbing sociopaths aiming for the corner office securing their megalomaniacal pissing match King-of-the-Hilldom.

If the country does actually wake up, descend pitchforks and shotguns in hand for the blood of the banksters and the billionaires start getting really burnt by the heat down in Hell's Kitchen, then they will of course be on the first Gulfstream out to London, Beijing, or wherever the "economic climate" is "friendly for business". Cue the pained brows of traders plastered aon CNBC and Time Magazine covers, mass handwringing whining about "brain drain" and "America losing its competitive edge". Politicians banging their shoes on podiums in pretend-outrage as they no longer get their thousand dollar lunches and revolving door opportunities on the boards of major banks. Mass exodus of toxicity, probably a drop in "productivity", which was all falsely inflated hot air consisting of the long skyrocketing price of homes, healthcare, and college which noone can afford anymore. A loss in Gross Domestic Product but a gain in General Happiness Quotient.

Whatever the case, the uber rich would just touch down else where, set up shop in Mumbai, somewhere. We can't stop people being greedy self-destructive assholes short of diving under the hood of our brains and rewiring our neurological reward-feedback pathways, or coming up with some cure for sociopathy and psychopathy. Either is superduper unlikely. But perhaps the thing that's really scaring them is the fact that the global unrest and active resistance is spreading now like wildfire, first from the Arab Spring, then to Greece and Spain, to the US. Already, viral co-protests are breaking out in California, even in Kansas. London heads of state and banks are getting wary of similar movements breaking out across the pond. Will the wildfire create utopia? Probably not. But if you're going after a hydra, it's best to hit all the heads at once, full-on scorched Earth.

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So far these protests, while I support them, haven't impressed me. Violence isn't the answer either. American's don't support violent political protests and rightly so. Peaceful protests, marches, and submission to arrest are how real changes have been made in this country for quite some time.

Sure, and that has been a major theme of the entire protest, if you're paying attention. So far the only violence has been coming from the police, and I thought you just said it wasn't till the kids started getting hosed that people started really paying attention. So, I'm not sure what you're on about here.

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The suffragettes, the lunch counter sit-in's, the voting rights marches all had in common the theme of sacrifice, I don't see that in these kids. They seem more interested in a party, in something to do, in meeting girls and it being on TV.

I'm not sure that's fair. Certainly they're not being shot in the street or lynched up by the dozen, but these people (not just kids but blue collar and middle class who have lost their jobs, homes, healthcare, despite what Fox and other mainstream media continue to spin them as) are out there with their tents and pizza prepared to squat the financial center of the universe for months according to Day of Rage, and the other key organizing sites. Many have even given up well-paying jobs -- those vanishing jewels in this economy -- to travel thousands of miles with almost no money to take part in this movement. They're out there for very specific, personal reasons in most cases, varying from chronic unemployment despite overeducation, absence of basic services, and connecting that with the complete failure of the political and business establishment to do anything about it or even *listen*. You'd discover this if you bother to go deeper than the co-opted US lamestream media. are generally better informed than the average American about the heinous crimes and issues involving Wall Street and the financial-political complex, and are protesting smart, not starting scuffles with police. Granted, not everyone will or can afford to be out there that whole time, but to say 'they're just out to have fun and get famous' when there are people being attacked, having their cameras and tents ripped away by police. And -- thanks to bailout-driven "austerity measures" -- these primarily overeducated yet underemployed aren't exactly 'loaded', and most probably aren't taking "paid vacation time" as that crown jewel of the labor movement is quickly becoming a myth as workers rights are continually eroded.

But beyond that, I think Mr. Gibson onced summed it up nicely when asked about his decision to leave the US for Canada during the draft:

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"It had much more to do with my wanting to be with hippy girls and have lots of hashish than it did with my sympathy for the plight of the North Vietnamese people under US imperialism. Much more, much more to do with hippy girls and hashish."

And I think that goes for most major, global movements. They're as chaotic, insane, and ultimately unpredictable as war, despite the way historians and academics like to tidy up all the black swans into a nice neat movie-script narrative full of protagonists, antagonists, arc and drama. Movements are not legislated into existence, they are not outlined in a boardroom by central planners or sprung fully formed from the dissertations of anthropology professors. They just happen. Sure, the Civil Rights Movement had a core of dedicated individuals in the NAACP, ACLU. But much of that movement, as a subset of the whirlwind that began in the 60's, was also fundamentally about young people doing something fun. Breaking away from the leash of Disneyfied parents still shellshocked from WWII trying to create suburban happy Stepford land. Country kids bored of shoveling hay and listening to uninspired sermons, seeing pictures on this new "Tee-Vee" thing of a place over the rainbow called "San Francisco" where everyone seemed to be having a really great time partying and doing this "mary-wanna" happy stick. And maybe somewhere, running through tear gas away from the cops in New York and a long hot night on the street with a black dancer-turned-demonstrator who’d spent her life under the boot of racism, maybe they found their new selves, came to understand and embody the “cause”. Came to discover the meaning of sacrifice.

I think it goes without saying that without the Beat forefathers of the 50’s and the preceding countercultural movements including the hippies and the JFK era, the America we know today would be much worse off, and indeed, the Civil Rights movement would have had much less needed social traction and political will to take off. As is illustrated most recently in “The Help” and virtually every story where the barriers of color, sex, and religion and other artificial divides between people have been broken, there is always a necessary courage on both sides, the minority (blacks in that case) and majority (whites). So maybe some people came out cause they really believed “the Capitalist Establishment” had to be abandoned for the communes. Maybe some people came out after reading way too much William Burroughs and wanting to blast their minds with every drug available into the Interzone. Maybe some people just followed the busload of hot young hippy chicks. Maybe some people were just bored. Probably for everyone it was a mix of all those, but I doubt even the people there can know their original intents. The important thing was they didn’t just sit around and pontificate to themselves from their armchairs, discuss in committees what “the perfect post-capitalist utopia will look like”, and hold readings of back issues of Das Kapital; no, they got out there and actually DID something. 90% of life is just showing up. I have to applaud the people who occupied, and continue to occupy Wall Street for that, even if they don't immediately accomplish their goals with the first of many legs of protest.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: TwiliteMinotaur,

Do you really see any brutality in these arrests? I see a boring ep of 'COPS' or slow night at my old job.

I think there are a substantial number of people without any experience with police or violence who WANT to see this as brutality but I assure you it isn't. Brutal, angry police don't call for paramedics or retrieve a detained persons inhaler for them.

It is trained submission to arrest and to violence that gives a movement the moral credence to lead the public. It was the tv images of the fat white sheriffs deputies laughing in court and little black children being mowed down my the Birmingham fire dept that pushed white and black middle classes, who previously regarded the civil rights movement as a dangerous radical group, firmly against the entrenched southern anti-black culture.

Wall Street protesters whining that the handcuffs being too tight constitutes brutality is a joke and comparing that to real protesters who risked everything to affect change is an insult to their memory.

Yeah, I was laughing while watching that. Those cops were restrained and civil.

Heh, yeah I guess over all it's all been pretty civil. There were some reports of cops saying hey should be out there protesting with them.

Looks like it's gaining steam.

Keith Olberman also brings up a good point that if it was Tea Party people on Wall Street, there would have been more media than protesters.