Code Pink and the Obama Left

GFM video update from Sam HusseiniAs Code Pink capitulates in Cairo, taking consolation for eking a 1/14 size march as a compromise with Egypt, where originally they promised to march regardless the permissions granted, I’m reminded of Code Pink’s role in 2008, protesting war while cheerleading for Obama. Code Pink was one of the strongest organizing forces at the Denver DNC demonstrations, but inside their clubhouse at the Mercury Cafe, decorations revealed their crush on the Man From Change. The antiwar movement needs players like Code Pink, and the indefatigable Medea Benjamin, but as the denouement of 2009 felled the last Obamapologists, I think they’ve lost dibs on decision making.

Groups like Code Pink can assist with action planning, but if they insist on a voice pretending to represent the goals of real activism, no. How can Code Pink et al be considered longer reliable partners at the grass roots? In Cairo yesterday, over a thousand activists wanted to hold strong, but 87 Judases had Code Pink’s approval, to board Egypt’s counter-activism ploy.

The predicament reminds be of the pharmaceutical commercials where a middle-aged man explains the grief to which he’s come, on account of neglecting his health. Now he’s found a pill to stay healthy and he wants to share his advice with others. What, pray tell, entitles him to give any health advice at all? He’s actually disqualified himself. Lipitor, I think is the latest pitch. Yes, he was an idiot, but he got a second chance with Lipitor, now he recommends it. We trust him — why?

Chapel Hills Mall boycott DAY 4 update

chapel hills mallCHAPEL HILLS MALL- Security visited the CFP picket on Wednesday. They’d observed us the past three days via video surveillance, but apparently their camera angles recorded only the backs of our signs, general slogans about Israel, Gaza, and the Gaza Freedom March, which did not adequately explain the inquiries they received about shoppers being asked to boycott VICTORIA’S SECRET and BATH & BODY WORKS. We were eager to explain. As usual, the critical question was how long we planned to be there.

Our answer was tentative: Until more than 87 delegates from the Gaza Freedom March to join Gaza demonstrators demanding an end to the Siege of Gaza. Solidarity protests and pickets are being staged worldwide. It’s up to the US and Israel, through their proxy in Egypt. Who knows if the Limited, parent company of the the aforementioned retail stores, can exert its influence? GFM would-be participant Sam Husseini reports international delegates left behind are being blocked from leaving their hotels. Mohammed Said el-Naidi reports and has picture.

A deal was brokered yesterday by which 100 peace delegates, one per nationality, could proceed by bus to Rafah. Many activists refused, choosing to demonstrate with the hundreds to be left behind. Organizers Code Pink had originally vowed to march on December 31st, regardless if permission is granted by Egyptian authorities, but now are declaring the brokered deal a victory… As a collective, the organizers forming the FGM rejected the offer, but a group left nonetheless.

The final 87 include many journalists who intended to cover the march and Palestinians hoping to be reunited with family members. No word yet whether Colorado Springs representatives are on the two buses headed to Gaza.

To support the GFM efforts, contact the Egyptian Embassy, 202-895-5400 and ask for Omar Youssef or email omaryoussef@hotmail.com with an email like the following:

I am writing/calling to express my full support for the December 31, 2009 Gaza Freedom March. I urge the Egyptian government to allow the 1,300 international delegates to enter the Gaza Strip through Egypt.

The aim of the march is to call on Israel to lift the siege. The delegates will also take in badly needed medical aid, as well as school supplies and winter jackets for the children of Gaza.

Please, let this historic March proceed.

Thank you.

Chapel Hills Mall boycott DEC 28-31

protest bannerEgypt decided to limit the Gaza Freedom March to 100 participants, leaving more than 1,200 international activists stranded in Cairo. Contact the US State Department or the Egyptian embassy to plead the case of the people of Gaza. Ask the media networks why the story isn’t being covered. In Colorado Springs, we’re calling for a boycott of US consumer goods which finance the oppression in Gaza. It’s DAY 3 of the Coloradans For Peace boycott action at Chapel Hills Mall, until the FGM marchers and relief supplies are allowed to reach Gaza.

Boycott vs. Chapel Hills Mall monitors

Boycott Israeli Apartheid
Please contact CFP if you can take a half-hour shift tomorrow. Gaza remains imprisoned, the FGM activists and aid convoy are still forbidden entry. The peace protesters are being roughed up in Egypt, and DAY 2 of our little Chapel Hills Mall action wasn’t without excitement either.

chapel hills mall security

At the height of our numbers, we were watched over by three police cruisers, a mall security SUV and what turned out to be an unmarked pickup. The law enforcement contingent eventually dissipated, only to reconstitute itself quickly when we decided to drive around the mall parking lot in search of a photographic angle that included the mountains in the backdrop.

As we drove between lots trying to frame the shot, the various police and security cars would weave into adjacent lanes keeping us in their sights. Funny and creepy. I confess to becoming too intimidated to take any pictures lest they pretend we were casing the joint. Did they think we were going to make a break for the mall doors?

In fact, the boycott message is suitably conveyed from the public sidewalk. The mall has written rules which severely constrict circulating fliers and petitions inside. If your application is accepted, for one day per quarter year, the mall administrators can assign you a location far from the bulk of the customers. Political messages cannot interfere with commerce, and the entire holiday shopping season is off limits.

For the most part, holding the placards was uneventful. Most shoppers pulling into the mall responded with blank expressions of confusion. Every so often we had to answer queries shouted from their windows as they waited at the light. Several times we received thumbs up, waves, and honks of support. Other times we could see drivers share words with the police cars keeping watch.

One woman walked by us scanning our signs with a deliberate scowl. “Actually, she she informed us, I like the Israelites.” I didn’t take issue with her, but suggested that what the “Israelites” were doing to the people of Gaza was not right. She disagreed, turning on her heels hissing: “The people of Gaza are Muslims.

Boycott Israeli Apartheid COS Day 2

chapel-hills-mall-boycott-limited
COLORADO SPRINGS- While Gaza Freedom Marchers remain confined in Cairo, stateside solidarity actions continue apace. Join Coloradans For Peace for DAY2 of the ISRAELI APARTHEID BOYCOTT at SW entrance of Chapel Hills Mall, intersection of Briargate and Agora Point. Noon Tuesday.

Gaza Freedom March update

free PalestineGFM activists still prevented from leaving Cairo spoiling Rafah rendezvous with demonstrators in Gaza; American citizens undertaking hunger strike after being blocked from the US embassy; the siege of the UN offices has been called off; and the Viva Palestina convoy in Jordan has taken an alternative route. Follow Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah and Institute for Public Accuracy’s Sam Husseini for minute by minute updates. Official reports from GFM. Photos by Antony Loewenstein. Solidarity actions continue worldwide, including Colorado Springs.

Abunimah reports after delegation of three activists were permitted to meet with US embassy staff:

USG supports the siege of Gaza, offers excuses & stonewalling. During meeting political officer Greg Logrefo confirmed that US Army Corps of Engineers is providing technical assistance to build underground wall.

Avatar: novel push for noble savage

Avatar movie poster based on the novel by SapphireI’d like to contrast the high-profile critical receptions being given two Hollywood films about darker-skinned-ness. Precious is about an African-American girl so dark she absorbs the light, without being about race at all. The movie tells a story of poverty, incest and the cycle of abuse, while tipping the scales with gratuitous stereotypes of Hottentot welfare mamas attendant their usual good-for-trouble black males. Vilifying the subjects it pretends to rescue, Precious has the blessing of the media, a shameless Oprah included. James Cameron’s Avatar on the other hand, opened to depth-charges of faint praise calculated to dim the buzz, perhaps because it packs the most subversive black-is-beautiful message since Muhammad Ali.

Avatar evokes rudimentary indigenous spirituality, peppered with what even elementary-schooled audiences can associate as Native American themes, from which we can infer the concepts are eternal, but idealizes an athletic aesthetic more human than the movie’s live-action characters. The “blue cat people,” as the critics have chosen to describe its Na’vi tribe, are but fantasy-striped, tailed Spartans, computer iterations of the Williams sisters and NBA dream teams. The real humans of Avatar tower in prowess, dignity and luminescence over their modern mensch oppressors.

Where racial equality on film is plotted according to how black figures are granted access to the world of white priviledge, Avatar celebrates the sovereignty of dark skin in its environment, where it’s not a barbershop, rapper’s crib, or street corner in Harlem. And instead of prepping the more palatable light-skinned negro for easier assimilation to the welcome-diversity crowd.

Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire, is an ugly project by and for gentrified American, whose title character is White-America’s usual avatar into their mysterious conception of Black America. I can do it no better justice than this review excerpt published Counterpunch:

A fiction whose “policy message is that welfare recipients are black women who wish to avoid work, who use their time having sex with their daughters, watching television and dining on pig leavings.” Is this a film – or a crime?

A crock and defamation that reinforces white man’s supremist burden.

Under Iran’s culturally repressive Islamic Revolution, the artists have produced a golden age of film. The greatest of these films have had to disguise their social message in analogies surrounding the concerns of children. Avatar takes perhaps a similar tack. Behind diversions of fantasy and special effects, is a profound morality tale. Critics can attack James Cameron for his simplistic storytelling, it’s the price to pay to bring the simplest of viewers along. Perhaps the director can release a final cut for cineastes which omits the redundant exposition. I don’t mind that Cameron uses a highlighter for the Cliftnote set. A survey of online comments shows me that some fans applaud themselves for getting Avatar’s message where they are certain their fellow audience members might not.

Most certainly the alarm most critics are raising has to do with the unpatriotic attitude which Avatar takes toward Capitalist imperialism. In GWOT America where we still “Support Our Troops” and still refrain from labeling our military contractors as mercenaries, this film will rub flag wavers the wrong way. I’d hate to be an active duty US soldier, watching Avatar in my uniform, as the audience roots for good to vanquish evil. It will probably be some time before Americans will want to see Iraqi or Afghan freedom fighters depicted as heroes. We’ve yet to see sympathetic accounts for example of the Vietcong holding down the Ho Chi Min Trail, or for that matter, the real Germans or Japanese beyond the Allied propaganda. But by disguising his story in science fiction, James Cameron has rehabilitated the Vandal and Visigoth, from the shadow of the Roman Empire. The shadow of man’s civilizing drive which grows darker the more it is illuminated.

And best of all, Cameron’s pagans are not whites like the typical Anglo Semites of the Christian holy lands. Cameron’s indigenous humans have the beautiful noses, skin and haunches indigenous to the climates which cradled humankind.

A 1930 Spirit of Christmas Past

Black Agenda Report revisited this Christmas poem by Langston Hughes:

“Merry Christmas”: Published in New Masses (Dec. 1930), p. 4.

Merry Christmas, China,
From the gun-boats in the river,
Ten-inch shells for Christmas gifts,
And peace on earth forever.

Merry Christmas, India,
To Gandhi in his cell,
From righteous Christian England,
Ring out, bright Christmas bell!

Ring Merry Christmas, Africa,
From Cairo to the Cape!
Ring Hallehuiah! Praise the Lord!
(For murder and for rape.)

Ring Merry Christmas, Haiti!
(And drown the voodoo drums—
We’ll rob you to the Christian hymns
Until the next Christ comes

Ring Merry Christmas, Cuba!
(While Yankee domination
Keeps a nice fat president
In a little half-starved nation.)

And to you down-and-outers,
(“Due to economic laws”)
Oh, eat, drink, and be merry
With a bread-line Santa Claus—

While all the world hails Christmas,
While all the church bells sway!
While, better still, the Christian guns
Proclaim this joyous day!

While holy steel that makes us strong
Spits forth a mighty Yuletide song:
SHOOT Merry Christmas everywhere!
Let Merry Christmas GAS the air!

Who is that on the back of the poor?

JUSTICIA, Western Goddess of Justice, by Danish sculptor Jen GalschiotHere’s a Christmas gift for your favorite First Worlder. Let them affix their mug behind the face of “Justitia,” the Western Goddess of Justice, carried by the laboring poor as she seeks to right inequity without relinquishing her station of privilege. Who is the bloated First World hypocrite — but you! This statue by Danish artist Jen Galschiot is also known as Survival of the Fattest. Global elitists can celebrate their face on this 8-inch cardboard cutout as it depicts their naked supremacy.

For COP15, Galschiot installed this life-sized statue in the water next to Hans Christian Anderson’s Little Mermaid. Climate talk delegates who ventured to see Copenhagen harbor’s famous tourist attraction saw a grotesque figure straddling her carrier, whose head struggled to stay above the water.

Picture frames are popular Christmas gifts for those of us who lack nothing, except more frames to decorate pictures of ourselves and our stuff. How’s this for framing an emergent identity?

Dennis Kucinich to lead Independents

kucinich-2012-independent
Strike three. Obama’s out. Stop war? Nope. Address climate change? Sorry no. Reform health care? In the insurer’s interest only. I’m hearing Obama’s failure to deliver real health care being blamed on Americans themselves, for not building a movement to support it. WTF. In fact Dems are being asked to root for Obama’s duplicitous health care legislation, or hinder the change-meister’s momentum. Momentum for what? Not one issue remains for which Democrats can claim to deliver America from the GOP. Isn’t it time to uproot all incumbents and side with the majority of voters? Teabaggers can have their Palin, the Dems can sink their last hope in Obama, Americans need to claim the largest constituency of recent past elections, the independents.

Space time capsule December 21, 1968

Earth seen by ApolloWhat does it mean that the stars we see in the sky represent light coming at us from millions of years before? The images we have of Earth, of ourselves from space, reflect a distant past too actually. Although we’re accustomed now to visualizing our planet from above, as a quilt of satellite photos wrapped around a globe, viewable from any distance on Google Earth, the actual vision they mimic is a single thoroughly ubiquitous NASA photo called “The Blue Marble.”

We have only a handful of actual pictures of our planet, taken during the lunar expeditions Apollo 8-17, between 1968 and 1972. Together they allow our minds to conjure our blue globe selves floating against the continuum of space, but they’re also snapshots of the past, of home forty or so years ago.

That’s not just our planet set against the dark universe, that’s you, spinning along. Were you looking up toward the astronauts on their mission as these pictures were taken? You might have watched the launch at Cape Canaveral and hours later thought about the first men to leave Earth’s orbit.

The above photo isn’t the “Blue Marble.” The image above differs from the photo taken by Apollo 17 on Pear Harbor Day, December 7, 1972. That photograph was the first to capture the Earth in full sunlight, but it showed only the Southern Hemisphere. I wanted to chose one where you’re in the picture.

The above image is the first photograph of Earth taken from space, snapped by Apollo 8 as it left for the moon, Saturday, December 21st, 1968. If you were in North America at the time, you’re at the lower right.

If you don’t remember where you were around noon on the winter solstice in 1968, here’s a subsequent photograph they took on their eighth orbit around the moon. It’s the first “Earthrise” seen by man. That was December 24, 1968, a date for which you probably have additional family snapshots.

NASA Apollo 8 orbits the moon

A bird in the hand is worth health care and a climate consensus in the bush

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. It’s better than nothing. We’re getting it from all direction now, from Copenhagen to the health care bill. The message is delivered by experienced elder statesmen whose benevolence we do not question because they are retired and have no horse in the race -yet they have access to the halls of power where real stakeholders are denied? Silver hair and silver tongues pitch: “Those who say a bad deal is better than no deal are dead wrong.” You’re kidding me Grandpa.

And what’s this for a perverted adage: “One step forward is better than two steps back?”

I’m seeing Obama being praised for revising his schedule to get to Copenhagen on the last day, for knowing how late is fashionable when the party’s a dud. But that’s not a leader. Obama could have given life to the party, instead he ops to give the Gettysburg Address.

Is it really illegal to boycott Israel?

boycott-israeli-goods-end-apartheidIt is not illegal for US consumers to boycott anyone’s products. But the business decisions of companies affiliated with Israel do enjoy some curious protective constraints…

It’s ironic that as the US enforces rigid sanctions against international companies which violate its embargo against Cuba, the US has enacted laws simultaneously which prohibit its companies from complying with trade restrictions called by others.

As a further embarrassment, the antiboycotting measure specifies just one boycott, literally: the League of Arab Nations boycott of Israel.

So while American consumers are free to make the buying decisions they wish, it is illegal for an American business to adjust its business practices to boycott Israel.

In other words, as much as social justice activists might like to ask a department store not to carry Ahava beauty products taken from Occupied Territory shores, the store would be prohibited by US law to do so as an act of compliance. ahava-stolen-beauty-occupation For another example, fashion labels such as DKNY and cK could decide to discontinue carrying undergarments manufactured by Delta Galil from settler farms in Palestine, but they couldn’t do it because of someone’s boycott.

(Delta Galil supplies clothing to the Gap, Banana Republic, Structure, J-Crew, JC Penny, Pryca, Lindex, DIM, Donna Karan, Ralph Lauren, Playtex, Calvin Klein, and Hugo Boss.)

This law makes a commercial boycott impossible to resolve between customer and business, but ultimately results in more pressure being applied to the source cause, which are the policies of Israel.

According to the US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security, Office of Antiboycott Compliance, in the 1970s two laws were enacted “to counteract the participation of U.S. citizens in other nation’s economic boycotts or embargoes. These ‘antiboycott’ laws are the 1977 amendments to the Export Administration Act (EAA) and the Ribicoff Amendment to the 1976 Tax Reform Act (TRA). While these laws share a common purpose, there are distinctions in their administration.”

Antiboycott Compliance

The Bureau is charged with administering and enforcing the Antiboycott Laws under the Export Administration Act. Those laws discourage, and in some circumstances, prohibit U.S. companies from furthering or supporting the boycott of Israel sponsored by the Arab League, and certain Moslem countries, including complying with certain requests for information designed to verify compliance with the boycott. Compliance with such requests may be prohibited by the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) and may be reportable to the Bureau.

The law specifies boycotts called by foreign nations, leaving the possibility that US citizens can declare themselves the originators of a boycott. However other language makes clear that no boycott is to contravene the US government’s declared trade policy with Israel. To elaborate on the EAR:

Objectives:
The antiboycott laws were adopted to encourage, and in specified cases, require U.S. firms to refuse to participate in foreign boycotts that the United States does not sanction. They have the effect of preventing U.S. firms from being used to implement foreign policies of other nations which run counter to U.S. policy.

Primary Impact:
The Arab League boycott of Israel is the principal foreign economic boycott that U.S. companies must be concerned with today. The antiboycott laws, however, apply to all boycotts imposed by foreign countries that are unsanctioned by the United States.

Who Is Covered by the Laws?
The antiboycott provisions of the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) apply to the activities of U.S. persons in the interstate or foreign commerce of the United States. The term “U.S. person” includes all individuals, corporations and unincorporated associations resident in the United States, including the permanent domestic affiliates of foreign concerns. U.S. persons also include U.S. citizens abroad (except when they reside abroad and are employed by non-U.S. persons) and the controlled in fact affiliates of domestic concerns. The test for “controlled in fact” is the ability to establish the general policies or to control the day to day operations of the foreign affiliate.

The scope of the EAR, as defined by Section 8 of the EAA, is limited to actions taken with intent to comply with, further, or support an unsanctioned foreign boycott.

These amendments are examples of Israel’s stranglehold on US legislation. Anti-Israel voices like to paint the picture that as a result, American citizens have been denied the freedom to vote with their pocketbooks where it comes to opposing the policies of Israel. Likewise, pro-Israel groups are content to leave the issue ambiguous. But clearly US individuals are free to make consumer choices and encourage others as they wish.

The function of the TRA further explains its business-limited scope:

What do the Laws Prohibit?

Conduct that may be penalized under the TRA and/or prohibited under the EAR includes:

• Agreements to refuse or actual refusal to do business with or in Israel or with blacklisted companies.

• Agreements to discriminate or actual discrimination against other persons based on race, religion, sex, national origin or nationality.

• Agreements to furnish or actual furnishing of information about business relationships with or in Israel or with blacklisted companies.

• Agreements to furnish or actual furnishing of information about the race, religion, sex, or national origin of another person.

Implementing letters of credit containing prohibited boycott terms or conditions.

The TRA does not “prohibit” conduct, but denies tax benefits (“penalizes”) for certain types of boycott-related agreements.

McKibben denounces COP15 as sham

Are talks in Copenhagen stalled? Did Hillary’s offer of US aid ford the turbulance in time for an Obama second coming? The Guardian has obtained a COP15 internal note which reveals that negotiators know their stated goals do not add up. Poor nations want a temperature rise limited at 1.5°C, rich nations are offering measures to max at 2°C, but know confidentially their best offer will produce a disastrous 3°C. Bill McKibben of 350.ORG declares conference an elaborate sham.
Confidential preliminary assessment-internal-note-secretariat

Forget yelling at the First World Annex I delegates. They know. Forget too, the goal of 350 PPM. While government representatives pretend their best efforts will cap atmosphere carbon levels at 550 parts per million, their own calculations predict we’ll reach 770.

The developing nations (the non-Annex I Parties) who will suffer the most by climate change want the damage limited to 1.5°C and they need pledges of countermeasures and disaster relief commensurate to those expectations. But the First World negotiators are offering half the money needed to address a rise of 2°C, knowing warming will get as bad as 3°C.

Here’s the document’s conclusion (highlighting mine):

VI. Conclusions

The pledges made by a number of Annex I Parties for emissions reductions below base year levels and announcements made by a number of non-Annex I Parties for voluntary actions to address emissions in the lead-up to the COP in Copenhagen could bring significant emission reductions and help to reduce the gap between the current reference emission levels in 2020 and the required level of global emissions of 44 Gt in the same year which is estimated at around 10.5 Gt. Even if Parties agreed to deliver in accordance with the upper range of their pledge, this will leave a gap of around 1.9 to 4.2 Gt.

Unless the remaining gap of around 1.9 to 4.2 Gt is closed and Parties commit themselves to strong action prior and after 2020, global emissions will peak later than 2020 and remain on an unsustainable pathway that could lead to concentrations equal or above 550 ppm with the related temperature raise around 3°C. equal or above 550 ppm. This in turn will reduce significantly the probability to stay within a temperature increase of 2°C.

If you’re tracking Treehugger or Grist for the lowdown on Copenhagen, grab a yardstick from 350.org. Bill McKibben, by the way, wrote The End of Nature in 1989, one of the earliest books to address global warming for a general audience. The American Museum of Natural History’s Nature Defense Fund published Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast in 1992. Columbia professor Wallace Broecker coined the phrase in the 1970s –for deniers who thought the conspiracy was a recent one.

By the way, COP15 is not named like the G8 or G20, for 15 key players meeting, by coincidence in Copenhagen. COP15 stand for the 15th international gathering of the Conference Of the Parties. The parties, non-Annex I and Annex I, we know now as the plaintiffs and the liars.

cop15-graph-350org-climatescoreboard

And from the Climate Score Board:

COP15 protest arrests leave what next

Latest update on Copenhagen demonstrations, from Greenpeace organizer Brinkley Hutchings: “Everyday at the negotiations we have flash mobs, clapping attention-grabbers, and youth crying out to be heard. But the delegates and decision-makers are wearing their earmuffs and blinders, doing everything they can to avoid hearing what we (the youth) have to say. *It has become really apparent that we must escalate.*”

New ICE building is half windowless

ice offices in pueblo bank trust buildingAs reported by the Gazette on Nov 30, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of the Department of Homeland Security has opened an office in Colorado Springs in the Pueblo Bank and Trust Building. The implication is of a lonely field office to monitor the busy I-25 corridor, but the Nation Magazine is reporting that ICE locations nationwide are being used as unmarked and unmonitored detention facilities for undisclosed detainees. I can’t vouch for ours. Anyone up for a photo field trip? Bring your papers.

According to the Gazette, the office has been a pet pork project of Congressman Doug Lamborn. Their description of the new facilities:

The downtown office in Colorado Springs is the ninth ICE office in Colorado and houses several cubicles and conference rooms as well as a cache of secure rooms to be used for interviews, confidential paperwork and holding weapons.

Detentions have been until now subcontracted with El Paso County. Currently the county holds approximately 150 detainees for ICE.

Did you catch this choice segment of the story? County Commissioner Jim Bensberg apparently confuses “to have a chilling effect” with crime deterrence:

“The presence of the federal office will have a chilling effect on a wide variety of activities,” he said, without elaborating.

“There were days I thought this would never happen,” he said. “If I had a tail right now, I’d be wagging it.”

Sticks and stones can hurt Berlusconi

Silvio BerlusconiWounded premier kept for four days in the hospital. At a young age we’re taught to pretend that words cannot hurt us like sticks and stones. Later we accord to words more power even than paper, scissors, rock –those of us for whom violence is only a surreality.

Both delusions it seems to me come of a world inured by a void of physical hardship. I can’t help but believe that Silvio Berlusconi’s assailant got a message across to the Italian despot that none before had been able to connect, no matter their shouts, pleas or accusations.

Will Berlusconi rebound like Hitler or Stalin after the attempts on their lives? This wasn’t an assassination attempt, whether or not Massimo Tartaglia’s act was premeditated. And it wasn’t a conspiracy either. Massimo by his own hand cut the pompous autocrat down to a mortal stature.

I’m guessing Berlusconi is no stranger to fist fights, he probably pulls his errant subjects’ fingers off using the piers himself. But it’s probably been awhile since he’s been sucker punched. A sudden, uninvited violence like that is the closest example Berlusconi can experience of the institutional violence his regime and ours visit upon innocent people. From out of nowhere.

If Berlusconi and his fellow autocratic leaders beef up their security after this episode, so what? If it now becomes virtually impossible for a common man to get within arms length, or even shoe-throwing distance of a world leader, so what? What expectations do we have that there has ever been communication at that level? Massimo’s gesture, like al-Zaidi’s puts closure on the facade of our leadership. We must communicate among ourselves. Nothing comes of begging crumbs from people in power.

It fills me with inspiration, it really does, to look the wounded visage of Silvio Berlusconi’s, his untouchable countenance wiped clean away.

That said, my favorite scene from Jim Carrey’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas comes at the end, after he’s gotten the best of the despicable Whoville mayor. “No hard feeling?” the Grinch asks, leaning in close and extending his hand. But instead of shaking his hand, he points his finger into the mayor’s face and laughs: Hahahahahaha Hahahahahahaha Hahahahahahahaha Hahahahahahahah!

Drones vulnerable to P2P filesharing?

The WSJ headline screams “Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones … Iranian Backing Suspected.” Hmm. Why Iran — because insurgents can’t afford $25.99 SkyGrabber software? Captured Iraqi laptops have evidence of intercepted video feeds, not code. The hacking term is no misnomer. Instead of calling the footage “hijacked” or “received,” the data is described as “stolen” and “pirated,” which would seem to betray an inviting vulnerability to SkySoftware’s reach. Are they saying there’s a UAV feed that can be harvested by a distributed file-sharing exploit? Imagine a drone-watch network for nabbing unwarranted military surveillance: DroneWire. By going after too many birds with this story, the DoD confirms its armed unmanned vehicles are patrolling not just Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, but Yemen and Somalia, where our distributed representative Democracy has no legal authority to conduct extrajudicial assassinations.

Coke tries to sell Hopenhagen in bottle

Copenhagen and Coke the Bottle of Hope
For a few brief seconds, the Yes Men merry pranksters unmasked climate summit sponsor Coca-Cola for the environmental villain it is. Coca-Cola had been among the organizers to brand the Hopenhagen campaign, a custom fit for their slogan Bottle of Hope. Coke then saturated the conference with posters intent to distill the Hopenhagen spirit into their bottle.

Doesn’t the limited satisfaction of drinking a soda come from the advertising theme? The condensation on the bottle, the sound it makes as the pressure is released, plus the images of the latest ads, define the product’s refreshment factor. In Copenhagen, Coke was promoting the elation to come from fighting for the planet, which could then be evoked to make an irresistible elixir.

Incidentally, the slogan presumably refers to an honorable scheme to manufacture bottles from sustainable materials.

What marketer could have been better placed to capitalize on the ephemeral essence of Copenhagen’s aspirations? Less sophisticated admen would have insisted on Cokenhagen. Household products would have required the unsubtle “Soapenhagen” proposed by Clean Coal.

hopenhagen pastoralThis is a detail from one of Coca-Cola’s posters by artist Andrew Bannecker for Bernstein and Andriulli. It’s a idyllic agricultural scene emerging like smoke from a genie’s bottle, in this case a Bottle of Hope we recognize as Coke’s. All of this beneath a banner proclaiming it “Hopenhagen.”

I am particularly unamused by the brick farm silo in the familiar shape of a coke bottle. What do you suppose Coke sees as its role in such a dreamy, by the caterpillar’s presence, organic, pastoral scene?

I suppose there’s some consolation that as COP15 tanks, Coke’s Bottles of Hope will taste false. Disappointment will be a pause that doesn’t refresh at all. Perhaps a perception of bitterness will wean consumers from the phoniness of too sweet. Coke’s bottled Hopenhagen will come with a foreboding aftertaste.