Been meaning to post this for a while.

On the care tags of some of the fine goods produced by Tom Bihn (ed: I have no idea of the quality of the products one way or the other):

“Nous sommes desoles que notre president soit un idiot. Nous n’avons pas vote pour lui.”

which apparently translates to

“We are sorry our president is an idiot. We didn’t vote for him.”

Orcinus has the scoop. The short of it is, it’s probably not the president you’re thinking of, but the company’s (Tom Bihn) president. Whatever the case, it’s an amusing prank.

Happy Friday.

(via Orcinus: “Those sneaky French” [April 17, 2004])

Kurt Vonnegut has a wickedly excellent and stupendous and outstanding article about America and Oil, of all things. Although really it’s about everything. What can I say? It’s outstanding. I’d quote the whole thing, just to get you to read it, but that probably wouldn’t work anyway, so I’m just going to ask you nicely. Please read it.

(In These Times: “Cold Turkey” by Kurt Vonnegut [May 12, 2004] via CommonDreams)

In an interesting contrast, an article in the Guardian says US brands are hurting abroad, and had better watch out, while the NYT says, wow, incredible! despite war and abuse, America’s brands are doing just peachy-keen in lands afar.

The gist of the NYT article is, in spite of a few minor (and basically insignificant) incidents, people (non-Americans, that is) aren’t particularly angry at US brands or any less willing to purchase them. It’s a fun, feel-good article. Anecdotes abound, showing how amazingly tolerant the world is of USA brands like McDonald’s and Ford and Kodak, even in the face of alleged American atrocities. Anecdotes like this one:

“For example, as Hidayat bin Ismail, 19, emerged Friday from midday prayers at the Sultan Mosque in Singapore, he acknowledged that he was still patronizing places like McDonald’s and KFC even after seeing the pictures of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners.”

Problem being, the article is mostly that—anecdote. And, in the absence of other, more comprehensive information, it might make do as a case for the strength of US brands. Except that there are other data out there; data which don’t exactly paint a stunning portrait of these same brands.

The Guardian article is based on a worldwide survey (of approx. 30,000 people) conducted annually by NOP World, a “top-ten market research power uniting some of the most renowned US and European research firms.”

Survey says, recent US acts, from its handling of terrorism to involvement in Iraq to its failure to hop on board the Kyoto bandwagon, “have all had a profoundly negative affect on the perception of US culture and its major brands.”

Thus:

“Until 2002, NOP found that brands such as McDonald’s and Coca-Cola were notching up healthy annual growth in terms of use and familiarity in international markets.

“However, last year NOP discovered that the growth in popularity of all major consumer brands – including those from Europe and Asia – had stalled. Over the past 12 months the positive trend has gone into reverse, with US products hardest hit.”

Still, both articles are interesting, and valuable in their own way. The NYT article if only to highlight the weakness of anecdotal evidence.

(via NYT: “War and Abuse Do Little to Harm U.S. Brands” by Simon Romero [May 9, 2004] and Guardian: “Consumers send ‘warning sign’ to US brands” by Patrick Barrett [May 11, 2004])

• Global Issues is an interesting web site that offers commentary and information on a whole host of topics, from Racism to Global Warming to the International Criminal Court. Haven’t had too much of a chance to explore it, but it seems to have some good stuff. (And with the title “Global Issues That Affect Everyone,” how can you go wrong?)
• The Christian Science Monitor has a new piece on the ongoing saga of the Bhopal gas disaster (in India), a 20-year-old accident in which thousands were killed and various corporate bodies eschewed responsibilities. (via CSM: “Bhopal gas tragedy lives on, 20 years later” by Scott Baldauf [May 4, 2004])
• And corporations find that, surprisingly, war does little to hurt their brands abroad. (via NYT: “War and Abuse Do Little to Harm U.S. Brands” by Simon Romero [May 9, 2004])

Seymour Hersh, the legendary investigative reporter who won the 1970 Pulitzer for exposing the My Lai massacre, won the public-interest prize for three articles on the Bush administration’s Iraq policy. Hersh did not attend the awards, held at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, because he was busy working. Reached at his Washington office, he was also too busy for chitchat, even congratulatory chitchat.

“Yeah, I just heard… That’s good. But I can’t talk. I’m actually on deadline… What can I say? I’m glad blah blah blah, garbage, garbage, blah blah. But I’m working.”

(WaPo: “Esquire the Alpha Male of Magazines” by Peter Carlson [May 6, 2004] via RandomWalks)

A group in Britain, VARE [Victims of Animal Rights Extremism] claims that not enough is being done to “tackle the tactics of animal rights extremists that currently fall outside the remit of the police and Crown Prosecution Service.”

It’s one thing to oppose laws you believe to be unjust, but it’s a completely different ballpark to break laws—the substance of which is only ancillary to your cause—in order to make a point. I.e., it’s one thing to free lab monkeys (e.g.), but it’s something else to raise death threats against someone and firebomb their house. It’s nice if civil society can remain at least marginally civil even in light of questionable standards of ethics. That said, VARE has a couple problems with its crusade of righteousness.

First, while the individuals victimized (sorry, victimised) by these ‘extremists’ (a group, police say, of no more than 20 or 30 people) may have legitimate complaints, VARE seems to be stretching the limits of any so-called moral high ground. There seems to be little sense in creating new laws solely for the prosecution of a group of between 20 and 30 people (Laws which the Executive Director of the Research Defence Society says would—should—be on par with laws against racism and “football hooligans”). More to the point, while admitting that it’s a small minority of activists who resort to violence, VARE doesn’t generally make attempts to put forth such distinctions in its demands for harsher laws:

“It’s absolutely right to say there are only a very small number of people involved in the [anti-vivisection] movement who engage in illegal activities,” says Wendy Higgins, campaigns director at the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, a campaign group not linked to extremism. “But inevitably groups like VARE paint a picture of the entire movement as a bunch of extremists. (New Scientist)

It’s certainly not cut-and-dried, and I doubt there are any easy answers out there. But as long as VARE and its kin continue with the presumption that vivisection (for instance) is de facto ethically legitimate and good and wholesome and necessary, there are doubtless going to be problems with extremism—of all flavors.

(New Scientist: “Scientists demand law against animal rights extremism” by Shaoni Bhattacharya [April 22, 2004]; The Scientist: “Animal activist victims unite” by Stephen Pincock [April 23, 2004]; Vare Home Page)