SHAC is a bit of a legend in activist circles. They believe that animals should be afforded the same rights and liberties that humans are and make the argument in terribly compelling ways. But beyond that, they use extremely effective but very controversial means to make their issue heard. It might mean visiting the personal residences of scientists that perform cruel animal testing and shouting at them with megaphones all day and night. It might mean protesting the New York Stock Exchange with such vehemence as to cause Huntingdon Life Sciences to be de-listed on NYSE. It might mean taping two pieces of black paper end-to-end in a circle and faxing it to Huntingdon Life Sciences, just to use up all of their fax paper and toner.

Ironically, it was this last act that they were finally busted for. Facing a heap of charges from destruction of private property (toner!) to conspiracy, the SHAC 7 were all convicted on felony charges. When asked why they did all of this to save a few animals, they said “I’m sure people through-out history were asked the same question—all this for a Black? Or all this for a Jew? Yes, all this for an animal.”

I went with several other activists to see “Your Mommy Kills Animals” (named for a brochure distributed by PETA) to learn more about SHAC. What we got was an exposé on how animal rights groups all hate eachother and destroy property a lot. However, it was just subtle enough to masquerade as a critical look into what strategies work and which don’t.

The first clue that there might be something awry were these two talking heads that the documentarians kept interspersing right before or after potentially compelling arguments from the very eloquent SHAC 7. They seemed to subtly undercut the logic of the protagonists. The first was David Martosko, of the Center for Consumer Freedom, and the second Iain Murray, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. These are Right Wing think-tanks that basically get paid to spew bullshit for video cameras. CEI, as I may have mentioned before, are the brains behind those fabulous “Carbon Dioxide: They call it pollution, we call it life!” commercials.

It turns out the producer of “Your Mommy Kills Animals”, Curt Johnson, has also produced “Michael Moore Hates America” back in 2004 and his next film is called “Devil’s Weed”, described as “a documentary that examines the loss of civil liberties associated with the public smoking ban in Minneapolis, Minnesota.” Co-producing is Maura Flynn of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Yes, a loss of civil liberties… We all recall Amendment 7: “Congress shall make no law preventing you from smoking in bars.” I wonder if we lost that with the Patriot Act?

There were other moments that made me doubt the film’s sincerity, like the poor music choices (I’m sorry, busting out Rage Against the Machine for a movie supposedly made in the last few years?) and the repeated use of the most violent and confrontational footage they had. It all came unraveled when I was talking to two animal rights activist friends who had wanted to go see it and asked me about some parts of the movement that I soon realized were obviously glaring omissions in the documentary. Clearly, its point was not to plant the seeds of knowledge in those looking to learn more about animal rights, but to sow the seeds on dissent within the movement itself. To the animal welfare people, it showed a crazy and out-of-control animal rights faction. To the animal rights people, it showed a hypocritical and ineffectual animal welfare industry. The Sea Shepherds hate SHAC for being young punks, SHAC hates PETA for selling-out, everyone hates ALF because they threaten people’s lives.

This is not the case, while I’m sure that everyone gravitates to organizations most in line with their own politics, most of the organizations I know more than casually understand the “spectrum theory” of activism. More radical groups need less radical groups to act respectable in order to negotiate, less radical groups need more radical groups to provide pressure to bring power-holders to the table. The animal rights movement is the same way. Even if “Your Mommy Kills Animals” tries to deceive you into thinking they’re at each other’s throats, if you go to the SHAC site and check out their links page, the very first one is to PETA.

This is the first of a few posts I’m robo-blogging from Burning Man. I wrote it last week and set it to go off today.

Working in the communications department of an environmental non-profit, a film about the disinformation campaigns staged by energy companies about global warming probably wasn’t going to contain a truckload of surprises for me. In fact, I cover such things all the time on this blog. It did surprise me how the filmmakers managed to make a potentially bleak subject pretty funny (they describe it as a “toxic comedy”) while leaving the issue its deserved respect.

Before the showing, writer/director Daniel Gold addressed the crowd. The film had began years ago and, after months and months of researching for a film about whether or not global warming was real, it became absolutely clear to everyone that what was really needed was a film about why there’s still any doubt—they name it the “global warming gap”, or the difference between what scientists know to be true and what the public thinks. Journalist Ross Gelbspan puts it plainly in the film, “they’ve stolen our reality.”

Ross is but one of many heroes and villains interviewed in the film, I couldn’t help but think of him as the star. Years ago, he co-wrote an article about climate change and disease; skeptics immediately attacked it. His first reaction, as a journalist, was to research their side of the argument. Thinking the jury was still out in the scientific community, he backed off and even felt guilty. Later he discovered that these skeptics were all funded by the coal industry. He gets pissed and becomes determined to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. A decade later and Ross has retired because it’s too damn depressing. He shrugs to the camera, admitting that article after article has made no dent and that—his daughter sitting not three feet from him on the couch—we’re probably fucked. Another few years later and we see him pulled out of retirement by Katrina and traveling all over the nation speaking with high schools, colleges, the next generation. His is an irrepressible heroism.

The “next generation” is full of cameos of people I know. While climate crusader Bill McKibben inspires a crowd, we see Billy Parish listening intently. Billy has done his fair share of inspiring others as founder of the Climate Campaign and co-founder of Energy Action, the nation’s largest youth climate coalition. Another next-genner can be seen as the dastardly Competitive Enterprise Institute counter-protests a climate action shouting, “Greenpeace kills! Greenpeace kills!” Campaigner Dan Firger smiles at the camera, “uhm, we’re not even Greenpeace.”

I had mentioned before that I was worried that Nordhaus and Shellenberger, co-authors of “The Death of Environmentalism” didn’t come off as heroes. I’ve only met Nordhaus in person but followed the whole debate from a few years ago quite closely (just google “death of environmentalism“). The film gets them just right: smart as hell, a tad reckless, and more than a tad completely full of themselves.

Unfortunately, mine was the last screening at SFIFF, but you can learn more, get involved, and pre-order the DVD on the official website. It’s got more laughs than Inconvenient Truth, that’s for sure.

Over the last six years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have written the most authoritative study on Climate Change to date. It has been penned by over 800 scientists and reviewed by an additional 2500 from over 130 countries and represents the very best science we have on the subject. The Summary for Policymakers (pdf) is available online. In brief, the findings were:

1. “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.” (p.4)
2. There’s a 90% chance that humans have caused it. (p.3)
3. Emissions are so out-of-control that warming will “continue for centuries” even if they’re stabilized. (p.12)

I’ll let you take a moment to go through the fives stages of grief before we move on. By move on, I mean, introduce the other team. Yes, coming out on the other side—against the report—is a well-oiled machine of energy companies, PR hatchet men, and legislative puppets.

ExxonMobil (via one of their “unbiased third party” think tanks, American Enterprise Institute) has already gotten caught offering bribes to any scientist willing to dispute the report. No research required, just disagree. All they want is a climate of confusion (pun intended).

Next, PR hacks like self-appointed “Junkman” Steven Milloy (to whom I will not befoul myself by linking, but do read his profile on SourceWatch), have tried to deliberately misrepresent the report by accusing the media of deliberately misrepresenting it. Having long since given up trying to prove the contrary to any scientific findings, the best they can do is shed doubt on what knowledge real science has rendered. Nice try, but it turns out I can read.

Similarly, Senator James “At-least-I’m-not-Senator-Stevens” Inhofe (R-OK), has gone on record calling the report “a shining example of the corruption of science for political gain“. The statement is so ironic it attracts magnets.

I am not given to hyperbole. Phrases like “worst” and “best” I reserve for the actual “worst” and “best” subjects of a category. Similarly, if I say something like, “I love this movie,” I have often already considered marriage before someone taunts me with the suggestion. I note this because it will ground my following opinion as beyond a stereotypical enviro-exaggeration, but the truth as far as I am concerned. These people who would place their profits, their salary, or their kickbacks ahead of the health and safety of not only our natural world but the lives of every man, woman, and child on this planet cannot be called anything nicer than traitor to the human race. They’ve been deceiving, deluding, or dragging their heels for far too long. I search my heart for some scrap of compassion for them to forgive the terrible crime they’ve committed against all of us and find none.

Let’s leave them to their petty machinations and meddling and pay them no more mind. In the meantime, the rest of us will Step It Up and try to get Earth back on the right track before things get even worse. Hesitation is over and done. Do all you can, as soon as you can. We meet this challenge and our great-great-great-grandkids will sing the victory in their songs. We fail and no songs will be sung.

Beantown (named after Boston Baked Beans, no doubt) was shut down on a scale that San Francisco only reserves for peace protests, labor protests, gay rights protests, anti-immigration prote—you know what, let’s just move on. Anyway, Boston flipped out today at the discovery of “suspicious” devices placed all over the city by terrorists.

These “terrorists” turned out to be an advertising firm doing guerilla marketing for the upcoming Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. In case that last sentence made no sense to you, let me put it another way. Boston went apeshit over Lite Brites giving people the finger. No seriously, here’s what they looked like:

You can’t see the finger, because FoxNews at least has the decency to blur out a cartoon bird-flip. Don’t want our kids to pick up any nasty pixelated habits.

As much fun as it may be to watch Boston freak out, this is not a victimless crime. I speak not of the poor people who were late for work (gasp!) but the creator of the devices who was arrested on “a recently enacted statute making it a crime to place a hoax device that results in panic“. I’m curious to know what the definition of a “hoax device” is, as these devices were clearly not hoaxes, but Throwies.

Webster defines “hoax” as “an act intended to trick or dupe”. In a world were we are constantly inundated by “hoax devices” trying to trick us into buying clothes by duping us into thinking we’ll be loved/feared/respected or trick us into buying cigarettes by duping us into thinking they’re not going to give us cancer/emphysema/stinkiness or trick us into driving cars by duping us into thinking that global warming isn’t real/dangerous/our fault, I think these devices do not qualify as threats.

The Anti-Advertising Agency correctly states that “advertising is the graffiti of the Fortune 500” and arresting someone for throwing light on a building, much less using such brash words as “terrorism” to describe it, leave me feeling very afraid for both our values and our collective Spidey Sense in this country. I place the blame squarely on the people who think LED lights are somehow dangerous (they don’t even get hot, clearly ranking them below Xmas lights on the Threat Level).

Adult Swim got some serious bang for their buck though. Hire these guys again!

Update (2/1/07): Following their arraignment, the two guys arrested for putting up the devices agreed to only answer reporters’ questions if they were about haircuts in the ’70s. It’s great to see that they’re treating this issue with exactly the amount of respect it deserves. Here they are laughing in court:

My mother, a thoroughly good-natured person whom I often use to gauge the pulse of America (to which I am somewhat deafened by living in San Francisco), has recently put forth the criteria for her next car purchase. It must be:

1. A hybrid.
2. Not an SUV.
3. American.

It doesn’t seem to be a terribly tall order, yet at this time there are zero models that obey those three simple rules. In short, US automakers can argue that there’s no demand for whatever the West Coast Enviro-crazies are clamoring for, but they’re simply not making the car that my mother—the elementary school librarian in Indiana—actually wants.

Being a good son, I tried to help her find the car she was looking for, even though I knew that the first available model to meet her criteria was the Chevy Malibu, estimated to hit markets late 2007. I pressed a bit more about why it was important to her to buy American and got more information. My great grandfather worked his whole life for GM on the assembly line and a family devotion to support his work had been passed on from generation to generation. This complicates the situation a little bit.

The Ford Model-T, which still gets twice the MPG as an Explorer.

The auto industry is fast on its way to a collection of platform companies where the products aren’t even manufactured by the branded corporation, or at least not in the same country. For instance, while Ford closes its US factories, it’s opening up factories in Mexico that employ half a million people. On the other hand, Toyota has factories in California, Kentucky, West Virginia, Texas, and even Indiana. In fact, Toyota and Subaru share a factory in my birthplace of Lafayette, IN.

The story gets even more complicated if you want your car produced not just by American labor, but unionized American labor. For that, you pretty much have to grab your car’s VIN and use this reference on the UAW site. Though it really should be noted that “American labor” technically includes Canada, Mexico, and a bunch of other countries as they are part of North or South America after all.

If, like me, you just go by pithy statements to determine your allegiances, you might consider the classic Cal Coolidge aphorism: “The business of America is business!” In which case, it might behoove you to note that Toyota is outselling both Ford and Daimler-Chrysler now, making it the #2 largest retailer in North America and, consequently, more American than either Ford or Daimler-Chrysler. Considering that Ford thinks that being American means talking bold without backing it up, I can’t say I’m surprised.

The story begins with an anonymous article posted to IndyBay, an independent online news source. Here’s the long and short of it:

Our job at Tomkins and Scott, my job specifically, was to monitor Craigslist and summarily flag all postings which reflected negatively upon the city in any way. I am going public with this because, after 3 years of being a censor for Craigslist, I believe what we are doing is totally wrong.

I definitely have an axe to grind with the PR industry in general, so this article sucked me right in. Could our vision of online democratic utopia truly be so easily torn asunder by this “Black PR” strategy? Is the emerging global community just the latest playground for powermongers to co-opt and exploit?

But I was quickly reminded that the internet is a fundamentally more diverse and thus more healthy media environment than newspaper or television. The very first comment to the article was:

I’m checking to see if this is for real.

Craig

By the time the article from IndyBay got to Digg, it was already being sorted out. Writes one commenter:

I just googled Tomkins and Scott and found nothing (except this post). One might attribute this to the fact that the company is “underground” because it does “black PR,” but the wording of this post is very strange. It really sounds like a 12 year old trying to sound like a 30 year old.

Which was followed shortly afterward by:

I don’t know about the rest of Diggers, but I don’t like to go off half-cocked. Dugg nonetheless for a cool conspiracy theory. Also marked as possibly inaccurate. Let’s see some proof.

And finally:

I sure wish someone would have asked me, I asked the guy, and he admitted it’s a hoax.

There are people doing really nasty PR stuff, and netvocates and also fls-dci have been accused of very ugly stuff. Check out the investigative journalists at patriotproject.com, look up their work on swiftboaters.

Craig

One way to look at the whole situation is that an untrue story like the original post would never have been published in traditional media. Another is that the article itself was describing how easy it is to fool the new media. But at the end of the day, community feedback took a dishonest article about a dishonest practice and managed to uncover the truth of the situation (i.e. while this particular instance was a hoax, it is describing a real threat). That feedback simply doesn’t exist in traditional media. Which is why we get things like half of America believing that Iraq had WMDs and bad math on the cover of Business Week.

In essence what we’ve seen are sources of increasingly less authority all safeguarding the validity of whatever they exist in contrast to. Craigslist keeps watch on mainstream media, IndyBay keeps watch on Craigslist, Digg keeps watch on IndyBay, and the commenters keep watch on Digg. The truth seems to be a recursive function.

Unfortunately, the bit of deception was noticed by a few Wall Street Journalists. The “amateur filmmaker” happened to have an email address that traced back to PR firm DCI, which is on the Exxon payroll. Just to make the conceit complete, he had even set up a MySpace account: http://myspace.com/goreiscrazy.

I’m honestly laughing aloud (LOL in the parlance of our times) at the whole thing, for two major reasons. First, the MySpace account as of this writing has 0 friends. Not even Tom thought this guy was worthy of an invite, and his “extended network” is fast approaching 100,000,000.

Also, the video, sad to say, is completely boring. Not even so bad it’s good (like those awesome ads for Carbon Dioxide produced by CEI). Here’s a sampling of the comments on YouTube:

This is sad. You’d think that a corporate sponsored video would actually be at least funny. Exxon–you need to rehire! This video sucks!

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I wouldn’t mind this oppossing view if it were funny or interesting. It’d be nice if they didn’t reference South Park, though. You know you’re sub-par when you do things like that. For example, you watch a lame movie and one character mentions Jaws. Then you start thinking, “Man, I’d really rather be watching Jaws right now.”

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$3.10 a gallon and they spend the profits on this kaka? Pity that the windfall apparently can’t buy you any “smart” or “interesting”.

In not completely unrelated news, my favorite favorite corporate shill, Steven Milloy is throwing a hissy about the State of California wanting to know if his constant doubting of climate change and his taking money from automakers and oil companies are in any way, y’know… maybe… related? I think he’s my favorite favorite because he gets pissy like this so often.

1. Hands Off the Internet, a “grassroots” website against network neutrality.
2. Tom Giovanetti’s OpEd in the Mercury News, “Network neutrality? Welcome to the stupid Internet.”
3. Sen. Ted Stevens’ already infamous “The Internet is a series of tubes” speech.

Let’s deal with these in order of hilarity.

First, there’s nothing “dirty” about poor Senator Stevens. He just clearly has no idea what he’s talking about. I don’t even know the dude’s party affiliation, and frankly it doesn’t matter. But it does show that the lobbyists are pulling out all the stops and not letting this one merely play out in the “Court of Public Opinion” (probably because they know they’d be found guilty) by rounding up all the Luddite, out-of-touch Senators they can in order to stop net neutrality in its tracks. Perhaps I’m being unfair to this elected official. Obviously, we can’t expect our duly-appointed representatives to be experts on every subject, like “what the internet is”.

Second, I’m unsure how to approach Tom Giovanetti’s piece, because I not only fundamentally disagree with him, but I also happen to know that he’s a hired gun PR guy that gets paid to polish turds. He’s the president of the Institute for Policy Innovation, a conservative think-tank that muddies the waters around debates that should be open-and-shut if a sincere discussion were to take place. Consider his previous work for privatizing social security and against municipal wireless and open source software. So, he’s a dick.

But even beyond that, consider his argument against network neutrality: access to mainstream media, like television and telephones and even police radio, will plunge into chaos because of “extremely high demand” for something stupid. Where are the heroic telecoms flying to the rescue to prioritize content!? Their hands are tied by draconic legislation! Argh! Except, isn’t “extremely high demand” already prioritizing content? Who benefits from a system that prioritizes anything other than what people want? Perhaps whomever is paying Mr. Giovanetti?

Finally, the “grassroots” website. The most astute of you will notice the quotation marks I insist on putting around the word “grassroots”. This is perhaps because the “grassroots” website is produced in connection with PR group Public Strategies, Inc. and funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from telecoms and conservative lobby groups. So, if you consider AT&T, BellSouth, and Cingular to be the ABCs of concerned regular folks like you and me, feel free to remove the quotation marks when you talk about it.

I don’t completely blame them. Just like record companies, oil companies, and certain government agencies, everyone’s trying to pay the rent and send their kids to college and so they work the system with whatever tools they have in their chest. The telecoms may have a lot of money and power but they should know that—after seeing the revolutionary promise of the printing press, radio, and television turned into celebrity spreads, pre-programmed rotations, and reality shows—we’re not going to let the internet go without a fight. It has finally pulled itself out of its pages-of-links-to-pages-of-links phase and started to make good on its promise to connect and empower people. We should let it.