Liquid Courage

Can a culture be defined by the toxic combination of alcohol, caffeine and sugar?

• Lauren Haehnel
• |
• 25 Feb 2010
• |
• 3 comments

• advertising
• Caffeine
• Red Bull

For the first time in Alpha Sigma Sigma history the Michigan State University frat threw a party that guests actually attended. Until recently the nerds of ASS never knew the secret to throwing a good party. They missed all the signs: the neon lights illuminating every club in town; the car stalking the streets hunting down impressionable students; the cans littering every party. If the ASS brothers wanted people to come to their house and get rowdy, they needed a sponsor. And that sponsor had to be Red Bull. Alpha Sigma Sigma threw down big last night, and half the campus was wasted.

Guests filled every room in the house, spilling out onto the lawn. Every student there drank Red Bull mixed with whatever kind of vodka they could find. As the 80 grams of caffeine and 27 grams of sugar from each can of liquid speed combined with each shot of vodka, the pledge brothers made fools of themselves in all 26 rooms of the house. It didn’t matter that Matt told half the campus the secret password to get into chapter meetings or that Erick puked down every corridor in the house before passing out in the front lawn, they had their wiiings on and they could do anything. The fact that almost half the brothers were already hugging the toilet by 11 p.m. went unseen – everyone was too inebriated to notice. The party wrapped up sometime after the second ambulance came to whisk away yet another girl suffering from alcohol poisoning.

Man, that party was awesome.

Amid all the wreckage, silver and blue coats the landscape like freshly fallen snow. The only real distinguishable items – besides some broken furniture – are the slim, chic silver little cans that made everyone’s night awe-inspiring and everyone’s morning a living hell. Red Bull did its job in more ways than one: It not only got every student at the party tanked, it also got its logo plastered all over both the campus and impressionable young student minds.

The “extreme” image being promoted by Red Bull plays perfectly into college culture, and is spawned from unique and delicately designed marketing campaign. Each time that crazy skydiver lands his base jump or that BMX biker does a triple tailwhip, the daredevil is accompanied by that scheming little bull. This same little bull is found in the hands of every student trying to fulfill their desire to be hardcore. It’s as if with each crack of the tiny 8.4 oz can, the drinker develops a new superhuman complex. With each gulp of liquid courage, their muscles bulge a little more and their ego follows suit.

Can a culture be defined by the toxic combination of alcohol, caffeine and sugar? If so, what’s the next step?

Lauren Haehnel is an up-and-coming writer from Michigan State University. She is a sophomore dedicated to a pre-nursing degree. Lauren’s rock will beat your scissors and paper any day!

Howard Zinn

He gave us back our history.

• Micah White
• |
• 28 Jan 2010
• |
• 4 comments

• activists
• culture
• zinn

There is a tendency among culture jammers to harbor a pessimistic worldview – to assume that we’ve always been on the losing side of history and that, despite our best efforts, nothing will change. Against this narrative of predestined defeat and perpetual victimhood stood Howard Zinn, whose sustained commitment to pointing out that we, the people, have often risen up victoriously against the moneyed corporate elite made him a hero.

Zinn’s greatest achievement is the monumental A People’s History of the United States, an alternative history book originally published in 1980 and revised several times since, which documents the suppressed stories of triumphant abolitionists, socialists and rabble rousers. For many of us, reading Zinn for the first time was a revelation: an emboldening experience of finding continuity between our acts of resistance today and the long and glorious history of passionate dissent we had known nothing about.

Howard Zinn, August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010, will be remembered because he gave us back our history and made it clear that in these dark times of corporate domination, the rumblings we hear from below are the aftershocks of past uprisings and the first signs that things are about to change, again.

Video: Remembering Howard Zinn (via Big Think)

Part 1 of 3: The Legacy of Howard Zinn

Part 2 of 3: Howard Zinn’s Personal Philosophy

Part 3 of 3: Howard Zinn on the World Today

Objects of Desire

Israeli diamonds are forever … on your conscience.

• Sean Clinton
• |
• 11 Jan 2010
• |
• 49 comments

• BDS
• blood diamonds
• Palestine

In recent years the romantic image of diamonds as objects of desire has been tarnished by bloody conflicts in central Africa that are often funded by the trade of locally mined gems. Human rights organizations have begun a campaign against “conflict diamonds,” or “blood diamonds,” and the ensuing global attention has forced the diamond industry to take action against the trade. The Kimberley Process, introduced in a 2003 UN resolution, is a certification scheme designed to prevent rough diamonds used to fund conflict from entering the market. But the process operates with a very narrow definition of conflict diamonds. Cut and polished diamonds, regardless of what bloody conflicts they may fund, do not qualify for regulation under the Kimberley Process. Israel’s blood diamonds, therefore, are kosher.

Israel is the world’s largest producer of cut and polished diamonds. In 2006 diamond exports worth $16.7 billion accounted for a significant portion of the country’s total manufacturing exports. (The importance of the diamond industry to the Israeli economy can best be appreciated when one considers that the budget of the Israeli Ministry of Defense in 2008 was $13 billion.) Because cut and polished diamonds are not regulated by the Kimberley Process, jewelers continue to sell Israeli diamonds to consumers who are, for the most part, completely unaware that the gems were crafted in Israel – where taxes from the diamond industry are used to fund the illegal occupation of Palestinian land and the brutal subjugation of the Palestinian people.

Despite the fact that Israeli diamonds are feeding Israel’s war machine, the Kimberley Process has yet to broaden its definition of conflict diamonds. Furthermore, the international campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions for Palestine (BDS) has failed to speak out against this major revenue source. Efforts have been made in Ireland to raise public awareness through the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), which has called on the Kimberley Process to expand its definition of conflict diamonds. The IPSC has lobbied the diamond industry to laser-inscribe all gems with their country of origin, which will allow consumers to choose diamonds from countries that respect human rights.

Because the international community – Western governments in particular – has long failed to protect innocent Palestinian civilians from constant attacks by the Israeli military, it’s imperative that the concerned citizens of the world take action in defense of Palestinians’ human rights. Rejecting Israeli blood diamonds is the most effective means of sanction available to civil society. Diamond exports significantly outperform all other Israeli export commodities, making the gleaming rock Israel’s Achilles heel. The country’s overdependence on a single luxury commodity leaves its economy vulnerable to trends and public taste. And unlike other Israeli exports – technology, software and armaments – diamonds are purchased by individual consumers, not companies or governments. When buying a diamond, each individual consumer has the power to withhold the money that powers the Israeli war machine. By choosing a stone that is truly conflict free, consumers will diminish funding for Israeli crimes against humanity – in Palestine and beyond. Israeli diamonds are forever … on your conscience.

–Sean Clinton

Fall from Grace

Tiger Woods has megacorps scrambling to rethink their branding strategies.

• Sarah Nardi
• |
• 15 Dec 2009
• |
• 10 comments

• branding
• nike
• woods

If there’s anything we should be taking away from the Tiger Woods catastrophe, it’s that all brands are built on the shifting sands of human complexity. Woods’s spectacular fall from grace illustrates the danger of reducing an entity – be it a person or a corporation – to a symbol. A man can no more symbolize a single principle than a product can symbolize a single idea, yet consumer culture demands that we see the world in such reductive terms. And the quickest way for a company to inject its simplified message into our collective consciousness is to tie the idea of a product to the stylized image of a celebrity. Cosmetic companies want us to look at an actress and see beauty, sportswear companies want us to look at an athlete and see strength. Companies like Nike, Gatorade and Accenture wanted us to look at Tiger Woods and see perfection. And now that he’s revealed himself to be profoundly human, that branding strategy is working against them. These companies will have to scramble to disentangle their stock from his plummeting star – lest we shift our newly formed idea of the man to the products he represents.

The War of the Worlds

Will the world’s elite stop seeing two planets?

• Sarah Nardi
• |
• 14 Dec 2009
• |
• 17 comments

• COP15
• copenhagen
• environment
• obama

When the “summit to save the world” wraps up this week in Copenhagen, 41,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent will have been emitted into the atmosphere – roughly the same output as a moderately sized city. The pollutants are streaming from the tailpipes of limousines (hundreds of which had to be driven into the country from Germany and Sweden to meet the demand), and from the engines of the private jets ferrying in VIPs. So many jets are coming into Copenhagen that the city’s airport is unable to accommodate them, forcing pilots to drop off passengers in Denmark and then fly to Sweden to “park.” Every luxury hotel in the city is booked and offering its high profile guests such sustainable fare as scallops, foie gras and the finest caviar. It’s hardly an example in curbing excess …

Copenhagen is functioning as a perfect microcosm: For every dogged activist, subsisting on tofu and living off the grid, there are untold numbers who somehow consider themselves outside or above the problem; people who are unable to see the irony in jetting across the world to discuss the issue of carbon emissions. Until the world’s elite stop seeing two planets – the one that needs saving and the one on which they live – 41,000 tons of pollution is the only thing this kind of summit will produce.

Join Our Staff

We are looking for a Web Editor/Staff Writer and a Senior Editor.

• Admin
• |
• 09 Dec 2009
• |
• 0 comments

• adbusters jobs

Position: Web Editor/Staff Writer

Adbusters magazine is looking for a savvy Web Editor/Staff Writer to join our in-house team. Our ideal candidate is a politically charged writer with a strong voice who wants to change the world. Applicants should be familiar with writing copy for the web and should understand a variety of social networking platforms. Dedication to blogging and demonstrable immersion in social media is a must, experience with Drupal and basic HTML is a plus. Duties will include generating ideas and articles for our website and magazine, maintaining a blog and adding a spark to all our in-house texts.

Please send your cover letter, resume, two writing samples, blog address, Twitter username and any other examples of your online presence to claire@adbusters.org.

No phone calls please. Only applicants who are short-listed will be contacted.

Position: Senior Editor

Adbusters magazine is looking for a Senior Editor to join our in-house team. Our ideal candidate is a seasoned journalist with lots of revolutionary fervor still intact who is passionate about the ecological, political and cultural challenges of our time. You must be capable of generating crisp, edgy text on deadline and infusing our magazine and website with a sense of inspired activism.

Please send your cover letter, resume and two writing samples to claire@adbusters.org.

No phone calls please. Only applicants who are short-listed will be contacted.

To Be Or Not To Be

Will this generation hold its leaders accountable?

• Sarah Nardi
• |
• 08 Dec 2009
• |
• 22 comments

• climate change
• COP15
• copenhagen
• environment

How fitting that the world’s leaders are gathered in Copenhagen, where they can ask themselves that proverbial Danish question: To be or not to be? A Greenpeace-sponsored campaign unveiled in the city this week presents a stark image of the negation. World leaders who chose not to be – not to be the ones who imposed firm limits on emissions, who initiated clean energy infrastructure, who stopped deforestation – apologize from the future for their failings. But what the campaign doesn’t address is us. Who are we to be? The generation that held its leaders accountable and catalyzed real, systemic change? Or the generation that chose not to be – and took the entire planet down with it.

Buy Nothing Day ... Buy Nothing Xmas

Dreading the holiday season? The frantic rush and stress? The spiritless hours trapped in malls?

• Admin
• |
• 07 Dec 2009
• |
• 8 comments

• bnd09
• buy nothing christmas
• buy nothing day

BUY NOTHING DAY 2009 WRAP

Zombies stalked the streets of Galway, Ireland while Michigan Whirl-marters confronted consumers with the proverbial question: What would Jesus buy? From Xalapa, Mexico to Valletta, Malta and New York, USA to Kyoto, Japan, people across the globe took part by simply opting out of the annual consumer spectacle. Some devoted the day to small personal challenges, while others joined Reverend Billy at the memorial for Jdimytai Damour, the man trampled to death at Wal-Mart last year in a bargain-hungry Black Friday crush. To all those who participated in this year’s observance, we commend you for taking a stand against the consumer culture that is killing our world.

The Copenhagen Climate Summit started Monday and it’s imperative that the world leaders hear our message: There is only one sure way to stop catastrophic climate change: we, the rich one billion people on the planet, have to consume less!

So let’s take the joy and wisdom we discovered this BND and infuse the entire holiday season with the same sense of simplicity. Let this be the year that the spirit of Buy Nothing Day flows over into a Buy Nothing Christmas. Let us know how you are celebrating Buy Nothing Christmas: https://www.adbusters.org/bnxmas.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

From premodern to modern and postmodern to … altermodern? Adbusters’ first issue of the new year is an exploration of eras. As the rubric of postmodernism becomes less and less relevant, what are art, technology, philosophy, politics, activism and capitalism morphing into … and who’s doing the morphing? What is this still-to-be-named new era all about? Send your wildest thoughts to editor@adbusters.org.

OPENING JAM OF THE YEAR

The American Economic Association is holding its annual general meeting in Atlanta from January 3-5, 2010. We’d like to be there to hand out copies of Adbusters #85 and debate with the neoclassical drones about the soul of economics, but it’s a little too far for us. We’re looking for two economics students in Atlanta who want to collaborate on bringing the spirit of ecological, humanistic and no-growth economics to the conference. If you’re interested, contact us at editor@adbusters.org.

Buy Nothing Day

This year we’re calling for a Wildcat General Strike.

• Admin
• |
• 23 Nov 2009
• |
• 25 comments

• activism
• bnd
• copenhagen
• environment
• obama
• protest
• strike

Neoclassical Sheep Walk

Kick it over on your campus.

• The Staff
• |
• 03 Nov 2009
• |
• 12 comments

• kick it over

You can download the manifesto at kickitover.org.