Published on Wednesday, June 27, 2001 in the Guardian of London

George W. Bush's America

Flag Protest Aims to Get U.S. Thinking

by Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles



The Stars and Stripes are being hoisted all over the United States this week in preparation for Independence Day on July 4. But in hundreds of cities across the country a different version of the flag will be unveiled in an attack on the power that corporations wield over government.

The alternative flag replaces the stars with corporate logos, such as those of Nike, Warner Bros, McDonald's, Shell, Coca-Cola, IBM, ABC and Playboy.

"A blast of symbolic disobedience will force America to think hard about the meaning of its original revolution and its subservience to corporations today," is how Adbusters, the magazine that is coordinating the unveiling, describes it.

"And though we're aiming at the heartland, the question is global. What counts as 'independence'? And when will we win it back?"

Kalle Lasn, the editor of Adbusters, said: "We have had the biggest response to this that we have ever had for a single initiative. The flag is emerging as a symbol of what is wrong with America."

He said that 40,000 "culture- jammers" were part of a network organizing the protest and 10,000 people were visiting the campaign's internet site every day.

The waving of the new flag is part of the post-Seattle, anti-globalization movement that has been fueled through the internet. Activists have been encouraged to download and print out the flag and to send in details of their plans for it.

Some aim to unfurl it over highway bridges during celebrations, and others will wave it in parades. One flag has been unveiled on a poster site off Broadway in New York. The new design will also be unveiled in cities around the world, including London.

The aim is to draw attention to the change in the relationship between corporations and government and to highlight the power that corporations now wield through political patronage and influence.

The organizers behind next week's protest say they hope that people will see the wider message behind the new design: "The spectacle of these flags snapping in the wind across the country is sure to raise sparks. But many may look and think, 'Dammit if that ain't the truth'."

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001

Let us get this straight...you want to use all your IBM computers with the "Intel Inside" to get on Internet Explorer to send and download a flag that protests all your IBM computers with the "Intel Inside" that is logged on to Internet Explorer...all while you're smoking a Camel, no doubt...you people are idiots.

The American Revolution was won using all the resources of what up till then had been British North America.

Slavery was ended in America PRECISELY because former slaves & their descendents, numbering about 200,000, joined the Union Army and Navy, when white re-enlistments and the draft feel short, and after that it was impossible to deny an end to slavery as the Civil War's end.

I could go on and on.

No unjust regime has *ever* been overthrown without using some, usually *many* of it's fruits against it.

If this be dopey, who but dopes have ever changed history?

Of course, there's another name for this: dialectics.

You could look it up.

Dialectic-shmectic...Another hipster doofus trying to sound so intellectual with his marxist buzz words and socialist rhetoric. And the slaves fighting in the Civil War compares to a bunch of HYPOCRITES smoking cigarettes, watching MTV, E-mailing each other (I, sir, could go on and on) HOW? This "Regime" as you call it, allows you to be a fool, and allows you to shout it from the rooftops, and internet, without fear of retribution. That aint unjust, you slick "culture-jammer" you. But hey, if you think a state run internet system and television network and banking system and airline and cigarette company are best, more power to you. Just kidding on that part, socialist idiots with power, as history has shown, are the true enemy of freedom. You can look that up, Fidel.

Team: why on Earth are you wasting your time

here amidst all these hipster doofusses?

I don't know why I waste the time. Just having a difficult time suffering the fools. Whatever the reason, I'm sure its the government's fault. That or the Bio-technics.