Sunday January 27, 2002

General Motors, Chumbawumba, team on anti-capitalist funding.

LONDON, Jan 27 (Reuters) - British anarchist band Chumbawumba are playing capitalist judo with General Motors by using the auto giant's money to fund anti-capitalist campaigners, Britain's Observer newspaper said on Sunday.

General Motors paid the band 70,000 pounds (,840) for the use of their song ``Pass it Along'' in advertising for its cars, the paper said, but unbeknownst to GM the band planned to give half the money to grassroots group Corp Watch.

``We're planning on using some of the money to document some of the social and environmental impacts of General Motors itself,'' Joshua Karliner executive director of CorpWatch told the paper.

``It's known for resisting the kinds of change in production that would assist in reducing climate change, and for helping debunk the science of global warming,'' he said.

The other half went to the alternative media group IndyMedia, which said it would use the money for ``corporate jamming actions,'' the paper said.

Chumbawumba came to prominence in 1997 with a hit single ``Tubthumping'' and for an attack by member Danbert Nobacon, who threw a bucket of water over Britain's deputy Prime Minister John Prescott in 1998.

The band had already been established on Britain's radical music fringe for more than a decade before achieving commercial success.

``We'd discovered through all the years of having no money just how powerful it can be if it's in the right hands,'' the band said on their website.

``After much discussion and worry, we okayed it in the same manner we'd okayed quite a few other uses of our music in the past few years - by acknowledging that the amount of money we were being offered could fund anti-corporate activists for years,'' the band said.

Reuters/Variety REUTERS

sounds good to me.

money is money - best kind is with no strings attached, unless you are serious in implying that all the Indymedia sites are now somehow going soft on General Motors or something??

where's my check?