…Exploring the role of the prankster as artist, activist and social observer and the significance of the prank in society.
Submitted by Jean Pockrus of Greenpeace USA:
PolluterWatch, a project of Greenpeace, has launched pHarmony, a matchmaking site just like eHarmony.com but dedicated to helping polluter industry lobbyists, CEOs, and propagandists match up with friendly public officials to make it easy to buy and sell influence and sabotage our clean energy future without ever leaving the house.
Related links:
Press release submitted by The Yes Men, June 18, 2009:
World Leaders Sign Pact to Avert Climate Disaster
Newspaper Ignites Hope, Announces “Civil Disobedience Database”
[Watch video here]
In a front-page ad in today’s International Herald Tribune, the leaders of the European Union thank the European public for having engaged in months of civil disobedience leading up to the Copenhagen climate conference that will be held this December. “It was only thanks to your massive pressure over the past six months that we could so dramatically shift our climate-change policies…. To those who were arrested, we
thank you.”
There was only one catch: the paper was fake.
Looking exactly like the real thing, but dated December 19th, 2009, a million copies of the fake paper were distributed worldwide by thousands of volunteers in order to show what could be achieved at the Copenhagen climate conference that is scheduled for Dec. 7-18, 2009. (At the moment, the conference is aiming for much more modest cuts, dismissed by leading climate scientists as too little, too late to stave off runaway processes that will lead to millions or even billions of casualties.)
The paper describes in detail a powerful (and entirely possible) new treaty to bring carbon levels down below 350 parts per million – the level climate scientists say we need to achieve to avoid climate catastrophe. One article describes how a website, http://BeyondTalk.net, mobilized thousands of people to put their bodies on the line to confront climate change policies – ever since way back in June, 2009.
Although the newspaper is a fake (its production and launch were coordinated by Greenpeace), the website is real. Continue reading “Civil Disobedients Sought via Fake Newspaper”
Greenpeace Buys Land To Block New Heathrow Runway
by Dave Demerjian
Wired.com
January 13, 2009
Greenpeace announced today that it has bought a parcel of land that sits directly in the path of a proposed third runway for London’s Heathrow Airport. It’s the latest move in a long-running battle between environmentalists who say expanding Heathrow would be an environmental catastrophe, and expansion advocates who say without a new runway Europe’s top airport will become an antiquated also-ran.
Greenpeace’s plan for the 0.4-hectare parcel, which it purchased from an undisclosed owner, is sure to have expansion advocates reaching for the Rolaids. The group will sell off the land in tiny pieces to environmentalists, celebrities, and anyone else who feels like buying in. This means that if the UK government were to exercise eminent domain laws to acquire the land, it would have to deal with thousands of different landowners and the lawsuits they would be sure to bring. Regardless of where you stand on the expansion issue, you can’t deny that Greenpeace’s move is a brilliant one. Continue reading “Join the Plot”