From Adbusters:

Tactical Briefing #27 – #LAUGHRIOT

Alright you wild cats, nimble dreamers and jammer tacticians,

In a sudden about-face, the United States has conceded a victory to Occupy and moved May”™s G8 summit to Camp David, an impenetrable military base in rural Maryland. Wow! Looks like the specter of 50,000 occupiers ready to swarm with a list of demands has turned the climactic Showdown in Chicago into a humiliating G8 Backdown. Bravo! Splitting the G8 and NATO summits was a deft move”¦ but now we”™ve got a major tactical rethink on our hands.

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Occupy pop culture: A lesson in détournement
by Natasha Lennard
Salon.com
March 8, 2012

Borrowing from the French, occupiers turn figures from the cultural mainstream into symbols of dissent

Credit: nycgeneralstrike

TV-show writers, pop culture purveyors and peddlers of general stuff-we-don”™t-need didn”™t take long to latch onto the Occupy brand. The language of the 99 percent is popping up in sitcoms and terrible pop songs; the word “Occupy” now adorns a neon green Swatch. It”™s probably beside the point to mention that revolutionaries in Egypt and Greece are fighting on without the help of branded watches; this is America, after all “” what did you expect?

But Occupy supporters are taking from pop culture too. Not in the obvious sense of message amplification and popularization, but by helping themselves to items from the cultural mainstream and flipping them on their heads for propaganda purposes. To see what I mean, check out this video attributed to “nycgeneralstrike”:

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From Joey Skaggs:

SUMMARY:
For three decades, New York City’s Annual April Fools’ Day Parade has offered the public an opportunity to express, in a comical way, its outrage against the foolishness of mankind. Thousands of participants in look-alike costumes with satirical floats creatively mock the thoughtless, corrupt and selfish acts of the past year. Kicking off at noon on Sunday, April 1, the parade will march down 5th Avenue from 59th Street to Washington Square Park where revelers will party to demonstrate against new rules that restrict the First Amendment rights of performing artists in the park. It will conclude with the annual crowning of the King of Fools. Spread the word!

PRESS RELEASE:
The 27th Annual April Fools”™ Day Parade will begin at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street at 12 noon, Sunday, April 1, 2012. Rain or shine, the parade will march down Fifth Avenue to Washington Square Park for the climactic selection of the King or Queen of Fools from the costumed marching look-alikes.

The New York April Fools”™ Day Parade was created in 1986 to remedy a glaring omission in the long list of New York”™s ethnic and holiday parades. These events fail to recognize the importance of April 1st, the day designated to commemorate the folly of mankind. In an attempt to bridge this gap and bring people back in touch with their inherent foolishness, the parade annually crowns a King or Queen of Fools from parading look-alikes. The King of Fools from the 2011 parade was Speaker of the House John Boehner.

“Every year the parade gets bigger and more outrageous. There’s never a shortage of fools,” says Joey Skaggs, parade organizer.

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