You must put a lot of work into blogging this much!…

For Immediate Release:

Contact: Colonel Custard (aka the corporate criminal creamer)

Greenwash Guerillas: contact@GreenwashGuerrillas.org

Footage available: http://www.GreenwashGuerrillas.org

Greenwash Guerrillas Pie Thomas Friedman at Brown University

YouTube Censors Video; Pie Thrower Faces University Disciplinary Procedures

Providence, RI - New York Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman was pied by the Greenwash Guerillas while giving an Earth Day Lecture at Brown University. The Greenwash Guerillas targeted Thomas Friedman because of his support for U.S. military intervention in the Middle East, neo-liberal economic policies that harm the world’s poor, and especially for promoting bogus solutions to the global climate crisis.

“We sought to expose the hypocrisy of allowing Friedman, who is known for his influential support of U.S. wars for oil in the Middle East, to call himself an environmentalist,” explained Greenwash Guerrilla Margaree Little. “He has blood on his hands that no amount of ‘green’ can wash away.”

Little, a Brown University student identified as one of the pie throwers, faces University disciplinary hearings, potentially including expulsion. Colonel Custard, the second pie thrower, remains at large.

Little and Custard jumped on stage as Friedman began his talk, entitled “Green is the new Red, White & Blue.” The talk focused on how green technology and corporate environmentalism can restore the United States to its “natural place in the global order.”

They tossed two green-colored cream pies at Friedman and dashed off as leaflets denouncing Friedman were thrown to the crowd. According to the pamphlets, “On behalf of the earth and all true environmentalists – we, the Greenwash Guerillas, declare Thomas Friedman’s ‘Green’ as fake . . . as the cool-whip covering his face.”

The Greenwash Guerillas object to Friedman’s support for nuclear power, coal power, industrial biofuels, and carbon trading markets. “These false solutions are smokescreens, intended to generate massive corporate profits while creating global humanitarian and environmental disasters,” said Colonel Custard.

Video of the pie throwing incident was posted on YouTube, and received close to 70,000 views in 36 hours, making it one of the most popular videos on the site. Without notice, YouTube abruptly censored the video, removing it from the website. Hundreds of news outlets, blogs, and websites had linked to the video. The Greenwash Guerillas have reposted the clip at: http://www.GreenwashGuerrillas.org

“Given the many other pieings on YouTube(1), the removal of the video can only be understood as an act of political censorship,” said Little. “One has to wonder whether Friedman, a billionaire with a lot of connections, has more influence than “you” on YouTube.”

“The Greenwash Guerillas chose the harmless and humorous tactic of pie-throwing because our goal was to take this perpetual charlatan off his new green pedestal,” said Colonel Custard. “Friedman’s support for coal and nuclear power is as misguided as his counsel on Iraq.”

This is the second time Friedman has been hit by a pie. In October 2002, he received a banana pie to his face while promoting his writings on free-market globalization in Boston.

Footnote:

(1) e.g., http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/webscout/2008/04/thomas-friedman.html

http://lornasalzman.com/collectedwritings/ecologyenvironment_bookreviewbreakthrough.html

Read between the lines of this group’s rhetoric. They don’t care about the environment at all. What they care about is anti-capitalism and anti-corporatism. What they fail to realize is that we have a better chance of saving the planet by working with big business than trying to destroy/demonize it.

If you’re a socialist, that’s fine. Actually, so am I. But don’t try to conflate your political views with saving the environment, it just doesn’t work. Environmentalism is about putting the earth first, even before your own political and social biases.

If a corporation does something, say, to curb greenhouse gases significantly, isn’t that a positive change regardless of how we might feel about corporate America?

And what the hell is the problem with biofuels? Sure, some will tell you it drives up food prices but that’s a short-term side-effect to a significant long-term environmental gain. And once the industry attaches more carbon controls to the refining process and can better preserve biodiversity, the net result will be cleaner air and a safer environment. It would be foolish to dismiss biofuels just because the technology is still under development. C’mon, did the Wright brothers give up on flight after their first attempt?

All that aside, I’m sure that these elitist college students really believe that what they did was right. But it wasn’t. It was assault. Comical assault, to be sure, but it was violence nonetheless. Frankly, they should both be expelled (if the other one turns out to be a student) and at least charged by the police.