Last year I met with Trade Unionists from a Coke plant in Colombia. I also met the wife of a murdered Union representative. Their experiences have been absolutely diabolical. Coke say that the Coke bottling plants have nothing to do with them, yet Coke US own 30 percent of stock- and I can assure you – the security around their colombian bottlers means that no-one gets into the plant without their knowledge – including the right wing terrorists who go in and murder those who ask for the kind of rights US workers have.

Propaganda? Ffs, Prok, grow up. But of course Coke does not use child labour and has nothing to do with murder- even though British journalist, Mark Thomas PROVED these allegations on Brit tv last week. But before you say it, of course, we in the Soviet of Britland would be biased, wouldn’t we?

Oh- and if people _ARE_ interested, Nestle have been cited by the UN and UNICEF again to be using questionable practices in the two thirds world.

But I guess Prok has shares in these companies and her fat arse needs feeding, so fuck the poor.

It’s good to read even the Nation, or Amnesty International, or the Columbia University newspaper, or any number of other more credible sources than this fake campaign.

The campaign revolves around the killing of a trade union activist in Colombia, where 4,000 trade union activists have been killed — just to put the story in a context where the government, not Coke is the killer of train union activists, by supporting right-wing paramilitaries. It’s a legitimate case, and quite legitimately the subject of an alien torts lawsuit in Florida to which American groups and labor unions have joined. Does this mean Coca Cola is responsible for the murder of trade union activists? No. As the other sources frame the story more accurately: it’s a stretch to go from saying Coke benefits from docile workforces to saying they (or rather, the bottling companies with which they are affiliated) actually orchestrate murders.

Like the rabid Nestle’s campaign, this kind of rabid propaganda isn’t really about concern for labour rights — the kind of rights that Soviet-style regimes which the communists remain uncritical of are famous themselves for suppressing. It’s about trying to give capitalism a black eye by tendentiously picking out big targets to which they can try to tie the crimes of other actors, merely because those big targets are more accessible to them than a murderous Latin American force that, were they to target it directly, would target *them*. I think it’s a pretty unethical thing to do. Coke doesn’t drain villages of water or exploit children or collude with right-wing terrorist groups as some kind of blanket practice; it doesn’t even demonstrably do this even in one case, which is still at trial.

When the hard left stops playing this kind of infantile game and stops using such facile propaganda, trying to sell it to gullible students, they might have more followers.

http://killercoke.org/

Prok opines thus: “In fact, donning my tinfoil hat, I was convinced it was all a plot from the very get-go, that the Crayonistas plotted and planned ingeniously, and paid Uri to insult them as “fucktards”"

Well Prok, as you know it takes a lot to keep the Herald yacht in the water. I’m not above dropping a few F-bombs to make that happen.

I fell asleep it was that exciting……

Anyone know who did the Happiness Factor Second Life film, I know its not Crayon (aggresive geeks who are a total let down at conferences) or MoU (you know we all used to run Linden Lab?)

Do your own search on Youtube, see for yourself (use the keywords: second life coke)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19LNTu0TIt0

20,000 views… vs 2,000 of Virtual Thirst?!

In fact, donning my tinfoil hat, I was convinced it was all a plot from the very get-go, that the Crayonistas plotted and planned ingeniously, and paid Uri to insult them as “fucktards” — knowing that with the anti-corporate culture among a minority of influential geeky FICs in Second Life, and the general culture of insolence on the Internet these days, they’d get static no matter what they did.

So they created a unique, ultra-modern ad-campaign which was like an anti-ad campaign, in order to a) get *some* ink (even a bad review is a good review) b) fuse and control the lightning, make Uri/the Herald be a lightning rod.

Brilliant, eh? Hey, I bet they really did this. Right? Right, Uri?