On August 12th, tens of thousands of longshore workers and supporters marched at ports up and down the Westcoast to protest the Bush administration's heavy-handed intervention into negotiations on behalf their friends at Wal-mart and Costco. Most of the rallies were lucky to get newspaper coverage on the back pages of the business section -- complete with shrunken numbers and garbled quotes from speakers. But one good picture can cut through the media filters. Newspapers are visual opportunists no matter what their politics. In Seattle, where over 2000 people marched, the rally was able to make it to the front of the business page in the Seattle Times with this photo of a king -sized Capitalist puppet. Let's face it, longshore workers as a group, are not as photogenic as, let us say, a group of satirical writers. But a giant puppet automatically draws your eyes attention and communicates a message any child can understand. The moral -- you have to feed the media their visuals.

The organization Corporate Watch has been zealously observing the PR efforts of our major corporations and presenting Greenwash Awards to those who've done the best job using environmental rhetoric to cover over their actual operations. This year's winner is the nuclear industry for their contributions to "Clean air."  Realizing there is nothing quite like a gift given from the heart, Corporate Watch has also tried to reach out to potentially socially responsible CEOs with appropriate presents. Ford president William Clay Ford Jr. was awarded a recycled bicycle for commuting to work following his admission that SUVs did indeed pollute more than smaller cars. Unocal CEO Roger Beech was sent a "Made In Burma" backpack, the same type used by their "drafted" porters to carry heavy loads of military supplies in Burma. World Bank president James Wolfensohn was presented with scuba gear so he could visit indigenous villages submerged as a result of dams built with the help of the World BankÕs "socially responsible investments." So far, I havenÕt heard whether thank-you notes have been received. 

Among the many useful sites on the Internet is RTMark, a site devoted to "the informative alteration of corporate products." RTMark is a meeting ground for people who have projects that would involve the "tactical embarrassment" of large organizations as well as for investors whoÕd like to see their money serve a socially useful purpose. An RTMark grant, for example, helped fund the fine work of the Barbie Liberation Organization. These are my personal favorite investment opportunities from the hundreds offered at RTMark: 1. A project to rename a major chemical incineration plant after Ronald Reagan. 2. Lobbying for a rating system that ranks films and TV shows by the extent of product placements. 3. A $500 dollar reward to any police officer who will "profile" white businessmen after 6:00PM. Talk about an opportunity for socially responsible investing.

As surveillance becomes more pervasive, it becomes more difficult to communicate the strangeness of this intrusion into our private lives. One way of addressing this issue has been attempted by a theater ensemble in New York called the Surveillance Camera Players. These public-spirited citizens noticed that few people had thought of the welfare of security officers who must sit for hours behind the scenes watching boring television monitors. Believing that "a bored surveillant is an inattentive surveillant, " The Surveillance Camera Players decided to put on plays "for the entertainment, amusement, and moral edification of the surveilling members of the law enforcement community." This sounds very much like the USO shows for the troops in World War II. The theatre group even posted a Web site explaining how you can put on your own plays. They recommend using pantomimes and making sure to have leaflets to explain your theater to customers. You may find their "10 Easy-to-Follow Steps!" to staging your own theatre presentation at their Website. This may be a bit subtle as protest, but it does win a lot of style points. 

One of our easier pastimes created by the Internet is the opportunity to put up parody Websites that mimic real ones except that they are more truthful. The World Trade Organization ran into this problem when a parody WTO site was created (http://www.gatt.org/) by a group of imposters known only as the Yes Men. The real WTO even had to post a warning about the false site, describing it as a "nuisance for serious users looking for genuine information." Unfortunately, the organizers of a legal seminar on international trade in Salzburg, Austria, were fooled and e-mailed the false WTO asking for a speaker. The false WTO was kind enough to oblige them and sent out a "Dr. Andreas Bichlbauer" with two "security agents" to address the conference. Dr Bichlbauer spoke on the topic of how Americans might auction their votes in the presidential election to the highest bidder, without apparently raising an eyebrow from the audience. This level of hoax is beyond most of our means, but the parody Website is something we can all do. Read about the hoax in the New York Times. 

Coming out this October, from the Website rated "The Best" in Political Satire by Yahoo Internet Life,  is the book Jim Hightower describes as "George Orwell meets Alice in Wonderland." Some of the material you read above was stolen directly from the book, but it's much funnier when you've paid for it. And there's lots more of it in the book. Be the first on your block to have a complete guide to cutting edge advances in Orwellian Doublespeak from our finest CEOs, advertisers, PR flacks and politicians. Read the advance reviews and see why I'm having trouble getting my head through doors. Then check out the progressive books from my publisher at New Society.