Blair 'tomatoed,' WTO pie hoax, and more...

1/13/2001

Blair 'tomatoed' over Iraq policy

Tuesday, 9 January 2001 10:46 (ET)

BRISTOL, England, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- Prime Minister Tony Blair faced a barrage of rotten fruit Tuesday and took a direct hit from a tomato thrown by demonstrators protesting Britain's policy toward Iraq. He was uninjured.

The tomato smashed into his back as Blair entered the City of Bristol College to open a new campus. An aide wiped the mess from his jacket, but the tomato attack left a large, red stain on the back right shoulder.

The protesters lobbed more tomatoes and other fruit, including small, rotten oranges at Blair, but the projectiles missed the prime minister. Police, including officers on horseback, held back about two dozen demonstrators as surged toward Blair.

Inside the college, a woman protester shouted, "How many Iraqi children have you killed today?" The prime minister appeared to take no notice as he continued on his way to a brief formal opening ceremony.

Some of the protesters were identified as students carrying banners with slogans such as "Cut the War Tax" and "People Are More Important Than Oil," in protest of U.N. sanctions against President Saddam Hussein's regime following the Gulf War.

Student Sean Western said, "A tomato was thrown as his (Blair's) head, and the rebound hit me. They threw one (tomato) straight into his car, and he started walking in, and there were six other tomatoes thrown, and there was a woman screaming her head off."

The protests appeared linked to a demonstration planned for London on Jan. 16 announced Tuesday by campaigners against the Iraqi sanctions.

The demonstrators didn't limit their protests to the Iraqi situation. Also on hand was a group from Farmers for Action, who led the fuel tax protests that nearly brought Britain to a standstill last September. The farmers brought along a dozen tractors and trucks, but police stopped them short of the city council offices where Blair was to make a speech.

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The Long and Winding Cyberhoax: Political Theater on the Web

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/07/weekinreview/07WORD.html?printpage=yes

by BARNABY J. FEDER
New York Times
January 7, 2001

IT'S well known that some regions of cyberspace Internet chat rooms, for instance are rife with poseurs and imaginary characters. But the World Wide Web is also a breeding ground for more elaborate deceptions, as demonstrated by the following cautionary tale about gall and gullibility in the information age.

The story begins with http://www.gatt.org/, which looks at first glance like an official Web site of the World Trade Organization, the five-year-old Switzerland-based successor to the organization that oversaw the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Unfortunately for the organizers of an October legal seminar on international trade in Salzburg, Austria, a glance was all they gave it before clicking on the "contact" link and sending a speaking invitation to Mike Moore, the W.T.O.'s director-general.

Big mistake: it turns out the site is run by the Yes Men, a loose-knit group of anti-free-trade activists that views hoaxes as a legitimate weapon of protest.

Excerpts of what transpired follow, culled from e-mail correspondence and faxes posted at www.theyesmen.org/wto.

Accepting the invitation:

It didn't take long for the Yes Men to accept the invitation in Mr. Moore's name, with a caveat:

Thank you for your kind invitation.

I may not be able to attend personally, but I would like very much to send a substitute. Would this be possible? Please let me know and I will begin the search process.

Thank you,

Mike Moore

* * * * *

Seminar director's reply:

The director of the seminar's sponsor was happy to oblige:

Dear Mr. Moore:

Michael Devine advises me that you wish to send a staff member to speak at the 26-29 October conference in Salzburg.

If you will confirm name of the individual and contact information, I will have further information sent.

Regards,

Dennis Campbell
Center for International Legal Studies

* * * * *

Masquerading as Mr. Moore:

At this point, Charles Cushen, a computer programmer in Los Angeles who had been masquerading as Mr. Moore and "Alice Foley," Mr. Moore's secretary, created Andreas Bichlbauer (choosing the name at random from a Vienna phone book), and made travel arrangements for Dr. Bichlbauer and two "security agents," including a cameraman. Dr. Bichlbauer raised eyebrows with his speech, titled "Trade Regulation Relaxation and Concepts of Incremental Improvement: Governing Perspectives from 1970 to the Present":

Dear Ms. Foley:

We were somewhat puzzled by Dr. Bichlbauer's participation at the conference. . .

The essential thrust of his speech appeared to be that Italians have a lesser work ethic than the Dutch, that Americans would be better off auctioning their votes in the presidential election to the highest bidder and that the primary role of the W.T.O. was to create a one-world culture.

In the late afternoon, a cameraman (I think it was the same one who filmed Dr. Bichlbauer's speech) appeared at the hotel and sought to interview our delegates. He said Dr. Bichlbauer had been hit in the face with a pie outside the hotel and wanted to know if the delegates thought Dr. Bichlbauer's speech had provoked the attack. . .

Several of our delegates (including work-ethic impaired Italians) approached me to express concern about the speech, the alleged pie incident and the cameraman who sought interviews in the late afternoon.

Your clarification will be appreciated.

Regards,

Dennis Campbell

Alice Foley's immediate reply:

Indeed you are correct, Dr. Bichlbauer was in fact "pied" after speaking at the Salzburg C.I.L.S. conference. At present we are not completely certain of all the details, but it appears that the cameraman you mention had something to do with it. . . . This cameraman . . . seems to have essentially been an agent provocateur who planned the pieing from the start. . .

We hope you understand that this sort of incident reflects primarily the unfortunate circumstances under which the W.T.O. must accomplish its work, and that our security can never be entirely adequate to the situations we face.

After another message from Mr. Campbell in which he reiterated that some delegates found Dr. Bichlbauer's remarks offensive or flippant, the doctor offered his side of the story:

I was disappointed to hear from Alice Foley that some people in the audience on Saturday disliked my lecture. . . . Those who were upset by the lecture were clearly unreceptive to any message departing from the simple W.T.O. "party line" as it is presented in larger arenas. At this conference we hoped to examine this "party line" through repackaging in a clearer and more carefully delineated fashion, for the sake of more lucid examination and a greater awareness of "issue extremes" for use in more politic descriptions those intended for the consumption of larger blocs of the consuming public. . . .

* * * * *

Further response:

Two days later, hoping to elicit further response, Mr. Cushen slipped again into his Mr. Moore persona:

Dear Professor Campbell:

I was dismayed to learn of your unfortunate experience with our representative, Andreas Bichlbauer. . . . I will recommend that Dr. Bichlbauer be required to attend a refresher course on public speaking, communication and policy before any further appearances on behalf of the W.T.O. . .

However, having examined the presentation exhaustively, I am forced to conclude that never in any particulars do Dr. Bichlbauer's statements . . . depart from the spirit if not the precise letter of our intentions and aims. That is, while we of course do not advocate vote-selling or siesta-banning at the present time, it is quite true that efficiency and the streamlining of culture and politics in the interests of economic liberalization is at the core of the W.T.O.'s programme, and such practices as described by Dr. Bichlbauer are useful in clarifying the long-range interests of global development as promoted by our organization and others.

On Nov. 1, Alice Foley had more bad news for Professor Campbell:

The situation has, I regret to say, somewhat deteriorated from an already unpleasant state of affairs: Dr. Bichlbauer has contracted a rather serious infection from the pie, which forensic analysis shows contained an active bacillus agent. It is not certain whether foul play was involved. . . . I know that this question will sound harsh, but could any of the lawyers present have been angry enough at Dr. Bichlbauer's lecture to do this? . . .

On Nov. 6, using addresses collected in Salzburg, Alice Foley e-mailed six conference participants with the message that Dr. Bichlbauer was near death from his infection and concluding:

Please, please let us know if anything at the conference struck you as strange, or if you can imagine anyone performing this masterpiece of cowardice, that so threatens to delete Dr. Bichlbauer from our midst in the prime of his usefulness.

A similar e-mail message sent two weeks later to 77 delegates elicited a range of responses, most indicating that the insult to Italian work habits had made the biggest impression. Dr. Bichlbauer's death was announced via e-mail on Nov. 27. The legal center's response on Nov. 29 provided the first clear sign that it finally recognized the hoax and asked the Yes Men to "let it rest." Alice Foley issued the following pseudo-clarification to the delegates:

Those who found Dr. Bichlbauer's talk "peculiar," "puzzling" and so on were alert to a situation that has only now become clear to our overcentralized eyes: Dr. Bichlbauer was an impostor! . . . He, his "security guard" and his "cameraman" . . . belong, it turns out, to an anti-trade cabal called "The Yes Men," whose interests run exactly counter to our own, and who will stoop to any level whatsoever to make points. (The point they were attempting to make with this trickery, according to the handwritten letter which we received by this morning's post, had something to do with "corporate power" and "democracy," though the syntax and handwriting of the letter are, truth be told, too execrable to make much of. . . . It is of course extremely embarrassing to us that we can have been conned, like common dowagers, in this way. . .

* * * * *

Postscript:

A W.T.O. spokesman said last week that while his organization deplored the Yes Men's deceptive Web site and the hoax, it respects the nature of the Internet as a forum for free expression. Mr. Cushen said "Mr. Moore" had recently received an invitation to a textile conference in Finland and that his group was hoping to scrape together the money needed to send a successor to Dr. Bichlbauer. "We think the ethical thing to do is to represent the W.T.O. more honestly than they represent themselves," he said.

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According to this site National Pie day is January 23:

http://www.bluemountain.com/eng3/unusual/

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"Take Sugar, Eggs, Beliefs . . . And Aim"

by THOMAS VINCIGUERRA The New York Times
Sunday, December 10, 2000

Time was when being embarrassed meant having egg on your face. These days, it's more likely to mean having a pie in it. Just ask Frank E. Loy, the under secretary of state for global affairs. Last month in The Hague, as he was delivering his daily briefing at the United Nations climate conference, a protester hit him with a cream pie.

The incident was the latest in a series of high-profile pastry attacks. The premier of Victoria, Australia, Steve Bracks, got whapped in October at the opening of the Melbourne Museum. In August, the Prince Edward Island Pie Brigade planted its weapon of choice on the Canadian premier, Jean Chretian. Other victims this year include Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman and Michel Camdessus, the International Monetary Fund managing director.

Until recently, pieing had gone the way of streaking. Its last major casualty was Anita Bryant in 1977. ``Everyone associates this with the Yippies and the politics of spectacle,'' said Paul Lyons, author of ``New Left, New Right and the Legacy of the Streets'' (Temple University Press, 1996). But ever since a Belgian contingent fired a volley of fluffy projectiles at Bill Gates in 1998, it's been one fling after another.

Obscurity is no defense. Minnesota State Senator Carol Flynn was hit with a lemon coconut cream pie for her role in the rerouting of a local highway. Minutes after being crowned Miss Rodeo America 2000 in Las Vegas, Brandy DeJongh got mushed by a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

``I predicted this,'' said Aron Kay, the godfather of the pie-tossing set, who put out hits on such notables as McGeorge Bundy, G. Gordon Liddy, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and William F. Buckley Jr. in the 1970's and 80's. ``Everyone has someone who needs to get pied.''

The use of pies as ordnance, of course, is a hallmark of silent comedy; the shtick culminated with the hurling of more than 3,000 pies in the 1927 Laurel and Hardy film ``Battle of the Century.''

Today, such innocence has given way to more political purposes. Exactly 30 years have passed since the modern pie movement's opening salvo: a 1970 assault on the Senate Commission on Obscenity and Pornography by Tom Forcade, the founder of High Times magazine.

Pie-throwing is one way of venting anger at a world that has become maddeningly complex and intrusive, said Alexander Bloom, a professor of American history at Wheaton College in Massachusetts and co-editor of ``Takin' It to the Streets: A Sixties Reader'' (Oxford University Press, 1995). ``There is this basic undercurrent of people who are feeling that all these forces beyond their control - from the I.M.F. to the W.T.O. to Y2K to H.M.O.'s - are in charge of their lives and are operating outside of the political process,'' he said. ``I think people feel frustrated.''

Pieing may also be part of a resurgent wave of political theater, typified by the protests at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. ``Over the last year, a movement that I thought was thoroughly dead is not dead,'' said Barbara Epstein, a professor of the history of consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz. ``Pie-throwing is part of that movement.'`

In general, pieing is a leftist activity with anarchist overtones. Targets tend to be identified with big business or forces seen as hostile to the environment, public health and/or human rights. The manifesto of the Biotic Baking Brigade, a San Francisco-based pie-throwing group whose members employ such pseudonyms as ``Agent Apple'' and ``Agent Pecan,'' inveighs against ``the technocrats who dominate industrial society.''

Thus, the B.B.B. has creamed Monsanto's chief executive, Robert Shapiro, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman and Martina McGlaughlin, director of the biotechnology program at the University of California at Davis. ``We are working toward a time when corporate crooks and their lackeys in government and the nonprofit sector will have to leave this bioregion for fear of our delicious mischief,'' the B.B.B. pledges.

``The right wing doesn't have that kind of sense of humor,'' observed Professor Epstein. ``If you're concerned with law and order, you're probably not going to be throwing pies.''

Professor Bloom added: ``It's assault, clearly, but pies defuse the anger and identify the target as a clown. If someone dumped feces or blood or mock toxic waste on you, that would be a lot more threatening.''

Most victims treat their attacks with good humor. When the pie aimed at Secretary Glickman only grazed him, he joked, ``That was not a very balanced meal.'' An amused Ms. McGlaughlin accused her ostensibly anti-biotech assailants of hypocrisy: ``The pies were store-bought, so they were filled with genetically modified food components.''

Not everyone is cracking a smile over this merry pranksterism. Three B.B.B. agents who pied San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown in 1998 to protest his policies toward the homeless were convicted on misdemeanor battery charges and sentenced to six months in prison. After Tim Eyman was pied in June for sponsoring a Washington State initiative to reduce funds for public transit, he complained of corneal abrasion and chemical burns from the warhead's fruit filling.

``I think it's terrible,'' said the comedian Soupy Sales, who estimates he has been on the receiving end of some 20,000 pies during his career. ``Leave pies to the professional idiots. Better to sit back and enjoy them with a cup of coffee or a glass of milk.''

Date: Thu, 20 Apr 00 13:40:08 GMT

Just for the record I have to write you about a pie that flew in Amsterdam recently:

Ton Schaap, bureaucrat working for the city of Amsterdam got pied March 24 by an organisation of inhabitants of the neighbourhood Oostelijk Havengebied (that is: Harbour East Amsterdam, scene of big scale gentrification) calling itself "Can't do any worse" (Kan Niet Slechter Meer, abreviated: KNSM, a peninsula in the harbour that was sold totally to yuppie-housing). Ton Schaap was to hold a speech about "different citbuilding concepts."

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Just desserts
Sweet confection targeted CU policy on sweatshop labor

by MICHAEL A. de YOANNA
Colorado Daily Staff Writer

Six jurors on Wednesday found that when Sara Toombs placed a blueberry pie in the face of CU-Boulder Chancellor Richard Byyny, it did not constitute an assault.

Toombs, a.k.a. Agent Moon Pie, engaged in what the defense said was merely a "slapstick protest" and was found guilty at the Boulder County Justice Center of lesser charges -- harassment and criminal mischief.

Toombs and her supporters, who argued that charges were trumped up by the chancellor and CU campus police, called the verdict a victory.

"I'm really thrilled," Toombs said following the verdict. "The whole time I admitted that I did this. I'm willing to accept the responsibility for my actions -- it just wasn't assault. I think the charges and sentence were fair."

Toombs, 21, was sentenced by Judge Diane MacDonald to six months unsupervised probation, 30 hours of community service and must write Byyny a letter of apology.

"I'm not so happy about the letter," Toombs said.

Toombs, a member of Boulder Biotic Baking Brigade -- a loosely organized international network that squashes pies in the faces of the rich and powerful -- said she was protesting Byyny's "betrayal" of an ad hoc committee that recommended CU develop stricter guidelines for and monitoring of the conditions under which its apparel is manufactured.

Toombs testified that much of CU's apparel comes from sweatshops abroad that have questionable labor practices.

Prior to the trial, which lasted all day, District Attorney Phil Davis denied a request to reduce the charges against Toombs.

John Carlson of Miller, Lane, Kilmer and Greisen, the firm that represented Toombs pro bono, sought to avert the trial by having Toombs plea guilty to the same charges the jury found her guilty of.

During the trial, Carlson argued that Toombs' action did not rise to the level of a third-degree assault -- a class-one misdemeanor.

But Davis maintained that Byyny was injured during the pieing. Byyny, whisked into the courtroom under police guard, testified that he had suffered a bruised cheek after the pieing and incurred numerous dry cleaning bills for blueberry stains on his suit during the May 4 incident at the University Memorial Center where he delivered a speech.

Davis played a videotape that showed Toombs squash a pie into Byyny's face from two separate angles. Davis directed jurors to pay particular attention to the rocking motion of Byyny's head after the pieing -- "up and back ... up and back," Davis said.

Video also revealed that Byyny spoke roughly 20 seconds after he was pied to be met by the applause of spectators.

"Thank you for staying," Byyny said after being pied, going on to finish his speech.

Byyny described for jurors what happened.

"I saw somebody coming towards the platform ... headed straight for me ... I tried to duck ... I was hit in the face with a pie," Byyny said. "It was a pretty shocking experience."

After his speech, Byyny was then was escorted to his office by campus police where he continued to wipe pie off his face, extracting particles from his nose by blowing it, spotting, he said, blood.

Carlson challenged whether Byyny's nose bled at all, taking issue with statements made by Byyny in the police report.

Prior to testimony, MacDonald accepted a motion by Carlson to exclude hearsay evidence by Byyny that was contained in the report filed by campus police after the pieing.

In the statement, Byyny reported that "when he returned to his office" after the pieing "he was told by several people that he also had a bloody nose."

On the stand Byyny said, "it was mostly blueberries."

Byyny, a medical doctor, also conceded that he was "pretty sure he wasn't seriously injured," but maintained that he "felt assaulted."

After the speech, Byyny said he went home to change his suit and to prepare for another speech appearance in Denver. On the drive to Denver, Byyny said he applied a bag of ice to his cheek and in the morning noticed a bruise.

Additional testimony as to whether Byyny was bleeding came from JC Ancell, associate director of the UMC, who stood 15-feet away from Byyny during the pieing. Ancell described Toombs' aim as "pretty much straight-on, it wasn't a glancing blow."

He added that it was a "clean shot."

Ancell said he "detected a trickle of blood" from one of Byyny's nostrils. Carlson challenged Ancell on the testimony -- Ancell admitting some difficulty in how he determined that blueberry juice -- red in appearance -- was blood.

Carlson further argued that Byyny did not act consistent with someone who had suffered an assault. He alleged that Byyny smiled after the incident -- something Byyny strongly denied.

Carlson also said events after the pieing were inconsistent with someone who was assaulted. Byyny never sought medical attention, he carried on after the pieing, Carlson said.

When asked by Carlson why he continued with the speech, Byyny said he did not want to give protesters "the satisfaction."

"I knew I could finish up," Byyny said.

Toombs, the sole witness for the defense, revealed extensive prior planning. She baked the vegan organic blueberry pie herself. She testified that her training in non-violent resistance techniques at the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center and the Naropa Institute in addition to practice pieings conducted with the help of fellow activists, led her to perfect a technique for "squooshing" the pie to Byyny's face.

She said she knew "how much force to use, exactly what degree of pressure to apply" and concluded that the chancellor would not be hurt.

Aside from alleged bodily harm, much of the day's testimony focused on the damage to Byyny's suit.

Byyny testified that he had attempted to save the suit by having club soda applied to the stains. He also took the suit to two metro-area dry cleaners on several occasions to repair the damage, incurring costs in excess of $15.

"It still has a little bit of stain in it," Byyny said of the suit.

"Do you ever think you will get it out," Davis asked.

"No," Byyny replied.

Prior to the trial, members of World Action and Awareness Coalition of Equal United Progressives, or WAAKE-UP!, engaged in a "suipied" -- self inflicted pieings.

Four members squashed pies in their own faces, two were "assisted suipies" and two more were involved in a double pieing.

No one was injured.

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Pied Beauty

by George Monbiot
(with apologies to Gerard Manley Hopkins)

Glory be to God for splattered things - For pies of couple-colour in a banker's face; For pecans all in stipple on a shaven cheek; The tart which glides to haughty frown on wings; Schemes plotted and performed, pies baked and placed; And all who throw them, blessed are the meek.

All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is smeared or scattered (who knows how?) Pies swift, slow, sweet, sour, cruelty free; Thrust forward whose trajectory's past change: Praise BBB.

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"Every day is pie day."
--BBB mantra and daily salutation

The Biotic Baking Brigade.....coming soon to a "pie-o-region" near you.

bbb@asis.com   http://www.asis.com/~bbb/

Friends of the BBB: c/o POB 40130, San Francisco, CA 94111, Amerika