[Nettime-bold] Pie Times News Digest #4: Irish PM Flanned

[Biotic Baking Brigade <bbb@asis.com>]

Irish Prime Minister Gets Pie in Face

Sligo, 6.30pm, Apr 12.

On his way from meeting his cronies at the local newspaper, Taoiseach
(that's Prime minister in irish, but that's the _only_ difference)
Bertie Ahern was greeted by Agent Whatever of the Biotic Baking Brigade.
At first she was unsure which was the target, as she was confronted by a
mass of almost identical boring men in suits. As time was running short
she plumped for the short, fat one in the middle. The gasp of the crowd
told her she had found her allotted target. As she ran away she could
hear the sloshing of dozens of eager face-lickers, jostling to help
Bertie clean his face. Bertie is always surrounded by a gaggle of
sycophants, eager to get a piece of the pie. Within seconds he was clean
and off to smile at more of Sligo's finest citizens at the Chamber of
Commerce dinner.

When asked for one of those funny statements BBB are famous for, Agent
Whatever said, "I can't think of anything funny about Bertie Ahern, he
seemed very angry. I thought he could take a joke but now I will be
charged with a public order offence. Perhaps he is just another
miserable, corrupt power junkie like all my friends think."

The Irish division of the BBB said "we have no idea who our next
target will be. There is no shortage of corrupt politicians in Ireland.
A pie thrown randomly near any government building would have a hard
time not hitting some corrupt old git. That's the main reason we have
been inactive so far; it isn't really much of a challenge."

@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Two reports from Holland:

1)      http://indymedia.nl/2002/03/2664.shtml

Rising star and rightwing populist 'professor' Pim Fortuyn gets three
stinking projectiles in the face at presentation of his newest book.
Fortuyn could become the bigest political party at elections next May
15th. From scratch.

----------------

2)       Hey,

The pies didn't stink, they were homemade
pies. There was also something stinky in the room (in an effort to
have the whole gig cancelled) and media thought the stink was
comming from the pies, but it wasn't. The actors was the Biologic
Bakers Brigade and the target was the bald professor Pim Fortuyn.
He's running for next election with his own list and has a cheesy
populist and racist message (islam is stupid, no more foreigeners).
Many people voting for him do it because they hate the ruling
parties. Fortuyn will become one of the biggest 'parties' at the
elections on May 15th, he might even get 20% of the votes. From
scratch indeed...

Note that another pying happened a week later at the Bookfair in
Paris, Noel Godin was involved, the pie had ananas and cream
ingredients and the victim: Presidential Candidate Jean-Pierre
Chevenement ('republican, or progressive nationalist' whatever that
might mean). Godin was arrested. Sunday March 24 was the date.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Sun, 27 Jan 2002

NY Times--article on the WEF & protests:

Of course, all the extracurricular activity puts heightened pressure 
on the city's Police Department, the Secret Service, and the various 
private security firms that have been hired to protect their 
corporate clients in what may be an unusually hostile atmosphere. 
Police officials say that they have been training for weeks for the 
forum, and will announce on Tuesday the city's plans regarding street 
closings, demonstrations and other matters that affect the public. 
Meanwhile, John F. Timoney - a former deputy New York police 
commissioner, former police commissioner of Philadelphia, and now 
chief executive of Beau Dietl & Associates - said that his security 
firm's armed guards have been retained by "quite a few corporations 
and business types."

"We are doing security in the various establishments, the venues 
where breakfasts or lunches or receptions are being held," he said, 
adding that the guards "will be inside to make sure there is no 
misbehavior, to make sure there is no one who wants to throw a pie in 
someone's face."


@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/02/28/BU95791.DTL

JUST DESERTS?

	      A year ago, Francine Cavanaugh tossed a
                       pie at Jeffrey Skilling for gouging
                       Californians Š now the former Enron CEO
                       is under fire in Washington

Kathleen Pender	 	Thursday, February 28, 2002
The San Francisco Chronicle

Last summer, when Francine Cavanaugh threw a cream pie at Enron's 
then- CEO Jeffrey Skilling in San Francisco, she was arrested and 
hauled into a police station.

This year, she might be given keys to the city.

Cavanaugh, a documentary filmmaker, says she was protesting Enron's 
role in the California energy crisis and Skilling's exorbitant 
compensation.

"I heard a lot about how he made all this money off the energy 
crisis," she recalls. "He was coming to town to talk about energy 
policy. I thought, who's this guy coming to town telling us about 
energy when he made all this money off of us?"

Cavanaugh, 34, says she was "inspired" by the Biotic Baking Brigade, 
a loose network of activists that has taken credit for hurling pies 
at people like Willie Brown, Milton Friedman and Bill Gates.

Two of Cavanaugh's colleagues at Whispered Media in San Francisco 
made a documentary about the brigade called "The Pie's the Limit." 
The firm's new film, "Boom, the Sound of Eviction," chronicles the 
city's housing crisis.

When Cavanaugh heard that Skilling was speaking at the Commonwealth 
Club last June, she registered for the event. The night of the 
speech, she walked into the club's auditorium on Market Street with a 
white-chocolate-tofu-cream pie tucked under some books in her bag.

Just as Skilling was about to speak, she lofted the pie onto the 
podium, clipping him on the side of the head.

Skilling remained cool, exhibiting the same steely reserve he has 
shown on Capitol Hill this week, where he has been bombarded with 
verbal pies.

Skilling joined Enron in 1990. He was president for four years and 
chief executive for six months before he resigned abruptly in August. 
In 1999 and 2000 combined, he earned about $14 million in salary, 
bonus and restricted stock awards. On Tuesday, he admitted he still 
has most of the $66 million he made from Enron stock sales since 1999.

Skilling said he didn't know the partnerships that hid Enron debt and 
inflated earnings were inappropriate. Many people find that hard to 
believe.

Say what you will about Skilling, he's no wimp. He's one of the few 
Enron executives who hasn't invoked his Fifth Amendment right to clam 
up. And he wasn't afraid to confront his critics in San Francisco 
last year.

After wiping the tofu cream out of his ear, Skilling launched into 
his speech. He said the energy crisis wasn't the fault of Gov. Gray 
Davis or power marketers like Enron. He blamed it on a flawed 
deregulation plan.

Throughout his remarks, Skilling was heckled by protesters wearing 
pig masks and snorting "oink, oink." The protesters, organized by 
Global Exchange, had tried to get a live pig into the auditorium but 
the pig was turned out onto the sidewalk.

"We were protesting Enron's price gouging and their gaming of the 
(electricity) market in California," says Medea Benjamin, leader of 
Global Exchange, a human rights and corporate accountability group. 
"We were also working with people in India and Mozambique, where 
Enron was trying to privatize their energy systems."

Benjamin says she was unaware at the time of Enron's alleged 
financial shenanigans. But now it makes sense. "We were amazed they 
could get so rich so fast," she says.

Protesters who refused to pipe down were escorted out of the meeting, 
to the delight of many in the audience.

Cavanaugh, who was not affiliated with Global Exchange, was taken to 
the Bayview police station, charged with vandalism and released a 
couple of hours later.

Skilling declined to press charges against Cavanaugh, but the 
Commonwealth Club did because it wanted her to pay for cleaning pie 
off the carpet and a big-screen TV.

"We're a nonprofit, we're on a thin financial line ourselves," says 
Gloria Duffy, the club's chief executive. "The fact that someone 
causes a mess for us because an event is taking place on our premises 
is not fair, so we did pursue it."

The charges were later dropped, but Cavanaugh never did pay for the cleanup.

Asked if she feels vindicated by Enron's collapse, Cavanaugh pauses, 
then says, "Not really. So many people were affected by it. But I do 
feel justified in doing what I did."

If Skilling came back, "I'd do it again," she says. "But I don't 
think I'd be the only one."

Her advice to other potential pie throwers: "It's best to go to 
events that don't have carpeting."

Duffy says the incident "caused us to think a lot about the nature of 
free speech and what the Commonwealth Club should be tolerating or 
fostering in terms of free speech."

After debating what she calls "l'affaire de la pie," the club 
developed some guidelines for behavior.

"We don't mind if people wear pig masks or if they hold a sign," Duffy says.

"Once they threaten the physical security of someone by throwing 
something at them, or damage our premises or disrupt the ability of 
the audience to hear or interact with the speaker, that's where we 
draw the line."

The club, a 99-year-old public affairs forum, tries to present 
opposing viewpoints. Shortly before Skilling's appearance, the club 
hosted Amory Levins, an alternative energy expert.

I asked Jim Coplan, a senior director at the club, how he feels about 
the pie episode in retrospect.

"We never like disruption at the Commonwealth Club. We like people to 
be able to say what they came to say. We don't like people engaging 
in acts that are potentially violent," he says. "But politically 
speaking, they (the protesters) may have been closer to the truth 
than Skilling was."

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

pastry apocalypse now

'delicious mischief' is the word
we hear out on the streets--
somebody's pieing CEO's
with flans & other treats!
the pies aren't shells with shaving cream--
no, that would be too crude--
they're vegan when it's possible,
they're tasty & they're good!
salmon souffle's endangered--
at least, that's what i hear--
soy-anything's the preference
for what gets flung this year.
brigadiers, leave your kitchens!
abandon your unfinished chow!
it's the day we've all been waiting for--
pastry apocalypse now!

--Dennis Fritzinger

@@
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

"Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is 
[hu]man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress 
has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion." 
--Oscar Wilde

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 94140, Amerika

--------------
Dessert Storm - an international month of pie-ing now has
open publishing news section - indymedia style - for your
photos, text, video of piesploits!!

(((  globalise the pie!  )))

http://www.dessertstorm.org

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

_______________________________________________
Nettime-bold mailing list
Nettime-bold@nettime.org
http://amsterdam.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold