Religions > Atheism > OT - Brand USA is in trouble, so take a lesson from Big Mac
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Religions > Atheism |
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"Meteorite Debris" |
| Date: |
16 Mar 2005 01:49:36 AM |
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OT - Brand USA is in trouble, so take a lesson from Big Mac |
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1436988,00.html
Brand USA is in trouble, so take a lesson from Big Mac
Instead of changing his foreign policy, President Bush is changing the
story
Naomi Klein
Monday March 14, 2005
The Guardian
Last Tuesday, George Bush delivered a major address on his plan to
fight terrorism with democracy in the Arab world. On the same day,
McDonald's launched a massive advertising campaign urging Americans to
fight obesity by eating healthily and exercising. Any similarities
between McDonald's "Go Active! American Challenge" and Bush's "Go
Democratic! Arabian Challenge" are purely coincidental.
Sure, there is a certain irony in being urged to get off the couch by
the company that popularised the "drive-thru", helpfully allowing
customers to consume a bagged heart attack without having to get out
of the car and walk to the counter. And there is a similar irony to
Bush urging the people of the Middle East to remove "the mask of fear"
because "fear is the foundation of every dictatorial regime", when
that fear is the direct result of US decisions to install and arm the
regimes that have systematically terrorised for decades. But since
both campaigns are exercises in rebranding, that means facts are
besides the point.
The Bush administration has long been enamoured of the idea that it
can solve complex policy challenges by borrowing cutting-edge
communications tools from its heroes in the corporate world. The Irish
rock star Bono has recently been winning unlikely fans in the White
House by framing world poverty as an opportunity for US politicians to
become better marketers. "Brand USA is in trouble ... it's a problem
for business," Bono warned at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The
solution is "to redescribe ourselves to a world that is unsure of our
values".
The Bush administration wholeheartedly agrees, as evidenced by the
orgy of redescription that now passes for American foreign policy.
Faced with an Arab world enraged by the US occupation of Iraq and its
blind support for Israel, the solution is not to change these brutal
policies: it is to "change the story".
Brand USA's latest story was launched on January 30, the day of the
Iraqi elections, complete with a catchy tag line ("purple power"),
instantly iconic imagery (purple fingers) and, of course, a new
narrative about America's role in the world, helpfully told and retold
by the White House's unofficial brand manager, the New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman. "Iraq has been reframed from a story about
Iraqi 'insurgents' trying to liberate their country from
American occupiers and their Iraqi 'stooges' to a story of the
overwhelming Iraqi majority trying to build a democracy, with US help,
against the wishes of Iraqi Ba'athist fascists and jihadists."
This new story is so contagious, we are told, that it has set off a
domino effect akin to the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of
communism. (Although in the "Arabian spring" the only wall in sight -
Israel's apartheid wall - pointedly stays up.) As with all branding
campaigns, the power is in the repetition, not in the details. Obvious
non sequiturs (is Bush taking credit for Arafat's death?) and
screeching hypocrisies (occupiers against occupation!) just
mean it's time to tell the story again, only louder and more slowly,
obnoxious-tourist style. Even so, with Bush now claiming that "Iran
and other nations have an example in Iraq", it seems worth focusing on
the reality of the Iraqi example.
The state of emergency was just renewed for its fifth month and Human
Rights Watch reports that torture is "systematic" in Iraqi jails. The
Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena's double nightmare provides a
window into the pincer of terror in which average Iraqis are trapped:
daily life is a navigation between the fear of being kidnapped or
killed by fellow Iraqis and the fear of being gunned down at a US
checkpoint.
Meanwhile, the ongoing wrangling over who will form Iraq's next
government, despite the United Iraqi Alliance being the clear winner,
points to an electoral system designed by Washington that is less than
democratic. Terrified at the prospect of an Iraq ruled by the majority
of Iraqis, the former chief US envoy, Paul Bremer, wrote election
rules that gave the US-friendly Kurds 27% of the seats in the national
assembly, even though they make up just 15% of the population.
Skewing matters further, the US-authored interim constitution requires
that all major decisions have the support of two-thirds or, in some
cases, three-quarters of the assembly - an absurdly high figure that
gives the Kurds the power to block any call for foreign troop
withdrawal, any attempt to roll back Bremer's economic orders, and any
part of a new constitution.
Iraqi Kurds have a legitimate claim to independence, as well as very
real fears of being ethnically targeted. But through its alliance with
the Kurds, the Bush administration has effectively given itself a veto
over Iraq's democracy - and it appears to be using it to secure a
contingency plan should Iraqis demand an end to occupation.
Talks to form a government are stalled over the Kurdish demand for
control over Kirkuk. If they get it, Kirkuk's huge oil fields would
fall under Kurdish control. That means that if foreign troops are
kicked out of Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan can be broken off and Washington
will still end up with a dependent, oil-rich regime - even if it's
smaller than the one originally envisioned by the war's architects.
Meanwhile, Bush's freedom triumphalism glossed over the fact that, in
the two years since the invasion, the power of political Islam has
increased exponentially, while Iraq's deep secular traditions have
been greatly eroded. In part, this has to do with the deadly decision
to "embed" secularism and women's rights in the military invasion.
Whenever Bremer needed a good-news hit, he had his picture taken at a
newly opened women's centre, handily equating feminism with the hated
occupation. (The women's centres are now mostly closed, and hundreds
of Iraqis who worked with the coalition in local councils have been
executed.) But the problem for secularism is not just guilt by
association. It's also that the Bush definition of liberation robs
democratic forces of their most potent tools.
The only idea that has ever stood up to kings, tyrants and mullahs in
the Middle East is the promise of economic justice, brought about
through nationalist and socialist policies of agrarian reform and
state control over oil. But there is no room for such ideas in the
Bush narrative, in which free people are only free to choose so-called
free trade. That leaves democrats with little to offer, but empty talk
of "human rights" - a weedy weapon against the powerful swords of
ethnic glory and eternal salvation.
But we shouldn't be surprised that the Bush administration, despite
telling stories about its commitment to freedom, continues to actively
sabotage democracy in the very countries it claims to have liberated.
Rumour has it McDonald's also continues to serve Big Macs.
--
epicurus1*at*optusnet*dot*com*dot*au
apatriot #1, atheist #1417,
Chief EAC prophet
Jason Gastrich is praying for me on 8 January 2009
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~pk1956/
Apatriotism Yahoo Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/apatriotism
Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves
were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in
Hell.
-Mencken
.
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