Daily Loaf

Skew me, skew you.

I'm on a mailing list that doesn't generate much traffic most of the time, but when it does, debates tend to be heated. I'm usually the advocatus diaboli on the list, since most readers and posters write from a rather anti-establishment point of view. Today Mike kindly informed us of a boycott that's being agitated against ExxonMobil, Microsoft, Kraft, et alia, by the Finnish chapter of the Friends of the Earth network.

As a firm believer in the power of markets as an instrument of social change, I generally back the idea of boycotting or campaigning against companies that are known for their unethical practices in foreign markets, or unequal treatment of homosexual couples, just to give a few examples. I buy my petrol from Neste, and will take an organic product over a global brand anytime, but I find this current campaign completely misguided.

To confuse a company, several companies, or in this particular case those companies that support the Bush re-election campaign (or in the case of the international campaing, just US companies in general!), with the government that is executing its policies in Iraq, is plain astigmatism. Such confusion only serves to display how distorted views are becoming on the East side of the Atlantic; how little understanding there is of the state of the nation that is the United States of America, here. Thinking that 'America' is monolithic is the same non sequitur some on the political left claim the US government commits when allegedly viewing the Islamic world as one singular enemy.

Sure, our good 'Friends' may pay lip service to the noble ideal of being anti-anti-American, but in a media environment where al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya can pin their islamofascist, anti-American and anti-Iraq views on, and I quote, mistranslation, words are cheap.