<nettime> 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."

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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.

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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."


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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."

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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

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"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

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

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