Onslaught - 2007 - 2023

Well of course I love this next commercial and the values it stands for, but as I've said in the comments over here and here, and indeed to the client Unilever (the owners of the Dove brand), I don't think it's honest for a multinational to put 'keep-it real-credentials' in the 'Campaign for real beauty' while they sell skin whitening creams to among others, Indian subcontinent and South East Asian countries that are by nature blessed with dark skin.

Just doing the focus groups for these kind of products can be quite tough for those of us who think a bit about the effects on the culture of the societies that we make advertising for. Take Thailand for example, based on qualitative research, some office secretaries (for example) will choose who they take to lunch in a group based on the whiteness of skin.

The darker skins are considered too 'rural' for those who want to climb the whiter skinned ethnic Chinese communities that effectively run S.E. Asia in business terms.

The aspiring English classes also used to take a dim view of darker skin in previous centuries because it indicated an agrarian lifestyle working in the fields. So I'm not trying to speed up cultural and media literacy development in these countries (or maybe I am), but I am suggesting to Unilever that specifically on it's skin whitening creams, it puts a disclaimer on ALL those products that Unilever embraces skin of all colours.

Otherwise its a bit hypocritical to be a campaigner for real beauty, when it's fake beauty and discrimination that powers one of the fastest growing skin care categories in many parts of the developing world.

Update: I see that the original video was pulled for copyright reasons but that a remix is now resurfacing for the same issues of resource exploitation but this time the targets are Nestle.

Thailand - Future Maps

Thai Women Go Crazy For A White Vagina

Most people in Thailand are dark skinned but as the Chinese plutocracy run the country the advertising reflects their fairer skin. I've written extensively about the pernicious effects of skin whitening creams because if you ever do advertising focus groups you can listen to impressionable young office women choosing who they go to lunch with based on their skin colour as money, career progression and hanging out with the right people is all that matters in the dog eat soi dog world of commercial materialism.

More over here

Update: Original video censored.

Noam Chomsky - November 16, 1992 - East Timor

As Chomsky gets older he's slowing down but in this Cambridge presentation from 1992 he merely glances down to his notes and talks in 5 or 10 minute chunks of solid history and nuanced politics of mass murder and foreign policy. He is masterful. (His talk commences around the 15-20 minute mark).

Update. Video deleted and the new one commences 24.50 seconds on East Timor

On the eve of the invasion, U.S. President Gerald Ford and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, were in Jakarta meeting with Suharto. Kissinger later claimed that East Timor wasn’t even discussed, but this claim has been exposed as a lie.

In fact, Washington gave Suharto a green light to invade. Ninety percent of the weaponry used by the Indonesian forces in their invasion was from the United States (despite a U.S. law that bans the use of its military aid for offensive purposes) and the flow of arms, including counter-insurgency equipment, was secretly increased (a point that should be borne in mind in interpreting what is going on today).

The United States also lent diplomatic support to the invaders. In the United Nations, U.S. ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan successfully worked, as he boasted in his memoirs, to make sure that the international organization was ineffective in challenging Jakarta’s aggression. Under the presidency of Jimmy Carter, the self-proclaimed champion of human rights, there was a further increase in U.S. military aid to Indonesia. Since 1975, the United States has sold Jakarta over $1 billion worth of military equipment.

—	Stephen R. Shalom, Noam Chomsky, & Michael Albert on the United States role in Indonesia’s December 1975 invasion of Timor-Leste Z Magazine, October, 1999

John Stockwell - The CIA's War On The Third World

A wide ranging discussion including the foundations for why we're in Afghanistan now going back to CIA and Zbigniew Brzezinski in the eighties with Operation Cyclone as well as Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Cuba, Angola, Namibia and much more. There's also a lot of excellent President Carter criticism which is good for me as I've more often than not defended Carter.

CIA Covert Operations and U.S. Interventions Since World War II

An excellently produced documentary that is interesting I think even to the lay person. 

There's a young Amy Goodman of Democracy Now who has always impressed me with her grasp of South East Asia affairs although her 9/11 denial makes her a left gatekeeper. 

She explains the E. Timor deal lucidly here.

Roswell, Operation High Jump and the Opium Wars - Douglas Dietrich

Radical historian, Douglas Dietrich's explanation for Roswell is based on the military documents he was charged with destroying at the Presidio Naval base in San Francisco. It's the most convincing explanation in part because it's the least exciting, though that doesn't mean it isn't a notable psycop concealing crucial parts of military history. In addition his insights on the origins of SEATO as an Asian based drug dealing arrangement make him the only one to make this entirely plausible claim.

Onslaught

Well of course I love this next commercial and the values it stands for, but as I've said in the comments over here and here, and indeed to the client Unilever (the owners of the Dove brand), I don't think it's honest for a multinational to put 'keep-it real-credentials' in the 'Campaign for real beauty' while they sell skin whitening creams to among others, Indian subcontinent and South East Asian countries that are by nature blessed with dark skin.

Just doing the focus groups for these kind of products can be quite tough for those of us who think a bit about the effects on the culture of the societies that we make advertising for. Take Thailand for example, based on qualitative research, some office secretaries (for example) will choose who they take lunch with in groups, based on the whiteness of skin.

The darker skins are considered too 'rural' for those who want to climb the whiter skinned ethnic Chinese communities that effectively run S.E. Asia big business.

The aspiring English classes also used to take a dim view of darker skin in previous centuries because it indicated an agrarian lifestyle working in the fields. So I'm not trying to speed up cultural and media literacy development in these countries (or maybe I am), but I am suggesting to Unilever that specifically on it's skin whitening creams, it puts a disclaimer on ALL those products that Unilever embraces skin of all colours.

Otherwise its a bit hypocritical to be a campaigner for real beauty, when it's fake beauty and discrimination that powers one of the fastest growing skin care categories in many parts of the developing world.

Update: I see that the original video was pulled for copyright reasons but that that a remix is now resurfacing for the same issues of resource exploitation but this time the targets are Nestle.