peaccenicked
27th January 2002, 20:19
US car giant's cash funds anti capitalists - paper
LONDON, Jan. 26 — British anarchist band Chumbawumba are playing capitalist judo with one of America's largest corporations by using its own money against it, the Observer said on Sunday.
Giant car makers General Motors (GM) paid the band 70,000 pounds ($98,840) for the use of their song ''Pass it Along'' in advertising for its cars the paper said, but unbeknownst to GM the band planned to give the money to anti-capitalist campaigners.
''We'd discovered through all the years of having no money just how powerful it can be if it's in the right hands,'' the band said on their website.
''After much discussion and worry, we okayed it in the same manner we'd okayed quite a few other uses of our music in the past few years - by acknowledging that the amount of money we were being offered could fund anti-corporate activists for years,'' the band said.
The band approached the U.S. based campaign group CorpWatch which says it aims to hold corporations to account and offered it half the money, the paper said. The other half went to the alternative media group IndyMedia.
''We're planning on using some of the money to document some of the social and environmental impacts of General Motors itself,'' Joshua Karliner executive director of CorpWatch told the paper.
''It's known for resisting the kinds of change in production that would assist in reducing climate change, and for helping debunk the science of global warming,'' he said. IndyMedia said they would use the money for ''corporate jamming actions,'' the paper said.
Chumbawumba came to prominence in the late 1990s with a hit single ''Tubthumping'' and for an attack by member Danbert Nobacon, who threw a bucket of water over Britain's deputy Prime Minister John Prescott in 1998.
The band had already been established on Britain's radical music fringe for more than a decade before achieving commercial success.
LONDON, Jan. 26 — British anarchist band Chumbawumba are playing capitalist judo with one of America's largest corporations by using its own money against it, the Observer said on Sunday.
Giant car makers General Motors (GM) paid the band 70,000 pounds ($98,840) for the use of their song ''Pass it Along'' in advertising for its cars the paper said, but unbeknownst to GM the band planned to give the money to anti-capitalist campaigners.
''We'd discovered through all the years of having no money just how powerful it can be if it's in the right hands,'' the band said on their website.
''After much discussion and worry, we okayed it in the same manner we'd okayed quite a few other uses of our music in the past few years - by acknowledging that the amount of money we were being offered could fund anti-corporate activists for years,'' the band said.
The band approached the U.S. based campaign group CorpWatch which says it aims to hold corporations to account and offered it half the money, the paper said. The other half went to the alternative media group IndyMedia.
''We're planning on using some of the money to document some of the social and environmental impacts of General Motors itself,'' Joshua Karliner executive director of CorpWatch told the paper.
''It's known for resisting the kinds of change in production that would assist in reducing climate change, and for helping debunk the science of global warming,'' he said. IndyMedia said they would use the money for ''corporate jamming actions,'' the paper said.
Chumbawumba came to prominence in the late 1990s with a hit single ''Tubthumping'' and for an attack by member Danbert Nobacon, who threw a bucket of water over Britain's deputy Prime Minister John Prescott in 1998.
The band had already been established on Britain's radical music fringe for more than a decade before achieving commercial success.