For reasons of situation, this high-risk fund has tremendous potential yields.
The Media Fund is managed by Andrei Codrescu, who has
consistently produced oppositional cultural dividends in various contexts, from
the poetic to the cinematic. His current position as commentator for National
Public Radio completes his exceptional qualifications for this position.
JOIN
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FUNDS
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US$
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NEED
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DESCRIPTION
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Join CCAT list
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media
net
labor
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0
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workers funds
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"Use and develop this software that turns the Cuecat, the freely available barcode scanner meant to aid shopping from home and to keep messy information away from 'consumers', into a tool for learning about corporate behavior."
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Join DUBM list
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media
magx
labor
quick
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0
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workers funds
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"Dub this hilarious filmstrip about the racism of US drug laws over the previews of rented movies before returning the tapes to the store. To get filmstrip for dubbing, download and output file from above URL or order tape."
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Join REMX list
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media
magx
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0
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funds
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"Major radio stations and department stores only play and sell censored music. An alternative to this is a CD containing 'Inverse Radio Remixes': songs with all lyrics removed except those removed from censored radio remixes. The listener hears just the music track punctuated by the occasional 'that's bullshit' or 'so he shoots up his school.' Investment needed to press the already created remix CD for placement on store shelves."
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Join PLCM list
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media
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0
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workers funds
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See recent coverage of this project. "Lobby for a rating system which ranks films and TV shows by the extent of their product placement. Require labels for VHS and DVD packages indicating amount of product placement ranging from '0-PP: Zero Product Placement -- Suitable for the entire Family' to '5-PP: Contains scenes of explicit corporate advertising.' If lobbying is unsuccessful, videotape warnings onto the beginning of rented VHS tapes and affix warning labels to packages."
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Join BUYS list
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media
altmark
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0
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workers funds
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"Launch a convincing e-commerce parody website that allows consumers to 'click-and-buy' a huge variety of absurd, politically charged, or spiritually abstract goods, such as gay liberation, unconditional love, the soul of Rupert Murdoch, blind complacency, or the revolutionary potential of the Internet. Ideal would be a 'sticky' site, which encourages consumer trance. Must receive media coverage."
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Join CHIK list
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media
quick
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0
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workers funds
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"Chick Tracts are those funny little comic books that Christian evangelizers hand out on street corners. The Jack Chick Museum of Fine Art has all of the Chick Tracts online, as well as links to parody sites. Alter chick tracts to make them anti-corporate, and hand out at street corners."
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Join PINO list
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media
labor
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0
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workers
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"Remake the story of Pinocchio so that he goes to Disney Land, and rather than being transformed into a pack animal, he becomes a real, live boy... who just happens to be from a Third-World country. He and several other kids are then taken to factually accurate animated representations of Disney's Third- World sweatshops. In the end Pinocchio is beaten to death by the guards for attempting to take one of the shirts he was forced to manufacture."
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Join GWBA list
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media
magx
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0
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workers funds
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"For a medical worker who leaks x-rays of George W. Bush's cochlear implant. (Why does he pause so long between phrases and words? Could that mole removal operation have been... something else?)"
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Join FLMF list
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media
magx
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US$1000
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workers funds
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for "a worker at a film editing house or video duplication outfit to insert scenes of a shockingly educational nature into popular movies or videos. Viewers must see the scenes, and it must be reported in the media."
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Join MIKY list
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media
magx
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0
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workers funds
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"Record the music for the Teutonic version of the Mickey Mouse Club anthem. Minor key, lots of heraldic trumpets, marching storm troopers, etc. Make an Mp3 of the song, and start distributing it under the Mickey Mouse Club name on Napster, Gnutella, etc."
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Join SABO list
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media
corp
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0
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workers funds
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"Reproduce the CIA's guide to sabotage produced for Nicaraguan anti-Sandinista forces, with the text redirected against corporate workplaces."
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Join BSTR list
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intel
media
quick
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0
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workers
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"Blockbuster edits the content of many of the videos they rent. Rent edited tapes and record the original versions onto them--the object being to get caught, so that Blockbuster presses charges (perhaps for vandalism)."
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Join NEWZ list
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media
quick
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0
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workers funds
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"Any time there is an anti-globalization protest, participate locally in breaking the press blackouts about these events (or poor coverage of them) by monitoring Indymedia, printing out the best stories, and inserting them into newspaper dispensers and newsstands in your area."
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Join COP2 list
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media
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0
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funds
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"Subvert the 'Cops' TV show by issuing a free net-based legal commentary (by a constitutional law expert) that points out all the instances on the show when cops violate the Constitution. We're doing this now, but need some funding to sustain it. Combat cop-culture and transform trash-TV...while learning your rights."
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Join CHUK list
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media
magx
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US$50
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workers funds
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"Draw a Family Circus cartoon where Billy sits on front porch with family members all dead in the yard from gunshot wounds. Cop asks Billy, Who did it? Billy says, Chuck. Ghostlike Charlton Heston is seen running away with smoking gun. Get this faux cartoon to run in a major newspaper."
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Join FCCA list
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media
magx
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0
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workers funds
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"Replace a frequently aired commercial on a major market radio station with an announcement from 'station management' that the FCC has pronounced the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as being 'in poor taste. (The station's corporate owner) has been ordered to turn the station over to the public interest effective the first of the following month. Anyone with suggestions as to what to do with the station should call (the corporate owner's CEO) at (his or her private number).'"
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Join CMEX list
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media
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0
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workers funds
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"The Center for Media Exploitation (or C.M.E.) will be an archive for culture jammers, full of downloadable and accessible tools for tactical media intervention. Investment is needed to pay for server space, and workers are needed to start contributing useful files of all types."
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Join FLMC list
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media
labor
quick
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0
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workers funds
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"Make a video segment about how copyrights protect the rich and record it over the anti-piracy message at the start of videos." (This image was sent in and could be used for such taping.)
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Join CRPE list
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media
corp
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US$400
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workers funds
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for "a television reporter to consistently compare the punishment corporations receive for actual violations with the punishment individuals would receive for similar offenses."
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Join BBFM list
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media
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0
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funds
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"We are seeking $500 to pay for screening our film on prominently located billboards. Our film consists of a series of TV commercials, so slick and entertaining they could be mistaken for real, but questioning a buying/selling culture. We have gotten permission to use several billboards for this purpose. See http://www.enjoythesign.com/ for more details."
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Join CKSC list
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media
net
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0
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workers funds
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"The Internet Cookie-Scrambler will be a mesh of proxies that cross-refer requests for banners so that information passed through to this information gathering firms is just scrambled. The principle is by having many users using such a mesh these companies will get a lot of incorrect data into their databases, which has the effect of actually devaluating their product."
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Join PATA list
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media
magx
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0
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workers funds
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for "a news-wire worker who can successfully invent irrefutable pataphysical stories, or substitute amateur film (or stock footage) for news footage"
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Join SITC list
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media
high
magx
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US$1000
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workers
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for "a worker at a news bureau to substitute several minutes of old sitcom clips for news clips during a prime-time news hour. The clips must be shown, must be seen by a large number of television viewers, and must be extensively reported on."
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Join GWBC list
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media
magx
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0
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workers funds
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"After George W. Bush says something weird, claim you hacked into the cochlear implant transceiver that Dubya's handlers use to prompt him, and that you were able to override their pre-fabricated sound-bytes with something of your own. Your story must be covered in the media."
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Join TMSQ list
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media
magx
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US$600
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workers funds
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to "rent two top floor rooms each in three Times Square hotels on a busy weekend night at the height of tourist season in New York. From the hotel windows, hang giant banners which read: 'New York welcomes Saddam Hussein'. The banner must display prominently several logos of large companies or municipal entities. Alternatives would be to rent a plane trailing a similar banner, lay down an enormous Welcome Saddam doormat which could be unfurled next to football stadia (where the news helicopter could see it), project the image on the moon or on huge white buildings, etc."
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Join AUDB list
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edu
media
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0
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workers funds
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"$1000 needed to subvert an audiobook leasing company (they distribute latest bestsellers, including a heavy list of corporate/conservative titles to hundreds of truckstops and public libraries across the country) by recording over every cassette of a certain highly anticipated right-wing title with Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, or Michael Parenti, etc. Worker will keep log of where these tapes are going, and local monitoring of infected racks can be administered. Get media attention in all cities where 'discoveries' are reported, and interview the 'victims'."
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Join CRYS list
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media
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0
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workers funds
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for "a print journalist who can use the Language Crystal to create two or three simultaneous readings of a story, or make it possible to read the story in another language (see Zukofsky's translation of 'Catullus,' which reads simultaneously in English and Latin)."
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Join SIXD list
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edu
media
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0
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workers funds
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"Create an interactive Web site that can reveal ownership of the media. For example, someone watching a CNN news program might spy a personality piece about Rosie O'Donnell and decide to research a possible connection between them. The SIXD Web site could respond: CNN is owned by Turner Broadcasting, which is a division of Time Warner, which owns a majority of Time Warner Entertainment Company LP, a division of which is Warner Bros. TV, which produces the Rosie O'Donnell show. The Web site should graphically depict the hierarchy of the connections it finds." (See this site for inspiration.)
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Join SURR list
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media
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0
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workers funds
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for "a worker at a metropolitan newspaper who places a major story in a surreal or metaphysical context that is now consistently ignored."
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Join IBMM list
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media
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0
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workers funds
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"Alter IBM advertisements by transposing their content with Hitler's acquisition of new territories and their separation and counting of the Jews. Run the ad on television." (Background here.)
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Join GLOB list
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media
magx
front
comm
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US$200
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workers funds
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"Reward offered for any journalist or producer who invites an impostor onto their live television program to represent the World Trade Organization."
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Join FAIR list
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media
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0
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workers funds
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"Create a website that will catalog companies that rip off their customers and contractors/employees (inverting how TRW and Equifax tell any story about you to businesses). Such a website could catalog corporate misconduct and show patterns of fraud indicating corporate policy."
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Join PROD list
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media
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0
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workers funds
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"Produce a preview-length video that touts the benefits of product placement in major motion pictures. Dub it onto the beginnings of high volume rentals."
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Join PDIS list
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media
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0
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workers funds
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"Establish a grant for television and movie makers who do negative product placement, or 'product displacement.' Examples: The FedEx package arrives late and mangled; someone throws up after eating at McDonald's; someone spits out their Starbucks coffee and says it tastes like shit; cameo of Rev. Billy being thrown out of a Disney store as characters walk by; characters cursing at their Microsoft software or AOL, etc."
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Join CPRN list
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intel
media
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US$125
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workers funds
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"Plant enticing pornographic videotapes in porn stores everywhere, with models such as (a super-well-hung) Ronald MacDonald, (a dementedly horny) Barbie, etc.--in other words, any trademark character which depends on its assumed virtue."
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Join NEWS list
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media
high
magx
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US$1000
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workers
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for "a worker at a major metropolitan newspaper who significantly alters an issue (e.g. changes most of the article text) in an interesting way. A good number of issues must see the light of day, and the media must report on it."
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Join GWBB list
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media
magx
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US$350
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workers funds
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"Successfully get George W. Bush's alleged cochlear implant 'prompter' mentioned with some possible credibility in major media. Bonus for the publication of a New York Times-style diagram of this type of technology."
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Join MIRR list
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media
front
comm
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US$1000
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workers funds
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"Distribute at least 1000 mirrors to activists in Genoa. Use them to reflect blinding sun on the the police and the G8 to re-enact Archimedes' burning of the Roman fleet." Done!
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