A broad-based movement for promoting environmental cleanliness and decreasing our dependence on foreign oil is long overdue. For some companies, however, “going green” is more useful as a marketing ploy than as a way of doing business — leading to campaigns that are “green” only in the greenback sense.
Take the National Basketball Association’s current “Green Week.” Of course, the NBA is claiming that its primary aim is to “generate awareness and funding to protect the environment.” It has therefore released a list of tips for “living” and “working” environmentally, as well as encouraged some NBA stars to speak on “green” issues.
But before The Huffington Post gets all excited (too late), perhaps it’s worth noting that the primary thrust of “Green Week” is a blatant merchandizing blitz. First, the NBA has outfitted all thirty teams with organic cotton warm-up shirts, with the NBA’s special “Green Week” logo front and center. (In case you had any doubts, these shirts are already available for $24.99 in men’s and women’s sizes, complete with a massive Adidas logo on the left sleeve.) Second, the NBA has issued special “Green Week” basketballs (this product is also, naturally, available for purchase). Third, at least three teams — the Denver Nuggets, Charlotte Bobcats, and Chicago Bulls — are marking the occasion by wearing — you guessed it — green uniforms, with some players matching these one-time get-ups with green sneakers and sweatbands.
Of course, the NBA isn’t the first sports league to engage in this sort of cynical “green” campaign. Back in February, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Super Bowl Championship t-shirts carried an obnoxious sticker, with the NFL pretending as though it was saving the environment by producing tons of useless merchandise (h/t UniWatch). Still, insofar as the NFL always issues commemorative t-shirts to celebrate its champions, perhaps it can be credited with finding an environmentally preferable way to waste resources that were going to be wasted anyway.
The NBA, on the other hand, has wasted new resources. Indeed, rather than making special warm-up shirts for “Green Week,” wouldn’t it have been more eco-friendly for teams to just reuse their normal shooting shirts? Or, rather than manufacturing special basketballs with the word “recycle” emblazoned on them in green, why didn’t the socially-conscious NBA simply recycle game-balls from previous nights? The green uniform gimmick is particularly wasteful: since the green-wearing teams naturally donned their special jerseys at home (how else could they market these jerseys to their hometown fans?), their opponents were forced to pack their white jerseys – in addition to the dark uniforms that they would ordinarily wear on the road – for their entire road trips! How much jet fuel was wasted lugging around this unnecessary double baggage?
My advice: if the NBA really wants to “go green,” it should start by mandating a sharp reduction in the number of costume changes – and therefore laundry cycles – for the dance ensembles that barely entertain fans during time-outs. It should also prevent teams from signing Stephon Marbury during the coming off-season. Talk about a waste of jet fuel.
The arguments against these contrived excuses have been stated over and over again. No need to repeat. For example, Israel WANTED the Jews from the Arab lands to leave and settle in Israel. Many fell for this propaganda. One Iraqi Jew whose story I read recently, regretted that he ever fell for that. So NO, the Jews mostly left on their own accord. On the other hand, the Arabs never wanted to leave their homes but either were force to or were not allowed to return by force of arms.
The suffering of the Gazans, for example, are from deliberate horrible war crimes from solders who knew what the deadly rounds that they are going to fire would do. To minimize that and compare that to residents of Sderot who have to run to bomb shelters is laughable. There has and still is no humanity to Israel’s actions.
Just a little humanity would go a long ways to get across the idea of the right of self defense. As it is, nobody in the world buys your story except for Israel first people.
BP says: “So NO, the Jews mostly left on their own accord.”
Some did, most did not. Most left because they had to. An occasional dispirited Jew is less common than self-hating Jews like Chomsky, Finkelstein, et. al.
To answer Sophia, “Why?” Because they’re Jews, that’s why. The “world” hates Jews. What part of that is not understood?
BIG PICTURE writes:
“Israel WANTED the Jews from the Arab lands to leave”.
Israel also wanted the surviving Jew of Europe to leave in 1948. Did they accordingly come because they were urged by the Zionists or because they had been mauled and frightened by an anti-Semitic Europe?
The Jews who survived WWII in Europe had nothing to hold them. They had lost everything and came to Israel largely from Displaced Persons camps.
In 1948 the Jews in Arab lands disposed over the accumulation of many generations. Yet they left and largely came penniless to Israel, why? Because the Zionists urged them, or because they were given no choice and fled for their lives?
so claiming that people ignore the suffering of the Palestinians either there or in Europe or in the US is baloney
Israel is rich, violent, bloodthirsty and genocidal. Their opponents are poor, bloodthirsty, and genocidal, and funded by rich friends. For Israel to argue that they are somehow better, or that they are “allies” with the U.S., is a sick, pus-oozing joke.
It is foolish and ahistorical to deny the thousands of years of Jewish history and pretend that somehow the existence of Israel is a threat to the huge Arab League, the Muslim or the Christian worlds or that room can’t be found for the Palestinian people as well. Yet somehow this is seen as a zero-sum game.
Anyone who’s ever been to Israel knows that it is the archetypal grasping, bloodthirsty, zero-sum society.
If anyone wishes to enter their hornets’ nest as our brave BP and JH are doing here, there is an intense discussion going on now on the self hating Jew’s (Glenn Greenwald) blog, ‘The distorting effect of anonymity,” at salon.com.
Some very revealing stuff regarding the soul of a Chomsky and Moyers loving nice Jewish boy from Washington DC is going on there now.
Some of this is ugly. The only thing uglier is Sophia’s risible logic.
“The Palestinians would have a state already except for the violence.” But what is the cause of this violence? Did it just spring from nowhere? It is yet another irrational manifestation of pathological anti-Semitism or a rather normal human reaction to being invaded and dispossessed.
I guess it was profoundly wrong for the Afghans (before they were Talibanised) to have resisted the Soviets; the East Timorese to have fought the Indonesians; and so on….
Sophia also write of ceding land as though it was only for the Israelies give, rather than something they in fact took, no stole…
But I know I’m barking up the wrong tree here.
Btw, on ethnic cleansing, that has been the Arab policy way before even the Jews considered it and even before the British came up with their own transfer plans in the late 1930s and especially the 1944 Labour Party Convention resolution to send most of the Arab residents of the Palestine Mandate to Iraq.
What was Tel Hai in 1920? Jaffa 1921. Petah Tiqva 1921. Hebron 1929. Hulda 1929. Jerusalem’s Old City, Neveh Yaakov, Atarot, Bet Ha’aravah, and Gush Etzion in 1947-1948, if not ethnic cleansing?
Israeli schools should NOT teach their children about the “Naqba”, as fictitious as it is.
” People who support Israel’s right to exist are all over the map politically, socially, religiously, and have many diverse points of view”
but people who oppose it or the US’s support of it are all racist leftists?
Question for all,
Why is Finkelstein called a “self-hating Jew”???
Because he dared to question Joan Peter’s shoddy “scholarship” ? Because he thinks the Israeli actions in Gaza are barbaric? Explain.
I enjoyed reading your comment and agreed almost entirely with what you have to say.