FLOO Om Fair Trade Bullets kennismaken met Amerikaanse markt
New York, April 1, 2009 Ruetors. De Fair Labeling Ordnance Organisatie (FLOO) Groep bekend dat eerlijke handel kogels zullen worden gericht op de Amerikaanse markt op 4 juli, 2009.
FLOO organisaties zien het product als een grote kans, en van plan om verhoging van de inkomsten van alle FLOO organisaties wereldwijd. The bullets will be carted in wood from the Forestry Stewart Organization and packaged in recycled paper boxes.
(Just a taste of what’s in store. Brilliant Bullets offers rounds for everyone from “the mundane to the exotic”)
“With climate change, the dwindling of water resources, the inflation of food prices due to the overproduction of ethanol products, fused with American and European sympathy for the plight of the developing world in the liberal left, we are moving toward an ever increasing demand for fair trade bullets," said one FLOO official.
While there was a broad agreement by all FLOO organizations to seize the moment and assure a lucrative cash stream into the distant future, the story of the fair trade bullet reveals a bumpy road from gun powder to market.
A Serious Rift
The debate over what exactly constitutes fair trade lies at the heart of the dispute. Europeans favor working with small scale bullet factories, while the Americans favor the large scale factories.
“If Fair Trade is not supporting the most needy bullet producers in the developing world, what is the point?" said Harry Wolfe, a British member of FLOO.
But the Americans disagreed.
“They are so old Europe," said one said Paulina Wheat, an American FLOO representative. “In America, everything is SUPERSIZED, like War-Mart! Behalve, Americans as a whole are too stupid to understand the distinction between large and small scale. We might as well just go with the large scale because we’ll make a hell of a lot more money.”
American FLOO officials are also salivating in expanding their fair trade market beyond War-Mart and Starbutts. “We’re not talking cottage industries such as bananas or diamonds. By putting a fair trade tax on everything coming out of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC), it will be like having a tap root into the heart of the American tax payer’s revenues.”
The European claim that the Obama administration has “driven a stake into the MIC’s vampire heart”, was soundly trounced by their American counterparts.
“The EU cannot even agree upon beer and cheese. China is collapsing under the weight of our worthless t-bills and we still have 761 military bases around the world,” said Wheat. “We’re still number 1!"
On The Ground
Despite the fact that the proposed date for the roll out of this product is just three months away, many details have yet to be worked out.
Large Scale Munitions (LSM) producers of fair trade bullets are reluctant to venture into bullet beneficiations projects, which remain untested. It is uncertain whether people in the developing world can learn the skills to even make bullets in large enough quantities, and many are concerned about the potential job losses in Chinese factories which have historically depended upon bullet manufacturing.
Despite the meetings, LSM is hardly committed to fair trade bullets, according to Joy Dick, an attorney representing LSM and spokesperson for their trade group, the Council for Responsible Bullet Producers (CRBP).
“We will commit our revenues to bullet development beneficiation projects, creating down stream economy only as a decoy to deflect attention away from our exploitative neo-colonial practices," said Dick, speaking from her K Street office in Washington DC.
Despite reservations, Dick’s quick to acknowledge the benefits of working with FLOO, even though it was difficult to sell CSR to stockholders. “Once we were able to show them that Corporate Social Responsibility had nothing to do with helping people, but is really just a marketing scheme designed to give us a good public image while we continue our massively destructive exploitation of communities and environment to make buckets of money, they were right on board," she said.
“War-Mart remains a stellar example for us of using the FLOO brand to create a halo effect so that we can appear socially responsibile and sustainable," said Dick. “LSM is open to working with FLOO only because we will not have to change any element of our supply chain outside of labor and environmental practices.”
“We are not interested in changing the economic relationships that have been in place for the past hundred years," she added. “Our real business remains unchanged: exploit local economies, export valuable resources and do what is necessary to keep our corrupt government cronies padded adequately enough and maximize profit for our shareholders.”
Under those parameters, Dick was aroused about the rigorous efforts of FLOO organizations to recruit members of her organization for the fair trade bullet project.
FLOO officials are reportedly ironing out minor issues which both sides acknowledge are more related to style, not substance. CRBP has hired top personnel from around the world and have already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with top flight accounting firms to create reputable principles to throw the public off track.
Officials from both FLOO and LSM are working to assure a clear and unimpeded supply of bullets, especially when contrasted to the weaknesses in the Small Scale Fair Trade Bullet Producers’ (SSFTBP) supply chain.
The SSFTBP Sector
If FLOO organizations do work with small scale producers, Pakistan is the natural choice. The nation already has a vibrant small scale bullet producing sector which simply needs to be organized. Plus, its location assures a strong local market well into the distant future.
Bovendien, massive amounts of trees will be saved. Small scale bullet factories do not need to provide toilet paper to their workers. This eco-friendly policy can be achieved while maintaining a sensitivity which honors local culture.
Echter, Pradeep Ashad, SSFTBP spokesperson, representing a community of organized bullet producers just east of Peshawar, Pakistan, expressed some concerns about working with any FLOO organization.
In an interview conducted late February, Ashad lamented the difficulties involved in maintaining the levels of transparency and organization that FLOO business models demand. “Balance sheets, cash flow projections, pricing derivatives—those are no problems with my Third Form education. But when they start talking copula function, joint default probability, gamma correlation parameters, it is simply too much.”
“I would have to hold a Phd in mathematics just to be able to even communicate with these Europeans who come into my village with all their cameras only interested in shooting pictures of children with snot running down their nose!" he said with exasperation. “I tell them, why don’t you photograph the mountains like the other tourists?"
Without his doctorate, Ashad doubted that the fair trade buyers would ever work directly with him. “I will have to continue to be selling to a distributor at a discount. He is the one to be selling to FLOO players. He won’t even use the fair trade premium to build a latrine in my village! Yet he has a new Prius, a house with three stories and six wives–while no one in my village has seen any change in their economic situation.”
Unless these issues can be solved, Ashad plans on continuing to sell his product directly to anyone who will buy them without the constraints of “transparency” or the burden of having to pay tax, a concept that any business person operating in the developing world, where all governments are massively corrupt, knows is stupid.
“I can make much better money selling my fair trade AK47 bullets directly at the Assassin’s market. They do not require such silly paperwork. They just want good bullets for Afghanistan to fight the American soldiers! Best of all, American companies set up in Pakistan will sell me all the raw material for these bullets!"
Despite the questions in the SSFTBP and LSM supply chain, FLOO officials are confident that they will be able to reach their targeted time line. “The bullets have to be ready by American Independence Day," said one official. “The symbolism of a New America with its fair trade bullets is too big of a bull’s eye to miss.”
(Another satisfied customer at the Assassin’s Mart in Peshawar.)
Mark Heist, author of the jewelry watchdog website, airjewelry.org, agrees. “I don’t care whether it is small scale or large scale. As long as the bullets are transparently sourced and I have them by my next elk hunt in November, 2009, I’ll fully support any of their initiatives. PC environmentalist big game hunters such as myself should do all their killing with fair trade bullets.”
A Transatlantic Concord
Even through the split over whether to support LSM or SSFTBP remains, all FLOO organizations present a united front on several issues.
Both sides agreed that cluster munitions were out because of the fact that such armament results in the death of too many civilians which might soil the fair trade brand. There is no plan to introduce fair trade landmines, fair trade smart or cluster bombs, nor fair trade missiles, though officials were quick to point out that these products might be considered as offerings for the future.
In a debate that some observers characterized as passionate, bordering on acrimonious, there was a last minute agreement over the issue of radioactivity. Fair trade bullets will not have radio active tips, as the Americans originally desired.
“We had the unique opportunity to rope in the nuclear industry and the military industrial complex at the same time," said Wheat. “Those European sissy’s really blew the call on that one!"
At the end of the meetings which dragged on for several days, both the Europeans and America FLOO officials were offered a benediction by a liberation theology priest, Father France, who had spent years living with poor farmers in the Americas.
The grandfatherly figure who to some in the room resembled St. Frances, offered these words. “The straight main road to hell is paved with good intentions, but after this meeting, I prefer a more circuitous path, wherever it may take me.”
After the sermon in the smoky back rooms of the hallowed inner sanctum halls of FLOO, everyone came together to drink a celebratory glass of grain alcohol to lighten the weighty mood. The discussion over determining the actual sourcing of the materials within the bullets was delayed. “It is a minor detail which we will iron out after we’ve developed our marketing plan," said Wheat.
Despite the appearance of harmony, echter, undisclosed sources have claimed that a serious a rift between European and American FLOO organizations exists.
“As usual, they are hardly talking to each other," said one observer of the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “They can only agree upon one thing: to maintain a good appearance so that their brand will not be effected.”
A New Trend in Jewelry
Meanwhile, the news of fair trade bullets has spread like fireworks, reaching the top designers of the jewelry sector. Fair trade and green has been an emerging trend in the jewelry sector and jewelers from around the world are anxious to jump into fair trade bullets, the next hot ticket fashion item.
Greg Bellowsrio, already plans on incorporating bullets as part of his “InCREDulous” ethical jewelry platform. “I plan on opening sixty stores around the world by August, 2009. All I need is a little bit of funding.”
Jerri Goldstein, A spokesperson from Jewelers Association of Washington State (JAWS), a major trade and lobbying group representing independent jewelers of the Pacific Northwest, was first to break the story.
“There’s nothing that American men love more than their guns," she said (no pun intended). “There are nearly 150 million men out there who only wear wedding rings. If you think that the collectible bead tend was hot," she said, “wait until you see the collectible bullet. They’ll feel guilty about spending money on themselves, so they’ll pick up a little something for their wives, like a diamond. This trend is sure to bring foot traffic into jewelry stores nationwide.”
Nancy Swansong, an accomplished designer, who in the initial stages of her career won both the Grande Bell award and was a Shooting Star at the JLK (Jewelers Labyrinth Keystone) Show, will be featuring her fair trade bullet collection in a roll out at the next Needless Markup Show, for the marquis independents and the few large jewelry chains that are not yet bankrupt.
She plans to target regional markets. “In Texas, they like it big, but even Texas women don’t have the balls to hang a cluster bomb around their necks. We’ll be using 30-06 of .357 magnum shells as earrings and necklaces," said Swansong. “In the Dakotas, we’ve produced a special plastic earring made from bird hunters’ shot gun shells that’s people friendly and we’re hoping Dick Cheney will endorse it. In New England, the guys there are afraid of wearing jewelry because they’re too insecure around issues of sexual identity, so we lean toward the more subtle .246 round, a classic deer hunting shell that isn’t overstated. If a guy in New England wears a .246 shell around his neck, his buddies will not mistake him for being gay.”
Swansong, who has strong connections with Hollywood, has special plans for the LA market. She plans on using 9mm rounds that would fit the Glock high capacity models 17 & 19. To reduce the weight on the Earth and comply with the standards for the state of California, the lead in the Glock bullet will be removed (and recycled), in favor of a full metal jacket round.
Celebrities who will be wearing the bullets at the next Academy Awards, will have special bullet tips made from 100% recycled platinum.
A major roll out of fair trade bullets as a premier jewelry item will occur in 2010, when three fair trade bullet stores open on 5th Avenue in New York, Michigan Avenue in Chicago and Rodeo Drive in LA.
(“I wish I had shot this elk with a fair trade bullet,” – Marc Choyt, Publisher of fairjewelry.org)
