If you want to guarantee avoiding being lined up against the nearest wall and shot by a revolutionary firing line, should the day come that the world governments finally lose it and the people rise up and take back everything they can get their hands on, including their human rights, land, and the means of production from the Bourgeoisie then PT is probably a good bet. Although I’m not as hot on Marxist theory as I was in my student days I’m sure that PT count as part of the merchant classes and hence members of the bourgeoisie but I wouldn’t hold that against them, I mean who actually toils in the fields these days, that’s what combine harvesters are for aren’t they?

Okay political opinion and jokes aside I have to admit that most political t-shirt designs out there combine to make a rather dour affair all round, essentially they haven’t changed much in style, colour or quality since the 1960s “Ban The Bomb” and Che Guevara tees you’ll spot in most grainy footage of the political rallies at the time, but PT have managed to do the impossible (or so many have presumed), they’ve combined fashion, humour and politics to form a particularly groovy collection.

Here’s a few of my faves available at their store right now:-

Devolve – Pro Bike Cyclist Tee.

This rather funky pro-cyclist tee features one of my all time favourite words – “devolve” – if there’s one thing I know the human race is going to have to do either by choice or by calamity it’s learn the meaning of devolution.

Which thinking about it is rather apt seeing as it’s just one letter away from revolution.

Essentially there are quite a few problems staring the human race in the face right now and one cure-all for a good proportion of them is the humble bicycle. Everything from the oil crisis (I don’t care how cheap petrol is right now it’s still running out) to pollution to the destruction of the ecology through everything from road building to out of town shopping malls is caused by the car.

Now I know there’s a lot of you out there, and this includes a vast majority of Americans, who are going through a range of expressive gestures right at this moment. Be it rolling of the eyes, a shrug, a clenched fist or an angry click of the mouse onto the nearest sexy sports car site, but think about it, is it worth dismissing this timeless piece of perfect mechanics simply for a quick thrill of speeding around the block until you reach the nearest traffic jam? The bicycle offers everyone a wealth of opportunity, be it fitness, a cleaner environment, a healthier bank balance, more nature and less tarmac, you name it this simple piece of machinery will (if we’re lucky) most likely contribute to a better life for all. Available in brown (see image), b/w and black and pink. Now get on your bike and save this grubby old world!

Keep Speech Free Tee.

I’ve featured the front and back of PT’s Keep Speech Free Tee. In case you haven’t heard of Mario Savio he was a student leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and besides the act he was an important figure in civil rights history this is a rather funky (if a little basic) design that caught my eye. What I particularly like are the punk/futurist graphics, simple lines created at particular angles have an enormous amount of impact (as did Avio’s speeches). Plus the fact that PT haven’t rammed the message home by cluttering the front, if you’re not in the mood for an uprising you can simply slip on a jacket and cover up the full lowdown on the back of this tee. But whats’ most important is that if we didn’t have rights to free speech (which by the way I am not even sure if the UK does have them or at least not to the extent that the USA does) then you’d probably be reading something more like…

I love the government – the latest government approved t-shirts come in black or white and avoid the clutter of slogans and/or images. Except for this one – “Order is Unity”. Oh are we not a happy breed? So contented, so grateful that our government can speak for us allowing us to work (silently) for the greater good. This has been a New World Order approved advertisement for government issue t-shirts available at your nearest civil obedience centre – available at 50 lashes – maximum one t-shirt per family unit.

Share a Shower Tee
Who said saving the environment can’t be sexy? If you find them kick them in the butt won’t you? Here’s a novel idea, an ecological t-shirt that doesn’t feature a bird flying or a tree or a rainbow. Thank god(ess) for that.

I’d like to see this collection grow, and I don’t know what they’ll end up replacing all the old Bush tees with, I mean I know he was jerk but he’s been a veritable goldmine for the t-shirt industry up until now :p Let’s just hope they won’t fill up the store with a load of Obama tees, I mean he seems like a nice guy but well perhaps presidential tees aren’t exactly the right direction for a revolutionary t-shirt site like Proletarian Threads. They also offer some fair deals on shipping from only $2.50 for up to $20 in tees, (although I can’t tell what the international rates are :/) and they seem to be rather laid back on wholesale charges, if you run a local action group I’m sure they’ll take it easy on you – hey even offer a fund raising kit! Almost all of their tees start at just $14.99 and if you get bored of political fashion there are plenty of links to music and books in the same vein. All of their prints are made with non-toxic inks on 100% cotton sweatshop-free garments so that should rest your conscience a little further! Anyway if you’re up for a bit of major political upheaval and want to bring down the bourgeoisie for the 21st century you know where to get your tees now don’t you?

As For TDWCA, essentially it’s a date, and for many a true antidote to the constant slogan tee reminders of the 9/11 tragedy, the last date that many across the world will remember for many decades to come, it’s wonderful to be able to direct our attention hopes to a new one and finally look towards the future!

As Ban T-Shirts put it “We will look back and remember this day as the beginning of a new chapter in American history.” I couldn’t say it better myself, well done America, you made the right choice, I know if the rest of the world were allowed to vote in the US elections it would have been an even greater landslide, but it’s happened nonetheless, the first black President of America. I stayed up all night watching the elections on CNN over here in the UK, and it was one of the most moving events I’ve witnessed in a long time. For me, seeing Jesse Jackson with tears in his eyes said it all.

Here are the other Obama tees from Ban-Tshirts celebrating the momentous occasion:-

All the above are available now but hurry I’m sure these will be even more popular than usual!

For all the freedom that technology has brought us you have to admit that there have been some massive downsides to our information revolution, including the slow coaches in government catching on to ‘this thing called the Internet’. Essentially CCTV Britain doesn’t let you sneeze without recording it on some secret database or other, and i won’t even start on America, however let’s just say if you mention Iraq or terrorism in a phone call then you’re on their hot list, besides the fact that I very much doubt any of us are about to lay waste to civilisation, the alternative is a barcoded subsistence of mutual fear and conformity.

Now if you’re still with me and are at this very moment fidgeting as you wait for a less ethereal revolution to come your way, you might want to check out the offerings at BanT-Shirts.com, a site that provides a chink of light, a hope of fashionable resistance against the underwhelming moral minority that have little to look forward to except a turnaround in the world economy and their graves.

If you’re not a faceless follower of the mainstream media, and you want to shake up your community with a pithy yet pertinent message, then Ban T-Shirts organic cotton t-shirts have a collection that could help you on your way to becoming a socially acceptable political agitator. Ban T-Shirts offer a range of superb selection of printed on the finest brands of American made sweat shop free T-shirts including American Apparel; Royal Apparel and Organic Apparel.

Inspired by the counter-culture protests of the Vietnam War era, the Guns and Flowers T-Shirt is a popular choice at BT.

If you can do nothing else resort to peaceful protest, not that you’ll have a chance these days, most soldiers are trained to shoot you kneecaps away before you’ve got close enough to stick a flower in their barrel, but I appreciate the sentiment. Solid, strong, bold and adventurous in sentiment and design, I wish that more designers had the cahunas to put their beliefs straight nto cotton and be done with it.

The most ‘manly’ thing a man can do is show his sensitivity without putting his meat and two veg on the chopping block and begging for mercy. If you love your woman, if you love women, show them you’re on their side, be a hero and wear this t-shirt. Domestic violence is a serious concern for many women and men in the world, if there’s one thing that doesn’t make sense to me it’s physically torturing the one you love. Hence my love for Ban T-Shirts Real Men tee.

I’d urge anyone out there who wishes to surreptitiously or even subconsciously change the world for the better to consider purchasing this t-shirt. It’s a slogan t-shirt sure, but apart from the fact that it’s superbly well executed it actually displays a message worth wearing. Imagine if you’re strolling along and one guy considering taking out his life’s frustrations on his poor distraught family actually reconsiders his life for a moment, this isn’t fashion, this is humanism in action, and no one can argue the value of that.

I find myself watching Fox News here in Britain just to remind myself how screwed up the world is and especially how much the media is to blame for that. it doesn’t matter what’s going down, who’s changing the world, who’s fighting who, who’s in the wrong, who’s in the right, you can be guaranteed that Fox News will lie about it.

I suspect that most problems in the world have been exacerbated by the likes of Fox who come rain or shine spout the same old same old. the left are evil, a free market is the be all and end all, and if you’re not with us you’re against us. Roll on Obama.

The fact is that user-generated content is probably on the brink of saving the world, we don’t actually need mass media, honestly we don’t. Take a look around, their are even user-generated news channels like Current.tv now that show every day schmoes like you and me filming stuff from all over the world, unedited, un-biased truth that would shake the corporate status quo to its foundations if only it had a little more airplay.

Get out there, kick up some fuss, screw with the suits, tell them what you think , wear a t-shirt from BanT-Shirts.com!

‘There will be hell to pay’ – nothing seems to be free these days, or nothing of value. It seems that everything is going cheap now the recession has started to bite the four corners of the world (someone tell me, was this planet once a cube?). Life is cheap (depending which country you live in on a scale of 1 to 10), so are promises (and that includes all political ones), the earth is running out of every conceivable raw material out there, and yet I can go to Morrisson’s Supermarket (I hate all supermarkets equally btw), and buy enough for a barbecue for four for only a fiver. What’s that all about? This isn’t an ad for a supermarket, honest! Don’t worry I’m not tied into any secret sponsorship deals, but do buy a Lexus, change your long distance provider, let me do an insurance comparison quote for you and drink more alcopops. The point is everything of value is paling into comparison to the all encompassing economic might for crude. Oil is the be all and end all right now, and unlike a few energy crises we’ve had over the past half century, this one is permanent.

Do you ever have the feeling that this might just be the quiet before the storm? In the 1920′s stockbrokers were jumping from their windows rather than face the crash. These days they make money from it, whatever does make money, bet that it will make more soon and you’ll get a slice. If a barrel of oil eventually tips $200 or $400 or even $1000, will we call it quits? Could we? If this situation continues, at this rate we’ll be burning anything in an attempt to hold on to some semblance of civilisation and someone will be betting on it. Old tyres are a great investment for the future, they burn for quite a while.

Oil is a little like money, everyone needs it but the bulk of it is owned by a select few, and the rest of us have to bid to get a piece of the action. Our governments, corporations, everyone in power has to beg, borrow or steal to keep this show on the road. Oil and money makes people lazy, I’m not including commodities brokers, but all the suckers who pay through the nose at the end of the money game, the consumer. If you trade you make a percentage of everyone else’s deals, if everyone’s broke you bet on some futures, or rather failed futures, currencies, corporations, even whole industries. I you don’t bet you’re at the mercy of those who do. The whole systems’ going to hell, more people are making money from money than any other product in the world. If you want to save the world shut down all the stock markets. Business will stagnate but eventually local economies will boom, they’ll only be able to generate enough financing to serve a local community, and well, the earth will be saved!

Hell To Pay is a strange old saying, I was in two minds about including ‘Admission – One Soul’ but to be honest I didn’t want to get into any Christian arguments, I’m a devout agnostic, I have no idea what comes after this life and neither do you or anyone else, and that includes the highly devout. You can believe what you like, whatever helps you is probably good but imagine this. You’re a bible basher, you know every word of it, you turn up at The Pearly Gates, Pete waves you on, you walk up the steps, and there’s God. White hair, beard, the lot. Next thing you know he’s asking you what you’ve learned down here, you start to recite The Bible and he rolls his eyes and shakes his head. He asks you to be creative, tell a story, recite a poem off the top of your head, sing a song, something, anything, as long as it’s original. You’re devout, you know The Bible off by heart but you’re stumped.

That’s my problem with belief, you have to save some for yourself, without it you’re the product of programming, religious or otherwise. Putting it simply ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket’. Maybe everything I’ve just said is claptrap, or maybe not, that’s the beauty of life, it might all be true, then again it could all be fiction. Unlike death, death is definitively as final as finality can get, there’s a road you travel, and that’s your life, but then it stops and that’s death. Hell would just be rubbing it in, besides if I was religious I’d this that we’re living in hell already. The world leaders don’t need horns and pitchforks to convince me they’re working on a completely different level to me. They see me and everyone I know as a statistic, an individual who exists merely to form the mass, the population that speaks, yet what do we say? More oil. Screw the environment. More war. Screw humanity. More Money. Screw everyone else.

Hell To Pay T-Shirts from only $9.99!

Hell To Pay T-Shirts T-Shirts at CafePress.com only $9.99! There are plenty of
other items available organic tees, sweatshirts and hoodies too.

Hell To Pay T-Shirt at RedBubble.com available
from GBP £11.11 – USD $23.94

Hell To Pay now available at Zazzle.com

[tags]hell,satan,god,devil,oil,recession[/tags]

The user comments obsessed about his clothes, where did he get his haircut, what jewellery is he wearing, and the saddest of all, “I really really wish I knew what shoes he’s wearing, the photo has been cropped too short”. If there’s a woman out there suffering distress because she doesn’t know which shoes Johnny Depp’s wearing, then there must at least be a million lost souls on the net who want to know more than simply how much for the tee and where.

Sure I stray from the central point, I’m human, I see metaphor, I equate it to my personal experience, but from the emails I receive the vast majority would prefer a good read over a single-sentenced fact any day. I’ve even had a comment at one of the many fashion networks I’ve joined, from someone who actually hates t-shirts but loves my blog! If that isn’t a ringing endorsement the world must be deaf.

And now for the news…. (shuffles papers, clears throat).

Retro Campaigns have been doing the rounds on the net, their press page is packed with reviewer’s links, I’m guessing they have quite a bit of coverage by now, but one more mention won’t do any harm. Christine Lusey asked me to give a quick mention to their unique line of political t-shirts. These aren’t your usual anti-Bush, Stop The Streets, We Can Change range of tees you’ll find at most stores these days, everyone is on their soapbox now; artists, musicians, perhaps the whole idea of government needs to be reassessed, but I’m not the man to provide the answers and I have a horrible feeling that no one ever will, not even the mighty Barrack.

Think about it, in the main most democracies are only really taking notice of two parties and the spectacle they cause every time they debate an issue. If you’re not in power of course you want change, but if change involves you leaving, then it’s a different matter. Tony Blair made plenty of promises and instead he hung onto George Bush’s shirttails all the way through his leadership. He’s left a devastated economy, a war torn Middle East, and a coronated PM Gordon Brown to count the pennies and lick his wounds as he loses one local election after another.

Before any Republican starts assuming this old Limey is pro McCain, you’re wrong, I’m not, I’m just a tiny bit anti-everything, perhaps I’m a lazy Marxist who enjoys the comforts of capitalism too much, perhaps I am a cowardly Anarchist who wants another revolution, but doesn’t want to fight in it, or clear up the mess afterwards.

As a very wise Irishman (actually he was born in England) said to em once, ‘you don’t want revolution, you want evolution, because revolution takes too long to pick up the pieces’. Such true words indeed. What’s funny about Retro Campaigns ‘s collection is that in the fullness of time, with the benefit of hindsight, many of the past political campaigns seem almost pleasant compared to the sniping and back-stabbing tactics used today.

Take the McGovern ’72 campaign tee for instance, could you be (pronounced with a Chandler Bing affectation) more hippy? I’m guessing this has to be for the Democrats, yes I don’t know my American political history, though I doubt most of the USA realise our ex-PM Blair has been booted out either lol. I think we should take a fresh look at this style political campaigning. How about a t-shirt that says ‘Yes, Sorry I’m a politician but…’ or perhaps ‘I know we really screwed up last time, but please, please, give us another chance’, or even ‘Don’t worry about politics, look at this lovely rainbow’ – oh no it seems that McGovern has already done that one. I just looked it up, McGovern was Kennedy’s Hilary. Yes I guessed as much, ‘please vote for me, I’m nice’ doesn’t work anymore. I seriously think the apology approach is the best option for Gordon Brown. Who knows maybe one day they’ll add another option at the voting booth, a vote of no-confidence’.

It’s great to see SpreadShirt answering the call for more eco-friendly t-shirts – now offering an option of hemp t-shirts. The t-shirt is 55% hemp, 45% organic cotton and comes in two colours – black and natural. The t-shirt is made by HempTraders. I just think the onus is on SS (oh dear better not abbreviate that again) to lead the way in ethical t-shirt production and distribution. They have definitely answered the call by offering two sites, one in America and the other Europe which reduces their carbon footprint, though I doubt by very much. As with my intentions for TshirtPrinter.org, I think they should seriously consider localising their distribution much further, or at the very least offer a Far East and an Australasian service, which would surely reduce the impact on the environment by a lot more. I’m assuming that a majority of their customers are from America and Europe right now, or I’m sure they would’ve considered it.

Something else they might have a think about is getting themselves a printer with a Soil Association mark or the equivalent, organic can mean a variety of things, standards differ from country to country, and by the way why not deal more with fair trade suppliers? Well the answer is obvious, it’s profit, it’s the bottom-line for any business, supply and demand. So, why not simply steer rather than corral the public towards more ethical purchasing? Each time they have a promotion, a sale, send out a newsletter, provide a referral banner, look for an ethical option, a footnote.

Say there was a points system, if we help Spreadshirt reduce their carbon footprint, they reward us. Even buying more t-shirts at once can reduce it, and that must work to their advantage, the less miles each product travels, the better the it is for the planet. How about something even more radical, team up with all the delivery companies that deal with catalogue clothes and get them to deliver, they usually drive past here every few days, regardless of whether Christina has ordered something or not. So take advantage of other companies’ wasted resources, offer more organic and fair trade promotions, offer a ‘green points’ voucher system (most will donate them out of guilt if you choose a worth charity to sponsor), and besides all of that, grade the t-shirts by ecological ratings as well as every other under the sun.

Finally the sex and death section of this post, don’t get too excited (or worried). I’ve had my submission for the Threadless.com/Fray.com competition accepted – the theme is Sex and Death (there you go), and I would love to know at least a few of those anonymous ratings were from people who appreciate my work. If you don’t then don’t read on lol…

See Ballbearers at Threadless.com if enough people Vote for it it should get printed.

Ballbearers pays homage to the tenuous relationship between sex and death. The funeral march carries a “Love Egg” to the grave. The egg is a symbol of birth, yet technology and our artificial environment pave the way for a future of mechanical reproduction. (It’s also funny!)

[tags]retro t-shirts, political t-shirts, Spreadshirt, Threadless[/tags]

Following in the footsteps of writer Jennifer Baumgardner, who, in 2005 designed her “I Had An Abortion” T-shirt in conjunction with the release of her documentary to make a political statement about abortion rights, Heather aimed to bring worldwide attention to the plight of rape victims.

Last year the supermarket giant ASDA banned the sale of a t-shirt from all their UK stores featuring the slogan “If at first you don’t succeed, buy her another beerÔøΩ” – which I myself would find offensive and I’m pretty open-minded in general. The vast difference between the ASDA t-shirt and Heather’s and Jennifer’s is their positioning amongst a generation of political awareness and social change.

I believe the age of “political correctness” is in the midst of rewriting its rulebook, I can understand how all three of these t-shirts could offend some, if not the moral majority as a whole.However I do believe it is vital to make a distinction between those that use “shock tactics” to forward a valid argument or social comment, and those that merely shock for the sake of it. If you want offensive t-shirts there are plenty of t-shirt stores doing their utmost to shock and sicken you, TShirtHell.com being at the top of the hit list for the family friendly lobbyists, (incidentally T-Shirt Hell had tried to place a “political statement” advertisement in Rolling Stone magazine in 2004 but were refused.)

The point is the USA has a real constitution (unlike the United Kingdom), it provides the right to free speech for every USA citizen, I am not quite sure where the rest of us in the “Free World” stands on this, I’m sure it all depends on what you say, who you know, how much money and influence you have, and your lawyer, or am I simply being cynical? Whatever my rights, I am sure I have the freedom to condone the rights of all people to draw attention to the plights of minorities; the dispossessed, the suffering, the poor, the physically disabled and many more worthy causes. For all their talk, for all the promises of politicians and short-term frenzies by the media, this is democracy in action -a slow and steady viral campaign, from the ground up. One person after another buying a t-shirt for more than the sake of style and fashion, for a change in the way society thinks, and ultimately behaves.

A true democracy must at least have tolerance for a variety of different views, tastes and opinions. However I can understand how many communities will have a terrible time accepting this, this is not a family friendly society but a society of individuals, many of whom with vastly different perspectives on life and how we should live it. Political, sexual, class and age differences can weigh down any debate with a stream of misconceptions and cultural misnomers, a torrent of “isms” and a long period of begrudging diplomacy to at the very least undo the damage done by those involved. Hence most communities cannot solve their problems only ignore them and hope they go away. It maybe upsetting for the children, the religious, the highly-sensitive and the elderly, however I suggest that Heather and Jennifer have suffered far more in comparison. I’m not a religious man, however I am sure there’s probably quite a lot of texts in the Bible suggesting showing compassion to the sufferances of others – or am I wildly off tack there? If the moral majority cannot show compassion I can understand why those who feel wronged, misunderstood, or neglected by society, would be angry enough to try and shock their contemporaries.

There is a grand tradition of politically charged imagery, it’s called ART! From the moment man/woman picked up a piece of chalk and scribbled on a cave wall, we, society at large, became witness to the graphic and painful truth that is the human experience. If we don’t share we can’t learn, if we can’t learn we cannot progress, if we can’t do that we will regress back to a puritanical time of misinformation and religious dogma. The choice is simple really, learn not to be offended by others’ suffering and even show compassion and possibly offer a positive contribution, or shutdown society now, turn off the lights and hope all our problems will go away. We need to face the truth, even if it does hurt, we don’t have to wear it, but we can’t expect those who have suffered to stay silent, this is the information age, no one stays silent unless it’s enforced by an undemocratic government. The worlds’ history shows a silent deference to the upper classes, the powers that be, monarchy, military leadership, political masters, cruel dictators and tin-pot despots.

We can’t turn back, we have to understand that this world is getting smaller everyday (6,677,602,292 humans by my last count), to avoid more and more war, and to react to natural disaster quickly and effectively, to ensure that we will still be able to trade globally in the future, to bridge cultural divides, we all have to learn more tolerance. This isn’t Burma, this is the Western World, we should know better. If we keep censoring everything, art, information, belief systems themselves will go the same way as personal privacy, consumer rights, and the power of the voter. Most of us are currently experiencing a glut in democracy, if the masses rose now, the governments would fall to their knees and do whatever we asked. But in all honesty we’re a completely different race than a few hundred years ago, people hardly muster up a march let alone revolt against their oppressors, besides we’ve seen what a mess that can get you in. As an old and wise man from Ireland once told me “Evolution not Revolution.” Evolution is natural, yes it is messy, but it works after a lot of trial and error. Revolution, well it’s practically a big fight and whoever wins can have a go and running things for a while, and if they’re no good they’ll have another and another until someone has the bright idea of bringing in military rule, and then everyone has to shut up. No more offensive t-shirts true, but then again no more free speech whatsoever, no more Church on Sundays for those who didn’t like the t-shirts, no more freedom of any kind.

Britain is one of the most homogeneous, culturally and ethnically diverse countries in the world, if not the most. We are a small island, only around 850 miles long, there’s over 60 million of us now, and that’s rather crowded. Most of us live in or near London, its the one city most American’s have heard of, it’s a second home to Aussie backpackers looking for bar work, it’s a financial powerhouse of the world (or rather it used to be), and all in all it’s a tolerable place to live (especially if you’re rich). The point is London has seen it all and then some, we’ve had punk, we’ve had riots, we’ve had the GLC and Thatcher in our time, it is a place of extremities of all genre. An offensive t-shirt in London would hardly lift an eyebrow, Londoners will walk past bank robberies, dead bodies, burning buildings, they won’t stop, unless to join the “staring competition” or take a photo for FaceBook. They don’t care. I know that most of New York wouldn’t care either. Most Western cities have a far more tolerant attitude towards shock tactics, mainly because the advertisers, the filmmakers, the pop stars, and the government have been there first.

If the Government commissioned a poster campaign to raise awareness of women’s rights and included “I’ve had an abortion” and “I’ve been raped” in their slogans, the media would jump on it for a few days, a lot of highly moralized people who’ve never seen the posters or read the literature would vociferously write in letters of complaints, perhaps the government would even withdraw them. But in most modern western progressive cities, most inhabitants would hardly notice the campaign. We are numb, that is the truth, our culture has been bombarded with everything under the sun these last few decades. TV has exploded, the Internet, drugs, music, film, massive collective events, political change, technological advance, environmental deterioration. We can’t help it, we’ve been overloaded with choice and bloated with opinion, we can’t take anymore, so we’re shutting down our public receptiveness.

When you’re young you want to stand out, but when you get older you just want to maintain the status quo. If we marked it on the evolutionary ladder, our race is a child, but as far as our instincts are concerned, society moves forward at the speed of a beached whale, its sick of conjecture, its immune to shock and horror, it simply wants to move to a gated community and watch cable and play golf all day. Soon those who have ruled the moral majority, those with economic power, those who have insisted on keep the social and economic models of our society “post-war” – even though we have entered a new century – these will meet their mortal end. However much power and status can make a person believe they are immortal, or at least their ideas and teachings are, they haven’t factored in the current and ongoing cultural malaise of a selection of generations with little more to identify with than politicians, celebrities and sports stars.

I was born in the late 60′s, I saw through the tail-end of an age of hippies turning into punks and skinheads that finished the decade with race riots and mass strikes. I’m sure every waking moment of my childhood would’ve seemed offensive to many parents today, I wasn’t sheltered from the facts, people suffer, people get angry, people want justice. It is the inalienable right of every free citizen (I am no subject of the Queen whatever she may believe) to protest. International anti-terror laws have been the undoing of many of our individual rights for privacy, congregation, behaviour and protest. We can either continue to encourage our governments to censor the world and his wife, or create a civilized debate without resorting to prejudice or in some circumstances, war. The power of image and text is as abundant today as it ever was, it has created religion, history, governments, even countries, but it is simply the instigator for debate, not the cause of a problem in society (which will always reverberate far deeper than fashion and politics), and it is certainly not the solution, but it is a vital bridge.

Most people in Europe, excepting the predominantly Catholic states, are humanists first, human rights are sacrosanct, and even though pro-lifers can debate the moment of consciousness in a foetus, the majority accept the human rights of women over their own bodies. For the main part religion doesn’t even enter the debate, or rather it does and is finally ignored. Religious beliefs are a personal system, the system of law is public, those who have suffered must be given the opportunity to seek justice, those in crisis must be given a supportive environment in which to make their own life-changing decisions. What we can’t do is tell people what to do with bodies, with their minds, with themselves, if they truly believe it has a positive effect on their lives. We can only protest, when the words or actions of that individual, public body, or corporation affects others physically and to their detriment.

The tricky thing about all this is that I have a lot of trouble with a lot of t-shirts, t-shirts that reduce us all to a common denominator so low, so bereft of compassion or understanding, it really does make me wonder what will become of us all in the years to come. Rather than censor this information, I am including links to t-shirts that offend me, not for the purposes of public titillation, but to show others that the only way to change the opinions of others, is to treat them as intelligent human beings with the capability to make their own moral choices.

Abercrombie & Fitch – Racist Asian T-Shirts

In 2002 thousands of complaints were sent to Abercrombie & Fitch over their racist t-shirts (largely from Asian-American college students, who were ironically one of Abercrombie & Fitch’s primary target groups for these products). By April that year A&F withdrew the items from their stores nationwide and discontinued all sales.

Abercrombie & Fitch justifications were scant. It used the argument that it had already had great success with sexist and Irish-American humor t-shirts in the past with no complaint. I think this is exactly where Political Correctness begins to stumble. You can easily as well find sexist t-shirts aimed at women that are “technically” denigrating men. The same goes for a long tradition of t-shirts poking fun at the British in both Ireland and America! The point is if there is a tradition of toleration, even friendly rivalry, there is probably a lot more common ground than say the English and the French would like to admit. At the other end of the spectrum you have incidents like Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that published 12 Muhammad cartoons in September 2005. A clear case of cultural divide, we have a tradition of lampooning religion, whilst Muslims and Buddhists don’t. The older the religion the more likely that the congregation will find humour in their own beliefs, I doubt that comedy would’ve ever been created without the enormous assistance of the Jewish faith and culture. Putting it as bluntly as possible, many Western cultures see everything as everyone as a target, if there’s a joke to be made, we make it.

Members of the Asian-American community offered a variety of reasons why they found the shirts offensive:

• The shirts “trivialize an entire religion and philosophy.”
• The shirts portrayed “Asian Americans doing menial work, something that early immigrants had no choice over.”
• The shirts used racist imagery from a newspaper published a century before.
• The shirts’ use of Buddhist iconography is an insult to the central Asian culture and belief system.
• The shirts employed negative stereotyping, i.e Charlie Chan and other Western stereotypes.

Nonetheless it took a long time for all the stores to pull their stock, in the meantime the public furore hit the media and 1000′s of Americans rushed out to buy the last remaining t-shirts. Many citing that they couldn’t see the problem with them, simply that they were “funny t-shirts”. There’s a distinct lack of cultural or even individual empathy in society today, perhaps there never was any, I just hope one day that the majority can begin to picture the other side of any arguments dear to their social consciousness’s heart.

Abercrombie & Fitch probably lost more customers than they gained, I doubt they would ever publicly attribute any corporate losses to the debacle, and besides the consumer has a very short memory, far less than any voter, a few snazzy ad campaigns and I’m sure A&F were back on track as usual.

Here’s another poorly thought out design… The Controversy over UK Football T-shirt slogan

A sports store has been criticised for selling a T-shirt bearing the slogan “Always Kick Ahead – Any Head” alongside England football strips.

In 2006 the Sports Soccer store in the Chequers shopping centre in Maidstone, Kent UK began selling this. Now I know Kent pretty well and there are plenty of people there who wouldn’t even need the encouragement, but there’s a long tradition in the UK for football hooliganism. sure it has vastly improved since the authorities banned those convicted of football violence from travelling to foreign games. (Although football violence has now caught on in Russia in a big way).

The store insisted the item was available nationwide and intended for rugby players (although it was displayed right next to the England Football Strip at the time). This is an example of reckless t-shirt design with no regards to the consequences, but I bet my bottom dollar that most of the world wouldn’t see a problem with it. It is a cultural divide, if your country has a history of violence in sport you can envision the problems it causes. It isn’t offensive until there’s blood running down the streets of the next European city to host the Cup.

Then of course there’s the recent Obama/Curious George t-shirt controversy, you can read the post here

I’d hate a world of earnest yet unyielding political correctness, silence isn’t some golden cure to the troubles of our times, we have to look at the root cause of the problem, cultural indifference, lack of empathy and sympathy for the common man, misunderstandings in history as well as political differences of the present. We really have to learn to tolerate each other, and if it means making t-shirts to test those boundaries, then I’m all up for it.

Take a look at this pair of sardonic beauties…

I adore wordplay, Justin has it down to a tee in these two designs, politics is one of my pet love/hates, and hes’ really managed to capture the essence of a lot of people’s political beliefs these days, i.e it’s all spin – so what’s the point? The colours and grunge effect print have really brought the quality of the designs to a perfection. They work so well as a pair I’d not be surprised if he doesn’t receive quite a few orders for both

The truth is that only politicians and their PR agencies honestly care to the core who wins or loses, the rest of us are keeping our fingers crossed that whoever leads a country next doesn’t start mentioning God, or the need to find a backwater country to introduce the delights of democracy (which in reality seems to mean a market economy rather than human rights – Britain is the most recorded nation state in the world – where’s the democracy in that?).

The bold fonts and rough hewn print of these two reminds me of the early pop-art prints of Robert Rauschenberg – the evoked political nostalgia makes the message all the more succint. The truth is we’ve been electing leaders since year dot and yet none of them can ever get it right

I am suffering indirect US Election burnout – yes I get quite a few USA news channels here – hence I follow the results when I can. Barrack has a great voice, he booms, unfortunately his crazy preacher has messed up his pitch; Clinton can rely on her hubby for the same, plus both are ripping apart their own party in one last ditch attempt to grab the limelight, and the prize of leading the Democrats into the next election. I could never imagine that happening here. Then again I could never imagine America putting up with Bush appointing his own successor without an election (RE: Gordon Brown’s succession to Tony Blair – did I miss the Coronation?).

There are plenty more fabulous tees to choose from at ShortBusClothing.com – and all at only $16.95 each (add a dollar for XXL). I’ve added a few more snapshots to give you an idea of their range, I especially appreciate the retro-look grunge style shirts, something I should try more myself, I just think certain images benefit more from the “tattered look” than others. It is so appropriate for political t-shirts right now – it hurts.

At the British local elections before last I voted for a third party, it turned out the leader was a drunk, he resigned and was replaced by an elderly gentleman of a by-gone age who couldn’t appeal to anyone under 65. He reminds me a little of the Republican candidate for the next US elections, John McCain, another out of touch guy but pitching himself at the extreme opposite of the spectrum. The truth is that America is soon to lose its crown as the primary economic powerhouse of the world. The Euro is now the favoured currency for a vast swathe of international traders, China is fast catching up on everything from import/export to luxury goods spending and even computer literacy. Sounds like one vast Stock Market in the making. He’s got a tall order to fill, follow Bush’s failed Iraq and economic strategies, plus appear like a new alternative whilst the possibility of either the first black or female President of the USA emerges on the horizon

I really appreciate the simplicity of Justin’s Terrorist T-Shirt, it gets straight to the point (yet again). If only we’d stayed out of Iraq, I’m sure the Worlds’ economy would be in a better state right now. I don’t know what Bush spent on it, but Britain is flat broke now, Gordon Brown the PM looks like a fool, an ex-Chancellor without a penny in the bank. Of course Tony Blair is laughing his head off.

If all the politicians want to talk about the same subjects in slightly different ways, they are still controlling the complete exchange of information, they are limiting the argument from the outset. Imagine a world without politicians… a world where people used good judgement instead of belief, where no man or woman, no matter their war record or high-powered connections could be trusted to run everything by proxy, according to their own emotional state, personal interactions, experiences, or beliefs.

There are no super-humans or demi-gods on this planet. Al Gore isn’t going to save the world, nor is the Dalai Llama , the only way anything is going to change is if we all admit we’ve screwed up and take a step back. It’s like each generation has a quota of resources and we’re way over ours – we’ve probably stolen enough for generations to come. We’re so out of touch with nature now that we’re relying on politicians to explain it to us.

I love this tee, “Make it Rain” – if only we could do that on command, it would certainly help Africa for a start! This is yet another beautifully textured design, I suspect Justin is overlaying grainy clip art and vectorizing the textures, I could be wrong. I’ve tried it myself a few times and it can take a while, so you know you’re buying from a quality t-shirt designer when it comes to Short Bus. Gold and dark blue is always a winning colour combination

As the world’s resources run dry I predict a near collapse of most Western electoral systems, as the spin revolves faster and faster, whilst that rare ability to simultaneously outline practical and adaptive policies, as well as implement them, withers away in a television sham of political debate. Oh well never mind, I’m sure the weather will finish us all off first before anyone really crazy jumps into the driving seat. At least you can still buy all these great tees at www.ShortBusClothing.com – if the world ends – at least you can go out in style…

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