Word: bove
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...IMPRISONED. JOSE BOVE, 50, militant French farm leader; for 10 months for destroying genetically modified food crops; outside Montpellier, France. Propelled to fame as an opponent of globalization when he partially dismantled a McDonald's restaurant in 1999, Bov? was spirited to jail by helicopter following a dawn raid on his farm by 80 antiriot cops. Bov?'s conviction stems from protests denouncing the dangers of genetically modified crops, during which he demolished experimental plots of rice and corn...
...Gaul. As of Wednesday, Ronald McDonald has been retired as the icon of McDonald's France, replaced by the Gallic nationalist comic-book hero. Ironies abound, of course, since Asterix had been something of an anti-Mcdonald's icon, appropriated by anti-globalization protestors such as Mac-basher Jose Bove to symbolize French resistance to foreign encroachment. Resentment of the perceived "McDonaldization" of their culture runs high in France - the influential daily Le Monde, for example, warns that Mcdonald's "commercial hegemony threatens agriculture and (its) cultural hegemony insidiously ruins alimentary behavior - sacred reflections of French identity...
...Losers ALAN GREENSPAN The god of the greenback cuts interest rates, but the U.S. stock market faints anyway. What do they want? Free loans from Japan? JOSE BOVE McSledgehammer? The anti-globalization Frenchman loses his appeal against a three-month jail sentence for wrecking a McDonald's RICHARD LI After eight years in the limelight, the telecom wunderkind admits he never graduated from Stanford. Is he really Li Ka-shing...
...claim to Astérix's peasant style, but in truth Bove is considerably more urbane. Although born in Bordeaux in 1953, he spent most of his first seven years living in Berkeley, California, where his parents studied biochemistry at the University of California. A college activist who came of age during the aftermath of France's May 1968 student uprising, he moved to the country in 1975 with his wife to join a small farmer movement against the planned expansion of a military base. In 1987, he launched his Confederation Paysanne organization, which organizes small farmers to take actions...
...Bove's appeal, like his trial, will provide another occasion for grandstanding against the effects of globalization on the French palate, and on food cultivation more widely. The only difference is that this time, Bove's following is considerably larger, and more global. Because at least among globalization's legions of discontents, Jose Bove has made himself a brand every bit as recognizable as Ronald McDonald. And even if he fails to stop the McDonald's juggernaut, that may one day help him move a lot of product among America's Roquefort-munching classes...