Cisco's Red Scarves

The Young Pioneers are a Communist Party youth group roughly equivalent to a unisex version of the Cub/Brownie Scouts in this country. Just like the Hitler Youth of yore (itself straight out of the British Baden-Powell mold), the common purpose of all these groups is frank, overt, political indoctrination. China's (very young) Young Pioneers are known informally as the Red Scarves, the scarf being the only official element of their uniform. Local groups dress alike as local budgets (or interests?) allow.


Cisco Systems has an ad featuring those omnipresent Red Scarves (tinted orange in the clip, for some reason) of a rural Chinese school getting connected to the world when a UPS-looking guy bicycles up a path with a brown boxload full of Cisco goodies — "Human Network Effect" comic books, maybe? I really can't tell. This is one of them message thingies, so maybe the message is "I'd Like to Teach, Teach Your Children Well, About Free Market Economies and How Your Chinese Commie Kids Are The Future Cookie Jar For American Stockholders."

Err... Adam Smith, right? (Can you hum the Ponzi Derivatives song for us, Mr. Baron, sir?)

Regardless of what Cisco thinks it's selling, the symbology is not exactly lost on an alert world. The subtext reveals to what extent them commie pinko socialisticociscoans be willing to bend over to play grabankle with Red China. Arrrgh!