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THE WEEKLY SPIN, July 26, 2006
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THIS WEEK’S NEWS
== BLOG POSTINGS ==
1. The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the Mess in Iraq
== SPIN OF THE DAY ==
1. The Business of Government Science
2. Lovins Says U.S. Nuclear Power Is Too Dead To Jump Start
3. Long Island Drug Bust
4. Beyond Persecution?
5. Greenwashing Is All About the Greenbacks
6. btw, u should look out 4 IEDs
7. War is the New Peace
8. Who Is Strumpette?
9. Crackdown in Cairo
10. Investigation Sought Into Campaign Against Drug Whistleblower
11. Ethics Talk And Ethics Walk
12. Newt & the Neocons Pitch World War III — Who’s Buying It?
13. Business Lobbies Hard for India’s Nuclear Exemption
14. Medical Journal Bats On After Three Strikes
15. Pentagon Seeks More Bang for Propaganda Buck
16. He Who Sows the Wind, Reaps the Storm
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== BLOG POSTINGS ==
1. THE BEST WAR EVER: LIES, DAMNED LIES AND THE MESS IN IRAQ
by John Stauber
Exactly three years ago our book Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq was published. Our publisher pitched it this way: “Rampton and Stauber take no prisoners as they reveal – headline by headline, news show by news show, press conference by press conference – the deliberate, aggressive, and highly successful public relations campaign that sold the Iraqi war to the American public. Rampton and Stauber show us a brave new shocking world where savvy marketers, ‘information warriors,’ and ‘perception managers’ can sell an entire war to consumers.” Our new book, The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the Mess in Iraq, is a month away from publication; it will hit bookstores September 14th.
For the rest of this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/5009
== SPIN OF THE DAY ==
1. THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT SCIENCE
www.the-scientist.com/news/display/24056
Nearly one in five scientists appointed to expert panels of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) had direct financial ties to companies that stood to benefit from the deliberations, according to a sampling released by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). NAS was created by President Lincoln in 1863, to “investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art” when requested by any department of the government. “I believe there are scientists out there without conflicts of interest who can serve on these committees and do a comparable job” to experts with ties to the affected companies, said Merrill Goozner, CSPI’s director of Integrity in Science program. CSPI cites the example of a NAS panel evaluating the risk of mercury in fish that included a scientist whose research was funded by pro-industry lobbying groups such as the United States Tuna Foundation. Another panel studying pollution emissions included 10 out of 11 scientists with ties to carbon-emitting industries.
SOURCE: The Scientist, July 24, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/5010
2. LOVINS SAYS U.S. NUCLEAR POWER IS TOO DEAD TO JUMP START
www.google.com/url?q=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/24/AR2006072400976.html&e=14823&sa=X&oi
Amory Lovins, the Chief Executive Officer of the Rocky Mountains Institute, an eco-efficiency think tank, is aghast at U.S. government support for the U.S.- India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Initiative. The agreement would facilitate an expansion of nuclear power in India, which is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. “We’re going to blow up what’s left of the nonproliferation regimes to promote a sector that doesn’t make sense,” Lovins told the Washington Post. Lovins believes India would be better off promoting energy efficiency than pouring scarce funds into nuclear power. Lovins said that the subsidies provided to nuclear power in the U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005 “are equal to the entire capital cost of the next six reactors . . . but is similar to defibrillating a corpse: it will jump but not revive.”
SOURCE: Washington Post, July 25, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/5008
3. LONG ISLAND DRUG BUST
www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/business/22drugdoc.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
In March this year Dr. Peter Gleason, a Maryland psychiatrist, was arrested by the FBI at a Long Island train station and later charged for promoting off-label use of Xyrem, a prescription drug manufactured by Jazz Pharmaceuticals. The New York Times reports that federal prosecutors allege that “at hundreds of speeches and seminars where he was rewarded with generous fees, Dr. Gleason advised other physicians that a powerful drug for narcolepsy could be prescribed for depression and pain relief. In doing so, he conspired with the drug’s manufacturer to recommend it for potentially dangerous uses the prosecutors claim.” Gleason admits that he was paid over $100,000 last year alone from Jazz Pharmaceuticals. Gleason, who was released on bail, argues that he was only charged after he refused to help build a case against the drug company which, New York Times reporter Alex Beremson writes, “court documents seem to support.”
SOURCE: New York Times, July 22, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/5007
4. BEYOND PERSECUTION?
news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1190528.ece
The global oil giant, BP, has reached a multi-million pound out-of-court settlement with a group of Colombian farmers after they brought a legal action against the company in Britain. They alleged that Exploration Company (Colombia) “benefited from harassment and intimidation meted out by Colombian paramilitaries employed by the government” to guard a 450-kilometre long pipeline from the Cusiana-Cupiagua oilfields. “Marta Hinestroza, one of the farmers’ lawyers, fled Colombia for Britain when she discovered that her name was on a paramilitary hit list. In November 2002, the Home Office granted Ms Hinestroza political asylum after she told of the threats she faced while working in the region,” The Independent reports.
SOURCE: The Independent (UK), July 22 , 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/5006
5. GREENWASHING IS ALL ABOUT THE GREENBACKS
www.brandweek.com/bw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002878049
Brandweek examines some of the latest corporate greenwashing efforts. A recently released study by Landor Associates, part of the WPP, found that “fifty-eight percent of the general population” are “self-proclaimed “Non-Green’ individuals [who] do not care about environmentally friendly practices, including recycling, corporate social responsibility, or natural and/or organic ingredients. … [T]wenty-five percent of the respondents consider themselves ‘Green Interested,’ meaning that while this group is concerned about the environment, it is not active in its defense. The remaining seventeen percent surveyed are, in fact, ‘Green Motivated,’ meaning that they feel it’s very important for a company to be Green.” Brandweek observes “the noise in the green marketing space has grown louder in recent months” with “ Dow Chemical’s ‘Human Element’ campaign … Shell Oil launched a $30 million marketing campaign in June … General Electric continues to build on its ‘Ecomagination’ effort… In June a public/private partnership titled EcoZone was launched, created by EcoMedia, a New York-based media company. Such companies as DaimlerChrysler, Alcoa and AbTech … pay up to $5,000 per sign to put their logos on billboards carrying environmental messages … ‘Green is green as in the color of money,’ said Judy Hu … at General Electric. ‘It is about a business opportunity, and we believe we can increase our revenue behind these Ecomagination products and services.’ “
SOURCE: Brandweek, July 24, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/5005
6. BTW, U SHOULD LOOK OUT 4 IEDS
seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/1700AP_Marines_MySpace.html
94 million registered users – many in their teens and 20s – use MySpace.Com as a way to connect with others with similar interests. The U.S. Marine Corps is hoping to tap into that pool of potential recruits through its own MySpace profile. According to Gunnery Sgt. Brian Lancioni, it’s “definitely the new wave. Everything’s technical with these kids, and the Internet is a great way to show what the Marine Corps has to offer.” Louise Eaton, media and Web chief for the U.S. Army Accession Command agrees. “It is where prospects are. We go to where they are to try to inform them of the opportunities we offer.” Fortunately, the Marine Corps has stated that they won’t actually enlist anyone directly through the MySpace site – they will meet the potential recruits in person first. The approach has its critics. Steve Morse with the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors stated “It’s kind of obnoxious of them to be using something that’s sort of like a youth domain, to kind of come in and really sucker youth into something they’re not really explaining fully.”
SOURCE: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 24, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/5004
7. WAR IS THE NEW PEACE
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/20/AR2006072001907.html
Shortly after attacking Iraq in March 2003, President Bush told wounded soldiers that “the war in Iraq is really about peace.” Now it seems that ‘peace’ is breaking out in Lebanon too. The Washington Post reports that “Bush sees a step to peace” in the current “Mideast strife.” According to White House counselor Dan Bartlett, “a moment of clarity has arrived.”
SOURCE: Washington Post, July 21, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/5003
8. WHO IS STRUMPETTE?
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/07/19/BL2006071900447.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns
Howard Kurtz gives a shout out to an anonymous team of PR industry bloggers who are posting under the identity of “Strumpette,” a slutty expert in marketing communications with “perfect perky boobs” who “sprinkles high-toned dissections of the flaws and foibles of the PR business with personal insults and the occasional expletive. Strumpette’s posts are quite pugnacious, under such headlines as ‘PR Mega-Firm’s CEO Caught in Big Lie’, ‘Exposing the Communist Blogifesto’ and ‘Word-of-Mouth Marketing: Viagra for the PR Business.’” Some PR people think she is “vicious,” while another damns the blog with faint praise, saying it is “marginally funny, and acts like a stripper in a nursing home.”
SOURCE: Washington Post, July 19, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/5001
9. CRACKDOWN IN CAIRO
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/18/AR2006071801565.html “With the tacit consent of the Bush administration, authoritarian Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is continuing his campaign against the democratic movement that sprouted in his country last year,” writes the Washington Post. His government has made it illegal to “”affront the president of the republic” — or insult parliament, public agencies, the armed forces, the judiciary. Journalists and bloggers have been arrested, jailed and brutally treated. “The crackdown on the press was predictable,” the Post says, “because it followed Mr. Mubarak’s assault on opposition political parties and on a judges’ reform movement — the two other key elements of Cairo’s promising Spring of 2005.”
SOURCE: Washington Post, July 19, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/5000
10. INVESTIGATION SOUGHT INTO CAMPAIGN AGAINST DRUG WHISTLEBLOWER
www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-vioxx-whistleblower,0,3647595.story
Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley has written to the inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services seeking an investigation into whether the Food and Drug Administration and Merck collaborated to try and discredit a whistleblower. Dr. David J. Graham, a FDA drug safety official, publicized the risks associated with Merck’s painkiller, Vioxx. In his letter, Grassley cited notes by a Merck employee of a conversation with an FDA official who mentioned an “opportunity to get (the) message out” on Graham and distribute the company’s critique of him to journalists. In a statement to Associated Press, Merck wrote that it has “right to express our views when we believe information others have presented is not fair and balanced.” In a deposition in a class action case against Merck, Graham stated the material obtained under discovery “actually demonstrates more clearly just how widespread the organized campaign to discredit and smear me was.”
SOURCE: Newsday, July 19, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4999
11. ETHICS TALK AND ETHICS WALK
www.pria.com.au/prianews/id/111
The anti-astroturfing campaign has drawn a response from the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA). The National President of PRIA, Annabelle Warren, wrote in a statement that the organisation “strongly opposes astro-turfing practices” and that members must “adhere to the highest standards of ethical practice.” If that is the case why did PRIA’s College of Fellows recently reject a complaint by Australian Greens Senator Christine Milne over the front group, Tasmanians for a Better Future? Warren said she couldn’t comment on the case as the PRIA Board was presented only with a recommendation but not the rationale for the College of Fellows assessment. Senator Milne was unavailable for comment. Keith Jackson, from the Sydney PR firm Jackson Wells Morris notes that there has been no response to the anti-astounding campaign by the PR industry “Big Guys” including Burson-Marsteller, Edelman, Weber Shandwick and Porter Novelli. “They say ethics. We see denial,” he concludes.
SOURCE: Public Relations Institute of Australia, July 19, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4998
12. NEWT & THE NEOCONS PITCH WORLD WAR III — WHO’S BUYING IT?
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34039
Bill Berkowitz reports, “ For years, U.S. neoconservatives have been ratcheting up the rhetoric — mostly in small gatherings and on partisan web sites — claiming that terrorist activities around the world constituted the initial stages of a new world war. But during the past week or so … Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the United States House of Representatives, is using any platform available to him to convince the public that the U.S. is engaged in World War III. … While Gingrich’s media tour definitely thrust him back into the national political spotlight, it may have also given the public a sneak peek into the Republican Party’s political/marketing strategy for the November congressional elections: If the war on terrorism doesn’t create a fearful enough climate amongst voters, why not ratchet it up by mentioning the spectre of a World War III? … John Stauber … [co-] author of the forthcoming book, ‘”The Best War Ever”, [told IPS] ‘You’ve got to call it something and five years after 9/11 with Osama [bin Laden] still roaming free and Iraq an American quagmire, and the Republican Party in danger of losing control of Congress, this ploy makes marketing sense.’ “
SOURCE: Inter Press Service, July 20, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4997
13. BUSINESS LOBBIES HARD FOR INDIA’S NUCLEAR EXEMPTION
www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/17/bloomberg/sxrupee.php
Robert Hoffman, a lobbyist for Oracle, describes the preliminary Congressional vote to exempt India from a ban on nuclear technology sales as “a coming-out party of sorts for the India lobby.” The U.S. Atomic Energy Act bans nuclear sales to countries, such as India, that have not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Last month, both House and Senate committees gave in-principle support to the agreement negotiated between U.S. President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Under the agreement, only 14 of India’s 22 nuclear reactors would be open to international scrutiny. The U.S India Business Council, a project of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have hired lobbyists Patton Boggs to help with their campaign. The Indian government have hired Barbour Griffith & Rogers to promote the agreement. The final Congressional vote in expected within weeks.
SOURCE: International Herald Tribune, July 18, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4996
14. MEDICAL JOURNAL BATS ON AFTER THREE STRIKES
www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/health/4055561.html
For the third time in two months, Catherine DeAngelis, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), has been embarrassed by revelations that articles published in the journal have not included full disclosure by authors of their drug industry funding. The latest edition of JAMA includes a study which links severe migraines to heart attacks in women. “All six of the study’s authors have done consulting work or received research funding from makers of treatments for migraines or heart-related problems,” reported Lindsay Tanner for Associated Press. “Authors should always err on the side of full disclosure,” DeAngelis wrote in a note to readers. The Center for Science in the Public Interest argues that journals should institute a three-year ban for non-disclosure and the penalty should apply to all publications involved in the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Last week, DeAngelis told (sub req’d) the Wall Street Journal she was against instituting a ban.
SOURCE: Houston Chronicle, July 18, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4995
15. PENTAGON SEEKS MORE BANG FOR PROPAGANDA BUCK
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/18/AR2006071801372_pf.html
“The U.S. military has removed two firms from a psychological operations contract aimed at influencing international public opinion,” reports the Washington Post. “The firms, plus a third company (SYColeman) that will retain the contract, spent the past year developing prototypes for radio and television spots intended for use in Iraq and in other nations… The TV and radio contract, originally worth up to $300 million over five years, had been held by three firms since last year: the Lincoln Group; San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp.; and Arlington-based SYColeman, a subsidiary of New York-based L-3 Communications Corp. … ‘We learned that working with three companies increases expenditures in both time and money and does not provide best value to the government,” said Lt. Col. David Farlow, spokesman for the military’s psychological operations unit. Lincoln Group spokesman Bill Dixon said in a statement yesterday that the firm ‘continues to win contracts’ for Pentagon propaganda, but ‘because confidentiality is vital to this work, the firm will not comment on the details of any contracts.’ “
SOURCE: Washington Post, July 19, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4994
16. HE WHO SOWS THE WIND, REAPS THE STORM
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/18/AR2006071800400.html
It isn’t only Israeli bombs that are landing in Lebanon. Propaganda flyers are also descending on the Lebanese landscape. This is just the most recent chapter in Israel’s efforts to influence Lebanese opinion. “In a crude drawing, leaflets dropped by Israeli planes over Beirut depict Hizbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah as a cobra dancing to the tune of the flute-playing leaders of Iran, Syria and Palestinian group Hamas. The cartoon shows two bombs near Nasrallah’s head, while the foreign leaders sit cross-legged on a map of Lebanon. Typed in Arabic and signed the ‘State of Israel’, the flyers are part of attempts by Israel to turn the Lebanese against the guerrilla group it is fighting.” A translation of the leaflet pictured here is available at BloggingBeirut.com. In the past, Israel has also used leaflet drops to discourage Lebanese aid to Palestinian fighters.
SOURCE: The Washington Post, July 18, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4993
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