Headlines

Pro-Road TV Ads Tar Environmentalists as Tyrants

"The Korean War veteran stares out from the television screen, an American flag waving behind him. 'Environmentalists are telling us how to live our lives ... preventing us from driving cars, and forcing us to live downtown,' he says. 'In America, these are still personal choices. Tyranny didn't win in South Korea,' he concludes. 'Don't let it get a foothold here.' The message, brought to you by the Georgia Highway Contractors Association, began airing on metro Atlanta television stations last week. Similar messages have been airing for months across the country..."

Spies for Hire

A group called "Military Information Services" is offering its skills in "psychological warfare" to corporations and governments. A unit of MIS called "Behavior Modification Operations" calls itself "a unique international corporate advisory company ready to fulfill your specific behavior modification requirements in support of organizational objectives in unstable areas and nations of the world. BMO is staffed by psychological warfare and military operations professionals who specialize in developing regions of Africa, the Middle East, Asia and South America. ...

The New Thought Police--Suppressing Dissent in Science

This article examines attempts in England to establish a "press council" that would control what reporters are allowed to write about issues involving science and product safety, particularly in regard to genetically modified foods. Mae-Wan Ho and Jonathan Mathews report on the seamless way in which the corporations, the state and the scientific establishment are co-ordinating their efforts to suppress scientific dissent and force feed the world with GM crops.

What Global Warming?

ExxonMobil's stubborn refusal to acknowledge the fact that burning fossil fuels has a role in global warming is creating a backlash against the world's biggest company. Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and People & Planet launched a campaign in the U.K. earlier this month to boycott Esso gasoline, supported by a variety of prominent politicians, celebrities and writers.

DynCorp In Colombia: Outsourcing the Drug War

Like the old English "privateer" pirates of the Caribbean five hundred years ago, sailing under no national flag -- robbing and plundering Latin America's riches for the English Crown, Washington now employs hundreds of contract employees through U.S. corporations to carry out its policies in Colombia and other countries. Like the sixteenth century pirates, if they get caught in an embarrassing crime, or are killed, the U.S. government can deny responsibility for their actions.

Babbitt Endorses Yucca Mountain Nuclear Dump

WASHINGTON -- Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, a national environmental voice who served on the commission that studied the Three Mile Island accident more than 20 years ago, on Tuesday endorsed Yucca Mountain in Nevada as "safe and appropriate" to bury nuclear waste.

The Secret Life of AAA

People join the American Automobile Association because they think it's a nice way to get Triptiks, traveler's checks and emergency towing, but what most members don't know is that AAA is a lobbyist for more roads, more pollution, and more gas guzzling vehicles. AAA weighs in on highway funding, suburban sprawl, mass transit, car design and safety, air pollution, and global warming. Almost without exception, critics say, it advocates policies that damage the environment and endanger health.

Secret PR Seminar Meets 50th Time

PR Seminar, a secretive spinoff of the National Association of Manufacturers, held its 50th annual meeting on June 6-9 of this year. "You have entered a very elite circle, you are the cream of the crop of the PR world," one of its members said in 1979. Not a word of the proceedings is supposed to escape although the O'Dwyer Co. has covered the event with varying degrees of completeness since 1970.

Moore Disinformation

In a recent Manilla Times article, Canadian timber industry apologist Patrick Moore, identified as a co-founder of Greenpeace and an ecologist, accuses Greenpeace of "abandoning science and following agendas that have little to do with saving the Earth." Is there really "trouble in the house of Greenpeace" as the Manilla Times headline suggests or are Moore's comments an industry supported attempt to undermine and discredit anti-biotech NGOs?

$2 million Dairy Issues Management Contract Awarded to Weber Shandwick

Dairy Management Inc., a trade association funded by dairy industry check-off money for building U.S. dairy product demand, awarded an issues management account to Weber Shandwick. The contract is believed to be around $2 million. Weber Shandwick won the account over top-tier agencies Fleishman-Hillard, Edelman PR Worldwide, Burson-Marsteller and Porter Novelli. Sara Galvin heads the DMI account from WSW's Minneapolis office. She is supported by staffers in Washington, D.C. The campaign had been expected to focus on concerns raised by foot-and-mouth and mad cow disease in Europe.

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