"Telecommunications industry groups have attacked a new bill calling for government regulators to take a closer look at how broadband providers manage their networks," reports Kenneth Corin. "The Internet Freedom Preservation Act, introduced earlier this week by Rep. Ed Markey, the Democratic chairman of the House subcommittee on telecommunication and the Internet, could make it illegal for service providers to block or degrade traffic on their networks. Its introduction revisits the contentious debate over Net neutrality, which has industry groups championing the free market and warning that government intervention threatens to choke off growth and innovation in the Internet economy." (As an example of the kind of "innovation" they have in mind, PC World magazine warned recently that consumers should "get ready for a crackdown on broadband use" in which "Internet users may soon be charged extra for using 'too much' bandwidth or cut off from using some bandwidth-hungry software applications.")

Want to earn up to $2.4 million to produce and distribute across Iraq 12 issues of a comic book designed to "highlight the professionalism of the Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) and to enhance the public perception of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) as a capable, well-trained, and professional fighting force"? Well, you'll have to compete with the Lincoln Group, the PR firm that previously placed U.S. propaganda in Iraqi newspapers. Last year, the "sole source contract for the 6th Brigade Comic Book went to the Lincoln Group," reports Sharon Weinberger. The comics seem to be a continuation of a project that the Center for Media and Democracy noted back in 2005, when U.S. PsyOps troops were working on "initial character and plot development" for the series. Everyone from the United Nations to the Business Software Alliance has used comics to target young audiences. Wired points out that the U.S. Army also distributes comics in the Philippines, to get an anti-terror, pro-miltiary message to the youth of the country's Sulu islands.

Vladimir Putin and George Bush (July 2007)Ketchum, the PR firm involved in the Armstrong Williams "pundit payola" scandal, helped Vladimir Putin become Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2007. The firm also conducted "dozens of media briefings in Moscow, New York and Washington, D.C. for both the Russian Federation and its natural gas monopoly Gazprom," reports O'Dwyer's. Ketchum was paid $845,000 for two months of work for the Russian Federation in early 2007, around the G8 Summit and visits to Moscow by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Ketchum has a $250,000 per month contract with Gazprom; the gas company also pays the Gavin Anderson firm $100,000 per month. In 2007, Ketchum's Gazprom work included "several press and think tank briefings," and organizing "meetings as executives visited the U.S. in late November and early December."

"In a move that legal experts said could present a major test of First Amendment rights in the Internet area, a federal judge in San Francisco ... ordered the disabling of a Web site devoted to disclosing confidential information." The site, Wikileaks, allows people to anonymously post documents and other information. The judge's order disabled the site's U.S. domain name, Wikileaks.org, though the site can still be reached through other addresses. The case was brought by Julius Baer Bank and Trust in the Cayman Islands, after documents allegedly linking the bank to "asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion" were posted on Wikileaks. A later ruling by the same judge "ordered Wikileaks to stop distributing the bank documents." But, in an "overwhelming response" to the case, "'mirror' copies of the website sprouted like weeds" and "bloggers and other fans of the site gave new life to [the] leaked documents the bank was working to suppress," reports the Guardian. "Clearly, the court and Bank Julius Baer underestimated the ingenuity of the web development community," reads a post on the Project on Government Oversight's blog.

Low-income California communities concerned with environmental justice have launched a 21-point "Environmental Justice Movement Declaration." Their position is a challenge to the policies of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is a "national advocate of a cap-and-trade program that would allow heavy polluters, often located in poor neighborhoods, to partly buy their way out of lowering their emissions." Eighteen groups signed the Declaration, including San Joaquin Valley Latino Environmental Advance Project, Oakland's West County Toxics Coalition, the L.A. chapter of the Physicians for Social Responsibility and Delano's Assn. of Irritated Residents. Absent were the "Big Green" groups like Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club. "'Under a trading scheme, 11 power plants to be built around Los Angeles could offset emissions by extracting methane from coal seams in Utah or planting trees in Manitoba,' said Jane Williams of the California Communities Against Toxics, which fights pollution in low-income areas." "Cap and trade is a charade to continue business as usual," said Angela Johnson Meszaros, director of the California Environmental Rights Alliance. Cap and trade is an element of the climate bill that has the most support in Congress. It is sponsored by Sens. John Warner of Virginia and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.

Mark Your Calendar and Save the Date!

The Center for Media and Democracy is marking its 15th anniversary in 2008 -- that's a decade and a half of award-winning muckraking and exposing corporate spin and government propaganda. We hope you'll join us to celebrate!

We're having an after work event on Friday, April 11th in San Francisco. Delicious food, fun music, a tantalizing auction, and fellow CMD friends -- the perfect way to spend an evening!

More details to follow, but put it on your calendar now!

Want to be SURE to have all the info? Send an email to event@PRWatch.org with your name and mailing address and we will be sure you are on the list to get updates!

Since the Superdelegate Transparency Project launched on Congresspedia last week, dozens of people have helped flesh out the facts about the so-called "superdelegates" whose votes may determine whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama emerges as the Democratic Party's presidential nominee. Thanks to the hard work of project organizers at Democratic Convention Watch, OpenLeft and LiteraryOutpost, the Superdelegate Transparency Project (STP for short) has been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, National Journal, Wired magazine, and the New York Times. According to the Times, STP is "the kind of tool that the back room bosses from 1984 could never have imagined - and today's political bosses are probably horrified to see. The site includes results of the popular vote district-by-district, the allocation of pledged delegates, details about the superdelegates and how they are pledged and eventually how they will vote. It will also tell you how to contact a superdelegate if you want to become part of a lobbying effort."

This information is vital because the close race between Clinton and Obama may result in a "brokered" convention where the Democratic delegates cut deals and shift sides to give one candidate the threshold needed to gain the party's nomination. The so-called "superdelegates" therefore hold enormous power to shape the outcome of this year's presidential election, and the public deserves to know who they are, how they plan to use that power, and what forces are working to influence them.

Thanks to the work of many volunteers, much of this information has already been compiled, but considerable work still needs to be done. That's why this Thursday we're planning an experiment that we call a "barn raising" - a day-long effort in which we're hoping that many hands can make light work. We'd love it if you could stop by the project and help out. To add to the fun, we've set up an online chat room where you can ask questions, share ideas, and meet some of the people involved in organizing the project. CMD staff will be there, along with STP organizers including Mark Myers, Jennifer Nix and Avelino Maestas.

If you'd like to join in, visit the chat room at http://governation.campfirenow.com/6f4a6 and introduce yourself, or stop by the STP project page, where you'll find a list of things to do and other resources to get you started. We'll have people there all day Thursday, beginning at 8 a.m. Eastern Standard Time and continuing into the evening. Join us because it will be fun, it's important, and because democracy works best as a participatory process.

A Canadian global warming skeptics group, Friends of Science (FoS), is facing several investigations into a radio advertising blitz it ran in the 2006 election campaign, which criticized the then-Liberal government's support for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Funding for FoS came in part from a University of Calgary trust account. Canwest reported that "facing embarrassing questions raised by the online SourceWatch.org encyclopedia, the university conducted an internal audit over the past year which concluded that its trust account had been used to 'support a partisan viewpoint on climate change.'" While the university closed the trust account, it has refused to make its full audit report public. However, further inquiries are underway. "We are contacting Elections Canada to advise it of the review and why it is under way, and we will follow up with Elections Canada once it is complete," Roman Cooney, the university's vice-president of external relations, wrote in an email to Canwest. Federal Liberal member of Parliament Mark Holland said that he wants parliamentary hearings into the FoS election campaign.