"Documents and emails released this week ... suggest Pfizer's marketers influenced" research on the drug Neurontin "by declining to release or altering the conclusions of studies that found no beneficial effect from Neurontin for various off-label conditions," reports Keith Winstein. The Food and Drug Administration approved Neurontin for epilepsy and shingles. In 2004, Pfizer's Warner-Lambert unit admitted to promoting "off-label" uses. Companies can't promote drugs for unapproved uses, though doctors can prescribe off-label. Pfizer paid $430 million for the offense and claimed it ensured "there was no improper marketing after it purchased Warner-Lambert in 2000." But the new documents, which were submitted in a lawsuit against Pfizer, detail more recent attempts to boost off-label sales. After one study showed Neurontin didn't lessen diabetic nerve pain, a marketer suggested "delaying the publication for as long as possible." One researcher emailed that she was told "not to publish anything that damages Neurontin's marketing success." Pfizer also failed to publish results that Neurontin didn't ease post-operative nerve pain. Lastly, after the drug was shown to have no effect on bipolar disorder, a Pfizer consultant writing up the study excluded 16 patients and changed how other patients were characterized, thus "turning a failure into a success."

The British "country brand capital development" firm Acanchi is crafting a "new image" for Israel. "Our research shows that Israel's brand is essentially the [Israel-Palestine] conflict," explained Israeli Foreign Ministry official Ido Aharoni. "Even those who recognize that Israel is in the right are not attracted to it, because they see it as a supplier of bad news." Israel previously worked with the ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi and U.S. political consultants James Carville and Stanley Greenberg to address its image problem. The rebranding effort began after September 2001, when government officials realized "Israel had an opportunity to escape its image as the main source of conflict with the Islamic word," because the "war on Islamic terror" had "gone global," reports Haaretz. As part of its rebranding, the Israeli government has launched an official MySpace page and invited "international journalists to tour Israel's wine industry." The Israeli government hired Acanchi in August 2008. Acanchi founder Fiona Gilmore recently toured Israel, as her firm prepares to "launch the new brand." The firm will highlight "Israel's scientific and cultural achievements." Acanchi "has helped to rebrand locales ranging from Lebanon to Northern Ireland."

Armstrong WilliamsThe second debate between the major party U.S. presidential candidates didn't address immigration policy. That disappointed the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In September, FAIR held its third annual "Hold Their Feet to the Fire" event, where it brings "dozens of talk radio hosts from around the country" to Washington DC, to do broadcasts on immigration issues, while FAIR supporters lobby members of Congress. This year's radio hosts included Armstrong Williams, while CNN's Lou Dobbs broadcast from the event. "We had talk hosts broadcasting for four hours each day -- 336 hours of radio time across virtually the entire country," said FAIR's Bob Dane. The Republican PR firm Shirley & Bannister Public Affairs booked the radio guests, including members of Congress, authors and "other high-profile figures of the immigration movement." Although the presidential "candidates are not talking about" immigration and border security, complained Dane, "this event is a loud reminder that we aren't and will not be silent."

Montana: Republicans challenging 6,000 voter regs of students, Native Americans. (October 8, 2008)

In November of last year, a panel of scholars met at the New York Public Library to mark the 60th anniversary of George Orwell's landmark essay, "Politics and the English Language," and to discuss the current state of propaganda in American politics. A video from that panel is now available on the internet. How are political messages framed? How are they decoded by their audience? These and similar questions are explored by panelists including George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive linguistics and a guru of Democratic political messaging; Republican pollster and messaging consultant Frank Luntz; and Drew Weston, a professor of psychology and author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation. Among other things, the discussion demonstrates that political pundits are no better at predicting the future than anyone else. (Luntz, for example, repeatedly predicts that Hillary Clinton will become the next president.) But if you want to understand how rhetorical framing works and how political strategists strategize, this 85-minute video provides some interesting examples.