Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
According to a recent ruling by federal judge Saundra Brown Armstrong, the Bush administration broke the law by failing to present the latest scientific research about global warming to Congress and the public.
What's the difference between a slick pro-war front group exploiting Iraq veterans to pour gasoline on the fire in Iraq, and a grassroots group of Iraq veterans leading the battle at home to end Bush's war of occupation?
Watch these YouTube videos and decide for yourself.
The business of pro-war propaganda is booming as "Freedom's Watch" joins Vets for Freedom, Move America Forward and other pro-war advocates for a stepped up war in Iraq in line with the Bush/Cheney Global War on Terror.
Ari Fleischer, former White House PR flack who jumped ship into the private sector shortly after the 2003 US invasion, is the public face and a founding board member of Freedom's Watch, which is being rolled out this week with emotional advertisements featuring wounded veterans imploring Americans to keep the money flowing for the occupation.
One such advertisement is up on YouTube. Once again the war in Iraq is being falsely linked to and justified by the terror attacks of 9/11, one of the Bush Administration's Big Lies that was was used to mislead America into war. In the Freedom's Watch advertisment on YouTube a war vet with prosthetic legs beseeches:
Shortly after the November 2006 election the Democracy Alliance, an exclusive group of about 100 Democratic Party millionaire activists, met in Miami, Florida. Members and their guests heard their keynote speaker and liberal legend Mario Cuomo analyze the Democratic Party in the wake of its stunning electoral victories that had given Democrats control of the US Congress. Cuomo criticized the Democratic Party for lacking vision, big ideas and a winning political argument. His recipe for future Democratic victories was simple: "You seize the biggest idea you can, the biggest idea you can understand. And this is what moves elections."
Cuomo then dared to voice an inconvenient truth: "Now it's 2006 and we're all rejoicing. Why? Because of Iraq. A GIFT. A gift to the Democrats. A lot of whom voted for the war anyway." The former New York governor challenged his partisan audience, "If Iraq is not an issue, then what issues do we have to talk about? … Where does that leave you? It leaves you in the same position you were in in 2004 – without an issue. Because you have no big idea."
It may seem incongruous to the average person why Philip Morris (PM) would back legislation to restrict its business, yet that is what PM seems to be is doing by supporting S. 625, the "Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act," the bill that would give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority over tobacco products. After all, PM has a corporate mandate to increase profits for its shareholders, so PM would not support this legislation if it wasn't going to benefit its bottom line, and it is practically an axiom in public health that whatever benefits PM's bottom line is going to be bad for public health. That's what makes this bill especially troubling to people who study tobacco industry documents; it is clear that PM had a hand in crafting it. That alone sounds like a lot, but PM's efforts to enact it are clearly delivering the company a hefty side-benefit of causing dissent within the tobacco control community over its passage.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
The PR firm Edelman "is handling the recasting of Diebold Election Systems to Premier Election Solutions," following the parent company's failure to sell its e-voting subsidiary.
Submitted by John Stauber on
The Boston Globe reports "the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the nation's oldest and most influential veterans' organizations, have broken their relative silence on the merits of the Iraq war, joining some of the staunchest war supporters to lobby Congress and the public...
Submitted by John Stauber on
The Associated Press examines two dueling partisan lobby groups composed of military veterans, "valuable public relations tools" for politicians in the debate over the war in Iraq. VoteVets "has spent about $850,000 this year on political ads. ... Its board of advisers includes ...
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
The PR firm Burson-Marsteller's anti-union consulting continues to haunt Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. That's because Mark Penn, a top campaign aide, also heads Burson-Marsteller (B-M).
You can watch some powerful video of our August 5th Coffee with the Troops online at AfterDowning Street, Alternetand on YouTube. We filmed the entire event, which was attended by more than one hundred people at the Yearly Kos Convention Sunday in Chicago.
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