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Web 2.0 warfare from Gaza to Iran |
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Articles -
Iran
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2 July 2009, by Tom Griffin Recent weeks have seen an explosion of interest in Twitter, a social networking application which has been used by thousands of internet users to pass on news, views and rumours about the situation unfolding in Iran in the wake of the disputed presidential election. The Iranian struggle is not however, the first conflict in which emerging ‘Web 2.0’ social media technologies have played a significant role. Israel's offensive in Gaza in December 2008 - January 2009 provides an important precedent which shows that, despite its undoubted potential for empowering new forms of bottom-up organisation, the social web is not immune from very traditional propaganda techniques. |
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“I will abide by civil service neutrality” says Downing Street’s new spin supremo. |
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Blogs -
Nicholas Jones
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Simon Lewis, the Prime Minister’s new official spokesman, says he only took the job on condition it would be non political and that he would be able to conduct himself with civil service neutrality. Unlike previous Downing Street directors of communications such as Alastair Campbell, Lewis is not a Labour Party appointee. He has accepted a two-year civil service contract and when asked (at a debate in London at the Reform Club 1.7.2009) whether he would like to remain at No.10 should David Cameron defeat Gordon Brown in the general election expected in May 2010, he made it clear he has an open mind and intends to wait and see what happens. |
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Speaker’s call for an end to ministerial leaks: Downing Street’s new media chief could play a role |
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Blogs -
Nicholas Jones
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24 June 2009 Nicholas Jones Simon Lewis, the newly-appointed director of communications in Downing Street, might be forgiven for thinking his only role will be to pull down the shutters on the last chance saloon for the Labour Party’s discredited spin doctors. But although the Prime Minister has probably less than a year in power, Lewis does have an opportunity to turn a new page in the government’s relationship with the news media and roll back the abuses which were institutionalised by Alastair Campbell and which spawned the Damian McBride scandal. |
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Articles -
Propaganda
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24 June 2009, Dan Hind
In the recently published White Paper Digital Britain the government signaled its intention to provide more state funding for journalism. The decline in advertising revenues in both print and broadcast media has made it impossible for commercial providers to deliver high-end drama, documentaries and investigative journalism. The government therefore proposed that 3.5% of the license fee, around £126 million annually, be given, among other things, to ‘news consortia’. The White Paper also says that the government is ‘open to other proposals for funding in the consultation process’. However it is raised, state funding, the White Paper assures us, ‘needs to be contestable, allocated against clear range, reach and quality criteria by an arm’s length body’.
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Reviews -
Television programmes
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 Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, 8 June 2009 In Errol Morris's 2004 film The Fog of War, former US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recalls General Curtis LeMay, the architect of the fire-bombings of Japan during WWII, saying that "if we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." LeMay was merely articulating an unacknowledged truism of international relations: power bestows, among other things, the right to label. So it is that mass slaughter perpetrated by the big powers, from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, is normalized through labels such as "counterinsurgency," "pacification" and "war on terror," while similar acts carried out by states out of favor result in the severest of charges. It is this politics of naming that is the subject of Mahmood Mamdani's explosive new book, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror. |
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Articles -
Climate Change
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Corporate Europe Observatory, 3 June 2009  “The Copenhagen Call” issued by the World Business Summit on Climate Change presents a large number of corporations’ wish list for an international agreement on climate. While the Call recognises the importance of the climate crisis, the proposed methods to combat climate change are carefully crafted to fit the interests of big business. If adopted, it could result in such big loopholes that they could undermine even an ambitious agreement.
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Call to review cancer vaccine after Germany demands more medical proof |
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Articles -
Pharma Industry
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Marisa De Andrade, 2 June 2009  THE Scottish Government has been urged to review its cervical cancer vaccination programme and follow the lead of Germany, which ordered experts to show hard evidence the jab is effective and safe in the long-term. The International Coalition of Advocates for the People (ICAP) – a group raising concerns of the safety and efficacy of Cervarix and its rival, Gardasil, to health ministers and researchers worldwide – want a thorough investigation into the vaccine. The organisation successfully lobbied the health minister and medical experts in Germany. Now the country's Federal Joint Committee, which decides on the formula for the country's social insurance system, has called for all recommendations on Cervarix and Gardasil to be revised and demanded a new report based on detailed evidence.
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Rush to introduce vaccination throws up worrying questions |
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Articles -
Pharma Industry
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Marisa de Andrade, 1 June 2009  LAST year, I became aware of Cervarix when co-presenting a radio show. Sandwiched between talk segments were 60-second promotional adverts commissioned by the Scottish Government aimed at girls aged 12-17. They were advised to get jabs "critical in helping to protect Scottish women from a disease that can attack them in the prime of their lives". A listener from America immediately texted in. By the end of last year, more than 23 million doses of rival vaccine Gardasil had been distributed in the US and reports of side-effects were flooding in. Why wasn't this information being conveyedto Scottish schoolgirls?
So the HPV vaccines became one of the case studies for my PhD in public health communication. I started digging. The US listener wasn't the only person with concerns about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines. Campaigners, scientific experts, doctors and parents all over the world were asking questions. |
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Fears over reactions to cervical cancer jab |
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Articles -
Pharma Industry
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Marisa de Andrade, 1 June 2009
MORE than 150 girls in Scotland have suffered adverse reactions after receiving the cervical cancer vaccine introduced last autumn, The Scotsman can reveal. Campaigners are calling for the vaccination programme to be suspended, claiming there are unanswered questions about the long-term effectiveness and safety of Cervarix. They are concerned that official information refers to mild side-effects, when some girls have reported serious reactions to the jab.
The families of six girls in England are suing GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the maker of Cervarix, after the girls suffered severe reactions resulting in partial paralysis, seizures and chronic fatigue. The Scotsman has learned two more have contacted the same solicitor after suffering severe painful swelling of joints. |
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Reforms in the spirit of glasnost? |
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Blogs -
Tamasin Cave
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Tamasin Cave, 27 May 2009 Is Cameron’s reform strategy designed to resurrect the image of his opponent as a tyrant holding onto power (or "hoarding power" as he put it)? Remember the Stalin jibe thrown at Brown? Cameron, by contrast, will give “power back to the powerless”. |
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