Category: propaganda

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability, propaganda Tagged with ,

The word “greenwashing” is only a few years old; the practice, unfortunately, goes back much longer.

This morning, for some reason, I woke up thinking about a loaf of bread I saw in the supermarket some time in the early 1980s. This line of bakery products was very clearly marketed to the customer who wanted natural foods, and even back then, that included me. The packaging copy was all about wholesome whole grains, natural growing practices, and such–until I got to the ingredients list.

And there I saw the deal-killer: “calcium propionate added to discourage mold.” Back it went from my hands to the shelf!

I was so deeply offended to see this very common bread additive in a bread marketed as wholesome and natural that I can still recall the exact wording. In fact, I remember telling several friends how corny and false this company was, trying to disguise its use of chemicals by saying “discourage” instead of the more typical, and harsher sounding, “retard mold.”

And that got me thinking about another early greenwashing offender: nuclear power. As a child in the 1960s, and one who was impressed by the promise of technology, I was enchanted by the idea of clean energy that would be “too cheap to meter,” as one prominent nuclear bureaucrat famously put it.

This enchantment didn’t stop me from getting involved in a local group that was questioning the wisdom of a proposed nuke two miles from New York City, but back then, all we knew about was thermal pollution. Thank goodness the utility abandoned that plan!

Two years later, I chose as a college research topic the pros and cons of nuclear power, and started reading in depth. Turns out, thermal pollution is the least of nuclear’s problems. Factor in these:

  • Potential for catastrophic accidents that could make Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island look like a romp in the park
  • Deeply subsidized limited-liability insurance that means if there is a catastrophe, private citizens aren’t going to collect on their losses without a massive infusion of billions of dollars of government money (this is a US law, the Price-Anderson Act, but many other countries have similar provisions)
  • A long and sordid history of literally hundreds of small accidents that could have become big very easily–this link with pictures and descriptions of the nine worst shows that five of the nine were AFTER Chernobyl
  • A 250,000-year pollution problem in the need to isolate extremely deadly wastes from the environment for a quarter of a million years (think about how few artifacts remain from even 5000 years ago, and almost nothing of human origin exists from even 30,000 years ago)
  • Huge inefficiencies that lead one analyst, John Berger, to conclude that nuclear–counting the entire fuel cycle–had actually consumed five times as much energy as it produced, so all this risk is for NO benefit (I have the full citation in my book, Nuclear Lessons)

And you wonder how any environmentalist (and several very prominent ones have) can endorse this terrible, deeply flawed, and very UN-green technology.

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By Posted on Posted in censorship, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , ,

For more than 30 years, one of the arguments I’ve made against nuclear power is the chilling effect on our freedom.

Now, it seems that Japan may have passed a law heading down that slippery slope. Or not—I am not so far convinced that the claims are accurate.

A blogger for the UK Progressive put up a rambling, jumbled article claiming that Japan has passed a law giving sweeping powers to shut down bloggers, people who post videos on Youtube, etc. when they’re critical of the government and/or TEPCO.

I did a bit of Googling and found dozens of other blogs basing their story on that same article, which I consider unreliable. But I did find this in the Tokyo Times, which seems to be a genuine news organization that fact-checks and posts corrections. The Tokyo Times article says the Computer Network Monitoring Law was passed on June 17.

It also says that during March and April, even before the law was passed, government agents sent 41

“letters of request” to internet providers, telecom companies, cable TV stations and others to take measures in order to respond to illegal information, including erasing any information from the Internet that can be seen as harmful to morality and public order.

However, this article links back to coverage in the Examiner which again ties back to the original, untrustworthy blog post. I certainly am not going to pore over all 6000 citations to see whether this story is legitimate. But it’s certainly worth keeping an eye on.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability, propaganda Tagged with , , , ,

David Vossbrink, APR, a PR guy who happens to be the president of PRSA’s Silicon Valley chapter, wrote in regarding my recent article on a PR site, “Seeing Past the “Spin”: Debunking Five Dangerous Myths About Nuclear Power.”

Vossbrink called my attention to a speech by the late safe energy activist David Comey, of Friends of the Earth. Comey, addressing the nuclear industry’s own Atomic Industrial Forum, told them they have a major credibility problem, and that he wasn’t afraid to tell them about it because he knew they would never follow his advice to tell the truth, and therefore remain easy targets.

Comey referenced a British spymaster, Richard Crossman, who was in charge of “alien psychological warfare” during World War II. He outlined 7 key principles that Crossman put forth in a 1953 lecture:

  1. The Basis for All Successful Propaganda is the Truth
  2. The Key to Successful Propaganda Is Accurate Information
  3. The Most Successful Propagandist Is the Person Who Cares About Education
  4. To Do Propaganda Well, One Must Not Fall in Love with It
  5. A Successful Propagandist Cannot Afford to Make Mistakes
  6. The Propaganda Must Be Credible to the Other Side, Not Your Own [empahsis mine]
  7. Understatement Succeeds Best [the Brits used understatement to make the Nazis think they were only bringing a portion of what they could, and that they could inflict far more damage on their enemy]

An aside: Interestingly, while trying to find his speech online (which was critiqued in a journal published February 1975, and thus must be no later than mid-1974), I came across Comey’s description of the fire at the Browns Ferry, Alabama nuke in 1975 (which could have been utterly catastrophic, but once again, we were lucky). The Browns Ferry reactors, among 23 US nuclear plants using essentially the same design as the failed Dai’ichi reactors in Japan, had to be shut down this week because of tornados. At least they didn’t wait until the tornado created a disaster, as the tsunami did in Japan.

Unfortunatley, Comey was right: the nuclear industry still can’t seem to tell the truth. And fortunately, I believe that Comey was also right about what that means;  it should be easy to undermine the nuclear industry’s credibility and overcome the juggernaut, to make it clear that we as a society will not tolerate the construction of a single new n-plant or license extension of an existing one, and that we need to take active steps to decommission the ones already in use.

Let’s prove Comey right—get out there and organize!

Note: I will be glad to send the PDF of Comey’s full speech–write me at shel (at) principledprofit.com, subject line Send David Come Nuke Speech. I was not able to locate it online.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability, propaganda, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , ,

The latest news from Daichi makes it clear: Nothing these officials say can be trusted:

Highly toxic plutonium has seeped into the soil outside the troubled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power complex in northeastern Japan, officials say. The amounts detected in five different soil samples taken from the facility did not pose a risk to humans, safety officials say.

Yes, I am calling that last sentence an outright lie—a disgusting, damnable, and definitely dangerous dissembling.

Want to know the safe level of inhaled plutonium? Zero. The risks are lower if it’s eaten or drank. Breathing the stuff has a very high deadliness factor because it settles in the lungs.

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By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Peace and War, propaganda Tagged with , , , ,

Ever see a 76-year-old-man up on stilts—and not just ordinary stilts but giant ones that elevated him 15 or 20 feet above everyone else?

I saw Peter Schumann, the tireless founder of Bread & Puppet Theater, do just that yesterday, at a performance in Boston.

Bread & Puppet Theater founder Peter Schumann, age 76, walking high above other performers on giant stilts.
76-year-old Peter Schumann, on giant stilts

Schumann founded the well-known political theater troupe back in 1963. Known for its giant puppets and unflinching anarchist-socialist politics (not to mention Schumann’s visual art and breadbaking, the collective nature of its living and working, and incorporating audience members including kids into its performance), Bread & Puppet has been fighting the good fight for decades.

Puppet-headed actors on stage: Bread & Puppet Theater
Puppet-headed actors on stage: Bread & Puppet Theater

I first encountered them in the early 1970s, when I used to attend demonstrations against the Vietnam war as a teenager. Walking the line between art and propaganda, the large troupe, based on a  beautiful farm in Glover, Vermont, is always entertaining, and always committed to the arts as tools of personal empowerment, affordable to all.

Peter Schumann talks with the cast just before the show
Not yet in costume, Peter Schumann huddles with the cast at the end of the dress rehearsal

I’m glad they’re still out there pushing the envelope, and was particularly glad to see a large number of kids, both in the audience and among the volunteers who got there early to rehears and join the cast for the day.

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Politics, propaganda Tagged with , , ,

Heretic that I am, I’m going to take an unpopular position: that the Democrats lost not because they were too bold, but because they weren’t bold enough. As all the “pundits” tell the Democrats (as they always do) to move ever-more-rightward, I’ll say, yet again, that moving rightward and wimp-ward is why they keep losing!

The strength of the Tea Party vote is more than a repudiation of Obama. It’s also a repudiation of the “mainstream” GOP (which was already so far to the right that people like Nelson Rockefeller or Lowell Weicker would have found it very uncomfortable).

The massive switch of independent voters, in particular, was, in short, a continuation of the 2008 Obama call for “change”: a loud cry that people didn’t feel they actually received the change they had voted for in 2008.

And this can be pinned squarely on the Democrats’ failure to make bold policy, and to be willing to tell the story of their success boldly. On health care, on climate change, on the economy…the Democrats whittled themselves down to half-measures. Where was the single-payer health care program that almost every other country in the world has adopted in some form (and why didn’t they position that as the boon to the business community that it is)? Where was the Marshall Plan-scale effort to get us off fossil and nuclear and into job-creating, carbon-slashing clean renewable energy? Where were the measures to hold Wall Street and the GW Bush administration accountable for the mess they made? And where were the visionary leaders who should have populated Obama’s Cabinet?

Despite a huge mandate for change, and a majority in both House and Senate, the Democrats refused to even listen to calls for massive structural reform, and then forgot all the marketing lessons they learned in the campaign and let the other side not just control but completely dominate the discourse—leaving the impression that they are a weak and ineffectual party of favors to special interests who can’t fix the economy or anything else. And failing on three crucial aspects of marketing: to remind people firstly of who got us into this mess, second, of the steps they did take to pull us out, and third, of the policy initiatives where change was actually achieved in the last two years.

As I wrote two years ago,

Don’t apologize for your beliefs. Three out of the four most recent prior Democratic nominees–Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry–all crawled on their bellies with messages that basically said, “umm, I’m not really a liberal, I didn’t mean it, I’m soooo sorry!” And all three lost because doing that took the wind right out of their sails. Bill Clinton, who is not a liberal, didn’t play that game. Not surprisingly, he won. Obama never apologized, ignored the L-word, and didn’t even flinch when in the closing days, McCain revved it up and actually called him a socialist (traditionally, the kiss of death in US politics).

Monday evening, Rachel Maddow released a video highlighting Obama’s accomplishments. It’s a great video. The Democratic Party itself should have made something like it, six months ago, and worked to get it viral. Released by an outside journalist, twelve hours before the polls opened, it had no time to gather momentum.

Here in Massachusetts, Governor Deval Patrick wasn’t given much chance a year ago. But he ran a positive campaign focused on the slogan, “Optimism and Effort.” He highlighted his accomplishments over and over again, made a case that the work wasn’t done, and inspired audiences with a message of hope, economic recovery, and the rights of ordinary people. In other words, he used the exact strategies I’ve been advocating for decades that the Democrats use. Despite his somewhat centrist record, he was able to position himself as a change agent. I went to one of his rallies and went up to him afterward to thank him for being a sitting governor bold and hopeful enough to go out and make that kind of speech.

He did benefit from a third-party candidate who clearly drew votes from the colorless, bland GOP candidate. But still, he won, and by a larger margin than many pundits had predicted.

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By Posted on Posted in Diversity, Peace and War, propaganda, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , ,

Stupid idea of the Week award to (drumroll, please)…Terry Jones, pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center, an evangelical church in Gainesville, Florida. Jones and his 50 members want to commemorate 9/11 by burning a Koran.

Here’s what General David Petraeus had to say about this idiotic idea:

It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems, not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community…Images of the burning of a Koran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan – and around the world – to inflame public opinion and incite violence. Such images could, in fact, be used as were the photos from [Abu Ghraib]. And this would, again, put our troopers and civilians in jeopardy and undermine our efforts to accomplish the critical mission here in Afghanistan.

The same Washington Post article quotes a statement from the U.S. Embassy:

Americans from all religious and ethnic backgrounds reject the offensive initiative by this small group in Florida. A great number of American voices are protesting the hurtful statements made by this organization. Numerous interfaith and religious groups in America are actively working to counter this kind of ignorance and misinformation that is offensive to so many people in the U.S. and around the world.

To these 50 extremists who falsely call themselves Christian, I’ve got a few other things to say:

  • Christ’s message was one of tolerance of differences, acceptance of diversity. Consider as one among many examples the story of the Good Samaritan. Samaritans were a despised ethnic group in Christ’s day, as this post on Bible.org makes clear.
  • What makes the US different from (and better than) totalitarian governments with official state religion is that we were founded on the bedrock principles of justice and equality, even for those who are different from us. While it’s true that as a country, we certainly haven’t always lived up to these principles, they are part of our founding heritage and part of why I am proud to be an American. Bigotry is anti-American, and this is an act of bigotry.
  • As General Petraeus points out, your action inflames the passions of the zealot/terrorist faction within Islam–and while they are a tiny minority, they can do tremendous damage, especially with you doing their recruiting for them. You are putting the lives of every American soldier in Iraq (still 50,000 left, in so-called non-combat deployments) and Afghanistan at risk!, not to mention the lives of all of us on the home front. Are you willing to have the blood of these brave soldiers on your hands?

    Advice to the better selves hiding behind that racist front: don’t do it. You want to do something constructive to commemorate 9/11? How about an interfaith Christian/Muslim/Jewish dialog group?

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    By Posted on Posted in censorship, Democracy, Diversity, Peace and War, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , ,

    Today marks the 47th anniversary of the March on Washington, and of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Right-wing extremists Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin will dishonor King’s memory by having a rally on the same site, opposed to all the values King held dear.

    I’m okay with that, actually. I’d never go, other than to hold a counterprotest sign—but I believe strongly in the 1st Amendment rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. As did King, by the way.

    I think Beck and Palin are despicable. I also think they have every right to hold their gathering of the lunatic fringe. And I’m aware that I’ve taken plenty of stands over my career for which others would paint me as “lunatic fringe.” Some of them are now mainstream, such as aiming for zero waste, repurposing rooftop space into food and energy collectors, and getting the heck off fossil and nuclear power sources—but they sure weren’t 30 or 40 years ago. I would not have granted then, and don’t grant now, the right of others to tell me how to think, and I don’t claim that same privilege against others whom I disagree with. The right to try to convince them, certainly—but NEVER to dictate what is or is not acceptable thought.

    I remember holding a lone protest in front of the local courthouse when the U.S. bombed Lybia. The first day, I got a lot of middle fingers and angry shouts. By the second day, a few people had joined me. On the third day, with a larger crowd, we were getting mostly thumbs ups and supportive honks. It was hard, on that first day. But I remembered my favorite Abraham Lincoln quote, “It is a sin to be silent when it is your duty to protest.” Taking an unpopular position didn’t take the burden off me to take a stand.

    And some of my positions are still out of the mainstream—so far. One such is that a Muslim group has every right to practice that other First Amendment right, freedom of worship—even two blocks from Ground Zero. As Keith Olbermann pointed out recently, there’s already been an Islamic center coexisting in that neighborhood since before the World Trade Center was even built. But even if there weren’t, this country was founded on the principle that people can peaceably assemble, worship the God of our choice (or no God, if we choose), and say what we want to say even if it makes others unhappy. That’s what made us the shining light of Democracy for the world, the example that so many other nations wanted to follow. Those are American values that I hold dear. And I predict that they will once again return to the mainstream of an America that seems to have forgotten its proud heritage.

    It means the right to build an Islamic Center—a gathering place for peaceful worship and community activities—on an abandoned site a few blocks from Ground Zero, and it means that Beck and Palin are appropriately permitted for their disgusting festival of intolerance. The appropriate reaction is boycott or counterprotest, not an attempt to silence those we disagree with.

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    By Posted on Posted in censorship, Diversity, Ethics in Government, General Commentary, Politics, propaganda Tagged with , , , , ,

    Came across this article, “Why Are The Feds Banning E-Readers?” by Pat Archbold, on National Catholic Register:

    Sometimes the federal government does something so laughably moronic, that one has to stop and ask the question “Are they really that dumb or is something else going on?”

    Here is the setup. Recently a number of universities around the country decided to take a look at using some modern technology in the classroom in an effort to save money. These universities took part in an experimental program to allow students to use the Amazon Kindle for textbooks. As you know, many people now use e-readers like the Kindle or the Nook as a replacement for traditional printed books. There are many reasons for this including cost, environmental impact, and convenience. Further, anyone who has gone to college understands the high cost of textbooks and would likely support any way to reduce this large expense.

    Here is the pathetic punchline. For conducting this experiment with the Kindle, Obama’s Department of Justice threatened legal action against the universities. The ridiculous contention of the Obama administration is that the Kindle and e-readers violate the Americans With Disabilities Act. Why? Because the blind can’t easily use them.

    Now the first thing that would pop into the minds of anybody with a third grade education and that does not work for the government is this simple question. If e-readers discriminate against the blind, do not traditional textbooks discriminate equally? The obvious answer is yes.

    The obvious solution, in my mind, is to require the universities to offer a suitable alternative for blind and visually impaired users—NOT to prohibit the devices entirely. E-book texts are easily converted to voice, so the only issue is giving those who don’t see a way to navigate into the right e-book.

    But his article, and the comments it drew, amazed me with their various “evil conspiracy” theories. Yes, there were some that argued rationally about the legitimate difficulties blind users have with these devices (and pointing out that they have much more difficulty with a printed book). But there were also a number of comments speculating that this is a way for the Obama administration to control dissent and silence conservative voices.

    My question to them: what have you been smoking?

    Here’s Archbold:

    I posit another and perhaps more nefarious reason. I think that the federal government is adamantly opposed to the use of e-readers as an alternative to textbooks for fear of loss of control. This loss of control is not so much at the university level but at much younger levels. The universities just happened to be the first ones to try.

    Here’s one of the comments, from “Frank”:

    A great deal of control over curriculum nationwide is exerted through textbook control. Education is critical to progressives. Remember, those who control education, control the culture. (Now , think of Obama’s childhood development, i.e. Indonesian grade school;, contact with Frank Mitchell Davis during high school years;, professors at Occidental College and Columbia University;, Alinsky acolytes in Chicago; social/political training in Hyde Park, Chicago South Side; Chicago political cauldron. Put it all together, what else can you expect but what we have experienced since January 20, 2009?)

    To me, the ruling that e-readers are out of compliance with ADA—and I speak as a disability advocate who served on my city’s official Disability Awareness committee for six years—is nothing more than the typical heavy-handed over-response of large government entities. No malfeasance, just bureaucratic inability to see past a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s the same mentality that, here in Massachusetts under Massachusetts General Law Chapter 40B, allows developers to ram through inappropriate and out-of-character housing projects that violate local zoning, in the name of increasing the ratio of affordable housing. Affordable housing is a worthy goal, and I spent about ten years doing a lot of volunteer work to address that issue—but 40B is a cannon shot fired against a mosquito: the wrong tool, with lots of unintended and undesirable consequences.

    The same mentality that thinks every road improvement—even our local bikeway—has to include over-widening, over-straightening, and often removing trees, stone walls, and other vital features.

    Big governments are slow and clumsy creatures with limited intelligence, even when they’re headed by very smart people. Over time, we as a society will realize that conditions vary in different locations, and one size really fits no one at all, only breeds resentment.

    Progressives can make common cause with the Right on this issue: local control is the preferred alternative whenever practical.

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, propaganda, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , ,

    Just when you thought, oh, the well is capped and Tony Hayward’s gone, maybe we can get back to normal—comes this little bit of news, courtesy of my colleague Chris MacDonald, a business ethics guy in Canada:

    BP faked a photo of its Houston command center to make it look busier and more determined than was actually true.

    Just how dumb are these guys?

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