international

"In the usual process," writes Greg Mitchell, "the U.S. government -- and media here -- are playing down questions about whether Israel overreacted in its massive air strikes on Gaza, while the foreign press, and even Haaretz in Israel, carries more balanced accounts. The early reports on Sunday already reveal the bombing of a TV station and mosque and preparations for an invasion." Mitchell cites eyewitness accounts that describe morgues full of civilians, along with editorial stating that Israel's bombing of Gaza "within the span of a few hours ... sowed death and destruction on a scale that the Qassam rockets never approached in all their years."

The "Worst EU Lobbying Awards," sponsored each year by Corporate Europe Observatory, Friends of the Earth Europe, LobbyControl and Spinwatch, have been announced for 2008. This year's award goes jointly to the agrofuel lobbyists of the Malaysian Palm Oil Council, Brazilian sugar barons UNICA and energy company Abengoa Bioenergy. According to the awards website, "They were jointly nominated for their use of misleading information and greenwash to influence crucial debates in the European Parliament and Council by claiming that agrofuels (crops used for fuel for cars and lorries) are sustainable." Event organizers also noted that "One of the candidates for the Worst Conflict of Interest Award, suspended Commission official Fritz-Harald Wenig, unsuccessfully tried to silence the Worst EU Lobbying Awards last week by taking legal action in the Court of First Instance in Brussels to have his name removed from the nominations and not have his name mentioned during the Worst Lobbying Awards ceremony. The court ruled that freedom of speech was more important in this case."

There's nothing quite like a hotly contested election. The candidates have their devoted supporters and angry detractors. Then there are vigorous debates over the issues, while some people question the integrity of the entire process.

We speak, of course, of the Falsies Awards.

Part of the coveted AwardsThis year marks the Center for Media and Democracy's (CMD's) fifth annual Falsies Awards. The Falsies are our attempt to shine an unflattering light on those responsible for polluting the information environment over the past year. We're happy to report that more people -- nearly 1,450 -- voted in this year's Falsies survey than ever before! We're also bestowing special recognition on one of this year's "winners."

Falsies recipients can collect their prizes -- a pair of Groucho Marx glasses, our two cents and a chance to atone for their spinning ways by making a detailed public apology -- by visiting CMD's office in Madison, Wisconsin. This year's Gold and Silver Falsies go to masters of war deception, while the Bronze Falsie recognizes a massive greenwash campaign. The first-ever Lifetime Achievement Falsie goes to a serial corporate front man, while a determined (if at times laughable) attempt at nation re-branding wins dishonorable mention. Then there are the Readers' Choice Falsies and Win Against Spin Awards, nominated by our survey participants.

The Philippines has enacted a law that treats the exposure of women to secondhand smoke in the home as a form of domestic violence punishable by law. Under the law, a woman can seek a protection order requiring her partner to stop smoking around her. Between 1981 and 1989 Philip Morris (PM) performed at least 115 studies at their secret overseas biological labs on the toxicity of secondhand tobacco smoke and found that secondhand smoke is four times more toxic by inhalation and 2-6 times more tumorigenic on skin than mainstream smoke (the smoke the smoker himself inhales). PM never published their studies or shared the information with governments or the public. PM also carried out elaborate media strategies in the U.S. and other countries aimed at confusing the public about the health dangers of secondhand smoke. Deborah Sy, a legal consultant with the Health Justice Foundation in the Philippines, explained the law by saying "Exposing another to second hand smoke has the same effect as exposing someone to poisons and dangerous toxins. It is an act that has immediate effects such as nausea, dizziness, headache or irritation of respiratory system. Normally, the exposure to smoking suffered by women is prolonged. Hence, the damage to the body is more significant."

As scientific warnings about the potential risks of climate change intensify, governments realize they need to at least be seen as responsive to global warming concerns. But, behind the scenes, many of the world's richest countries are dragging their feet. Some are promoting unproven measures designed to insulate the coal and energy industries from change. Others want to use the global warming crisis as an opportunity to promote nuclear power. Most are balking at committing to substantial cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, despite having signaled their intention to do just that a year ago. To help explain the issues and uncover the behind-the scenes lobbying, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) is launching the Climate Change portal within the SourceWatch wiki.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conferences -- huge events, attracting some 10,000 people -- aim to create a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires at the end of 2012. Official conference documents are often hard to find and often full of mind-numbing jargon. As a result, it's hard for journalists to track what's going on and harder still for citizens to know what their governments are doing. Between now and the COP15 December 2009 meeting in Copenhagen, CMD staff and citizen editors will build SourceWatch articles on climate change issues, profile the players in the UNFCCC negotiations and unmask corporate and government greenwashing.

One current priority is a series of profiles on the policies and performances of the key richest countries. If you would like to lend a hand, just register on SourceWatch and check out this page on our Climate Change portal. Thanks for your participation!

With help from British public relations guru Lord Timothy Bell and his firm, Bell Pottinger, the country of Belarus -- where "opposition protests are regularly crushed with overwhelming force by riot police" and the domestic spy agency is still called the KGB -- is getting an image make-over. Belarus' government "now has a new English-language website for prospective investors, Western journalists are being jetted to Belarus," and the government spent a million dollars on tourism advertising in 2008, with plans to double that next year. Belarus also plans "to set up information centres in Paris and Berlin, as well as Lithuania and Poland," according to a tourism official. Belarus' authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, even released some political prisoners this year, in a bid "to improve relations with the European Union." Last year, the United Nations rejected Belarus' bid to join its Human Rights Council.

The White House says that the Iraqi Parliament's approval of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) is cause for celebration and a sign that we have won the war. White House Press Secretary Dana Perino rejected the idea that the Agreement's stipulation of troop withdrawal in three years is in fact exactly the type of timetable that President Bush has consistently opposed. On the contrary, she explained that "We believe that the conditions are such now that we are able to celebrate the victory that we've had so far and establish both a strategic framework agreement, which is a much broader document and talks about all sorts of cooperation that we'll have with Iraq from here on out, from trade and healthcare and exchanges on science, and a real strong bilateral agreement that you would hope we would have with any of our allies."

An opinion column by David McKnight, an associate professor at the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, argues that "Rupert Murdoch's critics often make the mistake of caricaturing him as just another businessman, interested more in money than ideology. ... These claims underestimate Murdoch's powerful contribution to the shaping of political ideas in Britain, the U.S. and Australia in the past 25 years." In particular, he points out that Murdoch "maintains loss-making newspapers such as the New York Post and the London Times" and that The Australian was subsidized for 20 years. "Murdoch's preparedness to take losses year after year testifies to the fact that he often puts ideas and influence before profit," he writes.

The Livingston Group, a lobbying and PR firm, "received a healthy $300K during the third period," or third quarter of 2008, from the Council for a Democratic Iran. The website of the Virginia-based group states, "We believe there is an alternative between military confrontation with the current regime and accommodation." According to Lobbyists.info, the group previously retained the firm Cyber Security Research Consultants. Its Livingston Group lobbyists include former Congressman Robert Livingston and Lauri Fitz-Pegado. Fitz-Pegado previously worked at Hill & Knowlton, where she helped promote the first Gulf War for the government of Kuwait, using the front group "Citizens for a Free Kuwait." In a September 25, 2008 blog post, the Council for a Democratic Iran describes itself as "a newly founded non profit organization."

An analysis of tobacco industry documents published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) tells how the German cigarette industry worked to stop Lufthansa, the flagship airline of Germany, from banning smoking on its domestic flights in the early 1990s. Documents also reveal that German tobacco companies worked to keep cigarette vending machines accessible to children, stop higher taxes on cigarettes, block a ban on tobacco advertising and recruit doctors and scientists to serve as "expert witnesses" to testify against the health dangers of tobacco. One of the paper's authors, Martina Pötschke-Langer, who heads the World Health Organization's Collaboration Centre for Tobacco Control at the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg, said "The campaign against Lufthansa's non-smoking flights appears to be especially vicious, since pressure was applied to the government as well as to public opinion via the mass media." Lufthansa started working to ban smoking on German domestic flights in 1989, but wasn't successful until 1996.