[eccr] Fwd: The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, December 3, 2003

>THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, December 3, 2003
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>The Weekly Spin features selected news summaries with links to
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>THIS WEEK'S NEWS
>
>1. Silencing Save the Children
>2. PR Watch Nominated for Utne Independent Press Award
>3. Losing Hearts & Minds in Iraq
>4. The War on Dissent
>5. Wilkinson Is Back Flacking at the White House
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>
>1. SILENCING SAVE THE CHILDREN
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1095116,00.html
>   The British wing of the Save the Children charity was ordered to
>   stop critizing the U.S.-led coalition's military occupation of
>   Iraq, after it issued a statement saying that "lack of cooperation
>   from the coalition forces is a breach of the Geneva conventions and
>   its protocols, but more importantly the time now being wasted is
>   costing children their lives." Kevin Maguire reports that the
>   incident exposed "tensions within an alliance that describes itself
>   as 'the world's largest independent global organisation for
>   children' but which is heavily reliant on governments and big
>   business for cash."
>SOURCE: Guardian (UK), November 28, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1069995601
>
>2. PR WATCH NOMINATED FOR UTNE INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD
>http://www.utne.com/pub/2003_120/promo/10914-1.html
>   For the past fifteen years the editors of Utne magazine have chosen
>   Utne Independent Press Award winners in a number of publishing
>   categories including newsletters. PR Watch has won this award in
>   the past, and has again been nominated this year. Other nominees in
>   the category are some of our own favorites including Counterpunch,
>   Connection to the Americas, and The Hightower Lowdown. We're
>   honored to be in such company. Chances are that you don't subscribe
>   to PR Watch, so you only see archived issues. Please, to keep our
>   award winning quarterly going, we need your support as a
>   subscribing member. Click here and receive PR Watch by first class
>   mail four times a year.
>SOURCE: Utne.com, November 28, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/November_2003.html#1069995600
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1069995600
>
>3. LOSING HEARTS & MINDS IN IRAQ
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/27/international/middleeast/27MOSU.html
>   The Bush Administration has been doing its best to paint a happy
>   face on the Iraq occupation but reality keeps getting in the way.
>   The New York Times reports today that even in Mosul, a city 'once
>   so promising,' the current American military 'crackdown is draining
>   away much of the goodwill that remains.' Earlier this month a
>   leaked CIA report warned that resistance to the US occupation is
>   growing among ordinary Iraqis, leading to a new US plan to speed up
>   transfer of power to Iraqis. But the plan 'to turn over power in
>   Iraq more quickly was thrown into disarray on Wednesday when the
>   country's most powerful cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,
>   made public his opposition to a proposal for indirect elections.'
>   How bad has it gotten for the Bush Administration? Even long-time
>   CIA and Pentagon operative Ahmad Chalabi is accusing Bush of
>   letting his re-election concerns determine policy in Iraq, saying
>   'The whole thing was set up so President Bush could come to the
>   airport in October [2004] for a ceremony to congratulate the new
>   Iraqi government. When you work backwards from that, you understand
>   the dates the Americans were insisting on.' " President Bush's
>   surprise Thanksgiving visit in Iraq with 600 soldiers lasted less
>   than a few hours, including a very brief meeting with Chalabi,
>   under severe secrecy for his own security.
>SOURCE: New York Times, November 27, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/November_2003.html#1069909200
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1069909200
>
>4. THE WAR ON DISSENT
>http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17267
>   "It's popular to say that corporate globalization is war by other
>   means, but what went down in Miami during the FTAA skipped the part
>   about other means," Rebecca Solnit writes for tomdispatch.com. "And
>   though it was most directly ... an assault on the bodies of
>   protestors, it was first an assault against the right of the people
>   peaceably to assemble and other first amendment rights, a dramatic
>   example of how hallowed American rights are being dismantled in the
>   name of the war on terrorism. For months beforehand, Police Chief
>   John Timoney ... had portrayed protestors as terrorists and the
>   gathering in Miami as a siege of the city." Not only were the
>   public and media frightened by Timoney's depiction of the planned
>   protests, "[t]here's little doubt that the police themselves buy
>   the propaganda," Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman write. Having
>   been thoroughly indoctrinated on threat posed by protestors and
>   emboldened with new quasi-military equipment, "the police were, to
>   say the least, overeager to lunge at protesters," Mokhiber and
>   Weissman write. "After last week, no one should call what Timoney
>   runs in Miami a police force," Democracy Now! producer Jeremy
>   Scahill writes. It's a paramilitary group. ... The forces fired
>   indiscriminately into crowds of unarmed protesters. Scores of
>   people were hit with skin-piercing rubber bullets; thousands were
>   gassed with an array of chemicals. On several occasions, police
>   fired loud concussion grenades into the crowds. Police shocked
>   people with electric tazers. Demonstrators were shot in the back as
>   they retreated."
>SOURCE: Alternet, November 26, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/November_2003.html#1069822801
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1069822801
>
>5. WILKINSON IS BACK FLACKING AT THE WHITE HOUSE
>http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/11/20031125-10.html
>   James R. Wilkson ran the White House Coalition Information Center
>   for "the war against terrorism" and also served as top PR
>   strategist for General Tommy Franks during the US attack on Iraq.
>   Most recently he has been been planning the 2004 Republican
>   convention to be held in New York city coinciding with the third
>   anniversary of the 9/11 terror attack. A White House press release
>   today announces that he will soon be back in the White House with a
>   couple of new titles: "Deputy Assistant to the President" and
>   "Deputy National Security Advisor for Communications."
>SOURCE: White House news release, November 25, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1069736401
>
>
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