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Pickles Moves Against Local Authority Lobbying |
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Blogs -
Anna Minton
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 Anna Minton, 10th August 2010
Councils are to curtail their use of lobbyists, following changes in the rules announced by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles.
All bodies that receive funding from the Department for Communities have been ordered to sever their contracts with lobbying firms.
Pickles said “taxpayer-funded lobbying and propaganda on the rates weakens our democracy” and his statement announced that “the practice of local authorities hiring lobbyists to press-gang Government into pet funding projects” is to stop.
The new rules take the form of an amended statutory Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity, which is intended to stop campaigns being run from public funds.
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Sagit Yehoshua tries to censor Powerbase - Again |
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Blogs -
David Miller - Unspun
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By David Miller 7 August 2010
Renewed attempts to remove censor the website Powerbase are being made by terrorism researcher Sagit Yehoshua.
A few weeks ago our website Powerbase (or rather its predecessor Spinprofiles) was temporarily removed from the internet after a complaint by neoconservative think tanks operative Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens.
At the time we noted that Meleagrou-Hitchens attempt to have the entire page on him removed from our website was not the first. Back in February this year, Sagit Yehoshua complained to 1 & 1 Internet with which we had registered the domain name, that the page on her was defamatory. 1&1 refused to tell us the precise text that was alleged to be defamatory and insisted that the whole page be removed. At the time we did so, hoping to get clarity from the company.
It was not forthcoming, although the issue appeared to hinge on the question of ‘personal’ information; 1 & 1 told us that ‘Ms Sagit Yehoshua has expressly stated in a phone call to us that they do not want their personal information placed on the website.’ Now however we have reinstated that page, leading to further, ongoing, attempts to have the material removed. This time Yehoshua has targeted our ISP
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Hope for Sunshine on your Holidays |
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Blogs -
Anna Minton
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 27 July 2010
As parliament prepares to go into recess, here’s a quick update on our parliamentary work in the new parliament.
An Early Day Motion, on the urgent need for an effective statutory register of lobbyists, tabled by Kelvin Hopkins MP, has 46 signatures, including 20 Labour and 15 Liberal Democrat. However, only two Conservatives have signed up so far.
Following the news that Mark Harper, the Conservative Minister responsible for developing plans for a register, is to meet lobbying industry representatives but has failed to respond to our requests for a meeting we have teamed up with campaign group 38 Degrees who are galvanising their 140,000 members to press Harper to meet with us.
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Friends of Israel Initiative: The neoconservatives’ eastern front |
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Articles -
Middle East
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Toms Mills, 27 July 2010
Last Week, in the House of Commons Britain’s leading neoconservative organisation the Henry Jackson Society hosts the UK launch of the Friends of Israel Initiative.
This new organisation is the latest of a number of well connected advocacy groups in the UK seeking to deflect criticism of Israel’s illegal occupation and repeated human rights abuses.
The Friends of Israel Initiative says it ‘aims to create a network linking private and public figures who agree with the idea of an Israel fully anchored in the West’.
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On Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens Comment Is Free piece |
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Blogs -
David Miller - Unspun
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David Miller 13 July 2010 (as posted on Comment is Free)
Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens thinks our website PowerBase (formerly Spinprofiles) should offer a right of reply. We agree. In fact it has always been our policy, which is why we offered him a right of reply before his Guardian piece demanding one. He declined to answer our email.
Meleagrou-Hitchens argues that his profile should not appear on our website Powerbase, because he did not want to feature on a site which in the past ‘published’ the work of racist academic Kevin MacDonald.
Meleagrou-Hitchens well knows that - to our regret - one of our researchers did quote MacDonald on one of our sister sites – as opposed to ‘publishing’ anything by MacDonald. The quote was removed as soon as the mistake was spotted and an apology made. The person involved is no longer a contributor to our wiki projects. Note also that our project is a wiki with literally hundreds of registered users, many of them volunteers.
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Guardian comment piece on SpinProfiles' removal from the internet |
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Blogs -
David Miller - Unspun
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 David Miller 6th July 2010
Comment piece published in today’s Guardian about the removal of SpinProfiles from the internet:
When the anger of a prominent young thinktanker causes one of the world's largest web-hosting companies to shut down a site that monitors lobbying and transparency, it is time to start asking questions about online free speech and censorship.
Last week, as Hugh Muir reported in the Guardian diary, the website SpinProfiles was taken down by the domain name registrar, 1 & 1 Internet, following a complaint from Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, son of journalist Christopher.
SpinProfiles, run by sister organisation Spinwatch, aims to stitch together publicly available information to provide a detailed picture of who's who in the shadowy world of lobbying. It features close to ten thousand profiles of think tanks, lobbying organisations and those associated with them.
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Early Day Motion on statutory register of lobbyists tabled in parliament |
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 6th July 2010
An Early Day Motion (EDM) urging the Coalition to bring forward the necessary legislation for an effective statutory register of lobbyists has been tabled by Kelvin Hopkins MP, at the request of the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency.
This is the EDM:
That this House notes the commitment by the new coalition Government to establish a statutory register of lobbyists; recalls the personal commitment of the Deputy Prime Minister to introduce a statutory register; believes that such a register should be independently managed and enforced, that it should include information provided by both lobbyists and those being lobbied and provisions ensuring effective financial disclosure; and calls on the Government to bring forward the necessary legislation as a matter of urgency.
By July 6th, 29 MPs had signed from all parties, although of those only two Conservative have pledged their support.
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Corporate Front Groups and the Abuse of Science: The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) |
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Articles -
Science
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by Martin Donohoe*, MD, FACP
Earlier this year, I wrote a two-part essay describing the health and environmental consequences of global warming for Medscape (a widely-read on-line medical journal),[1] in which I described the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) as a corporate front group and criticized its selection of author Michael Crichton as recipient of its 2005 Sound Science Medal. Crichton, a physician whose recent book State of Fear questions the existence of human-caused global warming, had also received the American Association of Petroleum Geologists’ journalism award.[2]
On the day of publication, Medscape was contacted by attorney Jeff Stier, associate director of ACSH, who threatened litigation against Medscape if it did not remove my criticism from the article. Medscape’s editors and attorneys held meetings to discuss the issue, and I drafted a detailed response to ACSH’s threats which supported my criticism of the organization. To its credit, one week later Medscape published a revised version of the article which included an even more detailed critique of ACSH. Nevertheless, since many readers of on-line content read articles when they are first posted, they likely never saw the subsequent version. As such, ACSH was somewhat successful in quieting criticism of its organization.
Like many other organizations, ACSH uses threats and misinformation to suppress science, particularly when such science threatens the interests of those individuals and corporations which profit from activities that threaten human health and the environment. This article will discuss the threats to science and society posed by anti-science groups, focusing on ACSH.
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Web registrar's lawyers shut down SpinProfiles |
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Articles -
Legal issues
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Our SpinProfiles wiki website at www.spinprofiles.org was shut down by web firm 1&1 Internet on 21 June because we did not remove a profile on think-tank researcher Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, son of journalist Christopher Hitchens.
In an email dated Friday 18 June, 1&1's lawyers said SpinProfiles must 'immediately remove the profile' by midday Monday, or face being shut down. Although 1&1 do not host our site, the URL is registered with them. They gave no explanation of how the webpage violated their terms and conditions except that it included 'personal information' we did not have 'permission' to use. SpinProfiles' editor David Miller wrote back asking for more precise details of the objection, arguing, 'It is clear that the content of the webpage in question is factual and backed up by sourced information. It cannot be wholly contrary to your conditions of service…'
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SpinWatch exclusive: Fergie in New Undercover Sting |
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Articles -
Legal issues
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 Michael Gillard, 17 June 2010
THE QUEEN’S lawyers have reached a secret agreement to save royal blushes over another gaff involving Fergie and an undercover journalist.
The Duchess was facing a high court cross examination over some rather embarrassing emails she’d written to ITN journalist Chris Rogers, with whom she had worked on a controversial documentary about child abuse in Turkey’s state orphanages.
The film caused a diplomatic row in November 2008 after the Turks demanded Fergie's extradition and accused her of trying to scupper its EU membership – a bit ripe given its lamentable human rights record.
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