With respect to recent posts, I particularly liked the observation that
corporations are forced by the courts to act like sociopaths even if
they would rather not.
With respect to direct democracy, I am torn. I am heartened by those
who say they have found more wisdom among the humble than the exalted.
I saw much the same thing when I was in the US Army many years ago, but
the forces of darkness have powerful servants. I have seen the
effectiveness of the disinformation spread to throttle Hillary
Clinton's health care initiative; the campaign to scare Americans away
from carbon emission taxes; the campaigns to blame the woes of BC's
"fiber" (logging) industry first on environmentalists and now on the
NDP government; etc ad nauseam. However, I have seen California
initiatives which overcame multimillion dollar propaganda as well as
those that didn't. Certainly one great advantage of direct democracy
would be that we would be able to see the manouvers designed to
manipulate us, while those which manipulate politicians are usually
invisible, being carried out behind closed doors and for the most part
off limits to the corporate media.
The following article, forwarded to me by the redoubtable Hendrik,
seems most relevant.
Caspar Davis
***** FORWARDED MESSAGE *****
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 23:08:17 +0900
Subject: Burson-Marsteller: PR For The New World Order
by Carmelo Ruiz
The public relations (PR) business is one of the fastest growing
industries
in the global market economy. In order to face perils like labor unions,
organized consumer activists and environmental groups, governments and
corporations have come to rely more on slick PR campaigns. The peril to
popular democracy posed by PR firms should not be underestimated.
Using the
latest communications technologies and polling techniques, as well as an
array of high-level political connections, PR flacks routinely "manage"
issues for government and corporate clients and "package" them for public
consumption. The result is a "democracy" in which citizens are turned into
passive receptacles of "disinfotainment" and "advertorials" and in which
critics of the status quo are defined as ignorant meddlers and/or
dangerous
outsiders.
Burson-Marsteller (B-M) is the world's largest PR firm, with 63 offices in
32 countries and almost $200 million in income in 1994. Although its name
is unknown to most people-- even to many in activist circles-- B-M is fast
becoming an increasingly important cog in the propaganda machine of
the new
world order.
Human Rights, Anyone?
On the human rights front, B-M has represented some of the worst violators
of our age. These include:
- The Nigerian government during the Biafran war, to discredit
reports of genocide.
- The fascist junta that ruled Argentina during the 70's and early
80's, to attract foreign investment.
- The totalitarian regime of South Korea, to whitewash the human
rights situation there during the 1988 Olympics.
- The Indonesian government, which got into power through a
CIA-sponsored bloodbath. (It should be pointed out, however,
that B-M denies that it is handling the issue of genocide in East
Timor)
- Ideological barriers are no object. B-M also represented the late
communist Romanian despot Nicolae Ceaucescu.
- Other third world human rights violators that have been
represented by B-M include the governments of Singapore and Sri
Lanka.
Doesn't this bother the consciences of B-M's executives? Not at all.
Commenting on his firm's work for Argentina's fascists, B-M founder Harold
Burson said that "We regard ourselves as working in the business
sector for
clearcut business and economic objectives. So we had nothing to do with a
lot of the things that one reads in the paper about Argentina as regards
human rights and other activities".
Corporate Environmentalism
For years B-M has been involved in major environmental issues all over the
world, not hesitating to give polluters a helping hand when confronted by
activist groups and/or government regulations. Many transnational
corporations have turned to B-M for help in the creation of a pedantic,
elitist and corporate-oriented brand of environmentalism. It is the
hope of
entrepreneurial sectors and neoliberal demagogues that this type of safe
and harmless environmental activism will displace the more militant and
agressive grassroots groups.
B-M's environmental services have benefited industrial polluters, such as
the following:
- Babcock & Wilcox, when its nuclear power plant in Three Mile
Island had its famous mishap in 1979.
- Union Carbide, to handle the public relations crisis caused by the
Bhopal tragedy in 1984.
- Exxon, to counter the negative press coverage it got in the wake of
the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in 1989.
- Ontario Hydro, an industrial concern, headed by Earth Summit
secretary general Maurice Strong, which is the biggest source of
CO2 emissions in Canada. This corporation is currently selling
nuclear reactors to Argentina and Chile.
- The Louisiana-Pacific (L-P) logging company, famous for its
union-busting, clear cutting of old growth forests and support for
anti-environmental front groups. L-P hopes to convince its
employees and the public that rural unemployment in North
America is caused by environmental extremists and opressive
government regulation and not by unsustainable logging practices
or the relocation of s awmills to low-wage countries like Mexico.
- B-M formed the British Columbia Forest Alliance (BCFA), a
Canadian front group which has L-P among its founding members.
BCFA is campaigning against restrictions on logging and is
actively working to smear and discredit environmentalists. Other
BCFA members include Mitsubishi and Weyerhaueser.
- B-M is a key player in the nuclear industry lobby. According to
Canadian journalist Joyce Nelson, B-M has for years "represented
top nuclear power/nuclear weapons contractors such as General
Electric, AT&T, McDonnell Douglas, Asea Brown Boveri and Du
Pont. In fact, Canada's first Candu [nuclear] reactor sale to
Argentina in the early 1970's was later renegotiated during the
reign of the military junta, for whom Burson-Marsteller did an
image-cleanup from 1976-1981". In addition to this, since 1993
B-M subsidiary Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly has been
representing Nordion International, a newly-privatised subsidiary
of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., Canada's state-owned nuclear
power company.
- B-M coordinated the oil industry's campaign to discredit and
destroy president Clinton's proposal for a BTU tax.
- A B-M executive sits on the board of Keep America Beautiful, a
front for the packaging and waste hauling industries that lobbies
against mandatory recycling laws, especially the passage of a
national bottle bill in the US.
B-M's most powerful and influential 'environmental' client is the Business
Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD), an eco-capitalist outfit
founded by Swiss banker Stephan Schmidheiny. A leading theorist and
advocate of neoliberal dogma and corporate environmentalism, Schmidheiny
agressively combines entrepreneurship and statesmanship. He is a board
member of NestlE9, and a director and shareholder (5% owner) of B-M client
Asea Brown Boveri. BCSD's original task was to act behind the scenes
at the
1992 Earth Summit, which was chaired by the current head of B-M client
Ontario Hydro Maurice Strong, to neutralize and silence any voices
critical
of the irresponsible behavior of polluting corporations. In the words of
Joyce Nelson, "With the able assistance of public relations giant
Burson-Marsteller, a very elite group of business people (including B-M
itself) was seemingly able to plan the agenda for the Earth Summit with
little interference from NGO's or government leaders". Nowadays BCSD is
advocating free markets and unfettered corporate activity as the only
salvation of the environment. Its members include the CEO's of Asea Brown
Boveri, Browning Ferris Industries, Ciba-Geigy, Dow Chemical, DuPont, BCFA
member Mitsubishi, Maurice Strong's Ontario Hydro, Royal Dutch-Shell, and
companies from Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Spain, India, Kenya, Nigeria,
Thailand and Venezuela.
Dirty Tricks and Front Groups
B-M was hired by the pharmaceutical corporation Eli Lilly and Monsanto
subsidiary Nutra Sweet to promote the use of the genetically-engineered
synthetic bovine growth hormone rBGH. This hormone, which increases milk
output in cows, is strongly opposed by dairy farmers and consumer and
environmental activist groups. Their two main arguments are that 1) There
is already a milk glut in the US. To bring more of it into the market
would
depress prices so severely that small dairy farmers would be run out of
business; and 2) the use of rBGH has already been linked to severe health
problems in cows and to calves born with grotesque birth defects.
B-M's campaign to neutralize the opposition to rBGH included the use of
spies to penetrate activist groups. This fact became public when
University
of Vermont spokesperson Nicola Marro admitted that a mole had been placed
in an anti-rBGH ad-hoc group headed by Jeremy Rifkin, a well-known critic
of biotechnology and author of several books. Participants in the group
singled out a woman named Diane Moser as a suspect. Moser, who attended a
Washington DC meeting of the group, avoided small talk and read a
paperback
during the meeting. Vermont state representative Andrew Christiansen,
who a
ttended the meeting, told journalist John Dillon that "She said she
represented housewives concerned about BGH...I had suspicions immediately.
I've never seen anybody with a paperback coming to a me eting like that".
When the activists called the number she left in the sign-up sheet, it
rang
in the Washington DC offices of Burson- Marsteller. B-M executive Timothy
Brosnahan acknowledged that Moser was a B-M employee but denied knowing of
any snooping on her part.
A freedom of information act (FOIA) request by activists Tim Atwater and
John Stauber, who were then with Rural Vermont and the Foundation on
Economic Trends respectively, uncovered a broader pattern of espionage
against foes of rBGH. Atwater and Stauber's FOIA request uncovered
documents of the quasi-governmental, farmer-funded National Dairy Board
(NDB), which promotes rBGH. These documents revealed that the NDB
hired the
PR firm of Creswell, Munsell, Fultz & Zirbel (CMF&Z). This firm is a
subsidiary of communications conglomerate Young & Rubicam (Y&R), which
happens to be B-M's parent company. Given that Y&R represents rBGH backer
Monsanto, Stauber concluded that "The day-to-day work is done out of
Burson-Marsteller and CMF&Z. But I'm sure there's overall coordination
with
Young & Rubicam". Stauber is now editor of PR Watch, a newsletter that
provides critical reporting on the PR industry, and is co-author, along
with Sheldon Rampton, of Toxic Sludge is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and
the Public Relations Industry (Common Courage Press, 1995).
B-M works for Hydro-Quebec (H-Q) promoting the James Bay 2 project. If the
final stages of the construction of James Bay 2 are finished, it will
become the most destructive hydroelectric project in the history of North
America, disrupting the ecological balance of an area the size of France
and permanently displacing the Cree and Inuit indigenous populations
in the
area. To undermine grassroots opposition to James Bay 2, B-M created a
phony group of concerned citizens called the Coalition for Clean and
Renewable Energy (CCRE), which was headed by Harvey Schultz, former
head of
New York City's department of environmental protection. According to John
Dillon, "Schultz, Burson-Marsteller, and (CCRE) have hosted briefing
sessions for academics, and business and community leaders-- opinion
makers
who can carry the good word about Hydro-Quebec back to their
institutions".
The state of Vermont has proved particularly reluctant to buy electricity
from H-Q because of pressure from local activists. In order to counteract
this threat, B-M hired the Vermont law firm of Sherman & Kimbell to lobby
the state government in favor of electricity purchases from H-Q. This law
firm registered as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration
Act, which requires America n lobbyists to list their foreign clients and
how much they're being paid to represent them. However, since B-M itself
has refused to register as a foreign agent for H-Q, most of its work for
the James Bay 2 project remains a secret.
Selling NAFTA
In 1990 the Mexican government hired B-M to sell NAFTA to the American
public, media and politicians. B-M subcontracted this job to one of its
subsidiaries, The Brock Group (TBG), a consulting firm that has done work
for American Express, Bell Atlantic, Bacardi, Toyota and the Taiwanese
government. TBG is headed by former senator, Republican National Committee
chairman, US trade representative and labor secretary William Brock.
He was
certainly qualified for the job. As US trade representative, Brock
engineered the Caribbean Basin Initiative and the US-Israel Free Trade
Agreement, and began the negotiations that would eventually culminate in
the signing of the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement.
William Brock co-chairs the Multilateral Trade Negotiations (MTN)
Coalition, which was founded in 1990 to 'educate' the public-- and lobby
for--the now-completed Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade (GATT). The coalition's members include American Express,
General
Motors, IBM, General Electric, Cargill, Citicorp, Procter & Gamble and
other companies and trade associations. According to Malaysian activist
Martin Khor Kok Peng, the MTN Coalition had a big influence on the
1990 G-7
Summit meeting held in Houston, USA, in which GATT figured prominently. At
the Houston Summit, MTN held a high- profile press conference and released
a report by an 'eminent persons group' on world trade.
The Contra Connection
One of TBG's top executives happens to be former Miami businessman and
ambassador to Venezuela Otto Reich. During the Reagan administration, the
Cuban-born Reich headed the US state department's Office of Public
Diplomacy (OPD), whose task was to disseminate disinformation about the
Sandinistas and discourage reporting critical of the contras. This outfit,
whose operations were later found to be illegal by the US General
Accounting Office, was staffed with five psychological warfare specialists
from the 4th Psychological Operations Group of Fort Bragg. According to
John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, "the OPD...helped spread a scurrilous
story that some American reporters had received sexual favors from
Sandinista prostitutes in return for writing slanted stories". In 1987,
after the US Congress shut down the OPD, congressman Jack Brooks called it
"an important cog in the (Reagan) administration's effort to manipulate
public opinion and congressional action".
Interestingly enough, the OPD was conceived at an August 1983 meeting
between then CIA director William Casey and a small group of PR industry
executives. The meeting, whose purpose was to create a propaganda strategy
for the Nicaraguan contras, was attended by B-M senior vice-president
Kenneth D. Huszar and Philip Morris publicist James Bowling, who later
moved to B-M. Their advice to Casey included the creation of a
communications function within the White House, a recommendation that led
to the creation of the OPD.
B-M, Mexico and the Neoliberal Project
B-M's success in insuring the passage of NAFTA encouraged the Mexican
governing elite to retain the firm's services. It now has a luxurious
office in the posh Colonia Anzures district on Mexico City that caters to
customers like the Council of Businessmen, the National Stockbrokers'
Association, the ministry of commerce and industrial development, and the
Office of the President of the Republic. In addition to this, B-M parent
Young & Rubicam rakes in over $100 million every year from Mexican
clients.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the credibility of the neoliberal
project in the western hemisphere hinges on Mexico.
Businessmen, politicians and neoliberal ideologues all over the hemisphere
have touted Mexico as a symbol of capitalist success because of its
privatization policy and its faithful adherence to the economic formulas
prescribed by multilateral development banks (a.k.a. the Bretton Woods
institutions). After the massive expenditure of political energy in
getting
NAFTA passed, business elites in both Mexico and the US are
hard-pressed to
put on a convincing performance in order to give credibility to future
trade agreements. Bringing Guatemala and Chile into NAFTA has already
become an agenda item.
However, neoliberal designs for Mexico are endangered by a series of
crises, including the blatantly fraudulent elections of 1994, the
embarassing collapse of the peso, revelations of drug-related corruption
that compromise the Mexican elite all the way up to the president's
office,
a spate of political assassinations that seems to be beheading the ruling
political party's leadership, and the popularity of the EjE9rcito
Zapatista
de LiberaciF3n Nacional (EZLN). B-M has a lot of work to do in Mexico. In
the words of reporter Jon Reed, who investigated B-M's activities in
Mexico, "Burson-Marsteller and other Mexican and transnational PR firms
have demonstrated their effectiveness by working behind the scenes--
gauging public opinion, counseling government and corporate leaders,
shaping media coverage, and facilitating elite-to-elite
communications-- in
short, guaranteeing that the inevitable upheavals in an authoritarian and
unjust society do not interrupt business as usual".
Destroying Health Care
One of NAFTA's most nefarious consequences will be the dismantlement of
Canada's government-run health care system. Since it places very strict
limits on what domestic or foreign corporations can do, its more
progressive features--such as compulsory licensing in order to control
drug
costs-- will eventually be challenged as barriers to trade. Once the
Canadian system is gutted by NAFTA's notoriously secretive and
undemocratic
dispute resolution mechanisms, Canadian citizens will have, no choice but
to turn to the 'free market' for medical services and insurance.
However, American and Canadian pharmaceutical and insurance companies that
want to crack open the Canadian market are frustrated by the fact that
Canadians are very happy with their health care system. Worse yet,
more and
more Americans, especially in Vermont, are now calling for the
introduction
of single-payer health insurance in their country--a step in the direction
of a Canadian-style system. This presents a grave problem for neoliberal
demagogues, since it exposes the basic conflict between capitalism and
democracy.
Enter Burson-Marsteller's health care unit, whose staff includes "a
medical
doctor/physician; former FDA (Food and Drug Administration) commissioner;
former hospital administrator; former pharmaceutical communications
executives; former non-profit communications chiefs; grassroots
specialists, and former reporters" according to the senior editor of
O'Dwyer's newsletter, which monitors the PR business. B-M has plenty of
experience in matters of public health. On behalf of client Philip Morris,
B-M created the National Smokers' Alliance (NSA) to fight against smoking
restrictions. According to John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, the NSA "is a
state-of-the-art campaign that uses full-page newspaper ads, direct
telemarketing, paid canvassers, (toll free) numbers and newsletters to
bring thousands of smokers into its ranks each week. By 1995 NSA claimed a
membership of 3 million smokers". The NSA is headed by B-M vice-president
Thomas Humber and its members include B-M executives Pierre Salinger and
Kennetz Rietz, as well as Peter Kelly, senior partner of B-M subsidiary
Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly (see sidebar). In addition to this, B-M was
hired by the A.H. Robbins company when its Dalkon Shield IUD contraceptive
injured thousands of women who used it, and it is now currently promoting
the 'virtues' of Eli Lilly's anti-depressant wonder drug Prozac.
The winners of the health care debate in the US were beyond any doubt the
pharmeceutical transnational corporations (eleven of which are B-M
clients)
and the major insurance companies (which include B-M clients Met Life,
Equitable Life, Aetna, State Farm and Mutal of Omaha). Now both businesses
are vertically integrating themselves into superconglomerates known as
health maintenance organizations (HMO's). According to Joyce Nelson,
"During 1994 both the pharmaceutical industry and the private insurance
industry consolidated into even bigger players on the health care scene,
with B-M playing a major role in arranging the mergers among its clients".
HMO's are not required to cover all illnesses or people, but can instead
discriminate against elderly citizens and/or people with health
problems in
order to reduce operating costs.
What can we do?
The awesome power of the 'manufactured consent' of the mass media, created
in no small part by PR firms like Burson-Marsteller, can be
discouraging to
many politically aware citizens. However, despair is what the PR business
sells: despair from even the smallest possibility of positive social
change
from below. If we are to believe that organized citizens cannot
effectively
challenge corporate and government power, then the PR flacks will have
truly triumphed. But, as Rampton and Stauber say in their book, "The fact
that corporations and governments feel compelled to spend billions of
dollars every year manipulating the public is a perverse tribute to human
nature and our own moral values".
The author is a Puerto Rican journalist living in Vermont, where he is a
guest lecturer and research associate at Goddard College's Institute for
Social Ecology.
Recommended reading: PR Watch. This quarterly newsletter, edited by John
Stauber, provides a progressive and critical perspective on the public
relations business. 3318 Gregory Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53711, USA.
Sources:
Center for Public Integrity. Private Parties: Political Party
Leadership in Washington's Mercenary Culture. 1992.
Center for Public Integrity. The Trading Game: Inside Lobbying
for the North American Free Trade Agreement. 1993.
Deal, Carl. The Greenpeace Guide to Anti-Environmental Front
Groups. Odonian Press, 1993.
Dillon, John. "Burson-Marsteller: Poisoning the Grassroots"
Covert Action Quarterly: Spring 1993.
Greenpeace. The Greenpeace Book of Greenwash. 1992.
Khor Kok Peng, Martin. The Uruguay Round and Third World
Sovereignty. Third World Network. 1990.
Nelson, Joyce. "The Time of the Hangman" Adbusters: Winter
1989-1990.
Nelson, Joyce. "Burson-Marsteller, Pax Trilateral and the
Brundtland Gang vs. The Environment" Covert Action Quarterly:
Spring 1993.
Nelson, Joyce. "Dr. Rockefeller Will See You Now" Z Magazine:
May 1995.
Nelson, Joyce. "NAFTA's Nuclear Agenda" Z Magazine: June
1995.
Parry, Robert. Fooling America: How Washington Insiders Twist
the Truth and Manufacture the Conventional Wisdom. Morrow,
1992.
Rampton, Sheldon & Stauber, John. Toxic Sludge is Good for
You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry. Common
Courage Press, 1995.
Reed, Jon. "Interview with the Vampire: PR Helps the PRI Drain
Mexico Dry" PR Watch: fourth quarter, 1994.
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