14 Feb 2007 

SpinWatch is a partner of the ALTER-EU, a coalition of citizen's organisations to campaign for transparacy on lobbying in the EU. CEO is another member of this coalition. 

Today, CEO sent a complaint letter to EPACA chairman John Houston, in reaction to a chapter that Houston wrote in Challenge and Response -- Essays on Public Affairs and Transparency, published in September 2006.
In his chapter, Houston makes unfounded and unsubstantiated accusations against CEO and ALTER-EU.

The letter is published at the Corporate Europe Observatory website.

13 Feb 2007

by Eveline Lubbers 

Dear George,

Your Guardian column today  devoted to "The parallel universe of BAE" reveals that confidential and legally privileged material belonging to CAAT landed on the desks of BAE Systems plc. The company has refused to state how it came into possession of the material.

You recall the exposure in the Sunday Times that revealed how BAE had carried out a “widespread spying operation” on its critics.  CAAT took the case to the UK’s Information Commissioner, who found that the email address belonged to “a company with links to Evelyn Le Chene.”

I have had the opportunity the study the many surveillance reports about CAAT that were sent to BAE, the source material used by the Sunday Times. SpinWatch published an elaborate dossier on the case. It's called the  Threat Response Spy Files, investigating this case of corporate intelligence.

Eveline Lubbers, 28 Jan 2007 

Shell was one of the first companies to take a hit in the new-media war. The company was taken by surprise in 1995 when a Greenpeace campaign against sinking the redundant Brent Spar oil platform succeeded. Such a disaster would not be allowed to happen again. Shell International developed an online strategy, which included monitoring what was being said about the company in cyberspace.

For my book Battling Big Business I researched the on line detective agencies hired by Shell. Back then I also found out that the company’s impressive new website offered means of surveillance too. The forums were used to monitor Shell’s critics. For my present PhD research I was curious to know what had happened to the forums since.

Sometime a good project deserves some praise & PR from the like-minded. I just got very inspired after reading Katrina vanden Heuvel's blog in the Nation:

Before we can win the great battle of ideas, we must debunk the right's political discourse, a veritable code of encrypted language that twists common usage to deceive the public for the Republicans' purposes. The key to their linguistic strategy is to use words that sound moderate to us but mean something completely different to them.

We decided we needed to break the code by building a Republican dictionary. For six months, thenation.com accepted suggestions from everyone who wanted to participate.  Here are some of my favorites. I hope they inspire you to action, to take back this great nation from those who are doing it such harm.