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EXCLUSIVE: Health Insurance Lobbyâs Stealth Astroturf Campaign Revealed
,----[ Quote ]
| According to the server-information hub Domaintools.com, the AHIP grassroots
| outreach website AHIPAdvocacy.org is hosted on a server owned by DDC. Though
| DDC conceals the hosting of its other websites using a service called
| DomainsByProxy, ThinkProgress has obtained a list of the domains hosted on
| DDC servers. A review of this data shows that DDC maintains the grassroots
| outreach websites for large health insurance companies, but also for big
| tobacco and Koch Industries:
|
| â phillipmorrisusaactioncenter.org (Altria)
| â tobaccoissues.com (Altria)
| â kochpac.com (Koch Industries)
| â aetnavotes.com (Aetna)
| â healthactionnetwork.org (WellPoint)
| â humanapartners.com (Humana)
| â ahipadvocacy.org (AHIP)
`----
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/08/27/ahip-lobbying-publicoption/
Microsoft's front group ACT also uses DomainsByProxy.
Rendon's Embed Vetting Scandal
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| The military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported that the Pentagon was using
| one of its favorite public relations firms, the Rendon Group, to produce
| profiles of reporters requesting to embed with U.S. forces in Afghanistan;
| that the profiles graded reporters' past coverage as "positive," "neutral"
| or "negative," sometimes suggesting how to "neutralize" expected negative
| coverage or how to design embeds to "result in favorable coverage"; and that,
| in some cases, the profiles prompted military officials to reject reporters'
| embed requests
`----
http://www.prwatch.org/node/8537
Online politics reserved for rich
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| US civic engagement remains in the hands of the middle-class despite hopes
| that the internet would democratise political involvement.
`----
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8233908.stm
Recent:
Shameless Front Group Plans More Astroturf
,----[ Quote ]
| After its public relations firm was outed for sending fake letters opposing
| the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill to members of Congress, the American Coalition
| for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) is expanding its "grassroots" outreach.
| The coal industry front group "is launching a $1 million campaign" to secure
| more concessions for coal in the Senate version of the climate change bill.
`----
http://www.prwatch.org/node/8489
Related:
Microsoft puppets spamming ANSI
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| An impressive list of spam comments asking for supporting OOXML and
| backward compatibility, claiming also that "Open XML in no way
| contradicts any other international document standard". No really?
`----
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-11857/microsoft-puppets-spamming-ansi
,----[ Quote ]
| In 2001, the Los Angeles Times accused Microsoft of astroturfing
| when hundreds of similar letters were sent to newspapers voicing
| disagreement with the United States Department of Justice and its
| antitrust suit against Microsoft. The letters, prepared by Americans
| for Technology Leadership, had in some cases been mailed from
| deceased citizens or nonexistent addresses.
`----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing
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