This post is a follow-up to an article by Andrew Adam Newman that appeared in Adweek on May 5, 2008 called The True Story of a Bogus Blog, via PRWatch.org

Report: Hunter College Probe Slams Coach-Sponsored PR Class
Adweek
by Andrew Adam Newman
May 9, 2008

The course was funded by a $10,000 grant from Coach as part of a college outreach effort by the IACC.

New York: A Hunter College Senate Committee’s investigation of a Coach-sponsored PR class slams the college’s administration on numerous academic freedom grounds and says that the PR practices taught in the class were “deeply troubling.”

As detailed Monday in Adweek, the course taught last spring at Hunter in New York was funded by a $10,000 grant from Coach and was part of a college outreach campaign by the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (IACC), a trade group that includes Coach and other brands like Apple, Levi Strauss & Co., Louis Vuitton and Rolex. A class, acting as an idea-pitching and campaign-executing agency for Coach and the trade group, invented a blogging student named Heidi Cee whose posts on Facebook and MySpace try to dissuade students from buying counterfeit goods. PR observers and bloggers faulted the campaign for being deceptive.

The findings in the below report, which was leaked to Adweek and is scheduled to be presented on May 21 to the full college senate, largely echo the concerns of Stuart Ewen, one of two Hunter professors who made the complaint that led to the investigation, namely that the professor who taught the course was “coerced” to do so, that the trade group’s and Coach’s hands-on involvement with the course “was clearly a violation of academic freedom,” and that that the course was initiated at the behest of the administration rather than the faculty. (more…)

Submitted by Jon Truskey, from Robert Greenwald and the Brave New Team:

You may have heard of Rev. John Hagee, the McCain supporter who said God created Hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for its homosexual “sins.” Well now meet Rev. Rod Parsley, the televangelist megachurch pastor from Ohio who hates Islam. According to David Corn of Mother Jones, Parsley has called on Christians to wage war against Islam, which he considers to be a “false religion.” In the past, Parsley has also railed against the separation of church and state, homosexuals, and abortion rights, comparing Planned Parenthood to Nazis.

John McCain actively sought and received Parsley’s endorsement in the presidential race. McCain has called Parsley “a spiritual guide,” and he hasn’t said whether he shares Parsley’s vicious anti-Islam views. That’s because the mainstream media refuses to ask. And so, we’ve taken matters into our own hands, joining Mother Jones to present the truth about McCain’s pastor.

(more…)

Fabled absinthe all a hoax, German scientists say
The Earth Times
May 6, 2008

Karlsruhe, Germany - Absinthe, the green liqueur flavoured with aniseed which reputedly used to drive artists mad, was a hoax, a team of scientists said Tuesday, adding that it was only the strong alcohol in the drink that was damaging to health.

Absinthe was banned in Europe for much of the 20th century because of fears it contained large amounts of thujon, which is toxic to the nerves. Not so, said scientists at the CVUA laboratory in Karlsruhe, Germany, who did the study with US and British colleagues.

They tested old bottles of the beverage nearly 100 years old.

“Its psycho-active effect is just a fairy tale,” said scientist Dirk Lachenmeier. The liqueur had contained only minimal thujon.

Users claimed the wormwood liqueur could trigger hallucinations or epileptic fits. The Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh is supposed to have cut off his own ear under its influence. (more…)

Pentagon’s Propaganda Documents Go Online, but Will the TV Networks Ever Report this Scandal?
by John Stauber
Center for Media and Democracy/PR Watch
May 6, 2008

Eight thousand pages of documents related to the Pentagon’s illegal propaganda campaign, known as the Pentagon military analyst program, are now online for the world to see, although in a format that makes it impossible to easily search them and therefore difficult to read and dissect. This trove includes the documents pried out of the Pentagon by David Barstow and used as the basis for his stunning investigation that appeared in the New York Times on April 20, 2008.

The Pentagon program, which clearly violated US law against covert government propaganda, embedded more than 75 retired military officers — most of them with financial ties to war contractors — into the TV networks as “message surrogates” for the Bush Administration. To date, every major commercial TV network has failed to report this story, covering up their complicity and keeping the existence of this scandal from their audiences. (more…)

Submitted by Steve Lambert: An Evangelical Christian version of Punk’d by comedian Rich Praytor:

Faking the Rapture

Guy surfs behind great white shark caught with fishing pole!

Posted on YouTube by Notorious415, via Neatorama

Man arrested in Texas for trying to cash $360 billion check
1010WINS
May 1, 2008

Fort Worth, Texas (AP) — Charles Ray Fuller must have been planning one big record company. The 21-year-old North Texas man was arrested last week for trying to cash a $360 billion check, saying he wanted to start a record business. Tellers at the Fort Worth bank were immediately suspicious - perhaps the 10 zeros on a personal check tipped them off.

Fuller, of suburban Crowley, was arrested on a forgery charge. He was released after posting $3,750 bail.

Fuller said his girlfriend’s mother gave him the check to start a record business. But bank employees who contacted the account’s owner said the woman told them she did not give him permission to take or cash the check.

In addition to the forgery count, Fuller was charged with unlawfully carrying a weapon and possessing marijuana. Officers reported finding less than two ounces of marijuana and a .25-caliber handgun and magazine in his pockets.

David Blaine breaks world record for holding one’s breath
by Tara Burghart
USA Today
April 30, 2008

Chicago (AP) — David Blaine set a new world record Wednesday for breath-holding, 17 minutes and 4 seconds.

The feat was broadcast live during The Oprah Winfrey Show and the studio audience cheered as divers pulled the 35-year-old magician from a water-filled sphere.

Blaine looked relaxed afterward and said the record was “a lifelong dream.”

The previous record was 16 minutes and 32 seconds, set Feb. 10 by Switzerland’s Peter Colat, according to Guinness World Records.

Before he entered the sphere, Blaine inhaled pure oxygen through a mask to saturate his blood with oxygen and flush out carbon dioxide.

Guinness says up to 30 minutes of so-called “oxygen hyperventilation” is allowed under its guidelines.

Previously, Blaine was buried alive for a week in a see-through coffin in New York and spent more than a month suspended from a glass box by the River Thames in London.

photo: Hong Kong Space Museum

Editor’s note: For the official press release, visit Critical Art Ensemble Defense Fund Web site.

Federal Charges Against Steven Kurtz Dismissed
by Jeff Woodard, Executive Producer
WGRZ.com
April 21, 2008, updated April 22, 2008

The indictment charging UB professor Steve Kurtz with two counts of mail fraud and two counts of wire fraud, has been thrown out.

Judge Richard Arcara dismissed the charges in federal court Monday.

FBI agents in Haz-Mat suits went into Kurtz’s Buffalo home in May, 2004. Kurtz had called 911 after finding his wife unresponsive. It turned out that Hope Kurtz had died of natural causes.

But once police entered Kurtz’s home, they found biological samples inside. The F.B.I. was called and a huge investigation followed.

Kurtz told authorities that he used the samples as part of his performance art that deals with bio-technology.

After a lengthy investigation, Kurtz was charged not with bio-terrorism, but with fraudulently obtaining two of the samples that were in his home.

The following is an interview Kurtz conducted with Channel 2’s Scott Brown in 2007, when the indictment was still in place: (more…)

Message Machine: Behind Analysts, the Pentagon’s Hidden Hand
by David Barstow
New York Times
April 20, 2008

In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

Read the rest of the article here. It’s long but fascinating.

And, check out this New York Times multi-media report, How the Pentagon Spread Its Message also by David Barstow, April 20, 2008.

Barstow, an investigative reporter for The Times, examines primary source documents detailing the Pentagon’s response to criticism of then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld by a group of prominent retired generals.

thanks Nancy