Exxon Watching out for the Public Interest
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 03.21.06
Public Interest Watch (PIW) " was established in 2002 in response to the growing misuse of charitable funds by nonprofit organizations" and spends its time going after shady organizations like Doctors without Borders, The American Heart Association and Greenpeace. Normally we would ignore such things but we read (in the Wall Street Journal of all places) that the major corporate sponsor (like, 98% of its funding) of this charming group is none other than Exxon (Esso in the rest of the world) . According to the Journal, Greenpeace has labeled Exxon Mobil the "No. 1 climate criminal" so PIW started agitating with the IRS to do an audit, accusing it of "blatant self-dealing," money laundering and other illegal activities." We are certain that the IRS is unbiased and fair, but "I believe organizations should be scrutinized and audited, but I just don't believe you should get targeted because ... you're a critic of Exxon Mobil," said John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace USA. So drive right by that Exxon Mobil Station and visit ::Stop Esso or ::ExposeExxon. Hugs to the Journal for doing this story- We look forward to Holman Jenkins' spin on it.
Read our earlier posts about Exxon
UPDATE: Commenter Ben introduces us to the verb astroturfing- "formal public relations projects which deliberately seek to engineer the impression of spontaneous, grassroots behavior. The goal is the appearance of independent public reaction to a politician, political group, product, service, event, or similar entities by centrally orchestrating the behavior of many diverse and geographically distributed individuals." We love it.
UPDATE II here is a link to the original article.
The organization accepts contributions. I'm wondering if it is possible to contribute and then sue, based on how misleading the organization is about its true purpose and who funds it. A further wrinkle is that the pressure they apply on politicians, particularly in the third world, must be often accompanied by "incentives" funneled one way or the other.
I mean, these people are doing some serious damage. Check out their site if you don't believe me.
worth reading
lloyd hugs WSJ. Ahhh free love!
but seriously, exxon according to MoJo spent $8M last year on disinformation "think tanks" and consumer rights groups.... and it's going to continue (so the lesson is make sure you dot all t's and cross all i's. don't be like enron cause Rush will call for an audit)
Meanwhile, if it wasn't for Exxon Patrick Michaels, Fred Singer, Robert Balling, Richard Linden and the rest of the climate "skeptics*" would actually have had to go out and look for jobs! (climate skeptics is a polite word for something that if i write it someone will have to edit my comment)
thats why I loved it when Lee Raymond tried to chortle to congress --out of his 7 chins-- that Exxon had to keep prices high because they were busy working on emisssion reductions and clean renewables.. maybe (MAYBE..) he and his crew don't lust (maybe) but they have the other 6 deadly sins down pat.. ick. ick. ick!