taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

Ireland: Pledge to take a trip to Iceland. Daev says ‘pledge to visit Iceland as a tourist if they stop whaling’ — if he gets enough clicks on this campaign, he’ll get a trip on one of Greenpeace’s ships!

Tags: campaign, daev, greenpeace, ireland, pledge, tourist, trip

So it seems that P45.net were behind some classic hoaxes in the Irish media recently, including the Monaghan-Iraq story:

The New York Monaghan Association has issued a strong statement of support for the US military campaign against Iraq. This is despite being unable to carry their usual banner in the New York St Patricks Day Parade because of similarities between an outline map of Monaghan and Iraq.

Busaras comes clean, and Daev kindly remembers to provide 1 page that links to ‘em all ;)

Tags: association, banner, campaign, monaghan, net, new, statement, story, support, york

Google News has been forced to remove IndyMedia from Google News’ feed of sources, by an email campaign.

I’m in two minds about this — I can see Google News’ point. If an unmoderated feed allows crap like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to get through, then GN obviously doesn’t want that turning up in their ‘news’ search results. But removing IMC altogether seems suboptimal; I would assume the front page newswire – or at least the features – is a bit more moderated, and therefore trustworthy.

Getting balanced news — and that means lefty IMC along with neocon Fox — is key, and Google News was doing a pretty good job up ’til that point.

Tags: campaign, crap, email, feed, google, imc, indymedia, news, point, protocols

Guardian: DrugScope, the drug charity, says that an ‘intensive media campaign against the drug ecstasy has led to an increase in cocaine use among young people’. whoops.

‘Studies show the reason they no longer use ecstasy is because of the scare stories,’ said a spokesman for the charity. ‘They haven’t seen similar stories about cocaine and their belief is that cocaine is the safer drug. The reality is that cocaine, especially crack cocaine, is a much more harmful drug - it kills more people each year and more people have dependency on it.’

They also add a few UL-busting facts:

DrugScope’s guide argues that there are no recorded examples of heroin ever being cut with ground glass … no drug is instantly addictive and that addiction generally takes several months to develop … physical withdrawal from heroin is like a bad bout of flu, not a near-death experience.

Tags: campaign, charity, cocaine, drug, drugscope, ecstasy, guardian, heroin, increase, use

Danny O’Brien: Help stop the flood of spam, in the Sunday Times. Great article:

We have had enough of the filth pouring into our mailboxes. Danny O?Brien launches a Doors campaign to clean up e-mail and puts forward a six-point plan involving government, industry and you the reader

DOORS SIX-POINT ACTION PLAN

SOFTWARE MAKERS must improve antispam software, and fast. Filtering spam is good, but only masks the problem. Spam-spotting software must report what and who it has found back to the ISPs, so they can block further spams.

Interesting!

Tags: article, campaign, doors, filth, flood, plan, software, spam, sunday, times