LETTE

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Colombia who refused to backtrack against oil development and even threatened suicide if Occidental and Shell drilled on
their land. It was the companies who in the end backed down.

2. MONITORING AND INTELLIGENCE

Loosing control of a situation as result of the activities of pressure groups has become the nightmare scenario for modern
multinational enterprises. Shell was taken by complete surprise when the Greenpeace campaign against sinking the Brent
Spar former drill platform achieved its goals. A comprehensive review of what has become known as the PR disaster of the
century indicates that Shell had it all wrong about its own influence on the media. There was a new factor in the game,
which had been completely missed out: the role of the Internet. Since that miscalculation, Shell sports an Internet manag-
er who is convinced that listening to the Internet community is an effective barometer of public opinion about your com-
pany. The Shell Headquarters in London are making a thorough job of it. Specialised, external consultants have been hired
who scout the web daily, inventorying all the possible ways Shell is mentioned on the net and in which context. In combi-
nation with real life intelligence gathering, from open sources to covert actions like eaves dropping and infiltration (the
tiny London Greenpeace campaign against McDonalds suffered from at least seven covert agents in their group). These
tactics yield a great deal of information which can then be used for a variety of purposes. The least harmful -in a way-
would be tackling the aim of campaigns with a carefully balanced PR-campaign. The surprise effect of a picket-line or a
it-in can be countered if the targeted corporation was aware of an action in advance. Winning time and photo-opportuni-
ties dealing with reluctant spokespeople and clumsy CEO's is always good for soundbites in the mainstream media.
Without this surprise-effect, campaigners would loose half of their means, so to speak. Exchanging information with law
enforcement and governmental intelligence services would give the authorities extra opportunities to take their own mea-
surements to prevent people from doing potentially law breaking acts.

3. AGGRESSIVE PR, USING LEGAL THREATS, FRONT GROUPS AND GREENWASH TACTICS

The fear of legal threats made the printers of The Ecologist decide to withhold a special issue of the magazine on biotech-
nology and the Monsanto Corporation, during September of last year. The special issue of The Ecologist was a direct re-
sponse to Monsanto's large-scale Europe-wide advertising campaign, in which the company claims, among other things,
that “Food biotechnology is a matter of opinions. Monsanto believes you should hear all of them." The magazine highlights
Monsanto's track record of social and ecological irresponsibility, and illustrates its readiness to intimidate and quash
those ideas which conflict with its immediate interests. (The issue opens with an article by HRH the Prince of Wales on ge-
netic engineering Seeds of Disaster. Charles gave his permission for republication -it first appeared in the Daily Telegraph-
as a contextual introduction to this special issue). After 29 years of reliable and friendly partnership the editors of The
Ecologist found out that the printers had pulped the entire edition, two days before it was due to appear - without notifying
them. After the magazine had found another printer, the problems were not over yet. Two leading newsagents in the U.K.,
WH Smith and John Menzies, decided not to sell the issue, for fear of being sued. This incident demonstrates that
Monsanto's reputation for aggression and intimidation alone makes it difficult for the public to be properly informed of the
true nature of genetic engineering.

Green Wash is a special form of PR. The industry has for instance treated climate change as a PR-problem - it has funded
so-called independent scientists and formed green-sounding front groups, such as the Global Climate Coalition. In the run
up to the Kyoto meeting late 1997, the GCC spent $ 60 million dollars trying to persuade the public that they were not to
blame and justify a business as usual future. In Germany they call this astroturf lobbying. Exposing the schemes of secret
front groups has diminished the successfulness of this strategy. Though there still is a lobby group rallying grassroots sup-
port against wind energy sites. They operate along the same lines again and again, even buying houses at possible sites
in order to pose as local citizens. Astroturf techniques are performed successfully either at the level of European decision
making in Brussels, at an arena that is removed from everyday national or local debates. Usually, in these situations you
get some village journalists, and the story never makes it out of the region. Next week you might be employing the same

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