If you’re interested in how powerful forces of marketing & manipulation make the positive change we badly need MUCH harder, read @grantennis.bsky.social’ great book “Dark PR.” – Brent Toderian, Bluesky
“Think global, act local!” “Be the change you want to see in the world!” “Every little bit counts!” We can all get on board with such sentiments, right? That, of course, is exactly what corporate spin-masters across the world are banking on. By weaponizing such seemingly innocuous yet powerful narratives, change becomes a matter of personal choice, something each of us must slave away at day by day: switching off lightbulbs to save the environment or exercising to shed the weight we’ve gained from consuming junk food. All the while, the corporate welfare tap continues to flow, with over $6 trillion worth of annual subsidies dished out to industries that directly contribute to the deaths of over 5.5 million people each year through diabetes, road deaths, global warming, and other crises. But such framing is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the corporate disinformation playbook. This playbook is the dark matter of activist work: the unseeable element shaping harmful spin across all issues. It has never been reverse engineered – until now.
In Dark PR, Grant Ennis – drawing on his decades of experience working in the environmental, philanthropy, and public health sectors – reveals exactly how multinationals go about hoodwinking and manipulating us. In doing so, he lifts the lid on the nine devious frames contained within the cross-industry corporate disinformation playbook: through denialism, normalization, victim-blaming, multifactorialism, and a variety of other tried-and-tested tactics, corporations divert citizens’ attention away from the real causes of global problems, leading them into counter-productive blind-alley “solutions” like ethical consumerism and divestment. Sadly, though, buying Fair Trade chocolate has not and never will save the world. Only by collectively organizing to lobby our governments can we break this destructive cycle of lies and deadly incentives and reclaim control of our lives.
Dark PR: How Corporate Disinformation Harms Our Health and the Environment referenced in the UK House of Lords.
“I’m really interested in a piece of work that’s written by a guy named Grant Ennis, and I would advise you to have a look at his book on subsidy. So actually the Government provide an awful lot of subsidy to unhealthy food producers. Actually we could reduce the subsidy that is provided for that food and use the money in a different way to do different things. He is the expert in that”
– Alice Wiseman, Director of Public Health for Gateshead, England
Link: https://lnkd.in/e6AnKssm Minute 11:34:24
USD $ 6.99 USD $ 21.00Price range: USD $ 6.99 through USD $ 21.00
Grant Ennis has spent his career working across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. His work has spanned spearheading government-led public health efforts in India to supporting civil society projects in Syria. Since 2015, Grant has coordinated government-relations…
“Think global, act local!” “Be the change you want to see in the world!” “Every little bit counts!” We can all get on board with such sentiments, right? That, of course, is exactly what corporate spin-masters across the world are banking on. By weaponizing such seemingly innocuous yet powerful narratives, change becomes a matter of personal choice, something each of us must slave away at day by day: switching off lightbulbs to save the environment or exercising to shed the weight we’ve gained from consuming junk food. All the while, the corporate welfare tap continues to flow, with over $6 trillion worth of annual subsidies dished out to industries that directly contribute to the deaths of over 5.5 million people each year through diabetes, road deaths, global warming, and other crises. But such framing is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the corporate disinformation playbook. This playbook is the dark matter of activist work: the unseeable element shaping harmful spin across all issues. It has never been reverse engineered – until now.
In Dark PR, Grant Ennis – drawing on his decades of experience working in the environmental, philanthropy, and public health sectors – reveals exactly how multinationals go about hoodwinking and manipulating us. In doing so, he lifts the lid on the nine devious frames contained within the cross-industry corporate disinformation playbook: through denialism, normalization, victim-blaming, multifactorialism, and a variety of other tried-and-tested tactics, corporations divert citizens’ attention away from the real causes of global problems, leading them into counter-productive blind-alley “solutions” like ethical consumerism and divestment. Sadly, though, buying Fair Trade chocolate has not and never will save the world. Only by collectively organizing to lobby our governments can we break this destructive cycle of lies and deadly incentives and reclaim control of our lives.
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Kitabu hiki kinaturudisha katika kipindi cha kusisimuwa cha miaka ya vita baridi, kipindi ambacho, sambamba na kipindi cha leo, madola ya kibeberu yamekuwa yakifanya njama za kubadilisha serikali zilizokuwepo na kuziweka madarakani zile zenye kufuata amri. Kwa kutumia kumbukumbu za picha za Johari, nyaraka za siri za Marekani na Uingereza, pamoja na mahojiano ya kina, kitabu kinatowa uchambuzi juu ya nafasi na satwa ya Chama cha Umma Party nchini Zanzibar na kiongozi wake mwenye upeo mkubwa wa mambo, Mwanamapinduzi mfuasi wa Itikadi ya Karl Marx, Abdulrahman Mohamed Babu. Kwa kuangalia kwa njia ya uwiano wa mifano inayokwenda sambamba ya wahka wa Marekani kuhusu Uchina ya Kikomunisti katika miaka ya 1960 na woga walionao hivi sasa kuhusu ushawishi wa Uchina, kitabu kinatafakari juu ya mivutano mipya iliyopo katika kupigania rasilmali za Afrika, kuundwa kwa kikosi cha AFRICOM, na jinsi Wanasiasa wa Afrika Mashariki wanavyoshiriki katika kuimarisha udhibiti wa Marekani katika nchi zao, na “Vita dhidi ya Ugaidi” katika ukanda wa Afrika Mashariki hivi sasa.
Now available from Mkuki Na Nyota Publishers, Tanzania: http://www.mkukinanyota.com
Moçambique celebrou, em Junho de 2020, 45 anos de sua independência. Os ganhos e avanços que o país alcançou nesta quase meia década de independência são inegáveis, mas os desafios que subsistem são muitos. Este livro reflecte sobre Moçambique contemporâneo nos seus vários aspectos, destacando a formação e o papel do Estado, a democracia, a participação dos cidadãos, a política económica e social e o desenvolvimento. Como se pode ver, o livro não é temático e oferece diversas perspectivas de autores e autoras que se dedicam à investigação, ao jornalismo e ao activismo. O livro pretende exactamente oferecer uma leitura do país a partir dos olhos daqueles que não ocupam uma posição de poder mas que vivem, experienciam e lêem a realidade do país a partir de uma perspectiva crítica da sociedade.
O objectivo deste livro é dar uma melhor compreensão do que tem sido o processo de independência em Moçambique e porque é que o país pós-colonial ainda é ‘colonial’ na sua estrutura política e económica. Assim, são dados muitos exemplos para dar ao leitor a possibilidade de confrontar as perspectivas teóricas aqui utilizadas com os casos concretos.
Todos os estudos deste livro mostram que quarenta e cinco anos de independência não foram vividos da mesma forma pelas elites que governam o país e pelas populações que vivem sob o seu domínio. Por um lado, as elites no poder e os seus parentes beneficiaram, e ainda beneficiam, dos recursos do país, enquanto que uma grande parte da população continua à espera das promessas da independência. De um ponto de vista político e económico, os estudos que compõem o livro destacam como o “desenvolvimento” em Moçambique tem estado em contradição com as necessidades do país. Significa que o actual modelo de desenvolvimento responde muito mais ao capital internacional do que à transformação social de Moçambique.
Ce livre est un apport précieux pour demander à changer de focale et de perspective au sujet des migrations à l’intérieur du continent africain. Celles-ci sont bien plus importantes quan- titativement, mais aussi économiquement et historiquement, que les migrations de l’Afrique vers l’Europe. Elles sont beaucoup plus silencieuses et infiniment moins étudiées que celles du Sud vers le Nord. Ces migrations sont vitales, tant pour les pays de départ que pour ceux d’arrivée. Ainsi, des millions de jeunes partent chaque année pour les pays de la côte, et cela sans susciter les mêmes résistances, fantasmes et peurs qu’en Europe.
Cet ouvrage a le grand mérite d’intégrer les migrations dans la perspective plus large des mobilités, puis d’en examiner les liens avec le développement. Il est rédigé par de jeunes chercheurs africains, qui produisent à partir de leurs terrains spécifiques des analyses à valeur générale sur les sociétés contemporaines. Ils contribuent ainsi au renouvellement des sciences sociales à partir des pays africains.
On peut en revanche souligner que l’ouvrage a relevé un défi important : celui d’éclairer à la fois les dynamiques de l’expérience migratoire, des trajectoires suivies par les migrants et des espaces migratoires à l’intérieur de l’Afrique. — Sylvie Ayimpam, « Mobilités, circulations et frontières. Migrations, mobilités et développement en Afrique », Anthropologie & développement [En ligne], 51 | 2020, mis en ligne le 01 décembre 2020, consulté le 23 février 2021. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/anthropodev/1068 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/anthropodev.1068
These companion volumes are refreshing because they introduce us to many less well- known instances which amply illustrate just how mobile African populations really are at the regional, intra-regional and global scales. – Paul NUGENT, University of Edinburgh (United Kingdom)
Un ouvrage d’une grande actualité qui aborde la question des migrations sous un angle radicalement nouveau et original : l’articulation dynamique entre la migration, la mobilité et le développement en Afrique de l’Ouest. Ces deux volumes bilingues renouvellent le débat sur les migrations : de quoi faire réfléchir ensemble l’Afrique et l’Europe. – Marie-Caroline SAGLIO-YATZIMIRSKY, INALCO, CESSMA Paris (France)
Christian Bouquet, « Quelques éclairages nouveaux sur les migrations africaines », EspacesTemps.net [En ligne], Books, 2020 | Mis en ligne le 20 November 2020, consulté le 20.11.2020. URL : https://www.espacestemps.net/en/articles/quelques-eclairages-nouveaux-sur-les-migrations-africaines/ ; DOI : 10.26151/esapcestemps.net-jc2a-6b03
Avec la participation de Naluwembe BINAISSA, Alimou DIALLO, Nyalo Barkissa DRABO, Sylvester KOHOL, A. Aziz MOSSI, Loppa NGASSOU, Lawrence Rafaih OKELLO, Mutiat Titilope OLADEJO, Zakaria SORÉ, Astadjam YAOUBA et Irissa ZIDNABA.
From his home in El Salvador, the author shares an intimate personal and political memoir that follows his remarkable journey from the comfort and security of a picturesque New England town to a stirring and heroic engagement in common cause with the struggle for peace and justice in El Salvador. After four years as a Peace Corp worker in northern Liberia beginning in the late 1960’s, followed by a stretch back in the United States as a street worker in the ghettos of North Philadelphia, McKinley finds himself in Central America as an aid worker in 1978. He quickly becomes engulfed by the political violence of the region and engaged with the people and their struggles against five decades of military dictatorship, centuries of poverty and exploitation. The story is marked by terror, adventure and courage, by trials and tragedy redeemed by the beauty and transcendence of people in struggle. Originally based in Guatemala heading up a Catholic relief agency, his commitment to the struggles for change in the country attracts the attention of the military, and his own government, forcing him to leave the country in late 1980. He moves to El Salvador where he begins a gradual incursion into the revolutionary struggle of this country, in a commitment that will last the rest of his life. Interwoven with this personal journey, is the story of Teresa Rivas, her husband Antonio, and their five children, a peasant family It also describes their life after the war, with resettlement in the lowlands of Guazapa where many ex-combatants were building a new life. It explains in detail the gradual emergence of the objective and subjective conditions for revolution in El Salvador, including the difficult choice for the use of violence as the only available option for transformative change in the country. The book also details the challenges of reconstruction after the Peace Accords that end the war in 1992, and the tragedy of opportunities lost during the immediate post-war period in the face of the ongoing resistance of traditional opponents to reform. As the memoir closes, the author reflects on his choice to be in El Salvador over the past 43 years, and the country as he finds it in these changing times; on the family with whom he has shared love and life there; on his continuing relationship with Antonio Rivas and his surviving family; and his gradual reconciliation, from a distance, with the country of his birth.
The Travails of a Tanzanian Teacher is a riveting account of the bumpy first decade of the work life of Karim F Hirji, a retired Professor of Medical Statistics. Filled with a distinctive variety of eye-opening episodes, it covers lecturing at the University of Dar es Salaam, the life of a political exile in a remote rural area and the challenges of setting up from scratch a one-of-a-kind educational institute in Africa. With a style that seamlessly combines the personal with the general, Hirji provides an illuminating description of different aspects of the Tanzanian political, educational, economic and rural landscape during the 1970s. Starting with a commentary on teacher training, he concludes with a critical comparison of modern university education in the nation with that of the earlier era.
As the oldest (and arguably best-known) university in Uganda and the wider eastern and central Africa region, Makerere University looms large in the history of higher education on the continent. Alma mater to presidents, public intellectuals and pundits of all disciplines, Makerere has attracted considerable scholarly and popular attention, both in respect of its prominence and achievements, and well as with regard to its failures and foibles. The proposed book focuses on a particularly understudied aspect of the place of higher education in the African context, i.e. the relationship between a public university of unique historical importance and the contestations over democratization that have taken place both within campus and outside of it. It is built around the late-1980s struggle by the Makerere University Academic Staff Association (MUASA) for improved living conditions against the backdrop of the early programs of structural adjustment and economic reform that the National Resistance Army/Movement (NRA/M) government adopted soon after taking power in 1986. Although seemingly introverted in focus, in many respects the MUASA action represented the earliest forms of political struggle against a regime of governance that promised a great deal, but disappointingly delivered considerably less.
The focus on MUASA provides a critical entry-point to a wider debate about the place of organized democratic action by academics in a post-conflict context where the traditional institutions of political and civil society, i.e. political parties and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have either been severely compromised or discredited, or where they are too weak and inorganic to provide any form of significant counter-juxtaposition to the government in power. By organizing the first strike by academic staff in the sixty-seven (67) year history of the university, for a time MUASA became the focal-point for democratic organizing against a regime that was yet to fully expose its nefarious and anti-democratic colours. The book examines the broader issues concerning the relationship between organized academic action and democratization; the place of the Media in reviewing these struggles; the position of students as a critical component of academe; “big P” and “small p” politics affecting female academics, and finally, the paradoxical role of the School of Law in both aiding and inhibiting the struggle against dictatorship in a country which has enjoyed
John S. Saul, born and first educated in Toronto, Canada, moved to Tanzania almost sixty years ago and, since then, has also taught in Mozambique and South Africa as well as back in Canada at York University. In Tanzania, he discovered the centrality of the war for freedom from white rule and global capitalist dictate then taking shape further south – in Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa. Both his scholarly interest and his activist bent drew him to support and to seek to better understand the struggles in these nations-in-the-making, a political choice that now culminates in a final trilogy of books under the general title, The Rethinking Southern African Liberation Trilogy. The first volume of this trilogy, On Building a Social Movement: The North American Campaign for Southern African Liberation Revisited, was published by Africa World Press / Fernwood Books (2017). The present book is the second in that trilogy, with a third volume entitled Class, Race and the Thirty Years War for Southern African Liberation – A History set to conclude his work to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2022.
Here, Saul’s extended first chapter lays out the broad premises of the thinking that has guided his endeavours, ideas that takes the core reality of economic production and exploitation centrally but that are alive to the tangible impact on outcomes of a wide range of other social realities, including class, race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, the environment, politics and the state. A second section covers the essential unity of theory and political practice that underpins Saul’s findings. And a third and final section paints illuminating pictures of some core aspects of the diverse regional contexts — sites of both recolonization and continuing struggle, and all contexts whose trajectories will be further explored in his forthcoming third volume.
This book collects four decades of writings on dialectics, a number of them published here for the first time, by Kevin B. Anderson, a well-known scholar-activist in the Marxist-Humanist tradition. The essays cover the dialectics of revolution in a variety of settings, from Hegel and the French Revolution to dialectics today and its poststructuralist and pragmatist critics. In these essays, particular attention is given to Lenin’s encounter with Hegel and its impact on the critique of imperialism, the rejection of crude materialism, and more generally, on world revolutionary developments. Major but neglected works on Hegel and dialectics written under the impact of the struggle against fascism like Lukács’s The Young Hegel and Marcuse’s Reason and Revolution are given full critical treatment. Dunayevskaya’s intersectional revolutionary dialectics is also treated extensively, especially its focus on a dialectics of revolution that avoids class reductionism, placing gender, race, and colonialism at the center alongside class. In addition, key critics of Hegel and dialectics like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Antonio Negri, Pierre Bourdieu, and Richard Rorty, are themselves analysed and critiqued from a twenty-first century dialectical perspective. The book also takes up the dialectic in global, intersectional settings via a reconsideration of the themes of Anderson’s Marx at the Margins, where nationalism, race, and colonialism were theorized alongside capital and class as key elements in Marxist dialectical thought. As a whole, the book offers a discussion of major themes in the dialectics of revolution that still speak to us today at a time of radical transformation in all spheres of society and of everyday life.
Daraja Press
Dark PR is cited by The Australian
“We can’t solve a pandemic caused by an unhealthy food environment by treating it with drugs,” said Mr Ennis, the author of Dark PR: How Corporate Disinformation Harms our Health and the Environment. He said there were extensive links between pharmaceutical companies and diabetes and obesity groups in Australia, via direct funding and sponsorship, the sponsorship of research, and payments to attend education seminars and conferences.
“By funding these health organisations it risks making them front groups,” Mr Ennis said. “I’m unaware of any policy in Australia for obesity or diabetes that has any substance. I’ve never seen a country where nutrition and health groups appear so captured.”
Daraja Press
A list of media coverage
Dayble, Will. Resilience Is Propaganda! CreativeMornings HQ: CreativeMornings HQ, 2021-06-22. https://youtu.be/H_IiVGSTxr4.
Muntisov, Michael. “The Best Thing You Can Do to Tackle Global Warming.” Court of the Grandchildren, July 27, 2021. https://courtofthegrandchildren.com/the-best-thing-you-can-do-to-tackle-global-warming/
Ennis. Grant. We Already Have a Carbon Price. Negative $5 Trillion per Year. Demand Change at COP26! Citizens’ Climate Lobby Australia, Oct 12, 2021. https://youtu.be/xxk8xApGtB4.
Muntisov, Michael. “Australia’s Climate Is Changing.” Court of the Grandchildren, May 29, 2022. https://courtofthegrandchildren.com/australias-climate-is-changing/.
Muntisov, Michael. “Every Time History Repeats, the Price Goes Up.” Court of the Grandchildren, June 23, 2022. https://courtofthegrandchildren.com/every-time-history-repeats-the-price-goes-up/.
Muecke, James, and Grant Ennis. “Sugar Shovellers Are Making Us Sick, Fat and Poor (and Check out What They Pay in Tax!).” Michael West, November 15, 2022. https://michaelwest.com.au/sugar-shovellers-are-making-us-sick-fat-and-poor-and-check-out-what-they-pay-in-tax/
Muecke, James. “Turning the Tide.” Low Carb Down Under. Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre: Low Carb Down Under, Nov 27, 2022. https://youtu.be/OHaaHD5heFQ.
McIlroy, Tom, James Muecke, Grant Ennis, and Sophie Scamps. “Junk Food Tax Breaks: Former Australian of the Year James Muecke Says Parliament Needs to Act on Growing Obesity Rates in Australia – Why This Doctor Isn’t Pushing for a Tax on Sugary Drinks.” Australian Financial Review, November 17, 2022, sec. federal. https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/why-this-doctor-isn-t-pushing-for-a-tax-on-sugary-drinks-20221112-p5bxon
Light, Tan. “Tan’s Resolution: Read More Non-Fiction.” All Lit Up. 2023 ALU Bookish Resolutions, 2023. https://alllitup.ca/Blog/2023/2023-ALU-Bookish-Resolutions.
Client Publications Authors Liz Monument Publication date 2023/3/1 Journal LizMonument.com Publisher https://www.lizmonument.com/client-publications
Robinson, Natasha, Joanna Panagopoulos, and Georgina Noack. “Shining Spotlight on Shadow Weight-Loss Drug Campaign.” The Australian, February 14, 2023, Exclusive edition. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/science/shining-spotlight-on-shadow-wirghtloss-drug-campaign/news-story/c1f8b1151638e72515d66961722822ec.
Ennis, Grant. “How PR and the Fog of Corporate Disinformation Has Governments Paying to Burn the Planet.” Michael West, March 10, 2023. https://michaelwest.com.au/how-pr-and-the-fog-of-corporate-disinformation-has-governments-paying-to-burn-the-planet/.
Wilson, Kea, and Grant Ennis. “Stop the Spin: How to Spot Nine Types of Auto-Industry Disinformation.” Streetsblog USA, March 13, 2023. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2023/03/13/stop-the-spin-how-to-spot-nine-types-of-auto-industry-disinformation/.
Ennis, Grant. “Goodreads Giveaway of 10-books in Canada.” Self, March 2023. (Not a publication. Just noting down that this was done and it worked well). https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62832561-dark-pr
S01 E38: Name this Podcast… and dummies Authors Michael Brooks, Anthony Cimino Publication date 2023/3/16 Journal Center for Auto Safety Podcast Publisher https://www.autosafety.org/podcast/name-this-podcast-and-dummies/
How to Reframe the Narrative About Car Dependency Authors Kea Wilson, Grant Ennis Publication date 2023/3/28 Journal StreetsBlogUSA Publisher https://usa.streetsblog.org/2023/03/28/how-to-reframe-the-narrative-about-car-dependency/
What It Takes To Reframe the Narrative About Car Dependency (Grant Ennis) Authors Grant Ennis, Kea Wilson Publication date 2023/3/28 Journal The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast Publisher https://player.fm/series/the-brake-a-streetsblog-podcast/what-it-takes-to-reframe-the-narrative-about-car-dependency-grant-ennis
The Haul ST: Enabling people to live a “car-light” life: This week, New Mercedes-Benz CLA is debuting soon, Kia launched a new all-electric EV9 SUV, Uber’s Comfort Electric … Authors Adam Feldman Publication date 2023/3/31 Journal Movements Publisher https://www.readmovements.com/p/the-haul-st-enabling-people-to-live
How PR and the fog of corporate disinformation has governments paying to burn the planet Authors Grant Ennis Publication date 2023/4/1 Journal The Tawny Frogmouth: The Northern Beaches Monthly Mag V