Product Placement in the Pews? Microtargeting Meets Megachurches

Church pastors last year had a chance to win a free trip to London and $1,000 cash -- if they mentioned Disney's film "The Chronicles of Narnia" in their sermons.

Chrysler, hoping to target affluent African Americans with its new luxury SUV, is currently sponsoring a Patti LaBelle gospel music tour through African-American megachurches nationwide.

LaBelle's tour, which features both her November-release gospel album and Chyrsler's 2007 "Aspen" SUV, is passing through 14 of the largest predominantly African-American megachurches in the country. Some participating churches are also organizing "ride and drive" events, where church members and others can test-drive Chrysler vehicles.

"If we are going to target the African-American consumer, we have to go where they go, rather than ask them to come to us, and the church is a major institution for that community," says James Kenyon, Chrysler Group brand marketing senior manager.


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Genetically Engineered Rice Wins USDA Approval

Grain Tainted U.S. Supply This Summer

By Christopher Lee

Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 25, 2006; Page A03

The Department of Agriculture declared safe for human consumption yesterday an experimental variety of genetically engineered rice found to have contaminated the U.S. rice supply this summer.

The move by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to deregulate the special long-grain rice, LL601, was seen as a legal boon to its creator, Bayer CropScience of Research Triangle Park, N.C. The company applied for approval shortly after the widespread contamination was disclosed in August and now faces a class-action lawsuit filed by hundreds of farmers in Arkansas and Missouri.

The experimental rice, designed to resist Bayer's Liberty weedkiller, escaped from Bayer's test plots after the company dropped the project in 2001. The resulting contamination, once it became public, prompted countries around the world to block rice imports from the United States, sending rice futures plummeting and farmers into fits.

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GOP Fliers designed to trick black voters into voting for two Republican candidates.

GOP Fliers Apparently Were Part Of Strategy

Md. Tactics Similar To Ones in 2002

The six Trailways motorcoaches draped in Ehrlich and Steele campaign banners rumbled down Interstate 95 just before dawn on Election Day.

On board, 300 mostly poor African Americans from Philadelphia ate doughnuts, sipped coffee and prepared to spend the day at the Maryland polls. After an early morning greeting from Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s wife, Kendel, they would fan out in white vans across Prince George's County and inner-city Baltimore, armed with thousands of fliers that appeared to be designed to trick black Democrats into voting for the two Republican candidates.

The glossy fliers bore photos of black Democratic leaders on the front. Under the headline "Democratic Sample Ballot" were boxes checked in red for Ehrlich and Senate candidate Michael S. Steele, who were not identified as Republicans. Their names were followed by a long list of local Democratic candidates.

The glossy fliers in red, black and green -- colors that represent black empowerment -- featured pictures of County Executive Jack B. Johnson, former county executive Wayne K. Curry and former U.S. Senate candidate Kweisi Mfume, all Democrats, under the caption: "These are OUR Choices." In fact, none of the three endorsed Ehrlich, and only one, Curry, endorsed Steele. Some political analysts believe that disappointment over the fliers, part of a strategy to pull in critical black voters, cost both Ehrlich and Steele precious votes instead of adding to their support.


"They said we'd be passing out fliers and talking to some people," Preston said. The workers were not told, he said, that they would be helping Republicans.

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Should Death Row inmates be allowed to have MySPace pages?

MySpace has triggered a lot of complaints in the company's brief existence. Schools have complained when students use pages to post about their teachers; parents have complained that pedophiles troll the site for victims; even a prosecutor in California complained when a defendant's mother, Laura Rangle, created a page on behalf of her 23-year-old daughter, Laura Medina, taking her side of the story to the Web.

Now, a city official in Houston is griping that family and friends of death row inmates have created MySpace pages on their behalf. Andy Kahan, director of the city's crime victims office, has written to MySpace, arguing that pages devoted to death row inmates glorify them, according to recent news accounts.

"Is it within your policy to allow the glorification of killers by giving them a platform to influence young minds?" Kahan wrote, according to the Associated Press. "Are there specific guidelines within MySpace that would prohibit giving convicted felons a platform for all the world to see?"

The pages, written and maintained by people who know the inmates, include information about their hobbies, interests, favorites songs and the like. In other words, they seek to humanize the inmates.

There doesn't seem to be anything illegal about that; in fact, lawyers defending death row inmates try desperately to humanize their clients. But a lawyer in a courtroom speaks to a very limited audience; MySpace offers people a way to persuade millions. That a group is complaining about the pages speaks to the power of MySpace and user-created media in general.

Presumably the group wants News Corp. to start censoring profiles--an unworkable idea on every level. Who would decide which profiles are deserving of MySpace pages? Surely, Kahan isn't the only person out there who would like to see a few profiles taken down.

And if News Corp did come up with some sort of censorship policy, it wouldn't take long before people found another way to publish their Web pages. And it certainly wouldn't take long before users fled the site in favor of other, less controlling platforms.

China manages to increase trade surplus by 50% to $1 Trillion, while Bush wastes money on war

China Exports Expected to Push $1 Trillion

Source - AP

China manages to increase trade surplus by 50% while Bush wastes money on war

BEIJING (Nov. 10) - The Commerce Ministry said Friday that China's exports are expected to reach $960 billion this year, boosting its politically sensitive trade surplus to about $150 billion, a state news agency reported.

Imports should rise to $810 billion, raising total trade by 20 percent to $1.7 trillion, the ministry said in figures reported by the Xinhua News Agency.

The explosive growth of Chinese exports, already among the world's largest, have strained relations with Washington and other trading partners.

They are demanding that China open its market further to imports and ease controls that they say keep its currency, the yuan, artificially weak, adding to the trade surplus.

China's trade surplus last year was $102 billion.

Rwanda nun jailed over genocide

A Roman Catholic nun has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for her role in the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

Theophister Mukakibibi was jailed by a traditional Rwandan court for helping ethnic Hutu militiamen kill Tutsis hiding in a hospital where she worked.

Mukakibibi is the first nun sentenced by a Rwandan court for crimes committed during the genocide.

Two other Catholic nuns were found guilty by a Belgian court in 2001, and male priests have also faced trial.

Theophister Mukakibibi worked at the National University Hospital in the town of Butare during the genocide.

Protection

According to Jean Baptiste Ndahumba, president of the local gacaca court in Butare, the nun selected Tutsis sheltering in the hospital and threw them out for the militias to kill.

He said she did not spare pregnant women, and was also accused of dumping a baby in a latrine, the Reuters news agency reports.

"She used to hold meetings with militiamen and had an army officer as her escort during the killings," Mr Ndahumba said.

Gacaca courts have been used in Rwanda to speed up the process of bringing those responsible for the genocide to justice.

Last year a Belgian male priest became the first foreigner to go before a gacaca court accused of genocide crimes.

Some members of the Catholic hierarchy in Rwanda had close ties to extremist politicians and aided Hutu militias in the run-up to the killings.

Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in the 1994 genocide and thousands of people were killed after seeking sanctuary in churches.

Insulting Our Troops, and Our Intelligence

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: November 3, 2006

George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld think you’re stupid. Yes, they do.

They think they can take a mangled quip about President Bush and Iraq by John Kerry — a man who is not even running for office but who, unlike Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, never ran away from combat service — and get you to vote against all Democrats in this election.

Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Kerry, I hope you will say to yourself, “They must think I’m stupid.” Because they surely do.

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Voter Suppression in Midterm Elections: Robocalls, ID Confusion, Voter Roll Purges

In Virginia, Democratic Senatorial candidate James Webb's last name does not appear on the voting summary sheet.

In Indiana, African American congresswoman Julia Carson was told her congressional ID was not sufficient to vote.

In Broward County, Florida early voting, a vote for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate registered as a vote for the Republican candidate.

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An AXIS of Stupid - Britons more wary of Bush more than Kim Jong-il

Britain's Guardian newspaper said it carried out the survey along with Israel's Haaretz, La Presse and Toronto Star in Canada and Mexico's Reforma.

In Britain, which alongside Israel is traditionally a close Washington ally, 69 percent of those questioned said they felt U.S. policy had made the world less safe since 2001.

A majority of Canadians and Mexicans agreed, with 62 percent of those polled in Canada and 57 percent in Mexico saying their neighbor's policy had made the world more dangerous.

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