Babylonian Times

Philip Morris – smoke free zone
The American tobacco giant Philip Morris has turned its Australian headquarters into a smoke-free workplace, with specially ventilated smoking areas away from work zones.
This is quite a turn-around since 1995, when the company managed to be exempted from workplace anti-smoking laws in New York, after it threatened to move its headquarters out of the city. Philip Morris’s corporate affairs director, Thomas duBois, quoted in the Guardian, seemed to be slipping slightly off-message on environmental tobacco smoke, ‘It causes fatal disease, whether you’re a smoker at Philip Morris or not.’ So why do you sell the stuff?
Source – Guardian, 26/11/02

Corporate Antisocial Irresponsibility
At a time when it is fashionable for corporations and investment managers to talk of social responsibility, a new US mutual fund is proud of its political incorrectness. The Vice Fund <www.vicefund.com>, launched recently by Mutuals.com of Dallas, is deliberately investing in stocks such as tobacco, alcoholic beverages, gambling and military contracting. The fund’s philosophy was expressed succinctly by the Washington Times: ‘Markets rise and markets fall, but one thing never seems to change: drinkers drink, smokers smoke and gamblers gamble.’ To which may be added: and the United States goes to war.
Source: Dirt Diggers Network: Digest No. 23, 14/11/02

Highway to Heaven
US PR firm Fenton Communications latest brief is to provide publicity for an odd intersection of two great American interests – evangelical Christianity and cars. This comes in the form of the Evangelical Environmental Network’s ‘What Would Jesus Drive?’ campaign, designed to pressure car manufacturers to develop more fuel-efficient vehicles.
Rev. Jim Ball, of the EEN, believes Christians should junk SUVs and drive less-polluting vehicles that aren’t as harmful to the environment and people’s health. According to an EEN fact sheet, ‘The Lordship of Christ extends throughout every area of our life. Nothing is excluded from His Lordship. This includes our transportation choices.’
EEN maintains the more fuel efficient cars would reduce the risk of global warming and cut America’s reliance on ‘imported oil from unstable regions’. The US car industry is taking EEN seriously - Ball has visited Detroit to meet with Ford CEO Bill Ford and executives from General Motors.
But the car manufacturers might not be so keen if they thought it through - surely Jesus would take public transport?
Source – O’Dwyer’s PR Daily, 19/11/02