Death sentences in milk scandal

Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 11:56 am

The Herald reports:

The Green party has called on the Government and Fonterra to condemn the death sentences handed down in China to two men involved in the tainted milk scandal.

The two men were sentenced to death yesterday while Tian Wenhua, the woman at the head of Fonterra joint venture Sanlu Group, was given a life sentence by a court in Shijiazhuang.

This is no surprise. In fact Phil Goff back in September said it was “almost certain” that those responsible would be executed. Mind you, I thought such a public statement from the then Trade Minister was somewhat unwise, as it could be read as agreement (unintentionally of course).

Tags: , , , ,

Posted in International Politics, NZ Politics | 26 Comments »

How Google could really make money!

Sunday, September 28th, 2008 at 1:00 pm

The SST reports on the PR advice to Sanlu (the company part owned by Fonterra) from its PR company in China:

Carried on Chinese weblogs, the memo, purportedly from Sanlu’s PR company, notes growing numbers of damaging references to the company, which is 43% owned by Fonterra, in connection to infant kidney failures, and lays out strategies for addressing the issue. These included silencing victims, and paying off Baidu, China’s largest internet search engine, to remove negative references from its web searches.

Paying Google not to carry negative references on your comapny – now that could be a lucrative income stream.

Except of course once it got known, Google would lose market share massively.

The memo also said a “PR protection” deal had been negotiated with Baidu, in which Sanlu agreed to buy $640,000 of advertising with the search engine, in return for having negative stories blocked from search results.

Hmmn wonder how much they’ll pay Kiwiblog to remove a negative story. Wouldn’t cost $640,000!

Winston – make an offer :-)

Tags: , ,

Posted in Internet | 5 Comments »