Saturday, November 27, 2010

Who Is "Ginza Glenn"?

Anti-whaling activists Sea Shepherd call him "Ginza Glenn".
To his clients he's Wellington-based Omeka Communications, voicepiece for the tobacco industry and the Institute of Cetacean Research, lobbying on behalf of the nasty Nippon whalers.
Glenn Inwood is an award-winning kiwi PR specialist. He's been a journo, radio producer, communications manager for the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission. He worked in politics but, after ex-PM Helen Clark had called his whaling connections "distasteful", he resigned.
Wikipedia has quite a bit of detail on him actually...Inwood works for Te Ohu Kaimoana, the sole voting shareholder in Aotearoa Fisheries, which owns 50% of Sealord (the other half is owned by Japanese company Nissui, a major shareholder in Japan's Antarctic whaling fleet).
Inwood also works for Imperial Tobacco NZ, Japan Fisheries Agency, Japan Whaling Association, Species Management Specialists, and the World Council of Whalers.
As you may assume, Glenn Inwood is not a friend of whale conservators.
Various news agencies have had their eyes on Glenn too. They reported that back in Dec.2009/Jan.2010 someone chartered several 'spy flights' out of Tasmania: that was "Ginza Glenn". Paid for by Omeka, they tried to find Sea Shepherd's vessels en route to the Southern Ocean. SS claims Inwood lied by saying he was a NZ Govt employee monitoring the ships for search and rescue purposes. This led to a bill in the Oz Parliament, to ban nasty Nippon whalers from using Aussie planes to spy on protesters.
Now, on one hand, Glenn was just been doing his job and, in his controversial customers' craniums, doing it well. Consumer-killers and whale butchers would not feature highly on many PR firms' "preferred client" lists, so as long as Glenn beats the drum as hard as he does, he gets guaranteed good income!
But on the other hand, blood money does leave a stain...

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