Friday, July 6, 2007

EU pours £3.8bn into 'brainwashing campaign'

From the you've got to be kidding me file.

According to Lee Rotherham, the author of a new book which examines the EU's spending on its image, such initiatives are an "outrageous and cynical attempt to brainwash the young". The Europa Diary, a gift from the EU to schoolchildren, is one example cited by Mr Rotherham in Hearts & Minds: the Tax-funded PR Campaign to Make us Love Brussels.

Let's Explore Europe Together, an online teaching aid aimed at nine to 12-year-olds, describes the EU as a "really good plan that had never been tried before".

The European Parliament has also funded a cartoon called Operation Red Dragon, featuring a daring, fictitious MEP, Elisa Correr, who becomes "embroiled in a risky and fascinating adventure while in pursuit of her parliamentary activities".She dodges assassins, hunts down a general who broke an arms embargo, and still has time to debate copyright law in Brussels.

Via The Telegraph