"Alexander the Great was one of history's earliest propagandists," writes Matt Labash in a historical overview of military propaganda techniques through the ages, published in the conservative Weekly Standard. He lists examples, some humorous, of psychological ploys used by American, British and Nazi warriors.

Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange, a human rights organization based in San Francisco, recently sent a fact-finding delegation to Afghanistan and Pakistan. "I didn't know that massive numbers of people were not getting food aid because the U.S. was blocking an international force from coming in to open up the roads so that aid could get in," Benjamin reports. "And I also had no idea of the extent of innocent victims, who were killed by U.S. bombs, until I realized that everywhere we went, we found people who had stories to tell of loved ones who were killed in the bombing. ...

Burson-Marsteller, one of the world's largest public relations firms, has formed an alliance with Cyveillance, a company that specializes in helping companies track what consumers, activists and other interested parties are saying about them on the Internet. ""Negative comments or dialogue, which can be devastating to large corporations, often begin unnoticed in the recesses of the Internet," explained Eric Letsinger of Cyveillance. According to B-M's Scott A.