Scotland’s Advertising Standards Authority, which regulates ads in newspapers and other media, is banning an anti-wind farming advertisement by developer Donald Trump that linked support for wind farms to the Lockerbie bombing.
The advertisements featured a photograph of Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond and likened the government’s support of wind farms with the decision to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, according to the Scotsman.com website.
The decision to censor the article was cheered by environmentalists who have been fighting Trump’s development projects in Scotland.
Trump has been embroiled in a battle with Scottish ministers who have given the go-ahead to an experimental offshore site near Aberdeen, where he is building a massive, multimillion-dollar golf resort that overlooks the North Sea and sits several miles north of the boundary. Trump claims the wind turbines will mar the view from his resort.
Editor's Note: Should ObamaCare Be Repealed? Vote in Urgent National Poll
The billionaire property magnate threatened to use his financial muscle to oppose the 11-turbine project in the courts using "every legal means" to defeat it. Despite recently announcing plans to build a second 18-hole golf course at his resort, he repeated his threat to put his entire project on hold because it threatened the financial viability of his resort.
In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103, a flight from London's Heathrow Airport to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, was destroyed by an explosive device, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew members. Large sections of the plane crashed into Lockerbie, in southern Scotland, killing an additional 11 people on the ground.
In 2001, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, a security chief with a Libyan airline, was convicted of 270 counts of murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Megrahi was freed on compassionate grounds by the Scottish Government in 2009 following doctors' reports that he had terminal prostate cancer and was expected to have around three months to live. He did not die until May 2012.
The Advertising Standards Authority, or ASA, will publish a report this week condemning the ad as misleading. The ASA decision is the second such ruling against Trump over their anti-wind farm campaign. An earlier advertisement was banned for exaggerating the number and type of turbines used in Scotland.
George Sorial, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, told The Sunday Herald that the had been approved in advance by Scotland’s Committee of Advertisement Practice.
He told the newspaper: “We actually wanted the content to be much stronger because Scotland is facing an economic and environmental meltdown.
“The fact that the ASA has now clearly contradicted the advice of CAP demonstrates how disorganized, inefficient, and wasteful these agencies are.”
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.