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- Posted September 2, 2012 by
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Palm Oil: The EU Commission stands exposed as a fake
When it was suggested by this blog – it was some 3 years ago – that some unseen hand was funding palm oil attacks by green groups , a collective howl went out from environmentalists and their supporters.
The palm oil campaigns all had a common theme, like a line from a most familiar hymn sheet – one which has thundered in the ears of radio and TV audiences worldwide who had watched programs such as BBC’s Panorama which, together with newspapers gave the lie a life of its own – that palm oil is responsible for such massive deforestation that it is threatening the extinction of wildlife such as the orangutan!
Indeed, official denials were flashing across the wires before the issue was finally put to bed by Italian civil libertarians, Libertiamo. Such emphatic denial, understandably enough, is a little less thick on the ground right now.
Libertiamo’s explosive expose was certainly damaging to the reputation and good name of the EU. The obscene silence emanating from the EC is deafening, especially for a Commission that had so sanctimoniously taken Microsoft Corp to court for violating the EU’s Competition Laws!
Now the EC stands exposed as a fake who had violated those self-same Competition laws (plus WTO Rules to boot) by pouring millions of Euros into green group surrogates to attack palm oil just to pander to local edible oilseed industries like rapeseed and sunflower which are unable to compete against the palm oil juggernaut in the open market!
According to Libertiamo, it was the Director General of the Environmental Office of the European Commission who had been providing funding to green group surrogates like Friends of the Earth, Climate Action Network and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) ostensibly to improve environmental practices in developing countries. In reality says Libertiamo, the EC’s funding of the aforementioned green groups were all cynically calculated to prop up their indigenous edible oilseed crops like rapeseed and sunflower, which are otherwise hapless and unable to compete on an equal footing with the rampantly higher yielding palm oil!
Noting the predilection of these NGOs to make spectacular claims, Libertiamo observed that one of the most commonly used is a statistic that in SE Asia alone, the equivalent of 300 football fields are deforested every hour for palm oil plantations, a claim that has been exposed as a significant distortion of facts by the FAO’s recent "State of the Forests 2011" report which observes that whilst rates of deforestation between 1990-2000 were high at a time of significant development in SE Asia, the trend had reversed dramatically between 2000-2010. Deforestation rates during this latter period "more than halved, making the NGO claims of rampant expansion entirely false!"
Where the deepest of EC's problems reside is not so easy to say, but there has to be an increasing suspicion that it may well be within its own faulty perception that subterfuge such as this can remain covered up forever!
The truth is that, since the Libertiamo eruption, only one thing has truly changed in the palm oil equation – the slow realization within the hallowed halls of the Environmental Directorate of the EC that it was indeed foolhardy to attempt such a grand scheme of fraud and deceit on such a scale without being found out eventually!
The gravamen of the charge against the EC is not so much the funding but the fact that the EC was aware all along that the palm oil campaigns funded by them were based almost entirely on cooked up and manufactured evidence! “NGOs have become "peddlers of half truths to drive donations and attract government largesse. And donor governments support them, in the interest of uncompetitive domestic industries and neo colonial ambitions!" notes Libertiamo. The longhand and the shorthand are both legible enough.
Note: About Inc Society of PalmHugger: We are made up of professionals and individuals with a great passion for the truth.
We are biologists, creative designers, engineers, business men and women, professional tennis players, stay-at-home moms, retirees, college students, filmmakers, journalists, communication experts. You name it!
Our goals are all the same – to advance the cause of truth through better and wider dissemination of true palm oil environmental news and views, assisting in CSR initiatives, or developing programmes for advocacy and lobbying of palm oil environmental matters, always with an emphasis on truth.
Who we are not: We are not politically linked to any political parties. We are also not donor nor profit driven. Every single cent raised through our initiatives are channeled back to fund Palmhugger programmes that require financial assistance. www.Palmhugger.org
The palm oil campaigns all had a common theme, like a line from a most familiar hymn sheet – one which has thundered in the ears of radio and TV audiences worldwide who had watched programs such as BBC’s Panorama which, together with newspapers gave the lie a life of its own – that palm oil is responsible for such massive deforestation that it is threatening the extinction of wildlife such as the orangutan!
Indeed, official denials were flashing across the wires before the issue was finally put to bed by Italian civil libertarians, Libertiamo. Such emphatic denial, understandably enough, is a little less thick on the ground right now.
Libertiamo’s explosive expose was certainly damaging to the reputation and good name of the EU. The obscene silence emanating from the EC is deafening, especially for a Commission that had so sanctimoniously taken Microsoft Corp to court for violating the EU’s Competition Laws!
Now the EC stands exposed as a fake who had violated those self-same Competition laws (plus WTO Rules to boot) by pouring millions of Euros into green group surrogates to attack palm oil just to pander to local edible oilseed industries like rapeseed and sunflower which are unable to compete against the palm oil juggernaut in the open market!
According to Libertiamo, it was the Director General of the Environmental Office of the European Commission who had been providing funding to green group surrogates like Friends of the Earth, Climate Action Network and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) ostensibly to improve environmental practices in developing countries. In reality says Libertiamo, the EC’s funding of the aforementioned green groups were all cynically calculated to prop up their indigenous edible oilseed crops like rapeseed and sunflower, which are otherwise hapless and unable to compete on an equal footing with the rampantly higher yielding palm oil!
Noting the predilection of these NGOs to make spectacular claims, Libertiamo observed that one of the most commonly used is a statistic that in SE Asia alone, the equivalent of 300 football fields are deforested every hour for palm oil plantations, a claim that has been exposed as a significant distortion of facts by the FAO’s recent "State of the Forests 2011" report which observes that whilst rates of deforestation between 1990-2000 were high at a time of significant development in SE Asia, the trend had reversed dramatically between 2000-2010. Deforestation rates during this latter period "more than halved, making the NGO claims of rampant expansion entirely false!"
Where the deepest of EC's problems reside is not so easy to say, but there has to be an increasing suspicion that it may well be within its own faulty perception that subterfuge such as this can remain covered up forever!
The truth is that, since the Libertiamo eruption, only one thing has truly changed in the palm oil equation – the slow realization within the hallowed halls of the Environmental Directorate of the EC that it was indeed foolhardy to attempt such a grand scheme of fraud and deceit on such a scale without being found out eventually!
The gravamen of the charge against the EC is not so much the funding but the fact that the EC was aware all along that the palm oil campaigns funded by them were based almost entirely on cooked up and manufactured evidence! “NGOs have become "peddlers of half truths to drive donations and attract government largesse. And donor governments support them, in the interest of uncompetitive domestic industries and neo colonial ambitions!" notes Libertiamo. The longhand and the shorthand are both legible enough.
Note: About Inc Society of PalmHugger: We are made up of professionals and individuals with a great passion for the truth.
We are biologists, creative designers, engineers, business men and women, professional tennis players, stay-at-home moms, retirees, college students, filmmakers, journalists, communication experts. You name it!
Our goals are all the same – to advance the cause of truth through better and wider dissemination of true palm oil environmental news and views, assisting in CSR initiatives, or developing programmes for advocacy and lobbying of palm oil environmental matters, always with an emphasis on truth.
Who we are not: We are not politically linked to any political parties. We are also not donor nor profit driven. Every single cent raised through our initiatives are channeled back to fund Palmhugger programmes that require financial assistance. www.Palmhugger.org
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- oil,
- palm
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