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    Posted September 2, 2012 by
    DeforestatnW
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    Chicago, Illinois

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    Palm oil: The European Commission has no guts, no heart and no spine!

     
    Five surgeons were seated around discussing who makes the best patients to operate on.

    The first surgeon says, "I like to see accountants on my operating table, because when you open them up, everything inside is numbered."

    The second responds, "Yeah, but you should try electricians Everything inside them is color coded."

    The third surgeon says, "No, I really think file clerks are the best; everything inside them is in alphabetical order."

    The fourth surgeon chimes in: "You know, I like construction workers... those guys always understand when you have a few parts left over at the end, and when the job takes longer than you said it would."

    But the fifth surgeon shut them all up when he observed:"You're all wrong. Politicians are the easiest to operate on. There's no guts, no heart, and no spine, and the head and butt are interchangeable."

    Whenever I hear this joke, I can’t help but think how much it applies to the Office of the Environment Directorate of the European Commission (EC) and its secret role in the anti-palm oil campaigns that has been carried out for the past few years by its green group surrogates.

    Italian civil libertarians, Libertiamo appears to suggest that it is so. In a study entitled “Taxpayer Funding, NGO Collusion and Manufactured Crises: A Case Study of Malaysia and Palm Oil,” Libertiamo points out that since 2005, the European Commission has provided nearly €5million (MYR 19,7 million) to the World Wildlife Fund and €4 million (MYR 15,8 million) to Friends of the Earth. Climate Action Network (CAN) also received nearly €1 million (MYR 3.9 million) in the past two years alone.

    Libertiamo observes that the real reason for these baffling attacks against palm oil is, to put it bluntly, trade protectionism! Says Libertiamo: ““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…”

    Libertiamo notes that “the criticisms against the industry are regularly based on claims MANUFACTURED BY NGOs that are not backed up by hard evidence!”

    However, in so crassly funding palm oil campaigns that are at best, supported by “manufactured evidence, as noted by Libertiamo, the EC have just played with the livelihood of palm oil smallholders who eke out a living on palm oil, bandying them about as a cat would do with a piece of string! Heartless would be putting it mildly!

    For contrary to popular opinion, palm oil is not just supplied by mega corporations as the environmental NGOs are often wont to opine, but in reality, more than 40% of global palm oil production is produced by smallholders! These are the small farmers who are given the short end of the stick by a European Commission that has displayed a shocking lack of guts in capitulating to the EU’s indigenous edible oil industries clamor for protectionism to counter a rampant hyper yielding palm oil that they are hapless in facing in the open market.

    By resorting to these covert programs – the type more often associated with furtive third world regimes, the EC has also betrayed a seeming lack of spine in failing to stand by its own declared principles to encourage competition! It is worthy to note that this self same EC had very sanctimoniously prosecuted Microsoft Corp. resulting in the imposition of a spectacular multi-million Euro fine for the American software giant for what the EC termed a serious violation of the EU’s Competition laws.

    These covert palm oil programs sponsored by the EC 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 is a living testimony to the shocking hypocrisy and two-timing that appears to be the purview of the officials walking the halls of power in the EC!

    Note: Deforestation Watch aka Melbourne Zoo Watch was originally established to drive green issues on palm oil mainstream. However, Deforestation Watch has in the course of its existence evolved into Melbourne Zoo Watch and now considerable time and energy is spent on exposing the sly misdeeds and devious schemes of the Melbourne Zoo in using palm oil to surreptitiously raise funds for the zoo. www.deforestationwatch.org

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