Palm Oil: The Award for the worst smear goes to…

Another film awards season, another dirty tricks campaign. It appeared that The King's Speech, the ecstatically received British film whose star, Colin Firth, is favorite to win an Academy Award for his portrayal of George VI, is the subject of internet smears aimed at damaging its chances of success.

The allegation, which has absolutely nothing to do with the film itself, is that George VI was sympathetic to the Third Reich before the Second World War, because he supported plans to prevent Jews from fleeing Nazi Germany and settling in Palestine. Two American writers with film blogs have wittingly or unwittingly been central to the progress of this attempt to smear the film. Claude Brodesser-Akner, an entertainment journalist who blogs on Vulture, the arts page of New York magazine's website, wrote: "This blogger feels morally compelled to note that the film largely glosses over the Nazi-sympathising past of the tongue-tied monarch."

His posting provided a link to a 2002 report in The Observer, which stated that two MPs had asked for papers detailing the reaction of George VI to the increasing power of Nazi Germany. The Observer noted that documents confirming the king's support for checking the "unauthorised emigration" of Jews to Palestine were already in the public domain.

All this, you may think, is rather distant from the fortunes, quality and awards-worthiness of a film about George VI's struggle with his stammer which makes no claim to be a documentary or a comprehensive account of all aspects of the king's life. But a few days after Brodesser-Akner's posting, another American blogger, Scott Feinberg, added fuel to the flames by publishing an anonymous email from someone claiming to be a member of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and therefore eligible to cast votes for the Oscars. It read: "Scott, I'm an academy member, and there are a lot of us who won't vote for The King's Speech." It went on to cite Brodesser-Akner's posting and the 2002 Observer report.

This kind of campaign is nothing new to the palm oil industry, having been subjected to a two decade long smear campaign launched first by the likes of the curiously named and now largely discredited Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and lately by green groups such as Greenpeace and the even more oddly acronymic FOE (Friends of the Earth).

In the mid eighties, CSPI mounted vociferous campaigns claiming that palm oil was saturated fat and therefore, deleterious to heart health. They loudly called for a ban on the importation of palm oil.

The sheer incongruity that a commodity which is so inherently heart friendly could come under such feral attack in the mid eighties by CSPI led by the inscrutable Michael Jacobson, who accused palm oil of being saturated fat, and therefore deleterious to heart health, surely takes some beating.

Unfortunately, for CSPI its allegations were based on such flimsy "scientific" grounds - so simplistic it will be observed, that it'd be hard put to pass muster for a high school science project, many scientific studies on the health effects of a palm oil rich diet had been conducted AND published in peer reviewed journals! When the weight of scientific evidence was brought to bear on CSPI's claims, the organization now largely discredited, retreated to their lair in Washington DC to plan their next move against palm oil.

It took some 2 decades but CSPI worked out a new stratagem, something with stickability that was so simple and devious that it could be described as diabolical. This time CSPI published a "report" called "Cruel Oil: How palm oil harms health, rainforest and wildlife", accusing palm oil of causing massive deforestation and global warming.

The report was prepared with the assistance of Aid Environment listed as partners with Hivos — a Netherlands based civil society group with direct links to campaigns in Indonesia. Hivos, in turn, is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for up to two-thirds of its annual 100m Euro budget.

Before long, Greenpeace and FOE together with other green groups took up the cudgels. Dressed in silly orang utan suits, they campaigned long and hard for palm oil to be reined in to stop the alleged deforestation and orang utan extinction.

What is, perhaps, the most sinister aspect of Greenpeace and FOE's agitation against palm oil is the recent revelation by researchers Caroline Boin and Andrea Marchesetti in a well researched report entitled "Friends of the EU" (see: http://www.policynetwork.net/accountability/publication/friends-eu). This searing report amounted to an expose that the EU, through its environmental ministries and commissions is involved in funding up to 70% of the operating budgets of environmental NGOs such as FOE Europe is a dead giveaway that the real reasons for these baffling attacks is to protect oilseed crops like rapeseed and sunflower which are indigenous to the EU. It is inarguable that these EU oilseeds would find it difficult to compete on a level playing field, with "the cheapest oilseed crop in the world" especially in the production of biofuel, the use of which the EU has committed itself to promoting!

Says James M. Roberts, a Research Fellow for Economic Freedom and Growth in The Heritage Foundation's Center for International Trade and Economics: "In fact, one of the factors motivating the opposition to palm oil production is protectionism: These groups are opposing imports of lower-cost, higher-quality palm oil because it threatens the market share of oil produced from rapeseed grown in European Union countries."

"Many of the NGO opponents of palm oil production are recipients of some of the millions of euros in annual grants from EU environment ministries and the European Commission, advanced by European companies and labor unions in an effort to protect their domestic rapeseed oil production (which is itself subsidized through the EU's Common Agricultural Policy)."

It is pertinent to ask too why other oilseed crops like soy, rapeseed and sunflower should escape the scrutiny that palm oil is subjected to? After all, the oil palm share of world agricultural land is only 0.22 per cent.

The total greenhouse gas (GHG) emission of global agriculture is 17 per cent which is considered small compared with the burning of fossil fuel, which contributes 57 per cent of GHG emission.

The carbon footprint of oil palm cultivation globally is, therefore, 0.22 per cent times 17 per cent of the total or 0.0374 per cent of global GHG emissions.

In the view of the Palm Oil Truth Foundation, even if all palm oil cultivation takes place on converted peat-lands and rain-forest (which it definitely does not), it still occupies only 0.22% of the world's agricultural land, making it morally wrong and pure hyperbole to blame oil palm as a significant contributor to global warming.

And so, Ladies and Gentlemen! The Award for the worst smear of the decade goes to the palm oil campaigns of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth! THE END.

About the Author

Palm Oil Truth Foundation is an international non-governmental and not-for-profit organisation, without strings to the world of commerce and power. We are a people organisation, organised for the people and founded upon the principles of integrity and responsibility as a global citizen with the sole purpose of representing TRUTH to the global community about health, environmental and economic benefits of palm oil.

Author (palmoiltruthfoundation). Submitted on Sat, 26 Feb 2011 Time: 11:18 PM

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