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"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." —George Orwell


It all started with the Club of Rome. Founded at the Rockefeller's estate in Bellagio, Italy, in 1968, some of the fraternity brothers and sisters include Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Al Gore, David Rockefeller, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, and Mikhail Gorbachev.


And there is no one better to give you the short version of the Club's agenda than Gorby himself:


"The threat of environmental crisis will be the ‘internal disaster key' that will unlock the New World Order."


Who let this guy out of the asylum?


Their more precisely stated goal is population control. The solution? Create an environmental catastrophe like, oh, say, "global warming" and blame it on the planet's most heinous villain—man himself.


"In searching for the new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. . . . But in designating them as the enemy, we fall into the trap about which we have already warned, namely mistaking symptoms for cause. All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changing attitudes and behaviors that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself."


Sounds like a good plan . . . if you're Darth Vader.


In 1972, the Club took the world stage with the publication of a book they had commissioned to be written by a group of MIT scientists. It was called The Limits to Growth. Examining the planet's population growth in relation to available resources, the report concluded that the planet would run out of resources sometime in the next 100 years, resulting in a catastrophic decline in population and industrial production.


As one reviewer put it, the authors examine ". . . the impact of humanity on the world ecology and of steps taken toward remediating the accelerating approach to a train wreck that is mankind's ill-managed and uncontrolled ‘footprint' on this planet's environment."


Still, these trends and their consequences could be altered, it argued; we had to be less, do less and have less. The brand for this Orwellian path to planetary salvation was sustainable development.


Heavily promoted, the book reached opinion leaders in political, scientific and economic circles as it exploded around the planet like the Harry Potter of environmentalism. It sold 12 million copies in thirty languages despite the fact that the research had all the scientific rigor of a plagiarized term paper for a freshman biology class.


Assailed by top scientists, the research was shoddy in the extreme. Population expert and author Professor Julian Simon said, "The Limits to Growth has been blasted as foolishness or fraud by almost every economist who has read it closely or reviewed it in print."


Yale economist Henry Wallich reviewed the book saying, ". . . the quantitative content of the model comes from the authors' imagination, although they never reveal the equations that they used."


But it is a PR world and with the publication of this book, the modern environmental movement was born. Midwifed to life in a blanket of deceit, it was hailed as the savior, not of mankind, but of the planet it claimed was being fried to a crisp by humanity's toxic binge of carbon dioxide.


The scientific fraud is its own malice, but few were able to see the underlying strategy—that the book would serve as the foundation of a global public relations campaign that would mesmerize legislators, educators, and countless organizations of goodwill and would eventually set the stage for the biggest rip-off in human history. But I am getting ahead of myself.


This then was the ultimate con: The scientific basis of the book that launched the environmental movement calling for "sustainable development" and a reduction of man's leper-like carbon footprint on the planet was, and is, a scam, a hoax, a falsehood—environmental snake oil!


A plethora of green groups emerged, sensing the opportunity to make a killing. All with euphemistic sounding names, like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth (FOE) and Rainforest Action Network (RAN), the FOE's and RAN's alphabet soup green groups together with Greenpeace ran wild.


Altruistically cloaked as not-for-profit organizations, these charlatans went about with collection bowls in hand to governments, corporations and even the public to knock them up for funds to pursue their agenda, which unbeknownst to the willing donors were really to fill their coffers to fund the lavish lifestyles of their office bearers.


Any doubt about their modus operandi is instantly dispelled when you do a little digging. Do a little googling and the gullibility of the donors are laid bare. These "not-for-profit" green groups pull in a staggering amount of funds worldwide, running sometimes into the hundreds of millions of dollars, organization wide. For instance, Friends of the Earth has combined global funds in excess of US$300 million.


Although they are listed as not-for-profit, it does not stop the office bearers from paying themselves handsomely and awarding themselves perks that would make some corporate captains blush. In short, these organizations are set, not as a profit making business, but to make their conveners rich through massive salaries and perks and enable them to live the life of the rich and famous without having to pay a single cent in corporate tax!


However, to loosen the purse-strings of donors, these green charlatans needed a suitable target and which target was more opportune than palm oil?


Here was a commodity that was planted by developing countries that was taking the world by storm and developing country producers have not proven to be too conversant with or adept in the nether-world of industrial espionage and economic sabotage!


Extremely productive with a yield of 4-5 metric tons per hectare which is close to ten times that of its nearest competitor, palm oil was the world's cheapest cooking oil! On top of that, the oil was blessed with inherently healthful qualities being naturally packed with heart friendly anti-oxidants and phyto-nutrients like, inter alia, beta-carotene, CoQ10 and cholesterol busting toco-trienols! Moreover, the oil proved highly popular with food manufacturers when it was found to be trans fats free and yet had a naturally longer shelf life, without the need for hydrogenation or preservatives. However, what really tipped the scale and made palm oil the target of these green sharks was when palm oil's usefulness as a feedstock for the blending of biofuels and biodiesel became apparent.


Palm oil's growth had to be stopped and it's competitors could not sit idly by whilst palm oil was decimating their market share.


The most glaring recent finding revealed that the EU, via its environmental ministries and commissions, had actively funded up to 70% of the operating budgets of environmental NGOs - many of which were mostly the same groups viciously campaigning against palm oil imports into the EU. Among the major recipients include the Friends of The Earth.


Now why would the EU fund green NGOs who proceeded to mount what was tantamount to a trade protectionist scheme in the guise of environmental activism? It does not take a genius to figure this one out. The EU has homegrown oilseed industries like rapeseed and sunflower that were unfortunately not quite as productive as palm oil. In fact, their typical yield is just 10% that of palm oil!


And so a renewable energy directive (EU RED) was issued in 2008 by the European Union parliament on biofuel content which imposed strict regulations on carbon emission.


The EU RED has also put many palm oil-based biodiesel producers in a limbo as the directive distorts the commodity price and its trade. Many trade observers see the directive as a tactical unfair business ploy and a non-tariff trade move by the EU to single out palm oil for not able to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and preserving biodiversity.


According to the EU scientific and technical research, palm oil biodiesel - which has only about 19% GHG - failed to meet with the EU RED requirement. The directive states that biofuel must result in GHG savings of at least 35% versus fossil fuel in 2009 and also increase over time to 50% by 2017.


This claim, however, is contrary to many research views, indicating that palm oil biodiesel actually has an estimated GHG savings of 55%!


While many palm oil biodiesel producers were doubling their efforts to convince the EU on the sustainability of palm oil, there have been a continuous slew of anti-palm oil campaigns launched by Western environmental NGOs.


Amid the attacks and boycotts, however, there have been many positive independent researches and reports on palm oil from Europe starting to surface lately.


Many are questioning the EU RED's actual motive and its unfair treatment to single out palm oil which needs to be certified as sustainable, whereas rapeseed, soybean or olive oil which are produced in the developed countries had been given preferential treatment despite not being sustainably produced.


The sheer incongruity of that should have alerted the mass media to the uncomfortable scenario that environmental organizations like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are really proxies used wittingly or unwittingly by the EU in a cleverly planned and well coordinated trade war against palm oil.


It has often been said by cynics that the easiest way to rob a bank is to own one, except in this case the bank is the treasury of the green NGO. Palmhugger is compelled to ask whether the likes of enviromental NGOs such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are using a commodity like palm oil as a cause celebre to fill their coffers? THE END.