"Eco-imperialism" in New York - exploiting the poor for corporate purposes

1.Eco-imperialism in New York - exploiting the poor for corporate purposes (GM Watch)
2.CORE/Patrick Moore/Prakash/Roger Bate and other pro-corporate lobbyists 'Demand End to "Eco-Imperialism"' (Conference press release)
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1.GM Watch special report: *Eco-imperialism in New York - exploiting the poor for corporate purposes*

A conference that its organisers say will make "eco-imperialism" a household word is taking place at the Sheraton Hotel & Towers, New York, Tuesday. According to the title of the event "eco-imperialism" is, "The global green movement's war on the developing world's poor". Opposition to GM crops, it is claimed, is part of that "war".

The conference is being organised by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). CORE styles itself "one of America's premier civil rights organizations". Its national spokesperson Niger Innis says, "We intend to stop this callous eco-manslaughter".

Conference panelist, Dr. Patrick Moore, who is described as Greenpeace's "co-founder", is also keen to expose the "pain and suffering" the environmental movement "inflicts on families in developing countries" - something which, he says, "can no longer be tolerated."

According to fellow panelist, Prof CS Prakash, "By orchestrating unfounded scare stories that biotech crops are unsafe or untested, they put huge road blocks on the development of plant genetic engineering that could bring economic prosperity to the rural poor in Uganda and Bangladesh."

Another panelist, Paul Driessen, is the author of "Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death", a book which lays at the door of the environmental movement, "the hunger and suffering of millions of the world's poor who are denied the benefits of genetically engineered food."

The book's editorial reviews, include one from Prakash - he enthuses, "Great book!" According to Patrick Moore,"This book is the first one I've seen that tells the truth and lays it on the line".

But when it comes to GM crops both the book and the conference studiously ignore the fact that many development experts and NGOs have been just as sceptical about the value of GM crops for the world's poor as environmental organisations. http://ngin.tripod.com/feedingorfooling.htm

Many of the strongest objections have come, in fact, from experts and farmers in developing countries themselves. Dr Tewolde Egziabher of the Environmental Protection Authority in Ethiopia is among those who argue that the future of agriculture in the developing world is actually being harmed by the hype over GM crops which is drawing precious resources away from other agricultural innovations and practices that have far more to offer resource-poor farmers. http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1905

The Director-General of the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), Jacques Diouf, has pointed out that irrigation and road-building are far more urgent priorities in improving Africa's agriculture than encouraging the introduction of GM crops. http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1693

And a closer look at those behind both the "eco-imperialism" book and the "eco-imperialism" "teach-in" in New York, raises some disturbing questions about their precise motivation and the reliability of their pronouncements.

MEET THE EXPERTS

These are the "experts" being assembled by CORE at the Sheraton Hotel.

*PAUL DRIESSEN, author of "Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death"*

Driessen's book is published by the Free Enterprise Press, the publishing arm of The Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise (CDFE), where Driessen is a a Senior Fellow. He is also a principal of Global-Comm Partners, a Northern Virginia public relations firm specializing in environmental issues.

According to a review of Driessen's book on the CDFE's website, the book helps the reader "to understand why the environmental movement is engaged in the most appalling example of genocide the world has ever known!"

In the late 1980s CDFE and its Executive Vice President, Ron Arnold, launched the anti-environmentalist Wise Use movement. Arnold has also been a consultant for Dow Chemical, as well as Head of the Washington State chapter of the American Freedom Coalition, the political arm of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church (1989-91).

In 1991 Arnold told the New York Times, "We [CDFE] created a sector of public opinion that didn't used to exist. No one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along." According to CDFE's President Alan Gottlieb, who made his name as a gun lobbyist and has done time in prison for tax-evasion, "For us the environmental movement has become the perfect bogeyman."

Ron Arnold, who was one of the first to brand environmentalist "eco-terrorists", has stated his aim is "to destroy the environmental movement". In an interview with CNN Arnold said part of his intent was to "kill the bastards". He added, "People in industry, I'm going to do my best for you. Environmentalists, I'm coming to get you." (Interview, CNN, May 30, 1993 )

The Wise Use movement has had links with right-wing militias. The scapegoating and demonising of environmentalists is said to have contributed in some cases to their becoming the targets of physical assaults, arson and even bomb attacks. (The Green Backlash, Andrew Rowell, 1996)

Driessen served as editor of another book published by CDFE's Free Enterprise Press, "Rules for Corporate Warriors: How to fight and survive attack group shakedowns", by Nick Nichols, Chairman & CEO of PR firm Nichols Dezenhall.

In a leaked presentation that Nichols made to a pork-producers group on how businesses should deal with their critics, Nichols quotes Al Capone, "You can get more with a smile, a kind word and a gun than with a smile and a kind word", and George Carlin, "If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten!" Nicholls advised the pork producers that they needed to, "Fight like guerillas" and "Take no prisoners".
Source: http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=248

*CYRIL BOYNES AND NIGER INNIS of CORE*

In his introduction to Driessen's book, Niger Innis of the Congress of Racial Equality, says, "The time has come to hold these radicals... accountable for their excesses, and the poverty, disease and death they have perpetrated on the poor and powerless. Eco-Imperialism is an excellent start... The world's destitute masses will love it."

In the press release for the conference, its organisers - CORE - are described as one of America's premier civil rights organizations. This was true in the hay day of the civil rights movement. However, during the 1970s CORE all but collapsed and the remnant was taken over by Roy Innis, Niger's father, who moved the organisation to the Republican right.

Black American journalists Glen Ford and Peter Gamble describe CORE under Roy Innis as "a tin cup outstretched to every Hard Right political campaign or cause that finds it convenient - or a sick joke - to hire Black cheerleaders". They report how James Farmer, the former head of the original Congress of Racial Equality confronted Roy Innis on TV for turning the organization into what Farmer called a "shakedown" gang.

Innis is also on the Advisory Committee of Project 21. Ford and Gamble describe it as a "Black front group" and "a network and nursery for aspiring rightwing operatives". Project 21 opposes affirmative action and the minimum wage but supports GM foods. Project 21 has been funded by R.J. Reynolds, and it has lobbied in support of tobacco industry interests.
Source: http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=174

*ROGER BATE of Africa Fighting Malaria*

Africa Fighting Malaria is just one of a series of far-right free-market "NGOs" to which Bate connects. These include the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the International Policy Network and the European Science and Environment Forum. The latter was co-founded by Bate who was ESEF's first director.

In its mission statement on its original website, ESEF described itself as "a non-partisan group of scientists" and claimed, "To maintain its independence and impartiality, the ESEF does not accept outside funding from whatever source...".

However, documents released by tobacco giant Philip Morris as part of a court case revealed that ESEF was established with money from the tobacco industry - solicited by Bate. As Big Tobacco's European front organization, ESEF's task was to smuggle tobacco advocacy into a larger bundle of "sound science" issues, including "restrictions on the use of biotechnology."  Source: http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=18

*DR. PATRICK MOORE, "Greenpeace co-founder"*

The description of Moore as "co-founder" of Greenpeace is misleading, although he was among a number of founder members of the organisation. However, Moore has had no role in the organisation for almost 20 years, having quit in the mid-1980s.

Since leaving he has been a full-time paid director and consultant for the British Columbia Forest Alliance. The Alliance was the brainchild of PR firm Burson-Marsteller and has a budget of around $2m derived mostly from the forest industry. It campaigns for clear-cutting.

Moore's attacks on Greenpeace and other environmentalists as "ultraleftists" who "use Gestapo tactics" and who are guided by "pagan beliefs and junk science" have delighted industry. His language is a direct echo of CDFE's Ron Arnold who has long attacked environmentalists as "eco-fascists" and communists and called for a "holy war against the new pagans who worship trees and sacrifice people".  Source: http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=89

*PROF CS PRAKASH of AgBioWorld*

Prakash is Director of the Center for Plant Biotechnology Research at Tuskegee University, Alabama, USA. He is best known for his pro-GM AgBioWorld campaign.

In May 2003 Prakash was the lead orator when U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick announced the U.S.'s intention to file a World Trade Organization case against the European Union over its "illegal five-year moratorium on approving agricultural biotech products." (Tuskegee Scientist's Expertise a Key Component of World Trade Organization Initiative)

Although Prakash claims the status of a leading scientific expert, his pronouncements on GM often have little grounding in either truth or science. He told the press in the Philipinnes, for instance, that GM crops can help reduce farmers' post-harvest losses because "most genetically-modified crops have longer shelf life". This is untrue.

In his report Genetically Modified Crops and Sustainable Poverty Alleviation in Sub-Saharan Africa, Aaron deGrassi of the Institute of Development Studies, at the University of Sussex, notes, "Another surprising example of advocacy trumping facts is C.S. Prakash... Prakash has repeatedly cited [GM] sweet potatoes [in Kenya] as a positive example of the benefits of GM for African countries, but has confessed to having no knowledge of the results of scientific trials in Kenya."

Baseless claims are not the only aspect of Prakash's campaign which have led to questions. AgBioWorld has presented itself in the past as a mainstream science campaign 'that has emerged from academic roots and values' and which carefully eschews corporate support. Yet according to the annual report (2000) of the Washington-based Competitive Enterpise Institute (CEI), the centre piece of AgBioWorld's campaign - Prakash's declaration supporting the use of GM crops in the developing world - was part of CEI's much wider campaign against "death by regulation". The same CEI campaign has been directed against U.S. government efforts to discourage smoking because, according to the  CEI, "there are things more valuable than health".

Greg Conko, Director of Food Safety Policy at CEI, is a "co-founder" of AgBioWorld. Conko regularly co-authors articles with Prakash. CEI has a multi-million dollar budget that comes from corporate sponsors like Dow Chemicals.

There is also evidence of connections between Prakash's campaign and Monsanto's highly controversial Internet PR company Bivings.  Source: http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=106

OTHER CONTRIBUTORS

Other contributors to Tuesday's conference include Deroy Murdock of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which helps to finance far-right groups around the world, and Fiona Kobusingye, who is described as a "businesswoman, Uganda".

Also quoted below is the Kenyan Akinyi Arunga, Director of Youth Affairs for the Inter Region Economic Network (IREN) in Kenya. IREN was formed by James Shikwati with Atlas funding. In 2002 Shikwati wrote an article for the (London) Times, entitled "I do not need white NGOs to speak for me", describing a pro-GM, pro-free-trade march at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg. The media contact for that march was Kendra Okonski - the daughter of a US lumber industrialist who has worked out of various rightwing NGOs - all run, needless to say, by "whites". * CORE to Hold Teach-In, Demand End to "Eco-Imperialism"
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=169

One of Okonski's employers has been the Competitive Enterprise Institute, to which both Bate and Prakash also connect. CORE has also worked with CEI in the past on counterprotests. http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=174

CORE's campaigning on the "eco-imperialism" issue began around the time the U.S. filed its WTO case against the European Union. Bush's call for European governments to restart approvals of GM crops also "earned the praise" of members of Project 21 to which Niger Innis connects. CEI was represented at the U.S.'s launch of the WTO case, which was presented as being undertaken in the interests not of  giant US corporations but the poor and hungry in the Third World.

The "eco-imperialism" campaign smacks of the same effort to advance US corporate interests via a cynical attempt to exploit the hundreds of millions of hungry people in the world.
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2. *CORE to hold teach-in, demand end to "Eco-Imperialism": Greenpeace co-founder to denounce his former colleagues
NEWS For Immediate Release
Contact: Cyril Boynes, Jr. 212-598-4000
January 15, 2004
http://www.aspb.org/publicaffairs/agricultural/gpbiotech.cfm

NEW YORK. The Congress of Racial Equality, one of America's premier civil rights organizations, will convene a teach-in on Tuesday, January 20, at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers, to condemn the global green movement's oppression of poor people in the Third World.

"The environmental movement I helped found has lost its objectivity, morality and humanity," says Greenpeace co-founder and conference panelist Dr. Patrick Moore. "The pain and suffering it inflicts on families in developing countries can no longer be tolerated."

Moore will be one of eight experts from around the world will demonstrate from first-hand experience how environmental extremists deny destitute nations electricity, and deepen the poverty, malaria, malnutrition, tuberculosis and dysentery that kill their people.

"We intend to stop this callous eco-manslaughter," says CORE national spokesman Niger Innis. "The green movement imposes the views of mostly wealthy, comfortable Americans and Europeans on mostly poor, desperate Africans, Asians and Latin Americans. It violates their most basic human rights. CORE will lay down the gauntlet. Eco-imperialism may not be a household word yet, but it will be after this conference, the first one to address these issues."

Every year, malaria makes 200 million people so sick that they cannot work, attend school, cultivate their fields or care for their families. Most of the cases are in sub-Saharan Africa, leaving that region one of the most destitute on Earth. Two million people a year die from malaria - half of them children, and 90 percent of them in Africa.

A major reason for the malaria epidemic is the radical environmentalists and World Health Organization's near-total ban on DDT, perhaps the most effective mosquito killer and repellant in existence. "Europeans and Americans can afford to deceive themselves about malaria and pesticides. But we can't." says Fiona Kobusingye, who came all the way from Kampala, Uganda to participate in the event and tell her personal story.

The average European cow gets a $250-a-year subsidy. Meanwhile, a billion people struggle to survive on just $200 a year, Innis notes. More than 2 billion have neither electricity nor running water, and none of the basic necessities and conveniences Americans take for granted - all because of the greens' ideological opposition to energy and economic development in the Third World.

"We must put humanity back into the environmental debate," says Innis. "We all want to protect our planet. But we must stop trying to protect it from bogus or illusory threats - and on the backs, and the graves, of the world's most powerless and impoverished people."

WHAT: Eco-Imperialism: The global green movement's war on the developing world's poor

WHEN: Tuesday, January 20 - 1:00 to 4:00 pm WHERE: Conference Room D, Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers, 53rd Street & 7th Avenue WHO: Roger Bate, Africa Fighting Malaria, UK; Cyril Boynes, Jr., CORE, USA; Paul Driessen, author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power * Black Death, USA; Niger Innis, CORE, USA; Fiona Kobusingye, businesswoman, Uganda; Patrick Moore, Greenspirit, Canada; Deroy Murdock, Atlas Economic Research Foundation, USA; CS Prakash, Tuskegee University, USA and India.

At the teach-in's conclusion, journalists and other attendees can meet and interview the experts, who will also be available for print, TV and radio interviews during their time in New York.

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Every year, 500,000 children around the world go blind, as a result of vitamin A deficiency, notes Dr. CS Prakash, professor of plant genetics at Tuskegee University and a native of India. Two million die from problems directly related to this simple lack of a common vitamin, often because they are so malnourished they cannot survive the malaria, dysentery and other diseases that also afflict them. "Golden rice" could help end these problems, but radical greens oppose its use, because it was developed using precise genetic engineering methods.

"Environmental activists who've never had to worry about starvation, malaria and simple survival have no right to impose their fears, prejudices and ideologies on the world's poor," Dr. Prakash says. "By orchestrating unfounded scare stories that biotech crops are unsafe or untested, they put huge road blocks on the development of plant genetic engineering that could bring economic prosperity to the rural poor in Uganda and Bangladesh."

To a significant degree, Innis stresses, these problems have been prolonged and worsened as a direct result of eco-centric policies that oppose the use of pesticides, biotechnology and fossil fuels. This cannot be allowed to continue, he and the other panelists will demonstrate.

"Eco-imperialism perpetuates poverty and misery. It's hypocritical and immoral, unethical and socially irresponsible. Worst of all, it's lethal. It simply has to end," adds panelist Paul Driessen, author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death, and himself a former member of the Sierra Club and Zero Population Growth. "It's time to hold these groups accountable and compel organizations, foundations, courts and policy makers to understand the consequences of the policies they are imposing on our Earth's poorest citizens."

"The most recent WHO report on malaria makes virtually no mention of indoor residual spraying programs, using DDT," says Dr. Roger Bate of Africa Fighting Malaria and the American Enterprise Institute. "And when it is mentioned, it is done in a very negative way that ignores the great success South Africa and other countries have had with these programs. It's as though this great success has been scientifically cleansed from the literature."

"When I helped create Greenpeace in 1971," reflects Dr. Moore, "I had no idea it would evolve into a band of scientific illiterates who use Gestapo tactics to silence people who wish to express their views in a civilized forum. I had no idea the movement would oppose genetic engineering and other programs that could benefit mankind - and adopt zero-tolerance policies that so clearly expose its intellectual and moral bankruptcy."

"Cute, indigenous customs - the kind environmental groups say they are trying to safeguard - mean indigenous poverty, indigenous malnutrition, indigenous disease and childhood death," points out Kenyan Akinyi Arunga, who is on travel and will not be able to participate in the event. "I don't wish this on my worst enemy, and I wish our so-called friends would stop imposing it on us."